Paths of Glory with Sarah Marshall

[00:00:01] Blank Check with Griffin and David, Blank Check with Griffin and David Don't know what to say or to expect And all you need to know is that the name of the show is Blank Check It explodes in the no-man's land no podcast ever dared cross before!

[00:00:26] Is that the tagline? That's a great tagline! Isn't it? That's why I wanted to do it. Oh yeah, I love that. It's such a good poster too. And the poster makes you think that it's a movie about

[00:00:37] a badass military operation in no-man's land, you know, like a bunch of fucking heroes. Right. Right? Tearing it up, you know? Right. It's, it's, I mean, the poster is like Kirk Douglas in like action pose, his hands like gripped up near the grimace.

[00:00:55] It makes it feel like this whole movie is going to be him in the fucking trenches, wrestling people to the ground. Yeah. I'm trying to get the full image version of this because it's, it's one of your... I've got it. I've got it. It's got a two tagline.

[00:01:07] I've got the other one. Now the... I'll butcher this as well. Now the podcast blasts open the bombshell story of a colonel who led his regiment into hell and back while their maddened general waited for them with a firing squad.

[00:01:21] I mean, you know, that's a good tagline and it's not inaccurate. It's not. It's not. Yeah. It just makes it, you know, like a tale of daring do. It makes it seem like a Kirk Douglas action epic, which this movie is fascinatingly not, I would say.

[00:01:40] Sure. I love this movie. Yeah. Can I throw out a hot take? Really fucking good. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's great. Yeah. Have you ever seen it before? I'd seen it before. I hadn't seen in a while. Can I ask what was your favorite part? When it ended.

[00:01:56] When you were done? What's your favorite part? Just, you know, it's been discussed much on the show. I get very stressed out watching war films, even when I think they're good. I find it to be a somewhat unpleasant experience.

[00:02:09] So I, you know, I think the whole movie is very well made, but the moment when it ended and I could start breathing normally again and working on lowering my heart rate, even for a movie that's not that combat heavy. Although the one big combat sequence is harrowing.

[00:02:24] It's very impressive. Yes. Yeah. Our guests can talk anytime. Yeah. Oh, openly invited to. Yeah. Just chat. Encourage. I'm used to the construct where it's like we have to pretend that I'm coming to the door like the Mr. Rogers neighborhood version. We do the opposite of this.

[00:02:43] Even though your name is in the title. But right now, I love I love the early break in from the guest. It makes me it makes me very happy. The call is coming from inside the house. That's what we sort of go for.

[00:02:54] They've been here the whole time. Yeah. Now it's creepier because I was silent for a couple of minutes and yet I was here. Right. That's what we're looking to. Yeah. Love to shock and terrify our listeners at every turn. Settle. Good. Yeah.

[00:03:07] Ben, I'm curious, producer Ben, did you have a favorite part? It felt like you were asking because there's a part you wanted to spotlight. Oh, not in particular. Well, how about, you know, I like a good ditch, but I think

[00:03:22] there's there's too much of a good thing, right? Yeah. World War One was certainly too much of a good thing on the ditch front. Yes. That that's a good. Yeah. Like it's fun to hang out in there for maybe an hour, but like a year. No, thanks.

[00:03:39] It's important for you to watch World War One movies so that you you are reminded that there is such a thing as too much. You know the limits. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You can take it too far.

[00:03:48] I mean, there's nothing more brutal and, you know, depressing than trench warfare. And any image you see of it, you're like, good God, like this is horrible. It sucks. But then like I also, right, I also did grow up like watching Black Adder,

[00:04:02] which is a critique of World War One, obviously. That is not like pro-World War One. But when you're a kid, you're like, oh, they've got their little like houses, you know, like their little beds in there.

[00:04:13] And so I don't know when you're a kid, I think there's some charm to trench life that is obviously, you know, only in sanitized sitcoms. I was kind of thinking that while watching this, which immediately was a thought I felt very guilty for. Right. Me too.

[00:04:28] I feel a lot of guilt. But if it's in a set, then like, yeah, there is that childlike part of you that's like, oh, and yeah, I was just thinking of Black Adder as well, because like any any enclosed space

[00:04:40] that Lego they sleep in and honey, I shrank the kids. These are all exciting for a child. Right. I think I think I would like it if the war wasn't happening. I you know, it's really I think we're getting actually to the to the breakthrough here,

[00:04:55] which is it's not that World War One had too many ditches is that the ditches were the respite from the war that you had to stay in. I think I'd happily live in a trench if when I crawled out of it,

[00:05:11] I could just take a pleasant stroll and not have to spend 10 harrowing minutes blowing my whistle trying to touch bullets. A lot of whistle blowing. A lot of whistle blowing. It is wild that World War One, they were like,

[00:05:24] how are we going to fucking convince people to do this? And they were like, I don't know, blow whistles. Blow whistles. So many whistles. When I was like 13, I grew up in Britain here. Sarah, I don't know if you know that, but I did.

[00:05:35] I grew up in the United Kingdom. I don't know what this is. I don't understand why you're taking the time to ask Sarah if she knows this and not ask Ben and I. OK, Ben, Griff, are you aware of that? Absolutely not. First I've ever heard this ever.

[00:05:50] Brand new information. You don't have an accent. Yeah, where'd it go? I know, I know. I get that a lot. It went away. I was born in America, you know. Where's your chimney sweep hat? My chimney sweep hat is in my coat closet. I don't know.

[00:06:05] Where's your teacup? It's in the kitchen. What are you talking about? You think I have to carry that shit around all the time? Where's your frigging biscuits? Yeah. I could do with a biscuit around here. That'd be nice.

[00:06:19] I went when I was, I guess what you'd think, like eighth grade or whatever. I went on a battlefield, a World War One battlefield trip with my history class. So we went to Belgium and you go see some trenches and you go, right?

[00:06:34] You know, you're visiting all these battlefields and they show you the graveyards, which are crazy. I mean, it is crazy. So many gravestones. And then they'll show you like the enemy graveyard. They're like, this is where we buried the Germans.

[00:06:47] And they're like every headstone, there's like 40 bodies, right? Because they were just like piling them in without any real care. And I remember I took so many pictures of the graveyards because we were like 13 years old. We were like, oh my God, this is crazy.

[00:07:02] And I came home and my parents were like, so tell us about your trip. Like show us the pictures. And I was just like, this is a graveyard with no people in the picture. This is the German graveyard. And they were just like, who cares? Like what?

[00:07:16] This is all you took pictures of. That's all. That's my story. How are you going to take a picture that a ghost shows up in if you don't? That's how I thought that was going. Was that your parents were like, there's a strange light.

[00:07:29] There's this blur on the image here. Yeah. I don't know. Don't give a 13 year old a camera, 13 year old boy on a graveyard and on a battlefield trip at camera. He's not going to get you anything good. I don't know. We should test that hypothesis.

[00:07:43] Okay, let's get together a bunch of 13 year old boys on a battlefield trip. That's a great found footage movie. 13 year old boys doing on the battlefield with Izone cameras. I don't know. Fucking blank check sent them here. They got those Polaroid sticker strips.

[00:08:01] Don't you think that a successful podcast like the natural next step is to expand into reenactments? Because I've often thought that. They're the steps of just you do the podcast, you start a Patreon, T public page war reenactments.

[00:08:16] Your Patreon goal is like, we will reenact the battle of Ypres. Right? You know, that's it. 9000 subscribers. We're getting everyone on a plane. We're sending him to Belgium. You're going to dig trenches. You're going to jump at each other. Oh man. Wow.

[00:08:33] There were apparently five battles of Ypres. I just remember going to Ypres. We went there. Must be nice. Horrible war. Horrible war. I think it was just a nice, boring trip. Oh, I'm sure that this is something that other graduates of the American school system will echo here.

[00:08:51] But I feel like growing up World War One, we did have a unit on it in seventh grade. But until then, there was this pattern of like, it felt like we were going chronologically

[00:09:02] through American history and we would like waste a bunch of time in the Industrial Revolution. And then it felt like the teachers are always like, skip ahead, World War Two. And at the time, I was like, they're not managing their time well.

[00:09:16] And now I'm like, I think there's a reason we didn't really do much World War One in school because it's like, yeah, and then everybody died for no reason. And that's hard to put a spin on that.

[00:09:26] Also, World War One maybe got Terminator 2'd a little bit where the sequel is just so fucking big. It's true. And it's huge. Memorable. And the stakes and the skin, like iconic villain. You know, it does. It has a great villain. It's true. It's got an incredible villain.

[00:09:46] It's so easy to just sort of like get your mind around. There's a second Terminator. I get it. This guy's unstoppable. Whereas like the villain of World War One, it's like, you know, European alliance structure.

[00:10:01] And yeah, well, every country kind of had a guy with a mustache who was rich and kind of evil. You know, OK, and what happened afterwards? Nothing. Everyone still didn't like each other. And they just did it all over 20 years later.

[00:10:14] Like, yeah, that's kind of what's most insane is you feel like the takeaway from World War One should have been let's never do this again. The war to end all wars. That was literally what they said. Yes, they should just call it World War.

[00:10:27] In a way, they were dooming us by calling it World War One. It's like, don't call it fucking Remo Williams. Now Griffin, they didn't call it that. They did and the audacity. Fucking Doug's first movie over here. Yeah, they dug.

[00:10:42] No, but they did mess up because they called it the Great War. And everyone maybe mistook that after a while for like great war. All right. Can we do a greater war? I don't know. It became a fucking challenge. I don't know.

[00:10:54] We're making fun of a thing that is just an absolute moral calamity that resulted in the deaths of tens of millions. But what are you supposed to do? How do you grapple with these things? Yeah, war's terrible.

[00:11:06] Every time we fucking watch a war movie on this podcast, I just go, why is anyone doing this ever? I frequently feel like I'm begging whatever listeners I have on any show I'm on forgiveness

[00:11:17] for becoming too giggly when things are depressing and for my very well-developed sense of gallows humor. And this is the most appropriate movie we could talk about. Talk with gallows humor about because it's literally. You know, most of it takes place on the eve of an execution.

[00:11:35] So there's I feel like there's no more appropriate subject for this demeanor. We're all exhibiting already. A trench kind of nature's gallow, you know? Yeah, it could be called trench humor. It could be called trench humor.

[00:11:48] This is not like a funny movie, obviously, but it is a movie about, you know, absurdity, right? The sort of like dark, surreal, like behavior. There there is something like very darkly comical about this movie, like Dr. Strangelove

[00:12:07] pushes it into a level of absurdity where you can actually have jokes. Right? It's currently. But I feel like there's a much greater connection between those two films than I had considered before.

[00:12:21] And this just feels like it's it's sort of a clenched humor at like, this is so fucking stupid. It's very stupid. Yeah, Griff, introduce our podcast and our guest. Listen, the thing is that this is a podcast called Blank Check with Griffin and David. I'm Griffin. I'm David.

[00:12:38] It's a podcast about filmography is 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. And sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they bounce baby.

[00:12:50] And this is a mini series on the films. Stanley Kubrick, Kubrick. I saw people in the Reddit fighting about this the other day because Brits say Kubrick, but apparently it is Kubrick. I say Kubrick. Apparently that's English of me to call him Kubrick. Right. Kubrick.

[00:13:06] Apparently it is Kubrick. And then when he went to England, people assumed it was Kubrick and he didn't correct them. Huh? What an interesting guy. For a man who you imagine if they mispronounce his name, he'd go, can we get 100 more takes

[00:13:20] of that until you say it correctly? While crying, ideally. Absolutely. The mini series is called Pods Widecast. Today we're talking about Paths of Glory, which is sort of the guarantor to the guarantor in his career. Sort of. Yeah. I mean, it's certainly his first hit, right?

[00:13:42] I guess it wasn't even a huge hit, but it's a well regarded movie with a star. That's that's a big deal. It was certainly his first A picture in terms of sort of classification and working with a big star and studio and everything.

[00:13:59] And then it opens the door for him to make a giant blockbuster later. But our guest today is the host of You're Wrong About, but I would say almost more relevantly, You Are Good, a movie podcast that is about movies and feelings.

[00:14:16] Is that how you would put it? It's sort of about the relationship between movies and emotions and our emotions to them and how they help us process our emotions. And is that am I totally butchering this?

[00:14:26] I've been listening to a lot of episodes recently, but I'm trying to figure out how to present this. This is certainly a movie that makes me feel emotions. Yes. Oh, my God. This movie is like 40 pounds of emotions in a 20 pound bag, I would say.

[00:14:40] And I am also looking forward to talking about how much you can get done in 87 minutes. Kind of incredible. But yeah, we have refused to succinctly describe that show and left it up to other people.

[00:14:51] And it started off being about dad movies and dads and movies and working through dad feelings by watching movies. And then last year, we were just like, let's just have it be about all feelings.

[00:15:02] But I think it also has a function of like a lot of the movies we talk about are sort of like feel good movies or movies like Aimed At are specifically beloved by tween girls.

[00:15:15] And there's also an element of talking about how like there is important things to discuss about practical magic. Oh, I mean, you're preaching to the fucking choir here, David. This is this is David's. This is the snare drum that David's beating all the time.

[00:15:30] Practical Magic is a fantastic movie. Thank you. Not everyone knows that. It's very sad for them. And the thing about Practical Magic is... Sarah Marshall's our guest, by the way. I didn't get to the point where I said the name. Sarah Marshall's our guest today. Oh, yeah.

[00:15:42] Sorry about that. That's my name. Yeah. Oh, hi, Sarah. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for having me. I can't remember if I've said this on mic, but I don't think I have. I'm a big fan of that movie and of Griffin Dunn's movies in general.

[00:15:54] You've always been pushing for a Griffin Dunn miniseries. And I've always said there can only be one Griffin on this podcast. And I saw it in theaters at the age of 12. Like I was a little young for it, I think.

[00:16:10] And also I was like a 12 year old boy. You know, like, I don't know if I was like totally locked into this. You know, but I was excited for it and I saw it. And it really freaked me out when I was 12 years old in a theater.

[00:16:22] It's kind of a dark movie, which is sort of the secret of many a Griffin Dunn film. There's a zombie in that movie. People forget that. There's a fucking zombie. They raise the dead and it goes very poorly for them. Like, it's not cute.

[00:16:38] Like, and so, and then when I came back to it years later, I was like, yeah, God, there's nothing like this. It's such a strange tonal mix. And then I realized I felt the same about Addicted to Love. And like, I was like, oh, right.

[00:16:52] Like Griffin Dunn's kind of, that's kind of his thing, I suppose. Yeah. Anyway, love Practical Magic. Would love to live in that house. Did he just direct a new film or am I mistaken? He made a film called, well, he worked on, no, no.

[00:17:07] He worked on some kind of anthology film called Within that didn't go anywhere. But I believe the last thing he made was that Joan Didion documentary that went to Netflix. Yeah. But I thought perhaps I'm mistaken here and perhaps it was something he was acting in.

[00:17:22] But I felt like I was seeing him post online what felt like maybe his new film as a director. Like he just maybe finished something. Maybe I'm wildly wrong. Let's see. I mean, he has this segment in this thing called Within. That must be.

[00:17:42] But yeah, but that's, yeah, I don't know. You know, it's got like Don Cheadle in it. I don't know. It looks like Julianne Moore. You know, it's got some real people in it. It's the kind of thing that premieres at Tribeca, though. Not to be rude. Incredibly rude.

[00:17:57] Found dead in a trench. Sarah, you are someone who many, many people have been telling us to get on the podcast for a very long time. I feel like a lot of our mutual friends and our shared guests like Dana Schwartz and Chris

[00:18:13] Gethard, Josh Gondelman and people, whenever they would go on your show, they'd reach out to us and say, like, have you had Sarah Marshall on? She would have a good conversation with you guys. And this is long overdue. It's been in the books for a while.

[00:18:25] It took a long time of back and forth to schedule and everything. But I'm curious, just because it's been pinned for so long, what made you choose this movie? I think I gave you three options, and I forget what the third one was.

[00:18:40] But one of the other ones was Barry Lyndon. And you picked this one. And I was very relieved because I do love Barry Lyndon. But like, is the idea of watching it, you just like kind of, you know, it's like taxing in a different way.

[00:18:54] And this movie is, I don't know if you guys have this, but this is one of my favorite movies and one of my formative movies. And until watching it to talk about it with you, I had only seen it one time because I saw it once.

[00:19:08] And it was at the Portland Art Museum, which used to have free admission for Portland State students. And so I saw a lot of movies there. I saw this there and was just like, once was enough. Like, the entire thing is like tattooed onto my brain now.

[00:19:25] It's like entered into my soul, like an expanding bullet. And just I was like, yeah, that's I'm good. That was my shot or whatever. And so it's yeah, it's that's rare for me to not really revisit stuff like that.

[00:19:42] And I think, I mean, I was excited to talk about it because I remember like seeing it alone in a theater and not really meeting a ton. It doesn't come up that much in conversation, but it feels my personal thought is that this

[00:19:55] is this is my personal Kubrick or Kubrick movie, however you want to say it. And I think and watching it now, I was like, I feel like he just like got what human emotions were about and then was just like, I'm done with that. That was terrible.

[00:20:10] I'm going to make other stuff now. It is funny how much his movies become more and more anthropological with every film after this. Right. It's sort of like he creates a greater distance between him and the subject in the microscope.

[00:20:29] And this one, it feels like he's really there. I don't know. I mean, doing these episodes, it's been really interesting to chart and we haven't been doing the Kubrick's and in linear recording order, but sort of his start as a photojournalist

[00:20:44] into then becoming a documentary filmmaker, into becoming the most controlling fictional filmmaker. And and the way the sort of documentary approach and styling and attitudes seep away with each film, you know? Yeah. He stops being someone who wants to capture something and starts being someone who wants

[00:21:06] to create and control a thing. And watching this made me I mean, this is a tendency of his that I have very conflicting feelings about and I have conflicting feelings about The Shining, which I've talked about on You Are Good.

[00:21:18] But watching this, I was like, yes, like, go, Stanley, go be free, like, go identify with the robot. Yeah, I guess this is his last human drama in a way. In a way. People would maybe object to us saying that.

[00:21:35] But yeah, it is funny how this is certainly like, I don't think I saw this film until I'd probably seen all the later classics. I had seen Strange Love 2001, Clockwork Orange, The Very Least, The Shining, right? Probably Barry Lyndon as well.

[00:21:51] And I came back around to this one and I was, I think I had a different I think I thought this was I think I thought it was what the poster was telling me.

[00:21:58] I think I thought it was, you know, like a really epic war movie with Kirk Douglas, probably similar to Spartacus in terms of like scale. Right. And then when I found out that it was basically like a legal drama of sorts, like which is

[00:22:15] basically like my favorite genre of movie, like people talking shit out in a courtroom and like, you know, maneuvering. I know that it's sort of an absurd legal drama and it's set within a legal system that makes no sense. But you know what I mean?

[00:22:29] Like, yeah, that did surprise me. And I almost, yeah, I guess the closest thing he's made to this since this is Strange Love, because Strange Love is also people talking through absurdity by and large. Right. That's what I'm saying. They're very paired movies, oddly. Yeah.

[00:22:46] You know, you're absolutely right. And then, of course, in Strange Love, he's, you know, he's turning the dials up and everything is ridiculous. But this is a ridiculous movie too. This is, this is, it's just that this is also rooted in reality, not in total absurdity.

[00:23:04] It's also, it's strange when you think about Kubrick as this guy who would just jump from one genre to another, a different style of film. I have to make my this, I have to make my that, I want to play in all these different sandboxes.

[00:23:18] And then you're like, he made like four proper war movies. He kind of kept coming back to war, you know? And Barry Lyndon is kind of a war movie too. Other movies outside of those four that touch on war seriously, but there are four films,

[00:23:34] this Strange Love, Fear and Desire, and Full Metal Jacket. I would count Spartacus as a war movie. But that's what I'm saying, there are four movies that are explicitly war as main genre. You're right.

[00:23:46] And then you also go like, Lyndon touches on war, Spartacus touches on war, you know? It is kind of the dominant theme, or at least interest subject for him. And I think part of it is the way that like, war exposes these odd aspects of the human

[00:24:03] condition and primal desires, fears and desires, if you will, and all these sorts of things. But this is the only one that's like, through and through a war movie in a bizarre way. And the fact that it's a weird kind of legal drama, watching this again,

[00:24:20] because I had seen it the first time, I don't know, 12 years ago, something like that. So it's like meeting who I was when I was much younger and sort of seeing how

[00:24:33] the way I felt about this movie predicted the kinds of things I would do with my adult life. And I was like, oh, of course I love this, because it's all about injustice, which I'm fixated on. And it's a legal drama.

[00:24:46] It feels like one of, in a way, one of the few truly accurate legal dramas, because you have an incredibly short trial that you have three hours to prepare for. And the prosecution is extremely condescending and throws out everything of value that you

[00:24:59] have to say, which as far as I know, is how actual trials tend to go. And we don't get to see it that way, because it makes for unbelievably depressing media. It's boring. Right, right, yes.

[00:25:11] Did you folks see that, like David Simon cites this regularly as the number one influence on The Wire? That makes sense. Sure. This was the movie he saw. Yeah, right. He's like the telling a story about how the institutions fuck over its people and the

[00:25:29] people on the ground versus the people in the offices and all that sort of shit that like this is the sort of Rosetta Stone, if you will, for him. But also, yeah, and also the life of being a middle manager in an institution that can

[00:25:43] be violent and oppressive, which is always such a strange position. I mean, because the best thing about The Wire, well, there's lots of good things about The Wire, but like is those middle manager characters who are often adversarial and villainous,

[00:26:00] but then also at the same time, you know, are kind of just, you know, like they're just doing the bidding of forces above them that are even more villainous and more amorphous and all that.

[00:26:11] Anyway, it's sort of the most fascinating thing about this movie, though, is that it is like a middle management movie. It is a movie about middle management. Yeah. Kind of. You guys ever, you don't know, Griff, about Cardassians. I know, right?

[00:26:29] You never really got into the Cardassians in Star Trek The Next Generation. I'm sorry to bring this up. I'm sorry. We're doing this episode over Zoom and, you know, it's a regular Zoom technical, what have you. Both times you said it, I thought you said Cardassians.

[00:26:44] Well, they sound, yeah. I mean, they sound very similar. It sounds like the alien race. There's only so many Armenian characters in the pop culture. The alien race in Star Trek, the Cardassians, who are villains in The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine especially.

[00:26:59] There's an episode where, I think it's in Deep Space Nine, where a character is being put on trial. I can't remember which. It doesn't matter. He's being put on trial in the Cardassian legal system. And they're, you know, because it's the Federation.

[00:27:11] It sounds like you're saying the Robert Kardashian legal system. Go on. Well, imagine the Kardashian legal system. That'd be pretty bad too. It's probably not that different. And the Federation's like, look, okay, fine. Like we'll get him a lawyer. Like just tell, how does it work?

[00:27:27] And they're like, no, no, no, you don't understand. In our legal system, the trial is just an arena for us to yell at you. You're already guilt. Like the guilt has been decided.

[00:27:38] And the trial is just where we now tell you that you're guilty and why and what's going to happen to you. And the Federation's like, well, come on, surely is there an objection? We can raise it. Come on. Like, well, what are the maneuvers we can do?

[00:27:49] They're like, no, no, no, no. Like, that's over with. That's dispensed with. And so that's what this is like. Yeah. You know, he's like, well, I'll defend my guys at the trial. They're like, yeah, sure, buddy. You go ahead and do that. Like, that's fine.

[00:28:02] Like nothing's nothing's going to change. It is a big part of, I think, what makes my brain unravel whenever I watch war movies, as opposed to also, you know, the many other things like a light breeze that can make my brain unravel.

[00:28:17] But that when I watch war movies, I'm like, what are these fucking rules? Who decide this fucking shit? And everyone has to follow them. And then I extrapolate from there and I'm like, wait, but the rules outside of war also make no sense and are so arbitrary.

[00:28:32] And I'm like, what the fuck are any of us doing? But every time I watch a war movie, I'm like, says you, why do I have to fucking do this? Like anytime anyone's commanded to do anything.

[00:28:44] That certainly would be my reaction to being, you know, to being told go over the top. I would be like, I don't know about that. How about no? That doesn't serve my interests in any way. This is why Falstaff is such a great character. He's like war.

[00:28:58] I'm not sure about that. That sounds bad for me. And it's a sensible response. Yeah, I mean, false false steps take is also like, well, I know that tents go with war that

[00:29:11] are filled with food and drink so I can, you know, I'll be in those like if you want me to come to the war, like I can hang out there maybe. But yeah, that's that'll be the extent of it.

[00:29:22] It's weird that like Falstaff isn't shorthand for having the right opinion, you know, you're like this Falstaffian genius who figured it out. This free thinker who didn't get murdered like all of his friends and who died a lovely, peaceful death of lifestyle reasons. It's right.

[00:29:44] You're just you watch this movie. I mean, you know, I think it illustrates this very well. But the idea of just like I have a really smart move. I have this brilliant fucking eight dimensional chess move in my head for how to win this war.

[00:29:58] Just push a bunch of human beings towards it. This is take a bunch of human lives and just push them all in one direction and hope that ultimately more of our guys are alive than their guys. And then like that doesn't work. And they're like, well, shrug.

[00:30:11] I don't know what a shame. Yeah, I've been on an action movie bender this summer, I guess, because it's summer and like that's what you do. And I was watching Die Hard the other day and enjoying or like really noticing the fact

[00:30:25] that the FBI are like, yeah, we're going to lose 25 percent of the hostages. But like, that's pretty good for us. Like, that's fine. And just how it's unusual throughout history to not, you know, see all this as a numbers game. Yes, it is absurd.

[00:30:41] I mean, those are my favorite side characters in the movie because when they show up, it like it should be like, oh, great. The feds are here. They've got helicopters and stuff like they'll kick this up to they'll deal with this.

[00:30:54] And instead they show up and they're like, yeah, let's just fucking do it, man. Let's go guns blazing. And there's that moment where they're in the copter and the older agent is like, this reminds me of Nam and the other guy is like, I wasn't in Nam, man.

[00:31:06] I'm too young for that. And you're like, oh, they're just idiots, like just completely violence addicted idiots. Yeah. And how the older agent like this wouldn't be real for audiences for many years.

[00:31:19] But now the older FBI guy is like, for me and many other people, he's the guy from Show Girls. He just is the guy from Show Girls. So that also helps. Yeah.

[00:31:32] Anyway, makes me makes me laugh when he says this reminds me of Nam and the other guy's like, what? I mean, Die Hard is like what this movie would be in a way.

[00:31:42] If like, because like the whole premise of Die Hard is like how much good can like one good guy manage to get done? And then Die Hard, the answer is all of it. And in this movie, the answer is none of it.

[00:31:54] And aside from that, they're the same. So in 80 years, you know, some progress made. Paths of Glory, I can give you some context, Griff, or do we want to go back to the movie?

[00:32:08] I can give you some context, Griff, or do we want to talk about the plot? No, let's get into some context. Give me give me give me some context. I'm a connoisseur for it and of it. I know you are. So The Killing had come out.

[00:32:19] And even though it wasn't a big hit, it was just, I think, like universally regarded internally, like in the industry as like, this is someone to watch, right? Like this is this is a film. This is a real filmmaker. Yeah.

[00:32:34] And so Harris Kubrick Productions, who, you know, James Harris is Stanley's producer for all these early movies. They get a deal at MGM to write, produce and direct a film in 40 weeks for a fee of $75,000. That's basically it. Do whatever you want. But that's the budget.

[00:32:53] That's the right. That's the fee. That's the timeline. They want to make a war movie because even though they've done Fear and Desire, Kubrick is just still completely fascinated by war. He calls it one of the few remaining situations where men stand up and speak for what they

[00:33:07] believe to be their principles. He says it's pure drama. So that's an interesting perspective on war. I'm not sure I would agree with that, but I guess I know what he means that like it's just like so pressurized that environment, right?

[00:33:20] I don't know that you're like, yeah, like reality TV cohabitation competition shows now. Yes, exactly. That's where your principles come to the fore. People start getting real. No, I think that's what it's that. I think it strips people down to the primal instincts.

[00:33:36] I think that's sort of what he's getting at, right? Yes, right. Yeah. And there's this book, Humphrey Cobb's novel, Paths of Glory. Kubrick had read it in high school, found it in his father's office and just it was burned onto his like he'd never forgotten it.

[00:33:52] He says it's one of the few books he read for pleasure when he was like a teenager. It actually has been made into a play before. Um, so it's, you know, it's like a known thing and there have been attempts at cinematic adaptations.

[00:34:07] But you know what the problem with Paths of Glory is, guys? It's a bummer. It's a huge bummer. That's the reason that studios would be like, well, why are we doing this?

[00:34:15] It has like an unhappy ending and it's like about how bad war is and what idiot generals are is like, should we be doing that? I guess I guess that's what the problem is up there with bicycle thieves.

[00:34:26] I would say Kubrick saw bicycle thieves and he was like, hold my beer. Yeah, nobody is interested. They bring in Jim Thompson, who writes, you know, who wrote a way. What did he write? Now I'm well, no, I know. But like he wrote The Killing, right?

[00:34:41] Yes, he wrote The Killing. Right. Yeah. So they're bringing back Jim Thompson. He adapts it. No one is interested except for Kirk Douglas, who liked The Killing, reads the script and he says, Stanley, I don't think this movie is ever going to make a nickel, but we have

[00:34:57] to make it. So Kirk Douglas is the one guy who's basically like, I guess, got enough clout at this moment that he's like, well, I want to do something interesting.

[00:35:06] And he reads the script and he's like, like, I can get this made and I'm sure no one wants to make it. So it is kind of impressive. One million dollar budget based on Kirk Douglas's name. Three hundred thousand dollars goes to Kirk Douglas. Correct.

[00:35:23] He got a third of the budget. That's right. But hey. Michael needs tennis lessons. Michael's backswing sucked at that time. He was always slicing it. At one point, Kirk Douglas is busy and maybe can't do it. And they try to get Gregory Peck involved, which also makes sense.

[00:35:45] He's also pretty logical for a movie like this, I'd say. Sort of a guy with a backbone, right? Like a guy where you're like, I could see him sticking up for who, you know, these guys. Right.

[00:35:55] But it's so much the Atticus Finch thing of like, oh, Gregory Peck is the most moral, immovable man. He is the great good of American culture. Whereas there's something about this. The exact thing that I feel like Kirk Douglas actually shows a lot of restraint in playing

[00:36:14] against in this movie, but that we carry over as sort of legacy for him of the clenched teeth, the gripping hands, the fucking poster image. It gives this movie an edge where you're like, I know how big this guy can go. I know the histrionics.

[00:36:31] Whereas Gregory Peck always felt kind of selfless, you know? And he's and Gregory Peck is like more conventionally handsome. And Kirk Douglas is handsome in his way, but it's like has this very weird, intense, angular look. I don't know what are your yeah.

[00:36:45] Sarah, what's your Kirk Douglas take? Do you like Kirk Douglas as an actor? Seems like an intense human being as an actor. Yeah, I feel like Gregory Peck screen presence is the sort of like safe daddy feeling where

[00:36:57] like if you're like a child on a lifeboat with him, he'll like keep you singing songs and like not panic. Whereas if you're on a lifeboat with Kirk Douglas, like you're going to be drinking seagull

[00:37:09] blood and sing and see shanties and like he's going to level with you. Like there is something it's like I think he's playing like a an immovably good man, but not a paternal one. Yes.

[00:37:20] And you're going to be drinking and carousing as much as you can out there. Both ways you learn stuff. You do. They're both teachers. Yeah. I think we've talked about this, Griffin.

[00:37:33] We probably talk about a little more on Spartacus, but like, you know, he's like a new Hollywood star before New Hollywood. That's how I've always thought of Kirk Douglas. Like right. He's almost a man out of time, right?

[00:37:44] Like when you see him in things like this or the bad and the beautiful or ace in the hole or whatever, you're like, this is there's no one like this in the 50s, right? Like this is a harder edge.

[00:37:52] He feels like almost like a 70s actor or he straddles it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. My my insomnia YouTube rabbit hole of this week has been watching inside the actor studio and I watched the Harrison Ford one last night.

[00:38:08] And, you know, Harrison Ford is like so loath to talk about his process and his craft and all that sort of talk at all. Right. And like even Lipton is like, we really appreciate you doing this because we know this is not

[00:38:23] the kind of thing you like doing. And at the end of the interview, he goes in really tight for a handshake with Lipton. It's clear that he's like, thank you. But there's a stretch of it that's really interesting.

[00:38:34] It's sort of what you're talking about where they talk about the Mosquito Coast, which I think he says is his favorite movie he made. And Lipton is trying to sort of not prod him, but push him on the like. You've obviously lived a very lucky life.

[00:38:55] You're a very wealthy man. You're very famous. You're very successful. You're very respected. Does it ever feel like a burden that you are Harrison Ford? And sometimes when you try to make a movie like Mosquito Coast, people will not let you or they will not accept it.

[00:39:10] They will reject it because they have such a specific idea in their head of who Harrison Ford is and what he represents. And Harrison Ford, in a very unselfpitying way, is like, yes, yes, that is the thing I fight with.

[00:39:25] And he said, I have always gotten the sense that you use the fact that you have these big franchises and these blockbusters to single handedly get these movies made that would not get made otherwise.

[00:39:33] But you kind of know selflessly that you're not really going to get credit for it, that people will struggle with you being seen or wanting to be seen in that way. And the movies will lose money.

[00:39:44] And he just sort of says, like, I think there's the assumption that when I make a movie like that, I'm hoping it performs like one of my blockbusters. And the reality is I'm making it so that it can be made.

[00:39:55] And Douglas, like Harrison Ford was kind of trying to keep the Douglas tradition going. But the difference is by the time you get to Harrison Ford already and obviously things go so much further afield in the decades past that. Yeah, but it's right.

[00:40:11] You're already the opening weekend is already you're a slave to it or whatever. Right. It's it's bifurcated because he's fucking Indiana Jones and he's Han Solo and whatever. And there was this moment where Kirk Douglas could be a guy who could like pick interesting

[00:40:25] directors, pick thorny material, but work within these major genres of the war picture, the historical epic, the Western, what have you, and make these morally ambiguous movies that still basically could be sold as mainstream to mainstream audiences. Some of them worked hugely, some of them didn't work.

[00:40:44] But he was able to constantly try to make the challenging movie rather than being like, I got to make a dumb one to justify making the tricky one, you know? Well, everything you've said, let me now tell you what happened when they started to

[00:40:57] shoot the movie, because this feeds into that perfectly, which is that Douglas shows up there in Munich. I think they shot the movie in Germany and he's greeted by Stanley and Jim Thompson. They had rewritten the script. And Kirk Douglas says it's a catastrophe.

[00:41:11] They've taken this beautiful script and they ruined it. They had stupid dialogue. The dialogue quotes sounds really funny, such as you've got a big head. You're so sure the sun rises and sets up there in your noggin. You don't even bother to carry matches.

[00:41:25] I mean, this is all from Kirk Douglas. That's a thinker. It's such an overcomplicated metaphor. But by the way, that's like the kind of dialogue that like rules in The Killing. You understand when they're coming off of like two fucking hard-boiled noirs. Yeah. Of course. Hard-boiled weird dialogue.

[00:41:43] Right. But the most important change is that the movie suddenly has a happy ending. The general's car arrives screeching to halt the firing squad. He commutes the death sentence. And Douglas calls Stanley and Harris to his room and says, Why did you do this?

[00:41:58] And Stanley Kubrick, which he says, this is how Douglas puts it. He had a very calm way about him. I never heard him raise his voice. I never saw him get excited. He just looked at me with his big wide eyes.

[00:42:08] And he said, I did it to make a commercial. I want to make money. And Kirk Douglas just flipped out at the movie was like, I only wanted to do this because of the script you showed me. We are shooting that script where I'm walking off this picture.

[00:42:19] And Stanley Kubrick was like, that's fine. And they made the original picture. So this is, you know, yeah. Right. It's fascinating that like, yeah, Kubrick had sort of gotten in his head of like what a Kirk Douglas movie needs to be.

[00:42:30] And Kirk Douglas was like, I don't want to make Douglas movies. I want to be Kirk Douglas and use that to make other movies. Yeah, exactly. This reminds me of a story I love from the production of Titanic where like, they were going over time.

[00:42:44] They were going over budget. Fox sent down somebody to talk to James Cameron and was like, listen, just cut these scenes. Like, don't shoot them. You'll get back on schedule that way. It'll be great. And James Cameron, according to legend was like,

[00:42:57] the only way to change my movie is to fire me. And the only way to fire me is to kill me. I believe I've heard that story and I believe it. I believe it 100%. I'm just staring someone down and being like, do you have a gun?

[00:43:11] That's the only way you're going to make this happen. I have a tough neck, so you're not going to be able to strangle me. Even a knife will bend. The thing is, that's interesting.

[00:43:21] And I feel like our researcher JJ has found this in a bunch of these dossiers. A bunch of the research for these movies, like even the later ones, Stanley Kubrick always seems more concerned about making films that are commercial and

[00:43:32] successful than making films that are like, he doesn't care about critics' respect that much. No, he's not like, oh my God, I have to please that. You know, like he seems a lot more concerned with like, well,

[00:43:42] I want it to be a hit because then I can make more movies. Like, yeah, it's interesting because it was, it felt like that was the most important thing to him but in a weirdly practical way of like, if the movie bombs, then it's over.

[00:43:55] And I think more than that, that he knew he had such a particular way of making movies was so demanding that the moment those films stopped being profitable, it's sort of the Cameron thing of like, what's a worse fate for him than not being able to make

[00:44:08] a movie is not being able to make a movie the way he wants to. Not being able to demand that level of control, that scale, those resources, that time. And the only way he keeps justifying that is if the last thing worked. Yeah.

[00:44:21] But yet, seemed to not give a shit about critics or awards at all. No, not really. No, yeah, not someone who really cared about the Oscar or whatever. They shoot it in Germany, in Munich.

[00:44:33] Kubrick's marriage to Ruth Sobotka is on the rocks and he meets Christiane Suzanne Harlan, who is the singer at the end of the film. At the end of the story. I don't think I'd put that together. Yep. Who he marries and they are married until he dies.

[00:44:52] So they are married for 30 plus years. That is his, you know, his longtime companion. And it's an incredible and in the ending of this movie is incredible. I mean, it's so sort of unexpected and amazing. And so that whole like divorce and then kindling of a new romance

[00:45:08] plays out in the background of him making Paths of Glory. And then, you know, a lot of the other stories from the set of this movie. I don't know if it's going to shock you, Griffin,

[00:45:18] is about Stanley Kubrick making actors do lots of take to their increasing frustration. Have you heard about this? Yes, I've read about this a few times now. I'm not dragging JJ. I know like this is what always comes up. He's like, you know, whatever people recollect,

[00:45:34] like what was like to work with Stanley Kubrick. They're always like really serious, played a lot of chess, kind of cold behind the eyes. Lots of takes. You know, that's what always comes up. Yes. So yeah, Paths of Glory. Let's let's talk about it.

[00:45:48] It's a it's a great war film. It's the great World War One film. I don't think there's any disputing that right? Like what would its competition be like all quiet on the Western front? I can't even think of another film. Yeah, well, that one.

[00:46:01] I haven't seen that one. Yeah, I'm out. I haven't seen it either. Have you seen it, David? I have. Yes, it's very good. And I feel like that is sort of that is it's obviously it's from like 1930, right?

[00:46:14] It's it's, you know, a pre-code movie that it's just sort of the definitive like here is a fairly unsanitized Hollywood vision of what like, you know, how tough it was doing, you know, in World War One. It's it's not jingoistic or sanded down.

[00:46:31] It's it's it's a it's a really intense, sad movie. And it's good. It's good. It's it's like, you know, it's good. I'm a film critic, professional film critic. I keep pointing as if that's going to help. It's good. He's saying it's good. It's very good.

[00:46:48] David gives it one point. One point. I just think that I think of things like Velocity is dead or, you know, movies that have World War One sequences that are very impactful, but are not entirely about the war.

[00:47:02] Like, it's more like the aesthetics of the trenches and the gas attacks and all that. I guess like 1917, you know, became. Well, look, I mean, I thought about 1917 a lot watching this movie just because the amount of trenchy shit, right?

[00:47:17] Like that's the most trenchy movie we've had in recent history. But the one the one whistleblowing sequence with Douglas for me is so much more harrowing and tense than anything in 1917, which is all about, oh, it's fucking unrelenting. One shot doesn't end. You're stuck there with him.

[00:47:37] And he's not doing any cinematic trickery of that style. It's a very unfussy. He's just sort of tracking with him, you know, at a relative speed. But there's something about and with cuts like but it's somehow the way the tension

[00:47:56] builds in that you feel at least for me, I felt a greater sense of without trying to put you in a sort of you are there place. Oh, how the fuck do you get out of this? Right. You just hope to survive, right?

[00:48:17] You just hope your number doesn't come up. Yeah. Yeah. I think about it. Yeah. No, truly. You just fucking walk in with a whistle just going like, look, how many more steps do I have to take? All I have to do is avoid 35 more bullets and I'm good.

[00:48:31] Do you guys have any relatives that fought in wars? My grandfather fought in World War Two. Might as well. Yeah, my grandfather, I think, organized the USO shows in World War Two. That's such a Griffin Newman grandfather thing. Yep. Oh, my God. Wait, that's incredible.

[00:48:52] He fought in World War Two. Then you cut to this guy being like, all right, so you're going to open and this guy's going to middle. And it's a rough crowd out there tonight. Hey, Bob Hope was very rude behind the scenes. That was a tough gig.

[00:49:06] All right. You got PTSD from that. The wildest thing about it is my grandfather absolutely looked like someone who personally strangled 50 people to death on the front lines in the war. My grandfather looked like fucking Bob Hope as a thug.

[00:49:24] Was like a big stocky guy with a mean face. And then when I say, oh, he organized USO shows, you're like, oh, it was just Griffin in the war. And I was like, no, my grandfather looked like an angry man. I don't know about World War One.

[00:49:40] I think my guess is that for my dad's... My dad's dad was too old to fight in World War Two. My dad was born during World War Two. And so my guess is there was a similar generational thing where maybe...

[00:49:51] But I don't know about my father's side of the family. And then my mom's side of the family during World War One, they were like penniless immigrants or whatever. So I don't have any World War One family stories for sure. I don't know that.

[00:50:07] I found out my family, it's like pretty much up until... Well, just not the Vietnam, but like Korean all the way back. They were... Even Revolutionary War. Yeah. Served in all these wars. Well, you got one of those American families that goes all the way to the Revolutionary,

[00:50:26] right? You're all the way back. Well, there's the house in New Jersey that has been in your family for like six generations, right? Yeah, it's a house in New Jersey. Okay. What are you gonna do with that? A lot, bury jeans. Bury some jeans. That's true.

[00:50:41] I think my future invention is gonna be a time travel app where you can go back in time to visit your relatives and pressure them into buying real estate. And you can be like, here's 20 bucks, buy a bunch of acres. I'll check in on it later.

[00:50:57] You don't know what the East Village is, just trust me. I talk about this all the time, the movie Brooklyn, where they're like, we're gonna get out of here. We're gonna sell this Brooklyn Heights brownstone, disgusting, and move to Long Island.

[00:51:11] And I'm like, no, hold on to it. Oh my God, that thing is a gem. You're gonna get millions. Those stories you always hear about an artist who had a fucking studio in Soho or Chinatown in the 70s or the 80s.

[00:51:27] And the landlord's like, you wanna buy this whole building? What do you got in your pockets right now? I can't be bothered with this thing. It's a hassle owning it. You might as well take it.

[00:51:37] But yeah, I just asked because it's like World War II, World War I, they seem justified. It makes sense why our relatives did this heroic, honorable thing. But then we've been discussing throughout this episode, why would anyone ever fight in a war?

[00:51:54] Especially the way this movie presents war as just like the sort of nasty side of it, the probability, the math, the coldness of it all. I don't know. Like growing up, I was always like, I don't know, I don't get it.

[00:52:16] I'm not a boy, so I won't be drafted. So I don't have to make peace with it at any time. Not that there's been a lot of drafting in our lifetimes. But yeah, no, something I've never gotten is like the initial appeal of it.

[00:52:30] The first 20 minutes of Born on the Fourth of July or whatever, where you're like, I'm going to go to war and I'm going to fight and I'm going to have adventures and I'm going to distinguish myself. And then you get there and you see what it actually is.

[00:52:45] And I'm curious about, I guess I've never understood what illusions do people have going into it, specifically as infantry. It's like you must know that the odds are that you will die horribly almost immediately.

[00:53:02] And so like what is the and like knowing that on some intellectual level, like what do you think will happen to you that allows you to actually do it? Right. Why will you be why will you be invincible for whatever?

[00:53:13] I mean, I do think from what I studied just in World War One, I feel like it's widely covered that like everyone going into that was like, this is going to be fucking six months flat. Like we are going to be in and out.

[00:53:27] Just like with covid, just a bunch of celebrities sing a song six weeks playing Monopoly. We're going to we're fine. Yeah. Everyone in Germany and Britain especially was just like, come on, boys, let's all sign up.

[00:53:39] We're going to oh, we are they are telling me that these guys basically just have pickles in their hands. We are going to wipe them out and it's going to be great. And we come home over here.

[00:53:49] And then instead everyone's like, yo, everyone seems to have machine guns and tanks. All of a sudden we got to dig holes and really hunker down. This sucks. And like, you know, it's this now I'm just like imagining like Fatty Arbuckle making

[00:54:03] like the Nickelodeon version of the Imagine video calling in like Rudolph Valentino. There's no sound. All those guys were there. I'm sure they sound great. So. And, you know, obviously, World War Two is different because World War Two is like there's this global evil we have to confront.

[00:54:21] World War One, everything I ever studied about it in school and in school, basically, I was taught about the origins of World War One. And then we jumped right to afterwards like they were like, we're not going to actually teach you about the war.

[00:54:32] It's too complicated and boring at the same time. Like, right. That's not for high schoolers. We'll just so we'll just do origins, you know, well, you learn about France, Ferdinand and all that.

[00:54:42] And then we're going to do the Treaty of Versailles and all that like and then we go right to World War Two, the Depression and all that. But yeah. Yeah, it's like when you watch Titanic at your grandma's house and you finish the first

[00:54:54] tape and you're like, and then what? And you're like, and then they got safely to their destination, I guess. And then, yep, it arrived and and everyone got off in the normal way down the stairs and so on and so forth.

[00:55:07] So all I got was this lousy T-shirt. No, it's a it's a look. I like Full Metal Jacket more than you, David, although we haven't gotten to that episode yet. I'm curious to rewatch it.

[00:55:18] But it is the thing that I think Full Metal Jacket does particularly well is you sort of understand the way these systems are built to hype these young men up into not only is

[00:55:32] this a noble thing to do, but like you're going to come out of this being so fucking powerful and badass, you know, and the imaginary world of boot camp where, yeah, hey, yeah, learn to learn to put your gun together, learn to march. Right.

[00:55:46] And then like the reality of it being just this, like, hell. All the jelly donuts you want. Right, right. But it's this idea not just like I mean, the way in our society, obviously we like pay

[00:55:58] we were told to pay such reverence to soldiers, you know, without necessarily properly supporting them. But but also the sort of idea of like, this is going to turn you into such a high functioning person, you know, that that's so often. I mean, we're talking in modern terms.

[00:56:16] The military is this is your pathway if you can't afford college and you don't have a career path and you don't know what your thing is and you're going to come out of here and you're going to be able to do anything, you know?

[00:56:26] And I do think you talk about why these people show up and they get to war and they're just like, I'm going to fucking win this. I'm going to be a hero. It's because, yeah, there's a whole system built up for these kinds of things.

[00:56:39] I mean, what this movie is so good at depicting is when the sort of the the illusion falls apart for these people, you know, when when the sort of narrative that they've been sold starts to dissipate and people start actually critically viewing the things around them

[00:56:59] and questioning the orders and all of that. Paths of Glory, this movie is about a general who wants his soldiers to take over a position called the Ant Hill. It's French soldiers. They're all French.

[00:57:14] Everyone in this movie, of course, is French and it's very obvious that they're French. That's a joke about the accents. They sing all the whole time. It's great. They hated this movie in France. It's funny to read just like how vicious the fucking reviews were.

[00:57:30] Mostly because of that, they were just like, he's taken so much care and effort to replicate all the details. And it's all American actors making no effort to seem French. But I mean, this is like such a device, like everybody attacks us differently.

[00:57:44] But like it's I don't know, I think it's having them all sound sort of generically American is the least obtrusive thing you can do. But I agree. I agree. I think it's way better than watching Kirk Douglas or whoever, you know, try to, you know,

[00:57:57] pan-European accent sounding like Christopher Lambert and Highlander. Right. Because I think when I see that happen, it makes even less sense to me where I'm like, why are they speaking English with French accents? Like, I pretty much think there are two ways to go about this.

[00:58:14] There's the Inglorious Bastards way where you're just like, everyone's actually going to speak the language they would speak. And I will cast actors of that nationality for the roles. And very few people are given the creative and artistic freedom at that budget scale

[00:58:30] to get away with doing that. And otherwise, I think pretty much always the best approach is actors bring your own accent. We just are going to tell you where they're supposed to be from and everyone just do your thing. I mean, like it's the huge problem with Valkyrie.

[00:58:44] I mean, that's not like going to that movie is just OK anyway. But, you know, everyone is just using their accents in that movie. See, I kind of like it in Valkyrie. I don't like it in Valkyrie because I don't know why Cruz is American and everyone else

[00:58:59] is British. Everyone should be British, like British people playing Nazis. That's fine. That happened for a decade. That's how they, you know, that that's cinematically essentially how Americans represent Nazis on screen. But then to have Tom Cruise in there makes it odd. Like anyway, it doesn't matter.

[00:59:15] The weirdest approach, of course, is what Oliver Stone did with Alexander, where he was like the Macedonians will speak in Irish accent. That's why Colin Farrell can use his natural accent. But then I will make Val Kilmer put on a bizarre Irish accent. Right.

[00:59:31] And then everyone else will speak in English accents, except for Angelina Jolie, who will do like a Russian accent. And you're like, but none of these people. Wait, wait a second. You know, like you can't just like, you know, say that Irish means this. Like it doesn't anyway.

[00:59:46] You know what I want to see? I'm sorry. I'm like dragging us further on this tangent. But like no, please. We love to. Hollywood loves doing Boston accents so much. I do feel like we backed off slightly in the past couple of years. Yes. Yeah.

[00:59:59] Let's do the, you know, the Trojan army. But they all sound like they're in the departed. But that's right. That's what it is. You're doing some ancient war and half the people talk one way, but you have all the

[01:00:14] Spartans or Boston, all the Trojans, whatever you pick a country. You remake Paths of Glory with Mark Wahlberg and everyone else has to do a reverse Wahlberg reverse engineered Wahlberg accent. That's what the people want.

[01:00:29] Well, they're all French and General Broulard, who is a sort of friendly fellow, friendly kind of, you know, older guy with a mustache is like, can you please take the anthill? And this guy, General Mirot, who's got like a big scar and is kind of scary looking, is

[01:00:47] like, well, I don't want to do that. Like, that's fucking impossible. And Broulard's like, yeah, but you could get like a promotion out of it. And he's like, all right, well, we'll just do it.

[01:00:55] And that's the best part to me is it's not like, OK, well, I'm going to figure out how we'll do it. He's just like, yeah, OK, well, I'll just go tell them to do it and they better fucking do it because otherwise I'll be embarrassed. Right?

[01:01:06] Like he doesn't he doesn't really have any more anymore to offer them. It's the weird like corporate ladder thing of of war where like all of these people fought at some point. Right. Sure. And have now been promoted to the cushy office where they're not at risk anymore.

[01:01:28] And immediately when you get the security of the four walls around you, you no longer have any empathy for the people who are in the position that you just escaped. Right? I did it. How hard could this be?

[01:01:41] And it's like, well, you didn't fucking live in a trench like we do. Yeah, right. How many people do I have to throw at this problem to increase my sense of security in my current position or even rise to a higher position?

[01:01:56] George McCready, who is McCready, McCready, who is the scar gentleman, as you were saying Miro, this this is a real scar that he had. I was trying to get a sense of this because I was looking up other films of him and headshots

[01:02:14] and and it feels like in other films they tried to downplay it and cover up a little bit. And in this film, they embellished it. But it is basically a real scar that size that I think they made make look a little

[01:02:27] more intense that he got like driving in college. He like got into like a car accident as like a frat boy. But it makes him. It's so looks like a dueling scar, right? Exactly. It's like fucking perfect for this.

[01:02:41] And this fucking guy owned an art gallery with Vincent Price. He and Vincent Price were best friends, and the two of them in Beverly Hills owned an art gallery that was half them being like, well, this is like fun. We have like a place to hang out, right?

[01:02:56] And buy a bar. Let's buy an art gallery. But they also were like big supporters of like up and coming young artists. And their place was like this fucking celebrity hotspot. The by art were like fucking Greta Garbo would come out of her cave that she was living

[01:03:11] in seclusion to look at the fucking paintings that McCready and Price had on display. Could you just imagine walking into an art gallery and hearing those two voices talking to each other? And it was just these two actors with their pencil fin mustaches and slicked back hair

[01:03:27] and fucking monster voices. You're looking at modern art in Beverly Hills. And then what if you're in the like weird celebrity business district? Then you're like, OK, this is great. This is really great stuff out of my price range.

[01:03:40] I'm going to go buy some socks from Peter Lorre now. Yes, yes, you're right. I'm going to Lori's meeting. Yes, I've been working on some scarves. He's just like behind the thing with two needles. I don't know.

[01:03:58] This guy also, George, George McCready, the guy you're talking has just a fabulous Wikipedia picture. Griffin, you see in this thing? It's it's unbelievable. Yes, yes, he's in. It's it's a headshot from this movie called Johnny Allegro, which is a great movie title like that.

[01:04:15] So that's a great title. Some George Raft gangster movie. And he just looks he looks very patrician, but he looks great. He's got this bow tie and this kind of tweed jacket. He looks great. This is the the IMDb trivia fact from Victoria Price, Vincent Price's daughter.

[01:04:31] They opened their gallery. It was called the Little Gallery. They opened it in 1943. Their customers included Charles Lawton, Tallulah Bankhead, Barbara Hutton, Fanny Bryce, Catherine Hepburn and Greta Garbo. I know they probably weren't all there at the same time, but I just like to imagine an

[01:04:46] opening cocktail hour with those fucking voices like that's like that sounds like it sounds like a premise for like a fucking SNL sketch where everyone gets to show off the impression they have in their back pocket.

[01:04:59] I mean, I look, I also love Adolphe Mejoo, the guy playing the the the top general guy that's sort of, you know, Frenchy guy who is another absolute legend. Like he was in The Shake, like the old Rudolph Valentino movie. Like he was in A Star is Born.

[01:05:17] He's nominated for an Oscar for the front page. He looks like kind of like serious Peter Sellers. Is that crazy for me to say? No, that's yes, that's fair. Yes. You know, kind of like dramatic Peter Sellers with a stash and all that.

[01:05:33] He looks like what how Peter Sellers tries to make himself look. Apparently, Salvador Dali was a big fan of his and declared that he had one of the best mustaches. So and that's from a mustache guy. Yeah, that's a huge compliment. He was also a total politically.

[01:05:52] He was a huge jerk who is very Republican and was very fond of the House Committee on American Activities. I do. I do should acknowledge that he was anti polio vax.

[01:06:02] He also he he's the one who tore it up with with Kubrick the most, because I guess he's probably the biggest veteran where Kubrick at one point was like, all right, take 42 guys. And he was like, you don't know what you're doing.

[01:06:14] You're 29 years old, like you don't know how to direct actors. And Kubrick listened to him and then just said quietly, it isn't right. And we're going to keep doing it until it is right. And we'll get it right because you guys are good.

[01:06:25] Where's the one I found here? He did 17 takes, Manju. And then he said, that was my best reading. I think we can break for lunch now. Kubrick said he wanted another take. Manju went into like, we fucking passed out, right, was yelling at everyone like full Christian

[01:06:42] Bale onset breakdown. And he just let him stop. And then Kubrick said, all right, let's try the scene once more. He's just a stone wall, even though he's like a baby, just ice cold. And Manju went like, OK, and it just did it again.

[01:06:58] Like he would just fucking outplay people just by being unwavering. I think the casting of that guy is fantastic because he is likable, like you are genuinely kind of charmed by him. He's this avuncular fella, and he's just he's maybe not just as evil as Miro, but he's,

[01:07:17] you know, this benign evil person. Right. Like he's like he seems more sane than Miro, which makes him more evil at this point. Yeah, Miro just seems to be fully losing it accountable to no one. Right.

[01:07:32] Miro is so lost in his own vanity of like, I cannot be proven to be I can't be embarrassed by that. He's our Trump. He's like, let's fire on our own. You know? Yeah, right. Right.

[01:07:42] I mean, that whole so that's the whole sequence that plays out in the movie, obviously, is they, you know, General sorry, Colonel Dax, who is Kirk Douglas, is like, we're just

[01:07:51] going to die if you do that, like if you send us up there and he's like, well, jolly good, you know, pat on the back. It's that it's that way. It's about east, southeast from here. So, you know, give it a shot.

[01:08:01] Think of England or France or wherever we're from. Right. Yeah. And the attack on the anthill is a complete failure and Miro orders his guys to open fire on his own troops to force more of them onto the battlefield. And right.

[01:08:17] I mean, that's the main thing that happens. There's the there's the sort of side plot about the nighttime mission that goes wrong. But the main thing is just Miro losing it over them not following his orders. And he's like, great. We'll just court martial them all for cowardice.

[01:08:33] And the insane decision is made to try three men sort of as proxy for everybody. Right. To make an example out of each company. Yeah. And that is mostly what this movie is about. The main cinematic like filmmaking conceit of this movie, which is very simple, but just

[01:08:53] executed so well is like in that whole opening office sequence, you Kubrick's doing what later kind of becomes his definitive style of this sort of icy remove super wide shot, deep focus, focusing on the silence.

[01:09:09] You know, the only other ambient noise you hear is the echo of the people's voices in these rooms and, you know, such clarity in the details of every fucking bauble on their walls, on their desks. And then when you go into war, it is the most claustrophobic thing.

[01:09:25] It is this like constant barrage of noise, the drums and the gunshots and whatever. And the disparity between the people making these decisions and the people who are forced to actually live through them, you know, the remove that the people in the offices have

[01:09:41] away from the people who are on the battlefields. And even I mean, I just think he's so deliberate about when you get to the execution at the end not to jump ahead. He shoots it with the same sort of intensity and claustrophobia of when they are on the

[01:09:55] battlefield or when they're in the trenches, even though they are outdoors. And even something like the jail cell where they're being kept before the execution, he shoots more like one of the general's offices because there is actually a sense of security

[01:10:09] there, even though they know their death is imminent to like, well, but they're safe from the fucking shooting at least until they are marched out and shot. But I just think the use of sound in this movie is so smart.

[01:10:22] And the sort of the control of the language of it's so much about the spaces and the energy of the spaces and the difference between where you are safe and secure and have the

[01:10:34] most power, you know, even just the calm with which this whole opening dialogue scene plays out, how casually they get to talk about everything that when you first cut into the trenches and you're introduced to Kirk Douglas, a man who never ever seemed chill, you know,

[01:10:51] whose face is tense. I think that the sets are doing such an incredible amount of work here. I was noticing that just watching this again for today. And yeah, just how there's like one of the questions that I feel like anyone making a

[01:11:09] movie should ask themselves is like, why is this a movie? Why is this not a play or a book? But like the amount of work, I think that and this is what seems one of the things that

[01:11:20] seems so smart to me where it's like you can like if you're doing any creative project, you can feel like you're really getting something done because you're doing it in a very laborious way. And possibly many, many takes is one way of doing that, arguably.

[01:11:34] But just I feel like it takes a lot of creative security to let something be easy for you and just like the amount of work that those interiors do in the opening minutes for the

[01:11:45] audience of just like you just know in your bones, you're like these people have no idea what they're talking about, because how could you if you're surrounded by beautiful rooms and beautiful things and like no part of you is even thinking about whether this gash on

[01:11:59] your arm is going to get infected any second now? Yeah, it's incredible that it actually as as sort of banal as that those opening scenes are. It's building tension because you just know the second he actually cuts into the battle. Yeah, yeah.

[01:12:17] It's immediately going to feel so absurd. Yeah. It's like the opening of any horror movie where the family is having a great vacation. And you're like, this isn't gonna last. And you're like I'm so stressed out by this great vacation. Right.

[01:12:27] And if you're setting this as one end of the polar extreme, you know? God, it is so crazy though. Why did they do this? It's so dumb. Why would they be doing this shit, man? It's really dumb. It is the dumbest. It's the dumbest war of all time.

[01:12:43] Like I think any military expert probably agrees. So far. Yeah, well, right. Exactly. But in terms of like... We're solving this, right? We're doing it, guys. We're fixing it. Yeah. Okay, great. You know, in terms of amount of people dead versus like goals achieved. Yes.

[01:13:01] It's like the disparity. Even if you think any goal achieved in war is bad. This one is really like no goals. So many dead. No, but yeah, I was just literally watching a clip of Paths of Glory.

[01:13:14] Like just those shots of him stalking through the trenches with all the guys lined on either side and they just all look so miserable. And then like there are moments where he sort of goes into maybe goes under a bridge or

[01:13:27] something and it gets really dark for a second. That's the Kubrick shit where you're like, you know, this is... It's not just attention to detail and it's not just recreating something fairly accurately. Like the experience of it, but just it's so like chillingly, awfully atmospheric. It's so cool.

[01:13:47] And you know, not cool. Cool is the wrong word. Yeah. Upsetting. Yes, yes, yes. I mean, this is the movie where he really starts to develop the understanding of how I can use cinematic technique to make the audience feel a very specific thing, very viscerally.

[01:14:04] You know, which so often with Kubrick is how do I make them feel uncomfortable? How do I make audiences miserable? Yeah. But then of course, the whole movie is these general guys being like, I got you guys are really embarrassed me up there.

[01:14:17] And I'm like, did you just watch what they like? Are you kidding me? The worst thing that could ever happen to you just happened to all these guys. And the general's like, I'm going to have to put you on trial.

[01:14:28] I mean, and we're going to have to talk about this. And just the extreme absurdism of them being like, could I say something in my defense maybe? And they're like, no, no, I don't think so. It's pretty obvious.

[01:14:40] You got, you know, that it makes it, I don't know. It does make all that like very gentle dialogue. It's toxic power dynamics. Okay. Like, I'm sorry. I've got to say it. It's very toxic. Can I say it? You're right. It's very toxic. War is toxic.

[01:14:57] What they're doing is very, very problematic. It's so problematic. So, I mean, you were saying that this was like your Kubrick movie. This is the one that really like has stuck with you in your life. What is your relationship to war movies in general?

[01:15:12] Like, do you feel like, because I mean, I think David is more interested in war films than I am. And I struggle with them just because of the amount of panic they give me. That's a good question.

[01:15:25] I mean, the first thing that makes me think of is I remember going on a trip with my friend and her family when I was 13. And we were like, we were on a boat, but it was like a houseboat boat that you can move around a lake.

[01:15:38] And it had a little TV and VCR and like the sort of like standard cottage selection of VHS tapes. So I remember watching Thelma and Louise and finding Private Ryan, which I almost just call Good Will Hunting, but that's not no saving private.

[01:15:55] I can't even remember what it's called. It made a huge impression on me. They do find him. My favorite movie. They do find him. They do. Also, they should have done Saving Good Will Hunting, the Damonverse. And Saving Bobby Fisher and yeah, all of it.

[01:16:09] And I remember just like not knowing how to find a way into that movie. And I have not attempted to watch it again since I was 13 or however old I was at the time.

[01:16:20] But yeah, and just that being my assumption about how war movies are going to go, that it's like going to be like I think that movie's depiction of D-Day, right? That's in there. Yes. I have a very great grasp of what's in this movie.

[01:16:34] And just this sort of... And it's funny because I love horror movies. And I actually last night was watching Predator because I'm doing my homework before watching Prey, the Predator prequel, I guess. It was a very PR heavy sentence. Prey, the Predator prequel, yes. Right.

[01:16:57] That should have been the full title. And I feel like Predator is like as close as I get to a war movie where it's like these people are, you know, they're doing special ops. There's like a military element to it. Right.

[01:17:11] Essentially, it's like a finite number of people at a remote location dealing with a scary thing. That's what I love to see. Half of the movies I watch boil down to that in some capacity. And war movies, I feel like I don't consciously seek them out.

[01:17:27] I think war itself feels so complicated to think about. And just the sort of... What we've been touching on in this whole conversation of that in America, we have a culture of like extreme reverence for people who are veterans of combat, but also this like

[01:17:46] sense of like, obviously, it's very like we revere you because we would never dream of asking you to stop doing that. And that's what you get in exchange. And like, that's a lot of... It's a complicated ethical situation to think through in entertainment, I guess.

[01:18:01] And it's just less complicated if it's like Arnold versus a guy who's like clearly a dick even for his planet. That's what I want to see. But that's the thing, like Predator, I think of as more of a combat movie than a war movie, you know?

[01:18:17] And like Commando is the same. And it's the reason why the two Top Gun movies are so wildly successful, because they sort of abstract the war so much that you're like, this is combat. Right. Or they're like peacetime play acting movies or something. Right.

[01:18:32] This is just about fighting. You don't have to think about the larger structures of play. You don't have to think about what the greater goals are. It's about like how many... It's about skirmishes. It's like playing Asteroid, you know?

[01:18:42] It's like, how many things do I have to shoot down or whatever? And I do feel like, I mean, the fact that you bring up the horror movies, but like as a

[01:18:49] child, even probably into my teen years, when I would go see a horror movie, it would feel to me like those moments before going on a roller coaster where it's like, I'm miserable right now. I'm shitting my pants. I hate this. I don't want to do it.

[01:19:04] And then when you're on it, it's simultaneously punishing and thrilling. And then I feel good when it's done. Right. And then now I think I enjoy horror movies pretty thoroughly without that tension, without that fear, the anticipatory dread.

[01:19:19] But I do feel that way watching war movies where I'm like, God, I don't want to fucking watch this. Even if I know this is good, I don't want to fucking watch this. And the whole time I'm watching it, it's driving me insane.

[01:19:30] And then when it's done, I'm like, I'm very glad I watched that, which is like how I feel about this. Saving Private Ryan, which is a movie I had avoided my entire life until we had to cover it for the podcast.

[01:19:40] It took me six hours to finish watching it. And then I was like, well, I love this movie. This movie is a masterpiece. I'll buy it on fucking Steelbook. I will never watch it again. Because I was like, oh, it's a great film. I want to study this.

[01:19:52] I want to watch this again sometime. And it's like, I fucking can't. I can't. Not just the immediacy of the combat because it's a great steal. It's a great fucking steal. I'm happy to have it on the shelf.

[01:20:04] But I remember I put that movie on and Forky was like, this is so sad. And I was like, yeah, I guess so. It is sad. Very sad. Sorry. Go ahead. No, I just I spiral out on those things.

[01:20:20] And I feel like this is a movie that is kind of explicitly about that, which is perhaps why I was going to say enjoy it more, but enjoy it isn't the word.

[01:20:30] I do think this is a great movie, but I am I am just clenching the armrest the entire time equally in the battlefield sequences and in the fucking conversation dialogue scenes. I guess I just love there's like a certain gratification of seeing a movie that's like,

[01:20:45] yeah, death is horrible, right? And like dying in combat is also really bad. And being executed by your own side for basically no reason is even worse. And we're not going to console you with anything. That's just it.

[01:20:58] Like, I've also been on a Rennie Harlan kick and I've been noticing how there's at least two of his movies, Deep Blue Sea and Cliffhanger, where someone who's about to die horribly says, I don't want to die.

[01:21:10] I assume so the audience doesn't think like, well, maybe they were cool with that happening. And just like, I got to go sometime. Also, right. Tragic irony. The super shark. My greatest dream in life is to not die. I hope it never happens. The guy just died. Right.

[01:21:28] It's like fucking Scully and McBain talking about wanting to retire to his boat. My dream to keep living. I want to say a couple of things. One, a predator. One thing I love about Predator, though, it is somewhat of a satire, like so many post Vietnam movies, right?

[01:21:44] Where it's like these guys are like, well, we could deal with this problem. We have such big guns. Surely all of our big guns will kill the predator. And then obviously, like they don't know how to handle someone who actually knows how to use their environment against them.

[01:22:00] And then they eventually figure it out. But, you know, I do a lot of bushcraft. Arnold got the merit badge for that. Exactly. Eventually, eventually, you know, they get their noggins in gear. Saving Private Ryan, I think, is an incredible parallel to Paths of Glory because it's also

[01:22:16] about a very absurd mission in that it's like, hey, guys, you got to go get this one guy in World War Two because his brothers died. And everyone in the movie is like, well, we're all struggling here.

[01:22:31] It's not like this doesn't suck for me what this guy's brothers did. So like I have to and they're like, I don't know, man, we're drawing a line somewhere and you're going to go get this guy.

[01:22:40] We can't go back to his mom's front porch a fourth time and give her bad news again. Yeah, it's too fucked up. And in Saving Private Ryan, of course, there is like this because it's a Spielberg movie, partly, but also because it's a World War Two movie.

[01:22:55] There's this sort of like stirring good to it, even though it is a movie about the absolute absurdity of like, how do we define heroism in these circumstances? And then Paths of Glory is World War One. So it's like, yeah, we did that for no good reason.

[01:23:09] We accomplished nothing. And one of you has three of you have to die because we're embarrassed about it, I guess. Like, because in retrospect, it was even stupider. Well, they're like, they're in an interesting way.

[01:23:23] They're kind of inverse movies because Saving Private Ryan is like, we need to follow through on this mission, A, because it's a symbolic victory and B, because the absurd awfulness of this thing has gotten so macro that at least there's kind of a micro we can we can

[01:23:41] apply a micro empathy to one person who is outside of this thing and go, wouldn't it be nice if we didn't have to give her bad news again? Whereas this movie is just like, how am I supposed to fucking explain this to my boss?

[01:23:54] Someone has to fucking pay for this. And then, of course, like the brilliance of having it's like, OK, well, three of you have got to get put on trial. And so it's like, well, let's pick this one guy who is no good. He's played by Timothy Carey.

[01:24:13] And it's like the most extreme man who's ever existed. Right. This guy's just obviously no good. We'll pick this guy. Then let's pick this second guy who kind of knows that I you know about the fuck up with this scouting mission.

[01:24:25] We'll try and get him off the board to two birds, one stone. Fuck up. He shot his fellow soldier. I would label it a little bit stronger than a fuck up. OK, it was a snafu. OK, you're right. It was a snafu. It was very, very bad.

[01:24:43] And then they're like third guy. They're like, oh, I don't know. Pick the third guy randomly. And they're like, OK, we picked it looks like he's a war hero who's been decorated a bunch of they're like, OK, fine. We do want to try out.

[01:24:56] And so there's that moment where Kirk Douglas is like, hey, can I point out that this guy like is an absolutely decorated hero? And they're like, shut up, sit down. We're trying to get through this. We got lunch to get to like don't you know, come on.

[01:25:08] Don't even bring that up. I feel like the most legally accurate moment in any movie. Just like can I say something highly relevant and exculpatory? And they're like, no, no, no, thank you. We don't want to hear it. Yes. Move it along.

[01:25:22] We should also mention that this is Kubrick and Tim Curry's second movie together and very much their last fully their last. Yes, fire. This is where Kubrick is fully sick of him. Right. He like fired Tim Curry's incredible, incredible performance. I think he's amazing in this.

[01:25:41] He's really good. Yeah, so fucking captivating. But they essentially fired him the moment his final close up was done and they were like everything else we can get done with a double. Let's just prioritize the things that are on his face and then we'll turn some guy.

[01:25:57] We'll get a fucking dentist, Cape to Bela Lugosi him. But but one of the things I mean, like Tim Curry, just every take want to do something different. So continuity was a fucking nightmare.

[01:26:08] And I think he was so sort of like primal and behavioral in how he worked that he drove all the other actors up the wall. But during the making of this film, he fakes his own kidnapping. He did. He did.

[01:26:22] And look, what, Griff, you don't like to, you know, he's trying to get some publicity going. What's wrong with that? It's the easiest way to juice up your IMDb star meter numbers. We all know this. And it works out great for everyone who's done it.

[01:26:33] He got himself tied up and gagged and put on the road in Munich and the cops found him and were like, what's up with you? And he was like, I was kidnapped. And they're like, OK, and it became like a news story.

[01:26:47] And he just fucking made it up. Right. Like New York Times front page story. Yeah. Can you just imagine how fucking angry Kubrick was where it's just like, first of all, I can't get this guy to do what I want. And now also he's fucking kidnapping himself.

[01:27:02] He's making his own side movies. But I'm equally stressed out when he is on and off set. So, yes, as you said, they fired him when the last scene that his face would be in was filmed. Yeah, they fired him the next day.

[01:27:19] Also, the guy who played the priest, Emily, sorry, Emil Mayer, really hated Timothy Carey because in the death scene, which is so powerful where he's saying I don't want to die, you know, and he's being dragged.

[01:27:31] Timothy Carey would do things like bite his arm and like, you know, wrestle around and like, you know, harass him essentially. And the guy playing the priest really hated it. But but I guess Timothy Carey was like, hey, it's acting. I don't know.

[01:27:45] Yeah, I mean, I kind of I kind of can't argue with the results as much as I am kind of happy I never had to hang with this guy. He's got a great face. So the other guys are a little more anonymous, right? I don't know. Joe Turkle.

[01:27:59] Right. Who would know from many Kubrick movies becomes the bartender in The Shining, but also he's Tyrell and Blade Runner. Yeah, I mean, there's an interesting cross section of him finding some new company players in this film and him disposing of some old ones. Right.

[01:28:16] Who plays the other guy? Because Turkle Turkle plays our node, the war hero, the guy who's so beaten up at the end that he basically just gets like tied to the post to be shot. Right. Like, because you can't stand up, which is a horrible, incredibly brutal.

[01:28:31] Yeah, I wrote a quote down. If he's still alive in the morning, pinches cheeks a couple of times. The general wants him to be conscious. Like this shit sucks. Why the fuck does anyone do this? I'm not saying why do they enlist? I'm saying like, why?

[01:28:47] Why does anyone do it? I don't know. I'm a child. Why? I mean, you know, we're living like that. It's nice, too, that this movie is about the absurdity of execution, right? Like they give you a nice meal before they kill you.

[01:29:00] Like if you fracture your skull, they're like, don't let him die. We got to kill him. Like this is all still basically happening, except for the duck. I don't think you're going to get duck out of an American prison. The duck looks good.

[01:29:11] Timothy Carey, of course, ate that duck. I want to find the exact number because it's because Kubrick did so many takes. Of course, he ate that. It's pretty much a whole duck, right? 86 times. That's the thing.

[01:29:26] The way he's eating it, they have to reset with a clean duck every time. It's not like he's just pulling a drumstick off and they can cheat it to camera. He would eat it different every time somehow in that miraculous Timothy Carey way. Duck is gamey.

[01:29:42] Like I couldn't eat like I couldn't eat two helpings. Very rich. Yeah. Yeah. Very rich. That'll really put you to sleep at a certain point. It's Ralph Meeker is the other guy, right? And he's from Kiss Me Deadly. And he's in the Dirty Dozen later.

[01:30:00] And so, you know, he's a guy. He's got a real, you know, sort of nice clean face, nice square jawed guy. But I feel like we've talked about pretty much everyone in this movie now. Yes. Yeah. I don't think we really missed anyone here.

[01:30:14] The execution is, yeah, is very, very powerful and horrible. And then I really do find the next two scenes just as incredible. The scene where Dax has the showdown with Broulard, right? Where he's like, I wasn't doing this for like politics.

[01:30:32] Like I genuinely thought this was like a miscarriage of justice. And Broulard is like, ew, what? I thought I understood you. Gross. You're right. Horrible. Get out of my sight. And then the scene at the end with Kubrick's future wife singing this folk song,

[01:30:51] like is the best ending. Like and apparently Kubrick was really embarrassed about it because he was like, I know I have a crush on this girl. I'm not putting her at the end just because I like her.

[01:31:02] I promise you guys that I would have been like, yes, Stan. No, I know it's a good ending. Yeah, it's really good ending. Yeah. I mean, there's also just that thing with war movies where you're like watching this.

[01:31:13] She shows up and you realize, oh, I haven't seen a woman in 80 minutes. Right? Yes. You know? This is like a weird stance of mine I come back to a lot is that like I love it when

[01:31:25] movies like don't pretend to be interested in women when they clearly aren't, you know? And some movies like, you know, this thing, Stand By Me. Yeah. Where it's just like we're living in a world of men and it's like, great. Thank you.

[01:31:40] I'm happy that you're admitting that's what you're interested in. Yeah, because then when they're like, it's a world of men, but also there's three women and they're horribly written and they're always like whipping their hair out of ponytails.

[01:31:50] It's like, that's like if somebody is going to film something in Portland, Oregon, my hometown and like get the geography all wrong and get it just like, it's like, just don't just admit that you're filming it in Georgia,

[01:32:03] which is where I, Tanya was filmed because of tax incentives or something. It's like, just be like, we're filming it in Georgia. It's set in Georgia. We're not saying this is the Pacific Northwest. We're not claiming to know anything about women. It's like, thank you. Good.

[01:32:16] Go know things about men. You rather people are sincere in their shortcomings or their lack of interest rather than the sort of the token. Well, look, look. Yeah. Well, come on. What if, what if Guinevere was a Celtic warrior?

[01:32:33] There's this thing like, I mean, I keep on coming back to it because it's just fascinating cultural object of year 2022, year of our Lord. But in the offer, of course, I've been fully offer piled. Jesus Christ.

[01:32:47] Every episode ends with like the people who made the offer talking about how great the episode you just watched was. And sure. I do. I do love that. I love the propaganda show. Yeah. The clip show that airs afterwards.

[01:32:58] It's maybe better than the offer is that the sort of mini soads I get at the end of each episode of the offer. But the co showrunner, I forget her name. She was also the showrunner on the Al Pacino Nazi Hunter show. Sure. Hunters. Yes. Oh, yeah.

[01:33:13] The show whose promo engines made me think of Fisher Stevens is looking more and more without like Al Pacino. No, that's no Pacino. But but there's one of those things where she said, like, when I came onto this project,

[01:33:26] it was really important to me that the female characters weren't just accessories to the men and that they actually had their own victories. And then you're like, but they but they didn't. That's not accurate. You failed. Right. Right. It was important to me that we do that.

[01:33:42] And then we were unsuccessful. Well, they're like, they're right. She's like, she's taking in breath to say the rest of the sentence. And then we cut away. What female characters are even in the offer, Griffin? Well, there's like Juno Temple is Al Ruddy's assistant.

[01:34:00] There's a character who's like the head of casting for Paramount. There's Al Ruddy's ex-wife, who is the woman who owned the Chateau Marmont, later joined the Wild Wild Country cult. Like there are a couple primary female characters like that, and they want to really build up like

[01:34:16] what they accomplished in this time. But she's stuck fighting against the reality of like it was Hollywood in the 70s. Like a very, very. They made The Godfather. Right. And like, meanwhile, the show is like completely uninterested in like Talia Shire or Diane Keaton

[01:34:32] or the people whose like work on The Godfather was like tangible. Right. And I think maybe those two characters have three lines of dialogue between them. And like Talia Shire exists just to kind of be like a victim who's embarrassed on set.

[01:34:46] It's yes, it is that thing, though. It's like if you're dealing with the actual historical reality of this thing, but also the world this thing existed in. And especially when the project is so much about like, I don't know,

[01:35:00] the ills of masculinity and whatever to put a woman in there being like, I just want everyone to know. That I am making 67 cents for every dollar that James Caan is making. And it's like, yeah, it's right.

[01:35:14] And then if there aren't meaningful roles to give people, then it just feels like another. It's like you're being asked. It's like you're getting an artificial sweetener. You're like, I know that this tastes like something, but I'm not getting any energy from it. Right.

[01:35:28] Michael Gandolfini is in the offer. I'm seeing a lot of names here. Danny Nucci. I haven't heard about him in a while. Everyone's in the offer. Paul McCrane's in the offer. The star of Titanic. Paul McCrane, the only gay person at performing arts high in fame.

[01:35:43] You guys, you got to take the pill. You got to accept the offer. The iceberg is on the show. Yeah, the iceberg's on the show. I will not accept the offer. You got it. You must accept. I will. I will.

[01:35:54] I will, however, never forget describing to my brother having just seen Titanic when I was 11 years old. And he was like, what happens? And I was like, well, at one point the smokestack falls on this Italian guy and he goes, Mama Mia before it kills him.

[01:36:10] Then I rewatched the movie and I was like, oh, he doesn't say Mama Mia, but I just as an 11 year old, I just imagine that he did. In your mind, he was spinning a pizza on one finger. Right. Curling his mustache. And he goes, ah! Yeah.

[01:36:24] He's like, it's a me, Fabrizio. I'm looking for Wabrizio. I mean, the film's portrayal of the Irish American community is pretty much that nuance. So I guess that's what I was going for. But Danny Nucci, what a name. Here he is. I'm happy for him.

[01:36:45] Yeah, I'm happy for him too. Pads of Glory. I don't know. It's a short, it's a blessedly short movie, Griff. We were saying this. Yes. Because, you know, the works of Stanley Kubrick is a lot of long ones.

[01:36:59] You got Spartacus and Lolita coming up after this, which are both like, you know, over two and a half hours long. But also, I mean, this is in many ways a punishing movie. It is able to thoroughly explore its subjects and its themes.

[01:37:16] And, you know, I really place you in this world, but get you out within 88 minutes, which is kind of blissful. You like appreciate that it didn't, it didn't torture you for the sake of it. You know?

[01:37:31] This goes to my very strong belief that like for a horror movie to be like over 90 minutes and like really 80 minutes, I think is typically the ideal length. But like, I'll give you up to nine on top of that.

[01:37:45] And then if you're like 90 minutes long or longer, it's like, OK, you've got to be really high concept for this to be worthwhile. Because I and I do think that this like in terms of the emotions that creates for me,

[01:37:57] it's to some extent a horror movie because it's like you sit down, you know that things are not going to go well unless you've like only seen the poster, in which case maybe you think they'll go great for everybody.

[01:38:09] And you're just like you're you're like, OK, I'm just watching everybody be ground down by this relentless, unstoppable wheel. And that's what I'm in for. And like if you're watching a movie where like there's the idea at any point that there's

[01:38:25] real hope for people, I think you can endure that for longer. But this is like it is. I was curious also. I wonder if there's like behind the scenes information that you guys have about like was was it just what?

[01:38:38] Well, I guess they had a pretty good budget, so it's not like they were forced to make something short. It's interesting to me that Kubrick made a short movie. That's interesting. It is interesting that this movie is short, although, as Griffin says, it gets it all

[01:38:51] done and it's quite punishing to like, you know, a two and a half hour version of this movie might be unwatchably brutal. Right, right. Yeah, I think it would become numbing.

[01:39:00] Yeah, but maybe it is a budget thing in terms of like we have a moderate budget and we have the scale. We can do the scale of the big battle, right? But that's like where there's not going to be like multiple, you know, it's going to

[01:39:14] be one big battle and then a lot of chatting and prison stuff. And yeah, right. That's the thing. Like knowing the budget of this movie relative to the budget he gets on on the following

[01:39:26] films, I was surprised by how big the battlefield sequence felt, you know, how wide it is, how many people there are, how many explosions there are, how extended it is. It goes on for a long time. And the answer is like that is the money sequence.

[01:39:42] And then the rest of the movie takes place in ditches and offices. Yeah, I do think it's a great film. That's really my take on Paths of Glory. Yeah, I really have not anything bad to say about it. Yeah, I think it's one of his best films.

[01:40:00] And I think it is unusual that it's, you know, I think even people who love the killing, the sort of fear and desire, killer's kiss, the killing run feels like, well, that's the developmental. That's him figuring out his stuff, right?

[01:40:13] The killing is when he finally has sort of like a real grasp on the language. And then this somehow gets stuck in this zone where it's not thought of as one of the important ones, I think, because from this movie on, it's like everything he does is

[01:40:27] huge and iconic and historic to some degree, you know? And I feel like this sort of sometimes gets lost in the shuffle. But I think it's one of his best films. I think Ebert even argued it was perhaps his best film.

[01:40:41] I'm not a Kubrick completist, so I can't say I need to see, you know, you have to see everything before you can pronounce. But I mean, to me, it feels the most complete and coherent and like this sort of like perfectly

[01:40:56] crafted box, you know, where you're like a puzzle box. Everything fits together. Everything's tight. Everything works. And then I feel like once you've made that, you might be kind of bored by the idea of doing that again, because you've already done it.

[01:41:11] And then you would be like, okay, like what happens if we get baggy? What happens if we really like play with boredom? Yes, yes. The film came out in 57, Christmas 57. Although we're going to do the box office game from like early 58 when it was.

[01:41:27] Zero Oscar nominations, but he gets it gets BAFTA for best film nomination. He gets a Writers Guild nomination, Kubrick for the script. Yes, so there's right there's it was a well received film that probably broke even ish. You know, it like did OK.

[01:41:42] Its big problem, of course, was it was not really released in Europe. It was apparently not even shown to the French censorship board because they knew there was no chance that France would allow it.

[01:41:54] It was shown in Berlin, but there was so much protest that it was removed from the slate of the Berlin Film Festival. So it was protesting. That it didn't make them look like cool badasses. I don't know.

[01:42:08] I guess it's basically just like this is too touchy for us even now, I guess. Yeah, yeah, I do appreciate it as a war movie where like everybody comes out looking terrible. You don't get a ton of those.

[01:42:21] No, that's the thing about the idea of like Kirk Douglas saying like, oh, he wrote this happy ending script. I'm like, what? You know, supposedly the general comes in and is like, forget about it. But like there's no character here to turn to.

[01:42:33] Like there's no one in this movie where you're like, well, I'm going to make a movie. There's no one in this movie where you're like, well, if Kirk Douglas could just talk

[01:42:40] to this guy who clearly has some moral backbone, then maybe it's like, no, no, the guy doesn't exist. Like it's just there's no one around. You haven't set up a little rel who can show up at the end in the cop car and save you.

[01:42:53] Yeah, we need to do the National Lampoon Christmas vacation ending where Brian Doyle Murray shows up and is like, OK, you guys, I've sorted it out. It's going to be fine. It would be great if it was literally Brian Doyle Murray. Shot really.

[01:43:06] I mean, he might have been alive. Yeah, it is like it's I think it's I'm going to you know what I am going to say. I think it's the best movie ever made about the American legal system. And it's a war movie set in France.

[01:43:18] So I mean, that's a lot. And that's a good argument for everyone doing an American accent, you know, not attempting to play for like it might've been someone intentional. It's just they're just doing a ratatouille. It's just like, why is Brian Dennehy in France? Who cares? It's fine.

[01:43:36] Forget it. Yeah, Kubrick, of course. Also, the other thing is he makes no money on this movie. Yes, which is one reason he's going to Spartacus, because he really needs to make some money.

[01:43:47] Daddy's got to get paid because he he deferred his salary base, you know, hoping it would grow some money and it doesn't gross enough to pay him. Should we play the box office game, Griffin? Yes, please.

[01:43:58] OK, so Sarah, this is this is the segment where I try to guess the the box office of the weekend. The movie came out just based on the fact that my father and I would read the box office

[01:44:09] together every Monday as like the equivalent of him doing that with the sports scores with my brother. That's lovely. I will say it gets exponentially harder when the box office weekends are from 50 years before I was born. Before you were born. Sure. I'm doing the math.

[01:44:24] It's not the best. Yeah, whatever. You're very well spoken for a 14 year old, I must say. I don't know what year I was born or when this movie came out. The only math I understand is at the box office. Yeah.

[01:44:38] Well, Griffin, number one at the box office the week that Paths of Glory goes wide is the best picture winner of 1957, which is still just dominating in theaters. The winner of also a war movie. It's a war movie. It's a war movie.

[01:44:56] It's also a war movie, and it's about the futility of war, but it is an epic war movie in beautiful technicolor with all kinds of great performances. It's a really good movie. It's from a major... Oh, is it Bridge on the River Quay?

[01:45:15] It is the Bridge on the River Quay. Yes, by David Lean. It's with Alec Guinness and William Holden. Have you guys seen Quay? You guys gone to the bridge? I have not crossed the bridge.

[01:45:28] I saw like the first 20 minutes with my dad once because he was a technicolor war movie guy, but we would often watch the first 20 minutes and then become bored. It's very much a movie I have been waiting to catch a rep screening of that I'm just like,

[01:45:45] I should see that in a theater. Yeah. And I've never had the right opportunity. Incredible Alec Guinness performance. Obviously, he wins the Oscar. Number two at the box office is a literary adaptation of a Russian masterpiece. Okay.

[01:46:03] And I feel like one reason that this movie is getting made is that the star is a Russian... There was a Russian actor who was a major star at the time. Yul Brynner? Yul Brynner himself. So I guess they were kind of like,

[01:46:17] uh, okay, let's do some Russian stuff we can put you in. Because I did not know about this movie. I've actually was unaware of this one. But it's a Yul Brynner picture based on a great novel, great Russian novel.

[01:46:34] It's directed by Richard Brooks, Griff, who made In Cold Blood and Elmer Gantry. What genre is it? I don't know. It's sort of like an epic family drama. It's about a family. All right, I'm just going to tell you. Yeah, what is this? It's the Brothers Karamazov.

[01:46:55] There's a Yul Brynner Brothers Karamazov movie? Yes, starring Yul Brynner and Lee J. Cobb, who was nominated for Best Supporting Actor. Wow. Pretty cool. Yeah. I mean, as you said, no idea this movie existed. No, yeah, no idea.

[01:47:10] When I think of Russia, I think of Lee J. Cobb. Yes, you're right. Listen here, Dimitri. And William Shatner. Shatner's in this. Yes, a young William Shatner. You've also got Maria Schell, who I feel like people might know, Austrian actress from, you know. Wow. Some classics. Yeah.

[01:47:29] So that's number two. Number three is a great courtroom drama from a great director. One of his sort of straightforward noir-y dramas. Uh, it's not Judgment at Nuremberg. No, no, it's not. The director made a lot of comedies.

[01:47:48] That's why I sort of say it's like one of his dramas. Is it a Wilder? But this is like, yeah, it's a Billy Wilder film. It's a Billy Wilder courtroom movie. Nominated for Best Picture. It's got a really good performance.

[01:48:00] This will probably give it away by Charles Lawton as the prosecutor. Oh. Yeah, he's the lawyer. Fuck, what's it called? It's got one of those legal-sounding titles. Yes, yes. It's called Witness for the Prosecution. I knew it was something for the prosecution. Yes, okay, thank you.

[01:48:22] Tyrone Power, Marlene Dietrich, and Charles Lawton swinging in as the big lawyer guy. And Elsa Lanchester, your favorite. The Bride. The Bride of Frankenstein herself. Yep. Good movie if no one's ever seen it. Excuse me, The Bride of Frankenstein's monster.

[01:48:40] Frankenstein was actually the name of the scientist who made the monster. Thank you. Number five at the, sorry, number four at the box office is a Best Picture winner from 1956 that's been re-released and is just making more money.

[01:48:54] One of the worst films to ever win Best Picture, supposedly. I've actually never seen it. A Great Show on Earth? Nope, but you know, right by. Three hour epic comedy. Around the World in 80 Days. With a bunch of stars, yes, Around the World in 80 Days.

[01:49:10] Yeah, never seen it. Me neither. Anyone seen Around the World in 80 Days? I watched the opening sequence once. It was like five minutes long. It's like an early Saul Bass sequence. That's all I got. I saw the Jackie Chan version. A lot shorter. Sure, sure.

[01:49:29] Coogan's in that one, right? Yeah, Frank Caracci picture. That's got a weird ass cast. It's Schwarzenegger's last movie before he becomes governor. Yes, yes, I remember that. What a life. Number five, Griffin, you will never have heard of.

[01:49:45] It is a documentary film shot in Cinerama, which is the Cinerama. No, yes, yes. Three screen curve. Just for our listeners, you know, curved thing. And it's about the search for. Well, you know what? It's called Search for Paradise, and that's what it's about.

[01:50:05] About like looking for Shangri-La. Is it an ad for the city of Trenton? Of course, of course, of course. It's about Trenton, New Jersey. No, Griff, it's about like some Air Force guy who retires and goes looking for, you know, paradise in his fighter jet, I guess.

[01:50:27] And so it's a lot of like aerial photography and stuff. I don't know. It sounds boring as fuck, but it was enough of a hit to chart the other movies in the top 10. You've got Rain Tree Country, which is like a Monty Clift, Elizabeth Taylor,

[01:50:44] like Southern romance, big civil war, you know, sort of gone with the windy kind of thing. Never seen it. You've got A Farewell to Arms, the movie adaptation of the Ernest Hemingway classic. One of the many adaptations, I guess. And you've got Cowboy, a Delmar Daves movie.

[01:51:05] I've never seen that. With Glenn Ford, which I've seen. I think I have the criterion of it. Isn't there a criterion of it? Oh boy. With Glenn Ford and Jack Lemmon, which is a blast and was famously written in a bathtub. Oh boy, Splish Splash.

[01:51:21] It was written by Dalton Trumbo. It was Trumbo'd! And God Created Woman, which is that Roger Vadim movie with Brigitte Bardot. I remember watching when I was a teenager, like a little teenage siniest being like, all right, this thing's going to be really raunchy.

[01:51:40] And then you watch it and you're like, oh, I see. It's raunchy by 1950 standards. It's not that raunchy. Yeah, this movie has a full on neck. You're right. This movie's got so much hair over boobs, you're going to go crazy. That's why it's called necking.

[01:51:52] The neck is the sexiest part. It was rated X for two shoulders. You're right. There's something so weird about this period where color has existed comfortably for a while, but there is still a lot of black and white coexisting. Like you have like technology like Cineroid,

[01:52:15] technology like Cinerama, you have black and white as an artistic choice, even if it's becoming less commercial. You have huge sort of modern epics and smaller intimate things where like that grouping of movies you just listed off don't feel like they exist at the same time for me.

[01:52:29] It's true. They feel like 20 years on a spectrum of like 20 years. It is crazy. Somehow some of those movies feel like late 40s movies and some of them feel like early 60s movies and all of them are in the mid to late 50s.

[01:52:42] It reminds me of when in the Hudsucker proxy, I think they mentioned at some point, they're like, yeah, it's like 1958 or something. And you're like, oh my God, you guys have you're like very close to all of this being completely different. That is the best movie.

[01:52:57] We love Hudsucker. If we ever do the Coens, it's mostly for like the Hudsucker and Hail Caesar episodes, in my opinion. Yeah, I feel like Hudsucker is the episode I want to do more than anything.

[01:53:07] And Hail Caesar is the one that you want to do more than anything. And we like all of their movies, but those are the fucking who that we're like jonesing to talk about. Right. The movies that when they came out, the critics were like, this is very accomplished,

[01:53:20] but why did you do this and for who? And the answer was for all of us who found it over the years. Right. The oh, this is a smaller effort from the Coens. Love to call things a minor effort. It is the best thing that critics do.

[01:53:35] And I'm among them where I'm like, ah, minor effort. I'm like, you know what? What do I fucking know? You don't fucking know. Sarah, I've been listening to episodes of You're Good and really enjoying it. And as I said, we have so many guests.

[01:53:48] If you are a listener, blank check who have been on this show, have been on your show, Julie Klausner, recent guest, Gether, as I mentioned, Dana Schwartz, Josh Gondelman. We haven't had Julianne. Oh no, we did have Julianne. Oh my God. We have to have her on again.

[01:53:59] That's right. She talked about Pretty in Pink. I'm like, have her in my like to get back on category. Yeah. You should make the show. You know more about it than I do. Hey, hey now.

[01:54:11] But also so many great movies and actually like auteur driven movies that we have not gotten to cover yet. It was really fun listening to like the Groundhog Day episode with Gondelman is great. That's a movie that's very ripe for exploring through the prism of human emotions.

[01:54:28] But I highly recommend it. And I don't I feel like we don't need to recommend You're Wrong About because it's humongous show that everyone loves. That's one of the commonly accepted higher art podcasts in the world. Actually, yeah, I mean, I do.

[01:54:43] I feel like You're Good is like my like second child who like people it's like my Gordy and stand by me. I'm like my older child is a big ballplayer, but you know, my younger child writes stories and I'm very proud of them.

[01:54:55] This is if Gordy had supportive parents. But thank you so much. That means a lot to me because this is a wonderful show and I feel like it's true. And I feel like it's like I actually am curious what you all think about this.

[01:55:11] I feel like when I introduce my show, I'm like I would never call it a movie criticism show because I feel like the term criticism, at least on the Internet, has come to mean like nitpicking something to the point where you're like daring anyone to admit that they're

[01:55:24] capable of enjoying it regardless of what it is. And I feel like movies are something where like if you're entering the conversation without checking your own baggage and being like, I am admitting like these are the things that I love and irrationally just like want to experience.

[01:55:42] And we're not going to have an entirely rational, critical conversation because like to be willing to talk about a movie for an hour is like either you hate it so much that you have a ton to say about it or you're a fan.

[01:55:54] And there's some like some amount of love has to go into a conversation about movies. And I appreciate you making space for that. Yeah, well, it's very nice of you to say.

[01:56:07] And I don't want to speak for David, who is a professional film critic, but I feel like we always just try to remind ourselves that like, oh, right, the function of this show is.

[01:56:18] The two of us specifically as people and whoever the guest is talking about their relationship to that movie rather than trying to offer the definitive history or complete analysis for any of them. Yeah, I love that. Yeah, also, we just like talking about movies. We don't.

[01:56:37] I like talking about movies and I do. I agree. Like, you know, I just I don't know. And sometimes there's bits to sometimes we know we don't. And it's no, no, no, no, no. It's a no bits podcast. It's very serious.

[01:56:50] Sarah, thank you so much for being on the show. And I think you know, Heidi Vander Lee for helping organize this along with all the other people I've mentioned to recommended that you'd be on the show over the years.

[01:57:03] And thank you all, you listeners out there for supporting the show. Please remember to rate, review and subscribe. Thank you to Marie Barty for our social media and helping produce the show in countless other ways. Thank you to Joe Bone and Pat Reynolds for our artwork.

[01:57:20] AJ McKeon and Alex Baron for our editing. Lee Montgomery and the Great American Novel for our theme song. JJ Birch for our research. You can go to BlankCheckPod.com for links to all sorts of nerdy shit, including our

[01:57:34] Patreon Blank Check special features where we do franchise commentaries and other sorts of bonus things. We're doing the Roger Moore Bond movies right now. And some fun little Kubrick bonuses as well coming down the pike.

[01:57:49] Tune in next week for Spartacus with Richard Lawson, although a lot of other people stood up and announced that they were the guest on that episode. Like Richard did say I'll guest on Spartacus and then other people went, I'll guest on Spartacus. I'll guest on Spartacus.

[01:58:04] But I do think Richard Lawson was the guest on that episode. I think so. I think so. We're still unpacking it. If memory can be trusted. Yeah. And as always, war is fucking stupid.