Finding Nemo with Rebecca Alter

[00:00:23] Guess what? Podcasts? I recorded one and it was three and a half hours long. Three and a half hours long? Yup. Oh, because Sandy Plankton said they only run two hours tops. Sandy Plankton? You think I would do an entire podcast and not know as much as Sandy Plankton? It was three and a half hours, not two. Very good. So that's the end of the movie. Yeah, it's one of the last lines. One of the emotional lines. It does. Makes me cry too. There's like five different moments in this film.

[00:00:52] That at very least get me right up onto the edge. On the brink of the tears. To me, the big moment is just Crash seeing his age. That's the moment that gets me. That's the one? Yes. Interesting. Beautiful moment. It's so beautiful. This movie, this movie is just filled with these little grace notes that are, I just think so elegant, that are like funny and charming and don't feel like they're hitting too hard. Agree. It is, in my opinion, this is like one of those movies that should be taught in every kind of like,

[00:01:22] conventional Hollywood. Sort of storytelling lab or whatever. Yeah, because it's just, it is an incredible set up payoff movie. Another thing that's filled with grace notes is the notebook of the character, the main character from Project Hail Mary. Oh, because his name is Ryland Grace. I think there's not enough discussion of the fact that Ryan Gosling plays Ryland Grace. Ryland Grace. Because it's a Hail Mary full of grace, I believe is the. No. Jesus Christ.

[00:01:48] I think that's what Andy Weir, who's, in my opinion, a master of subtlety, is going for there. I enjoy that movie greatly. Yeah, it's fun. It's fun. And I think I'm now forced by law to knock it down a star, now that you've explained that to me. I mean, it's just my read on it. I mean, look, why is it called Tinder? Speaking of, why is it called Tinder? Because you get matches. Oh, Jesus fucking Christ. And it's one of those things that I tell people all the time, and they're like, that can't be true. And I'm like, that's literally why it's called that. Unfortunately.

[00:02:17] That's when they came up with that name in 2012. I am required by law to go onto the app store and knock Tinder down a star as well. Because famously you rated it five stars in the app store. Perfect app. Only good things have ever come of it. In my mind, there are only a few perfect apps. Facebook. Twitter. X. But yeah. Truth Social. Truth Social. Very good. I count Twitter and X as two separate apps. And both of them get five stars for me. Right.

[00:02:46] It's Terminator versus Terminator 2. X, I wish I could give it six stars. That's the problem. Because they improved on perfection. They did. I'm just saying that to invoke another Albert Brooks film, everyone made a fucking meal out of, you're telling me Emma Mackey is Ella McKay? We've gone too far. No one's saying, really? In this day and age, in this economy, Ryan Gosling is Ryland Grace? Ryland Grace. Oh, you can't spell one without the other.

[00:03:15] They're just very similar. It's weird. What's the, um, uh, oh, Rocky. The rock character's called Rocky. Yeah. That was also- One of our biggest movie stars, I would say now. He's maybe top ten, Ren Track. What was Tony Erdman called? What was Tony Erdman called? Sandra Huller. You know, it'd be funny if she's just called Tony Erdman. I know that's not her name in that movie either. Yeah. It's the dad's character's name. I know. What's her name in the movie? It'd be funny if she was just like, hello, I'm Tony Erdman.

[00:03:44] I run space over here. Sandy Heller? Yeah. I do think now we need to have her singing in every movie. I agree. Look, I mean, I assumed that was a reference to, uh, you know, to Tony Erdman, right? That's Lorda Miller being cute, having her do karaoke, and I thought that was funny. And also being like, hey, you know, she does this in a movie, it kind of like knocks everyone's socks off. That's an effective move that we've identified that 90- It'll work. 9% of the audience won't have seen. That's true.

[00:04:12] Like, we all sit there patting ourselves on the back going like, oh, interesting Tony Erdman reference. Maybe they should do Tony Erdman in IMAX. Wasn't there going to be an ill-fated American Tony Erdman? Lina Dunham. Nicholson and Dunham. Lina Dunham, right? Two chillest stars. Excuse me. Yep. You were wrong. Lina Dunham was writing and directing. Kristen Wiig was going to co-star with Jack Nicholson. I didn't actually know that Wiig was involved. Yes. I mean, the weird thing about that is it's like, don't do that. But I'm like, those are the people to pick, I suppose. It's also a movie.

[00:04:40] I would say on paper, Force Majeure had this, but Downhill didn't nail this, where you're like, there is a version of this premise that works as a much broader studio comedy. I would not resent you trying to remake it and just doing the more obvious version of it. Maybe don't make it two hours and 40 minutes long or whatever. Right. They have the scene where they all get naked? Yeah. Nicholson was going to show a lot of dick. That's what I heard.

[00:05:09] But Tony Erdman's the one who doesn't get naked in that scene, right? Because does he show up in the outfit, in the beast outfit? No, that's the very end. Yeah, that's the end. She's naked and the younger woman that he's with is naked. The boss is, the boss shows up. Right, the boss is naked. Maybe he's not naked. I think Tony Erdman, yeah. Do you know that the younger naked woman, and I already resent framing it this way. Dear me. Do you know that that actress- I love Tony Erdman. So good. Do you know that that actress-

[00:05:38] That actress. Co-wrote Malignant. Wow. And I was like, why did that happen? Ingrid Bisou. And then I dug deeper, she is married to James Wan. Wow. Dang. Wow. Engaged him in 2019. Tony Erdman came out in 2016. Maybe he saw it and was like, who's this beautiful woman? Mm-hmm. And what movies could she possibly have in her head about monster skull creatures? It is funny that she was like, you know what I've always been thinking about? What if there was face on back of face? Yes. Yeah. What if you had one extra face? One extra face.

[00:06:08] And it does martial arts. Wow, she's in Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom. Yeah. And she's in all his movies. She's in The Nun. Yeah. Well, he didn't make that, but- Yeah. But she does, she has a screenplay credit on Malignant, right? She sure does. Yeah. And that is a delightful screenplay. That's a- It's a well-written film. Another film that should be studied in schools. That's a great film. Yeah. The only problem I have with that film is it came out in the deep pandemic and I kind of don't remember it as, I need to rewatch it. Yeah. You know, that was a Project Popcorn movie. I saw it in theaters and I overheard one of the worst post-movie conversations I've ever had.

[00:06:37] Just two bros at the urinal saying like, dude, is that like bad on purpose? Like he needs to have his filmmaking license revoked. Like how do you not understand that you're making a movie that is like literally bad? Right. And they just kind of kept stewing in that zone. I have no patience. No. For people who view things like Malignant in that way. You don't, you just don't deserve movies. It's not even you don't deserve nice things. You don't deserve movies.

[00:07:03] I deserve all the movies though, including the movie Finding Nemo. In my opinion, a perfect film. Yeah. I almost think we don't deserve it as humanity. I think it's the tender of movies. Did we deserve it in 2013? I mean, 2003. 2003. We needed it in 2003. I don't know if we deserved it. It was like the Dark Knight. We were in Iraq. It was the hero we needed, not the hero we deserved. We were in Iraq. I was 17 years old. I saw this film in America. I was here on vacation. On a holiday. On holiday.

[00:07:32] I saw it by myself. I'm pretty sure at the Regal Union Square. And I'm sure you spent the entire movie fuming. Oh, yes. At the consideration it showed towards the Australian people. Oh my God. I didn't even make the connection. Why do these fucking fish want to go to Sydney? A David Australian corner. It's a lawless land. I would say this movie does not make Australian humans look good. Oh, no. The only two speaking Australians are the dentist and the granddaughter. They're both a little villainous.

[00:08:01] The world's most horrific child. The dentist is a fun guy. He's kind of fun. I guess he's sort of... He's kind of the classic dentist. I think the humor of that is really good. Where he's like, Ah, how are you doing? And then he just tortures people all day. Now David's whipping the stereotypes back up. Ah, well, that's what he talks like. Sure. Ah, you know it might. Yeah. Do you think the dentist should realize what's going on with Darlene? Stop giving her fish? I guess he doesn't know the fish talk. This is the thing I really like. He doesn't know that like Alice and Janney could voice one of these things.

[00:08:31] It's the thing I really like about the Toy Story. Certainly the first two... Toy Story 1 has this. This has this. Some of the Pixar movies have this. But this is a movie in which no one is consciously a villain. Uh, yeah. Yeah. I guess you're right. Because like... The conflict is not... Even the sharks are nice. Yes. And the angler fish doesn't really have consciousness. Yes, exactly. That's like not a sentient fish. Although Becca, good point.

[00:09:01] Like what's up with that? Why doesn't he? Well, there's also... We learn that there exists in the ocean petting zoos with snails. Yes. So snails aren't people, but then like little shrimps are people. There is a cast system. I love when a Pixar movie just has a fun joke. Because they're like, that's a fun joke. And then like 20 years later, I'm like, but I don't... How does this fit into their theory of consciousness? Yeah, this works into the implications of like there being a Cars Pope. David, David, I can explain it. It's very easy.

[00:09:29] The Witch from Brave carved 20 wooden sculptures. Each of them given life. Well aware. Do they keep... Are they still doing that with like, you know, like Elio will come out and they're like, hey, how do we fit this into our grand Pixar unified theory? Well, Elio just exists like in present day earth and present day space. Yeah, I guess recently they've been kind of hitting... Here, Griff, let me tell you something and then we'll introduce the show. Okay. I just want to tell you one thing. Okay. I was at the bar last week with my friend Caitlin, co-host of Hits Different, my baseball podcast. Secret podcast. It's not a secret.

[00:09:58] I want everyone to listen to it. And I became... This is true. ...so close friend. And I was kind of like, bro, you're a sports sport. We don't need trivia. Yeah. Pick a thing, right? Yeah. Like, I'm already watching, but okay. And they're like, there's four rounds and you get to double one of the rounds and you have to pick... We'll tell you the categories now. Oh, Franklin Park? Like Daily Double, you make it double or nothing for the value of the points. Franklin Park does it too. It wasn't... The bar was...

[00:10:27] It was 99 Rogers, not Franklin Park. Okay. Same idea. Same region. And so he's like, the categories are going to be like, this one's music, this one... And then he's like, the category three is animation. And I said to Caitlin, like, we're going to double that one. And Caitlin's like, really? And I'm like, I'm pretty sure you're now. I'll be good at that. Yeah. And it was 20 questions. Write down every Pixar movie. No sequels. Yeah. So write down every Pixar movie, excluding the sequels. There's 20. Did you break a sweat? I didn't. I was like, okay, great. And I kept going. And I got 18.

[00:10:56] Do you want to know the two? I forgot. Then I run out of steam and I'm like, what the fuck? You know, like... Did you forget Elio? Nope. Had Elio. Does Lightyear count as a sequel? No. Yes. Lightyear counted as a sequel. He didn't want Lightyear. This is tough because I'm like, the ones that are... Did you forget Soul? I did not forget Soul. I'll give you a hint. One is a bad and somewhat forgotten Pixar movie. A good dinosaur. Bingo. A good dinosaur. Which I've seen many times and yet still couldn't grasp on it.

[00:11:25] I was going to say, I assumed you'd remember that one because it is the shorthand, easy punchline, bad Pixar movie. Yeah. Even then, the anonymity still hurt it. The other one is one of the most iconic Pixar franchises. The worst one, but nonetheless a huge one. Correct. You forgot Cars. Isn't that crazy? Yeah. Just because Cars sucks so bad that I kept being like... And what? I had fucking Elio. I had Soul. I had Dirty Red. Where were you in 2006 that... I didn't see Cars in theaters. I'll tell you that much. I still haven't seen it. You still...

[00:11:54] That actually boggles them. I haven't seen it. And my daughter never got into it. Like, she never... She's seen it, but she never... Yet. Although, I don't know. It hasn't really happened. I don't know. She still hasn't watched any of it. No, she's seen Cars, but doesn't like it. I love the concept of Lightning McQueen. I love the concept of Mater. Speak on this. Speak on this. And Bonnie and Luigi and Doc Holiday or whatever. Like, I love the concept of all these Cars. I just haven't seen the movie. I'm a little surprised. It feels like a thing you would hyperfixate on.

[00:12:23] Because there's, like, a lot of rabbit holes to fall down in Cars universe. Of just lines of thinking. Not even, like, actual things to study. That is true. Well, I love those... Like, I'll watch a YouTube video where someone... Yeah, does this thing where they connect it all and Cars is actually sci-fi post-apocalyptic. See, that's the stuff to me... I mean, some of that's interesting to talk about with Cars. No, but it's too literal. Yes. To make it all... I just think, like, in the way that... Right, all makes sense with our world. The way that you're saying, like, oh, they have a petting zoo with snails. Like, what does that mean?

[00:12:52] Cars has seven things like that in every single frame. Every frame. It's so true. Right. And it's not stuff that, like, Pixar people are digging into online. It's the kind of stuff that, like, William S. Burroughs would spiral over at a bar. You know what? Maybe if it was a movie called High Speed Rail... Go on. Thank you. Exactly. Yeah. Maybe I just don't like this car culture. Wait. The Biden video that came out yesterday...

[00:13:22] Where he's like, doesn't this guy look like Obama? And he just brings a black guy on stage? No, but then the thing that makes it funny... You should be standing on the other side. ...is he looks like him just enough... Just enough. ...for him to be the funniest in the world. Right. I mean, it's not like he brought out, like, an 80-year-old man or something. Like, what's going to happen? Right. You think it's just going to be, like, some, you know, like, random person in the crowd. Biden is just being senile. Right. But he comes on... He'd bring, like, Aaron Pierre on stage. Lanterns. They're going to solve the crime with their powers.

[00:13:52] Where are the jackets? Mufasa? You don't need the full jumpsuits anymore. Just like a person. Aaron Pierre was the voice of young Mufasa. He's young... Well, he's, like, middle Mufasa. He's middle Mufasa. Middle Mufasa. Right. And then... Because young Mufasa sings my favorite song in the world. Which is called? The I Always Wanted a Brother song. I Always Wanted a Brother. You don't remember that? I'm not going to do that. I have seen Barry Jenkins' Mufasa, The Lion King. I'll admit it. It washed over me pretty fast.

[00:14:20] I didn't really retain me. I'm making you listen to the song after this. I still have not listened to that... Watched that film. But the trailer only had one snippet of a song. The song's, of course, written by friend of the show Lin-Manuel Miranda. Is it the Mads Mikkelsen? No, it was just... You heard them repeat, I Always Wanted a Brother, like, five times. He Always Wanted a Brother. So it was kind of memed. It's one of the many hooks in that song. Always Wanted a Brother. Bye Bye is a song?

[00:14:50] Yeah, that's Mads Mikkelsen's villain song. It is a little insensitive of you to invoke hooks on the Finding Nemo episode because, of course, those are the true unseen villain. Yes. Man. Like Bambi. The hook. Or a hook like Peter Pan. Yeah. If he went hand fishing? Hmm. Hook fishing? Hmm. I mean, sure. I've lost this train of thought, but okay. Picture him sticking a worm on that. Yeah. That's what I'm saying. The dentist is benevolent. He's not fucking catching Nemo, frying him up.

[00:15:17] He thinks he's just like my little niece. My little niece. It's nice to have fish in my tank. He says that he saved him. He's like there was this little baby clownfish all alone and I like rescued it. Yeah. That's a little bit of a savior complex thing where it's like all alone. I mean, he was in the fucking water. He found Nemo. Sure. Okay. He saw the poster he was like. Oh, fish found in water? Right. Challenge accepted. But you're right. There's no real villain. The closest thing is Bruce the Great White Shark and he has worked to overcome his villainy.

[00:15:47] But that's like a sequence. Anglerfish is a sequence. In 100 thrilling, perfect, funny sequences. Yes. Yes, exactly. In 100 thrilling, perfect, funny minutes. There are contained. The movie's 100 minutes long. Self-contained conflicts. Yep. Within the larger conflict, which is just how do you get across the fucking ocean? I think this movie sets up so perfectly. The moment that Nemo's taken, you just start doing the math and you're like, how could he possibly find him? It's sort of the Pixar magic of the moving truck drives away

[00:16:17] and Woody is but a tiny little man. Right. How the hell's he gonna get wherever they're going? I think this is the simplest and most extreme version of that where you're just like, I don't even understand how he could begin to make contact with him, to locate where he is, to scale that distance. I'm getting emotional at you saying that, thinking about everything that Marlon and Dory accomplished. It is the movie, the moment in this film that makes me cry without fail every single time

[00:16:44] is when Nigel recounts the news that has... That's a lovely moment. It's a lovely moment done well by Oscar winner Jeffrey Rush. Yes. It's a pelican called Nigel. And Oscar nominee Thomas Newman kind of going hard in that moment. Oh, the score. His eyes widening as Nigel's story goes down in the mix. Of his dad's heroism. You see him pantomiming all the things that have happened and Nemo realizes how much his father loves him. It gets me choked up just thinking about it. Today we're talking about Finding Nemo, which is one of the most successful

[00:17:13] movies in history. What is this miniseries called? I'm telling you what it's called. Please. I was talking about it with a guest who will be coming up on this miniseries. Yes. I'm not going to say. And I said, I've had this one locked and loaded in the chamber, no need to pitch. Okay. This miniseries is called and it's not going to work when I say it out loud, but it's really going to work visually. It will spell. This thing will spell. Podsy. P-O-D-D.

[00:17:44] Hyphen C. Mm-hmm. I love it. Podsy. I mean, what else are you going to call it? We're not going to call it Podding Neemcast. Right. Or Finding Podcast. Who cares? Poddingcast-o. In the pod of a cast. Poddingcast-y. That's what was pitched to me. And I said, I don't think that's what's... Podsy. Podsy. Great. I love it. We're discussing here on Blank Check the films. Pod Carter? Pod Carter. Name it after his most famous, memorable, beloved film. You know what I also like

[00:18:14] about calling it Pod Carter? It implies that it should have been called Pod Carter of Cast and then the of cast was cut out. That is fun. It could just be Podcaster, but then it would be impossible to tell what that even is. We can't do that. Right. Right. But also, to pay respect to John Carter, it has to be the version of the title that doesn't really work. We here are discussing this summer, this lovely summer that we're, I assume, having the films of Andrew Stanton. The six films total, I believe?

[00:18:44] Yes. Two of them released in 2026 alone. Indeed. Yes. Yes. A man after our own hearts. This is Blank Chick with Griffin and David. I'm Griffin. I'm David. It's a podcast about filmographies, directors who have massive success early on in their careers, such as releasing Finding Nemo, what at the time was the highest grossing animated film in history, the highest grossing film Disney had ever released in any division, and I believe it was at the time the sixth highest grossing film in history.

[00:19:13] I know you always get angry when I try to get you to pull up these what was the record at the time. I can't. I did some research. I found fucking Wayback Machine archived box office mojo pages. It was the sixth highest grossing film of all time. I remember when this film beat The Lion King to become the highest grossing animated film of all time because there was a big fight on the Oscar watch forums about which was the sort of more worthy film for that title. Yes. Like some people are like, ah, this sucks, like this stupid, you know, fish movie,

[00:19:42] Lion King's so good. Other people are like, ah, Lion King's over. I remember that. Nemo's a fucking masterpiece. It also was humongous overseas. Yes. In 2003, it made, I believe, $850 million worldwide. Yeah. Sounds about right. It's the number two of 2003. The only movie that beats it is Return of the King and Return of the King becomes only the second film to ever make a billion. Can you name the animated films that since dethroned the movies we're talking about? So this is what I was, this is what I was trying to do the math on, right? Because it has the record

[00:20:12] for a year. It kind of like blows the ceiling off of what an animated film can do, especially globally. And then Shrek beats it a year later. It beats the opening weekend record. Shrek 2. Shrek 2. Uh, sure. Shrek 2 beats it domestically, beats the opening weekend record. Right. Shrek 2 becomes the third highest grossing film in history at the time. We love it. At the time, I think it was Titanic, Star Wars, and then Shrek 2 domestically. And of those, I know my favorite.

[00:20:42] Now, I would argue this is the beginning of, I say this respectfully, the unshittification of the all-time top ten. Yeah, it just starts to be a lot of crap. It also starts to be like every year two movies enter the ten so the churn becomes so fast. Yeah. Up until 2003, it felt like there was a ten where you're like, of course, there are two Star Wars in there. Gone with the wind. There's E.T. Oh, it's not adjusted. Not adjusted. Oh, well then, it's a useless metric, not adjusted.

[00:21:12] You could look, you could compare the two lists, but it also felt like the unadjusted numbers were like, even unadjusted E.T. is still bigger than most movies ever released. And then, everything starts kind of like, usurping. So, Shrek 2 dethrones Finding Nemo. And then I think Shrek 2 has it until Toy Story 3. You are correct. And then basically, it becomes a sequel rally. This is the thing. Despicable Me 2? Does well, but I think doesn't quite beat Toy Story 3.

[00:21:40] And then Finding Dory overtakes it. You have Dory, but what about, yeah, that's, no, Dory never overtook Toy Story 3. Although this is a little complicated because a lot of re-releases have adjusted these numbers somewhat. Sure. But I can tell you, Frozen certainly beat it. Frozen becomes the new number one. It beat Toy Story 3. Domestically? No, worldwide. Worldwide. This is all worldwide. Okay, okay, okay. I don't have domestic. Okay. This is worldwide. And then,

[00:22:11] it's sort of like, do we count the Lion King remake? This is the big question. It is animated. It's mostly a film made by computer graphics and animation. They tried to pretend it wasn't. I would argue it held the record, but only for a little bit. Yes, because Frozen 2, no, Lion King actually grows slightly more than Frozen 2. And did Incredibles 2 take over at any point? Incredibles 2's peak was 2. Okay. A second. But I do think Incredibles 2

[00:22:39] did take the domestic for a moment. Yeah. But then Inside Out 2 and Zootopia 2 and Neja 2. Right. Neja 2 is now the number one highest grossing animated film worldwide. It has made $2.2 billion. And Zootopia 2 is the highest grossing American animated film. There you go. Right. And also the best. Yeah. But this is another... I like that one. This is another thing. There were very few animated sequels until Shrek 2. Theatrically released. Right. Shrek 2 helps break

[00:23:09] the taboo of like... Toy Story 2 was an outlier. The straight-to-video Disney sequel. Toy Story 2 was an outlier, of course, bumped up from home video to theatrical. It's massive, but it doesn't overtake Lion King. And then Shrek 2 is the first sequel to take the crown. And it does feel like the stigma is off of doing animated sequels and then it's just everyone playing like a... I don't know. It's a baton race between the franchises. It's crazy that they did Rescuers Down Under. Yes. Especially when they did.

[00:23:39] Wasn't that... Go ahead. He knows why. I'll tell you what the logic was. It was like Eisner and Katzenberg Takeover. Right, and they're like, we want a sequel. They're like, we should do a sequel. That feels like a thing we should do. To like our least beloved one. No, but I think they were just kind of like Rescuers is one of the only ones that makes sense for a sequel. Yeah, truly. Most Disney movies have a pretty definitive ending. That's the thing. What's wild is they were like, it feels like good business sense to do a sequel, but also, we should do a sequel that doesn't betray the integrity of the original film. So they still were making kind of like

[00:24:09] an artistically driven story decision where they're like, well, Rescuers is a book series. It feels more episodic. You can just send them on another mission. Every other Disney animated classic feels like a closed loop. And then with someone getting married or whatever. Pinocchio becomes a real boy or whatever. It was truly like people... Captain Hook is beheaded. Whatever happens in that one. People won't be insulted if we do Rescuers 2. Right. It won't be betraying the sanctity of something. They should do Cinderella 2 and just like, she got divorced. Well, they did two or three even straight to video.

[00:24:38] And one of them is a crazy time one. One of them is like a Back to the Future 2. That sounds good. That sounds good. Shit. People like it. Oh, they do. Oh, people like it. People. Humans. I'm going to ask our guests, have you seen any of the direct to video Cinderella's? I have not, but I'm sure I've watched some Jenny Nicholson or some such person recap them. Yes. Yes. I think it's called a Stitch in Time maybe. It's a something in time. And the weird thing about those- Cinderella 3,

[00:25:08] a twist in time. A twist in time. Oh boy. The weird thing about those, they came out at the same time as all of the Barbie straight to video ones, which were also doing some very exciting things with the same IP. This does say, unlike most direct to video sequels, this received generally positive reviews. Yeah, people like this one. So it's, maybe it's like, what's the fairy goblin that goes back in time and like kills Hitler or whatever. Yeah, that's why they like it. So yeah, focus groups were really happy about that. Do you know who wrote, or I shouldn't say wrote,

[00:25:37] but much like Malignant, has a screenplay credit, part of the team, on many of those Barbie's 2000s animated films? Can you give a clue? He was played by Brian Cox in a movie. I don't know. Robert McKee? Yes. Yeah. That's one of those things where Robert McKee's story, the book that everyone talks about of like, this is everything you need to learn about like, the three act structure. Studio, Western, you know, popcorn screenplay structure.

[00:26:07] And they'd be like, what has this guy done? Why am I listening to this guy as an authority? And you look it up and it's mostly Barbie animated movies. Where he was like a story consultant. Today we're talking about Finding Nemo. Our guest, Rebecca Alter. Becca! Hi. Is this your main feed debut? It's my main feed debut. And I'm going to say the best movie you've been asked to cover on this show. Absolutely. I think this movie is a little better, no offense Ben, than Look Who's Talking Now. Okay. Fair enough. It's slightly more successful.

[00:26:36] Has had slightly greater cultural impact. Both talking animal movies though. Mm-hmm. True. This is true. I'm happy to carve a lane. It feels like it is an interest of yours. Is that fair to say? Yeah. This is one of your beats as a journalist. I guess so. Um, I don't know. Just other Finding Nemo records, it is still the highest grossing physical media release of all time. Is that so? The Finding Nemo DVD is like, and part of it is just it comes out at the peak of DVD as a medium.

[00:27:06] That DVD went triple platinum in the built-in minivan DVD player. True. In my mom's minivan. The accessibility of the video game consoles are adding DVD players. DVD players are in cars now. DVD players are in computers. what else was in cars? Cars. In the movie Cars. Um, I don't know if you guys caught this. A very insidious announcement not to invoke. Oh, yeah. The baby cars? The home entertainment. That's the most evil shit I have ever seen. They're doing baby cars? They announced,

[00:27:36] Ben and Becca, they announced this week that there is a Disney Junior TV show that's like Muppet Babies with the Cars characters. Oh, wait, but Lightning had never met them before. I love that you know this much about the chronology without having seen any of the films. Well, do you know why? Why? Because I love Radiator Springs and Disney's California Adventure. It's one of the most beautiful places I've ever been to on Earth. So I said, I need to know the lore. Fellow gentlemen of the Blank Check Podcast, there is going to be a good amount of theme park talk on this episode. I regret to inform you.

[00:28:06] I warned David in advance. I brought like a sleeping bag where I could just like curl up under or a hammock maybe. Pour the caffeine. Hammock on the porch. You're staying wide awake for this shit. Question about the cars. Yeah. The baby cars. Are they wearing diapers? No, they're just kind of because they're leaking oil. They just like, it's a good question. I guess. What's the term I'm looking for? Kawaii? Is that that? Yeah, kawaii. I mean like, they just make them squished and rounder and their eyes are bigger. Their eyes are bigger. I mean, we'll see this with Finding Dory, of course,

[00:28:36] when they have Baby Dory, you know, like, what is genuinely a billion dollar idea of like, put Baby Dory at the beginning of the film. Dory small. Can I say what I think the most consequential thing to come out of cars is on the entire culture? Mm-hmm. We all grew up with the little tykes red car, yellow roof. Uh-huh. That was a car. Yeah. Sometime after cars, they gave that car a face, like eyes and a face. Sure. And now kids grow up with that car being like a person. Yeah. Car that they're inside. And I don't think that would have happened.

[00:29:06] This is what Lightning Racers looks like. It only looks like 10% cuter than the regular car. Yeah, they actually look identical. But I imagine they're gonna have little kid voices. But is this suggesting that like, Lightning went to Radiator Springs as a child? Great question. A new mater? Because like, in cars, he's meeting them all for the first time. My understanding is that what it suggests is who gives a shit it's gonna make trillions of dollars. Much like Muppet Babies, which doesn't really make sense as anything other than a what-if alternate universe.

[00:29:35] The series follows Lightning McQueen as he takes on fresh challenges and races around Radiator Springs alongside his old pal Mater. Is it just kind of like, fuck it, like, it's parallel, don't worry about it. The new friends are thrill-seeking drag car Pipes and mud-loving monster truck Miles. Perfect. Which is a great name for a car. I mean, it sounds like the fucking movie cast is back. Owen Wilson, Larry the Cable Guy, Bonnie Hunt, so they're all gonna have grown-up voices.

[00:30:04] They're recasting Paul Newman. Yeah, well, he's dead. So, I mean, that is the reason to recast him, right? I'm hearing this for the first time. Fighting Nemo, best-selling DVD of all time. It's also, if you look at all the video game platforms of this moment, Game Boy Color, PS2, GameCube, it is, like, amongst the top 20 highest-selling games on all of those platforms. It is just a movie that kind of coincides with, like,

[00:30:34] geek mainstream American media and the tendrils of it all just, like, rise to the top. We had the Shark Tale PlayStation 2 game, but not the Nemo. And what happens in the Shark Tale video game? There was a level where you could make the Will Smith fish dance to You Can't Touch This. Yeah. Sounded pretty good. It was pretty awesome. Was it, like, Parappa the Rappa-style dancing?

[00:31:04] Like, Dance Dance Revolution-style dancing? Oh, I'm watching a full gameplay walkthrough here. That's the only part I remember, but we didn't have Shark Tale on home video and we did have Nemo. Yeah. Kind of everyone had Nemo. Shark Tale came out, what, a year after Nemo? Yeah. Yes. I just remember being one of those things where, like, Nemo, which the movie we're going to talk about today, the water effects and, like, the way it looks, it's just such a staggeringly good-looking movie. It still looks incredible. I think it's maybe, like, the most beautiful

[00:31:33] movie Pixar ever made. Yes. And then Shark Tale comes out a year later and looks like a fucking, like, PlayStation game. Yes. And, like, the fish designs are horrendous, but all of it looks bad. But it also, like, there's, like, no water effects. Right. There's no lighting and you're like, how do they move? And it's like, they sort of just walk upright in the water, not on the ground, not on the ocean floor. And they have, like, houses and stuff. Yes. There's a thing. Ants and Bug Life. Uh-huh. Bugs Life. Bug Life.

[00:32:03] Bug Life. Sorry. Mm-hmm. I'm using myself. Like, they just, like, look distinctive. They were going for different things. And in fact, you could argue that the DreamWorks one is the more realistic looking one. It's absolutely the more realistic looking one and it kind of pulls it off. Ants ain't blue and ants do not have just two legs, you know? Right, right. In the DreamWorks one, they have four legs and two arms. It's, you know, whatever. It sort of was okay. And then, like, the comparison wasn't as drastic, I guess, is what I mean. Uh, sure.

[00:32:32] Finding Nemo Shark Tale, disaster. I saw a thing Andrew Stanton said that really stuck with me, which he, when they started working on this movie, he was like, the challenge I pose to all of you is I don't want to anthropomorphize these fish. I want to figure out the way for them to be able to convey emotions within the physiology of how they actually work. That's a good call. And it's one of these things where you watch this movie and it's like they create this rule for themselves that they hold themselves to and the movie really doesn't fucking cheat on it. And it makes it all the more impressive how good I think

[00:33:02] the performances are in this movie. And I speak of the voice acting, which is obviously like this is just an impeccably cast movie that changes a bunch of fucking careers and shit. Sure. But also, the actual like character animation performances of the movie are insane. Who's your favorite? The bench is so deep. It's so deep. Deep, deep, deep, deep. It's almost, it's impossible. I think Brooks is the reason this movie really works and we'll get into it. Watching it this time and this is a movie I have seen

[00:33:31] more times than I can count. Wow. I was really, really locking into the Defoe performance, which I think is incredible. Very good. Who are your answers? Oh, I was thinking more about... Stingray teacher. Oh, yeah. Fucking all day and night. The model of pedagogy. That guy is the best. Mr. Ray. The way he diffuses various things. Very two. There's nothing to see here. That. And also, when Nemo's trying to say and he's like, all right, kid, don't knock yourself out. You know what I mean? Like, things like that. So good. This is,

[00:34:01] to your point, Becca, though, it's like, this movie has like 130 perfectly executed bits. Yeah. Like, any character in this movie that would be kind of just like a functional point A to point B exposition driver or whatever, they give a character game that is so efficient and memorable and charming. Yeah. Where no one in this movie feels like they're just filling a spot. The games are clear and distinct and they're all like, they all feel so satisfying to the creature that they are.

[00:34:31] My other favorite is Allison Janney. I love, love, love Peach so much. But this is what we're talking about, right? Where it's just like, there's a chain of logic that is very satisfying of like, what is the personality of a starfish? Right. And you're like, well, if she's in a tank. She's stuck to the wall, she surveils. Right. She's watching. Right. And then what's the superiority complex she has about that? She basically becomes the know-it-all because her job is to be on watch. I just love the issue. And then who's the person who voices that? Well, of course, get like the fucking lady from the West Wing.

[00:35:01] That's what her personality would be. Like, all of these choices are so satisfying in a chain of logic way. I love Vicky Lewis. Everyone's incredible in this. Is anyone bad? No. And like, Bob Peterson, who you're calling out as Mr. Ray, is one of the Pixar guys. Oh, I know. I know. He's Roz. He's my friend. He is Doug. Yeah. He, of course, was the original fired director of The Good Dinosaur, the movie you can't even remember. Ugh. The fired director. Oh, fired. Okay, right. Because it was Son-son? It became a Pete Son picture.

[00:35:31] But that is the chaos period where suddenly like, every director is getting fired, every movie's being replaced. Is Son getting a third? He's doing Incredibles 3. He's doing Incredibles 3. A little bit of a step down. It should be the next generation and it's like Jack-Jack's a dad. That would be pretty funny. Craig T. Nelson's old. David's laughing. I'm laughing. I don't know. Maybe it'll be good. It's totally not. It's totally gonna be Paddington in Peru in my opinion. Peru wrote the script. I know. So that's cool. Like, my guess is it'll be something where I'm like, this resembles what I like about the, you know,

[00:36:00] all of this. Yeah. But it, you know, I can, it feels a little It's very frustrating. It's a little frustrating. Pete Stone has made, this will be the third film he directs. We're gonna talk about a lot about Pixar director careers in this series. A thing I studied deeply. But he's directed three films. He's one of the kind of Pixar brain trust, top story guys who's worked on all these projects and he himself has voiced so many beloved characters like Emile and Ratatouille. Sure. Sox, who is arguably the only good part of Lightyear. Sox is fun.

[00:36:30] Definitely the only good part of Lightyear. Like, he's a really, really fun voice actor. Noted. Yeah. Gun to your head, can you name that character? I just remember that he's riffing on a level that's just sublime. It is. He does some shit with a pen. I couldn't name any fucking character in Lightyear and it's called Lightyear and stars Buzz Lightyear and I'm still like, is that character called Buzz Lightyear? I don't, I don't want you to call mental health hotlines on my behalf but I did the other night fall down a rabbit hole of watching Lightyear

[00:37:00] videos on YouTube. Well, it's the movie about the man on which the toy is based. That's right. Becca, I'm sorry, but this is not a movie about the toy. This is a movie about the real person Buzz Lightyear. The real person upon, on which Yes. the toy was based. Squirt in this movie. Is Brad Bird's son. I was about to say, the little baby turtle. That's Brad Bird's son, Nicholas Bird. Who Andrew Stanton heard him speak

[00:37:29] and was like, this is our generation's thumper. Rarely do you find, he might also be the what are you waiting for to do something incredible, I guess, kid in Incredibles, if I'm not mistaken. Something amazing, I guess. Yeah. I think that's him as well. This is the cross-pollination of all these things. This is a period of time where Pixar has been super tight and focused. Right. Basically one like dream team of people working in all these movies

[00:37:58] and for the first time it's starting to spread out. They're starting to have multiple productions running at the same time. You know, the first three movies are all directed by the same very normal man with really normal boundaries who just loves hugging and Pete Docter and Andrew Stanton were the first two people hired at Pixar. Yes. They have their sort of initial fabled kind of like early what kind of movies could we do meeting,

[00:38:28] right? Where they like supposedly We're going to crack open the dossier. let's crack open the dossier. David? Yes? Got any big summer plans? Sleep. Your plan is to sleep for the whole summer Rip Van Winkle style? Sounds good. I'll tell you what my plan is. What's that? To drink AG1 every morning. Of course. Well, you better or else you're going to crumble into dust. This is the problem.

[00:38:57] Any other plans I make would be foolish, foolhardy if I weren't also planning to regulate my system with AG1 because it doesn't matter if you're traveling, you got late nights, packed weekends, zero structure, any of those. Keeping AG1 in your routine helps you stay consistent. That's a loaded word right there. Consistent. Yes. When everything else gets and here's another loaded word unpredictable. Oh, I don't want that and I know you don't either. Look,

[00:39:26] it's a daily health drink with a multivitamin. Yep. Pre and probiotics. Yep. Superfoods and antioxidants. It's an all-star lineup. One scoop, eight ounces of water. You just shake it up. There you go. That's it. You drink it. It takes 30 seconds. Now, the summer's where you want to get a little lax and you want to let yourself go and have fun but just these 30 seconds a day help keep everything else in shape. This is kind of like a old-fashioned formula with like one to two ingredients, right?

[00:39:55] Wait a second. What? David, I'm laughing so hard at your ignorance. This is a next-gen formula that delivers 75 plus ingredients backed by four clinical trials clinically shown to support gut health, fill common nutrient gaps and improve key nutrient levels within three months and I want to thank the announcer from Bar Rescue for jumping in for that one section. Very exciting. Look, late nights, long weekends, spontaneous plans, life happens.

[00:40:24] AG1's going to help you keep things consistent like Griffin's saying. Consistent. Give you high-quality nutritional support every single day no matter where you're starting your morning. I know you drink it every single day. What's your favorite flavor right now? Right now, I'm actually really big into berry. I've been cycling through them and I've really been enjoying this berry phase. I will say this as well, David. Yes. You said it wherever you are. I'm about to go away for six weeks and you better believe I just ordered a whole box of travel packs so that I don't have

[00:40:54] to travel unarmed. I had no doubt. Visit drinkag1.com slash check to get your free morning person hat and free AG1 flavor sampler in your welcome kit with your first AG1 subscription. That's an $82 value. That's drinkag1.com slash check. When I wear that hat, it's going to be so ironic. Yes.

[00:41:29] Basically, you know, Pixar is originally a computer technology company. They're like, we should have an animation division. Someone should be fucking around with this computer animation thing and seeing if there's any money there. It's of course a company started by George Lucas. John Lasseter is fired from Disney where he was kind of constantly the guy who was next up to maybe direct a feature. The one that comes really close to happening is where the wild things are.

[00:41:58] there was animation test you can see that's really interesting. Lasseter, like when he saw Tron was just like, this is the future. There's some future in combining these things, which Disney ends up obviously doing with like Beauty and the Beast and Lion King with their big set piece sequences using CGI backgrounds. Where the wild things are was supposed to be that. He also develops Brave Little Toaster, which is taken away from him. Which feels very spiritually Pixar. Yeah, it's a movie with Pixar juice even if it's right, like kind of cheap and light on execution. And Toy Story

[00:42:27] definitely feels like a refinement of everything he was starting to noodle with. But he gets fired, he goes to this computer conference, I think it's Siggraph. Yeah. He makes the play, they hire him to be the animation guy, he's one dude noodling and when they finally go like, we have some extra budget to see if there's more that can be built here. Who would you want to hire? He goes to his two CalArts classmates, Pete Docter, who becomes the first person other than Lasseter to direct the Pixar movie, Monsters, Inc.

[00:42:56] And then Andrew Stanton's the second. That's sort of the next phase is the anointment of you guys get to make your own movies. This is true. And yeah, they were pretty good. Before I opened the dossier, Becca, your experience with Finding Nemo, you're slightly younger than me. Did you see this in theaters? Absolutely. Yes. And I feel like everyone I've spoken to really remembers seeing it in theaters as well. I would have been nine and I think I loved it,

[00:43:25] but it was also a time when like every year of my life, like one new landmark animated movie would come out that felt like it was just a constant heightening because it was sort of like tail end of Disney Renaissance. Yeah. And the early Pixar's and throw Shrek into the mix. Throw, you know, as a kid it was huge Ice Age into the mix. Like every year there was a new animated movie that felt like the biggest thing in the world.

[00:43:54] You have basically concurrent with the decline of Disney feature animation. You have three new animation studios rising and it's still basically only like two or three animated movies a year. Yeah. It is so different than the current landscape where we're just inundated with shit. Yeah. And they were like really trying shit like in a quality like way to one up each other. So even though I was, I didn't see Anastasia, I was too young when it came out.

[00:44:23] Like that was a really important VHS tape. But Anastasia. From random third studios joining the mix. I was going to say Anastasia is part of the kind of like 90s rush and there's the 80s rush as well of like Don Bluth has left. Other studios are trying to see Disney's week. Is there a chance to dethrone Disney and be the default animation studio? And then when Disney rises again, it's even more of a feeding frenzy of Jesus Christ, they're making so much money.

[00:44:53] We should be in this business. But you look at those movies in the 80s and 90s and it's primarily either feature length adaptations of TV shows, which are sort of their own thing and are often junkier and lower budget, right? Or it's other studios trying to figure out how to crack the Disney playbook. Anastasia is very much can we do the Disney thing? When Toy Story comes out, it's like this absolute lightning bolt of like, wait a second, is there actually not

[00:45:22] a one kind of formula pattern for what an American animated movie can be while being seen as like A-level, you know, highbrow? And then I think DreamWorks and Blue Sky, these other studios are all going like, fuck, is there a chance to like define what your own thing is? There's new visual styles possibly. There are new storytelling styles. There are new styles of humor. Suddenly these things don't have to be musicals. They don't have to be based on fairy tales. Plus there's some stop motion entering the mix. Absolutely.

[00:45:52] Yep. I'll also say like, even though I was like becoming aware of movies during the era that like people, that some people see as the decline of the Renaissance. Sure. Because of when they came out and the age, like Tarzan is still maybe my favorite modern Disney movie. This is something, you know, I like am in media and whatever. I mean, I'm like, I know people who are a little younger than me. And I'm like, right, Tarzan, like, I don't, I saw that in theaters, but by then I was like, oh, the juice is out of this.

[00:46:22] I mean, Emma Stefanski in our Treasure Planet episode where I was like, right, I didn't even see this shit. And she's like, oh, when I saw this, I assumed it was the biggest hit of all time. Like, it was just a giant movie for us. The difference is, Tarzan was a huge hit. Tarzan was a huge hit. Tarzan like, but to me was just like, and Tarzan rips. Massive soundtrack. I mean, you'll be in my heart. Right. Phil Collins. Yeah, I don't mind Tarzan. I've seen it since. He's got the invisible touch. My personal bias aside, Tarzan is like,

[00:46:52] very well reviewed, right? It, it, it, it was definitely a hit. It's a massive hit. Yes. The soundtrack is really, like, culturally important, but five or six months later, really culturally important. Yes. At the time, it was fucking humongous. We've gotten criticized for being like, the Tarzan soundtrack obviously sucks. I'm pumping the brakes. I don't think it sucks. I just don't think it was cultural. It's adult contemporary. It was not like a Lion King level, earwormy. It was, it was the second closest they had ever gotten to that. I disagree.

[00:47:21] And you'll be in my heart. I think that's a fact. Was their last sort of like, credits, adult contemporary hit song of the 90s. They closed out. I don't care that much for Tarzan, but I just think these are objective facts. I think the tree surfing and the vine swinging looks awesome. This is my bigger point. It's like big hit, totally works. There is this sense of like, is Disney back? Have they saved themselves? Five months later, Toy Story 2 comes out, and it feels like the takeaway from everyone is like, Tarzan's the end of an era, and this is the future. We all had fun with Tarzan,

[00:47:51] but like, we're moving past this. Yeah, the formula, it's no good anymore, right. In the 2000s, Lilo and Stitch is the only Disney feature theatrical animated movie that I would say unequivocally works. That is the only one. No, I think Empress Negrief. Princess and the Frog, is that or not? I'm saying financially, critically, and test of time. Okay. Empress Negrief was a disappointment at the time. I guess so. It was, at the box office. Financially, it was a little. You've heard about what they're building.

[00:48:22] They're building an Yzma coaster in Villainland. What? They're doing a pull the lever. What? Because they've downgraded from it. It was going to be a Maleficent water ride thing. What is Villainland? Here's a fun game. David, what do you just think Villainland is? From saying what Becca just said, from hearing her say that. So it's, because I'm like really bad at this. Is it just in Walt Disney World or is it in both? It would only be in World for now. Because World's larger. There's more space for stuff.

[00:48:52] That's Orlando. But, and I know World has, It's made up of multiple parts. Right. So I know there's like Epcot and Animal Kingdom and all this. You name two. Can you name the other two? Is there one that's just kind of like, Maine Disney? Yeah. Could you think of what it's called? What would your guess be for what it's called? Disney World. No, I have no idea. Magic Kingdom. Yes, I did know it. I did know it. And then is like Star Wars World its own thing? Or is that within one of the worlds? Yeah, right. See, this is where they get me. Think of, think of the movies. The movies?

[00:49:21] Now the problem is this land has changed names many times. Okay. Give me another hint. It was called Disney MGM Studios. Uh-huh. It is now Disney Hollywood Studios. Yeah, I would have accepted, I would have accepted MGM. Right. Okay. So that is them competing with Universal Studios. I get that. Is there another one? Epcot was Walt's Dying Witch. I don't know about Epcot. And Animal Kingdom was them competing with SeaWorld and Bus Gardens. Right, all that shit. Yeah, okay. Those are the four in Orlando.

[00:49:50] There's fucking water parks that I think back over on the same page. Don't fucking count. That's not a proper game. Yeah, I still haven't ever been. The villain world is in the Magic Kingdom. Correct. Yeah, it will be. Now, why are they doing that? Villains are probably the Descendants. No, no, no. What are they competing with? Think movies again. What are they competing with? The Dark Universe, of course. truly. Is that Universal opened their new park in Orlando. They've got like their monster stuff. Where they reclaimed the name Dark Universe and applied it to Monster Theme Park.

[00:50:21] And so now Disney's like, fuck, they have a cool scary thing. We need a cool scary thing. Villain Land. Now, all the rumors had been it was going to be built around Maleficent. Uh-huh. As the centering force. And they're sort of realizing like, maybe Maleficent's like, kind of old news. Oh, no, they still are doing. Isn't that why they were thinking of making. The Maleficent water ride. A third Maleficent movie. Like, they're always claiming they're going to do that. I mean, that's part of why Tron Ares happened.

[00:50:47] Because they also had spent hundreds of millions of dollars building a Tron roller coaster. Yeah. And they wanted object permanence for that franchise. But interesting. So Yzma would be its own ride. It's not replacing Maleficent? Yeah, it's not replacing Maleficent. Um, but this was announced after the first announcement. And I think there were conversations about them actually scaling back the scary on Maleficent. This is, this is the thing. Disney's a little cowardly about getting too scary. Yzma's more funny than scary. Yeah.

[00:51:17] Does she give them an easy out? Right. Like, but then it's just like, why are you, why are you doing it? And they love giving Patrick Warburton something to do. Sure. I'm looking up villain land. Ember's New Groove is a masterpiece, but it was not a major hit. Yeah, it was a minor hit at best. And it was not really appreciated at the time. Yeah, and then, I mean, obviously. You're like, Treasure Planet Atlantis are just like complete belly flops for them. Yeah. Home on the Range is the last hand drawn. Uh, Lilo and Stitch is the one upswing there,

[00:51:45] and it's the movie that basically sneaks through the cracks. And then that first CGI runs a disaster. Right. And then you have Princess and the Frog at the end where it's like, did pretty good. Yeah. People liked it, but maybe even that underwhelmed. And had the pressure on it of, can this bring back the Disney princess movie in hand drawn? It does okay, but it does well. But the next year Tangled comes out. And once again, it's like, this is the future. Here's our model. This is what we're doing. We've redefined what our sort of Disney animated movie format is. Um, but.

[00:52:14] So that leaves the floor open for Pixar, DreamWorks, and Blue Sky. To invent a new thing. And, and to really be like, right, it's, it's all open game. And what Andrew Stanton talks about is. Yes. Uh, feeling like Toy Story, Monsters, Inc., and Bug's Life all shared a similar vibe. The first three, obviously, a lot of that's that they're directed by. Same, same huggy guy. Lotso. Lotso, huggin' Lasseter.

[00:52:43] But also that it's the one core team working on every movie. Pixar basically at this point only has enough employees to be focused on one movie at a time. Yeah. And when Lasseter goes, Doctor, you get a movie, Stanton, you get a movie. They start expanding the crew and they're splitting up who's getting Peterson, who's getting Joe Ramphed, who's getting Pete Sohn, all these story guys. He said that to his doctor? He was like, Doctor, you get a movie. The doctor was like,

[00:53:12] the theory that Dr. Mario is legally classified within Nintendo's copyrights as his own character and not Mario himself. So it would have to be like Mario has a cousin who's a doctor. This is the way- That's what the dad should be disappointed about. That would be funny. Why aren't you a doctor like your cousin? He's got so many pills. I sent you- Of all colors. I sent you this TikTok video that someone pointed out in the first Super Mario movie, there was an empty seat at the family dinner table where Mario's dad's like, I don't respect you being a plumber.

[00:53:39] And there's like a little nephew there whose dad is missing. And the implication is maybe, does he hate his plumber son so much because his other son- Right. He's a successful medical student. And if Mario's the last name, then his name might be Dr. William Mario. This is the thing. Now every animated movie and kids movie in a bad way is about weird dad angst. Yup. But this is really groundbreaking and genius about weird dad angst.

[00:54:09] This movie is made by a dad working through his things versus, I think, a lot of animated movies and specifically illumination films. And who knows why this is the case. Right. Feel very driven by- They've been told to be about this. Yes. Well, and also people who cannot get over my dad doesn't respect what I do for a living, which is a little limited as a story, as an emotional arc, unless you're digging really deep. Finding Nemo feels like it comes out of a very honest place.

[00:54:37] And I also think all these early Pixar movies are really defined by these guys as young fathers. You know, overgrown children, people who went into the field of animation, suddenly crossing this line of like, I have a kid, and now I'm kind of like dealing with existential terror of like, wait a second, I have to be a grownup. How do I raise kids properly? What do I feel about how I was raised? What is the world I want them to live in? And also they're in this insane industry working on these movies that are so intense,

[00:55:07] that take so long, and they're all kind of fighting this like concern of, am I not spending enough time with my family? Sure. Right, right, right. And it makes sense. All these workaholics like- To give joy to all the children of the world, they must miss their own child's dance recital. Right. Yes. Right, right. Soccer practice. So, Andrew Stanton, I'm opening the dossier. Please do. Heard of it? Yeah. He does, he has a couple voices in this movie, but one of them is the-

[00:55:37] Yeah, the lobsters. The Boston lobsters. There you go. Born in Wellesley, moved to Rockport, because, whatever, apparently his dad was sort of like, Wellesley's too sort of fancy. Okay. I don't like how rich and white it is here. His father, Ron Stanton, was an MIT graduate, founded a company called Highcore, which the New Yorker says did confidential radar work for the Department of Defense. Cool. Andrew says that Ron was a classic authoritarian figure,

[00:56:07] away from home a lot, kind of tight-lipped. Gloria, the mom, puts it this way, when Andrew had done something wrong, his father never needed to say anything. He'd just come and stand in Andrew's room silently, and Andrew would tell him everything. Gary. I mean, to what we were just saying- Whereas Gloria is a fun mom. She was an actress who gave up acting to have a family, and she loved, you know, to entertain and be fun. All of this makes a ton of sense. Yeah. He lives at the intersection of weapons, tech, and acting, and fun. Right.

[00:56:36] That sort of Pixar is right in the middle. To your point, Becca, what a relief that the movies aren't about this. Yeah, about like my parents. Right. Right. My dad doesn't respect me being a plumber. So, Gloria, this is all from like a New Yorker profile of him, I think for Wally. Is when they did this. There's also an incredible New Yorker profile when John Carter comes out, that we will talk about extensively in that episode. Because it's 2011. It's right at the fulcrum point of- Yeah, I think it's for John Carter. What's going to happen when this movie is released. So, his dad introduced him to science fiction,

[00:57:06] including the John Carter novels. He was a rocket scientist. He had pulp sci-fi novels throughout the house. He dragged him to like every single sci-fi movie. He, it's not, the culture stuff isn't just coming from the mom. Uh, Stanton said, basically, he was a precocious little boy with like undiagnosed ADD, who just like, wasn't quite like a child prodigy, but was clearly like very, like very energetic and creative, and like doing lots of stuff, kind of like without much encouragement. Uh, he would make little skits with a Super 8 camera.

[00:57:36] He had a, a show he did with his friends called The Silly Show. Mm-hmm. Sounds pretty good. When you watch all the vintage Pixar special features, because they were really at the forefront of DVD bonus material, and, and showing so much of, with every release, like here's more about like how Pixar works, and pulling back the curtain, not just on the technical process. Which is so classic Walt. That's so wonderful world of Disney. This is part of why Lasseter gets pushed into the, is he the new Uncle Walt position? But you watch those things,

[00:58:06] and I'm just going to say this, Andrew Stanton is charismatic in a way that none of those other guys are. That's interesting. Andrew Stanton is like, He's got a little more like personality. He is just clearly like more of a people person, versus like Lasseter had always felt was kind of doing an impression of an Uncle Walt. Yes. And Pete Docter by his own admission is a pretty introverted guy. Right. He seems like a pretty reserved kind of guy. He's a kind of classic animator. Right. I, I want to just like draw a thing and slide it over to you rather than talk. Uh, and Andrew Stanton I think did a, a fair amount of like,

[00:58:37] actual acting and such when he was growing up, which I also think comes across in his movies. And the silly show. And the silly show. That he's a little bit more of a performer. He went to University of Hartford for one year, but then transferred to CalArts. Mm-hmm. Griffin's alum. I dropped out, but yes. So, obviously it's part of the sort of legendary program there. A113. That you just, uh, you know, invoked earlier. But also, I mean, that classroom, that era is also like, I believe, Steven Hillenburg who creates SpongeBob. Oh, that guy.

[00:59:05] Brad Bird is there with them at that same time, even though he comes to Pixar later. I mean, it's like 10 people in that year who went on to make an outsized cultural impact in animation. He had been dating his, uh, now wife, Julie, basically since he was 15 years old. She went to Georgetown. They got married right after they graduated, basically, uh, settled in Los Angeles. Stanton worked on a sex education film starring Martin Short for Croyer Films, animated The Sperm. is this The Journey of Me?

[00:59:35] Is this coming all the way back around to Look Who's Talking? I think so. I believe there's an attraction that at one point was part of Epcot called The Journey of Me. The Making of Me. There we go. I've seen this. So yeah, it's a sex education short that played in the sort of the wonders of the human body part of Epcot. Yeah, it was a wonders of life pavilion. Fair enough. Uh, like many CalArts students, he wanted to work at Disney. He was rejected three times. Mm-hmm. Uh, but then he meets John Lasseter, and he had, I guess, some student films.

[01:00:05] I had these student films that were luckily entertaining enough that they showed some at festivals that also had, like, Luxo and Tin Toy, the early Lasseter shorts playing at them, and they kind of hit it off. My favorite's the bicycle one. Red's Dream. Red's Dream. I always liked that one. Yeah. Stan's- It's a freaky clown. Stan's stuff is really funny, too. Yeah. He also, I mean, I don't, time might be off on this, but I know he worked on the Ralph Bakshi Mighty Mouse cartoon. I mean, the sex ed thing was, I think, also Bakshi Studios, or maybe, or I can't remember. Right. Mighty Mouse The New Adventures.

[01:00:34] It's so funny to think of Bakshi making something for, like, Epcot goers. Right, right. This is this weird era where Bakshi's, like, trying to play a little more mainstream, but all the stuff he makes is just kind of subtly off and weird. Mm-hmm. Not that I think he's trying to be transgressive, but that he can't be normal. There's something inherently degenerate. Right. coursing through what he does. That Mighty Mouse cartoon is like that and is fascinating. I highly recommend looking it up. Fair enough. Stanton, I think, had writing credits on the whole season and was pretty involved in that. Yeah.

[01:01:04] Can you watch the shorts? Are those available? They must be somewhere, but Mighty Mouse is one of those things where I could not even tell you who has the rights. I'm like, are the Mighty Mouse rights owned by, like, weird conglomerations. So he has hired as Pixar's second ever animator. Yeah. Obviously, Pixar has been taken under the wing of Steve Jobs at that point. Andrew, happy-go-lucky, they say. Mm-hmm. Relied on humor to get by.

[01:01:34] He works on Toy Story, obviously. That's his first Oscar nomination. He's one of the many credited writers of Toy Story. So let me just unpack this a little bit. Because, A, I think he is, he's, as I said, he's a very charismatic guy. He's very sociable. There's a story I'll tell later in this episode that's kind of a thing that makes him as a filmmaker. But he is an incredibly anxious, somewhat cynical person. He talks about, like, the constant battle between those two forces within himself. Yeah. And trying to,

[01:02:04] probably the battle between, like, his mom and his dad, you know? Being someone who is avuncular and outgoing and sociable, but is constantly kind of, like, wrestling with these concerns inside of his head. Right. Everyone at Pixar says that, like, Woody is him. That's interesting. He says, Stanton, he says he's Sid. I can read you the quote. So he, Ben. He came up with the character. Yes. He was the guy who wrote Sid, essentially.

[01:02:33] And that Sid is the reflection of what he was like as a teenager He liked to break his toys and then, like, remake them into new things. Right. As creative projects. Right. Which is back to this point I'm making of, like, Sid doesn't know he's a fucking villain in Toy Story. Andrew Stanton's always said this. He's like, Sid's a creative kid who just hasn't gotten to art school yet. He doesn't have an outlet, you know? The kind of, like, myth-making here is within Pixar, they're sort of like, I guess we need to bring in an outside screenwriter,

[01:03:03] a Hollywood screenwriter. A number of people take passes at Toy Story in years of development, including a similarly normal person, Joss Whedon. One of the fake Coens, I can't, it's not Etan Cohen, but maybe it's the other Joel Cohen spelled differently. Fun. There were, like, four or five credited screenwriters on Toy Story who were mostly... Joel Cohen. There we go. Yes, yes. Mostly other kind of, like, Hollywood spec script, punch-up, rewrite guys. And they kept having people come in, they'd pay them to work

[01:03:33] on the script for, like, a couple months. They'd fix a couple things, but other things wouldn't be fixed. They had never really solved it. Disney wasn't giving them more budget. And the sort of, like, myth-making part of this is that Andrew Stanton goes, like, can I just, like, try and see if I can do a pass? And Stanton sort of holds away with the script and is the guy who, like, finally fixes everything and cracks everything. Right. And makes it cohesive. And Pixar realizes, like, oh, fuck, we have a screenwriter here. We have a guy in-house who knows how to do this stuff.

[01:04:03] Especially after the infamous Black Friday screening. Sure. Where there was the very dark, very cynical version of the movie after, um... Right, where Woody was, like, an asshole originally. Katzenberg had kept saying, like, I think there's a future with edgier, funnier, darker, more adult animated movies. And little did he know. He basically gets there with Shrek. Shrek is what he always wanted to make. Mm-hmm. But he kept pushing Pixar past their natural instincts. And so there's the screening they show of the story reels right before it goes to animation.

[01:04:33] That's, like, a disaster where Disney's gonna pull the plug on the movie because they're like, this lead character is, like, a complete asshole. This movie is just unpleasant to watch. And they beg for three days to rework the film. And I think Stanton does a lot of the story heavy lifting. And they do the just, like, fuck it. Let's get back to the exact movie we want to make. They greenlight that conditionally. And the film ends up happening as it is. But there is this kind of, like, Stanton's attitude mirrors Woody very much

[01:05:02] of constantly being frustrated but wanting to put forward the face of, like, I got this under control. Right. I'm looking out for all of you. Right. Yeah. Well, that makes sense. Yeah. So, uh, Jim Morris says he's the best sort of genius for story structure. Yes. That's one Pixar guy. Uh, Michael Arndt, that guy, you know, Yes. says that he's kind of good at being harsh in a story. Like, he'll say the thing that's not working or whatever. Like, he's more blunt. I saw him say in an interview

[01:05:31] that that was a big thing from Steve Jobs, uh, who, you know, in this era is still very hands-on with Pixar. That he was just like, people would get really turned off by how blunt Steve Jobs was, but he was just kind of ruthless in identifying what is the problem and what is the thing that needs to get done. Right. Yeah. Some of the other credits before Nemo, obviously, uh, he's also a co-director and writer on Bugs Life. Yeah. He's also the voice of Bug Zapper Bug 1

[01:05:59] and Singing Grasshopper 2. Uh-huh. In, in the Disney parks, there is an attraction that is now called, closed, called Tough to Be a Bug that took place inside the tree in Animal Kingdom and had a giant animatronic hopper that they didn't need to remove when Kevin Spacey got canceled because Kevin Spacey refused to do the record. Andrew Stanton did it instead. Andrew Stanton does a weirdly good Kevin Spacey impression. And that was already one of the scariest things in Disney parks without Kevin

[01:06:29] even doing the voice. True. True. And it has been replaced by a horrible Zootopia attraction. Interesting. Tough to be an animal. Um, he's the voice, oh sorry. No, I was just gonna say, co-director in animation can mean a number of different things. Sometimes it means that two people are directing a film equally. In this era of Pixar, it's sort of the junior director thing. Uh, Lasseter taking him on as co-director for A Bug's Life was sort of to train him to be able to make his own film. But he is by all accounts kind of

[01:06:58] the main screenwriter of A Bug's Life. And also when Toy Story 2 is saved from direct-to-video and reworked, he is the guy who does that. So, across those first three movies, he is like the main writer guy. Um, right, right. So Toy Story 2 has got the credit. Of course, he's the voice of him in Buzz Lightyear, Star Command, The Adventure Begins. Can't say I knew that. Yeah, that's just in the opening. This is the thing, he's a really good performer and he would often do sound-alike voices for when the stars didn't want to come

[01:07:28] do something like a ride or a commercial or whatever it is. He is the voice of Zerg canonically in Toy Story 2. Yes. That is him. He's the real Zerg voice, obviously with a bunch of modulators on him. So, Finding Nemo's been swimming around in his head. Interesting. Use of words there. It's about fish. Since Toy Story, he says, he'd always wanted to the ocean. He was fixated on a child on his dentist's water fish tank. When he was a child, he would look at the fish tank. Yeah. Which was a weird way to see humans. What's the movie about?

[01:07:57] What makes me care? He says he's in a walk with his five-year-old son, Ben, and he has the terrible anxiety that he realized that his terrible anxiety was making him a bad father. Yes. That he kept being like, careful, you know, like... That he was like pulling him from running into the street and all the sort of things and he went like... You should do that. Yeah. Yeah. But it was the intensity of his worry that he felt, right? And he was like, here's my day. I have a, you know, a day alone with my son and I'm gonna have

[01:08:26] no good lasting memories of this because I spent the entire day concerned about everything he was doing and not actually connecting to him. And that's the real, like, germ of the idea. I want to make a movie about that. He, uh, also had seen an early cut of Lion King and apparently remembers just slamming on it. Says, like, sort of shows what I know. He hated the idea of the sort of circle of life of like, oh, we're all just part of this grand chain and we're all, you know, it's all helpful. He likes the Bambi idea of like,

[01:08:56] it's a real scary predatory world. And he's like, Nemo is set in the Bambi world. This is another thing that I really give him specifically credit for changing in the language of American movies because I really think it starts with Toy Story. Animated movies in which characters talk like grown-ups. Right. Where you're not dealing with kind of like mythical, representational, voices of reason, cosmic evils. And so much of the comedy in this movie is just that it's funny that two fishes are talking

[01:09:26] in this casual-a way and that they are so recognizable as personality types. But I think, right, he's speaking to a very specific human anxiety rather than kind of like a larger just-so stories type of lesson. Yeah, without tipping too far into the like, shark's tail, like, hey, I'm swimming here. Which I'm just gonna guess they say. Right. If they don't say that, it missed opportunity. Ackerman fucked up. They do sound like grown-ups, but not in that DreamWorks way, which is a different thing.

[01:09:56] Yes, I think it's that the DreamWorks movies start really iterating on other things in pop culture in a kind of post-modern, metatextual, self-referential kind of way. And what Stan sort of identifies is like an audience will laugh if a character suddenly reminds you of a type of person you know. Not an archetype in sitcoms, you know? But like, a type of person with a specificity.

[01:10:26] Yeah. So, Finding Nemo, he settles on clownfish because he sees like a coffee table book and finds them arresting him. It's obvious, like, it's a great idea. He saw a picture of two clownfish coming out of an anemone and it looked like they were sort of hiding and he was like, and it looks like a parent and a child. He presents an hour-long pitch to Lasseter. Lasseter's a long-time scuba diver because he was hugging the fish down there too. Unfortunately. And Lasseter says, you had me at fish. Yeah.

[01:10:57] And then he's like, how about a hug? The other part of that story is, bring it in, buddy! Anyone else want to join? Stanton the Worry Wirt planned an hour-long pitch that involved him doing all the voices and sound effects and he had audio cues and Lasseter's like, fish, that's a great idea! We can sell fish. Yeah, right. Truly. They're colorful! Right. We also can't stress enough how big Spongebob was at the time. That's true. Everyone loved Underwater. We were underwater crazy. Let's call out, though, this is,

[01:11:26] it's a little bit of parallel thinking. Like, Spongebob premieres in 99. There's four years in between, but the lead time on animation is... This is around 2000, I think, when this movie goes into production. Yeah, yeah. Spongebob was immediately a hit, like, right out of the box. I think that was a little bit of them getting lucky with timing. Another thing, I think I saw Jim Morris say this, that was unique about this movie is so often they would come up with a big idea at Pixar and then they would all sort of brainstorm together and then they'd hire

[01:11:55] an outside screenwriter or three or four people would noodle on it and they'd keep iterating and adding things to it until they finally got to something vaguely resembling a script. Stan literally just sat down and wrote a script for this one. Right. It is like right after A Bug's Life. It's different from the... Yeah, I know there's other people now, like other people credited and all that, but he had a screenplay. But in a kind of complete vision way, it gets changed in regards, but it was like, here's the arc of my story, here's what it's about, here are the major beats beginning to end. However,

[01:12:25] the problem was the Tank story. Like, he had the Search for Nemo stuff, I think, much more set, but the Tank story kept derailing the narrative is how the other Pixar guys put it in this sort of initial pitch. Right. How does that not feel like you're cutting away to an inactive thing? Exactly, right. The original script, also the loss of Marlon's wife was communicated with brief flashbacks in her first through the film and only in the third, we've talked about this on this podcast before, only in the third act do you see that it was like this barracuda attack or whatever. Allow me to restate this.

[01:12:55] Please do it now. Because it's like, the audiences were like, what the fuck, right? Why is he so stressed out? It is the most important thing in Andrew Stanton's career and it swings back in a different way in John Carter in a way we need to talk about. So this is the thing that needs to be established. He, as a guy who now in the time between Toy Story and Finding Nemo, has gotten really serious about screenwriting and read the books and studied other movies and really tried to understand screenwriting as an art form, was obsessed with movies that are able to do this as a storytelling device.

[01:13:24] Isn't that fun when a movie can kind of slowly tease out information and backfill it in multiple flashbacks? And so he just, that was the shape he conceived in his head of the movie starts with Nemo waking Marlon up his first day of school and yada, yada, yada. And across the film you start to get these flashbacks until you finally at the end realize, oh, his wife was killed by a barracuda. All the other eggs were destroyed. Nemo's the only son he has left. And they would play the story reels for audiences

[01:13:53] which are basically, it's usually, sometimes it's Pixar animators, sometimes it's the final cast actors and the voices, lightly animated storyboards, usually with temp music, just so before they do the expensive part of actually starting animation they can feel the flow of the movie. And they play it and people are just like, we hate Marlon. He sucks. Yeah. This guy drives me crazy. And by the time they explain why he has this level of neuroses,

[01:14:23] it's too late. The audience isn't on board. Right. And he keeps trying to crack it and he can't and then he's just finally like, what if I just put all this stuff at the top? Yeah. And it makes sense. I just do it. It's also really helpful for me because I can just not watch that with my daughter. Just skip right past him. But as you said, he was like, everyone was concerned that's too scary, you can't front load it in a movie. And he said like, that's Bambi. Bambi exists and Bambi survives as a beloved film. Right. I think you need to like look the scary thing in the eye.

[01:14:53] And the second he did that, the movie worked. The other thing that happens is... Dory. I don't know if you know if that's what you were going to say, but to him it's Dory. What are you going to say? There was a different actor cast. Well, we'll get to that. Let's get to that. Okay. The other thing for him is Dory. But I just want to say he has a TED Talk around the time of John Carter where he shares the storytelling lesson. He learned there of not trying to out-clever yourself as a storyteller that it's important for audiences to have the emotional information they need

[01:15:22] to understand what's going on with the characters. That makes sense. And very often if you try to be smart or stylish in your sort of devices you actually... It's... You're alienating the audience. Correct. You could just as easily because with this from the very beginning you're like Marlon has suffered. Yes. You know. You're rooting for him. It's an incredibly devastating thing and you understand... It works perfectly. It is so... Elizabeth Perkins crushing it. That's the other thing. Like Elizabeth Perkins

[01:15:52] is great. Within 30 seconds you understand the dynamic of their marriage. A scary thing happens you see his anxiety. Like it's just... And it also introduces you to like in Finding Nemo and in the ocean it's like danger at every turn these fishes' lives are very precarious. Yes. Like we're going to encounter a lot of scary creatures. There are actual stakes from the beginning. It's not just that this kid is lost. It's like the mother dies as do hundreds of eggs. At least hundreds of fish

[01:16:21] every day die in the ocean. Yeah. Dory to him kind of takes the film to another level. She bridges the two main characters. He was inspired by the structure of the novel Cold Mountain for this. So Dory's the Renee Zellweger character. he means by that. Yeah. David Reynolds who's a Conan writer and had worked on other Pixar movies and Bob Peterson who... Mr. Ray. Right. Who hadn't written a movie for Pixar yet but is in the mix. But it's one of their main story guys. Exactly. Like those are the other credited screenwriters.

[01:16:50] William H. Macy first cast as Marlin. Yes. They wanted someone with a lighter touch is the cited reason. As Stan has always put it... This is never revealed until there's like a Pixar book that reveals it, right? So Stan always talked about the fact that they had originally cast a dramatic actor and it felt like it made the movie too heavy. He cast a guy who was funny but comes from a dramatic background and that he felt like he was playing the anxiety too real and too weighty

[01:17:20] and it fought the comedy of the movie. And he always kind of in a gentlemanly way never named who the actor was but then said when we brought in Albert Brooks he didn't need to play anxiety. That's his natural state and he could riff all these jokes on top of it and it worked. The book The Pixar Touch is the one that finally puts William H. Macy as the name. It's never really been verified but it's basically been commonly accepted that's who it was. It makes a lot of sense to be like Andrew Stanton thinks

[01:17:49] well wouldn't like William H. Macy's character from Fargo in an animated movie be the correct version of this. But that's a very dark movie where you kind of want to watch that guy suffer. Totally. Albert Brooks had was making The In-Laws comes out the same summer around The In-Laws essentially. He said he did 11 sessions of 4 hours each that's all he had to do. Yeah.

[01:18:19] It doesn't sound like that much to me. The other thing he said is that he basically would never read what was written on the page but then would improvise for like 20 minutes. He's really good. He's like you can't get him to say the same thing twice. He doesn't want to do line readings but he because he's a writer and a filmmaker in his own right would look and be like what's the thing that needs to be conveyed in terms of story information in this line of dialogue and then now I will give you 20 iterations of the funniest ways that could happen.

[01:18:49] He's a really funny guy. And and good governor. Yes. And a good what's he becoming secretary of labor or commerce or something? In the country in which he was born and raised. We assume. We assume. Yeah. What if he's a dirty Ruski? What if that was cut out of Elma Ked? He's becoming president he could be like Canadian or something. A Canadian's in the room with us right now. A Canadian's in the room with us right now. Bye. Okay. Brooks comes up with the clown thing.

[01:19:19] He comes up with the joke like that he can't do jokes. Yeah. That was Brooks's idea. Right. Stanton's watching Ellen. The sitcom Ellen. Much better than the talk show Ellen. Late 90s. Yeah. And she kind of you know the Ellen delivery thing of like she changes her mind five times into a sentence. One line where she changed the topic seven times and turned to his wife and said I think that's Dory. Now Dory was written to be male. Right. And speaking of this kind of like interested in coming in

[01:19:49] and saying how do we break the mold of what a Pixar movie is a little bit. Right. That he felt like Toy Story the two Toy Stories and Monsters Inc were all buddy pictures. All had Randy Newman scores. All had a kind of similar design language sense of humor and that he really felt like we need to start stretching out what these movies can be so it doesn't start to become formulaic. Right. And I think there's a there's a way in which you can see Finding Nemo as a buddy picture

[01:20:18] because it is Dory and Nemo on this journey together but the nature of Dory as a character prevents it from feeling like that. I think they're going on a sort of buddy journey and I think it's like one of my favorite things about the movie especially in the context of what Pixar was before is I love when the goofy one funny one stupid one is a girl. I think that was really missing in a lot of kids entertainment as the time at the time.

[01:20:48] It was seen as retrograde at some point and they stopped doing it. It's just like girls need to be perfect love interest. For the girl to be the hilarious comic relief silly stupid one is so awesome and I still love that when that happens in like an ensemble sitcom or something like today because it still is semi-rare and so Dory I think is like huge. I give him super credit for just being like oh Ellen would work for this even if it is not how I conceived this. Obviously you know

[01:21:18] Pixar is famous for when they picked a subject being like let's do a ton of research and let's find story discoveries from learning about the real thing and certainly they did a lot of that with A Bug's Life he replicated that model here he found the thing about certain fish have like five second memories I feel like that was already a joke about goldfish the old goldfish memory thing and he was like that's kind of an interesting character challenge and it could so easily be that's a character you meet for five minutes in one of many

[01:21:47] segments of the movie it's like one bit in the movie right it gives himself like a real fucking tough challenge to how do you make that the other character in the dynamic and not have it be annoying you know who's pretty funny Ellen DeGeneres story story rules story's amazing it's a great bit but I and Ellen is so funny in this movie it's crazy so funny but like how does it not to write that character and perform that character where it's not frustrating that she's the obstacle in the movie because the actual goal of the film is get to Nemo

[01:22:16] but then the person who's joining him in that goal she's kind of not helping has her own dilemma it makes it all the more satisfying when she can push through things it makes every like win she has like so much more heartening but I mean without her Marlon is a pain totally so what were you going to say Becca oh just not to skip ahead but one of the big moments that breaks my heart like as a kid when he abandons her but to your point Becca

[01:22:50] relationship between male and female adult characters they do not I'm going to say this on the record Marlon and Dory do not I regret not only that but you don't even want to ship them you don't want to ship them not really this is a great nightmare couple you don't want to ship them it's closer to being a surrogate parenting relationship sort of which is why it helps Marlon have a narrative within the film an emotional arc of he's in trying to keep Dory safe realizing

[01:23:19] the things he's fucked up with Nemo he's realizing his parenting mistakes but he is also Dory is also helping him overcome like you know like his anxiety his sort of his executive function problem of kind of like never making choice just keep swimming man like sometimes you need someone who's just like kind of positive energy we got to keep going you know like he'd never make it to Nemo without that energy even with her condition there's the fact that she is an adult means that he talks to her a different way than he

[01:23:48] talks to Nemo right he can't be quite as patronizing and when she pushes back on him he listens a little bit more yeah he learns to trust yes Dory rules Dory's good Ellen's great yeah I love to order her lunch just that's what I love to do I mean this this is and get it right every time this is the movie that saves her career it transforms her career the talk show premieres this fall after this movie is released so obviously

[01:24:18] it was already in the works yeah but she you know she has the failed second sitcom yes 2001 to 2002 which was called the Ellen show yeah which is like that's the one where it's like she is gay like it's like it's like baked into the show versus the first sitcom like that is a revelation that comes late in the show yeah and that had like Jim Gaffigan in it and stuff and Martin Mull and it was like a big CBS show and it flopped yeah and it was kind of the thing like right was Ellen kind of just

[01:24:48] you know she had Ellen she had the show like she was she was important culturally but like but they were also that's kind of it they were putting her in movies Mr. Wrong is obviously a disaster but she's in Ed TV she's funny in Ed TV she has a line to think about all the time which one can I say it yeah it's so funny it's just a good line it's like Rob Reiner comes in and he's like the mean bot the mean seat the network network guy yeah and there's something to do about like you know he's like if this happens I'll get you more money and she's like can we get coffee filters we've been using

[01:25:18] a yarmulke and it feels like something Ellen might have made up because it's just such a specific image that they just have this soggy yarmulke yes anyway that's awesome sorry she was so big in the 90s and the arc of what happens to her is really fascinating to study now because there was just like years of speculation of she's gay right we're just not saying it right this like short haired lady with pants

[01:25:47] there's the Larry Sanders episode that happens like two years before she comes out where the whole premise is Rip Torn's character is pressuring Larry to be like if we could get Ellen coming out right that would be a big boon for the show so Ellen's kind of winking contest episode

[01:26:17] they're never saying the word so it was enough in the ether that she's even making jokes about the fact that she's not acknowledging it and then they do an episode where she comes out the character is gonna be gay and Ellen's gonna come out it's the front page of fucking Time magazine the puppy episode yep I'm gay with her sitting crisscross applesauce no she was doing a little fun fun meal oh you're right yeah she's doing a gayer stance in Chris Price episodes Ellen

[01:26:46] she's the best but that episode I love Ellen that episode is huge in the ratings yep I'm gay makes headlines right it's one of these things where like she gets this huge bump of visibility and then everyone sort of applauds her and then immediately is like but obviously we can't like sell car commercials on a gay show all the sponsors go away the listener that's a good point yeah the viewership drops I'm just gonna get canceled the show's basically canceled within a year of her coming out yeah and the attitude is like thank you for your bravery but obviously

[01:27:16] you're not part of the popular culture anymore and then she talks about for years fighting to be like uh hosting the Emmys or hosting SNL when she didn't have anything to promote trying to just get herself back out there as a comedian after all the offers had dried up Ellen she ran a bookshop yes was it a bookshop what Ellen true Ellen Morgan the character in Ellen oh okay wasn't it a bookshop yeah yes it was called by the book funny

[01:27:45] but this is the movie that launches the second half of her career that reintroduces her in undeniable kind of way does she make a lot of movies after this no because she's doing the show yeah so the only movie she made after this in which she's not playing herself is Finding Dory is this film called Finding Dory yeah in which she played Dory she did play Dory and that's it and she's never made one since she did more specials she did some stand up yeah like any movies no movies yeah

[01:28:15] it's just a story from then on I think about that tweet all the time Becca you know what I'm talking about of like like the loss of her of her talk show oh yeah yeah yeah where she's like she would have extracted the events of the universe is off right she would have extracted everything usable out of Hawk Tua and like discarded her like a carcass like Hawk Tua got to like have a whole year because Ellen wasn't there to just kind of be like here is Hawk Tua we've presented her to you we've asked all the questions and now she can go yeah the like Ellen extraction machine yeah right like that's how it used to be

[01:28:45] it was like there's a funny video of you ordering a donut in a weird way come talk to Ellen for an hour and then never be seen again but it's also just fascinating that Ellen went from being like Hollywood like threw me out they like said thank you for your bravery and then like closed the door on me and then she's the voice of one of the most famous and beloved animated characters of all time two of the highest grossing animated films in history right and becomes like the voice of reason for every mom in America mm-hmm like has a 20 year run of just being like

[01:29:15] she kind of controls this like sliver of the national conversation of just like I'm deciding which viral people get elevated I'm deciding like what the new style and throw pillows are at Target yeah it is interesting that uh that Ellen show starts and then this rise of like viral videos and social media starts and she immediately becomes yeah the curator of that for moms yes and dancing

[01:29:44] she invented dancing there's an Ellen bit before then people just stood in the famous J Nirvana sequence yes yes yes yes yes yes uh I've heard you're afraid of clowns no Ellen that's not true and then the clown pops up out of the Jack in the Box so there's a movie there's a movie I just you're right she's in is she coming back or is that because I know she had like a recent ish special in the last five years she did a documentary about gorillas David much like Alec Baldwin she said goodbye to public life on her last tour

[01:30:13] she said this is the last time you'll ever see me it wasn't her I didn't watch the special but wasn't the special kind of like yeah I'm rich

[01:30:47] I live in a spaceship Nemo and the show bring her back to prominence she kind of held on to this spite forever of like everyone commended me for doing a thing that was culturally important and also every job dried up it's just fascinating like this movie so much hinging on that choice to cast her it was the right choice yeah but as we sort of said like every casting decision in this movie is pretty spot on even Alex

[01:31:16] young Alexander Gould he's quite good the voice of Nemo he's the kid from Weeds that's right he was the kid on Weeds I remember that he had a little bowl cut his mom was dealing weed he looked like a little like a little Nemo Nemo's just a round little guy with a pair of eyes Weeds talk about a show that its entire premise is defunct now yeah she's like I'm selling weed I'm gonna get in trouble with the law yeah you know like oh no the cops are after me because I sell joints now you can just go to the store now you can just go to the store yeah

[01:31:55] David yes I know what your problem is uh oh you're getting too much sleep ugh alright I have trouble to sleep what can I do well you this is a lifelong issue but now you also got a house full of handfuls it makes the sleep you can get all the more precious does it not of course of course and uh you know what's the most important thing about sleep Griffin uh most important thing about sleep sawing logs counting sheep honkshu honkshu I would say closing your eyes

[01:32:24] wearing a sleeping cap these things are all very important but no it's the mattress oh atop which you sleep the thing and I have a Lisa ah mattress thanks to their wonderful partnership with us I believe I'm sleeping on a king size Lisa mattress I want to make sure I say exactly the brand I have I believe it's the legend oh I think that's what it's called yes um the hybrid chill maybe it's just the hybrid

[01:32:53] I'm not sure if I got the chill I got the chill because I'm a hot sleeper I want to chill out so the whole thing with Lisa is um they've got all kinds of you know shapes and sizes for you right you know if you want a little more firm you want a little more soft it's the best hack to improve your sleep it's to address what you're sleeping on I for a long time was on a less good mattress that wasn't as big I switched to a king I switched to a very nice Lisa mattress you're a tall man you have a tall wife

[01:33:23] it is one of the best single life decisions I ever made in terms of just improving my quality of life you genuinely seem so relaxed even just recounting this I love to be in my bed now and like of course I always like bed bed's fun bed is fun yeah great to be in bed but now I'm like hmm how long till I can get my bed in fact we have to record an episode after this and I'm like so many hours from bed bed is great and you know we've covered some of the worst beds in movies

[01:33:52] on this podcast Will Dormer falling asleep on a dock or a pile of garbage poor guy rooster cog burn bed of ropes you don't want to be like those guys those guys didn't have happy ends you want to be like a king a legendary king sleeping on a Lisa so you know just for some things you want to know please I want to know these are beautifully crafted mattresses they're tailored to how you sleep they're designed with specific sleep positions and feel preferences in mind you know you'll sort of do a sleep quiz

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[01:35:19] kaffee in seiner besten form mit cubo wird jeder kaffee auf knopfdruck zum genussmoment denn mit der neuen cubo one kapselmaschine von chibo genießt du feinsten spitzen kaffee aus besonderen anbaugebieten vollmundige aromen dank innovativer press brew technologie und über 17 sorten kaffee für jeden geschmack erlebe premium kaffee schon ab 29 euro entdecke jetzt die cubo kapselmaschinen in deiner chibo fiale

[01:35:48] und auf chibo.de my nemo begins with uh nemo's mom getting chumped bits by barracuda what do you think a plus good i mean i do think it's an incredible opening it also felt jarring as a pixar obsessive seeing this opening weekend they played knick knack which was an older short being reissued is that the one um in the snow globe with the jackhammer yes and the sexy lady in the other snow globe

[01:36:18] but because of woke the sexy lady in the snow globe used to have big naturals and i think when they re-released it for nemo they made her a little more flat chested and i have been writing angry letters to disney every day of my life since then i want my snow globes horny like those early pixar movies right they that's what they would do they would show the old shorts they would alternate because there was not as uh jerry's game and for the birds

[01:36:48] they didn't have the the young kids making their own shorts in within pixar yet it wasn't as consistent a pipeline so sometimes they'd be like we don't have a short ready let's throw up one of the old guys get knick knack out of the fucking box knick knack rules they never did red stream though cowards they didn't that's the one they never put on there no kid wants to see that on a big screen it's a sad movie the clown's really scary oh yeah it's a bit creepy and it's in like a black void yeah that's why i liked it it's about a fucking unicycle ben it's a movie about a unicycle who's sad that he can't get a clown to sit on his face

[01:37:18] that's insane that sounds like a parody of a pixar concept he wants to juggle right he wants to learn how to juggle with his two little petals oh you're right yeah but there is a clown in it and it is weird where does he sit well there's only one place to sit on a unicycle find the lie um but knickknack plays then we got our fucking jump in look so junior guy and then the movie like just kind of cold open straight like mid dialogue i remember that feeling jarring it does feel like a tonal

[01:37:47] shift uh against the other pixar movies that ease you in to a reality yeah i mean the opening line of this movie is wow right wow you're seeing and you're already saying that because you're looking at this digitally animated ocean that's also quite gorgeous i saw this film by myself i remember i was here on vacation i had to fill some time and i went to like a midday screening at regal union square and it was all kids yeah because it was the summertime yeah

[01:38:16] and i felt a little weird day 17 years old but you'd go see a matinee and the theater would be filled with fucking girls yes i saw this movie multiple times in theaters and that was part of its success was pixar had become enough of a name brand that even people who didn't grow up with pixar like people who were in college when toy story came out were like guess i gotta go see the new pixar movie right the track record was just so fucking strong at this point the opening was humongous and then it just played throughout

[01:38:45] the entire summer it wouldn't go away this was the summer that everyone assumed matrix reloaded is the juggernaut right and that was may and this came out like a week later a week later or whatever yeah and then by like two months in it was like this has zoomed past matrix and it keeps playing throughout the entire year which obviously can't happen zero architects so i don't know why that happened just kids um yeah they need a merovingian fish oh that that would be fun a french fish yes i guess the the shrimp yeah the shrimp chef he goes

[01:39:15] jacques you know uh he's done or whatever sweet yeah who voices him that's joe ranft love it who's also wheezy yeah oh is many many voices is wheezy dead well joe ranft is dead sadly do you know what happened joe ranft was working on the movie cars no whatever he was working on the movie cars which i think he was maybe co-director on yeah i think that was where he was rising up to right here what's the worst way he could have died run over my car

[01:39:44] car accident that's really sad um so who else died is the um 399 eggs in coral and then never forget about the 399 i do feel like they have right like that's why they do it as well because like fish do have hundreds of children right so they have to come up with this kind of plotty way that he's like it's like a one father one son it's like how judy hopps has like a hundred siblings but it's i mean don't get me do not get me started on that

[01:40:14] it's what's really smart about the setup i think too where you're like what is the only circumstance in which a parent would be this obsessive over a one child and it's where they make these choices of like when is the characterization being dictated more by the behavior of fish versus the behavior of humans and with marlin they find this exact midpoint where you're like well if fish have hundreds of children they couldn't be this helicopter-y but if he has a traumatic event that gives him only one child then is he just like a neurotic parent

[01:40:44] in the early 2000s i also think to my point of just like this thing that stanton was able to identify of how to make animated characters be grown-ups like this is a movie in which nemo's the title character but nemo is the third lead the two leads are grown-ups true and same with monsters inc and toy story and a bug's life that all have kids in them but the kids are supporting and the grown-ups talk like modern grown-ups and when we enter into this scene what's immediately

[01:41:13] kind of comfortable about it is that it has the vibe of a couple who have been looking at houses all day yeah right right that you you feel the where their in-jokes are how they needle each other the satisfaction of you know what you're right this place is good and then how immediately that paradise is destroyed by this barracuda that's the villain of the movie griffin yeah barracuda barracuda yeah barracuda anyway years later cut to

[01:41:43] nemo lives he has fucked up fin i know we're just hyper fixating on the first scene of this movie alone but for how large the trauma of the barracuda and as you said like many parents who are just like i just don't show this scene to my kid it is funny that when you look at the barracuda is still cartoonish looking like has like a yeah goofy googly eye it's like a scary cartoon it's also like a perfect kind of trauma by implication where you see the moment where she clocks the

[01:42:13] barracuda i know then she looks down he notices it because she's no longer riffing with him he's inside the anemone you are fixating on he peeks out yes there's perfect fucking acting of her eyeline changing to the barracuda and trying to game out if she can make the move to protect the eggs how's she gonna protect them she's just one fish and then marlin gets hit by the tail blackout you don't see her die you just have him wake up to her not being there and only the one egg with the crack egg in the fins right the

[01:42:42] crack is why he has a one assumes that's the uh reasoning he's lucky i don't think those eggs can really crack because they're like jelly but like who cares lucky fin yes so they live in an enemy yes marlin and nemo uh and nemo wants to start school i guess it's sort of a september uh because the year's starting he's been eager to start marlin keeps holding him back he has to remember to brush his anemone clown fish live eight six to ten years in the wild

[01:43:11] ten to twenty in an aquarium okay should have kept him at the dentist well dory will get to the aquarium um yeah it's a thing that that's and said also when he saw that picture of them poking out of the anemone and said like oh what about clownfish then he looked into it and he was like clownfish live in anemones and rarely leave that he there was like a gift in researching the species of oh they live in this weird like security net that also can sting them and try not to leave the bubble i think it is a really smart

[01:43:40] characterization choice they dialed in the exact right amount of anxiety that marlin can have because there's an insufferable version of this movie where marlin is like bo is afraid where he is so terrified of every corner right that he literally doesn't want to leave the anemone there's something in the fact and even just the way he's doing bits with nemo at the beginning where it's like he wants to think of himself as a funny guy he wants to think of himself as not being up too

[01:44:10] uptight easygoing yeah the neighborhood dads like know him already right once he gets to the drop off this is true everyone tries to relate to him like a normal person and then he just always puts a little too much in it he always gets a little too wound up can't tell the joke and no one's mean no i like when he's fucking up the joke they're just like okay you know like they're all the dads are just like can we stop the one guy just goes for clownfish he's not very funny and then the other guy goes pity uh it's a jellyfish a seahorse and uh i'm trying to think the dad

[01:44:39] yeah it's the type of fish of the one who says i'm obnoxious yes which is dewey from malcolm in the metal which might be a yellow tang yeah yeah uh well an angel fish i think that's no no so dory is a blue tang uh yeah but here i am speaking about a yellow tang oh yeah no you're right there's that bird fish you're saying something different david and this is why you should listen to oh no bubbles bubbles is a yellow yeah bubbles is a yellow tang so these might be angel fish oh not to be confused though puti tang no and also puti tang is in the film but you have to look for him let's also

[01:45:09] say we've invoked bubbles but we're not yet getting to the root of the matter we will do that later okay willem dafoe is an angel fish okay uh bubbles is a yellow tang so what's the kit a butterfly fish cool cool the others are a flapjack octopus which is those octopuses with like the cute little legs that kind of go like she is adorable and uh the a seahorse so it's not a jellyfish it's an octopus her one tendril shorter

[01:45:38] than the others but you never notice when she twirls them like this jellyfish in this movie are like angler fish in that they seem to lack a consciousness aka eyes well jellyfish in real life yeah definitely don't have a brain they don't have a brain and my daughter has endless questions for me about jellyfish which i fully send because we go to the aquarium all the time i was gonna say like four times a day you go to the aquarium it's the best place on earth but like where she is she has really reasonable questions of just like why and how like why do they exist and then what's

[01:46:08] what is this yeah like where's and i'm like how do they eat how do they and i'm like i don't really know man they're weird jellyfish are weird you ever been sung that jellyfish question in the room oh yeah me too it really hurts sucks fucking sucks you ever get peed on uh yeah but not for that reason just for fun we packed sand on it oh sorry i fully wasn't fine i think i think peeing doesn't really work and sand possibly does right a bit more yes peeing is one of those classic like uh

[01:46:37] old wives tales things it it does feel like as much as he's trying to break out of a sense of a pixar formula that was starting to codify at this point this is the most traditional pixar move of now let's do eight minutes of basically blackout gags of what's funny about fish right right like toy story has this the second andy leaves the room and you're like what's every character's game i feel like certainly monsters inc has this with mike and sully walking through monstropolis the first time

[01:47:06] and you're like okay what how does a monster city work you have all of this which also feels like it's him knowing you have to counterbalance the trauma of what just happened in the movie it's nice totally that they have a nice dynamic but also kids need to feel comfortable now it's very economical yeah you get right to nemo going away without it feeling rushed you know getting you know in trouble and it's basically i mean like nemo was taken at like minute 14 and i think dory enters at minute 16 like he basically gets

[01:47:35] both of those things set up within the first 15 minutes of the movie uh of course uh right their school is uh that they will ride on the back of a manta ray and he'll tell them things about a singing teacher named mr ray he's just so good who likes uh diffusing conflict right who's right very very good at handling interpersonal uh inter interofficial yeah it's cool to have a teacher who's also sort of also the bus yes great great point uh uh and the other parents are commanding marlin for

[01:48:04] seeming kind of chill right even if he's not funny but then nemo he pushes a little too far he's encouraged by the other boys what also happens he finds out that the day he's finally letting his son go to school also is the day they're going to the drop-off yes the dads are giving him credit edge of the reef yeah you seem pretty chill i was stressed out right and then that's i i regret it i never should have let him do this he runs out he embarrasses nemo in front of his friends and nemo feels the need to rebel he's gonna touch the butt he's gonna touch the

[01:48:33] butt classic comedy and it's also nice to have the comedy there because that's hilarious if you're a kid and it helps diffuse the situation a little bit which is very scary it is an acting moment that i love in this film nemo's silent performance of challenging his father to touch the butt and they play it like nemo is in like an fbi standoff where he won't break eye contact and he just taps it really quickly and intensely i really i love the kid going yeah it's

[01:49:02] really funny but there's also such a loud smack sound when he hits the butt there's so much force on it um and his point is proven he's ready to swim back to his father unfortunately a big bad dentist right the deep sea divers come one puts nemo in a ziploc bag the other one really rudely takes a picture of marlin a detail i love is that when the flash goes off on marlin marlin reacts by turning sideways and his eye goes wall-eyed so it's like the pose in the

[01:49:31] photo is what a fish would look like versus a cartoon thought about that it's a really quick right his fish's eyes go this way but in the movie they have to look this way he becomes flush and pointing out right i remember reading a fucking like screenplay guidebook that was showing how all hollywood movies fit into you know certain storytelling formulas and it tried to argue that the dentist is the antagonist of this movie which is is wrong the antagonist of this

[01:50:01] movie is marlin's anxiety yes right that is what needs to be overcome and defeat it right i mean also nemo does get captured in that it does suck it's a problem no one's villainous right yes but it is same as these creatures just doing what they're want to do right um all through the ocean like the seagulls are they're not villains but they're not they're not sympathetic you could argue that the obstructions that almost feel malevolent in the movie are not circle of

[01:50:29] life but like just the survival of the fittest mechanisms right of just this is the ecosystem of how fish survive in relationship to each other but there's also like the reason why the tank stuff doesn't feel stagnant is gill is able to kind of teach nemo the thing that marlin's afraid to teach him that marlo marlin is so philip marlin philip marlin is so terrified by what he perceives as nemo's weakness because

[01:50:59] of the lucky fin that he wants to teach him how to live a life devoid of risk and is over correcting and gill is someone who similarly is like scarred uh and empowers nemo to feel like he has the ability to actually do things yeah we'll get into his initiation ritual but i love that they give him that little thing to feel brave okay so marlin bangs into dory trying to find like a meeting bangs into

[01:51:27] dory immediately she uh can't help him who's a character introduction help well i of course i know right this way and then while he's following her she starts doing the panic looking over her shoulder who's this creepy guy and then she does the aggro like you what you got you got a problem huh huh it's a tossed off joke obviously it then becomes the premise of an entirely new movie it runs in my family at least i think it is i think it does where are they makes me laugh so hard and then every time

[01:51:56] it's just a two shot that holds for like 10 seconds of silence i'm often thinking about it and then she looks back and she goes hi i'm dory that it's one it's one run on thought the timing is so good right where are they it's just so fucking funny because like you never need to explain it the whole movie then explains it but her dad is fucking pattern baldness blue tang or whatever we'll get to that yeah but uh the movie's

[01:52:26] been moving so fast up until this point that when you have that sustained two shot of just letting the the joke rhythm of ellen uh drive the movie it feels like a nice reset point uh dory and him then pretty much the next thing is the sharks right like pretty much immediately run into bruce this is the one thing in the movie that always felt an eensy bit cute to me the entire shark dynamic i don't love the uh the

[01:52:55] self-help uh therapy speaks i don't love the trope of characters same with wreck it ralph in uh group therapy or in like a blank anonymous overdone it's not my favorite now can i play devil's advocate and say this was pretty early yeah it is wildly overdone now i remember not liking it in 2003 we must acknowledge that the sharks were kind of the immediate breakout characters bruce was big bruce had a big summer well bruce dory is

[01:53:24] the breakout character well dory's a movie star dory's like a leading lady like dory's first on the policy she's an alginineau yeah but one of the big posters of course is bruce's big face i love of course that it's the great barry humphreys dame edna uh herself playing scary uh and then eric banna and who's the third one interesting so the third shark in this dynamic is played by bruce spence now here's what's interesting about this guy and and hold on to your seats he played

[01:53:54] the gyrocopter pilot in the road warrior aka mad max 2 whoa whoa he's also teen on meet on in star wars episode three revenge of the sith this very year he is the train man his rachel's revolutions is out in just a few months david he was arguably the king of the box office in 2003 except he got cut out a lot of the rings entertainment weekly did a little sidebar in their 2003 year in review where they said he was the highest grossing actor because he had matrix

[01:54:22] revolutions and finding nemo and if he had made the cut of return of the king i think he would have had two billion dollars in box office wow it's like how jonathan bailey was king of the box office last year uh now yeah now why is that well apart from oh because jurassic was that last year yeah was that but last year it was that he saw a dinosaur right and went oh cool he cried can i say he was the scarecrow yes ben i like the shark

[01:54:51] house thank you i like that they live around bombs because the bombs attach to chains are awesome yeah the bombs are cool and then being blown up is cool it is funny that ben's like attached to chains not just bombs no no let's not forget and i like a shipwreck too yeah i also feel like uh what is it chum and what's the other shark's name uh crunch or crush let me find out uh anchor anchor chum and bruce anchor and chum yeah oh crush is the turtle right

[01:55:21] yeah and anchor is a hammerhead uh yes and uh chum has the hook through his face they just feel like very ben characters specifically anchor and chum they should get their own movie but uh yeah like the joke obviously right is they they don't eat uh fish anymore what will they be eating doesn't really come up kelp or some shit but i just think this like real vegans i think sharks need like a tremendous amount of food to operate right like i think this is incredibly well staged action sequence

[01:55:50] you it is it's incredibly well done yeah and then the bombs exploding uh dory's um dory's blood coming out of her nose and then the way his eyes change like it's so cool yes i just starts tripping that's good no no mate don't do it that's really funny i think like several points in this movie in a film that you would not classify as an action film stanton kind of like pulls off a fish version of an indiana jones sequence where even just like bruce leading them

[01:56:19] through the establishment of the mines in the sea right like all the sort of visual stuff it needs to teach you that's then going to pay off in the sequence the missile silo that they can hide out in how they can activate that to get rid of bruce which then even has the comedy within it of anchor and chum jumping in between bruce's bites to apologize for his behavior and it's just all like he keeps teaching you things that don't feel like overstated setups that pay off in

[01:56:49] very satisfying ways where then you can just have action happen with real tension because you know this is a universe in which death can happen characters can die in this movie and still get jokes in ben's laughing at how excited i am dory is so funny when she forgets that they're being chased and then launches the missile so they go back towards the shark right yes yes this is oh any dory joke like that works we should call this out too this is the

[01:57:18] other thing is that dory can read english even though she can't remember things 32 all the way that's the reason that marlin has to stick with her because the only thing they have to lead them towards nemo is for the address written on the back 42 during this is when they find the goggles exactly the divers goggles he rec he clocks them right we learn she can read english because she sees the sign that says escape yes right this kind of perfect like he's stuck with her

[01:57:46] because she can do a thing that he can't do even if she doesn't understand what she's doing and she's constantly getting it wrong but then in this like chain of events it's like going after the goggles and the snap of the elastic band is what causes her to bleed which is the activates bruce yeah she's so good to even just doing the kind i'm fine i'm fine you know like this is also a character design that should not be like a plausible nosebleed coming out of these things she's so fucking narrow

[01:58:15] her face is basically a pencil when head-on with eyes sticking out either side right and she's just got like a nose bump in a mouth there's a lot of blue tangs at the brooklyn aquarium the new york aquarium yeah and my daughter's i was like dory there she is this is an incredibly difficult actual species to get emotion i got no notes yeah i got no notes in any of the animation in this movie i think it's perfect i think it's the apex of pixar yeah i really do yeah i mean maybe ratatouille like ratatouille has such a

[01:58:43] beautiful kind of like approach to all of its things i think this is a better movie well that's okay everyone relax we're all saying this is the five star tier for me right the two toy stories monsters inc finding emo uh ratatouille incredibles those are the ones at the very very top of the heap for me those are like perfect movies in my opinion i do think stanton is the guy within

[01:59:10] pixar who starts getting most fascinated by the idea that in computer animation you can simulate a camera in a way that you can't in hand drawn and he pushes that really far in wally where wally is really selling the illusion of there is a human operator like wally has delayed zooms and shit like that i know this is basically spoiling our list but do you like this more than wally where are you there i'm not sure where i am i i think

[01:59:40] wally's a little bit more imperfect than this film right the static highs of the high highs also you just have to like think about when that movie got announced and it was like andrew stanton is making a robot rom-com in the style of silent films i lost my fucking mind when it was like he's making a robot buster keaton movie it felt like they had designed a film specifically for me um that makes sense

[02:00:07] becca huh while you're nemo oh nemo like wally is like i love ratatouille so much so that's not far behind nemo but wally i have a harder time with the things that are imperfect about it but you think this is stanton's best film maybe but wally's more of a great this look this is the debate this is the grand debate we'll have over these six weeks it's like a godfather versus apocalypse now situation where you're like every that's interesting i don't find that a tough situation anymore i recently rewatched

[02:00:37] apocalypse now and was like i think i think i can see like this movie has left me it's a mess such a big movie for me as a teen obviously it's incredible i also think like the most ecstatic things that movie can accomplish are part and parcel with its messiness totally which feels the same as wally to me where i'm like wally is like a couple steps off of being perfect for me but if it was perfect it maybe wouldn't able to achieve the weird things it's able

[02:01:04] to pull off but this film it feels like stanton is with really fucking limited technology at this time still and this shit's so fucking expensive to do and they talk about the methods they had to develop and the strategies of how to stop it from costing like 500 million dollars how do you continue to visually maintain the relationship between the characters and the water they're in right right like in shark tail it's just characters floating in this

[02:01:32] they're like we can't in every shot show the bubbles or the waves of their fin motion we can't always show the distortion of uh you know the thickness of the water at this point at different levels in the darkness or whatever but they choose their battles really well they're all these insane hacks they do where basically they create one texture surface which is the surface of the water whenever they're peeking their heads up above and then they copy that and put a different layer on top of it to make it the

[02:02:01] ocean floor so basically the sand and the water are the same element but one is fixed and one is in motion similarly they couldn't figure out how to make the anemone and the monsters inc team which was working on the other side of the studio had cracked the fur thing right and someone went oh if you take a ball of fur and then like size it up like crazy so every strand is really thick whoa then the anemone is just overgrown hair so there's stuff in

[02:02:29] like animation that's like when you hear stories about Sam Raimi figuring out a hack for like how to pull off a special effect in a cheap way that this movie is using to like insane effect because none of it feels like shortcuts and it's just so painterly and beautiful and even just the fucking the lighting on this movie I wanted I wanted to bring up the lighting especially because we're in a crisis in 2026 to see a movie where it's so thoughtfully done so vivid and beautiful and

[02:02:58] Pixar is like a big part of their process is what they call the color scripts where they do these pastel kind of storyboards not of every shot but basically of every sequence to look at the color tones of the movie which is like a classic Disney 50s type thing as well to establish the moods of like when is it brightest and when is it coldest and when do you need to establish a tone of things feeling ominous versus sad you know and I think this movie uses the like

[02:03:27] depths of the ocean to convey those things things get brighter when they're closer to the surface right very cool where you see more reflection of the light obviously the whole anglerfish sequence you know is such a bravura demonstration of all that to you know the light on the anglerfish so cool so they get away and pretty quickly they're swimming down to retrieve right when they get away from Bruce that's when they come across the

[02:03:54] anglerfish they don't get a second to rest no it's um yeah it's you know how male anglerfish uh reproduce how you know right they suck their own decks I'm taking a guess they're little and they fuse to the the girl anglerfish and like melt into her and just leave behind their balls and then the the female anglerfish uses the balls to like make and make it lay it do they come and get the balls back no

[02:04:22] they die that's the end for them they're they they mate they die mate you know they're just like go out on top exactly I mean nice work if you can get it it's one of those like dimorphism things like the woman is like the woman the woman the female anglerfish is like 10 times bigger than the male or whatever yeah like the ocean floor stuff brings up like deep sea is as scary and unknowable as outer space yes the creatures

[02:04:50] that are in it are alien this one looks like an HR Giger alien like it's terrifying this is a great call James Cameron taught us about the aliens uh of the deep and the ghosts of the abyss goes the abyss alien to the deep that's right I I think it is very smart that this movie avoids yeah if you were to anthropomorphize the deep sea creatures more it would feel like this is a bad neighborhood in a way that was coded very

[02:05:16] dangerously leave that shit for shark tail exactly right it makes it much easier to just be like this is basically outer space and we don't understand the rules of what's happening here these characters don't have faces that you can like understand or talk to yeah I feel like if if it had a voice it would be too scary for kids totally um be like breathing it's already kind of scary yeah yeah yeah and it's right it's selective which characters can't speak it's the ones

[02:05:44] where even just being around them is potentially a danger you know yeah so to move on from the attempt to you know from this like pretty quickly we are also in the tank right like around this time is when we're sort of cutting over to the tank I was looking I feel like the tank basically comes in 30 minutes in we stay with just Marlon and Dory for a while uh no excuse me it's right after the bruise sequence because the bomb goes off it cuts to the two birds and the one

[02:06:13] who thinks the other one farted it's a really good tension relief gag and a really good way to bridge ocean worlds and silly dentist world so the tank comes in minute 25 well and the tank is like we've already at this point we've already been introduced to like 12 incredible characters yeah let's throw in a whole perfect little chamber piece sitcom ensemble right of characters who are going absolutely stir crazy you got gill willem dafoe yeah willem dafoe baby jay doh

[02:06:43] sorry I'm being a katherine lanasa baby cheeto what a baby jay doe in the pit uh season two early on uh there is a abandoned baby okay and uh katherine lanasa who's gonna look over this baby jay doe there's a baby jay doe sounds good yeah it rocks yeah and like pit fandom which is very normal not toxic at all totally regular uh one of the recurring jokes about this season

[02:07:10] is like they're always like predictions for a finale uh baby jay doe you know uh saves the day you know like she will uh have laser vision you know that they keep being like this abandoned yeah someone was like i've seen the ending and just i won't spoil it but don't look up baby jay doe and rocket launcher i i don't say this lightly yeah but just three shows i don't engage with in the last four months i've just been reading insane headlines about the way the fandom is

[02:07:37] treating these actors like i'm like broken containment on like right like that you are reading about fandom needs to die it really does it's really what's happening in pit world the shit that was happening to the heated rivalry guys i'm like this isn't good but i'm not surprised because this is a show that's driven on a sort of team edward team jacob over obsession with but blankies are great and we like that we love your money i mean and your fandom easy easy easy easy

[02:08:04] um but then like the pit shit that's been happening and then there was the fucking percy jackson kid was like i can't go to prom oh yeah harassing whoever whoever he takes to prom the fans are gonna send death threats he was basically like the fans have like tracked down every girl in my high school class and is sending death threats saying like you better not go on a date with him because he belongs to me oh everyone needs to show it's just but it's the internet and it's the

[02:08:33] way the algorithms feed and all that it's so crazy but pit is the last show i would expect to have that of course and i just keep reading these i think that's why it took everyone by surprise yes where they're like i went it's it's a like a sober hospital procedural and everyone's just like i can't believe that robbie did that it's like he's a fictional character but then they're like angry at which actors aren't coming back when it's not oh yeah they're being they're they're

[02:08:58] being real normal about everything um this group okay so we got just right and then it's like sitcom fucking all-stars right it's like brad garrett he's the puffer fish we have allison jenny from the west wing we love her steven root from news radio brad garrett from every allows raymond obviously uh vicky lewis also from news radio uh austin pendleton is gurgle uh and he's you know i he's he's a guy like a theater actor million movies yeah we love it uh max from the muppet movie

[02:09:26] uh and then joe ranft is jacques but immediately everyone has their bit oh yeah he's clean nemo wakes up and sees all the scary imagery of the like aquarium toys and everything you feel like okay so this is gonna be like analogous to him being in prison now and he's stuck with a bunch of scary inmates and then immediately it's like no this is like a mental hospital yeah it's cuckoos now they all have conditions right right so okay let me try so um gill is scarred and he's kind of battle

[02:09:55] you know he also has a bad fin he's got a bad fin too they basically never stopped him i don't know if you've noticed this the scarring pattern on his face is basically one-to-one with platoon i was about to say it's platoon right they give him the same scars um defoe plays it so straight but also i think it's like incredibly warm in this movie yeah he's this alternate father figure i know i want i want gill to believe in me he's so good because you're just like there's a universe in which they

[02:10:23] go like the joke is you're really intense he's the drill sergeant you play it really seriously yeah and at the end you show a little bit of warmth but even from the beginning he's playing the vulnerability of this guy um it's important too that he was the only fish that ever lived in the ocean yeah he is the the rest of them are tankies yeah um brad uh the puffer fish so he he sometimes he goes puff mode i guess that's his problem yeah he doesn't really have any other problems he's got

[02:10:49] like a hair trigger anxiety response right it's it's the equivalent of having like panic attacks or whatever i guess peach peach is kind of maybe the most balanced but she's a bit of a gossip yes and i know it all yeah uh bubbles loves bubbles yes he's obsessed with the bubbles he's ocd and he's obsessed with the little treasure chest that releases bubbles and trying to keep them in there one of the great fish tank toys if not i think the top or i guess no uh gurgle's the one who's ocd

[02:11:14] and yeah gurgle's like yeah and then and then uh deb i just love uh the idea that she's uh obsessed with her own reflection this is my sister flo who she thinks is a liar she told nemo not to trust so funny it's really good yeah and then uh jock is just a a high-status uh elitist frenchman he's kind of good actually yeah shock rules so they all want

[02:11:38] out though right like they all want out of the tank and they have like uh you know uh a sort of developing plan that nemo fits into he's dropped into a great escape situation where it's like there have been years of failed plans they keep on trying things that don't work and nemo feels to them like he offers some new opportunities specifically in the fact that he's small right right yep you can go

[02:12:01] into the filter and put the stone in the fan and but speaking to how complete the kind of vision of this movie was when stanton wrote it the major changes you hear about in the film are taking out things that were gilding the lily rather than needing to figure out how to ultimately get to things so like you know unwinding the flashback structure he originally had gil be more of a i don't know

[02:12:30] whether to trust this guy or not character he played him more scary up top sure yeah there's a scene where nemo gets gil to open up and talk about what happened to him and how he ended up in the tank and he tells this whole story about his family that went missing and where he came from and then nemo finds out later in the movie that gil has been lying it's like a joker do you want to know how i got these scars thing and that every detail that gil told him is in a picture book that's in the

[02:12:58] dentist's waiting room that he hears a kid read and he was just like it we don't need this yeah just let gil be actually invested in helping this kid yeah this movie is already a liar stuffed to the gills right right there were originally two seagulls how many comedy points there one trillion comedy points no one trillion i now owe you comedy points you're in debt um there were originally two seagulls

[02:13:25] or not seagulls uh what is it pelicans oh yeah right so the one who ends up trying to eat them was originally a fully developed character and there was kind of a good and bad pelican and nigel's trying to protect them and this other one's trying to eat them and they were just like none of this is necessary because they already have the seagulls right that's their thing yeah but i love nigel as a character as just this kind of like jeffrey rush just playing fucking warm right just playing like a

[02:13:52] lad who just loves coming in because he likes dentistry right it's funny how they all know about dentistry yeah it's awesome because they've been in this tank all these years but they're stuck nigel comes and visits of his own he likes to hear the like dentist update what's the gossip what drills he using it's funny because it's like they are out they are watching the dentistry like television they're so invested right but for them it's also like studying their captor to be like where where

[02:14:21] are the vulnerabilities what's genius about nigel too is you immediately recognize that is how they are gonna get out of there that's what i'm talking about it's like there's such intentionality of this story that anytime a character's introduced you're like what's the function they're gonna serve yeah and anytime you're shown a visual element you're sort of like oh right he could keep people in his beak right and none of it it's all what everyone you know talks about being the ideal of what you want

[02:14:49] to achieve in dramatic storytelling and especially in like film narratives is surprising but inevitable how can you in 90 minutes pay off the things that felt like they were they had to happen but yet when they happen they don't feel de-rigger you really locked into this movie i i've seen it so many i've seen so and i mean so have i yeah but uh i i truly i this is one of my go-to i can't sleep

[02:15:15] movies this is like a real comfort movie for me and you know we were talking about we did our edge of tomorrow episode on patreon which i guess will have just come out or recently come out right and we were talking about how you will often identify a sleep movie and watch it like literally every night for like a couple of months pretty much and then you kind of like squeeze all the juice out of it and you move on to something new for a while yeah nemo has just been in the rotation for 20 years for me

[02:15:43] yeah i probably haven't seen this movie until you re-watched it yesterday in over 15 years or something and it was like i know every word every line every scene a lot of the lines are also so catchy so sticky this is like full of just these effortless feeling catchphrases uh it's not like donkey catchphrases it's no they're not dumb jokes and so much of it is the specificity of the actor

[02:16:08] makes a really interesting choice in the rhythm of their line delivery or the character the design of the character that is saying that thing and the animation of what they do when they're saying it so where do we leave off well we've done the tank for a while the dory thing they escape the angler fish right we go from the tank to the angler fish and then it is when basically like dory doesn't absorb the directions of like avoid the jellyfish and they go into the jellyfish so yeah or is this

[02:16:37] marlin's fault it's marlin's fault she sort of remembers that they shouldn't do it and marlin's like what are you talking about this is the right way yeah the the like uh school of fish yeah they're like does the bit too or they keep impersonating that's john ratzenberger that's john ratzenberger yeah so we're gonna get back to them the grumpy gus in an amazing way he's like mar you have marlin okay yeah you have marlin dejected that they lost the goggles right and that's when dory introduces

[02:17:04] the just keep swimming to cheer him up that she's also invested in him she was able with the angler fish because he used the light like a reading light she was able to do p sherman 42 wallaby way sydney yes they've lost the goggles but this is for the first time she's learning to remember yeah which i just think is so elegantly done that it's a gradual thing rather than at one moment suddenly

[02:17:29] you have your payoff moments with her you have the like her making the emotional plea to him that like when i'm with you i remember things and you have the moment where the whole nemo thing comes flashing back to her she's so proud of herself right now for she's like i've remembered that incremental you give her little victory so it's not just like at one point in the movie suddenly she's fixed and because her well a she repeats the she repeats it a hundred times but also like because the

[02:17:53] remembering the address is something so um emotionally important to her that like i won't remember that address of a house i grew up in but i'll remember p sherman 42 wallaby way sydney until like i die probably and especially her riffing on it and her turning into the songs ask me again and i'll tell you p sherman 42 wallaby way so they get to this trench uh and the trench looks dark and scary marlin sorry i was pulling up to remind myself where i was instead i just got the scary sounds of the

[02:18:22] trench and marlin is obviously like well we don't want to go through the dark scary trench we need to go over a fish who she had asked for directions earlier told her it's the school of fish it's the final thing after they've been making fun of marlin and he's like fuck these guys then they're like one last thing but it's after he's swum off so only she's there to hear it and they don't know that she can't remember oh right that is then i thought this happened later in the movie but i'm getting them confused with the school of fish in the end who we'll get to who are also a big silver school of

[02:18:50] fish but but the clockwork kind of precision of just like there aren't any cheats in the story they are so funny they're so specific like the conflicts they find themselves in why they're there why there isn't an easy out why they need to fight to work through the thing like if marlin wasn't offended by them mocking him because he's so self-serious then he would have heard the thing about the trench right and he doesn't like asking for directions she's very friendly she doesn't mind

[02:19:18] going up to anyone his stubbornness screws they do the like hey is this fellow bothering you yeah lady so they play a game of charades to cheer her up and then because and so we've seen that they can move in this really fun way and then they do a big arrow because they tell them they need to get to the eac oh right they know where sydney is showed the little waves they show the opera house they turn into marlin and they do like a sad face marlin which is pretty funny they do a mocking

[02:19:46] impression over his shoulder they are very funny yes and then give them the directions right swim uh uh through not over yeah he doesn't trust her so they get he distracts her he's like look a shiny thing yeah they go the jellyfish fucked them up the jellyfish fucked them up yeah this is the sequence then they're woken up i mean we cut to the tank and then when we cut back to them when they're woken up

[02:20:08] but it's so scary intense and so beautiful it's another camera decision where he said they animated this whole sequence and he was like it looks too neat and clean and perfect there isn't tension to this and the guy who was head of camera on the movie was like let me try something and he clicked twice to zoom in like literally just did that sure and did it kind of like arbitrarily right and stanton was

[02:20:33] like oh if the compositions are asymmetrical if the jellyfish's bodies are cut off right and it feels like there's just this weird environment that you can't see as full bodies and so all of the camera placements within the sequence which is a lot more quick cutty are all kind of a little disorienting how did they stop the camera from getting wet really good question it's a fun sequence fun but we're getting

[02:20:57] to the turtles turtles okay in my opinion the most positive representation of a californian in the world this is a really good take like of that kind of like the surfer dude thing andrew stanton a massachusetts and although he's probably lived in california for like decades at this point yes doing like a surfer dude accent like oh man yeah you know right but it's like the whole point of crush

[02:21:22] is he's just like i'm 100 years old or 150 or whatever he is look at me i'm fucking chilling there's nothing annoying about this guy he's not forcing his worldview on it the more you talk to him the more you're like this guy's got it fucking figured out he's like you know when there's like cool team like when there's cool jesus for teens do you know what i mean crushes cool jesus uh you think he's kind of like a youth pastor but like a really nice youth pastor he's like the cool jesus he's the cool

[02:21:49] hippie jesus that the youth pastor is talking about yeah i guess like a youth pastor wishes he could be crushed but he is show he's demonstrating an extremely different parenting style yes right marlin is being exposed to it is actually a much healthy much less helicopter-y kind of parenting he'll find his a way to teach your kid a way a kid learns to be safe in the world is to fail or fall off the swing

[02:22:15] and then figure it out in their choices and feel like it's based on experiences rather than rules being placed around them yeah and feel it to have a sense of um adventure that feels um safe just the whole idea of like you know locating the eac is a real phenomenon then being like man okay so turtles would they be like surfers yeah if they're literally just in the flow of this it's sort of like a highway right like when you see the fish that are merging on but it also is skydiving yes yeah

[02:22:45] right right oh when squirt gives their big the big like skydiver like okay we're gonna have a great jump today totally um i mean incredible performance from stanton it's another one of these early examples where here's a role that they earmark of like well at some point we'll hire like a celebrity to do it and he would do it in all the story reels much like brad bird doing edna mode or whatever right well that's the opposite story where they hired much like william h macy it's never been named but

[02:23:15] everyone believes it's lily tomlin makes sense that he hired lily tomlin and she was doing the records and he kept on giving her really specific directions of being like no i think it's more like this and it's more like this and lily tomlin literally excuse me i got myself to a tongue twister lily tomlin literally goes i think you should just do this yeah why don't you do it then and then and then he just does edna was born right um this was the opposite where when they were edna mode when

[02:23:42] they were in the early stages everyone around stanton was just like you should just fucking do this he's like a hawaiian shirt guy well all the pixar guys at this point in time are hawaiian shirt guys this is a little preppier he's i i got that new england thing yeah yeah but this is outside of no one's gonna do it better should i have a hawaiian shirt no absolutely not that would be a fucking nightmare i think you're wearing a baseball shirt and it's awesome i'm i'm in my

[02:24:09] mets era yeah i keep buying jerseys um so the other thing as we've been saying about how all the character choices make sense for the type of animal yeah this type of um more relaxed parenting style not only that they're surfers and what and whatever else but it's also because they hatch their eggs really far away yeah and marlin goes how how do you trust that they'll come and swim all this way in the big big ocean and find you and it's like oh when they're ready they'll when you know you know

[02:24:39] you know but it's finding those gifts of like you do research on different species and you go oh that's interesting that's an interesting character detail yeah rather than forcing things onto characters you find these discoveries i want to mention that in between right before marlin waking up oh we have tank stuff yes you have the first attempted tank escape yep which is genuinely like pretty that's

[02:25:02] also an indiana jones type i really like that it's a moment for gil yes to be like i pushed the kid too hard or like i was being crazy like thinking this would work also that he's only been dealing with other adults and that he's pushing nemo to the same extent he's the opposite of marlin where rather than not letting him do anything he's making nemo do too much yeah so he pressures him the plan is because nemo's small he's going to swim into the filtration system and jam one of those little

[02:25:31] tank pebbles into the rotating yeah the motor to jam it and then the tank will get gunky they will all have to be uh put into little bags while the dentist cleans it we get a really fun visual where he's explaining how the plan is going to work and talk about the camera placement it's like this pov of these bagged fish rolling across the highway and i think talks about it as the fincher sequence

[02:25:57] he's like this is my homage to the fight club here's how we're going to infiltrate yeah you know talking through it and all the crazy camera movements and whatever it's really fun it is a really smart plan it's a good plan but it has this assumption to it that i do like that it's like there's a fish logic yes of like humans will only do one thing right and they don't realize that like yeah human can just fucking go on amazon and buy like a new filter but i i like that nemo gets close

[02:26:22] like it's not like it's a total failure no but but it is so scary scary that it does actually set marlon back and not marlon i'm sorry gill it makes him question everything to a degree where he's just like these are the lies i'm telling myself so i can survive in this fucking tank we're never getting out of here right and it flips the dynamic where nemo is going to have to console him basically because nemo finally does it because he hears about his dad's heroism well i'm sorry let's

[02:26:49] just run through because i need to i need to get through this because you have this lesson with the the turtles right and they they send them off the eac but they start spreading the message right this is a sequence that they talk about is just like kind of pixar at their best where one night they were like fuck we got to solve this story problem how can nemo possibly receive a word that his father is looking for him at this point in the movie wouldn't he just give up how do we stop

[02:27:18] the character from just conceding and they're just like well what if it's a fucking like game of of radio right what if it's a chain of conversation and then what are the opportunities for characterization and all of those things because all these have to be like a four second gag yeah of what's funny is oh our swordfish like upper crust british fencers so you know and they basically just like write this

[02:27:44] all in one night all do the voices these are all pixar people it's all like peterson and stanton like repeating different uh you know archetypes and cultural stereotypes and it's like a really fun journey that just feels like a fun story exploration but then you get to nigel hearing it nigel recognizing it being like i gotta tell this clown fish but you can tell that he's like this

[02:28:08] is gonna mean a lot to this kid i gotta tell him right away flies through with urgency nemo immediately is like what actually no not possible he's immediately heartened and then rejects it as like that is not a thing my father yeah that my dad would never battle a shark like let alone even like sandy plankton's dad wouldn't even battle a shark

[02:28:31] if you told him your dad is just swimming really far to get to you even that would test his yeah his uh his notion of his father uh but this is a beautiful moment because he nigel says some identifying features about marlin sport fish trout tuna oh yeah yeah yeah his name's marlin yeah so um you said he fought a shark i heard he took down three and you just you just fucking

[02:28:57] like spielberg shot push in on nemo's face and his eyes widening right as he realizes the expression of his father's love in a way his father could never say to him the understanding of what his father has gone through to try to get to him yeah i i just find incredibly emotionally overwhelming i think you're right i think you're right i think it's very emotionally it's it's very beautiful and so nemo makes up his mind he's gonna try the plan again gil wouldn't have wanted to push him he

[02:29:27] like nigel's telling the story all the other fish in the tank are so excited for nemo and then they realize he's missing and he's already gone back up the pipe it's like hearing of his father's bravery has emboldened him to believe that he can do things as well uh we should also of course we around now is when nemo i mean when marlin and dory get sucked into a whale and dory speaks whale to the whale that's right after this and that changes that changes humanity forever it changes the

[02:29:53] world everyone just could not stop talking about it it was it was seismic whale it is so funny having i've seen finding dory so many times now because my daughter vastly prefers it to finding nemo and uh and that movie i think is pretty fun and we will talk about it on this show yeah but the way that they're just like well dory has to speak whale that should be crucial actually the fact that dory doesn't know where her family was that's the emotional arc of the movie that throwaway line like in the

[02:30:20] first where did dory learn just to read correct like they're basically like what are the things about dory now that is the spine of finding i like that movie a lot everything that drives me crazy in it is the checklist dc yeah i hate that in prequel type yes like i i hate that they bring the turtles back even though i love crush and it just feels like they're like guys you have to bring the turtles back we need to sell like turtle march you know yes there's stuff like that that's

[02:30:48] really annoying turtle talk we'll get into as well we'll get into turtle talk um but whale yes the whale the whale uh speaking whale is just that is one of the most biblical ancient important go off uh archetypes in in myths and sagas and legends is our heroes get swallowed by a whale you just have to do it pinocchio yeah one of the greatest animated films of all time true

[02:31:14] swallowed by whale yeah i think it's some of the best decor in inside of a whale yeah yeah baleen that's their little teeth things yeah which is so funny because you think of them as being sort of soft and small but they're so packed in and hard when marlin's trying to escape but anyway their taste buds being so pronounced that the fish can hang on to them that part for i do not like marlin rubbing up

[02:31:40] on the taste bud and also the water coming like as flowing against the where the whale is swimming it's so interesting yeah whales are crazy them having this fight where marlin's like really reaching a breaking point with dory of being like you keep thinking you can do you know you can speak to whales you can read you can do all this fucking shit and meanwhile it's just the whale approaching them so fucking slowly right and because of the weird perspective and lighting and all the tricks in the

[02:32:07] water she's going like hey little fella i don't think that's a little fella that's piacon yeah that's piacon he is such a piacon because he is helping them it's interesting that way of water inverts what you're talking about where the villains go inside the whale and do something terrible take their immortality juices yeah well that's a lesson about whales are something grander and more sacred than us yes and we we can't be trying to mess with it true i do like that the whale basically becomes a location

[02:32:37] right that it's like yeah where they have a fight and they talk it right but i like becca's thing of like right also this kind of like they're passing through a siege perilous here yeah the biblical thing yes that they are transformed by being expelled from the whale right and that and it's much like nemo's character growth happening in him listening to nigel's story like just really elegant show don't

[02:33:00] tell stuff through action it's just such a fucking perfect piece of screenwriting when marlin is yelling at dory right for trying to come up with a solution for how to save themselves yeah and he's just saying no to everything she's fucking doing and then he finally breaks and says my favorite line you think you can do these things but you just can't nemo and and what i love about it is you see the

[02:33:24] shock on her face the reaction of why he called me nemo she can't quite comprehend it but then it cuts back to him and he looks so fucking embarrassed like he realizes what he just said her name is dory yes that well that's well she's like who's nemo i thought your kid is harpo chico fabia yes yes but that he like he gets it the second it comes out of his mouth what harpo just laughing about dory

[02:33:52] it's another classic comedy thing anytime she confidently says the wrong name and he just has to go nemo he just has to correct her so fast so nemo is a very fun word to say it's awesome that it said like a trillion times in this movie it's a really cute fun name

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[02:34:40] ab 2 euro 98 im monat geh auf wow tv.de streaming war noch nie so wow of course nemo himself escapes all by himself like you know marlin does not rescue nemo no right he's there for nemo when he comes out of the yeah you know into the harbor right out of the sink but also dory is correct like dory gets them out of the fucking door he's been talking to the whale this whole

[02:35:09] time whales don't speak and i think whales don't speak the same language as all the other fish because they're again like the tulkuun sort of like on this elevated plane of intelligence the same way that we can't speak the same language of whales but whales do have language yes so that's sort of what's happening here in my mind she's communicating with the whale the whale is like you need to do the counterintuitive thing which is fall down into my throat so that i could then blow you out i've driven you to sydney i'm dropping you off which is also what teaches marlin to

[02:35:37] trust nemo in nemo's escape that she's doing the counterintuitive thing why would you go deeper into the whale and nemo similarly is not trying to swim up out of the net no yeah he's gotta swim down that's how we're gonna escape this thing he learns about swimming down also because um yeah when when the fish have to get scooped out uh usually to be sent to their doom at the hands of darla it's in a little net and if a lot of them are in the net they can yes yeah break it and and

[02:36:08] nemo you know the big transformation is he he he knows what to do he persuades marlin to let him do it marlin you know lets him do it right marlin has the wherewithal to let him do it uh and they escape it's the story thing i love across the toy story movies that also feels very influenced by indiana jones where you set out like here's the clear plan this is what needs to happen and and the order of actions that will get us to the other side of this thing and then immediately shit goes wrong

[02:36:36] and your characters have to improvise but it's like a heist movie where you're so trained into how this is supposed to go that it's exciting every time they have to veer off of the plan and the movie is telegraphing the all drains lean to the ocean thing so loudly throughout as like if they can just get there then they're in the clear they're safe yeah it is a thing that Pixar people have talked about that there were a lot of incidents after this movie came out

[02:37:04] of uh kids flushing right fish down the toilet like they're not gonna because they thought they're not making it to the harbor ban they thought that was the humanitarian act oh no fish shells went way up after this movie of course and like aquarium attendance i feel like permanently went up after this movie oh yeah but there was a lot of kids uh trying to free fish by by flushing them down i do think there's a very beautiful of its time sort of y2k frutiger arrow uh vivid

[02:37:33] blue and orange like um aesthetic to the whole thing that feels like it was those are the two best colors let's go met i also like calling this frutiger arrow is that how you say it frutiger arrow sure do you know what i'm talking about yeah yes i know what you're talking about like a like that one windows background yeah um also a little fruitopia i miss it oh fruitopia i miss that is like crush and squirt vibe yes that's true i miss my like windows 98 bring it back bring it back

[02:38:00] also a good reason for them to be clownfish is the blue orange contrast is the best contrast um so did you know if you ate a clownfish that it would be gross because they're covered in a special mucus to protect them from the anemones that they live in anemone anemone all right kid don't knock yourself up um no and then when then then we're done like i mean right like it's like oh no we skipped over right you think you're in the clear when he escapes but the tank gets super fucking dirty

[02:38:28] awesome pendleton's freaking the fuck out can't you see that we're all surrounded by shit which they cut him off yeah she goes right the dentist is coming in and he takes his reader's digest into the bathroom right yeah is that when that happens or yes yes and the kid in the waiting room is reading the incredibles comic i don't know if you know and there's a little buzz light you're in the toy chest yeah um but the thing they didn't account for is that he would just buy some new high-tech cleaner and install it while they were sleeping yeah that he doesn't need to take that out or he

[02:38:57] took him out but put him back in really quickly so they wake up the tank is clean all hope is lost right um it does not know that uh dory and marlin have gotten so close and today is the day that darla is coming and she's gonna take nemo and shake him until he dies yeah it you know she even gets her hands on him i mean she's got him for a second she gives him a hearty shake yeah she's like the opposite i think a lot of like the depiction of australia and this was just probably this and

[02:39:25] you know kangaroo jack were like my only exposure to australia in you know the first decade of life uh and it so goes against the lovely intelligent children of bluey darla makes it seem like the children of australia are monsters i do think it's vital in bluey that bluey is a relatively obnoxious child yeah but she's not like darla is like oh no darla is much worse but i mean like

[02:39:51] i mean i just wait at one point someone a character with an australian accent calls dory bluey well she is blue she is blue uh but you know in bluey like one of my favorite episodes of bluey a hugely controversial episode is the one where ellen comes out where the puppy episode they're all puppy episodes this is true uh is the one where bingo you know first they both turn into blueys right bingo turns into bluey like bingo paints herself blue i don't know about this it's so good

[02:40:20] it's called mini bluey why is it controversial i'll tell you in one second so bingo turns herself into bluey and bluey's like this is what it's like if you're bluey and essentially it's like you need to be more obnoxious like you are not like you are the good sister okay i'm the more annoying sister don't listen to dad when he tells you to do something right ignore people be a little bossy make weird noises yada yada and they do that for a while and then bluey's like this is boring how about i be bingo and so they both turn into bingo right they bluey paint and then you know

[02:40:47] they're being nice and helpful and the dad goes this rocks result this is great and then bluey's really upset like bluey gets upset and they you know they have to resolve like you know that you know bingo's like i'm also annoying like bingo helps bingo is a much sweeter kid but but like bingo is basically like of course like they think that but like i'm also annoying and weird and demonstrates how but then the episode does end with the dad being like but it did kind of rock when she was

[02:41:13] being bingo right and a lot of fans don't like it because it's like it's not an example of amazing parenting like the dad never really apologizes i can't be these perfect parents all the time that's why i love it the issue with the bluey parents is they're too perfect so we need these moments anyway where where are we here's the thing i like in the movie and i like this just when movies can give me this feeling where you feel like it's wrapping up and you're like it's a shame i've been having fun i guess if it's time to end it's time to end but i could watch some more of this

[02:41:43] and there's basically a fake out denouement right like darla's here ticking clock it's coming to a head marlin and dory have made it like basically right in nigel's mouth which was another moment of learning to trust because yes he's like you need to hop in my mouth that's simplified this is the only thing the other pelican needs to accomplish is just being a basically non-speaking rival yeah and

[02:42:09] they're all like lads who are perched above a fish and chips stand we also need to call out the mine seagulls who we haven't even talked about yet right which were also you say bruce is a breakout star the seagulls were oh humanious um yeah seagull mine mine it's so it's very funny it's just another really good identification of like what do seagulls feel like to us when we see them right

[02:42:32] yeah um so and also uh nemo is playing dead yes so that he'll get flushed down the toilet and that's what marlin and dory come in on so they think the dentist is scooping is scooping him to give to darla gill's final advice is to play dead yeah uh he wants to get to the drain um but yes there's like this tension of uh nigel getting marlin dory to the window they make it they're just in time to see

[02:43:01] what they think is nemo dead on the counter so they give up nemo wakes up gill recognizes the panic of this moment and does what is potentially the sacrifice of load me into the volcano another thing we've set up in the movie that doesn't feel like it's going to be a sort of mechanic for action right it was just sort of a fun gag that they could make the volcano right that's just part of the ritual but then we've shown that like it's not actually dangerous but of course yes you could launch

[02:43:29] yourself from that so they all work together and they launch gill um over to the dentist tool tray right who uses basically the tools to break nemo's bag to be able to let nemo flip into the drain of the dentist spit sink uh but it's too late in the sense that marlin and dory think it's too late yes they think he's so nemo is flushed to sea yeah and marlin and dory are back in the ocean and nigel

[02:43:57] also thinks nemo's gone and it's like i'm sorry i'm sorry i truly am his second i'm sorry truly am really gets to me gravity of it yeah and then he just fucking flies away yeah and marlin has his lowest moment of just like i mean genuine grief yeah he's crossed the ocean he came so close his son is dead and he's like dory we're going our separate ways he's not even angry at dory at this point

[02:44:23] but it's just like i i it's over she gives the beautiful thing about like i don't want to keep forgetting when i'm with you with this relationship i'm able to remember and he's like i don't want to when i'm with you i'm home yeah yeah she makes her big plea and it falls on deaf ears because he's just going through too fucking much which leaves her alone this is where you're like i felt like the movie was about to end but now they're all split up again where's the movie even going what moves does

[02:44:50] it still even have and it's oh nemo can bump into dory and dory cannot understand what that means yeah yeah so at first nemo very sweetly is like oh like are you lost yeah right right very cute he sees he's just escaped from like the most perilous situation ever he's seen more than any little baby fish should but he wants to take care of her yeah he wants to help people like okay like i'll help you he sees she's in distress right and once again like if marlin had listened to dory's

[02:45:18] plea he would have been reunited with his son in five minutes yeah right so marlin goes away there's these crabs who are fun dory doesn't remember you have the moment of like nemo that's a nice name yeah oh really funny yeah perfectly played uh and then what is it that helps her remember again um it's like a flashback yeah but what triggers the p sherman 42 wallaby way sydney

[02:45:44] because she has the moment where it all comes flooding back or like kaiser soze moment i'm trying to remember what the verbal trigger is um i don't remember okay well so that the fact that we're forgetting is very no no it's metatextual that we don't remember and it will come to us in a in a flashback and it'll be like a parallel and whatever yeah so that happens uh she remembers

[02:46:08] and they need to find marlin yeah right and marlin's just sort of following the school of fish right um you could argue he's borderline suicidal at this moment yeah so he's there's this big school of fish and they're all like hey watch where you're going they're like really dour um he's sort of caught up in that they briefly reunite it's the pipe i'm sorry it's the pipe where the crabs are

[02:46:32] looking to catch the fish yeah and it says sydney on it oh she sees that she reads it there you go and p sherman 42 wallaby way sydney comes back to her yeah and then she's like oh nemo and she's hugging him yeah with her little fins uh there's this big school of fish and and i'm sorry but just incredible ellen de jenner's line delivery she does her similar like seven thoughts in one sentence without your dead and you're not and your father your father she has her one kind of scolding yeah

[02:47:01] while she's like squishing his face it's really cute she's really uh but we see this school of fish where they've just reunited um up above on the shore there's a fishing trawler that's going this is right the the net right yeah it's gonna drop a big net and scoop up all of these fish yeah and and nemo's the only one who can basically save everybody right oh no because dory gets caught up in it yes and marlin is now even though he just he he realizes his mistake from abandoning

[02:47:30] dory he's not gonna lose her again so it's like we need to get her out of there and free all the fish nemo goes inside and marlin has just got his son back and he's like you cannot do this but then it's like this is going to work you need to trust me though you i i know that you can yeah and it's you've already had their moment of reunion so it's what's impactful is that marlin has just gotten

[02:47:55] him back and he so quickly accepts that he needs to trust him and let him go for another moment yeah so he schools all the fish huh uh-huh so true this is yes swim down this is based on a real event yes that stan read about in the news there was some event where a school of fish seemed to somehow figure out how to beat a net to break the net right which is another great like oh shit if

[02:48:23] you're telling me that happened for real yeah at least someone claims it yeah yeah movie's over right i mean like that we end up back at back at the school and all that excuse me my opening quote another moment that makes me cry where he's looking at nemo who has succeeded in freeing all the fish but he's lying kind of knocked out at the bottom of the ocean floor at least this tier of the ocean floor right yeah this and you have the mirroring of him going to nemo and cradling him like the egg

[02:48:53] and then to console him as he's like half a week you know yeah he tells him the sandy plankton thing right yeah it's a lovely moment to me the lovely moment is when he gets information when he gets the what when he when he's like how old are you and crush goes 150 dude like that just makes me cry but see it's because it's so beautiful the past good too both are both are incredible both are so sweet uh but the fact that he's able to tell him that and that he knows that and that he understands the

[02:49:21] value of having experiences and learning things for yourself and that's what he like yells at nemo about which is so funny his genuine frustration of why do you still give a shit about sandy plankton yeah is both very funny and very albert brooks saying the name sandy plankton to very important spongebob characters yes good call um he just delivers it in a really funny way

[02:49:46] and then it's very sweet and then you cut forward basically to their new found family they're right they're back back at the anemone and now it's marlin jumping on nemo because he's excited for him to go to school um there's also many credits scene where the tank that the tank gang does escape which is yes oh and squirts an exchange student now oh that's right hey man best i just want to say this right now but okay it was part of the reason why i was so concerned when

[02:50:16] they announced they were even making a sequel yeah is this movie does end just perfectly it does but it's not like the monsters inc ending where you're like i truly don't know what you do no finding nemo does end with like they live in the ocean and are friends they could have another adventure it's nemo swimming back to hug him and say i love you and then swimming off and marlin saying i i love you too son at a distance you know that he says it to himself kind of yeah it's good yeah he says go have an

[02:50:44] adventure and nemo says okay but the last line is yeah i love you too yeah right before nemo got right before nemo got taken away he said i hate you exactly with his like full force i guys i hear you i love this movie i will say it does not quite activate my parent buttons in the way you guys seem to be so that's interesting but like not in like a way where i'm immune to does it activate your child of a parent button is it more like the opposite identification i just like it because

[02:51:13] it's about fish and dory's so funny it's pretty awesome but i think all of the stuff you're saying is very well done like i'm not you know but it doesn't it does this movie doesn't like i'm like it's about how secure attachment styles are formed yes in the crucial early years of life yes uh i also need to correct myself he does the swim back love you but then he just says bye dad while on mr ray yelled out at a distance and then marlin says bye son very quietly to himself

[02:51:40] all right the end beautiful fucking robbie williams beyond the sea oh yeah obviously famously uh if you see this movie what's the what's the language where the end is slut what what so there's a language right that it comes up on the screen it just says slut and that became an old like twitter

[02:52:04] of like the end of youtube but then it just goes slut well then wouldn't that happen in like a hundred movies yes but it's just especially funny and also most movies don't say the end of the end it's swedish it's swedish that is awesome uh i will find it now uh do you know speaking of languages

[02:52:26] this is only the uh second movie ever that was dubbed into navajo that's amazing whoa here we go see here's the ending water looking at the shot you know and that just it does just say in fact it does just say slut um best supporting actress of 2003 here were the oscar nominees i want to say this right now the nominees were renee zellwiger for cold mountain who won unbelievably yeah

[02:52:56] yeah shoray agadash lu for house of sand and fog lovely nomination mediocre patricia clarkson for pieces of april better in the station agent but still pretty good yeah that's a weird one where that movie it was a combo doesn't exist but there was a moment of hey patricia clarkson's always been good she has two great performances this year let's give her a lifetime kind of you pick yeah and the pieces of april she has cancer or whatever it's a little more but a totally forgotten movie that she's somewhat forgotten yes she's good marcia gay harden and mystic river kind of an

[02:53:24] odd nom she's not bad in it yeah holly hunter in 13 a very good performance because she's a good actor in a very sort of over robbed movie yeah ellen degeneres is better than all of those performances like by far like it's not even a question did bafta nominate her i know they nominated eddie murphy i think they flirted with it but like she might have made a long list or something she got a couple of like she won the saturn but the saturns are you know a little she got a couple of critics award

[02:53:51] you know like chicago nominated a lot of critics saying like this is the time to finally do this and this still has not happened it still has not happened a vocal performance no there are very few that are at at the level that deserve it it is the kind of transformative performance that i think the oscars especially when you hear those five names yes no offense to them no but that's like a good actors all well the empty circus thing was also a big thing at the time right yeah yeah that

[02:54:17] was also a big thing yeah um but that's also like motion like we did get a oscar for uh animated film obviously it was nominated for screenplay sound and music i think yes music the score is a great score it's newman's best score i was going to ask you because i know sometimes you can be a little snarky about newman he he has a thing that he does yes and i enjoy the thing that he does but i do feel that he you know you kind of know what you're getting with a newman score i think this is his best

[02:54:46] score i agree with you so it is a secret power of this movie just that even though he and randy newman are part of the same lineage that all the pixar movies musically sounded so similar and this one starts so differently and when you hear the opening strands of the thomas newman score over the the anemone house hunting scene at the beginning you're immediately like oh thomas newman's whole thing he does

[02:55:10] all the time sounds like the ocean it does there is no better fit for his style it's a hundred percent then obviously lord of the rings won that year and that is very very very good music but howard shore already won one for fellowship but you have to give it to him for return it has the the beacon lighting like it just it has the most like bravura shit he ever did they didn't give it to him for two towers no they didn't want to know too let's find it because also the hours let's

[02:55:38] travel through time i keep being corrected that the hours didn't win no right that because that's the frida year golden fall swipes it from glass interesting um i think this is incredible year because catch me if you can is also nominated uh the wonderful uh elmer bernstein score for far from heaven and thomas newman's very nice roger perdition score i love that score very nice but this feels like a real they fucked themselves by not giving it to thomas newman the year where it made the most

[02:56:07] sense and now they're just constantly living in the shadow of how many nominations they've given him yes and the idea that he's maybe never going to have a moment as clear cut as this one again i wonder um score's incredible script's incredible i i feel and i feel like this is the point you're making what was that even with the anti-animation you know stigmas this is a year where like

[02:56:33] wally becomes a breaking point in 2008 right we'll talk about in that episode that as much as dark night i would argue leads to the expansion it does it was part and parcel but this is a year where people were really like do we have to nominate finding nemo and it felt like the conversation couldn't get traction even though everyone sort of sensed like this feels as important as beauty and the beast and sort of signaling a change in the industry on top of it being such a seismic success

[02:57:01] in a year without lord of the rings where you didn't have a more obvious blockbuster film maybe this would have gotten in but even with the anti-voice actor prejudice i feel like fucking ellen degeneres was like seven or eight on the list might have been and part of that's just how weird and kind of weak that supporting actress field was but you're right it does feel egregious that she couldn't beat any of those five i agree i was transitioning but then i wanted to interject

[02:57:30] quickly i never saw this movie before what that's insane i knew when i was talking it's true it is the wettest film when i was talking about how adults would go see this film you were giving me a look like you were holding something back yeah uh it's so sweet i loved it i guess it makes sense that you weren't in the market for finding nemo at the time you were yes you were just enough older than us and

[02:57:55] you've also talked about your sort of like teenage like fuck the mainstream i only saw it because i was like a nerdy film fan like like right i had no reason to see it otherwise 2003 that summer is when i graduated from high school right pretty cool now i will say i'm somewhat similar to dory because at that point i had already really dove headfirst into a lifestyle that has led to memory

[02:58:20] loss ben has written this out he's reading from a prepared statement i'm not making fun of you for that i just think you're saying i want people to know the level of intentionality with which you're speaking right now but i think it's it's long long-term memory oh sure yeah the short-term stuff you remember the bits uh but we should i think introduce the podcast oh this is blank check with griffin and

[02:58:47] david i'm griffin swish i want to point out as i'm sure griffin you already know that every pixar movie before this one had come out in november that was the pixar spot yep and originally this was planned for november 2 but possibly because of sort of the aesthetic of the movie right summer they're like no may 30th um there are also a couple other things that factor into that right one is i think they didn't want to this not getting stuck in a rut thing we've talked about

[02:59:17] the other thing that's happening around this time is last year goes out and poaches brad bird who now is sort of orphaned after warner brothers animation has collapsed right and part of that was we're worried about repeating ourselves we need to get someone else in to shake this up and change the pattern and they talk about a little bit like lilo and stitch being seen as the the secondary film redheaded stepchild or while treasure planet was the main focus right that everyone was so fucking

[02:59:46] amped up about incredibles and it was like we got brad bird he's a genius the script is perfect right we're making an action film it's a little bit older that nemo's sort of slipping through the cracks a little bit is seen as less exciting and less sexy but there's also this thing that disney is sort of pushing on pixar uh which is if the movie comes out in may we can sell merchandise in may sure have the home video release come out around thanksgiving make it the number one christmas gift

[03:00:14] and do a second wave of merchandise in december sure which basically eisner pushes on them as like it's big to be a hollywood a holiday film but now that we know that pixar is basically a proven brand and the movie's going to hit no matter what we'll make more money on these characters if you release earlier and most of the pixar movies swing to summer after this famously what were you going to say no what were you going to say famously what there's the original pixar deal after toy story

[03:00:42] where they sign them up for five films yes there'll be an autonomous company but disney has distribution rights and will own the characters in perpetuity right and those five films are supposed to be monsters inc nemo um uh incredibles cars and a bug's life i forgot the first one chronologically where they get fucked on this deal is they said sequels don't count we want you to make toy story 2

[03:01:08] right away but sequels don't count that's going direct to video right when they up it to theaters lassiter goes so that's one of our five films and eisner goes no we get that for free because it was meant for video what a jerk that leads to the tensions between pixar and disney that made people think when they're done with the fifth film which is going to be cars they're going to leave um every film was more successful than the previous film they kept out grossing themselves and everyone

[03:01:38] around eisner at disney was like you gotta do what you anything you can do to make good with pixar now because we can't lose them right and what eisner kept saying was they're gonna fail at some point one of these movies is gonna flop and then we're gonna own their asses because they're not gonna have negotiating leverage and he was really confident that nemo was the one well he was wrong he kept saying to people this one's not as commercial fish aren't gonna sell as much merchandise even if

[03:02:05] it's just down a little bit they're weaker and they'll come begging us it was their biggest hit yeah and that basically like puts the death knell on eisner it's a big part of why he's pushed out of the company that he fucks that up with his arrogance and that's a little bit i think why they wanted to go to summer um to see like if i whatever but the other part of the story is that it was seen as the secondary film uh no one was confident about it there are these big fucking like

[03:02:32] cinema con and licensing you know conventions where they have to go and sell these movies years in advance in order to get people on board with them for merchandise and for you know the theater partners and whatever and there was one of these where they didn't have enough footage to show or it wasn't a good enough state and the movie had a bit of a stink around it because eisner kept shit talking it and they need to go combat it and they sent andrew stanton out and he basically performed the movie

[03:03:01] for 40 minutes similar to the pitch that he did for lassiter and everyone walks out of that being like that's the fucking biggest hit that that shit the way he told the story and did all the voices and the emotions and everything nigel telling the story to nemo truly and you can see it on it's on the dvd and the blu-ray and the fucking itunes extras there's like a super cut of the moments of him doing that wow but he basically just kind of willed this movie into not being totally disregarded

[03:03:29] because disney kept trying to like slide it over and anyone who was engaging with it was like it feels has the jews it opens to 70 million dollars cumulacus biggest hit their career in their time so far monsters inc did 62 ends at 339 domestic 871 worldwide it's made more now with re-releases and stuff

[03:03:52] the 3d re-release uh which stan oversaw is what convinced him to finally do finding dory but it also added basically another hundred million dollars to the girls convinced we'll talk about it it's number one at the box office on may 30th number two is the film that was number one the week before no matrix has been out for i think three plus weeks okay let me go through may in my head so the the opening movie of the summer is x2 x-men united that is number seven then matrix comes out the

[03:04:21] following weekend matrix reloaded is number four and no i think it was two weeks between them okay and then the next may blockbuster huge comedy oh it's bruce almighty got a yo-yo that's the earth like also open to 70 million huge huge hit this month was through america was at just doing great yeah and movies were doing great america's actually doing horrible you basically had four consecutive 70 million dollar opening weekends i remember it so well it was my imdb pro era right my mom got a

[03:04:51] subscription for work yeah and so i had it and i had such good box office imagery and stuff and like yeah i just remember like bruce right terrible movie uh yeah awful it's a bad movie but it was the biggest comedy opening weekend of all time matrix had a five day so it's three day was a little smaller but it opened over a hundred if you count the five day nemo's the biggest animation opening in history x-men was the biggest super sure opening yeah you got pirates coming down the pike

[03:05:16] later summer yeah oh those crazy bad boys too bad boys too terminator 3 yeah um but yeah uh number three at the box office opening against nemo slightly underwhelming in its opening but i think it kind of legged out a pretty good gross italian job it's mark walberg and charlie starren in the italian was a sleeper i mean it's a hundred in my memory it's pretty fun it's fun i've not seen it in 20 years

[03:05:42] it looked like dog shit and everyone was like why would they remake this and then it kind of was a word of mouth it was seen as kind of like a national crime this is offensive yeah there was like you're making one of our things you already did get carter why are you kicking us even further i find the british obsession with the italian job a little insane like that movie is basically like boring until the end which does rock okay like the the stuff with the minis is great that's mostly not the movie interesting

[03:06:09] but it's pretty fun do you like the italian job with mark walberg and andward norton and charlie can't say i've ever seen it i remember it being huge and uh back when canada's wonderland was paramount canada's wonderland there was um an italian job coaster where you were riding in the mini coopers uh david canada's wonderland a theme park that used to be paramount branded and is not anymore has like 10 rides that are all clearly connected to paramount movies but they lost the license and now

[03:06:38] they're just generic yeah so top gun is now like flight deck right and the and the italian job one is called like stunt track or something yeah and tomb raider is called like temple explorer yeah there was a wayne's world coaster at one point called the hurlenator okay that i don't know about that's awesome yeah i'm trying to think what the other ones are but that park is very funny for that reason yeah the italian job is called backlot stunt coaster big icon of the park instead of like

[03:07:04] the disney castle is like the paramount mountain and now they're just like it's a mountain um but yes the italian job roller coaster still has mini coopers and they're like it's just one of those chase sequences from any hollywood movie yeah i see it right here well you're not gonna change them no um number five of the box office is a film you've seen many times many many many times it's specifically one of my movies you don't like it but you've seen it maybe you like it you don't love

[03:07:31] it i don't love it but i've your sister loved this i i do think this movie is very good this is way up on the list of the movies i have seen most in my life because my my sister romilly past and future guest longtime sister was not a kid who obsessively watched the same thing over and over again other than this one film which for seven years was in constant rotation is eddie murphy's daddy daycare oh yeah we've spoken about this because this was a similar thing where it's like

[03:07:59] i was watching this genuinely every single weekend at my friend's house it's like we're gonna have a sleepover it's we're gonna watch daddy daycare i think daddy daycare is very funny but i it could be stockholm syndrome it is a movie i will defend as like no that one's actually well written and it has a good cast but also i've seen it so many times that if i didn't find it funny i i wouldn't have been able to survive um number six opening this weekend new is uh my favorite eliza dushku horror uh

[03:08:29] franchise wrong turn um which wikipedia calls the first installment in the wrong turn series it's like let's relax what's your second favorite eliza dushku horror franchise all those other ones she's done uh i do love dushku though who doesn't love a little dushku yeah douche it up uh number seven are you a douchebag what do you say you self-identify as a douchebag yeah number seven is x2 number eight is the in-laws so that's with albert brooks right

[03:08:54] bombing at the same time bomb yeah huge bomb number nine is another bomb but a great film down with love love and number 10 is uh uh probably the most important cultural text of 2003 the lizzie mcguire movie yeah oh my god made the mistake of opening against x2 what a summer that was the summer of the lizzie mcguire movie hey now hey now this is what dreams are made of oh yeah only risk in taking sing for me paulo and adventure is not taking it at all i i have a very defined sort of

[03:09:23] the finding nemo message a a real kind of defining memory of uh all the girls in my grade going to see lizzie mcguire movie uh that friday opening day same day that x2 x-men united came out and the girls were angry that none of the boys wanted to go see lizzie mcguire and i quite a big fan of the x-men and i remember the girls in my grade basically being like if you come see the lizzie mcguire movie

[03:09:51] with us someone will make out with you did anyone no i didn't go see it of course i went to x2 x-men united x-men the x-men are united in this film i was like i'm sorry you don't understand what you're up against here you have no leverage in this conversation x2 was a pretty exciting day that was pretty cool i was like night crawlers in this one i know and it was just kind of that thing of like the first one worked so they're gonna get to be a little like more off the leash with this i was like you could promise me that jessica alba would make out with me and i wouldn't go see the lizzie mcguire

[03:10:19] movie right now herself can we talk about theme parts please so a couple of very important things it was revolutionary at the time turtle talk with crush so epcot has an the second largest research aquarium in the country is within epcot it is something that disney does not take enough advantage of it's a it's a wonderful um little aquarium and i think of interest to david was basically seen as on the chopping block in the early 2000s all this educational scientific shit

[03:10:48] is lame we got to get characters back in here they have rescue manatees there so they decided they had a blockbuster fish movie saved all this shit the seas is now going to be rebranded as the seas with nemo and friends and one of the great attractions there is turtle talk with crush yes that's where i've seen videos of this yeah it's really at the time it was live puppeteering basically they had an animated model that could do crowd work so the audience would be there like

[03:11:15] your name's griffin wow they had cameras they'd make jokes about the guy wearing the silly hat it's so cohesive because you're looking at all these fish tanks at the aquarium and then you go to one that's like a fish tank but it's a screen and it's crush and he makes jokes with all the kids and it's fun there's also a little ride where you're riding in in shells and the characters from nemo are being projected onto windows into the real tanks but then there are also some sculptures and you're seeing real fish it's like they kept using nemo characters as the bait to get children to engage

[03:11:45] with real aquatic life uh there's also i i don't want to talk about it because it sucks but they reskinned at disneyland the um the submarine voyage ride with nemo stuff i could not disagree more this is one of my favorite attractions i want to skip over that it is one of my safe spaces it's now called finding nemo submarine voyage convince elevator pitch you go into a submarine that is on tracks they make you feel like it's free floating but you're genuinely underwater and then it is a

[03:12:14] technical marvel where you are going around in a loop while the thomas newman score soothes my anxiety but and you see a combination of real fish and like incredible projection where it looks like real animation is happening outside the window of the submarine but what i'm gonna be honest you're selling me but what was lost nothing was lost it was just already kind of like a dull experience but you're right adding the ip onto it doesn't yeah it was it was more like it's a unique ride

[03:12:43] mechanic a big fake octopus attacks you and you have like a jacuzzo style narrator just telling you about it it's just funny because it's so uh to most people it would be very anxiety inducing you're going into a small claustrophobic capsule and going underwater how many people are on the sub no it's a very slow moving line yeah um but it's you all have your own seat the seats face in opposite directions everyone has their own little hole they get to look at um i think i would find it anxiety

[03:13:12] provoking did it not have my good friends and the thomas newman score and the vibes and the colors maybe that's why i like it so much it's 12 minutes yeah that seems very long i love these rides that are just like i'm not an ant shit's gonna slow down you just get to stay seated nothing's gonna happen to your tummy these are nice kind of refresh points in a theme park day yeah of like i can just vibe out here uh yeah and it's less overstimulating than like a small world or something yes i never

[03:13:41] skip it the last thing i want to bring up because i think it is one of the great achievements of the 21st century at the theme parks which is at animal kingdom finding nemo the musical i think this is a really really significant piece of theme park entertainment the big blue and beyond no this is the re so a few years ago they were like we need to cut down the runtime just looking so i understand the context that's a bastardized version 40 minutes and now it's like 20 minutes this was

[03:14:09] the first time disney worked with uh robert and kristen lopez this is what's interesting about this david so they got them off of avenue q to be like i know david is holding up big foam fingers my sign is so far away ben the way that the stage uses the vertical space for these underwater creatures it's cool it's some julie timor style you see the puppeteers visibly but the puppets are

[03:14:36] in different ways worked around their bodies the the nigel puppet is the most impressive biggest thing i've outside of the king kong musical it's like that nigel puppet is jaw-dropping and the song that they do for the turtles is so good it's like a beach boys type thing and it's just awesome i also think not my dad is a great song nebo's where where's well first it's where's my dad and then it's not my dad right when nigel tries to turn the story in the big blue world like these songs

[03:15:04] are genuinely for theme park entertainment it is an excellent family musical i don't understand why they've never this is my tried to do it the lopez over the lopez is over delivered on a theme park musical which made disney go like oh fuck we got to have these people work on everything which leads to obviously frozen and coco and all these other things yeah i have never understood why they've never attempted to transfer this to broadway because even just like the visual approach they they cracked the

[03:15:29] code on how to make these characters work on stage they cracked the puppets the songs are good i'm like if you just doubled this length and i'm sure they would just write more songs easily right and there's so many good songs packed into it already this thing would be a huge fucking hit and instead of ever transferring it after like 15 years they were like let's make it shorter yeah and now it's like a 15 minute like greatest hits a bridge version uh yeah but i will never stop that just to move

[03:15:54] people through like why a bridge maybe kids attention spans nowadays and also probably some equity thing with the performers like this is a really especially crushes song yeah for a guy to be singing that it's it's tough on the vocal cords it looks like crushes song is called go with the flow it absolutely is but david theme parks love having shows like this that are successful because they're people eaters they take pressure off the lines for the rides if you can get someone to sit down for 40 minutes

[03:16:23] and you can pack a house and this was one of the few shows that people were like this is actually good it's not just kind of like a shitty restaging of you know there was the i know becca has to go i'm gonna say you guys could just keep going i feel like you guys we will for another hour oh god i really do need to go soon have you ever been on podcast the ride no because i haven't been we've spoken about it but then like i don't know when i'm gonna be in la next podcast the ride and

[03:16:51] dope boys are the two that it feels like you have been inevitable on this is like and the schedules never line up this is the beginning of my like life's wish triple crown right like i feel like for you like being on blank check is an enjoyable lark but like it's a mere stepping stone to podcast no no no no you misunderstand i love blank check well that's very nice of you it's it's i love everything you do a masterpiece of podcasts it's a dream to be on the podcast that i like so much

[03:17:20] no is there no other nemo theme park stuff well there's crush's coaster in paris there's a simulator in disney sea but oh crush's coaster yeah crush's coaster delightful is it's very good it is the exact kind of right you hate it's a shell that's moving fast and you're spinning you're in an indoor roller coaster a mousy type ride they play the kind of surf rocky yes hey i like that you knew the time isn't that what they're called tiny mouse coaster uh it's very fun it's in the doesn't sound fun to me

[03:17:48] yeah but you would you would hate it sounds like bullshit yes what was the other thing you said the thomas noonan like surf rock score the environment's very fun they have lights and colors yeah and that's in um the the bad part of disneyland paris right although it's just now they rebranded it now they have olaf there they have aaron children get to learn about death by watching olaf power down in front of them oh yeah right i saw down on a boat which is so parisian it's so the ennui of make they made an animatronic for disneyland paris who who dies in front of you yes i

[03:18:18] will say crush's coaster doesn't look that intense i'm watching it's a family coaster right this is the other thing with disney nothing is i know that intense but that is as close to being a thrill ride as disney gets basically yeah um no oh disagree well what do you put higher i'm saying even at that park indiana jones is is way more intense i made the mistake of getting my brother was living in france at the time and i took him to disney and he showed up with his backpack and his laptop

[03:18:47] because he said i'm gonna have to uh just do some work at some point sounds like a brother and so he was really worried about the security of his laptop and he was like this thing isn't gonna go upside down right and i was like no it's disney nothing goes upside down he was very angry at me at the end of that right yeah does it go upside down it does it's the mine cart roller coaster watching it it does one loop i think so uh i will he was holding on to his backpack i will plug

[03:19:11] vulture.com sure and that's pretty much it i think popcorn bucket they've canceled they've canceled my ass it's bullshit that's oh yeah the man the man didn't want me speaking truth about devil wears prada bucket shaped like a bag we tried to fucking michael jackson bucket shaped like a hat they don't want me revealing these stories and i'll say tried to force the issue through critical

[03:19:36] darlings yeah we really did so actually video never released campaign very comment on on all of vulture's social media saying bring back the popcorn the bucket still exists uh i came in today asking becca to do a bucket trade because i never got the fantastic car from fantastic four first steps and i said i would promise to trade her the f1 popcorn bucket that was supposed to be part of the critical darlings oscar nominees segment you're in review and becca has made it clear that

[03:20:02] she does not want the f1 bucket i have five melania buckets on my desk i don't know what to do with them those things talk about being worth negative comedy points yeah well the melania bucket they make me laugh okay well then that's lee cronin's the mummy have a bucket that's like a dead child i'm off i'm off the beat they they pulled me off the case it's an injustice and what if it was just lee cronin that would be good just to honor lee cronin's the popcorn yeah exactly um let's make it clear our

[03:20:28] listeners let your voices be heard uh becca previously on the masthead chief popcorn critic yeah popcorn bucket critic and we want this reinstated we want the coverage back bring back bucket um yeah but in the same way that you should all um join blank check patreon you should um this is a good plug uh subscribe to a magazine subscribe to our magazine i'm a new york magazine subscriber hashtag

[03:20:54] bring back becca's buckets sure and on the day of the release of this episode june 21st over on patreon robocop 2 is coming out oh a movie i love as much as finding me a movie a commentary where we're kind of like this isn't very good the whole time oh i'm sorry can we take that we reveal our deepest secrets i get pretty worked up i don't want people to think i'm pretty worked up no no no you get pretty worked up i get pretty but i think we're even-handed and fair about its flaws i try not to

[03:21:22] be an asshole right we're not just like shitting all over it we're just kind of like my cousin shows up randomly that we've never talked about before and he kind of looks like me like you're doing like fun sweep sweep kind of stuff oh yeah right uh joe biden's the guest urkel urkel appears right we it we have urkel stefan urkel okay steve urkel and the urkel bot all appear on the episode

[03:21:47] urkel bot is there yeah take us out um when aj recently plugged urkel in our uh group chat no did he yeah he did this is another thing i've been thinking interesting and and aj kind of look similar yeah sure sure got some aj vibes yeah a little bit yeah i mean you're just talking about like a guy in a half zip with like hair i mean like not not to insult aj it's kind of like a normal looking guy yeah yeah aj's very handsome but he looks like the default video game avatar before you

[03:22:14] make it right he's your sim before you start doing stuff sorry sorry aj you're very good looking i i prefaced it with everyone we employ is good looking jj especially stupid sexy it actually sucks i hated spending a weekend with his fucking hot ass i'm gonna stand next to him and former employee nick texts me after meeting ben being like what's his

[03:22:38] skincare routine yeah i was like nick why would i know i mean that is funny that he asked you but like ask ben i don't fucking know what it's my secret i don't do shit yeah that was my that would have been my guess aj and his family came into the city and we got lunch with aj and his son and he was telling me that he's he's into snl now aj's son who's like eight i think sure and so i was asking him about like which sketches he likes and which cast members he likes and i was like do you like colin

[03:23:07] jost and he went who's colin jost and aj went the guy where where he comes on screen you point and go daddy dude dude someone at one of our live shows texted me like i think colin jost is here aj is and i was like that's aj like that's just aj yeah so colin jost andrew stanton aj mckeon all on a spectrum i just want to establish this at the beginning of the mini series you guys are huge

[03:23:31] coming unannounced to sit in the nod that's aj i overheard colin jost talking about making edits to a patreon episode why is he doing that i'm gonna be take us out thank you all for listening please remember to rate review and subscribe i'm very excited to be talking about the films of andrew stanton i mean a few filmmakers we have ever covered or will ever cover more conform to the intro of this show directors who have massive success early on in their careers and are given a series of blank

[03:24:00] checks to make whatever crazy passion products they want sometimes those checks clear wally and sometimes they bounce baby john carter in three films that's the whole fucking premise of this podcast that's all i just i'm very excited to be doing this and i'm very excited that we're going to talk about toy story 5 on main feed and i'm very excited and i'm glad that david's in the bathroom when i'm saying this so he doesn't get jealous that forky's getting married in toy story 5

[03:24:28] forky's wedding forky's wedding ben forky's gonna make karen beverly an honest knife tune in next week for wally with david ehrlich a man who has seen that film 800 times i think approximately and as always forky is getting married okay i'm just i'm making these edits here david

[03:24:58] uh you're gonna have to be nemo okay okay yeah i think that's the lighter born for that role yeah it's not a lighter you have to be marlin if you're not marlin it's a disaster correct i mean i think you should just do your marlin line that you've been doing on this show for 11 years which is the it's like you think you can do these things but you can't you've said that so many times on blank check i think it's one of the best lines of screenwriting well it's also like clearly your brooks is

[03:25:23] like locked into that line like yeah it's my activator right yeah blank check with griffin and david is hosted by