Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk with J.D. Amato

[00:00:00] Blank Check with Griffin and David, Blank Check with Griffin and David, Don't know what to say or to expect. All you need to know is that the name of the show is Blank Check. Your podcast, Billy, no longer belongs to you. It's America's podcast now.

[00:00:27] Steve Martin. Everyone knows that line. Ring ding ding. It's even more evil, Jerry Jones? Yeah. So who is Jerry Jones? He's the owner of the Dallas Cowboys. Okay. Is this character also- Is this sort of hobgoblin-esque figure in the national footballing?

[00:00:44] His portrayal, and I have no context for Jerry Jones obviously, and obviously I'm digging straight into the deep end. Right. His portrayal, uh-huh. Always felt like it was kind of Ted Turner inspired, but is Jerry Jones that type of guy or is he combining-

[00:01:01] No, yeah. He's doing more of a Ted Turner thing. That's a good point. In terms of his actual energy and everything, right? Jerry Jones is more like of a creepy southerner who's a maniac. I wish Steve Martin could grow a mustache for this. What?

[00:01:15] Guys, I think we're talking the walk 2018. We're talking the walk 2018. We're here! Check! We made it! We're talking the walk. Check. Here's- Blank! Let's do the intro, but just the words are all out of order. Don't actually do that. Baby! What were you gonna say?

[00:01:37] I was gonna say this. I need to start right here. I've seen a lot of people talking online about how this is a bad movie, how this is- We're starting with this. Jesus Christ. No, no. We are starting with this.

[00:01:49] If you're tuning in right now and you're like, I don't know if I'm listening to this episode, I'm going to convince you- I think they may have already swiped deletes just the sight of Billy Linn's long half time walk, but maybe not- This is what cinema is about.

[00:02:04] We like blank checks not because they are guarantees, but because they are blank. I agree with that. And this is a blank check. This is beyond a blank check.

[00:02:13] I was watching the last night and said this is quietly one of the most insane cultural artifacts of all time. And- Quietly because no one talks about it, but we're here talking the walk 2018! Talking the walk 2018, sorry David. It's one of the bigger bounces.

[00:02:26] It's one of the bigger bounces. It's quite a bounce. And that's fine, but that- we don't- that's okay. No, JD, it's not okay. It's okay as long as we talk to walk.

[00:02:36] We like blank checks because sometimes they don't work out, but they're blank and you go for it. Hey JD. If everything had to be a guarantee, we'd just get Marvel movies and Star Wars movies. JD? You're right. Thank it. I'm JD Amato and I love movies.

[00:02:52] I'm Griffin Newman and I love movies. And David Simpson. I'm eating a Wendy's spicy chicken sandwich. God, what a Philistine. Ding dong! Oh, if Wendy's sponsored the show that'd be great. Come on Wendy's get aboard. Um, this of course is blank check. It's a podcast about filmography.

[00:03:10] It's directed to a massive success early on in their career and a grant to a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion projects they want. Sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they walk very slowly and dramatically maybe. In high definition.

[00:03:26] Yes, this is main series on the films of Ang Lee. It's called Broke Pod Mountcast and today we are talking about his most recent film. Yes, this is our season for now. Our mini series. That's true. Yeah. Or is it?

[00:03:41] Um, and it's called Billy Lynn's Half Time Walk and it's long half time walk. Billy Lynn's Long Half Time Walk. Do you still get caught up every time you say the title because you want to say Billy Flynn like Chicago?

[00:03:54] As I believe I've mentioned on this podcast, I literally RSVP to the screening invitation or I like emailed someone at Sony being like it is Sony right? Yeah. Like I can't wait to see Billy Flynn's. They did not acknowledge my mistake. It's one of those things.

[00:04:08] I also dazzled this movie's full of razzle dazzle. I for a while mistakenly kept calling it Billy Lynn's big half time walk. I mean, it also that is also true. Um, I had the same thing with inside Lou and Davis.

[00:04:20] I think because of no country for all men, I want to keep calling it inside Luella and David. I see, you know, it's like Luella Moss when there's another popular character. I mean, no character is more popular than Billy Flynn. He's on every pizzeria mural. Pizzeria mural.

[00:04:36] Every Hollywood souvenir store. We've lost the thread immediately. You know those pizzerias with classic murals and bad kinds of cinema? It's like Frank Sinatra and the Coliseum. Coliseum. Coliseum. It's the guy who owns it. It's always like when there's a building. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:04:52] It's the guy who owns the shop in front of the leaning tower of pizza. Yes. Right. Next to the Ghostbusters. And they're crossing the street. Billy Lynn. He's got another movie coming out. It's not like this is Ang Lee's last movie ever. No, no.

[00:05:04] October 4th, 2019 we will cover Gemini Man. That's the point. That's a year from now. That will be at that point. That's a while from now. This is where he is, his walk ends right now. That's where this mini series ends. It is.

[00:05:16] We'll check back in with her friend, Ang. Yeah. And that's the beauty of Ang Lee is that he keeps getting chances to make interesting things. Sometimes they're groundbreaking and may not manifest into a film that people love or that people can stand to watch.

[00:05:34] Or that casual viewers take in. Yeah. Sometimes he makes these things that are big swings that are Oscar winning films at Sweet The Nation. This is true. You also go, the films of his that have been commercial breakthroughs are the films

[00:05:46] that no one could have predicted would be commercial breakthroughs. 100%. Like Brokeback Mountain making $80 million. Crouching Tiger making 120. Sentence It's a Belly Making 60. Those are insane numbers that sort of broke the expectations for what those types of movies could do at that time.

[00:06:02] All true except that you're not mentioning the biggest one, which I mean sort of. It's grossing as hell. Certainly the biggest one. Right. Life of Pi, which is his last movie where if you said on paper like we're going

[00:06:14] to make this kind of like CGI Tiger blue screen epic based on a weird novel. With a lot of religious undertone. The novel that people thought was unfilmable that like multiple directors had tried. And like they'd be like, well, you know, maybe it'll be an awards player and

[00:06:30] say like no smash hit like genuine smash hit. Well, and that's the most important piece of context for this movie is that and I'm sure we'll have covered this in detail on the life of Pi episode.

[00:06:42] But the notion that post-life of Pi, Ang Lee is now for the first time seen as one of those filmmakers who breaks technical barriers. Right. Yes, because he never was. He was always a very classical filmmaker, even something like Hulk where he was pushing.

[00:06:56] Well, but Hulk is kind of people shit on it. He was pushing a lot of stuff at the time and it's just so weird. His filmography is so weird. And to me, I say it's Seamus because once Seamus is gone is when he starts running wild, right?

[00:07:11] But I think that's taking Woodstock is the last Seamus, right? Correct. And I think that's fantastic. And I think because I think there's not that many filmmakers, especially directors who have that are able to go,

[00:07:20] not only am I going to pick interesting content or things that are not the beaten path, but also I'm going to try to take these technical leaps. And sometimes they are huge achievements. I think all the times they're huge achievements.

[00:07:32] Sometimes it captures the fascination of the world at large. Sometimes people have a harder time taking it in. There's a big three. But he keeps doing it. There's a big three and Ang Lee became the surprising unlikely fourth.

[00:07:41] The big three, I would say are Lucas, Cameron and Jackson are the three guys who have really tried to like push it, right? I guess so. That's very creative technology, you know, like their buds. Come on. You're the professional film critic. What the fuck is this?

[00:07:58] David Sims of the Atlantic over here. Two directors we've covered on the podcast. I know that you like Cameron. I'm cool. But like, yeah, I mean Peter Jackson and George E. You can try to back up. Well, like Peter Jackson's, you know, he's pushing his.

[00:08:18] He's mostly pushed in bad directions. You know, his hobbits, his high frame rates, all that shit. I would argue boy. Here we go. He's going to argue something else now. I would argue you can push it as a guest by the way as if you

[00:08:31] couldn't tell JD Amato. I'm JD Amato and I love movies. Thank you. Thank you. I have now high five two of our three other people in the room and also just to give some content. Griffin's just kind of far away.

[00:08:44] David, I think you're in a good mood today. Yeah, I'm in a good mood. Not stressed out. No, not stressed out. Oh, I hit it immediately. Now I'm stressed. We heard a couple of marimba bars. Last time we recorded, I was in like an extremely stressed out

[00:08:58] mood and then I puked and then you puked. Unrelated. I don't think my stress made you puke. The poutine. Yeah. I know where it was from now. I think I figured it out. You figured it out. Yeah. I don't want to rehash this. That was a nightmare.

[00:09:11] Have you noticed that JD was so stressed out? JD is sitting as far from Griffin. Yeah. As part of sort of my recovery process from that episode. Yes, correct. But I'm in a good mood. I don't know Griffin, how are you feeling? I've been going through some stuff.

[00:09:25] You're back-serting. Yeah, I was on steroids for a while, which, you know, my joke is that they made me really cut and swole. But then I saw JD the other day and he was like, you look really skinny.

[00:09:37] I'm the only person that takes steroids and somehow get more emaciated. I wouldn't say you look really skinny. You look like the same size. I feel like I look slightly less healthy than I do. And that's already a low bar. But I'll say this.

[00:09:53] I've seen you look unhealthy before. You know what I mean? Like it happens too sometimes. Right. Yes. To me, it was not dangerous owners just like- They were like, you're on the lower end of the space I know you live in. I carried your backpack for you.

[00:10:06] JD carried my backpack. So you guys- All right, okay. So here, all right. Let's do this for two cents. No, no, I'm going to set the scene for the listeners. We have a lot to discuss. We're going to talk about Billy Lynn's long half-time walk

[00:10:17] in this episode, which I'm so excited about. 2016 war drama. David has done- David has done- JD has done more research for this episode than anyone has ever done for anything ever. Correct. And before then though, JD, our good friend, hung out with both of us separately-

[00:10:34] In the week leading up to this episode. In the week leading up to this episode. Was that a coincidence or was that planned? Did you want that? I think it was a coincidence. Well, here's what I think it was.

[00:10:43] I think it is a coincidence that ours was a coincidence. Because ours was weeks in advance. We planned ours thing a month in advance. Yeah. And I thought it'd be- Griffin and I hadn't really touched base after both of us were dealing with various-

[00:10:57] We were both making TV shows which no one should ever do. And we were talking to each other during that process about how stressed out we were and overdue for a hangout catch up. Yes. And I think I thought it would have been weird

[00:11:08] to have our first hangout catch up be- I think that's a good point. On podcast talking about Billy Lynn. Right, because we're good friends and that's- There's a lot of stuff that we've both gone through in terms of wanting to retire to the Andes Mountains.

[00:11:19] You're retiring to this studio, my friends. Okay. Griffin hates it when I say that. Look, I can't get by in just a couple high altitude bucks. But we went to see the Happy Time Murders, which I will say conclusively on this podcast

[00:11:32] we will never do a bonus episode for it. Thank you. And people calling for that and the subreddit are maniacs. To be clear, people actually have- Multiple people have asked us for a Happy Time Murders bonus episode. Its own thread and also coming up in other threads.

[00:11:44] Hey, guess what? When are the guys going to talk about it? It will never happen. Now, I want them solved to be clear. I don't like the Happy Time Murders. They're sort of solved but they don't really make sense.

[00:11:54] Here's all that I think needs to be said about it. I do not believe it's a blank check film. It's not, which is the most depressing thing about it. That's the thing that sucks about it the most.

[00:12:03] Isn't it one of those sort of like things where you're like, this might have been a blank check at some point and now it's just this like mess. I think it definitely was at some point. It's not quite a paycheck movie. It's not quite a blank check.

[00:12:13] I was saying I think it's more check than blank. Yeah, that's what JD said. They're like five times now. But only once on Mike. Once on Mike. I would equate it to- Thank you. He had, he started handing out blank checks to other people

[00:12:26] in order to get the movie made. He's like, if I give you one blank check, then can I to get other people involved? It costs more than Billy Lynn's long half time walk. That's insane. This isn't mumbling the murders 2018. This is talking the walk 2018. Mumbling the murders.

[00:12:40] All right. And then JD and I went to a big three basketball final. The championship. The championships. Which depressingly I read got a higher TV ratings than any WNBA game ever, which is like truly depressed. This big three big three. So it's ice. So who was it?

[00:13:01] It was it was who Jordan V you and the right bar. The you're actually not really. George, but you're in because the young man little far. The new bowl. Who are the biggest three basketball ball is dead sadly. Fuck is George Mirzan still alive? Yes, he is.

[00:13:19] That's a good poll, right? Yeah, you're just sort of now you're naming like the famously like ridiculously tall basketball. He's naming basketball players that are in movies. Which is why he would know that place above. But George Mirzan and Manu Bower are the two like seven seven guys.

[00:13:34] Like the tallest men who ever take note of an athlete. They had to be abnormally large and be in talkies. Yeah. Here's the here's here's what the big three is. The movie star for your walk. Yeah. Big three is a league that ice cube created.

[00:13:49] That is when NBA wait seriously. Yes, when NBA players retire, they can join the big three, which is all retired players. So we watched a game where like called the big three because it's three on three basketball now five on five.

[00:14:03] So it's played like half court, you know, it's like a kind of like street ball. You know, they're only on one side of the court. The court is only one side happens on that other side. The court is more seats more seats. Yeah.

[00:14:15] You're into this who is in the game. All right, so we were seeing the championship. I cube crit this is a real bling. Not only did ice cube created this is a game with a concert like ice cube

[00:14:26] comes on to say there's a stage when you arrive right JD. Yes and this is a blank check. This is him using all his cash. I'm there was success in different mediums right. Yeah sure.

[00:14:36] And we sit down and we're like what's with the stage and someone in front of us is like ice cubes going to perform and I was like well alright then ice cubes the sound was terrible. Well because here's the thing is it's not a huge budget lead.

[00:14:48] It's in the Barclay Center we're in the Barclay Center. Okay, I was sitting as close as we were sitting for to root he kept he kept he kept I mentioned it to Kevin ever and saying to root the final flight or whatever it's not you and go.

[00:15:00] That's where the yes. Yes, he did down. He literally did. He was right there. He actually did that. Tired there. No, I'm just I'm I shouldn't even talk about it on we know it's just I'm sorry I just I had like a disappointing career set back this

[00:15:22] week what happened I lost the best of online bed and category and good housekeeper I knew you were really looking forward to that I'm sorry you didn't get the trophy look I'll admit you know the competition has been pretty light no one's really been innovating

[00:15:35] the space and I thought I could get this one in a walk because like you know sheets are always marked up you know the most betting is marked up like 300% to scam so I got some dirty rags

[00:15:47] I wrote my name on them and I thought it would win Griff linens Griff linens but then here comes Brooklyn and oh yeah oh here's our strategy let's make a really good product oh you mean the fastest growing betting brand in the world with 20,000 five star reviews.

[00:16:03] Something that's respected by everyone they like using it and I'm like okay fine I guess that's a way to go. So yeah instead of your strategy which was basically just trying to win by default right Clinton actually makes like fancy hotel

[00:16:16] sheet level sheets for like the average consumer right I was like hey do you want to like sleep in a way that feels like you're taking a nap under a bridge during a rainstorm and then everyone else is like no we'd rather like feel like

[00:16:31] you know fancy hotel sheets you know we'd like the idea of a husband and a wife who love each other and love linens and are making this product together rather than just a sad mid-level actor. And also they have a cool dot called Dukes.

[00:16:46] Yeah and I don't know. Yeah they've got this small business approach as a husband and wife team so they're involved in every step of the manufacturing process of the customer service process they remember their customers by name and they take out

[00:16:58] their gentlemen so they keep things personal that's why it's like so affordable. And for me this is also very personal because they live in the city that never sleeps New York City and so I feel like I'm no longer the hometown golden boy.

[00:17:10] Yeah I mean you did not deserve to win. I didn't. I have Brooklyn and sheets they're very good and then you gave me your sheets and I had to burn them in the backyard. Yeah yeah and like a ghost came out of them.

[00:17:21] Right and I gave you a promo code and the promo code ended up costing you more money. Right. Yeah it added a new loan to my yeah right but with Brooklyn and which I've got Brooklyn and sheets you've got Brooklyn

[00:17:35] and sheets we're a couple of Brooklyn and babies. I don't want to admit but I've defected over there the best most comfortable sheets they really are and we have an exclusive office offer for blank check listeners. You can get twenty dollars off and free shipping what

[00:17:50] when you use the promo code check at Brooklyn and that's my shop my shipping was two hundred dollars. Brooklyn is so sure you're going to love the sheets they offer a risk free sixty night satisfaction guarantee and a lifetime warranty on all their sheets and

[00:18:03] comforters the only way to get twenty dollars off and free shipping as you use promo code check at Brooklyn and dot com that's B R O OK L I N E N dot com promo code check that's nice too because my my sheets are

[00:18:17] high risk it's nice to them to offer risk free and I don't think there won't be any oil sheets are high risk yeah hey guys what's I feel like these wet dirty sheets all over the studio now you know who I sold my

[00:18:28] remaining support near an open flame because you'll go up with them. Damn get some Brooklyn and promo code check did he show you where Ben snipped out the fart no but I did not buy it as people might know that our producer Ben was a fart defective

[00:18:45] that night at the party detective he detected poet laureate meatloaf is an old person and I just could tell by the producer Ben Ben like stank that was like a keeper an old person if any took him up

[00:18:58] any wet hat better we haven't had the names in a while do the names wish him a hello fennel sure yeah well fennel he's not professor crispy no he is a fuck master well let's not go there he's graduated certain tells are the course of

[00:19:11] different mini series such as Kylo Ben producer Ben Kenobi Ben I trauma and Ben say say anything that that that ill events with a dollar sign war haas producer Bane Ben 19 the fennel maker a banglish sure Mr. Ben credible what's the verbal house and now do

[00:19:34] you have any one yeah no you do I've been seeing what people have been suggesting there's a one that I really like them curious if you chose it you drink Ben haas look that's the one that I thought that I love fair enough remember we are

[00:19:46] being one other that I like but I can't remember what it was it doesn't matter alright so what who did you see at the big alright so the big three when we saw ice cube LL cool J as well financially

[00:19:56] involved or was he just there to hang out I don't know at one point a ticket I mean he was financially involved in that so I just paint the picture hanging out also I pointed out there LL cool J is an interesting person has been both

[00:20:07] deep blue sea and toys yeah two two two faves yeah this guy's in good movie if we ever did a JD's choice where you could pick any movie you want it would be toy yes there is one point of which ice cube was performing we couldn't

[00:20:20] really hear him because the acoustics were horrible because it was set up for basketball not for an ice cube concert and performing in the round and Barclays without proper sound is right and LL cool J has walked to the stage like he's you know he's

[00:20:33] right there no one else is doing this he has two cell phones one in each hand and he's filming ice cube with both cell phones I was like what does is it like a sonic and knuckles thing really if you put them

[00:20:46] together it's better so that's on a can knuckles they were like imagine if you're holding two phones next to each other and filming something you would just get the same video twice and you do in a story on snap and he's doing a story on insta possible

[00:20:59] come on not that is very possible I bet that's what he's OSHA Jackson junior was also there oh he's good he is I know we have like four and a half hours he got like that by a Maris and I don't want to keep on side

[00:21:11] barring here but just because this is one of our we're now in the zone again of doing episodes within a month of their release yeah Rob Letterman director of detective Pikachu upcoming episode on this show it's essential most anticipated movie of all time

[00:21:27] detective Pikachu yeah I love detective movies I love Pikachu yes I have to see this movie I'm hoping that detective Pikachu is what happy time murder should have been just a hard boiled noir pretty sure a bear knuckle noir but he in an interview said that the

[00:21:46] Pokemon are gonna be photorealistic they're making them look like actual animals oh god Pokemon are not real animals they're fake but it sounds like the design aesthetic for this movie is to make them look like real animals in our world horrible so my question now moving laterally

[00:22:01] you just said because I've been debating this as well is that the approach to take with the fucking Sonic the hedgehog movie maybe because it's just a weird because I like cartoon right right but like is Sonic the hedgehog gonna be like knuckles and tails and Sonic all

[00:22:15] looking like roadside creatures or is it gonna be like the smarts where it's just like what the fuck is this thing this doesn't exist I don't know because hopefully it's like the polar express the premise on it doesn't look like a no

[00:22:29] Sonic is a creature and then he has some like sort of cool spikes and that's like him he's but he doesn't look like a hedgehog he's the wrong color for a hedgehog but the premise of the movie is James Marston plays like a traffic

[00:22:41] cop like a roadside like speeding cop that's the premise that's not the premise but that's the human step is that's how he meets Sonic so you have to imagine in a real world environment he's there with his speeding gun and this blue thing flashes by and I

[00:22:55] wonder is it just gonna be a CGI creature with like red sneakers and the cool hair or they gonna make a photorealistic blue hedgehog who's like hey man Jesus Christ my pitch if you make a movie based on a video game John Leguizamo must be

[00:23:11] the star of it and he'd be a great Sonic no it's been Schwartz he would have been a great Sonic I mean Jim Carrey is playing Dr. Robotnik I'm playing I should mention that I buried the lead a little I'm playing knuckles Ben's playing tails

[00:23:25] tails is my favorite JD's playing big the cat I'm playing Dr. Robotnik no Jim Carrey is playing Dr. Robotnik which I mean fuck I'm playing the owner of the casino night zone I don't know do you think that Jim Broadbent's agent has just been banging

[00:23:43] his head against the wall for six straight weeks on the fact they missed Robotnik but do you think Robin was like oh no like I would Robotnik I wish I could do him now but that even sounds like Dr. Robotnik like that's how I imagine Dr.

[00:23:57] Botnik should talk what's his deal he wants to turn the animals into robots this is the end man this is David's observation of stand-up comedy what's the deal with Dr. Robotnik can he walk or does he have to be in a spaceship it's not clear it's so weird

[00:24:19] what's he having against these animals old video games are so weird now they try and have them make sense there's a little more thought into and then Mario it's just like oh the dinosaur kidnapped a lady why kidnapped her why did he do it

[00:24:37] what if they announced it he's a doctor makes robots and the hedgehog doesn't like him doesn't like him at all well so much of video game is created by like okay so what can we do in technology could we actually visually render the designs came first

[00:24:59] what if Indiana Jones this is our Billy Lin come on let's talk the walk I just want to tell you that we saw the power win the big three championship who's the power now here's the weirdest part we got big baby Davis to sort of their star

[00:25:17] bird man these are kind of like mba veterans like not quite stars that's not true one of these one best picture one of these one best picture bird man you're a bird man yeah chris anderson yeah he won best picture if he had one

[00:25:33] best picture I'd have been happier with that choice the real game of the night and I know blankies right now are screaming because I get I'm going to get into the most final is a little boring I'm going to get into the most film nerd thing

[00:25:43] you've ever had in this podcast revel in the big three for just a moment yeah the game of the night who's the third guy on the team on power yeah yeah well you know six guys per team but like quinton Richardson that was the other that was

[00:25:57] the third big you know mobily you know mobily was on that team corn migatti right corn migatti never been hard to these guys on the biggest basket not in the world are you the weirdest part is that their opponent was called

[00:26:11] threes company most of the teams have a three pun in their name because it's Thomas Suzanne summers is on the team and their logo Norman fell they're called threes company their logo is a factory I don't know why it's a company it should have been corporate

[00:26:29] offices or right but it's so weird yeah okay who's on the game of the night you know no we're in space I'm trying to think this is disgusting I know all ten basketball players who have been in movies since may robin 1991 Robinson

[00:26:49] was there at the big three game what was a Robinson's he's an uncle drew he plays the guy that I saw oh also well we're going to do that I was going to say what what's the Lord oh Baron Davis David very yeah but anyways

[00:27:09] the game of the night was the battle for third place right the third place playoff between the three headed monsters and tristate try really like it really just felt them reach of me like what's the three thing tristate okay but it was so much fun and the game

[00:27:25] winning shot was had by mock mood Abdul Rahouf yes who was previously knows Chris Jackson NBA yes he is currently 50 years old well it's still lighting guys up it was so much fun yes it was awesome he has gray hair it is crazy it was cool

[00:27:41] JD and I hung out we saw the big three championship we saw ice cube perform we saw happy time murders which was really good in terms of like breathing exercises because we were sighing constantly yeah our oxygen intake was like very regulated

[00:27:55] right there at the moment it was very much like David and I our friendship would go and see a big three game try to be a players our friendship as we go and see happy time murders now yeah that's fair yeah I think our friendship is also that

[00:28:07] we go see happy time murders but we probably go see something else yeah but I'll say there is and it's not exclusively but the majority of movies that you and I have seen together our movie is where it's like we need to see this

[00:28:19] together so that we can have the very specific incredibly long discussion afterwards yeah monocomino right and Billy Linn falls into this yes where we were overdue to like hang out and see a movie and I said do you want to see Billy Linn's long half

[00:28:31] time walk and you said I don't know what I told you about the technology and you were like that sounds weird and I was like yeah and Lee and you were like wait Ang Lee directed this which speaks to how much this movie

[00:28:41] was kind of like ignored and shrugged off 100% and I said to you he's broken all these technological barriers the movies gotten trash they only set up five screens like not even five theaters but there were five screens in the entire planet yes that were capable

[00:28:57] of projecting the movie in the way he intended and at the point that I suggest we go see it down to two yes and it was it was now the only screen in North America that was there was only ever one

[00:29:07] screen oh no there were two LA was playing it for a while Hollywood and am see Lincoln Square could handle it which is where we saw smaller screen at the Lincoln Square and then there were also well you can't you

[00:29:17] can't do this on a big yeah yeah in fact they had they had they have to get rid of the first like five rows of the theater because the technology doesn't work yeah I'm gonna I'm gonna get so into

[00:29:25] it what are you gonna say also screens in Taipei Bangs Beijing and Shanghai these are the five places on earth you can see this movie in two continents did in 120 frames per second yes yes and I know that I'm going to sound like

[00:29:39] a one-trick pony with what I appreciate in films but something that I want to set the stage for what I think is amazing about this film is we sat down that theater mm-hmm it was half full maybe yeah we saw

[00:29:53] like a late like a Sunday night 10 p.m. showing or something weird like that but still there wasn't many people in it yeah the moment the first shot of this movie came on screen yeah the reaction of the audience was paid to JD explains a theater

[00:30:08] yet but this is what it's about okay it was what oh shot comes on yeah oh people people have erection like oof and then there's giggles yeah no and light applause yeah okay because people are like what am I going on with my eyes what's

[00:30:24] the first shot of the movie to him reaching to grab his cell phone from his nightstand table it's a nice day which is like 3d 120 frames per second was the most aggressive thing we'd ever seen like it felt like like having your personal space violated

[00:30:38] I'll say this to the makeup earth JD literally has four pages of typed notes stapled together with also handwritten addendums on it so there's one quote that I want to start with from Sony release us like 40 page I just

[00:30:52] want to say this one thing before you get to the quote because the other thing I found interesting about the makeup our theater we saw it in and David you saw it at the New York film festival opening your film festival where they were

[00:31:02] opened the New York film festival I started a press screening not it like the premiere right attempting to project it in the perfect format and it was a little bit off you still saw more certainly closer to me yeah but it is this insane thing as we're talking

[00:31:14] about this movie is like very few people in the world got to ever see it the way he intended and on home video it will never be replicated in the same way no it was released a month later and I saw it again at the Sony screening room

[00:31:26] in 2D regular because I remember you saw more like a small me like it's not very good and I said is there any chance that technology so distracting that you didn't realize the movie was great because I so badly want this right right right well

[00:31:38] you are all in on the Vin Diesel of it all and the Steve Martin of it all sure if you go like Griffin like pick your three actors you want to be rehabilitated by Ang Lee sure reclaimed as serious like character actors it was Steve Martin

[00:31:52] Vin Diesel and I even feel Kristen Stewart's reputation was less sterling than it was is now she was at the beginning of her sort of reclamation project but I was amped by it I thought it was a great story for

[00:32:04] a movie I got excited when I read the synopsis and all of that but the theater we saw it in I think the makeup seem to be you know half full of like Chinese college students yes which you realize like oh he really

[00:32:20] is sort of an important important cultural figure yeah as just like the most prominent you know Asian American artists yep in this medium at the very least this movie made almost all of its money in China right right so it was a lot of like native

[00:32:34] Chinese speaking college students are 20 some things yeah and then the other half the theater was like people who worked in film yeah like I recognize a lot of people like oh wasn't like a sound guy on like a college shooter I did five years ago like packed

[00:32:48] together people who are just talking about on set experiences because I was eavesdropping and that was the whole makeup was just like Chinese college students who were like this guy's important we have to support him and film crew people who are like I need

[00:33:00] to see what the fuck this is just to break it down this movie made 23.7 million dollars in China insane 3.2 million dollars in Taiwan and 1.7 million dollars in the United States and was released and was not super million dollar project yeah yeah and

[00:33:16] that's the other thing is that after I saw it I think I went on a tirade of just any person that was a film fanatic yes I was like check it out you have to go at least 10 people go see it because people would come back to me

[00:33:28] and be like so JD may be so good when will anyone ever see it in that again I have because it's such an ignored movie like what I guess maybe one day but like who's going to go to the fucking effort of setting up the projection because

[00:33:42] you even go like okay let's say like the museum a moving image right they can do it right maybe one day they'll be able to you know but it's literally like you would convert your entire theater for one movie right it's not worth

[00:33:54] the conversion cost right yes so I believe so here's here's what the sub the context of all the stuff that I want to talk about is that this film uses technology so basically I don't think we've said it yet it's 120 frames per second right 4k

[00:34:12] stereoscopic so it's 3d right okay which films are usually shot in 24 frames I'm gonna get all into it you are but like here's here's the pitch I'm just to say this very cleanly 24 is what people are used to Peter Jackson released the first Hobbit in 48 and

[00:34:26] people went fuck this too much that's I always say I go I go when people when he released the Hobbit in 48 frames people are like this is crazy this is 120 frames Ang Lee went 0.5 times more than what Peter Jackson had

[00:34:38] done which was two times more than what we were used to and people hated that and he did it for a movie that's mostly just set in the bleachers at a state a drama that a traumatized guy who's introverted no yeah here's what I want to say

[00:34:52] going through his own half time long yes but we're not even half time yet here's here's my first quarter I think it's okay to not watch this movie unless you're unless you're able to see it 120 frames per second 4k 3d now what if you can

[00:35:06] watch like the 4k disk I think no okay wow so I think no I I got the combo pack which is I got the combo back I paid like twenty dollars for this I got it on I know what I got on sale I've been

[00:35:20] I've been watching the prices I've been riding the prices for months because I was hoping it would be on this writing the because I was it's that's one of those things where Amazon's like you want that you're gonna have to

[00:35:28] pay like no one wants that no I mean like it's not like Amazon did a sale where it was like if you bought 3 4k uhd movies they were each like fifteen dollars still a lot though yeah but I got furious seven in King Kong King Kong

[00:35:44] I love King Kong baby the Jackson get ready for that out yeah that's gonna be a good app that's gonna be a good app maybe turn around saying that we have this on the books no

[00:35:54] we do it whenever we do it no no I mean to me that watch out for the Hobbit the third Hobbit app that's when David's gonna I'm locked and loaded for that one baby that movie is good yeah this is what we gotta do

[00:36:04] Jackson because it's the combination of every type of miniseries we've done so far it goes into the chaos of the Star Wars one day yeah as a person he will be your matrix reloaded my problem with him is as a he it's not that good but

[00:36:16] yeah as a personality Jackson's not that interesting he's like a sort of out of a monkeler guy you know what I mean sure but yeah I mean his career starts out with what is clearly now the first to best puppet fucking movie of all time

[00:36:28] definitively I also I had to I grew up in the horror movie section yeah my local video store video adventure and boy oh boy that we did we love Peter Jackson back in the day before he was the Peter Jackson of now yes and

[00:36:42] he was known for making the good I mean the weirdest transgress dead alive is the goriest most violent film of all time funny though I mean hilarious and bizarre and when you're you know 12 and you want to have jaw dropping insane

[00:36:58] gore it's interesting I don't think I could sit through it now just as an adult but boy oh boy is that movie wild just to say this though because presuming that blankies have watched this movie in preparation for this episode the ways it is available to watch now

[00:37:14] are on this compact 4k UHD 60 frames per second so you're still only getting half of what you saw in here but it's closer to the experience of what the high frame rate looks like it looks weird 2d then there is a normal frame rate

[00:37:28] 1080p 3d blue right is what you watch which is what I watched in preparation for this and then there is just the standard high depth 2k 24 frames per second which if you're watching it on any stream platform if you're buying it if you're renting it that's

[00:37:42] probably what you're seeing okay so I have a question Ben experience and I might be setting you up yes it's too soon but I don't know what anything you just said oh boy oh boy I have no idea what any of that is Ben so here's the good

[00:37:58] you just invited a vampire inside your house here we go I'm so jazzed here's what's gonna happen my friend God I love talking about movies so much this stuff gets me so jazzed thank it I want to talk about how cameras work

[00:38:22] and I want to explain the brass tax of it because there's a lot of people like myself even even coming through film school where you understand the ideas of it but there are certain words and phrases that are thrown around

[00:38:34] you sort of feel embarrassed to admit you don't know what they are and sometimes when you look that stuff up it's sort of circular because it all leans on each other so what I want to do is I want to explain how cameras work

[00:38:44] and I want you guys to sort of be that audience gets to keep me to making it understandable it's the thing where you know how to use a word but you don't know how to define it yes or it's the kind of thing

[00:38:56] there might be one word that you don't know and I might be saying this and people listening will be like I know all of this but just let's refresh ourselves because when we get into the technology

[00:39:04] of it what they did was so advanced that you need to have this base knowledge to really understand it and I promise there's no aspect of this I just want to ramble with this stuff I think this is legitimately important talk about it

[00:39:16] so first I want to start with I want to be fastening to read about the making of Billy Lin there's two amazing quotes in the whole thing because Angley and John Tolle John Tolle's cinematographer that did this from the get go one of the best living cinematographers

[00:39:34] famous Oscar winning two time back to back actually Braveheart is the second and what was the first one Legends of the Fall a gorgeous movie not a good movie but a gorgeous movie it was one of the most beautiful looking ones

[00:39:48] Shot of Thin Red Line which is an incredible looking movie Shot of Tropic Thunder because Ben Stiller wanted Tropic Thunder to look like Thin Red Line He has a weird career because it's that yeah it's Tropic Thunder but like

[00:39:58] Gone Baby Gone I feel like people often hire him when they're like you know like a Ben Affleck where he's like I know you're a good cinematographer so just make my first movie look beautiful he shot Cloud Atlas he shot Iron Man 3 he shot Jupiter ascending

[00:40:12] and what's the most important movie that he ever shot one we've already covered and one we're about to one we've already covered one we're about to one of them is my least favorite film we've ever covered Elizabeth Howe correct and one we are about to cover

[00:40:24] did he shoot in Nancy he did we're about to cover it not the parent trap we're about to cover it it's complicated you're talking the actual timeline of one we're recording sure and John Toll had he had no experience shooting 3D before that he shot digital before

[00:40:44] yes and because like Iron Man 3 I'm sure that was digital like things like that and so anyways there's this 40 page PDF about the making of this whole thing that is fascinating to read and it gets so deep into the technical side

[00:40:54] of things but there is these two quotes in it that I think are fascinating right because his other 3D movies were all post converted he wasn't involved at all on set in terms of thinking stereosopically and I'm trying to think of was Cloud Atlas

[00:41:06] Jupiter ascending and Iron Man 3 both were like post converted I don't think any of them were shot stereosophically which I'll explain why that's such a crazy process but there's two quotes that I think are apropos of this whole thing number one

[00:41:20] rather than try to make digital look like the last 100 years of film why don't we start exploring and try to find the aesthetic and look of the digital age and then in trying to describe the look and feel of this he says there's no need to discuss it

[00:41:32] it can't be described in words it's not a verbal experience you can see it whether you like it or not it's a different level than movies you're used to seeing and that's something I want to say we're going to try to explain it here

[00:41:44] it's going to be almost impossible for you to truly understand what it's like it's going to be like us telling you a ghost story because truly it's hard to believe if you haven't seen it yourself they would have these meetings while they shot the film

[00:41:56] where they would shoot dailies also they couldn't even screen the dailies at 120 frames per second which I'll explain what all that means in a second they had to do it at 60 frames a second all the heads of departments would sit there and watch it and then

[00:42:10] Aang Lee described that like you'd literally see like their faces sink because they would be like this is changing the entire language of film and what we know about our jobs doesn't make sense anymore and we have to relearn it so like both Aang Lee

[00:42:24] and John told us it was like going back to film school the language of film totally changed and we were out there trying to figure out how this worked and they even admit some of the stuff was not successful or some of the stuff was

[00:42:34] out of their control and boy oh boy was an interesting thing but they had to learn on the fly how to do all this stuff I mean that's the most interesting thing about this movie is you see guys rewriting the language of filmmaking in a way that

[00:42:48] kind of fucks with every other aspect of filmmaking that had been perfected up until that point and the experience of it like it makes performances worse it makes costumes worse well it doesn't make them worse as much as it shows them from what they truly are

[00:43:06] we'll talk about it but also here's some questions I have from what I vaguely remember like the camera is very large right? yes it makes a lot of noise right? yes so you can't hear what you're saying well our actors like struggle to hear

[00:43:22] what they were saying and you can't do a lot of takes because you just like said they did like use up film really fast no it's so difficult with the lighting and the focus right these are all hearing that these were hindrances in the filmmaking process

[00:43:38] 100% and I want to address all of those here Ben I'm going to give you this first just hold on for a second what the fuck is going on he just handed Ben an envelope just hold on let me just say for anyone who hasn't watched the movie

[00:43:50] and is just listening to this episode because they're a JD fan right? and they know what this episode's going to entail before we get into the technical nitty gritty of this explain in a one sentence way what this technology is applied to this movie is about

[00:44:04] a Bravo Squadron a group of heroes in the Iraq war in 2003 correct? it's 2004 the film was set in 2004 early in the Iraq war they were fighting in 2003 this is Super Bowl 2004 it's not the Super Bowl it's a Thanksgiving game yes interesting because it's

[00:44:24] based on a Super Bowl performance it's basically fictionalized kind of I'm saying didn't Destiny Child actually do the Super Bowl in 2004? I don't think so no they weren't big enough for that let's look up who did performed at Super Bowl 38 which was of course between the Carolina Panthers

[00:44:44] and the New England Patriots Beyonce saying the national anthem but the halftime show is I believe the notorious halftime show where Janet Jackson's rest is exposed by Justin Timberlake so it was like a weird medley where Jessica Simpson did something and they did something

[00:45:04] so whatever anyway and he was going to have a snake at the end of the song the point being it's a big football game it's a big football game Thanksgiving game in Dallas a big football game that's going to have a halftime show

[00:45:14] Squadron's gone viral for their heroism through a cell phone video and now they're being brought out at the halftime show in this sort of like tribute to patriotism and our wartime heroes and the lead character Billy Lynn is the super introverted internalized dude

[00:45:30] who's quietly sort of crumbling from PTSD in this super overwhelming set of circumstances and we take place all over this one day where they're about to be feted and the next morning they were going to be basically takes place over like four hours

[00:45:44] so it's this one day where they're treated like heroes before they're just going to be sent back into the show they're going to be sent back and there are subplots running such as like Chris Tucker plays a PR person who's trying to sell their

[00:45:54] story and make them some money Kristen Stewart plays Billy's sister who's trying to convince him not to return to war to get an honorable discharge he got in a week and fucking get into that later but she's now the anti-war figure and then you also have Vinny Diesel

[00:46:08] Vinny Diesel plays the entire film so you know this is a supporting role for him it's not a Vinny Diesel film it's him, he's a company player who is the person from their squad lost in combat so they're mourning him this is all based on a novel

[00:46:22] written by Ben Fountain in 2012 and Ben Fountain is like he's not it was his first novel like he's like a short story writer I guess and it's like a well regarded novel but it's not like a best teller it's an acitically satirical novel that was well regarded

[00:46:38] the movie was written by James Sheamus's assistant who is an associate producer on Life of Pi that's just stuff you need to know but that's a big thing is the novel is mostly his internal monologue and is about the contrast between what Billy Lansing around him

[00:46:56] and his commentary on how much bullshit is around him it's him sort of calling out the hypocrisy of the entire situation the movie is now a kid who barely speaks and the reason is Joe Alwyn right out of drama school Taylor Swift's boyfriend now

[00:47:12] I graduated two days earlier and I graduated with Ed Lynn Steve Martin Vintiesel Chris Astore Chris Tucker Wildcast so that's the story that he applied all this say of the art technology and the idea of that being that there's that a lot of war veterans will talk about

[00:47:30] that hyper real feeling of coming back and feeling both removed and too present in their environment and so this technology that definitely creates that feeling the thought was statistically deployed it's not just like well let's try it there is a no-manic purpose to the high frame rate

[00:47:50] but also after Life of Pi he got so interested in continuing to push boundaries he wanted to make this Muhammad Ali George Foreman movie which I believe he still sort of like has on the back burner they shot test footage for that

[00:48:04] and that was when he started experimenting with all this because he thought that upping the frame rate would help shooting boxing not having to go in slow motion actually having the impact of the punches in real time being able to show it in a way that was never

[00:48:16] actually able to be captured on camera before and that movie just kept on getting slowed down and he decided to apply a lot of those sort of breakthroughs he had been working on to this film Yes, Angli has a whole theory that

[00:48:28] he believes that action is shot in slow motion because frame rates are not capable of actually portraying action Now I just know that like I think I'd heard people work on this movie say is that the goal was to make the movie

[00:48:42] feel like you're having a panic attack and I know and I will say like as someone who has the weird crispness of like everything you know all three of us all four of us in this room have had our battles with anxiety

[00:48:54] and weird mental fogginess and all that sort of stuff I know when I'm in an insane state of anxiety this is kind of how the world looks to me it's that insane thing where I feel super over stimulated movement feels really overwhelming and I can't stop focus on

[00:49:06] everything all the time and so at a certain degree on paper you're like this sounds unbelievable but it's also really fascinating that the movie doesn't feel very subjective in a way where you're like this is how things look to him Yes, it's like you're watching him

[00:49:22] in his environment and watching him is overwhelming Yeah, it's true. Let's get into the tech of it because I truly believe it I truly believe it. You don't have to do any more pre-amples I truly believe it will help contextualize this No more pre-amples. Okay, so

[00:49:36] how much do you guys know about how cameras work and all this stuff? No, just go for it Fair amount of pitiful next to you Just talk So, assume little because we're talking to our listeners as well Not that they don't know anything

[00:49:50] but I want to try to explain this in a clear way so feel free to ask questions That's why I have all these notes trying to organize the best way to describe it because it's a little complicated it just folds in in itself

[00:50:02] The way you think about all cameras is you're trying to control light and there's three big questions that you are trying to determine is how long so you got film, right? We're trying to figure out how long light hits our film which light hits our film

[00:50:17] and how much that light hits our film. Those are the three elements that cameras are trying to control So, starting with film we know film it's a piece of plastic that has gelatin and chemicals on it silver halide is the chemical

[00:50:29] the idea is that this is a chemical that when light hits it it reacts an interesting property of it is that you can have chemical that is more or less sensitive to light the more sensitive to light it is the grainier the chemical is going to be

[00:50:43] and we measure that through a term called ISO or ASA ISO is the term we use so basically if a film is really sensitive to light it'll have a high ISO if it's not that sensitive to light, it'll have a low ISO The way ISOs work is

[00:50:59] like you have 100, 200, 400, 800 200 ISO film is twice as sensitive as 100 ISO film 400 ISO film twice that's the idea That's when people talk about high speed film stock and that's also why that has sort of been the biggest sort of forward trek of film technology is making film stock

[00:51:21] more and more reactive to less and less light so you don't have to make everything as blandly and broadly lit and shine a bunch of lights in them Right now there's a lot of people that are like yes but isn't everything digital now

[00:51:33] yes, but I'm going to explain film because how digital works is them translating the terms of film and the concepts of film to digital so start with the so that's what ISO is that sensitivity you have an ISO rating of stuff okay so

[00:51:47] This is like a symphony orchestra you're setting up like that's your violin player warming up in the corner it all comes into play in this movie okay so how long light hits our film okay that's an important aspect of all this so we all know 24 frames per second

[00:52:01] is how movies work for the most part that is you're taking 24 pictures a second and the way the film works is that you have an individual cell in your camera you cover up a cell of it a cell of this thing, you uncover it

[00:52:17] to expose it to light and then you cover it back up and you cover it back up then you move the film to the next frame you uncover it, you cover it back up 24 frames a second is you're doing that 24 times that's

[00:52:27] sort of what the clicking noise is is that frame moving so you would think that means that a 24 frames second film each film is being exposed for 24th of a second that's not correct though because because as you can imagine

[00:52:43] for part of that time you're covering up the film to move it to the next frame because if you're just moving it it's going to smear like when you do a long exposure photos where it's like someone holding a flashlight and moving it and they're able to

[00:52:55] right with light in the sky, that's what would happen if you're moving the film without covering it up so you cover it up with something that's called a shutter think of like a record a spinning record or like a pizza something round it spins

[00:53:11] and you take pizza slices away so let's say we take half the pizza slices away that means we have a half circle that's spinning when that half circle is not covering the film that's being exposed when it covers it's being covered

[00:53:23] now if we take half the slices away we have 180 degrees that is a window that's 180 degrees that's called a 180 degree shutter if we only take one pizza slice away that's 30 degrees that's called a 30 degree shutter and the effect that this has is you're more or less smearing

[00:53:41] that image right so when you think of like films where people get super high or stuff like that when things are warping and sort of moving and smearing that's when you have a wide shutter angle aka like more than 180 degrees when you think of like

[00:53:55] is stuff crossed industry standard though yes stuff crossed industry standard it just helps to spin a little bit more when you have a narrow window like that's called a low shutter angle and that's something like in saving private rhyme when like bombs hit and it feels all

[00:54:11] like choppy and really sharp that's a low shutter angle what am I looking for when it feels almost strobe light when it feels like a strobe a strobe light sort of thing going off that's because you're not seeing motion blur which is what it's called when

[00:54:27] motion smears across the screen so that's shutter angle whenever you hear shutter angle that's all it is how many pizza slices you're taking away from the spinning disc now the thing I just want to butt in and say because this is always the thing I find most interesting

[00:54:39] about the entire history of film is that 24 frames per second being the standard was kind of an arbitrary decision oh boy am I going to get into this okay but it then becomes the language that all of us get used to in terms of how any

[00:54:55] filmed media looks 24 frames per second it's like a refrain right it's not based on the way we see it's based on the technical limitations of the time and then that becomes the language for the next century exactly but I'm going to get into the physics of stuff because

[00:55:09] there's a reason why 24 frames gets into it so now we have a cell phone so far we know how this works we got frames per second which is how many pictures we're taking per second is frames per second and our shutter angle is how long in that

[00:55:23] frame that it's being exposed so now we have to figure out what light reaches our film and that's where lenses come in lenses are just pieces of glass concave, convex that are taking light refracting it into your film or whatever your image sensor ok long lenses are

[00:55:43] when you zoom in on something, when you're seeing a small wide lenses or when you're seeing a lot we call wide lenses short lenses because the glass is closer together and the lens is physically shorter so page 2 so now we get focus the way lenses work is that

[00:56:03] I know I'm flipping through my camera lenses the way focus works is this light that's reflecting through the lens is based on the curvature of the glass there's a point in front of your lens where things are in focus they are as sharp

[00:56:17] as possible and from that point ok, things that are closer to the camera or farther camera go less out of focus your depth of field hell yeah Ben Ben's doing guitar solo so a wide depth of field is when everything's in focus

[00:56:35] the shallow depth of field is when only a really small plane is in focus so in examples when you see in a movie they pull focus yes wide and then they zero in on an object or a person and the most base

[00:56:49] way of describing it is how much of the background is in focus around whatever the central focal point of the shot exactly, and depth of field is really important because it determines all of your focus and everything that you're seeing in the frame

[00:57:03] is the things that affect your depth of field first and foremost is the length of your lens a longer lens a long lens where you've zoomed in that's going to have a shallower depth of field so that's like when you see a close up

[00:57:17] of a tear going down someone's cheek and the tear is in focus but even they're not, their cheek is not that's shallow depth of field with long lens when you have a short lens wide angle there is a much wider depth of field

[00:57:29] ok, and that's why when you shoot a landscape you can see mountains in the distance are all in focus because when you're wide, focus is going to infinity and Angley tends to be a sort of long lens kind of guy like Brokeback Mountain is a movie that's all

[00:57:45] like long lens photography because you're seeing them in their landscapes and it's always you had to get Steve Coogan's entire performance in shot we've set up in an episode that Steve Coogan played the mountain go on J.D set up the truth?

[00:57:57] yes, we have set up the truth another element that determines your depth of field is how close your subject is to the camera so the farther away your subject is the bigger your depth of field is going to be

[00:58:07] wherever your focus point is and the closer your subject is to the lens, the shallower your depth of field is going to be again think of shooting mountains versus shooting someone close up tears going down their face and also another way to think of wide angle lenses

[00:58:19] like think of like Terry Gilliam he'll shoot a close up with a wide angle lens sometimes and more things will be in focus because he's a wide lens moving it physically closer so anyways there's another element that affects your depth of field Ben that's your aperture your aperture

[00:58:35] is here's the drone player now yes this is the intensity how much light you're letting get to your film the aperture is like think of it like a sci-fi space door it's a bunch of blades that form a circle you can make the David David we're in cinema

[00:58:53] right now it's not cross pizza just trying to keep a light here you can make that circle small or you can make that circle big that is like a butthole obviously if that circle is small less lights getting through

[00:59:09] if you're making the circle big more lights getting through we measure that with something called f stops the lower the f stop number the bigger the circle so f stop of one is there can be a little bit more depending

[00:59:21] all the way open we caught all the way open and then you have one 1.4 2.2.8 4 5.6 we should make it clear that this definition of f stop is very different than Ben's definition of f stop which is a place where you can stop and fall you want to pull over

[00:59:39] I've got an f stop over here I know about 20 more miles to an f stop what do you say I've vetted out an f stop five minutes away but something to keep in mind is that the bigger your aperture is the wider open it is

[00:59:53] the shallower your depth of field is and the smaller your aperture is the more your depth of field is that's why a pinhole camera everything is in focus because you have a really small narrow aperture ok so those are the major elements of how film works

[01:00:09] well wouldn't you say that the f stop changing that and judging how you're going to shoot something coolness versus blown out and being like really high contrast looking and isn't that kind of play into it as well well so your f stop doesn't

[01:00:23] necessarily affect your contrast too much but what it does is it determines how much light is hitting it so that's why you have light meters things like that and you're trying to expose so that everything looks at the right exposure not too bright not too dark

[01:00:35] well you're talking about Ben when people sort of take strong stylistic choices like that that's very often a byproduct of people applying the quote unquote wrong method for that type of shot like what JD was saying about like shooting close ups

[01:00:47] and like you know wide lenses like the Colin Brothers do or Barry Sonnenfeld does where it's like that weird distorted hyper real kind of thing right it's like going up a few stops yes what they say right yes exactly so now to talk about Billy

[01:01:01] Lynn now that you understand that those concepts of how that all works just hit an hour it's good we're doing great we can cut off the big three stuff we're on page three this is you know this episode is titled 12 hour wall right well here's

[01:01:13] the thing here's what I here's what I would argue I think it's more important to talk about the tech than is talked about the plot 100% so because we could burn through the plot in 10 minutes plot I mean right yeah so 120 frames per second that is

[01:01:29] an insane endeavor because it is again way way higher frame rate than anything you ever see so the camera spins around 120 the fucking you know there's 120 pictures with the pizza per second well so now we're in digital there's not actually digital there's not actually a spinning

[01:01:51] pizza but you everyone should be on the floor right now okay now we're having our horn section here comes the bus so sorry go ahead I'm sorry it's digital film you're right yes this is not celluloid so you don't have to worry about

[01:02:05] that mechanic is not sure okay so now I'm going to get into a fuck what's the best order of operations to do this okay here's I'm gonna do I'm gonna get to probably mark this episode as explicit just cuz genuinely a lot

[01:02:17] of people are going to use this as masturbation material there are so many blankies who like just fully get off on you explaining things in this detail but this is I here's I'm not joking I'm curious what you're gonna jerk off to this and that's cool

[01:02:29] I believe that if there's there's a lot of blankies there's a lot of blankies that are there's a jerking on critics amateur film critics things like that yeah I believe that understanding the technology is important I think it is you can't let it

[01:02:41] speaking as a film critic you know you can't let it overwhelm your writing or your thought process because that's not for one what your readers really want and for two you know there's more things going but you should yes the

[01:02:51] more you understand the better obviously you could tell the best critics are the people who have an understanding of how all the different aspects actually work rather than just looking at the final product yeah and for all this stuff I'm trying to explain this simply as possible

[01:03:01] so there's some super nerds that might know that I'm avoiding some details or maybe simple some flying something like sort of toppings on the pizza yes so here's here's some crazy shit we're gonna get into or pizza in the bottle the way

[01:03:13] film works and this is now getting to billy linds of this is we can get out we're out of the films will stop now this is me getting into what's crazy about Billy we're walking the walk the way film walking the walk 2018 the way

[01:03:23] film works people often say what allows a bunch of series of still images to create a illusion of motion is something called persistence of vision which is the idea that like if you right now wave your hand in front of your face you see

[01:03:37] that your finger that you the image of your fingers is blurring and that's considered persistence of vision which is that the image sort of smears in your retina and in your brain and so that helps you determine what direction things are going how motion is working okay that's

[01:03:53] not true that is not what dictates motion that's not what makes cinema works so now I'm gonna get into some crazy stuff so there's a bunch of these experiments that prove that this is not how it works because I'm a rocker section

[01:04:05] legit David you can't oh my god this is well no there's one podcast you had me when you're describing how cameras work but now you're like now let me up into you thought process vision maybe so there's these famous experiments where you take okay

[01:04:19] an image of a red dot it's not it's a still image of red dot no motion blur nothing okay and then you take that away and put up another image of a red dot another location okay if you go between those images one

[01:04:31] to the other one to the other and you start increasing the pace that you're going between the two suddenly your brain starts to assume motion between them instead of it being one image of one circle here and another here your brain goes that circles moving from here

[01:04:45] to here back and forth back and forth and in the science experiments they refer to this in a certain amount of hertz or a certain amount of milliseconds I've sort of tried to transmutate it into frames per second okay so the frequency

[01:05:01] which do that when you it starts as being still images and then let me get my exact age for yep welcome to five towers club by the way from zero congrats thank you from zero to five frames per second it's just succession to

[01:05:15] images then you get to partial movement where you get the sense sensation of things moving slightly and then at around eight between sixteen and eighteen frames per second which is really interesting you have what's called beta movement okay which is just like he's like low testosterone

[01:05:35] god sort of cock movements hey Ben can you open that envelope oh my gosh this is like Neil Patrick Harris hosting the Oscars that's sort of why I did this and it's opening the envelope that was the same on the front there Griffin will make a

[01:05:53] joke about beta movement and just open it up fuck this is amazing beta cock movement okay um I mean the guy knows me we're very good very old friends oh my fucking god I just knew I just knew Jesus Christ I'm sorry so around sixteen to eighteen frames

[01:06:28] one thousand company that really was a tour de force thank you listen you got it you know people and you know someone you know them we started doing it together you have beta movement which is interesting and they move it is also called optimal

[01:06:46] movement that is the moment at which movement seems the most clear and what's eighteen frames per second David I don't know eighteen that's the frame rate that silent film started out oh sure yes that was the first time when people were like oh this

[01:06:58] can't be the frame rate and that's because it matches up with beta movement optimal movement then something crazy starts to happen as you increase the movement even further beyond eighteen frames per second you get to something that is called the five phenomenon which the five phenomenon

[01:07:16] PHI Greek letter sure and that is that your eye stops looking at it going I can't get over the letter sorry crazy what if he hadn't done the joke I almost didn't say cock either I did low test

[01:07:30] testosterone and then I was like should I put it to back David will be exasperated by the joke that would have been the true cootie grass if you had also gotten that in yeah right just sidebar for one quick second that's why when people parody like

[01:07:44] silent film comedies it's often people move too quickly or whatever because it was right a lower frame rate that now has been converted when we watch it so you hit this thing called the five phenomenon which is when your eye starts

[01:07:56] looking stops you thinking that the red dot is moving and starts observing the area around the dot is moving theoretically and that's considered pure emotion because you're not observing an object moving you're observing the idea of motion without a visual cue to it

[01:08:14] which is only interesting to me because that starts happening around thirty frames per second which is when people start to go how come video looks so weird which is around thirty-five because like that's the was the classic complaint about Hobbit at forty eight was that it looked

[01:08:30] like a home movie yes behind the scenes footage look like a soap opera all the things that yes or it looks like you have motion smoothing on your television right which is technology that creates fake frames in between which is a technology designed kind of like for

[01:08:44] sports things like that are very fast video game video games that people have accepted at high frame rate right and and then you buy your TV and like like half the fucking country just like watches movies with motion smoothing on and like doesn't think

[01:08:58] about it and film nerds whatever like fall asleep crying go to the bar and go like hey can I see your remote for a second right and I was in an air B&B in Alaska and the TV had like I was

[01:09:08] it was like super motion smooth I was kind of impressed like and I it took me forever to figure out how to turn it off well so here's the thing that's that why most smoothing is so weird is that what it's doing is so when something's at 24

[01:09:20] frames per second the time between those frames you know the image changes right you're in one position you're in another position your brain has to make up what the movement is between that and so the more your brain is able to interpolate add up whatever

[01:09:34] it wants that it thinks is going on between there that's what makes it feel sort of like that like classic movie feeling because your brain is adding in a lot of the gaps there then the higher the frame rate is your brain's not adding in gaps and with

[01:09:50] motion smoothing what it's doing is it's not even actually the actual motion it's a computer trying to guess what the middle is which is slightly off but your brain can't figure it out but it's like the dreamlike quality that is at

[01:10:00] this point over a century baked into the cake of how we perceive movies and television yes that visual language is at its very core and for years like Douglas Trumbull visual effects yeah Titan was trying to get the industry to go to 30 yes and 30 was viewed as

[01:10:16] too big of a jump right people won't stand for it so the fact that like Angle and Peter Jackson started full on multiplying rather than just like slowly adding frames is insane wait because here's here's here's the next step of all this the physics stuff is that

[01:10:30] I think 30 frames is weird because you're right around this five phenomenon which this is me totally theorizing the physics of of that being tied but I think there's something to that but then once you get above 33 pains per second you get into like

[01:10:42] a lot of the real reality of the thing that's going on is that just like the high level of mobility which is basically your eye if two images are going back and forth is unable to distinguish one from the other and as you move up towards

[01:10:56] infinity that gives you more just there's no gap between the images they're just on top of each other in your eye so the human eye for the most part like like the highest it's ever been recorded is like five hundred something they lost oxygen what it is that

[01:11:12] they will show someone like a footage then flash an image for whatever the millisecond is and if they can perceive it that so most people are actually around 45 or a little around there a little above so 120 frames per second actually gets us to the point where

[01:11:30] for the most part for most people it is more frames per second than our eyes and brains can actually process and so for us it just appears as reality so our brain isn't interpolating anything between the frames because every all the information is given to it

[01:11:46] which in film and angley and john told talk about this in really major ways want to remove the window was the thing they kept on yes we want to films always had this window between it it's kind of foggy

[01:11:56] we want to remove the window make it look like you're looking at a box on the wall well that's a this is central question so here's what's so interesting I need the window in most movies you're looking at a box on the wall the picture happens

[01:12:08] to be changing right once you get above 120 frames per second especially with stereosteopic 3d 4k in angley talks about this is really interesting you are not aware of the box anymore you're looking at the at the film and it

[01:12:22] you know we're like they're just people on the other side yeah it looks like it looks like there's a hole in the theater and you're just seeing reality which means the way that like right now the way that we're all looking each other if you look around anywhere

[01:12:32] you're not perceiving the edges of your frame you're just looking you're focusing on the things around you because your eye has so much to take in when you watch this movie you're not aware of the frame and as such the language of film goes out the window

[01:12:46] framing contracts all these things go you're not watching just people on a stage you're still watching a movie that cuts you know that has close-ups people's heads has like dissolves yes this is a movie that has a lot of complicated visual tricks right yeah and like

[01:13:04] like I mean like Andy Richter he said that joke about like his grandma watching a movie and you cut to someone's head and she's like a severed head like you know like that's funny like this movie kind of feels like watching that and

[01:13:16] in a way he hasn't done his career up until this point it has a lot of as much as I said it isn't a subjective film in terms of being from Billy Lynn's viewpoint a lot of the conversations are subjective close-ups the coverage is like Chris Tucker looking

[01:13:30] you in the eyes right so we were like walking out of there being like that's the weirdest fucking phenomenon is seeing Chris Tucker deliver a monologue his head is like 30 feet tall yep and it looks like you're seeing that through a window it looks like King Kong is

[01:13:44] outside your window talking to you about a movie it is wild and here's the other thing about that is that there's something in frame called the language of film which is certain rules that we believe exist is that like the line for example there's no 180 degree

[01:13:58] there's something called a 30 degree rule here's a really interesting one 30 degree rule this is a rule that when you are making a film and if you have a camera pointed at something and you're like in a wide shot if you're going to cut to that same subject

[01:14:10] again you have to change the angle by at least 30 degrees otherwise your eye notices the cut sure because basically the image needs to be different enough so that your eye isn't as attuned to what's changing we had a different 30 degree rule

[01:14:24] on set of the tick by the way which was the sound stage had to be 30 degrees because Peter's costume was so hot that sounds like paradise to me not even real a lot of crew people wearing parkas but there's the line

[01:14:36] you know so say it's like JD and I are talking right is that your camera would stay on one side of our conversation that's the one in the ground orientation of the frame if David's on the left and JD's on the right

[01:14:46] if you do a hard cut over to fully the other side where then David was on the right and JD was on the left your brain would reject it would just look stupid although phantom thread crosses the line many times and it's one reason

[01:14:58] those conversations are so strange and disorienting but it can be used much like we were talking about breaking rules on purpose to get a disorienting effect the great Jeff Herb rest in peace one of the things he said about the line Jeff Herb he was a cinematographer

[01:15:10] sounds like an herb Jeff Herb he's cinematographer he was an amazing he was part of the ASC he was a professor at NYU sounds like a Mario Kart film to me yes but he basically said don't have to wear a 180 degree rule

[01:15:22] the thing you have to keep in mind is characters should be looking the same direction on screen and that's all that your eye really cares about how do you spell this guy's name? Jeff Herb there he is Jeffery D Herb yeah he was incredible passed away

[01:15:36] he died, Wikipedia says he's still alive not true it sucks so 30 degree rule a great example have you done VR anyone here? no I just did it on mushrooms recently listen to that episode of night call it's actually really great he talks about it

[01:15:54] so something in VR that they learned is that you can't cut in VR because people throw up so they do fades to black and then fades back up because in VR when your reality just changes it's too it's upsetting to your balance same thing happens in 120 frames

[01:16:10] the 30 degree rule does not work coverage does not work because as you look at it you believe you are perceiving reality and when it changes it seems this is what I want to hear I want to know why this movie looks so fucking weird

[01:16:24] and I don't mean the crispness of the visuals I mean how the camera moves the way your brain processes the information on screen actually kind of hurts you as we were watching I was trying to explain to my girlfriend like what was so unsettling about just the way

[01:16:38] the movie's visual language works and it's hard to explain because I'm not that smart I'm stupid big dumb dumb you're looking at me like you want me to deny that you're a big dumb dumb I was like imagine a spinning pizza and she's like I'm going to bed

[01:16:54] so people talk a lot about how 3D is like color film and audio sound being added to film it's not in my opinion because we already had ways to communicate depth in film and the two ways were focus in contrast those things both both communicated depth

[01:17:16] now we're using 3D to communicate depth and it's different so in this film what they had to do is they started to realize is that contrast and shadows didn't work because we're used to a 2D plane a square that we're dealing with the

[01:17:30] the rectangle that we're dealing with the balance of right because we are looking into it and we're perceiving it as reality we don't need contrast or lighting or focus to tell us anything about what we're supposed to be looking at because that would be like if

[01:17:46] you're looking out into the world and suddenly just one things in focus that means that you need to get glasses now that's why I rewatched the movie in 3D last night because I started out watching it in 2D high frame rate and

[01:17:56] if you're going to lose one thing it's actually more disorienting to lose the 3D in watching it because the way it is shot and lit there is zero depth in the image if you're not watching it in 3D because of that trying to mimic reality

[01:18:12] and so here's what they became up against when they're shooting this when you shoot stereoscopic you need two cameras you basically have one camera for each eye you have something that's called a beam slitter in the middle which is a mirror that shoots light off of it

[01:18:24] into both cameras so they're shooting on Sony f65s which are pretty heavy cameras and you have this 3D rig and all this stuff that is to connect them and combine them and when you're shooting 120 frames per second you have a lot of your batteries

[01:18:40] all the media is huge their rig was over 100 pounds the camera so Aang Lee talks about how he's so used to shooting steady cam shots things like that a steady cam operator cannot hold 130 pounds on their shoulders for more than 2 seconds

[01:18:56] and there's very little camera movement of any kind it's a lot of static lock down the moves feel very like you really notice it when the camera moves and when you shoot stereoscopic you need those two things to be totally in sync so like

[01:19:10] a great example of this is that they shot these on master prime with really beautiful lenses but they had to go through dozens of lenses to get two of each lens that matched because lenses are made by humans fallible, things will be wrong with them

[01:19:24] only we could get rid of humans that's page 5 of JD's Minifest now the humans the humans ruin film cinema so they're shooting this with these giant camera rigs that are hard to move on top of the thing perfectly synced something they ran into while shooting

[01:19:42] this was that because they're 120 frames per second they could not get the cameras to be totally in sync they would be off by a couple frames which totally changed like how media matters stupid idea then it's crazy the room when Tommy was always like we'll shoot

[01:19:58] digital and film at the same time the thing that's crazy about this movie is that he decided to apply all of this to making a full feature film that was going to be released in theaters rather than going like let me get technology companies to give me $5 million

[01:20:14] to make a short blank check baby which is kind of like Inner E2's VR film like that's a short where he's like let me try and begin to develop where to use this to sort of test out what happens if you do

[01:20:26] and he uses it the clever way and there's an immersive concept to that movie that makes sense but this isn't all or nothing thing in the same way that Attack of the Clones was where it was like I'm going to do the learning curve

[01:20:38] while making the movie and just put it up on screen and we're going to do it on a script that's like from an untested writer that's like you know not a movie that's screaming out for this like we said there is some thematic concept here but like

[01:20:52] there are other ways to use visual and film language to communicate that this guy is feeling weird the crazy side effect of that for me is that because of the way they had to light everything frame everything, set up the camera move

[01:21:05] you know the way they directed actors the way they dressed or didn't dress the sets all of these things the film is essentially unwatchable in every other format that it's not like a 3D movie where you can just we're saying if you just watch it

[01:21:18] right like you can watch Avatar in 2D and you argue that it's not as good but it still doesn't work in the way that you're used to watching a movie it makes sense this movie looks strange even when it's in normal frame

[01:21:29] yes so to answer your question of why does this look wild so first the camera rig is totally unwieldy so the speed at which you're used to shooting stuff is impossible second as they start to shoot they learn that coverage does not work

[01:21:40] which is when you're shooting a scene you get closeups angles that doesn't work with that and you can put it all together in the end room then here's where I explain all of how cameras work that has the biggest smallest space

[01:21:50] here's where I explain why cameras work to you so because you're using all this technology and this technology I'll start by saying this the production designer there's a great quote where they talk about usually when you're production design a scene

[01:22:04] so like right now if you look at like the wall of this building we're looking at a wall in this somewhat newly built studio you can tell that the paint looks like it's a newly built studio and that's because there's not years of layers of paint

[01:22:15] painted on top of it we perceive that because we're in this room whereas when you go into like a New York apartment where there's 40 layers of paint you can sort of perceive that in movies you don't really notice that in Billy Lynn you do notice it

[01:22:27] the production designer was like usually in films I would put three or four coats of paint on a wall and in this film I had to put 30 or 40 because you would notice it you would notice it likewise the makeup artists were like

[01:22:39] you couldn't put makeup on because you could see it you see any makeup on these people's faces and it gets into like if any you know listeners have ever been on any film set of any sort there's always that disorienting experience

[01:22:51] even if you're on the lowest level thing you know where you're just like God this looks so fake I can't believe it photographs as real on camera we've been doing this for 100 years we know what it's supposed to look like

[01:23:03] people just have no, through trial and error these things have been developed bit by bit and they essentially tried to rewrite the entire language of cinema in 120 minute movie and here's what's so wild not just the language of cinema but the language of how you produce a film

[01:23:15] every different department yes every department and anything that looks off or slightly manufactured is glaring and Billy Lynn but because they're shooting in 3D your beam splitter takes away one stop of light it takes away half of your light then because you're 120 frames per second that takes away 2 1 1 3

[01:23:37] stops of light losing stops everywhere then Aang Lee is like everything needs to be in focus what did we learn about focus to have things being focused you have to have a small aperture which means what you need more light so they got into

[01:23:55] the situation where they needed sometimes 5 or 6 times as much light because also the f65s they're dealing with sort of have a built in digital ISO of like 800 and anytime you push it above that you start getting digital noise so of course they

[01:24:09] were anything that was slightly not real stuck out like a sore thumb but they also needed to find a way to pour a light in in a way that has never been done in cinema before which is like square peg round hole those things do not

[01:24:23] fit that's why if you look at the behind the scenes stuff of them shooting like the Super Bowl they have there's these big helium balloons you can fill with helium floating the air put really bright lights in they had like 10 of them

[01:24:35] in the air just to shoot as much light as possible onto the subjects likewise Aang Lee was like contrast doesn't work lighting doesn't work we have to keep it low contrast just so as an audience member you can

[01:24:47] look at it and just pick out what you want to look at in the frame so it's this insane endeavor of anything that's slightly messed up you're going to notice and we everything is messed up because we're doing this and you're also I mean the experience

[01:25:01] that everyone who's seen this when we projected in the full Aang Lee format a form thing never came up with a name for they should just call it the full Aang Lee death an Ango vision is that you can't stop focusing in on weird things in the background

[01:25:15] sure sure like you you get really hung up on signs on walls or like a certain background actors there are especially if something doesn't look totally right if they're background because a big thing on set is you go like hey we need clean sounds all the background

[01:25:29] actors just mind talking and you can't stop focusing on how fake the people pretending to talk in the background look can I say something you never pay attention to yes it's weird that you would do all of this in a movie where

[01:25:41] you have someone playing a fake Beyonce yes that's the thing that's the weirdest the weirdest of all I know I've already said other things are the weirdest element the way my girlfriend immediately the second was like that's not Beyonce and I was like well

[01:25:53] no I mean they couldn't get Beyonce it's all that you can think about so the second she's on screen in the most important scene in the movie only ever see the back of her head and some us glaring thing in the world like every time she turns around

[01:26:05] and the other members of destiny's job you know which they might do like if they're deep in the background you notice it because you're like oh I see how we're not really able to see their face right you know but there's even this shot

[01:26:15] where it's like her in the foreground from behind adjusting her wig and in the background totally in focus you see the line of like the seven Bravo guys and it is somehow the most amateur hour shot looks like garbage that's exactly it you're like why

[01:26:29] does this look cheesy like this is this movie is supposed to be like a visual revolution it looks cheesy it looks cheesy because anything that's not real right you notice right which is why I think this technology should be used to make like a film like

[01:26:43] Koyanastasi or like Baraka same Sarah it's so much better for documentaries and that's why I thought I thought casting what's his name is the lead is really interesting he's not necessarily an actor actor he's a guy that sort of knew whereas something

[01:26:57] that Ang Lee talks about in that you and I noticed was when you look into the eyes of the actors performing this movie you see an actor performing you see all the insecure you see them remembering their lines it feels like you're reading their mind you see them

[01:27:11] making the choices and the thing that's astounding is I think draw one is really good in this movie and comes off the best of all the actors he's good he has the least talking to do I disagree that he's the best in the movie Garrett Hedlin yeah

[01:27:23] he's very good he's excellent he's the only one who seems to have figured it out but yeah because it's not just the visuals it's also the script is so weird the script's very odd but I was going to say the thing Joe Alvin is that he's good though

[01:27:33] he's straight out of drama school so he is a real actor but he's not an actor who has any real prior experience with on-camera stuff in any serious way so he doesn't have the movie making tricks that he has to ignore

[01:27:45] they didn't have to teach him how to unlearn because like people like Vin Diesel and Steve Martin my best friends are people who have over decades developed such a strong sense of technique in terms of what their relationship to the camera is but Vin Diesel above

[01:28:01] all else is an actor who's like I know exactly what I play on camera I know what my angles are I know the disable I talk at you know like this is my relationship and then you watch him in this and you're like I see

[01:28:11] Vin Diesel thinking about when lunch is going to be fair enough I mean he's hungry but I mean he's hungry I think Vin is fine in the movie I think Kristen Stewart is fine I even think Steve Martin is okay all of them play better when you're watching

[01:28:23] a normal frame rate yeah that's probably true I was going to say all of them do yeah everything does that's their medium there are the three actors who are the most or the four actors who are most experienced in the old school way of cinematic language Joe Alwyn

[01:28:35] works well because it's like Ang Lee taught him how to be on camera specifically for this camera and they talk about how they did so many fucking tests with him because the studio didn't want to hire a totally unknown guy who had graduated from drama school literally

[01:28:47] two days before they put him on the plane so they did like ten tests with them they kept him in Texas like doing tests or LA I think for ten consecutive tests over the course of like two weeks so they were A testing him and

[01:29:01] testing the technology at the same time so I think his performance is the most married to everything they were trying to do technology right and that's another thing as they shot this they couldn't watch it in 120 frames per second the technology did not exist

[01:29:13] for them to watch dailies in fact even in post-production editing they could not watch it in 120 frames per second they're just crossing their fingers like right hopefully this will all come out in the wash they're making a movie like the Lumiere brothers

[01:29:25] it's like you shoot it and you go like I hope this turns out and you don't know I think that's I have a question though if I'm traveling let's say going on a trip somewhere like a long half-time walk you know where would I

[01:29:41] what would I use to to transfer things from one place to another well that's the thing look if you take a long half-time walk you don't want a lot of things in your pocket right and you're just going around cutting into your thighs and the like

[01:29:55] I hate when that happens I love people go like luggage it's so inconvenient it's so heavy why would I pack a bag well maybe someone has just entered this space a disruptor into the luggage space to send all your problems with luggage away

[01:30:13] you're talking about the team of thinkers, seekers and designers who've created a new kind of luggage and I don't mean power like emotional power real power you can plug your phone into the thing power season 6 on stars exactly and this is a product

[01:30:31] that designed after asking thousands of people how they pack why they travel, what bugs them about their luggage so this bag it doesn't have sticky wheels solving old problems but also solves new problems like dead cell phones well it's got a battery built in

[01:30:45] so you can charge on the go here's the thing I really like about it okay I sweat a lot for a man as small as myself and I use the term man very loosely I sweat like Joe Cocker at Woodstock and so if I go on vacation

[01:31:01] my clothes are like you don't get a second use out of them right when I pack my bag I'm always like dirty clothes in the same bag but this you're saying this seems like am I getting a plastic bag from Bodega and stuffing the dirty clothes inside

[01:31:13] I get you removable, washable laundry bag keeps dirty clothes separate from clean inside so you get to separate segregate your dirty clothes from your clean clothes maybe segregate with a loaded term to use but you put it in there

[01:31:31] you close it off then we get home you pull the bag out you put it in the wash done alright now I gotta tell you this sounds awesome because I currently don't have a home Ben is homeless and this is not a joke

[01:31:41] I don't have an apartment so I think I need this Ben is like Pete Holmes because he's crashing several different applications of that term ships are free how can I get this ships are free anywhere within the lower 48 states you're in one of those

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[01:32:25] that's $20 and you know they're great I have one I'm taking it to Toronto just a couple days double humble crack great well thank you for answering my question let's get back to talking the walk 28 ding dong hey kids it's me Ronald McDonald the official sponsor of blank check

[01:32:47] if you come to local McDonald's and use the promo code blanky I'll cut your big mac and hack you can take one half now and take one half home he's penny wise that's what the kids like McDonald's kids up with the times they got artisanal chicken sandwiches

[01:33:05] and they got penny wise that's what the kids like I'm proud of McDonald's now it's still my burgers but 100% that is a real ad so I recommend you go to McDonald's and when you're ordering say to the cashier promo code check and just wait

[01:33:19] and if they don't know where you're talking about you go I heard you were going to hack my big mac in half hack my mac promo code check what were we talking about we were talking the walk here's something interesting interesting part of all this stuff

[01:33:35] in 3D films usually there's an issue this is a big issue in life of pie where there's motion blur issues because motion will start mid frame or something like that and you get this weird ghosting feeling

[01:33:49] the camera movement is too fast if the character is on screen it's too fast yeah and it doesn't work in this it's all good baby it all works and you're watching football players and you're watching dancers at the half time show people moving very fast

[01:34:03] and you have a camera pan across the scene and you're like I can't look at that and that's motion jitter it's a problem that happens because your brain can't track all the changes that are happening especially with motion blur especially disorienting to look at in 3D

[01:34:17] where it's trying to render blur in three dimensions but life of pie is a better movie than this movie but 120 frames per second that problem doesn't exist so there's all these things as you watch this movie where you're like this feels weird and different I can't tell why

[01:34:31] this is the thing that I feel like suckers I would say some of these directors into this like James Cameron Peter Jackson where they're like I want my special effects to look cleaner I want these big action scenes to be more easy to follow with your eyes

[01:34:45] but anytime there's an entirely CGI creature on screen you're like this is actually pretty stunning like Gollum looks amazing but the problem is that a guy wearing hobbit makeup looks like a guy wearing hobbit makeup and the difference of the refraction of the light

[01:35:01] you see the guy in his eyes being like am I a believable hobbit right now? 100% yes! You don't feel anymore like you're in fucking Rivendell or whatever whereas in the original Lord of the Rings shot on film as far as I know

[01:35:15] where he's just like let me point the camera at New Zealand like you're like oh this looks like another world cause there's a window it's like give me the window well it's like Bill Plimpton does animations he draws in like two's or fours right?

[01:35:29] and you watch that and you enjoy it because your brain is interpolating between it here oh boy you're just getting reality you're looking at Steve Martin and you're like Steve Martin's not sure if he can do this and Steve Martin is aware of the fact

[01:35:41] that he's wearing a suit that they just bought yesterday like you can tell all of these things and you're like did Steve Martin get a face lift? you know like you're looking at all these aspects of things that could usually be hidden on camera plus you feel

[01:35:53] like you're looking into everyone's minds Steve Martin is the biggest one where you're just like oh that's Steve Martin like you do that's all I'm thinking about when he's in it he's not playing a character it's just Steve Martin it's weird

[01:36:07] we were like why is Steve Martin talking like that that's not how he talks do you know that he was offered the Chris Tucker part? Angley really wanted him for that they announced that like Steve Martin was in Talks

[01:36:17] for Billy Lynn then they said he had dropped out because he didn't want to play that part and then he came back and he was like to play the owner and then he was back in the movie and this part feels like

[01:36:29] a far less natural fit for him which I find fascinating because in Born Standing Up, his memoir he talks about how he felt completely discouraged from being in dramatic films because he remembers going to see the premiere of the Spanish prisoner the mammoth film he's in

[01:36:45] and the audience laughed when he came on screen and he was like that's it conclusively they will not take me seriously I'm not a serious person I don't want to fall on my face and embarrass myself by trying to do that

[01:36:57] and then in this movie they offered him the part that was a little more comedic in a drama and then he decided to go for the character that is very dry very dramatic really weird and then you're watching him and seeing that intent in his performance

[01:37:13] I have a question about VR brought that up earlier and I just experienced that and it was intense but that was because I was on you were on mushroom Sylvester Syvon and that will make things feel very intense and you were doing that on our show

[01:37:29] Vin Diesel's fallen hero from this movie which you don't even know his name because you didn't watch it yes so I though I was thinking about the whole time my friends and I went we were talking about the implications of this technology and even just thinking like

[01:37:45] how in some weird creepy like Berlin club there's horrible designs of VR reality that you could engage it right but the other thing I was thinking about of how we're all talking about big flashy superhero movies as the future even just thinking of

[01:38:09] are we going to start going to movies and put on a VR mask like I did because the thing that I will say about it and then walk around in a room like I was you know in these different installations because the thing about it is

[01:38:25] I don't know if that's storytelling I kind of agree with it and it just becomes immersion well so here's the barriers that are in the way of VR right now is number one you have motion lag which is when you move your head there's a slight lag between

[01:38:39] video moving and new moving and if you think of VR most of the VR experiences you've had have probably been CGI because filming live action footage the only thing you can really do right now is take a single data point and be collecting everything that's coming into it

[01:38:55] whereas true 3D the experience of living life is that I can walk around objects and see the different angles of them as opposed to standing in one spot and just looking around me so we'll have to develop technology that allows you to actually

[01:39:11] explore and change and interact with real footage in a way that is as dynamic as the real life because until then you're just stuck at a finite point and everything around you you can look at but so that's why I don't think that's coming

[01:39:25] but I do think this technology of 120 frames per second 4K 3D is a step towards that because again right now we are inhibited by the rectangle screen but this technology proves the rectangle doesn't really matter when you have a high frame rate like this

[01:39:39] so I do think there will be interesting things but I think this is a very early stage of something that will probably develop into something more reasonable and more useful to us but this is the first step it will be a long time before

[01:39:55] it'll be a long half time walk before it turns into anything that is full of more experiential I'm going to say this in the dumbest way possible but what I find fascinating is all of these techniques and technological advancements in the name of trying to

[01:40:09] the notion they throw out is we want a greater reflect reality make what the image you see on screen feel more like how your eyes function what the real world looks like to you when it's with live action elements weirdly starts to have an uncanny valley effect

[01:40:25] because you're starting to notice how fake everything is and the CGI rendered elements always work better this stuff works in video games, works in VR I mean if you were going to try to push high frame rate thing just as its own thing

[01:40:37] it would make more sense to do that with CGI animated films to say like, Coco is being released on limited screens in 48 frames per second and that might fucking work that's kind of what could be the breakthrough for the technology at least to get people to sample it

[01:40:51] but god, animators would kill you having to animate 120 frames per second if you're doing 48 it doubles their workload you know and I mean well all this bullshit is a lot of bullshit but at least it's like you are still just pointing a camera somewhere and turning it on

[01:41:07] it's not like animation where they have to they can't just point a camera at something and turn it on because like Pixar movies which are state of the art are still done in 2K and there's been some questioning of like

[01:41:17] why wouldn't you go to 4K live action films or in 4K now and it's like cause it literally would double our work and our budget but I would want to instead of watch a movie about robbing a bank I want to rob a bank

[01:41:29] but you can and already have done that buy a gun rob a bank like you do good time alright so he's taking the fifth oh weird okay do you remember that time that Ben walked into a bank and said this is just good time VR hahahahahaha well

[01:41:50] with a loaded shotgun what's wild about all this talk too is that the technology does not exist for 120 frames per second really yet like avid which is the editing system everyone uses it only released its sort of like beta version of 60 frames per second during Billy Lin

[01:42:06] so they had to by hand track and manage their media like an excel file they had open to track the to line up the frames to get everything to work because it does not exist yet

[01:42:20] you're just telling me this and I'm so stressed out cause they made a bad movie like it sucks to hear all this and it would be so great to hear all this and you'd be like and the fucking result is there what a tonic film

[01:42:30] that will always be so interesting about it yeah it's interesting is that if you were doing like a 5 minute short film and when we walked out of this movie we talked after a bit and then we met up like 2 days later talk about it for like another 3 hours

[01:42:44] right you and I just walked around and talked about it and the big thing we were going into is okay there is potential in this thing what kind of movie could you make with this like you'd have to fully design it around the technology

[01:42:54] and we were going is it a film that won't take place in one location is it something where you have entirely non professional actors is it a documentary is it this visual aesthetic is it this type of story we're running through all these different possibilities

[01:43:06] and if you were doing like let's design a bunch of 5 minute short films testing out the different sort of genres aesthetics all these things that would work with it whether you know we were saying is it better if it's improvised

[01:43:18] because then you don't see people trying to memorize their lines if they're really reacting naturally in the moment they don't know what they're going to do all that sort of stuff to have to deal with this level of problem solving takes up so much

[01:43:30] mental energy and so much time that it just feels like you're watching this movie and there's like a fifth as much energy spent on the actual movie as a storytelling device as there should be

[01:43:42] and a big part of that is these shots are so difficult to set up that they said like it was like 2-3 takes maximum so dramatically I finally hit it last night where I was like this feels like a shittier Clint Eastwood movie where he famously is like

[01:43:54] I don't want to take too long in this it's 2 setups, it's 3 takes either you're ready or you're not and sometimes it totally works, he's got time hanks it's a pro and sometimes it's 15-17 to Paris and you're like what the fuck is going on here

[01:44:06] and it feels like abstract art and at the weirdest moments this feels like abstract art except performed by people who are very professional in experience. I'm watching this movie I had seen it twice already but I'm watching this movie with Joanna and like

[01:44:20] I'm like I do love that idea that he feels like the world is feeling a little too real and also that idea that like we lionized veterans and military people and like he's trying to present them in total clarity

[01:44:34] and show you how scared and shaken up they all are and I'm like I love this and then 20 minutes in or maybe 25 he's having that conversation with the cheerleader and they're like saying these weird long monologues to each other about how they really feel

[01:44:46] and you're just like this is one of the least engaging scenes I have ever seen. From two actors who I think are pretty good on there Joanna is just like this movie is fucking terrible this is boring and I'm like yeah I know

[01:44:59] this is a bit of a rough scene and then you realize it just sort of sinks into the muck it can't pull itself out it just doesn't have engaging pathos apart from the half-time walk which is pretty good

[01:45:11] and I've been in this scenario a thousand times on set but if a scene like this is just not really grabbing you what you would do after two takes is go like let's throw it all out so what would make this maybe let's change the blocking

[01:45:21] let me give you a different direction but it was kind of like they had to go with their first draft ideas of every single shot at least in terms of performance and there are scenes like the big Steve Martin speech scene where he's that's his scene where like

[01:45:33] network scene where he's like mostly delivered in direct address down the barrel and he just kind of gives this like somewhat flat speech and then you're kind of like then the movie moves on and you're like that's important was that important does that matter?

[01:45:49] and especially for Amy a guy where it's like he just likes to sit on set in silence for an hour and a half to get a full understanding of the space he likes to work with actors body language do breathing exercises it's so precise about sort of the

[01:46:01] dramatic you know his technique in terms of that reserve and a lot of times that's whittling down from bigger performances to getting smaller and more nuanced things and you don't have the space to do anything other than what the first strike is that said though

[01:46:19] well here's what I want to say this is me not being a critic you're a film critic that's what you do professionally I'm just a fan boy of films I'm JD Mido and I love movies I don't I don't like this film being categorized as a bad movie

[01:46:35] or a terrible movie I think this is a really courageous thing I think that it takes a lot of guts to go we're going to be the first ones to use this technology I think it's a really novel idea it is the movie is like Fitzcarrell

[01:46:51] it's like the actual event pushing a church up a hill or whatever it kind of doesn't matter what happens when the boat gets to the other side of the mountain but the fact that they hold it up the mountain is in and of itself

[01:47:03] and it's like his instinct to go Oven Lucinda what's the movie with the chair? it doesn't matter carry on but his instinct to go let's use this technology to make a film about Oven that all matches up and of course sure it doesn't totally work out

[01:47:17] and there's aspects of the story that don't turn a line up but I feel like when everyone's like oh it's a bad movie it's a terrible movie as people who love blank checks we should be rallying behind this if blank checks need to be

[01:47:31] measured on whether they're perfect or not then we're not going to get any more blank checks we're going to get Marvel movies Marvel movies and Star Wars movies aren't perfect they're just like they're a guaranteed you know what I mean but that's

[01:47:43] they're just guaranteed to be pretty watchable that's exactly 100% you're saying he took the big swing I'm saying he missed now we both admire which I agree right but I don't think that's a terrible film I'm saying right but he missed so

[01:47:57] I don't think it's a terrible film I think it's not a good film not a good film I gave I gave it like it's like a six out of ten for me it's just a weird thing to say about a movie like this because it's such a polarizing

[01:48:07] bizarre movie but it is kind of like a film where you're like this doesn't really succeed but it is so unusual that it's hard to hate it I'll say two things about it one, JD and I I love this

[01:48:19] and largely agree with you on this but I know your big proponent of the experience of making the movie should be as much of work as the movie itself I think that could be as valuable creatively right and this is like an ultimate example

[01:48:31] of that yeah and certainly the process and the challenge of what they put themselves through is more interesting than the movie itself in this case you wish there was a burden of dream style documentary about the making of this film just so all that could be documented

[01:48:43] the tragic thing about it is the movie is essentially unwatchable to most people can we talk about that after I walk this? yes in one second because this is the second point I want to get to

[01:48:51] but it's like most people can't see it the way it was intended and because of the way it was intended the version that does now exist for people to watch feels compromised and just doesn't really make sense and the other thing about this movie for me though

[01:49:03] is I just always remember because it's not a fancy word but it sticks in my head whoever it was at the New York New Yorker I think it might have been Anthony Lane when Spider-Man 3 came out did his whole pan of Spider-Man 3

[01:49:15] but said there's this one fucking sequence in the middle the birth of the Sandman sequence but for five minutes there's nowhere else in the world you'd rather be and I think about that sometimes with a movie that doesn't work but you get the one sequence

[01:49:27] where it's like this is what the director was trying to do and for a brief window it totally crystallizes and for me the actual walk itself is that when I saw this in theaters with you at 120 frames in 3D in 4K for the walk I went

[01:49:41] I fucking get it and this feels like a master work this is brilliant and it's insane how when you watch it not in that format it doesn't totally work at all can I get that right that sequence I would kiss me

[01:49:53] well we're gonna get to that to the half time walk that's kind of like I would watch it on my TV in like you know crisp Blu-ray or 4K and I'm like that was good but you forget like it only really truly works in the proper

[01:50:11] and it did it felt it feels like you're in his head for that sequence and at the end again the sort of the final montage he has during the fight although some of the wartime sequences him and the pipe with the guy in Vendizel that's an excellent scene

[01:50:27] and even the shit like the pink mist I just remember being like oh this actually feels like what I imagine it would look like to be on the battlefield doesn't look like a movie version of war this looks like actual violence

[01:50:39] but then there are scenes like the scene where Billy Lynn in flashback is doing pull ups chin ups and Vendizel and Garrett Headland's characters are talking to him they're all standing nowhere near each other and they're having this kind of casual conversation but it looks like a stage

[01:50:55] player something like the way they've all been arranged and none of them ever move because it's for the sake of 3D exactly and you're just watching this you're like these this is fucking stupid like they're not people like sorry Ben and it's you lose the whatever human drama

[01:51:11] he's like built ahead of steam and like it just sort of like dissipates really and they're even just like narrative issues like the whole running thing with them getting in troubles with like the stage hands at the concert they're in the wrong place at the wrong time

[01:51:23] it varies like you're like why are they yelling at them like why are they being mean these are veterans this is like a half time show there's like so much security there's so much play at this event Destiny's Child is playing and they're going like

[01:51:35] so here's what you're gonna do giving them the directions 30 seconds before they go on to the field you haven't worked this out before stuff like that where you just go like it seems very uncharacteristic for Angley to put that much that little thought into the internal logic

[01:51:47] of human situations right or the thing with the where the you know the techs get like so mad at them and then decide to fight them after the right they're just waiting in the alley would never let that happen whatever think like

[01:52:01] let me attack these famous war veterans especially because one because it's shaped to because they'll kill you and also the first half of the movie they have been flat with them constantly as their handler guy through everything and then he conveniently

[01:52:11] disappears for all the scenes where people are trying to fight them right and then I'm just sorry like are you like this is the thing all the tech and then it's like when you just sort of dig into the movie you're like

[01:52:21] none of this holds water it's so frustrating right and I love the idea of them in rock war movies are hard to make we kind of talked about it on hurt locker even though that's under we know middle east you know war on terror movies yeah

[01:52:33] this this is kind of almost there to a good rock war movie like the ideas are good the you know that the sort of like total fallacy bush era kind of like America like yeah we're still out there doing like I like that montage

[01:52:47] watching this movie makes me want to read the book so fucking hard the books better right like of all the people talking to him where it cuts like do all the sort of like stock phrases we all remember

[01:52:55] yes from that era I think the combat scenes are good yeah and conveying like I think they're really good just sort of the uselessness of it I love that thing where yeah where the guy he murders his hand like goes up for a second

[01:53:07] like he's saying a prayer or something to himself like because he knows about denying them the red but it's fascinating like as much as we say like it kind of pulls the curtain back and performances and let's see the process the moment when he's stabbing

[01:53:19] the guy in the tube you feel like you see life leaving this guy's eyes yeah and it's bizarre yes because it feels more real than anything you've ever seen and then the way the blood slowly trickles out it no longer feels like a visual effect

[01:53:33] it feels like holy shit this is what it looks like to watch someone die like you feel like you're watching a snuff film for a moment right and so there are these glimpses where it feels like the technology is totally lining up with the storytelling

[01:53:45] they are largely the nonverbal moments right you know because I just think the script isn't there and the dialogue scenes the performances just aren't massaged enough the dramatic sort of logic of the thing isn't totally figured out but there are these moments that completely justify

[01:53:59] the film existing as if it didn't already justify its own existence just from the bravery of the experiment which in of itself is just this amazing like we're going to the moon in 1918 you know we don't even know how to get to like Missouri

[01:54:15] yet and you're going to the moon like that's what it feels like yeah yeah just like this will go down in the history books someday as something whether anyone ever figured out how to do this it becomes this amazing like chapter in filmmaking history

[01:54:29] which is I think that's the important thing to me is I just don't want this film to be dismissed and forgotten because I do think it is Ang Lee John tall the whole crew that made this Vin Diesel taking these pretty brave courageous

[01:54:45] steps to try this thing and we don't see a lot of big filmmakers spending a lot of money to take these big swings that may or may not work it's like to me it's the epitome of what a blank check is it's like I'm going to cash in

[01:54:57] all of my histories of filmmaker to do something that I think will at least push film ahead even if it doesn't help me right now I'm kind of selfless about it in that regard where it's like I'm going to use my cash

[01:55:09] a to try to make the advancements that no one else can make JD changed my opinion today okay because I like watching movies because I like stories and I like kind of leaving my own reality right absorb seeing people who have a home to live in but

[01:55:29] I will say that I've also always been like fuck blue ray bullshit I don't care I've never ever watch flash because I always was like is it really that much of a difference I always get SD it is also you always get it

[01:55:45] I've never given a shit ever I get you watch DHS when possible absolutely yeah yeah I prefer it yeah but you have opened my eyes to the idea of experiencing film and being more a burst through the visual I never really I was always just

[01:56:03] like I care about the story the characters the dialogue I don't really I'm not thinking about what it looks like but it makes a difference timing as we go into our parent trap episode yeah well I think it takes this visuals of all it takes

[01:56:17] filmmakers appreciating respecting the fact that they need to use an interesting way to make it worthwhile a great example is like the early stereoscopic films of this modern generation I really didn't like what are we talking about here what do we got

[01:56:31] I mean whatever the first ones to come out and stereoscopic early I guess like some of the Marvel movies did I mean I'm trying to go during the center of the earth the Rodriguez did the couple but the first one and you called me and Griffin stupid animation

[01:56:47] nerds for this Coraline was the first one why felt movie that Henry Selick was respecting the medium and trying to do something interesting that was using it in a way that was engaging me as an audience he did stuff where yeah I love how he

[01:56:59] had he had sets that were purposely really deep and sets that were used visual fat yeah um physical effects to make them really shallow set the 3d was really messing with your eyes he's literally using depth as like a storytelling element very consciously designed

[01:57:13] until like the body of the film rather than just being like let's have things staggered in the image and that was the first time that I went oh this is actually an interesting tool to be used in film yeah similarly where it's like I have the same

[01:57:23] thing it's like I couldn't give a shit like we're just talking about TV's before now and I don't have a good TV or a good audio system I don't care I like the stories like you but then when people start trying things that are

[01:57:33] interesting and are trying to push the format that's when I have like open my eyes and respect that because that's that's when it's interesting again is when Ang Lee is going hey let's try this thing and try to use it for art not just to make

[01:57:45] the ticket ten bucks more expensive or to release it in another DVD version and also a thing that I think I said on that episode I will repeat despite it making me look like an idiot because I wasn't as smart and I had the curve is you guys

[01:57:57] were at the time but I remember walking out of Speed Racer with my sister she said what did you think and I said I don't even know because what they're doing with the visual language is so different and beyond what anyone's

[01:58:09] doing that either this will totally make sense in ten years or it will be this weird curio of someone trying something crazy right and Speed Racer is an example where it's not like every movie looks like Speed Racer but a

[01:58:19] lot of the elements of Speed Racer have seeped to our general sort of storytelling language where that movie makes more sense now yeah that's true Speed Racer is great Speed Racer fucking ruled it's wild how you guys doing I'm doing great great yeah we all

[01:58:35] just went quiet all of a sudden I know it's just a lot of the process I love you here's I love you hey that's the thing in the movie what Vin Diesel yeah I love you I love you I love that too but it just kind of

[01:58:47] happens yeah and then it happens again in the movies like you did before and you're like yeah okay I guess so I thought you were just having a nice moment no I do love you so much but I was just you know

[01:58:59] I think male intimacy is like not a thing that really gets represented I'm a pretty intimate guy yeah don't get me started now you're complaining yeah a little too intimate see I feel like you went 180 on a male intimacy I was trying to catch you honey trap baby

[01:59:15] I feel like my goal is oh no go on JD what's your goal pulling out another envelope it's called shroom we'll try to honey trap David I feel like it's tripping yeah probably yeah because he's all trippy he's like spiritual baby that was the most half-hearted baby

[01:59:37] I wish this was the best performance you just want Vin Diesel to be so good in this movie and you know what he is fine yeah pretty pretty good in 120 frames I think he's actively bad you see behind all the smoke and mirrors if you

[01:59:51] watch it in 24 you're like he's okay yeah he's okay I agree but yeah it's very like watching in the high frame rate you were like I see that Vin Diesel is like very consciously playing his best angles to the camera

[02:00:05] well so like here's a few of my favorite moments in the movie one is there is a scene where they're in a limo which to get the camera into the limo they had to disassemble the camera bring all the pieces in one by one

[02:00:15] and then reassemble it in the limo so it's like when you can't get your sofa through the door of your house the guy has to take your sofa and this shot when they like you cut to inside the limo this is when

[02:00:27] like eight minutes into the movie everyone in the theater takes their glasses off for a moment and like rubs their temples because you're seeing everyone in this limo they're all in focus and then in the back corner there's a window where you're seeing people tailgating

[02:00:39] and they are all totally in focus and normally you wouldn't see them and they wouldn't be in focus and there'd just be these blurry background actors and instead you're like that background actor is drinking a cup but there's nothing in it that guy's throwing a football to nobody

[02:00:53] you're noticing things that you would notice in reality when you're like the shot of them on the stage are the seats made out of where you can see the whole stadium what stadium was this shot at? Dallas so it was shot at like the stadium

[02:01:05] that's crazy I'm pretty certain that must have been like fucking so complicated yeah well it's also possible to light a giant stadium like that yeah that's what I'm saying it's like the worst environment and like half of this movie is them sitting in the stands

[02:01:17] like them just sitting in the middle of the crowd and you see everything behind them they CG'd some of the audience in I have to imagine imagine how hard that would be 120 frames per second where any error in reality is so noticeable the fact that

[02:01:35] the book is supposedly so acidic and satirical right? yeah and it's the contrast between Billy Lin who's a man of few words and his sort of internal monologue and calling out the hypocrisy of everything around him the Garrett Hedlin character who we said

[02:01:48] is the character comes off the best the best performance in the movie doesn't exist in the book if I'm not mistaken and was created to have another character verbalize everything Billy Lin was thinking which is also the reason why he's the only

[02:02:01] engaging character to walk because it feels like he's the character speaking honestly and we're like is there gonna be a twist where he's a ghost or something like cause he's so forthright cause he's just like forthrightness and Billy Lin is just internalized like quiet

[02:02:13] and you're like well this kinda hurts Billy Lin that he like isn't able to say anything he just looks like a lamb he's just got those shimmering eyes I think Joe Alvin might be a good actor I just saw him in Operation Finale

[02:02:27] he's good in that like I feel like he's got promise he has a big year this year but I mean he is mostly it's a lot of face especially with this technology if the movie would honestly work better more focused on close ups of Joe Alvin

[02:02:41] with voice over over them you know? like that might work better if it's they literally just kept his internal monologue and you're just watching these close ups and looking into his eyes and all of that it might be weird but also like this doesn't work

[02:02:53] two other things I want to point out before we stop talking about this movie and never talk about it again never stop talking about Billy Lin two things one what's an annual tradition talking to walk 2018 we're gonna do it every year like the Blankie it works definitely not

[02:03:07] his sister his sister Catherine yes they play their scene together with this uncomfortable intimacy it feels like they want to fuck right and of course part of the idea Billy's characters that he's a virgin right and put that crazy thing where we literally send people off to

[02:03:25] die in rock and they've never had sex but they can kill people which is one thing I think he does really fucking want this movie is casting really really young looking actors for the whole squadron to kind of sell home the reality of like oh these

[02:03:37] are kids Arturo Castro from hasn't city babyface babyface um so that's weird to that scene at the press conference where two times the screen grays out and they like say the real answer and then they you hear them say the fake answer

[02:03:53] and like you can't do that twice and never again yeah that can be a thematic device or you don't do it don't do it twice it just seems weird technique like he wants to show reality versus fantasy but doing it any other way

[02:04:05] would break the technology yeah so just fucking take that out yeah it's basically a masturbation joke I almost feel like this technology means you have to also fall like the dogma 95 rules right like oh like it's just there's a manifest so you have to subscribe to

[02:04:21] what literally the dogma rules where it's like no sets no lighting sure sure I see maybe not all handheld but like all the things because anything that feels a non real maybe you should have a podcast that watches every dogma 95 movie

[02:04:35] it talks about all the rules that got broke there's only one though right to count ever make a dog must be no that was 99 not 95 boo your your I am to be star meter just oh my god wait can I just there are 35 dog my

[02:04:55] little mini series can you what I found something that made me laugh wearing a blanket she is a good boy wait can I borrow your computer for second fucking jerk why because I have a segment I want to do now do it all I do a merchandise spotlight

[02:05:09] let me do this like because I learned something recently and I think you guys will appreciate it wait vamp while I get this setting getting my computer taken from me merchandise spotlight football still America's favorite sport never done anything wrong no controversies is there any merchandise

[02:05:27] for this no no I would like to know what's the fictional team in the movie because they can't use they just say Dallas right name that would be a great piece of ephemera is like a fake a fake Jersey or something Jersey yeah

[02:05:41] locking into I am to be pro right now wait it's very funny holy shit my star meter I'm sure I mean if you stay logged in I'll happily use your I'm to be pro sure you can use it if you want

[02:05:52] sure you know those like a way like temple run those like mobile games we're like trying to run and collect all the they should have made one of those that's like a half time walk and you just write it all the way without being a guy Rachel tried

[02:06:06] to get a Dan Fogler to to be on the show Dan Fogler from like star taking what stock yeah his email is what are you doing I won't say I'll bleep it does she know him or something like she did a podcast with them

[02:06:29] he has a podcast wow okay is he gonna be on the show baby all right I'll say this that is one of the better email addresses I've ever truly one of the better email addresses I've ever ready for that was a good vamp good vamp great

[02:06:43] vamp ready for JD second there's a second I noticed this the other day and it really made me laugh this is the I am to be star meter report with JD a motto so I'm to be as a thing called a star meter which they randomly assign

[02:06:57] a number to someone yes so like right it's like how many times you've been searched right that kind of stuff I don't really know there's some algorithm yeah yeah yeah I know I know thank you okay Ben bleep everything that's happened in the last 90 seconds there's one

[02:07:15] straight long bleep and it ends now I'm to be has I'm to be has the star meter yeah where it ranks people everyone that's on I'm DB those but on the star meter page it has four categories the star meter how much they've moved up or down

[02:07:33] and then inexplicably it has age and height and you can categorize it's not an example I can tell you why they have that but carry on you can categorize everybody by both age and age and height yes it's casting yeah yeah yes I understand

[02:07:49] why you would have someone's age and height there right but this is you can rank everybody in IMDB based on their age or height are you going to see other 29 year old five six actors and how I rank against them he's gonna like find this the shortest

[02:08:01] and tallest I want to check in on according to I'm DB who the youngest the shortest and tallest actors are fine what about oldest right now Ronan Willingham is the youngest age zero well that's so point zero give me his credits Jackson Roloff from little people big world

[02:08:21] is up there at one years old as is Aria Dixon Fiona from the NBC Nightly News at Leicester Hall we're cutting this but then here's the best part here's where it gets wild you have height so at half an inch you already read

[02:08:39] half an inch what are you talking about half an inch half an inch is a guy named Keon impossible but here's the real here's the thing that's so funny bill or something who do you think the tallest who is the tallest actor going to IMDB

[02:08:59] the tallest actor in cinema history Groot K.K. The Whale how tall how tall we are we're standing we're standing we're standing we're standing number two is Topsy the elephant larger than life operation double drop from the film from the fucking like 19 the elephant in Einstein

[02:09:31] excel Jesus Christ we're already read a five page manifesto I'm gonna log out of my IMDB no no no let me use your IMDB product why do you want it? it's so useful for me just don't do anything weird for me

[02:09:45] no no no it's just so I can see publicist phone numbers so I can say like hey I want an interview Topsy the elephant he's long dead David how funny is it IMDB is like here's who's hot and here's who's tall

[02:09:59] Topsy the elephant that's his only credit right yes yes he was kind of one and done we're gonna play the box up cake of the whale why is IMDB happy? cake of the whale had a few credits too right there's at least three free willies

[02:10:15] I think he didn't do all the free willies I think he did something like he might have been in like Mary Kay and Ashley mysteries at sea world or something like that they jason borned him you forget the renner played free willy in the third one

[02:10:29] pierce braznan jumped in at a certain point do we want to do the cake of the whale I think the weekend went wide it's one weekend later so then pick either weekend I'm trying to see maybe don't get so look whichever one we don't do now

[02:10:47] we'll talk in the walk 29 oh wait what ding dong what a cake IMDB oh my god um it's like one shitty blockbuster we're doing the weekend it opened wrongly don't holding a paper ss georgey okay we're doing the weekend that at first came out

[02:11:13] I think Ben went to an actual ad there no we're not doing an actual ad well no it's one for later but it's fine ding dong now you can actually do it the movies are you orson wells right now hey help us escape our world with

[02:11:29] the list actors extravagant set pieces and witty dialogue but what record scratch about the music oh are you talking about the soundtrack show the podcast that breaks down the music in your favorite movies will give a bit of history around the film and it's impacting today's pop culture

[02:11:47] and like the best french wines it's hosted by David W. Collins a veteran voice actor and composer with over 20 years of experience and entertainment don't just call him a critic he's an entertainment professional he loves pop culture and he reveals behind the scenes info

[02:12:03] on your favorite flicks and reveals how music makes them so memorable so like you got like Spielberg didn't want El and Sylvester to work on Back to the Future at first and Sylvester spent most of the production winning him over yeah and like the best french wine

[02:12:17] princess line oh boy we lost Griffin yes and like the best french wine princess laia's theme and star wars is more romantic than the others that makes you care for her characters if she represents the good in the galaxy worth fighting for

[02:12:35] uh yeah and part of what makes the infamous shower scene in psycho work is because the score makes you physically uncomfortable and like the best look you can listen to soundtracks show every wednesday on apple podcast spotify google podcast wherever else you get your podcast

[02:12:51] you'll never listen to movies the same way again and like the best french wines all of the music surrounding gameplay in super mario brothers only last five minutes a ha and we're back kids okay box um remember go to mcdonald's promo code blank

[02:13:11] and say hi to my mac be quiet be quiet you guys are in person though go in linds long half time more it's gonna be person to person communication it was in theaters billy linds long half time walk was in theaters for five weeks total total yeah

[02:13:35] it was on two screens in its first week it then expanded in your canal a correct it then expanded to a eleven hundred screens uh-huh was in those for the two minimum weeks like that are required by exhibitors essentially then lost all screens went to

[02:13:51] seventy five sixteen in the vanish from theaters it's one of the biggest single weekend theater do you know they released the film in twenty four different versions i know i don't know what that means what do you mean between stereoscopic 3d 2k 4k right right

[02:14:07] different 3d versions like 24 different versions uh so open on domestic totals a million and a half one point seven million dollars insane but it does make 30 worldwide yeah the studio is estimated to have lost about 40 million dollars um but like out grossed by

[02:14:23] like two of the three father's nose yes it's out grossed by every angly movie except for pushing hands and ride with the devil those are the only two right the never cracked a million yes um so number one on november eleventh twenty sixteen i reviewed

[02:14:37] this phone by the way you can read my review it's not bad it's on the atlantic dot com um number one is a marvel movie number doctor strength yes and so this is this is the weekend when donald trump has just been elected president

[02:14:51] like it's a rough weekend oh i forgot yeah so this is pretty much this is second weekend of doctor strength correct my mother and i were visiting my great aunt and uncle at a retirement home in florida sounds like a great place to be

[02:15:03] the weekend after trump had been elected and we were losing our minds and we were like let's walk to the closest movie theater and see doctor strange which my mom has seen zero previous marvel movie and she even she was like

[02:15:13] that was kind of the same right marvel movie no you know what i think she saw weirdly i think the only two she had seen were iron man two okay and uh the avengers sure and she didn't like either of them and then she saw this

[02:15:27] and was like yeah they're all kind of the same aren't they kind of are yeah yeah anyway doctor strange in second weekend big hit people under rate uh for like a solo first marvel film that's maybe the biggest of the first other than

[02:15:41] the first iron man i guess i mean 232 pretty solid yeah good it did well yeah because the other first entries usually do around well it's a weird thing where we're obviously going to get another one but they won't

[02:15:52] say what the future movies in marvel are right now because they don't want to quote unquote spoil i think for you i guess how big a party being a fanny war so it wasn't as much

[02:16:01] i love that he uses the crimson bands of citra act i mean i like the my thing is a cool guy it's a fun movie that's another movie that is actually infinitely better in three that actually yes i saw a movie in three and it looked cool

[02:16:12] and pretty yeah the visual effects are really special because they do a lot of portal dimensional stuff like that it uses death in a very similar way to number two is a film written and directed by pass and future guest richard lawson trolls it is his trolls

[02:16:28] which in its second weekend has made 93 million dollars and at that point had made four billion in merchandising correct that was dreamworks attempt to do cars and just be like what's a thing we can put on everything and make you like couldn't stop the feeling

[02:16:42] i listened to that song on ironically america was trying to it's a real jd about a state is that like a pump up song for you is that like a chill down song during dark times i'll sometimes listen to it to get into a good mood cool

[02:16:54] when when you're trying to kickstart the feeling and it won't start yeah yeah you use can't stop that phone to start at whatever okay number three the box office to new film one of the years new at the time

[02:17:05] new at the time new at the time i mean this is a couple years one of the best picture nominees of this year oh a great film one of my favorites of 2016 and kind of like a genuine and oh heartwarming hit

[02:17:23] like for this kind of movie yes this was a surprising opening weekend for arrival arrival which made 100 million dollars total 200 million people have hypothesizing at the time if the trump election had helped boost the film with its message of struggling to

[02:17:39] communicate to great and now i think it's just like it was a good movie i don't think it had any political power but it's a great movie though is it a great song say something about the box office game that i just want to admit

[02:17:47] is that every time i listen to you do it there's a part of me that thinks that you've cheated beforehand and that on the way here right you're like we talked it through or whatever no just a griffin you think i've memorized it in advance

[02:17:59] yeah but i will say anytime i'm here in person and i see you drawing from your memory i can tell that it is real and even if even if you did cheat i wouldn't want i wouldn't want to test it i wouldn't want to know

[02:18:11] you're in the world of magic like you're you're wondering if i'm using some like mentalist tricks or whatever but you're saying at the very least i'm selling it well in person i'm saying for the listeners i'm i

[02:18:23] there's a part of me that was skeptical yeah i i i believe you're legit i do find we have people are in studio could you film it at 120 frames yeah then we just figure out if i'm lying or not the truth teller

[02:18:35] okay number four at the box um it's a christmas movie here's the tagline for it five days together oh joy i definitely know that joe reed saw this movie in the theaters like within days of trump's election love the coopers no that's a good guess though

[02:18:56] that is a good guess is it ensemble picture like that or is it like a start it's an ensemble um does it have like a top line does it have like a real major is it really just truly an ensemble picture it's a real ensemble picture

[02:19:08] yeah uh you know the the cast is listed in alphabetical order on the poster there's eleven names here is it uh was it almost christmas almost christmas i get that confused with this christmas movies with these sort of generic bland titles almost it has bad

[02:19:28] zoom boy john michael higgins on the poster he's kind of going like yeah no zoo for you he's kind of got his arms crossed the zoop nazi john michael higgins fan yeah they all are right yeah

[02:19:44] who is first is that an alphabetical kim briley alize is first build with her e then he got omar epps danny glover john michael higgins romany malco and monique monique and then he got a little airy parker yeah there's a second line baby jb smooth

[02:20:00] gabriel union jesse t usher dc young fly dc young i don't really know who that i know the rest of him okay uh he is a uh american rapper actor comedian and singer well here that's a lot of stuff

[02:20:16] number five of the box office you don't want me to talk more about almost christmas i do like the dynamic between david sometimes being like come on let's get through it but i'm like you know what i'm just gonna settle in sometimes it really sits

[02:20:28] i like how this feels i like this chair number five is another of the years best picture nominees and one of those best picture nominees that people will probably struggle to recall in future years interesting and you know it's a movie that actually didn't do that well

[02:20:44] this is its opening weekend or is this a while no it's been out for two weeks uh i feel like you've never seen this movie it's it's a genre you

[02:20:52] hate oh no i have seen it because you kept on telling me to not see it this also got a best director and best actor nomination correct it is called fuck hacksaw ridge hacksaw ridge yeah it was sort of a hit made 67 but like

[02:21:04] i remember the buzz was kind of like real comeback for mel Gibson it's like well it did fine yeah it is insane that he got a best director nomination for that crazy that's the most egregious years ago

[02:21:16] that's what that happened he's gotta be done though no he just made a movie about police brutality with vince vaughn he didn't direct it he's just the star of it it's called dragged along concrete yeah i wonder what the politics are on that one

[02:21:28] oh boy boy uh we've got the accountant one of those like sleeper massive hits yeah huge uh terrible account in favor i never saw uh shut in what is shut in it's the one where Naomi watts is um shut in she's somewhere she's stuck

[02:21:48] Oliver plat i don't know i never saw it uh what else we got here we've got a boo amadea halloween jack reacher never go back you know i just remember like so

[02:22:00] many of these movies it was that thing where trump had just gotten elected and you're just like even like looking at a poster for boo amadea halloween you're just like everything's changed now yeah inferno

[02:22:12] inferno there's an ad for inferno on my billy lindy dvd really yeah and i was like pen foster and then i just skipped ahead i forgot he's in that wait it has like pre-roll dvds pre-roll ads yeah it's not weird that's that's

[02:22:24] very 1990s disney is usually the only one who still does that we're unlocking the vault yeah and then the next week is fantastic beast but i picked this week before this is a f*** fantastic beast okay we're like exactly we're like fine beasts

[02:22:40] you haven't well there's only one another one's coming this year called okay beast if you can be bothered i liked all the harry potter movies and then i saw those and i was like i don't think

[02:22:48] they're gonna scratch quite the same itch so i'm just not gonna do it no no they don't they don't scratch that's the that's probably a great way to define what's wrong

[02:22:56] with those movies they don't really scratch that itch so then i was like i'm just not going to do it yeah and i'll just have enjoyed the harry potter movies and i've said this before but like the color

[02:23:04] palette of that film is limestone it's like the strangest decision ever made because it's a very well designed movie well designed movie with a lot of clever visual ideas but then also they're like but every building should be white looks really f***ing boring

[02:23:16] uh when they pitched it when it was like first announced i was like i like the idea of doing a harry potter movie that is not like living in the mythology right and it's just like

[02:23:25] not about the boy who lived like that is not part of this like epic hero it's like gremlins or small soldiers it's like he's got a suitcase and the things fall out and he's got to capture them all you know

[02:23:33] it's it's it's harry potter pokemon and then the movie is so much about like wizard hitler it's so deep in the mythology right it's like i bet you wonder what the other countries were like and it's like not really i don't like what do they got wizards

[02:23:45] well yes actually york and it's like looks a lot like wizard london very similar but dan fogler is there dan fogler mr f*** you have to bleep it out again david dan fogler probably is the best performance in that movie right that's like that's the most effective character

[02:24:05] come feral's oh yes it's also an a you have to bleep that out too don't give many hints maybe this time maybe this will be a this is a legendary episode i think this is just right

[02:24:19] we're gonna have to do it again next year same time next year stop setting that up talking the walk 2018 fans that is not happening i want to be clear at the end of every year is talking the

[02:24:30] walk we plan next year is talking the walk maybe it was like a premium episode possibly emailing drill bone right now to design our i talked the walk 2018 no what's gotta be now it's gotta be i talked the walk has gotta be a pizza with every other slice

[02:24:47] yeah oh oh oh david it's me griffin in the present tense thinking back on that episode we recorded a couple weeks ago great episode oh remember when we made the joke about the i talked the walk t-shirts sure it was an idle joke

[02:25:09] one of our famed tangents i'm gonna get deathly serious now we made them and they're available right now on t public you can wear a shirt that announces to everyone proudly that you talked the walk in 2018

[02:25:21] wind howling so menacingly setting a standard you're making a promise that you will continue to talk the walk every year by another t-shirt and we'll all become billionaires there's a crow pecking in my eye

[02:25:33] get that crow away from your eye you need to see go to t public dot com slash stores slash blank hyphen check by your i talked the walk 2018 t-shirt because you're gonna feel embarrassed if you don't get in the ground floor

[02:25:47] and you don't have a complete collection ten years i mean there's just one question i mean do you talk the walk or not right did you or didn't you and here's a here's a parallel question are you a goddamn loser or not are you gonna step

[02:25:55] up to the plate and own your life oh there's another question ben remember when this promo was gonna be short my ears are bleeding and then here's one more question who designed the t-shirt

[02:26:05] what who designed the t-shirt ben my father robert robert has as if you need to hear anything else so go buy your shirts now you losers you know ben's dad actually designed the t-shirt guys that's truly

[02:26:19] no jokes he texted us the other day being like my dad's designing a logo family here blank check what if we what if we end this episode i agree what if we make good out of this and make an annual this is not a joke

[02:26:39] an annual billy lind theme charity walk for blankies what if we like use it as like a force for good in the world we weaponize our fan base and you do the annual billy lind podcast walk to raise money for i don't herniated discs

[02:26:53] and backs of actors closely all that out ben just cut it out great i talked about twenty eight ten but i do think i feel like jd comes into every episode where he's like i'm gonna coin a new fucking catchphrase

[02:27:09] for this show if i live to regret it talking the walk twenty twenty eighteen t-shirt as i talked the walk with a pizza the couple slices missing spinning motion line i didn't i didn't do one of my patented sub podcast

[02:27:25] this episode oh i guess not oh that's true you want to do one now hey guys jd a model here just jumping in for a quick second

[02:27:31] i didn't actually have anything to say but because i set it up in the episode ben said that i had to put something in so i guess i'll just say this if i got any detect or physics stuff running this episode i'm sorry i tried my best

[02:27:40] also i'm sorry we didn't really talk about the plot of the movie anyways we'll do better next year talking the walk twenty nineteen now back to the show and we're back

[02:27:49] runtime is two hours twenty four minutes keep on my hill and we didn't even go for the part of the movie no but at all to be fair when we bleep out dan foldler's email address the episode will be one hour and two minutes

[02:28:02] correct that's true it's a very long email address i don't know how i don't really long has Rachel just been trying to type out the email address for weeks now from the moment they hired her just finished wait okay can i finish can i finish yes here's

[02:28:16] here's here's the things i want to get off my chest let's get the manifesto out again take out a second i just want to say is leather bound i want to be locking it with a key i want to shout out a couple people

[02:28:28] it was just an eldritch scream that came out of that thing some fantastic beast are crawling out a niffler the table is turning to stone around it go on what's up dimitri portale the stereographer and 3d supervisor needs a shout out

[02:28:46] benger vase the production system supervisor those are the two dudes that did all the tech stuff for this film if you look up this sony has all these articles about how it went down it was crazy 3d is really good in this one yes they used

[02:29:01] other the other facts that i want on the record they used true motion shutters which have the ability to have more than three hundred and sixty degree shutter angle now they understand a shutter how crazy is that

[02:29:16] it doesn't really i don't really get with that even me jd's manifesto is sucking neighboring objects into it like a portal it's on fire but you can still touch it alright that's most of all i want to say it

[02:29:30] well we finally did it we got jd to be a little embarrassed jd are you right if i scan that and make it a pdf available for people no i'm not it's proprietary he's got to save something for next year

[02:29:44] okay no you can't have it wow alright that's that's i'll bring in a manifesto and whatever i get into in the podcast is what we get into it and whatever we don't get into it's for talking the walk twenty nineteen we get into it there

[02:29:58] it will be included in jd's archives that are donated to a university when he dies i'll try to hop into the reddit to try to answer some questions i got called out i went to watch you guys at david discord

[02:30:13] yeah i went to the discord to chat with fans i watched david answer questions and i didn't know how discord worked i used it for video games with three friends so i went in and it was like ding jd amato has arrived

[02:30:27] and i was like no no no i don't want this stop looking at me and i was like what's up jd how you doing how do you think the bulls are gonna do this year i tried to talk to you and you were like i'm just lurking

[02:30:36] and then the other night i opened up discord again to play video games with friends and it had me automatically logged in and people were like hey and i was like oh god goodbye but i lurk on that thing i ran after my last episode

[02:30:49] someone that i was in the grade school performance of west side story yes they gave you a good review there's the first and only time i was ever in a play yeah shout out to you taylor well you've been in staged performances at the ucb and stuff

[02:31:03] i guess it's not like a play you never done also this is the one time i told you guys someone on the street was like oh you're jd amato from blink check so this is now my home that's your title on the street

[02:31:16] oh it was a friend of a friend okay still though yeah shout out to you um well thank you all for listening thank you for talking the walk jd thank you for being here congratulations on your entry into the five timers club thank you i also say

[02:31:29] i don't i i i don't need to i don't i'm not in competition with emily or richard those are people that should be on the podcast more than me they're actual film critics with actual hard disagree getting into technical stuff i don't really have hot takes on

[02:31:43] no i get you i get you but you got your best the best here's our emily you richard your actual critics who i read your reviews of things that's very nice yeah no but you belong in the podcast as much as anyone else you maniac

[02:31:55] stop being a maniac you maniac i love movies and i love this podcast and i love you guys i love you too jd blanket thank you um thank you all for listening thank you for taking the walk

[02:32:09] sure thank you for listening to the angly many series quite a long one quite a long one next week we begin the run of our march madness champion nancy the drug or not later this week a little bonus episode well there's that too yes anglies the higher

[02:32:26] or no what was his called right the higher was the whole series the bmw short series where they had like john you know i had chosen chosen was his the higher was the larger series we're gonna do that and including that our final summation thoughts on angly

[02:32:41] thank you for listening please remember to rate review subscribe go to blankies i read that comfort some real nerdy shit thanks to angie for good for our social media thanks to joe bone and pat reynolds for artwork lay my memory for our theme song

[02:32:53] and as always jd looks like he has something to say nothing really don't forget to hack my man i got my quote i'm gonna use all right there's a quote i mean here this movie is a line title talking the walk 2018 as if to imply that every year

[02:33:18] you're so obsessed with breaking our format this i think we should i'm not saying we have to i say it implies that we will what if we make t-shirts talking like 2018 what if we make t-shirts that said i talked the walk 2018 and had

[02:33:33] like some like survived like you know like it was like like fireworks like the poster i talked to walk 2018 and it's got the silhouette of fake Beyonce addressing her wig from behind put that all at the end of the episode we'll see what the response is sure this

[02:33:52] movie is so insane okay are you ready isn't saying it's the best no it isn't yes it is i will convince you by the end of this