Blank Check with Griffin & David - Millennium Actress with Hoai-Tran Bui Transcript and Discussion (2024)

Starting point is 00:00:00 Blank Jack with Griffin and David Blank Jack with Griffin and David Don't know what to say or to expect All you need to know is that the name of the show is Blank Jack The part I really loved was podcasting him. Wow, the end of the movie. The end, the profound end line. Very profound.

Starting point is 00:00:31 At the end of the day, isn't life about the podcast you chase after that you never get to record? What's that one for you then? For me, Tom Shadyak series. Right, that'll always be one year ahead. That's the key around my neck. It says Evan Almighty. And someday I imagine I'll get to that episode, 10 years from now.

Starting point is 00:00:50 Yes. Yeah. I'm chasing, I don't know what I'm chasing. Penny Marshall, confirmed, next mini-series. I'm bringing this back. I think so. I think it's a good bit. I'm sorry that we have to address this up top, because it's very boring, but I watched jumping jack flash correct the first penny Marshall movie a movie

Starting point is 00:01:12 She was hired on late. It was supposed to be someone else and she was brought I don't know why they were like this director isn't working out. Let's hire Zero time director penny Marshall, but they did. Yeah. Have you seen Jumping Jack Flash? No, your comment was, you said the most plot in any movie ever. I mean, it's, have you seen Jumping Jack Flash? I have not even heard of this movie. It's not a particularly well remembered movie. It's a Whoopi Goldberg comedy.

Starting point is 00:01:34 Covered on the podcast. From the 80s. An early Whoopi vehicle. Sure. It's one of her firsts. About like a data entry person who starts talking to a British secret agent on her computer and gets sucked into like a whole like Cold War intrigue spy thriller. Am I wrong in thinking that is immediately post color purple the first time studios are

Starting point is 00:01:54 like let's build a movie around Whoopi? Even if it's not build a movie around her, it's certainly like she will be like let's get this let's give her a script. Yes. And she will be, like, let's get this, let's give her a script. Yes. And she will be the star. It's a weird pick for her because it's like, she's playing kind of like a bookish, nerdy, desk-bound person.

Starting point is 00:02:17 This is what's so sassing about the Whoopster as a movie star. The Whoopster. I do love the Whoopster. Is she just kind of became like undeniably famous, talented, respected, and then they were like, we have no model to fit her into. Yeah, that's true.

Starting point is 00:02:29 That's why she was always getting back in the habit. Totally. And would like take scripts that were often written for men, and they'd be like, let's rewrite this for Whoopi. Here's this movie was written for Shelly Long, Griffin. Fascinating. And the script was seen as problematic. Howard Zeeff, that guy, was the director.

Starting point is 00:02:46 They fired him and replaced him with Penny Marshall. And she rewrote the screenplay during production. So it was like an insane, you know, like, what is this? Jumping Jack Flash is one year after Color Purple. It's her second movie. So she's hot stuff. But yes, every one, like, but wasn't Sister Act written for Bette Midler?

Starting point is 00:03:01 Like, every Whoopi movie was basically written for someone else. And at the last second they were like, what if we do a dramatic rewrite and let Whoopi put her voice in us? Anyway, go on. Bette Midler, you're correct. I just wanted to check. The role that she had in Star Trek was written for her. Yes, of course. Well, she demanded it.

Starting point is 00:03:17 Yes. She pulled a Mace Windu. Yes. She was like, I love Star Trek. Yeah. Put me in Star Trek. And Roddenberry f*cked with it. Yeah. Right and Roddenberry was like she's too famous that

Starting point is 00:03:28 jerk also her reps f*cked with like her reps tried to block it from happening cuz they were like if you do TV you're never coming yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah she was right guy in an amazing character yeah do you agree iconic character I agree um Jack Flash, a lot of plaids, sorry. This is all very important for our Millennium I decided for some reason to watch any movie ever that depicts what I have decreed cyberspace. Okay. I made a giant list of movies. Some of them I've already seen.

Starting point is 00:04:00 Doesn't sound like you. Like The Matrix, you know. Sure. Is this on a spreadsheet by any chance? It actually, I did it on Letterboxx, but you know, it's that vibe. Letterboxx is sort of the postmodern spreadsheet. Can you export to XCO?

Starting point is 00:04:12 I believe you can. That should be his new tagline, the postmodern spreadsheet. It's kind of what it is. Yeah. And you know, I made a list of like 20 and then people started commenting, you know, they saw the list and they were like,

Starting point is 00:04:21 what about this, what about this? Okay. You know, I started adding things. Yeah. And a lot of people said Jumping Jack Flash. Interesting. And so I was like, I guess I gotta watch it. And I watched it and two things happened.

Starting point is 00:04:30 One, I realized the film does not exist in cyberspace. It's just chat room. She's just in a chat room. That's interesting, it's an early chat. At the time that was cyberspace. Somewhat, somewhat. I was kind of like, my arbitrary rule was like wireframes. Ben, I feel like this might speak to you.

Starting point is 00:04:46 Like the Tron rule. You know, I want to see some wire frames. You know, when we're entering, you know, cyberspace. Bio digital jazz. Yeah, sure. You know, lawn mower man, what? What do you mean wire frames though? Like just like visually, you want to see some wire frames

Starting point is 00:05:01 when like, it's the render. You want to see the holodeck essentially. Orally, like Tron animation. Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes. It You wanna see the holodeck, essentially. Or like the Tron animation where it looks like Chicken Coop. You know, obviously, the other thing I was trying to chart is like, what is the peak? And obviously the peak is 1995. 1995 is when, here are the movies, I'm gonna read them out to you. Disclosure? Disclosure?

Starting point is 00:05:20 The most cyber-spacy. That's 1994. But yeah, Virtuosity, Hackers, Johnny Mnemonic, Strange Days, The Net, and over in Japan, Ghost in the Shell. Ben was f*cking eaten in 95. Like that is the, like Hollywood collectively has the same brainquake where they're like, people need to have short peroxide hair,

Starting point is 00:05:40 it'd be like clickety clackin' and you know, everyone has to be called like crash override. I'm in. Yes, they're always in. It can be set clickety-clackin'. And, you know, we need to, everyone has to be called like, crash override. I'm in, yes. They're always in. It can be set in the future, it can be set in the present, but it's the same kinds of things. And then, you know, you see it kind of tailing off, but then the Matrix comes a few years later,

Starting point is 00:05:56 and you're like, a lot of this was seeded in bad attempts. But you're right, from like, 96, 97, 98, it becomes deep supporting characters. It's it's what Jason Schwartzman always calls the go for cricket rolls Yeah, the I'm in the you know guy with right you know, but that guy's no longer the center of the movie It's not the main plot point. Yeah now He's just yelled at by the main lead exactly to speak English who's a little too cool for computers Like I'm 12 to speak English. Who's a little too cool for computers. In English, please. In English, please.

Starting point is 00:06:26 Yeah. Like I'm 12. And that means? I watched some awesome, you know, kind of junkie movies, like, uh, well, I watched Brainstorm. Juggles Trumbles Brainstorm, which is kind of a stretch for what I'm going for, but it's very cool. I watched, like, you know,, Brain Scan and Ghost in the Machine

Starting point is 00:06:48 and the 13th Floor. You ever seen the 13th Floor? That's like a stir of echoes to The Matrix's The Sixth Sense. Where they're kind of like, we're kind of doing the same thing. And everyone's like, don't care, this one's over here, I'm going to this one. Now, our listeners try to constantly game out what we're doing next. This is the problem. I caused a problem

Starting point is 00:07:05 by accidentally watching Penny Marshall's first film. At the time we are recording this episode, this mini series has not yet been announced. It's a short mini series. People don't know what we're covering next, right? But they're constantly reading the tea leaves, looking for clues to get ahead. They're Swifties.

Starting point is 00:07:19 They are. You know what? You know what? You know what? There's only a few of them who behave that way, but yes. A couple of them are. That's what they're like. A couple of them are. You know what? You know what? You know what? There's only a few of them who behave that way, but yes. A couple of them are. And you had that E's sort of, you know, nickname before Swifties did.

Starting point is 00:07:31 We did. We had the blankest thing down. That's interesting. David logs this, right? Wall suit. This happens constantly. And then I say to David, hey, David, if we're covering a movie on a mini-series that hasn't been announced yet, can you wait to log in until later?

Starting point is 00:07:46 And David says, no. Yeah, definitely not. That's not how I live my life. So I just don't log any film I've watched for the podcast that has not been announced. Because then they would really know. That's confirmation. Then they could really confirm it. So when we, I keep, because I have the f*cking eye-cow of when we recorded, when the series

Starting point is 00:07:59 gets announced, I go back and add the watch dates. Wow. For everything retroactively. That's intense. It's intense. But David logs jumping jack flash. Someone screenshots it, goes onto our Reddit, says Penny Marshall mini series. And usually the bit is, if we have something on deck

Starting point is 00:08:16 that we're gonna do, I start to go. We're never gonna do it. Never gonna do it. Never gonna do that. So people look for the tea leaves of me overselling that this will never come up again, this will never be discussed. I see this Penny Marshall post.

Starting point is 00:08:27 I think I'm on the subway or something. I'm like in between two things. And I see this post and I'm just like, you know, be funny. And I just right underneath confirmed and I look, turn off my phone and I go off in the rest of my day. And then like three hours later, Maria, it was just Marie who was mad. I was abused. You are that meme of, what's his name, Roman Kendall.

Starting point is 00:08:49 Yes. Checking his emails. Yes. But the other part of this is for the first couple years of the show, our joke would always be and of course the next mini-series will be Penny Marshall. We used to say that. We would say that. It's true.

Starting point is 00:09:02 It would be our version of the, sorry, Matt Damon had to be cut for time. We should do it. Yeah. We're doing it next. I'm confirming it right now. Right now. Okay. Let's reform.

Starting point is 00:09:12 No, we are covering a very different filmmaker. We are. I think Marie was really just mad at you because this was like one day before the live show and suddenly the fans were making like eight Reddit threads being like, so Penny Marshall's movies are available here. Right? They were basically going all in. Yeah they were we had enough to worry about yeah That's a drum off the sense of people never know we're covering set off. That's why I now I'm playing eight dimensional

Starting point is 00:09:33 Yes at all times with what I watch yeah, okay I'm gonna log for Satoshi Kone movies. Yes, and they're gonna be like I don't know though that jumpin jack flash thing really threw me I I know like he's just having fun. I will strategically watch and log films in groups. Oh my God. To have them be like, he watched both of these on the same day? Hell yeah. And I'm, you could say I could just do this.

Starting point is 00:09:56 I could do fake logs just for the sake of stirring up the pot. No, I'll like, I'll do it. I'll be like, I'm going to watch four Eddie Murphy movies this week and have them try to figure out what the f*ck is going on. Perfect. Yeah, and of course they almost figured out the ninth anniversary thing when I watched a few nine movies But then I logged eight heads in a duffel bag and they went crazy Listen, it's all very inside baseball. I'm so sorry Got him Any of the great film we've covered today. This is blank check with Griffin and David. I'm Griffin

Starting point is 00:10:25 It's a podcast about filmography as directors So a massive success early on in their careers and are given a series of blank checks Take whatever crazy passion products they want. Sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they bounce baby This is the most tragically cut short career we've ever covered. It has to be yeah We've covered other people who passed away when it felt like they still had good work left in them. But talk about a guy just making four perfect movies and tragically dying before the age of 50. Yeah, and he didn't, he probably didn't really get a blank check, I guess, in the way we usually think about it. But, you know, he's so worthy of coverage.

Starting point is 00:11:00 It's weirdly kind of retroactive with him. I mean, now his films, I do feel, like, loom so large culturally, and we'll talk about this. Part of this is just kind of like the mainstreaming of Japanese animation since his death. I feel like Paprika too, like, that's the closest thing he... I don't know if you have an opinion on this. Like, his movies didn't do, like, amazing. No.

Starting point is 00:11:22 Like, when they were released. Yeah. And none the less, they were so well received and his like reputation was so strong that he would get weirder and weirder projects approved. Like he could make Paprika even though Tokyo Grandfathers was not a big, whatever. Sure. That's the closest thing I can say to this. No, that's the other thing with him.

Starting point is 00:11:39 It was like his films were big in Japan, but they were not huge in Japan. Like his legacy there also only grew over time. Yeah, they were well-respected. I think his legacy only really grew when Hollywood directors started picking up his work and kind of, not ripping from it, but so to speak. Well, I think even more than that, like a lot of major directors who count him as a major influence

Starting point is 00:12:07 in a lot of general and hyper-specific ways, but then also like ten years of the internet being like, do you know that actually this movie is? Yes. Like, he's a guy whose profile did get raised by, well, actually people online, constantly redirecting everyone to, this is the real sh*t. Aronofsky's the one who bought the rights to Perfect Blue, right? We'll talk about that on that episode.

Starting point is 00:12:29 It's disputed. It's disputed, but yes, he bought the rights, but he never actually remade them in a very proper way. But then some people question if he did ever actually have the rights. That's for that episode, which we will have done at this time. It's a me-series on the films of Satoshi Kon.

Starting point is 00:12:43 We're calling it... P-precast. Sat the films of Satoshi cone. We're calling it precast Satoshi cone Satoshi cone Satoshi cone Papri cast now you pitched Paprika cast no I pitched okay. Let me find this is the problem I was running it both ways one looks better visually one sounds better out loud pod pre cast But what you pitched was pod preka cast. I'm trying to find it pod preka cast. Is But what you pitched was PodprekaCast. I'm trying to find it.

Starting point is 00:13:07 PodprekaCast, is that what I pitched? Yes. You know, we like to squeeze podcast into the title of one of their films. And his films tend to have fairly short titles. And there's only four of them. So we're already in trouble. Podprecast.

Starting point is 00:13:21 Perfect cast. So obviously, perfect podcast. Tokyo Podfathercast. Perfect cast. Perfect cast. So obviously, perfect podcast. Tokyo Podfathercast. I don't know. I said Podlenium Castress. Podpreka cast, yes. You said damn, that's good. I did, but then I started saying it out loud and I was like, what's cleaner out loud is

Starting point is 00:13:39 podprecast. Podprecast. You're the ones who are going to have to say this out loud. But it looks bad when you just type that out. So this might be one of those like, which is the real title? It's Pubprecast. There we go. Pubprecast.

Starting point is 00:13:55 Okay. That's what this is called. Today we're talking about a second film. It's called Millennium Actress. Yes. I think it's a masterpiece. Is this your favorite? Have you seen all his films? I haven't seen Tokyo Godfather

Starting point is 00:14:06 Yeah, when I haven't seen I recommend I have Tokyo Godfather's I highly recommend it I don't care if you recommend it. I won't see it another masterpiece. It's abstaining from the episode David what do you think and hope it just be nothing? That's the thing that's fascinating about him is I feel like three of his movies have now been canonized as like, these are three of the greatest animated films of all time. Tokyo Godfathers is the one that's a little ignored. And even still, people are like,

Starting point is 00:14:32 that one's quietly a masterpiece, too. It's quietly a masterpiece, and I will say it's one of the best Christmas movies of all time. Wow. That's intriguing. Yeah. Our guest today coming in hot with hot takes. Entertainment editor, correct title? Correct title.

Starting point is 00:14:46 Hell yeah. At Inverse, Hoi Tran Boi, return to the show. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me again. Excited to get all millennium up in this. You were... Just three millennials. Just three millennials.

Starting point is 00:14:58 Are you a millennial? I am a millennial. You're a millennial. Yes. I'm very firmly a millennial. You're speaking in there. Yeah. We're a couple millennial podcasters. That's what I'm saying. Yeah. speaking in there. I'm very firmly millennial. Yeah. We're a couple of millennial podcasters. That's what I'm saying.

Starting point is 00:15:06 Yeah. Look at us. Someday we'll make a movie about us as old. Well, obviously this movie is not about a millennial. No. She didn't get trophies for finishing fifth. I don't know what the millennial jokes are. I think it is a very millennium movie in that sense of like it being 2000 and we're being

Starting point is 00:15:22 like, let's look back. Yes. Right, right, right. The century that just passed us, how things have changed. You love this movie, you have a poster of this movie on your wall. I do. You got the poster when you went to see it at the Metrograph.

Starting point is 00:15:35 Was that your first time seeing it? No, that was a rewatch. The first time I saw this, I saw this way too young. I watched this as a child because my parents were one of those, this is an animated movie, you'll probably like this. Right, where cartoons for kids. How old were you?

Starting point is 00:15:49 Oh, I was probably like 10 years old. I don't know what you're going to get out of this at that age. Yes, but it kind of... It looks cool. It looks cool. It did blow my mind. Right. That was the movie, I think it was the first movie I saw where I was like, wow, movies can be like this.

Starting point is 00:16:05 And then watching more movies and realizing, oh, only one movie can be like this. It's probably his least, like, you know, adult movie. Like, it's his PG movie. Like, Perfect Blue, you can't show to a child, obviously. Paprika's scary. Tokyo Godfather's, I mean, I assume there's some gunplay. Is that one pretty, that one's pretty spright.

Starting point is 00:16:31 Do you guys know what Tokyo Godfathers is about? I know what it is, because it's a remake of the- I know it's a remake of Three Godfathers. That I know. It's them with a kid, right? It's them with a kid. It's three homeless people who discover a kid on Christmas Eve.

Starting point is 00:16:41 Wait, that sounds heartwarming. It's really heartwarming, but it's also quite, you know, sad and melancholy and a little bit grubby. But that's probably the one that is by default the most child-friendly? I would say so, yeah, because it is like a Christmas movie in some ways. It's very Capra-esque is what I would describe it as. This movie is very like psycho-emotionally sophisticated, too. Yeah, this is about grown-up feelings.

Starting point is 00:17:03 It's not for adults as the way that Perfect Blue and Paprika are, it's not extra violent, but I would say it's maybe his most mature one, because it feels like he hones a lot of the themes that he picks up and kind of explores in Perfect Blue, and then does in further ways in Paprika. But yeah, it feels like his movie for adults in a different sense, that like he's exploring other mature avenues. It's one of those movies where like it's almost like Sarah Polly away from her, where I'm like, why did you feel compelled to make this movie at such a young age? And then the fact

Starting point is 00:17:36 that he dies so young makes it kind of profound, where it's like this guy wouldn't live to make this film relative to his own experience looking back. The fact that he, as a 37-year-old, was able to sort of tap into this feeling of an age that he would never make it to. Yeah, it does feel like a late career kind of movie. Like the movies that Scorsese and Tarantino are making later in their career after they're done with the violence and bloodshed and looking back in a much more wistful way.

Starting point is 00:18:06 And he's doing this in the middle of his career. It's his second movie. It's his second movie. Yeah. I know. It's not a tough sell, exactly, but it's definitely, like, if I'm looking to, like, break out and make something, like, really, like, you know, commercial, I guess, is the...

Starting point is 00:18:23 You know, like, this would not be where I would go. And I agree with you. Yeah, second movie, it's an, well, it's an amazing movie, so whatever, go off, King. Perfect Blue also like didn't explode as much as it was well regarded. It had the benefit. Perfect Blue is f*cked up.

Starting point is 00:18:37 Yeah, sorry. When it came out, it had the benefit of like, it was meant to be direct to video. Yeah, yeah, sure. It gets bumped up to theatrical, so it was seen as like overperforming, over-delivering in the Moana 2 way of like, look, no one expected anything from this.

Starting point is 00:18:51 I like that you're talking about Moana 2, a movie that has not come out yet. We were just talking before recording about the new thing of like, put everything in theaters. Yes. It's the Mean Girls of movies. I don't care if it's pure garbage. People will... There is a Don't Tell Mom the Baby-Sitters Dead remake that will have been out in theaters by the time this episode comes out and at the time we're recording, there is no trailer for it.

Starting point is 00:19:14 Why bother cutting a trailer? Who cares? Produced for BET Plus and now they're deciding it's only in theaters. What that is, it's so maddening to imagine the conversation people like Did you know that we get like a cut of ticket sales? Yeah, that's money We have second we need that right and you're telling me they're like you're with this plane They're multiple steps like the movie has multiple Then and on VOD then went to stream

Starting point is 00:19:41 Table by putting everything on streaming directly it's streaming, we actually don't sell any tickets. That's so weird. Why were we doing that again? What was the deal with that? We put Dune on streaming, we did that, right? Dune, that movie. And certainly that made us more money than when we put it in theater. Oh no wait. The Matrix Resurrect, we put that one right onto streaming. Right there. Good. Anyway, it's fine, it's good that they did that.

Starting point is 00:20:05 Everything's good. Yeah, no, I imported a British version of Millennium Actress because it was the only place where they released it in 4K. That's true, I have the steelbook, but it's a Blu-ray, that's true. And it is one of the last major animated films to actually be done on cells. Hell yeah.

Starting point is 00:20:27 At an era where like Disney had already transitioned to digital and could pay like 10 plus years earlier. Most of Japan, the major work had as well. This is like kind of seen as the last significant work through the gates of purely like people painting on physical things and then using cameras to shoot it and they did this 4k restoration that I think led into it getting it sort of re-release it playing a metrograph a bunch they did a new US dub and restored the original version but yeah I checked in with the dub it seemed fine I watched dub this time because I had seen it I hadn't seen it until it was playing at the Metrograph a couple years ago and saw that

Starting point is 00:21:09 Version in in the original Japanese cut the American dub is good. It's funny to watch I'm sure we said this a billion times with the f*cking Miyazaki episodes It's funny to watch the films with the English dubs What the original subtitles because it's always just that they try to make everything more conversational. Where the lines are almost exactly the same, except they add a bunch of like, you know, I mean, come on, man. Yeah, the localization of just dumbing things down in a way. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:21:37 Um, yeah, I just sort of switched over to it because I realized it existed and it was like, it seems fine. But this movie works... It does. It's odd in English in a way because, any movie that's literally about Japanese people. The history. It's so much about Japanese history

Starting point is 00:21:52 and Japanese cinema specifically. Which I think was a very cool thing to see. I feel like very rarely we see even Japanese films kind of go so deeply into Japanese cinema and like a love story for that, a love letter rather. Just one dub. And a love story for that. A love letter, rather. Yeah. And a love story. One dub complaint about Miyazaki.

Starting point is 00:22:07 Okay. Because my daughter watches a lot of Miyazaki. Now she's watching Castle in the Sky. Love that movie. Which is not appropriate for her. No, I was gonna say, I'm surprised you got him there. How old is she again? She's three!

Starting point is 00:22:18 Okay, yeah, she's too young for that. She's way too young for that. She has like guns and pirates and explosions. Yeah, Mark Hamill being scary. Yeah, Mark Hamill, very. Yeah, Mark Hamill very... So his performance in the dub, excellent. Unsurprisingly, he's a pro. And she loves it. She loves the robots.

Starting point is 00:22:34 She's just, you know, I want the girl falling. That's what she says. James Van Der Beek is... He should be... He should have a couple years in jail for that one. Just a couple. I've noticed that one. Just a couple. I've noticed that in the prior Terrible English dub and in the original, characters played by women.

Starting point is 00:22:54 And I think he's kind of trying to go for like the sort of very shrill, high, you know, like little kid voice. But he's so annoying in it. And I'm just hearing his voice constantly, oh, hey, what? Like, shut up, B up, Vanderbeek. Yeah, a lot of that. And there's a lot of yelling in that movie. It's a lot of like, ah!

Starting point is 00:23:10 That's the other fascinating thing. I know we're going all around here, right? But like, 90s, 2000s are the era of like Disney and Miramax trying to figure out how to make Miyazaki translate to American audiences and doing these star-driven dubs. And none of them totally hit in theaters. It's seen as a major success that Spirited Away gets to

Starting point is 00:23:30 like six or whatever it does and wins an Oscar obviously but it's still like this is never gonna be seen as mainstream. It remains insane to like think about how recently a Miyazaki movie just made 50 million dollars in theaters domestic, opened at number one. So happy it won the Oscar. Won the Oscar. Deservedly won the Oscar. It didn't feel like a weird oddball choice. It's like, no, this is a movie that like permeated

Starting point is 00:23:53 American popular culture. I low-key thought it was gonna win, and it was because it had the financial success on top of the critical acclaim. Yeah, and even the people who weren't familiar with the movie were like, oh yeah, Miyazaki's gonna win because he's Miyazaki but he lost for Howell everything in between win prizes and was even nominated for he wasn't nominated for Ponyo

Starting point is 00:24:12 No Which I was very upset about but a lot of time and now Weinstein trying to make the Miyazaki's work re-editing rewriting a lot casting them poorly Then Disney putting a lot of them only out on home video. Casting them poorly? I have a soft spot for the Mononoke dub, I will say. The Mononoke dub is all right. There's some weird choices.

Starting point is 00:24:31 Yeah. I'll put it that way. But I think that Billy Crudup... Thornton? Yeah, Thornton. Crudup? Crudup, Dane's, Mini Driver. Got some good stuff going on there.

Starting point is 00:24:41 Just an era of... It felt like you would constantly be reading. As like a dumb animation kid who was reading about this stuff all the time, took a while for me to actually get into Miyazaki. But it would be like, why don't American audiences accept this? Here are like the greatest films in the world. They play well everywhere else. Here they're like punted to being art house stuff.

Starting point is 00:25:03 Or Disney will only release them on VHS and put whoever the teen star de jure, the Vanderbeek's of the world in to try to get them in there. They lucked out with Kirsten Dunst at least for Kiki. Sometimes they nailed it. Yeah, she's great. They totally nailed it. I'm now watching all the dubs and they are fine. They're fine. I, as someone who grew up on the dubs, I genuinely have a soft spot for them

Starting point is 00:25:24 even though I do prefer the subs. But yeah, I think that mostly they're okay. Like, I'm very used to the Ponyo dub, obviously. Sure. I've talked about the Totoro dub where the fanning sisters have like southern twang, which is really funny for a movie that's set in rural Japan. They're trying to go for like the rural aspect, a little too hard. Are you a great big suck, Gremlin?

Starting point is 00:25:46 That's a line reading I've heard 50 million times now. The point I'm trying to wind up to. What are you winding up to, you big actress, you big millennial? 90s, 2000s, this arms race between Disney and DreamWorks, right? Katzenberg leaving, starting his own animation wing, and being like, I've got to' beat them at their own game. We're doing hand-drawn, we're doing CGI, CGI's working, we're shutting down hand-drawn, whatever.

Starting point is 00:26:10 DreamWorks very briefly establishes a label called Go Fish Pictures, which they could never quite figure out what it was. But this was released by Go Fish, right? And Go Fish was then being like, is this our... I get it, because the Dreamworks guy is fishing. He's fishing. So he's pulled up some foreign films from the lake of art. Is this Fox Searchlight for us?

Starting point is 00:26:33 Is this like acquisitions of independent p*rn? Right, they released Ghost in the Shell 2, but they also put out The Chum Scrubber. Which is one of the most disastrous. Was that a Sundance movie? That was a Sundance movie. Did they buy it in Sundance or did they? That cost 10 million. Now, what what is that about? The Chum Scrubber!

Starting point is 00:26:48 Stars our buddy Jamie Bell. Jamie Bell, friend of the show. Okay. I would say kindly it is a disasterous film about like Suburban teenage malaise disenfranchised. What was the other one? There's another film that was the exact f*cking same vibe. United States of Leland. That's one, but that's Gosling, right? Yes. No.

Starting point is 00:27:11 Lex G on a recent episode. Taylor Pucci is in it. Oh, Thumb Sucker? Thumb Sucker. Thumb Sucker and Chum Scrubber, how am I not confusing them? Thumb Sucker and Chum Scrubber f*cked each other really hard.

Starting point is 00:27:18 Those are not the same movies? Not the same movies. Look at this Chum Scrubber though. Oh gosh. He's scrubbing chum. He's scrubbing that chum. Why is he? Meat generation RX, it says, you know, because of medicine. It has something to do with sharks though, right?

Starting point is 00:27:31 My head is like a shark's fin. What's it about? I... A suicide of a drug dealer in an idealistic but superficial town. Lack of communication between teenagers and their parents. The inauthenticity of suburbia. It's one of those movies Oh, are they trying to do like train spotting but for teens or like yeah modern Burton like 2000s Burton where it's like he ever figured out like a suburb bullsh*t, man

Starting point is 00:27:56 What if you removed all genre elements? Where does he have the scrub the chum? What does that mean? Why is it called that? Why did a studio allow a movie to be called Chum Scrubber? Lex G in a recent podcast episode referred to the early 2000s era of the special little guy movies. Sure. Like, clever little guys where it's like the igbee goes down.

Starting point is 00:28:17 And then I think that morphs into the Leland chum scrubber, miserable little guy. 100%. It's like... There's good versions like mysterious skin. ...minus the charm. Is Donnie Darko part of that? Donnie Darko is definitely part of that. Chum scrubber is also a long-tailed Donnie Darko movie.

Starting point is 00:28:34 But the entire Go Fish Pictures arc is, they acquire Ghost in the Shell 2, a millennium actress, right? Right. And they're like, this is us trying to like, compete with Disney having the Miyazaki thing. We're trying to popularize our own important Japanese animation over here. Millennium Actress gets great reviews, does not get a major release. Ghost in the Shell I think does pretty well in theaters, but neither one gets an Oscar nomination.

Starting point is 00:28:59 But that movie is really weird. Like that movie, if you saw Ghost in the Shell, one, congratulations. Sure. Two, you're already confused. Yeah, it's a weirder movie than what the reputation would have you believe. It's that, but Ghost in the Shell, it rocks, but it is not a movie with a mega intensely coherent plot. Yes.

Starting point is 00:29:18 And Ghost in the Shell too is him being like, that movie was too normal. But had grown on DVD over the years. It got a reasonable release. They do those two movies. It's like Go Fish might have their thing kind of figured out. They spend a ton of money on Chum Scrubber. Chum Scrubber comes out, it makes, I believe, $35,000.

Starting point is 00:29:39 No, Griffin, it made $350,000. You're off to a zero. That's worldwide. Give me the domestic number. Let's see. You're right. You're right. So Chum Scrubber scrubbed them clean. Yeah. It made about 50 grand in the US and 350 worldwide. They basically right after Chum Scrubber announced Go Fish Pictures.

Starting point is 00:30:00 It's about one 20th of a black hat. Yeah. So they put out a- The prize winner of Defiance Idaho comes out like two months after that Julianne Moore movie and they had a pre-existing deal for Casper which is a live-action remake of an anime. Yeah, and then they were done. I just think it's interesting They had this brief window where they were like we're gonna like where our competitiveness with Disney is Forcing us to broaden Japanese animation in American theaters. And in both of those cases, they didn't do like star driven dubs.

Starting point is 00:30:30 The Millennium Actress dub was just like good American voice actors. They put it out in specialty theaters. This movie didn't get an Oscar nomination because of the weirdness of it coming out the same fall as Tokyo Godfathers. Yeah, it came out in same fall as Tokyo Godfathers? Yeah, it came out in American 03. Yes. Obviously, it came out in Japan in 2001.

Starting point is 00:30:51 So, right, widely, no, actually it came out in Japan in 2002. I'm sorry, it was at festivals in 2001. So, you know, it took a long time to reach here. And then both films came out in 2003. Both are up for Oscar, were submitted, and I think they kind of competed with each other. The Oscar nominees for animated film that year, do you want to tell me?

Starting point is 00:31:10 Nemo. You want to guess? Triplets of Bellevue. Yeah. And... Belleville. Belleville, I'm sorry. Brother Bear?

Starting point is 00:31:19 Um, come on. Yes, correct. In a year with five, one of these two movies probably would have gotten in. Possibly. Yeah. Trips of Belleville. Remember that? Love that movie. Guy was playing a bicycle at the Oscars.

Starting point is 00:31:32 Oh yeah. Wait, what? They had a song nominated for Belleville. Belleville rendezvous. And they did a performance of the, you know, it was one of those things where people are like, they're gonna like perform this? And they did. And there's like a guy on stage who's like whacking a bicycle. Like Zappa style. Like just hitting a rusty bike.

Starting point is 00:31:49 That's sick. It's fun. I remember being fun. You'd love this movie, Ben. Great movie. I've seen it. He's seen it. Yeah. You should watch the musical. But I should see this musical performance.

Starting point is 00:31:58 A guy who's also kind of weirdly disappeared. Sylvain Chomay. Sylvain Chomay. He made one movie after that, I want to say. He made the... He made the Jacques Tati movie. The Jacques Tati movie, The Illusionist? The Illusionist, which I liked too.

Starting point is 00:32:09 I think he directed one live-action film in France. And then disappeared after that. So here it was about wokeness? I'm joking. I don't know what it was about. It was called Attila Marcel. Hmm. Who was in it?

Starting point is 00:32:26 Guillaume Gui. I don't know. No one I really know. Yes, that's right. It seems like it went okay. I did not see this when I was too young. I probably should have. I remember reading the reviews.

Starting point is 00:32:38 I was still in my I don't understand anime phase. Oh boy. Which took me a while to get over. But I remember reading the reviews and everyone's take on it being like, it's weird that this is animated. Sure. Like even the critics who liked it, I think, you know, Scott was very positive on this movie, were all like, it's an odd film to make an animation because it's pretty grounded

Starting point is 00:32:58 in reality. He gave it a critics pick. But yeah, I think American critics just couldn't get that. They didn't get it. They were like, cartoons have to be genre films. They didn't understand. They didn't understand how you can maybe blur the lines between reality and fantasy in interesting ways in this medium. David.

Starting point is 00:33:17 Yes? I'll admit, it makes me a little self-conscious. What, hosting a podcast? Well, hosting a podcast that's produced by Ben Hosley because every time I walk into our studio I know I'm not going to be the best dressed person in the room. Sorry! I just know it. It's a losing battle. It's never true. There's nothing I can do to beat him. There's no service, there's no company, no one can help me. Yep, that's it. That's the end. I mean there's no one

Starting point is 00:33:42 who's gonna help you. Wait a second! What? What? What about a fully custom shoe from Indaccino? You'll walk into a wedding season, into a wedding season, into a wedding season, looking like a million bucks. Even though they just started $4.99. To be clear, $499. Not $4.99, that'd be great. That would be absurd. I mean you'd know then that the quality was not there. Let's also make it clear good for wedding season But also just good for a weekly podcast record if you happen to be on a podcast produced by the best dressed man in New York So I'm showing up in custom suits to this podcast. I might be annoyed Indicino the whole thing with Indicino. It's not off the rack or whatever. These are custom-made suits. You go to the website

Starting point is 00:34:22 You shop your menswear. Obviously, they don't just have suits, they have jackets, they have lots of nice things. So you're telling me this is bespoke clothing? Yes, it's bespoke clothing. It just takes a few minutes. You know, you pick your suit, and then you can customize it, make it a tuxedo. You can change the jacket style.

Starting point is 00:34:40 You can change the lapels. You can change the vents. Every single thing is up to you. Or you can just go with what they want. Like, you know change the lapels, you can change the vents, every single thing is up to you. Or you can just go with what they want. Like, you know, if that's overwhelming, the Indochino has great custom-built suits that you can just take. And they're bespoke without the premium price tag. They start at just $499, the fitted shirts start at $89. It's a tailored fit from home. You can choose customizations without ever leaving the house. Or you can book an appointment at a showroom near you and let an Indochino style guide walk you through every step.

Starting point is 00:35:06 This is what I like. Indochino is all about flexibility. They do things the way you want them, not just in terms of how you want the thing to ultimately wear on your body, but even the process of how you get to that point. I gotta say, I'm shaking in my fine boots. Oh, boy.

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Starting point is 00:35:43 Did you see it in theaters? I saw it, I wanna say that my parents rented it on Netflix. Like the disc. Yeah, the disc, because a long time, my parents had the disc. Well, of course they did. Do you think they rented it for you because they were like, it's a cartoon.

Starting point is 00:35:57 I think so. Like was there more thought put into it than like here's a new animated film. They would just rent movies that they're like, oh, this sounds good. And then they see it's a cartoon, so they let me watch it. Sure. Okay. Right, right, right. That's fair.

Starting point is 00:36:10 So it was their choice that they looped you in on, basically? Yes. Yes. They were very open with the kind of movies that I would watch as a kid, mostly if they were cartoons. We stan. We stan. Oh, so like, what's like, what did you watch? Like, what's a cartoon you watched that was too grown up for you? Nine Lies of Fritz the Cat. Oh, obviously.

Starting point is 00:36:27 I mean, I do remember watching Princess Mononoke too young and being like, there's a lot of the heading in this movie. It's a lot of blood. My daughter cannot see that one. That one, I draw the line. Yeah. It's very violent. She's watching When Rises, though, right?

Starting point is 00:36:41 Sure, she'd love that one. I put on Kiki for her and she was bored by it. Anyway, carry on. Bored, she'd love that one. I put on Kiki for her and she was bored by it. Anyway, Karen. Bored by Kiki? All right. But yeah, the early 2000s, growing up then, was very interesting because there was that explosion of anime.

Starting point is 00:36:52 There was that anime wave, the how, not the how you wave, the, yeah, it was just like the anime wave that was taking place in the late 90s, early 2000s. And I think that was making anime in general more accessible and something that my parents were specifically open to just letting me kind of try whatever and read whatever and watch whatever. So it was basically just like I could choose

Starting point is 00:37:14 because they weren't really vetting it. Did they let you watch Ghost in the Shell? I didn't watch Ghost in the Shell. I wasn't interested in that. That was a movie that I would see on, like, at the rental shelf and be like, -"This looks really scary." -"This is too intense." Yeah, I was like, this looks scary. I don't interested in that. That was a movie that I would see on, like, at the rental shelf and be like, this looks really scary. Yeah, I was like, this looks scary. I don't want that.

Starting point is 00:37:29 Did you, so watching this, you felt like you had a sense of context for this film being unusual? Yeah, it was definitely very unusual for me as a kid, just because, I mean, even not knowing everything that was happening and, like, the inspirations that it took from real-life Japanese actresses or the real Japanese history that it was portraying, just the way that it was made was so, you know, new to me in general. And not just being an animated film, but because it was, I mean, I'm going to cite a YouTube

Starting point is 00:38:02 video that I'm sure many people have seen, but the Every Frame a Painting video on Satoshi Kon and editing time and space. And he specifically talks about the way the editing is done. Not in all of his movies, but I think a lot of the way that he does it in Millennium Actress, where it just goes from scene to scene without any real warning. And sometimes a scene will interrupt the next, and then the reality will converge on each other. The modern day will start interacting with the with the past and that kind of thing and that was something that really blew my mind

Starting point is 00:38:29 As a kid, so I was really taken and dazzled by that. It blows my mind as a 37 year old Yeah, you don't see movies do sh*t like this. You don't see you do movies do sh*t like that But it's subtle what it's doing like it's not like Gonzo, you know, right? Yeah, sorry And his other films can certainly go full Gonzo. I mean, I feel like the backbone of Satoshi Konno as an artist is like subjective perception of reality, right, and this sort of like blending between reality, fantasy, identity.

Starting point is 00:38:59 And this is a movie doing that in a ostensibly very grounded way. It's using this framing device of being elderly, And this is a movie doing that in a ostensibly very grounded way. Yeah. It's using this framing device of being elderly looking back, memory, senility perhaps coming in in a way that allows you to sort of like build that into the framework of the story in a more, I don't know, literal minded way. But yes, it's like a movie that does not hold your hand, that doesn't give you easy signifiers for when reality is shifting.

Starting point is 00:39:27 Yeah. No. And I think the way that it kind of holds itself back in terms of how wild and gonzo it can get in terms of blurring the reality and fiction, and pushing the boundaries of animation makes it so that a lot of maybe the critics of the time kind of overlooked why it was animated because it's a movie that really couldn't have been made in live action,

Starting point is 00:39:49 at least to the degree that it was in this medium. That was totally his take and pitch on the thing. It's like, I mean, A, I was reading this, the booklet that came with the fancy smancy Blu-ray release I got, but also all the notes that JJ pulled up and there's a really interesting thing, it might have been in the perfect blue dossier, but him talking about how he thinks the key to art is there being like a step in translation or adaptation. And that he feels like a lot of movies are based on movies, and filmmakers are inspired by other filmmakers primarily and that his background his training was an illustration

Starting point is 00:40:26 but then once he sort of built his Muscles as like a draftsman sure he then started obsessively studying live-action films and was like I was not really paying attention To what was going on in animation. I wasn't looking to my contemporaries I didn't want him animation to be inspiring my ideas in animation I really was looking to live-action and thinking what are things you could do with the live-action language of storytelling and Then plussing that with animation and this is yeah, it's a script that like I just saw f*cking one from the heart is in re-release right now in a weird re-edited version by Coppola Yes, which I've heard some people say is actually maybe not an improvement. I think it might be worse.

Starting point is 00:41:09 I haven't seen a theatrical in a while, and I want to give that another spin. But that is very much a movie without it being as baked into the story or the themes or the premise where Coppola was like, what if there are no normal transitions? What if images blur into one another and the camera moves and time and space change and all this sort of stuff? And in order to do that live action, he bankrupted himself. Like he drove himself crazy

Starting point is 00:41:34 and put himself in a financial hole versus Satoshi Kon was able to do that through animation while also producing one of the cheapest animated films ever. This movie was made adjusted for inflation. The budget of this film is still be under $1 million. Incredible. It is crazy. Yes.

Starting point is 00:41:53 Produced in two years, did it on-cell animation, but it's like he was very strategic about how he did it. Right. And for how beautiful this movie is, you study it and for a lot of it, there's like almost no motion on screen or only one characters moving They used a lot of pencils and paper from the garbage too. Is that true? No David is making things up Let me crack open the dossier here. So

Starting point is 00:42:21 Perfect blue it's a little film that's Toshi Kone makes That comes out. What should I make next? He wants to make Paprika! Love the novel. An adaptation of the novel. And that fizzles out because Rex Entertainment, who had financed Perfect Blue, said we don't have the money for that essentially. They went bankrupt basically.

Starting point is 00:42:43 So he contributes some work to some other directors. The only project that JJ can find that's listed is a movie called Jinro the Wolf Brigade. Okay. Some other stuff, who knows? But Millennium Actress, he can trace this to Taro Maki, producer on this film, the producer of this film, I believe, who loved Perfect Blue and loved how it moved from objective to subjective

Starting point is 00:43:09 storytelling seamlessly. That's interesting. Compares it, this bending of reality to the... Trump loyal. How do you say this? I was trying to practice it before the episode. Trump loyal. Yes. Where you, you know, Ben, you know when you paint like something and it kind of make it look 3D?

Starting point is 00:43:29 Like back in f*cking Castle times. Castle times, yeah. I feel like you can just perfectly define what it is. You see this all the time too though with street artists who try to paint or draw on the sidewalk images that from certain angles will look like the illusion of depth. You know, like if the Road Runner paints kind of like a tunnel? This is the... That's the best way to put it.

Starting point is 00:43:52 Yeah. It's like if things are real. Is it that... No, it's that the Coyote paints the tunnel, and then the Road Runner will go through it. It's a really good gag. It's so funny. Who ever thought of that? Funny guy. Right. Why the C't he paints tunnel

Starting point is 00:44:05 rubs his hands together? Get to it. Bib around neck, fork and knife, licking lips, ready to go. You know, it's funny. Looney tunes. You're describing the road runner goes through a tunnel without a problem. Wiley coyotes confused then goes, I'll chase after him. He immediately slams into the perfect 10 out of 10. They did that one million times. It never stopped being funny. Never stopped being funny. But that is what Taramaki compares Satoshi Kon's storytelling style to, right?

Starting point is 00:44:37 Your basically- And also his visual style to a certain degree. Yes, and his visual style. It's a good handle on basically his entire worldview as an artist, right? And his voice. What if everything was possible, basically? And also this kind of constant shifting of reality relative to perception of like what looks flat actually might have a dimension that you didn't perceive from the previous angle. Yes. So basically he's like, do you want to make another movie like that? Right? Perfect Blue has gotten my attention. So the word stereogram is also brought up a lot as a sort of translation of this like concept that

Starting point is 00:45:17 they're thinking about where you know depending on what angle you're looking at. Dimash E is a term they use in Japan for this type of art. Yeah. The thing will you know the the picture will change if you look at it from different directions. So he's like, it's not like I wanna make another suspense movie like a thriller like Perfect Blue was. The method itself is the aim of the movie, which is very interesting way of putting it.

Starting point is 00:45:41 Yeah, cause this is not an obvious, if that's the assignment, this is not the obvious movie to land on. If you're coming off of Perfect Blue and they go do another thing with a weird sense of reality. I just want to credit JJ here because I think he wrote this very well. So Khan had his method, but he didn't yet have a story. Naturally he turned to the two oldest stories in the book, Boy Hero Science Fiction or Senile Old Lady Costume Play. But everybody's on account. He said, I looked for a story like a stereogram.

Starting point is 00:46:12 I came up with several ideas, science fiction with a boy hero, a senile old lady in a costume play, something like that. I wrote them down. I tried to decide which one to choose. Him saying that to the producer, he's like, I'm even going to go like, boy does science fiction or old lady who's senile. The producer's just like, you better f*cking pick that boy boy does science fiction or old lady who's senile the producers just like you better f*cking

Starting point is 00:46:25 Make that boy f*cking put that boy in a space and he's like I'm gonna flip a coin and it lands on the old lady And they're like great Calls him yeah, I think I'm gonna go with the lady. Okay, let's go with the lady. Um, so Thinking about this make the protagonist an actress actors and actresses work both in fantasy and reality. A perfect situation for this kind of a tricky world. But also on his blog before he died, he said some years later that a friend of his had emailed him in 1998 with the phrase imaginary great actress that like stuck with him.

Starting point is 00:47:01 It is kind of evocative. This is the whole thing with a filmmaker like this. Because he died, but he left behind interviews and blog posts and you can really pour over everything in the record in this kind of, not obsessively, but just this kind of like archival way of like everything he said is sort of interesting. Especially because he made a movie like this that is not the kind of movie people make. In either field. Look, it is.

Starting point is 00:47:28 I mean, I guess in live action, it's like Being Julia. It's like the bad version of this movie. Sure, there's, I mean. Like an actor's just like, oh, I had some roles in my day, you know. There's that. I mean, I think a lot about Babylon by Damien Chazelle. Yes.

Starting point is 00:47:47 It's not about filmmore acting the same way, but I feel like Big Fish is a much more conventional version of this type of story. Yes. But again, all of those, I guess this has it too. The thing of like, the old person's laid up in bed or in hospital or something. She's thinking back on her life.

Starting point is 00:48:03 Ugh, or you find a box. Oh, what's in this box? Dewey Cox has to think about his entire life. What's this picture of him? The part of the ocean. The Atonement story where she has literally the same haircut as the lady from Atonement. That was Joe Wright's brilliant idea. They all have the same bad haircut. Then you'll know it's them.

Starting point is 00:48:19 And not only the haircut, the clip. They all have the little clip. But okay, so Cohn brings back his Perfect Blue screenwriter, Sadauki Murai, who was sole credit on Perfect Blue, they are co-credits on this one, so Cone also gets a story credit, I guess, for originating the idea. Can I just call out the thing I find very evocative

Starting point is 00:48:40 in quote, imaginary great actress that he seems to have sparked on. Is the notion of not just being like, I'm making a film trying to depict someone who is great at what they do, the idea to like build a fictional legacy, right? That it's like, can I create a person with a career and a history that never happened

Starting point is 00:49:01 and sell that to an audience, a sense of import? But also it's like, that's true, but then like he's deciding, they have to decide like, where in history do we leapfrog from, right? Like, what will we touch on? JJ said that, I mean, pouring over all the Satoshi Kone interviews and blog posts and everything, that he's incredibly self-effacing,

Starting point is 00:49:22 so it's sometimes hard to get an accurate account of how things came about, because he's had the tendency to undersell himself. But he basically said going into this, he did not really know anything about Japanese film history. That they started writing the movie, just thinking it was interesting, and then said, I guess I should figure out what this maps onto culturally.

Starting point is 00:49:42 Yes. I will say, I do realize we forgot one other more sort of standard, conventional type of story of this, which is Forrest Gump. Yes. When what's he doing? He's sitting on that dang bench. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:49:55 And he's about to tell you his whole life. Forrest Gump has lived through 100 years in American history. Here he goes. He's going to, you're absolutely right. He looks like Tom Hanks the entire time. Yes, this is a double history where it's like, she is going to tell us sort of about a thousand years of Japanese history, but also a hundred years

Starting point is 00:50:11 of Japanese film history. So the ways that that history got reflected through art, which is interesting. This movie is so interesting. Yes. I'm not joking. It really is. It's not that she facetiously said. Yes. This is a, like, it's, I don't think it's even 90 minutes long.

Starting point is 00:50:32 It's... The credits roll at one hour and 22 minutes, which is a standard. And it feels like one of the densest movies I've seen. That's the thing. It's not, I was about to say it's not action packed, but obviously it has a lot of action, or at least like, you know, situations, but like you could watch it and it could kind of bounce off of you.

Starting point is 00:50:50 I think the first time I saw it, I liked it. The first Cone movie I saw was Perfect Blue and I think I sought this one out. And I think it kind of bounced off me a little bit. And even on rewatch, I was like, this is good. Like this is incredible. And then it, you know, you just keep thinking about it. And I think I'm gonna need to go back to it again. It's one of those movies you kind of need to watch

Starting point is 00:51:13 like a bull rider because of how wildly things are shifting around that you need to like actively hold on rather than passively let it wash over you because you do need to be choosing in every moment how much you're trying to actually game out the reality of what you're seeing versus what really happened. Because yeah, you have these like, it's actual Japanese film history, this imagined career of this woman, her life getting mushed in with her career.

Starting point is 00:51:43 They call out early on, like, isn't that one of her movies? And you're like, okay, so she can't really differentiate between the two. We're seeing both in the same narrative stream. But there's also sort of the story of the perspective of the two guys we're hearing the story from. And the two guys, the documentary filmmakers, also are kind of drawn into this,

Starting point is 00:52:01 what is real, what is fiction. And they become participants too. Right. And then you realize we're, I mean, it's so fascinatingly built. But one of them is like Slay Queen and the other one is like, what's going on? It's a little. That's their vibe. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:52:20 That's why I think Lights, Camera, Jackson would like this movie. Oh, God. He would. He would vibe with that. I'm sure he would. Yeah. Yeah. He loves old ladies, right? That just seems like this movie. Oh, God. He would. He would vibe with that. I'm sure he would. Yeah. He loves old ladies, right? That just seems like his vibe.

Starting point is 00:52:29 And in Hollywood history, there was like a Hollywood version of this one especially. He'd be the guy who's like, oh, well, you're fantastic. Like, he's holding the camera. Yeah. OK. I'm sitting here with Shirley MacLade. Wait, is he the Slay Queen in this set?

Starting point is 00:52:44 He would be the Slay Queen. He would be the one who saved her life on the set of Secret Life of Walter Mitty. Yes. So this is a very interesting quote from the screenwriter, Sato Yuki Murai. In Japanese history, there was a time before the war when they favored foreign ideas, they dreamed of continents.

Starting point is 00:53:02 It was an era very rich in vitality. It fits so well with Shio Shioko's young poetic energy. It matches perfectly. World War II was the so-called time of struggles that overlaps with her struggles in her adolescence. And then there was a time when vitality comes back after the war, that links up very well too. Like they're trying to build a personal narrative

Starting point is 00:53:21 on top of a historical narrative and a cinema narrative. It's wild how much they make it sound like all of this was accidental though, where they're like, oh, I guess that means we can do this as well. Because the Millennium Actress is a title, we're saying this movie having the whole attitude of like, it's time to look back on the last 100 years and a century of such extreme progress.

Starting point is 00:53:41 But you're also like, this is basically the 100th anniversary of movies. This is like cinema looking back on itself, which also means it's like the first century that we have documented in a certain way. Not only do we have the like cultural artifacts, but there are visual artifacts, there are like representations of real life. You're seeing real faces moving in motion from 100 years ago, which people didn't have 100 years before that, and you can like track the industry and the culture based on the

Starting point is 00:54:10 rise and fall of these different things. I mean, it's also, yeah, it's just like, it's evocative to open a movie with a movie studio being demolished and a man who basically looks like the Japanese Joel Silver crying and having a tantrum. And then to open it with the entire movie Rewinding. Yes. I don't think we've talked enough about that because it's such an interesting device. Yes. And it's again something that only Satoshi Kon would do. And this this Blu-ray booklet I keep throwing down like it's the Constitution, they call out that it was like a pretty pointed choice

Starting point is 00:54:45 to make it a VHS, because at the time they start producing this movie, it was like DVD had won. The animation companies, there was some big anime film that was the first one to skip VHS and go only to DVD, and then the PS2 had come out that year, and they were like, this is it, VHS is over, it's done,

Starting point is 00:55:04 it's a dead format. Um, poor VHS. Now it's back. Now it's back. Is it back? I don't know. I feel like people, people kind of like it now, right? I miss it. Well, you can get a little TV, you can get a VHS collection going if you want. I mean, my old VHS collection isn't my parents, but they never threw it away. They never threw it away. You got a great base. I'll say this. The effect of rewinding the noise will always be VHS, much like if someone is to stop in a moment, right?

Starting point is 00:55:39 Or like someone said something weird, it's a record scratch. Like those are just inherently, I think, gonna be the sound effects. There's the innate sound, yeah. But it's very, like, evocative seeing that happen in this movie, watching someone in animation see the crackle of the TV and have to sit too close and those sounds and everything. And it's like that's being captured at the moment it's dying.

Starting point is 00:56:02 It's also interestingly anachronistic for the movie itself because the movie takes place over film history going back to the 1940s through like the 1970s essentially. And that's a time when VHS was really not prevalent. So like the whole device of rewriting it was something that doesn't feel even close to the career that she has, but that Shioka has, but even so, it feels right. I don't know how to say it, but. Totally, you think you're right. It's what I find so fascinating about this movie

Starting point is 00:56:32 not being reverse engineered from some desired telefilm about film history or about acting, that both of those were things they basically found their way to. When it's like this movie is so good at expressing the weird like time machine quality of film like film as cultural preservation but also that thing of like, you know, we did Buster Keaton last year watching these movies that are over a hundred years old and you're like watching them and thinking about like

Starting point is 00:57:03 and you're like watching them and thinking about like Imagining the time after they call cut and him walking over to whatever their version of a craft service table was You know that this doesn't just exist as like a work of art in the same way that looking at a painting or a book Does you're seeing like an actual capture of existence at that point in time? I think it adds like an extra layer of artifice too, because in the movie, they're looking back at her career, and it's basically going through her mind and her imagination and her memory. And you are, it's called to attention the fact that they're making a film about this too,

Starting point is 00:57:36 which is why that VHS rewind is sort of the calling to that extra layer of like looking back that you are. And when they're entering into the story, when you see the two of them pop up Calling attention to that extra layer of looking back that you are. And when they're entering into the story, when you see the two of them pop up as the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in her tale with the camera chasing after her, trying to make sense of what she's telling them, it does feel like an interesting depiction of the process of documentary filmmakers where it's like, isn't your job to listen to what they're saying and actually try to place yourself within it, figure out how

Starting point is 00:58:07 to tell the story that they're telling you cinematically and then there's the third aspect of it which is like I do think this is one of the best movies about the psychology of an actor I have ever seen. I think in a really fascinating way it depicts acting process which is so hard to depict and is so infinitely hard to talk about. Where actors usually easily sound dumb or annoying or pretentious. And this is a movie that isn't about method acting,

Starting point is 00:58:38 but it is about the weird meshing of like, well, if you're doing this well, you're pulling from some real emotion. And whether that is because you have an innate sense of empathy and the ability to relate to situations that are not your own, whether it's because the material does remind you of something from your own life that you're pulling to, whether it's because you're able to just imagine it so thoroughly that it starts to feel real to you. At the end of the day, like in the soup, if you're f*cking 85 and you're dying, what's

Starting point is 00:59:08 to differentiate your memories of your real experiences from the memories of the emotions you created to depict other experiences? Especially that's when that's going to be what everyone remembers about you. You know, that's your whole legacy. Until these two guys decide to sit down with her. They have no idea what her f*cking life is Even this guy who spent time with us, right? Right. They know her movies. That's how she's gonna be remembered a hundred years later This movie's so good. It's so good the way that Observes stardom

Starting point is 00:59:38 I mean kind of going off what you're saying to about just like her legacy as a star and how that's so wrapped up in her own personal life and history in that in chasing the man who that she'll never be able to find that the leaks into her roles and it makes her such a star and it makes her keeps her young too. And once she gives up on that, then she kind of becomes just another person and fades the background. It's another thing. I mean, I know they based this film off a couple specific actresses as a starting point. There's the woman from...

Starting point is 01:00:09 So Sukohara is kind of the most obvious one. Yes, yes. From Tokyo Story and Late Spring. Late Spring, yeah. The greatest actresses who ever lived. Incredible. The best. And was just retired for the last 40 years of her life, just at a certain point stopped making movies. But there's also, like there was a ton of that in Hollywood.

Starting point is 01:00:25 Like Greta Garbo. She retired laziness, just to be clear. Yeah, yeah. That's why she packed it in. She didn't have that grindset mindset. But she did a lot of the movies that are, you know, she did a lot of movies that are like this movie, obviously. The other one, what were you saying, sir?

Starting point is 01:00:41 No, no, I'm just saying Greta Garbo is like an American analog, who is this massive movie star and won Oscars. And then sir? No, no, I'm just saying Greta Garbo is like an American analog who is this massive movie star and won Oscars and then at like 42 was like, I'm done and lived another 40 years and wasn't like a recluse in a Howard Hughes way. Lazy, lazy. That's why it's called millennial actress. Millennial. Lazy.

Starting point is 01:01:01 Because they're lazy. Taking handouts. She has had the hustles. Yes. Because they're lazy. She has had the hustle. She has had the hustle, yes. But I just think that's a thing that is basically like culturally gone. Not just in Japan, but like in American cinema as well. I was watching some f*cking interview where they're talking about the making of Ragtime and how it was like they were trying to get Jimmy Cagney to do his first movie in 20 years. He had been on the bench and he didn't want to come back and they got him to do one more

Starting point is 01:01:24 and he was retired. And you're like, yeah, there was an era of, our greatest movie stars at a certain point just pulled the f*ck back for whatever reason. Is there anyone like that now? Gene Hackman's the one. But even he obviously retired at an old age. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:01:41 Like in his, yeah. But like, has anyone like called it quits in like their 40s or 50s? On their own terms. old age, like in his, yeah. But like, has anyone like called it quit in like their 40s or 50s? I guess Daniel, Dan Lewis, if he sticks to his guns, would be someone like that. I don't know. Oh, you don't think so?

Starting point is 01:01:54 We'll see. I mean, based on just some of our texts recently. Ben's really close friends with Daniel. Is he loosely attached to Tuesday? Is he circling Tuesday? Well, I can't say too much more. I might get us in trouble. I'll just say this. He's been spotting around town wearing a calendar. As he gets into character.

Starting point is 01:02:10 I don't know, like, rise of the internet. This is a thing that starts to go away, right? Where, like, in the year 2000, 2001, you could have people who were giant movie stars in films that remain in circulation or watched, and then you're like, what happened to that person? They sit in their house. And it's not easy to check Wikipedia.

Starting point is 01:02:29 You're not finding someone who's taken paparazzi photos of Jean Hackman going to an Arby's, right? You're like, these people just kind of vanished. And sometimes there's a tragic story behind it. And sometimes it's just like, they were just done. Lazy. I'm sorry. Lazy as hell. I mean, I remember that Audrey Hepburn retired early so that she could be a UN ambassador

Starting point is 01:02:49 for like the second half of her life. Yeah, and Grace Kelly, you know, she married a prince and then died. So lazy. Yes. So lazy. She was so lazy that she drove her car off a cliff. Whatever happened to her. What happened to Grace Kelly?

Starting point is 01:03:02 Did she drive her car off a cliff or something? I know, dig yourself deeper into this one. Uh, yes, she was driving and she had a stroke and she lost control of the car and drove it off a cliff so I was right. Wow! Whenever you say that, David views that as lazy. Pure laziness. Classic millennial Grace Kelly. That sounds like her doing a lot. Stroke, car, cliff?

Starting point is 01:03:23 Incredibly dramatic. That's the most dramatic way to go out. Multitasking. Queen. I'm so sorry, Grace Kelly for besmirching your name. A couple of other thoughts that Cohn has before he gets into the making of the movie. One, obviously he's working with female protagonist again. He thinks he's like, I'm not intending to do this, but I do think the movies are quite linked.

Starting point is 01:03:46 You know, the depiction of the relationship between admirer and idol, right? You know, fandom in general is sort of a theme. Like... Definitely left poisonous view of fandom. Right, so he was like, Perfect Blue had turned out so dark that I kind of wanted to make a more positive movie that's doing the same kind of thing. In an I kind of wanted to make a more positive movie

Starting point is 01:04:05 that's doing the same kind of thing in an abstract kind of a way. Love is so beautiful, a tale of loving someone is beautiful whether it's fulfilled or not. I'm surprised that love is always fulfilled in American animated films. Yeah, he's right.

Starting point is 01:04:22 This is a very unfulfilled movie. It'd be funny if like the little mermaid ended with Eric being like, you're a fish. I'm not going to marry. I have to marry like a aristocrat. I mean, if they followed the original fairy tale, she would have become seafoam and died. She would have become seafoam and died. But like, maybe she goes to heaven. That book ends with like, but maybe she's going to go to heaven.

Starting point is 01:04:40 She goes to heaven and they're like, no, no, no. Maybe. Maybe. It's because as a mermaid, she doesn't have a soul. She doesn't have a soul. But because she became human, they're like, maybe she has a soul now. You're borderline now.

Starting point is 01:04:52 Cohn claims, it is really nice. Those stories are great. Cohn claims, I hadn't actually seen that many movies, so I had to consult a lot of books and films. Ceci consulted upwards of 600 books, visited a lot of old film studio prop houses. Not very millennial of him. No, no, he was absolutely so Gen Z

Starting point is 01:05:16 when he was digging into Japanese costume design in the 40s and 50s and stuff like that. They really go in for like full fidelity to like the filmmaking eras. What, like, because you have these defined like the Showa era and the Hisai era and all these, yeah, major movements in Japanese film. He faced a lot of questions from the press about why he was making his film in such a realistic style of animation. I guess that's true.

Starting point is 01:05:44 Like, I guess this movie is like less showy. Less showy, the colors are more muted. Right. The eyes are not... Eyes are smaller. Yeah, eyes are smaller. This is also just an era where people are like, you should use animation to make animals talk.

Starting point is 01:05:57 Well, that is true. It's cool when they talk. That is true. I do love when animals talk. Yeah, it's awesome. And maybe they're wearing clothes? Maybe like they're kind of sexy? Okay, sorry. I think whenever animals talk in Satoshi Cone movies, it's always seen as a very bizarre and upsetting thing. It's like, what the hell? We covered this back in the day though when when Brad Bird was setting up The Incredibles and they

Starting point is 01:06:21 had to go pitch it to Disney with Pixar behind him. I don't know if it was Eisner or who else it was at Disney. They were like, this is not an animated film. Right. These are all human characters. What are you talking about? Right. And he was like, superpowers, I can make them stretch. I can do sh*t you've never seen. It's like, you don't understand how animation works. So you have to imagine like this was like that times a million. Yeah. Because he's making a biopic for a fictional person essentially. Right, that's, yeah. Even as much as this movie blends reality,

Starting point is 01:06:48 outside of the science fiction segments at the beginning and the end, most of what it's depicting is grounded. Like it's war films and it's this and it's that, but yeah. That's why the subtlety of like, oh, we're moving between fantasy and reality. Like, oh, you can do that in live action, I suppose. But it would feel much more right, blatant.

Starting point is 01:07:08 Like, oh, now we've moved into a flashback, essentially. And Conn said his big thing was like, I don't want to have any... I don't want to be riffing on a clean, established language. You don't want to do wavy lines when you're going. The camera moves through a window. That is a really good way to know, though. It goes, doodly-doodly-doodly like that. He said, I'm not doing any of the Wayne's World tricks.

Starting point is 01:07:32 So, Tsutsukahara, obviously, obvious inspiration for the film. He cannot deny the parallels. An additional inspiration is an actress called Hideko Takamine, best known for Floating floating clouds and 24 eyes, also retired young in the 40s, in her 40s. But he also refers to... Chiyoko is just like a folklore character, right? Like she's beyond like some easy analog. Makes the movie for a tiny budget, like you said.

Starting point is 01:08:02 Was working off storyboards before the script was even finished. The film doesn't have a lot of wide shots. I think you were saying this, like, you know, it's a lot of sort of telephoto lens feelings as a cost cutting measure. Right. I mean, he's look, he's a smart enough filmmaker that he was like, I probably can't afford wide shots and expensive backgrounds. Right.

Starting point is 01:08:24 I need to make them count. But if I'm going to do that, I need to justify it within the story, which is you're staying within her perspective as tightly as possible. And it also lends to the whole, you know, love letter to cinema kind of thing, of the glamorous close-up of actresses. Oh, yes. Drink it in! Drink it in.

Starting point is 01:08:45 Drink it in. This is the first film of his scored by Susumu Hirasawa who scores all his other films. Unbelievable score. Or at least scores Paranoia Agent and Paprika. I'm not sure about three copies. One of his primary objectives apparently was working with this person. The score is unbelievable. It's very cool.

Starting point is 01:09:01 It's great. The whole score during that montage when we get sort of the clips of her life merged with the clips of her early career, incredible score. And very, yeah, score very crucial to a movie like this, where it's like, you know, about people talking. Yeah, especially to keep the flow between locations, places, times, realities. Yeah. Yeah.

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Starting point is 01:12:17 but you start with the demolition of this dude. Or I guess you start with the space shot, right? Yes, you start with the space shot of her filming. The film that she is, I think it's her last film, in which she's going to space and she's chasing after the man she loves while one of her coworkers declares his love to her and she falls on deaf ears.

Starting point is 01:12:37 On the moon in spacesuits. On the moon in space. She only has eyes for one thing and her eyes are shining as she lifts off. I just remember seeing this at the Metrograph and thinking when this sequence came up, wait, am I wrong about what this movie's about? Like, cause I had always like,

Starting point is 01:12:52 wait, it's the animated film that's just like a woman trying to remember her life. And then this starts, and the first three minutes look like a standard anime film of this era. Yeah, it's really cool. You open on this hyper detailed rocket. Yeah. And then, yes, revealed that this guy

Starting point is 01:13:10 is watching it on a VHS tape. I just, I love the design of this character because The lead What's his name again? Genya. No, I just think he is presented in a way where visually,

Starting point is 01:13:27 I said Japanese Joel Silver, but he looks like a sort of gruff, cynical exec type. He does. Sure. He doesn't look... Suspenders, goatee. He doesn't look like a sensitive, bordering, unsick-o-fantic... He looks like a desk pusher. Yes.

Starting point is 01:13:42 And his, like, sort of slacker cameraman. Visually. Looking very 90s. He should be the nerd. He should be the one like, no, no, you don't understand. She was a legend. Right, it's just sort of like, this is a gig for me.

Starting point is 01:13:56 And Jenny is yelling at him like, you don't understand the importance of this, but he's so aggro about it. Yes. But they're, yeah, checking up a mountain to find this woman who has been off the radar for 40 years to interview her as the studio has been destroyed. She was the star who was most associated with the studio for decades and they feel the need to document it to have some sort of

Starting point is 01:14:15 living testament to this woman. No one knows what she's even gonna look like, but what her memory is gonna be like. This opening montage of like them driving, her in this sort of like post-World War II bombed out, right, with cranes, like landscape, and then the spaceship flying, and you're cutting between all this stuff. And if you've never seen this movie, it's not like you're like, what is going on? But it is laying subtly out what he's doing,

Starting point is 01:14:44 like, you know, for the rest of this movie, without you really understanding it. going on, but it is laying subtly out what he's doing, like, you know, for the rest of this movie, without you really understanding it. You know, like this sort of imagery of her in various movies. It's giving you that information right up front, and then kind of- Wow, they're also like in their car,

Starting point is 01:14:56 like looking at papers, like being boring. It's like, this is what we're gonna see, and we're gonna fill it out later. Yes. And I think this movie does capture very well the energy of that feeling of, like when they're outside her door, right? I guess first, her sort of maid answers the door.

Starting point is 01:15:14 They don't know if it's her or not for a second because no one's seen her in so long. But that energy of going to see a real elderly person and being like, I don't know what this is gonna be like. I don't know how functional this is gonna be. I don't know what this is going to be like. I don't know how functional this is going to be. I don't know if this is about to be upsetting. I don't know how much they're going to be like cogent. My grandmother is 93 now and she is kind of like remarkably sharp for her age, but I spent

Starting point is 01:15:39 a lot of time with her. She lives in the city and I feel like similar to this character We have a lot of conversations now that I did not feel she was capable of having five years ago where she kind of zooms out and looks at her whole life and Simultaneously starts talking about things in much greater detail than I've ever heard her talk about before things that used to just be sort of like broad swaths are now like talk about before, things that used to just be sort of like broad swaths are now like very minutely sort of like honed in on. And then other things she gets way abstract about, you know, and she just wants to zoom all the way out and just kind of think about the larger

Starting point is 01:16:15 arcs of her life. And I just feel like this movie gets that feeling down very right of like being with someone who's like, I don't know how many more conversations I have In me certainly of someone who really wants to listen and I want to be heard and there's stuff I need to express Yeah I do sympathize with the guy too where he's like I love you But like not in a weird way like he's trying to be chill his face goes all red with her right you know What if she's just like a nice old lady. There are these guys, like you come across in the film industry who are just these horrible blowhards and you're like, how did you end up in this job?

Starting point is 01:16:53 And then you trace it back and you're like, at some point this guy was some innocent sweet film nerd who got hurt by this industry, learned how to be an asshole, like ruined people's life and has made bullsh*t for the last 20 like, 20 years. But then he'll point to, like, the Cassavetes poster on his wall, and he's like, that's why I got into it. And this energy of this guy being like,

Starting point is 01:17:12 I care so much about what you do. I think it's a different kind of unrequited love, in a way. Because this movie's all about unrequited love and, like, how that drives a person. And I think it's so interesting after the depiction of how toxic and poisonous and dangerous fandom can be in perfect blue, he depicts fandom as being this kind of unrequited love and something that is much purer in a way.

Starting point is 01:17:35 The closest thing this movie has to a quote-unquote twist is the reveal where it's like, no, he was like... part of her life at different times. There were like actual moments of meaningful impact between the two of them, and he goes there assuming that she would not remember, both because of her age and because like, well, someone like you would meet a million people.

Starting point is 01:17:56 That was impactful for me, but why would it be impactful for you? And the notion of like, viewing him as just a fan and then coming to realize like, no, he's this guy who exists in this space where it's like, you're meaningful to me, I don't know if you feel anything about me. Again, unrequited love.

Starting point is 01:18:14 Yeah. And it's kind of, yeah, it's like the most optimistic portrayal of fandom that I think I've seen in a while, that feels like very loving, that it's just like, this is a sweet romantic thing. It's a dark time for fandom these days. It is a dark time for fandom've seen in a while that feels like very loving, that it's just like, this is a sweet romantic thing. Instead of just being- It's a dark time for fandom these days. It is a dark time for fandom, but in a way it's like,

Starting point is 01:18:30 this is the one good side of fandom that we see, that it's just another type of love. And I just like, she's playing someone who is born during the great Kanto earthquake, right? Like that's how she starts off. She's like, my destiny is like tied to earthquakes. So she's from the early 20s and like she's representing the history of the country like to the people and to the viewers and like and

Starting point is 01:18:54 Like that's sort of how I thought about I knocked my head off my great-grandma Died when I was young, but like right, you know, like that's a person where it's like you it's a When you were born, you know, like that's a person where it's like, when you were born, you know, we didn't even have whatever. Right. Sliced bread, cars, whatever. My dad telling me exactly. My grandfather was born before cars existed and that belonged my mind and being like,

Starting point is 01:19:14 there's a link from that time to now. How many channels on cable did he get? Six. You lived, like they lived all different lives and it's so bizarre to think, it's baffling to think about. You're like, wow, I can't imagine my life without this technology. But that's the millennium look back thing. That was like the f*cking 99, 2000 energy of just like... It's the millennial look back.

Starting point is 01:19:34 It's crazy how fast the last hundred years moved. You know? When you think about it, how many cable channels do you think she had when she was born? Her? Yeah. At least two. Basic you talking basic package? She had like ESPN, but no ESPN too? Like do you think that's possible?

Starting point is 01:19:50 Disney Channel was an add-on. And their programming was bad at that point. They only had like Welcome to Poo Corner and Dumbo Circus and sh*t like that. Oh, absolutely. So you know, like she's recounting her childhood, right? Born during the earthquake, was spotted as a young girl, right? By a studio director when she was at school.

Starting point is 01:20:12 Yes. And her parents kind of like forbade it, but she, you know, starts acting anyway. You're fully taking at face value at this point. What she is relaying to you is just purely the story of her life leading up to how she became an actress. And then you get to the scene with her and the soldier that hangs over the rest of her life.

Starting point is 01:20:29 Right. Sure, sure, sure. But like, this is the first scene where like, when she's like recounting this meeting, where her dad's like, you can't do this or whatever. And they're just... Her dad has died actually, because he died at her birth. Well, who's yelling? Is it the studio head who's yelling at her?

Starting point is 01:20:44 Like... I think I got the feeling it was her teacher or something. Maybe that's it. And they're just in the room with her. The guy, the cameraman's there. Yes. And that's like where you're just like, what is this? Right.

Starting point is 01:20:56 And the cameraman is also saying, what is this? Right. Like, yeah, and they're in their regular clothes, their modern clothes and all that. And yes, then you're having this moment where, like you said, the sort of pivotal meeting. She finds a soldier hiding now. With the key.

Starting point is 01:21:10 Yes. Well, he's not a soldier, he's a revolutionary. Yes, I'm sorry. He's a revolutionary, he's an artist and revolutionary. He's got a suitcase. And he's like kind of hot. Yeah, he's pretty hot. Not just kind of.

Starting point is 01:21:20 For her to be obsessed with him her entire life, he has to be super hot. And he lives up to the hype. But he's like a paint-splattered suitcase. And also blood-splattered suitcase. Yes. The imagery of him like painting in the snow, setting up his easel, like with no one around, creating a faraway world.

Starting point is 01:21:41 I was just thinking... He's got a little bucket hat. What kind of like passing encounters do you have to say something so poignant and profound that someone just falls deeply in love with you and thinks about you for the rest of your life? What, like... I'm doing that all the time.

Starting point is 01:21:57 Yeah, exactly. Like, what about speaking from his perspective? We release an episode every week that changes someone's life. Yeah. No, no, yes, I mean, for sure. and people keys. Yeah, we release an episode every week that changes someone's life. Yeah. No, no, yes, I mean, for sure. Well, it's also like he is, in a weird way,

Starting point is 01:22:10 he is instilling in her the stakes and importance of the idea of being an artist, right? That it's like, here is a man who is like creating art in a time of turmoil, against all odds, putting his life at risk, but he's holding onto his paint brushes and bringing them with him because he needs to express something,

Starting point is 01:22:33 things need to be documented, they need to be communicated. For someone who's at the early stages of being pulled into an art form, that's also its own kind of complicated industry, it's like this guy's saying to her, like, this matters. Yeah. Art for greater meaning. Yes. Also, he's hot.

Starting point is 01:22:50 And he's hot. Even if you don't see his face at first, which I found really interesting. No, he's all in shadows. He's all in shadow. And then the instance where you do see his full face, it might be a film. Yeah. Right. Because this sequence, I mean, she basically runs off, is chased away, runs to the train station,

Starting point is 01:23:07 tries to catch him. This whole sequence that you're filming literally or that you're viewing literally. Then, Genia says, like, I remember that scene. It made you famous or whatever he says to her. And the camera guy is like, I thought that was a movie? Like, at this point already, the two realities are starting to blur together.

Starting point is 01:23:26 Ben, you love a key. A serious key. I do. I love the aesthetic of it. It's just a piece of jewelry, too. And his whole thing of like, this important, opens the most important thing. Yeah, like if someone wears a key around their neck, or carries a key with them, well, I guess that would be

Starting point is 01:23:42 just your key chain. But you know what I mean. It's a functional piece of jewelry. It's a functional, yes. Yeah, it serves some function. There's the thing where she touches pinkies with him, and then you dissolve to her holding up her pinky, like she's like, I will never throw this shirt away!

Starting point is 01:23:58 Yeah, she's remembering it. My precious pinky! Like, all those little details. I feel like with most great performers, there's this conversation of, was there something that formed them in sort of action, in incident, right? That changed their relationship to their own emotions, their access, their sort of emotional intelligence or understanding, or were they like born with some innate sensitivity and sense of empathy the ability to connect whatever but like in the way that

Starting point is 01:24:30 Barbara Streisand who we talked about very recently talks about like her father passing away her stepfather being distant you know like this longing for approval from the men in her life who weren't there or could not reciprocate love and that sort of like built her whole thing. It was the reason why at 15, 16 she was able to sing these ballads with a wealth of emotion. It's like that is this moment for her. I think it is the meaning of the final line where it's like it's not like she was purely in love with this guy as an idea. I think she absolutely would have been thrilled if at 25 she had found him again and could

Starting point is 01:25:07 have had a relationship with him. But also he is emblematic of like the ability to tap into a sense of longing, of deep emotion, of pathos, the ability to connect with this man in such a brief encounter and hold that with her for so long. And so many of the great movie stars when when people discuss like, what are their, like what is the quality that makes them so poignant and lasting? It's that there's some sense of like,

Starting point is 01:25:33 something that can't quite be expressed. As much as great movie stars are great communicators, it's usually, the thing that pushes people from actor to star is usually some inexplicable, like there's something they're holding back There's some sense of longing there's something they're reaching for that they can't quite grab and this is just like a very smart literalization of the type of like incident as a child the kind of memory you could hold on to the sort of like constant grasping for a thing that you're never gonna get to

Starting point is 01:26:04 Which is I mean really what the whole thing's about. Right? Yeah. 100%. Some of our greatest films are just centered around yearning. And conflict itself is based around searching for something that you don't have. Resolution after boredom. Actors say, what's my motivation? What's my want in this scene?

Starting point is 01:26:22 You know? And it's like... David's... Mutridenera. But if you're someone who is... who either is born with or experiences some set of conditions that gives you that innate, unbreakable sense of yearning in your life,

Starting point is 01:26:38 then it's like you're always gonna be kind of compelling on screen if that's being captured, right? Like, if she hadn't met this guy, she would have willed into existence another thing like this. She would have had some experience like this that became her White Whale. So this experience she has, where she sort of...

Starting point is 01:26:57 meets a sort of revolutionary man, he leaves behind a magic key and he had a painting, and he is maybe on a train eventually, and she's chasing after the train. Is he actually on the train or is she just thinking he's on the train? Well, at that point, we're seeing the movie as well. But the servant who tells her that he escaped after the police found that he was hiding in their shed,

Starting point is 01:27:17 he says, oh, they... he made it to the train station. What I love about the train sequence is it is so magisterial, and it's like many a film and television show we would know the train goodbye, the best kind of goodbye. Way better than playing goodbye, by the way. So hard to run after them. Yes. Although movies have tried that.

Starting point is 01:27:36 Lier, liar. Or he drives the stair car. Yeah. I mean, the best you can do is two guys running in a playing field like in heat Well, that is that is that's a good version Yeah, but also I love that the cameraman and the other guy are running after her and they're like this is exhaust Yes, like the idea of like not just are you being transposed into her world? You have to like follow her through her world. Yes tiring like One then later when he's in the samurai outfit

Starting point is 01:28:05 and he has to call out, like, I know it is an error appropriate, like he's trying to integrate himself into her memories and knowing that it's a struggle, he's not quite getting there. But also being the, having the best fandom dream come true by getting to play out the roles opposite his favorite actress ever.

Starting point is 01:28:23 Which also just makes it then so emotionally impactful to me when you start to recognize like, oh, that's him. He exists as a younger form in this story. He's now gotten to the point where he enters the narrative and he's like watching himself watching the things that he witnessed with the new sense of context. There's a really interesting moment in the later scene after he gets introduced as the younger version of himself who's in her life.

Starting point is 01:28:50 Um, he... They're searching for the key at one point when he gets lost while they're filming. He, like, rushes past himself and knocks himself over. Which is so interesting. It's so cool. Yeah. So much going on in this movie. Because there's also the stuff where they're shown in her home

Starting point is 01:29:09 and they're acting it out. On the stage. But there's also no one there. There's no crew. Yeah. And so that's another sort of like almost the other mirror of that. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:29:19 There's always lenses upon lenses upon lenses of looking at this woman's life and career. Yeah, you have this whole period film that she's in, where she's on the boat. There's this sort of villainess with the cool glasses, who's trying to stop her from reuniting with her love. Yes. At this point, we're sort of seeing... Aida? Is that on?

Starting point is 01:29:41 Yes, we'll see the film like stop down. Oh, no, no, no, I'm sorry. That's... Aiko Shimao. Aiko Shimao, yes. Eiko Shimao, right. The Betty Davis of this movie. Exactly, she's a villain in the movie and then they cut to like, or you know, the lights will appear and the director is giving her directions and the actress is like,

Starting point is 01:29:57 she can't handle this role. Like it's like, there's two layers of villainy at work here. There's an all about Eve story going on here too. She's the young hotness. And then you have this manifestation of a witch that's sort of hovering over her life. That is like a character in film she's done, but also seems to be haunting her.

Starting point is 01:30:13 And whether she is one and the same with a shimao, or is like a reflection of herself as an older woman. Yeah, because at the end we see her, see that reflection for the final time, but then she's like, is that me? And it kind of morphs together. Yes, she has the mole on the face. But it's like this very honest reflection of even if you're like a child actress, plucked

Starting point is 01:30:35 from a very young age, you're being placed into an industry where it's like, oh, and by the way, the road tends to end for actresses here. Yeah. Right. Your clock is ticking almost immediately. Houston is an asset. Yes. So here's a woman who's like an adult and seems to be in the prime of her life and is so mortally jealous

Starting point is 01:30:52 of this young child. And she's also terrified of getting to that point in her life. Absolutely. Big train crash sequence, right? Is that, and then that merges into a like true period film. There's a name for it. The, you know, doing my best here. The Jide Geki, is that how you say it?

Starting point is 01:31:19 I don't know. Like this sort of, do you know who I'm trying to... Jide Geki, yeah. Like this sort of like... The samurai. Edo period, right. Samurai, you know Hoi Chien? Do you know Huy Gai? Yeah, like the sort of like... The samurai. Edo period, samurai, you know, period costume. She's got the, you know, the painted eyebrows, all that, you know, like that is the most drastic transition

Starting point is 01:31:38 between the sort of, you know, like 1930s movie or whatever, and this like 16th, 17th century movie, whatever it is, where she like, everything's on fire and she's about to kill herself. I mean, so interesting to me as someone who is only casually familiar with Japanese film history that I even now see like the things I recognize like the Jide Geki films feel to me very much like Akira Kurosawa films. And then when we get to later with the temporary films, the Uzu films, that kind of thing.

Starting point is 01:32:08 And then, of course, the Kaiju films, which we'll talk about soon. Which is obviously... Thank you, Satoshi Kon, for including that in this. It was very fun to see. But yeah, this feels... Yeah, there's the ghostly lady. This feels like Thrown About a little bit. I think that was one of the inspirations that he used. But the ghostly, like, rumple-steel-skinny lady with the big loom.

Starting point is 01:32:31 She's cool. Yes. Who tricks her into drinking the tea. It's so interesting, the scenes that we see that she's filming, they feel so important and pivotal to her own life because it feels like, you know, the tea that she's doomed to drink, is also dooming her to never get over this love that has defined her for so long. Right. But once again, it's like...

Starting point is 01:32:55 To some degree, I mean, the final line of the film... You spoiled it? I spoiled it. Gives her the sort of narrative agency of she was not a victim of circ*mstance, right? This idea that this truth was held for her, from her for so long, out of the fear of like, this would destroy her if she knew the man she had been chasing was long dead already. And for her, it's like she has this ownership of like, the chase was always the thing I was gonna be in love with. Yes. Yeah. The resolution won't be nearly as good as the chase. And that's why making the movies is better than real life, right?

Starting point is 01:33:31 Yes. Yes. That's why escapism of movies is better than real life. That everything that's like haunting her is also something to some degree she's bringing upon herself as trying to like, conjure the energy to f*cking act. You know, to feel sh*t. But what if someone told you a story about the movies they were in and then you were in the movies

Starting point is 01:33:49 and then you almost died making the movie that is a memory? Okay, so I wanna say this now. That sounds awesome, obviously. I know. I would love that. Isn't that crazy? Like, if every time I have to profile an actor, they're like, well, if you'll remember,

Starting point is 01:34:01 and then suddenly I'm in the movie with them and I might die. Suddenly you're in feudal Japan and you're getting attacked by bandits. I want to say this now, and I want to make it clear that I'm not saying that I wish it had happened or want it to happen. But rewatching this, it is astounding Hollywood has not tried to remake this movie. Hmm, interesting. It feels like such an obvious- As an animated film?

Starting point is 01:34:22 No. As a live action film. As a live action film. Being As a live-action film. Being Julia. Bam. Well, they nailed it. I mean, I think that the closest equivalent is Damien Chazelle's Babylon, which is more of a love letter to movies than to a specific actress.

Starting point is 01:34:35 I think, like, Your Name, which Hollywood was trying to remake in live-action for like ten years and finally seems to have given up on, and part of the struggle was that they were like, we cannot figure out how to culturally transpose this thing. It is so specific to Japanese history, and they were trying to do it with indigenous Americans, and it never totally worked. It went through different directors. This movie you could transpose in live action

Starting point is 01:34:57 onto American film history with the exact same narrative structure, and the documentary filmmakers are entering the narrative and all of this. I'm not saying I want it to happen, but I just like cynically, you're like, there are two actresses who are like desperately clawing for the rights to this movie to set it up, to remake it themselves as like a star vehicle, as the two ages. I wonder if the relative anonymity of Satoshi Kon has helped that, because, yeah, it's not even one of his most well-known films.

Starting point is 01:35:29 Also, would it depict the Civil War? Well, this is not a thing we maybe want to go back to. You don't want to go back? Be a northerner. Huh? Yeah, exactly. Fall in love with a northerner. Okay. I'm just saying.

Starting point is 01:35:44 You think in your name they couldn't figure out how to like do the thing where you make the sake out of like the virgin spit? That was the thing they couldn't crack. Yeah, that was the one thing. That does feel like, I can't find an analog for this. The weird cosmic love story,

Starting point is 01:35:55 yeah, they could crack, but not the spit. Sure, sure, sure, sure. There's a lot of like, the spit is kind of pivotal in your name. They gotta make the chair movie in America. That's what I want. Yeah. Suzume where they have movie in America. That's what I want. Suzume? Yeah. Suzume where they have the hot chair. He is hot and he's also a kung fu kicking chair.

Starting point is 01:36:10 I love that chair. A three legged kung fu kicking chair. We did our award show episode, Huchan, and we'll take notes throughout the year of what my picks would be and what would be funny awards to give out. And the one I f*cking forgot to read was most handsome chair.

Starting point is 01:36:25 There was fierce competition. He is very handsome. He is, and he's handsome in chair form. As good as millennial actress is, at no point 10 minutes into the movie does anyone turn into a chair and then not turn back into a person. It is the only note I have for this one.

Starting point is 01:36:40 It's the only thing I would hold against it. I think we could have used a talking, kung fu fighting chair. Every movie could. I've talked only thing I would hold against it. I think we could have used the talking kung fu fighting chair. Every movie could. I've talked about it, I've probably talked about it, which is the growing realization where I'm like, okay, he's gonna be a chair for a bit. He's still a chair.

Starting point is 01:36:53 He's gonna be a chair the whole time. I've seen this guy's movies. He might have the guy be a chair the whole time, even though he was hot. And also that isn't like the main thrust of this movie. It's not primarily a chair transformation. No, it's about natural disasters and climate change. And instead it's about this guy in a chair.

Starting point is 01:37:09 The guy's just kind of going on his chair journey to the side of the main story. Yeah, they're chasing after a cat who cursed them to be a chair. That movie rules so hard. Is he working on something new? Do we know what he's up to? Because of Shinkai.

Starting point is 01:37:22 But those, right, those are films that would be impossible to localize, to adapt, to remake. And obviously other filmmakers have pulled elements of Satoshi Kon's work. It just feels like this is a movie that you could remake and the changes you would have to make mapping it onto American culture would make it different enough. That it's almost a worthwhile effort. I agree with you to an extent because I think now more than ever it's actually more possible to make this kind of film. Even in Satoshi Kon's style, I think of everything everywhere all at once, which the Daniels have cited Satoshi Kon as inspiration and influence in the way that they edited and the rapid fire editing and framing and blocking of their films.

Starting point is 01:38:03 And that's the closest I've seen in live action to Satoshi Kon being made real. There is, yeah, there's an understanding of the language and there's a democratization of the technology that would make it easy enough to replicate these kinds of transitions. This is, I'm just like, I think this is the best version of this movie that could ever be made. I'm not advocating for someone to make another version, but I'm just like, this thing is so f*cking poignant. And part of it is it's just poking a lot of the bruises of my favorite types of stories. Where I'm like, I love shifting between reality and memory and fantasy.

Starting point is 01:38:36 You love yearning. I love yearning. I love movies about like the complicated history of movies and our relationship to them. I like any movie that's basically someone about to die Trying to make sense of their entire life in a final moment Especially if they're like dumping it all into another person who's overwhelmed that like always gets me And the fact that this movie is able to do all of that in 88 minutes is astonishing. I'm pulling a bridges in Madison County Go on just I'm dying and putting in one suitcase for them to find.

Starting point is 01:39:06 You're doing nothing. You're not going to bring over. It's like, that was so boring. He never did anything. It was like, no, I had one emotional affair. It's in the suitcase. It was a weekend. One good weekend.

Starting point is 01:39:16 But you lost the key and it has to be found. Yeah. Yeah. That'd be funny if they were trying to open it and they're like, stuck. Forget it. Burn the suitcase. Those are real opposite ends of metaphor Someone gives you a key and you hold on to it forever for the rest of your life

Starting point is 01:39:29 And when you lose it you chase after it versus Clint taking everything putting it in the suitcase and being like I don't know It's in the basem*nt. I never want to look at that again It would be funny if they went and found Clint in that movie and he's just like lives in a tree He's like a thousand years old. What if you make Millennium actor with Clint? Oh, f*ck. Interesting. Interesting.

Starting point is 01:39:50 I mean, that does sound, this is why you can't do a live action. Who plays Clint? I'm saying Clint plays. Not Scott Eastwood because he. Oh, who plays young Clint? f*ck. Yeah. I mean, like that's the advantage of animation.

Starting point is 01:40:02 We backed into the issue is. Right. We set that up that we don't get away from Scott. Yeah. Yeah, I mean like that's the advantage of animation. We backed into the issue is... Right, is that you can move her back. We don't get away from Scott. No, well now what someone would do would be like, what do you mean, AI, I'll clean Clint right up. He's young as new. Go right to rawhide with him.

Starting point is 01:40:16 But it's the cynical part of me that's like, isn't there some sort of like Winslet Dench Iris casting where it's just like just two great actresses? Sure, that sounds fun. Yeah. I don't know. The other problem with the Clint movies, they'd be like, oh, tell us about this movie.

Starting point is 01:40:29 And he's like, too late, we already wrapped. I shot it in 12 minutes. I barely remember that. That film is actually fast forwarded. The take was done before we even started. Also, it would just be him telling the documentary guys that they were all wrote at him. Although, maybe you would have a talking chair in that because...

Starting point is 01:40:46 Well, he likes to talk to chairs. Show him Suzume. So is that the one Clint needs to remake? I like this kid. Clint, that's a chair. He's got the face of an old movie star. I'm going into production on my 95th film, a live action remake of Suzume. I love these warm portals.

Starting point is 01:41:03 I'm the chair. I play the chair. I play the chair. You just like Clint walking around Ikea being like, I'm looking for my star. He's here somewhere. Or 1517 style. He just cast the chair. He's sitting on at that moment. He's got a great face. Why look further? I knew it. It truly is. Right? God, God, but they only let him do that once. Why go to Ikea when we have Cher at home? Like truly, probably Richard Dool, he was like, and we'll just cast the real, he died. And he's like, God damn it. Now I have to do auditions. I'm furious. They railroaded

Starting point is 01:41:41 me into a industry. They railroaded me into a kid. Why didn't anyone tell me he was dead? Yeah, okay, so what are some of the other movies there's this sort of the booklet here has the full fictional Filmography, which is cool. So it's heroism of the wounded soldier. I'm reading the American titles It has both yearning for you castle of phantoms Scarlet glory they're good titles. Very good titles. She Yoko seven ninja transformations, a Shimbara pure love, the song of snow, extraordinary black Tengu encounters the Madonna of Tokyo schoolhouse and spring, midsummer horizon, the garden of women, house of fossils. Definitely more movies than I clocked in the movie. Some of these make brief appearances. Giglia, Gigalia is the Godzilla.

Starting point is 01:42:31 The truck general colon chapter of the race on the noble highway. Right. That was for kids. Planet Z is her final film. I have to say, I love that Shioko was never like limited to the prestige films. Like she was doing kaiju movies. Like when that Godzilla type rolls up and it's just a dragon, I was like, this is great.

Starting point is 01:42:52 But she's doing sequels to her samurai film where she's basically just like bandit now. And it's like definitely a direct to video B movie sequel where they're like, what if you were showing off your legs? Right. But that's like... But that's right. It's like, I think of Satsuko Hara from the three Ozu movies I've seen her in. Sure.

Starting point is 01:43:13 And she made like a hundred movies. Yes. Like, I'm sure some of them were trash. No offense. No, but like someone like Lillian Gish, who like starts young in silent films, and then you're like, because of when she was born, her career spans like the entire arc of film, figuring out what it is, where it's like, oh, and then she's going to get to like talking

Starting point is 01:43:30 western, and she's going to do like later old lady noir parts and all these sorts of things. It's sort of like being alive, the years this character was alive, you couldn't be pretentious about your career, because the industry is like rebuilding itself and reshaping itself. It's sort of like being alive the years this character was alive, you couldn't be pretentious about your career because the industry is rebuilding itself and reshaping itself every life. And the country is literally rebuilding itself too. So like if you survive, if you continue working across decades, you're going to make every

Starting point is 01:43:58 type of film. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We eventually do cut back to the movie from the start of the movie where she's like wandering a ruined landscape Post-war one assumes I guess are bombed out landscape I do like the line from the the filmmaker guy who when they get to the right before the their her hometown gets bombed He says is this a sci-fi movie? And no, it's reality.

Starting point is 01:44:26 Yeah. But also, yeah, the Japanese cinema had decades of processing that reality through genre. Through genre, and the horrors of the real life war felt so absurd that they feel like a sci-fi film. But they had to turn into monsters, yeah. But he is putting both sides of the coin out because the man she falls in love with is

Starting point is 01:44:48 a dissident opposing the Japanese invasion of China. The sort of pre-war kind of imperialism of Japan. And then the post-war trauma of post-war. It's so funny that in the interviews he's like, yeah, I don't know, I just sort of had an idea about an actress. Yes, this is what I'm saying. And it's such a dense, complicated film. Right, it's like astonishing that it feels like

Starting point is 01:45:12 he kind of landed on this by accident, but had the rigor to be like, if I'm gonna tell this, I need to now do the work and f*cking study this well enough to be able to paint it properly. Right. Yeah. Good for him, he did it. He's a great f*cking filmmaker. This movie's be able to paint it properly. Right. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:45:26 Good for him, he did it. He's a great f*cking filmmaker. This movie's so... It's so good. Masterpiece. It is. Have we talked about Tachibana? The character who keeps showing up and saving her? The ghosty lady? No, the, like, he is...

Starting point is 01:45:42 Genya. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, the guy. It's the younger version of the documentary. Where he can't help but insert himself, right, and be her savior. It's like, it's not actually him. It is him. In every single occurrence. Oh, sure, sure. There's always a character type.

Starting point is 01:45:56 There's always this character type that's recurring. Yes. The sort of kindness of strangers, people. I mean, I think it's interesting that there's always, she's always playing a very specific type of role. The woman who is pure of heart, but also has a little bit of fire and spark in her, but also will, has that such purity of spirit that men will like immediately jump in to save her.

Starting point is 01:46:19 So it's kind of like, in a way, it gets to this sort of conservative idea of women, like the purity of women. The Madonna and the whor* thing. Exactly. But I think a lot of Miyazaki films actually get into too, like the sort of purity of spirit. And that is something that kind of drives her roles as well as like her fans who feel like they have to protect her and feel like they want to protect her. Right, who's like ruled by this unrequited love.

Starting point is 01:46:46 Like she's forever sort of, yeah. I mean, we've... Wisconsin, that purity. Yes. Shimao ends up taking her key. I mean, it's funny how quickly the movie sort of breezes over this, but it's like the key is stolen.

Starting point is 01:47:03 It feels like she sort of loses her drive to work in the same degree. She ends up marrying this director, sort of set up by an executive, and her career starts to like, slow down. She becomes a housewife, but then maybe she's just playing housewives. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:47:20 You see the posters of her throughout the movie, and there's this poster of hers, like a nice middle-aged lady, and you do get the posters of her throughout the movie and there's this poster of hers, like a nice middle-aged lady. And you do get the vibe of like, right, she's making less thrilling films. You see this confrontation with like a mother, mother-in-law where she's basically like

Starting point is 01:47:38 a woman's happiness is making a nice home. Yeah. Oh, that was an interesting scene because we see that scene playing out first between her and her actual mother And then it cuts and it's actually Sheenal the the lady the actress who has always been sort of her antagonist Yes, her bet Midler. I love that scene. It's another one of like those effortlessly cut scenes that you're like, oh, yeah

Starting point is 01:48:02 We're still in this cutscenes that you're like, oh yeah, we're still in this. David? Yep? You know what I hate? What? Weak short erections. I just hate them! They grind my gears!

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Starting point is 01:49:08 I could pass along to my friend? Well, you can use code check for 20% off your first order. Terms and conditions apply. The offer only available once for new customers and cannot be combined with other offers. The offer is not available for prescriptions. I find it interesting the reaction that Jena, the filmmaker, always has against the director that Shioko marries.

Starting point is 01:49:39 It's a kind of, I wonder if it stems from that protectiveness he feels as a fan, or he is just like any man who is exploiting the woman I love is always gonna be evil. But I don't know why, but for a long time, and this is from my first or early watches of it, I thought that he had abused her, and I had that idea in my head. Oh, alleged that's an undercurrent.

Starting point is 01:49:58 Exactly, and then when I watched it again, I was just like, oh, I guess he didn't, but I always had that sort of feeling. Yeah, yeah. I guess in his mind, it's more just like, he domesticated her. He took advantage of her in a way. And he was older than her too when they first met,

Starting point is 01:50:12 so there's definitely that degree of power and balance. Yeah. But to this guy, it's almost like, there is a form of abuse in not allowing her to continue as an artist at the scale. If your relationship to her is one-sided mirror, I'm in love with her work. I think she's incredible. I stand here and set off to the sides and watch her work and try to help her.

Starting point is 01:50:31 And suddenly, there's some shift now where her career is throttling down. You would hate that guy. Yeah. Right? In the way, like... If I'm super fan? Insane modern fandom will get upset about who Blanka's dating. Like if Colin Farah got married tomorrow?

Starting point is 01:50:46 And stopped acting? Yeah, I would hate that person. Yeah. People burning their Anna de Armas cardboard cutout. Yes, exactly. That kind of thing. But there's this pile up of... You have that whole sort of moment,

Starting point is 01:51:00 the transition between her conversation with her mother and she Mao, the key going missing Jenya saving her life, I guess happens a little bit later But that whole like marriage happens very quickly I mean the movie sort of treats it like she just has this kind of like lost ten years Yeah, where she's trying to play house and doing less engaging work. And then how does she ultimately find the key again? doing less engaging work. And then how does she ultimately find the key again? She finds it in his office, right?

Starting point is 01:51:27 Yeah, because you have her basically breaking down as both a young married woman and as an old woman, and then she's cleaning his office one day and she just finds it. Yes. And then we have that scene where it turns out they're having this confrontation on a set. Yes. Which is very interesting for no audience. You see the lights go out behind them,

Starting point is 01:51:46 which is very cool. And, you know, the rival is there. But it's like they literally took her artistic yearning and put it in a box and said, don't worry about this. And then she sort of got the spark again. She found it again. And then...

Starting point is 01:52:02 She made Planet Z, which I want to see. It looks f*cking rad as well. It looks awesome. It's a moon Z, which I want to see. It looks f*cking rad as well. It looks awesome. It's a moon invasion movie, I want to say. I'm just saying if tomorrow someone was like, I'm making a movie called Planet Z, I would be interested. Don't worry, I'm on it. It'll be done tomorrow.

Starting point is 01:52:17 Clint, wait, no, no, take a little time with this one, Clint. I'm taking a chair to the moon. Clint in his chair, going to the moon. Clint, you can slow down on this one, please. No, I'm going faster. Like I assume he took a minute to make Space Cowboys, right? Maybe not. Maybe he doesn't have the vibe yet. It is so funny the couple of times like that and hereafter where he's made movies with like a ton of CGI.

Starting point is 01:52:40 Where they have to like f*cking projection map Donald Sutherland's face onto a CGI astronaut suit and you're like, did he even look at... He's like, it's already done. No way, he's like... I trust, just print. Yeah, you can do that. Go Clint, that's a storyboard. Print it. Where's the print button?

Starting point is 01:52:58 Now we're making younger Clint into just like, a senile Joe Biden parody. Well, that's the Millennium Actress way. I'm done painting the wagon. I think I've already said this, but he should make a movie about Joe Biden getting railroaded for being too old. I know it's probably not in his politics. I just think what's happening to Biden

Starting point is 01:53:16 would probably resonate with Clint Eastwood. Yeah. Oh, just because he's a million years old. I can wake up with the best of him. I get out of bed every day. Good for him. Oh, just because he's a million years old, I can wake up with the best of them. Um... I get out of bed every day. Good for him. He probably doesn't direct from a chair like Scorsese does.

Starting point is 01:53:31 True. Scorsese really did look like he was about to, like, turn into an enchanted sleeping frog at the Oscars. He was just like... He looked very old. Oh, sorry. It was really Scott who directs from a chair. Then he naps between takes.

Starting point is 01:53:43 Oh, does he? Yes. Is that Scott's take? I think so. Oh, I bet he wakes up from who directs from a chair, then he naps between takes. Oh, does he? Is that Scott's take? I think so. Oh, I bet he wakes up from those naps, grouchy. Yes, because that's how he films so fast, is that he directs from a chair that he naps on. That's great, chair and bed. My experience, I was on the vinyl pilot,

Starting point is 01:53:59 The Worst Things Scorsese Ever Directed, and my experience was- And that's like 10 years ago at this point almost, well, eight. Yeah, and still far and away, the worst thing he's ever done. No, I'm just saying he was a little more spied. Yes, no, he was. But yeah, he's early 70s at that point.

Starting point is 01:54:12 He has his video village, and they would literally construct a pillow fort around it. So sometimes it was cardboard boxes taped together. Sometimes, depending on where we were filming, they would literally take pillows and put it around them or chairs or whatever it was But he's like sort of closed off They kept on saying it was because and I believe this his asthma is so bad

Starting point is 01:54:32 And that show was just lousy with people fake smoking that he couldn't be on set that often And so it was like every like you do like three to five takes and his first AD would come out and just be like He's happy keep doing it. Right. And then after like five takes, the door would open, the cardboard door, and Marty would like storm out looking like the man from Up. I'm guessing like amid a plume of smoke. Basically, they'd bring out a giant like fan, like pipe,

Starting point is 01:55:02 to blow the smoke out of there and then he'd come out and give like a bunch of notes for five minutes and then go like, and then keep going, fan, like, pipe. To blow the smoke out of there. And then he'd come out and give, like, a bunch of notes for five minutes, and then go like, and then keep going. Go do the other thing. But most of the time, he was, like, sitting in his little fort. Mm-hmm. Uh, Ari Aster just announced his new movie. The Western?

Starting point is 01:55:17 Yeah, Eddington. Mm. Uh, wow. Did they announce the cast? Joaquin. OK. Pedro. OK.

Starting point is 01:55:24 Emma Stone. OK. Luke Grin. Pedro. Emma Stone. Luke Grimes. Austin Butler. Wow. Michael Ward from Empire of Light and stuff. Sure, yeah. Clifton Collins Jr. Wow, it's like he was like,

Starting point is 01:55:36 cast everyone who everyone was talking about this year. Nab and Butler is kind of a big thing at this point. Because right now with Butler, it's kind of like, when does that guy roll snake eyes? Like, he is just like hitting. That's a good way of putting it. Because after Dune, he has Bike Riders, where he is taking the baton.

Starting point is 01:55:52 David's got feelings on bike riders. I forgot about bike riders. I mean, he's not bad at it or anything. Have you seen Bike Riders? I haven't seen it, but I do know that he's doing a weird voice. He's certainly doing a voice. And he's taking the baton from the king of weird voices,

Starting point is 01:56:03 Tom Hardy himself. Tom H, it's true. What if that's the the king of weird voices, Tom Hardy himself. Tom H. It's true. What if that's the Millennium actress you make, Tom Hardy? Oh, I've done so many weird voices. He could play the actor throughout the centuries because, or the decades, because he would just do a different weird voice. He would. He would.

Starting point is 01:56:19 He'd be great. But then who's old Tom? Tom, obviously. Tom in old age makeup. Tom in old age? He plays it all. He would do it. You think he would makeup. He plays it all he would do it You think he would let anyone else do that. He would love it. I'm so old My bones and my bones. Yeah, I never saw voice again for old age

Starting point is 01:56:39 Doing f*cking venom, but it is weird that he's kind of yeah I mean, I'm fine with that, obviously, but I would like him to do some other stuff. I like that the franchise he's stuck in is at least one that's totally based around his personality and performance. It's not like he's doing, like, kind of clocking in, clocking out work.

Starting point is 01:56:56 But it is weird how much his output slowed down. He did a lot. I guess it's hard to keep that up. He also, like, f*cked up his legs. Because he did the symbiote. Because he wore weird boots on Venom, I'm telling you. Fitty. Yeah, and not even like, oh, for when he was doing mo-camp or whatever.

Starting point is 01:57:15 He was like, I saw these boots, I thought they looked cool, I wore them, they f*cked up my legs. What kind of boots were these? Are these torture boots? He wore them inside out. I think he's like had a lot of like surgeries in between the Venom movies for these f*cking boots. A lot of surgeries? I'm not kidding you. Did he have surgery so he could fit into the boots better? He needed two knee surgeries after making Venom 1.

Starting point is 01:57:38 Yeah. But that was because Richard Fleischer kept kicking him in the knees. Not Fleischer, what's his name? Ruben Fleischer. Ruben Fleischer, there you go. My knees were f*cked. My knees were f*cked. My knees were f*cked.

Starting point is 01:57:48 I'm not going to try it. Your knees were born in the darkness, whatever he says. I should watch that again. Yeah, they should bring Bane back. What if James Gunn announced phase two, Bane? Bane, does the Bane Bane? What if no one was like, now that I have my Oscar, I'm making a Batman movie. Is Batman in it? No. Yeah,, Bane. Bane, does the Bane Bane? Top party's Bane. Now that I have my Oscar, I'm making a Batman movie. Is Batman in it?

Starting point is 01:58:08 No. Yeah, just Bane. This is a good question. Is Bane going shopping? Chaos of DC film slate, everyone trying to let James Gunn give him the time and space to, I saw that, they just pushed it back again. Everyone trying to give James Gunn the time and space

Starting point is 01:58:21 to actually try to build this thing properly. If Christopher Nolan walks into Warner Brothers holding his Oscars, slams them down and goes, Bane movie, do they, can anyone say no to him? No, of course not. He's got that blank check now. He has the blankest of blank checks. I saw someone say there was some like tweet from like an anonymous film. He could make a movie called like, My Dick.

Starting point is 01:58:42 It's like, what's it about? He's going to make a MacGruber movie because that's his favorite movie called like, My Dick. It's like, what's it about? It's about my dick. No, he's gonna make a MacGruber movie because that's his favorite movie. That would be fun. MacGruber, Talladega, and his crossover. Some film executive who was an anonymous source quoted on Twitter by some entertainment journalist the other day said he may... It is arguable that Christopher Nolan is the biggest movie star in the world right now. And I think it's an evocative thing to think about.

Starting point is 01:59:04 Yeah, it's interesting. There's an argument. But he's going to make something probably weird next. Maybe not, maybe he'll do the opposite and make like a super genre-y silly thing. But what's wild is that Tenet and Oppenheimer both feel like movies you only get made after you've just won Best Picture.

Starting point is 01:59:20 Yes, and he won Best Picture for one of them. Right, one of them's really silly, one of them's very serious. Both of them feel like the like, I guess we can't tell you what to do movies. I want to rewatch Tenet. It's just impossible to predict what he's going to do now. I rewatched it recently on the big screen, they had that re-release on IMAX. It was amazing, it rocked hard.

Starting point is 01:59:38 It's so cool when you just go backwards. It's great, even when you zone out, because sometimes you might zone out during it. It's great to zone out in Tenet, that makes it better. But even when you zone out, then you're like, during it. It's great to zone out in ten. That makes it better. Yeah, but even when you zone out then you're like you come back in and the coolest thing ever is happening on screen. But you're also like what's going on? You're like that's part of the fun. Yeah, you're like I don't know what's happening. Exactly. Anyway, the perfect Millennium actress world premiere.

Starting point is 01:59:59 The soldier comes back reveals. Right. She goes off and runs out after her... Let me get this... The timing of this right, because basically later, once she's in the hospital, Jenny relates to the cameraman that he had the remainder of the conversation with the soldier that she didn't hear that he killed him. Yes.

Starting point is 02:00:23 Yes, that he was tortured and killed after his arrest. The man with the scar on his face who would appear in some of her movies too as sort of like the vision that she had of, that she was always running from in a way. He's confessing this, he's trying to like atone or whatever. He's like, yeah, I'm sorry that I did this. But she doesn't hear the full confession. She runs out. He only confesses to Jena.

Starting point is 02:00:45 Yeah. Then there is a literal earthquake. She is hospitalized, the real, you know, we're back in the present day. She's on her hospital bed and Jena's like, you're gonna do great, you're about to pull through. This is great. You're fit as a fiddle.

Starting point is 02:00:59 And that's when she's like, nah, bro, it was all about the chase. Peace! Yeah. Right? I mean, it was all about the chase. Peace! Yeah. Right? I mean, basically. Like incredible final line. And also she says,

Starting point is 02:01:10 I'll chase him in heaven too. Which is just like, she's gonna continue the chase. I have the key. It's not even about finding him. That key's gonna work in heaven. Yeah. Yeah? The afterlife.

Starting point is 02:01:20 Yeah. Sure. Sequel to Millennium Actress. Chiyoko through the, what, seven circles of hell, nine circles of hell, finding her man. Yeah, she's like in heaven, and then she's like, no, I must depart. Yeah, but here's the problem.

Starting point is 02:01:35 The real sequel of Millennium Actress would probably be called Zoomer Influencer. On TikTok. Geez, I hope they ban it soon. Zoomer Influ influencer, Ben. It's so funny how old crusty weirdos in Congress right now are trying to ban TikTok, and me and people I know are like, I hope they do. I'd love it to be banned.

Starting point is 02:01:55 Yeah, please. Ban that f*cking ban. Just for my personal mental health. Anyway, Millennium Actress World Premiere was at Fantasia International Film Festival in 2001, released in Japan September 14th, 2002, and then... American release doesn't happen until... What's that?

Starting point is 02:02:13 What fishing was? Oh, so it was... Oh, I got a bite! They went fishing. Yes, Go Fish was the first film distributed by Go Fish, as we said. Rumors circulated they asked him to recut the film for American audiences. He says this was never the case. He didn't love how they handled the...

Starting point is 02:02:33 Posters, the one with her sort of standing with a sword surrounded by the photos. It looks a little more like... It's sort of evoking like, sort of House of Flying Daggers. Well, that didn't even come out yet, but... You know, like Crouching Tiger, I guess, but not really, it's still a fine poster. It's just not as cool as the original poster, which is really awesome.

Starting point is 02:02:53 Well, Cohn didn't like it. He said it sabotaged the culture of the film. To put it bluntly, what the hell? Samuel Goldwyn pictures, as you said, Griffin, for some insane reason decided to rush Tokyo Godfathers into theaters just two months later, three months later. After, like, because this is coming out, and this was kind of de rigueur at the time,

Starting point is 02:03:13 that Japanese films are coming out in the States only like a couple years after. I mean, like, Hero was nominated for Best Foreign Film two years before it was actually released in theaters and sh*t like that. Well, that's because of Weinstein. Same with Golden was like, we got to get this thing out now. So he has two movies come out in America within two months of each other,

Starting point is 02:03:32 even though they had been made and released years apart. Film was well received, only grossed $37,000 in America though, but got good reviews. Barely a chum scrubber. Yeah, it didn't even... They didn't even crack the chum. It didn't even scrub the chum. But we't even crack the chum. It didn't even scrub the chum. But we can look at the release date for the box office game Griffin, which is September

Starting point is 02:03:50 12, 2003. Now Millennium Actress is opening number 75 in one theater. No, I'm sorry, six theaters. Tough to make the 75. Right in between the 10th weekend of the highly underrated Tim Fiewell drama, I Capture the Castle. Oh, good movie. And a film I've never heard of called 30 Years to Life. Nope.

Starting point is 02:04:13 Don't know it. Looks like it's an ensemble comedy. Uh-oh. Love those with Erika Alexander. Okay. Number one of the- Oh, 30 Years to Life, a jokeoke, where it sounds like a prison sentence, but the movie is about marriage. Oh, that's old chain and ball.

Starting point is 02:04:28 That's the real... Number one. There are three films, new films, at the top three this week. Okay. Okay. Number one, it's a sequel. September 2003. Correct. Once Upon a Time in Mexico?

Starting point is 02:04:41 Look at that. Okay. Wow. Johnny Depp, Salma Hayek, Antonio Banderas, Robert Rodriguez's Once Upon a Time in Mexico? Look at that. Okay. Wow. Johnny Depp, Salma Hayek, Antonio Banderas, Robert Rodriguez's Once Upon a Time in Mexico. Coming out like six weeks after Pirates of the Caribbean where they were like push the Depp so hard. Depp is very funny in it.

Starting point is 02:04:57 But he is a supporting character. But he is kind of mostly what I remember about the movie. I have not seen the film in 25 years. I remember it being a bit of a slog. But that's all three of those movies are so fun for 20 minutes, and then you're kind of like, okay, I get it. Right. If Topher Grace could cut the Mariachi trilogy, Star Wars prequel style into one film, it would probably roll.

Starting point is 02:05:24 The problem is you'd have to ask Topher Grace. You gotta ask Topher. And no one film, it would probably rule. The problem is you'd have to ask Topher Grace. You gotta ask Topher. And no one knows where to find that guy. 1-800-TOHFER. Okay. um, tohfer.grace.gmail.com. He's currently cutting Denis Vane of Zune movies together. Yeah, he's making a 48 minute tape.

Starting point is 02:05:39 Denis was wrong. And I'll show you why. Um, have you seen Once Upon a Time in Mexico? I have not. That's one I missed. I have seen clips of Antonio Banderas looking extremely hot. Him and Selma, looking the hottest together. Selma's also barely in that movie. Like, she's above the title, huge on the poster,

Starting point is 02:05:57 the movie starts and they're like, yeah, she's been dead for ten years. And they're a couple flashbacks. Yeah, there's a big flashback sequence. You're right, though. She was busy. She was busy. Making's missing or whatever. Yeah, there's a big flashback sequence. You're right though. She was busy. She was busy. Making Frida or something. Sure, she's making something.

Starting point is 02:06:09 Number two is also new this week, an underrated film from a director we recently mentioned in the last half hour or so. Interesting. In a positive or negative way? We were talking about his directing style and how he sits. It's a Ridley movie.

Starting point is 02:06:27 Ridley Scott film. September 2003. I saw this in theaters and enjoyed it. Matchstick Man. Good movie. Good movie. Nick Cage. Great Cage. Sam Rockwell.

Starting point is 02:06:36 Alison Lohman. Maybe Bess Lohman? Probably. Undermated Cage performance in that one. He's really fun in that movie. There's a big twist. Several. I guess there's one major major twist. Bruce, he's really fun in that movie. There's a big twist. Several. I guess there's one major major twist.

Starting point is 02:06:48 Bruce McGill's in it. Bruce McGill rules in it. Or do you want it? Pigs. Yeah, it's a good movie. Medicine. Number three at the box office. It's a horror film.

Starting point is 02:06:57 I believe it's a debut. You think it's a debut? A debut for a frequent director in the genre. It is his debut. Huh. And he's not annoying. You find him not annoying? No, honestly, I actually find him somewhat charming.

Starting point is 02:07:15 You're saying it's sarcastic. Okay. Actually in interviews. But you find his movies annoying? Maybe they can be annoying. He's got a bit of an annoying thing going on. Is it a torture p*rn-y thing? He would dabble in that. This movie, not so much.

Starting point is 02:07:28 This isn't Cabin Fever. It is Cabin Fever! Eli Roth's Cabin Fever. Which, that's not torture-p*rny. No, no, no, but then he... I feel like Hostel is what everyone... Interesting you don't find him annoying. The thing about him is I do find him annoying. Yeah. But then sometimes he does...

Starting point is 02:07:43 He will talk about the genre in nice ways sometimes. Every time I start engaging with Eli Roth, I'm like, I find this guy annoying, right? And then by the end of the engagement, I'm like, why am I so tough on him? And then I loop all the way back around to annoying, it resets. Look, I was like, I kinda like Thanksgiving.

Starting point is 02:08:01 I like Thanksgiving. If you ask me what I think of the guy at this moment, I'm like, kind of annoying. Yeah. I like his classroom. It's in cycles. Did you like Thanksgiving. If you ask me what I think of the guy at this moment, I'm like kind of annoying. Yeah. I like you. It's in cycles. Did you like Thanksgiving? I did not see Thanksgiving because I find Eli Roth annoying. He put a house with a clock in its walls. He put it inside the walls. That's true. The house has a clock in its walls. Yeah, right. I think he became for me one of those guys where I was like, can you make a movie? Yeah, rather than like talking to me or like being in other movies it definitely felt like there was a there was a

Starting point is 02:08:31 Disproportionate balance of how much people were telling me this guy's an important filmmaker versus how infrequently he seemed to make movies He made like cabin fever hostile hostile part two. I'm like, okay Okay, then he doesn't make a movie for six years, right? And then when he does this the green Green Inferno, which stinks. Then he makes Knock Knock, which I think kind of stinks. Then he made Death Witch, which is way worse than those two movies. And then he put, I guess I should see

Starting point is 02:08:54 the House with the Clock in its walls. What if we... I was thinking the other day, I've been watching... f*cking Jack Black on Fallon playing the sax-a-boom, which is a clip I go to a lot. That's the one that you can put on repeat whenever. It's really good. But at the end of it, Jimmy Fallon comes out and goes,

Starting point is 02:09:12 The house with the clock and its walls in theaters now! And so I just keep watching this clip that I find so funny and entertaining, and then I'm reminded, Jimmy Fallon yells at me about this movie I didn't see eight years ago. I should see it. And I'm like, Jimmy Fallon yells at me about this movie I didn't see eight years ago. I should see it. And I'm like, would I secretly love this? I just remember when Richard Lawson tweeted at us, the house with a co*ck and its balls.

Starting point is 02:09:31 Yeah. And I've just never forgotten that. Few movies have ever dared to put a co*ck in balls. Not Ann, Dan. Number four at the box office. The ghosts are interesting. It was number one the week before opening to a robust last week, $6 million. It has dropped only 24% good hold.

Starting point is 02:09:52 Good hold, so it's under $5 million. That's strong, actually. So it is a comedy. It's a comedy that's been really low. Now, Ben may have seen this in theaters. I think I know what this was. Because this was- Now, you may not have, but you might have thought about it at least.

Starting point is 02:10:04 Can I just say what it is? Yeah. It's Dickie Roberts former child star starring David Spade There's the limited grouping of movies that at least pre-covid where suddenly numbers went Whack-a-doo in the slow reopening of theaters where it's like what is what are the lowest number ones of all time? What are the lowest number ones in recent memory? And there was always this tier of like the second weekend of The Watcher, Dickie Roberts child star, Bangkok Dangerous, movies that opened to number one with six million dollars. Only we care about this.

Starting point is 02:10:33 We care about it so much. Have you seen Dickie Roberts? I have not. But have you heard of it? Never even heard of it. Well, it was a David Spade vehicle in 2003. But I do like David Spade, so I could appreciate

Starting point is 02:10:45 where you're coming from, but no. That one totally... I assume you have also not seen it. I've not seen it, but David Spade used to be in movies. He did. Where is he? He used to be a proper movie star. Where is he?

Starting point is 02:10:55 He has a podcast where he and, like, Dana Carvey are like, remember SNL? And they're like, yeah, it was great. Kind of. Tuesday, you would write the sketches. It's literally like, at this point, I'm like, I could go to SNL and do the job just basically. I wouldn't be good at it, but I would know where to go Little guide to working at SNL you're used to right in longhand. Yeah, you guys talk about this every f*cking week

Starting point is 02:11:19 For so long even though those guys like kind of barely overlapped on the show ran in different circles on the show They were just like who are two SNL guys we can put together Time on their hands right and it's a good source of passive income for them I think it might be primary income, but then They also were like having other SNL writers and cast members And then it would extend to like host Producers on the show and then someone was tweeted the other day about who they've had on his guests recently and they're just f*cking Anybody now. Oh really people who have no connection to SNL. Okay, so maybe I can do it. Maybe I'll go on there pod

Starting point is 02:11:56 There's this has never written for SNL, but thinks he could that's your title. That's yeah. I could do it Tuesdays, right? That's when you stay up all night. So I'll be ready for that and then dress is on Beforehand so I know that I'm sorry the most recent guest on fly on the wall was Ted Sarandos at time of reporting hey Ted. How you doing? Yeah? But they did have a legendary SNL cast member Bill Simmons bill Simmons went on it I'm sure that that's a good who do you think is the first bound? You can do these jokes now that you guys did.

Starting point is 02:12:28 Anyway, um... Eight Heads in a Duffle Bag, Spades in That. I watched it for Ben. Yeah. Have you ever seen that movie? It's another one I haven't seen. These are movies you don't need to see. It's not one of my favorites, okay? It's a movie I like. Okay. Okay.

Starting point is 02:12:44 It stars Joe Pesci. The Pesh. He has got to deliver eight heads in a duffel bag, high jinks ensue. Easy. What could go wrong? We love a good high drink. Things go wrong, but in ways you wouldn't predict.

Starting point is 02:12:56 I believe as a 13 year old, 12 year old, what have you, I auditioned for Dickie Roberts, former child star. Cause the premise of that movie is- former child star who never had a proper childhood and He's trying to get a big role and they think he didn't have a normal enough life to play the character So he moves in with a family So it's like him with two young children and a mom and a dad Living in suburbia trying to learn how to be normal I think is the premise of

Starting point is 02:13:25 that movie But the thing I remember when I auditioned Was the stakes of the movie were he's got a big audition to play the key supporting character in the new Martin Scorsese movie starring Robert De Niro and De Niro and Scorsese were written into the script. Okay, and I was like they're getting Scorsese and De Niro and they were like We're hopeful and the movie came out. It's Rob Reiner and Alec Baldwin and 03 Alec Baldwin sure

Starting point is 02:13:55 Yeah, it's a new Rob Reiner movie. You're right. Yeah Number five of the box-office just to wrap up, it is a movie you've already referenced. It's the biggest hit of the summer. Pirates of the Caribbean, Curse of the Black Pearl. That's right. Biggest movie of the summer is, funny Nima, not to be pedantic about it, but I think that was biggest, highest,

Starting point is 02:14:17 grossing live action picture, perhaps. Pirates of the Caribbean, though, was the surprise of the summer, culturally seismic. We're all dressed in like Jack Sparrow. And we're still playing the Pirates of the Caribbean though was the surprise of the summer culturally seismic. We're all dressed in like Jack Sparrow and we're still playing the Pirates of the Caribbean score at the Oscars. Yeah. They played it after someone's win. They played it like at a weird time. It was a very strange time. They played it with like Devain Joy Randolph was leaving the scene. It's so funny to think about with like, f*ck we don't envy

Starting point is 02:15:09 The people who have been locked inside a conference room for five years trying to solve the idea of how do we make another Pirates? the Caribbean movie Well, so is it him? Does it have to be not him? Is it him in a smaller part? Then and then 10 10 and then 10 10 and they seem to refuse the notion of maybe don't make another one Is it him in a smaller part? Dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun- more blood to get out of the Jack Sparrow stone. No. And so then apart from that, it's like you have pirates and magic happens. That's not that compelling either. No. I don't know. That's whatever.

Starting point is 02:15:52 We can talk about it off, Mike. But like, they need to figure out like who's Johnny Depp now. And I'm like, I don't think you need to figure that out. Anyway, Disney's only making good movies, obviously. Yeah, it's perfect. All the decisions they make make a lot of sense. Number six was Freaky Friday. Great.

Starting point is 02:16:06 Surprise hit of the summer. Great movie. Number seven was Jeepers Creepers 2. Nothing weird going on with that one. Normal, legal. Number eight was Seabiscuit. I always forget that was a summer movie. And a big hit.

Starting point is 02:16:16 Big hit. Made 120 mil. Number nine is the greatest American film made in the 21st century. Spy Kids 3D Game Over. SWAT. Okay. Clark Johnson's SWAT. Okay. Clark Johnson's SWAT. We have our different favorites from that summer. Have you seen SWAT?

Starting point is 02:16:30 I have seen SWAT. I remember watching it at the time and that was at the height of Dirt Bag Colin Farrell. Yep. He was so dirt baggy in that movie. No shirt, one dog. Hell yeah. It's just like Farrell and Jackson, you're like, oh, awesome. And like, oh, Michelle Rodriguez and Ella Cool J, cool.

Starting point is 02:16:49 But then like, Brian Van Holt, Jeremy Renner, Josh Charles, like, like Olivia Martinez, like, it has like a bunch of dudes. And then like, Reggie Cathy is the cop, is the boss. Reggie Cathy yelling at you is so good in any film. I have seen SWAT more times than I care to admit. You should admit it right now. Admit it right. Your number.

Starting point is 02:17:09 David put it number one in his sight and sound ballot. It's an amazing movie. No way, did you? No, but it's an awesome movie. It's one of the movies you've seen most. Is that possible? I just owned it on DVD and I've seen it so many times and I was a huge Colin Farrell boy and yeah, I love it.

Starting point is 02:17:23 What is the Olivier Martinez number that he shouts? $100 million! What a guy. It is funny you see that stack cast like, whoa, what film are these guys up against? The f*cking slu*t from Unfaithful, the hot Euro guy. Halle Berry's third husband. Was he married to Halle Berry?

Starting point is 02:17:45 Yeah. Wow. That's a sexy couple. For a while after that, like right off a swat. I hope people like painted them together. Like they're a very beautiful couple. He popped off a swat right into her bed. Geez, Halle Berry is relieved her divorce

Starting point is 02:17:58 from Olivia Martinez is settled. I think they had a child together. Am I wrong about this? Yes, they had a child. They were a hot couple. And number 10 at the box office Griffin, okay, Kevin Costner's open range. Well a Movie we'll never talk about. Thank you. Um

Starting point is 02:18:16 We won't have time to talk about it cuz Penny Marshall's confirmed as our next series We don't have time Penny's gonna take a little Attention attention, this is a spoiler alert for the 38 year old film Jumping Jack Flash. There's a whole scene in that movie where she just tries to remember the lyrics to the Rolling Stone song, Jumping Jack Flash. Really? Yeah. I thought the title,

Starting point is 02:18:36 I assume that's one of those movies where the title doesn't have to do with anything. No, the title is that like, he's like the secrets are buried in the lyrics to Jumping Jack Flash or whatever. That's insane. It's a whole thing. Wow. Spoiler alert, it's Jonathan Price. is that like he's like the secrets are buried in the lyrics to Jumpin' Jack Flash or whatever. It's a whole thing. Wow.

Starting point is 02:18:47 Spoiler alert, it's Jonathan Price. You don't see him until the end of the movie, but he's the guy at the other end of the computer. What? He shows up and he gives her a big hug at the end. Wow, I just spoiled Jumpin' Jack Flash. You might want to put a Jumpin' Jack Flash spoiler warning. Jonathan Price? Yeah, Jonathan Price.

Starting point is 02:19:00 Wow, how random. I was talking to someone who I think worked at Metrograph at the time, and our buddy Alex Ross Perry was doing a screening of Listen Up, Phillip. Or maybe it was at a different... It was at some rep theater. But they were doing a screening of Listen Up, Phillip, and they had access to Jonathan Price, and he was going to come and do a Q&A. And the programmer was like, I got to take this opportunity to do a Jumping Jack Flash

Starting point is 02:19:22 screening. Hell yeah. And license the print of jumping jack flash. And was like, Jonathan, can you just jump and do the intro before you do the Q&A for the other movie? Well, I didn't spoil the movie. I wish I could do a jump and flash. And schedule them against each other.

Starting point is 02:19:34 All right, wrap us up. We're done. Hoi Chan, thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much for having me. Is there any larger? Come on back. Well, please. Door is always open.

Starting point is 02:19:43 Any larger Satoshi Kon thoughts across the other films that you will not be on for? I just think that he is a singular director Who has made nothing but masterpieces as I was texting David before all killer no filler He did make an album called all color no filler when he was the bassist. Unfortunately that album was not great. Yes one miss. And I'm so happy that you guys are doing a series on him and hopefully giving more of a spotlight to a director that I think is often overlooked.

Starting point is 02:20:14 Maybe this series will get a Millennium Actress ad remake off the ground, who knows? Clint, if your ears are burning. Clint's a big blankie. Clint's a big blankie. He's a huge blankie. I don't understand why they haven't done Tarantino yet. Someone explain this to me. Why does Barbara deserve a mini-series directing to the thing she's fifth most known for?

Starting point is 02:20:39 Mike, Clint really is becoming just Gruff or Biden in real time. I was about to say. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The rumble is a little different. Come on. Come on. There you go. I got a little bit of that drawl.

Starting point is 02:20:49 It would be funny if they did a Biden version of Millenium Actress, and there's a whole scene with Corn Pop anyway. Yeah, this is a good pitch. Do you have anything you want to plug? Clint plays Biden as Millennium President. I have a podcast, Checking Through Time and Space. It's a Doctor Who, Star Trek Watch podcast. I keep demanding to go on it. Yes. You won't invite me, I think, because you. Well, I'll It's a Doctor Who Star Trek watch podcast. I keep demanding to go on it.

Starting point is 02:21:06 Yes. You won't invite me, I think because- Well, I'll invite you on at some point. I would also. Yeah, I'll invite both of you guys on. I would love to. I know you don't do a lot of guests. We don't do guests because it's the premise of it

Starting point is 02:21:17 is that I'm a Doctor Who fan. My co-host, Jacob Hall, is a Star Trek fan and we show each other our favorite shows. We would do episode by episode, little, you know, breakdowns of each one. What are you up to now? What, where have you, or do you cherry pick? We, okay, so we're doing a bit of a temporal prince of,

Starting point is 02:21:36 temporal prince of movement in our Doctor Who watch because we've gotten, we're halfway through, almost at the end of Matt Smith, but we've made our way back to doing the first season of the first Doctor, William Hartnell. And then we're doing like season by season, going back and forth between modern new who and classic who. And with Star Trek, we're at season three of TNG,

Starting point is 02:21:55 which I've been told many times is the best season. Yeah, so I'm excited. Listen to our podcast, it's on all podcast platforms. And I'm also at Inverse. You can see my writing there, inverse.com. And sadly, still on Twitter. Get off. H-Tranbuoy.

Starting point is 02:22:16 Get out of there. Yeah. That's me leaving Twitter. I keep saying, I just feel like I got to go down with the ship. I'm never going to quit. I'm not going to join a new place. We're playing those violins up until the end.

Starting point is 02:22:29 Yeah. When I really knew I was over it was when the Oscars happened and I didn't, because I could have like posted on Bluesky, right? Like done a thing where I'm like, I'm post, and I just like, I was like, I've lost the urge to post. I did love how little impulse I had. Yeah. That I was like...

Starting point is 02:22:44 It's going away. Yeah. I'm not trying to generate jokes and if I say something funny at the party, there is no part of me that immediately wants to transcribe it. Right, right, get that up there. Yes.

Starting point is 02:22:52 We're cutting it off slowly. Yeah. Weaning ourselves off. Enough. I woke up to the next morning, people complaining about people complaining about Jonathan Glazer's speech and I was like, oh, how great that I missed this. I'm reading the response to a response of a thing that would have annoyed me.

Starting point is 02:23:08 I didn't even know about that. Yeah. And I was just like, great. I was just watching the show in a room of people. I mean, I could have guessed. But I didn't have to hear it in real time or read it. All right, we're done. Come on, wrap this up. Thank you for being here.

Starting point is 02:23:21 Thank you for having me. Thank you all for listening. Please remember to rate, review, and subscribe. Thank you to having me. Thank you all for listening. Please remember to rate review and subscribe Thank you to Marie Barty our co-producer Thank you to AJ McKee and Alex Baron for editing the show. AJ McKee and also our production coordinator Thank you to JJ Birch for our research. Lay Montgomery the Great American all for our theme song Joe Bowen, Pat Reynolds for our artwork you can go to blankcheckpod.com for links to some real nerdy sh*t,

Starting point is 02:23:48 like our Patreon blank check special features, where right now we're still deep in the sewers, I imagine. Uh, why do I always close this before? This is a rookie mistake. Nine years in. Yeah, we're deep in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, that's right. Tune in next week for Tokyo Godfathers. Yeah. And as always. The part I really loved was chasing him, That handsome chair.