Alien³ with Matt Singer

[00:00:01] Blank Check with Griffin and David, Blank Check with Griffin and David Don't know what to say or to expect All you need to know is that the name of the show is Blank Check Why? Why are the innocent punished? Why the sacrifice? Why the pain?

[00:00:26] There aren't any promises, nothing certain Only that some get called, some get saved She won't ever know the hardship and grief for those of us left behind We commit these bodies to the void with a glad heart For within each seed, there is a promise of a flower

[00:00:40] And within each death, no matter how small There is always a new podcast, a new beginning Amen Sometimes I'll watch the quote as you read it Sure And I'm kinda like, he's running out of words To throw in podcasts I know exactly where to put it

[00:00:55] Oh, I figured you did Yeah Um, you're wearing sort of his glasses right now I got those Griffy glasses on Yeah, Charles S. Sutton in this movie, huge Griffin-Newman vibe Major Griffy energy I just watch it and I'm like, it's so nice to see myself reflected on screen

[00:01:10] I think you just kind of have a, god, can we just all fucking stop fighting energy sometimes? Which is sort of Griffin It would manifest very differently, I think, coming out of me Out of you? You don't think people would just shut up and listen to you? No

[00:01:21] Immediately What undeniable command he has of this room A bunch of ardent convicts wouldn't be like, oh, okay, okay This is like such an astonishing performance from him Love him

[00:01:34] Every time I watch this, I'm just like, this is kind of like one of the great supporting performances, period I mean, I feel like you are, okay, so Jeez, we need to acknowledge I need to have some gravitas here

[00:01:46] Because of course this is the start of a new mini-series But of course we've covered this film There's a lot of things to set up here Because we did do alien commentaries in the pandemic What even is this, David? I know I just remember your reverence for Dutton

[00:02:00] Then, and it clearly endures now Right That's all At times I have thought he might be And this is boiling hot And I don't know if I stand by this today But I at least think it's in the conversation The best performance in any alien movie

[00:02:15] You think this is the best performance I think it's in the conversation You think you want to have that conversation? What about Sigourney Weaver? I was going to say, I think Sigourney Weaver I agree that I think you kind of Gotta give it to her

[00:02:29] But I think if you remove Ripley If you go non-Ripley performance Okay, okay So sort of like, who's your favorite Simpsons character That's not in the Simpson family And a franchise with incredible performances In basically every movie If we're not counting the Vs If we're counting proper aliens

[00:02:47] Yeah, I mean, I probably have A few people ahead of Dutton But just a, yeah It's an excellent performance Each of these movies has basically At least two slam dunk supporting performances Right? It's a good showcase for exactly that And Resurrection is the weakest of them

[00:03:06] And even still, you're like, Perlman's kind of on fire in that movie What were you expecting? Well, the most normal, relaxed I don't know if you remember Resurrection I definitely know how to speak English I haven't seen it in a little while Dominique Pignon, who I do believe

[00:03:20] Basically was just phonetically reading Yeah, they put peanut butter in his mouth Reading Joss Whedon's, you know, verbose Of course At one point says, what were you expecting Santa Claus? Except he says, what were you expecting, Santa Claus? He doesn't know what he's saying

[00:03:37] His character's in like a bionic wheelchair Right? And the bit is that there's like a thumping from the other side of the door And everyone's like prepped with their guns And they think the alien's gonna come through And the doors open up and they're all like, woo

[00:03:49] And then he says that line And he does say like, what were you expecting, Santa Claus? What were you expecting, Santa Claus? Obviously this is not from the film we're discussing No, the film- Not relevant Listen, let me get a bunch of stuff right out of the way

[00:04:03] This is Blank Check with Griffin and David I'm Griffin. I'm David It is a podcast about filmographies Directors who experience massive success early on in their careers And are given a series of blank checks To make whatever crazy passion projects they want And sometimes those checks clear

[00:04:17] And sometimes they bounce This is start of a new miniseries Recovering the films of David Fincher It is called The Curious Pod Of Benjamin Butt-cast That's right You're damn right it is The Curious Pod Of Benjamin Butt-cast There was some initial, oh The Curious Pod Of Benjamin Cast-

[00:04:44] Castan or something? You could do an obvious The Curious Cast That was it Benjamin Podden or whatever And you were like Butt-cast Butt-cast Butt-cast Yes, welcome to The Curious Pod Of Benjamin Butt-cast Who were you expecting? Benjamin Butt-cast What's that guy doing? Dominic Pignot

[00:05:12] I think he's still in the J'Nai movies That no one watches anymore He hasn't done a movie since 2015 Really? Oh no, I'm sorry, that was TV He does more movies He's 68 years old One of the all-time great films Yes That J'Nai movie And he was in Micmacs

[00:05:35] Was he in Micmacs? Was he in Micmacs a day ago? Yes, I was in Micmacs He's done 9 films with Jean-Pierre J'Nai Wasn't he in Tell No One? What word are you saying? What was the word you just said? He was in some fucking French thriller

[00:05:52] That had like crossover success here in the States Tell No One? That's what I'm questioning I'm not seeing Tell No One He was in something What were you expecting? I love that guy Do you like that guy? I know we're here to talk about Fincher and Alien 3

[00:06:10] But do you like Jean-Pierre J'Nai's films of the 90s? Let's slot down a quick 30 minutes on Pignot I watch it in the pandemic Because I was trying to do like sort of Dystopia movies For some list or whatever And it's a great dystopia movie Have you re-watched Amelie?

[00:06:26] You know what? Not in years That's a movie that has only grown in my mind I was a cynical teenager about it When it came out And I was like I'm smarter than this movie And I don't need whimsy in my life or whatever

[00:06:40] And later I have sort of just been like Beautiful Like visually I'm very curious how it would play for me I was a whimsical teenager who loved it How do you feel about Amelie, Matt? We're going to introduce you No, it's fine

[00:06:57] I should be anonymous the whole time I also have not seen it in decades Like 20 years It's been a while That is a great point though, David We have a guest on today Who is not part of SAG or WGA And thus can promote His upcoming works

[00:07:15] Like crazy And I assume you will be promoting like crazy Every possible chance Introduce our guest Our guest returning to the show The author of the upcoming Opposable Thumbs Matt Singer He's reaching into his book What does he have here? A copy of Opposable Thumbs

[00:07:35] This is a video right? So everyone can see the cover right now What is the actual release date of Opposable Thumbs? October 24th So it's out in about a month from now But you can preorder it Which I know is very crucial To the success of books

[00:07:52] Especially mine As far as I'm concerned It's especially important It's most important to preorder your book That's the message we're getting across here today So you are here with us, Matt To talk about The book cast The thing we're trying to set up here

[00:08:11] Is a new miniseries, Fincher David Fincher On our Patreon Blank check special features We focus on film series and franchises Rather than directors As our sort of grouping Sometimes the Venn diagrams overlap Sometimes We try to pick franchises that maybe don't have one strong auteur

[00:08:31] Throughout all of them Because those are the kind of things we usually like to keep for main feed So we did in 2020 One of the all time best years A great year with no issues Especially the part The later part of the year

[00:08:45] Which is when we did this Those first three months, boring You know January Nothing's going on Everything seems okay Our three franchise series were Toy Story Mission Impossible And Aliens What did we do after that? I think we may have done Mission I don't know I don't know

[00:09:10] Mission Impossible and Aliens Perfect examples of franchises That have auteurs But do not have one definitive director We of course checked in with our pal Mr. Crocodile Dundee That's what it was Our normal 2020 Was Star Wars The last thing we recorded pre-lockdown

[00:09:30] And then we did Toy Story, Mission Impossible Alien, Croc Dundee All the greats Exactly, the big four What is that loom largest in my mind? Alien, Croc Dundee Mission Impossible and Aliens In both of those series

[00:09:46] We had to cover a movie we had already covered on main feed We did a second go around on Ghost Protocol By Brad Bird And Aliens by Cameron And we said Should we not do this Because of Fincher And what we said on mic

[00:10:03] If we ever do Alien 3 We'll talk about the assembly cut Here we'll watch the original cut Because it's the more widely accessible But then when we do the real episode We can obviously delve into the assembly cut So is that what you watched? Yep Matt? I re-watched both

[00:10:23] Like a good guest Like a great guest I have seen the original cut many times Maybe not like dozens I'm pretty versed in it And I'd only seen the assembly cut I think once before Because I watched it when I bought The correctly and logically named

[00:10:40] Quadrilogy box set A thing we've talked about many times Ruined our generation's brains forever It implanted a word That does not exist It facehugged onto a generation Forcibly implanted a nonsensical word Right And it's just like you can kind of tell

[00:10:58] It's a good way to identify like-minded people When someone says quadrilogy you're like You were really into physical media in 2003 weren't you? You're right I say that word Of course You're a like-minded person It's almost a handshake It is, it's like a secret code

[00:11:16] What do you call four stories? Obviously a quadrilogy And you're like And you had the box set and did you watch it with mother mode on or did you? God back in the day where they were like Your DVDs should be hard for you to watch

[00:11:29] Which is the first thing I ever bought on Amazon in my entire life Wow The special edition memento DVD where you had to go like Man, film, play, god You know you had to like go through these notes You literally had to print out the instructions

[00:11:41] And like keep them with the DVD Otherwise it was a useless disc So irritating Did you have that thing? There's a secret way to watch the movie In correct order I was Less memento guy than I now am tempted to buy that DVD Just as almost an artifact

[00:12:01] To like play the game of it You can, you'll have minutes of fun I have a memento on Blu-ray If I want to watch the movie But it's the same way like Panic Room Which is famously not on Blu-ray

[00:12:13] And we'll talk about when we get to that episode I tracked down and re-bought The old three disc edition of that That is the most comprehensive special feature package For any movie ever It was just peak DVD Fincher The second of this will be documented Absolutely

[00:12:30] I tried to watch this movie this morning I think I made a I watched the movie I think the mistake was I went like let's go full bore Everything Let me activate like basically Everything this Blu-ray could do for me At once So I did the assembly cut

[00:12:50] I put on subtitles For the commentary So I was listening to the movies It's not Fincher? Because he didn't He has nothing to do with any of those He's very scarred by Alien 3 And then there's a commentary track That feels like

[00:13:09] I can't tell if they're all in the same room Or it's editing between a couple commentary tracks But it's like Dickie Edlin from Boss Film It's the cinematographer It's the editor Who put together the assembly cut I listened to it at one point

[00:13:23] So I was like watching the movie Reading the transcript of their commentary Seems a little sensory overload And then I put mother mode on What exactly is Fincher intended It's like M-U-T-H Dot R mode Or something And it is like

[00:13:41] It puts like a weird Weyland Yutani grid around the film In which it basically does pop up video Why would you need You don't need it And like cuts away to little featurettes But also gives you like pop up Trivia track shit

[00:13:56] So you made it about 10 minutes in 2 hours Yeah I felt like I was To invoke the recently released Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning When Gabriel goes into the entity tank Yeah he's in the coffin of information Right So much is being thrown at me

[00:14:14] I can't process any of it You emerge and you're like There is only one movie, Alien 3 But I have always unabashedly loved this movie Sure I think the assembly cut is Better while not being perfect I think it falls a little bit into that

[00:14:30] Our guest might disagree which I'm very intrigued by I saw him floating that idea I kind of do disagree Interesting But we can talk about it Here's my take I came around to watching it this time Because I had always been like Well obviously assembly cut is better

[00:14:46] This time I viewed it more like The Snyder Cut Where I was like This is interesting to sort of watch laid out Right All the pieces of the intention It doesn't totally function as a movie Alien 3 for its like Sort of muddled form Is more properly

[00:15:07] It's a blockbuster film about an alien in a prison Right and partially because Fincher had no oversight over The assembly cut it was just a team A decade later trying to like put together A blockbuster to his first assembly Which would not have been his finished film

[00:15:22] Was just what he presented to the studio Before they pushed back on him It's just kind of like cracking open the notebook You know and seeing like Here are all the alternate versions of the scenes Here's how it was originally assembled

[00:15:34] If you just put everything in order from top to bottom See and that's why I kind of think That the theatrical cut is better It's because it does feel Like a rough cut to me A little bit It's not like it improves certain things

[00:15:48] But I think it weakens other things And creates other problems The theatrical cut has problems The assembly cut solves Some of those problems While creating other problems of its own I almost want a Blade Runner style Final cut thing where it's like Now we need a third cut

[00:16:06] That meets in the middle Cut it out! Stop even telling me about Alien 3 Where as Ridley Scott is like Fincher's meanwhile going like Zaslav over here What's more final than final? The ultimate or something like that Blade Runner and Alexander There's a couple movies like this

[00:16:25] Where you're like I don't even know which one Is supposed to be the last by the name Right because Final Cut in Alexander was the third And then he did a fourth cut I think the ultimate comes after the final And the second one was revisited

[00:16:37] Yes I believe that's correct But it is one of the most confusing Theatrical revisited final ultimate And people will because they know I like that film A lot and I do I think that film is excellent And they'll tweet at me like which Alexander cut

[00:16:49] Should I walk into? I'm like I don't know man Just lay them out on the table Dump all the pieces out like a fucking puzzle I was doing this bit before we recorded But my new thing is Zaslav reforming him

[00:17:03] Using it as a verb but also reforming him Kind of like a grim reaper Of all media Even the things that aren't Time Warner It's just gone And sometimes it can almost be like a Philanthropic act Sometimes it's like Fincher being like please put this movie

[00:17:20] Out of its misery and Zaslav just comes in With his scythe Alien 3 doesn't need to go anywhere No I want to talk about Fincher There's one thing in the assembly Cut that I cannot believe is not in the Theatrical cut and it almost justifies

[00:17:36] The whole thing to me which is those early shots On the surface with her body Which are so cool and evocative I'm like why would you cut this? This is so good All that production design The exterior is incredible It's in the theatrical cut for like 20 seconds 30 seconds

[00:17:55] What's fun about that too is when I think of Alien 3 Just in abstract as a movie The first image I think of Is Charles Dance on the beach in that opening And it's so cool that we don't Really ever go back there

[00:18:07] God this is like the weirdest situation It's so much evocative mood setting Stuff it sets such a better pace For the movie I think most of the improvements of the assembly Cut are in the first Sure It's more in the back half where you're kind of like

[00:18:23] This is kind of taking a while But we can talk about it obviously Then I assume you watched the regular cut Yeah I didn't need more time with this movie No But I mean this movie is very you in a way It's got the industrial

[00:18:40] Sort of early 90s Nine inch nails-y vibe Aggressive dude vibe There's some chains Tons of chains I'll say this I could have used more dripping At the end There's waterfalls Every time the alien is in close up I need dripping like every 10 seconds

[00:19:02] Can I actually ask a question about that? Obviously the alien bleeds blood If you cut it or whatever But you know how the alien is constantly producing moisture In that iconic shot Dripping with water Always slimy Is that slime? Is that water? Is that sweat? What is that?

[00:19:20] I was really wondering because it's really coming off That face It's incredible to see it Just gooing off How does it stay hydrated? Do they drink? They drink Pepsi There's a great commercial we all just watched In which the alien sucks down a Pepsi Incredible 1991

[00:19:41] That's the other thing I was seeing from the AVP Wikia That commercial came out a full year Before this movie came out So it was less of a direct tie in And more of we have this suit we just built for the movie

[00:19:51] And it was also part of Another thing we'll talk about Around this movie there was this Aborted push for like Do we turn Alien into like a kids franchise? That they were planning to Around the release of this film come out with A cartoon show

[00:20:08] There was a toy line, new video games All that didn't have that much to do with Alien 3 specifically But they were like can we make Alien Into just a thing This peak era of like R-rated franchises being Toned down for children

[00:20:22] Could this be the choice of a new generation? And then they were like yes it can In this ad for Pepsi The Pepsi commercial is great Did you like Alien as a kid? I did I have my toy from growing up right here Alien His Alien is Predator

[00:20:40] I know you're a Predator fan And he said These are like the only toys from my childhood I've kept That's true Fascinating I love though H.R. Giger's Aesthetic For sure Grew up loving these movies His early funny work in particular They were really funny ones Funny guy

[00:21:05] Funny white Feather like touch He is kind of funny The quadrilogy if you will The box set Has an incredible making of documentary About each movie But the one about Alien 3 is really awesome And has a lot of Giger talking in it About his design for this movie

[00:21:25] Which they actually didn't seemingly use a lot of He gave them a lot of stuff I think they ignored But him talking about it Is incredible Does he talk like this? Does he have a fun accent? And he's talking about the erotical Things within it

[00:21:41] If you enjoy the comedies His early works It's actually pretty fun There's the rod puppet that they call The Bambi Burster That plays more in the assembly cut That is like the most juvenile version Of the runner Alien Which is apparently the main thing

[00:22:00] That he had an influence on That actually ended up in the film Now Ben Before we dig into this Just because you were asking David Whether or not Ben is a fan of Alien 3 Of course one would think Well this is Ben's second time

[00:22:16] Talking about Alien 3 on mic If I'm not misremembering Was that not the episode? Was it Resurrection? Resurrection is when Ben fully took a nap That's a very nappable movie I agree It's not the most arresting movie ever made And Trump had just been diagnosed With the novel coronavirus

[00:22:37] One of the wilder things to happen And so we were all drinking For unrelated reasons And I got diagnosed with the bit of a sleepy boy Yes But doctor had come He would have been like He had just been diagnosed

[00:22:53] And we were like all we want to do is talk about this Who knows It will be resolved In whatever way So we were all like Trying not to talk about it And Ben was like We're on little zoom boxes And Ben starts lying down on his couch

[00:23:11] Hugging his cat Right and he's just sort of looking adorable And we're making jokes about how adorable he looks And then like 10 minutes in He stops responding to the jokes And we realize he is fully asleep But he was like grinning Ear to ear grin

[00:23:28] He looked so peaceful It really did gently Put me right to sleep Dan Hedaya getting his throat snapped Dreams of safety gloves In all the alien movies There's a lot of dream and sleep imagery The first one The second one They all begin with people asleep

[00:23:48] Every movie begins and ends with a little nap time Well this one ends with Well this one has the ending of A lot of my dreams which is you're falling To your death Which is incredibly dreamlike as well So I think it's very justifiable On those grounds

[00:24:04] You were just going along with the dreamlike Vibe And she is dead She is dead Like that's the end of Ripley As much as she was quote unquote resurrected Obviously that's a different character explicitly And then that's it But she is resurrected on the xenopedia

[00:24:23] And what they point out As much as there is tons of alien stuff That's happened Nothing has actually been set after this Like no one's ever actually figured out What happened after that Even though it has an explicit cliffhanger Basically of like You know they're near earth

[00:24:41] Right I think before like Prometheus formed There was a moment where it felt like Ridley was considering Doing a thing with Sigourney When he was sort of like I'd like to go back to alien Before he landed on the more prequel-y thing

[00:24:54] And then obviously Neil Blomkamp was going to do his thing But his thing was going to be ignoring this Right which would have been annoying Remains the dead end In a fascinating way Neil Blomkamp famously normal and chill By the way I've heard that We've all heard that

[00:25:12] I'm not accusing him of anything criminal By the way with that vague thing He can be a bit nervy You used to be like super successful And you were going to make an alien movie And now it seems like you're not really going on for you

[00:25:24] There was a moment where I was With Alex Ross Perry Our friend Who will never be on this show again And he Someone else we were with made a joke About someone else being on the verge of getting cancelled Uh huh right And everyone went like deadly silent

[00:25:44] And he went like sorry I was joking There is literally no one you could say that about Who we wouldn't take it seriously Right at this point you're just like okay There's no comical name you could throw out Where we'd just go like impossible Santa Claus?

[00:25:59] And likewise any time you say normal and chill About anyone Well who do you expect? I mean the man abuses his power day and night Breaking and entering every house That's true He's basically a peeping tom This guy makes $254 million a year he works one day

[00:26:15] And his salary is higher than any CEO other than Zazlev Who puts him on the list? Well that's the question Right exactly who watches the Watchmen Bluntkampf just a weird guy self destructive career But yes it is the thing I will forever love this movie for Where like

[00:26:33] Watching Dial of Destiny I was just like why don't we let character stories end And that movie is I can be like I want to put a period at the end of this But it's still just There is something to that in this movie Alien 3 Because

[00:26:58] It feels like And when you watch again the supplemental materials It's like well Fox really wanted another Alien movie And the people who made it are like Okay And that energy is really like infused Into the movie And it's like really like in a twisted way Paradoxical way

[00:27:19] It's really fun You know like This movie reminds me there is a favorite George Costanza Quote of mine From the episode The Massus Where Jerry is dating No well that's a great quote too That's the episode where it moves That sounds right

[00:27:37] But the quote I have in mind in this case I'm trying to think how it moved could be I mean I guess it does move I don't know Is Jerry is dating the Massus She hates George And George Finds himself inexplicably drawn to that

[00:27:53] And at one point he says This woman hates me so much I'm starting to like her And that is how I feel about Alien 3 This movie It's just like exuding Antipathy and hatred And just mean and nasty And it kills the protagonist

[00:28:12] It says we're never making another one of these stupid movies Stop asking us for them It's over And that energy I'm a sucker for Exactly the reason you're saying Every sequel exists to propagate more sequels Especially now They have to play it very safe We've got to please

[00:28:32] And Alien In its own way And especially Aliens This movie is by design a crowd displeaser It wants you to be It's desperately trying to piss you off In every way And not only does it have that contempt For like The studio system Basically like Weyland Yutani Corp

[00:28:54] Well that's the other part Is Fox being like Please you have to keep doing this You don't understand This Alien thing is so important to us It has contempt for the studio And also when you remove the metal layer just inside the movie itself It's basically like

[00:29:11] And we all agree that humanity is terrible Yes Just by and large There's no hope There's no joy There's nothing It's just misery Matt you're roughly my age So you probably did not see Alien 3 in theaters In 1992 I would have needed an adult supervisor So I did not

[00:29:36] I cannot dispute How crushing it must have felt Especially back in the day Of knowing a lot less about these movies When you're walking into them To walk into this movie Being like I was 14 years old When I saw Aliens

[00:29:52] I was like I cannot wait for this movie And the way this movie begins Is like sit down, start crying Like nothing good is going to happen Your friends are dead Well in a way it's almost more painful To watch now I feel like

[00:30:06] Because in the quadrilogy context Say it as many times as you want I'm going to keep doing it Because you brought it up Because today you can watch Which I did You could watch them all in one night Or one night after another

[00:30:22] You watch Aliens and that has this ending Of this new family That has been created And then you're like ok take that disc out I'm going to put in Alien 3 I do think there's that thing You talk to most film nerds

[00:30:37] Who are a couple years older than us Starting at maybe like 4 or 5 years older than us And this is still the shorthand movie For the most disrespectful Thing you can do to its characters This is what they're still afraid of Like now

[00:30:53] Can you imagine this movie coming out today The reaction of what it would be online It would never make it anywhere In the studio system I'll see people say I heard rumors that they're thinking of pulling in Aliens 3 At the beginning of this movie

[00:31:07] I'll see people still use it as The warning sign of the thing not to do And people talk about it as if it's Almost a traumatic incident Of how could a studio fuck up What we liked this much We talked about this in our commentary episodes

[00:31:21] But I discovered I watched the first Alien and the first Predator Rented both on VHS From the video store across the street And then watched Every Friday for the next 3 weeks Would rent the next Alien movie So I'm just like watching this In a compressed month cycle

[00:31:40] Where part of what I'm into is like And what you're telling me they're all different So when Aliens 3 starts I'm like yeah that's how these movies work It was like later that I found out Oh people hate this They hate the vibe of it

[00:31:54] They hate that they killed off the characters They hate that it's its own thing I feel like the audience revulsion would have been As much as we all like Michael Biehn's pretty face And Hicks is very charming If there was some sort of way for them to

[00:32:07] Have been like Newt got ejected Onto a happy colony And she's fine And who knows what happened to Hicks And Ripley's stuck here now I honestly feel like people Are just like you killed off Maybe the best child character In the history of genre films

[00:32:25] Right, a thing that people usually hate We all hate that kind of a character Newt is the one we let into our hearts And then you begin the movie like Drowned horribly Charles Dance is like yeah I don't know She's fucking dead though So dead

[00:32:41] Also when you go back and look at Aliens And you look at all the things this character survived And you watch her go through this incredible ordeal And then you watch Ripley go down And she gets kidnapped again And she has to go down to the Queen

[00:32:53] And rescue her again As like the credits play And it's like there's a fucking alien on the ship And also as you said David Like at the time this movie is coming out People know less about movies Going into them

[00:33:08] Even if you're someone who reads fucking Starlog magazine and whatever You're still not going like Well Ripley and Newt aren't in the trailer So it definitely means they die in the opening credits There's not the same ecosystem Of dialogue

[00:33:20] I think a lot of people show up and are like I'm curious to see what they do with Ripley and Newt I do remember this movie coming out And I feel like the big thing that you remember Or I remember from the marketing

[00:33:30] Was just Sigourney Weaver cut off her hair That was the marketing Apart from that they were like three times the thrill Like they really hit the three Cubed thrills But there wasn't They didn't really dwell on what even the movie was like About or anything

[00:33:46] It's like Sigourney Weaver looks Wild and awesome in this And we got more aliens And that was it, that was the whole idea Right she got a big salary on this I feel like that was another big thing Of like she's kind of breaking new

[00:34:01] Like pay ceilings for women in film Yeah I think Resurrection even was up from this Oh I'm sure I believe she made more on Resurrection than like The Budget of Alien There's some stat like that But like this was 10 She made a lot of money

[00:34:19] Yeah because she's quite important And we can talk about the development of this movie But there was a time when Fox was like Developing two follow ups Yeah She was going to be in the second Was the idea Hicks would be the lead of the first movie

[00:34:36] Is this the Gibson thing This is pre-Gibson Was this Walter Hill and his partner Yeah I guess It's Walter Hill and David Giler Who's the long time producer of these movies Right here's the idea Hicks would be the protagonist of Alien 3 And Ripley would barely appear

[00:34:54] And then in the fourth she would return And there would be like a big epic battle Of fucking aliens Even if you're someone watching these trailers And you're like huh Hicks and Newt aren't in them And you're aware of the fact that Newt was played by a child

[00:35:08] And like what 7 years have passed She may not want to Cryo sleep is not going to be able to work With this premise or whatever You still might be like oh part of the premise Is that Hicks and Ripley crash And Ripley is landed somewhere different than them

[00:35:23] You don't necessarily think like 15 minutes Into the movie you're going to see Newt's chest Cracked open Lying on a slab We need to get into Fincher background But just another thing to pin here In terms of like killing Newt As a character

[00:35:39] And that being a thing that people were really devastated by I do think it's interesting That Aliens is obviously Thought of as such a big Motherhood right In science fiction and genre film Like really one of the best encapsulations Of that She makes that movie

[00:35:57] She doesn't have any children I was when in mother mode Too much information being thrown at me They kept on talking about They made the dummy that Charles Dance Carries from the beach And when they made it When they made the dummy Sigourney was like 8 months pregnant

[00:36:16] Oh shit sure And so they didn't scan her But they took measurements They took pictures And she was just like Just focus on my head and my shoulders And I assure you That I will be this lean By the time we start filming Which was like 6 months later

[00:36:36] So she's making this movie 6 months after having her first child And there was something to Whereas the last movie Now has a kid for the first time And the movie is like My child is dead Was the child yours? No I'm not her mother

[00:36:55] But she plays those scenes She's great in those scenes Totally but I think it speaks to her daring As an actor That she's sort of like I now want to do the thought experiment Of the worst thing I could possibly imagine And make the movie that's going

[00:37:11] Into the darkest part of my psyche She was not resistant to it Her one thing was that the movie not have guns As we've discussed and we can discuss again Apart from that I don't think she was really like Obviously We need Newt or we need X

[00:37:27] But David Fincher How do you feel about David Fincher Matt? You think he's overrated? Real dingbat, crappy filmmaker Dingbat, yeah that was the word Amazing Amazing director You think he's a fucking And the vibe I get from them too I'm glad you bring that up

[00:37:48] They just feel very slapdash, put together One take wonders We got it we're moving on That's how I feel about a lot of them Total Eastwood style I also feel like notoriously just kind of like A sleep in video village Doesn't really care about anything happening

[00:38:04] Lets people run their own devices I mean there's a couple of fun Fincher elements To this but part of what Is really fun about it Is that you know at this time Obviously first feature And you know He's what like 27 or something He is 27 years old

[00:38:22] Very upsetting when they hire him And they basically I think again I'm going to keep referring To that making of documentary Someone on their On the production side Or maybe multiple people They're like well he was a really good shooter They think of him as this guy

[00:38:41] Who obviously based on his music videos And everything he's done He's an incredible visual stylist But they just thought well he's going to be grateful To be here He's going to be happy to have this huge job He's going to be the good shooter

[00:38:55] And he's going to shoot what we tell him And he's going to you know just go along with us And that is not what he did And we'll talk more about the development of this film But right it is that classic studio thing

[00:39:05] Of like we'll hire the director last Which is insane But right they're like no We have to hack everything else together first It was established as a very director driven franchise Well indeed And remains so In its way Obviously you know AVP or whatever

[00:39:26] Even W.S. Anderson is no turner And he's right David Fincher born Denver Colorado 1962 Did you know that? No he grew up in Marin County California Just a couple doors down from our old friend Georgie Porgy Lucas The legend is he grew up down the street

[00:39:44] Two driveways down From George Lucas Now George Lucas is obviously probably 20 years older Than David Fincher right? Yeah but they were like buddies They'd play like stickball together George Lucas wow I nailed it 19 years older than David Fincher So yes you know

[00:40:02] Marin County as when he was a child Was haunted by the Zodiac Killer Never come up again Right thing to note His dad worked in It will come up a lot Obviously worked as a journalist For Life Magazine Did a lot of freelance magazine stuff

[00:40:21] Sort of a science writer Mainly I think but was very big movie buff Took him to all the movies His mom worked in mental health Substance abuse Sounds more like she was in Not a therapist I'm not sure exactly what her job was But she worked in like

[00:40:39] Substance abuse Programs But yes took him to see all the movies And you know Fincher was very good at drawing From a very young age Yes but also In a very Finchery way Frustrated that he was not perfect at drawing He'd look at his drawings people would go

[00:40:59] You're good and he'd be like it's all wrong I think this is a quote that our researcher has dug up Where he's like someday You know I used to always go someday you'll have the skill To draw exactly what you see in your head

[00:41:10] You'll be able to show it to someone and if they like it Then you'll be able to transfer this thing Through this apparatus Putting it in my head to this Communication of ideas And it does feel like that It comes up with Fincher a lot

[00:41:24] Where he's like I know exactly how this is supposed to look I just need you people to understand What's in my head And we're mostly very loyal to him We understand this is our job To sort of like translate Look filmmakers like this

[00:41:39] Filmmakers like Wes Anderson, like Spielberg and whatever A lot of their strength comes once they've made a couple films And they've established their good team And the team basically knows how to finish Their sentences Where they can just start going like I know what his tastes are

[00:41:51] I know what he's gonna want His editor I've interviewed all the people who worked on Mank I've talked about it before Mank Remember Mank Mank And remember his editor is like I am his therapist That's my job Showing him dailies being like see What you're doing makes sense

[00:42:13] And Fincher would be like yes Or to be like no no no We have to change things But usually it's like I'm trying to anticipate his anxiety By being like this is gonna look good The film that inspired a young Fincher most Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

[00:42:30] Or more accurately a televised making of documentary About the movie Which blew his mind Because he had not put together Like many children don't put together That movies are not made in real time That movies are complex JJ did not include this In his research He's fired

[00:42:50] A movie I've heard him talk about a lot Which at first I found very surprising And now I think is kind of key I think even maybe when Benjamin Button Was coming out And he curated a series When he curated a series of his influences At MoMA

[00:43:06] He sites Mary Poppins as like a humongous Movie for him That's cool I think a lot of it was the like The technical trickery To create something that feels very Natural and lived in Not that it's a natural movie But I think a lot of that movie

[00:43:25] Was the first one that he cast off And the full creation of a world Now there's a Ben Hosley moment here When he was 9 years old He asked his mother for a BB gun And she said No I'm not going to get you a BB gun

[00:43:39] What else might you want And he said fine I'll accept a movie camera Now he says this was sort of a trick he was playing Because a movie camera costs like 10 times As much as a fucking BB gun That was really smart

[00:43:54] He says his parents were quote unquote insane He says his mother was often extremely disturbed By the movies he would make Moves to Oregon when he's 14 Works as a projectionist I mean all of this is just such classic Early young director stuff Gets a camera, makes little movies

[00:44:10] Becomes a projectionist He went to something called the Berkley Film Institute I don't know if that still exists If you guys have ever heard of it As a teenager to learn how to make movies And He got in touch with someone at Quartie Films

[00:44:24] Do you know what this is Griffin? No Which was an animation studio And his first screen credit for quote unquote Special photographic effects Came on their animated film Twice upon a time Oh yes which was a Lucasfilm production Yes Obviously up there in North California

[00:44:44] That's Lucasfilm territory right Yeah I love that movie And so then he pivots from that To ILM His dream landing spot Ever since he met George Lucas when he was 10 years old And he works famously on Return of the Jedi He's assistant cameraman on that

[00:45:01] He does map photography on Temple of Doom And on Never Ending Story Credited as Dave Fincher Dave Fincher Good ol' Dave But I think then he's basically at ILM Sort of at the end of that early golden era Since the mid 80s

[00:45:17] People like Phil Tippett and Joe Donstan are moving on And he's done I mean for now So he is getting bored And he does a famed advertisement Which Marie actually just sent us In text message but I knew it And I assume you may have seen it

[00:45:33] In which a fetus is smoking a cigarette In utero as an anti-cancer ad I can remember it from childhood Yeah And that kick started his Music video career Which you know We're gonna talk about his music videos We'll do an episode on that

[00:45:52] How do you feel about his music videos If any at all Obviously very formative time for music videos In general late 80s early 90s Yeah I mean I'm the wrong kind of dork for that I would not be a good guest on that one

[00:46:08] But I was watching some of them last night Kind of trying to put myself in the headspace Of this is the guy who Then went on to make Alien 3 And I mean visually There's a little There's a quality I guess a lot of them are black and white

[00:46:25] A lot of the best ones are black and white Yeah like the Madonna videos They have a lot more like Although actually one of the Madonna videos Has a very fun bit With like She's standing behind I think the like screens And it reminded me of

[00:46:45] One of the most famous moments in Alien 3 With Charles Dance's Death scene Where you know in the infirmary Which has all these Like shower curtain kind of things And you see like the alien The silhouette and all of that Which is a great scene But it is

[00:47:05] I think he Has not wanted to go back And talk about his music video work He famously refused to be included In the music video Come on Finchie He would have been perfect Which he's like made for He would have had like the best one

[00:47:24] And I do think there's a Mandela effect Of people thinking I own that DVD Which they didn't Chris Cunningham who had one Worked on this film Along with Steve Norrington A lot of guys who later go on to become directors Were in the effects team on this movie

[00:47:40] Chris Cunningham again maybe the most Ben director He did the Bjork robot video But he built a lot of the puppets And models for this movie That's his primary interest And Norrington who goes on to direct Blade Was also a big effects guy

[00:47:54] A similarly good director to David Fincher Fincher and Norrington But this is the era of these guys Getting plucked up You do music videos and then you get brought into Hollywood The point I was going to make is His movies Or his music videos rather

[00:48:11] They have a really strong visual style But it definitely feels And this is why I imagine he doesn't Really want to reclaim them He is serving the voice Of the artist Of the record label Of the campaign He's using them as sort of like technical shooters

[00:48:29] He's a great shooter The anti-smoking ad does feel like It has a little bit of the Fincher worldview In it But you watch his best music videos But they don't feel like They have the worldview That starts immediately in this movie

[00:48:46] And carries through the rest of his filmography A guy where it's like you cannot beat His worldview out of his films It does not matter what he's working on Now Fincher is hot shit But he is looking for the right project to start with

[00:48:58] This is a very funny quote I assume you know which one I'm talking about Apparently he was pitching Sid Gannis Who is the president of Paramount On some movie And Sid says, Fincher no one is going to give you 40 million dollars For your first picture

[00:49:12] And Fincher said, Sid I know that Why would I do a 40 minute movie Good line But also Indicative of Fincher's Expensive tastes Even before he started making movies But also As we'll say many times His reputation is He doesn't just throw out some willy nilly number

[00:49:34] He doesn't just waste money He just reads the script And goes I understand Exactly practically what I would need What time I would need What equipment I would need How much it would cost And FYI it's a lot Which I love him for

[00:49:53] And if it's a cent less I walk off And that's a lot out of this experience Where he thought he could sort of win the arguments In real time rather than getting the agreement going in So over to Alien Pretty not too shabby Good movie

[00:50:09] 1986 James Cameron makes a sequel Oh you can't make a sequel to Alien What's there to do? Dollar sign I would say also Pretty good So far High expectations obviously In this world Especially when Aliens is the thing that on paper People were like some other fucking guy

[00:50:31] Is coming in and making a sequel And then you sort of do this genre shift When that works it's suddenly like Well now Alien is a franchise where people come in And take big swings At a very high level

[00:50:44] But if I'm a director I'm like no fucking way Do I want to do another The expectations are impossible And there's no Like Cameron's zag is so obvious Where the hell are you going to zag from that? The pit of despair Now Walter Hill and David Giler

[00:51:03] The producers Great Walter Hill of course We all love Walter Hill Great old grumpus that he is now They make this treatment They send it to William Gibson Who has written Neuromancer William Gibson writes a script I feel like we were talking about Matt I might have

[00:51:23] It's quite notorious as one of those Great unproduced scripts That people sort of lionize And now they've made an audible There's a graphic novel You can consume it Almost every way except as a movie I feel like we may have Briefly mentioned it on our Other episode

[00:51:43] He calls his joking Summary is Space commies hijacked alien eggs Big problem in mall world Because it's set in a giant mall It's a very Cool script I will say It's very different from this movie It's mostly about Hicks Yes Which I think was his remit

[00:52:06] I think he was told Ripley will come in For the fourth movie So write us a Hicks adventure Rennie Harlan was supposed to direct it He had just made Nightmare on Elm Street 4 And I guess that was enough Nightmare on Elm Street 4 is fun Yeah that's Dream Child

[00:52:24] Or Dream Master Dream Child is kind of bad Harlan is in a weird place This is before he does Die Hard 2 And Ford Fairlane Well Ford Fairlane is what he Gets handed when this falls apart Ford Fairlane of course being The Andrew Dice Clay movie

[00:52:44] What a perfect apologist But yes it's like The Sulaco drifts into This sort of space communist Empire like Marxist Place and they pick them up Rennie we got bad news and good news for you The bad news is You're not making Alien 3 anymore

[00:53:03] You're not making the third Alien film The good news is You are making the first Ford Fairlane movie Did you You're an Andrew Dice Clay boy Ben You get to kickstart the franchise He reminded me too much of the people That lived in the town

[00:53:19] That I grew up with in New Jersey Gave you shit He's not very alternative No not at all It's a whole clever script He's more of like I say slurs That was his vibe in the 80s Has anyone seen Ford Fairlane? I have not seen Ford Fairlane

[00:53:38] I have but it's been a while It's a very Matt Singer project The worst garbage Exactly Shovel it in my face I wouldn't be surprised if Ford Fairlane had an Arby's tie in At the time Ford's got the meats It's a cool script you can check it out

[00:53:56] Basically like Weyland Yutani has an army of aliens The space marxists have their own army There's a big battle I don't know it's insane That's my diagnosis of it Cold war in space Rennie Harlan comes on board But the producers didn't really like it

[00:54:12] They thought it was crazy I think everyone else kind of liked it It just becomes this like Revolving door Of like takes and writers And directors Until it ultimately winds up with Fincher They give it to Eric Red Near dark writer Who revises it down

[00:54:33] Basically in terms of scale And then David Twohy The fugitive writer Pitch black man Later Which is sort of like alien adjacent Very alien vibes And it's almost very alien Three vibes specifically Like bald people Impressively bleak Sci-fi conditions He had just written Critters 2

[00:55:01] It is weird that they're scooping people out of the New line cinema Horror sequels I guess that was kind of hot shit back then When this should be The genre world But I think back then it was Even if it was a big deal Sci-fi horror movie

[00:55:20] That's still just lesser than Even if Aliens got Oscar nominations I don't know So is the first Alien 78? 79 It is insane to process That this movie comes out 13 years after Alien Yes You know where it's like You can understand the seismic shift in the industry

[00:55:42] Between Alien and Aliens And the shift between Aliens and this When you remove Aliens from the middle And you just look at what's changed In the studio system in 13 years You do understand How just even by like 1990 They're maybe starting to pull up the ramps

[00:55:59] And go like how much do we want to deal with People who think of themselves as artists Is it better to get guys who can just get it done Just get technicians And certainly we haven't really talked about it yet But there was certainly a point

[00:56:11] In the development of Alien 3 Where they could have gone that route You know what? Maybe not Right Alright let's see Two-E is the one who brings in the prison planet concept Okay Harlan exits he's like I'm riding the dice train I'm rolling the dice

[00:56:31] I'm pretty sure his thing was He had these very ambitious ideas Again like Fox was like we're not paying for these sorts of things A whole planet made of wood Well that's meant to work We're getting a wood planet

[00:56:44] Harlan was like well we should go to the planet Where the aliens come from Which is like An obvious pitch And potentially quite an expensive one Drew up a design looked like a butthole I mean this is the whole thing There's been so many alien movies

[00:57:00] And prequels and sequels And yet no one has ever actually really Been like let's put the aliens on earth Or let's go to alien planet They keep brushing up against it And being like we'll save that for next time

[00:57:12] And that's not something that Randy Harlan supposedly wanted to do Which they wouldn't want to do He's kind of a fastball down the middle guy Right he's like die hard too Die harder Yeah just die a little harder Let's not freak people out

[00:57:26] Just die a little bit harder So Troy writes this prison script But Ripley is not really a character in it So they're like get back here Because now we've decided Ripley should be the star Like whatever Some come to Jesus moment And they're like We love this guy

[00:57:45] Which is clearly what they did with J'Nai later too Where they're just sort of like This guy has a unique artistic vision Like we should just have a meeting with him They bring him in And he pitches them This sort of medieval concept of a wooden planet

[00:57:59] I just think This is when Hollywood was at its best Someone could walk into a studio And be like The whole planet is wood What do you mean? They're about to start asking questions I don't know that there are answers Like trees when you say wood

[00:58:18] What do they mean coming from Ben Hosley The man who when we watched Treasure Planet For this show Said I was disappointed that the entire planet Wasn't a treasure And we said what do you mean like it was made out of treasure

[00:58:30] And you went no like the planet is a chest Right Absolutely And I stand by with a keyhole Ben is bumping on planet made of wood Well yeah because I just I mean Trees are made of wood And trees cover a lot of the planet

[00:58:48] But is this just like a big It's like a structure Man made Is it like the inside of a baseball You know what I mean Yeah I think kind of that Solid wood planet I pictured it more like it was a man made construction Out of wood

[00:59:07] Somehow it has atmosphere now Boards nailed together But it's like the idea is that They reject all technology And are populated by monks And I think What I think is my favorite thing about all this Is that they hear this and they don't go Please leave the office

[00:59:25] Immediately your parking will not be validated They're instead like Why don't you go and write wood planet That's the thing When you say this was your favorite era of Hollywood They'd think about it for a while Wood planet eh Now it would be like

[00:59:41] How many women in STEM can be in the movie To what extent can it not do anything How does it set up number four Will Saudi Arabia be mad at us If we make this movie Can we be recruited by G.I. Joe at the end

[00:59:53] I don't know Write the wood planet script Here's a brick of cocaine See you in two weeks So they start writing this This is part of the WGA strike To guarantee that writers get a brick of cocaine Exactly Columbian pure cocaine Chwoe somehow catches wind

[01:00:14] Like hey they got someone writing a wood planet script And he's like Are you fucking pitting scripts against each other What is going on I could write a planet made out of something Absolutely And so they're like fuck you you're out We're going all in on wood planet

[01:00:30] And Vincent Ward is writing wood planet And he's like I don't really know what to do with Ripley I don't know why she would be here I have just all these monk concepts They bring in production designers And they're like this is going to cost a fortune

[01:00:43] Everything is going to be made of wood Are you crazy And so finally It gets all the way up And some studio exec is like Can you nix the wood planets Can we be done And that was like a line in the sand for Ward

[01:00:59] Ward leaves the project And he's like He's the only one with a story credit He's sort of bananas The screenplays credited to Guy Lerne Hill And Larry Ferguson whoever that is And it's sort of this They're mishing up the monks With the prison planet

[01:01:17] They turn the monks into prisoners But they're kind of religious They're just smushing everything together One of the problems with the movie I think Is that it kind of winds up being like Well they're obsessed with religion But they're prisoners But they don't really

[01:01:34] Their religious ideas are so nebulous And vague They have Charles Dance almost like acknowledge that With a line of dialogue How it's like well we don't They're apocalyptic millenarian I don't know It's vague They've turned to God in their desperate time It's one of those classic studio

[01:01:54] Too long development movies That has like 10 phantom limbs That clearly used to extend into something that actually functions Right And through all these drafts mushed together Nothing's been dropped completely Right and the other thing is that After all of these drafts

[01:02:10] All of the writing, all of the developing All the ideas When they do finally get Fincher They start making a movie without a script Which is bananas and absurd also It's like after all this time Because what happened which we haven't said yet

[01:02:24] Is at some point during all of this ridiculous development This is good enough You're coming out on X date And you have to hit it And then when Ward leaves They have to come up with a director And then they have to basically like

[01:02:39] Well here's all the pieces of things we have How can we turn this into something That can come out on this date And it's like a case of Well we've made these amazing sets How can we fit them into this movie That we're making now

[01:02:53] And how can we have prisoners The movie does, as much as I do like it It does at times feel Like a jumble of different Disparate elements Absolutely but Matt to be fair We have to give credit where credit is due Every time a studio has said

[01:03:10] This is good enough just start making it And we'll figure it out later It has worked perfectly Unfortunately there are examples Of that being true And I do think that convinces studios Like yeah we'll be like fucking that movie It's rare and when you hear about it

[01:03:26] Not only is it rare it sounds stressful And I'd rather not do it that way And that would certainly be the case here Not only does it sound stressful But you read interviews with the people Who worked on those movies

[01:03:38] And they were like that was the worst period Of my entire life I don't view that as a career triumph I mean I think the thing that's cool About Alien 3 though Is that the parts of it that are coherent Are the parts that reflect that process

[01:03:53] And the hatred of the corporation And how they're trying to I mean What I was going to say way a while ago That I don't think I ever even said Was like the alien in this movie Is David Fincher in some weird way The corporation brings

[01:04:09] They want to control him They want to They think They're hurting him Come on go over there Just hang on to him he's amazing Think of the possibilities with this guy Just don't kill him We can control him And they bring him in And what does he do

[01:04:31] He just refuses to go along I just feel like This is like the movie the alien would make It's the one thing they didn't account for The director would have ideas And Ripley in this case Is kind of Sigourney Whereas I think most of the other directors

[01:04:47] Have viewed Ripley as their analog In this movie Ripley is the one person who's like I know he's a little terrifying I think I kind of understand I can deal with this It's true Just lock me down there with him

[01:05:02] It's fine I'll get him where he needs to go He's not going to kill me I know that at the very least Fincher does say that his initial pitch When they bring him in was more expensive I mean this is his quote The thing I think we'll find

[01:05:16] He's a very quotable man He's dry and he's just got away with words He says My pitch was like a David Lean movie It was about pedophiles in outer space It was a huge movie And very complicated and political There were three Lance Henriksons running around

[01:05:33] Paul McGann was a serial killer At the end of the movie you had the alien running around With 3,000 stormtroopers on the way It was massive and strange And I went Here's this movie And they said nah And they were like nah we can't afford that So already

[01:05:51] As he puts it, cutting the balls off the thing Like you said It's fine if it's one alien killing some guys Just shut up Just hold the camera at it Don't overthink this Because it's an R-rated movie They don't want to spend 200 million dollars on it

[01:06:09] In fucking 1992 or whatever I was talking about With someone There's a lot of hand wringing going on At the time we're recording this In July About the perceived failure of Dial of Destiny And just like how could Disney spend This much on 80 year old Harrison Ford Right?

[01:06:30] Why would they make that movie at that number And I do think Whether or not this was part of their strategy By just putting Indiana Jones back in theaters It does kind of boost The older Indiana Jones movies And their value to Disney Yeah no no

[01:06:46] There's a whole tale It boosts the value of him staying in the theme parks And all this sort of shit And I think there was this version Because there was all this machinery Of them being like video games, comic books, toys Cartoon show, Pepsi All this shit

[01:07:02] You know what Fox ultimately did And what Disney and buying Fox Has recognized Is just like the alien as iconography Is so valuable And it's going to be a decade before a decade is up Right, we just gotta do something And the other stuff That they're doing

[01:07:21] Doesn't really have anything to do with the third movie It just helps to have posters in theaters That character That's why you can't do it this way Because that's what they were doing Just like it's Alien 3 The first teaser for Alien 3 Is like

[01:07:37] It claims that the movie's gonna be set on Earth They don't even know what the movie they're making is They said it couldn't be done but there's a third alien movie Is basically their pitch Oh my god, wait Because aliens are kind of like space bugs

[01:07:50] What if there was a new variant of aliens But it was like termites And it started chomping down on the wood planet Huge problem for the wood planet That would be a fucking vacation Perfect movie, perfect movie Please not even involve them eating wood

[01:08:04] And then the monks fall through a hole Right through into space I could just walk in there and be like And it's made of milk and they're like is there an alien in it I'm like yeah sure, we could put an alien in that

[01:08:14] And they're like yeah get to work It's fine, we just need there to be an alien movie Fincher's the one who has the idea of shaving Ripley's head Which is such a good idea Incredible And you know He doesn't want her to be

[01:08:28] Ripley in her underwear dodging the alien He wants her to be this sort of hardened figure Yes We decided the reason this keeps happening to her Is because she's cursed to do She's cursed to fight this thing till it's over It's my favorite thing about this

[01:08:43] If I'm Ripley, I'm never going to sleep again Every time I wake up I'm in a new fucking place With another god damn alien And I have to explain to all these new people Like you don't understand this thing is the worst

[01:08:53] You do question the whole hyper sleep Element of these movies at a certain point When it keeps happening So You know Blah blah blah I'm just reading Blah blah blah Blah blah blah I was Fox's bitch Look there's tons and tons of fighting

[01:09:17] We should talk about the plot The story Fincher making this movie Is just him constantly being slapped down by Fox Over and over again In terms of budget And in terms of just like Taking too long to do everything

[01:09:31] And Fox being like what is the matter with you Like why are you not delivering for us Why is the budget out of control Why can't you just give us this movie Even though you don't have a script that's finished What's wrong with you

[01:09:44] A big thing they talk about in that mishmash commentary Is that like Richard Adlin, a legend of the field Basically at the top says This is one of the very last Like totally photochemical Optically printed movies There are very limited amount Of digital effects in the movie

[01:10:02] It's mostly at the very end It's really next to nothing But there's like certain pieces of this That look really dodgy That people always outline Mostly the alien Which is mostly a rod puppet With digital removal It is just that like the compositing Is so bad

[01:10:23] And that is largely because I think they were just like We do not have time to get this right They lacked time and money I do think it could look better Fincher would have worked it until it looked great I think they just put it in there

[01:10:35] Some of the shots in the assembly cut are like new shots Didn't they insert a couple of things I think when it first came out Maybe it wasn't But then they made a second version They also brought in actors The audio is improved

[01:10:49] Because initially you could not hear the audio In the ad-deb subtitles Which is cute I mean I love the DVD For it's kind of like popsicle sticks And bubble gum We are just putting this together This was also that era where DVDs were so big

[01:11:06] That there was that thing Really Scott we will give you $10 million to rework Yeah we are going to make so much money There is actual budget being put into these reconstructing projects Even though some of the I totally agree

[01:11:18] The shots you are talking about they don't look good But then on the other hand There is like that exterior That we talked about before That is gorgeous and amazing And they show it on screen in the theatrical cut

[01:11:30] I think the effects work of the alien itself looks good It's a combination of the two elements That don't look good I mean Ebert's slam on this movie Was famously It's like the best looking bad movie ever made Sure Roger Ebert Did you watch

[01:11:48] We can talk about it later Someone should write a book about it Did they have an Alien 3 review They did You can watch it on YouTube I think they were negative Two thumbs up Let me find the thing here I think that best looking bad movie

[01:12:07] Was from the 7 review When they were talking about Fincher Later But I was looking at I'll just while you guys are looking things up Two thumbs down I literally have a hundred thousand word document On my computer with every review they ever gave

[01:12:23] So yeah it just takes a second His most damning things were things he said later So Fight Club is when he said Alien 3 is one of the best looking bad movies I've ever seen Alien Resurrection Ebert says I lost interest in Alien 3 when I realized

[01:12:38] That the aliens could at all times outrun And outleap the humans So all the chase scenes were contrivances Sure I sort of know what he means It's the problem of the alien being so powerful Yeah But then it's just always panic

[01:12:52] When the alien is there which I find so exciting And they have the I call them like Ramey-esque shots Of the point of view Of the alien But they're like going around the corridors Are so cool I love that shit

[01:13:08] It's sort of amazing no one had ever thought to do that I also think the like Being able to outrun the alien for most of the movie Isn't a problem when your movie is working Towards the fixed end point of death is the only escape Right? Right

[01:13:22] Cause sort of the point it's making is like So yeah As Fincher comes aboard There's just still constant more rewrites Constant fighting I forgot that Rex Pickett The author of the book Sideways Was brought in to do one last rewrite And Fincher took him out to dinner

[01:13:44] And was like this is what's going on This is what they're telling me I'm telling them this is gonna be way over budget By the way I'm not drinking Merlot And Pickett apparently was like You are correct I don't know to Hill and Giler

[01:13:58] Basically being like you need to listen to Fincher He's like not wrong In telling you all this stuff But nonetheless They basically go into production with an unfinished script 45 pages of a script You know That they've been fucking fighting over For 10 years practically

[01:14:16] Fincher says he tried to quit on day one And his agent was like you can't You'll never work in this town again Like you just have to do it It's just always I'll never do that again I'll never start a production without a finished script

[01:14:29] Without knowing exactly how much I'm gonna spend and how long it's gonna take Right? Supposed to be a 93 day shooting schedule Fox cut it to 70 days They wanted 50 special effects shots They gave him 25 So they did lots of 18 hour days To deal with that Sounds fun

[01:14:51] And you know Weaver very positive about Fincher Just in general Always To see them work together Yeah that's true It's kind of surprising for how highly They speak of each other In a bad set of circumstances She's at the height of her powers He's at the bottom

[01:15:13] It sucked making that movie But he was a total pro And I liked it He felt the same way about her Totally Jordan Cronenweth obviously Is the supposed to be the cinematographer He gets Parkinson's disease Is diagnosed with it A few weeks into production

[01:15:34] Is replaced with Alex Thompson So that's one issue That you don't want to run into He barely shot anything but he set the look That then was Iconic This would have been his last film Yeah And then of course obviously his son Becomes Fincher's DP

[01:15:55] For many of his future films But they talked about In the commentary how much They tried to establish this visual style Of the camera is often very low It's like sort of on the ground And especially within the prison The sets all kind of have Slats and grating

[01:16:13] So they can light it from underneath Rather than above And shoot up towards the ceiling I think it's such a different feel Than the previous two Alien movies Where they're in very confined spaces You know where you're in low ceilings Where you're in ships

[01:16:29] Where you're in like hallways And shit like that Like the first scene where you see All the prisoners sort of like debating About what to do about this woman Who crash landed And the camera is basically Going up all their nostrils And they're being lit from under

[01:16:48] The other movies have been like You got blue-collar grunts And you have these evil corporate people Right? And the greatest evil More than the aliens are these companies These corporations But they often present themselves At first as being friendly And then this movie is starting out

[01:17:08] By introducing you to a bunch of guys And being like, these guys might be the problem These guys might actually be the problem And you're going to be on edge Because you know all of them are here for a reason In a way

[01:17:20] So it is very effectively disorienting At that opening section I think the cleverest thing is casting Dance Because he is menacing He's playing a good guy in this movie Who is good And his motivations are good And then he gets his head bitten By the alien

[01:17:38] It's more like poked I think And then he is deceased for the rest of the film And does not appear Dance on her side or not though Because you never know with that guy He's got a barcode in the back of his neck

[01:17:51] You don't understand exactly what he is doing there And then right at the moment you get the answer He's dead And the theatrical cut is almost exactly half way through And it's a great shock moment One of the supplementary materials And I forget which one now

[01:18:05] I think it's one of the actors Maybe Is talking about how Fincher would talk to him about his influence And be like this is my Hitchcock moment And he wouldn't say what the Hitchcock moment was But then I realized it's this This is Psycho

[01:18:22] And he even puts the curtain The shower curtain God bless Once you put all those pieces together It makes perfect sense The problem is that he is so good in this movie And then 50 minutes after the last hour of this movie He's gone

[01:18:38] There's a lot of other guys Bald guys My man Dutton is bench pressing 8 million pounds Dutton grabs the torch But Dance is just such an interesting A very alien character Sort of similar to Henriksen Or Ian Holm where you're like this guy is sort of like

[01:18:54] Soft and intelligent And a little dry in a way That I can't trust Inscrutable, you're not entirely sure of his motives for a long time But it's a doubling down And she also does the dance Which I would too my friend

[01:19:08] This is my point, it's a doubling down of this movie And it's a bone deep cynicism You start out at such a bleak fucking point You place her in a really bleak environment And then here's this one glimmer of light And especially when you're watching the assembly cut

[01:19:21] It's an hour until he dies Hour to an hour I think that's another benefit of the assembly cut You get to take a few more dances Sure You stick on the dance floor for a little bit longer But you're like Oh there's this glimmer of hope

[01:19:37] This movie is almost nice And you're like I'm so glad I'm not in love and connection In the wake of great, great trauma Right And then right at the moment where you feel like Is there a sliver Maybe she's found someone again And it'll be okay He's gone

[01:19:57] There's nothing left for her It is crazy that she wakes up And they're like So your friends are dead But lucky for you But even that may not discourage the Imprisoned rapists Who are everyone who is here Who hasn't seen a woman in decades

[01:20:16] And if you survive the rapists Don't worry, a lot of murderers in here too Just general criminality So bad that they got sent But they're also like This used to be a real place We used to have thousands of people here And then everyone left

[01:20:32] But just the idea of These guys stayed They chose to stay We said this is horrible We can't do this anymore And they're like Basically a cult of being awful Well they're kind of like the people who never left Chernobyl Like you know how everyone's like

[01:20:51] Russia, Soviet Union evacuated that But there's like 40 grandmas Who are like I'm not fucking going, who cares So I get another head or whatever We're just gonna tough it out But I almost feel like these are people who self identify as garbage

[01:21:05] I should not be in general population So yes, Ripley is on What is the planet called? Fury 161 I wonder if that was a David Towie contribution Because then we get to Furiosa Furia So yeah You've got I guess If we're talking about the cinematic cut of the movie

[01:21:34] The alien who is On the ship just like Ripley Gets into a dog If you're talking about the assembly cut It gets into an ox Doesn't really matter but it's just funny that it's different I just like the dog I really do have a preference here

[01:21:50] And it is the dog and I will tell you why I agree with you that the dog makes more sense It makes more sense, they set it up better In the assembly cut It's just like You see on the beach when they're retrieving her body

[01:22:02] Everything is sort of ox and pole Right but in the theatrical cut you see the dog Kind of barking And you see the face hugger looking I just like personally I just love the idea Of again David Fincher being this nasty Mean spirited guy being like

[01:22:16] You know how they say Don't kill the dog Guess what we're gonna do We're gonna kill the dog And then if that's not bad enough we're gonna have a child autopsy On top of that It has the thing vibes as well obviously

[01:22:31] I like the dog that's a problem I like the oxen scene It looks cool It looks nasty and interesting But you don't see the alien And then you go oh yeah that's an ox Huge oxen vibe That's kind of like a dog

[01:22:47] That feels like that was the studio note Why is this an ox it behaves like a dog Fincher goddamit No one knows what an ox is That was a big thing I think from all these aborted Drafts and everything

[01:23:00] The first hour of the time of this movie is Alien as 15 different animals And they were like oh there was a point Where there was like girl alien snake alien Like you know springboard But then this it's like what are you looking for here

[01:23:12] It's like four legged and it runs Fast why the fuck are you making it an ox Yeah I don't know I'm sure we can see if he had his reasons But the first hour of this movie is pretty slow Yep Even in the theatrical cut I would say

[01:23:28] I think the alien is not getting up to much He throws one guy into a Fan Well it's slow after he's killed off Like most of the cast You know like the other I mean alien and aliens start very slowly You gotta warm up the pot

[01:23:44] And with way less sort of horror and nightmare It's you know like they're much more grounded And like detail oriented This one it's like the opening credits There's already aliens and facehuggers And acid But yeah you know she's getting to know Dance who is Clemens She's meeting

[01:24:03] Sort of meeting the other prisoners Though they're She's mostly kept away from them They're so busy reading You know they're just such smart guys They're not super lost in prayer Exactly they're praying They're very like in their own heads Scholarly Yeah well who've we got we got Dutton

[01:24:23] Who plays Dylan The spiritual leader Who seems just like Sort of like a rock solid guy Unlike pretty much anyone else Burdened with unspoken guilt I was gonna say where's his sins most heavily You've got Andrews Who is the warden played by Brian Glover

[01:24:41] Who's just a classic fucker You know that guy is in like A gajillion British TV shows Always is like fuck that guy He was actually bald I think too That's his look He was a wrestler He started out as the red devil

[01:24:58] And then he became Leon Aris the man from Paris His catchphrase was Ask him ref and how about that then His kind of like famous Performance is I think the guy who warns them In the pub in American Werewolf in London But they were talking about

[01:25:14] They shot this movie in London in Pinewood And he was the guy that all the crew guys Were like completely enamored with Legendary He was the all star on set You got Ralph Brown as 85 Aaron They all call him 85 for his IQ score Lowered

[01:25:33] Who I feel like I best know as Rick Ollier Of course From Phantom Menace Matt if you remember Rick Ollier Who could forget Rick Ollier Explains like piloting to Anakin Yes now I see I'm looking at a picture of him Yes

[01:25:49] And I believe he's the one who has When the ship starts blowing up Because Anakin's doing barrels inside of it Or whatever What's happening he says we didn't hit it And I'm like yeah You guys suck You guys do zero during this movie

[01:26:07] He also I was rewatching Wayne's World 2 And had forgotten that he's the roadie in that Oh that's right he's really funny in it He's just sort of a very familiar face He's just a comedic all star The Brown M&M story

[01:26:20] I feel like we went hard on Rick Ollier back in the Phantom podcast days That's funny Yeah but you're also just like This guy just feels like a placeholder And it's not fucking Ralph Brown's fault at all No he's got a good look There's no character written here

[01:26:34] And then you watch him in other shi- And you're like this guy has the ability to pop Oh he's juicy 85 is another character that supposedly Fincher and Fox were fighting over He wanted him to be like dumber To really play up The whole 85 is his IQ

[01:26:48] I'm not sure if you're listening to Fox wanted 97 I will say the 85 makes no sense You're like this guy seems perfectly smart I don't really get what he's supposed to be done You got Paul McGann The 8th Doctor I love to invoke that he's the 8th Doctor

[01:27:04] But an esteemed British actor From with Neil and I As Golic who is basically not in the theatrical cut At all And is a major part of the assembly cut He's the crazy guy He worships the alien and keeps fucking things up For everyone else

[01:27:21] By letting the alien go free And then basically batting clean up We have Pete Posslethwaite The greatest face in the history of cinema His character's name? Posslethwaite What are the odds And you've got Holt McElhaney Who I always As fucking Riddick He's got the goggles

[01:27:41] I'm always looking out for him And when he first shows up I go He's a leaner man He looks real lean Great in this, great in Fight Club Fincher, reliable guy Brings him in for mind-hunting And then you've got a bunch of randos It's a good group

[01:28:00] Phil Davis who I love Love Phil Davis It's a good group of guys Phil Davis is the best I just rewatched I have to say this 2005 The Disney series Bleak House Adaptation of Dickens' Bleak House Gillian Anderson And very many other people And Phil Davis plays Mr. Smallweed

[01:28:26] Who is a moneylender Villainous character He's always in a chair He doesn't walk He's always being lifted around And he's one of the best characters And whenever he's brought into the room He goes, shake me up Judy Sounds like Arrested Development It's genuinely those vibes

[01:28:47] That's the thing about Dickens This man is wild Shake me up Judy I want someone to bring me in room to room In a chair and ask them to shake me up But I do think when This film was test screened A lot of Audiences were like

[01:29:07] Why are there 8 English bald guys Who I can't distinguish I still think that when I watch it It definitely was a move To just be like yeah it's going to be a bunch of dudes And they're almost all English character actors You're not even really gonna

[01:29:21] You got Charles Dutton but apart from that Not a lot of diversity They're all kind of similar ages They're wearing the same clothes They have the same haircut Not even any tattoos which would have been helpful To differentiate Colton McElhinney has a little teardrop That's about it

[01:29:40] Let's hire like 15 Karen's boys Shave them all and put them in burlap They're just To me this is another classic Fincher hostility gesture I don't hate it I just understand a studio maybe I mean I think there are different ways You can defend it for sure

[01:30:00] But definitely one of them is just like As a big F you to the audience I mean I guess if you're paying A lot of attention and watching very closely You watch it over and over Guidebook in hand But I guess it does sort of make you

[01:30:15] Pay attention I guess there are people watching it in mother mode Where pop up style As Fincher intended This was the guy who was doing this And that other scene Ripley being bald Which maybe you have to justify this way 100% It's an incredible move

[01:30:35] Not only just visually striking But it's like an undeniable The look of her Like that With the bald head Even before the ending Where she's jumping into a vat of fire It makes that It sort of foreshadows that Right from the get go

[01:30:55] And even the sort of like The ego soul death of the whole thing Where it's like she's just removing everything She's just like a living skeleton I feel like the shot It is insane for her to film this six months after having a baby

[01:31:08] I mean I wouldn't do it I mean I guess she was paid like 10 million dollars But still They did offer you 8 million dollars six months after your daughter Was born to do Alien 5 and you said no It was a bold move The shot of her

[01:31:22] You know sort of Whimpering as the alien Is inches from her face That happens right after Dan's death Is that the most iconic shot in the Alien franchise? That's an interesting question Like as much And obviously that's sort of a specific You know But single image? Yes

[01:31:44] And her being bald is so crucial To her iconography Even though it's in the least liked Alien movie And I mean The other thing about the bald aspect of it Especially and it's like in that moment It becomes heightened Is that from certain angles

[01:32:00] She has like this almost alien-esque presence And now that she's become potentially the mother of the new alien She's already such An interesting physical presence She's so tall and skinny But like it's not just well she'll look striking And cool Like there are many different ways to defend

[01:32:17] I don't know about defending all the dudes being bald And hard to keep track of But Ripley having that haircut I think adds a lot to the movie On a bunch of different levels Get back to my point of this being a fascinating movie

[01:32:29] For her to make after she's had a kid And the loss of Newt The other half of this movie is Her realizing she is pregnant With a thing she absolutely does not want Right Absolutely Just two fascinating mental states for someone who just had a child

[01:32:46] And the weird You know it's a security blanket for her And also it's her death Impending death So she knows this is it It's the thing that's keeping her alive And the thing that makes her want to kill herself Which is just like they come to her

[01:33:02] And they're like we can handle this We'll take the alien out You'll be fine You'll go back and cry asleep And at that point I think everyone in the audience Is like not only do you not trust them You're just gonna fucking wake up back to more aliens

[01:33:16] It is time to end this There is one way this ends That is actually a worse option than jumping into lava Absolutely I'd choose the lava every time No I would go Right early in the film after the autopsy of Newt And all this other grimness

[01:33:33] She does boot up Henrickson Bishop I love this weird You're into this Ben It's so good he's so gooey It's a beautiful animatronic The way he talks I mean just the best trick in Alien Having the robot sort of half be able to talk So good

[01:33:53] But this was like almost It might have been a record number of servos Within the face of this thing And I do think The fact that it's like The thing has crashed and it's been a while And it's sort of deteriorated And all of that helps them

[01:34:09] Because you're like well it's a really good likeness And any part of it that's less animated Than the real actor you saw in the last movie Is like degradation of a broken robot I assume you're a Henrickson guy Sure absolutely And he's awesome

[01:34:23] I mean both parts in this movie He's also a reason He gives Alien vs. Predator a star by itself He's just like a genre movie Hall of Fame When's the last time we've seen him? He's pretty old That's why I'm asking He's 83 years old

[01:34:42] Is he sort of soft retired? Unless he's doing direct to video Oh he's doing direct to video He made 5 movies last year He's the narrator of that Alien 3 The audio drama He has He has 1 gajillion credits on IMDB Yeah he's got a credit called

[01:35:01] Bring Me the Head of Lance Henrickson In which he plays Lance Post production filmed in 2010 Can't wait for that to come out I don't know if we're going to see that one Did you guys ever watch Millennium? No I know you were a big Millennium guy

[01:35:15] That's your shit A great era of TV where they're like I don't know put it on Friday nights And it's just like they would air this shit Demented Classic X-Files blank checks type thing Where he's like can I put my weird sort of Illuminati conspiracy theories

[01:35:31] With like dark violence On Friday nights And they're like anything you want It's sort of vaguely iX-Files connected Great let's do it I do want to read this quote This is from Rick Birnbaum who was in charge of Fox At the time

[01:35:47] He said well first you could have someone piss Against the wall for 2 hours and call it Alien 3 And then he said I can do 30 million dollars I mean And then he later said I can release a 15 minute black screen And it would do 15

[01:36:04] Which I don't think is the right attitude For them to have to be clear Like they do have this power of like Why do you care? It doesn't matter we already opened the movie It's called Alien 3 Students used to have more contempt for the people

[01:36:18] Who went to go see the movies Than the people who made the movies The audience is king fuck you you shitty writers How dare you have an idea So what happens next in Alien 3 It's kind of a plot light movie In a way They just are here

[01:36:34] They're in this shitty place And then there's one alien Which I think is the right move Yeah you're back to the sort of original Alien slasher Vibes of people getting picked off one by one This is a unique alien though It's a doggy alien

[01:36:48] It's a nasty little freak But I feel like the kills in this movie Aren't even that insane The guy getting fan chopped is kind of cool But that's the first one And then after that The dance scene is awesome But then it does become

[01:37:07] Even as cool as some of the POV shots are It does get a little repetitive When he's just kind of picking off bald guys In those tunnels Like Brian Glover getting sucked into The sort of ceiling Which I think is like a fun jump

[01:37:22] But it's not actually like a graphic kill And then after that I couldn't even tell you Charles Dutton's death is very triumphant And tragic But that doesn't even really involve the alien I do feel the repetition of The environment too Where you're just like

[01:37:40] Who ended up being the DP on this movie Who replaces Cronenworth His name is Alex Thompson He's best known for Excalibur Where he had set everything up And everything had been art directing He's just jumping into an already moving train Right? And he was like

[01:37:58] I was very appreciative that David had already Designed this movie where everything was grey Because I hate white walls And they sort of sting the light And they bounce the light back off And it's hard to light actors against white walls And whatever

[01:38:12] And it was really good for absorbing the light And letting me focus on the actors Especially when you're not on the assembly cut You don't have the brief glimpse of the outside world There's no pops of color or light It's either grey or you're in the furnace

[01:38:25] And then it's sort of lit with Red diarrhea A sort of rough color It's a dirty furnace What do they make? They make metal sheets or whatever? Yeah, covers for toxic waste containers Right They're basically like a box factory I think these sets are great

[01:38:43] But you also feel in a movie where it's mostly just about Continually getting hunted down by the alien And hallways So they have one hallway they keep shooting from different angles Right? Yes, I do think that's what was going on over at old Pinewood Studios

[01:38:55] It's like how Freaks and Geeks or any high school They really just had the one The T Right, exactly And you just kind of move it around Because yeah Look In the theatrical cut They're basically just like let's herd him down there and get him

[01:39:14] In the assembly cut they do that Lock him down there Then he gets unlocked by Paul McGann Re-escapes and then they do it again Right It really just kind of drags it out more Which is the understandable objection That I think is the smartest lift

[01:39:30] Right, that they kind of clean that up In any description of like the changes That's always like well this is the biggest change But I think it speaks to the fact That you can remove that entirely From the movie Right, and some people say well that character

[01:39:45] The Gullah character Sort of an interesting concept Right, but again Everyone except a handful are so interchangeable anyway Like do you really I never realized he vanished Because they all look alike to me anyway So like I just assumed he was one of the bald dudes

[01:40:01] That got killed Like I didn't know He's like I feel like they do better versions of him later Like with the David character In the Ridley Scott movies Of this guy who's like I kind of worship the alien Because it's so beautiful and strange

[01:40:15] And it's not for profit motive I'm just kind of like hot damn That thing's crazy And like it's a fun thing to float But I think even in the assembly cut where you get his full arc He's mostly an irritant He's not really a full arc Yes

[01:40:31] And there's Let's see There's the sequence where she gets her Chest scanned And she has an alien queen inside of her Fellas don't you hate it when that happens It sucks But her learning that there's an alien From Bishop From the remains of Bishop

[01:40:52] And her learning that she has an alien inside her Are things that the audience has already figured out Way before this And they draw these reveals out Another benefit to theatrical version is just like I think the audience puts it together very quickly

[01:41:04] And beyond that it helps to make the movie a little shorter Because once these two realizations are in place You're like she must die Right We're prolonging the inevitable This is another also an element where it feels like

[01:41:16] We've made a movie out of ten pieces of five movies Yes Where it's like sometimes this spaceship They crash landed on is so destroyed She needs to like find The remains of Lance Hendrickson In a garbage pile And like jury rig away to talk to him

[01:41:32] What's going on buddy And then later in the movie she goes into the remains of the ship And she's like I scanned her body and it works perfectly And you're like wait Why is there an MRI machine in here That still works

[01:41:45] Right and that's one of the things where they're like It's necessary for the story And it's like where you feel the fact that they did not have a script And they're just kind of filming scenes It would be funny if they woke Hendrickson up

[01:41:55] And he was like are we on the wood planet And she's like no they fucking cut that Cut down That sounded so cool So They do have a triumph And I do think it's important that they have their triumph That they kill the alien

[01:42:12] Right that they douse it in steel They smelt him And then they cover him in water and he shatters It's an inventive death And Charles Dutton gets this big moment Of like you know Do it He's down there and he's yelling and bellowing He doesn't want to kill

[01:42:30] Or he doesn't want Sigourney To die And he's like you can't die yet you go up ahead Right And then he's like He just lets the alien kind of kill him Yes he sort of keeps the alien down there So they can dump steel all over it

[01:42:46] And I always wonder if they're just gonna If the whole thing is It's a fair question but they do need to kill the alien I suppose Because if Bishop and the company showed up And the alien was still alive They would be like great we'll take it Absolutely

[01:43:00] I always just wonder why doesn't he let her be the bait He seems one both Burdened with so much guilt Over whatever he's done Ready to die and two doesn't Well he likes her I guess Everything you're saying Is a hole I might poke In this airtight screenplay

[01:43:21] Griffin I don't know if you're looking anything particular up But the ending Of this movie is pretty great I have no beef with the final show That's what I was looking up Before we get to that I think it's what I like about Dutton's performance so much

[01:43:37] And Charles S. Dutton is a man Who served time in prison He did There is like a verisimilitude To this performance And he's a guy who discovered theatre And acting when he was in prison And was a man who came out

[01:43:53] A very different person than he entered in You can read all about Charles Dutton's Life Conviction of manslaughter in the 60's It's fascinating Fascinating life But this is the one guy Who it feels like He needs to spend the rest of his life

[01:44:12] Atoning for what he's done wrong Do we even know what it is? He has the one line This is what I was looking up She said I want to say thanks For what you said at the funeral My friends would have appreciated

[01:44:26] Right because he sort of gives the Thank you good lord For Newton Hicks And he says yeah well you don't want to know me lady I'm a murderer and a rapist of women That's his one comment Which don't Know if that's right

[01:44:43] In the assembly cut Hope McElhaney tries to Assault Ripley That's not in the theatrical cut right? Or no no I'm sorry it's his sacrifice That's not in the theatrical cut He has this moment midway through the movie Where he like distracts the alien

[01:44:57] The assault is still in there I always forget But I think there's the difference Of like as we said these are all the guys Who chose to stay right? Who are like we belong here We don't belong anywhere else And I think for the other guys

[01:45:13] It's a little bit more of like We actually maybe enjoy being in a society That is somewhat lawless Where you are amongst your own kind Right? And Dutton is sort of like The moral one Who is just mostly there As a means of self-flagellation

[01:45:32] Is that fair to say? Like it feels like his world view is like I do not deserve to engage With people anymore Not that I feel more comfortable than it And I think his whole fight with Ripley Wanting to kill herself Is this idea of just like

[01:45:48] That's not the way to punish yourself Right? The way to punish yourself is to live And it's like the prism of her wanting to live Or not via entirely her own suffering Versus the idea of like This loop she's caught in Right?

[01:46:04] Especially when she knows she has the baby Inside of her It's a little baby Yeah Her big line she has Where is it? When I don't know Sorry when they're talking The next time they send marines They were expendable too

[01:46:27] What makes you think they're going to care about a bunch of lifers Who found God at the ass end of space You really think they're going to let you interfere With their plans for this thing They think we're crud

[01:46:37] And they don't give a fuck about one friend of yours That's died, not one It's like that's where she's at at the end of this Which is just like no human is respected Which company is she talking about there exactly? The one in the movie or

[01:46:49] Meta textually outside the movie Yes, yes Right, it's just like whatever it takes to get it done And I think she understands that like Not by choice but she has become Complicit in the cycle of this thing Right So the ending is

[01:47:06] The Weyland-Yutani commandos come out with these puffy They just look cool They look fucking cool It's just such a great, I just love them I love Weyland-Yutani Isn't that what Noah Hawley's show is kind of about or something That's the whole It's probably a bad idea

[01:47:22] Because they're probably best as This thing you ladle out Just a little bit of And even I love the Prometheus and Covenant I'm a huge fan of those movies But the more you hear about the company in them The worse A little goes a long way

[01:47:38] But just them showing up in hazmat suits And weird goggles Yes And they're just like where's Ripley? And then Bishop being there I'm the real Bishop That the robot Bishop was modelled after But I'm here to be a friendly face And just to give her that

[01:47:57] And you're like The joy of it is you're just like I don't even know if he's the real Bishop Either is possible Both are bad When she attacks him there's this prosthetic Of his ear sort of falling off And it doesn't have the classic milk blood

[01:48:13] But it also doesn't look totally human Which is perfect It could just be a weird prosthetic And a more advanced robot In the time since she's gone into cryosleep They don't have milk blood anymore Now they look more realistic But it does speak to that point

[01:48:29] Where it doesn't fucking matter Which is at this point having the conversation with him It's like nothing means anything to me anymore I don't care if you're a robot Or you're a human who reminds me of the robot I used to know Which by the way

[01:48:43] Doesn't really make sense She's only been in cryosleep for a little while Right? For this one I don't know that they say exactly They make a big deal in the second movie How long she was asleep Oh it's been 80 years or whatever

[01:48:58] I think this one is supposed to be faster But I don't know How would the guy who made Bishop Look like himself How old would he be now? I see what you're saying Do you know what I'm saying? Is Bishop a top of the line model in Aliens?

[01:49:15] Obviously the joy of the Aliens world We don't understand what technology is like People might live 400 years in the fucking alien world The outside world is so unknown Especially rich people You don't know The whole joy of Aliens is you never know

[01:49:29] You're always on the fringes of whatever society they're in There's always this concept that you sort of get There must be rich fabulous wealth And we're just like All the way over here We're always at the edge of it It's my favorite franchise

[01:49:43] Matt I don't know how you feel about Aliens It's up there Even though it's constantly fucked with And often disappointing Although I love the Ridley Scott sequels Yeah Big League Scott She kills herself In the theatrical cut The alien bursts out of her And she sort of goes

[01:50:07] Pushes it back in I don't recall the noise And then in the assembly cut She just dies in this more Christ like pose And the assembly cut has that sort of Closing montage Is that in the original cut? Which is quite nice

[01:50:26] Of doors closing and her sign off This is what I have on my mic arm here Is the thing from the theatrical cut Which is it's supposed to be a queen chestburster Cool Right which is what's coming out of her

[01:50:40] Yeah of course that's why the alien doesn't want to kill her It's a good ending If nothing else I'm not sure people were walking out of the theater thrilled To see that that had happened But it's very effective

[01:50:54] Wouldn't you love to go back and see how people walked out of the theater on this one? I truly would And we're gonna do the box office game And everything else in theaters right now Fun for the whole family By and large

[01:51:06] And then it's just like by the way And again that's part of To me that's part of the appeal Is that you know God bless the sequels That are just like you know what Forget it Oh you like these movies? Guess what we hate them

[01:51:25] I will basically never not love this movie Anytime I am actively rewatching And I'm like middle sags more than I remember It does kind of lose it's way But the opening I find so strong In both versions And the ending is just incredible And I'm just like

[01:51:42] The basic attitude of this movie To it's position of being The third film in a beloved franchise And it's sort of response to that pressure I just adore And I do think even despite all the problems He had making it and hating it

[01:51:56] And you know now he wants nothing to do with it And he won't go back and work Like there is some sort of kernel Of fincheriness That is in this movie That hostility and anger There is nothing anonymous about this film

[01:52:10] If this movie was directed by fucking Robert Longo Or whoever And you're like yeah he never really did much What a weird thing It would be way less interesting As like the seeds of fincher Is so much more interesting What's the line about

[01:52:26] In every seed there is the promise of a flower They say in this movie Think about it We've covered a lot of first films And every actor has a world view But they maybe haven't crystallized How to express it yet And they don't have command of the language

[01:52:43] Of film enough yet To get the ideas across You see the little glimmers But this thing is very primordial And this is almost an opposite example Of like the guy had the full tool set But was not given the reign To do it

[01:52:59] Or the time or the money Right but it's all in there What you kept on saying is like We were just really impressed Day after day How much this young guy Was really fighting To make things the way he wanted You know you just kept expecting

[01:53:17] You've seen this before These guys roll over They fold They give up at some point Right because it's easier Right and even as much as he's just like I lost it Sure But his fingerprint is on every single aspect of the film

[01:53:36] Also just the control freakery you hear about I'm sure if I sat him down and watched it One he would just shoot me in the face For making him do that But two like the second he sees The rod puppet not looking right

[01:53:48] He would just be like ah Jesus Christ Because that's his reputation There's I'll talk about it in the panic room episode But there's a feature where you can watch Most of the movie pre-vis And that was like the most thoroughly pre-vis And there's a clip

[01:54:03] One of the behind the scenes features That is them screening the pre-vis For him on like You know like a 10 by 10 Like CRT monitor And he's standing like two inches away From it and they're playing the pre-vis In real time and he is non stop

[01:54:19] Just going like that needs to be two inches lower You need to come in ten degrees that way This needs to be five degrees brighter Like every single image he never stops talking Over the cuts over the movements And it's like he's saying Like close but you know

[01:54:33] It's like great job that was great He's not waiting for it to be finished to give his notes In real time like a computer He is processing everything That is like a millimeter incorrect With it I just like that every you know maybe not everything

[01:54:47] But so much of what this movie is I think we've said it's not perfect There's problems But so many of the things that we have praised And like about it Are directly from him You know what I mean His fingerprints are so much the stuff

[01:55:04] The good stuff in this movie I want to tell you that when he finished the film He showed it to Joel Schumacher Who he says is one of the most gregarious And studio-politically astute Which makes sense I've met Joel Schumacher And you certainly always hear

[01:55:20] Oh he's a real sweetie nice man You met him of course And you had a bizarre audition experience with him I asked him a question about interpretation of the scene And his response was I find that acting is similar to sex

[01:55:32] If you ask people if you're doing it right You're probably not doing it right Which is clever And you say you ask if you're doing it right all the time I constantly ask during sex If I'm doing it right You are not cast in my movie

[01:55:46] But it was one of his worst movies It was one of his worst I auditioned five times for that fucking movie 12 is that what it's called And this is when Joel Schumacher is a pretty big deal And Joel Schumacher is like First of all, this movie is okay

[01:56:01] Like it's not as bad As you think it is The good news is you're aiming high The bad news of course is that means you're going to be disappointed You're an overachiever You're miserable

[01:56:13] Number two is you put yourself in a position where they have more power than you Because you care and they don't You can't let this happen again He's actually diagnosed the whole movie And what happened very well And he basically tells him You just can't do this again

[01:56:28] If you want to make a movie You just cannot be in that position again It already probably haunts Fincher Anything he rewatches in his own work Where he's like That isn't what I want it to be Because of technical limitations

[01:56:42] Or me just having the wrong view at the moment What he can't live with is watching it And going I know how this should have been done And they wouldn't let me He's at the point the movie comes out I think he's about 30 or 29 or 30

[01:56:56] And he's probably thinking I'm going to be seen as the fucking 20 something that gave 50 million dollars To make an alien sequel And I fucking shat the bed The guy who screwed up In the early 90s there's already this wave Of like these music video directors

[01:57:12] Are all flash and substance And they get a movie and they have nothing to say Like I will just be seen as the mad enfant terrible Like oh they never should have given The music video director the keys to the kingdom It's not really until like later

[01:57:25] Until 7 and then Spike Jonze That people are like I guess good directors can come out of music videos Right Here's a great quote from Paul McGann Who said there were more producers around than actors It's like having a fucking audience for every scene So you know

[01:57:41] Vibes on set were really bad Is there anything else interesting in here Obviously He asked to do 6 weeks of reshoots And they gave him 8 days So They basically As is classic with reshoots of these kinds of movies They were like more scares please

[01:57:59] Can you just shoot some scares You know get this nastier Whereas now it feels like most blockbusters The reshoots last longer than principal photography Right And there was a whole thing with this movie I know about With the hair again Because she had grown her hair back

[01:58:15] Bald cap that was complicated It was like if she had to cut her hair again For any reason they owed her Like 40 grand So instead they paid like 20 grand To make the worlds most advanced Makeup bald cap And then they needed to use it again

[01:58:34] And they were like shit did we throw that away And then they found it in some pile It changes the whole shape of someone's skull If you're putting baldness over tucked away hair Obviously Advertising campaign for this movie is incredible And all that You know Alien cubed

[01:58:53] This film did get an Oscar nom for visual effects Lost to Death Become Her Which has very iconic visual effects Was seen as more revolutionary Was nominated alongside Batman Returns As well It came out on May 22nd 1992 So The other great tagline I'm sorry

[01:59:11] Is just this time it's hiding in the most terrifying place of all Well that's the thing Going into the movie you're like prison And the answer is her womb We didn't even mention like my single Favorite part of the movie Which is the opening logo with that music

[01:59:25] Sting Da da da da Like they don't give you the end of the 20 It's so good Not just for this movie but I feel like also For Fincher How many Fincher movies could start with That sting Just a lot of them And the opening credits are cool

[01:59:46] I feel like it's right before they switch over To the CGI 20th Century Fox logo Yes it's the painted logo It feels late for the painted logo Anyway Elliot Goldenthal Elliot Goldenthal's score for this is great I'm a huge defender of his 90s scores They are operatic

[02:00:04] I love his Joel Schumacher Batman scores I love his Heat score I don't know where he went I know he's Julie Taymor's husband He's round I guess He does opera and stuff But he had a real fun run in the 90s Yes where he was becoming sort of

[02:00:20] Alfman style and unconventional blockbuster composer A guy with a weird background Who was fitting really well into these large movies And giving them a little more personality Since Public Enemy he's just done Julie Taymor's movies Yeah He did Our Souls at Night as well

[02:00:36] He has a good quote on I think it's on the documentary He said Fincher told him he wanted you to feel You the audience to feel you were completely fucked Within 5 minutes and that there is no hope completely Mission accomplished Mission accomplished This film opens a disappointing number 2

[02:00:55] 23 million dollars Not bad for an R-rated movie in 1992 It makes Opens to 23 but only makes 54 Which is pretty Poor legs for the time But it did make 158 million dollars Which is similar to Aliens It just made most of it overseas Did well overseas

[02:01:16] I think they truly had the vibe of like we could piss against the wall Like you know It's 7 years later so the money is going a little The inflation But it is certainly seen as a bomb What is beating it Griffin It's an action sequel

[02:01:30] Holding on to the number 1 spot In my opinion the greatest poster of all time Oh Lethal Weapon 3 That's right The magic is back again With Joe Pesci poking his head out That is a good poster There's Pesci Ben look at Pesci Look at Pesci please

[02:01:50] Take a peek at the Pesci That is a good poster Just run back to the fucking Lethal Weapon 2 poster Magic is back again Did they even take a new picture Of Glover They might not have They took the old pictures

[02:02:07] I don't know why you show up in studio and stand behind the cardboard stand Um Lethal Weapon 3 I couldn't tell you much about that one That's the one I haven't seen The one with the most Pesci That's for sure I've seen 1, 2 and 4

[02:02:23] Is that the one where they introduced Renee Russo's character Yes So he That's all I could tell you about it She has the relationship with Gibson What is she an internal affairs agent She's in 4 She comes back in 4 I think they might get married Or she's pregnant

[02:02:43] 4 is about will he settle down Right 4 is a wild movie Well 4 is where they're just like Chris Rock do 5 minutes Like right Like let's just do stupid shit They may have had less of a script than Alien 3 did I was gonna say

[02:02:59] 4 is a true example of Warner Brothers being like We fucked up we have no summer movie And they basically like started filming in March And the movie came out in July And the trailer ends with like Chris Rock direct to camera being like Lethal Weapon 4

[02:03:14] In theaters it's me Mel Gibson Like just doing bits to camera Yeah man Cause they just like had shot 4 days of that I remember at the time being like well dig it please It looks incredible Alright Lethal Weapon 3 number 1 Alien 3 number 2

[02:03:30] Number 3 there are 3 movies opening this week that are big Any romantic drama Is it Dying Young? Am I in the right ballpark? What would the ballpark be for Dying Young? No That's a Joel Schumacher movie Oh right cause there's a different Joel this summer Yes It's

[02:03:51] I would say it's like arguably the worst film In this guys career apart from like Some of the shit he made recently Ish So is it a Rob Reiner? The director is a Hollywood journeyman Who still works to this day He's made good movies, he's made bad movies

[02:04:07] He's won an Oscar Ron Howard? Is it Far and Away? It's the Tom Cruise movie Where I'm just like you don't need to see it Not even if you're a fan I don't think I ever have It stinks It's Far and Away his worst movie

[02:04:25] And they're all doing the accent I should have remembered cause I did watch A review and they're coming up next And they show like a clip of Tom Cruise with the accent And I was like hey

[02:04:36] It's at the level of when I do an accent without any prep At the opening of this episode It is exactly that And it's also just one of those movies where you're like Why did this come out in May?

[02:04:46] Like you know this is like a sort of Cruise Cruise and Kidman Had so much juice It has the stupidest fucking title Far and Away Not based on anything That is a perfect example Take that writers Someone on Reddit was poking this up again

[02:05:04] But movies that feel like they were based on books Right but it's not We were just like how is this not based on some fucking book Some guy's like I don't know It should be based on something Some rascal just sat down And typed exterior Ireland

[02:05:18] Far and Away Now number four at the box office A film I think Ben probably enjoys Dennis the Madness? Starring a recent Oscar winner Sort of a fish out of water film Fish out of water film Will it spoil it to say what water the fish is in?

[02:05:41] He's in California California Is it Encino Man? Encino Masterpiece They dug up a man It's Brendan Fraser Do you remember the sequel tease at the end of that movie? Is this where Buried Jeans comes from? Subconsciously Encino Man going

[02:06:04] Do you remember the tease at the end of that movie Ben? No So the way they realize he's come back to life Is they like get home I think they're looking for wherever the buried ice block was Or whatever And then they see his hand prints

[02:06:18] And face print That are muddy on the side of their giant Glass picture windows Of their suburban home And they're like fuck he's out he's escaped Right? At the end of the movie there's a thing where they get back to the home

[02:06:32] And they think everything's settled or whatever And then they see a similar print But it also has boobs Oh yeah Encino Woman And I remember watching it And then turning to my dad On TV So did they make a sequel? Were they going to make a sequel?

[02:06:53] The sequel will address this It sounds like the sequel will start with Top nudity Encino Man famously In Britain was called California Man I was just looking at Wikipedia Because I think they were like No one in Britain knows what fucking Encino is

[02:07:09] You can't call a country after like A neighborhood basically Look at this poster It's a great poster It's where the Stone Age meets the Rock Age I have so many comic books from the 90s I was a comic book reader as a child

[02:07:23] This was a classic movie poster There is an ad for Encino Man in every one of them It was like If no one else you're coming to see this And guess what? I did Matt you said where the Stone Age meets the Rock Age We should acknowledge

[02:07:39] This is a classic three taglines poster The second tagline is A chilling new comedy In full Neandervision Very good And the third tagline is Thawing this summer at a theater near you I like that they spelled theater T-H-E-A-T-R-E Classy Obviously Encino Man came up

[02:08:02] Because Brendan Fraser and Kei Hukwan Are both in it Yes It came up on the awards circuit Brendan Fraser Good in Encino Man Great in Encino Man Number 5 at the box office The first of the spring Now summer We've covered it on this podcast

[02:08:25] What genre is the picture? Thriller Is it Point Break? No it's an erotic thriller Is it Basic Instinct? Basic Instinct Has made $100 million in 10 weeks A real hit More than I make in a month Hit Basic Instinct Best picture Ben likes at the time Beethoven

[02:08:53] That dog too big It big Grown too grumpy Dog too big, grown too grumpy Everyone drooling The head of the family is the one with the tail Who slobbers more? The dog, Ailey, or Beethoven So 50-50 You've also got Disney's Beauty and the Beast

[02:09:13] Which seems to have been pushed back into theaters Many weeks later You've got Robert Altman's The Player A masterpiece Absolutely You've got Ron Shelton's White Man Kemp Jump Pretty good movie A pretty fucking fantastic movie And you've got a little comedy by the name of Wayne's World

[02:09:31] Ben is pre-dick That's just what I'm saying Seriously You could just be bouncing between Encino Man and Beethoven and Wayne's World I'm just taking one hot VHS tape after another And we're throwing it to the side They're smoking Ejecting them like a fucking bullet cartridge

[02:09:54] What week is Wayne's World in? I was wondering that too 15th week That did not come out in the summer No, that was like a Feb release It's made $113 million And it's got 7 million more to make It's not done It is a great film

[02:10:12] I think it is truly I think Wayne's World 1 is great I think Wayne's World 2 is a great American film Oh you think Wayne's World 2 is a great American film? I'm sorry, I think Wayne's World 1 is 2 is pretty dumb It's got some stuff in it It's got Charlton Heston

[02:10:28] Wayne's World 1 Wayne's World 1 is profound Yeah Our friend at the show Rob Shear Posited a question that has stuck with me and I think he might be right You're like, is Wayne's World the only mainstream studio comedy in basically a 20 year span The 10 years before and after

[02:10:53] that has no gay bashing in it Because even Bill and Ted has that moment where you're like, ah god damn it There's almost always the one or there's a moment where a gay character is introduced and they sort of like side eye the camera Sure there should

[02:11:07] I look, this is not a science Of course There are jokes and comedies from the 90s and 80s Right I think starting in the 80s into the late 2000s Now Wayne's World does have What's His Pants I was going, oh of you man

[02:11:22] But I think that's so funny I don't think that's funny No I know, and it's like you can't say thank you You have to say I know That's my thing, you watch that movie and you're just waiting for what's the thing that's aged poorly

[02:11:34] And I'd say basically none of it has Yeah Rob Lowe's in it? When I saw that movie in the theater I literally laughed so hard I actually fell out of my chair Like that cliche, I literally laughed so hard I fell out of my chair That's my memory

[02:11:52] First awesome powers Do you know who's so fucking funny in Wayne's World? Everybody Ed O'Neill He's so funny Stan Mckeith's Donuts That always got me the most Such a Chicago joke Yeah his monologue No I was watching Because we recently lost him

[02:12:17] But there was a really good YouTube cut Of Alan Arkin's entire Uncredited performance And so I married an axe murderer Which is basically like 9 minutes 3 scenes is a perfect comedic game Across 3 beats That is just like a master class And you're like there's that thing

[02:12:35] In the fucking Mike Myers movies When he was cooking Where he could give Ed O'Neill 4 minutes to just eviscerate And not just eviscerate but be like There's an entire world here This guy could be his whole movie And instead we're just getting this Little glimpse into this life

[02:12:53] Did you watch The Pentaverate? I tried to And you tapped out on that one I think I watched one episode I think I made it to the end of the first episode I watched all of The Pentaverate And I would say The Pentaverate

[02:13:08] Was the second worst thing that happened to me that week In terms of like harm to my body Who And then we should be done Who has more money? Mike Myers who made Wayne's World And Austin Powers And Shrek Or Ed O'Neill Who's on 2 sitcoms

[02:13:30] That have been syndicated out the ass For like 10 seasons a piece It might be, it still might be close It's probably Mike Myers because of Shrek I forgot that Shrek the paydays are so massive And then the residuals Right, that was the thing

[02:13:45] That was like the one time where they paid out the nose for the voice talent And gave them really fucking good deals Um Ed O'Neill is just one of those guys where you're like Does that guy live on the moon? Like he must be so rich

[02:13:57] They also talk about it because everyone else was pretty untested He was the top paid performer on Modern Family He basically always was So you're all negotiated together Celebrity Network pegs him at 65 And Myers at 200 I forgot about Shrek You can't really beat Shrek

[02:14:13] I think Shrek's the big thing And the other difference is that Mike Myers has Like underlying ownership of those characters Right He's got all kinds of stuff going on He's an all star so to speak He puts the show on and gets paid

[02:14:27] Might as well be walking on the sun It's different My Spotify recently served that one up to me Now I'm a believer And I was like wait you think I wanna You know when Spotify's like we're just playing You want Walking on the Sun by Smash Mouth

[02:14:42] And I'm like no Hey you piece of shit You want this fucking garbage I don't Because our computer knows you better than we do And we're telling you you want this shit Alright That's it we're done We've wasted enough of Matt's time Thank you for coming here Matt

[02:15:02] Right here on your desk Where's the camera so I can point it Hold it up Hold it up to the mic and flip through the pages Let's hear what that book sounds like Listen to that This is a book about Siskel and Ebert I'm pretty sure he's thrilled

[02:15:20] One of my favorite YouTube rabbit holes When I can't sleep they're one of my go-to's Of just watching random interviews Compilations The best I went way down that rabbit hole What was sort of your angle In approaching this book I just I wanted to read it

[02:15:41] So I wrote it That is a great call Because I was a huge fan Of Siskel and Ebert growing up That was my ultimate Like almost more than the movies themselves I liked the show first And that was my gateway to liking movies really I watched the show

[02:16:00] And then became interested in the movies they were talking about But at first it was almost more the show They popularized a certain type of film discussion You know Or just film discussion on television Period In terms of like Critical sense of like

[02:16:16] As a means of doing film criticism And they have this complicated legacy Of people who argue that they kind of Diminish the thing by placing it on TV Reducing everything to the thumbs up, thumbs down And then once they figured out the level of nuanced discourse

[02:16:28] They were able to fit into very short segments That were not dumbed down You know they have to fit five reviews in per episode Or whatever And also the amount of films that they not only boosted But like made the reputations of single handedly

[02:16:40] You know films like Hoop Dreams And Dreams by You And all these ones that just like basically Dark City Were minted by these guys Either reclaimed by them Or sort of Dark City was just Ebert I just remember that being one of the late

[02:16:57] Like him making it number one You're like Ebert made that his number one Shit I should see it And he did like a commentary track for it Not bad His final was Siskel's final best of movie Siskel had some great He had like Crumb one year

[02:17:13] He had like one false move We don't talk about Siskel enough We don't Because honestly Ebert is such a legend And was a better print Yes he was a better wordsmith And also he has which is wonderful He has his like basically entire archive Still lives online

[02:17:31] Where if you want to search you can type in Roger Ebert Alien 3 And you can read his review Siskel's stuff is more decentralized It's just hard to find There's just not as much available I've always considered him Just like when I was a teenager

[02:17:45] He was like a starter critic for me Not that he's not a good critic generally But just like when I watch like La Ventura And I was like this is helping me process Something I can barely understand I'm like 15 years old Like the perfect personality balance

[02:18:00] Between those two guys Do you know this Matt that when we started this show And it was originally just a Star Wars thing Right? And Ben was like I think you guys have something here You should come up with a name

[02:18:12] You need a name that is more general Than the Phantom podcast And we were like what? And Ben's top pitch do you want to say it Ben? I remember it Because at one point our email account was registered under this name It was Griffel and Simsburg

[02:18:29] Which is especially funny Given that it's your first name and my last name But I do think It rolls off the tongue I think David Burt would have worked I know you made the right call Is it too late to go in? No it's never too late

[02:18:45] I don't think so If we had There's some moment where I'm like Griffel and Simsburg We talked it over It wasn't an immediate discard No we had no better idea It was by default The leading candidate I don't hate it But god bless Siskel

[02:19:07] And Ebert who both left us at this point Very excited to read the book I'm very excited What is the format of the book? Is it just you reviewing every single review they did? It's 18 million pages long That document that I have on my computer Just reprinted

[02:19:24] It's a little bit of a bio of each one But then it's largely about The making of the show How they did it Their relationship Some of the stuff about the criticism of them They're dumbing it down They're dumbing down criticism Do you get into Roper?

[02:19:44] Yes there is actually The last full chapter is The show after Siskel and then after Ebert had to depart as well There's a whole chapter just on Michael and Tony And Christie Lemaire And Ben Lyons And Ben Mankiewicz Ignati I spoke to Ignati Christie Lemaire

[02:20:10] Did Tony Scott do? And Michael Phillips So they're all in there And then the back of the book I made an appendix Called Buried Treasures That Siskel and Ebert loved The other thing I was a big fan of As a kid was like The Malton guys

[02:20:31] And I just wanted to do something like that They have movies like Hoop Dreams That they really made But because I watched every episode I could find and recorded everything There were these movies where even me

[02:20:44] I gave two thumbs up to and sometimes put on a top ten list And I've never even heard of it And so I took the 25 Schindler's List That one blew my mind So I made my own Almost like guide Of the 25 movies that Are not super well known

[02:21:02] That they gave two thumbs up to That are really cool and worth checking out There's like a 90s Barbara Hershey one I remember watching an interview of them being Just over the moon about how fucking good It was that I feel like doesn't exist Shy People 87

[02:21:18] I've heard of Shy People They were just like all about shy people Hershey and Kleyberg Martha Plimpton According to my notes here Only Ebert gave it thumbs up Siskel thumbs down On an episode where they also reviewed Switching Channels And God Created Women It must be a re-release

[02:21:38] I'll say that's a very horny review And the House on Carroll Street The Roger Verdin movie? They're like check out this fucking horny ass Roger Verdin movie From 30 years ago Maybe it was re-released I don't know Sorry to fact check you No no

[02:21:57] I think it was more just I guess she had one best actress That year And they just talk a lot about how insane that performance is Final question Do you touch on the Good Burger review at all? That is my single favorite Siskel and Ebert clip

[02:22:11] So that's the one where I invoke it once a year You have invoked it before But it is They start arguing over the quality of the movie Right Where Ebert doesn't even seemingly really like the movie that much Sure

[02:22:27] But he takes umbrage with the fact that Siskel says the characters in the movie are dumb Right He's like they run a burger restaurant Like how dumb could they be Right he's like they fool the bad guy

[02:22:38] And Siskel says of course they solve the plot of the movie They're the hero of the picture And he goes but you have to take for granted Within the text of the film they're smart enough to figure it out

[02:22:46] And they get into this whole thing where like Siskel's like Why are you taking this as seriously He's like you have to meet the movie on the ground So it's like presenting itself to you The clip becomes an argument for how you perceive movies Right

[02:22:58] So I don't think that one is in here I will figure out a way to put it in the next edition Please But it might be its own chapter

[02:23:37] The last couple of times there has been A tie in fast food menu We have tried to coordinate me going with you For the trip and it hasn't worked And I appreciate that you still send me the invite There's been a resurgence There was the spider verse whopper

[02:23:51] And then what was the one before that That we were trying to make happen The despicable minions 2 menu It was the rise of Gru maybe The rise of Gru poison gun Just like give it to me You will be killed by this We'll have to go to Brazil

[02:24:07] Have you seen the barbie The barbie burger Where they just cooked you a barbie They put another shrimp on the barbie It's only in Brazil Apparently Maybe if we ask hard enough They'll ship it to us They'll bring it over here I mean

[02:24:27] There should be a turtles menu In August They have like frozen pizzas They have their own line It's not even like Tombstone is Ninja Turtles They did it all themselves Have you seen the thing at the AMC theaters There's like a special Ninja Turtle Slushy Icy flavor

[02:24:50] But they're also adding a thing Where you can buy green pop rocks And like mutinize any beverage We should do that And it makes it green and glowing You put it in any other soda They just have this poster now at all the AMC theaters

[02:25:04] That's three different radioactive Looking beverage cups You have to go see Oppenheimer At some point Get out of here Come on we're done You can check out Matt's book There'll be a link to the preorder In the description Posable thumbs Do you have an audiobook

[02:25:26] Are you doing the audiobook It hasn't been settled yet but I want to do the audiobook You should Let's put our thumb on that scale Matt should do the audiobook Thank you for being here We're going to have a fun ride ahead of us

[02:25:41] A fun ride into the depths of how bad humanity is But all these movies be good His main thesis People are perverts I'm literally reading the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo trilogy That's how pumped I am for this series You've been amped

[02:25:55] You've wanted to do this one for a while We didn't even make any We do love Da Finchman We have great admiration for the man named Fincher Yes Tune in next week for Seven Seven Seven C7 It's just seven Time on screen is seven Seven Thank you to

[02:26:24] Marie Barty for her social media And helping to produce this show AJ McKee and Alex Barron for our editing JJ Burts for our research Lane Montgomery and the Great American Novel For our theme song Joe Bowen and Pat Reynolds for our artwork You can go to BlankCheckPod.com

[02:26:40] For links to some more Real nerdy shit Including our Patreon Where right now we are doing the Brosnan Bond movies Yeah Actually we just kind of Have wrapped up very recently with And then tomorrow Is our Alien vs Predators episode Oh that's right enjoy that

[02:27:03] And then we're going to get tied into this And of course we'll be starting As you said the Brosnan We'll also be doing the Fincher Music video episode as we said Coming next month I believe Correct October 11th And also good time to plug

[02:27:19] After three years we take all our Patreon stuff behind the paywall So you can sign up for a free Patreon membership And you'll be notified every ten days when an old episode Gets made public including I think pretty soon the Alien

[02:27:31] Franchise commentaries will be coming up a little bit later This year. You are absolutely right It will begin in October Yeah right about this time That's right. Look at that Wow. Synergy. Synergy Tune in next week for For another episode of Griffle and Slim Swirt

[02:27:51] I'm saying it's not too late that is a good title See