Finding Dory with Zach Cherry

[00:00:21] An unforgettable podcast she probably won't remember. So that was one of three taglines for this film. An unforgettable journey she probably won't remember. That one's kind of clever. I don't know if you caught this, it's a subtle thread, but the character of Dory and finding Dory has memory issues. That's so true. Short term memory loss. Second tagline. Have you seen her? Yeah, that one I liked. I remember those are the teasers because she'd be hiding in the post.

[00:00:45] She'd be really small and it would be like the manta ray migration or whatever you'd see sort of, or the stingrays. Is that right? And then the third one was she just kept swimming. She just kept swimming. Now, I like this movie, but those three taglines show why this movie needed to happen, which was basically the Walt Disney Company being like,

[00:01:08] if we just put out a poster with a picture of Dory and any of those three jokes that are just right there for the taking, it will make one billion dollars. All you need to do is be like, here's Dory again and she's still Dory. That is exactly what happened. Have you seen her? Great. She's gone missing. She just kept swimming. Or whatever. That's the thing she does. Dory. An unforgettable journey she probably won't remember. Love it. I'm laughing and my heart is warm.

[00:01:32] She's a fucking fish. Come now. The theater has seats. You can sit down in any of them as long as you paid for your ticket and we'll show you the fish and then our business is done. Right. That's how Pixar should advertise things. We've fulfilled our end of the bargain. That's how sequel should... She's a fish. Can you come? I'm really... I got other stuff to do. She's a fish.

[00:01:57] It was one of those movies where there was a lot of marketing, but it didn't feel like there was audible hype or excitement for it. No, because Monsters University had to be like, remember the monsters? They went to school. I'm like, I guess they did. They're like, well, they did. Okay, listen to me. Okay. And they did. And it was called this. Monsters University. Monsters University was selling you a weirder take. So there had to be more of a conversation with the public. Finding Dory was like, we got the Nemo.

[00:02:22] And everyone was like, got it. I'll circle it on my calendar. I won't talk about it until then. I'll show up. I'll give my money. I'll see it. How far apart were Monsters 1 and 2? 12 years. Okay, so about the same amount of time. And Dory is 14. 13. 13. I was shocked. I was shocked to, in my memory of the timeline of Pixar, it was Finding Nemo and then Finding Dory came out like two years later. Right. Like I had no recollection that it was a full 13 years later.

[00:02:51] But you're sitting down to Finding Dory being like, I just found Nemo. Yes. I gotta find her too. In my memory, that's how it took place. So then when I like, you know, when I plugged in to do my part of the podcast, I was shocked to learn that there was like a huge gap. I had no memory of that. Yeah. I mean, first, we lost Nemo under the Bush administration. Yeah. W. And Dory was found under the Obama administration. And was it like, what was happening with Pixar at the time?

[00:03:19] Trump has not had to deal with Marlon yet. He is the first. Well, I guess Biden didn't either. Where's Dory? Yeah, but I was gonna say, Biden did have kind of a bit of a Dory brain sometimes. Biden kept asking for Dory and Nemo. Which one's lost? Well, maybe this inspired him. What were you gonna ask? What was happening with Pixar at the time? Like, great question. I'm so ready to answer this. Was it like, we need a big win? Yeah. Yeah, for sure.

[00:03:44] That was, I do remember it feeling like, oh shit, they're actually doing, they're like- I'm gonna correct Sims here. Coming back to Nemo. It wasn't, you need a big win. It was, guys, it's time to play ball. Well, you're right. The internal politics, you're right. Totally. It was, we respect the artistic purity thing, but come on. Once in a while, we're gonna fucking do something like this. Right, because- We gotta cash a check. Yes. Toy Story 95, Toy Story 2 99. They don't make another sequel for 11 years.

[00:04:14] From 99 to 2009, it's all original films. Right, and then 2010 is Toy Story 3. 2011 is Cars 2. That's true. 13 is Monsters University. 2016 is Finding Dory. Yeah. 2018 is Incredibles 2. You're forgetting in 2017. Is Cars 3. Cars 3. And then 2019 is Toy Story 4. That's right. That's right. And suddenly- Suddenly a lot of sequels. Yes.

[00:04:42] And it was just kind of the backlog of, we respect what you've done, but come on, guys. Right. Like- So Dory's right in the middle of this sequel boom. Right, which is- I remember when it came out, my reaction being like, ugh, fine. I guess so. I did see it. This movie was a ginormous success. It's a little- I remember being very excited. Memory hold just how huge it was, but I do think this was the start of the kind of Pixar fatigue of, is this really what we're doing now?

[00:05:12] You know, Toy Story 3 was beloved. Monsters University less so, but it had novelty to it. We haven't been sequelizing all of these. Cars had already kind of been written off as like- Cars was always- That's the junk one. Yeah, sure. This is for babies. I consider that almost a different- Totally. Thing. But then the accumulation of it by the time you get to Finding Dory is really- But I mean, this did so much better than Monsters University. Yeah. Huge. Monsters University, I don't like. I know you do. I like it a lot. I defend it.

[00:05:41] How did the originals compare? Like, was Nemo a much bigger hit than- Yes. Monsters- Finding Nemo, when it came out, was the highest grossing animated film in history. It was the sixth highest grossing movie period, I believe. Something like that. It was in the top 10 of all time. It was a big hit. All for that little fish? Yeah. So crazy. It doesn't even have two whole fins. But that was their- It was like Toy Story, A Bug's Life does about the same, maybe a little less than the first Toy Story. Then Toy Story 2, huge jump up.

[00:06:10] Monsters, Inc., huge jump up. Finding Nemo, ginormous jump up. And then they sort of hit a plateau. Incredibles is down a little bit. It's like Ratatouille up. And WALL-E are all in the like $200 to $300 million range. And then when they pull the Band-Aid off the sequel thing, the numbers go through the roof. It's humongous because there have been so much built up. You have successfully built these characters that have endured and are beloved and have now been like activated across multiple generations.

[00:06:40] Kids are being raised on these who weren't even born when the first one came out. I will say I'm ready. I am ready for a whole lot more in the Finding universe. Zach, they announced this week that Ellen DeGeneres, who of course has retired from public life and told us all a year ago that we were never going to see her again, has signed on to reprise the role of Dory in some sort of undefined short film. Interesting. They are doing something new with Dory. Short film, I'm not. I'm not either. But it was just interesting.

[00:07:10] The announcement in and of itself doesn't feel that big, but it feels like it's more of a, is she coming back? And is Dory going to do more? Yeah. This is her last film role currently. Yeah. This is the last time Ellen was in a film. Who would get lost this time? The teacher should get lost. I mean, everyone's... Stingray? Yeah, he gets lost. When this came out, the cynical joke was like, do you do Finding Marlon to complete the trilogy? And it's like, there's no movie there. Yeah.

[00:07:38] Nothing's being activated by him being lost or found because he also ostensibly is lost in... But he's... Maybe he's... Yeah, you're right. Maybe he's sunsetting a little bit. He's starting to... Oh, he Biden's... Yep. It's older, Marlon. He could Biden. He won't stop talking about that. You got some juice there. Wait, the little ass turtle. The little turtle. I could fuck with the... Not squirt. ...spinoff about him. Isn't it... Well, the big one's Crush? Oh, so it is Squirt. It's Squirt, I think. Yeah, totally. But I was more...

[00:08:05] I'm in the mood for a young Marlon prequel series. Sure. I want to see Nemo go on his own epic journey. Sure. I sort of feel like... You want to... Here's what you want. You want young Marlon before he's this boring, henpecked family man. Before his trauma. Right. His trauma. Just sowing his wild oats in the ocean. Yeah. And then... So that's prequel. And then on a separate track, you want Nemo flash forward to his 20s. So this is kind of a godfather too, Finn.

[00:08:34] And you want him sowing his wild oats in the ocean. For me... You want two separate stories about those young fish fucking around. Marlon is Bilbo. Okay. Okay. And Finding Nemo is... Finding Nemo and Finding Dory are sort of Hobbit-esque. Mm-hmm. And then we need Nemo's Lord of the Rings. That's coming down the pipe. Right. You know, is more sort of the lore and Silmarillion and that type of stuff. And that's what I'm looking for. So then what's the hunt for Gollum of the Finding universe?

[00:09:04] Wait. If we do Peter Jackson, do you want to do a Hobbit movie? I love all of Hobbits. This is the answer I was looking for. I'm deep in... This is the answer I was looking for. The Hobbit was like... Yeah. One of the first real books I ever read. Sure. Absolutely. I mean, for me too, but the movies... Oh, I love the movies. Right. You exited Satisfied. Yeah. We get excited anytime we can identify a cherry. Pick on this podcast. Exactly. If there is a... It's just where I was kind of like... Hmm.

[00:09:30] Because if you go to ChatGPT and you were like, predict a Zach Cherry blank check episode. You can't always do it. Where it's like, he's been on Yesterday, the Rollerball remake, and now Finding Dory. Yes. ChatGPT is like, I don't know, man. I need more information. And you'll swing in Zach sometimes with a cold like, hey, if you ever did this director, I would want this. That's right. Of course. 1517 to Paris. Yes. Is my ultimate desire. You called your shot before March Madness on Man on Fire.

[00:10:00] Love Man on Fire. And Tony Scott came close. He came close. We'll do him someday. But... He'll make it. Like a year ago, maybe we threw to you and we're like, this is what we're thinking. And you were like, I like the Coen brothers, but like respectfully, none of these feel like they have to be my episode. You've always been very kind of like, I'm not going to do it unless I feel the pull. Yeah, well, except for this one. That's what's weird. Somehow we just all landed on, that sounds funny. Well, do you know how I found out I was doing the Finding Dory episode? How?

[00:10:27] Our mutual friend Allison Wilmore was here. Oh, sure. Recording an episode. She goes, I saw you on the calendar for Finding Dory. Yes. I went, oh, okay. I guess that bit was real. We had sent you like the year schedule and you said, hmm, Finding Dory, I have been eager to defend my good friend Ellen DeGeneres on Mike. That's right. Which was a joke. Yes. But then David and I looked at each other, stroked our chins and went, does sound like a good episode. Yeah. Yeah. We're going to hold him to this.

[00:10:56] And I will defend her to this day over her sitcom. Great sitcom. I thought that was good. Yeah. For sure. We were talking about this in the Nemo episode of just like, Ellen was so fucking funny. Oh, she's so funny. I mean, she genuinely, there was a time when I was like, she's the funniest person on the planet. Like, I, you know, I sort of cycle through my, who's like doing it for me at the moment. And there was a time when I was like, I would watch her talk show and just everything she

[00:11:26] said would make me laugh. It was impressive that she was still funny on the talk show. Yeah. She's hilarious. That there was, you know, she still was able to be kind of dry and cutting and then off camera. Off camera, occasionally she had a bit of a sharp edge, possibly. Have we discussed the, the second Ellen sitcom, the Ellen show? We talked about it in the Nemo episode, where she owns the bookstore. No, that's the first Ellen show. Ellen, she owns a bookstore. Oh, the second one is the radio show? It's set in the wake.

[00:11:56] I don't see that. No, it's set in the wake of the dot com bubble bursting. This was a 2001 sitcom. You know, it's like really, really. And her internet company goes bankrupt. She moves to her hometown. She's got a crazy mom played by Clarice Leachman. Scatterbrained sister played by Emily Rutherford. I love that actress. Great actress. Meets an old prom date who thinks they can pick up where they left off, but she's gay. So he doesn't get that. Played by Jim Gaffigan.

[00:12:26] This was the gay show. This was the, yes. Martin Mull plays a befuddled teacher. Oh yeah. That's really hard for Martin Mull. The great Carrie Kenny on it as well. Yeah. And then she becomes a guidance counselor at high school. Yes. So it's like a very kind of like star laden thing. Co-created by Mitch Hurwitz. Mitch Hurwitz of Arrested Development. And Carol Leifer. Legendary comic writer. Yeah. But like one of those things where I feel like they were like, we got A-list talent. Yeah.

[00:12:55] Ellen is now a fully realized, like, you know, society's on board with like gay Ellen. Like there's no shock here anymore. And it aired and everyone was like, no, thank you. It got canceled. This is not. I think the dot com boom of it all may have doomed it. Who cares? Not to psychoanalyze too much, but it was interesting when she was doing her episode of the Letterman Netflix show was before the toxic workplace stuff came out.

[00:13:24] But was the first time where I saw the mask kind of fall of she's really angry. And maybe she did a Marin and I felt this as well. She has so much lingering anger of how much the industry threw her out while celebrating her bravery for coming out. And then all of the stuff she did after coming out was rejected. And then she has this incredible like Nemo comes out May 2003.

[00:13:53] The Ellen show premieres like that September or October. Like within the year 2003. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Totally. She has completely rebounded to the height of American pop culture. And yet it feels like the longer that success extends and the bigger it gets, the more her resentment brews of what happened in that five year wilderness period. And it just like metastasized. Into this pit of like.

[00:14:21] Where do you see the short film? It's called Dory Settles Some Grudges. Yeah, right. Dory's like, it's fine that I'm rich. Actually, it's good. Yeah. She's just swimming back and forth really angrily. But I like, I get the, the angle of she was sort of pressured into coming out. There was this feeling of good for you. Yeah, sure. And then everyone was like, but by the way, we're done with you. Yeah, you can't work anymore. Right. Come on. Right. Like you're a gimmick now. I think Ellen's good. I'm pro Ellen. I think she's brilliant.

[00:14:51] I think her performance in Finding Nemo and Finding Dory is so good. I think she's. We were making the case. She's very good. In the Nemo episode that she should have been nominated for Best Supporting Actress. For that one, for sure. And that's the lineup of who got in that year. It's, it's almost absurd that she didn't get in. Dude, has anyone ever been nominated for a voice performance? Never. Never haven't. She was bandied around at the time. Because I do feel like it was such a breakout thing what she was doing.

[00:15:17] And the BAFTA Awards had nominated Eddie Murphy for Shrek. They nominated Donkey. Incredible because. Oh, he's so good in that. He is. The BAFTA Awards have historically had such a bad track record with black actors manifesting in some weird things that happened at this ceremony. There have been no recent incidents. What are you talking about? But like the BAFTAs have never nominated Denzel Washington one time. Is that really true? Of course they often snub him, but I was like, really? They never got him in there?

[00:15:46] After the I swear thing, I was like, let me do like a full cataloging of this. They literally never nominated Denzel. But then also you look through like, who are the black actors who get the Oscar noms and how often do they miss the BAFTA noms in their senior year? Yeah, no, it's. And it's crazy. It's telling. And then it's wild that it's like the only one of the major groups, if you, you know, if you go Globes, SAGS, BAFTA Academy, the only one of them to ever nominate a voiceover performance is BAFTA Eddie Murphy Shrek.

[00:16:16] It's a great performance. It is. So like, I salute them doing it. Yeah. But at the same time, is it insulting where they're like, we loved you as Donkey? A little bit. There's a little bit of a like, is this backhanded? It's a makeup nomination for Mushu. This is true. So true. They didn't get him for Mushu. Disney definitely would do the exact same thing next time. We're going to do a big Chinese epic. Mushu is the dragon in Mulan. In Mulan. Oh, sure. Because in the 90s post-Genie, it was basically like, there better be a little guy and he better be voiced by someone.

[00:16:46] And it is genuinely another incredible performance. It is. He's good as Mushu. The live action remake had no Mushu, right? Like, no. I think there's like a statue at one point. Cool. That they point at. It's like an exclusively Mushu moment. But there is no actual living representation of Mushu. But yes, you're right. It is funny that they were just like. Might have been a mistake. We want to explore like Chinese folklore. Also, there is a dragon who just sounds like 80s Eddie Murphy. And he's called Mushu. He's called Mushu. Come on!

[00:17:15] And the bit is that he's got like. Oh, boy. A kind of inferiority complex. He's little. He's like a little dragon. Right. Right. Right. But he also kind of finesses everyone in conversation. We're not talking about Mulan. But we might talk about Mushu some more. Nobody from Mario was nominated for an Oscar? You mean the recent Super Mario movie? Now, who are you going for? Who's getting the trophy in your eyes? I've seen that movie, I would say, 15 to 20 times at this point. We're talking the first one.

[00:17:44] The Super Mario Brothers movie. Oh, I'm thinking of Galaxy. Okay. Galaxy. It's not eligible yet. Yet. Yeah. Okay. Right, right, right. You never know who's getting the win for Galaxy. I actually haven't seen it. No, I've seen it. I've seen it with my daughter. She loved it. I saw that first one. But she would give everyone an Oscar. If she knew what an Oscar was. In our blankies, we always try to do a best voiceover category. Yeah, sure. If that existed at the Oscars, they would have nominated Jack Black for the first Mario. Oh, yeah. He's great. Right? And not Chris Pratt.

[00:18:14] Yes. That would have been the lone nomination. Who have been some of your nominees in the recent years in that category? You know, like Ben Wish on Paddington is a good example. A really outstanding voice performance. What are some good ones? I'm trying to think. I feel like Jake Johnson in Spider-Verse was one we called out. Yeah, now I want to look through the history. You know, I love Holly Hunter in The Incredibles movie. Yes. Right? Like, that's a really... I mean, honestly, there would be quite a few from both Finding Nemo and Finding Dory.

[00:18:44] Finding Nemo and Finding Nemo has got great voice acting. And we're going to talk about Finding Dory. It does kind of the same thing as Nemo that I appreciate of like, we're not getting the Super Mario route of just like, who's famous right now? Like, we're going to get character actors, sitcom actors, you know. Ty Burrell is great in Finding Dory. Here is the ultimate triumph of this movie for me. And I feel like this is rarely the case in a sequel. Every new character introduced in this film is excellent. Yeah. There is no like, They're all good.

[00:19:14] You're trying to make this happen. Hank? Yeah. Or is he Frank? Hank. He's Hank. You got it. You got it. He's Hank. He's good. But I think all the new characters are great, well-designed, funny, well-developed, well-cast, don't feel like repeats. There's also not that many. No. No. Like, it's not overwhelming you with a bunch and you, yeah. Which often is the thing. They're like, can we throw 20 new darts at the board and see which one of these sells merchandise? Well, I have some issues with Gerald, but we'll get to him. Gerald. And not Becky.

[00:19:43] You're fine with Becky, but not Gerald. Becky, I have less issues with, but Gerald. There was touchiness at the time. Gerald and Becky, I have minor quibble. Okay. Who's Becky? Becky's the bird with the bucket. Oh, right. And Gerald is the sort of massive eyebrow. Right. Right. This is Blank Check with Griffin and David. I'm Griffin. I'm David. It's a podcast about filmographies. David's giving me a thumbs up. Directors who have massive success early on in their career, such as making Finding Nemo,

[00:20:11] and are giving a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion projects they want, such as WALL-E or John Carter. Sometimes those checks clear. See WALL-E. Sometimes they bounce. See John Carter. I did like John Carter. Yeah, you would have been good on that. I mean, it was a good episode. Sometimes a filmmaker is holding such an incredible get-out-of-movie-jail-free card that they can immediately recover from the most notorious flop of the decade, the century. Disney calls and is like, hey, by the way, John Carter's going to lose like $200 million.

[00:20:39] And he's like, I think I just found Dory. And they're like, we'll see you tomorrow, baby. You can do anything you want. I can cover that. I'm good for it. I see. Oh my gosh. It's fascinating. I think the best voice performance in Super Mario Galaxy is Benny Safdie as Bowser Jr. That's the one where I was kind of like, well, he's doing something and this is interesting. Like most everyone else, I was kind of like, you're kind of doing what you're supposed to do. Charlie Day has more to do in the second one. And I do. I like him in both. I find him effective. I think he's good. But yeah, the first one spends 90% of the movie in a fucking cage.

[00:21:09] He is in the cage. Who is Charlie Day? He's Luigi. It's Finding Luigi. The first movie is Finding Luigi. He goes missing. All I'll tell you is I told you, I think before, my daughter was very locked into Luigi both times because she really likes it. He's scared. He's scared. Like she identifies exactly. Is your daughter easily scared? I mean, like, I'm not saying this judgmentally. I'm not saying. I just feel like there's not a lot in life right now. I think all children are pretty easily scared.

[00:21:39] Because like the Halloween cat in the Disney Plus show Super Kitty scared her. And I've seen the Halloween cat and he ain't scary. He's mischievous at best. And she's like in bed at night being like the Halloween cat's going to get me. And I'm like, the Halloween cat steals candy. Like he doesn't even scare anyone. But mischief can be the scariest thing of all. I think to a kid it's a little bit like the kind of like. Disrupting order. And they're like sneaking around like you're not supposed to. I don't know. And that's my candy. The rule of law is premised on a lack of rules.

[00:22:09] Lack of mischief. This is true. Really? She does not like that Halloween cat. I just always. Especially we're talking about like children's media. Or things that are designed to play for children. At least partially. Right. I saw some scary shit when I was a kid. Like because no one was really watching the store. I find it. This is a cartoon. Like won't scare you. People can be algorithmic about these things. And design these things in a lab. Right. And the Mario movies are a perfect example of that. But sometimes you just hit on something where you're like this speaks to kids. Yes. You have developed this character correctly.

[00:22:39] Cast the right person. The right design. And kids see this and they just go like that's me. I get it. I'm going to ride with this forever. Dory. Yeah. You have said David that you have watched this movie many many more times than Finding Nemo at this point. Oh yeah. Because your daughter is hyper fixated on baby Dory. Yeah. And I just feel like also just generally it's like this movie has more Dory. Yeah. Dory is the best. Yes. So thus it's better. And makes Dory the vulnerable character in a way that. Yes.

[00:23:07] Fascinatingly I think kids ended up relating to harder than Nemo the literal child in the first one. Nemo is fine because Nemo is very confident. Yeah. Like you know it's sort of like Nemo is going to be all right. And like Marlon like I mean I like Marlon. We all like Marlon. You know good job Marlon. But like my daughter is not. I don't know if I like Marlon. Yeah right. Even though I am Marlon. Even though I am Marlon. I'm running around being like what's up with Marlon. Right. Maybe that's why you don't like him. This was the first time. He's holding up a mirror. I watched Finding Nemo to prepare.

[00:23:36] And it was the first time that I identified with Marlon straight down the mirror. And had some hard talks with myself. It's tough. Yeah. Yeah. And I did also watch Finding Forrester to complete the trilogy. Oh perfect. Thank you. You're the man. And I am not joking. I did do that. Our guest today is Zach Cherry. It's a cherry pick. Finding Dory. The 2016. It doesn't win best animated film. No. What did? I'll find out. In 2016.

[00:24:06] This is the Zootopia year I believe. My question was. Does it even get nominated for an Oscar? It does. Does it? Let me just find out. Well on the freaking M&M's commercial. Hey. Well actually. That sounds pretty hot. No. No Oscar nom. That's wow. They snubbed at the Oscars. They snubbed sequels. They don't like sequels. Yeah. I can tell you. Let's find out what the best animated film nominees were in. What? This is 2016? Let me guess. Beavis and Butthead. Okay. Okay. Wait. Okay.

[00:24:35] I will say it's a pretty strong field. There's a reason this did not make it. Okay. So Zootopia wins. Yes. Correct. Tell me the distributors at the other four. One of them is Laika. So that would be... Kubo? Which is an excellent film. Should have won. Good movie. But Zootopia won rules. Zootopia's good. Yeah. I mean these are all... These are good movies. Still kind of a crime that Laika has not won. Yeah. Never has. An Oscar yet. Yeah. It should have won. Right. Because Coraline... Is the up year. Yeah.

[00:25:04] Coraline is the one it's... They should have been handed that one. Yeah. And then Paranorman would have been a fine winner over fucking Brave. That's what's embarrassing. Rick and Ralph. I was really hoping... Rick and Ralph's in there too obviously. Rick and Ralph going in was the presumed winner and it was sort of shocking. Rick and Ralph was the same year as Finding Dory? No. It was the same year as Brave. Oh. We're jumping all over here. Right. It was shocking but it was also an indication back then that they were like, I don't know. Isn't the Pixar thing the best one? Which is why it's interesting that so quickly they switched to we're willing to snub Pixar if they're going to do this sequel shit. Yeah.

[00:25:33] Zach, you fuck with Ralph? Ralph. Oh, I love Ricky Ralph. He's such a great guy. The first one is awesome. Yeah. Yeah. Because like the only... Well, you were angry that he broke the internet because you were trying to use it that day. Yeah. Yeah. I had to submit my taxes. The only... And it's like, what am I going to do? What the fuck, Ralph? Ralph. Come on, Ralph. Could you have checked in with me before? Yeah.

[00:25:56] The only Pixar sequel that is nominated in between the two Toy Story sequels, you know, three and four, which they, you know, gave the trophy to. Incredibles 2. Is Incredibles 2. Yeah. Everything else, they were like, no, thank you. And that loses to Spider-Verse, right? Yeah. Yeah. Which is fine. I mean, yeah. Okay. So Zootopia, Kubo, another giant Disney animated film. It's a second... Which is, this is also why Finding Dory didn't get in. It's like, there's already two big Disney movies. Was Big Hero the same year? No. No. Come on. Come on. 2016.

[00:26:23] I saw this movie right after Trump was elected. You saw this movie right after Trump? Oh, it's Moana. Moana. Moana. And then there's two indie movies, like two small films. Are they both G-Kids? One is G-Kids, I think. Okay. One is sort of Ghibli-esque, but wasn't... I don't think it actually was Ghibli. Hmm. Right. It was a... No, it was. It was a co-production with Ghibli and some French guys. It's watery, too. It's a watery Ghibli. It's water. He says it's a French watery Ghibli.

[00:26:51] It's kind of not Ghibli, but it's still, you know, it's kind of like half Ghibli. Huh. It's called The Red Turtle. Oh, yeah. It's very pretty. Yeah. I've never even heard of that. Mac and Rita? Eh? Mac and Rita? Maybe. That was my guess. Oh, the other... Oh, no, no. It's not that. The other one is a French stop-motion film that is really great. Oh, My Life is a Zucchini, which rules. One of the great titles. My Life is a Zucchini. Zucchini. And fucking written by... Celine Chama. Mac and Rita is the fucking Netflix show. What's the thing I'm thinking of?

[00:27:21] Or no, that was a Diane Keaton thing. He's spiraling here. There was that... Well, there's Ernest and Celestine. Yes, that's French lovely animals. Frankie and Grace is the Netflix show. That's the Netflix show. But then there is something called Mac and Rita with Diane Keaton. I'm thinking of the one that was kind of sexy. Oh, I know what you're talking about. Let me find it. Where I want to say it was like... Chico and Rita. Chico and Rita. Yeah. It was like this tune. A little Spanish. Might make your pants tighten. That was the tagline. They dance pretty close. I do think that in a...

[00:27:48] Maybe a slightly less packed year, it might have gotten the nom. But that's a big... There's already these two giant things in Moana and Zootopia. So they're kind of like... Yeah. We don't need Dory. I might nominate Dory. Did I nominate Dory? I like this movie. I like this one a lot. But I've grown to like it. When I saw it in theaters, when it came out, it's not like I hated it or anything, but I was just sort of like, that's exactly what I thought it was going to be. It was totally fine. I don't remember it walking out the theater. And also your daughter's experience,

[00:28:18] I've found, is not unique. A lot of our friends your age, with children your daughter's age, are like, yeah, my kid watches Dory way more than Nemo. Yeah. Dory rocks. And now this movie... It was the second highest grossing film of its year domestically. It was beaten only by Rogue One. It made $486 million domestic. It made a billion dollars worldwide. It was... It made a full billion. A giant hit. Yeah. Big hit. And like, that's great. But Moana,

[00:28:47] which was sort of like slightly an underperformer at the time, has like, has outgained it in legacy by a lot. Yes, right. That's a fascinating one where it only seemed like an underperformer because Frozen had been so humongous. And Zootopia. And your doors. Songs help your legacy a lot. They do. They do. Because they exist outside of actually watching the film. You can put them in the parks. Yeah. You can put them on ice. You can put them in a whatever, right? Yeah. Put them on a hit clip.

[00:29:15] You can make really good looking live action versions of these films. You can... That just look the same. David, let me rephrase what you're trying to get at the idea. You could perfect them. You could finally get them right. Like, what if Disney just was like, just tomorrow, the guy just was like, hey, by the way, we know that looks bad. We're not going to release it. Sorry. It is fascinating to me. Or flip side, what if they said, James Cameron is doing a live action Finding Dory? Oh, that'd be great.

[00:29:45] And he's doing it all for real. Yeah. Right. It's all real. He put the computers down. He taught a fish how to act. Yes. We don't know how he did it. Yelling. Yeah, right. He just keeps yelling at this fish. Now she's... Fucking blue tang. Now she's good. Don't you know who I am? Right. Alienware's back to school event is the perfect time to score top gaming gear with incredible features

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[00:31:21] Finding Dory. So, did you see this film in theaters, Zach? I have no specific memory of it. 2016. But I'm positive I did. Because I was all in on Dory. I love Dory. Dory rules. June 2016. I assume you're living in New York. I saw this at the now-dead Cineopolis Chelsea. Mm-hmm. Or whatever it was called back then. The Bowtie Chelsea, the Clearview Chelsea, you know, that theater, which was the UCB movie theater. It was the UCB movie theater. Yeah, I used to go there all the time. Cross the street from Traylor Park. It was great. You could live there.

[00:31:49] That was one of those places where you're like, no one's kicking me out if I never leave this place. What was also incredible about it was- It was like one employee. It felt like a ghost town. It was like five floors. There was only one employee. There were never many people there. And then they did a really expensive- They juiced it up. Restoration, and it was so nice. It was nice. And still no one was there, but it stayed open for another four years. And there was a nice little burger shop underneath it that I liked to go to. Yeah. I like that place. And there was the last remaining Boston Market in the United States. Directly across the street. It was across the street, right?

[00:32:18] Everything was happening on 23rd, between 7th and 8th. I'm just also looking at the domestic box office. The top 10. Rogue One comes out in December. Finding Dory, June. Captain America Civil War was notably a spring release. Secret Life of Pets, I think July. Jungle Book, spring release. Deadpool, February. Zootopia, March or April. Batman vs. Superman, March. I can't believe Deadpool didn't make an appearance in Finding Dory. Suicide Squad, August.

[00:32:48] Sing, I think November, December. Like, Dory was so far and away the highest-grossing film of the summer, because every other film in the top 10, basically, save for Secret Life of Pets, came out spring or fall. So what was the summer of 2016? Dory! Dory! I'm saying, like, Dory! Dory! It was nothing else? Dory ran the table so fucking hard. I mean, let me see. It was... Suicide Squad ended it. And I mean... Yeah. Ended it. X-Men Apocalypse.

[00:33:17] Neighbors 2. The Angry Birds movie. I'm sorry, Captain America Civil War was the first week of May. Okay. So it was the kickoff. Alice Through the Looking Glass. Ninja Turtles Out of the Shadows. Oh, man. Pop Star, which rules but bombed. Conjuring 2. Now You See Me 2. Warcraft. Central Intelligence. Independence Day Resurgence. That one's so bad. Like, this is a rough line. The Legend of Tarzan. The BFG. BFG. Like, these are kind of historic

[00:33:46] non-starter franchise movies. Lady Ghostbusters. Star Trek Beyond, which is great but bombed. Or underperformed. The final Ice Age. The only one that didn't make 100 million domestic, I believe. Jason Bourne. That one's bad too. And then the summer ends with Suicide Squad and fucking Ben Hurl. It was also bad. Right. So Dory was like so far and away the queen of the summer. So where'd you see it? Big man. That's a good question. I'm pretty sure I saw it

[00:34:14] at AMC Lincoln Square. I saw it with my friend Scott Craterman who's one of my oldest friends and a regular movie buddy of mine. And I have a very distinct memory of sitting there the first 20 minutes like white knuckling the armrest and being like, this is bad. And I have this experience every time I rewatch it. You were more invested in the Pixar movies being good. Yes, I was invested. Like, I feel like I was kind of at this age where I was kind of like, I don't really care anymore. If they're bad, which I sort of assume it's like, whatever. I was really... I wanted Incredibles 2 to be good

[00:34:44] because I like Brad Bird. But like, generally, I would be kind of like, eh. I felt invested in the inshittification of Pixar. Right. And I was trying to think of an analogy because it wasn't like it went from being like great to being terrible. But it was kind of like the expansion of Shake Shack where you're like, this thing felt really special. And how are they maintaining this quality? And how does it feel different? And then it grew and you're like, it's still better than basically everything else. But what are we losing?

[00:35:14] And I'm worried about it falling further. And I think like the first 20 minutes of this movie are pretty aggressively bad and feel a little checklist-y. Like, what do we need to do to like calm you down? I assume... Do you mean like post Baby Dory? Because Baby Dory's just right at the top. Yeah. Do you mean the kind of like, let's reset with like, where do Marlin and Nemo live? We're going to bring Mr. Ray back. And we're going to bring the turtles back. Like, it feels like speed running the greatest hits from the first movie. Right.

[00:35:44] And introducing this conflict of like... Feel like alts from the first movie. Right. It's like, is every character forgetting or pretending this didn't already happen? And this conflict of like Marlin's like, ugh, Dory. She's like, she's kind of a pain. She's kind of like, tough to have around or whatever. Now, when you saw it, had you recently watched Finding... Like, was Finding Nemo in your regular rotation? Yes. Because I don't think it was for me. And so this time, when I watched them back to back,

[00:36:14] you're like... That stuff did put me off. It's crazy how much kind of like double B is. Yeah, I was like, oh, we're just kind of like running through like, hey, there's the turtles and there's this guy and there's this guy. It felt like the worst version of what I was fearing this movie would be, which is just like, he jangling, can we just do it again and will you guys be happy? But I think when I saw it, I had probably not seen Finding Nemo since it came out. Like, I wasn't rewatching it. So I think I was just like, hey, my friends are back. I think everything from when it gets to the Marine Institute

[00:36:43] is basically uniformly very good. Like, I think... You like it once... The second it gets there, it works. Plot kicks in. But I have rarely had that experience of sitting there and for like 15 to 20 consecutive minutes being like, bad, bad, bad, bad, fuck, I'm spiraling and then feel the movie just kind of like swerve, pull out a victory and stay good. But then I remember defending it at the time. Sure. It did feel like even though it was a big hit... You're there to defend.

[00:37:12] It was immediately greeted with this sort of like, what are they doing here? kind of thing. Can we zoom out? Because I know you were asking these questions, Zach, but some of the things going on here... Okay, sure. We'll get into the story specifics. You go right ahead. This is all you, baby. So a thing we're restating in all of these episodes. There was a one movie contract for Pixar to produce Toy Story, which Disney will distribute and retain the rights of the characters forever.

[00:37:41] That movie is such a hit that Disney swings back around and says, we want to make a five-picture deal. You are an autonomous studio. You are producing films for us. We will own those characters in perpetuity. They agree to five original films. They also demand, can you please do Toy Story 2? They said, we're a small company. We only have the energy to do one movie. We're trying to scale up to two at a time. So they establish a B team of younger guys to take on Toy Story 2, which is meant to be direct-to-video. Because that's the Return of Jafar model.

[00:38:10] You didn't put animated sequels in theaters. They devalued the brand. There was this real belief in the sanctity of that theatrical Disney movies need to mean something. And the sequels being on video help kind of keep them feeling clean of the legacy of the originals. Toy Story 2 is not working. Lasseter, Stanton, the A team, when they're done with A Bug's Life, come on and say, will you let us take this over and fix it? We don't think this is up to our standards.

[00:38:40] We don't want it being released. And if you let us take it on and push it back, we will make it good enough to put in theaters. They do that. It's a massive hit. It wins Best Picture, Musical or Comedy at the Golden Globes, an institution whose awards mean a lot. And they go, great, that was our third film on the contract. And Eisner goes, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah. That was not the deal. The deal was five original movies. Toy Story 2 didn't count. You still owe me three more. This starts the bad blood between Pixar and Disney.

[00:39:10] They do Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo, Incredibles, Cars. And by the time Cars is coming out, relationships are beyond freight. And they are self-producing, Ratatouille, WALL-E, and Up, completely self-financed, and they will just sell them to the highest bidder of whoever they go to. Every studio in town is bidding on them. All of this stuff's super relevant to how this movie comes about. Katzenberg gets pushed out. Iger comes in. Iger's first move is, whatever it takes,

[00:39:39] get Pixar. He gets them. They commit to releasing those three films. But then he also cracks his knuckles and goes, but guys, can we start talking about sequels? So Disney has now spent like $6 billion to buy Pixar. Stanton has been placed as the VP of creative. He doesn't want to have to be a businessman, you know, or an administrative guy, but they're basically like, you're the king of story here. You oversee all of this. Lots of Huggin' John Lasseter,

[00:40:09] the founder of Pixar Animation, at least, is suddenly placed into three positions simultaneously. He is the head of Pixar, he is the head of Disney feature animation, and he is the head of Imagineering. So now Lasseter is wearing three hats, three offices, three times as many opportunities to hug people. Two more hats than I've ever worn. It's impressive. His priority starts to become, Disney animation's really bad. I have to fix this. And what were they putting out at the time?

[00:40:38] So they had been putting out like Chicken Little. Okay. He comes on halfway through production on Meet the Robinsons and tries to sort of course correct that. He tries to course correct Bolt. The first one that's sort of like this worked, he was able to kind of help oversee rebuilding it from the beginning was Tangled. Bolt made me cry. Tangled's a big hit. And then it starts the run of like Tangled, Frozen, Moana, Jutopia, Wreck-It Ralph. All these things we're saying where suddenly it's like

[00:41:08] is Disney the rising studio? Right. Is Disney better than Pixar these days? He's putting more of his energy and attention there because they had been the problem place and Pixar seemed to have it all figured out. But the other part of it is they're saying to Pixar, guys, we just spent a lot of fucking money. And we know that the sequels were a non-starter conversation because of the bad blood over the Toy Story 2 thing for so long. But now there's so much fucking money on the table if we bring any of these characters back.

[00:41:38] And there's always this kind of polite like, we leave it to you the storytellers. We won't do it and we won't force it until you tell us you have an idea. But we'd really like you to try to come up with an idea. And so that energy is like behind them. Toy Story 3, they were ready to do. They had wanted to do and it was being held up by the bad blood. But with that in motion, then they're sort of like, can we revisit the monsters conversation? Can we revisit the Incredibles conversation? Can we revisit

[00:42:07] the Dory conversation? I feel like this is where you get to the sort of creative incubation of the idea. Sure. When it came out, Stanton was like, no. Right. We're not a sequel studio. That's not what we believe. They're always fucking going on about that. They're liars. They weren't for a while. Well, their third movie was the sequel. But I just explained this whole thing. I mean, this is all the... I understand. But, you know, they've always had a little bit of sequel. The Toy Stories feel different to me as well.

[00:42:37] They feel like a whole separate thing. They do. And that's because, right, because the third Pixar movie was Toy Story 2. Like, it does kind of set it apart. Yeah. So, Stanton said he was always no sequel. Like, basically always. And puts it that he says he had to get on board from a VP standpoint, not a director standpoint. Exactly. Right. Isn't this good for the company? Right. Don't we want to keep Pixar afloat? I mean,

[00:43:06] this is the classic kind of intratification thing of you're the most successful movie studio in history. You get bought for, like, a tremendous amount of money and immediately they're like, but don't you have to think about what's good for business? And you're like, what they've been doing has been good for business, but they start getting in their ear with this logic of, well, if you make the sequels, that helps pay for the originals. Now, the script for Finding Nemo 2, which was written back when Disney

[00:43:36] was like, yes, fuck you, we'll just make what is it? They started a company called Circle 7. Circle 7. And it's like, we will make Toy Story 3, Monsters Inc. 2, Lost in Scare-a-dice. Yes. Love to know more. And Finding Nemo 2, we're going to make them cheaper than Pixar makes one. This was a Katzenberg negotiation move. He said, they're so protective of their legacy that I will develop my own animation studio to the side. To the ones we're allowed to sequelize. And make them. And the only way they can stop me is if they decide to make them themselves.

[00:44:06] And this created so much bad blood, but obviously, the second Iger takes over, he says, shut them fucking down. But I want to tell you about this script, which was written by Laurie Craig, the writer of Ella Enchanted. Okay. Now, is everyone sitting down? Yeah. Okay. Marlon's lost. Hold on. How old is he? The hackery of them not even landing on Dory should get lost first. Truly, I mean,

[00:44:36] it is so funny that like, it's just like, okay, Nemo and Marlon are living together. They're feeling that everything's good. Huh? Why don't we switch it up? Marlon's lost. It's called finding Marlon. Basically, Nemo's got to find Marlon. Dory gets her memory back by hitting her head. Nemo is given a long lost brother. Great. I guess so there can be some sort of tension of like, oh, you're my brother. All of these Circle 7 movies sounded horrendous. There's some dolphins. Uh-huh.

[00:45:06] Some polar bears. That sounds good. Zach, do you think... My guess is they'd be voiced by, you know, somebody with quite an accent. sure, sure. You know? Absolutely. It is funny how this time they're like, the fucking nature preserves in California. We're not doing Australia again. No. There's a magical tunnel that whips you all the way down to California. It's just different sitcom actors. Yeah, right. So yes, as you say,

[00:45:35] Iger comes aboard and immediately is like, no more of this Circle 7 nonsense. Like, I'm shutting all of that down. And this is part of Iger's great strategy is he comes in, shuts them down, says to Steve Jobs, you name your price. I'm not negotiating here with you. I want to make you guys feel so protected that I'm doing everything I can to respect the sanctity of your characters. I'm not going to push you to do these things. I'm going to shut down any crass exploitation.

[00:46:05] I'm going to overpay you. But can you please try to organically come up with sequel ideas that you like? And the way Andrew Stanton puts it, and I think we mentioned this on a prior episode, is when the Finding Nemo 3D re-release comes out in 2010, which he obviously works on to get ready. He's watching it, and yes, he is kind of like, I mean, Dory basically is lost when the movie begins. I mean, they do find her being like, where are my family? I was looking for my family, at least I think I was.

[00:46:35] He's like, fuck, I did put it in there. So, he's like, I do stop, you know, I couldn't stop thinking about it, I will admit. Now, could he also not stop thinking about big bucks? I don't know. Like, you know, dollar signs? The other thing is, he's now sort of got a foot outside of Pixar focusing on John Carter and wanting to make this John Carter-sized leap to live action. So, what he says is, hey, I got a good idea. Because he jumps big. He jumps so far.

[00:47:05] He jumps so big, so far, so high. That guy can really hop. On Mars. This guy hops. That's what they should say. You should call that movie Hoppers. Exactly. Did you see Hoppers? I did. I liked Hoppers. Hoppers very enjoyable. Moynihan fucking rolls. Moynihan right now kind of pole position best voice performance of the year. Moynihan very good in Hoppers. He's the dory of Hoppers. King George. King George having a big year at the box office. Oh, yeah? Well, that's his biggest hit he's had so far. So far. Yeah.

[00:47:35] Plenty months left. A lot of words. King George. Hamilton. Hamilton. Oh, sure. That's that. If they do that. Sure. Still on Broadway. Still bringing in Baffo box office. Yeah. Who's playing King George right now on Broadway? Interesting. I'm seeing it's King George from Hoppers. They got the beaver. They render him in real time. Originally, Stanton's like, well, I'm too busy on the John Carter thing. And John Carter is obviously going to be a trilogy that I have mapped out. And each of these movies is going to take two to three years.

[00:48:06] But here's an idea I like for Finding Dory and I bless the development of this as a script. Right. It doesn't originate with him. It's a hired writer first. Also, of course, then John Carter bombs. It does. And he says he went into kind of a lost weekend to purge himself. Only one weekend? Yeah, he might need a fucking That's pretty good. Yeah. It takes me about a week and a half to recover from a bad improv show. And this guy

[00:48:35] had a historic bomb and he was like, just give me 48. That's impressive. It is. Yeah, I mean, it is. Yeah, to make a movie like John Carter where people are like, can we, can you get that Guinness Book of World Records off the shelf? And like, is this the biggest one yet? Like, are we going, like, you know. He also, he did an interview that just came out at the time we're recording. Or it was part of a larger entertainment weekly piece about Toy Story 5. And he had, you know, he's a very self-deprecating guy. Sure.

[00:49:04] But he had a joke about like, if you know me by name, I'm concerned. Oh, yeah, I saw that. Like, I understand like Pixar as a name brand is a known thing, but like only, you know, dang ass freaks know Andrew Stan by name. Is this podcast maybe fucking up that effort? Possibly. But I think there must be something kind of weird to having a failure that big that's also kind of anonymized. Like, there's not even the personal sort of like, look at how hard

[00:49:33] fucking Francis Ford Coppola fell on his face with Megalopolis and it's reckoned with within the like, the story of a man's career. It's just everyone kind of being like, the fuck is this shit? Yeah, John Carter was the failure, not him. Right. At least in terms of the public. Like, I didn't know who, I had no idea he directed that. No. At the time. You knew simply that, you know, Tim Riggins went to Mars and it didn't work out for him. Right. And he hopped. And again, I did like that movie. It's, it's, it's got its charms. It's got its charms.

[00:50:03] So Bob Weiger calls Stanton on the phone, apparently gives him a quote about, from Teddy Roosevelt, about being the lonely man in the ring that has the guts to actually do it versus talking about doing it. I don't know. He kind of peps him up. Stanton works on Zootopia. His college roommate is Rich Moore, who's the director of Zootopia. So he like, helps out with that movie. He's got a creative consultant. Because that's the other thing was at this time, they were like, Pixar's got it figured out so much that should the Pixar brain trust weigh in on everything. Can they give notes on Tron Legacy? Right. And then,

[00:50:33] he goes to lots of Huggin' Lasseter. And he says like, I think I have a story for Finding Nemo too. Pitches that, they write up a treatment, and then he's like, alright, I'm gonna call Ellen. Because I guess it's a different thing to call Ellen now. Yeah. She's busy. Now, Ellen had for years maintained this running bit of why aren't they calling me to make a sequel. She would publicly do this. You know, Hanks would be on to promote Toy Story 3 and she'd be like, must be nice. Right.

[00:51:02] Must be nice. I don't have any money at all. Yeah. I'm only selling hundreds of millions of dollars of throw pillows a year. JJ found a very 2013 sentence too if you want to hear it. Dory is Disney's most liked character on Facebook. Had 24 million likes. People just were like, I want to like. Thumbs up. Thumbs up to the character Dory. Right. And that's as important as where I went to college. Right. Can you not? It has to be one of the five things

[00:51:31] people see about me immediately. Ellen's statement on the announcement. I have waited for this day for a long, long, long, long, long, long time. I'm not mad it took this long. I know the big people in Pixar are busy creating Toy Story 16, but the time they took was worth it. The script's fantastic. Yeah. You also just know, and I don't know if it's ever been reported, but I imagine she got much more love from this film. Are you kidding? What? Ellen, I thought that she kind of just did everything for love of the game. I gotta stop bragging on Ellen. Ellen has become an incredibly savvy business person

[00:52:01] at this point in time and Pixar and Disney notoriously, you know, pay an exposure the first time. Right. Right. And then the second time. And the residuals. That's the big thing. Right. I think I've shared this anecdote before, but I met, or I've met her a couple of times, but Kristen Schaal said she did Toy Story 3. They pay you what is scale. She's the fucking 17th character in that movie. Yeah. And it's like,

[00:52:30] there is a scale number. Despite you being in a Pixar movie, it's the lowest amount they could pay you to be in an animated feature film. And she was like, I bought a house with the first year of residuals, theme park, video games, whatever, you know? Hold on. I need to talk to some people. But then, if there's a sequel and you're the central character or you're the breakout character, suddenly you're holding a lot of leverage. Except maybe not so much anymore, right?

[00:52:59] Because Inside Out 2, didn't they not? It was a weird thing. I mean, but also they paid, I think Amy Poehler got $10 million. And then they were like, Bill Hader, here's a sandwich. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. So, the film is co-written by Victoria Strauss. really had no credits. She'd worked on an ABC TV show called October Road, but they wanted a female screenwriter. It is a fascinating... She had a spec script they liked. Pixar thing, I was going to say, where a lot of the writers

[00:53:29] once, you know, they ramp up production, right? And this was also a big part of, I think, them conceding to the sequel push was it's been a big effort to get to a steadiness to be able to put out one film every year. Wouldn't it be great if we could do two a year? And they were like, if it's two a year and the staff is doubling and all of this, then maybe it helps if every other film is a sequel or a safer bet. But it also means they have to start

[00:53:58] reaching outside of their, like, core brain trust and building a bigger talent pool. And so often, these writers you see who end up being the co-writers with whoever the director is or the Pixar person is on these movies, you're like, how'd they get this job? And it's like, they were obsessively reading spec scripts. They were, like, checking the blacklist. They were going to plays. They were seeing independent films at Sundance. It's this fascinating thing and I think Stanton was kind of important

[00:54:27] in sort of spearheading this of, let's not look at animation writers. Let's just look and see good writing and find young people because also, it's a multi-year process. It's like, if you sign on to a Pixar movie, you're moving to like Emeryville for three or four years to keep doing iterative work on it. So it's better to get someone who's ready to like be an employee rather than just take on a project. Ben? Dory, Facebook. Currently? Currently. 20 mil.

[00:54:58] Huge. She's lost. Wait, it went down. It went down. Well, I deleted my account so that's one. That is maybe a sign of Facebook's kind of, you know. Was it 40 or 50 before? 24. Wait, what is it now? 20. 20 mil. Oh, but she only lost four? Losing seems bad to me. I just think with the general Facebook thing. I guess you're right. Also, some weird follows. Oh yeah? Who we got? Dory's follow? Oh yeah. Dory's been liking some kind of interesting pictures on the internet.

[00:55:28] Dory's a huge Huberman gal. So, the big issue Strauss found is it's tough to write a main character who can't remember things and has short-term memory loss. She pretty quickly comes up with Hank because she's like she needs a foil and she needs someone who can move her places. It is. Hence Octopus. The smartest thing this movie does is like how without cheating do we like have someone who's her memory

[00:55:56] and her mobile kind of operator. Can we give these characters a little more latitude so it's not just a complete retread of the first movie of they're in the ocean and they gotta swim really far. and like Hank has a little Marlin DNA in that he's like gruff and not warm but like it's a different enough I would say because he's not anxious he's just kind of like cynical or over it or whatever. It's an interesting kind of combination of Gil and Marlin from the first one but it feels like he's a little more stir crazy. Wait, who is Gil? Gil is the Dafoe. Oh yes.

[00:56:26] The Dafoe in the first one. Because he's got a little bit of the like you know I guess he's also a little kind of one flew over the cuckoo's nest like I just gotta get out of here. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He just wants to go live in peace. Yes. I get it. We see him briefly in this movie, right? Like they're all credited. Oh, they're the end credits. Post credits. Yeah, yeah. They're still in the bags. Right. They initially did want the parents to also have short-term memory loss to complete the joke of it runs in my family at least I think it does.

[00:56:56] When you were watching when you walked into the studio today I was I had the Blu-ray. You were watching deleted quote unquote deleted scenes. It has 50 minutes of deleted scenes which is quite a lot and even when movies cut that much material they rarely make it public and I would say of the 50 20 minutes were four different strikes at the opening and they all have Stanton intros where he's explaining the iterative process of what kept changing and you do realize like they back themselves

[00:57:25] into a couple corners here. They're like first of all we want to make the Dory movie but how do you give Dory the character agency to go out on her own journey and grow and change and learn if she can't fucking remember anything how does she do things of her own volition? So there's all this shit that you see them try where they're like there's a muscle memory thing where her fins start like she's she's sleep swimming in her sleep she starts swimming directions and then they lose her

[00:57:55] but she doesn't know what's driving her there it's the muscle memory not a short term memory and then he's like but then the first 30 minutes of the movie she's not making any choices it's like she's like fucking you know weekend at Bernie's 2 right and then there are multiple stabs at well the reason she got lost is because her parents also have short term memory so that helps why they haven't found her but then also like every scene and they have like scenes some of these are animated some of them are roughly animated some of them are just storyboarded most of them have the real voice actors

[00:58:24] and you're hearing Eugene Levy and Diane Keaton do the short term thing which is incredibly funny sure but then you're also just like all of these scenes get caught in a cul-de-sac yes Stanton said essentially like they just they realized it would make everyone crazy you cannot have any emotional catharsis when I watched Finding Nemo I was operating under the assumption that her entire species had this I thought it was like a goldfish thing that was their starting point right and so then I had forgotten that oh no

[00:58:54] this is just Dory like Dory just has this issue so they ran into some complaints over the fact that it is set at a you know marine park like a preserve blackfish right and so they consciously were like all of the fish characters will be allowed to leave if they want in our story because we don't want to suggest that like they belong there or have to be there or anything like that Pixar's usually like pretty secretive about their movies

[00:59:23] until the last possible moment they have to volunteer information because their brand is so strong right and that was a case where in my memory like they kind of came out a year before release were like we are making changes to our story they like preempted a potential controversy they added that third R of release yeah right right exactly so you know like I think those are the big things they kind of I think that was a story present because if it had been to

[00:59:52] it could have run the risk of just being a bigger version of the fish tank in the dentist's office it helps that the problem isn't they're being kept here as much as it is like this is just an entirely different kind of space and I think what they do smartly and it gets back to I was saying in the Nemo episode that Nemo is weirdly feels very Indiana Jones coded in the way he constructs the sequences of what is the challenge

[01:00:22] and how do they get out of this it does feel like the biggest gift they gave themselves in this film is just to be like what if there is environment that is hospitable to fish but also is largely above ground surrounded by people tanks are separated and how do you cross these physical divides Nemo and Marlin don't have to be on the opposite side of the ocean from Dory but if they're in a gift shop and she's in a tank it's actually a harder puzzle to solve yeah

[01:00:51] which keeps it from feeling like just a copy of the first movie there was a lot more Destiny and Bailey they say both those characters are great the whale shark and the beluga whale and essentially they just kind of like had to cut stuff but like that they all had like you know tons of material because they were fun to write there's an entire storyline where Marlin Marlin and Nemo get separated from Dory early when the squid chases them and then they go into the tank gang and they meet you know like Gil and all those guys

[01:01:21] and it was funny but they just sort of like kept being like it is a Dory movie this is just distracting from that so they don't use that it is the thing especially after watching all these like failed alternate openings and everything you're saying I've come to peace with the first 20 minutes that also just feel like they never totally cracked it but they were like you know what we just have to get there the movie doesn't really start until she's at the Marine Institute right they should be there with her

[01:01:50] you know right and can we just kind of like jangle some keys for the first 15 or 20 minutes are we gonna have to ban that phrase we're using it too much we're using it too much yeah it's become a totemic phrase you're jingling keys with it sort of I kind of am for casting though they would be like huh what about Ty Burrell Google Ellen DeGeneres Ty Burrell she's interviewed him like five times they could just listen to them talking Eugene Levy they could listen to that Diane Keaton they can listen to that right because Pixar

[01:02:20] will famously now I feel like they do more of a traditional casting process but they would locate an actor and then do a test animation to their dialogue from something else and be like how does it look right yeah Diane Keaton had never done animation before ever when was Modern Family did that had that already started 2008 or 2009 right when is that or maybe 2010 we talked about this and it's funny in John Carter that you're like you can tell

[01:02:50] which TV show Stanton was watching when he cast that movie were you ever on Modern Family for 11 years and I you know I honestly never watched it but I was you know when Ty Burrell popped up and Ed O'Neill I was like oh this is very much okay this was dominating the TV you know he was watching Always Sunny and they were reliable and honestly Dory Marlon and Nemo are a bit of a modern family themselves they're found family sort of a nice

[01:03:19] wink at that you got two people from the wire you got Idris Elba and Dominic West is the other that's pretty funny did you ever watch Modern Family I never did like you've never seen Modern Family I've seen a few episodes here and there but I never like committed to it yes same I watched that for like two seasons before I was kind of like I think I get it it is funny that in my memory like you thinking this movie came out like a year after Finding Nemo I'm like oh right this was like right after Modern Family popped and this is one of the first

[01:03:49] kind of like postmodern family glow sort of jobs for the cast reaching out and I'm like oh this is closer to the end of that show than it was the beginning it had been on the air for seven years it would be off the air right four years later Alexander Gould the voice of Nemo in Finding Nemo was a grown up was a grown up he remembers the moment because he would do the voice for the toys yeah like the moment like a couple years later where they were like you can't do it your voice is getting too deep that must what she said was devastating to have that that

[01:04:19] fucking Kristen Schaal I know I heard a story about someone getting a house recently but to just be told like there's a ticking clock sorry buddy you don't my pitch for old Marlon he'll be back in business oh sure is that kind of like a like a sort of Logan-esque sort of legacy sequel right okay Marlon honestly that would be perfect because Marlon if he

[01:04:48] he he is so brutal at times in these movies if he starts to lose it so even his amount of politeness is gone you could have some real savage Marlon moments I'll say this Marlon just cutting loose Brooks also sounds a lot older in this one he does and you're like he has age he's still funny in this but he does feel harder edged in this just from the nature of him sounding more like a grumpy old man than a nebbishy guy yeah but they they really like when

[01:05:18] he tells Dory go sit over there and forget that's the best that's what you're best at that's like one of the most brutal that's what I'm saying yeah and this is also post drive Brooks Sigourney Weaver they just thought that was funny and it is the voice of the blue planet in America the American version of blue planet and she's also the voice of the ship in WALL-E obviously she's the voice he actually doesn't mention that but yeah that's true I'm gonna mention that it's relevant she's the voice of the planetarium at the

[01:05:48] academy of sciences in San Francisco she's totally one of those people she knows her way around water she can just play herself we now now they didn't ask her until near the end yeah they just had a scratch voice and they were like I hope she says yes and she did I also just think every time they do the joke she probably wanted a house she was actually weirdly without one she had never found one she was living in a box yeah every time they do the joke of someone invoking Sigourney Weaver by her full name it gets me yeah it was fun Ed O'Neill there's an

[01:06:18] incredibly long quote that JJ put in he realizes this quote is too long so I'm going to try and just he was like this is newsletter fodder but I'm just gonna try and tell you that I'm gonna boil this down he gets a call he wanted to do finding him you know he gets his agents like finding him he's like I've never seen animation they're just cartoons it's not my thing but my kids like it whatever he is in Mr. Litwack he is he's the owner of the arcade and so he assumes they're like look you're playing an octopus called Hank you're being paid by the session and he assumes like great is it

[01:06:48] like Mr. Litwack like I did that in like one day right he shows up and he's like it was like really intense like the work is grueling the character is going through a lot of like you know motion and stuff so it's like a lot of like watch out and you know yelling and stuff and after three hours he was like all right and they were like you're gonna have to come back you know like we're not like you're gonna keep coming back and then after a while he's like is this like not a cameo and they're like no this is like one of the lead roles that's so funny

[01:07:17] he is so good in this they have said and he didn't know Ty Burrell was in it like they never talk about it and then they watch a preview and he's like what's the octopus doing and they're like oh he's a mimic octopus he can like you know blend with things he's like oh that's cool I didn't know that either you know so that I feel like can be the experience of being in one of these movies if you are not plugged into the Pixar world but are famous yes and you get the call of like hey offer you know we don't have

[01:07:47] to audition you you want to be this octopus and you're just like sure you don't know what you're in for it's just fun it's also because it is such an iterative evolving story process you like do choose your own adventure versions of the movie you know you go in and you do like 15 pages and then a year later they call you and show you something new and you're like how does that track and they're like well that previous thing is gone we've made him this and we took this out they've said it was the most difficult character they ever had to animate that it was

[01:08:17] I mean that makes sense a nightmare so crazy it feels like you know we we've talked about how Stanton likes these kind of self-imposed animation challenges a big thing he said for the first movie Zach is that he was like I don't want to anthropomorphize the fish I don't want to give them movements that are like a human let's just push 10% beyond what a fish could do but try to get everything we can out of just fins and face and whatever and it feels like well now you have a character who's hyper mobile

[01:08:46] and instead of there being a limitation it's the challenge of do as much with him as possible and the choice to make him just like constantly in mission impossible mode is really good also he has no mouth which is such that's like a Stanton thing of like oh their mouth is at the bottom anyone else would be like well you can't have a character without a mouth we gotta cheat and you can tell that he's like I kinda like the idea of just the eyes and it's like

[01:09:16] the eyes and then sort of like a nose bump but it's basically it's like Gromit love Gromit too we all love Gromit he's a great movie star Angus McClain who goes on to direct Wally I mean sorry Lightyear unfortunately is the co-director so you know he's doing a lot of work the film does the film does have a lesbian couple as we know this was the original disgusting Lightyear kiss we see two women pushing a stroller together for two seconds

[01:09:46] truly and even Trump was elected months later obviously all that was sorted out Fox News did genuinely get very upset about this and it was the most annoying shit in the world but they were kind of a conservative couple because they were horrified by the octopus baby that is true they can't accept that someone might have an octopus for a baby they're sort of like it's funny right you know what actually we've all got our you know our kind of boundaries and we have to confront them sometimes yeah it is funny how much that was blown up it also is funny to rewatch it and be like I mean I read it as two moms

[01:10:16] but also one of them has got like a short haircut or whatever I get what they're going for there are like a lot of context clues you could be like these are two moms who brought their kids out separately obviously it is no big deal it would only have been annoying if they had done the Beauty and the Beast thing of like we promise you gay representation is in this movie and then that's what it is or the Avengers thing what do you mean the guy says something and Captain America nods he's like yeah I'm so sad that my dead gay boyfriend

[01:10:45] is dead but still gay and I'm still gay even though he's dead one of the funniest things in the world is for a movie like that to pat itself on the back for finally presenting a gay character and the director to cast himself as the gay character a straight man and be like pretty impressive huh David yes ah

[01:11:14] oh god this is life throwing another thing at me oh no did you catch it no I got hit with it I got pelted pretty hard it's gonna leave a bruise how's that to-do list it's tough it's tough and life keeps throwing more things at me okay well is there maybe something that we could take off your plate have someone else help you out with perhaps a trusted tasker from TaskRabbit David I would love nothing more my ideal life is to do as little as possible

[01:11:44] as much as can be off my plate the happier I am I have children I have logistical responsibilities often of like I need to build a piece of furniture I need to whatever you know hearing about this for the first time but sure I'll buy into the premise the bit of this app and I've used TaskRabbit multiple times for it is literally always like that is the best money I ever spent in my life we here at Blank Check Productions also recently hired a tasker to help us build

[01:12:14] we purchased some new Ikea shelving now why did we do that Ben? the collectible collection that Griffin has been amassing over many years has sort of gotten out of hand broken containment more shelves were needed yes more shelves need to be constructed we needed more places to store the various cool things that Griffin has brought into this space important and we were able to easily bring someone over they did a

[01:12:43] great job and it was so easy to record dang episodes that's what we're meant to do we're not going to make you listen to a Patreon building the shelves with JD Amato taskers have assembled over 3.4 million pieces of furniture completed 700,000 home repairs have handled 1.5 million moves and counting that's quite impressive obviously you know you guys probably know already but you can search on task driver for a tasker based on cost skill set availability past client reviews you know exactly who's

[01:13:13] showing up you can have confidence that they know what they're doing so when life happens your to-do list grows get ahead of it now and get $15 off your first task at taskrabbit.com or on the taskrabbit app David

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[01:15:41] the film begins with this it does this feels like something designed in a lab to make money and make people cry this is another fascinating thing about the alternate openings right where they're like her eyes are the same size and everything else is tiny the alternate openings

[01:16:10] some of them I thought worked better than the actual opening of the movie but the first half of them are sort of there's one I really like where you feel like are we just watching Finding Nemo again it's Marlin running into Dory in their first conversation and then they run into the sharks and it's a little bit of bridge but they're literally reusing the same animation and then Marlin starts beating the shit out of the sharks and you realize this is how Marlin

[01:16:40] tells the story to everyone now that is kind of funny and it's a sort of like visiting parent day at the school and we get a little whiff of that he makes it four sharks instead of three so he's telling the story you get to see it acted out it's really funny and then Dory's there and the kids are like what about you Dory so you're like Nemo's mom and she's like no and they're like are you her aunt they start asking questions about the family structure in a way that makes sense that kids would do but I honestly do like that we don't ever get into that no but I like that

[01:17:10] it's just like they're just a family we don't need to decide what it is yes they're not hitting right we don't think I don't think I don't think yet I also think this movie this movie suggests to me that Dory is much younger than Ellen DeGeneres is well I mean fish age less than humans yeah so but in the first movie I'm like

[01:17:40] oh this is like 240 something fish no I think she's probably in her late 20s in Finding Dory right okay yeah how long do you think a blue tang can live is it really depressing 12 years they can live more than 30 years in the wild so they can live for a long time it says 8 to 30 which is kind of a big range but but commonly they live between 15 and 30 years so she could

[01:18:09] be you know like 10 fish years making her sort of like early middle age or whatever because what I think about is also sort of like how long because they say it's been years they do say when she finally makes it

[01:18:47] like haven't caught find it how do you reset the board so quickly and also start to drive out why Dory is suddenly activated by the lack of her parents and all this sort of stuff and he was like you know the classic Stan thing of like I want it to be a series of flashbacks that reveal themselves gradually or is it one flashback that comes later does the movie open with the flashback and that's a dream and it all comes later and there was one that I thought was really stylistically interesting that was like well what would your memory be like as a child and then on top of that she's got

[01:19:17] short-term memory loss so she's getting glimpses but they're abstracted and it's not a literal scene playing out and then it just feels like in the evolution at some point someone drew up a storyboard where the opening shot is baby dory and everyone was like well you've lost the argument unfortunately you have just found gold and the movie now starts with that no matter what he's not saying this but it definitely felt like suddenly they're all well as long as that's the first shot you can do whatever you want after

[01:19:47] that look I saw this film in theaters it did nothing for me I rewatched it with my daughter and I liked it and then just I by the idea

[01:20:17] of the parents waiting for years is it manipulative I might accuse it of being a smidge manipulative I'm going to rip the band-aid off with little baby Dory with her big old eyes I think this movie is obviously not as strong as the first one it's not as tight as the first one I feel some of it's sort of like searching construction and I think this those dates are

[01:20:47] announced years in advance shareholders are promised we will have a movie that will make a billion dollars in this shake

[01:21:17] shak of Pixar a little bit is the movie starts sometimes feeling a little bit good enough in spots versus the classic Pixar thing being like we will beat this like a drum until we get it as tight as it could possibly be and I don't think everything in this movie works but a thing I think it does incredibly well which is the greatest justification for making this movie and making it distinct from the first one is it is like basically a movie about being a caretaker for a special needs adult right

[01:21:47] right yes that it is a special needs child who is lost and a found family and this notion of like the responsibility of having to care do also think it's about finding it's about like figuring out how to care for

[01:22:16] yourself as as someone who you know my reading of the film is that Dory is a bit neurodivergent she is and it's something I watched Finding Nemo with my wife and we were talking about the Dory character my wife has ADHD and she related so hard to Dory right in terms of just like this experience of kind of not always knowing what you were just doing and blah blah blah so I think it's a lot of that too

[01:23:07] also when they announced like it's Eugene Levy and Diane Keaton playing Dory's parents you're like yeah that math works out that makes sense but I think their perspective of being parents looking at a young child and feeling the concern of will she ever be able to do this on their own then the chosen family going like we know what we've inherited right this is part of the burden of our life we love her we want her here but this is now an added thing on our plate we always have

[01:23:37] to be concerned about her and Dory figuring out how to do things on her own I think all three are dramatically really well done and are tricky kind of landminding things and I also commend this movie for as much as it was pushing its politics on our throat with that lesbian couple it wasn't really doing buzzwordy representation matters shit well no I mean they are all fish yeah but this is not like we're gonna have like a fish in a wheelchair

[01:24:07] or something maybe we could I mean look yeah I guess it could be a little more on the nose everything starts to just break in society right well because you're talking about ghostbusters like I feel like that's the most prime example of like they're like we're doing a girl ghostbusters and it became like a fight or like a you know an internet kind of touchpoint in a way that I think a lot of people like me were just kind of like why who cares if there's a girl what does it matter if there's a girl ghost why are you all activated by this why are

[01:24:37] you angry what's happening the beginning of the culture war and then in retrospect I'm like not you know not that I'm like there shouldn't be girl ghostbusters but I'm like I guess some of this stuff started to feel a little try hard of like you know you've all waited for girl ghostbusters and I'm I have the same indifference where I'm like I haven't honestly right I'm not against it I'm fine with it but I also but you also you don't need to go like take a victory lap about this like per se that's the thing and I think especially as it's like Trump is

[01:25:06] elected everything becomes more divisive Donald J. Trump was actually in 2016 elected president of the United States of America I remember that Disney starts to do the preemptive back padding you know a little bit like Joe Russo starts to be like I'm so fucking gay in this Avengers movie it's crazy Gaston's gonna have an exclusively gay moment which means he dances with a boy right and then it becomes this feedback loop of these movies are annoying they're

[01:25:36] shoving it down their throat they're doing it disingenuously or whatever I just feel like this movie gets there very honestly and doesn't try to weaponize it in any manipulative way as you're saying it's more manipulative in the just basic losing a child thing the kind of family peril stuff but she's lost they just took the character of Dory seriously they did what actually makes sense

[01:26:06] a little bit about how much this movie does the we're going to explain every single random bit of Dory from the first movie it was a bit slumdog millionaire that is a good comparison it's like every one of these things which in them certainly yeah

[01:26:36] and then they're like no no you don't understand she does speak whale she had a whale friend where's in the pipe okay you know she can read because she's surrounded by plaques but also audio narrating the plaques yeah which is fine it's fine but I do like the movie because I all of the kind of

[01:27:06] Pixar thinking of how do we get X to Y how do we move characters through rooms and situations like the coffee pots the floppy I love Nemo and Marlin using the fountain to travel all that stuff I'm like you guys are just kind of at the top of that game right now even if things are getting a little lazy with your sequels or whatever like you're so visually adept I think I think Stan is also particularly good at is the and is credited for this within even the

[01:27:36] larger Pixar films that he's not ostensibly the main writer main director on that he was sort of the guy who could lock in on the like okay if you're Mr. Potato Head how do you feel you know if you're Mr. Potato Head that means your pieces are falling out all the time the inner emotional struggles and psychological hangups of each bug be based on the lady bug has got a chip

[01:28:06] on his shoulder but this movie does similarly after doing so much crunching it whatever remember that he was so good at that that was what's that from it's from Leary so Leary's first special

[01:28:36] no cure for cancer which is all his stuff that he's not famous yet I tried watching that recently it was tough I grew up a Leary fan it's tough to watch not even like this hasn't aged well culturally offensively it's not that offensive it's more just that exactly but then lock and load is second special is the one where he's now kind of famous and has kids and like and so it's more him being like I go to fucking Dunkin Donuts

[01:29:05] they got maple coffee what's going on you know that kind of thing wait did he did he ever do commercials with that as the premise a hundred percent did Dennis Leary ever do commercials yes yes but I feel like there was a commercial one of him being like whatever happened to this that was his whole thing he's pretty good at it the best thing in lock and load is when he rants about the catholic church because you're like oh he really hates the catholic church you know and like that's a little more motivated by like childhood and family

[01:29:34] it was still a pretty touchy thing to do at that point in time right it's a little more hot low you know right but the right the stuff I loved when I was a kid I was like yeah yeah Dennis tell him give it me the like 12 year old person who's never had coffee in his life you know you used to just get a black coffee at the diner or whatever and then he just stopped doing comedy and just voiced ladybugs and saber-toothed tigers and I guess did yeah we're good I mean I love rescue me in a lot of ways like that's another show where you watch it

[01:30:04] now and you're like oh they'd go to jail oh right to jail with all this jail I'm gonna have to watch that yeah start it now it's got some good stuff yeah he's not in this movie no although if they made it in the 90s he probably would be the fucking octopus I mean right like you open with the sort of core trauma they end up you know after him trying to outthink himself doing a version of what he ended up having to do in the first movie of just like show the thing here's Dory she can't remember shit her parents

[01:30:34] are worried all the time they're trying to teach her things just keep swimming in the shells that she can trace as like a Hansel and Gretel bread crumb trail back to them but she gets caught in the the overtide the undertide under under under current no undertow is a different thing it's the undercurrent I think they say but she's in the display that's what I was confused that's what you find out later why would it have

[01:31:04] a current that pushes the fish into the pipe system right it's the vent that's what it is I think ultimately it's the vent it's like a filtering system they're sort of misdirecting you at the beginning to not think that they're not in a natural environment which maybe they cause the fish all seem to know that they will get released so maybe they're just training her for her eventual life in the true ocean when she's little I buy that

[01:31:34] yeah but then you basically run to the section of the movie that feels like a Beatles cover band or something to me where it's like waking up for school going Mr. Ray yes now sure it's not like the most original stuff it still has bits that work you know it's like when you have Ellen doing Dory I'm happy do you know what I'm saying though about how the bits all just feel like alts from the first movie because they're not doing yes the sequel

[01:32:03] thing of oh we they're barely part of it but yes but but for me I was still having fun with Dory Dory rolls her Ellen's line readings in this movie almost every line I'm just like yep that's the

[01:32:49] she could phone this in I do not feel that she phones this no not at all yes like I feel like she gets this character very well still like even in that early sequence that you know is kind of playing the hits that just that bit where where he's like don't go too close to the edge and then she pushes them so far away from the edge and then she's like no no that's too far and brings him back like just I could watch Ellen do that endlessly yeah and you know the first movie that character is clearly meant to be more

[01:33:19] of like a dilemma and just comic relief and the whole surprise was that she brought as much emotional grounding and well roundedness to it that you're like you could make her the center of the side and the story does he not it's very interesting Goldblum is the best because it's not just Malcolm even

[01:33:49] it's also Dr. Ian Malcolm in Independence Day I forget what it's David Doctor Scientist I just rewatched Independence Day and forgot that he says must go faster in it literally that they're just like can you can you just say it again say the thing you said in Jurassic work what if you just said it again but can't we just make the whole movie out of this guy right when he's Goldblum is the lead of resurgence you're like you know he needs to be in the mix like yeah right obviously Jurassic Park Dominion fixed it oh

[01:34:19] fixed it he was so good in that I don't even remember what he did in that honestly it's the live action Moana of Jurassic movies wait what does he do in that one is he on locust patrol in that one yeah is he yeah I remember Neil and all three them are but he's in

[01:34:54] had kids right that they broke up or whatever and in this one Goldblum's like you know she's divorced now and Sam Neil's like oh I wouldn't even know how to tell how I feel we're gonna get to this in old Marlin as well were you a Jurassic Park Dominion fan I don't remember that one I've seen every Jurassic Park movie that's the one about the locust that barely has dinosaurs in it which is a really good formula at all so they basically realized that the company that Wayne Knight

[01:35:24] smuggled the shaving cream can to in the first movie had been the one we never we never followed up on that so they're a rival company that's been doing their own genetic fuckery is this the second world this is the third world yeah yeah and the second world is the one that has like a haunted house movie inside right becomes an auction at a manor in the countryside I don't remember any of this but I will see all of them in theaters you put dinos on a big screen I'm there so that movie has gold blue

[01:35:54] minute but he just has a cameo speaking in front of congress being like we should stop the dinosaurs and then at the end he says welcome to Jurassic world and the premise is that the little clone girl has freed all the dinosaurs that are now on mainland America and so we have to live amongst the dinosaurs they're all dying they're mostly just hang out in the woods they don't bother us so what's this movie

[01:36:24] about the rival genetics company used the shaving cream DNA to do other fuckery but never try to do dinosaur shit and one of their things was that they also do like Monsanto style food fuckery like artificially grown and they were trying to defeat one of their competitors by creating super locusts that would attack their competitors crops but the locusts got too big and now they're eating all the food and we will

[01:36:54] all starve interstellar style to death unless all of our main characters from both people stop the locusts sometimes a dinosaur shows up for a minute I don't remember the details of this one because I think I I've been confusing you with the news I I'm giving you profundity snaps you know there's this moment in one of those I think it's the one you said where he says welcome Jurassic world did you notice this moment where

[01:37:24] like the character is handed like this rectangular piece of paper and then he goes he goes to a bank of America and he has a little conversation with someone and they put it into a slot and then he goes ding ding ding that was the uncredited thing I didn't know what was going on in that Dominion ends with Laura Dern and she's got the Chase banking app open and she keeps scrolling it down to refresh and then she sees the five

[01:37:53] million go up it was a great after credit like someone should do that in a sequel Chris Pratt's like we be like all right everyone we're gonna pay you a lot right like if you want to see dinosaurs I'm like no

[01:38:23] like Scar just like no I've seen them there what do you mean there's so many of I'm excited for the what's the house on the end of the street with the

[01:38:53] dinosaur movie whatever that trailer Zach it's from the director of it follows and under the silver lake and it's suburban family Anne this one suburban street gets

[01:39:22] transported to prehistoric times it looks awesome I'm really into it I'm also really just into the idea of can someone please break the Jurassic franchise's monopoly on dinosaur movies can others do dinosaurs well we have the Kong verse yeah that's true and they do have dinosaurs they're dinosaur is I feel like as they've gone on they've swung further away from dinosaurs and more to can we create our own creatures

[01:39:52] and I miss the straight up they're dinosaur they are adjacent but I always like King Kong just fucking punching a T-Rex beast if he had a glove it would be as good as it was when he had a glove did he get glove first then axe or other way around other way around axe first then glove right right because the axe is made out of like a Godzilla spine or something one scale that he puts inside a big log

[01:40:22] and then the second one he's got the beast glove and I'm hoping that in the next one he gets shoes I think he needs a hat a little fedora a little a jaunty Kong gets a little pretentious or something but I was thinking more of a helmet but I'd like him in a little fedora sure helmet makes me think of like can we put him in like a cannon can we start shooting him out Kong cannon that's fun like Godzilla shows up and is like

[01:40:52] one second and then rolls out a big cannon and is like right there's a big wick he has to light it with his atomic breath I mean now it sounds like we're just workshopping a Donkey Kong movie like we're moving away from King Kong and towards Donkey Kong I did like that Super Mario Galaxy did put in the weirdly realistic T-Rex from Odyssey oh yeah yeah sure yeah yeah right the little baby

[01:41:21] Mario the baby's fuck with a moment in the history of movies is in the Peter Jackson King Kong when he fights the T-Rex and he like breaks his jaw from the inside and then before he throws him

[01:41:59] an animal what do we want to say about the jewel of Moro Bay right she's like I gotta get to California the whole first movie is how hard it is to get anywhere and they're just

[01:42:29] right way and yes yes I think the turtles are sort of the writers of Rohan in my in the before I thought the same thing I was

[01:42:59] he tries to memento her a little there's a little moral dubious and it's another smart kind of Pixar logic thing of oh does that tag is there a power in that kind of tag he wants to get back or he wants to stay in he wants to go to Cleveland so he can live in peace yes right he wants to stop being I can deeply relate to but yes right you're in a box he's untrustworthy he's fresh water I love the way

[01:43:29] he moves yes the way he moves is really fun to watch and I love how frazzled he is sure he's kind of me where he's just like Jesus Christ yeah his character is 90% under eye bags yeah which is good design facial animation yeah he's a septipus of course I like how touchy he is about that right and he helps her find Bailey and destiny is the moment where she jumps in with the dead

[01:43:59] fish how she gets to them right because I like that too because that is it's just dark enough like that's the amount of Pixar dark I want where she's like just play dead I get it you know where you're like let's yeah we can acknowledge this she sees this good line they maintain of like Dory can't be too dumb right like Dory misunderstanding things is funny but especially in a movie

[01:44:28] thank you where I think I think I appreciate your because I was thinking the undertow is a beach thing yeah I think it's a but there is a real thing that they address where it's like all the fish moving around does create like a kind of bottom of the sea current that humans don't think about right that like moves shit around yeah but that's what they call the ocean is scary yeah very scary yeah I love it though get me in there yeah I don't like to go down there do you ever do any sort of like scuba yeah almost no

[01:44:57] that never and I like a snorkeling I barely go in a pool I love to go in a pool I feel like you're like me where we like traveling it's like the greatest luxury of like work when our careers are going well it is nice to get to do it by accident essentially right but I feel like you and I are the same where what we like doing is being a city explorer yeah like I don't want to necessarily go to the tour shit and I don't want to like fucking swim in some fucking thing wait in the severance episode

[01:45:27] where you guys went upstate I mean you went to yeah you know the to the parking the the kier park or whatever uh did you swim because there was a lot of water stuff no I never go in the you you didn't get drowned I'm just in the snow you're just in the snow I can handle sure I know it's I know it's water but it's less scary yeah so come on yeah you can walk on it it's easy it's no big deal you can eat it it's fine avalanche though that's a lot of snow yeah

[01:45:57] well too much of one thing is always bad interesting I mean finding Dory would argue otherwise I suppose so I mean okay so just that it gives you way more Dory than the first time and it still works so destiny's deal is that she's nearsighted and is always bonking into right which is another good reverse logic characterization thing yeah Bailey is embarrassed about his nose noggin beluga I love everything about how strange I like his weird design

[01:46:27] I like they almost always keep him in profile where it feels like he's a 2D character weirdly in a 3D movie and I I really like Ty Burrell's performance but the logic of he now thinks he's lost his echo sonar because he bumped his head and that's why his head looks like that and he's self-conscious about it even though that's just the species he is is really funny to me yeah

[01:46:57] and it is fun that because they're at this sort of like rehab facility everyone is a bit of a misfit so it's like it is really nice the way they all support each other and basically hype each other up and be like you can do this it's the other thing that post blackfish stops it from feeling like a they are stuck here they're being held prisoners is the unifying thing is that all of these creatures are kind of like I don't want to be out there

[01:47:27] they're misfit toys right that's scary and I'm not ready right I like snot fish that's a funny bit yeah fish sneezes yeah do they sneeze you know what I'm gonna go to google.com find out do fish my favorite like no what they don't have lungs so they don't and they don't really have noses I know obviously in Nemo they have these things right but yeah so they don't really

[01:47:56] have the ability to do that fair enough yep sorry my favorite little one scene guy is the overly personable clam oh yeah I think he's so good oh when right when Marlon and Nemo get they get stuck with him right yes he was originally supposed to be their next door neighbor in the opening in one of these fake openings or unused openings I like that he's like a

[01:48:26] muppet yeah right that he doesn't have eyes or anything else that he's just a clam that opens up and is just like this guy's not you know rotate to like decrease the interaction slowly over time which he's not really picking up on it and it's so funny to do that with a character that doesn't have a face

[01:48:56] yeah that is a great little do you know what the but yes they wrote this bit in with him and then even when they cut that opening they were like this guy's too good we have to figure out another way they get stuck with him do you know the scientific term for the bulbous part of a toothed whale's head that contains its echolocation center you know the sort of big thing what's it called a melon they literally just call it a melon that's fun yeah it's fun David

[01:49:28] yeah quick question and be honest oh I saw him swear I will tell the truth and nothing about it thank you when did you last actually think about how much fiber you're eating can't say I can't say anything about it enough actually think about I don't know not not recently enough protein I'm not talking calories fiber fiber it's important fiber in the US fewer than 1 in 10 adults hit their daily recommended intake and fiber isn't a bonus nutrient it's foundational fullness gut health some man certainly affects

[01:49:58] energy blood sugar it touches all of it and as someone who struggles with let's say I do too digestion issues sometimes I try to be mindful of fiber and that's where Huel comes in sponsor of the podcast H U E L Huel Huel is nutritionally complete food one bottle or one scoop gives you everything a real meal is supposed to give you protein fiber carbs

[01:50:28] 27 essential vitamins and minerals this is like the cast of Ocean's 11 in terms of how star-studded it is it's designed by nutritionists to be a full meal not a protein shake you have fuel instead of food when you don't have time for a healthy meal as someone who's not good at scheduling and structuring his life I will admit they sent over a big box the chocolate peanut butter flavored and I have a couple times realized oh I forgot to eat a meal but you can also use powder when you want something more built thicker blended more filling it helps you hit your protein goals

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[01:51:27] for partnering and supporting our show you got the two seals who are sort of the high status we know everything yeah but are assholes too Gerald who you want to defend no well I do want to interrogate I just the movie's positioning of Gerald slightly undercuts the message of the film

[01:51:57] because the film the film is all about like owning your differences and like you know it's okay to have something up with you essentially yes and you can do things and you should be sort of accepted and affirmed and then Gerald shows up and they're like you fucking freak get the fuck out of here what's wrong with your fucking eyebrows don't touch our rock is Gerald a radio is the other thing I don't know what's going on with Gerald yes but

[01:52:27] by radio you refer to the Cuba Gooding junior movie of course not the device for listening to audio transmissions no I am aware of the fact that he is not an electronic device they don't treat him very well they don't they don't and I think you're right the characters and honestly the film itself but it's a one you know it's whatever I mean it feels like them trying to find a new version of the seagull joke right the seagulls is basically like doesn't it kind of sound like seagulls are saying mine and so like with the sea lions the way they barking it's trying to do that again

[01:53:01] stuff that feels similar to Neem you know it's like yeah we should have like these side characters that relay information that are yeah kind of like a big jokey thing it's a little like right because you're combining some

[01:53:31] with also them being the seagulls I think the performances are really funny I like them being two blokes sure you know yeah I have no issues with them I guess the argument is couldn't he have been like a Donnie in the Big Lebowski trio could they still be an asshole to him while he is a character who can speak and isn't coded as perhaps developmentally disabled yeah I mean I think probably but I think Becky they do a much better job with because Becky

[01:54:01] is very much like a microcosm of Dory's story almost where Marlon is like you can't do anything and then they learn oh just trust her and she'll figure it out Becky is a loon a bird literally named for being crazy essentially so interesting do we never hear her do the loon I guess kind of they are crazy it is like I've vacationed on lakes of loons and it does sound crazy when they're just doing that at night it's another thing that I

[01:54:31] think helps with Becky is that the loons are all crazy are all nonverbal and Becky's just a little weirder and she's hot someone finally says it I mean we had to get here eventually I assumed Becky would have a really big part in old Marlon yeah I mean they have chemistry she comes walking through that door again they have chemistry they have sort of a like Marlon almost enjoys the fact that she doesn't listen like

[01:55:01] it's almost like they're developing a sub dom type is it like a Burton and Taylor like the fighting is the juice yeah they're they're towards phantom thread basically of yeah they have this sort of dynamic that you know he likes being like Becky you do this thing and she's kind of like I'm not going to do it's also I think just like a smart refinement for them of Dory isn't lost they're close enough to Dory they're versions of the movie they clearly ran through where

[01:55:31] Dory swims off they know where she is but there's a parallel narrative of Marlon and Nemo needing to get there versus what we're saying of like it's a very different type of environment it's harder to traverse but they're never that far from her it's more like a maze and then I also think it helps create this thing where the tension isn't how do we find Dory it's what you're saying the testing of like you're applying your Marlon logic to this and it's not going

[01:56:01] to work Marlon has to accept her line of thinking Becky's line of thinking yeah sure totally I the whole narrative of like she needs to remember like why the shells mean something to her why that right like and it's very satisfying to sort of I feel like there are too many flashbacks like there's too many filling in there's maybe

[01:56:31] a couple too many but and then I it really changes your perspective on children's entertainment when you watch the movie with the children that entertainment is intended for and you're like right of course like it's on her wavelength it's not on my wavelength it shouldn't be on my way a 37 year old man seeing animated films being alone and being like do I detect a plot hole like

[01:57:00] you know excuse me you don't need to spoon feed this to us and I'm like literally sitting next to a baby being spoon fed it's like you know I was spoon feeding that girl her food more recently than you know whatever like you know she was eating it that was my experience watching goat though where I saw a goat and I was like okay something is a little overstated and I looked next to it and there was like a woman feeding a baby mush in the chair next to me in the theater I was like maybe I need to shut the fuck up when goat

[01:57:30] was available for purchase for 30 whole dollars on iTunes I was like purchase you didn't wait for the steal no I don't buy children's films on steal like the whole it's all digital quick access it needs to be on the iPad it needs to be like she's like I want goat and I'm like gotcha goat it's ready watch there it is get that free digital code are you going to buy the goat steal no I don't like goat okay come on that's never stopped you before did you see goat I didn't goat's good

[01:58:00] you like basketball yeah I mean technically the game is called roar ball yeah I was going to say we might want to take a little dip into the logic it's a little different from basketball yeah rule one yeah animals can play it yeah the ball is very different it looks exactly like a basketball except it has a million holes inside of it so that any type of animal appendage could hold it if you have claws or paws or whatever and the way it works it's like you kind of need like a giraffe on your team to like you know protect the rim

[01:58:29] or whatever right exactly yeah the giraffe is like the center there's an ostrich character who's kind of a wing okay yeah you know like it's all tracks yeah she's good so has your daughter transferred her love of roar ball to basketball at all yet no because I'm so intently trying to brainwash her into liking baseball so she mostly you're working on baseball first yes but you know I am going to try and get her into the WNBA eventually I was going to say I don't know if you've ever met Sims's wife Zach

[01:58:59] I don't think I have she is similarly very tall she's tall she played volleyball David's daughter is almost definitely destined to be oh she's my daughter is in the 99th percentile she's very very tall yes no this could all happen or softball or any athletics the only issue is she she's got those David Sims jeans you know moving around inside of her and they may limit her athletic ability it just might be a hampering my wife did play volleyball through college

[01:59:29] so like she you know she could have yeah but roar ball also yes the home team which might be say like a team with like a jungle environment or an ice environment is allowed to change the court oh by like kind of like erupting a volcano like baseball yeah exactly the home game advantage you're allowed to kind of like press a button basically and go like volcano mode right your stadium mirrors your natural habitat even though all the teams have multiple different species that's very baseball

[01:59:59] and and the environment can be unbelievably hostile bring that right field wall in a little bit that is kind of the right there's like an arctic team and their court is made of ice so if you slam down too hard on it it shatters and then it's just like too fucking bad you can't walk on that part anymore it's good it's good I'll be watching I'm gonna get the steel book I think you should get the steel I think also a very funny Nick Kroll performance is a Komodo dragon I own movies I don't like on steel book but they are out of a specific sense of completism

[02:00:28] they are something like fast x where it's like I own all of them I hate this one so if they make like five more goats then you'll I would need to I would need to opt in wholly on goat at some point for them to eventually get me to buy one I didn't like if that makes sense this is much like yes me owning several Ghostbusters sequels I don't like okay touch pool that's fun we like that sequence very funny

[02:00:58] it is a fun sequence it is the one where Dory's logic made the least sense to me of just keep swimming and then they it didn't matter which part of the touch pool they made it to poke what is the part they reach at the end poke something or sure poking but it didn't it didn't it didn't matter but it is a fun sequence and I like the hands thing y'all ever done a touch pool recently

[02:01:28] I've done that a lot because I've been to the aquarium a lot recently no but in my past David goes to the aquarium like six times a day I do go a lot my daughter loves it I go by myself it's fun to go to an aquarium it's really fun look at all the fish they do have touch pools and they are kind of like you know they're very specific it is not like in Finding Dory sure they're like one animal at a time and we're being gentle with the animals that's good it is that's progress I don't think anything nefarious was going on SeaWorld obviously a rival of Disney's

[02:01:58] it would be in their interest to take SeaWorld down that's true but I after the first movie there were all these stories of like pet fish sales went way up but then kids would beg their parents for a fish and then flush it down the toilet because they'd say like all drains lead to the ocean I'm trying to free them this movie kind of absolves you of the guilt of being a child going to an aquarium uh yeah sure it's like they need that they need the help this is good I've never been to SeaWorld but the children are scary monsters

[02:02:28] that's true I wonder if kids grapple with that that's a good point I mean because it made me feel like I can't ever do a touch pool again it is interesting that right it's like this is actually a pretty good setup for them save the kids if the kids weren't here they'd have it made they like it here yeah the kids are the problem yeah the kids are scary yeah so adults should go to aquariums alone and keep their hands on themselves that I can agree with good since I happened to SeaWorld a handful of times because I would visit with my grandparents

[02:02:58] in Florida they lived outside of Orlando Gatorland was obviously your preference for sure love Gatorland Gatorland is this shitty local park near where my grandparents lived that was just so trashy but great location of also problematic location of the final third act action set piece in bad boys ride or die yes the fourth bad boys ends at Gatorland oh yeah it's a lot of fun

[02:03:28] but um with the mega Gator yeah fun I mean the the whale show is cool they splash you Shamu if you're in the splash zone right like that it is so funny that in the 90s one whale just became a major celebrity Shamu like a household name you know and every SeaWorld location was like yeah yeah this is the one yeah we got Shamu too we got Shamu you like Shamu he's Shamu this is that guy this is that guy from the commercials and the movies and everything is Shamu alive

[02:03:58] no well which one I think Shamu might have yeah she died in August 1971 whoa so even before I was like Shamu died 25 years before Free Willy but then how did I hear so much about Shamu exactly it's a very common name in the whale community can we pick an investigative podcast oh oh yes oh I do I've never seen it I've never seen it I always try to get

[02:04:27] a picture and I can't get it fast enough did you get it come on I think so my angle's not great damn it it's the microphone arm Ben can you move the microphone arm before he oh fuck David pushed it on himself but now he's smiling he's lost it damn it I think I got one I think I got the effort of moving the arm took him out of it it did this is the problem the whole thing about me doing my whale impression

[02:04:57] my impression of Brendan Fraser the poster for the movie The Whale is you really have to let your mind go blank because that's what he looks like on the poster Zach you're a tremendous actor thank you and you just saw David transform in front of you I did but he's not classically trained no it's all instinct it's a precarious process it's very delicate the trance can be broken very easily you see him drop into it so quickly yeah have you seen Brendan Fraser the whale I have not I've heard it described

[02:05:26] in detail on 70 episodes of Doughboys I was about to say 70 almost seems low basically syndicated on Doughboys at this point but no I have not watched Doughboys you could just sort of like piece together the entire movie through all of the various times you know what's funny it's a movie I was probably never going to watch yeah but when I heard he floats at the end that was really what sold me on I won't be I did out loud go get the fuck when that happened

[02:05:56] I was like wait a second I'm sure I was not like I'm sure I've shared this anecdote before but that happened and I went yep and then I heard a sound behind me and I looked and the man sitting directly behind me was like sobbing and convulsing I can't I am interested in developing a live action version of the whale yeah that implies it's a cartoon no we'll just do it without prosthetics oh sure so we'll just sort of you know live action it up yeah but I'm

[02:06:25] that's we're in talks for that we're in talks right it is funny the way the Doughboys talk about the whale you could go well they're reducing it to like five things the jerking off the meatball sub the essay that's all I know that's kind of the fucking movie that's the thing you'd imagine like well they're being really kind of mean to it and if you watch it those things are those are like the A plots like the meatball subs really the whole fucking thing is this they read the essay like ten times keep going back to that damn essay

[02:06:55] the movie's called The Whale because the essay's about movie dick that is why it's called that David the title does not refer to him and his body it refers to the essay and if you thought it referred to him you're the judgmental one and maybe look in a mirror shame on you Zach what do you make of the fact that when Dory I'm bringing us back to the end to this movie to the final act this movie does have whales in it sort of learns that her parents did you know escape to search for her and never came back

[02:07:25] leading Dory to think that they are dead and Dory kind of it's not like she tries to kill herself it's just kind of like throw herself I guess it's like she's despondent she's despondent and it's like Hank scoops her up and then I guess he drops her it's not like she throws herself out of the coffee pot or whatever right but there is that kind of quite shocking but like exciting moment where you're like sort of Dory eye view of like crashing out of the

[02:07:55] pot and like rolling down the drain I don't know it's effective yeah I mean this is another like sort of this movie it has like two kind of darkish moments before it's finally like they're alive and everything's fine and they found her and everyone's gonna be okay I'm re-watching it the octopus scoops up Dory then gets caught and drops yeah that's what it is right because he like he's like where are the others and she's like I don't know my parents are dead and then right yeah when they were supposed to be affected with the same level of memory loss she was gonna find

[02:08:25] them like halfway through because finding them wouldn't solve stuff because they all keep forgetting each other and now it's like how do we save all three of them right really annoying but then I think they end up in this position where they're like well fuck then what is the explanation for why they haven't found her they land on a good thing of they were trusting she would make it back to them yeah I think it makes sense and they were doing everything to stay in one place right and we'll just keep building a map I don't know if that was the healthiest choice but it was I mean it's a little

[02:08:54] bleak if you think about it too hard because they're completely isolated they're not near any other living creatures nope they it seems to be they're living in the dark you might want to build a support network of other people who can spread the word it's also it is another fish family with one child yes you know what I mean after like finding Nemo goes to pains to be like look the rest of the eggs got eaten this is an unusual situation because it is true that like fish generally have like clutches and eggs

[02:09:22] um I also think that it works largely because this is where they really get their fucking money worth out of Diane Keaton sure their sag scale but buy a house with the residuals a year later money out of Diane Keaton where she I think really dramatically sells the like we just trusted you would find us and you did to make it a moment of triumph of like look at

[02:09:52] you you did it I assume that's where you and your wife start sobbing it is very effective it's just you know like the fundamental thing that I think is very affecting to watch as a parent is when you see Dory as a child suffering from memory loss it feels much more like profoundly awful which is the of course the drama of the right the flashbacks and all that but the young Dory is much more self-conscious about it and worried about and you're anxious about it and all that right right right and then yeah just the catharsis yeah just

[02:10:21] like dude though like all the you know tiktok's always serving to me like watch you know the child see his soldier dad returning from the airport and it's just within one second I am just like on the edge of you know you watch that now and after two seconds the child like lifts up the dad and throws him through a wall and you're like this is AI Wilford Brimley starts like puking oatmeal have you seen these there's some account I keep seeing I'm just like this is

[02:10:51] another Wilford Brimley interview from Larry King I'd love to watch this and then after three seconds he starts like projectile vomiting Quaker oats I can't even search for that because I don't want the algorithm it's like when yeah you watch one of those you're cooked Emma Stefanski friend of the show was like do you know about hot Hagrid and I'm like what are you talking about she's like hot Hagrid and I googled it and it was like there was a whole tiktok sub-sulture people were like horny for Hagrid but then of course immediately my phone was like oh you like that

[02:11:21] you want as much of that as we can give you this might be the only opportunity I ever have to tell this story it's related to hot Hagrid okay go on I don't remember how it came up but I do remember that during shooting season one of severance I did tell John Turturro that people want to fuck Shrek and it was fairly early in the season and I remember him sort of

[02:11:51] being like okay that was just like the end of the conversation my impression of making the show especially the way like I guess you would do the COVID for it's like you guys are in that set for like yes forever yes yes like for so long it's just you're at these consoles next to each other we ultimately did get quite close and I bet if I told him about it now the conversation would go differently I want to know more but this was it was probably in the first two weeks of shooting I'm amazed he knew about Shrek

[02:12:20] I guess Shrek's everywhere all our kind of elder statesmen Italians of the screen and stage are learning about Shrek later in life of course Pacino's got the phone case Turturro knows that people want to give it to him yeah he knows now yeah how I mean how many voices has Turturro done well of course he's Francesco Bernoulli in Cars 2 I think I like to mention a lot you see in any of the hotel Transylvanias never not and that's actually a shame especially considering how close he is

[02:12:50] in the Happy Madison he was in Del Toro's Pinocchio who do you voice the Torre I don't know okay I saw it one time yeah but yeah I think he needs to do a little bit more Cars 2 sucks and is for losers and babies and even babies should be embarrassed that they like it it is one of the most insane movies ever made I tried to give it another watch recent I did watch it through but I was like well I have any perverse appreciation for just how insane it is now and it still is more annoying than interesting to me even with all of its weirdness

[02:13:20] Totoro's very good in it he's like a Formula 1 car or whatever he's a Formula 1 car who's really like haughty I gotta watch that's a slam dunk for him yeah I do I do want to say one more thing about Finding Dory my favorite part of the movie which we've maybe briefly touched on or whatever it's sort of happening at this part of the film is the moment where it starts with Nemo and Marlon when they're stuck in the

[02:13:49] fountain and yes in the gift shop and they start saying what would Dory do and then they reunite with her and they tell her that and then for the rest of the movie Dory starts saying what would I do and I found that quite affecting and very like because I do think it's something I think people who have a variety of issues it's really hard to have confidence in yourself when you're like dealing with that kind of stuff and so I think this idea of just like trusting in yourself

[02:14:19] and almost like making yourself a a like heroic figure to look up to I thought was really kind of beautiful honestly to I also I think I know I think what it expresses very well is that Marlon is willingly bringing Dory into his family and taking on responsibility for her but is clearly burdening him with a tremendous amount of stress and more than being like neurotic around Nemo he's clearly just like fuck I'm like on the clock

[02:14:49] at all times making sure Dory doesn't kill herself and what Nemo like teaches him in that moment of like oh right she is self-sufficient and she helped you fucking find me right my like he has to not that he doesn't want to still help her yeah no I know I know I think because there's that scene where he's like yelling at her that is genuinely effective it is like he's being an asshole and he's not being an asshole in the way he is in the first movie of you're being annoying no he's being an asshole

[02:15:18] because it feels like his weight right yeah right and it's it's it's appropriate Marlon is no fun in this movie but you know it all it all lines up with the characterization hey it's also nice when Dory's parents point out that Dory was able to eventually find that's what I was saying yeah it's like a really it's a it's an effective win for Dory now I was texting with JJ our researcher about this last night sure and what's his status uh

[02:15:47] I don't know he took a long time to tell us that like a roof guy was coming to his house and I was not happy I really wanted to know that kind of information right away we texted him something he like he thumbs up so text hours later like that I had said and then said like sorry I thought I had thumbs up that earlier but my roof guy was here to look at the roof and I said thank you so much for filling us in JJ was really worried yeah I was like you know you really you gotta be keeping me more updated this is the first I'm hearing of it yeah

[02:16:17] that's crazy that he didn't even text you about it right that's actually yet to mention it we might have to fire him because I feel like every time it hails in Wisconsin JJ's up my ass being like more hail and I'm like alright and yet I don't even hear what's happened to the roof he sent us a series of texts about going to the local university library to take out a bunch of books on Martin Scorsese to start researching for our next mini series and was texting us about how difficult it was for him to bike home in the rain

[02:16:47] with all the books and we just necked him so fucking hard where we're like huh JJ those books look pretty fucking dry to me he sent a picture of a stack and I was like I don't look wet I don't see a single droplet um now we sound like assholes what I was gonna say is that JJ while prepping this dossier texted me and said are you more pro on Dory than Sims and I was I think we're both pretty pro and he was saying like good I just wanna make sure it's a positive episode and I said

[02:17:16] yeah I think the first 15-20 minutes suck basically everything from when they get to the Marine Institute on rules and he said yeah that's right and it like rules rules IMO and then I think perhaps the most dead on profound point that JJ has ever made in his years of working for this show better than the roof stuff there's an octopus driving a truck what the hell else do you want yeah that part rules it is the moment where I was like Stanton still got the fucking magic and the chaos in him yeah of just the audacity

[02:17:46] of being like you know what I'm gonna try to do I'm gonna try to construct an actual proper action sequence that can be driven by the fish that is affecting the human world that is pushing further than like you know the strain of the first movie is if the fish swim down it'll turn over the boat right yeah sure I mean it reminds me Toy Story that's what I love it's kind of just like what if these guys were in our world what's the craziest thing that they might be able to achieve you know like

[02:18:15] could these toys drive a car could they you know it's a push it's heightened but it feels similarly affected by a logic of fucking once a year we'll hear some insane story of a thing like this that happens if not this crazy you know I saw a video recently of a dog honking a horn over and over this is the thing there's always some story of like it's basically the same thing that happened right a bear walked into a 7-11 and worked a shift and you're like what and then you watch the video and you're like this rules

[02:18:44] there he goes I feel good about the world for one hour I just think this sequence is excellent and it feels like he keeps heightening how far you think it could possibly go in straining credibility and it's silly but there is a really good worked out internal logic of like you said in a Toy Story way like how much actually affect things and we've already seen them sort of do a dress rehearsal with the stroller yes so it's like you kind of are just bought into like this octopus can move he knows

[02:19:14] what he's doing you know and then weaponizing the otters is great I feel like you want to talk about the otters Ben who doesn't love an otter I was just trying to move us along but yeah who doesn't love an otter they're cute I'm with you man let's wrap up Finding Dory I don't remember what else happens anyway what's the song when the truck is like slow motion is it good I can't remember um I don't know yeah the end credit song in this is unforgettable which is clever after the first one has that was nice beyond the city of course

[02:19:44] there's the closing little moment with Marlon and Dory looking out over the the beautiful yeah you know landscape right coral neighborhood yep totally but just yeah the serenity of that moment of them all sort of the peace and the comfort in their family it's what a wonderful world it's Louis Armstrong yeah I see the tree that's the song on my way over here I was singing the song uh

[02:20:12] can you find me Dory so that of course they could have used that that would have been that is Creed's can you take me higher that's right yes okay but first it I just was I couldn't stop doing it Ken now I'm gonna be doing that now I'm gonna be doing it's beautiful now can we throw down the gauntlet for the can you find me Dory challenge so you were doing this walking over here yeah listeners send us a video of you walking

[02:20:42] in public singing can you find me Dory can you um but you have to do it in public while commuting do we want a third Dory Nemo you know they they doctor recently kind of said like hey it's a big ocean like he kind of hinted at it of like we're thinking of ideas like blah blah blah and as you say Ellen went from I've retired from public life to I guess I'm making a short film in which I star as Dory right so like she's cracking the door open it feels like something is

[02:21:11] Albert Brooks is old he's old but he was recently in a film perfect world Marlon I do I think it's such a rich world where like it doesn't have to be about even these characters like yeah they do such great world building with each like the turtles and the sharks and the stingrays and the like I just would watch any any more ocean life it does it do be looking good if we're under the sea yes I will say and this is just like a personal

[02:21:40] preference thing the technology the leap between the first film and the second film is obviously huge not to mention now they basically have unlimited budgets these movies are so profitable these characters are so valuable the sequels right can kind of that they're truly like just send us the bill when it's done it doesn't matter how much it fucking costs it helps us as a company to have Dory back out there I was talking a lot in the episode of the first film about all the cheats in that movie of how they pull off the depth and the texture

[02:22:10] and the elements of the ocean and how a lot of it is kind of like the CGI version of old stagecraft where that movie feels a little bit more like an archer's film and it's sort of representational way of capturing that and this you're just like they have all the money and they have all the technology and they could just render everything perfectly it does look beautiful but I miss the sort of I don't know the movie magic of the first one this may be very goofy a wicked style reclaiming of Gerald okay

[02:22:41] Gerald for good yeah we kind of learned that in fact Gerald was right all along he was a genius yeah yeah Stan in that Entertainment Weekly article had this quote that has I've seen the internet immediately run with misinterpreting as Toy Story 5 director announces Toy Story 6 and 7 okay everyone's been running this as a headline what he said basically was he said 6 7 and he did his hands like this right and everyone laughed and Disney

[02:23:10] started like doing projections right no he was talking about how they came to him and said do you have any ideas for 5 and he started noodling on it he wasn't planning to direct it and then he really liked the idea he said we'll start writing it start directing it was 3 the definitive ending and then when we opened ourselves up to that's Andy's story there are other things you can do we keep thinking the series is ending and he said something

[02:23:40] to the sort of effect of you sit down for 2 hours and start doing the mental exercise about other toys and what their lives would be and immediately you just come up with ideas for 2 more movies right he was basically like right and everyone just took that as they have an idea for 2 more movies that will exist right and he was just sort of saying and I think this is his superpower that you know Toy Story 4 was notoriously a disaster forever that they couldn't crack it was the one movie they kept pushing back even though they had all these big money

[02:24:10] deals because they were like we don't have it and then they finally went to him post-finding Dory and said do you have anything and he was like what about this and they were like fuck that's good and then he took over kind of co-writing the movie I think he's the guy who's really smart about locating something that feels kind of organic that is just sitting there in the world that you've developed and what the human story is there the emotional story that you can like explode out of that I dread

[02:24:39] the notion of them announcing something literally like finding Marlon or Nemo's now grown up and his child goes missing but I'm like if they could come up with an idea that's just sit down and think about other things that could happen in the ocean with fish even if it is led by these characters I just think you can't do since this movie is the flip flipping it again I agree I don't think it needs to be finding anyone right you know who does flip flipper flipper flipper hasn't worked

[02:25:09] in a while yeah well again some problematic he was on the shitty men in media list this film was supposed to come out Thanksgiving 2015 they instead decided to give that to the good dinosaur I had a great meal that year 2015 Thanksgiving yeah this is why nobody beats the Zack it would have been good to pair with Dory the only way that meal could have been better that's the only thing missing is instead

[02:25:39] you had to pair with the good dinosaur yeah good dinosaur obviously didn't do very well that was notably one of the the first I think it was the first Pixar movie to lose money I think that was the first Pixar movie to ever confuse me it sucks it's really confusing I remember watching I watched the whole thing as an adult and I was just like I don't know what is happening it's also it's it's the first one where you're like you guys never cracked this yeah you guys have released this film because you had to but you did not know what it was

[02:26:08] Cars 2 sucks but it is like poorly conceived and then it is a successfully executed version of their stupid idea good dinosaur you're like where did this start what did you think you were making can any of you take pride in what you've released now I was going to say though that was the first year that they released 2 uh in 2015 I think it was Inside Out and Good Dinosaur in the same year so it was sort of like Inside Out covered the Good

[02:26:38] Dinosaur's losses yeah right and that did so well right exactly and I think they flipped Finding Dory and Good Dinosaur because they were like Dory is a guaranteed hit Good Dinosaur is a guaranteed flop can we sandwich it with the flop in between successes right so Dory comes out June 2016 it opens 135 million dollars at the domestic box office which is an animated movie record at the time beating Shrek the third which had held the record for a decade Zach just gave me a

[02:27:07] very funny look John Turturro a look yeah hopefully that much his majesty hey sex sells it makes close to 500 million dollars domestic it makes a billion dollars worldwide only the second Pixar movie to do that after Toy Story 3 it was not by the Academy Awards as I pointed out and Stanton does not go on to make another animated movie until Toy Story 5 right

[02:27:37] yes we'll talk about it in the next episode but he very much was like he moves to TV well he was like the John Carter thing wasn't a one-off I want to be directing live action and what follows is like eight years of him signing on for a bunch of things attaching himself to blacklist scripts movies set up at various points in time that don't happen and directing a tremendous amount of TV he did a fair amount of TV he directs two episodes of Stranger Things

[02:28:07] an episode of Better Call Saul an episode of Legion an episode of Tales from the Loop remember that one four episodes of the excellent show for all mankind including one of its best ever episodes in my opinion his Better Call Saul episodes also really excellent I will say sure and one episode of the well remembered Netflix show Third Body Problem he's a consulting producer on that sure and he was a consulting producer

[02:28:38] there's more of I love them all I love them so much they're the greatest books ever and you read them and you're like anyone who thinks they could adapt this is a fool like this is the most unadaptable shit in the world it has like 400 characters most of whom are Chinese like and so you just have to immediately start like messing with it which is what the show did over a massive timescale millennia yeah and like you read the first book and you're like wow that's hard you read the third book you're like

[02:29:08] that makes the first book look like fucking where's spot like that makes the first book look like a cardboard book for children anyway they're so good I've never watched the show also a consulting producer and writer on Obi-Wan a show I've recently watched and think is quite terrible not very good but felt like a very much I would imagine Obi-Wan was just a swing and miss in the dirt like the ball is nowhere near them and they're like no we can get and it's just not even close I just find it interesting

[02:29:37] he didn't direct any episodes of it it's not like he was the main creator I have to imagine that was a play at that moment when suddenly it was like Star Wars production was ramping way up they're gonna make a bunch of shows is this a way to sort of get my foot get my foot in there maybe I do a different Star Wars thing or I don't know Debra Chow was the director of that entire season she did it all but instead he does not make another live action film until 2026 when of course he released In the Blink of an Eye Zach do you know that Andrew Stant

[02:30:06] released a live action movie on Hulu months ago no and months from now I haven't heard of it Kate McKinnon is the star of it Rashida Jones Daveed Diggs and very soon Toy Story 5 will be released with him as the director that one's gonna do pretty well it's gonna do pretty well he has once again replicated the same post John Carter thing of you guys forgot I have another get out of jail free card by the time this is out

[02:30:35] Toy Story 5 has come out so one assumes unless it tried to like assassinate the president at a dinner or something it did great like I don't know what might happen in the meantime to derail Toy Story 5 it seems like it's on a good I have a I have a a Woody email dump that I've been sitting on Woody might have gone to an island okay Woody logs he might have flown on a certain express the Pizza Planet logs

[02:31:04] yeah Pizza Planet actually used to be called Comet Pizza let's talk about it it is is there anything that could happen that would prevent that movie from making like a billion dollars I don't know I mean I remember everyone felt that way about Toy Story 4 yes and then it's slightly under delivered box office wise although in the end of the day it made a ton of money I was I was wrong when we were trying to talk about the box office and whatever episode it was

[02:31:34] it basically ended up at the exact same number as 3 right just many years later but it was also post the sort of Finding Nemo Finding Dory had such a big jump and Incredibles 2 Incredibles 2 had such a big jump the Despicable Me movies were like rising on each one that people assumed well 3 was so big 4 will be even bigger and the answer is that like 3 is about as big as a movie can get ditto 4 the ceiling might have been established but it's also incredibly high

[02:32:03] now speaking of box office June 17th oh sure here we go yep Finding Dory is opening number 1 number 2 is an action comedy so is this Central Intelligence yeah I fucked it up by looking at the the rest of the summer lineup a little bit but I don't know what specific so the rock he big yes Kevin Hart not so big Zach what if they were in a movie you're smiling what are your thoughts of course I love that movie now I remember I saw that film at the pavilion which is now the Nighthawk Prospect Park but it was in the

[02:32:32] dying days of the pavilion I had to see it to review it and I like missed whatever screen they were like the screening is you just missed it you know like one of those things and I watched it in like you know probably like a freezing cold theater with like a garbage bag for a blanket or whatever and I remember when the rock was young he was like he's kind of like a nerd he was like a chubby nerd he's very overweight the CGI him on his face onto like a CGI body it's terrible looking and I'm gonna do a live action remake of that as well

[02:33:01] good I love how you say live action remake of a movie that is largely live action yeah I'm just doing it but I'm just doing the fat for real does do this oh natural right God yeah and there's a lot of it don't remember much else about that movie I'm just a huge I'm a Kevin Hart Mark like anything he makes back then especially I laugh he could make it he's funny I think the rock is funny in that as well I don't like that movie

[02:33:31] but they're both good in it they're locked in the plot is whatever it was just one of those things where they were like rock big heart small make a poster we'll write the script later do you know what the tagline was for the film yes I do because it was what my review was about it's so bizarre because the poster does not have their names above the title instead the tagline is saving the world takes a little heart and a big Johnson it's rare that there's a tagline that's a joke about the actors names yeah

[02:34:01] it's not it's not bad but that movie sold itself that's the start of their partnership that's the first one and then what was the one they did right after that legally cannot make a movie without the other one cameoing yeah right and then they're also doing fucking commercials Central Intelligence was a hit it was a big hit 127 yeah number three the box office is a horror sequel you did mention it already but Conjuring 2 Conjuring 2 excellent film very good of the Conjuring I'll always like the first one best

[02:34:30] but I do like it and I love the scene where Patrick Wilson sings that's him playing Elvis by the campfire seen Conjuring 2 I've only seen the first Conjuring which is very good I will eventually make my way through the Conjuring the devil will make you do it yes but I've only seen the first Conjuring Last Rites is one of those movies that I already have forgotten if I watched it I think I did right like I waited like no one liked it so I think I waited for HBO and I'm pretty sure I watched it but it is not in there with you I don't know

[02:35:00] if I ever saw it or not I think I did but I can't be sure this is why I have Letterboxd because you know I'm 40 years old parenting's breaking the old brain I felt sure I hadn't seen it I watched it but now I can't say one and a half stars oh right Haunted Mirror I might have seen some of the spinoffs well there's a lot of them La Llorona La Llorona Annabelle La Llorona I think I watched Annabelle yes watch out for her doing a La Llorona sequel like eight years later sure why not apparently that thing

[02:35:30] has just become like the most watched movie in the history of movies I think that one did have a long like Netflix tale long tale number four at the box office is another sequel it's a two it's a movie that got a three many years later more very much more recently and is it a three that finally landed on the right title that is correct this is Now You See Me numeral two one of the most offensive movie titles of all time at the very least it should have been Now You See Me comma T-O-O I agree I agree

[02:35:59] but it should have been called Now You See Me Now You Don't right which they eventually did do and then they made the bad boys mistake where by not using that title for the second one they couldn't call the third one Now You Three Me which is what it should have been I guess so instead the third one is Now You See Me Now You Don't I've never seen any of them and the fourth won't be called Now You See Me Now You Revolution legacy I've always heard that they are fun they seem like silly insane movies number five at the box office is a huge flop based on a video game Warcraft that did make

[02:36:29] 400 million dollars in like China alone essentially Eagle Court Street just to see it like opening weekend with like four other people and watch it was kind of like this is so good I'm smoking an imaginary cigarette that's also not something I do such a spaghetto I was gonna call it out a very funny specific moment where Hollywood was like huh maybe we just make movies for China like there was half a second

[02:36:58] where they were like it made so much money in China that maybe we make American blockbusters just for them and then China was just like no we'll just make our own go away have you seen Warcraft? I don't think so have you played Warcraft? I did I I'm more of a Starcraft guy I had a deep World of Warcraft sure era I never did that in college that's the MMORPG you know right I went to see it with Juan Nicolón the great comedian former UCB teammate of mine

[02:37:27] and he's a big Warcraft fan and at the end of the movie I think the Toby Kebbel orc has a baby and he turned to me and went so like that baby is kind of the most important character in Warcraft lore and I'm like this is what everyone's fucking up why is the movie ending? yeah start with the baby what are you talking about? what the fuck have I been watching then? it's like if Superman was born at the end of yeah end of the movie if the movie

[02:37:56] was called Superman but the whole movie was about Jor-El yeah and you're like that baby's Superman this is true I'm no little Warcraft expert but I do know that they did number six is X-Men Apocalypse as you mentioned terrible movie the original Gentleman 6 which is embarrassing to admit now it's crazy that yeah you were like hey it's a 6 and I was like I don't know and then I called it a Gentleman 6 and now once a month for the rest of our lives someone on the Reddit starts a thread can you explain to me what a Gentleman 6 means?

[02:38:25] and it's just people trying to parse my definition number seven is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Out of the Shadows which we've covered on our Patreon which is fun that's the one that's good that's the good one that's the Bebop Rocksteady one right the better live action Dave Green director of Cody vs. Acme right the live action I mean like CGI the Bay the Bay the Platinum Dunes is there any fat guys in that movie? Bebop and Rocksteady Bebop and Rocksteady I'm gonna be doing a live action it's prime for a live action remake you got two big guys

[02:38:55] you could play both you could clump it I'm gonna do a clump a clump Bebop I mean you should also do a live action clumps I would love to do that number eight is Alice Through the Looking Glass which is terrible yeah number nine is Me Before You that's the Emilia Clarke Sam Claflin yeah sure oh yeah that's like based on a book she's in one of them's a tearjer in a wheelchair or something

[02:39:24] yeah exactly who wants to do assisted suicide right that's right number ten is Captain America Civil War which obviously is a big hit yes thing I love to call out about Alice Through the Looking Glass it's the rare reverse Spy Who Shagged Me where the movie in total made less than the first movie made in its opening weekend is that like a horror a horror Alice? no it's just the second Tim Burton but without Tim Burton and everyone else it's Depp

[02:39:54] and Houndabon Carter and Anne Hathaway and Sasha Baron Cohen plays Time yes he does he plays the concept of Time in a performance it's not that bad that I feel like you've always stumped I'm like he's actually doing something in that one yeah Zach Zach is like looks intrigued yeah I kind of want to touch it out the plot of that movie is that the Mad Hatter is bummed out and they have to figure out why he's bummed out it's sort of like he's lost his mojo thing yeah right

[02:40:23] what's the matter with Hatter he's in a grumpy mood was the tagline and so she has to use the time guy to go back in time to figure out that like the Mad Hatter's dad was mean to him or something I think I'm remembering the trailers yeah plays the Hatter's dad I don't fuck oh Jesus now I gotta look it up like Keith Richards or something no that's pirates did that I know but I'm like can't do that twice who would Depp have cast to play Dad Hatter I don't know Reset Fans of course

[02:40:53] Reset Fans does it yeah that makes so much sense anyway but this this film Tori Tori's a good time Tori's a good time she's not she's not changing the world this movie but like it's a good time one thing we didn't talk about yet and this is a good time for it because it was sort of in the credits I fucking loved the sort of tableaus with Hank where you you like don't know where he's gonna be and then he he pops up I could have watched

[02:41:22] that for a full hour just like I love when he goes into the fishbowl and makes himself look like a plant yeah it's awesome like that was great yeah they should do they should do that for the sphere yeah you put a a feature length just finding Hank slideshow at the sphere well you know the Finding Nemo DVD which is the best selling physical media release of all time still or certainly movie

[02:41:51] had aquarium mode was it's big feature was you could press a button and it would just play an endless loop of like a Yule log equivalent of Pixar animation your TV screen is an aquarium so you you would love just I would a four hour loop of Hank in a room and he's sneaking into different spots yeah and you just don't know where he's gonna be at first and then it's like oh there he is there he is and then he hides again yeah Hank's a really good guy Zach do you have

[02:42:20] anything you want to plug um when does this come out it comes out uh July 12th okay I believe there's one more Rat Scraps oh yeah Rat Scraps is ending I believe there will be one more show New York Improv New York Improv Show at Caveat Theater I believe our final show is in August sometime so check it out Ellen doing monologues uh hey we don't know yet but I'll certainly reach out um but yeah

[02:42:50] it's an improv show I do uh or have done we're we're ending our run after five years I think um yeah so I believe the final show is in August caveat.com google it you'll you'll figure it out come to the last show come to the last show you are in I'm just looking at your Wikipedia page now you're in Jane's new movie that's right I'm very excited for that that's out I think in August uh teenage sex and death at camp miasma there's we got some I got a busy year on the

[02:43:19] you got a good slate coming up right you're in breadwinner you're in the breadwinner which is out at this point yes the uh Nate Bargetti movie that's right right uh you're in Resident Evil of course according to Wikipedia of course Zach Greger's Resident Evil can confirm of course can confirm you can very excited you're in a Kevin Hart movie called 72 Hours I am wait what that's a Netflix origin I got to work with my guy stunned to learn that Kevin is making a Netflix original saving the world is gonna take a little heart and a little cherry yeah

[02:43:49] I tried to push that they said I'm not really a main character they said I'm more of uh sort of minor supporting interesting it's a little rude yeah uh you're in Lauren Miller Rogan's new movie although I don't know when that's coming out but that seems like that's a great cast yeah it was a lot of fun yeah we got some fun stuff you got lots of fun stuff keep your eyes peeled and there's Severance on Apple and Fallout on Prime Video and I don't know what else is out there yeah you start filming

[02:44:19] Severance in a couple months which means it will premiere uh next decade right no comment there you go no talking about Severance great show I love it uh you're the best best show on TV and you're the best best guest on podcast good always good to be here it's very nice to have you and whenever that 1517 to Paris comes into the station oh dude like Clint I mean look I know we're about to do nine months of Marty yeah so like one year of Clint isn't exactly like

[02:44:48] the best follow up yeah but like someday you know if you want to give me the green light for a year of Clint but the Clint won't take that long because we can do each episode in one take that's true we should actually like commit with the Clint's to being like we need to be done in 80 minutes and break for lunch or whatever right we have to honor him somehow yeah love that idea that would actually be fun the Clint bit is 10 minute episodes yeah I mean seriously let's not make a big deal out of it it's good uh thank you all for listening please remember to rate review and subscribe

[02:45:18] next week we are going straight into in the blink of an eye uh yeah I think so just making sure there's no new release stuff with all the summer oh wait shit it is the Odyssey it's the Odyssey Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey this is why I asked yes yeah yeah there you go so the next two weeks we will be covering the two biggest films of 2026 I'm hyped for that The Odyssey and In the Blink of an Eye mhm how do we think Odyssey's gonna be I'm so excited consider me seated yeah I'm so seated

[02:45:47] I'm seated in a horse and I love I'm excited for Bernthal and The Odyssey I'm really excited for that hey can I fucking talk to you I love that guy just like the idea of like and Hathaway's like when will my husband come he's like I don't know hey I don't fucking know your husband's on some sort of Odyssey or something okay good cousin come on long time cousin you need to open your own restaurant a series of small trials he can't stop playing Mike yes uh anyway tune in next

[02:46:17] week for that and as always Disney make the call Zach Cherry is ready and tech avail to develop old Marlin I'd love a house a show about Marlin getting some strength even just give me let me do a little voice do a little voice in old Marlin I could be like uh what's a what's a sea creature they haven't done yet uh star no starfishes uh tadpole snail sea snail oh

[02:46:47] I'm a little snail that's pretty good wait a second what's your what's your deal blank check owns that okay you come through us I have some type of trauma as well okay very good we could tease this out after a couple seasons yeah Dory I accept and love you oh it's Dory's boyfriend yeah that's my pitch it's a good pitch

[02:47:14] blank check with Griffin and David is hosted by Griffin Newman and David Sims our executive producer is me Ben Hosley our creative producer is Marie Barty Salinas and our associate producer is AJ McKeon this show is mixed and edited by AJ McKeon and Alan Smithy research by JJ Birch our theme song is by Lane Montgomery in the Great American Novel with additional music by Alex Mitchell

[02:47:43] artwork by Joe Bowen Ollie Moss and Pat Reynolds our production assistant is Minix special thanks to David Cho Jordan Fish and Nate Patterson for their production help head over to blankcheckpod.com for links to all of the real nerdy shit join our Patreon blank check special features for exclusive franchise commentaries and bonus episodes follow us on social at blankcheckpod subscribe to our weekly newsletter checkbook on Substack this podcast is created and produced by

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