Joint Security Area

[00:00:01] Blank Check with Griffin and David, Blank Check with Griffin and David Don't know what to say or to expect All you need to know is that the neighbor was shy with Blank Check After half a century of division, overcoming our history of agony and disgrace,

[00:00:26] we're gonna open the podcast to reunification, okay? Could we maybe open it later? Yeah, I don't know. There are no good options for this. Wait, what? This is the line? I thought you had a follow-up line. Yeah, where's the podcast?

[00:00:39] No, that's... I said we're gonna open the podcast to reunification! We're gonna open the damn to podcasting. I don't know what to tell you. I don't know what you can tell me. Only tagline you could find was in Korean with no translation. I found a French tagline.

[00:00:52] Oh, what's the French tagline? It seems like it's like... alright, let me... What is it in French? It's like... You wanna mispronounce another language? Shut up. One people, two countries, one tear? Okay, great. Are you sure? Like, I'm trying to...

[00:01:09] Two friends, one podcast, one tear. Whatever. That's it. Yeah, I'm sorry. That's... I'm butchering a butcher. That's what I... JSA tagline. That didn't really help. Maybe a joint security area tagline? This is, I think, gonna really pay off. This is good. This is good podcasting.

[00:01:31] When you start a podcast, you want there to be momentum. You want people to be like, huh? Certainty. Confidence. You're in good hands. Absolutely. Should I do what I've been doing on Ocean's Eleven? No, no, no.

[00:01:43] Okay, okay. Tune into the Ocean's Eleven episodes if you wanna hear me do New York, New York. Yeah, every week. And explain why that's a stupid bit. Yeah. You can hear me do countdowns for when the movie starts. Spoiler alert, I don't start at three. No.

[00:01:55] This is Blink Check 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 and are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion projects they want.

[00:02:08] Sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they bounce into the DMZ, baby. Sure. Like it's stuck in a joint security area? I don't know. They go to the bridge of no return. Sure. This is a miniseries on the films of Park Chan-wook.

[00:02:24] It is called I'm a Podcast But That's Okay. Yes. And today we are covering what we like to deem on the, in this show, a guarantor. Big guarantor. It is the thing that gives someone access to the checkbook.

[00:02:40] After two kind of ignoble starts to his career, attempted starts to his career, he just fucking knocks it out of the park, makes, no pun intended, what was the most financially successful local South Korean film up until that point in time. And he's made himself a proven thing.

[00:03:02] That is all true. The film is called Joint Security Area, JSA. It stars Hawkman, Dr. Fate. Okay, here he goes. Adam Smasher. Adam Smasher? Spinderella, what's her name? What the fuck are you talking about? Excuse me. Someone didn't see Black Adam in 2022. Hurricanea? Cyclones? Her name is Cyclone.

[00:03:28] Cyclone. There's a group in the world of Western comic books, Ben, which I think no one ever talks about those. No. Never being represented in media. No, I was just gonna say, and I like to think of them as our modern mythology, but go on.

[00:03:45] The Western comics are our modern mythology. Justice Society of America. So they are also the JSA. Now, Ben, you might be asking what makes the JSA different from the JLA, the Justice League of America, a team I already know within the DC universe? I definitely wasn't wondering that.

[00:03:59] I'll tell you the answer. Different members. Sure, okay. Dwayne The Rock Johnson spent like years just fucking drumming up this excitement of like, wait until you meet the JSA and you're like, I don't understand meaningfully what is different about this team.

[00:04:13] The answer is they existed before the Justice League in the comics, and then they were replaced by the Justice League, which had better members. Right. Was kind of cooler. People thought leagues, I guess, were probably a little cooler than societies. Right.

[00:04:26] And then they've sort of brought them back at some point like a kind of throwback team. They've been back for a while. They're around. But it's sort of like- They're like the B team. Older members or oddball members or alternate universe versions of characters and whatever.

[00:04:37] You know, sometimes you learn stuff and then you're like, Oh, there goes the memory of my third grade science project. Here's what I hate. I feel like that's what just happened. It's just like going down some drain.

[00:04:51] What I hate is that this stuff is just in my head. It feels like it's been there forever. Yeah. And it's not like I'm erasing other memories to fit it in there. It's that other information isn't getting in in the first place.

[00:05:05] You know, I'm like, I wish I understood how to do my taxes. Right. I can probably name 20 JSA members. I'm not particularly good on that, but I did see Black Adam, which I feel like you didn't. I didn't. And still haven't?

[00:05:18] I've watched pieces of it on TV and airplanes. I've not actually- Completely redressed the balance of power. The hierarchy of power. And whatever. Which has changed. So, Black Adam- Is not the movie we're talking about today. Features the JSA. Right. And they are all there.

[00:05:35] They are all there. It's the funniest thing in the world to me in that movie when, you know, he shows up. Oh, Black Adam's here. And he's punching people or whatever. And it's just- Very angry. You know, fucking Aldous Hodge who plays Hawkman. Yeah.

[00:05:49] You know, gets on the line with Viola Davis playing Lady. Yeah. You know, DC Lady. Amanda Waller? Correct. The Wall. And she's just like, here's the deal, Black Adam. What's the play? He's like, easy. Adam Smasher, Doctor Fate. Yeah. Fucking Cyclone. We'll do it. We'll take it.

[00:06:07] I'm just like, what is this team? Who are these people? What about Superman? Yes. Maybe call that guy. If you're going to fucking bring the JSA- I swear to God we're going to talk about the actual movie in question here.

[00:06:18] But if you're going to bring the JSA into a movie, shouldn't you be like, this is the secret society. The oldest standing superhero team. Rather than being like, we're going to throw some new members in. Here are a bunch of guys who basically have never worked together before.

[00:06:31] That's the plot of Hawkman and Doctor Fate. They don't know each other. They have a little bit of a history. No, yeah, him and Doctor Fate are like, going back. Kind of in past lives. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's not what this movie is about. Thank the Lord.

[00:06:46] Thank the Lord. That it is not about any of that silliness. There's already enough drama in this movie. I hate to see what happened when Black Adam showed up. So here we are. We don't have a guest. We were going to have a guest.

[00:06:58] We were going to have a guest. He canceled very late. Which is not his fault. Busy life circumstances. And we were up against it, and so here we are. And that's the clue. He was a he. He was a he.

[00:07:08] And I think he is someone we will have on at some future point. And I think he'll be a great guest. We won't say who it is. But this is an episode. We're recording this fairly out of order. We basically done...

[00:07:20] We've done almost all of our Park Town Woke miniseries at this point. Apart from the last two films. We had delayed this episode because of guest consideration. Right, because let's just say... This does not feel like the best episode for just three white guys to talk about solo.

[00:07:36] Oh, relax. I'm not furious about it. But it is. This is a movie that is so culturally important within that local cinema, right? And is so tied to the recent history of that country. That we just have to be very upfront.

[00:07:52] There's a lot of stuff we probably don't totally understand in this movie. Yeah, don't worry about it. Can't speak to super accurately. But we were trying to find a guest for it. And we were unsuccessful. Yeah, I mean, whatever. Happened last minute. Here we are. We're talking JSA.

[00:08:06] We're talking Park's guarantor for his long successful career. Yes. A total turnaround. Yes. Similar... From his first two, you know, sort of basically failed efforts to make something that would catch on. Similar to M. Night Shyamalan. A guy who had grand ambitions.

[00:08:24] Two swings of bat, failed to connect. And then went like, fuck it, I'm gonna make a hit. And we can talk about that because yes, I do feel like... It worked! It was almost calculated. He does have a writing credit on this.

[00:08:37] But I think, you know, there's four credit writers. This is a little more of like a project he came aboard. Sure. But let's talk about where he's at. Sure. After The Moon is the Sun's Dream and Trio. Yeah.

[00:08:54] And as we talked about in the last episode, my man, you know, became the kind of the coolest thing you can be. Stay-at-home dad? Well, that is cool. But no, a movie critic! A famed movie critic. Well, okay. Okay.

[00:09:09] You like that he's basically just got your lifestyle at this point. I don't... All but a podcast. No, it's very interesting that his film criticism, I think was like crossover success level big. Yeah.

[00:09:23] And I do think it was, from what I can understand of Korean film in the 90s, like there's just sort of explosive movie interest in fandom in general. Sure.

[00:09:34] In the 90s because of this like rush of Western films and suddenly the Korean film industry is kind of like back on its feet and there's lots of interesting stuff being produced. You know, like there's this just sort of like hyper focused, like explosion of interest in movies.

[00:09:51] And he's out there championing like his genre stuff and all that. But... He's connecting. He's giving people a prism through which to understand Western films. But he wants to make movies. He does. He hasn't really figured it out. No. He gets a couple years after Trio comes out.

[00:10:07] Because this movie, George Skerry area is coming out only three years later. Okay. Trio is 97, right? Yeah. Yeah. That's neat. 2000 on the nugget? 2000. 2000. Yeah. He gets the chance to direct a short film called Judgment. Okay. Which I have not seen.

[00:10:24] It's about a real thing, the collapse of a department store in Seoul that killed 502 people, which is a lot. A lot. Like a gigantic fucking building that just like, you know... Was it a structural failing? Okay. Gotcha. Like the columns were wrong.

[00:10:47] I mean, they really messed up this building. This is why I don't design buildings. I could not live with that pressure. But so he makes this movie called Judgment that is like a 26 minute movie.

[00:10:59] It sounds incredibly depressing about the body of a young girl from this disaster where two different people claim the body. Like a family comes to claim it, but also one of the morgue workers is like, no, this is my daughter who disappeared.

[00:11:20] Like it's this weird kind of frightening dilemma. It's the kind of stuff he's going to be playing with in a while. With a while for like the Vengeance trilogy, I feel like. Here's what he says. He was pretty poor when he's making this movie.

[00:11:36] He would sort of basically... When he's making Judgment, you're saying? Exactly. He says he would sort of hang out with his wealthier friends and milk them just for, I guess, a little bit of money to sort of, you know, get enough together to make this.

[00:11:56] Had them buy people lunch. I don't know. I'm trying to say. Wait, he's just talking about how Clint Eastwood is in Steve McQueen or Magnetic's movie presence. His quotes can be kind of hard to parse. JJ included three pages in the dossier here just of his lunch orders?

[00:12:14] I need to pare this down, JJ. Anyway, joint security area. That's coming to him fairly soon after this, obviously. Judgment is 1999. JSA is 2000. How does this come to him? Trio had attracted the attention of a producer named Shim Jae Myung.

[00:12:33] As always, apologies for however I am mangling any Korean pronunciation. This person had a production company and she reached out and was like, do you want to direct an adaptation of a novel called DMZ? Referring, of course, to demilitarized zone between North and South Korea.

[00:12:58] This is a novel that's been floating around. They've been trying to figure it out. And that's what this is. Obviously, joint security area is based on this novel. But this is like a big budget commercially minded project.

[00:13:07] This is not some weird noir you're going to make for 50 bucks where you're trying to challenge the form or whatever. This is a thriller set in a very famous part of this country that is politically charged and loaded with history and meaning.

[00:13:23] But also it's just like a tense, cool environment to think about. Right? Yeah. There's a big old border with soldiers on each side staring at each other. What if those soldiers became friends? It's a totally and then there was a murder mystery. Right?

[00:13:38] And it's just an immediately arresting concept. Would you agree? Yeah, it's basically a murder mystery where the twist is they were friends all along. Right. That all of this was done out of basically shame to cover up their friendship.

[00:13:53] So he essentially is like, I need to shake the reputation I have as like experimental director who's better as a critic. Right? I want to make something mainstream. And like style over substance. 100%. Right. You know, this is all just referential and it's not, you know.

[00:14:12] Yeah. Heady flash technique shit. The subject was about the division of the Korean peninsula. It had the structure of a crime thriller, my favorite kind of film. Mm-hmm.

[00:14:21] He's getting a real budget because Myung Film, which is this producer's company, is a real production company with a real system in place. So the only anxiety he has is this film is about North Korea and, you know, about the two countries. Touchy to say the least.

[00:14:42] It's sensitive. Yes. There apparently was, the way he puts it, a strong law, a social security law. And there was some fear that the film would basically be against this law in some way. Like they would get in legal trouble. Okay.

[00:14:59] Probably over the depiction of whatever, you know, the Korean military. I'm going off his quote, which is somewhat vague. He just says like, the producer and I thought if we make this film that we might have to go to jail because it's against the security law. Okay.

[00:15:15] But they also were sort of like, you know what? If it's a huge hit, I'm not going to go to jail or I will go to jail and only make it a bigger hit. Right? I don't know.

[00:15:23] They had some sort of calculation of like, you know, publicity is publicity. The film was a gigantic sensation and contrary to his fear, it in fact ended up softening that social security law. People started to laugh at the ridiculous rigid kind of system, he said.

[00:15:40] It does look obviously lacking the feet on the ground understanding of the cultural climate this movie came out in. It does feel to me in what I was reading about it and its response.

[00:15:53] I'm watching I think obviously that this was like one of those examples of a movie completely meeting its moment. Yes. And sort of like speaking what was sort of unspoken in the culture and allowing some sort of sense of, I don't know, reexamination?

[00:16:11] Right. Kim Tae-jung, who is the president of South Korea from 98 to 2003. So like right at this time. Yeah.

[00:16:19] He's this very transformational figure in Korean politics as well and he is very focused on like trying to enact some kind of peace process between the two Koreas and like softening relations and you know, like all this stuff. He won the Nobel Peace Prize.

[00:16:38] I think in the air generally there is a sense of thaw. So like a film that somewhat positively depicts the North. Yeah. Like certainly has sympathetic characters in North Korean military. That's the biggest thing.

[00:16:53] Maybe there's a time in Korea that would have been more of a taboo thing to depict. But I think like now it's sort of like this is the moment for, you know, whatever this kind of interpretation.

[00:17:06] Well, I mean, it's, you know, the weird thing of entire countries being like villainized or othered in your culture. Eventually people start to question by and large why they are living with those assumptions. Yes. Right. Whatever. Exactly. Like it's right time, right place in a way.

[00:17:31] He's somewhat, I think he now will kind of not talk negatively about this movie exactly, but kind of be like, oh, you know, JSA my sort of pulpy hit.

[00:17:44] You know what I mean? Like I think he feels like he moved beyond it in terms of maturity of his storytelling and how challenging it is. Some the kind of commercial thing he maybe wouldn't be drawn towards anymore.

[00:17:55] He says JSA is a well-made commercial film. In my eyes, it could also be an example of queer cinema dealing with division. Well, no shit buddy. Yeah. I watched this movie. Obviously that's an undercurrent to it. But that's all it ends up being. Yes, I do.

[00:18:09] And maybe he's sort of like, well, now if I made that, maybe that that's like fleshed out covering this so early in our mini series as you folks are listening to it chronologically.

[00:18:19] But so late in our experience of recording these episodes, I'd held off on watching this for a while as we've been going through all the other films.

[00:18:27] And I hadn't seen this movie before. And I've just had this the arrow Blu-ray sitting on my shelf staring at me as I keep on taking other things off the shelf, skipping this one, jumping ahead to other park movies.

[00:18:39] Right. That that arrow. Yes, exactly. Right. And I think both in the way that like as in the dossiers, he the quotes he talks about this movie retrospectively as like that was my pulpy early film, whatever.

[00:18:52] That was my big hit. That was my big commercial movie. And also just the arrow cover.

[00:18:58] I think I was expecting this to be more of like, oh, he just made like an action movie. This is like an action thriller versus what really is like an odd morality story.

[00:19:08] And I'm not I'm surprised by how much he kind of writes it off. His movies obviously get more complicated after this. But this is a film that is taking a relatively complicated, like creating a complicated moral stance, especially for the moment in which it's being made.

[00:19:25] And also he's already playing with for the first time successfully all of his like ideas about narrative, how to structure, inform and all that shit.

[00:19:36] This movie is some straight ahead fucking war film. This movie is really good in my opinion. I've seen it two or three times and I am always like, thank you.

[00:19:46] Um, I mean, just thank you so much for pointing out that there was such a humble brag of mine. Of course. Um, I am. Don't be too fucking humble. I'm always like.

[00:19:56] I remember that it's sort of a murder mystery and it's like this, this female officer is trying to unravel like what happened here. Right. You know, uh, which is just as Park is saying, like, I'm immediately on board with that kind of thing.

[00:20:09] I love a sort of like, you know, walking around a crime scene in the first scenes like, well, bullets are here. Blood spatter here.

[00:20:18] You know, this guy died here. He survived, you know, he's missing. And the cops like, you know, you know, it seems to me that he killed him and he flew over there. And the lady's like, yeah, no, it sure seems that way unless it's not that way.

[00:20:32] And there's something else going on. And then she picks up some piece of fluff. Like, that's what I love. The sort of he does the kind of Columbo thing in reverse. Right. Where like Columbo will start out with you seeing the crime. Right. How catch him.

[00:20:46] They call it comes to the scene. Everyone else thinks it's one way and Columbo figures out the right questions to ask. We know. Yes. Now, of course, you haven't watched Poker Face. I David, there is a reason I'm bringing this up because poker face is doing this too.

[00:21:00] Right. It's eight seasons, eight episodes, 10 episodes. I've watched all but the last. I think it's I think I've watched seven out of 10 now. I finally last one to watch the last one I watched was maybe it's six.

[00:21:15] The Judith Light as a path. OK, so I've watched six out of 10. Yeah, I've been downing it. It's fucking incredible. But you you have not yet seen the one that's about Phil Tippett. No. With Nolte, which I'm very excited. I think you'll really like.

[00:21:29] But it's obviously riffing on the same format, right? Where it's like the first 15 minutes of each episode is like you're not even seeing Natasha, Leo. You're placed into a set of circumstances that you don't understand. This whole drama play out that ends in a murder. Right.

[00:21:43] But of course, what's you know, with Columbo, it's like, well, Columbo's smart. Yeah. I'm not saying that poker face isn't smart. I'm sure what her name is. Miss Poker Face. Lady Poker Face. Miss P Face. But she knows when someone lies. Yeah.

[00:21:57] And it is always just so thrilling in poker face. Yes. When you're like, she's about to like she's moving on. Like she's not even going to hear about even though it's the best. And then one guy says a lie that's so odd. Right.

[00:22:09] It doesn't feel odd. Why would that person. Why would he lie about that? Right. And then she can't help but. Right. I love that thing. Right. Park movies tend to do a similar thing, except he does the opposite of it structurally. Yes.

[00:22:23] Which is you spend a good chunk of time in the sort of unknowability of a thing. And then rather than make it the big twist at the end. Yeah. Somewhere in the middle, he just kind of stops the movie and starts unpacking everything.

[00:22:41] And so this has a bit of that. Yes. But it actually does kind of in my little I've always been a little annoyed that it kind of actually means that it's more just kind of after that set up.

[00:22:52] He's just like, let me just show you what happened. But it does. And maybe she'll figure it out. Like 30 or 40 minutes before you get to that. I mean, we were talking because we we just did Lady Vengeance last night.

[00:23:02] But that he wrote that movie for her because he felt like I didn't give her enough to do in JSA. Yeah. And you start JSA and you're like, well, this is her movie. This is fucking a few good men. And she's Tom Cruise.

[00:23:15] Right. Right. Right. Right. Which would be cool. Right. And it's like he he's not doing the I bet you wonder how I got here.

[00:23:25] And then just immediately the whole movie is a flashback. And he's also not doing the where we talk about this the other day, the thing that now all these fucking prestige TV shows do where like the cold open of the first episode is some insane scene.

[00:23:38] And then it cuts the title and the rest of the season is trying to get back to that point. Right. What is that? The cold open. And then I don't know. I can't remember. I can't remember anything anymore.

[00:23:52] I can't either. But you know what I'm saying? Yes. The thing I like about him is he he only takes you into a different temporality when you've gotten so comfortable in one place that you don't even think about moving.

[00:24:04] Oh, I will confess. Yeah. And maybe you feel this way. Sure. Sometimes I'm like, what's going on? Oh, absolutely. Because he doesn't do any tricks. No, throw a snap a color filter on. Nope. He obviously won't give us, you know, a title card or dissolve.

[00:24:23] Maybe it makes it sound dumb. His movies do require an intense amount of concentration, I think, on repeat viewing. Yes. They become a lot clearer. But you don't. Yes. When when things are shifting from one place to another, one perspective or another, it's sometimes hard to acclimate yourself.

[00:24:38] I will say this, too, especially with this podcast. We're watching movies. I know I'm going to have to talk about them if I'm struggling with a film off and pull up the old Wikipedia, the most reliable website in the Internet.

[00:24:51] Oh, you about to complain that the the Wikipedia entries for some of these movies are are not helpful in that regard? Yeah, because it's the problem is it's like the Wikipedia user edited. Right.

[00:25:04] There is no consistent by one guy. Style guide, basically. Yeah. Richard Pedia. Right. Wikipedia is the name of the man who runs all of it. Yes. No, it's that some people in their like plot summaries, synopses on their Wikipedia entries for these movies will just lay out the events of the film.

[00:25:27] Right. Without any kind of thought in the most obvious. This happens. This happens. This happens. Right. Some people do that. Some people do. I'm explaining to you what the actual story of the movie is, not how the story is told within the film.

[00:25:41] And most of them I find split the difference. Right. So if I'm watching one of these movies and I'm like, trying to make sure I'm keeping the plot thread straight, let me just look over at the Wikipedia. Then I read a sense where I'm like, I don't think that happened. That just happened. And I missed that. And then it happens 30 minutes later. And you're like, the Wikipedia guy decided to flip this all out of order.

[00:26:01] But yes, I was often disoriented while watching this film. I think most of those movies by the end you go, oh, now I think I figure out where everything was. But in the moment you sometimes don't have your bearings.

[00:26:14] I, yes, I think in this film you'll start a scene and one or two minutes and you will be like, okay, I think I understand that this is the past. And I am now getting further context for what happened here.

[00:26:29] But it is, I think, a sort of like quite daring and challenging film considering that its rep when you were looking at Park Chen-Wook's career is like, yeah, you know, the fucking popcorn flicking man about soldiers. Yes.

[00:26:45] The first time I watched it, this movie, I definitely remember being like, I'm not sure I know what's going on for like half the movie. Right. Might be kind of embarrassing to say. Cut it out.

[00:27:00] No, keep it in. Keep it in. The thing of like this set up, what happened here? What a bizarre crime, right? How do we crack this? And everyone's trying to view it through like a political prism, right? Right.

[00:27:14] What are the weird political intrigue? What are the weird things that led to this set of circumstances? And the twist being, as I said, like, oh, it's basically this was an entirely emotional interpersonal story that then was covered up to make it seem like a more complicated political situation.

[00:27:33] Sure. Right. Right. Like the core of the thing is actually like, oh, this is all just about some people became friends who publicly should not have been friends. Right. And then they... Mistakes were made. Right. Mistakes were made. Some people got shot, some intentionally, some not.

[00:27:46] Right. And it's like, it actually benefits everyone to make it seem like something more nefarious was going on. Exactly. But no, the fundamental thing is they were nice to each other and decided to become friends. We hung out a lot. Right.

[00:27:59] And you're like, I'd rather make it seem like I deliberately assassinated someone. Right. Than admit... And was kidnapped and escaped and all of this. Yes. Well, it's for their own safety. Yeah. It's for their own safety. They're protecting themselves by having two different reports. Yes.

[00:28:19] Of how things went down. But, you know, it kind of causes a lot of confusion and chaos. It does. What a tangled web we weave, etc. Too much security. Okay. So, they write... He writes this film with various people. Cyclone. Hawkman, Cyclone, all those guys. Adam Smasher.

[00:28:36] Yeah. I mean, it's just my favorite thing in that movie is that you haven't seen it, but the end. Fucking Hawkman and Dr. Fate, you know, they're going into the battle with this sort of energy of like, you know, we've had a long run together. Have you?

[00:28:49] And, you know, it's like, oh, this is tough, but I'm really gonna miss you. And I'm like, you're 40 years older than him. Yeah. I've never seen either of you in a movie before. Yeah. Am I supposed to just buy this? Like, ah, these two. Hawkman and Dr. Fate.

[00:29:02] Well, so, Hawkman's thing in the comics is that he's like constantly reincarnated. Yeah. He's like an Egyptian god or whatever. Right. And Jimmy Colletzer was like... We shot like the whole explanation of they'd been friends in past lives, and then we cut it out. Beach vacation I took.

[00:29:22] While we were talking? Freshman year of high school. Don't act like you're retaining this. No, you're right. I'm just joking. You won't remember any of this. You're not making room for this. No. We're going to quiz you. Watch this.

[00:29:32] Ben, can you name the five members of the Justice Society of America as the team exists in Black Adam? Sure. Hawkfucker. Good, good. Smash guy. Okay. Uh... Black Adam. Ben, memory's still intact. You're doing okay. All right, fine. David, go on. Um, Joyce's career area.

[00:29:46] I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to answer that. I don't know. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. Okay. Joyce originally planned to shoot on location in the sort of Korean truce village of Panmunjom,

[00:30:05] which is right next to the JSA. Okay. South Korean military essentially decided no. I think they thought about it but said no. They spent a million dollars making a replica version. The most expensive movie set in the history of Korean cinema. Wow.

[00:30:22] Also, the first Korean film to ever be shot on Super 35. Okay. Which is basically what most Hollywood movies at the time were being shot on, but was, you know, big widescreen film stock obviously, but that was rarer for a Korean film. Looks phenomenal. Looks fucking great. Yeah.

[00:30:38] And then the cast is loaded with very big names, but I think a lot of them were at the start of their career here. Sure. So you got Lee Jung A. Look, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Who plays Sophie, Major Sophie.

[00:30:55] She's obviously going to be the star of Lady Vengeance. You've got Lee Byung-hun, who is one of the biggest Korean actors alive to this day. I feel like he's best known. I've done a lot of crossover stuff here. Good, the bad and the weird, right?

[00:31:09] I saw the devil. I saw the devil. But he's Storm Shadow in the G.I. Joe movies. He's in Now You See Me 2. He's in Magnificent Seven. He's in Red 2. He's in Red 2. Right. He's done a number of American films. He's in Squid Game, I believe.

[00:31:23] He's the new Terminator in Genesis. He's the new Robert Patrick. Yeah, he's the T-1000 2.0 or whatever. Sure. I can never keep track. We really need to do the Terminators on Patreon because... Yup. Yeah. Anyway. Yup, we do. But that was my immediate takeaway when this movie started.

[00:31:41] I did not know he was in it. Right. And I did not know he was that old. Yeah. Oh, sure. He looks fucking phenomenal. He's 52. Yeah, you're right. He's a good looking guy. He's a good looking guy. He's a good looking guy.

[00:31:54] Like, mathematically, how could he be in this when I saw him in American films, I assumed he was 30? Right. No, he's on the older side. So you got him. You've got Kim Tae-woo who plays... He plays the guy who tries to kill himself by jumping out the window.

[00:32:12] Did you mention Song Kang-ho? I'm not at him yet. Well, I'm sorry for disrupting your narrative order. Who I feel like Kim Tae-woo is best known as a big Hong Sang-soo guy. I know you're not really a Hong Sang-soo guy, but one day you'll watch his 40 movies.

[00:32:25] He's one of the great Korean filmmakers. I've seen a couple. I mean, like, you know, he directs films where people are just talking at a table for 25 minutes and then suddenly he zooms in on someone's face and you're like, oh my God.

[00:32:35] Or it'll make movies where it's like, yeah, it's about like a guy who wants to date a girl, but one weird thing happens, you know, and like that's kind of enough for you to be like, fuck. I'm intrigued. He rolls.

[00:32:46] The only problem with him is that every year I'm like, okay, I think I'm like pretty fresh on him. Yeah. And then he's like, I have three new movies, bitch. I made them yesterday. And you're like, ah, God damn it. I can't keep track.

[00:32:58] For a listener who would maybe want to get into his stuff, what's a good entry movie? I really recommend, that's a really good question. Right Now, Wrong Then is sort of the classic. I've seen that one.

[00:33:09] Which is the one where it's like you watch a date happen and then halfway into the movie he's like, we're going to watch the same date happen and it's going to go differently. It's just that. Okay. It's like the date twice. I like that. I like that.

[00:33:22] You're looking for yourself in yours, which is impossible to describe. Um, but yeah. I don't know. There's a lot of, you know, fucking ask JJ cause he's like the biggest Hong Sang Su fan in America and our researcher and he'll tell ya, he'll probably send you a really

[00:33:32] long text message. That's right. JJ. I'm dragging you. He'll send you a very long text message late at night and then send you an even longer text message apologizing for the length of the text message.

[00:33:43] Um, so, uh, and then yes, uh, you've got Sung King Ho, who we'll talk about more in a minute, is gonna be in lots of the films we're talking about going forward, and is one of the great actors alive. I agree. I think. And really, post-Parasite,

[00:33:57] I feel like Western, even like many, many Western viewers, finally are sort of like, I'm fully aware of that guy. I know you said you wanna talk about him more later, but just while we're on this, can I say this?

[00:34:07] Because it's a general just as he stands today. He is, uh... It is incredible how his command of his instrument, in terms of how expressive he is, and the depths of emotion he can express, while barely moving a muscle on his face. And the older he's gotten,

[00:34:28] I think the more powerful he's gotten, only because his face becomes more interesting as lines develop, as gravity develops or whatever. It is fascinating to watch him this young, when his face is kind of like perfect, when he doesn't have... He's not wearing his experience, you know?

[00:34:45] And still be able to communicate so much with so little. There's just like incredibly deep reservoir feeling in this guy that he is able to convey with a real economy of actual movement and gesture. Um, I... He's the best. I agree. Incredible pun. One thing that's interesting, apparently,

[00:35:06] is that the North Korean actors... He pulled out of the theater world, and the South Korean characters in this movie, he pulled out of the more popular entertainment world. He wanted the South Koreans to feel looser. He wanted the North Korean actors to feel more strict.

[00:35:21] He wouldn't let them improvise. Apparently, Song Kang-ho was mad about that. They had to feel rigid. Accomplished the difference through getting people from different acting schools and styles. Exactly. All right, so let me give you some Song Kang-ho news. Please. News or background?

[00:35:39] But also, maybe do a little Google search to see what's he's got poppin'. Why not? Song Kang-ho news. Click the News tab. It's a new segment called Let Me Be Song Kang-ho. Apparently, he's in a new film called Cobweb. Okay, cool. In which he plays a director.

[00:35:55] That seems to be the new big thing. Uh, indulgent. Okay. Seems to be the take on this movie. Now give me some background. Uh, came up in community theater. Mm-hmm. Um, so, you know, didn't, I think, go to, like,

[00:36:10] film acting or, like, film school or anything like that. He's a theater guy. Doesn't appear in a movie until he's 29. He is in The Day the Pig Fell into a Well, which is the first Hong Sang-soon movie. And one of the great titles. Yeah, pretty incredible.

[00:36:24] Uh, how old is he in this? Well, if that was 96, so he's probably like 34, 35. You know. Um... He's in Lee Chang-dong's film Green Fish. That's Lee Chang-dong's first movie, which I highly recommend. I recommend all his movies. You know him best for burning.

[00:36:42] Probably his last film, which is fucking great. Um, you know, start doing some supporting roles. Then he's in Shiri, which I think we will talk about in a future episode, which was before JSA, the biggest Korean hit ever. Gotcha. Okay. Supporting role there.

[00:36:58] And so then he's in this. So it's sort of like the man is stacking bugs, right? He keeps popping up in these big movies. Yeah. He had no expectations from Park, of director Park, because his last history of movies had not gone anywhere. Sure.

[00:37:13] Says he has tremendous artistic talent and warmth as a person. Mm-hmm. Um, uh, he visited, uh, the JSA when he was researching this role. Looked into the eyes of a North Korean soldier. Um, he says, I tensed up and got so nervous.

[00:37:29] The North Korean soldier was very young and he gave a shy smile to me. I cannot forget that moment. You know, and he thought, like, this is representative of the story this film is trying to tell the audience. Like, these are people too.

[00:37:41] They have their own emotions, right? You know, they're not just like this scary wall of, you know. Yes. Um, he says that this film, he thinks, was very important in a transformation in Korean ideology. Trying to strip away the stereotype of North Koreans, allowing, you know,

[00:37:57] seeing them as people, that they're the same as we are. Uh, he liked making it and basically was like, wherever this director goes, I'm there. Right? Yeah. Obviously, he's also in tons of films, uh, directed by Bong Joon-ho. Right.

[00:38:11] But this is before he's worked with Bong at all. Yes. Yes, because he's not in Barking Dogs. His first movie with Bong is, um, Memories of Murder, which he's amazing in. Are Bong and Park already friends at this point? I don't know. I don't have a friendship database.

[00:38:28] Well, maybe you should. Maybe I should... spend the rest of my life trying to figure out when everyone became friends in the world. I have DB. I have a friend database. That's a good website. There's a good business out there. So, let's talk about the plot of JSA.

[00:38:41] And it is... As this is gonna happen to us on... I feel like this happens to us on a lot of the episodes. Yes. These movies are tough to recap in a way because of the out-of-order narrative. It's the Wikipedia problem. Am I telling... Our own Wikipedia problem.

[00:38:55] Like, if we were Wikipedia. Right. You're like, am I trying to recount the order in which the information is delivered to me or the story as I now understand it on the other side? Um, right. Uh, so... There has been... Uh, there's been a murder.

[00:39:12] And the joint security area, the North Korean border house, crossed the bridge of no return at the DMZ, which is the, you know, the big demarcation line between North and South Korea after the Korean War. Uh, two North Korean soldiers are dead. One was shot seven times. Right.

[00:39:28] So they're like, there's the intensity. This is not just like an assassination or whatever. Right. Um, a South Korean soldier, uh, Su-hyuk, uh... was clearly... Who is a border soldier. It was clearly kidnapped or captive or something and has escaped, uh, and been rescued. This has all happened.

[00:39:51] Wounded leg. He's hurt. Yeah. This has all happened, uh, and so Major Sophie E. Jean of the Swiss Army has been brought in by the United Nations to basically, like, untangle this. Like, something crazy has happened. Yeah. Can we, uh, you know, diffuse this

[00:40:10] and figure out what went on before there's an escalation? Her Swiss bosses. Uh, yes. Her Swiss superiors, let's say. This film actually has a surprising amount of English language dialogue... Yes. ...from her Swiss... Swiss-German, you know, uh, bosses. It is that funny thing of like, you're watching genuine,

[00:40:28] like, Swiss-German actors... Right. ...speaking in English, which is not their natural language, nor Park Chan-wook's natural language. But it's just, you know... I don't think the performances are bad, but they do have that feeling sometimes of like, I don't know if you feel this,

[00:40:45] but when you watch, like, a foreign language film that has, like, one English-speaking actor in it, and the temperature of that performance feels very different than everyone else... Right. ...but it also feels different than when you see an English-speaking performance in an American or English-speaking movie... Sure.

[00:41:02] ...where you're like, it's at a different frequency. I agree with that. I do think it's a bit of an odd... It's just, there's... There's just a fair amount of them, and it just ends up being completely inconsequential, I guess. It's sort of my real problem with it. Yes.

[00:41:18] Like, which is sort of the same with Sophie in general. Like I already said, she feels she's front-loaded in this movie, and then very quickly... She's just, yeah, you know... Because once again, a lot of other movies would truly just use her as means to an end.

[00:41:30] This is the cold open, it's five minutes, and then you go to the story, right? The fact that this movie basically hands the whole first act over to her... Yeah. ...it makes you think like she should be more important. It feels like she's gonna crack the case.

[00:41:46] These are all gonna be supporting characters, and her putting the puzzle pieces together. But that's not really it. She's more there to just kind of be like, huh, this autopsy's weird. This guy was shot a bunch, so was there some sort of grudge?

[00:41:59] Huh, there's a bullet that no one can find. What happened there? Yeah, I feel like Director Park... I'm not even saying it's an audience surrogate character, but he usually places a character in the center of the movie who doesn't quite know what's going on. Is being...

[00:42:14] Information is withheld from them. Or obscured from them. And just tries to place you in their sense of confusion for a bit until you reveal what everyone else is up to. Whether or not they're the lead character. And she's like, she's serving that function.

[00:42:31] You're supposed to be watching her and also going, I can't figure this out either. Turns out what happened was they were all friends. They were all friends. And they had a bunch of That 70s Show hangs together. The real joint security area

[00:42:43] was the friendships we made along the way. I am sorry for that 70s Show reference. But... But they sit in a square around a table. The camera is literally whipping around. They're smoking. They're smoking. Now they're not smoking... The wacky tobacco.

[00:43:01] But of course in That 70s Show, they never really said that that's what they were doing. No, in the same way there might be some jazz cigarettes right out of frame. I don't know. But I could not help but be like, it's like That 70s Show.

[00:43:14] But I do love that it's just, that's the mystery. They were friends. They learned that they have shared humanity. Sort of by accident. Which is almost the most shameful thing. You're not supposed to think of them as actual human beings. They have this surreal job,

[00:43:32] which I think Park is so fascinated by. Them just standing, looking at each other across the border, feet away from each other. And it's like you have these peoples who are ethnically basically the same. They're all Korean. They're all from this peninsula.

[00:43:50] We fucking drew a line after the Korean War. And now they cannot interact with each other. And your culture is basically telling you the guy who's on the other side of that line... They're terrifying. They're like inhuman. They hate you. All this. Right.

[00:44:06] And that's all just bubbling away. And these guys are the only guys, it feels like, in the whole country who actually get to look at each other in the face. But of course they can't talk, really. Yes. And you have these early things, or like the tourists.

[00:44:21] You're just getting the emojis, right? I'm getting some diamonds. I'm doing some spins. What if I deleted that app and barred you from ever returning to it? Would it be good for your life? No, it'd be fine. Someone on Reddit said that.

[00:44:33] And then someone in the comments was just like, his vices could be so much worse. That is so true. We should be happy this is where it's topping out. But you know, I used to throw that in my mom's face when I was a teenager a lot.

[00:44:45] Where she would be like, you know, why are you playing video games all day? And I'd be like, you know the things I could be doing? And she'd kind of be like, all right. But you know, at the same time, my objections to NCV

[00:44:55] are that I'm not proud of it. I don't want to see you play too many videos. I'm not proud of it. But on some level, I am sometimes astounded I don't have a crippling drug problem. I'm glad you don't. Please don't develop one. Exactly.

[00:45:09] So I'm just like, let me just fucking spin the wheel. Also, if you deleted it, it wouldn't do anything because I back up all my data on Facebook. I have a fake Facebook account that I only use to back up Disney emoji blitz on two different devices.

[00:45:21] It's all in the cloud. You can't fucking take me down. I won't. I'm sorry. I just like all the aesthetics of the border itself that he keeps thinking about. They're so right on top of each other. Yeah. Only there, though.

[00:45:34] By the way, I just want to just briefly while we're on this. In other places throughout the border, there's so much more separation. Yes, I think that's the only place where a prisoner exchange would happen or whatever. That's like the bottleneck. Right.

[00:45:47] I think this actually has recently changed. I think there is some like the JSA now is kind of almost like a museum or whatever. But anyway, go on. Can I just quickly say to get us off subject? Because you brought it up.

[00:46:01] I know I told you this, David. Is this going to be about that? Disney emoji blitz? Absolutely. We're talking about the- Just mark it and edit it out. Actually, AJ, keep it in triple it. I have a fake Facebook account that I only use to back up

[00:46:16] Disney emoji blitz on two different devices. I have a fake Facebook account that I only use to back up Disney emoji blitz on two different devices. I have a fake Facebook account that I only use to back up Disney emoji blitz on two different devices.

[00:46:25] But I've been playing this game for years. I get cast in Disney's Disenchanted. I get so excited at the notion that I'm going to fucking be in this game, right? It's like, oh, I'm like a cute animal character. Every time they have a new movie come out,

[00:46:38] be it in theaters or Disney+, they do a special event for the tie-in to the new Disney movie. They add the new emojis you can play as whatever. Disenchanted comes and goes. No inclusion in the app. You know what they just announced they're adding? The Golden Girls.

[00:46:57] Now, no disrespect to the Golden Girls. I mean, they're a pretty big deal. Those guys own TV. A phenomenal sitcom. I don't think of them as like Disney characters. Well, they're in the wheelhouse now. Yeah. Were they on ABC? Yeah. Pip isn't. Thank you for being a friend.

[00:47:14] Right, that's them. Get ready to get a bunch of fucking Blanche emojis coming in tech soon. Good, but that's a good... Well, actually kind of looking forward to that. Good segue back to JSA. Hey! Thank you for being a friend. Thank you for being a friend.

[00:47:28] It turns out they're friends. Some of them down the road and back again. You've got this North Korean soldiers in the more sort of, you know, look, throwbacky communist uniforms. Like, you know, pretty vintage, pretty classic. They do. It's not Korean guys. They've got the aviators.

[00:47:42] They've got the little round helmets. They look more like sort of UN peacekeepers. More modern jacket. Right. To... I'm not a war guy. I think it's pretty well established. I hear you. The South Korean uniforms are pretty fucking sharp. Oh, you think they're sharp?

[00:47:57] I think they're pretty sharp. Picks up look sharp. It's not a thing I really fetishize. Yeah. Sure. But I just was like, that's a good uniform. One of the South Korean soldiers, the lead, So Hyuk, Lee Byung-hun's character, was on patrol. Yeah. He gets lost. Yes.

[00:48:17] Which, by the way, like, don't do that. Don't do it. Bring a map or something. I don't know. Like, if I'm on patrol at the border, I definitely do not want to cross into the border. Yeah. If your job is to never cross a line,

[00:48:27] I wouldn't go wandering. Right? Like, there's a physical line you never want to cross over. I wouldn't be like, let me just stumble around and see what I happen upon. He, well, he stumbles onto a mine. One of the worst things you could stumble onto.

[00:48:43] I would be so fucking mad. I'd be fucking furious if I ever stepped on a mine. And he is found by Kyung-pil, who is a South Korean North Korean actor. And another guy, Woo-jin, who is the other guy. Right. The guy who, he's also, Shin Hak-kyun,

[00:49:00] he's in Somebody For Mr. Vengeance, and he's in Lady Vengeance, and he's in lots of stuff. But here's this enemy that are taught to demonize. And in a moment when you actually just see a human being standing on a mine with terror in their eyes,

[00:49:13] it is hard not to feel basic human empathy for that person. And they're even having a little fun, I feel like. There's something about the dog that also, animals are universally, we all can say that we love animals. I hear, yeah.

[00:49:31] There's this connection where you don't want to hurt. They brought a dog with them. It rumbles them by barking. And then they're like, I have a fucking dog. Like, why did we bring the dog? You know, there's a whole thing where you're like, yeah, it's very relatable. Right.

[00:49:42] Like, you know, North Korean dogs aren't that different from South Korean dogs. Dogs don't know politics. That's right. Dogs ain't got no country lines. They just cute. They just cute. So they just cute. Yes, they just cute. So they help him. They free him from this mine.

[00:50:04] And so they sort of start to become friends. They throw each other messages. You doing anything tonight? Look, their lives do seem boring. Yes. Like, it is monotonous and kind of crushingly dull probably. I do think it's funny. I mean, you were saying that there's the gay subtext

[00:50:24] to this film, right? That there's the sort of perhaps romantic... Yes. ...undertone. Look, this film doesn't pursue that angle and that's fine, honestly, because it's more about this shared empathy that these people discover for each other. But I'm watching it being like,

[00:50:39] these guys are kind of in love, right? Like the main two guys. Especially when you literally start this thing out with like passing notes, right? It felt to me like kids getting hormonal in middle school being like, wait a second. Yeah. What's the other half doing? Right, right.

[00:50:54] You know? Like so much of them sort of like this weird clandestine, like we have to like meet while no one's looking and like share a drink does feel like adolescents finally sort of like becoming aware and interested and curious. Right, right. Um, well, they're like big... Uh...

[00:51:19] ...teens in military uniforms. Yep. And they're sneaking into a sleepover. Yeah. Um... That's what it felt. Yeah, right. They start to basically have big sleepover hangs. It feels like the boys from the boys' bunk sneaking out overnight into the girls' bunk. Um, but, you know, they play cards.

[00:51:36] I don't know what they do. They smoke cigarettes. They drink hooch. They drink hooch. Like cards? No, they just, they just, just guys being dudes. A little bit. Yeah. I mean, they fart. They do fart. They do fart. They have some fart jokes.

[00:51:52] Now, thirst has a major fart element, which we'll talk about in that episode. I do like that my man's not above a fart joke. He's not, but that is the unifying power of the fart. Right, fart as characterization. I would be annoyed.

[00:52:06] He's not using a fart as a punchline. He's using it to reveal layers. I would be kind of like, okay guys, we're really doing this? That's what I would be like. It seems like an incredibly bad fart too. Yeah.

[00:52:16] They react to the fart almost with more extreme panic than the landmine. Now... Because it's too late. It's gone off. The fart's gone off. There's no way to disarm it. There is basically nothing else to describe about all of this until things go wrong.

[00:52:35] Right. You're not cutting back into this until like 30, 40 minutes in, and then you're really living in it. You're watching it very gradually develop. It is a thing I love about his films that, you know, we talked, he does an odd order, an odd chronology, right?

[00:52:53] He drops you into scenes without complete understanding, awareness of where you are, when you are at first. A thing I think he is very good at in all of his films that I think is almost like an under-discussed aspect

[00:53:05] of narrative filmmaking is like the actual nature of time. Right? That movies play out in real time. And unlike TV where you might binge all the episodes, you might watch them once a week spread out, whatever, right?

[00:53:22] Or book, which you pick up, put down at your own convenience. Movies are meant in theory to be watched from beginning to end when you start them, in whatever way you're watching them. And there are things that sink in more deeply

[00:53:39] if real time has passed in your life since an element was established, if that makes sense. Uh, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know? Like the fact that you actually have to watch them be friends for 40 minutes. You could do this all in a montage.

[00:53:55] You could just be like, and then peace was brokered, and it's like five minutes of just watching over months or weeks or days or whatever. Their friendship growing. But I actually think because of where this film starts, because we start from trying to unravel the mystery,

[00:54:10] because it's surprisingly the puzzle, like, solves itself to be like, oh, it was actually just about friendship. The thing he needs to do is have you live in their friendship for an actual period of time in your life. You know? To really sit in this.

[00:54:25] Because then you start to lose track of, oh, right, something bad has to happen, right? I know where this started. And like, you know it's fraud. Right. You know, it's like... They can't be friends in joint security. Right. Which if he makes the friendship

[00:54:45] ten minutes of actual screen time, you're never gonna lose track of... the bad fallout that's gonna happen. And then that will just sort of be like, well, yeah, obviously that was gonna get rumbled. Because what happens is they eventually get rumbled, and it's like, there's no explanation.

[00:55:00] You can't be like, you don't get it. These guys are a good hang. You know? Because that's like basically all it is. Well, also just like the combat intensifies. There's that moment where they're standing at the fence and they're watching all the explosions going off. Yeah.

[00:55:15] And they're sort of like standing there with tears in their eyes and they're like, I think we maybe shouldn't go over there and hang out with them anymore. Right. And there's just this feeling of like, we've been living in this nice little bubble of like cognitive dissonance.

[00:55:25] We're pushing our luck or whatever. Right. And the stakes of what's going on around us are just getting amped up. The longer we let this go on, the worse it's gonna get. Especially because their service... They're close to both being done. Yeah.

[00:55:41] At least the soldiers on the South Korean side. Right. We've had our fun, but don't we wanna like get out of here clean when this is over with and just move on with our lives? Because there's... There's no future to this friendship.

[00:55:51] Yeah, there's not really upside to the friendship apart from that it's nice that they... uh, have, you know, found some common humanity and all that. But right, they are more just kind of passing the time. Like, they're bored, they're here. It's nice that they can be pals.

[00:56:08] There's something transgressive and exciting about it, which is also where I feel like you start to just automatically think of like queer readings of this relationship. Um, but at the end of the day, they just start farting in each other's faces and drinking radiator wine or whatever.

[00:56:21] Like, it's not like that crazy. Yeah. There's, you know, but there's also the excitement of showing someone, exposing them to a new kind of music. Sure. Hey, check out this snack cake. You never had it before. The snack cake. That's my favorite thing

[00:56:34] where like the most tense they get in the glory days of the friendship is the combat... the combative argument about who has better desserts. Yeah. Which culture has better treats. It's a good thing to debate. It's a great thing to debate.

[00:56:51] Who do you think has the best desserts? Unfortunately, I gotta say the French. The French. Ah, the French. The patisserie. Oui. Um... Le financier. I did experience a cronut for the first time recently. Oh, you were near my office. You were at Dominique Ancel? Yep.

[00:57:11] What flavor was it? Your office? What the fuck are you talking about? The Atlantic's office is in Soho. It's near Dominique Ancel. I just want to point out that you just referred to Dominique Ancel as your office, not near my office.

[00:57:22] No, I said you were near my office. Dominique Ancel. It was their two separate thoughts. It's my mistake. It's your mistake and you're embarrassing. I heard you say, ah, my office. Ah, the French. Did I ever tell the Michael Shannon story on Mike? Yes. Did I?

[00:57:36] I believe so. Did I? I'm pretty sure. Do you want to retell it? It happened at Dominique Ancel. Do you want to retell it? It's not Michael Shannon there. And... I don't think I told this story. Did I tell this story? I don't think you have.

[00:57:49] I've heard it before. I don't think I've heard it. He's heard it. Then tell it. Look, I'm in line at Dominique Ancel. I like to go and get their white chocolate macadamia nut cookie, which I think is good. Right. You know, the cronut.

[00:57:59] I've had the cronut, but you know, it's a cronut is kind of a lot. Yeah. It's a pretty rich thing. I got to say, it really did not sort of start the day off. You're not going to be like dashing through the street after downing that thing.

[00:58:10] I'm a little surprised by its staying power for that reason. Look, it's it's it's totally good. It's just it's just a very, very rich treat. It's a it's a it's a it's a it's a it's a it's a it's a it's a it's a it's a it's a

[00:58:16] It's like there's always tourists there. The guy in front of me, the cash register lady is waving them over. Hey, you know, he's not looking. He's looking at his telephone. Yeah. Phone addicted world that we live in. So I don't even touch him but I do,

[00:58:25] the kind of like hey, I think you're invisible to me. He's just a perfect, totally alright. He's a totally fine guy. It's a perfect guy because he's always got his phone on him and is always patting his face. You know, David Cavanagh.

[00:58:34] I don't even really know what any of those people are doing to him. He's a real fan of Danny. He does it better than anyone else. and he's looking at his telephone. Yeah. Phone addicted world that we live in. So I don't even touch him,

[00:58:44] but I do the kind of like, hey, you're up. You know, I kind of like wave. And he turns to look at me and it is Michael Shannon, who is really tall. Taller than you. I think he's a really big guy. Like just generally like imposing. Sure.

[00:59:01] He's got like wild shaggy hair. Yeah. Big beard. Yeah. And he goes like, all right, all right. Like he like goes to a hundred. Full take shelter. Yeah, like, oh, it's my turn. You know, and I'm like, while this is happening,

[00:59:14] I'm like, oh my God, this is Michael Shannon. And I seem to have annoyed him. Sure. Or whatever. He goes and orders. He ordered like 400 fucking items. Yeah. I go in order and then we're waiting. He's just standing there. Yeah.

[00:59:28] And I'm like, I'm just gonna look at my phone. I'm not going to have any further interaction with Michael Shannon. I don't want to embarrass myself. I don't want to do anything to annoy him more. Then he gets his order and unprompted,

[00:59:39] just like claps me on the back and goes like, I'll see you next time, buddy. And walks out. See, I. It's a good story. You feel like you didn't remember any of that story? No, definitely not. Then maybe you never did tell it on mic.

[00:59:50] I think I never told it on mic. I kept meaning to. I can't remember. There's some episode where I'm like, I gotta tell my Michael Shannon story. Our buddies at Podcast The Ride have introduced a thing that I think is quietly revolutionary in podcasting. What's that?

[01:00:02] They just take their bit. What's the bit? They've instituted the five timers club. For stories? Yes. We definitely have a few that belong, I think. Right. That would be automatic inductees. Right, you're not talking about which guests have been on multiple times. It's which exact anecdotes. Right.

[01:00:20] Have been told five times. Sure, sure, sure, sure. Because you do this for long enough and you start to really lose track of, have I said this before? And have I said it on this show? In my real life too many times? On other people's podcasts?

[01:00:35] What have you? Right. But you start to wear it as a badge of honor. I think we are fans to comb through the archive, identify whoever reaches that level. There's definitely candidates. Yeah, the story of me and my friend watching the documentary about aliens

[01:00:52] and finding out that Sigourney Weaver At least three times. Got nominated for Best Actress. That might be a five-time record. And you went, whoa! Okay. Anyway, that's Dominique. Oh, we were talking desserts. Because the boys talk dessert. Right, ah, the French. We're going back up the Inception levels

[01:01:09] to remember what the fuck we were talking about. This is where we were. We go back, they kick, kick, and then we're like, oh, right, desserts. Yeah. Cronut, though, good. What flavor did you get? I feel like I just got like- It's the seasonal flavor. It always changes.

[01:01:23] He's got wacky flavors though? So there's always one flavor and it sort of rotates. It was like blood orange the last time I went there maybe? And maybe you've never had the real- Raspberry jam and pistachio. That kind of sounds like my shit. Oh la la!

[01:01:39] A raspberry jam and pistachio! I just imagine Lumiere serving all of these up. Yeah, no, that sounds nice. Okay. Okay. What else? They just hang out. Look, eventually- They just hang out. It's revealed they got rumbled by a commanding officer. Well also- Guns got pulled. Right.

[01:02:01] They have this stuff of like- There's the moment where they witness the combat and they try to draw the line. Yeah. The South Koreans go like, we should try to end this. There's also, you know, there's this sort of charged moments with the guns. Yes.

[01:02:15] Where one of them's like, I'm the best shot, you know, with this. And the other one's like, yeah, but you ever actually fucking killed anyone? You know, like there's that kind of stuff. Foreshadowing. There's the foreshadowing there and just the sort of like differing whatever,

[01:02:28] approaches to being in the military. Like, you know, the Korean soldiers, the Korean volunteering, it's not volunteering, the Korean like length of service in South Korea is like two years, I think. And obviously in North Korea, it's much longer and basically like

[01:02:45] so, so, so many people in that country are in the military. It's a very large military. It's like, you know, it's like a thing to do, I think. Yeah. So there's that, you know, they're talking about those shared experiences, but yes, okay. Eventually they're sort of like,

[01:02:57] should we pull back? Sure. Then they get rumbled and guns get drawn and there's a Mexican standoff and then everyone starts shooting each other. Sure. Right? Yeah. I mean, Yes. Yes. And, and I do love this. Anytime it happens in fiction, the post, you know, right, you know,

[01:03:21] Yes. A couple of people are dead when one guy immediately figures out like, here's what has to happen. You have to do this. Right. Pretend you escaped. You know, in the arm or whatever. Right. And that all happens. And we arrive back in the present. You know what?

[01:03:37] I'm sorry. I was saying this is not one of those stories that starts at the dramatic climax and then takes you back to how you got there. Right? But I did forget that the opening of this movie is the owl. Yeah. Well, I love that.

[01:03:51] Where you're like, what is this? And then you get back to it later and not since Live and Let Die, Moonraker. I think it's Moonraker that has the double take from the pigeon. Yeah. Have we gotten such a good reaction shot from a bird?

[01:04:05] Opening with the owl is so cool. Yes. Yes, it's Moonraker. Right. And the owl is, yeah, is responding to the gunshot. Yes, yes. Right. The semi-accidental. The first gunshot. Yes. Which, you know, then leads to this like shootout. Right. But then yes,

[01:04:22] the owl ties us back into the present. Interpolated with all of this or all the interrogations. Yes. Where they're trying to untangle why, you know, it went down this way, what really happened. One of which in panic almost leads to a suicide attempt. Right. Yeah.

[01:04:41] He, you know, that character is Sung Sik, I believe. He first jumps out a window and then shoots himself, right? No, he attempts to attempt himself. He shoots, right. Gun is not loaded. He tries to shoot himself. Gun isn't loaded. Then he jumps out the window.

[01:05:02] Yeah, he's in a coma. Right, right, right, right. Because he's terrified of questioning. Inunderscrutiny. Yes. So there's that kind of like longer tail, right? Of like, they cannot like sort of, there's a mess that they can't clean up essentially. Like, and it's not only are there people dead,

[01:05:22] but there's like, you know, the lingering impact on the people who survived is too much to handle. And I do feel like, yeah, it's just this very good metaphor for like, you know, the ravages of like, it's not even a war at this point.

[01:05:36] I mean, technically the war is still going on, but just this like, you know, this never ending standoff, right? That like, you know, I don't wanna weigh in on Korean reunification or whatever, but obviously it'd be better if everyone was together and was friends, in my opinion.

[01:05:55] Not to be very heterosexual about it and keep hitting the same- You're gonna be heterosexual about it. I'm gonna be very heterosexual about it, keep hitting the same point. But I was just like, what is this reminding me of? And then I was like,

[01:06:08] it's like the fucking Little Rascals movie where they're just like- Heterosexual is not the word. Okay, go ahead. It's like the Little Rascals movie. Here's our little clubhouse. What's the one thing we know? We hate women. Sure. And then Afaf is like,

[01:06:22] oh, I think girls are kind of cool. Sure. And then they're like sneaking over. I just, I want someone who listens to this show to write a PhD doctoral dissertation on Griffin saying he was about to get heterosexual and then just describing the plot point

[01:06:38] from the Little Rascals movie. I'm saying- Nope! Book length. Just lay it all out. For straighties, the boring thing of like, when you're a kid, you're just like, what do you know? Opposite sex is gross. When you're a little boy or a little girl,

[01:06:56] sure, you get pitted against each other. I see. Don't want to be seen talking to them, right? And then once like the threshold is crossed, you're like, oh, this is kind of cool. But also no one can know about this. So you think the ideological differences

[01:07:11] between the Democratic Republic of Korea and South Korea is similar to boys and girls thinking each other have cooties? I'm saying North Korea's from Mars, South Korea's from Venus. Just saying, someone just wants to take a bite at that apple. It's a big apple. Yeah.

[01:07:31] It's a crunchy apple. Yeah. Yeah. Where did you find such a bizarre warped mind to study? Oh, I listened to a podcast and this guy- Yeah, right? Like the advising professor is like, this is too out there. It's just strange. How did you get security clearance?

[01:07:51] It's like fucking Hannibal Lecter in a glass case. So eventually, as this is all getting untangled, Sophie gets pulled off the case. It turns out her dad was a POW who had some North Korean ties during the war. That makes her not neutral enough

[01:08:08] and she can't do it anymore. Right. So then she's actually kind of freer to just sort of be with the guys and be like, come on guys. Like I know what really happened here. Like something really happened. Now she just wants to know for her own satisfaction, basically.

[01:08:23] Right. Yeah. The loose end is the extra bullet. Yeah. They're able to do a count on how many bullets were discharged, how many are left in the clip, and there's one bullet that's unaccounted for. And is able to figure out that there was some friendly fire. Right.

[01:08:46] It turns out that Seo-ho actually shot first, right? And eventually he, well, the end of the movie, kills himself out of guilt over the entire thing, essentially. And then there is this phenomenal closing shot. The photo. Of this photo that was taken at the beginning of the movie

[01:09:12] by a dumb tourist. Yes. Dumb American tourist in a red hat that by mistake unites all the characters. This photo that just accidentally includes them all. Yeah. It's very, very cool. There's the sort of- They were together the whole time. Poetic. Right. Yes.

[01:09:32] But also the idea of someone unknowingly could walk by a scene, take a random photo, and not even understand what they're actually capturing in that moment. Right. That story, I probably fucking, I don't think it's a five time, but I've definitely said this on the podcast before.

[01:09:47] That you've read Born Standing Up, right? The Steve Martin book. Yeah, years ago, yeah. There's the part in it where he worked at Disneyland for years and years and years and did the magic shows and shit. And then finally had the moment where he is like,

[01:09:59] I need to have the courage to make a go of this and see if I can really be a comedian and quits Disneyland and starts his career. Right. After he started working there when he was 12 or something. It was insane from basically when it opened.

[01:10:14] And when he left Disneyland, he had this moment where he was like walking out the gates for the final time and looking back and being like, I wonder if this is the moment I'll regret for the rest of my life. And there was like a small mousy woman

[01:10:25] standing by the gates as the place was closing with a camera. And he was just like, I wonder if she's taking a picture of the place is closing. And then like decades go by, Steve Martin becomes Steve Martin. He's obviously this huge fucking art collector.

[01:10:41] And he goes to a Diane Arbus show and he sees the photo. Oh, that's insane. Wait, that's so cool. And it was Diane Arbus, was that woman before she was well known. And here are the photos for sale. And he is like this photo,

[01:10:53] she could not have known, is capturing the most pivotal moment in my life. That is cool. It is that exact day. It is that exact moment. And she didn't know what she was taking. Right. You know, and it's like, this is a much more complicated tableau

[01:11:08] with a lot of- It's just random tourists taking a photo of things. Right, it's just tourists going like, what a weird thing, this joint security area. Is there a photo of Alfalfa realizing that he actually likes girls though? Like the moment that he realized it. Yeah, Anthony Pelicano.

[01:11:21] That's how that movie ends. Was tapping. Like black and white. Yeah. I think about that all the time. The Little Rascals movie should have a moment where a private eye comes out and goes, you're not gonna like what you see and give spanky manila envelope of photos.

[01:11:35] But as someone who's lived in New York for quite a while, I mean, you're both lifelong New Yorkers of course. Yeah. We're in so many tourist photos. Yes. Narrowing my eyes. Yeah, sure, I suppose that's true. People are always taking photos. I think about that all the time.

[01:11:51] Just there's all of these photos of me floating out there in the ether and the background of random people from all over the world. Especially in a smartphone era. Family vacation. Yes. Yeah, it's funny to think about. Yeah. But yeah, no, it's a beautiful ending.

[01:12:06] Look, it's a very universal concept, but it's a thing I've not really seen people put in the movies. The opening of Past Lives does a similar thing, I think, so well. Yes. Where you're just like people watching. Like which we do all the time. Right.

[01:12:21] And then you have the idle thoughts. Oh, what's this? What's this like trio of people in a restaurant? Like this doesn't look like everyone else. Right. You know, see two people of the same age, they're on a date, they're married, whatever.

[01:12:34] You know, but like, oh, these three people? What's the deal here? Right. And you're kind of curious, you're trying to puzzle it out and then you never think about it ever again. And that movie is just, no, we're gonna explain everything to you.

[01:12:48] We don't have a box office for this. Now in the future episodes, sometimes we're playing a box office game for the Korean box office because someone eventually translated that for us. We didn't have access to the Korean box office for some of the episodes.

[01:13:07] For the first chunk of episodes and recently a listener very graciously took the time to do this for us. But he couldn't get JSA. So we were doing a lot of equivalent American box office weekends, but when the film didn't really have an American release.

[01:13:22] Just looking at the American weekend of when it came out in South Korea. Which I guess we have to do here because I don't have anything else for you. But you're right, there might be a chance to fill in those other games somewhere else.

[01:13:37] Shiri had come out the year before, as I said, in 1999. Widely regarded as the first true Korean blockbuster. Broke sales, ticket sales for Korean film and then broke the ticket sales record for any film defeating Titanic. Wow. There are then campaign slogans for something called Shiri syndrome.

[01:13:58] People sort of, it became this almost like patriotic thing of like, you know, we have to beat Titanic. Like let's revive domestic cinema, right? Like let's beat the dominance of America. JSA comes out in September, early September of 2000. Okay, so this movie sort of became

[01:14:15] the right vehicle for that energy on top of the movie. Everything is already there. Sure. You know, like people are already, and this film bests Shiri's total. It's the highest grossing movie in Korean film history. At the time, it makes $29 million.

[01:14:31] The next year, there's a movie called Friend that makes $40 million. So this keeps getting topped. Yeah. But the success is obviously crucial. There have been many American attempts as with a lot of these movies to remake this, which has never happened.

[01:14:47] But as with every single fucking foreign like film or television show set on the border, America's like, what if we set it in the US-Mexico border? Not the same. Not the fucking same. Not the fucking same. It's so stupid. Talk about a movie that is so specifically tied

[01:15:05] to its culture, its time, its place that cannot be transmuted onto something else. And like, you know, the thing I'm mostly thinking of obviously is the FX show The Bridge, which took this show that was set between Denmark and Sweden.

[01:15:19] And was like, it's set during the, you know, between America and Mexico now. And obviously like there's border, you know, there's art to be made about the border. It's not like it's uninteresting. Sure. But it's like not easy to transpose. Look, David Franzoni, the guy who wrote Gladiator

[01:15:35] and Amistad wanted to direct a JSA remake in America in 2019 after 14 years of near silence, announced it with Ana de Armas and Demian Bichir. Weird. And was gonna be by like a US Marine and a female Spanish infantry lawyer sent by the Hague

[01:15:58] to investigate a shootout between US Marines and Mexican special forces. Like, obviously this has never happened. Yeah. Doesn't make any sense. When was that announcement? 2019. Wow, okay. In 2014, however, this film was adapted into a Korean stage musical. Wow. Which got kind of bad reviews. Okay.

[01:16:19] The film did get some good reviews in America. When it was finally released in like 2005. But yeah, its impact in Korea is much more crucial to consider I think. Tarantino was an early booster of this movie. Obviously he's a big park booster in general.

[01:16:38] But he has put it on, I don't know, there's some list. I have the list in front of me. I wanna read it quickly because I do find it interesting how many of these movies we've actually covered. But he loves the distinction of like my favorite movies

[01:16:51] since I started making movies. The moment I'm not just watching as a fan, I'm watching as a fellow filmmaker. And these are basically like the 20 movies since Reservoir Dogs that he was jealous of. Right. Okay? Battle Royale. Right, which he goes on about all the time.

[01:17:09] Right, that's like his number one. Woody Allen's Anything Else Weirdly. He's always been a huge fan. Which he fucking loves and also thinks is quietly a time travel movie I think. I mean, I'd love to hear the rest. Yeah, Takashi Mike's Addition. Yeah, yeah. Story Hark's The Blade.

[01:17:24] Yeah, great movie. Boogie Nights, Dazed and Confused, Dogville, Fight Club, Friday. Hell yeah. The Host. That's a great list. Right, and then here we're getting to some blank check shit. The Insider. Great movie. JSA. Hell yeah. Lost in Translation. They'd be lost.

[01:17:40] The Matrix, though he hates the sequels. He's wrong. He's very wrong. Memories of a Murder, or of Murder, yes. Police Story 3. Is that the one with Michelle Yeoh? Yeah, that's Supercop. Like front and center? Yeah. The Insider, Speed. Yep, goes too fast. Team America World Police, Unbreakable.

[01:17:58] America, fuck yeah, Unbreakable, amazing. Mr. Glass, they call him that. So we've covered several of those and have maybe one more that will be discussed soon. But the other one he always says is that Sunshine would be on that list

[01:18:11] if not for the last half an hour or she is wrong about it. Yeah, well, let's do the box office for September 8, 2000. We've actually done it before. It's The Way the Gun's Bocked Office. Fuck. Number one of the box office.

[01:18:24] As you said though, there's no way you remember that one. No, that episode is really, whew. The box office game, the website, the other day did a top five two days after we had recorded it and I still got a bunch of it wrong.

[01:18:40] Yeah, it's hard to remember this stuff. Number one of the box office, opening to only $9 million, it's a new film. It is coasting off the success of a 1999 hit. And boosting its star, who's actually not really the star. He's more of a supporting character in the film.

[01:18:59] It's a villain, actually. The Witcher? Fuck, The Watcher, that's what I meant. That's what it is. James Spader and Keanu Reeves in The Watcher. It's that weird poster where he's third build but they make his name wide. Correct. James Spader, Marissa Tomei, Keanu Reeves.

[01:19:15] The Watcher, which in my memory is not very good. No, and had like three very low number one weekends. Yes. Because there was just so little competition. Yeah, two. Two, okay. It was number one for two weeks though. It was number one the next week at $5 million.

[01:19:30] That's what I just remember it being comically low number one. Number two of the box office is a dark comedy from at the time quite a hot name in the dark comedy film world, a playwright. He still is working but you know,

[01:19:47] Spader has gone in an interesting direction. Is it Nurse Betty? Yes. It could only be Neil Butte or David Mamet. And obviously David Mamet at this point was of a huge deal. Both of them. Neil Butte's still kind of early-ish. Weird directions.

[01:20:06] Did you see that it was circulating on Twitter the other day the super cut of Val Kilmer's commentary for David Mamet's Spartan where it's just him shit talking Mamet? Of course I watched every fucking second of it. Incredible. Incredible.

[01:20:20] One of the greatest bitches of all time, Val Kilmer. I say that with admiration. And he just goes, it's such a weird man with those fucking glasses. Are you kidding me? He's so mean about his personal appearance. It's true.

[01:20:32] Number three of the box office is a hit teen comedy. She's All That? No, that's 99. Hit teen comedy 2000. It's Not 10 Things I Hate About You. That's 99 as well. What distributor? It's from Universal. Universal, it's a hit. It lingers. It lingers like the cranberries.

[01:21:01] Tell me about the star situation on this picture. The big teen star has had a long career, was nominated for her first Oscar a couple years ago. Is it a Kiki? Yep. Is it Bring It On? Bring It On. Great film. Yes. Number four of the box office

[01:21:18] is a serial killer horror thriller from a definite blank check director. And we'll do this one day. We will do this movie someday. We'll probably do this director one day. It's like an easy four. It's five, I think. It's an easy five. But they're definitely a blank checker.

[01:21:36] This was his first film. This was his first film. But like an underrated, like some people are obsessed with this guy and a lot of people sort of forget he exists. Interesting. We've talked about all these movies Why has he made so few films? I don't know.

[01:21:49] Ask him. He just, he works in- Famous commercials and music video director. Okay. Okay. It's Tarsom's The Cell. Tarsom sings The Cell. Which rocks in my opinion. Totally. It's kind of like a smooth brain movie, but it totally rocks and it looks amazing.

[01:22:08] Isn't that the one that were famously like Ebert gave it a great review and everyone else trashed it and he was just like, was I watching a different movie than everyone else? And then he found out he was. They like screened him the director's cut.

[01:22:18] That has definitely happened, but I can't remember if it's The Cell. My memory is it was that one, but I might be completely off. I don't think it's The Cell. I think it's something else. Cause I know what you're talking about,

[01:22:29] but it's, I don't think I can remember. Someone tweeted us. Okay. Number five, space comedy. A space comedy. It's not Pluto Nash. No. It is the year 2000. It's August, September? Yeah, from a huge auteur. Yeah, it came out probably like early August. Huge auteur, space comedy.

[01:22:47] Sorry, I'm playing with a toy car on my desk. It's making noise. I got a little Christine, different Carpenters Christine. Huge space comedy, auteur director. Give me the distributor. Oh, Warner Brothers. It's a Warner Brothers picture. He is one of Warner Brothers' most stable. Oh, it's Space Cowboys.

[01:23:07] Space Cowboys! I should just, space comedy, think as literally as possible. Pretty much is what it is. Yeah. It's a space and it's a comedy. Those space cowboys. People said old people couldn't go to space. They did. They proved them wrong. Yeah. And only one of them died.

[01:23:24] Yes. Well, well. Died a hero. Died a hero. Yeah. That's the box office. Next week, we discuss Sympathy for Mr. Randall. We do with David Ehrlich, our friend David Ehrlich of IndieWire and Fighting the War Room returning to the show.

[01:23:42] But we have all kinds of exciting guests coming. We do. Like I said, done all but the last two episodes of this miniseries and I think it's a good one. Yeah. Does David resent the amount where you have to talk about child murder? Yep. Yep.

[01:23:53] Got really, really upset and angry today. Doesn't like it, but I think. Not joking. The episodes are good. He got very angry. Very angry. Not at anyone, just in my house alone. Angry at fictional child murder. Well, yes. I think of nothing but contempt for those characters.

[01:24:06] Yes, yes. But it's okay because I don't have to watch that movie again because I just watched it. David, you know how you were saying you don't run the internet friend database. You don't have an ability to track when friendship started and how they started

[01:24:20] and all of that? I purchased something recently because we got our display, our sort of like blank check menagerie here in our office of a combination of movie merch and sort of like items that demarcate the history of our show and its existence, right?

[01:24:36] And we have a couple of like the coins that we've made, the Comedy Points coins and the Chip Smith coins. And as I've been like arranging the tableau, I'm always like how do you display? So many toys up there. There are a lot of toys up there.

[01:24:48] How do you display the coins because they don't sit upright? So I went to Amazon. I got these little plastic coin stands, right? So you can have them standing up vertically. But also I've been moving apartments and going through a lot of my old stuff

[01:25:01] and weaning through it. And you know what I found, David? That now fits perfectly into these coin stands I purchased. What? Something that would belong on the internet friend database. Just for the listeners at home, David is at the edge of his seat.

[01:25:15] I am literally at the opposite of the edge of my seat. Okay. That is a Videology drink token. A wooden Videology drink token that we would get when we won trivia. This is basically the physical token of our friendship being formed. I have to document this.

[01:25:30] That's a little sweet. It's a little sweet. It's a little sweet. I think I have one of those rattling around somewhere too. I remember seeing one. I had preserved one at some point when I realized they were closing and I didn't. I had my stockpile.

[01:25:44] Get a couple bucks for a tip. Get a drink. But that's now, it's gonna go prominently on display next to the Beta Joke envelope. Oh yeah. Ben's Porches 40. Piacon. Lego Piacon. Carefully assembled by Marie Barty. King Ralph VHS.

[01:26:02] And are you gonna set up the Lego set that we were sent? That's a big project. I feel like we're waiting for the right surface for it. Yeah, that could be an episode. This is a humble. Oh my God, wait, you're right. Maybe. That would be fun.

[01:26:18] This is a real humble brag. I mean, yes, maybe. It needs a visual element. Or something else. It can't just us being going like, hey, I need kind of a long yellow guy. I should say what it is though. Chris McKay, director of the Lego Batman movie.

[01:26:35] Is that how you say his name? I believe. I think I'm not getting that wrong. Sure, I believe you. It's spelled McKay, I believe it's pronounced McKay. And if I'm wrong, I'm sorry Chris. Wrong doesn't matter. We did the Lego Batman movie on Patreon. Yeah.

[01:26:49] And then much to our surprise, a month or two later, he sent us an incredibly nice note and the two biggest Lego sets. They are big. We have the Batcave and then we have the Joker's version of Wayne Manor. But we haven't built them yet

[01:27:03] because we need proper space to place them. Yeah, they will go somewhere, I promise. Yeah, we'll figure it out. Behind an unused drink token. All right, take us out Griff. Thank you all for listening. It's gonna be a fun mini series.

[01:27:16] We can say this because we've recorded most of them. Mm-hmm. And we got great guests coming up. Yeah. Some first timers, some returning favorites, some overdue. There's smiles, there's laughs. There are tears, there's David saying. We're not really wrapping it up right now.

[01:27:31] David pounding his fist on the desk and saying, don't make me watch Child Murderer again. Thank you all for listening. Please remember to rate, review, and subscribe. Thank you to Marie Barty for our social media, helping to produce the show and also building

[01:27:43] Lego Pycon and placing him on top of the mantle. There he is. Thank you to JJ Birch for our research, Asia McKean, Alex Barron for our editing, Layne Montgomery and the Great American Novel for our theme song, Pat Reynolds, and Joe Bowen for our artwork.

[01:27:57] You can go to BlankCheckPod.com for links to some real nerdy shit, including our Patreon Blank Check special features where we do commentaries on film series. We are crossing the oceans now and Little Drummer Girls coming up there. Should we say what we're doing July 11th?

[01:28:15] Is this a good place to say it? No. Because we've recorded the other episodes that will come out after this where we would reveal it. Already. True. Fine, go ahead and say it. I'm gonna say it. We're doing something really nerdy on Patreon

[01:28:29] that I think people will like for July 11th. Right. We're doing an episode called Spreadmaster's Delight in which David, who infamously has a spreadsheet that includes what he would nominate in every single Oscar category for every year. We're gonna randomly generate a year in a category

[01:28:47] and David will reveal who his nominees would be in that category and I will offer on the spot me trying to come up with who my picks would have been. Right, right, right, right. I hope you dirty fucking nerd pigs like it. Spreadmaster's Delight, some real nerdy shit.

[01:29:02] Tune in next week. Perchance there may be a spread of the edible sort. Ben asked us if we had nut allergies. I don't. And also what our bread preference is. So who knows what kind of bit he has planned there. Impossible to predict. Who knows?

[01:29:20] Tune in next week for Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance and as always, get ready for a loud child murder. No, no, no. We have to think, we do! It's happening! It's a lot. David! Knocked my lamp down. Dang.