[00:00:00] Blank Check with Griffin and David Blank Check with Griffin and David Don't know all you eat and know is that they're able to shine with Blank Check Shitam podcast qua So, so, so, Quebec Quas become, become a podcast qua.
[00:00:32] Isn't it, isn't it's not like Le Petit, Quebec Quas I can't even remember. I think it's just J'ai T'aime Quebec Quas. Am I wrong? No, no, J'ai T'aime Quebec Quas, no. That is, that is not a Quebec Quas accent. That is not an anything accent.
[00:00:48] It's her saying it. It's her saying it to him. I'm not criticizing you. I'm talking about Brad Bradley, Bradley Pitstein and his AP French. Bonjourno, you know, I mean he already did that like you know anyway we'll talk.
[00:01:09] He's done the World War II movie where he jokes about the fact that he can't really do accents. Yeah, he's covered. He's covered. He did it in the other movie too. He hung a lantern on in the other movie. Exactly, he hung a lantern on it.
[00:01:23] Hello everybody, this is a podcast called Blank Check with Griffin and David. I'm Griffin. I'm David. Wow, wow. And I'm Chris. And pumped up. Should I jump in there? Well there's Ben. Yes, you want. Hey, okay, I'm here too. Hi.
[00:01:42] Ben, it's a podcast about filmographies, directors who have massive success early on in their career and are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion products they want. Sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they're allied baby.
[00:01:55] And this is a mini series on the films of Robert Zemeckis, the infamous Bobby Z. We're near in the end. We're talking allied. It's the great allied off. I feel like I've been hyping this one up.
[00:02:11] It's big. The entire mini series. I don't know if anyone's actually excited. Right, you've been like Don King, Rumble in the jungle, you know, like this, this being like finally people are going to know the verdict allied good or bad.
[00:02:27] Sin versus Newman. I mean, the thing is like, do we know who can be trusted in this? Really? Chris, I feel like this is going to be like the big guys episode in which I fight really hard and then everyone else kind of shrugs.
[00:02:43] Griffin, I'm really sorry to tell you this, but David is a German spy. And I'm afraid that as you know with podcast protocols for these kinds of things, you have to kill them with your own hand.
[00:02:54] Wait a second. Wait a second. Wait a second. Wait a second. Chris. It makes perfect sense, doesn't it? Are you telling me that David grew up in Germany? He grew up and as a baby, no, actually there's about nine. They parachuted him into London. Wow.
[00:03:15] And then he pretended to be an American kid in London. Wow. God, I want to punch this piano so hard right now. Play with Marseille. Griffin over Zoom. This is why I want to get through the intro as quickly as possible.
[00:03:35] How many World War II movies has Brad Pitt now made? It's a lot. I was actually thinking about this. Three within 10 years? Right, you've got right around this time, you have Fury of course. Everyone remembers Fury so well. That was the prequel to Fast and Furious.
[00:03:55] Exactly, yes. Once there was only Fury. What are some other ones Griffin hit me? Glorious bastards? Of course, of course. And then this is what I was trying to remember if there's one more. Alright, well that's fine.
[00:04:10] Obviously World War Z was about World War Z, not World War II, so it's not that one. If you looked at only the end of the title in the mirror, you could get confused, but yeah. Right, exactly. What else? I'm looking at his filmography.
[00:04:24] Legends of the Fall, is that the first World War I want to say? That he goes to in that one? Seven years in Tibet, that's sort of post-World War II. That's got a little World War II action in it. I'm enjoying this.
[00:04:41] Spy games, obviously there's a lot of spy games being played, but no World War II. Would you count World War Z too? That would be a World War II movie, it would have to be. That's what I was thinking.
[00:04:54] If we did finally get World War Z too, I suppose, you have to consider that. Okay, sure. Aren't they reanimating Andrei Tatarovsky to direct World War Z too? Isn't that... Yatarkovsky is coming in? Yeah, I think so. Yeah, of course.
[00:05:12] He wants to do an action movie, I heard. That's what his reps are saying. He wants to get his foot in the door. He wants to show that he can handle that kind of budget. There was War Machine, another war movie, but the Iraq War.
[00:05:25] I guess that's it. But he does have the look of a handsome old movie star, so it makes sense. Put him in old war movies. Right, once he passes 40, he gets really into being this sort of like haunted lantern-jawed golden boy in the war.
[00:05:45] Right, and then of course there's Troy, which is about the Sac-a-Tray to talk about a war, the Trojan War. That was a war. As we talk about World War II movies... Wasn't that my last movie? Yeah, I think it was.
[00:06:02] My last movie had to do with the Second World War. And for a long time, World War II was like your angle. That was your way into the academy, right? Yeah. These academy voters were like, World War II, I'm watching it. I love it.
[00:06:16] Yeah, that was Ultimate Boomer Bait. Right, your last movie. I mean, your last movie, Operation Finale. I think sometime before Operation Finale came out, that changed. But it's kind of unclear. Where's the line? I can't quite... Well, I mean, honestly, look how Allied did with the Oscars.
[00:06:34] That's a thing. I was trying to sort of chart this. We watched Finale today before watching Allied, Chris. Which is next on the movie. That's extremely kind of you and maybe masochistic. But no, no, no, it's a very enjoyable film. It's on Hulu, a Crack-a-jack movie.
[00:06:50] Well, it was on Hulu, that must be good. Exactly. But I was thinking about Finale and this film, and then even sort of like Fury, which is slightly more in the action vein, but I feel like also kind of underperformed.
[00:07:06] It does feel like there's been this shift where, as you said, World War II used to be money in the bank. Now it's World War II? Well, now it's just like the history channels domain or whatever. Right? They're just like little handle it fellas.
[00:07:25] I also feel like this is the kind of movie that used to be. And Finale as well, where it's like you have like two big stars in a World War II movie and there's like sort of, it's epic backdrop or emotional story in front of that.
[00:07:38] Whether it's a real life story or it's a fictional story, it's like here's a character driven story in this setting. And now I feel like when war movies do well, more often than not they are modern. But even if they aren't,
[00:07:52] they're movies that are sold entirely on the viscerality of you are in the war. When war movies do well, it's 1917 and it's lone survivor. It's like that zone. I feel like there are a couple other that have done well in recent years.
[00:08:08] 1970s maybe the only one to really like Oscar breakthrough. But I wonder if to some degree, Inglourious Bastards is the dividing line. It might be because that right, but here's the, there's a few I want to just take you through a couple.
[00:08:22] You know, so some examples I would say of movies like you're talking about. Our guest today by the way is Chris White's director of operation Finale. That's true. Hello Chris. Producer of Night Eggs.
[00:08:34] And by the way, we've got some housekeeping to do on Night Eggs in a little bit, but I don't want to stop you. We'll get to that. Oh, I mean, yeah, strapped in. Okay. So, so, so midway, right?
[00:08:45] That was a movie came out last year made like 50 million kind of ignored, you know, like, that's a client. That's a good example to me of like World War II, no longer money to make Greyhound this year obviously sold to Apple TV.
[00:08:57] But you know, people were kind of like, oh yeah, whatever. Allied is a good example. But Dunkirk Griffin obviously that has the Nolan brand. Sure. So that helps it along, but that's so successful. But like you say, that's like what you're talking about where it's like
[00:09:11] you're in the war baby. Right. This is visceral. This is, you know, you're rattling you around. If somebody doesn't have like an arm hanging off. Right. Nobody cares anymore. Right. They just want the VR experience. Right. Other under performers, you've got the monuments men, you've got red tails.
[00:09:33] These are not movies that were out now bombs. They were just movies that kind of like did okay. Defiance, remember Defiance? Daniel Craig. Yeah. Valkyrie of course, which I recently watched and is not very good. No, it's not very good.
[00:09:49] But to this point, 1917 and why am I forgetting the other one? The one Dunkirk are the only two that became major Oscar players. Right. That's right. 1917 obviously, World War One. Yeah. No, absolutely. I feel like especially like if you go 2009 is when the Academy announces
[00:10:07] the expanded field, right? And glorious bastards gets best picture, best director, best everything nominations that year. And you could imagine a scenario in which you're like, well, if there are going to be 10 nominees every year, probably one of them is going to be a war film. Right.
[00:10:22] You can see that just being like whatever the best war movie is every year will end up getting one of those slots. And instead it's slipped, as you said, White Sea. Yeah. Maybe it's after saving Private Ryan, it sort of upped the ante in terms of viscerality
[00:10:38] and glorious bastard kind of turned it a bit postmodern. Right. And Private Ryan is like a couple years after English patient, which is the last of that sort of war film to I think really connect with the American people in both levels. But is it?
[00:10:57] Also, it's like how they say so many directors, it's like you have a space movie and you're like, you know, first Allied, first a Mechus. It's like you never made a war movie, right? Right. You know, does everyone want to crack at that eventually? Yeah.
[00:11:11] But it's also such a pointedly old fashioned movie, which is what I like about it. But I think it's what a lot of people find unengaging and distancing about it. Right. I mean, that's true. I mean, right. There's a difference between critical reaction and box-up.
[00:11:27] Like the box-up is reaction to this movie you can chart up to plenty of stuff. Rated R, you know, right after Trump's election, weird publicity cycle where Brad Pitt basically doesn't want to talk about the movie. You know what I mean?
[00:11:42] Like there's a lot of stuff that hands from this movie. There's all the rumor mongering about the two of them and his recent divorce. And it's also like a straight adult movie with a very basic premise. There's not a lot of hook in the marketing and they're targeting
[00:11:58] a very specific audience. Right. But yes, right. In terms of the critical reaction, more interesting, I would say. You know, you say in so-called fashion, there are these weird kind of outlying moments amongst it, right? There's this people doing cocaine and the party. Yes. I love that stuff.
[00:12:17] There's a lot of fucks, a lot of fucks in the script. Yes. So many that they even work on it within the movie. Yes. Too many fucks in one exchange. Yeah. When Mary-Anne Cotillard says you just got an R rating, you know, she's like, oh, two, look,
[00:12:33] two nonsexual fucks gets you on R rating. But that would say sexual fuck. You just said so. The MPAA will not like this movie. Chris, have you ever had to deal with the MPAA in terms of defining whether or not- American pie! You're speaking- Well, that's right.
[00:12:50] Directed from American pie. Yeah. Did they try and slap NC17 on American pie? Yes, that was our first rating. Right, because you had him fuck the pie in a different orientation. Or whatever. There was an alternate shot in which she actually straddled it from above. Really?
[00:13:09] I don't think we ever contemplated that. However, you do get into these ridiculous conversations about, well, okay, what if we remove one thrust from the pie? How about that? Wait, but surely it wasn't only the pie that bothered them. There are actual sex scenes in that film.
[00:13:26] There were a number of things. But there was, as they call it, the technical term is frame fucking. So we did have to do a bit of that in order to inch our way back to R. And that's literally how long the shot can last. Yes.
[00:13:46] I mean, right. Which angle you use? Can you take out eight frames? Can you take out one pump? It's like the Hangle McCrangle Berry skit with the key and peel skits. Right. Oh, wow. You can't do the third pump or you get ejected. Right. So they weren't like-
[00:14:07] I mean, I don't know. The foreign exchange student gets changed. It doesn't seem plausible. That was my mom's note after she saw American Pie. Why would she change? Well, she has a good point. Right. She was just like, I don't know, David.
[00:14:22] It felt kind of implausible to me. And I was like, yeah, I don't think that movie was really going for plausible. That is a goof. That is a goof because most people don't change down to full nudity at other people's houses.
[00:14:34] In front of the mirror and spend a long time looking at themselves. Yeah. Right, right. Anyway, yeah. But my mom, she rented American Pie in the year 2000 and watched it and gave me notes. So that's a viewer. That's money in the bag. She reported back to you. Yeah.
[00:14:50] That was an elusive quadrant. Chris, here's a question we've never thought to ask you. And you've been on the show. This is now your third time including a Patreon content. Wait, it's only his third time? This is our race. Isn't it wild? Right? Is it only three?
[00:15:10] I guess you're rarely in the big Apple, Chris. But now we're on the big Zoom. I want to get up there. I want to be up there with the Emily Yoshida's of the world. Yoshida just hit 10. 10. Outrageous. I can't do that. That'll take years. 10 main feet.
[00:15:26] Well, don't go, come on. Don't lose hope. I mean, come on. Yeah. All right. Anyway, so carry on, Griff. But you're good friends. The question we never asked. We've never asked. Right. The question... Thank you. We've never asked is...
[00:15:43] Because I feel like at several different points in the history of this podcast, maybe not recently, we've talked about the American Pie Directive Video Universe and especially Eugene Levy's continuing role in that. Oh, right. The Jim's dad... His seniors. Right. Right, right.
[00:16:03] The Jim's dad continues to be this voice of sage wisdom to sexually awkward young men who he should have no relation to. Well, actually at this point the government actually... It's like those very special episodes where the government pays us.
[00:16:18] Pays Eugene Levy to represent it to be a sexual educator. He's like, I'm here to open the book of love or whatever. I'm trying to think of the most inventive... I will say, Griffin, Jim's dad has a Wikipedia entry on the hero's wiki.
[00:16:34] So he is considered a hero. He is a hero of sexual health. So what was the question? I'm sorry. What's the question? I'm sorry. The question is... No, no, I'm not trying to press you. I just... No, the question is, you directed the first film.
[00:16:50] It has become this bizarrely long running series with all these spin-offs and everything. Do you have any participation in the American Pie universe? Do you get checks when they release a 10th movie? No, I don't. Wow, rude. Paul and I don't at this stage.
[00:17:07] Does Adam Hertz say that but I hope so. I hope so. The credit card screenwriter, yes. I definitely hope so because he is, you know... He's the daddy of all daddy. He's the Jim's dad of the franchise. He's Jim's dad of the whole thing.
[00:17:21] We do sometimes get checks for American Pie 2 because we're executive producers by that stage. Right. But that is it. American Pie 2, which I assume you had no actual involvement with. No. I will say one of the most anarchic theater experiences I've ever had.
[00:17:38] I must have been 15 years old and I just remember pandemonium. People were just like, I don't know what's going to happen in this movie but... If you saw the last one, anything goes. People were just bouncing off the walls. Yeah, it could have been a black mass.
[00:17:53] I was like 12, I was just at the cutoff. I remember campaigning my parents so hard to let me see in theaters and it was one of those things where it's just like, he might be a little too young. But I knew I was missing out.
[00:18:07] It was like watching all my friends go to see the Beatles at Shea Stadium. Like I was like, this isn't going to be the same. And I watched it a year later on VHS and I was just like, I missed a cultural moment.
[00:18:17] I'll say, I was 15 and that movie was a little... That movie was a little young. Like that movie was really for 12 year olds. Even at 15 I was like, I don't know about old men. Oh my God, you guys are so young.
[00:18:32] I think the time we talk about this kind of stuff, it reminds me. Come on, I'm old. I'm old as sin. I'm old as bones. A pile of ass. Show bones. Bag of bones, Sims. David's so old he's gone into syndication twice over.
[00:18:49] I'm so old that I'm just cashing heart, hands and checks. That's right. I know the name of the creator of bones. Get out of here. All right. Chris, you're here. You're not here to talk pie. You're not here to talk Jim's dad.
[00:19:07] I wouldn't mind if we could talk a little bit about night eggs. Okay, all right, yes. But you are here to talk eggs. That's true. An ingredient in pie. Has been, have you got the promo queued up for? I do. I'm going to do an intro. Yeah, please.
[00:19:24] Let me just intro this because, you know, obviously we've lost a bit of momentum on night eggs with the pandemic. There's been a lot of talk about there was the thing with Chrissy Teigen where she talked about eating night eggs. Yeah, a lot.
[00:19:43] She went to that well several times. Yeah. She made a video and everything. She kind of croaching on the brand. She could have climbed down in a way that was upsetting for me. I know. And we, so we got into it with the lawyers. True.
[00:20:01] We had problems with Sam Jackson's window, windows. They were, they needed double insulation or whatever. Too much. It was an issue. And, and you know, and then then we did, you know, we had a deal, we had a studio deal and then it fell through. And then. Okay.
[00:20:23] I should take some of the blame. I kept talking about giant horses and I think we should get into that, but continue Chris. Sorry. No, it's okay. There were some budget questions and but then we, we thought, okay, we know that we got to go streaming now.
[00:20:40] And then we finally, we got a deal and have you guys heard of a thing called quibi? So that's what I'm really excited about right now. Oh, I have some great news for you and some bad news. Great news. You have an in a quibi.
[00:20:55] His name is David Sims. I'm a major in. David is the founder, majority shareholder. Bad news. Quibi's having a slight cash flow issue at the moment, but I'm working on turning it around. That would explain why there we've had some trouble kind of
[00:21:12] just getting, getting down to brass tacks with them. Right. Yeah. The phones are currently not like, I mean they're plugged in, but there's no power supply to them. But you know, we're going to figure it all out.
[00:21:22] David, do you mind if I, if I speak as your publicist here for a moment? Sure, please. Of course. As an official representative for quibi Chris, you should just understand. And first of all, we apologize for the delayed response.
[00:21:35] I think we can all say 2020 has been a wild year. It's been crazy for everybody. Quibi is in the middle of a pivot. I would say much like the pivot from, from landscape to portrait mode while watching one of our classic turnstile videos.
[00:21:51] Quibi is sort of been pivoting as a company out of being existent. Right. Right. So it's just a lot of like tectonic plates moving. We're just sort of figuring things out. We're very committed to night eggs still. Thank you, Griffin.
[00:22:10] That explains a lot about, you know, not hearing back. But anyway, in the meanwhile, Ben, I was feeling really badly. I was feeling like I was being a bad producer. And so what I did was put together a bit of a sizzle, an audio sizzle reel.
[00:22:21] You know, I'll explain a bit afterwards, but I just want to see what you think of it. Okay, I'm very excited. He's screen sharing with us here. Visionary filmmaker Ben Hosley announced his latest project. Night Eggs. In 2021, not even a global pandemic will prevent the world from experiencing.
[00:22:44] Night Eggs. Night Eggs. All right, it's reserved, not associated with Chrissy Deegan's Night Eggs. Well, and that it's an important tag there. I think we should all really spotlight. Okay. Yeah. So to explain, you know, obviously this went out today on the net and has gone viral.
[00:23:06] And some people are saying like it sounds like a horror movie. A little bit like it sounds a little too intense. So that's so then that's why, but that's why I put the outro, which kind of tells you that it's going to be fun to lightens it up.
[00:23:19] Right. Like end of an episode of a sitcom vibe to the, to the, right, you know, like I feel like I'm about to see the Gracie Films card or something. Yeah. I think it's good though. I think it's got a vibe. Yeah, it's got a great vibe.
[00:23:34] The distortion on your voice, I'm assuming that's your voice. Oh no, that wasn't me. That was. Oh okay, okay. People think people keep saying it's me doing different, like kind of set, trying to sound like the trailer guy, but that's a real, that's a real guy.
[00:23:47] It was, it was Don LaFontaine Jr. You got LaFontaine Jr.? You got LaFontaine Jr. That guy mostly does cruise ships. Yeah. Yeah, so I mean, but the thing is, you know, we're selling this is not the steak. It's like people still don't really know what it's about.
[00:24:03] Right, right. But that, that's kind of a smart approach to marketing the movie because the film of course is a mystery. So why not sell a mystery with a mystery being what is this fucking movie? Right, right. I like that episode of Entourage where they,
[00:24:19] they sell the movie off the trailer. No, sorry, carry on Ben. Go ahead. Well, no, no, please. I mean, I love an Entourage antidote. But. But, yes. I love them Entourage antidote. I like anything that can yet prevent Entourage from spreading. But, you know, Chris mentioned the budget
[00:24:40] issue. So guys, I don't think I've talked about this on the show yet. I sort of built in this new sort of angle, which is that there's giantism. There's, so there's giant horses, but like there's giant people, rich people are now giant.
[00:24:59] Okay, but not like if you're like nine foot, 10 foot, you know what I mean? It's not like huge. It's like they're double the size now. So essentially you have giants of silicon, valley, literally. Yeah. Okay. What's the idea? I didn't think about though how difficult it would be
[00:25:23] to sort of make that happen. You know, it's the budget. Sure. It does. It does. But I feel strongly about it. I do. Yeah. It feels like that's the kind of thing you'll walk out of a meeting over where they're like,
[00:25:37] the people have to be nine feet tall and you're like, I'm at it. It's like there's not just a carpool lane. There's a giant lane. You know, it's just things like I feel like you got a half. A lot of people think just put the people are supposed
[00:25:49] to be giant closer to the camera, but then there are a lot of problems. A lot of problems. Fantastic. But seriously, 2021, I mean, I know actually this is 2021. That's true. So welcome to 2021 everybody. Get ready. Welcome everyone. It's coming out in 2021.
[00:26:08] Once when I was actually once when I was a baby writer, just arrived in Hollywood. I went to a party and I met a girl whose job was to write tag lines for like posters and movies. And she's, and I said, oh wow. Interesting.
[00:26:26] So can like give me an example of like your, what's the work you're proudest of? And she said, get ready for the ride of your life. That was her tagline or big tagline. Wow. It was not a come on by the way.
[00:26:39] I mean, it could have been interpreted that way though. I don't think it was unless, wow, now that I think back like, gosh, did I really miss out on something about 30 years ago? Yeah. I have to confess what is that the tagline for?
[00:26:52] Or is that just like, she didn't say, she never said, anyone could use that. I love a get ready tagline too. It's just like, was it Ricky in the flash? Get ready for Ricky flash. And I was like, I'm not ready. I'm trying to get ready.
[00:27:08] I don't even know how to get ready for this. I'm seeing here that it was used for total recall. I don't know if that was the original. I also, when I got some total recall, but let's see what the actual tagline for total recall was not the car.
[00:27:25] Yes, it was get ready for the ride of your life. Hey, the only thing that I sort of mind more than a get ready tagline is X studio cordially invites you to because I always feel offended because I feel like you're asking me to buy a ticket.
[00:27:39] You're not inviting me to anything if you're inviting me to it. That's a fair point. Where are you invited? Where's the free ticket and where's the food and where's the party? You're invited to buy a ticket. You're invited at normal prices.
[00:27:52] What they're really saying is like Columbia Pictures cordially puts you on the hook for $15.99. Columbia Pictures cordially is pointing out that this film will be on sale for you. I was going down a YouTube trailer rabbit hole last night
[00:28:11] and I watched the trailer for Jingle All the Way because I remember that having like a very funny misdirect teaser as a child that they made it look like an action film and then subverted it. But that movie was produced by Chris Columbus who was
[00:28:29] going to direct it and then handed off the reins to Brian Levant who did the Flintstones movies and Beethoven I think. He did Beethoven one, he did both Flintstones, he did Snow Dogs, did a lot of hits. And the trailer uses the very confusing from the director
[00:28:49] of Mrs. Doubtfire and the director of the Flintstones which I think that's not fair play. Double dealing. It's not, it's not but you know. I think if your producer is the director of a big hit film you can't credit them as from the director.
[00:29:08] I think you could do the from the guys or from the people who brought you. If you took it to court they could be like well, this movie is from Christopher Columbus who directed Chris Columbus, not Christopher Columbus. She had an important distinction.
[00:29:23] And you know, so you can't sue us on this and I guess they'd be right. But that kind of crediting makes it sound like Jingle All the Way is Christopher Columbus and Brian Levant doing the five obstructions. That it was a film of two directors,
[00:29:41] two Titans wrestling control at every other scene. That I would like to be cordially invited to see. Yes, that I would watch. Chris, I'll cordially invite you anytime. I'm just realizing on top of all the World War Two talk we were doing at the beginning of this
[00:29:58] the last time you were on a main feed episode, Chris, was Luscaution which is also a World War Two movie. That's right, yes. And when you came on Patreon it was to talk about Rogue One, a film that you wrote. Which is a war movie.
[00:30:11] It is a war movie. I just love war. You become one of our in-house resident war experts. I hope that I will be cordially invited anytime a war springs up. You will, but I'm curious as we now dig into the deep end of The Great Allied Off 2021.
[00:30:30] I'm curious what for you do you find appealing about war films? Like what are the central tenets of a good war film for you? What do you like in the genre? What do you aim to do when you've worked in the genre?
[00:30:42] Well, I guess it's like the heightened emotionality and the sort of the heightened like everything comes into strong contrast, right? Ethically, morally. But I don't, I mean I guess Rogue One is a war movie but other than that I haven't really worked on much.
[00:31:01] Well, I guess Operation Finale. Yeah, I think it's with this greatest generation malarkey where it's like oh you know people had lives then there were much more living on a sort of a higher level of existence because of the stakes involved.
[00:31:17] The stakes are high. I mean it's like sports movies. It's a good thing to build a drama around because there's a game where they'll kill winner and a loser. Like there's a natural denouement there and even if you're not covering the end of a war in your movie
[00:31:33] it's an environment where the stakes are incredibly high and everyone's pushed to their upper limits. Yeah, I guess that's why there aren't many great cricket movies, eh David? That's not true, Lagan. Really? For example, have you never seen Lagan? Oh, Lagan. I have not seen Lagan.
[00:31:50] Isn't it about 20 hours long? Chris, it's three and a half hours. It's three and a half brief hours. It might be four hours. It's 224 minutes long. Chris, please, I know you have children in a family and you don't have 224 minutes to just throw around but please watch Lagan.
[00:32:08] I think it's still on Netflix right now. It's so good. I love it every time I've watched it. I've watched it many times. I threw it on recently for Forky and I was like, look, you know, I know I've talked to you about this movie
[00:32:24] and you always roll your eyes at the, you know, four-hour Bollywood cricket movie but I promise you you're gonna like it five minutes in. She was like, I am totally vibing with this. This rules. We watched it. I think we watched it over two days.
[00:32:37] Like we, we spoke about it. It's the best. I will say I remember, and this is a cherished memory of mine from when I was 10 years old. We played, we were playing cricket in my primary school and because it's a more advanced game,
[00:32:52] like I feel like you don't play it when you're really little and I was really good at it and the teacher in this first game we played said, the American kid is better than you at this. You know, he was like yelling at the Brit. Shame.
[00:33:06] And I was like, I like so proud of the fact that I was one, okay at a sport and two, putting my English. Yeah, well, you could catch one thing. I can catch and throw. That reminds me of my first rugby practice
[00:33:22] when they didn't know I was American and the coach stopped and said, stop there is an imbecile in our midst because I didn't know what a number eight did. Anyway, Allied. Allied. So set in Britain, at least. How would you know that? Well, it's set mostly in Hampstead.
[00:33:46] It's set mostly near where I grew up. A lot of shots of Hampstead Heath. But yeah, Allied. Roberts and Mechis is Griffin. What do you want to estimate? 18th film somewhere around there, right? Yeah, yeah. I think he's made 20 or 21 in total. That's about 18.
[00:34:04] I remember as we've sort of talked about in this late, this final period of Zemeckis that we're covering, the most recent period post-Mocap, he's just constantly entertaining a lot of scripts. There are just a couple times a year you'll hear Zemeckis is circling this. He's interested in this.
[00:34:26] And then something ends up going. I really remember pointedly this being a deadline story where it's like Zemeckis got the script. He loved it. He sent to Kutziar and Pitt. They loved it. They signed on. They start filming in 10 weeks. Like, it was like a rapidly moving train.
[00:34:42] It was just sort of this hot, hot script. Big movie stars attached. Big director attached. Paramount bought it for a lot of money. And they like ran right into it, positioned it. Big holiday season Oscar play. And it just sort of totally disappeared,
[00:34:59] which I think as we've sort of alluded to, partially because it's a movie that weirdly had the opposite mojo of Mr. and Mrs. Smith, right? Like, that's a movie where Brad Pitt's married. He does a movie with one of the most beautiful movie stars in the world.
[00:35:18] And everyone can't get over the idea of like, oh my God, did they sleep together? Did Anne the marriage or not? And it becomes this press hullabaloo. And people thought it was going to doom the movie because historically it does in the sort of classic
[00:35:30] like a proof of life kind of way. Yeah. And then it didn't. It was a major hit. And then this movie, it felt like there was a lot of gossip around it. Like, you know, as soon as they started filming
[00:35:44] and it was very unclear whether there was any merit to it or if it was just the kind of basic gossip construction that happens whenever two incredibly attractive people work together. But it felt like it sullied the movie in some kind of way, not the positive way.
[00:35:59] It didn't help the movie save 155 souls. It didn't land the movie in the East River. Exactly. Exactly. But I also think... It was in the Hudson, Chris, Jesus Christ. You would never try and land a plane to the East River. There's a bunch of bridges. It's too gross.
[00:36:14] And it's too gross. As far as I know, and I sort of dug around about this, it was all... That was all not true. It's just fake. They were like, well, it has to be this, right? Right. And I think it just was not.
[00:36:29] I mean, you know, their marriage fell apart for more ordinary personal dysfunctional reasons. And Kuttyar is still with Kanae. I mean, her marriage is still intact. Right. And as Chris was about to say, they have no chemistry in this movie.
[00:36:43] You don't seem to like each other that much. I would say... And I look... All right, look, Griffin. Look. Okay? I got it. I'm gonna say, you know, you liked this movie when it came out and you famously nominated it for best screenplay at the Blankies. Yes, sir.
[00:37:00] And I scoffed. You went, what? I went, what are you talking about? Allied for screenplay? I'll stand by the fact that I don't know if the screenplay... But we'll talk about that. But when I saw this movie at the time, it was kind of bummed out by it.
[00:37:16] I thought it was a little flat. Trump had just gotten elected. I didn't want to deal with it. So you were like too amped. You were too excited. It was kind of... I just wanted to be outside, you know, waving flags. With the people. Yeah. No.
[00:37:32] And so I feel like I probably didn't give this movie a fair shake. I want to say there's a lot I admire about it. I think it's interesting. I enjoyed watching it again. I don't know that I came around to like, Allied triumphalism, but I liked it.
[00:37:51] But did you get ready for it? Did you get ready for it? Did you get ready? For the Allied of your life. Sorry. Just kidding. I believe the tagline was, the enemy is listening. Which is fine. That's inspiring. Right. But Pit and Cotyard, I don't know.
[00:38:15] They're not jumping off the screen to me. Two beautiful people. Two wonderful to look at folks. Look, I'm going to try probably in vain to map my argument for this, but it is pointedly, I think a very bottled movie. Right?
[00:38:29] Which is one of the things that I think works against it. As you say, the idea of doing a classical World War II movie is to be able to use these operatic emotions in front of a grand sort of backdrop,
[00:38:42] you know, with these high stakes and high passions and high tensions and all of that. And this is very much a movie about emotionally reserved people, which puts it at odds with the sort of genre that it is homaging.
[00:38:56] And the era of films, I would say it is homaging. But I also think this is a movie that is so much about not being able to read people and to a certain degree, rather than making this more of a tragic romance where the first 40 minutes are just,
[00:39:15] oh my God, can you believe the fucking tension between these two people? The chemistry is off the charts. And then the rest of the movie becomes the tragedy of look at how it all falls apart. I think it's deliberate. You can argue whether it works against
[00:39:30] the ultimate goals of the movie. It is deliberate that they are never explosively sort of electric with each other because the movie is about never being able to totally gauge where they stand. Well, there is that weird childbirth scene. Wild. Holy shit. Bananas.
[00:39:57] So for those not familiar with this movie, Maryam Kojai gives birth during the Blitz while the hospital is being hit by bombs. They're rolling her out on a bed. She births their child on the streets. Yes, and she's like, look at me. This is me before God.
[00:40:15] Like she has a whole monologue. Which definitely seems a bit... Actually in retrospect. Absolutely. That's the moment. Shania Redflag. But yes, also, I think she says she's part of the Assassin's Creed in that monologue. She's spilling a lot of beans in that monologue.
[00:40:33] You have to find the apple. And the deanimus. She also pulls Brad Pitt close to her right after the baby is born and starts sharing a lot of 9-11 theory she has. But it is in retrospect, yes. It is an absolute warning sign
[00:40:48] that the first thing she can say during a bomb strike after giving birth to a child is like, look at me. I'm too exhausted to lie now. Yeah. Like that's essentially what she's saying. Like you can trust me because I don't have the energy
[00:41:04] to pretend to be someone else right now. Well, this is... I mean, it made me think about childbirth scenes in general in movies which I think are never ever realistic. There's a trope in a series of tropes. It strikes me it's so impossible to actually realistically depict childbirth
[00:41:21] that instead they just go by the book most of the time. This is how we do this in Hollywood so we're just gonna do this. This is going deep but my wife had an emergency C-section for our first baby,
[00:41:35] which was in London by the way at John Lizzie's hospital. Birthday ward. And although that was very stressful I also was secretly relieved I didn't have to go through the movie scene where your loved one is screaming in pain. Right. The 24 plus hours perhaps. Yes.
[00:41:58] So what is that amount to? Is that I'd only been told by movies like how... which childbirth is like. It would seem bad enough but I'm sure it's actually much more painful. And also of course the baby is always better looking than a baby is.
[00:42:12] When they hand Mary on coach the other baby and they're like, oh that baby's eight months old. Yeah, okay you put some goo on it but... Yeah, Hollywood has some sort of unfair casting processes when it comes to newborn infants. They definitely...
[00:42:26] It must be such a pain in the ass to corral a newborn. Have you ever had to deal with baby Chris? Did they have to audition? Did they have to send a tape in? Of course. Or send photos, yeah or video or whatever.
[00:42:39] But you know your audition is actually the birth of the child because then you want to get as close as possible to what the baby's like as a newborn. That's like the first camera test. Right, that's like the old Hollywood
[00:42:49] like they pay to put you on a camera test to shop around. Yeah. Yeah, what was the famously bad CGI baby? Was it American Sniper I think? American Sniper has a plastic baby. Right, it's just like a straight up doll.
[00:43:07] Yeah, then like Bradley Cooper drops at one point and nobody even notices. It's not that bad but it's pretty bad. Right, later Twilight films. You were pre-baby. I was pre-baby. There's a very odd CGI baby which is Renesme. Show some respect please, David.
[00:43:28] Put some respect on the name. It's just a name I struggled. Renesme, Renesme. Well it's obvious it's a combination of Renesme and obviously they sent me, of course. Very obvious. But that one's an odd example because they built the practical baby first and then they made it CGI
[00:43:42] and you see this CGI baby and you go that thing is so frightening looking why wouldn't they use the practical? And then you see the practical baby. 80 times more frightening. The most cursed thing ever designed for a movie. The practical baby actually created the conjuring universe
[00:43:58] just when it was created. That all came out of that baby. I remember I got, speaking of that particular movie, I got a call about because I was kind of one and done on the Twilight saga and they called me about the next movie
[00:44:14] just to say like there's this scene where maybe you could sort of help us with the writing of it. Is there a way that you could make it like less kind of scary and creepy that Jacob immediately falls in love with this baby? And I said no.
[00:44:36] That's just a tough needle to thread. Guess what, that's an impossible concept to get across. The only medium in which that could possibly work is in a novel in which people can interpret it in their mind and adjust it however is least objectionable for them.
[00:44:52] You cannot visually put that on screen. It is such an absolute breaking point for the franchise. Huge, the tallest order. It's like a Ben Hosley Night Eggs rich person sized order. 15 feet tall. Well listen, no that's going to be fine. Sorry, you're wrong. That'll be fine. The Hobbits
[00:45:14] they've perfected it at this point right? You just saying the Hobbits that's all we needed to hear. They perfected it, you're right. So Allied, guys let's talk Allied. Allied is a 2016 war thriller made by Robertson Mechers. It was written by Stephen Knight
[00:45:31] who I would say is one of Hollywood's most unpredictable screenwriters. Can we talk about Night? Can we unpack Night? Can we have a hard day's night for a moment? Yes. He's very prolific. Very prolific. And when Serenity came out his third film as a director
[00:45:49] which I feel like was one of the more clowned upon films last year or 2019 but a film that I've always defended for its bug nuts nature. It's ambitious. It's a wild ambitious movie. I would say it makes some mistakes but I like the ideas
[00:46:09] or what he's going for. I don't disagree. I will give you Serenity makes some mistakes. But it's a movie I ultimately think you have to applaud. It's wild ambition in many ways.
[00:46:25] And also a movie where I've always contended to play a lot better if you know the ending going in. But when that movie came out someone on the Blank Check subreddit posted the argument for doing a Stephen Knight series at some point and saying like he's got
[00:46:39] one of the weirdest blank checks ever and that his guarantor is Who Wants to be a Millionaire and I was like did Stephen Knight win Who Wants to be a Millionaire? Did he sell finance a movie? He created it. Stephen Knight created the British version
[00:46:55] of Who Wants to be a Millionaire and then became a very acclaimed Tony screenwriter and then he wrote fucking dirty pretty things and got nominated for an Oscar and has had this like strong career working a lot a lot of big directors directed three movies of his own.
[00:47:09] Do you want to know what the initial title for Who Wants to be a Millionaire was before they came up with that very effective title I would say? That's a million dollars, ain't it? For one they're competing for a million pounds
[00:47:23] but also it was going to be called Cash Mountain Oh shit, that's better Are you ready to climb up? Are you ready to climb up? Cash Mountain? Right, right. Anyway That's like a very 30 rock title So presumably there would have been like a pyramid of cash
[00:47:45] Yeah, there would have been some pyramid motif It would be addressing like a Mound Near he would have like ropes Right, rather than the classic graphic of the amounts getting crossed off, instead the graphic would be a money pyramid and a little Mount Near with a pickaxe
[00:48:03] and he would just get higher and higher and higher doesn't get the money Yeah, go to the eating dollars Cash Mountain But yeah, his big breakthrough was that he wrote Dirty Pretty Things which is a very good movie and got a surprise screenplay
[00:48:19] nomination at the Oscars for it which you know, that's like it's got no other nominations that movie kind of, you know, snuck in I like Eastern Promises a lot There's another early screenplay of his Good movie I'm really a fan of
[00:48:37] Then he kind of goes away for a while He directs a movie Hummingbird that doesn't really exist with Jason Statham Right, but he comes back that year Hummingbird, he also writes Close Circuit which doesn't exist as well, the Eric Conner CCTV thriller He does wrote and directed Locke
[00:48:55] which is wonderful They came out the same year That's wild And Ben, he creates Peaky Blinders Good show Which you know, the drama of course 19 teens Birmingham gangsters that everybody loves that I think is like still on the air, it's one of those shows that's never gonna die
[00:49:19] This guy has like two careers jabbed into one, this reminds me of one I realized that I thought Bre Larson and Alison Bre were the same person and I was like wow, she's got such a huge career In the time, yeah But then you look at this
[00:49:33] This next run post Locke Locke is like a movie that makes his mark as a director and you go like oh maybe now he's gonna transition to being more of a director writing his own material scrappy little actor based indie films like this
[00:49:47] And then he just does like 100 foot journey, right Disney Lassie Hallstrom cooking movie He does Seventh Son which is like a disastrous universal franchise starter, Pawn's sacrifice The Ed Zwick Bobby Fisher movie, he does Burnt which was his script forever and for 10 years that was like
[00:50:07] this script where like Fincher almost made it with Keanu Reeves, there were always like big pairings and then it finally gets made with Bradley Cooper John Wells doesn't exist I would argue though not a bad script it has some spicy scenes, clearly you see it you're like
[00:50:23] yeah I could see how this was a hot thing, like you could see how directors were into this. Everyone considered making it and then Allied which is like here's my spec script, bidding war three major talents come up Paramount Pictures gives it a big opening
[00:50:37] weekend and it disappears and then since then yeah weird like he writes the girl in the spiders web, he directs Serenity and he is now of course writing Lockdown the Doug Liman COVID based Heist movie starring Anne Hathaway, Chewatelle Edge for David Sims and Olivia Craig
[00:50:57] David Sims is in there, of course you're forgetting that he created C, the Apple TV drama set in the future where everyone's blind that Jason Momoa was in this guy he's working, I want his writer drugs so that I can do his stuff
[00:51:17] I'm sorry I also have to mention yes Tabu he created the British Victorian crime drama Tabu with Tom Hardy and Tom Hardy's father Chips Hardy Chips Hardy, but also he wrote the angry Scrooge Who Fox version of Christmas Carol last year yes Guy Pierce was I believe right
[00:51:41] was Scrooge, yes it's a very odd career yes, man works Allied which he is solely credited for and I'm seeing here on Wikipedia that he got a blankie nomination for writing incredible is based on like a story he heard
[00:51:59] like it's like one of those things where he's like oh you know like a friend of my dad's told me this story no my aunt of like a guy who fell for a French woman and they you know he knocked her up and she gave
[00:52:11] birth and then found out she was German spy it's not like this is a concrete story that there is documentation of it's just like a crazy story from the war that he heard and it definitely feels like it is structured like a fable in that
[00:52:29] way and I have to make it clear when I when I laud this films screenplay it is mostly that I find the structure of it incredibly interesting I like the structural idea of it yeah I understand others do not like it as much as me but structurally
[00:52:47] this movie has some interesting ideas I write off the bat if we're digging into the meat I love that this movie spends ostensibly 45 minutes on the epilogue right that there's a lot of time where you're essentially embedded in the early stages of this relationship and it's like
[00:53:07] an ice cold open right I mean you have this weird like we've talked about most of mechus movies open with complicated tracking shot getting you into an environment or getting you out of an environment and giving you all the details of the characters life before anyone speaks
[00:53:23] and this movie has like 10 minutes before a word is really kind of uttered and it's it just opens with like black white title cards and then Brad Pitt lands a parachute in the middle of the desert in the middle of nowhere opening shot his feet
[00:53:43] floating into the screen right just sort of silence no score you're in Lawrence of Arabia territory for about 3 minutes right this guy has literally just dropped into the movie into the middle of the desert in the dunes and then a car
[00:53:59] drives up and they sort of have the silent exchange and handoff of objects and there's something kind of cool to like starting with no information you know other than that's a weird entrance and then the only thing he's told is your wife will be wearing a purple dress
[00:54:15] and it's basically like show up you know know how to act and you're gonna have to kiss a beautiful woman and take her upstairs essentially right great great I love of course this I like Chris a couple things one I feel like you have not
[00:54:31] actually weighed in with your take on allied and two what do you think of the opening well so first of all disclaimer I'm in the tank for Bobby Z I'm working with him now and not just that's true I like him very much so you're currently
[00:54:49] whittling a screenplay for him is that fair to say I am and I'm also I'm producing him as well so I'm all around him I'm all up and I'm so... you're trying to turn the screenplay into a real movie? indeedy it is called Pinocchio it is about
[00:55:05] a boy no a puppet who wants to be a boy oh interesting that's an interesting twist a boy who wants to be a puppet who can remember it's an original idea that I came up with your aunt told you about it so my take on it
[00:55:19] is partly informed by my liking of the man also informed by the fact that my dad was OSS and so I grew up with him watching World War II movies and his constant critique of these movies and so I've got him in my head kind of you know
[00:55:37] it was just no fun actually watching a World War II movie with him because he'd be like that is not the right divisional lens and for insignia for that cancer division and stuff but I do also really like the opening shot of this I like the opening moments
[00:55:57] I do think it's quite old fashioned in as much as the I think the modern mind says but why did they wait to tell him what she was going to wear until he got into the car like did they not brief him at all
[00:56:13] in advance like wouldn't it have been more sort of technologically actually but interestingly I guess a lot of this movie depends on the fact that nobody has the internet so you can't google somebody's picture I was going to say this too
[00:56:27] and it makes perfect sense that this is a movie based on a story he kind of heard from somebody but this is very much a movie that operates from top to tail in the world of movie logic pretty much every decision
[00:56:41] that everyone makes and how they go about it and the processes that are presented to them are all movie logic where you have to accept that that's the way it's happening because that's the way the movie wrote it wouldn't you go meet your newfound wife
[00:56:57] in private first and then she'd give you a little bit of a pep talk ahead of time and then you'd go to the cafe or the roof afterwards everything only happens the way it does because it would make for in theory a more engaging scene in a movie
[00:57:13] right? I mean you're absolutely correct they would meet in private somewhere even if they have to go to that restaurant they would find a way to have her step out or meet him in the bathroom or some shit but instead you get this weird disorienting cold open
[00:57:25] and you get him walking in eyeballing the silent exchange of the two of them looking at each other and having to sort of go like this is now an arranged marriage we're now jumping into the deep end we're in the world of stylish choices and
[00:57:39] and also like heavily elusive to older movies she literally says I've loved you since Casablanca right at one point pretty early on and so this is the world we're in and if you can get ready for that ride get ready for the ride of your life
[00:57:55] I would say I am trying to get ready for the ride of my life of course this is the other thing I feel like we need to mention I say right off the bat one hour into the episode but right off the bat
[00:58:07] I think we need to acknowledge I feel like a lot of the complaints I hear about this movie stem from the visual look that he is making a very old fashioned movie that it operates on this sort of like classic kind of forties romantic movie logic
[00:58:23] but he's using a lot of CGI and obviously the film surrounding this are more like classics a mech as he showcase movies right like the walk is pretty much a movie built entirely around we can reconstruct this thing
[00:58:37] and recreate this thing JD has talked about it at length about how that movie is clearly trying to work past a sort of literal evocation of a real space and more sort of story book kind of dream like representation of a place
[00:58:53] and I feel like he is using digital technology in this movie not just how much digital backdrop or either is clear like you know color correction and even just their faces look a little mo cap at times it is a movie where it feels like he's using CGI
[00:59:09] like how do I even put this I feel like he's weirdly using CGI to approximate old fashioned visual trickery like it's like the way he is using virtual backdrops in this is like it's rear projection or like it's matte paintings so the same way that the way
[00:59:29] he is sort of touching up their faces feels like it's gauze on the lens or something you know? It is painterly you might say but like you know give me a little grain like I know this is the most boring complaint these days but like
[00:59:45] if you're making a throwback movie I would enjoy some you know it looks a little flat and digital sometimes that's not the end of the world these are handsome people I like to look at them I think the first act of this movie is pretty
[01:00:05] arresting like I basically dig it you know like all this stuff is just good I like how stripped away it is stripped you know stripped down it is I like that we you know we barely need to know their names we barely need to know if anything
[01:00:21] they're saying is real I like that the mission is pretty direct we're gonna shoot that guy you know like I like Casablanca who doesn't I came here for the waters The first act of this movie is like the middle of cast away
[01:00:37] in how sort of stripped down and sparse it is the tools he's using he's a guy who's been known to use a lot of flash and use a lot of sharp dialogue yeah the dialogue not tippy top I think I can't disagree it's a thing gets a little
[01:01:01] ropey at times but I also think the movie wisely does not rely on dialogue too much it doesn't require a lot of looks Brad doesn't have to speak too much French yes it's not a strong suit it's a look movie for me
[01:01:21] I mean we like when we did Manchurian candidate on the show and talked about like the value of Demi doing a Manchurian candidate remake is his sort of sort of subjective camera right his whole visual style of looking character straight in the eye when they speak
[01:01:39] works very well with that material because it's a movie about trying to look someone in the eyes and figure out whether or not they're on the level whether or not they can be trusted which version of a person you're talking to this and that I think the way
[01:01:51] he's using movie stardom in this movie and I'm not saying this is like a meta movie about movie stardom but he pointedly cast two ginormous stars right and two people who have their own sorts of chemistry I do think it is a movie about
[01:02:09] performance in a way that is aided by having two people who are that innately arresting even in a movie that is trying to tamper down their natural charisma because so much of the movie is just like I don't know she really seems like she's on the level
[01:02:27] right but then also this is Maryon Kutiyar she can play whatever you ask her to play you know yes I think she's wildly unconvinced I mean when I interviewed him he you know Zemeckis was very much like she was the only choice and like
[01:02:47] she has the look of an old European movie star right I mean she's what helped her endure in Hollywood I think after she won this sort of early surprise Oscar I don't know what to say about her performance in this movie does she act
[01:03:10] as well in English as she does in French I think she definitely acts better in French I think she's a good English language actor but I think she's certainly next level in France in French usually when she's in an English language movie like the way Nolan
[01:03:28] uses her or what are some other come on give me public enemies she is good at playing mystery women these very dramatic leap off the screen figures and then you see her in Rustin Bone or you see her in Two Days One Night very long engagement
[01:03:54] and you're like oh my god this is such a natural human performance and you rarely see that from her in a Hollywood movie now is that because Hollywood just looks at her and is like oh my god Vava Vom like you know
[01:04:08] possibly yes I think there's some degree of that I mean certainly like you know Nolan kind of uses her in that kind of classical bombshell sort of way right not nine is another one right but I'm looking at other things here
[01:04:20] too and it's like the immigrant is sort of asking her to play old Golden Age movie star she's great in that that's that's the right vibe because that's like an old fashion movie she's playing an immigrant obviously so you know like you know it makes sense
[01:04:36] that her faculty with English is is not much you know like that's yeah that's a great performance she's absolutely one of my favorite actors alive even if she's not someone where I'm like oh she's given my five favorite performances of the last decade
[01:04:50] she's someone I always find very engaging and I think she has a really strong command over her screen presence and as you said she can do things like Rustin Bone and and two days one night where she's like speaking in her own language very stripped down very elemental
[01:05:08] very behavioral or she can be used in that Assassin's Creed way where she's like what do you want me to play you want me to play like an ingenue of M fatale I'm like mystery woman who's classy and makes your exposition sound less silly done you know
[01:05:22] and this movie sort of the midpoint between those things I mean obviously more in the classical bent but you also get another thing I like about this movie is that a lot of it takes place in other languages like that is a threshold
[01:05:38] that I thought was really going to be broken after and glorious bastards where that movie was such a big hit and like probably one third of that movie is in English and mainstream American audiences went and supported a movie that is like largely spoken in German and French
[01:05:56] and I thought like oh finally now if people are making period films in foreign countries they will actually make the film where people are swapping going back and forth between a couple languages speaking natively as they would in any given scene it like for example
[01:06:12] the walk is a terrible example of French people who all only speak English to each other because they want the movie to play in America and the justification in the script is oh come on let's speak in English I'm trying to improve my English right
[01:06:28] that actually when they said that I completely understood and that made everything make sense right but I like that this movie it's like you get a lot of scenes of her speaking in French him speaking less well in French it allows her a certain comfort curiously she speaks
[01:06:44] she speaks English to the German attache the embassy that's where the rule I guess is just thrown out the window where it's like look let's just all speak Galactic basic here if we've got three languages in the room but actually they sort of they complicate
[01:07:04] matters as well by saying oh Brad Pitt doesn't speak English he only speaks German so curiously they're speaking English seemingly out of capris to mean right yeah right that's how they get away with that and we pit Brad Pitt sure you know I would say 2011 he has this
[01:07:32] dynamite year that's sort of the you know the pinnacle of this whole era of his career that's been so exciting where he has the tree of life he has money ball and of course he has happy feet too that's just three great performances
[01:07:46] yeah he should have won three Oscars that year exactly best actor best actor in an animated film best supporting krill yeah and then after that you know he's still like I would just say he enters this phase where he's just a raggedy guy
[01:08:04] so you got like killing him softly World War Z 12 years of slave the counselor fury this by the sea the big short this is this whole period where even when even in World War Z in this where he's a marquee idol he's kind of like quiet and grumpy
[01:08:24] and sort of mumbling and then like also just seems very drawn to playing these like really raggedy guys in supporting roles popping up and stuff being weird you know it feels like he's working through stuff obviously his marriage was falling apart
[01:08:40] it turns out you know but go ahead sorry that's a part of it I think it was also like him finding his real zone as an actor as you said like 2011 was like his most successful year creatively right and he's starting
[01:08:54] to find the roles he can fit into as well but I also think there's a narrative that we see a lot talking about movie stars on this show where guys who are just like otherworldly beautiful kind of can't wait
[01:09:08] until they start losing a little bit of their pretty you know for a guy like Brad Pitt I think he views like the wrinkle starting to come in as a gift because they can still make a movie like Allied where you give him an
[01:09:20] $80,000 haircut in a perfect suit and he looks great and he's got the cheekbones but he is now a little more weary you know and so it allows him to play savory people unsavory people rather but it also allows him to play sort of broken down former golden boys
[01:09:38] which I think as you said he just runs with he runs with he wants to play people who have some kind of acts to grind chip on their shoulder something they're holding on too tightly you know yeah yeah I think like when he does once upon a time
[01:09:54] in Hollywood he actually sort of emerges from that a bit I mean he still has the broken downness but he's having fun with it as opposed to something a bit medicinal about when a guy's like yeah now I'm going to play the broken man
[01:10:08] and it's going to be really sad just his performance in Allied does feel like he's like I'm going to tie both arms behind my back and see how I do I don't actually think this is a bad performance I think at the end it is deeply
[01:10:24] felt what's happening to him you know I don't think you know it does not feel like he's like sleepwalking through this movie in the slightest I agree but it is interesting how insanely reserved he is for so much you know how right like how
[01:10:38] resistant he is to turn on the charm button yes you hire a movie star with such innate charm pointedly to say now can you actively work to suppress all of that charm I only want the bare minimum charm coming through just to keep people engaged
[01:10:52] watching you on screen my my I think I've said this before in the show but my sister who is nine years younger than I and so she kind of came of age as pit was transitioning into his clenched period when I
[01:11:06] took her to see once on time in Hollywood she turned me she went like I didn't know Brad Pitt was such a movie star and it was such a funny thing where it's like she's grown up with Brad Pitt being one of the dominant
[01:11:18] like movie stars in the culture and she's seen a handful of his movies but they were always him playing kind of angry clenched or closed off or bottled in some sort of way and that was like the first movie she had seen in her lifetime having not seen
[01:11:32] the oceans movies too young for them that that where she was like oh he can be this charming like he can look this good and be this alluring and yeah it's like that's why he slammed dunk won the Oscar because people were just like
[01:11:46] okay now he's like taking everything he's learned from his serious ojern and brought it back to him being like the sexiest dude in the world and this movie allied is absolutely in like the dead center Nadia of those two points what are your thoughts Chris my pit thoughts
[01:12:04] I will pit stop I think yeah I think he's very intent on not having fun here and maybe that makes it less fun for us yes this is not really a fun movie no beginning is a little fun and then after that it's surprisingly on fun I like
[01:12:24] how sad this movie is I could never argue it's fun I don't think it's a corker it's sad well what I mean yes Mary on coachy are shoots herself in the head in front of her husband but is that really it does happen and don't forget her baby
[01:12:44] yeah baby's right there but it's happy because he's gonna be okay yeah he's gonna go to medicine have film making wise this does feel like him using the tools from cast away in a very different type of story but it has that sort of inherent
[01:13:05] loneliness to it that I think cast away has for a guy who's so much about energy right like some mech is such a kinetic filmmaker in whatever genre he's working in and his movies are usually very fast-paced and are about
[01:13:19] the sort of back and forth between the performers whether they're comedies or dramas or action films like he's a guy who keeps everything moving and this like starts out as I said where cast away takes an hour to get to of just everything
[01:13:35] being really drawn out and these guys these two main actors who are sort of like holding back all the natural charm which I think is deliberate you can argue it works against the movies best interest but because these are two people who like
[01:13:49] they keep saying in the movie like don't get emotional you know like don't let your emotions get involved here you're seeing two people you're meeting them cold you don't know whether or not to take them on the level and all you know is that these people
[01:14:01] it's been their entire life faking relationships so I think to some degree this movie is about like the uneasiness of being in a serious relationship with somebody the sort of inherent trust you have to commit to I'll never fully know another person and this is like
[01:14:21] the nightmare scenario of it right for a while for about an hour of it it feels like it's a movie about infidelity right and within a marriage right and then they are it turns out allied by the end of it but um huh yeah actually
[01:14:39] I just want to yeah I got it I just want to interject that there was there's a scene in which uh Marion Cochiar's character is kind of testing the metal of Brad Pitt's character by slowly unbuttoning her her blouse lower and lower and I just kept on imagining
[01:14:59] it would also work if Brad Pitt were doing yeah absolutely just slowly revealing his pectoral muscles yeah absolutely I also like that Brad Brad Pitt's reaction to that is Jesus he's not like ah you're playing a good game and I
[01:15:17] can see what you're doing there like he's just like alright god my god you're unbuttoning your shirt at lunch what am I supposed to do here I'm having an egg I love all the weird formality of that like I like that this movie isn't
[01:15:33] it look it is obviously not realistic but I think on an aesthetic level it gets at some kind of interesting truth about what it must be like to be a career spy right and the rooftop scenes are so fascinating to me because they don't
[01:15:51] have the kind of megawatt sexual chemistry that you would expect from this movie with these two actors what they have is them having very banal sort of formal conversations about like shop talk while she also directs him in real time through how to
[01:16:09] seem like they're a sexually active couple like that they're exchanging war stories while also she's like and now you have to like kiss me here this person's watching this and I like that kind of stuff the rules of pretending to be a fake couple obviously the Americans
[01:16:27] that was about a real couple but you know like I like the I like spy rules that's fun like I like the scene I love August deal I'm sure you guys agree obviously he's an glorious bastard he's in the Daniel Bruhl zone of like incredibly
[01:16:45] talented German actor who does all this wonderful stuff in his home country and any time Hollywood comes calling he's like is the film set in World War two what's the script called it called the Nazi get shot in the face so is that my role
[01:16:59] yeah okay it's actually very generous that Malik let him play like the conscientious objector because otherwise if he appears in the American film he's almost always playing like Nazi asshole number three right exactly he recently played Karl Marx shout out to that movie the young Karl Marx
[01:17:17] but he's great I like this scene that scene the right you guys agree you know the right down the formula for phosphate for me right now formula for phosphate I was thinking like right does he buy it or not yeah he doesn't it's never paid off
[01:17:35] and I think it might have been here's how I would have put a button on that scene he would have just said well I don't even know what it is but okay that's the fork and I was just like there's no way this guy knows what the
[01:17:49] formula for phosphate is and she's like well maybe he looked it up before head right he knew a phosphate guy who was coming through I don't know I just Wikipedia did I have in Cartel right here of course not Nazi the right has all the technology
[01:18:09] but and then the the assassination scene rules like I pit and Cody are just murdering people with machine guns like yeah like a fancy party that that scene where she that moment where she points her gun at the the nice society lady you know
[01:18:25] at the ladies like you know like that's great you know spy stuff great love it but let's mention before that is them having sex in the car like the tension slowly building between these two very bottle people and then they
[01:18:41] go out to the desert they're in the car and she sort of like throws out like we could just die tomorrow I would have driven back to a nice bed but I guess yeah man that looks really uncomfortable like where there's a busted car yeah when I was
[01:18:59] younger very aware that I'm still a young man even though I feel like I'm 87 when I was younger I think as someone who grew up in New York City I used to very much fetishize the idea of having sex in a car because it seemed
[01:19:11] like such a right of passage like such a suburban teenager thing like that's your that's your space that's your domain the car you got to use the car and now I watched something like this and I just can't stop thinking about how uncomfortable it would
[01:19:27] just makes me feel like it don't work right right especially someone with a fucked back I'm just like there's no way I could enjoy that not a fuckback a fucked back I guess I should make that clear I am not the fuckback of Notre Dame
[01:19:41] I do have a fucked back I'm trying to think and I'm sure we've talked about this over the course of this miniseries but not a lot of sex scenes in some Mecca movies no that's another much like Spielberg it's not a topic of human interest there's a diffidence
[01:19:57] you're seeing some Brad Tush we do see a lot of Brad's buttocks there's only two of them I mean not that many of them a lot of them they're out of bunch look it's a thing that's come up that like certainly because Zemeckis and Spielberg are so linked
[01:20:17] Zemeckis is inherently a lot hornier than Spielberg who feels like he goes out of his way to sort of avoid sex in his movies to some degree and then when he does it in Munich everyone clowns on it to this day and Zemeckis does not often
[01:20:31] have like over sex scenes but there is certainly a greater strain of sexuality in his movies but this feels like the one movie that is like kind of sexual in an adult way to me there's this weird moment in the
[01:20:45] party isn't there where there's like this kind of the World War II version of a bro asking these two girls to make out yeah and when they're like clearing everyone out of the party a pit opens up a closet and there's like a topless woman
[01:20:59] being chased by a guy Benny Hill style that she asked him to go upstairs to check to see if anyone's fucking in the baby's room like it's certainly and then you have Lizzie Kaplan as Brad Pitt's incredibly horny lesbian sister yes who's an actress who's almost
[01:21:19] 20 years younger than Brad Pitt but maybe they have different moms I don't know but uh really different moms so I talked so when I interviewed Zemeckis for this movie he was grumpy not with me just I don't know how to grumpy five
[01:21:35] I think he's one of these guys who doesn't want to give too much to the press it feels like that's a thrill line up and also like he's been doing this for so long he doesn't need to talk to some pipsqueak
[01:21:45] but also he's more of a film spotting fan he was like angry that he was talking to you of course but I remember we talked a lot about the whole like under sung thing especially in old movies of like yeah Britain in the 40s those people were
[01:22:05] going crazy they were like the world could end were being bombed all the time yeah they were drinking like crazy they were all having affairs obviously lots of men were overseas as well so like a lot of marriages
[01:22:17] had been like thrown to call you know like all kinds of crazies it was happening they were doing things like cocaine you know and like it was just a wilder time than this you listening to swing music they were listening to swing music and they were having parties
[01:22:31] and like you know you think of mrs. Miniver and these great British war movies where it's like the stiff upper lip Brits and all that but yeah it was the apocalypse like you know why wouldn't people be going crazy yeah yeah there's something striking about seeing like
[01:22:47] his office superior doing lines in the background of a party in which people are openly fucking but that feels like I mean it's the it's the weird tension of this movie that it's like he's doing this pastiche thing but then he's also trying to deflate
[01:23:01] it a little bit as well by having them use more modern language and showing that sort of like debauchery but it's shot in a quite in quite a sort of conservative manner right that's the interesting is it's not like you don't have like foreground somebody doing blow
[01:23:15] kind of in a weird like color timed kind of thing it's absolutely his least flashy movie and the flashiest shots are still locked down by and large like anytime he does some sort of fancy framing in the movie it's a pretty still
[01:23:33] you know shot held for a while he's just doing something interesting with the composition there's a great either split diopter or fake split diopter shot where Brad Pitt is in bed being suspicious of of Mary and Coach Yarn she's by a window and it's two different totally
[01:23:51] different planes of focus it's quite cool I think he also does a sort of reprise of his contact shot of the mirror shot where you can't see that the camera with Brad as well there's some there's some cool stuff it's a less less ostentation it's less showy
[01:24:07] right it's an un-showy movie but let's just say the sex scene in the car is kind of like a day new month to this first movie right like the first 45 minutes are kind of their own movie and you could very much see
[01:24:21] that being the only story they wanted to tell two people assigned to a mission as spies playing a married couple they sort of fall in love they execute the mission and then they go their separate ways right that could very much be the movie but instead
[01:24:35] you have this sort of you know this big day new month this scene that first of all because it's alarming to see this kind of sex scene in a certain way especially in a movie that does feel this old timey and old
[01:24:45] fashioned you know it's not like copious nudity but you're seeing Brad Pitt's butt you know you're seeing those pie thrusts and there's also like Mad Max fucking sandstorm happening outside the window there is a sandstorm well the sandstorm feels like it's summoned by their sexual activity right it's
[01:25:03] so operatic right this one moment is so operatic and then they go back to being like pretty professional like you cut to them you know getting ready in the car you know briefing each other and they're making like little flirty comments but to some
[01:25:17] degree these are two characters who have been trained to like sever their emotions right they have learned how to become somewhat sociopathic well I think he but he's gone a bit gargoyle about that point there right doesn't he say it says twice you know
[01:25:29] to a magnifique right sure but he's saying it in his Brad Pitt like clenched away you know to a magnifique yeah then they show up with the guns they mow everyone down and then the film sort of jumps ahead to them being
[01:25:45] you know him saying let's let's go to London together I'm gonna take you to London we're gonna start over right okay and so here's the thing okay so as you say this movie kind of has a long epilogue right that's partly because prologue it's second
[01:25:57] long prologue and a long epilogue though correct right like because the epilogue is another thing but right the middle of this movie is like flash forward and there's that birth scene that we talked about but basically it's flash forward he's married now they have a kid
[01:26:11] they live in Hampstead the war's still on but they have this nice domestic life his sister's there blah blah blah this is now like at the 45 minute part he pretty much resets and now does the standard Zemeckis opening where you like go
[01:26:25] through the house and see all the pictures on the wall yeah yeah right now now you're in the the net neutral right you're at the comfort the home base Simon McBurney and Jared Harris playing British functionaries who are a little weird I wrote down in my
[01:26:41] notes as soon as I saw Simon's face oh shit Simon McBurney skull-duggery he's not there to deliver good news it's true drink boy first of all happy birthday some queasy cynicism is about to hit it like okay they have this like beautiful domestic life
[01:27:03] right this a dillic house they hang out with his sister they got this beautiful baby born in the most extreme circumstances ever and then you see like Brad Pitt's got a pretty normal like office job now he's a desk a desk guy he works
[01:27:17] right he works at OSS or V-section or wherever and they give him the heads up he thinks it's going to be a promotion okay so Simon McBurney is like your wife Maryam Boesiger is a spy as far as we're you know we were we're getting information
[01:27:31] she stole this woman's identity she's a German spy you have to run a blue dye operation where you write some you know info down and we see if it gets passed along you know classic thing right and then is introduced the craziest rule of all spying where
[01:27:51] if your significant other proves to be a spy you must kill him or her with your own hands or you get killed which is kind of like you have to do this or else you have to kill the mother of your child
[01:28:05] or else will know you're in on it too whatever it's like a looper they try to slip that curveball past us right you don't close your own loop yes but this is not the movie's fault but Maryam Cotillard what he should now do is
[01:28:25] do the blue dye operation and sit and wait and find out yeah right right and instead of course the movie needs you know some stuff to happen so he starts acting like a fucking maniac and running all over town being like have you seen this woman
[01:28:41] like is she the real Maryam Boesiger and handing pictures to pilots and then actually flying to flyers on ramp posts going to France himself and interrogating a vomiting drunkard on a surplish prison break which is so funny that he barfs first I love that
[01:29:01] where he's like is this her and he's like yeah yeah that's her she's great excuse me while I barf I can't see a thing she had beautiful yellow eyes he's like no she has blue eyes blue whatever may I play devil's advocate go ahead
[01:29:21] this is where I think to some degree not to psychoanalyze the man's life but we talked about how cast away and what lies beneath are the two movies that come right after his divorce and in the same way you know most directors who have robust careers
[01:29:37] start to check off certain genre boxes of the types of films they want to make or the types of actors they want to work with very often in a long enough career if a director goes through a divorce there's a movie that is very clearly the devil's movie
[01:29:49] right there's a film that feels like and we don't know the details right we don't know the details of his divorce it's not super public he remarries quickly he worked with his first wife he now works with his current wife who knows right but cast
[01:30:03] away and what lies beneath are films that feel like obvious divorce movies right like cast away as a man being forced on island by himself to figure out who he is and what lies beneath is a movie about like the weird tension of a marriage
[01:30:15] that's been going on for a long time and reckoning with what they sacrifice to get to that point and this feels like a sort of a much more generous post-divorce movie about just trying to figure out like why relationships end on an allegorical level right the idea
[01:30:35] of there like being potentially at any given point a bomb under the table of a relationship that could upset the entire thing be it something from the past or that they've changed that they fundamentally changed to no longer be compatible with you
[01:30:51] this movie is sort of about someone who like two people who fall in love at the one moment they could possibly fall in love right if they had met a week earlier she would have been a german spy not a week but you know what I'm saying
[01:31:03] and like after this she would have gone back to Germany you know he hadn't grabbed her at the end of the mission said move to London with me and they're trying to outrun the outside circumstances you know fighting against the idea of them being together
[01:31:19] because of this sort of inexplicable you know connection that people feel to each other people falling in love in a relationship that's kind of intrinsically doomed okay when I talked to Zemeckis we eventually at some point we talked about how fatalistic the movie is
[01:31:35] you know and it's about fatalistic people they're living in London and during the Blitz and you know you could die tomorrow right like that's informing so much behavior and here's what he says I'm just going to read this the thing that makes love stories
[01:31:49] work in my opinion in movies and novels and country and western songs is the feeling of longing we have to evoke the feeling of longing the painful feeling that's what we as humans understand is love no one can define love
[01:32:01] but if you attempt to the closest you can get this longing and that has a melancholy to it you can say dread or doom it's that feeling we all feel when we fall in love with someone we have this horrible fearful feeling
[01:32:11] that maybe will never have this person in our life if you want to get existential about it all love affairs will always end in horrible pain right I feel like that's what he's dealing with on a metaphorical level on top of the constant question of whether you truly
[01:32:27] know the person you're with whether you can ever truly trust them you know but it's also that thing of the minute you fall in love with someone or the minute you buy a puppy you will have that sort of dark thought in the back of your head of
[01:32:43] one day this thing is going to die the puppy might be a german spy secret you'd have to kill it we've got to run a blue die what could this thing do to break my heart the obvious tragedy is I lose them
[01:32:59] how could they fundamentally betray my trust in some kind of way and I do feel like this whole section of the movie where you're saying Brad Pitt has zero chill and is fucking shit up rather than just letting the test play out is because he is
[01:33:15] so full of nervous energy the mere accusation flips him out right he loses his cool in the room with McBurney and Harris and he's just I think trying to control his universe is now a process in play that he cannot control
[01:33:31] the results will come out in the wash and he's telling himself if I go and track down everyone who I think has seen this woman can I get the result I want to hear but you know he could just sit her down
[01:33:43] and be like look here's the situation they tell me you're a spy and I have to kill you you're a spy or not come on let's talk it out believe me I won't kill you let's figure it out I will psycho to her like there's this whole section
[01:33:57] of the movie where he's like right and you're kind of questioning is she innocent and is he now seem like a spy to her but the thing is even when he knows the very worst of it right like she's betrayed him she was fooling him that whole first 45
[01:34:15] minutes in Casablanca she's made him betray his side he doesn't care by the end of it so it's not you know even having been betrayed he's still more about his love for her right it's a bonus actually well the question then kind of becomes
[01:34:33] his love as Zemeckis might tell us right it's it's it's wild sort of puppy love and it's also like for him I think the greater question of allegiance is okay if she's a spy if this was a setup can I at least hear that
[01:34:51] it became real at some point right like there's no way to reconcile with her original intentions the thing he wants to get out of this is but now it's real now there's still an actual thing at some point she changed at some point she evolved this wasn't illegitimate
[01:35:07] I wasn't living a fiction the thing is when she does finally admit it right at the end when he you know sits her in front of a piano and demands she plays Lamar say is and she says I'm not Sam from Casablanca yeah sorry yeah she says like
[01:35:25] yeah what could I I'm so sorry what can I do I love you like you know they were threatening our daughter and like that's why you know like she genuinely thought if I came to London I would get away from them they wouldn't be able to find
[01:35:37] me that woman who's been babysitting our baby is actually a fucking German spy and she's got a gun point right yeah I mean there's only one drunk guy who could he could identify right right and there's the guy who's like oh I
[01:35:53] saw her and I'll never see anything again now I'm turning my head you can see I have no eyes yeah Matthew good saying like oh I saw her through this bad eye or my no I which one but no I also just like when she
[01:36:11] finally gives the explanation it's almost incidental we're like yeah no we know at this point we know we get it you were in an impossible situation you know what I mean like it's not like even a shocking reveal which is interesting for a movie
[01:36:27] this is not a criticism it's interesting for a movie that is predicated on is she or isn't she right by the end we're like oh no I mean yeah of course she is well it's hard to do a reveal with someone not being
[01:36:39] able to do something it'd be more like if she like if she was known as known as a German spy with a tendency to play the tambourine and then suddenly she started jamming out with a band you saw that would be the big twist give me that thing
[01:36:55] God she's so good at the tambourine no one's that good but her not playing the Marseille is inherently not a it's like a it's kind of less of a twist to Rue I was hoping that she tried to just like slam her way through the alternate
[01:37:13] scene where she's like da la la no but I also the drunk guy is like she played the Marseille so beautifully it was so good not just like she was just learning the piano but she had the piano to get it I like
[01:37:31] the simplicity of that moment though that it's like she sits there in front of the piano and then she puts the cover down and it's the like I'm not even gonna pretend like you got me because I think in and of itself
[01:37:41] the fact that she surrenders that easily to the Rue's is sort of the moment where he realizes like oh we're both on the same level here which is that we're now terrified about you dying that like love of country who gives a shit
[01:37:57] it's just about keeping you alive at this moment and then this completely like you know hair brained plot of like let's just drive really quickly to a plane fly out of here and they'll never fight December again yes that idea
[01:38:11] this is true that idea where are you gonna go it's compelled a lot of that stuff is compelling pit is so weird in some of those scenes but it's very compelling I guess I like when he shoots the nanny that's a great scene great just
[01:38:29] absolutely murdering a 60 something woman yes in a hamstead townhouse you don't see enough of that in the movies you should do that once a movie every movie and the sort of mania of the final thing where he's like trying to get the plane started
[01:38:49] and she's like wrapping up her baby because she knows it's over and Jared Harris like drives his car into a propeller just stop the propeller I love that shit I like when the propeller just messed up the car like oh that's right intriguing
[01:39:05] but then you have that moment that I love that I think is like a powerful Zemeckis shot where they're like in the rain and here's like Jared Harris and Brad Pitt yelling outside this plane and she's in the backseat of the car with the baby looking through
[01:39:19] the front window and it's just like here are just two men yelling at each other and we'll say though this movie caused like 100 million dollars to make for Paramount and this was really in a tough period for Paramount they were experiencing a lot of trufflep
[01:39:33] so you know they were betting on this and to the Brad Gray area and like the end of this movie is Jared Harris is like Mr. Pitt I arrest you for high treason at once against Her Majesty the Queen and then she shoots herself and you see it
[01:39:49] and he's like that's all boys Brad Pitt will instead get the Medal of Decency and will never speak of this again and then it's like roll credits and then Bobby Zemeckis just comes on screen he's like I hope you enjoyed the movie
[01:40:03] who files out and Donald Trump is president like it is a wild thing to expect audiences to go out and be like a cinema score for that one sure it's a very abrupt ending in a wide right you don't sort of cut in on
[01:40:19] Jared Harris thinking it over Brad Pitt no dog look you see her like looking at the abstracted figures through the window making the decision grabbing the gun covering the baby walking out and she sort of like says her I love you he says his I love you
[01:40:39] turns away and then she pretty much walks into a close up and shoots herself in the head it's wild Brad Pitt's immediate reaction it's so good I think he plays that moment so incredibly well where even before the actual tragedy of the thing hits just the shock
[01:40:57] of it like his instantaneous knee-jerk reaction almost to just the sound of the gunfire and you see him over her shoulder in the shot and then yes right they cover up the body Jared Harris goes like five cheers for Brad Pitt
[01:41:09] and it runs away and then the end of the movie is like fucking Mayor Koutiar has written a sad letter to her daughter being like we must admit I was a spy I was going to die at some point
[01:41:21] I assume if you're reading this they shot me in the head I love you Rafiqasibi from Tomara Land that is Rafiqasidi they hired Rafiqasidi yes they did to be in a bunch of still photos and then I guess you see her from behind petting a horse with Brad
[01:41:39] that's kind of like an antiquated you know when someone records a videotape in the event of my death played this videotape I always love when people do that I should start making them now for myself you should make them for all kinds of scenarios
[01:41:55] though we're like I see them if you're watching it means I fell off my speedboat that I eventually bought if you're watching this now I open my window at the safari at Six Flags and something went down but that's essentially what she does
[01:42:07] it's like here's the letter in case of my death I assume I for one reason or not will or another will not live to see you grow up my daughter so here's a letter and the letter is like I got to admit I fucked up
[01:42:19] this one's on me sorry I loved your father but I got myself into a real pickle also Jeff Fume could not melt steel beams if you really look into it and then the movie fades to black but no it's like hard fade to black credits
[01:42:43] pulled back Alan Sylvesterie's score and then he transitions to playing jazz music like then the credits the rest of the credits play out with like the dun dun dun dun right the movie is actually about the birth of modern jazz I mean that's
[01:42:57] really what's been going on this whole time it's a bleak movie it's a bleak movie I don't know does it earn it I guess is the question right like does it earn this incredibly bleak you know sad ending I don't know I kind of like allied
[01:43:15] when am I going to watch allied like Griff you like this movie did you watch it again before absolutely not this was the first time I've watched it again I saw in theaters the weekend I came out I saw it with Jordan Fish and Ray Tontori
[01:43:27] friends at the show and we were like oh that's the best movies America's has made in like 20 years right that thing rules but it definitely felt like I don't know it almost felt like the flip side of what you're describing where it was like
[01:43:41] oh Donald Trump has just been elected and he's kind of wallow in like epic misery right and just sort of like doomed love sort of like watch as the world burns around us and we have to kill each other shit but I also remember like the audience reacting
[01:43:59] audibly to it I mean I feel like it had that kind of palpable tension in the theater seeing at the AMC 25 where like you know when he's gets the guy to look at the picture and say that it's her there were sort of like gasps certainly
[01:44:17] when she shot herself in the head I don't know it's just like one of those things where it's like I felt like I kind of had an ideal theatrical viewing of it I certainly liked it a lot again watching it this time but I remember it
[01:44:29] feeling kind of magical being captive in a theater watching it especially with how sort of deliberately paste the movie is how quiet it is how bottled it is there was something about the tension of being there in the theater that really got me
[01:44:45] I'll watch it again at some point it's not like one I'm going to throw on once a week it's not like I watch Allied when I can't fall asleep I mean I could see parts of this movie Lullin you to bed Hey now I watched it on iPad
[01:45:01] while I was putting my middle child to bed in two different sections well Winnie the Pooh was playing to the side so I can't say I have the ideal theatrical experience and we should also mention no we should also mention we asked you to cover this movie
[01:45:17] like we sent you the full Zemeckis list and you give us some options and you sort of said like Allied is kind of interesting because I have a fondness for like World War II movies and then I sort of pushed on you like
[01:45:29] I'd really like you to come on this episode because David and I disagree on this movie but I knew the risk of which is not care for this movie at all I don't I well I don't I don't know I'm think I'm in the middle
[01:45:41] of you guys really that's what I thought would happen I'm also in the middle though I think this movie has a lot of interesting stuff going on it just feels like everyone's in the middle yeah I mean by Zemeckis standards I just like this period much more than
[01:45:59] the mocap period absolutely that's not really a hot take I think there's interesting stuff going on in flight the walk, Allied and Marwin I don't none of those movies are you know out and out hits for me I think flight is the closest
[01:46:13] yeah see this is far and away my favorite of this period of his 2010 right but I appreciate that he at least tries stuff and you know I wonder about this you know this next phase but I also wonder about this
[01:46:31] next phase of Hollywood and I also wonder if we'll ever see a movie again so you know can't really lay all that at Mr Bobby's feet right now this is the other factor of play which is I think I have a soft spot for this kind of movie
[01:46:45] in a career which is Blank check director has massive success early on and then they get to a point where they're just sort of like oh you've been like a major player for three or four decades you can do anything but maybe you're a little bit like
[01:47:01] out of the pocket at this point right you have your sort of like Empire period like Tim Burton or whatever and then you get to that period where you're sort of like what do I do now what do I evolve into and this feels
[01:47:15] for me like big eyes another movie which I defend more than most people where it's like this feels like the most exciting thing to see a guy like this do even though this movie was very expensive it's like to do a movie that is so stripped down
[01:47:29] because we've said Spielberg and Lucas and a lot of those guys so Mechus has been one of these guys who now when he does interviews sort of like complains about the modern state of the film industry and that movies are made for grown ups right you know
[01:47:43] and then Hollywood doesn't make a lot of original movies anymore everything's franchise everything's whiz bang this and that despite him being a big special effects guy it does feel like to some degree he's tried to do a little bit of the Spielberg thing
[01:47:55] where like they'll make a family film they'll make a larger film but also they really try to use their clout to make the type of adult drama that doesn't get made anymore and so I do just find this film exciting as like this is an interesting
[01:48:09] argument for what late periods of Mechus could be you know for him making a movie that is almost diametrically opposed to the types of films he started out making but are very much the kind of films that only an elder statesman can make
[01:48:23] and also not to steal her point coming up in next week's episode but Emily or she the mother of lankies in our welcome to Marwan episode brought up the fact that many directors in sort of the later period of their career start to like obsessively
[01:48:37] make movies about making movies it feels like the material that jumps out to them is almost always a movie about storytelling or the movie about process that can somehow be mapped onto movies and this is not that like this is very much a movie that is about
[01:48:51] a relationship and a situation you know it feels like he is just into the kind of gambit of what the script is presenting it's not something that he's mapping onto his sort of artistic sort of mantra in a way that Marwan does and the walk does
[01:49:10] you know I'd say it's a very curious cinematic object this movie right because in some ways it feels so conservative in the way that it's sort of presented but there's some really quite strange elements to it edgy things it's edgy in its way
[01:49:32] it's also like you said David that you wish he threw some grain onto it like the language for this type of movie we understand is someone going full mink right or at least partial mink mink is greenless too this is so crazy about mink
[01:49:46] but whatever we'll talk about mink another day but this is what I'm saying that you lean more into the pastiche and emulating the technology of the time and I do think there's a cognitive dissonance thing here that works for me but I understand
[01:50:00] it doesn't work for other people where it's like he's using entirely modern technology to replicate a very artificial old timey sort of world for me it works a lot better than it does in the walk it's the best marriage of those things
[01:50:14] and I think it's also one of the modern the technology isn't the point like he's using the technology in service of the story it's not by and large imagine if this was done with this technology it's just sort of like the trimming of it which I like
[01:50:32] let's play the box office game it's a great allied off 2021 absolutely 2021 my friend let's play the box office game though Griffin it's November 20th Thanksgiving time 2016 who doesn't love to take their family to watch Brad Pitt and Marianne fucking a car make a baby
[01:50:50] and then have her shoot herself in front of the baby yeah I took my whole family to see allied and every single member of my family divorced me individually number four it opens number four to 12 million Griffin can you tell me the final domestic total of allied 30 40
[01:51:14] makes 120 worldwide 119 80 probably over 100 what's number one okay Thanksgiving and the year is 2014 16 16 so Trump so is this the final Hunger Games no it is not I think that might have been the year before it is an animated film it's new this week
[01:51:40] it's a big hit and I feel like it's only gotten bigger in the years since is it Moana Moana is this the week that America began considering the coconut exactly 82 million dollar opening weekend for Moana and Thanksgiving I do think you
[01:52:00] I feel like that's maybe your favorite of the modern Disney era and at the time you were sort of like yeah it's good but I do think it's grown for people it's one of the two movies I saw the week Trump was elected the other was allied
[01:52:10] and I think they really skewed my take on both them we'll never talk about Moana on this podcast ever again what's number two of the box office it's a it was number one the week before it's it's a franchise starter but it's also a franchise entry
[01:52:30] sort of a side prequel yeah like a side prequel let's call it the side prequel hmm it's one to sequel and another is in production and there's been nothing wrong with the production of this new film oh boy nothing weird going on there
[01:52:48] I know this one don't I please it's it's dinosaur land it's not right that was my first thought it's not Jurassic World I know but now I'm trying to think about other franchises that have dared move forward during a pandemic oh is it the crimes of grungle grungle
[01:53:14] darn exactly those fantastic beasts right it was the film that dare asked what if they were fantastic beasts and if so where would we find them see this is the problem I think Chris and I were just thinking about trying to make a movie during a pandemic
[01:53:30] and not thinking about the single most cursed movie currently in existence a movie that every day seems to step on another witch's toes and collect a new curse upon its very nature it's just that whole thing where it's like alright okay we've decided to fire Johnny Depp
[01:53:48] and we're just not going to think too much about JK Rowling right now let's begin production in the middle of COVID people need this movie they're protesting in the streets that's why they're protesting right they're saying boo earns we should not show any doubt
[01:54:10] fantastic beasts where to find them David that was a great Simpsons reference and you get 10 Simpsons reference points oh my god if I had gotten Simpsons reference points every day if I could turn them into money I would be a billionaire at the age of 12
[01:54:30] number three at the box office griffin it's another in the we talk about these movies all the time movies that came out right around Trump time it's another franchise movie we did a commentary episode on it we did a commentary episode on it is it doctor strange
[01:54:48] doctor strange doctor doctor yeah because right I think I talked about this in some other episode but I saw doctor strange with my mom right after Trump was elected but the accountant was sold out the accountant has dropped to number 15 on this box office wow number
[01:55:10] four is allied number five one of the best movies of 2016 is it a rival arrival arrival from yeah how do you do like arrival Chris I do very much yes I do so I'll say well there you go I did I didn't understand the twist
[01:55:34] I felt like the stupidest person so I didn't even understand when they revealed it I was like why is she got such a big problem marrying this guy to be fair Chris my mom had the exact same hang up I saw it with her
[01:55:48] we talked about it she was like I think I liked it I just didn't like as much as you and then like a week later she was like can I ask you like one lingering question I've had about arrival now is like sure and the question
[01:56:00] belied the fact that she did not understand anything that happened some other movies in the top 10 trolls director Richard Lawson bad Santa to remember that that happened of course directed not by Terry so I got but by Mark Waters what else have we got we've got almost Christmas
[01:56:22] which one is that almost Christmas that's right that's the one it's the family comedy it's like Danny Glover Monique Romani Malco like a fun people like that movie people have talked that one up to me I've never seen it Hacksaw Ridge speaking of war movies number nine
[01:56:46] and it's really unfair what happened to that movie I mean such a byproduct of cancel culture it's really you know Mel Gibson is like a problematic figure and they canceled him so hard and as a punishment he only got nominated for best director in best picture
[01:57:00] I was just waiting for you to land the plane it's just elemental truth that cancel culture is out of control right and number 10 another of the best movies of 2016 the edge of 17 great movie that I love and rewatch it a lot Chris if you've seen the edge of 17
[01:57:16] I have not seen it I gotta see it the idea of someone re-watching a movie a lot to me is so crazy like you know what no I don't mean there's a bad movie I'm like my god where's like I have no time no I know
[01:57:32] you're a father Chris but sometimes you gotta watch gummo a bunch with your kids yeah I've recommended if you haven't done that it's really I mean it reminds me of my childhood he's always making kids movies kids gummo trash on burrs I mean that's more adolescence
[01:57:54] yeah that one's more for kids instead of about kids edge of 17 is the first time I saw Hailey Richardson I feel like Chris you worked with her several times and I think it's like one of the big stars of tomorrow she's so great I know that was
[01:58:10] her breakout for sure I have not seen the ones that's where she popped for me right I haven't seen that I was rewatching your movie finale before this as well and then she's so good in that she just she fucking rules she was awesome she really she has
[01:58:26] actually pretty extraordinary range and like very goofy in person but the moment that the you know the camera goes on she just kind of did like this dead set focus yeah man as well she's great I it's one of the things
[01:58:46] that this pandemic cost us is the release of after yang the new coconut a movie where there's like robot babysitters and common ferrules in it and she's in it I gotta see that thing I know you best to delay it yeah that's my of course
[01:59:04] I can wait yeah I can wait right you you produce Columbus Chris that movie David sounds like it was produced by you and not only produced by you but you held everyone involved up at gunpoint and demanded they make that like that feels like you're gonna play
[01:59:18] a robot or something I really know the details but that feels like a Kim Jong-un like holding filmmakers hostage yeah anyway I can't wait to see after yang whenever it does and we you know 2021 I do hope I'll be seeing movies in the theater again
[01:59:38] but who know man yeah here's to that she used to that Chris thank you for coming back on the show we gotta do it more often thank you for having me I'm around anytime you know well this is the thing is we were like you gotta do allied
[01:59:52] and you're like yeah that sounds great I'm like we're like great it comes out to you in six months yeah right I thought you guys it forgot actually no no I mean I'm responding to emails but also we booked most of Zemeckis in like March and April
[02:00:12] when it looked like he was winning and we were just so freaked out about the pandemic and like I guess we're just recording everything remotely now let's lock down like all these guests but but that's like 20 episodes we booked like 20 episodes ahead hey Chris thanks
[02:00:28] for the ongoing like you know creative support as a producer of night eggs means a lot those meetings like are just you know it's encouraging me to continue on with this journey I'm glad because you know I know
[02:00:42] it's been a tough year for all kinds of filmmakers but but I feel like next year is our year yeah I agree well this year because that's right we're just we're in it we're in it so stay tuned I think night eggs is going to be the movie
[02:00:56] that finally gets people back to the theaters again it's gonna be the sort of home yeah you need a movie that's like it's kind of a spectacle right hey all right exclusively on 40x well you know I'm getting ahead of myself 40x only big horses IMAX you can
[02:01:18] feel the gallop in your seat oh boy that's what it should be Ben it should be 4D IMAX you should demand that IMAX theaters convert to 40x seats and that's the only way that night eggs can be projected I need smells I need rumbles
[02:01:36] Chris people should watch Operation Finale I mean I just watched it for kicks before this to reactinate myself with your filmmaking style re-world war 2 but it's such a good movie oh thanks man and it's on who doing some funny stuff in the course of doing that
[02:01:52] you know my mom's in that movie she because well yeah the imitation of life scene which is so good I love that and weirdly we shot that scene in the very cinema in Buenos Aires where those two characters did meet in real life so that's kind of wild
[02:02:12] wild yeah great scene I'll plug that to people should watch imitation of life that's a great movie that your mom said it is we're done we're done Chris thank you guys thank you for having me oh please
[02:02:28] I was gonna be so thrilled she complains about the fact that you're not on the show enough because she finds you relaxing as opposed to us screaming in the yelling we are not relaxing we're not relaxed yeah zero shell but watch those two movies
[02:02:42] and tune in next week for Marwyn with Emily Ashida mother blankies coming back to welcome you all thank you all for listening please remember to rate review and subscribe thanks to Joe Bowen pat rounds for artwork go to blankies.ret.com for some real nerdy shit
[02:03:02] and go to our Shopify page for some real nerdy merch new stuff being added all the time we're getting back on that horse go to patreon.com slash blank check where we're doing it baby we're going down under where we're doing the crocodile Dundee movies
[02:03:20] the obvious next franchise to tackle the new star wars alien mission impossible toy story crocodile dundee it's a clear pattern alright alright that's it and as always grand pit shows a lot of buttocks in this movie