Cabaret with Rachel Zegler

[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 Welcome and welcome to the podcast Friend or stranger, podcast

[00:00:32] I'm glad to be here, podcast Happy to see you, please stay Welcome and welcome to the podcast I'm losing it, I'm losing it, I lost it, I lost it, I lost it, I lost it

[00:00:49] The only reason I thought you might not do that is I don't, you're not that adept with other languages No offense to you, of course Uh, I can't believe you say that about someone who took French 1 seven times He took French 7 You gotta start with 7 and go down

[00:01:10] That's what you do You start out French 7 is just you're in a cafe smoking cigarettes and someone just makes conversation with you and you have to keep up I'm great at ordering Right, well you point No, no, I say it Okay, sorry, sorry, sorry

[00:01:28] For the record, I say it He says it I say it Hamburger, hamburger I don't say ambaguer Orangina? I say orangina, s'il vous plait I'm not fucking Steve Martin Spectacleuzot though, I know what to call it That's the opposite, that's him struggling to order in English, right?

[00:01:53] Yeah, he's French He's trying to say I would like a hamburger Yeah Our guests can speak at any time by the way At any time Just chime right in Please save us, save us I'm really staying out of this Great job Griffin

[00:02:10] Thank you, I don't know, I probably should have just stuck with the one line but I want to risk it Basically you said welcome, welcome, podcast, stranger, stranger, podcast You kept throwing podcast in for different words which was funny

[00:02:25] Yeah, well thank you for saying it was funny, I think it was up for debate but now it's finally been settled Listen, this is a podcast called Blank Check with Griffin and David, I'm Griffin I'm David Producer Ben with us as always

[00:02:38] And this is a podcast about filmographies, directors who have massive success early on in their careers And are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion products they want And sometimes those checks clear, sometimes they bounce, baby Right into it

[00:02:54] I was like is there a way to put a German word in there and I couldn't fucking pull one This is a mini-series on the films of Bob Fosse, it is called Pod That Jazzcast Nice

[00:03:04] Thank you, now I want to ask our guest, it's not up for re-litigation, it has been settled I just want to ask our guest, I won't say whose pitch was whose The alternate pitch was Pod That Kazzt, C-A-Z-Z-T

[00:03:24] Sorry, was that not the reaction that I should have given? It was the honest reaction That's the correct reaction It was the honest reaction and I appreciate your candor Of course, candor and ebb, my candor and ebb You're getting flipped a comedy point early David what?

[00:03:42] I just want to let you know that I googled what the German word for baby is And it is baby Oh so I did say it, I got it fucking right on the first try Congratulations Our guest today, on the show

[00:03:59] I think already a young legend of musicals Hell yeah And dare I say it, because I hope you just now default to this being your primary credit A literal Disney princess It's true, the rumors are true

[00:04:18] You should just say literal, you should tell people I'm a literal Disney princess You cannot debate that, that will hold up in court Yep Rachel Zegler Thank you On the show It's like that clip of Barbara Raulter saying you are Beyonce And Beyonce says thank you

[00:04:37] I am not Beyonce Finally someone says it, not Beyonce Thank you is an incredible response Rachel thank you so much for being on the show Thanks for having me, thank you, it's so cool to be here I should let you know that for the last couple of weeks

[00:04:53] Every time we've sort of talked about trying to schedule with you Because you're being very generous with your time in the middle of busy filming In a foreign country, and crazy schedule and all this sort of stuff

[00:05:02] Every time we were sort of like trying to hash things out David would just go why the fuck is she doing this show Because I love movies But above all I love musicals so much And when you asked me to do this And to do this particular film

[00:05:20] Which is a film that I'm passionate about Not only because of the film, but I love the stage show More than anything So I'm just really excited to just talk about it Right off the bat, can we talk a little bit about your history with Cabaret Cabaret

[00:05:39] I assume you would have seen the revival You know I've actually never Yeah, I never saw it on Broadway Oh wow, okay Even though I grew up in a close proximity to New York That was never a show that I saw I don't really know why

[00:05:57] In the sense that I think the latest revival was probably like 2014 Is that right? Yeah, that's the Michelle Williams, Alan Cummings With Alan Cummings, right And then Emma Stone was the second

[00:06:11] And I think my parents might have thought I was too young at that point to see it But at that point I had already seen the film Because I frequented, my family frequented Turner Classic movies when I was growing up So whatever was on we'd just watch

[00:06:25] And so I had seen the film a couple of times It wasn't until I think I was like 15 years old And my local theater did it in Clifton, New Jersey And my director who had directed me in Fiddler on the Roof and Thoroughly Modern Millie

[00:06:40] She had cast her son Chris and her daughter Sarah as MC and Sally Bowles And she was so worried that it was going to look so like nepotism baby-ish But they were perfect and the show was so astoundingly beautiful

[00:06:55] And the stage show gives such a new meaning to the music That if you are only familiar with the film It would just go right over your head And the stage show really just hits that home

[00:07:08] And so since then I saw a couple of other local productions of it Because I was obsessed with it And then when I moved to London My boyfriend came to visit me for Valentine's Day And I did everything in my power to see Eddie Redmayne and Jesse Buckley

[00:07:25] In the West End revival And it was fantastic It was really, really wonderful The direction is very interesting It's very different from what I've seen in the past Again, never seen a professional production of it live And it was super interesting

[00:07:39] And Eddie Redmayne was just shockingly like a nimble mover And an incredible dancer that added a new storytelling aspect That I had never seen before with the MC And Jesse was so beautiful A lot of people were saying

[00:07:54] People that I was working with on Snow White who had seen it as well Were like, well, Eddie is Act One and Jesse is Act Two And that really, it was the best way to put it

[00:08:04] Act One was all about MC and Act Two was really all about Sally And it was fantastic And then I re-watched the film last night And so that's my history with Cabot Ray Cabot Ray I want to see this London production I know Did they just leave?

[00:08:24] They both just left in March No, no, no It's still, a couple of friends saw it recently It's Froffy and someone Amy Lennox I don't know Amy Lennox And Amy Lennox's performance on the Olivier Awards was fantastic

[00:08:45] And so it kind of made me want to see it again Super expensive, super worth it though I am sort of embarrassed that I never saw the show live That I didn't go to the last revival Which I guess technically was a revival of the revival

[00:09:00] The legacy of the Mendes Marshall production Has sort of just like Because even a lot of the international outposts of the show For the last 20 years were like transplanting their design choreography Right? Yes And the whole concept of housing it in a club

[00:09:20] And you're sitting by a table I saw, I don't want to brag And Rachel possibly wasn't alive when I did this Which is depressing But also good and normal Because I'm not old, I'm just mature The right age, you are the one correct age I saw the 1998 production

[00:09:40] So I didn't see it in London I was too young for that But I saw it with Natasha Richardson Of course you didn't see it in London You grew up in New York City You saw Natasha Richardson I am so jealous

[00:09:49] So you saw Natasha Richardson and Alan Cumming And Alan Cumming in New York And it did kind of blow my mind To the point that I think briefly I would say that Natasha Richardson was my favorite actress When I was 12 years old

[00:10:05] Because she would have been so good in that Even though I probably had not seen her Well, I'd seen The Parent Trap I was going to say you'd seen The Parent Trap So I had seen her in at least one movie

[00:10:14] But I probably hadn't seen her in much else But she was so cool And that was so incredible And Alan Cumming was so different from the movie version Which I probably hadn't seen yet I can't remember the timeline of all that But anyway, that was cool

[00:10:32] But I never saw the Michelle Williams Whatever, revival of the revival People went after it at the time Being like, well, she's not a strong enough singer And then there's the sort of backlash Like, well, Sally Bowles isn't actually supposed to be that strong

[00:10:49] There's this weird tension with Cabaret Where you can kind of play it amateurish In a way, I guess Like that can be part of the drama of what you're doing I fully subscribe to the character Sally Bowles Not being uberly talented Because then it adds to the plot

[00:11:09] Of why her career kind of isn't taking off The way that she thinks it should Why she's stuck here, right Yeah, because then, you know There's that false sense of stardom That Liza Minnelli gives the role in the film Where you're like, why is Liza Minnelli

[00:11:26] In this sad club When she's a smoking hot babe Who's so good at this A smoking hot babe Who is the daughter of Judy Garland And her career can't take off Right Oh my god And she's doing these numbers That you're like, wow, this is incredible

[00:11:48] People would be running from all over the city To see this shit But anyway, we can get into that But not to jump ahead It's the thing It's the innate thing about Liza That I think Fosse taps into really well here There's just something a little too vulnerable

[00:12:06] About her Which on stage, I think If you're seeing her live It's all about the connection with the audience And in a movie like this, the way he shoots her Even though she's fucking killing these numbers You're like, there's something a little uncomfortable about it Yeah

[00:12:25] You know, it's a little too raw It's a little too naked In how clearly she wants to be loved Which is like the Achilles heel of this character Right, right Can I just speed run through Because I've forgotten some of these Because that production ran for so long

[00:12:43] The 98, right? And they kept on star casting Sally Bowles I mean, the 2014 was unique To have like two people that big Play Sally And just be like two gigantic movie stars Who both had performances That people had strong takes on And then the show closes, right?

[00:13:04] Well, Sienna Miller actually did it as well And then it closed Sienna Miller did it as well She was the last Sally Bowles This is interesting This was the 98 run, okay? Not in order Jennifer Jason Leigh Susan Egan Jolie Fisher Gina Gershon Debbie Gibson Terry Hatcher

[00:13:23] Always struggled with this name Melina Canacoretes Canacoretes Canacoretes From CSI New York Yes, Jane Leaves Molly Ringwald Brooke Shields Leah Thompson Ooh, Jane Leaves Leah Thompson Weird list, right? Leah Thompson would be so good Yeah Interesting Right? But there's a real range of different types of performers

[00:13:45] And different levels of comfort with musical theater I remember Michael C. Hall being the MC I remember the posters of him Rolla Sparza Neil Patrick Harris Yes Sort of pre-TV comeback Adam Pascal Right, Adam Pascal John Stamos Norman Leo Butz Exactly, yeah John Stamos Who was he?

[00:14:05] Norman Leo Butz did it? Is that what you just said? Yeah, that must have been pretty early for him Yeah Yeah I mean, you gotta really throw yourself around I mean, it's a demanding role That's like pre-Wicked Norbert post-Dirty Rotten Scoundrels

[00:14:19] I think it might be pre-Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, right? Pre-Dirty Rotten Scoundrels Absolutely has to be When was Dirty Rotten Scoundrels? 2005 Yeah So he does that right off of Wicked Wow, this is gonna be a musical nerdy episode Which I love

[00:14:34] But what he had done, Rachel, was he had been in Rent for years Right He was part of the replacement cast in Rent Yeah And I guess he jumps from that to this, to the Cabaret revival And then he does like, he did The Last Five Years, right?

[00:14:47] Well, yeah, that was his Off-Broadway, right? Yeah God, I'm sorry I just didn't even realize that The Mendes production starts in 93 It doesn't come to Broadway until 98 But that essentially 93 out here, right? It was out here Yes With Adam Godley and Yes Rachel is broadcasting from London

[00:15:05] Right, I don't know how you know that Oh, sorry Adam Godley and the great Jane Horrocks Little Voice Herself was Sally Bowles Love Jane Horrocks She was so good in that too But it is funny I mean, I don't know

[00:15:18] Like Fosse's take on Cabaret casts such a long shadow And then like, you know, 20 years later Mendes comes in And then that becomes the definitive thing Like everyone's riffing on for 30 years almost Yeah, I mean, it's funny I feel like he's the one

[00:15:38] Cumming is the one who sort of Not reinvents But he more hyper-sexualizes the MC, right? Versus the Joel Grey take, I guess Well, the MC in the stage production is the ever The omnipresent spectator And then the puppet master of the whole thing

[00:15:57] Whereas, you know, Joel Grey didn't really get that opportunity Because it was on the screen Yeah, and because of the way he sort of Fosse makes the movie realistic or whatever Like, you know, he makes the songs diegetic and all that Right Although I love that too

[00:16:14] Because I do love that the MC in the movie Is this utter mystery That you, you know, that like you just You just have no idea what his relationship Like who, like he almost seems like he only lives on the stage He's, yes, he feels demonic

[00:16:30] He feels like otherworldly He doesn't feel like a literal presence There's, I mean, jumping around here But I've been watching Joel Grey interviews recently I guess he did a memoir a couple years back So like a lot of his like 92nd Street wise style sit down

[00:16:48] Long talk about his whole life His memoir was called Master of Ceremonies Well As it should be, I guess, yes Yeah, okay Fosse was like so burned by the response to Sweet Charity That he was really at odds with like I don't want to be a musical guy

[00:17:05] And he said the first cut he saw That Joel Grey saw of Cabaret Fosse did not let a single musical number play out in full Like they obviously shot all of this And there was a cut of the movie where Fosse was so like

[00:17:19] I just don't want to fucking do the musical thing That it was like you would get either just the first 10 seconds Or the last 10 seconds of a song intercut in montage And no full performances And Joel Grey was like, well, there's my career fucking out the window

[00:17:34] And then every producer in the screening was like Bob, what the fuck are you doing? This is a Broadway show, Bob Yeah, they were like, first of all No one ever sees this version of the movie ever again Put the songs back in, you lunatic

[00:17:47] But it's funny to think of like Joel Grey watching this version Where you have such a strong take on the structure And the musical numbers being so removed from everything And then watching them just kind of remove them Literally from the film and being like

[00:18:00] Oh, I have nothing to do with this movie Hot take, this movie wouldn't work without the musical numbers I think they're pretty weird I don't even think that's a hot take I mean it's ingenuine This ignorance of the political unrest outside of the Kit Kat Club

[00:18:17] Is the whole reason the musical numbers exist Completely agree David, let's dig into the dossier Because this movie certainly has an interesting journey The Fossier The Fossier, I'm sorry, the Bob Fossier Our researcher has decided to call the dossier the Fossier now Which I love

[00:18:36] Yeah, so Rachel, have you ever seen Sweet Charity? Bob Fossie's Sweet Charity Yes, yes I have What do you think of that one? We just talked about it on the show last week Well, as the world's biggest Chita Rivera fan

[00:18:50] I have to say that I do like Sweet Charity I haven't seen it in recent years I get the reason why it probably didn't do well at the time It probably was ahead of its time in a strange, strange way But I also remember watching Fosse Verdon

[00:19:11] And seeing all the dramatized behind-the-scenes of Sweet Charity And it all makes sense They didn't think they had a real star at the helm And they thought it should have been Gwen Verdon and all these things But it served a purpose It's a musical movie

[00:19:31] And it fits that formula of those Right, it was released what, late 60s? 69 The year the Hollywood musical is kind of collapsing Yeah, because you just had a whole decade of West Side Story And Mary Poppins and all of these incredible films coming out Sound of Music

[00:19:54] And then the decade sort of ends with Hello Dolly And that and Dr. Dolittle And all these huge cacophonous, big disappointment movies That were expensive, overhyped Sweet Charity is good It just didn't do well And it's a shitty category to get stuck in

[00:20:13] Of this genuinely well thought out, well made movie With great performances That just fell in a terrible time for a musical movie to be made or released Weird transitional time For a guy like Fosse who had been on such a hot streak Leading up to that movie

[00:20:34] And he's 42 making his first film But his career was always sort of growing, growing, growing Legacy growing Even when he had flops, things that didn't work on Broadway I don't think any of that dinged him as much as Sweet Charity did Because it was treated, I think, like

[00:20:51] Well, this isn't his medium That's not a thing he's good at Rather than this show missed On Broadway he'd proven himself enough If you had a flop, it was like, well this one didn't work Because Sweet Charity did badly Fosse is very burned by that

[00:21:06] He does not want to go back to stage I assume he sort of thinks that will look like a retreat Or whatever So he's trying to get some stuff going He tried to make a movie a big deal on Madonna Street The Italian film about small time thieves

[00:21:21] He's working on that for a while I need a different fucking Italian movie To turn into a movie musical That falls apart He tries to make a movie called The Eagle of Nap Town Which is like a sort of Mid-western kid makes good musical thing It doesn't happen

[00:21:44] It eventually gets turned into the movie Breaking Away Many years later Which is not a musical, of course No, famously But for whatever reason That project that he started the ball rolling on Eight or nine years later Becomes Breaking Away Do you see number three here?

[00:22:03] He got connected to a movie called Burnt Offerings Which is a horror movie We know and pay a lot of respect to Which Rachel once could not identify I'd never heard of it And people yelled at me

[00:22:15] For having never heard of this random horror movie from the 70s It was some horror movie I'd never heard of And a thousand people yelled at us And they were like, canonical! It's a classic Burnt Offerings Which is not a musical at all, of course

[00:22:30] But I guess he's just kind of like Well, what if I do a Haunted House movie? That doesn't come together Then he goes to dinner With Neil Simon and Hal Prince Probably a pretty fun dinner And Hal Prince says I was going to make a cabaret movie

[00:22:46] But I had to turn it down Because I'm too busy preparing to direct Company on Broadway Right Pretty cool to think about that Hal Prince being like Couldn't do Cabaret, have to do Company Anyway, obviously Hal Prince is pretty much the greatest Broadway director of all time

[00:23:03] Or whatever However you want to think about it Hall of Fame guy And he tells Fosse Look, yeah, no It's all set up They've bought the rights Liza Minnelli's attached to star J. Pressen Allen's writing the script Sy Fuhrer is producing it And Bob Fosse

[00:23:24] Is like, tell me how you did Cabaret Break it down for me Every moment I want to know about this And after that he basically just starts lobbying the studio He's like, I have to do Cabaret You've got to let me at Cabaret Which was a big pitch

[00:23:40] Because it was a big hit show And he was not The Hollywood was not interested Yeah, like Hollywood was like No, Hollywood tried to get Billy Wilder They tried to get Gene Kelly And so And I like this quote This is Emanuel Wolfe at Allied Artists

[00:23:59] Which is the studio that made this movie He said, I knew the best time to get a talented director Was after a failure So it's sort of like that idea of He's been knocked down a peg He'll be whatever, hungry He'll be ready to Earn everyone's respect back

[00:24:15] That's why he went for Fosse I want to just put a pin in J. Pressen Allen And make sure we do a little J. Pressen Allen sidebar in a bit I keep moving forward through this Well, we'll talk about it It comes up again

[00:24:29] Because there was a lot of fighting over the script But J. Pressen Allen is a legend I assume that's what you want to bring up A fucking legend And I think an undersun legend And I want to talk about her a little bit But let's move through time

[00:24:43] Sure, anyway They bring up Fosse And yeah, look He's a very strong personality He's very difficult to control He clashes with every producer he works with He immediately starts fighting over The cinematographer they're going to hire All that kind of stuff But I want to note something

[00:25:03] He is not the one who has the idea To eliminate all the songs That are not set at the club That had already been established By the producer, Cy Fuhrer He was the one who was like We need to do that

[00:25:17] And he was like, I don't want to make a classic musical Because he's burned by Sweet Charity I want to do a diegetic musical Where we're not just having people singing As they walk down the street And hanging the laundry Or whatever

[00:25:31] He thinks they've got to break the mold on that Now, I love people singing While they hang the laundry, personally Me too But I get that in the 60s That maybe had just gotten stayed Just the idea of doing something different Was exciting Yeah, it's so funny here

[00:25:49] There's this Fuhrer quote As I saw it, if one or two of the numbers didn't work We had a flop. On the other hand, if all eight worked And the picture was a little short on dramatic direction We could still have a hit

[00:25:59] My bet was on the numbers I had to protect the musical numbers And there's nobody better on musical numbers than Bob Fosse Sweet Charity is like a movie where every musical number Is a showcase, not just for choreography But like his filmmaking techniques

[00:26:11] And then this is a movie Where he feels like in a certain way Agreeing to do the musical numbers Is the thing that gave him the access To do the other parts of the movie That he was maybe more excited to do

[00:26:25] Or just show that he could do a test himself for the first time You know? Sure Yeah, he was given not much money 175 grand and 7.5% of the profits Which I think was a good deal for him eventually Yes Pretty good He had a pretty budget

[00:26:43] This movie had a $3 million budget It's very cheaply made, which is crazy And he goes to Berlin To start I think Berlin Certainly Germany They shot this in Germany To start work But he does He brings in Neil Simon To try and rewrite J. Presnell And script

[00:27:09] He's been in a lot of movies But every time you read about him He just seems like a huge pain in the ass Yes He brings in another guy, Hugh Wheeler Who worked on the script And they tried to get him a co-writing credit

[00:27:23] But he didn't get one He's listed as a research consultant But what do you want to say about J. Allen Griff? I mean first of all If you just hit the bullet points Of her career At a time where there are very, very few female screenwriters

[00:27:37] And very, very few Real careers You know? That span decades She writes Marnie Adapts the Prime and Miss Jean Brody Cabaret And then in the 80s Other stuff in between Funny Lady But in the 80s Rebuilds herself with Sidney Lumet As the most hard-edged Brutal

[00:28:05] Prince of the City And then does Death Trap with him She's incredible And right The fucking uncredit on La Cage a Faux Did the Prime Miss Jean Brody adaptation For Broadway as well But she's one of these people Where A. She's kind of one of those Amazing undersung

[00:28:25] Secret script doctors Who worked on fucking everything And at a certain point Got so burned out on the industry She's like, I'm gonna do this fucking thing Tell me how many days I have Pay me the money and I'll fix it

[00:28:39] Like I don't need to play this whole game I'll just come in here and be a surgeon But she like I don't know I think she If you read about her And her like tenacity And her stubbornness I mean she was like I think notoriously

[00:28:59] A difficult pain in the ass person as well And I think that's why we're with people Who were also sort of perfectionist control freaks She has a great quote about Fosse here Which is I didn't find him the happiest collaborator

[00:29:11] I ever had for a man who dealt with women As much as he was obliged to Let's say he had an extremely parochial view Of women So she was definitely Looking at him as scant as he was trying To like tear her script up or whatever

[00:29:25] But she does get the credit And the Oscar nomination But yeah she's a badass She wanted to be an actress She was frustrated by it She got married too young And then she was like I need some way to support myself To get out of this marriage

[00:29:41] And then was like I'll write If you write you have no boss and I read a lot And she just like fucking wrote a novel and a play And started writing screenplays And was just like yeah what are you talking about I'm just gonna write

[00:29:53] She is one of those people I find fascinating In that I don't think she ever accepted credit For how much of a trailblazer she was Sure Because she was just like what are you talking about I just sat down at a typewriter and wrote shit

[00:30:05] She also did what's it called Just Tell Me What You Want That's her novel Which is kind of a big corporate satire That's a crazy movie That's a Sidney Lumet movie as well Anyway J.Presnell Everyone's fighting They're fighting over what cinematographer to hire

[00:30:23] He wants to hire Robert Surtees Who he's doing a sweet charity with Cypher the producer is like no You can't go over the top like that again Eventually He's suggesting huge names to him Eventually they settle on Jeffrey Unsworth Who's the guy who shot 2001 No chump obviously

[00:30:41] But there's a big fight about that I don't know It's just a lot of It's one of these movies where everything About the creative process seems to be Tension and fighting And not enough money Everything's held together with Tape and glue Then they produce a masterpiece

[00:31:01] But when you sit any of them down They're like I don't know it could have been better The movie's pretty good guys Take comfort in what you did I also just think There's a genuine palpable sense of mania And desperation Baked into this movie that cannot be Faked

[00:31:19] I think when You're that the production was that much Of a nightmare and no one thought the movie was working out This isn't one of those cases where you're like How's that possible you must have been looking at

[00:31:29] The dailies every day and feeling like you fucking won the lottery I'm like I can imagine this being a bummer To work on I can imagine everyone feeling weird Making this movie Liza Minnelli obviously had gotten Passed over for the stage Role

[00:31:47] Even though she was a Tony winner At the age of 19 and she was Judy Garland's daughter They thought she couldn't do the English accent Because the role is traditionally An English girl, Sally Bowles And then she does Stare All Cuckoo after that? Yeah and becomes a

[00:32:03] Big enough star that by the time The movie's coming around she is like Part of the draw She's part of the reason it's getting funded But she claims When she didn't get the accent right They say they're going to cast someone else

[00:32:17] She says that's fine I'll just do the movie I was young and I just knew it And then whatever Imagine A few years later She goes to meet with a producer And she sings cabaret for him The song Cabaret And he said you got it

[00:32:35] And so that's when I got it That is so funny And the coolest thing I think of course Is that she designs the whole look of Sally Bowles herself Like Sally Bowles doesn't usually look like this She's usually blonde on stage In previous productions or whatever

[00:32:49] And her dad Vincent Minelli One of the greatest directors who ever lived Who understands movie musicals Better than anyone basically Shows her lots of pictures of Louise Brooks And is like you know this was Hot stuff in the 30's Don't just think like Marlena Dietrich

[00:33:09] Don't just think like blonde movie idol And so Joel Grey cut her hair For her And she dyes it black She does the look that she's got The sort of how do you describe it She looks like an owl But with a little point The widow's peak

[00:33:27] And she knocks on Fosse's door The night before they start shooting And says what do you think I wish I could do Liza Can you do Liza Rachel Can anyone do Liza Not offensively I feel like I would offend her I can do a singing Liza

[00:33:45] Not a speaking Liza Can I do my terrible speaking Liza Please Yeah and we'll cut it out Yep let's cut that out That's more Arrested Development Like Lucille 2 Being like Boshka In Wasson's account Basically the account is That she said what do you think

[00:34:11] And then Bob Fosse said what if I hadn't But that meant that he did like it Yeah And Joel Grey Bob Fosse doesn't want to cast him He's like no you're the theater guy You did this on stage He looked at every other actor

[00:34:27] Joel Grey says he was heartbroken By this I just have to laugh at Bob Fosse Being like no you're a theater guy Yeah Look in the mirror my friend Well absolutely he's like terrified By the fact that I think people view him That way As the theater guy

[00:34:47] That could be said for a lot of horrible things he said to a lot of people Right There's a lot of self-loathing in Bob Fosse Which is borne out by All That Jazz The most self-loathing film ever made

[00:34:57] Yes All That Jazz is the most self-loathing film ever made Right It really is where he's just like take a look at me And we're like whoa Bob This fucking sucks It's show time It's so good though But also what Joel Grey thinks is that Bob Fosse

[00:35:13] Secretly wanted to play the part himself Now this is Joel Grey's opinion on that But that makes some sense Obviously Like Bob Fosse a great actor and performer in his own right Had never really gotten to do it You know have a big role in a movie Yeah

[00:35:29] I don't know And he kind of started when he was a kid as a tap dancer in vaudeville Like it just makes sense I think Bob Fosse also relates to the Sally Bowles thing We talked about in the last episode

[00:35:39] But the thing where he was like all I want to do is just be a song and dance man And everyone was like There's something creepy to you Like you're not Gene Kelly You're not happy You know Yeah

[00:35:53] I think there's more of himself in both of these characters Than maybe he'd even want to admit But perhaps I don't know I watched this long interview with Joel Grey And I think that's the thing that he really felt Like it was Fosse Keeping him down

[00:36:09] And sort of you know Kind of wishing away whenever The producers went like just hire Joel Grey He was like I don't know That doesn't feel like the right thing Let's see more people And there was no one else who was ever serious option

[00:36:23] And Joel Grey said that he heard there was a moment Where they said to Fosse It's either you or it's Joel Grey Right And when they finally challenged him point blank That he was like It's Grey Like when the producers finally sort of said

[00:36:39] Are you trying to get this part for yourself He then was like I know I fucking shouldn't do it He's gonna do it better Cause at this point how old is he as well He's 45 right Yeah that sounds about right Yeah

[00:36:53] I mean not that you can't do this role at 45 It's an ageless role in many ways I mean Alan Cumming is still doing it It does feel like a role you can't shake Like Joel Grey obviously did it Twice on Broadway

[00:37:05] Alan Cumming has done it twice on Broadway And on the West Side It does feel like a role that kind of like Sort of defines you even if you do lots of other stuff Well it's one of the most haunting roles Ever written for someone on stage

[00:37:17] I think It's such a haunting part And I mean Even just by the act two Songs given to the MC With I Don't Care Much Those songs Resonate throughout The entirety of someone's career Let alone the political Aspects of the song in the show That I can't imagine

[00:37:43] If I had the opportunity to play that role I would be playing it well into my 80s If they'd let me Wait Rachel you should play the MC That would be cool I do think having a woman play the MC Would defeat the purpose of the character But

[00:37:59] I've seen it done very well before I've seen it in a high school production And I was confused But that could be the fact That it was high school It could be the fact that it was A 17 year old person The Joel Grey interview

[00:38:15] I keep on going back to because I thought it was really fascinating He said that when he was cast In the show on Broadway He had no fucking idea how to play the character And that Everyone just kept on being like Joel you got this

[00:38:27] And he's like I don't I have no handle on this I have no grip on this I cannot figure out it feels like this is such a sort of Turnkey for the whole show That I really have to set a tone

[00:38:37] And a mood and I don't know what the Right level of Because he is such an inscrutable character Like what is the thing I'm holding onto here And that he went to A comedy club and he saw A comedian who was just so Nakedly desperate To be loved

[00:38:55] That he saw this like incredibly Uncomfortable performance By someone who could not hide Their desperation to win over the crowd And he was like this is so Off putting and unbecoming And it Tilts over into scary And he was like that's the root of the thing for me

[00:39:13] That there's this weird energy Of like he's He wants it too much He's trying A little too hard That's interesting because I think Of him as so confident In the movie right but he was like that's The element that makes it uncomfortable That I latched onto

[00:39:33] And then I think what's smart about That is it's like right that's the ultimately The scariest thing about this show is like This guy is willing to win Over Nazis if they're The people in the audience he will play to them It's just this like Obsessive serving of

[00:39:49] Whoever the crowd is It's the mirror you know The weird twisted mirror That he's in front of A black mirror almost Exactly it is funny how much though For how iconic these two performances are And both of them win their Oscars That like They both have incredibly limited

[00:40:09] Film careers for people Who are considered major movie stars they both Don't do much They're both very sporadic Yeah I mean they both have very robust Careers as entertainers Especially Liza obviously Is just sort of like a name onto herself Forever right but yeah You'd think Liza

[00:40:29] Would like do a bunch More movies off of this she doesn't even do a movie For three years after she does Lucky Lady Three years later which is a Stanley Donah movie With Gene Hackman and Burt Reynolds That I've never seen That I'm sure was a bomb

[00:40:43] And then after that Cameo as herself in Silent Movie Matter of Time with her father Then New York, New York is like her next big ass movie Which she's so good in I mean I love her in New York, New York

[00:40:55] But that movie obviously is a bomb at the time And then Arthur King of Comedy she plays herself Muppet's Take Manhattan she plays herself Then Rent-a-Cop Then Arthur 2 on the Rocks Yeah she basically just doesn't do it much Sex and the City 2 she plays herself

[00:41:11] And then like Stepping Out and The O in Ohio Are her last two movies That she played other people in And yeah Arrested Development is like most of her work I mean obviously she's Iconic, incredibly iconic Probably most millennials introduction To Liza Minnelli Is Lucille Ostero

[00:41:31] Yeah I feel like that might be the only way Certain people know Is that she's Lucille too But you look at Joel Grey and it's like Man on a Swing, 7% Solution Buffalo Bill Then 9 years until Remo Williams Then 6 years until Kafka Then it's like The player as himself

[00:41:51] Yeah it's nothing really He went to stage primarily too Because Joel Grey then went and Iconically did Wicked, he did the Anything Goes revival With Sutton Foster and everything He did Cabaret many times And he was Amos In the Chicago revival The Chicago we all know

[00:42:09] That's still running And he's He is an A-lister on Broadway forever And a character actor in movies You're not mentioning that he's Doc On Buffy, Griffin I forgot you've never seen Buffy Oh well Did he do Alias too? Probably, I don't know Yeah Alias Three episodes of Alias

[00:42:35] I just think how defined both of them are By these roles Yeah, I think it's hard to shake You know And that's fine Joel Grey beat out Al Pacino And the rest of the cast of The Godfather Do an Oscar And no one really objected to that

[00:42:53] They maybe object to Al Pacino not having an Oscar But they don't It's not like he lost to some chump Who was the non-Godfather Non-Cabaret nominee? I can look it up for you Yeah You just said we'll talk about the Oscars later But I have to know

[00:43:11] Cabaret won eight of them, right? Yeah Cabaret won eight Oscars to The Godfather's three But it did not win Best Picture Right And Joel Grey did win Best Supporting Actor Oh, of course, Eddie Albert and the Heartbreak Kid Oh, yes Great performance

[00:43:29] Three Godfathers, Joel Grey, and Eddie Albert I was gonna say Al Pacino should have been in the lead But whatever, it doesn't matter Ben has a question Ben's hand went up Well, yeah, I'm hoping I'm not interrupting the flow here I gotta ask on behalf of people

[00:43:43] Who are not familiar with Cabaret Like, what is up with the source material? Great question What is this? It is wild to me It's technically two things, right? Yes Ben, you will be more confused when we tell you the journey to this becoming a fucking musical

[00:44:01] Well, Christopher Isherwood, who's just one of those guys who just The kind of guy you want to be Just an English guy who wears a scarf Who, you know, wrote plays and movies But also diaries and novels And wrote his own memories

[00:44:13] And, you know, one of the most important members of, like, sort of gay liberation in literature As you're saying, David, like, I'm not sure I'm not sure I'm not sure I'm not sure I'm not sure I'm not sure But as you're saying, David, like His fiction work

[00:44:31] Was as interesting as his life And he was the best at telling his life He wrote a book called Goodbye to Berlin Which is about his life in Berlin During the end of the Jazz Age During the end of the Weimar Republic, right?

[00:44:45] And it's about his sort of fascination with this cabaret singer Named Jean Ross And how he helped her get an abortion and all that So, like, that's the basic source material He's the Michael York character Right And then there's a movie called

[00:44:59] A movie and a play called I Am a Camera That's based on that That this is kind of springing out of More than the book, I guess Is the best way to put it It's like a copy of a copy Right

[00:45:13] And when they first tried to turn this into a musical The approach was Act one is a review It's a Kit Kat club A night at the Kit Kat club And then act two is straight dramatic play Right It's technically a fair assessment

[00:45:29] Still to this day that the first Act is all fun and games Until somebody starts singing Tomorrow Belongs to Me At a Party When I saw it, my boyfriend had never seen it before When I saw it here on the West End

[00:45:41] My boyfriend was not familiar with anything Having to do with cabaret And didn't see the Nazi plot coming And I was like, really? But he genuinely didn't see it coming And it wasn't until The guy from the train

[00:45:55] That the character Cliff is doing all of this bidding for In Paris Takes off his jacket and is wearing a red armband That my boyfriend was like Oh, they're Nazis Right You look at the calendar And it's like 1930 Berlin, 1931 They're Nazis World War I had happened

[00:46:17] World War II, wait, when did that start? And I was asking people who had just recently saw it And I was like, were you familiar with it? But they too didn't see it coming Which I think is really Which is The success of the show

[00:46:31] Is that it proper distracts you From what you should be thinking about You're having fun Life is a cabaret And in here life is beautiful And Act 1 Is all the fun songs Exactly As most musicals of that era Tend to be

[00:46:51] Is that Act 1 is all fun and games And then Act 2 is like death And that's it I mean you were in a musical that is very like that Yes And the only Act 2 respite you got Was like a number about the least brutality

[00:47:05] That was what you got in West Side It's often like a struggle When they try to adapt these things for movies Where they're just like This is right, this is a lot You can get away with sort of the grand tragedy I remember Frank Oz saying

[00:47:19] When he screened When they Tested Little Shop of Horrors And they had the original ending Where Audrey 2 just takes over The world needs everybody, everybody dies Seymour feeds Audrey, he dies Everyone dies, right And the audience just like fucking revolted And it always worked off Broadway

[00:47:39] And he was like the difference is At the end of a live stage show The curtain comes up And the whole cast comes out And they take a bow and everyone feels a sense of relief And when you watch people die in a movie

[00:47:51] Then you just walk out and they remain dead Like you're just back in the real world You know It's true, and on a Broadway show You're like they're gonna do that again tomorrow Like there's also that kind of feeling of Yeah, yeah

[00:48:05] But like West Side Story and Cabaret are unique Not the only ones But they're unique examples of like How they worked being translated to movies With endings of like doomed inevitability I mean I watched this with someone Who had never seen it before

[00:48:19] A friend of mine who fell asleep In the last like 20 minutes And then Paramount Plus Started auto-playing Footloose Which I'll say it's pretty jarring to go from The end of this movie to like To Kevin Bacon But it's also about Footloose is also about autocracy

[00:48:37] It is, it's about dance fascism It is But it was still A splash of cold water, right And she says I'm sorry I fell asleep What happened at the end And I went like you know The Nazis win They're coming The whole thing's bad, the Nazis

[00:48:57] Yeah, I mean I don't know how else you're gonna end Cabaret But Cabaret has a weird Unsettling ending It's not like West Side Story where someone gets shot And people are crying Which I love the end of West Side Story To be clear but it's

[00:49:11] A punctuation whereas Cabaret Is just this kind of stomachache at the end Where you're kind of just like oh god Right, it's only gonna get worse from here Well and even like If you could see her which is probably quote unquote The most fun number

[00:49:25] In the second half Ends with this horrible mic drop You're like oh this number it's fun And we're back into like good times And then Joel Grey like looking you dead in the eyes And saying like achoo Um yeah Uh okay

[00:49:41] Michael York I want to shout out briefly Michael York Let's shift gears and talk about Logan's Run Are you a Logan's Run fan? Are you a Logan's Runner? Are you a Logan's Runner? You know what Rachel that is a TCM classic It plays on TCM all the time

[00:49:59] It's always on fucking TCM So that's why I've seen it so many times I guess it's an MGM movie They just owned it It must be one of those things It really must be because I remember being so wildly uncomfortable The first time I saw it

[00:50:13] And now I can't associate Michael York with anything else So every time And I forgot he was in this movie Because I have not seen this movie in a long time And when I rewatched it I was like oh my god it's Logan's Run

[00:50:25] I got a hot take on Michael York Yeah? What's that? I think his best work was on Gilmore Girls I agree He is good on Gilmore Girls He's also hot on Gilmore Girls Which is supposed to be the idea It makes sense why Paris loves him Sorry

[00:50:45] The man aged well continues to look good But when you see just a splash A young York in like this Or Logan's Runner or whatever You're like fuck What a face this guy has He's really good looking in Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet Oh right Rachel that's exactly it

[00:51:03] He had just popped in Romeo and Juliet And so Fosse puts out a casting call Looking for a quote Michael York type And Michael York calls his agent And is like do you think I could qualify for this? He basically is like

[00:51:15] I heard you were looking for a Michael York type My name is Michael York It would be really really embarrassing if Fosse said no Yeah he's like uh no I was looking for a Michael York type So he brings in Michael York Right

[00:51:29] Who is really good in Romeo and Juliet And that was sort of his breakout I guess he was in That very early Merchant Ivory movie The Guru as well Oh weird I have another Michael York hot take Okay you think he's hot? Good voice

[00:51:47] Does anyone else in history sound like Michael York? Hello Austin Yeah like the way he He has a very captivating speaking voice It's like I don't even know what I'm cursing Turns out she was a femme bot Sadly we knew all along That's one of my favorite jokes

[00:52:03] Oh my god I forgot he did do that He's Basil Exposition That was obviously my fucking franchise as a child But like I was so captivated by him In that where it's just like The way this guy says everything Is so bizarre

[00:52:17] And his role in that movie is literally just to deliver exposition Yes Him saying sadly we knew all along In the second movie And it's just dismissed is so funny The whole scene with his mother I just think like both the resonance of his voice

[00:52:31] And then he's got this very odd Speaking rhythm That is so unique Yeah he's you know It's 1972 he wants to figure out How we're going to play this character The character is presented as bisexual In the movie Isherwood was gay but I mean even presenting him

[00:52:49] As bisexual in 1972 was Relatively daring For a studio movie Isherwood doesn't like it Isherwood says that he thinks That the movie sort of considers Homosexuality a kink Not like an identity I don't know if I agree with that because I always watch

[00:53:07] This movie and just think like he's gay He's not really He basically says like I've never been able to make it work with women Except for Liza Minnelli That's the only one where he has a connection He largely seems gay And even like the jealousy

[00:53:23] That he gets of Max Is not really based on the fact That he wants the attention of Sally, he wants the attention of Max So yeah I always Kind of viewed Even like the Cliff Bradshaw character in the stage show I just always consider that character to be

[00:53:39] To be gay but I don't know Has anyone ever made The definitive intention behind the character Known or has it Always been this kind of very vague It always shifts I think you know There's various productions that do things various ways And obviously Isherwood was gay

[00:53:55] So if you want to take it all the way back To him then there you go But like yeah no I think it's This is the thing that's funny about Cabaret It's been a lot of different things Over the years and There's songs that you know Money

[00:54:09] And maybe This Time they're put in for this movie And then the stage shows after this movie take them Because they're like well those are good songs we'll keep them But like they weren't in the original production And things like that

[00:54:19] It's just funny I have seen this movie many times Humblebrag I Have never Once thought of this character as bisexual I truly am like This is a gay man who has a relationship With a woman Not to paint with too broad A brush but he's

[00:54:39] Neither the first nor the last gay man To only be able to make a relationship With a woman work with Liza Minnelli Right Yes I mean like You know Peter Alex yes go on I'm referring to possibly Several people but I do Think it's He outright says

[00:55:01] I tried it didn't work right And then I think they have such A unique bond that he is Able to engage with it More but He knows it isn't Where I mean It's her heartbreaking scene with The like where she's Talking about if they had the baby

[00:55:21] And like how long before I need to get up Perform at some CD club again and how long Before you and she can't finish the sentence Again and it's like we both know What we innately are I'm always Going to need to perform and you're always going to

[00:55:33] Want to be in the arms of another man It's a little Tragic Lots of things in cabaret All right they make the movie they're in Germany Because they're in Germany Nobody can really tell Bob Fosse what to do Because no one's actually there

[00:55:49] At one point he got a telegram From the studio saying he was using too much Smoke in the Kit Kat club And he tore it up and threw it over his shoulder There's a really good Quote about how he was so intense

[00:56:01] That he would smoke cigarettes and not Know that they were done so they would be About to burn his mouth and people would come And pick cigarettes out of his mouth Because he was about to hurt himself and he Would not even notice Just a crazy person And

[00:56:17] He's obviously doing all the Choreography and is sort of like Trying to balance the Bob Fosse Ness with the sort of like this is Supposed to be a CD 1930s Club they wouldn't look Their dances wouldn't look like Bob Fosse dances

[00:56:31] But right you know so it's like that Weird sort of balance that he's trying to strike Being a little less elaborate I guess Yeah I also think This movie looks dirty In a fascinating way like This is obviously the same year as The Godfather

[00:56:45] Which is a movie that is infamous for how Much how radical The darkness of Its cinematography was right the whole Gordon Willis like dark Dark color shadows kinds of Things but it's clean looking In its darkness and this movie Looks like It's like under exposed

[00:57:05] It's the smoke it's the color palette It's the dinginess of every room You know of the clothes Everything is so Yes especially when you compare it to Sweet Charity which is so sort of meticulously Designed everything in this movie feels Really cluttered and dirty And kind of obscure

[00:57:23] He wanted it to be dark he wanted it to be Smoky as I said Jeffrey Unsworth initially was like well I wanted To be kind of Bertolt Brechti I wanted it to be like Hard and cold and Fosse was like no Soft and smoky and

[00:57:35] Jeffrey Unsworth says that was the right move The Thing everything was so dark And they didn't have monitors back then That they were worried that things would literally Become come back unviewable like Like just so underdeveloped that it would Be under exposed that it would be just

[00:57:51] Really really dark But it all worked and At a certain point I'm sorry I just Have to these little anecdotes are so funny Cy Fuhrer the producer Tried to steal Bob Fosse's Filters Because he was like it's too dark It's too dark and

[00:58:09] The woman that Bob Fosse was having An affair with on set whose name was Ilse Schwarzwald Diverted him and gave him some fake filters To throw away so the producer Actually tried to throw away Bob Fosse's lens You know camera filters And was distracted From it

[00:58:27] And Bob Fosse at the time Saw this movie and got fired From funny lady which he was The photographer for because he was trying to make It look like cabaret because he was like That's what musicals should look like now And he got fired Anyway

[00:58:43] Yeah so and then of course Gwen Verdon who is so crucial To sweet charity she's on set for this She's helping design Liza's clothes she's going to like Berlin vintage stores She's designed like cool 30s clothes She found the monkey suit She found the monkey suit Absolutely

[00:59:03] The studio had sent some kind of blue velour Monkey suit and she Was like this won't work and finds a real gorilla Costume and flies it to Munich It's Munich not Berlin where they're shooting it Of course because Berlin would have been under the iron curtain

[00:59:15] What am I thinking David, David, David What were you thinking And she also walks in on Fosse Sleeping with this other woman And it's a huge It's basically the last straw Bob Fosse was sleeping with a woman Which one Which one David A couple of other things

[00:59:37] On money initially Gwen Verdon wanted to dress Jill Graham Liza Minnelli as bums but once He dressed Liza Minnelli as a bum apparently She looked so much like Judy Garland Dressed as a tramp that it was distracting So instead we're like okay we'll make them look rich We'll

[00:59:53] Have them wear monocles and top hats And all that And during money money Fosse kept being Like more sexual like you know Pelvis thrusts all this kind of stuff He tells Minnelli You know at one point you weren't as serious and sexual

[01:00:07] As I wanted you to be Liza Minnelli starts crying Then he goes over to Joel Grey He knocks on Joel Grey's door And he says it didn't come out the way I wanted it to It wasn't sexual enough it wasn't serious enough

[01:00:17] And Joel Grey said too bad I'm sorry to hear that And closed the door That's what more people should have done To Bob Fosse in his life Yeah well it's too bad Bob Look you got some takes so I hope you enjoy it

[01:00:33] That's how I want to respond when anyone criticizes me On any count Too bad I'm sorry to hear that I'm so sorry that you think that God damn And you know Then they make the movie And then they cut it together They get a PG rating

[01:00:51] Because he was initially He was initially going to say oh fuck Maximilian And she replies I do They turned out to screw Maximilian Because they knew that might get them in trouble And that's what gets them a PG rating But you also have to remember

[01:01:05] There's no PG-13 at this point The gulf is huge between the two Yeah And it comes out and it's a gigantic hit And it wins eight Oscars Bob Fosse's only reaction is I can't believe I lost best picture though To the Godfather Nonetheless he's like

[01:01:23] And so he thinks he could have done even better But that is the story of Cabaret I mean Godfather was the highest grossing film Of that year right Yeah Godfather is a hit upon hits Right this must have almost been seen As more of like the critics darling

[01:01:37] Movie which is odd to think about But it was certainly a big hit But nothing like It was the sixth biggest hit of the year Which is that's pretty good Absolutely but Godfather was like a blockbuster Yeah Godfather far and above anything that year

[01:01:53] And then the Poseidon Adventure What's Up Doc Which is a great movie Deliverance and Jeremiah Johnson Two kind of like you know country Thrillers Can you imagine Again a year where The five best picture nominees mirror The top five Highest grossing films of the year that closely

[01:02:15] Uh huh Yeah yeah sure Deliverance, Cabaret you're right I mean it's a good year in film The nominees for best picture that year are The Godfather, Cabaret, Deliverance Sounder which is a great movie And the immigrants The um You know It's a Swedish movie It's a good year

[01:02:39] You also got like Sleuth that year You got the Heartbreak Kid You got Fat City Lady Sings the Blues Diana Ross sort of successfully Moving to serious acting You know a lot of good stuff This movie opens With a number called Vilkomin

[01:02:59] So did this podcast if anyone remembers It did Another commonality between this movie And this podcast Is that you have mischievous Possibly dangerous puck like figures Welcoming you into A hostile environment I played puck in high school Griff Did you know that? No really?

[01:03:21] I played puck in a Midsummer Night's Dream Oh I thought you meant in a stage production of The Real World Um Wow Uh yeah but Joel Grey immediately just sort of like Sets the tone of the entire Film right? It's so important Yes Joel Grey's performance

[01:03:43] Yes and tone shift But I have to say that Liza Minnelli has the worst Entrance in the movie Like she's such a It's so disappointing Because he just kind of tosses And also Sally Bowles is here And she's just like hey And then that's it That's literally it

[01:04:03] I'm not sure when Michael York moves into the building But it's so I remember that was like one of the notes I took When I watched it last night Was like where the hell was her entrance She's Liza freaking Minnelli She's just yeah

[01:04:17] Another one of the performers right? It's that weird kind of mundane I mean Mine Hair is a good number Oh Mine Hair is one of my Favorite stage numbers ever But I do wonder If it was intentional in the way that like She felt unimportant

[01:04:33] In that club and maybe that was the reason But it did feel like maybe Considering she's the lead actress Like that entrance should have been A bit more Something I don't know Because on stage Her entrance is incredible It's show stopping There's nothing like Being a Broadway show

[01:04:55] I was just talking about this Griff On the Sweet Charity episode right? Where the whole audience Is just kind of trembling with excitement Waiting for the star To drop in And for them all to lose their minds How important

[01:05:11] Do you think Sally Bowles is to the Kit Kat Club? Is she a big draw? Is she just One of many performers? I think in the stage version she's a huge draw She's kind of the Name performer at this point

[01:05:25] Yeah and that's why when she gets fired it's a big deal And then she goes back because she's a crowd favorite The club needs her This whole vibe In this movie, I think she's not She's not that big of a deal

[01:05:37] I mean we don't really see anyone else You know we see group numbers Obviously we see the MC She's the only one we see being introduced By name But it is sort of hard to tell How crucial is she to the Kit Kat Club Right

[01:05:53] You know the Sweet Charity episode I said that that movie is like Fundamentally about someone trying to convince Themselves that they are worthy of love That they are lovable, right? And Bob Fosse has this huge Huge self-loathing Superiority complex That clouds all of his work

[01:06:11] And the other thing Is I think he Views show business And the weird drive Of show people to be a dark Thing You really look at all of his movies And they are people who are like burdened By the perception of their Work

[01:06:31] Not being taken seriously or not being loved enough Or being viewed as dangerous Or illegitimate or whatever it is People who cannot make their art Connect in a way that they Want Who also just fundamentally feel like I'm probably unlovable I'm desperate for love and I'm probably

[01:06:49] Not worthy of it And I'm trying to replace it with my Relationship to the audience And vices and everything in between Yeah And the characters do that All of his characters are vehicles for that Right That difference in how Sally Bowles is positioned

[01:07:07] Within this movie I think speaks to Bob Fosse's complex His basic world view It's just echoed in all five movies Which is fascinating Because he is such an auteur We're talking about him on this podcast And obviously he's This creatively focused guy

[01:07:25] But he's coming onto a show that's not his And he's telling a story That's not his or whatever But you can feel him And it's a female protagonist You can feel Him behind everything As you can with Sweet Charity And everything else It's that director thing

[01:07:45] Obviously All That Jazz is all about him But the other side of that Is him doing non-fiction True life, ripped from headline stories And yet he focuses On the exact same elements Of those very different characters And different time periods And different scenes He's just a guy

[01:08:05] Whose themes are really fucking big Because his follow up to This is Lenny Where it's like I need to make a movie About another self-loathing Intense performer Which he also Notoriously hated Cutting it together And everything like that He just had such a breakdown Cutting that film together

[01:08:27] That was the other thing How dedicated he was in the editing process Dedicated in all of the films Editing those movies And absolutely hating them Which I always wonder how directors Edit their own films It seems terrible I remember being in the editing room

[01:08:45] With Steven Spielberg editing his new movie And I remember just being like I'm sorry, your buddy Steve invited you Your buddy Steve Invited you to watch fucking Fableman's footage It wasn't, I haven't seen any of it I need to clarify

[01:08:59] I dropped in to give him a birthday present Back in December Wait, what was the birthday present? Yeah, you gotta tell us the present Oh, I can tell you the present What do you get the man who has everything That's probably the dilemma I end up having

[01:09:13] Jurassic Park on Blu-ray Does he have that? Here's all of the cut scenes This is a list of cut scenes I want You can give me them for your birthday You can But no, I got him a I took a really beautiful picture Of him and Steve Sondheim

[01:09:31] In the recording studio when we were doing G-Officer Krupke And I got it framed Him and Steve were really good friends And that was his birthday present But I dropped in at his Amblin offices to go give it to him And I remember walking into the editing room

[01:09:47] And he was in there with Michael And the whole team that edits With him and has been for years and years And I just remember The vibe was very chill but I felt very uneasy How do you people lock yourself In these four walls For maybe 12 hours

[01:10:05] A day watching The same 35 seconds Over and over again No wonder Bob Fosse hated his films By the time he was done It was usually him and one other person In a dark room just cutting the same thing together Nowadays I guess it's a little bit

[01:10:21] Different in the digital age But Steven still shoots on film So there's so much that goes into I can't imagine When it comes to Bob Fosse and his self-loathing complex Which is an understandable complex Even though he took it to the next level I probably would also be

[01:10:37] In the same boat I don't get how you Don't just hate what you've done If you watch it a hundred times It's like saying the same word over and over again It starts to sound like not a word I can't watch my own performances

[01:10:51] I saw West Side Story ten times And it was sadistic It got to a point where I was like I can't do this ever again Rest assured Shazam 2 will be viewed Once and never again It's the thing That I find most astounding In directors

[01:11:09] Who also star in their own films How? I don't know how they do it The two brains doing both At the same time Being aware of both things during takes Thing is one I can almost get my head around How a very high functioning person can handle that

[01:11:25] But the idea of then you have to go into an editing room And watch all your fucking And then watch your stuff There's one thing You're Bradley Cooper You're directing A Star is Born And you're half the movie That's crazy I remember asking Choreographers

[01:11:45] Can you watch your own work? We all have that complex I can't watch playback I can't watch playback when I'm on set Let alone having to watch the whole thing back Being a director I assume you're watching it back I'm watching the baby that I conceived

[01:12:01] And I'm watching it for the 1500th time No wonder Steven Spielberg doesn't sit in at the premieres He sat in at our New York premiere He sat in at New York Because he wanted to see it with everybody Our whole cast was there And then LA

[01:12:15] He went and took a nap And then came down to the party King shit Taking a nap at any point is a king move I would do the same exact thing If I were a director There's one thing being in

[01:12:29] Over an hour of a two and a half hour film And then just like that's it But then you lay claim to the whole Two and a half hours Every inch of it is your thing I am now realizing that I can't watch Snow White ever Goodbye

[01:12:43] You can't because you're all over Snow White It's the whole movie There's the thing they say You write the movie three times And the final time you write it is in the editing room And I feel like every director that I consider great

[01:13:01] I have read a quote from At some point in time where they say Inevitably At some point in the journey You hit a point where you have made the worst movie Anyone has ever seen Where you're in the editing room

[01:13:15] The thing you're watching is truly the worst thing If anyone sees this I'm ruined Right, unsalvageable Just impossible The thing of editing If you're a good director It means you're discerning The people who I think have an easy time editing Are people who probably lack taste Or skill

[01:13:35] But if you are a discerning director You're watching footage and just I imagine hyper fixated on The things you didn't get The things that are wrong You can't fix Even if you're making a great film There was probably some moment in the editing room

[01:13:51] Where you're like, well this is the best we can do with this And we're going to have to move on We've looked at everything and this is the best I don't love it Obviously that's what so many directors say If they watch a movie of their own

[01:14:03] They're like, this is 30 seconds too long Or I remember this day Where we just couldn't get a take Because of whatever The weather His editing style is so unconventional He has such bizarre structures to his movies With these different Russian nesting doll timelines And things like that

[01:14:21] Where his editing is also like choreography So it's not just that he's trying to Rewrite a movie in post But he's trying to find this very specific rhythm And the relationship between the images It must drive him insane And that's where you get The joys of having

[01:14:37] Someone who knows The world of choreography In the directing world And that's where you win That is where you win That is where you have an absolute win As a movie viewer As a movie maker People who are on that set If they were working with a director

[01:14:57] Who had no idea It's the same way that Jerry Robbins Was so successful with the original West Side Story Even though he got fired It was the fact that the camera was choreographed It's why we were so blessed We had Justin Peck guiding Our dolly cam

[01:15:13] And guiding our steady camera And guiding our steady cam Weaving them through dance numbers It's important And that's why Fosse movies In retrospect Maybe in the day Didn't necessarily look like they were working But that's why we look back on them And we're like this is genius

[01:15:33] It's because the man knew his own work And that's why it's like The reason I think so many times We talk about Movie musicals that don't do well Or don't necessarily fit the mold In the right way It's because you have a director that has no Musical vision

[01:15:51] No rhythm, no sense of dance Which is so It's the most integral part of a musical When you're making a musical movie And it's so depressing When the musical movies Some of them don't seem to have The faith in the audience When it just doesn't move

[01:16:09] It doesn't move at all I mean it's what Is unique about him is he's so much Less reliant on camera movement Because you're right In the history of movie musicals that tends to be The most successful way to handle it

[01:16:23] You have to treat the camera as its own piece of choreography You need to sync up the movement In that sort of sense And Fosse, this one in particular Is so much more locked down And he's achieving that sense of choreography Only through the cutting

[01:16:37] Which I think people continue to learn Lessons from It's what you're saying, they go, oh well Fosse is able to create this rhythm With the cutting, I can just shoot a bunch of Fucking coverage and stitch it together And that will work

[01:16:49] No but he understands the movement of going from one image To the next Yeah, and then it becomes evident why he You know, the original idea was to just cut All but ten seconds of a musical number In it, you can see those moments

[01:17:01] Where you can tell there was A sense of hesitation I do I struggle with the loss of certain songs In this film There are great songs from the show That are not in this I think Fräulein Schneider gets some of the best songs In that musical

[01:17:19] And it totally sucks That they don't ever delve into the plot There's no Herr Schultz character Right, that is like a co-lead Basically in the musical The musical is absolutely Built upon This old woman And her house And like the whole, you know

[01:17:39] Who cares so what, what would you do Is one of the greatest Musical theater songs Not because it's the most interesting Or flashy, there's no dance Or costumes that are crazy But it grounds that plot In a way that I don't think any other musical has ever had

[01:17:57] Something like that, that just brings it all Into this full perspective For the audience to be like Holy shit, of course You're obviously rooting for this relationship Between Fräulein Schneider and Herr Schultz But when she sits there and says You know, they break

[01:18:13] They throw fruit through my windows I will still be here when the war is over And because I've been here all along And I'm gonna be here again And you just kind of see The reality And the shininess Of the Kit Kat Club is shattered

[01:18:29] By that one song And you're like, shit, dude This is real life, this is what's happening And that's what the whole song Cabaret is about The whole breakdown that Sally has Which I think also the movie is missing That that song is a mental breakdown

[01:18:43] Realizing that she can no longer silence What's going on outside the walls Because it's gonna come in at one point Like, that's something That I always struggle with with this movie It's just not, I miss that And I think the reason that never made it in there

[01:18:57] Is because Bob Fosse was really hesitant About making another musical And I think the number in the film version Ends up being played more as a form of denial Than what you're saying It's her being like, I'm just gonna live on stage Like, I can't think about anything

[01:19:11] It's not a protest song, which is what you're saying Yeah It's more of her throwing herself Into this side of herself And being like, it doesn't matter Nothing matters, life is a cabaret It's all gonna be fine And obviously if the movie ended on that

[01:19:27] Weird note, but then the movie ends on The weird reprise of Willkommen That is so discordant and scary And the mirror And all that stuff But can I just make a joke I wanted to make 15 minutes ago Please

[01:19:43] Do you think when Bradley Cooper was editing A Star Is Born He just would say I just want to take another look at that I just want to take another look at that I just want to take another look at that Can you load that up?

[01:19:55] I just want to take another look at that Roll it back I just want to take another look at that Remember A Star Is Born God, we need it back They need to just bring it back Let's do another one Just do another one A Star Is Reborn

[01:20:13] Do a fucking bionic Jackson Maine Comes back Jackson Maine is a head in a jar or something I just wanted to take another look at you Sorry, I just had to do that joke It's been rambling around in my head This is, I think

[01:20:31] We're talking about the things It's very much Bob Fosse's cabaret And you're right, Rachel There's a lot of decisions he makes That takes away from Inherent Power From the show But they're all to serve his weird Not weird But his fascinations His pet peeves It's idiosyncratic

[01:20:53] A Broadway show to movies Is hard Broadway shows are long And they are structured Well that's how you end up with Wicked Part 1 And Wicked Part 2 That's how you talk yourself into that decision You're like, well this is so big and unwieldy And there's this clear act break

[01:21:13] What if we do it as two movies And it's like, I get it But I'm also like, are people going to want to wait Two years to see Wicked Part 2 Rather than 20 minutes How are they going to feel walking out of Part 1

[01:21:25] How are they going to feel with how Part 2 starts I just think The flow of those movies is going to be very strange Prove me wrong though I've always said, maybe it'll be good I have no idea It really is like if we ended Cabaret at

[01:21:39] Tamara Belongs to Me And then was like, gee, I wonder what's going to happen Cabaret Part 2 That's the thing with Wicked It's like, hmm, is she going to be a wicked witch At the end of it We know what's going to happen She's defying gravity

[01:21:55] And I hope she just keeps flying Up, up and away Especially since Wicked is a prequel To another story To a well-known story Working towards a fixed point in time But I think the thing That he is able to do With the movie more successfully

[01:22:13] Than I think you can do it on stage Is because you're cutting back and forth Between these two realities The tension between The show The musical elements of the movie The sort of fantasia of the Kit Kat Club And just the slow creep of

[01:22:29] The rise of the Nazi Party You know Whenever you're out on the streets And you're seeing just the number Of armbands increase Or the sort of like Thrown off jokes That stuff I think Hits differently if you're actually Seeing that in the outside world

[01:22:49] Rather than in a construction of a stage You know It's the fucking line that's like the most Frightening in the movie for me I pulled it up so I didn't Fucking mangle it The Nazis are just a gang of stupid hooligans But they do serve a purpose

[01:23:05] Let them get rid of the communists Later we'll be able to control them Yeah well for me the most haunting line is When he's like do you still think you can control them Oh god I know what's gonna happen And so it's

[01:23:17] And that's part of the brilliance of it though Is the Knowing that the audience knows exactly what's gonna happen And the irony of the whole plot Because of that fact But it is so perfectly woven whenever he hits a beat

[01:23:29] I mean them throwing the Nazi out of the club At the beginning and the audience cheering And being like we all fucking agree on this right We can make fun of them Right And that's like the first half of the movie When you know the songs

[01:23:43] But also just the kind of romantic Bohemian like oh we all live in this crazy Boarding house And you know try a prairie oyster And you know who do you like to sleep with And like I live in this weird room And you'll live in this weird room

[01:23:59] You know and it's like very it is very winning And it is very romantic And you do like have this kind of automatic love For like oh this idea of like you know Berlin in the 30s And you know everyone's just kind of an artist

[01:24:11] And everyone's creative and everyone's bouncing Off of each other But it's all doomed And then the tomorrow belongs to me number Which is like the only number Number It's a great number Is the only song that's like both outside But also in the daytime

[01:24:29] Like it's so jarring where you're like oh god right In the daytime it's a whole different society Like and there are people that aren't bohemian Artists in this country And like it's in And when you just I mean that whole sequence Is so incredibly well done

[01:24:43] The cuts to like The old guy Who's kind of just like You know who's just like You know and then but then the weird Swell of passion That all these people are more and more emboldened As it's going on And standing it's so good It's so freaky

[01:25:03] It is so freaky It feels like from another planet Or something The aesthetic the band the way they're all dressed Like for me I'm truly like What is this stuff Like this is so An amalgamation of like a bunch of things But it's also this is just

[01:25:21] It's how it always fucking happens Like history repeats itself And people are Seen as so absurd As to not be threatening Until the moment where there is that sort of Single-minded focus And calm and confidence You know inevitability to how they behave

[01:25:39] Where you're just like oh it's fucking too late We've let this Metastasize into something we can't roll back You know Obviously that song is so effective That people thought it was a real Like you know nazi anthem And not a song written by two Badass jews Yeah yeah

[01:25:59] Just because it's so perfectly It's so much as the sort of creepy pastoral Folky you know anthem Idea Of the sort of 30s nazi anthems Anyway But that's yeah what else happens in cabaret You know you got yeah the prairie oysters And You got

[01:26:23] Sally making I would say a fairly Fairly bold Pass at Brian Which is basically like you know I got an okay Body like touch my stomach for example Pretty good Boob thoughts Thoughts question mark Your hands on it so My favorite part of that whole sequence

[01:26:45] Is when she gets out of the shower But she's still in full hair and makeup Full hair and makeup It's like eyeliner didn't even smudge The lashes are there It's perfect Maybe she wears just a shower cap over her entire head Yeah

[01:27:03] It's just a head of a hazmat suit And she's just like yeah this is fine I want to believe that her shower cap is the exact same Lines as her hair It's the widow's peak It's just a rubber version of that She tightly pulls over

[01:27:19] That would make sense That's like a dancer in like whatever 42nd street Like some kind of old right With the bathing caps Her hair is oddly the evil queen from Snow White You know how she wears that cowl on her head It's very interesting

[01:27:37] I was watching it yesterday I thought it was very interesting And also considering the characters In Snow White Because Snow White was 37 I should know that Snow White was based off Hedy Lamarr So I feel like that era of everything Was the inspiration I'm just looking through now

[01:27:57] But like Maleficent had that too I feel like a lot of the Disney villains have that weird widow's peak Head cap It seems aggressive It's a point A constant furrowed brow But it also gives this heart shaped face That's very deceiving For the kids to watch

[01:28:17] Even though the wicked queen is called the wicked queen So maybe you can figure it out Hi I'm your stepmother My name is wicked queen It's going to be great, come live with me We're friends First and foremost I want you to think of me as a friend

[01:28:35] And of course everyone knows I'm the world's biggest hottie So that's well known I'm the fairest Number one fairest of them all No contest I check in on that once in a while No big deal I'm the number eight So they get They start hanging out

[01:28:55] They start sleeping together He tried it with three other girls And it hadn't worked But they were all the wrong three girls Classic And then they start hanging out With this barren dude Maximilian von Hune Played by Helmut Grimm Who's a Nazi

[01:29:15] But he's got a nice country estate And a mustache I remember when I saw this movie As a young I don't think I must have been like 12 I don't think I picked up on it Because their whole kind of three way affair Is happening off screen

[01:29:39] Until it sort of spills out on screen The dance sequence Where all three of them start slow dancing together That's so fucking well done And then it's not really made explicit To the U2 bastards Which has one of my Is my pet peeve with

[01:29:55] My pet peeve with this movie That zoom right after he says So am I It's like the only zoom In the freaking film It would be so much more powerful If it didn't zoom I do think so much Of it was him trying to

[01:30:15] Go against the standard language of musicals Because even Sweet Charity is a lot more conventional And has a lot of zooms rather than dolly moves Barren is bad news by the way Just anyone that kind of Classically handsome In Germany, I'm scared of If someone has like paintings

[01:30:37] Of their relatives That go way back That's a real red flag Welcome to my house, this is Max the second I'm Max the fourteenth of course Maybe this time Is kind of the early optimistic number That is like Completely incredible That's a number added for this movie

[01:31:01] It is the thing that sort of Surprises me every time I watch it How much more Restrained her Rendition is in this movie than I feel Like this has become such a big Liza anthem It's very bittersweet It's very bittersweet It's more hopeful

[01:31:23] I think than it has been Because it's usually Correct me if I'm wrong because I don't know It's been a second In the stage production, I believe that's placed After he agrees To raise the baby with her, right? Yes, I think in the stage production

[01:31:39] They put it much later And here it's very early It's a little bit more Tinged with Heartbreak and possible disappointment You know she's lying to herself And so in this, it happens right after They sleep together for the first time So she actually is

[01:31:57] Extremely hopeful about the relationship Yes And this This and Mine Air are both added later To the shows, right? But still it does have You kind of I mean I've seen this movie so many times It's sort of hard to remember how I felt the first time

[01:32:17] But you do Have the idea that it's a little doomed Or she's fooling herself A little bit It's like Call Your Girlfriend One of my favorite melancholy pop songs That's anthemic, right? Yes, no this is a song I listen to When I want a good little cry

[01:32:35] Or I want to be in my feels It's I find it to be a very Heartbreaking song But there's something about When Liza's at the palace or whatever And she's like fucking belting it to the rafters That makes it even more tragic It gives the

[01:32:53] It gives the same Vibes of the one very famous Performance of Judy Garland sitting Without any Amplification, singing Somewhere Over the Rainbow That's just like gut-wrenching I saw Liza at City Hall I guess maybe 10 years ago now City Center, surely No, Times Square Town Hall, I'm sorry

[01:33:17] City Hall's where the mayor is I know Actually Liza Minnelli is the mayor of New York City That'd be just fine That's a factor It was a one-time mayor of Broadway Sorry, it was, yes At Town Hall Her and Alan Cumming did a shared night

[01:33:35] And it was sort of feeling like That might have been the last major Sort of run she did But it was like she can't do a whole night She's gonna do a couple songs He'll take a swing 2013, Liza and Alan So nine years ago And she was incredible

[01:33:53] But there was a moment When, between songs Her banter to set up song Some guy in the audience yelled out Liza, I love you And she like Looked him dead in the eyes She fucking stared straight into the soul of the man

[01:34:09] And she went like, I love you too And then she went Really, I mean it I do, I love you too And it was like that moment That's the whole fucking Liza Minnelli thing In a nutshell There was She's very like Hard on sleeve, nakedly

[01:34:29] You're feeling for her so powerfully The mask is removed with her That's why that moment at the Oscars Was so touching this year With her and Lady Gaga Where she was obviously struggling And Lady Gaga said I got you And Liza Minnelli said I know

[01:34:45] And it was such a real I know I was having such a moment in the audience Liza But that's always been her M.O And I have to say that was her mom's too Towards the end of her life It's a really beautiful thing And sort of sad

[01:35:03] Just to see it come so full circle But Liza's lived this incredible Life and established herself Just as we were saying before As an icon of film Despite not doing much Doing that anymore? But it doesn't matter If you're someone like her That's the rarest peak

[01:35:23] That you can get to as a performer Where it's just like yeah She's Liza Minnelli She's a type onto herself If she's in a movie you understand And even crazier to think Her mother is one of the Even greater icons Both of her parents She couldn't lose

[01:35:43] She won the genetic lottery If there was anyone out there Who would say it's her I don't remember who it is I don't know how much it was meant to be catty Or not I don't think it is a criticism

[01:35:55] But I think about it whenever I'm watching her Some critic I think when this movie came out Said like her face is pointing In like seven different directions She's got that fascinating thing Where it's just like her eyes are going this way

[01:36:07] And her teeth are going this way Her mouth is this way her nose is this way Like no one else in the history of the world Has looked like her And I think the fact that she looks like both of her parents Yeah

[01:36:19] She's gorgeous and that's the thing It's like she's so She's such a dime piece And it becomes That's right Rachel You're right to say it It becomes her It becomes her It's so beautiful And I think she owns it in such a way

[01:36:39] Because she doesn't look like everybody else And it makes her character more intriguing No matter what she's doing But also as a movie star In her own right and a stage star Just a star in general She owned that look that she had And it made it

[01:36:55] It made it even better because her mom Struggled so long in the early You know studio days Where people called her a hunchback And said she was ugly And made her fix everything I mean insane Insane so to see her kind of win In that regard

[01:37:13] Even back then especially now in retrospect Is such a cool thing Well Liza like really was able to Especially at the beginning part of her career Come out of the gate so strong and really do shit On her own terms in a way

[01:37:25] That her mother didn't have that level of Control But yeah I mean I do just think it's fascinating Because I do think it is part of The take of this movie that like She's not a great performer She is never going to be a movie star

[01:37:43] For any number of reasons Liza's a great performer But there's that thing you know That makes her uncomfortable To watch that added vulnerability Or whatever whereas like Liza Can perform on stage And still have that like That removal of the mask And have it work for her

[01:38:05] And something like New York, New York Where she's giving like a far more Naturalistic dramatic performance In the non-musical sections Of that movie There's something about the fact that Sally is like always on That she's always performing You know Even when she's leading Brian around or whatever

[01:38:23] Right because Michael York His performance is at such a different pitch Than hers right And then Joel Grey is at a similar pitch And she moves back and forth Between the two worlds but she stays Always in kind of stage show zone

[01:38:37] I mean even the scene where he comes home And finds her after she's had the abortion And she like cannot help but try To sort of make a show out of it You know Like in how to sort of

[01:38:49] I don't want to say play her sadness but like Her sort of wistful jokes about everything Yeah It's how she understands love Yeah Is being able to make other people feel something I get it I get it I get it Sally And I also get the kind of

[01:39:11] Nihilism That she settles on by the end of the By the end of the show I get that too It's hard to deal with such turbulent times It's relatable Heartland Town a podcast that you and I Used to listen to religiously There's an episode I remember

[01:39:29] Where Dan Harmon was talking About maybe the Tiki Torch Rally or one of the fucking awful Things that's happened in the last five or six Years and he said like It's the defining thing about Like Who you are as a human being that everyone

[01:39:45] Of course wants to be loved And the ultimate test of that is If you're alone and Unloved and the only person waving you over Is a Nazi do you cross the street Right You know It just you know I think he put that

[01:40:01] Really beautifully but it's sort of the whole tension of this Movie of like you could discount it and discount it Until the point where the choice is Do you care to Pursue a Nazi's love Do you want the approval of a Nazi

[01:40:13] You know if the only way for you to perform Is for an audience of the fucking Arm bands What's more Important to you yeah Right Yeah we're all a little complicit but then You always have the MC Who is this Creature who is like completely Devoid of motive

[01:40:35] And yes like character Right you don't know anything about him You don't know who he is It feels like Pennywise from it You're like this is just some Supernatural being yeah And so he's like pure nihilism right He is which is so entrancing Like and it's so cool

[01:40:53] There's that one shot where you see him Grabbing her breasts at the not grabbing But like touching them as he's about to put her on Stage and It's like it's a shot that Fosse Obviously put in like to suggest Something to the audience but without really

[01:41:07] You knowing what's going like so It's when he's sort of in the wings Yeah and he's just like he's Just grabbing her for a second before she's going And you're like I always saw that not As a breast grab but as a heart

[01:41:19] Grab am I the only one who Saw that no you might be right like I can't tell if he is sort of Being a little sinister in that moment or if he's Just prepping her For you know getting out on stage like He's just sort of like yeah

[01:41:33] I always kind of saw it as this like This is this is your home And here life is beautiful and like so That it's not just to the audience but It's also like a mask that Everyone who works there is also putting On it's right and

[01:41:47] It's their alliance I think that's absolutely up For interpretation and I have I don't think There's a right I think it's supposed to be very ambiguous Like it's it's very it's just It's just like this one peak you Have of him not on stage

[01:42:01] Like he's directly offstage but like he's About to be on stage that's Just you do you do also see Him watching He's watching her at one point no He's watching them yeah Yeah watching Michael York And and and Liza Minnelli interact Right that is

[01:42:19] It I think you're right did I make that up No you didn't make that up I think you're right Yes but I mean that but I do think That like both of those moments are very Interesting because they are the only moments where

[01:42:29] You don't see him on stage performing But he also still feels like he's Putting on a face and He's giving this like annoyed look Um well because He doesn't want to lose her to the real world One assumes but you can assume a lot of

[01:42:43] Things obviously you don't really know but that would be The idea oddly enough it's The leading player in Pippin It's it's It gives that same Which is also a Fosse Classic But it does give that same Kind of feeling I mean I love it's a much more

[01:43:03] Empathetic character but Hermes in Hadestown More recently like it's always a good Character that kind of guy Who's like I'm here I'll Always be here I'm the You know I'm the MC I'm here to explain Things I'm here to entertain you and

[01:43:17] Then like as it goes on you're like Who is this guy is he like Part of the show or is he part of The plot like I don't understand that's the interesting Part with Hermes especially is just That that last song where it's like

[01:43:29] You know it's a sad song and we're gonna sing It again and and the sad tragic Thing about his character is that he's gonna watch It happen all over again and it doesn't seem Like there's anything he can do But be there and know but he

[01:43:41] Does sort of say in that final song and I love Hadestown so much and that's the only reason I'm thinking of but like where he's like it Could be different next time you never know And that is sort of the weird right

[01:43:51] You know like maybe even though we all kind of know This is the the sad poetic song That always ends in tragedy like You'll watch it again because maybe it'll be different Next time and that is like the allure of entertainment

[01:44:01] It's so cool. That's why we watch Titanic Over and over and over and hoping The iceberg doesn't. Absolutely But you know what else Rachel Titanic has a Happy ending which You know like Like the weird the weird dreamy ending Of them back on the boat and only

[01:44:17] The nice people are there. It's the miracle That movie that it was able to Yes It's so crazy. Can I just Shout out my favorite Version of the musical trope The two of you were talking about please I think an underrated one Officer Lockstock in Urinetown

[01:44:35] I think is a really fucking Fascinating character. It's very True and the way he does and does Not intersect with the plot when he's sort of impartially Commenting and when he's actually affecting Things Whether he's benevolent or not. Yeah That is did you say you're in Town

[01:44:53] Ben it's true. I mean I'm interested It's Ben it's a musical from I want To say like 2001 2002 right early 2000s That set well It's set in a world basically Where you have to pay Money to pee all the all the urines Urinals are controlled by a corporation

[01:45:15] It's a privilege to pee It's a privilege to pee And it's one of those shows that was So like peeing somewhere else They send you to Urinetown. Urinetown is The mythical place where people get sent To and never seen again

[01:45:29] I wouldn't want to go there. You piss in a jar They send you to Urinetown. Way down Urinetown Way down under the ground Why Has Urinetown never come back? I was gonna say I don't know I've never understood it. It's been doomed To college productions

[01:45:45] That's really it. And I also feel like A lot of times when I see Productions of Urinetown they Don't quite get the Humor. It's such a Fine line. You should play Hope Harcourt Though. I'm realizing now Hope Harcourt in Urinetown? Yes

[01:46:03] That's also. That's Anything Ghosts. Hope is Anything Ghosts But that character's name is also Hope. I'm getting the last name Right. Sorry. It's Hope Cladwell Cladwell. Yeah. But you should also Play Hope Harcourt in Anything Ghosts Fun fact. My sister Played Hope Harcourt her

[01:46:17] Sophomore year of high school in Anything Ghosts. Yes it was Racist. That show is So racist. That show Would be tough to Film I think. Yes. There's a few things That might not work. I can't believe it's Playing out here in London. I'm like I cannot

[01:46:33] Believe that this show is still allowed to exist London loves to do Anything Ghosts. I saw Anything Ghosts twice In London I think. Like they're always reviving It. Yes. They keep doing it. I love Anything Ghosts. I did it twice When I was young

[01:46:47] I do feel like both productions I was In they tried to solve the problem where they Were like can they be like monks Like Jesuit monks Like what is the. Well I saw A production with Corbin Blue Out in DC in like a round

[01:47:01] Theater a couple years ago and And they tried to fix it by Making certain characters Asian And therefore Other. Okay. Like different other Characters Asian and being like well see It can't be racist And it was like no It's still a little bit racist You shouldn't Do that

[01:47:23] It was very interesting to see in that Like I think I saw it like in 2018 That 2018 lens was very interesting It's so deeply woven in With the plum blossom shit and whatever You have to make such wholesale changes To get around it. That's the thing

[01:47:39] You have to completely shift it Yeah anyway you should play both hopes Okay. Yeah why not do it. But Woke Anything Ghosts Someone will solve the problem. Someone Will. I mean the same way that they're Planning to solve Thoroughly Modern Millie I'm sure they'll solve

[01:47:55] They'll solve Anything Ghosts. Yeah Are they doing a Thoroughly Modern Millie movie? Are they? No they were going to Revive it a couple years. Yeah They were going to do a city center revival with Ashley Park and I remember They were developing it while we were

[01:48:09] Working on West Side Story and I remember Talking to Janine Tesori about it And she was like you know Talking about how Ashley was such a great pick Which she is. She's brilliant and How there was going to be some you know alterations Made because

[01:48:23] You know you have an Asian lead Of a show that is notoriously not Kind to Asian Stereotypes. Insane stereotypical Stuff in that show that's like weird For the yeah anyway for modern audiences Yeah That would be fascinating though to see Someone try and thread that needle

[01:48:42] But David. What? When you read reviews of the movie Cabaret From when it came out. Cabaret. Oh yes So many of like the classic Golden Age Hollywood directors and especially movie Musical directors were like so Rhapsodic about this fucking thing where they were

[01:48:56] Like someone has made a musical that is actually Dark. That is genuinely Engaging with grime And darkness and not Sort of just weirdly working in elements In a cartoonish way that It like what we're talking about these musicals That would often have like weird

[01:49:12] Underbellies that were not treated with Appropriate amounts of weight. Right Yeah I mean it's Funny because of course like West Side Story Existed. There were lots of Like movie musicals that Had dark endings But they you know the original West Side Story Does feel you know

[01:49:30] It's so poppy and it's So colorful and it's so magic And it's so surreal weirdly Like it's not set In our gritty World I guess is the difference Yeah I don't know. Right and that was the number one Thing we wanted to change When we brought it

[01:49:48] Again and that was you know Tony Kushner Was really the main Proponent in doing that Right. He was Amazing at creating a gritty The reality. Genuinely dangerous Yeah But what's so good about The movie that you're in Rachel Siegel which is called West Side Story

[01:50:08] That we're referencing right now. Directed by your buddy Steve Is that it is still a fucking musical Like you know I think the worry obviously Is you're always gonna do the Let's make it gritty let's make it real and you're just gonna

[01:50:18] Forget that this is still a show where people Are gonna break out into dance and song And it's still gonna have that heightened Feel and like yeah And cabaret is definitely more low key Obviously but it is still A musical it still does obviously

[01:50:32] It's an iconic piece of musical film Yes but the performances do happen In a performance space similar to Rob Marshall's Chicago which I think He probably took His inspiration from there for sure Absolutely right and that was The first musical to Really explode in a long long time

[01:50:50] And it made sense That made sense I remember thinking for a really long Time that it was one of the only Movie musicals to get it right Because it takes place in a dance Hall that's what all that jazz is all about

[01:51:02] It's just kind of like you know this is a This is a music hall where everybody Sings about everything And life is fine and we can escape The harsh realities of the world But there is that thing Yeah I mean cabaret kind of breaks the

[01:51:16] Movie musical in that everyone else Struggles after this to get away with the Unabashed we just break into song and do whatever The fuck we want kind of movie They're always people are always a little Bit cautious it feels like Yeah this Joseph Mankiewicz quote Fosse brought the

[01:51:32] Stink of truth to cabaret Is really fucking Good he's one of the few directors I'd write for Stanley Donen wrote Fosse a letter Said that Stanley Kubrick said that he thinks Cabaret is one of the best pictures he's ever seen In his life and then I think

[01:51:46] He later said that all that jazz was Perhaps the singular best movie he had ever Seen Vincent Minnelli Went to the preview with Liza And said to Fosse I have just seen the perfect Movie like I just think all these people Were sort of astounded by like

[01:52:00] This thing is actually Gritty right But but like you You feel in that in These reviews that you read because not just those reactions But from the critics as well where like Pauline Kael is like this is made without Compromises and it's hard and unsentimental

[01:52:16] You feel the critical Community reacting to a decade Of musicals that we might consider A lot of them are classics but are so You know gaudy and You know theatrical and Colorful and poppy and like you know whatever they Just they get critics are longing for something

[01:52:32] Different like you're in a far more cynical Decade now and and there Was I think right so much Of the praise for this movie came from being like They found a musical that matches our times Yes Sure and it is good

[01:52:46] I do like Cabaret I think it's pretty Good I think it's pretty great movie It's a wonderful movie it's a great Musical and it just comes from great Source material Which is you know the Greatest foundation you can have for a good musical

[01:53:00] Is like crazy ass source material Fosse's petty Quote with just a little more money I could have made a great film if I've been able To get the period right I would have won best picture Oh my god But you know I do get what he means

[01:53:14] Not I don't agree with him at all but I Imagine he's watching it being like man I only had three million dollars and like Yeah I can see everywhere where like Our budget is straining You know and we can't like get out into

[01:53:26] The city or we can't do this Or that or right you know like whereas I'm Like I love that I love that this movie Feels like it's taking place In this weird little bubble And you barely understand what's going on outside Like I think that's so cool

[01:53:40] But he's looking at the Godfather And he's like man they let him shoot sets Yeah sure I mean Godfather's A good looking movie blocked off entire city streets Yeah I mean I don't Know what you know yeah what can

[01:53:52] You say it's two good movies came out the same Year but you know Fosse wins An Oscar it's pretty good he should be happy Yeah and he gets never happy He gets the triple crown he wins The Tony Emmy He won a Tony an Emmy and an Oscar

[01:54:06] In the same year he's the only person To ever do that because he Wins the Tony for Pippin and the Emmy For Liza with a Z Liza really having a hell of a year Unbelievable yeah let's talk about Liza having a really good year

[01:54:22] And we will be doing Liza with a Z On our Patreon right Griff Yes Which it will be cool It's gonna be super cool actually It's tomorrow in fact It's posting tomorrow so enjoy that Hey now that worked out well David do you have the box office game

[01:54:40] For this movie I do Rachel we're gonna play the box office Game we're gonna look at The top five Films at the box office the week this came Out and Griffen Is gonna try and guess them Now usually he's good at this but in

[01:54:56] 1972 he might not be so good Within my lifetime I have a weird Recall I can go into the memory palace And pull them out this one I might be grasping at straws And so this movie came out yeah February 1972 just wanna say that as well February 19th

[01:55:14] No the 20th sorry Is it February 19th It's February 13th 1972 That's the week of My dad's 10th birthday Hey Happy 10th birthday Craig Happy 10th Craig Shout out Rachel's dad Craig Zegler What up Craig It's just you know this came out in February

[01:55:40] It wins the Oscar like a full year And changed later And Godfather came out in March Those are both movies that just kind of took over the year Yeah it just ran the table But number one is a movie From 1971 one of the biggest hits In 1971 it's

[01:55:56] Action Thriller with a big star That launches a franchise Huh is it Dirty Harry That's right Number two Griffin is the best picture Winner of 1971 French Connection The French Connection You're doing good you're doing great Another kind of launches a franchise Huge star action thriller Number three

[01:56:22] Is less well known this is a Crime comedy it's based on A sort of well known novel About funny gangsters It stars a Broadway legend One of the greatest of all time Huh do you think you know what this is Rachel

[01:56:36] Or are your eyes widening at the possibility I just like the word Broadway legend Yeah Broadway legend Funny gangsters based on a true story And a Disney legend And a Disney legend Voiced an iconic Disney character So is it a Jerry Orbach movie That's right

[01:56:56] Jerry Orbach the king Yeah what is this But he put baby in the corner He dared to put baby in the corner And he also was Lenny Briscoe for a million years He put Joel Grey's daughter In the corner That's true

[01:57:12] Look I'm not trying to virtue signal here but I tend to Fall down on the side of that no one should do that You shouldn't Hot take guys I don't think anyone should put baby in the corner That's what Swayze says

[01:57:24] He comes up to her and says look Hot take but you can't do that And also everyone should go buy Jennifer Grey's book Out of the corner Thank you everyone shameless plug for my girl For Jennifer Grey's book Jennifer Grey the greatest Fucking sidebar I embarrassingly

[01:57:42] Only watch Dirty Dancing for the first time Like this month No Weird blind spot for me And one of those moments that I was just like I feel like I've seen it through cultural osmosis I've seen scenes I know the songs I've seen a parody

[01:57:58] I feel like I've seen this so I just never got around to watching it What were you going to say Rachel I would kill to watch that for the first time again I'll tell you my experience Fucking rules So good Could not believe how good it was

[01:58:12] I'm like yeah yeah No I get it I know I should see it And then you watch it and it feels like So fresh so striking It's the Simpsons I can see why this was so popular Oh shit right

[01:58:26] But here's another thing that I think isn't discussed about enough with that movie The dancing is so fucking dirty I swear to god I thought oh that's some Some buzzy title They understood the assignment I got fucking hot under the collar Every five minutes watching that movie

[01:58:42] Dirty dancing The dirtiest dancing I've ever seen Jennifer Grey In Ferris Bueller Is like one of my earliest crushes I was just like who is this I'm obsessed And she's so gorgeous in Dirty Dancing And yeah it's hot She gives one of the greatest line readings

[01:59:02] Ever in Dirty Dancing Which is I carried a watermelon I'm gonna re-watch Dirty Dancing I feel like my wife would be like Would be fine if I just threw out Dirty Dancing Right? I'm very compelled by this This sequel Announced What this is Wait what's the sequel

[01:59:24] Yeah she's gonna be in it They're doing a sequel with her A legacy sequel Will they incorporate Havana Nights Will Rama be very sure I'm not questioning the fact that that ever happened If they fucking tie Havana Nights back in It would be so funny

[01:59:40] They do a post credit scene Of Diego Luna and Rama Because Swayze is in Havana Nights Yes But I just like the idea Wait Griffin are you telling me you've seen Havana Nights But you haven't seen Dirty Dancing Yep you have outed me embarrassing

[01:59:56] I saw Havana Nights in theaters And it still took me an additional 20 years to watch the first movie Why would you I'm a broken person That's so odd I saw it in theaters It's so funny that like after The idea of like let's do a Dirty Dancing sequel

[02:00:12] The only thing that will remain Is the Dirty Dancing Like it won't be connected in any other way Some may say the Dirty Dancing Is the friends we made along the way And so It has to be in the sequel It has to It's the titular role

[02:00:30] That movie is written by like Like a radio host It was like written as Just a sort of It was like a memoir of growing up in Cuba In the 50s It was about being there during the Cuban Revolution It's like that movie Becoming Breaking Away

[02:00:48] Where it was like this script that bounced around for like 15 years Then someone was like we could put some Dirty Dancing In this This thing is missing something And I think he's credited as the soul screenwriter There's not a word of my movie in there It's Peter Segal

[02:01:04] Is the NPR host Anyway Dirty Dancing 1 You actually have not guessed the movie Right It's a Jerry Orbach gangster comedy Yes Do I know this movie? You might know it You'll probably know the title It's based on a book by Jimmy Breslin Famous newspaper columnist

[02:01:26] Worked with my mother for many years Shout out Jimmy Breslin Ran for mayor of course What the fuck is the title of this movie? The movie is called The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight Oh A young Robert De Niro of course Yeah Yes

[02:01:48] Basically based on the life of Joe Gallo Crazy Joe Gallo You know I know that title It's a great movie title And I never ever had any idea what that movie was about Or who was in it That's number 3 at the box office Number 4 Griffin Is a musical

[02:02:08] The biggest hit of 1971 It's in its 16th week It's gonna run forever Gigantic 3 hour musical It's not Fiddler on the Roof It is Fiddler on the Roof I thought that was 70 for some reason My favorite arrangements for Fiddler on the Roof Which I didn't realize this John Williams

[02:02:28] That's right he did I think he even won an Oscar or something He did for the movie It blows my mind That anyone ever was able to touch it again after that Baby John Williams We're talking like 30 Fetus John Williams Just fresh out the womb

[02:02:46] Doing things for Topol Which is just crazy Fiddler on the Roof Which is one of the last big blow That really is so different from Cabaret Fantastic film It's so big It's his first Oscar win But already his 4th nominee

[02:03:04] That was my first musical I ever did on stage Oh really? You played Tevye? Tevye is understudy I was Sprintza The second youngest of Tevye's 5 daughters Okay Thank you You're welcome Number 5 At the box office Another Best Picture nominee Great film A drama Sensitive

[02:03:34] One of the ones we just cited Earlier Oh from the previous year You're saying a 71 Cause it's only February A lot of holdovers Launched a director's career Sensitive coming of age drama Launched a director's career He made movies before this but this is his big breakout

[02:03:56] It's a great film It's a great film It's very sad and beautiful And wonderfully acted And it stars a bunch of great people It's got a scene that my mother described As the most harrowing scene she's ever seen In a movie theater I must have been 16

[02:04:16] Is this my beloved One of my all time favorite movies I think so Last Picture Show Which scene Where Sybil Shepard has to strip on the diving board I think my mom Has basically said I was 16 years old It was like my worst nightmare

[02:04:36] And it must have been so shocking In 1971 to see that in a movie I finally got to see that movie In a theater when I was in LA recently I've seen it so many fucking times I never got to see it on big screen

[02:04:48] Jesus Christ is that thing good I saw it with a friend of the podcast Alex Marzonia Very kindly gave me his extra ticket You've seen that movie Rachel? A long time ago A long time ago I think the thing that stuck out to me

[02:05:02] The most as well was The same scene that your mother described When you said that I was like oh I have seen that film I have a list It's going on the list everyone I will say I am still obviously A young man by most metrics

[02:05:18] But every time I rewatch that movie And I get a little bit older That fucking Cloris Leachman performance Hits harder and cuts deeper She's so good Number You've also got the hospital George C. Scott, Patty Shayefsky drama Where he's a doctor And he's going crazy

[02:05:42] I've never seen it I know it's a big deal You've got A Clockwork Orange Another 1971 Best picture nominee Never talk about on this show You've got a John Wayne movie called The Cowboys Which sort of seems like he's phoning it in But okay I don't know

[02:06:02] You got any movies called The Cowboys John Wayne, Mark Rydell film And you have Diamonds Are Forever The final Connery Bond movie Officially If you don't count You are such You love to discount You don't count Never Say Never again It's not canon And Cabaret Opening at number 10

[02:06:26] That's it What a time to be alive We made Rachel come on our podcast Rachel thank you so much for doing this I'm so happy to be off of being a fucking star Of a giant movie in a foreign country On a different time zone It's deeply appreciated

[02:06:42] Guys, any time This is such a joy I learned so much today And I hope I offered some insight Maybe I didn't I have no idea I don't remember what I said You said great things Are there any final thoughts Is there anything you want to say

[02:07:02] I guess the rest of Fosse's career Since you're only on this one episode I have to say I'm extremely envious Of the All That Jazz episode Because that's one of my favorite movies Of all time And it's also something that I only recently saw Full through recently

[02:07:18] I just said recently twice I've only seen it full through for the first time Recently and it was because I could only find it On a plane It is not in circulation You cannot rent it or stream it Or digital purchase it anywhere

[02:07:32] You gotta buy that Criterion D Blu-ray Exactly I have no DVD player here Someone get Rachel a DVD player I have nothing That I can do For that so I was on a plane back From the Grammys from Vegas Layover in Michigan

[02:07:50] And then when I flew from Michigan Back to London it was on my flight And I was like Settle in boys It slipped through all the weird streaming rights To make it to a plane It was on my Delta flight Don't fucking get it I'm like fucking fucks

[02:08:08] Disney take that movie off the god damn shelf Yeah put it There's so many interesting things That have been put on Disney Plus That I'm like why not All That Jazz Imagine though I use Disney Plus to watch Bluey and Toy Story with my daughter

[02:08:24] What if my finger slips All That Jazz But I have to say I was talking to Mark Webb who directs Snow White And he loves All That Jazz And I was able to have such an amazing Intellectual conversation with him about that Because it's just the quintessential

[02:08:44] Fosse movie because it's about Fosse By Fosse and it's such an interesting Movie Now that Fosse is no longer with us We can watch it With a different perspective It's his text about himself It's his legacy And the way that he knew He was hurting people

[02:09:04] And even though we see little bits of it In all of his movies Of this acknowledgement of the way he treated people Wasn't right and also the self deprecation Of his entire Sense of self All That Jazz is just the epitome of that

[02:09:18] And it's one of the greatest movies ever made And I'll die on that hill No, no, I agree Fantastic performance by Anne Ranking I don't know how she did it without breaking Down every day To be playing out her real life in such a way

[02:09:32] That seems really unfair But she did such an incredible job May she rest easy I just I just have to say Shockingly recent departure From the world I'm so heartbroken by that Also an incredible Sally Bowles Anne Ranking was I just have to say

[02:09:52] But you heard it here A gauntlet thrown down Whoever does the All That Jazz episode Don't fuck it up Nah, don't fuck it up Do you ever call Mark Webb the Webster? No, I call him Madam Webb Even better He's never in a bad mood

[02:10:12] But I told him that if he's ever in a bad mood I'd call him the Dark Web What a tangled web you weave I have to say One of the nicest Nicest normal guys Working in this industry right now A great dad

[02:10:28] Who is making Snow White for his daughter To watch It makes my work so much more fulfilling To work with him So just shout out to Mark Webb Shout out to Madam Webb Can I ask you one question? Please Do they have Apple's craft services on that movie

[02:10:46] Does it feel a little Have you seen my thread on Twitter? Rachel, you've been posting Apple's on Twitter I feel like I've seen you doing this My Twitter thread of the snacks The insensitive snacking That happens on Snow White Because I've made a lot of jokes

[02:11:02] About how I'm going method versus Snow White And now I'm scared of Apple's You should be But I've had to eat 75 Apple's On this set And by eat, it's just a bite But it's still 75 Your jaw is like, what am I doing?

[02:11:20] And also you become very self aware Of what you look like when you bite into an Apple So I sat there and took a video I have a video, like a 15 minute long video On my phone of me just being like This way maybe? Or this way?

[02:11:34] What's the most attractive Apple biting angle? Fun fact You won't find one There's just no attractive way to eat an Apple But yes, there's a lot of Apple themed snacks Crafty Does a dessert every day with lunch And it's almost always an Apple crumble Or something Fucking rude

[02:11:54] They're not thinking about you It's fun and games for everyone else Yeah There's nothing that There's no food that Gal has to be afraid of Yeah They don't fucking She's afraid of mirrors though Maybe yeah Oh guys The film's so fucking good though

[02:12:16] I can't wait for everybody to see it It's so good Thank you so much for doing the show Thanks for having me, this is so fun People should watch you be a movie star That's my plug for you Watch Rachel Segeler Be a movie star

[02:12:32] Continue to be a movie star But I got that 4K steelbook And HBO Max It's also on HBO Max Thanks guys, I appreciate it Thank you truly And thank you all, the listener I'm now like the MC shifting over Looking straight in the eyes of the audience

[02:12:50] Holding up a mirror Thank you all for listening Please remember to rate, review and subscribe Thank you to Marie Bardi for social media And helping to produce the show JJ Birch for our research Good job on the fossier JJ And 10 comedy points for the fossier joke

[02:13:06] Thank you to Joe Bowen and Pat Reynolds For our artwork Layne Montgomery, the great American owl For our theme song AJ McKeon And Alex Barron for our editing You can go to patreon.com slash blankcheck For blankcheck special features where we do commentaries On franchises like

[02:13:22] The Batman movies But also talk a little Liza with a Z And you can go to Blankcheckpod.com for links To all the other nerdy stupid bullshit That we do And tune in next week for Lenny Money Nothing really about a

[02:13:40] Dark performer who doesn't know how to treat people nicely Yikes And as always Vilkomin, well no What's the opposite Auf Wiedersehen I'm just gonna let you do it Yeah do it Oh that's really all I've got Adieu Podcast