Pinocchio (2022) with Podcast: The Ride

[00:00:01] Blank Check with Griffin and David, Blank Check with Griffin and David Don't know what to say or to expect All you need to know is that the neighborhood's shy with Blank Check Starlight, star bright First star I see tonight I wish I may, I wish I might

[00:00:31] Have the podcast I wish tonight I wish I may, I wish I might Five days of filming maximum, right, for Hanks in this film?

[00:01:30] That's a good question. What is it? Is that why Hanks keeps doing these things like, it's just, it's like how he was like the Polar Express was like black box theater. It was a couple weeks. It was great. We explored the space.

[00:01:44] He played like eight characters. He's on screen the entire fucking time. But in this one he did have to put on some makeup.

[00:01:51] That's annoying. He does like his section is more live action than anything else. But this movie I think is like 95% stagecraft, you know, like VR void, Unreal Engine shit. And he's not in that much of it.

[00:02:05] He's not. It's five days max. Like this might be one of those cases where maximum I think two weeks. I'm going to say two weeks. I did a few takes, prep rehearsals, whatever. But I do. I do feel like this could have been five days, $10 million.

[00:02:20] A lot of it, maybe a full day was sleeping. Maybe that was caked into the contract. As long as I'm not part of Blue Fairy, that should line up right. That's like the original. Just let me sleep.

[00:02:32] Maybe that's what they should have done is Hank should have played every character Polar Express style. Why not? Then it's then I'm doing my bit. Here's Robert Zemeckis. I'm doing my bit. Right. That's something, not nothing.

[00:02:46] If Hank's played in this movie, Pinocchio, Geppetto, Jiminy Cricket, Stromboli, Blue Fairy, Coachman. Blue Fairy is the one I'll say maybe he shouldn't play. Lampwick and fucking Honest John and Gideon. Immediately this movie probably becomes better. Right. Or at least interesting.

[00:03:04] Would he play Monstro? Yes, of course. Roar, gurgle, gurgle, kachoo. I want to hear Hank's take on all that. He could play the sexy fish. Yep, yep, definitely. Cleo the goldfish. Yes. The cat. He could be the cat.

[00:03:22] Just have to act like a cat. Just be a cat with no discernible qualities. A little, a cute little cat. Did anyone keep track? How many minutes of screen time does he have? 20 minutes? Yeah. Maximum.

[00:03:37] Right. I mean, this is one of those things Disney Plus has. Obviously Disney movies have long credits. And then Disney Plus always has like the additional seven bonus minutes of just giving you the credits for all the translations, the dubbings in every country.

[00:03:51] Oh, you have no idea. When I was looking at how much was left. Yes. And then it got to directed by Robert Zemeckis. And I remembered, that's right. The endless Disney. Thank you, endless Disney for a translation.

[00:04:05] Thank you for jumping in and saving me from there being like 35 more minutes of Pinocchio. They make it look like it's an hour 50 and the end credit hits at 134. The Zemeckis director credit is one hour 34 minutes.

[00:04:21] So if the movie is only in actuality 94 minutes long, 20 minutes of Hanks even feels high. It's it's 10 at the top and maybe five at the back. Right. Is that about it?

[00:04:36] Yeah. Here's another thing just to like front load this in terms of the weird nightmarish qualities of this movie. I only clocked at the end. I don't know if it also was the case in the earlier scenes.

[00:04:47] The final scene at the beach between Pinocchio and Geppetto, every time they do an over the shoulder shot on Pinocchio from behind Geppetto. Geppetto is clearly 100 percent CGI. It speaks to the level of investment that Robert Zemeckis has on spending time on a set that I swear to.

[00:05:09] I was like, why is this shot weird? Which when you're an hour and 34 minutes into the Zemeckis Pinocchio for a shot to jump out is weird. It's saying something. And then I noticed like his hair looks odd.

[00:05:21] There are no pores on the side of his face and that like one eighth sliver of his profile over the shoulder is like, oh, they like dusted off an old Polar Express model.

[00:05:31] Right. They couldn't be bothered to shoot over the shoulders with the real people in this film. I was thinking about how it's a I'm sure it landed. I'm sure they talked about it.

[00:05:42] But for Zemeckis and Hanks, this was a chance to make a lost at sea in a little makeshift raft. But a thousand times easier than the last time they did this together.

[00:05:55] One of the things that is maddening about this film is that for as much as we felt no excitement when it was announced that this film was happening. And I believe this film was announced while we were in the middle of doing our Zemeckis miniseries. That sounds right.

[00:06:11] We were already deep in the Bobby Z days. Yeah, because this this was I feel like this actually came together pretty quickly. It was announced like January 2021. OK. And we were definitely I were we I don't fucking remember if we were doing Zemeckis. We we were weren't we?

[00:06:28] No, it was not announced January 2021 because January 2021 is when they announced that it was going to Disney plus. That was the night that we recorded our witches episode is the night that they announced this is bypassing theaters. I remember that distinctly.

[00:06:43] Yeah, it looks like well January 2021 they announced I guess the whole cast. But yeah, sometime in 2020. Look. I don't know. Yeah, August 2020. There you go. Hanks rejoined the project with Zemeckis. We were doing Zemeckis.

[00:06:57] The arc of us doing Zemeckis was essentially we start doing the miniseries and we know this is his next movie, which does not inspire confidence. And then when we end the miniseries on arguably what was his worst film up until that point in time. Yes.

[00:07:10] We're buttressing it with like, oh, and by the way, his next thing isn't even going to theaters. And now we see this thing, you know, a year and change later, a year and a half later.

[00:07:19] And you find these moments in the film where you're like, I almost see how Zemeckis could have connected to the material on this. Here are things that are obsessions of his and his filmography things he has previously showed interest or skill with. Well, sure. Yes.

[00:07:37] I mean, go tell. Well, finish your thought. Finish your thought. And all of it just feels dispassionate. Look, we're going to unpack this for the rest of the thing. This is this is Blunt and Chick with Griffin and Dave. It's a podcast about filmographies. Yeah.

[00:07:48] You didn't say your name. I'm Griffin. I'm David. Directors have massive success early on in their careers and given a series of blank checks, make whatever crazy passion projects they want. Sometimes those checks clear and sometimes you just end up making a fucking Pinocchio remake for no reason.

[00:08:06] What what's the thematic Zemeckis thing you're seeing in this? I'm not disagreeing with you. I just don't remember anything about this movie already. So I finished watching it an hour ago and I barely remember anything that happens in this movie. You watched it like two weeks ago.

[00:08:23] I watched it last. Yeah, time is a little fungible for me right now. But yeah, like I guess a couple of weeks ago on a screener and you know, didn't like it. I thought it was bad. I think this is what I'd say.

[00:08:38] I think the obvious thing is you could see Zemeckis connecting really hard to Geppetto as a character. Yes, the craftsman. And this notion of trying to take fantastical things and bring them to life, you know?

[00:08:55] The bespoke art into reality, especially when his arc has been going more and more digital, you know, trying so hard to pioneer these advancements in film technology and saying like, this is what you like. This is what you want movies to look like.

[00:09:06] And he did make Marwen just a few years ago, which is also about little puppets. Yes. So that's something.

[00:09:14] Right. And then to Scott's point, like stuff like, you know, the maestro sequence, you're just like there's a version of this where you're just like, yes, he can flex the muscles he used in Cast Away in a different genre with a different toolbox, you know?

[00:09:28] It is. It's funny that it's thematically, it's like Pinocchio is a real boy, but not quite right. Like there's a little bit, I mean, depending on how you want to read what they're saying at the end. But basically it's realism to a point.

[00:09:47] Like something's off, which is that not all of the Zemeckis digital material is almost real, but not something is off. If we're talking about 21st century Zemeckis and this push and pull of like, he just wants to fucking stay with his computers.

[00:10:05] He doesn't want to use a camera anymore. Loath to do these fucking grown up movies, even though, you know, it felt like he was teasing us for a while there that he'd finally put the computer down.

[00:10:15] I don't agree with you that he was teasing. I think he gave it a go. This is my read. I may be wrong.

[00:10:20] He gave us a solid decade of four interesting movies. I don't, you know, I don't like all of them, but interesting movies with movie stars and, you know, on diverse topics and diverse genres. And Flight and Allied are both like very much grown up movies.

[00:10:41] Like they're like R-rated adult, you know, expensive, but not special effects driven movies.

[00:10:47] So Flight the Walk, Allied, Marwen. And I think after Marwen flops and none of those movies were, I mean, Flight was successful, I guess, but then, you know, increasing, you know, lesser success pretty much as it goes along.

[00:11:00] I think he's just like, I don't know, forget it. I don't want to bother anymore. David, you're missing the other point. No, no, no. I agree with you. But also Marwen is half Zemeckis land. It's half MoCap Valley, you know?

[00:11:13] He got his toys back and he's like, I'm not giving them up again. I have my toys. That's fair. He like found material that allowed him to do both. And then you watch The Witches and you're like, oh, like 80% of this movie is CGI mice.

[00:11:28] Right. It's all crazy, endless flying camera shots going through like gutters and shit.

[00:11:33] He's like, keeps on pushing back and back a little bit, little bit by bit. But this is a movie about a puppet who wants to be a real boy. And today, long overdue, we got three good boys on the podcast.

[00:11:47] But beyond that, perhaps most thematically relevant for this episode, our three guests today include two Disney daddies and a wooden boy. A little, little wooden boy. A little wooden boy. I also make horrific click clack sounds when I move about. Your joints are remarkably similar to Penelope.

[00:12:15] They, unlike him, who's like a brand new endeavor, mine have seen better days. A day of walking with you, Jason, does sometimes feel like, oh no! A catastrophe! And also seagulls fly around and aid you in your journeys as you walk. Yeah, that's true.

[00:12:41] From podcast The Ride, beyond overdue, the good boys themselves, Scott Gairdner, Mike Carlson, Jason Sheridan. Hello. Thank you so much, fellas. We're here. Thank you for having us. Oh, it's so exciting. Thank you for being here!

[00:12:55] Love being like, getting to like swim in the wraparounds of Blank Check and be present for the business of Blank Check. The business. I love that Griffin, I've enjoyed rearranging like every possible arrangement of things that you do and things that we do. I'd love to make them.

[00:13:13] Yes. Every combo. Let's do them all. And I'm so thrilled about this one. I'm very excited here to talk about this and sort of like review and give my thoughts on this piece of audiovisual entertainment.

[00:13:26] That's what I'm here for today, to talk about this. Not as a film. Sure. But as a piece of Martin Scorsese coin term, audiovisual entertainment.

[00:13:37] You know, I was going to say it's almost hard to argue that the term doesn't apply here, but entertainment feels like a little bit of a stretch. It is definitely an audiovisual product. Right. Griffin, David, if I could just ask, I've been thinking about this. Yes.

[00:13:54] If you could just remind me in terms of Blank Check canon, what is the, what do you think the worst piece of audiovisual entertainment you have watched on this show? Because I feel like we occasionally discuss this, Griff.

[00:14:12] I feel like every six months we'll go to the bottom of the game and just try to check in. Yeah. Yeah. Like what are what comes to mind right away? This is in the lower rung, but I have to say, David, this is really low for me.

[00:14:24] You saw this two weeks ago. You texted us. You just said Pinocchio is pitiful, pitiful. And then you updated your Zemeckis ranking on Letterboxd with this dead last. I have to say, I absolutely prefer this to Christmas Carol or I should say rather. Interesting.

[00:14:41] I like Christmas Carol less and I think it's almost a coin toss for me as to between this and Witches, but it doesn't feel like a slam dunk worse Zemeckis movie for me. It's in the unholy like bottom rung, but.

[00:14:57] I'll say this, Christmas Carol, I'm not here to defend a Christmas Carol, but that at least it's almost like. At least it's grating. At least it's grating. Yeah, at least it provoked a reaction in me. You know, at least I looked at it, you know, in disgust.

[00:15:15] Pinocchio, I was just sort of looking through the screen. I felt like it wasn't even that I was sliding off the screen. I just was looking almost like there was nothing in front of me. I did feel largely numb watching this.

[00:15:29] I think the Witches, like the first 20 or 30 minutes that are Octavia Spencer and the kid before they go to the hotel. The Witches at least had actors. It has actors in it.

[00:15:39] The mouse stuff in Witches is worse than this movie, but Witches has moments and performances briefly that at least inspire something. Christmas Carol just does nothing for me. But what are some others? What are some others? When we talk about the bottom, bottom. Like true stinkers. Yeah.

[00:15:59] Like, oh my God, why do we have to watch this? I mean, Alice in Wonderland. This is Alice in Wonderland. Wow. That's a great. That's a great. Alice is more unpleasant than this, especially if we're talking live action Disney remakes.

[00:16:12] We didn't do it as part of a miniseries. We did as a one off, but I prefer this to The Lion King. Yes, me too. It's shorter. Did Alice in Wonderland cause all of this? I don't remember what began. Well, you got to really despise it for that.

[00:16:28] Because whichever you hate the most or like or tolerate the most, like the genre in general. Yikes. It's just it's just an orgy of creative bankruptcy. This entire slate of Disney live action.

[00:16:42] It's also just wild that you go from like, you know, the pitch on Alice in Wonderland is what if Tim Burton did Alice in Wonderland? Right. It wasn't even really presented as much as it's a remake of the classic Disney film.

[00:16:54] It was like Tim Burton's twisted reimagining of Alice in Wonderland. Then you go from there to Maleficent, where it's like a revisionist story version of a story.

[00:17:03] You know, we're telling the story differently from a different perspective, but we're sticking more to the visual iconography of the Disney film. And then it starts like training more and more of like, OK, we're doing Jungle Book, but we're not fully committing to it being a musical.

[00:17:17] And we're adding an extra 40 minutes of plots. Then it's like Cinderella. Then Beauty and the Beast is the first one where I feel like they're like, we're just doing the Disney movie. Do the movie. Right. We're doing all the songs. We're doing all the numbers.

[00:17:29] It's all the story beats. We add in some unnecessary backstory in place. And it looks like shit. Right. But then the designs are bad and then they just keep on trending more and more to like, let's just make it look sound.

[00:17:39] Follow every story point of the original movie to this point where you're just like, why did anyone bother getting out of bed at any day in any position at any part of the pipeline of this film? Because they're like conserve. These are like the equivalent.

[00:17:51] These movies are for a corporation or the equivalent of like your grandmother saying you should buy a savings bond. It's like a safe investment for the company because it's so identifiable at this point.

[00:18:05] It's the weird thing of when Iger took over, he you know, there was immediately Bob Iger, you know, former head of Disney, a recurring figure on podcast The Ride.

[00:18:15] When he took over, like shut down a lot of the stuff that he felt was like Eisner era Disney run amok, like all the direct to video sequels and everything back and talked about needing to like make projects that were brand deposits.

[00:18:28] Do you guys remember this term that he would throw around? Disturbing. That's like a. Deposits. Yeah. It's a grim like if a doctor tells you that you're not. Absolutely. You have brand deposits. They're lining your colon. These brand deposits.

[00:18:43] No, he was like the Disney name has been so sort of tarnished. We we like oversaturated the market. We didn't control quality. There are things we need to make that may not be profitable, but they restore a sheen of respectability and quality to Disney.

[00:18:59] So he would like talk about certain movies being brand deposits. And to some degree, it feels like these movies now mostly exist to make people realize how much they like the original film.

[00:19:10] Like I feel like people watch these when they go up on Disney Plus or go see them in theaters, never think about them again. And it just gives them a greater appreciation of the original thing, which they then sell more merchandise for. Can I say something depressing? Please.

[00:19:25] I mean, this is going to be a depressing episode. We all will be. I think it's also I don't want to paint with a broad brush about young children today. But I do think they they like seeing this. They like this.

[00:19:40] It's they like to see the new Pinocchio looking like this. And maybe they like the old one, too. But then it's like and did you know there's another Pinocchio? And it looks, you know, it's all glossy CGI. And they're like, I want to see that.

[00:19:52] I think it's it's this notion of, oh, the original film will be too slow for the children of today, despite our movies now being 40 percent longer. I think it's just the look, though. I don't even mean the pacing. I just mean that kids like things looking like this.

[00:20:08] I was a dumb kid. I used to care about special effects. I don't know. Maybe that's a thing. I look at this cross here. I think you're right that initially there was sort of that notion of like, let's try and reinvigorate the brand.

[00:20:21] And let's say in 2010, it was still a little sexy to bring in Tim Burton to make an Alice in Wonderland movie. Now it kind of feels like they're like, I don't know. We might as well do them all. We might as well fucking take everyone off.

[00:20:32] Like when they announced the Black Cauldron, that's when it's official. They're like, OK, we're just going to do them all.

[00:20:37] But Black Cauldron is one of those things where if they were to do Black Cauldron tomorrow, you'd be like, wow, they found a way to somehow do a sort of fantasy novel adaptation on a large budget.

[00:20:49] Like it wouldn't even feel like doing a live action Black Cauldron remake. It would be like, oh, they're now just going to do a new version of these books. Maybe. I don't know.

[00:20:56] I mean, I just always hear these stories about like all the sort of in-house producers at the live action side of Disney who have these development deals basically being like you can kind of pick one project.

[00:21:08] You can try to push through development that isn't based on one of the original animated classics. And otherwise it's this game of like trying to grab dibs on three or four titles and hope that yours are the ones.

[00:21:22] So like, you know, someone like Bruckheimer used to have a production deal and was doing all different types of shit for them. And now they have producers and overhaul deals who are like my slate is Bambi, Robin Hood, Sword in the Stone.

[00:21:36] It's that old, old adage one for them and one for them. Right. And now they want another one. And oh, wait, it looks like I have to do another one for them.

[00:21:46] Right. And like the one for me is like I'm really trying to remake the black hole, you know? It's like I'm trying to remake a lesser Disney project that doesn't have that name value. I want to ask. Scott, your son is now nearly three. Yeah, getting there. Yeah.

[00:22:03] Did he watch any of this movie with you? No, no. Now was that did you shield it from him? Um, I don't you know, it's funny. David, what you said about I mean, well, and I have a very little kid, but like.

[00:22:18] Yeah, I'm thinking older than your son's age. My daughter, who's younger than your son also would not give one shit about this movie. Yeah, yeah. This is it's more in the realm of like why you'd watch the squeak or something like that.

[00:22:31] But because this compared to a movie that's I don't know, a Moana or a train like what's on all the time. Moana or in content where it's like colorful and mainly smooth. This is what's in my head.

[00:22:46] In all of the movies my son watches, the characters are smooth and soft and they look pleasant when they smile and they're sympathetic when they cry as opposed to like jagged. It's in several of our Zoom backgrounds. This face that they got to on Jiminy Cricket.

[00:23:03] He's like he's a monster. It's why like his face is so sharp and all these odd divot. I mean, he looks like a he looks like a hybrid of a dinosaur of some kind. He's not.

[00:23:17] I don't know why a two year old would ever want to see this as opposed to like, you know, Woody, who is soft and smooth or even original Jiminy Cricket, who is around big eyed, smiley little cartoon thing. Who's more colorful.

[00:23:33] It's like it's a brighter sheen of green instead of this like pale sickly. Like, doesn't he look like a almost in hospice man?

[00:23:44] Yeah, he looks like he looks like this is I want to say this is exactly this is the first thing I thought of when I saw Jiminy Cricket Bible man.

[00:23:55] He has this weird like kind of howl and it was so like jarring to me that I'm sure maybe this is what a cricket actually looks like if you get down on its level, but it looked so strange to me and unnerving. Weird religious superhero Bible man. Right.

[00:24:13] Part of the problem of trying to make like a live action adaptation of Disney's Pinocchio is you look at a character like Jiminy Cricket and you're like, he in no way resembles a cricket. As you said, he is just a cute round faced green man.

[00:24:25] And then this is like, how much do we want him to look like a real cricket? You get to these questions like what is the difference between like Geppetto's cat and Gideon, a cat who wears clothes and walks upright? How realistic are both of them?

[00:24:39] The second you're doing fur texturing, things become less cute and stylized. And there's this basic principle of animation, especially Disney animation, which people will mock for being like overly cutesy and round and, you know, all that sort of shit. But like people talk about appeal in design, right?

[00:24:55] It's a big principle of animation coming up with an appealing design. And I feel like so often when we get these expensive, quote unquote, live action movies with CGI characters directed by live action directors, appeal goes out the window. They just are like, what's an interesting design?

[00:25:10] And they don't think about what will I want to watch? What will make a child happy? Within seconds of Jiminy Cricket appearing on screen, my girlfriend went, what is with his face? What is going on?

[00:25:23] They're like trying to toe this line between like the actual physiology of a cricket and the design from the original movie. And it's an impossible circle to square. That having been said, thank God he sounds great. It's what there's this Cracker Jack performance.

[00:25:38] We can all agree across the board agreement. I only put together after watching it that like Joseph Gordon-Levitt does the same thing in The Walk. Like the sort of like, hey, I didn't see you there. Let me take you through the movie.

[00:25:53] You know, like that he's literally doing that as Jiminy Cricket now. So you want a tail, do you? Well, I've got a few here in my coat pocket.

[00:26:01] Which makes it all the more demented that Zemeckis must have gone like, man, who did this well in a movie for me before? When everyone agrees that is the most nightmarish element of The Walk.

[00:26:10] That's the part where almost everyone just turns off the movie and doesn't make it past second five. Oh, bonjour. I am on the Statue of Liberty. They get to it even sooner here with the interruption of the Disney logo.

[00:26:28] Like they at least had to wait for they in The Walk, they got through the production company cards. Before doing something bizarre and straight to camera.

[00:26:37] But that was like, I was so thrown and borderline offended by seeing this Jiminy enter a logo that I watch all the time. And granted, the Disney castle logo plays before lots of pieces of shit. But it also plays before everything my son likes.

[00:26:56] And he like imitates the train in it and the fireworks. So I have a lot of fun. And it's the castle of our beloved Magic Kingdom in Florida. There's a lot to like, I think about that logo. And it's fucking when you wish upon a star.

[00:27:08] Like they're finally getting to the movie in the modern Disney era that gives them the song for the fanfare of their logo. Which I kind of forgot. I almost, when it happened, I still was like, wait, why? Why is he singing that?

[00:27:20] Oh, that's oh yeah, it's when you wish upon. They somehow managed to make it not like, oh well, perfect. It still felt jarring and obnoxious. He sings one line of it. This is like the most famous song in the Disney catalog as crooned by Jiminy Cricket.

[00:27:36] And he doesn't do it in that way that for almost all of it is a imitation of that. It's like I cliff. Now, I don't remember the actor's name. Oh yeah. Who did original Jiminy Cricket.

[00:27:47] But like one of the most iconic parts of the performance is that I won't be able to do it. But let me try it. Like the dreams come true. That crazy high true. I guess I got it. I think I got it. Cliff Cliff Edwards.

[00:28:00] Yeah, but he didn't Cliff Edwards. Okay, but he didn't. He kind of like stop. Sure. He didn't go for the jugular of the full falsetto, which like lets you. It kind of is right at the top, letting you know the movie in general will not strive

[00:28:14] for the high note. No, no, they swapped the falsetto for an immediate quip like an immediately. Also, what they do in general, more quips. Oh, isn't that a catchy tune? It is incredible how like Zemeckis take on this material seems to begin and end with.

[00:28:38] I like the original movie. He's so beholden to the original film and yet at every opportunity will undercut it and be like, that's weird. He did all that in a day. What am I doing singing?

[00:28:48] Why am I talking like every fucking other line is being like this old movies dumb, huh? Unnecessary connecting of tissue. Like I would, I never would have thought original Pinocchio is full of logic holes and unjustified character motivate never occurred to me.

[00:29:09] So now we have all of these odd middle scenes that don't really, it just, it feels very like no, we let's get, I mean, let's, we should really dig into the meat of this film. Okay.

[00:29:24] Now that he's gone, can we talk about I did audition for this movie. We talked about this at the, wow. Did we mention this on Mike? I think at some point I did audition for Jiminy Cricket. People. I also know audition for Jiminy Cricket, Paul F.

[00:29:40] Tompkins, Ryan Scott Jones. What could have, I should have said what for you to because it's you and I wish you would have, but Paula Tompkins is a true like your kid that was on the table and that was on the table.

[00:29:52] And there were some things where I was just like, Oh, you're actually just reaching out to comedy people in our, our, our real world's Jiminy Cricket, the closest equivalent. Someone who basically dresses like Jiminy Cricket on a daily basis has the demeanor. Whoa, whoa.

[00:30:07] But you two might've come in with takes, you know, this is the other thing I'll say when I got the sides, it just said underlined, please sound as close to 1940s movie as possible. All right.

[00:30:22] Like the note from casting was basically do not put any take on this, have no spin whatsoever. I worked so hard to just kind of like voice match it, which look, if they had paid me to do that, I would have done it happily.

[00:30:36] I felt like I had a pretty good Jiminy Cricket impression that sounded like the original movie. I have a similar register. We've had words to that guy. Of course. Yes. Right. It is an interesting skill and interesting acting exercise.

[00:30:48] Like, like playing a real person in a biopic, I imagine. Right, right. I was like, this is the challenge is to just study this original movie and sound as close to it as I can.

[00:30:58] And I felt like I did a pretty good job while knowing this feels bizarre because Disney has people in house who still play Jiminy Cricket. Like they have sound alike on their speed dial who will do it for like kingdom hearts or the theme parks or whatever.

[00:31:14] Oh yeah. And they and I like that they've done that sometimes. Like if the well, like, you know, hey, James Earl Jones will still be Mufasa or Jim Brings will still be who like what? Because nobody's seeing these. Did anyone watch it because of Joseph Gordon?

[00:31:28] No, this is my thing. I'm like, if you're reaching out to Paul F. Tompkins, I guess you're like, we want a little bit more of a name than the guy who currently plays Jiminy Cricket in our stable who none of us can pull by name right now. Right.

[00:31:40] But then when you cast Joseph Gordon Levitt, I go like, wow, I guess he must have secretly a great Jiminy Cricket impression in his back pocket, considering how much they were adamant that this has to sound exactly like the original thing. Yeah, but he's right.

[00:31:54] But he's Zemeckis' friend and he's worked with him and he probably came in and was like, hey, I've got this idea. I'm going to do this. And Robert Zemeckis is probably like, that's great. I love that. Do that. And then, you know, whatever. Took a nap.

[00:32:08] I assume that's what the production of this was like. Perfectly. He might have taken a nap during a couple of these lines. I want to make it very clear that I am in no way bitter about not being in this film.

[00:32:20] I in fact feel a sense of relief. But I do think it is perplexing to decide to cast a name who we all agree is not going to like actually get any kids to watch this movie, despite being a well-liked star and then not

[00:32:36] really basically settle for what sound like first takes on every single line. Do you think, though, that this was like, is there a chance there's a whole scratch track of him doing like the Don John voice in this?

[00:32:49] Do you think there's a chance that he tried something radically different and maybe at a screening they said, you know what, we got to go back to the other? I don't know. But it's like if I don't know, it makes more sense.

[00:33:01] It would make more sense for him to do this in his speaking voice. While, yeah, then it's him. Then he's doing something like that you would get him to do. He probably would have given a better performance also if he wasn't so caught up.

[00:33:15] Yeah, without the weird like challenge and shackles maybe of having to be like Cliff Edwards. Because he can't really do this voice, but he's like still trying to do the sometimes going into, you know? And why would you just do it?

[00:33:28] Cliff Edwards is in it and talks that way because it was the 40s. It's not the 40s now and the rest of the movie isn't the 40s. I don't think.

[00:33:39] I mean, I assume that Pinocchio is set in the 1800s sometimes, but then I don't know because at one point a cuckoo clock opened up and there was a red cocktail dress in it. We have to talk about this. Geppetto predicting the future of fashion.

[00:33:54] Yeah, I didn't mean to jump on. There's a lot there. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. We should. Like, why does Geppetto make a clock with a sheriff coming out of his saloon? Yes, the American West. How does he know about?

[00:34:07] And sort of roughly in the style of Howdy Doody, like the 50s children's television. He doesn't know what television is. I'm a worldly guy. That's what he would say. I don't know. I love to think about it. I read a lot of books.

[00:34:23] In the 2020s, you're remaking a 1940s Americana version of 1800s Italy, small town Italy. Which leaves everyone grasping for what voice do I do? Everyone has a different answer. How Italian am I? How past am I? How current am I? Everyone comes up with something different.

[00:34:46] You know what I like? I do like that at least there's a couple original IP cuckoo clocks in this. Not everything has to be IP, you know? But Geppetto falls prey to that. It's like the balance of the theme parks increasingly.

[00:35:01] Did you like the carved toy that Jiminy Cricket doffs his cap to the toy's ass? There's a lot of butt stuff in this movie. There's a lot of butt stuff. Compared to the other Disney movies of this genre. A fair amount of tentacles as well.

[00:35:18] Monstro has tentacles and for whatever reason the blue fairy wings are Cthulhu-like. I will say this.

[00:35:27] A thread we found when we did our Zemeckis miniseries a couple years ago is especially when you get into this last decade or two of his work and more of the CGI mocap stuff. He loves making his wife a fetish object.

[00:35:39] There is a very busty puppet in Polar Express that looks like his wife. A marionette puppet. In Beowulf there's a very busty barmaid who has giant swinging pendulous breasts in IMAX 3D that is played by and looks like his wife. Similar in Marwen.

[00:36:00] I'm sure it happens to some degree in Christmas Carol. When Jiminy ogles the butt in this I almost was waiting for the cut to her face to be like, oh it's Leslie Zemeckis. Which it isn't. This doesn't look like her.

[00:36:13] But every one of his animated movies has the moment where you're like, why did this just get so horny for a second?

[00:36:18] And then you look it up and the character is either modeled on, played by, or both his wife Leslie Zemeckis who is sort of like a modern burlesque woman. It's a director's signature. It's just a signature of a director. He's a wife guy.

[00:36:31] Robert Zemeckis in his twilight years, he's a wife guy. Like the internet. Huge wife guy. Yeah. I feel like we should step back and talk about the development of this project and also touch upon Mike's background image on Zoom.

[00:36:44] But the mid 2010s, what we've been talking about, the gold rush to just mine every piece of Disney classic IP and remake them in some form. This movie is put together for Sam Mendes originally. Yeah.

[00:37:01] Although I want to mention Griffin that as you I'm sure know Jim Henson wanted to make a version for Disney in the 80s with Steve Barron. And when that didn't happen, Steve Barron went on to make that movie The Adventures of Pinocchio in the 90s with Martin Landau.

[00:37:18] Which Jim Henson workshop did work on. Right. Which had a Henson hand. That movie is a nightmare. It's one of those movies that was like one of those children films like Return to Oz or whatever where you're like this feels designed to traumatize children.

[00:37:32] I will say the puppetry in that film is impressive. Like Pinocchio is kind of just like oh this is how you can actually do a Pinocchio in live action. There's something kind of compelling about the fact that he's actually on real sets.

[00:37:46] Coppola always wanted to do a Pinocchio live action movie. That was sort of one of his great unmade projects. It seems to be a story that fascinates many filmmakers. Right. Like obviously we have del Toro's version coming this year. Roberto Benigni's version Griffin as your zoom background.

[00:38:04] There's been many other adaptations. And who was who did it again. Yes. Roberto Benigni directs Pinocchio with himself as Pinocchio in like 2002. And then it's his life is beautiful. Follow up right. It's him cashing that check. Yeah. Check cash.

[00:38:20] And then like three years ago he played Geppetto in a new version of Pinocchio from the director Gamora. Right. Matteo Garone. Yes exactly. Yes. Garone. Previously had pretty much all made like crime dramas. Well look I mean has anyone else read the original Carlo Collodi book Pinocchio because

[00:38:38] I was obsessed with it when I was a kid. Has anyone else read Pinocchio? I believe I read it as a child. Yeah. I've read the Wikipedia about what really happens and how he kills Jiminy Cricket.

[00:38:47] He kills Jiminy Cricket who is not does not get a Christian name. He's just cricket. Right. And the cricket shows up and it's like hey maybe stop being such a jerk and Pinocchio is like eat hammer motherfucker.

[00:39:01] Die seconds later Pinocchio is like I feel kind of bad about that. Well moving on. Well you know it's a very obviously it's a very strict and upright moral tale about how like children need rules essentially to follow.

[00:39:15] And I was I had it as a kid and I would read it over and over again I think because it was so dark and I was just kind of transfixed by it.

[00:39:23] But I don't know if that's what compels filmmakers like the original tale or if it's just sort of the wonder of the original Disney movie or just as you say Griffin the kind of like

[00:39:34] you know the craftsman creating life angle if that's what's cool about it like I think I think it's a bit of all three. I think directors relate to Geppetto who always is more of a cipher than a character you know

[00:39:50] or at the very least just kind of like plot mechanics for most of your story. And I think there's always been this challenge of like you want a big actor to play Geppetto.

[00:39:59] So how do you make that role sort of more interesting to play outside of just being the opening in the end. I think there's the technological challenge of it which is always interested people and relating to the idea of being able to pull off the technical challenge.

[00:40:13] I think it's a combination of yeah it's like one of those stories as a kid that will like simultaneously terrify and compel you and the original Disney movie has that balance like it's one of those Disney films you watch where you're like this is 60 minutes long.

[00:40:28] It is terrifying for how much people like to talk about Disney sanitizing these stories and the fact that he doesn't crush Jiminy and all of that sort of stuff. It is still like a very dark scary movie and it's very much a movie about like Pinocchio

[00:40:40] having to like get his just desserts and learn lessons. The kids transforming into jackasses always frightened me as a kid. But then the more frightening thing I think was smooth Pinocchio at the very end. I never even as a kid like I'm glad you got your wish.

[00:41:01] I'm glad everyone's happy and weird little family. But I did not like smooth Pinocchio and it kind of happens in this but really far away. I was going to say it's kind of telling that this movie barely does the he becomes a real

[00:41:21] boy at the end and even kind of shrugs and goes like maybe it happened maybe it didn't and you don't see him up front like they're like even this feels too upsetting for us to put on screen.

[00:41:31] Thank God imagine their take on they balance it out by making lamp with more. It's just worse like just more annoying just more extra like I don't know what I I said

[00:41:46] watching it I hope this might be to me but it's like lamp wick looks like a Pete Davidson that they took out of the oven too early. But when when Disney finally gets this set up it is Mendes and our friend friend of the

[00:42:03] podcast Chris Weitz gets brought aboard to sort of write it and produce. Oh no yes is everything okay. This is all I'm going to say this is all I'm going to say as a disclaimer.

[00:42:13] I'm going to say this one oblique statement film development is a very weird attractive process and sometimes credits and oddly in terms of who gets credited for what and when your name on something might not mean very much at all.

[00:42:30] Sure but Mendes is one of these figures that Disney has clearly been trying to get to make one of these movies for them. I feel like he's been attached to a few came very close to doing Oz the Great and powerful

[00:42:39] but he's one of these guys they want to do one of their big live action films Hank similarly one of the guys in rotation they wanted him to play the Michael Keaton part in Dumbo.

[00:42:48] He's sort of seemed like a white whale to get in one of their live action Disney films and he is on board for the whatever this earlier version and then he drops out at some point maybe you all drops out.

[00:43:02] I believe he gets brought on when the Paul King version happens and this is Paul King straight off of Paddington 2 so it's one of those moments where like people are equal parts like why is he doing a Pinocchio movie rather than Paddington 3 but simultaneously kind

[00:43:17] of having to say like look I might have to trust and see what his version is like right I give Paul King benefit of the doubt now and it did sound like there was a real take there at that point.

[00:43:29] He is the one who sells Hanks on doing it. Paul King drops out for family issues and then Hanks leaves the movie at some point but what I just read is that Hanks was apparently as this film is sort of like stuck in development

[00:43:46] hell Disney still wants to get Hanks back on board Hanks is apparently the one who suggests some access. Sure well they know each other I'll do it if Bob comes and does it with me.

[00:43:58] Wow that's friendship I guess and this is like some access coming off of like three you know consecutive bombs but also a period where you kept on hearing that he was turning down shit like the flash that it was like people keep on throwing Zemeckis these big

[00:44:19] modern blockbusters and he's old-fashioned he doesn't care about superhero movies he doesn't want to do this shit and then it was like he just loves this original movie he wants to work with his body buddy Tom he's going to come in here and rewrite the thing

[00:44:33] and make it as much like the original film as possible strange and yet not still like it'd be hard to imagine what like when he's presenting his take like can you flash to

[00:44:47] what the presentation but like what what would he have even said here's my take with the plan was my guess is his one hour pitch meeting was screening the entirety of the 1940s Pinocchio

[00:44:59] and then pointing to the screen at certain times and going but I'll be real and the camera will be doing this the cats are gonna have hair you're gonna see and then the hair will

[00:45:08] get wet and it'll be wet looking hair and this fish this fish is gonna be as pretty as my wife I wouldn't be surprised if that's where his wife was in there that she actually

[00:45:19] did the mocap for the fish water for me could you could just give me a quick flutter but just interesting and important to mention that across this you know 10 year period of Disney trying to make their Pinocchio this entire time del Toro is desperately trying

[00:45:34] to make his own Pinocchio stop motion with Gus Grimley the illustrator and his whole thing is like I want to go back to the book I want to make it darker we have this very

[00:45:43] specific visual take we're gonna do it in stop motion you can't get off the ground until the end of perhaps the Netflix blank check days and their push into animation he finally gets the carte blanche to make this movie which will come out on a different streaming

[00:45:56] service in like eight weeks I'm looking forward to like del Toro stop motion you got me we with that you know yeah it does sound interesting it's true yeah simultaneous with this Warner Brothers is very much trying to make their own live action Pinocchio because Robert

[00:46:14] Downey Jr. wants to do Pinocchio more than anything it's in this period like where everyone's looking to get him to do another big budget film okay you got the judge out of your system

[00:46:25] you know it's like what ends up being the energy he devotes to do little he spends five years on trying to make Pinocchio in which he would have played both Geppetto and done the mocap for Pinocchio yes and was going through different directors do you remember

[00:46:41] who the first one was David no was Ben Stiller in there yes I'm sorry Ben Stiller was going to write and direct Robert Downey Jr.'s Pinocchio then when Stiller drops out it is right after

[00:46:52] Downey Jr. had dropped out of inherent vice and he goes like Paul Thomas Anderson right he brings Paul Thomas Anderson to Warner Brothers Paul Thomas Anderson's like look I'd love

[00:47:04] to make a movie like this no one ever lets me do this I'd love to make a children's film he goes in he pitches for it he's developing it for a while and then after a couple months

[00:47:11] he's just like they thought my take was too weird but his his attitude was always I'm not trying to make art house Pinocchio I would like to make a big budget family film but he's

[00:47:20] probably just too idiosyncratic of a filmmaker to make something that didn't scare them slightly and then after PTA drops out it becomes Ron Howard who feels very equivalent to Zemeckis of just like give us a nice Americana baby boomer nostalgia take on this and then at

[00:47:37] some point the project just crumbles due to lack of interest and probably the Disney version had more momentum at that point do you also think there's a chance getting daily rambling notes from Robert Downey Jr. might influence the filmmakers I cannot imagine

[00:47:55] I mean once again it's like anything his version would have default been more interesting because you imagine he would have done some weird shit as Geppetto and some weird shit as Pinocchio even if it was bad even if it was do little adjacent there would have been

[00:48:13] idiosyncratic choices why does anyone why did any actors ever want to play the child in anything like which Zemeckis does that have Polar Express Paul yeah yeah yeah and they had to like change them over right yeah yeah I'm over and then the same thing Marsy's

[00:48:30] mom's to write it was Seth Green up until a month before the movie came out and then they dubbed it over with a real kid so as Downey just like that's because they're lesser

[00:48:38] actors it hasn't worked because the greatest actor hasn't done it right when I get my hands on this fucking kid part what fucking was he gonna do yeah but is it like maybe there's

[00:48:49] still a chance we can get like you know how Patrick Stewart did the night before Christmas and you do all the roles on the stage yes so is there a chance we can get Downey Jr.

[00:48:58] on like the West End doing all the roles something like that but like just can they instead just do something else what if they did that something else where he played like an interesting character

[00:49:11] like a journalist maybe trying to solve a serial killer case or something I don't know just be normal why can't you all just be normal is it the act is it the actors life this is

[00:49:23] the song that's like kind of spinning in these older actors and directors had that I did a song it's just wild that both actors and directors feel inextricably drawn to this property once

[00:49:34] they get to a certain level of power clout and esteem within the industry now it's time to do Pinocchio which is strange because weird like sub porny Pinocchio's this whole history you're describing I feel like eight different Pinocchio's you haven't referred to just fell

[00:49:53] out of a tree like isn't there some weird Pauly Shore one looks like crap like there's so like why is it it's viewed as so special and oh if I could only touch the magic orb

[00:50:04] that is Pinocchio but then it just gets cranked out by weird bizarre foreign animation studios and brand like voiced listlessly by people who aren't paying attention like the mix of special and not special of Pinocchio I don't understand David you've seen that the Pauly

[00:50:20] Shore Pinocchio trailer right I have seen it of course you are he's like but dad right like you know that's dad I want to be a real boy the the one element though I think has

[00:50:35] some influence whether people know it or not is that this Pinocchio has been in the public domain for a long time yes of like since 1940 I read it's a it's a very very

[00:50:46] old book it was released in 1883 so yes it is right in the public domain the copyrights that exist on this are essentially only the copyrights that Disney has on elements like Jiminy Cricket or like these specific songs the most confounding element of this movie

[00:51:04] to me without fail is that they cut three songs from the original movie for this yeah they know we're new songs that don't exist like the song that were like the bonding of

[00:51:17] Geppetto and Pinocchio and they put a different song in it's just I think the song's called Pinocchio Pinocchio correct that's the Holy Smokey Oh song oh okay okay which Tom Hanks famously refuses to sing on screen it's a thing like with Toy Story that he like turned

[00:51:32] it down three times because he was like I don't do musicals and Pixar to be like no songs no songs right oh so him singing that little song in two is a big deal that he

[00:51:42] says a huge deal of huge deal friend yeah he talks about that like that it was a huge deal and he actually despite being like I can't sing does basically give it like a

[00:51:54] deal college try in Toy Story 2 whereas this it feels like Alan Silvestri and Glenn Ballard presented him songs and he was like no I'm gonna I'm gonna talk this I'm not even gonna

[00:52:04] talk this rhythmically the last thing I want to do is get into territory that I seek to avoid on our podcast which if you don't listen to our show it's about theme parks in theory

[00:52:15] but we end up talking about a lot of other bullshit pop culture ephemera yeah yeah yeah and I but I feel like I have to reveal that Glenn Ballard who you mentioned who's worked

[00:52:25] with Silvestri and other things I forget what did all the Polar Express songs as well with Silvestri and oh yeah oh my god hot chocolate and I believe the same team got it hot chocolate

[00:52:35] I ain't got it they also together wrote all the original songs for the Back to the Future musical oh weird oh I don't know much about that it's transferring to New York next year

[00:52:48] most likely it will it will be with us you'll know there will be their opening night it has both Huey Lewis songs Earth Angel Johnny B. Goode and then like 20 new Silvestri Ballard

[00:53:00] songs oh yeah which if this is any indication I'm a little nervous but the I mean his name jumped out at me from the from the pop career and I was looking at like what are his things

[00:53:11] jagged little pill Alanis Morissette was him he's the writer producer of Wilson Phillips hold on but relevant to us and one of the Pagas Reggae specifically he is the co-writer and producer of Aerosmith's Pink oh boy wrote these original pink when I turned out the

[00:53:29] lights or whatever I remember that great honestly a great song bad boys in Boston playing in Disney World right now outside loudly they never played on the ride it's not one of the ones on the ride but outside in the comment like the area children are just listening

[00:53:45] to the song pink by children are hearing it as they walk to the adjacent Lightning McQueen Racing Academy David do you know that there's an Aerosmith roller coaster at Disney no I

[00:53:57] did not know that and it's like you're why why well Mike would you like to feel this I'm not even asking in a mad way I'm just I don't understand there were they were they

[00:54:08] went to a couple different bands there's different rumors and it's hard to tell exactly which ones are true of which band like they may have gone to the Rolling Stones I forget

[00:54:16] did they go to kiss is that a weird thing I remember but it was also it came out of this era where now director Breck Eisner was taken to the Disney parks with his father

[00:54:26] Michael Eisner as like a cynical teen I don't know if Breck has something to do with roll rock and roller coaster I'm not giving credit but I feel like it's the long tail effect

[00:54:37] of that sort of attitude of we need things my son would think is cool and the idea of like let's have a really fast roller coaster with a cool band yeah and then of course

[00:54:47] it was like in their 50s Aerosmith in there that was the coolest band Disney knew about at the time who you find David in the line like you get you go to an exclusive recording

[00:54:59] studio session with Aerosmith where they are recording walk this way again for Paris one I forget but like no no they're recording walk this way yeah and Ken Marino is their engineer and like a lot Iliana Douglas is the manager yes she's like her you guys forgot

[00:55:20] that you have to go to a an award show in five minutes a concert is it a concert it's a concert yeah so the premise of the ride is like you have to take their super fast

[00:55:31] car it's a super stretch limo of course and they hook you up because you know how we feel about our fans our fans gotta go as we love our fans we love a constant stream of our

[00:55:44] fans coming into our recording studio when we are recording one of our biggest hits again 20 years after the fact this pre-ride video David there's a moment where Steven Tyler is like oh no I forgot about it and he puts his hand over his forehead like this but

[00:55:59] he does the shocker and no one noticed no no no years not the shocker you're doing the devil horns he did the shocker as in he did yes the sex yeah two in the pink one in the

[00:56:12] sting yes 20 years and then Disney digitally added fingers to make him have a flat hand like a year ago with all you know apologies to Pinocchio that is my favorite Disney CGI moment Steven Tyler's digital censored hand Scott you are you're not thinking about I

[00:56:36] can't wait to share a beer with my son when he turns 21 you're like I can't wait till my son's older and I can explain this ride to him I don't say it'll still be there oh

[00:56:48] yeah I just want to be about this or post this on the reddit but just the like what are some of your favorite examples of clear last minute studio notes and it's the scene

[00:56:59] where Lampwick and Pinocchio are on the ride they're boarding the ride and there are if you watch it with closed captions seven different boys saying different lines reestablishing that it is root beer that they're drinking yeah it's just like boy one hey that root

[00:57:16] beer looks good boy to give me that root beer boy three can't have enough of this root beer they just like had added so many lines to underline because I think they are drinking

[00:57:27] beer right yes it's Pleasure Island for God's sake smoking cigars how else do you know that they're being bad I mean the smashing is bad and look contempt corner I can't imagine a darker thing in this it seemed like contempt corner maybe their comment on social media

[00:57:49] is that what they're trying to tell us everybody getting in a camera and give me I hate you you stink contempt corner was also where I was watching this movie from at that point

[00:58:01] they did I do feel bad for the kid playing Lampwick because that hair and the makeup and whatever drab clothes that they did him so dirty to go like and this kids a little

[00:58:11] rat like this kids a bad little fucker I mean they literally did him dirty they just fucking yeah they had to do around and so it let me say this I like all the contempt corner stuff

[00:58:22] and I like the Pleasure Island I like being in Pleasure Island and I will say this I believe I like the most pieces of this movie of all of us there are scenes things that I liked

[00:58:32] as audio-visual what did you like the kids smashing the clocks I liked I like the kids like looting a store I thought that was really funny I liked all of this nonsense here and

[00:58:44] in addition I liked the them on the right but I did like all the kids being bad they found some funny ways for them to be g-rated bad well you this was before when we were

[00:58:55] on the way to recording this the trailer dropped and we all texted about it and Mike you were the one who said I think it might be good you throw that out there based on

[00:59:05] some based on somehow thing materials in the trailer Cleo's fuck me eyes there was the track if there was an attractive fish in there that did not play into my my thought that

[00:59:16] maybe the movie would be better or not bad I'm not saying the movies not bad don't get like I was curious where you landed because you came in thinking and we were wondering

[00:59:27] will this be an episode I kind of thing that happens a lot on podcast the ride where you become a staunch defender of something that strikes everyone a little odd and I was like

[00:59:34] but I'm watching it and like this isn't even this won't get Mike fully I know you're not gonna Glenn Ballard or no Glenn Ballard and I don't want to overtake the whole conversation

[00:59:43] here but but if I'm just gonna lay out my cards on the table for the first 10 minutes with Tom Hanks and your pedo I was liking the movie look I was saying it's inviting

[00:59:55] it's Tom Hanks he's doing this one of his voices that he's just you know does the drop of a hat I liked all that stuff I liked honest John and Gideon a lot I really like them I

[01:00:08] like looking at the snout the snoot of honest John and his team don't understand this what you said that in the trailer your reason for why you like the trailer was I like this

[01:00:19] shot and it was like a bulgy lens yeah honest John going down into Pinocchio's PV which I'm glad you like that in the trailer because in the film it happened 100 and every shot

[01:00:32] of honest Johnny bent into frame like that there is a thing it's a Meccas always talks about when he did his Polar Express Beowulf Christmas Carol run where he just be like and we can do anything with the camera now there's nothing you can write that we can't

[01:00:47] film and it feels like he's still in that mode of like I want to show you all the stuff we can do at a point where none of this feels exciting or novel but with this movie in particular

[01:00:57] it still feels like he has shots like honest John putting his snout right into the non-existent lens or like Pinocchio's like lying nose stretching right towards the audience where it's like you're still composing this as if it was an IMAX 3D movie where people have

[01:01:14] not seen an effect like this ever and we're going to just be wowed by the new tools at your disposal when we're like 20 years into this shit and also your movie is going straight

[01:01:25] to Disney Plus like yeah that decision is made before they shoot a moment of non-film I am wondering if that was also part of his impetus for shooting three different perspectives on a giant mound of shit that Pinocchio hovers around for a while drops his Apple next to

[01:01:51] it and picks it he's like oh it didn't get touched but it didn't touch the shit I think it's still good I'm not I want to say I'm not a huge fan of the shit stuff yeah it's

[01:02:03] one of those moments where a filmmaker provides the entire review critique of the movie in one image for you to just throw back in his face actually three images because you had

[01:02:14] a head on and then you had a side and then you had different head on yes yes I should have made that my background here we're going to do it now yeah find the point yeah yeah

[01:02:24] what you're saying about we got to showcase the tools of the medium I that seemed to me like the entire reason for Sophia the seagull like like when Jiminy is saying like I need

[01:02:37] a ride I gotta find Pinocchio he might as well be saying I want to go on a madcap journey through the sky where you go inside of rooms and then right outside and then right along

[01:02:46] the roof but you don't miss anything and the camera's not tethered to a crane or nothing all right well I could do that there we go there's the shit it's Sophia the seagull also

[01:02:58] a perfect example of one of these like Disney remakes where they're like well finally we'll fix these narrative problems with the original film that are not problems anyone ever had like filling in these plot holes that no one is bothered by where they're like well how

[01:03:11] does Geppetto find out where Pinocchio is we need a character who flies who can be there in that location clock it and report back to Geppetto we need a character who can say

[01:03:22] both he has had to sell all his clocks and then earlier um num num num num num num num that was my takeaway they made Lorraine Bracco get in a booth and go num num num num num

[01:03:34] num men will men will make rooms and rooms of cuckoo clocks before going to freaking therapy it is such a weird narrative element this movie tries to play of like this almost Finding Nemo thing of Pinocchio being like my dad hates me he likes clocks more that

[01:03:50] he needs to be told that his father loves him Mike I almost want to agree with you in certain places where I mean this is like you know faint praise award but I was expecting

[01:04:04] to for this to be one of the bad movies we cover that makes me like cosmically depressed whereas in reality this movie mostly just made me tired I will speak of Ted look I have

[01:04:15] a one month old baby and I watch this movie I watch this movie thank you I watch this movie starting at 8am today with the baby on my lap for two hours and I the baby is

[01:04:28] very gassy and it's been keeping us up a lot at night so I was I basically anytime I would perk up the movie was really doing something so the scenes I mentioned pushed pushed through like three hours of sleep to make me go okay all right pretty good

[01:04:49] because I also thought maybe because of all the word like that I would be like oh my god this thing that's that's what I felt like like I don't want to say it was benefiting

[01:04:57] from lowered expectations and I can't isolate like sustained scenes that I enjoyed but there would be isolated fleeting moments where I would at least feel marginally compelled by what was happening on screen yeah when I say like honest John I like him I'm the movie

[01:05:15] almost nothing to do it's almost as if I like saw an interview on the news with somebody and I go it seems like a guy I'd like to hang out with is a compelling character he

[01:05:27] is the one element of this movie that I almost feel like Zemeckis leans into the nightmarish quality of yes a lot of the pleasure island stuff feels very sanitized to me and it's like that's pretty much the only reason to make a live-action Pinocchio yeah is to go

[01:05:42] full nightmare on pleasure I 100% can I show you can I show everyone this I didn't I just remembered this that I this is something I found on Twitter and whoever I'll I know

[01:05:52] who it's who made this because they posted it but I found this a fan cam of honest John from voice of course Michael Key yes I don't know how they got him I mean it's just like

[01:06:03] that guy he's working he hates doing voice performance yeah you gotta drag him into a VO booth but I yes but I found this is a quick clip but this makes me just like honest John

[01:06:16] even more here we go oh my god this is the thing that watching this like I love this guy I love this guy he at least has expressive physicality yes look at that snout it's so

[01:06:32] realistic he's I have a little I did not like things to say like that at all David has things to say that's a real quick Twitter user Kaiser Nico and EKO is who posted that

[01:06:44] I assume made it okay a few things one Mike I apologize for bringing you on this podcast we have a one month old baby to talk about Robert Zemeckis Pinocchio that is horrible

[01:06:55] you need sleep yeah I do need sleep that's true but no this is how I like to live my life I like to enjoy this because I feel great shame for having done this to this isn't as bad

[01:07:06] but you interrupted Kubrick to do this Stanley be quiet right a month old baby a month old father's being punished and you guys have you have some of the greatest films ever made

[01:07:21] we had to postpone our episode on Dr. Strange love in order to get Pinocchio in there first to I don't just a couple points what I think the CGI in this film is technically quite proficient

[01:07:37] which I guess not that surprising for his image there's stuff that feels janky but like things like honest John you're like this is not like a lazy job you know this is done from a design perspective they execute honest John better than Jiminy Cricket like they

[01:07:51] they lean into what's weird about yeah a hundred percent the design of Jiminy Cricket is disaster that I'm not going to defend and I also think the Pinocchio design is quite bad like it's so weird

[01:08:02] there's something off about it I don't know why they decided to do those little tweaks you know I don't know anyway but the other point is just like it is directed by Robert Zemeckis

[01:08:11] the movie is not incompetently made or anything like that like I sort of know what you mean about like you could watch like a scene and be like well that was fine you know nobody

[01:08:20] looked at the camera like he knows how to make a movie knows where to put the camera basically his virtual fake camera you know but there's just something like it's like he took what I liked about Pinocchio or whatever like you know what I think about Pinocchio

[01:08:40] and then he removed even that like even the sort of sanded off nice Disney 1940s Pinocchio which as you guys have all said is still atmospheric and creepy and interesting and now it's just about like an idiot like it's not even about a mischievous kid

[01:08:55] it's just about like this like perfectly guileless one day old creature that's just sort of like what should I do with myself and like a fox is like I should be an actor he's like okay I guess I'll do that you know like there's no character

[01:09:08] they find a way to absolve him of any agency for anything that happens in this movie until he unleashes his motorboat legs and proves to everyone that he's great because only a hero would do that he's inspected Pinocchio turns into inspector gadget a few times

[01:09:25] a lot a number of times yeah but oddly late like for that's a pretty that's a take now that's something but it doesn't happen to like an hour 10 in and then it happens a bunch

[01:09:38] it's such a weird balance of at for a lot of this movie for most of this movie I'm thinking like Robert Zemeckis do less challenge right like as David said he is such a technically proficient filmmaker that even when he is clearly not super invested in the material

[01:09:55] he just knows how to construct a movie right there is like a certain like smooth musicality to what he does but then when you get to his thing of just like the fucking Polar Express thing of like

[01:10:06] every moment feeling like it needs to be a roller coaster right like every moment suddenly needing to be shot like a crazy action sequence with a swooping God's eye camera and all this sort of shit you're like if you scaled this back the movie immediately becomes 25% better

[01:10:23] not good but like less infuriating and then there are other things where you're just like well then why aren't you doing more here narratively if you're gonna have Pinocchio occasionally have these like special powers that I almost wish you just went all the fucking way

[01:10:40] yeah he should have yeah he should shoot like wood out of his eyes or something he should there's little like squinters that like yeah get in on his John's eyes and then he can escape use the the nose to pole vault you know tell a bunch of lies

[01:10:56] and then use it to get over a fence or something he gets set on fire three times and three or four times in the movie and like yeah let's let's ramp that up seven eight times boy on wooden boy on fire scaring people like

[01:11:11] right like if you're gonna make this an action movie actually make an action movie whereas it's this weird Zemeckis thing of just like shooting mundane things as if they are an action film as if they are like spectacle yeah right

[01:11:25] can I say there was a gag that I legitimately liked and I thought was pretty funny and it comes so so close to the end of the movie when they're in Monstro and Geppetto throws Pinocchio like a rope with a plank of wood on it

[01:11:43] and just like beams him like just nails his ass that I thought was very funny but then immediately like deflated by Hanks being like I threw a piece of wood at the boy made out of wood and I'm like that's not a joke

[01:11:58] what did you guys think of you did all of that in one day what it was yeah that's sort of his big joke at the end there you know what I weirdly like I didn't hate that I don't like the meta nature of it

[01:12:09] or the commentary nature of it but you know what I liked about it is that like that finally Tom Hanks feels like he's doing a Tom Hanks thing so even sitting watching him be in this weird character box for a whole movie

[01:12:19] and then that felt like him like being kind of funny and flustered that was like 80s Tom Hanks so I liked it for that actually yeah conversely a moment I let out an auditory like oh was when the guy

[01:12:34] the guy who was taking them to Pleasure Island starts hopping around on top of everyone going like play play it's time to play and like I'm like oh no not this that and the moment where Jiminy Cricket is listening to the Blue Fairy

[01:12:51] there's like a moment where he's holding his umbrella and I forget what they were trying to convey but it looked like he knocked over his umbrella because he got a boner and I had to keep rewinding it

[01:13:05] and I think it's solely like he just gets startled by something but his hands go in front of his crotch Zemeckis is weirdly horny we talked about this a lot when we were deep in it it does it comes up a lot yeah

[01:13:18] there is that joke in this movie where someone like asked Jiminy about like he made a boy out of wood and it's like I guess there's another way to do it but Gervetto doesn't get out much something for the parents though now I appreciate stuff like these

[01:13:33] Mike a month ago you would have hated that joke but now you do but now it's a little wink toward me and what's happened in my life Mike how did you how did you feel about Joseph Gordon-Levitt constantly constantly referring to him as Pinoke

[01:13:50] well he does that in the original movie doesn't he or no? he does he does that's a Jiminy Cricketism I'll say this too because I watched the original movie whatever it was

[01:13:58] like two years ago I watched it a couple of times when I was trying to work on my self tape for this and from my memory and then I checked to like verify this

[01:14:09] in the original film it does seem to be pretty clearly established that it is multiple days so like yeah these sort of making the joke about you did all of that in one day isn't even a

[01:14:22] we're making fun of how weird it is the original movie takes place over one day they're making fun of themselves for making a change to the story but the thing that does seem to be one day in the original film is the time Gervetto spends with Pinocchio

[01:14:37] like essentially he creates a midnight the next morning he sends him off to school Pinocchio is lost he has like a combined 12 hours with Pinocchio before Pinocchio goes missing and this film especially when we're talking about this thing of like

[01:14:50] the biggest human role in a Pinocchio movie is Gervetto and the problem is if you want to stunt cast that there's no reason for him to be in most of the film there is nothing for him to do for most of the running time

[01:15:02] even if you're going to send him out with a little lantern searching for Pinocchio it's kind of a thankless role outside of the beginning and the end in this Jiminy Cricket just fucking talks over a montage that lasts for 10 seconds where he was like

[01:15:15] and then they had a good family unit and they spent months and months together being very happy until the one day he decided to send him off to school and I'm like you're just breezing over the stuff you could have had Hank stew

[01:15:25] and it seems very old that all of a sudden I think you need to go to school and what did he do why is he mad at him why you didn't show us

[01:15:32] right it's this thing of just like it seems like a weird family but they got along pretty well until one day and then it's this attitude of like Gervetto seems to resent Pinocchio

[01:15:42] Pinocchio is aware of the fact that his father doesn't love him enough because he's not real and you know the whole thing with Pinocchio is obviously always this thing of like Pinocchio has to learn his lessons in order to become a good boy

[01:15:56] a real human boy as a reward and this movie ends on this note of like you've shown your character so much that you're more real than most boys who aren't made out of wood

[01:16:07] you shouldn't want to be a real boy you're better than real boys because you have motor legs so fuck every other boy then every other boy is bad and then you see half a second of him turning real and Cricket talks to the camera

[01:16:21] and he's like I don't know some people say he turned real I don't know if I believe that see you later folks I was mad at that and annoyed by that but then I also then I remembered that because of that rushed ending

[01:16:32] I got to stop watching the movie right, so you're a thumbs up for it ultimately yeah yeah love it perfect ending a friend of the podcast Ray Tentori I was hanging out with him when you texted me about how bad this film was David

[01:16:46] and Ray was just like how is it possible that it's that bad like the original film is so weird if you rewatch the original Disney film it's weird and dark enough that if you're actually doing just a very straight remake of that

[01:17:02] it should be more compelling than a lot of these Disney remakes and beyond that he was just like there's the one slam dunk moment there is no possible way Zemeckis fucks up which is when they first start turning into the donkeys

[01:17:15] and then you watch this and it's like he botches it beyond belief but really screws it up and I was having that feeling as I was watching this movie and not really enjoying it and feeling like why is everything so bright and kind of cheerful

[01:17:29] and just sort of one note and then I was like well but the pleasure island stuff turning into the donkeys that's so intense it has to click for 10 minutes right it feels like an inconvenience in this movie at best

[01:17:41] like that they're turning into donkey barely feels like partly because nothing in this movie feels real I guess so like turning into donkey I'm like just like well one unreal thing is turning into another unreal thing

[01:17:51] oh as opposed to I mean obviously the first one didn't feel real because it was animated but it was like the best-looking cartoon like a shocking level of visual improvement of anything anybody had ever seen so there was that visceral feeling any viewers got in 1940

[01:18:06] but now like who hasn't seen hundreds of movies that roughly look like this a bizarre decision also to make it that like oh for Pinocchio he'll start turning into a donkey puppet right yes don't like that

[01:18:18] like in the Disney film he gets organic animal donkey ears and tail and in this he's like why is my wooden tail now gray also right before is one of the craziest line reads I've ever heard which is lampwick

[01:18:36] Pinocchio is kind of complaining about like you shouldn't like yell when somebody's taking a pool shot and the kid says it's something like why not psyching out your opponents is a great strategy

[01:18:51] you put the emphasis on G and what X to where are you from and are you a 20s boy or even because then there's other times where he does a little asides or just he passes by contempt corner

[01:19:03] and he goes like I like those guys yeah those guys are good I don't know what bizarre strategy have you PTR guys seen the walk I watched only because of blank check I watched just to the beginning oh my god what a gift you gave recommending

[01:19:24] just the beginning is not what you should watch oh I loved it but I almost think that this that is the film that this is most similar to in his career where it's like there is already an excellent movie version of this story

[01:19:38] you are now retelling it with a bizarre heightened tone this constant feeling of like weird CGI artificiality this like totally tone deaf Joseph Gordon-Levitt performance with a shaky voice narrating this entire film to you as if you're charmed

[01:19:55] but I'm watching this movie much like David where I'm just like well much like the walk where in the middle of this movie that is not really connecting you get this 10 minute bravura sequence like the walk itself in the walk is phenomenal

[01:20:08] it's like Zemeckis at the top of his powers and I'm like when they get to Pleasure Island he's going to start just fucking hitting homers we're just going to get 10 minutes of weird fucking Zemeckis nightmare fuel and you're right David it feels like an obligation

[01:20:22] yes yeah yeah exactly right there's not a lot of joy for this material in general it feels like there's a little bit of joy for the character designs but like they don't even really fully commit to the original songs they basically don't let them play out in full

[01:20:39] no they seem disturbed by the original songs or whatever yeah they think they're not cool or something I don't know they cut three of them Mike you pointed out that there's some quote unquote original IP in Geppetto's cuckoo clock wall

[01:20:53] that 90% of them are restagings of Disney films but there are a few original ones I believe almost all the ones that are not based on Disney movies are from the original Disney film

[01:21:02] but a couple of them I know there's the one where there's the mother spanking her child or a nun spanking a child and then there's a policeman behind them with like a billy club waiting to arrest the nun

[01:21:15] is a cuckoo clock from the original film but they add the policeman to say we obviously don't condone child abuse like this modern Disney bent the solution was we don't like child- so a police officer will come in and make everything bad we'll stop the-

[01:21:33] don't worry kids don't worry the carceral state is here don't put that fucking cuckoo clock in the film then no one's making you put this on screen let alone put it on and go like but we want to show where our moral stance is on this cuckoo clock

[01:21:48] this is the stuff Disney's worried about is the cuckoo clock being right and being moral and they want to make sure Krusty the Clown's Super 7 toy doesn't have a cigarette Mike you and I could spend 15 minutes ranting about this it's a big problem

[01:22:01] this is what they're worried about they got rid of the alternate cigarette hand they got rid of the alternate smoking head they got rid of Mr. Teenie's cigar this is a $55 adult collectible correct this is going direct to consumer it's not gonna sell at retail

[01:22:17] no and that's what they yeah they had to put an end who are you censoring this for? who are you censoring this for is the answer and it's not censored on Disney Plus it's not should we talk about the other primary original character in this film

[01:22:30] which is Pinocchio's love interest a woman who wants to uh uh uh I don't know abolish the UCB and build a more sustainable model for reformers who communicates with Pinocchio with Pinocchio through a puppet who he's in love with like a more like a more equitable Mitzi Shore

[01:22:51] like what are we thinking runs a theater of some kind or a club this other version of the fucking Disney remake thing where it's like we have to make these films a little more progressive you know we have to update them to modern times

[01:23:05] and the things we didn't know back then so you're talking about um Fabiana and Sabina yeah yes yes right the it's not quite the you know girl who loves STEM character but it's sort of that equivalent right like

[01:23:18] I want to create a more moral uh ethical entertainment industry where we can kick abusers out and it's just like yeah no one likes Stromboli what the fuck are you talking about? he's not he's not a great manager

[01:23:33] we don't need you to say like we need to build a better industry without Stromboli figures where the artists have a stake in their own material I'm gonna be honest with you I saw this movie I'm gonna say I saw this movie

[01:23:44] like I saw this movie like days before I went to Toronto so I'm gonna say like 10 or 11 days ago I think it was exactly like two weeks ago might be two weeks I the minute you mentioned it I remembered but I completely forgot about this

[01:23:55] that this happens in this movie that there's this character and all of this going on she comes back I had just spaced on this because you just went and watched like you watched how many movies have you watched since you watched Pinocchio? some of which were probably great

[01:24:10] oh my god David you're also likely fatigued because you spent so many hours standing up and clapping of course this is what we've learned 19 minutes start the stopwatch they're going there goes start the stopwatch white noise deserves more

[01:24:31] that's the shame is David you were at TIFF for what like five days? yeah five six days well three of those days were just spent in standing ovations you could have seen so many more films I need to sleep I was screaming as I keep talking

[01:24:45] let me out of here I gotta do it I gotta do it for the fabelmans the security guards are like wedging a chair underneath the the doorknob outside you can't leave the theater until the standing O is done and spikes shoot up from the seats

[01:24:59] you're not allowed to sit back down tears your butt up Sam Mendes like slow walking to the stage being like keep it going I'm not taking the stage until we hit 10 minutes at the very least ironically this movie one movie has more tragedy packed into it

[01:25:22] than all of the films you saw at that film fest well like this fucking Fabiana character is just like so overloaded with like okay a pressed performer right right in an unjust system who also was a ballerina who cannot dance anymore

[01:25:37] because of some unclear debilitating injury or illness that affected her leg so now she's able to only dance through the puppet is this a disease from childhood or did she sprain her leg a month ago right right is it a Forrest Gump thing

[01:25:53] or is it like right a temporary injury and then right has this weird relationship with Pinocchio where he's in love with her puppet seemingly not kind of understanding that the puppet isn't real he like understands that she's his friend but the puppet he has the hots for

[01:26:10] it's so confusing because the end of the movie the message is like you're a boy if you act like a boy you're a boy that's the message so it's like why would he be in love with a puppet who is not sentient yeah

[01:26:25] I also feel like the original film has more of this element of like Honest John being like the snake in the garden of evil and once you give in to him you're on like a doom ride right and it's like Honest John gives him over to Stromboli

[01:26:40] he also gives him over to the fucking coachman like everything bad that happens to Pinocchio is some way orchestrated by Honest John whereas like he has a much smaller role in this film he feels just like a shitty talent agent

[01:26:54] who you work with at the beginning of your career and then his hands are like oh my god stop it stop it weren't these jokes started in were there agent jokes with the Marx brothers like what this is the most ancient thing to do yeah

[01:27:11] but then it's sort of like the coachman thing he sort of just stumbles backwards into Stromboli who is played by just a good Italian actor one of these things where you're just like yeah cause you're just like they cast a guy Giuseppe Battista 18 Davide Notello awards

[01:27:28] to his name this is a guy who doesn't have to fucking balance his own movie star persona with the demands of this role they can just put a big fake beard on him he can speak in his real accent and just play an evil man

[01:27:40] like it's what you need out of these roles it was nice when he was on screen doing he like did a monologue and just a human actor carried the film for 30 seconds like we got to take a break from cuts and seagulls going in and out of window

[01:27:56] like wow the power of a man talking a lens had to be affixed to a camera he had to memorize that chunk of dialogue I think Luke Evans is having a slight amount of fun I think he is the only thing that makes the Pleasure Island sequence

[01:28:14] feel a little bit menacing yeah my issue not enough of him he does he just kind of pops in yeah but it's also like in the original film it does feel like as we've said like Pinocchio makes these choices driven by bad impulses he needs to understand

[01:28:31] like learn a sort of moral compass whereas in this everyone's like Pinocchio you should be famous and he's like I don't know I guess so like he never feels like he wants any of the things that are being hoisted upon him it's this thing we're talking about

[01:28:45] where it just makes Pinocchio like an idiot right this guileless idiot who just stumbles into things and that he never fully he's never fully in love with Pleasure Island he never has the temptation yeah yeah like he's fully on board and drinking and smoking

[01:29:04] I think that was maybe like he gave in to like greed and this shady career and now he has a problem and then he gets punished for it he reads a little better than he's never he doesn't really want to do any of it so why

[01:29:21] this is the problem with modern Disney and the rules is you can't do that stuff even though there's telling little boys not to smoke cigars Disney doesn't want to portray a cool little boy like Pinocchio smoking a cigar even if it's saying it's bad you can't show

[01:29:42] Wolverine can't smoke a cigar Krusty the clown's toy can't smoke a cigarette even though Krusty is not a role model I never said I was a role model that's just my impression of Krusty saying he's a role model for how much Disney seems obsessed with

[01:30:00] like conforming these films to these very standard sort of screenwriting narratives these sort of save the cat here's how you set up a character here's how they grow here's how they learn and change Pinocchio does not grow, learn, or change at all in this film

[01:30:14] the onus is entirely on Geppetto to learn how to love him basically, right? Pinocchio is just sort of like this weird, like, impartial guy getting like, you know kicked around from one plot point to another and I saw they screened Sleeping Beauty in 70mm

[01:30:37] the museum moving image here in New York City which is just like rarely for a studio that used to be famous for re-releasing their movies in theaters every year it is so hard to ever see like a film print of a Disney animated film screen now

[01:30:50] you watch Sleeping Beauty which is this like incredible, bizarre work of art and there's something to that movie which I also think exists in the original Pinocchio most of the first like 20 or 30 years of Disney animation where those movies like don't have credited screenwriters

[01:31:06] they were written through storyboard basically with a team of animators looking at whatever original material they were adapting and then going like okay, so what should the big sequences be? and then they work out the big sequences and so you get these things where like

[01:31:21] big narrative beats are sort of brushed over but you'll have like a 15 minute sequence of the three fairy godmothers in Sleeping Beauty trying to figure out how to build a cake because the animators are like well this is fun and interesting and visually compelling or whatever

[01:31:36] but now they go backwards and these sequences are kind of slavishly recreated and then dip it in with a bunch of we gotta get all that screenwriter-y stuff in there now we gotta put all the screenwriter-y bullshit on top of it right

[01:31:49] which like sucks the joy out of the things that as like a child you'd be eerily fascinated by where you're like this sequence is just weird movement and emotions and like physical comedy for 10 minutes with no plot drive yeah, nothing, I mean nothing

[01:32:05] nothing is made a meal of like the donkey stuff it's like as a child that'll haunt you forever and no kid is ever gonna remember the donkeys like they're not gonna be haunted by the donkey stuff nothing is going to haunt them from this movie

[01:32:21] they might like it it's so fast and so many of them get dumped in trap doors with smoke monsters and it's dark and smeary can someone remind me too because we mentioned Honest John and Pinocchio earlier does Pinocchio in the original movie Pinocchio sings

[01:32:43] an actor's life for me for a bit, right? yes I did a D.D. yeah he doesn't in this movie though oh right that's weird I don't think yeah, and I always thought that I have always thought like I'm wondering if this is what Walt Disney

[01:33:00] really believed at actors that they're suckers and they're very slight people and they're like mostly children being fooled into this like exploitative industry which he helped run but I just thought that was very strange because in this movie it's just like a fun little number

[01:33:19] that Honest John gets to do while like hopping down the street well and that they give Wish Upon A Star mostly to the fairy godmother the blue fairy rather than Jiminy Cricket I mean taking that song away from Pinocchio feels like them saying well he doesn't enjoy acting

[01:33:34] it's not like he's like falling into the allure of fame people just pushed him to do it but he has to he's like an unwilling child actor doesn't he have to? yeah that's so weird I think in the original cartoon he was mostly just mimicking

[01:33:47] like he's like just trying out like well this is what this guy told me to do and he seems nice right but then he like has to get the bug a little bit you know he has to be lured into temptation I could tell that he was

[01:34:04] sitting still in that phone call because there wasn't a loud chirp with each movement that he made that seems to be a lot of like Robert Zemachis' excitement over being able to do a modern Pinocchio is like oh we'll add in noises of clanking

[01:34:21] every time Pinocchio does anything we'll try to more realistically realize how annoying it would be for someone made out of wood to move a lot where are we going to get all of these cricket sounds like how are we going to be able to have enough variety

[01:34:39] well what if we tell a joke about Chris Pine and then just record what any audience does after we play oh fucking Christ this odd like I want it to just be exactly like the 1940s movie but also put as many meta modern day references

[01:34:58] and sort of just like self knowing like we're stepping out to comment on the movie from a modern perspective the Pine thing is beyond the pit it's all California Adventure Aladdin it's all like it has to make a topical reverence genius to make a topical reverence

[01:35:14] I think it's strange that there's one and that it's not something Honest John is doing a lot it makes it a weird island Influencer is sort of a new there's a few more Pine is the most egregious one I still did not like that that was hitting Twitter

[01:35:31] I saw that people griping about Influencer yeah I hate that if I can just contribute my opinion oh yo that's your take I gotta say I don't really like looking at Pinocchio no I'd rather not he's got a cartoon face he's got a cartoon he's cartoon face

[01:35:47] they decided not to go anything that looked like the rest of the characters and he has a painted on cartoon face from the original movie yeah a real sense of unease comes over me if I look at him too long that said if he had hit the dab

[01:36:04] I would have liked that I would have been 100% were you screaming that at the screen dab come on Pinocchio you're getting applause you're getting standing applause like you're at a film festival from this crowd hit the dab they'll go crazy I saw

[01:36:19] it's much like the Lion King remake on an opposite end where it's like if you make these lions look completely realistic you cannot make them expressive in the way that actually gives you the value of this film being animated there's the opposite problem with this movie

[01:36:34] where it's like he is too directly based off the original Disney design in a way that does not actually translate to quote unquote live action and I saw some animators I follow pointing out and it's a subtle thing but it is a big thing

[01:36:50] that fucks up his expressiveness because I'm just looking here like in our Zoom grid Mike's Zoom background is a photo of Paul Thomas Anderson next to a Photoshopped image of original Disney hand drawn Pinocchio with sunglasses and a goatee added to look like Robert Downey Jr.

[01:37:08] from the announcement of the time that Paul Thomas Anderson was going to make that movie I'm glad you said that because I was like why does Pinocchio have Gadar glasses on? It's RDJ Pinocchio and then below him below him David has his Zoom background is Pinocchio

[01:37:25] now looking at a couple turds so you're like looking at basically hand drawn Pinocchio and then CGI Pinocchio right on top of each other from my vision and a big thing that fucks up the Pinocchio design in this movie is that his eyes

[01:37:39] do not have circles around them that they are not outlined where it's like well yes because that's like an animation thing he's got outlines around every part of his body to differentiate where those things are and they're almost like well you wouldn't need to outline it

[01:37:52] because you could just paint white on those spots of the wood but it does make his face kind of just like slide off There's also something where if you know what I'm talking about the way his cheeks his cheeks have this unnatural kind of fuzzy line

[01:38:10] that's like if you're trying to make a gradient in Photoshop or a similar program and you don't do it exactly smoothly so there's kind of this jagged I wouldn't know how to put it in proper design terms but like his face looks like a badly done gradient

[01:38:27] that's like fuzzing out Also when they close up on his face and you see their approximation of wood grain the texture on his body and his skin his non-skin as it were I'm like it looks like the fucking wooden floors in the first Toy Story

[01:38:44] Like it truly looks like they just took like a medium res wallpaper from like Windows 95 and just mapped it over this model Yeah, it's he brings Geppetto back to life with a single tear at the end of the movie That close up and the close up on that

[01:39:03] is so weird Too close And then Geppetto spits up He gets rid of the water that was blocking his pipe and the spit has magic in it Tom Hanks spits magic spit And then at the beginning there's a weird before I think it's before the Blue Fairy

[01:39:23] actually appears in the room The way Pinocchio comes to life is that she from afar sprays a hose of magic onto a photo of a dead child Right Banks like a trick shot off of the dead child and onto Weird That's how he comes Instead of like

[01:39:44] a glow the way the first one did it The magic in this movie is like an MCU energy beam And then also she has to like use the photo as a reflective surface to like channel the magic energy into the right spot And fuse a little bit

[01:40:00] And God knows we need more movies with blue sky beams There have not been enough movies over the last decade with blue magic shooting up into or coming down from the sky And having weird like sparks flying off of it Children love it They love the sky beams

[01:40:16] Children love the digital photo process notice HDR They're going wild for it That's how these live action remakes keep getting remade But it's also one of these things When you talk about this movie being in such a hurry that it doesn't actually enjoy any of the beats

[01:40:31] It feels contractually obligated to go through from the original film It's this inexplicable thing about all these fucking remakes where you're like It's 30 minutes longer and yet feels rushed The things they are adding largely outside of things like like Puppet Lady feel like Where is this fat?

[01:40:49] I can feel it But it's not like they're tangibly adding any extra material You scan through it The moment Pinocchio comes to life in this movie is minute 19 Ooh I believe he- And isn't all of that Isn't everything except- Until, you know Jiminy probably gets in the house

[01:41:08] at minute- from minute 1 to 2 or something Right Everything else is just in that house You're in the house You're in Geppetto's workshop for so long And I guess part of it is just like we need to give Hank something to do There has to be something

[01:41:22] The second Pinocchio is born his character immediately becomes less important But the original movie I want to scrub through here but I believe he meets Honest John at minute 10 The original movie is probably only like 80 minutes Right? It's pretty short Oddly short You know what?

[01:41:39] I'm proven incredibly wrong here and this is wild and it defies logic He's making Pinocchio like minute 2 Pinocchio comes to life minute 16 in the original film Because he's around The puppet boy is around for a while Right That's the thing There's more of like

[01:41:57] Geppetto playing with the puppet and talking to him and connecting with him as the son he doesn't have rather than adding this sort of dead wife and dead child that Geppetto has never gotten over That is a good That is a good What they did in this version

[01:42:13] is they made Geppetto less of the saddest maniac They could which is what I like about Geppetto I mean Geppetto I understand why I would love to play Geppetto The more we talk about this I do realize that I do want to play Geppetto because he's

[01:42:30] out of his mind It's a sad character but like Oh, little puppet boy Doing the voice doing the all of that nonsense is fun and I do think they took something away from Tom Hanks who could have been able to portray a man at the edge

[01:42:45] at the edge of sanity Oh yeah He's not teetering Even in his despair he has it together too much You need that like Oh Oh Yes He's losing his mind whenever he talks Griffin, you've seen Griffin and David have you seen this clip Scott Unearthed This Clip

[01:43:00] years ago now on our podcast Oh, I was I was going to plug it at the end Oh, okay No, no, no By all means let's talk about it now Yeah, there's this like because if you're talking about Pinocchio material you prefer Mike, feel free to explain it

[01:43:15] but it's a great thing from the 70s It's the great actor Avery Schreiber doing in a Disney special Yes a version of Geppetto that is so out of his mind and he sings Talking to himself and talking to every other object and telling these odd stories

[01:43:32] about, oh, Pinocchio when I give you a bath you warp and when I give you a spanking oh, it gave me so many blisters And then he sings this bizarre song while making himself a new friend because Pinocchio isn't coming home for the holidays

[01:43:48] and then at the end the reveal is that he's made himself a new Geppetto himself who he kisses on the mouth I think This is fantastic It's fantastic We won't repost it after but check this clip out I love this Avery Schreiber is top Geppetto to me

[01:44:04] Yeah, but I yeah, they took that away from Tom to be able to play into a little bit more of like his damage and how he's being able to you know, work it out work out his issues And then it also feels like

[01:44:18] I mean, they cut back to him a couple times being like bereft and searching for Pinocchio fighting against the elements of the weather and whatever but none of it feels very active and then there is just this thing of like Geppetto gets swallowed by the whale

[01:44:32] Pinocchio has this moment where he has to decide to save him Pinocchio becomes a superhero at the last moment And then he's dead He's floating in a puddle The classic image to convey one being tired after a day's work on twitter.com Right Floating Dead floating Pinocchio corpse

[01:44:51] People like Oh, FML Right, right I direct this question to David because I know Jason, Mike and Scott know this exists and have talked about it before David, are you at all familiar with the existence of Geppetto the 2000 TV movie? No, I am not What is that?

[01:45:09] There was a live action Disney Pinocchio movie done for the wonderful world of Disney I'm vaguely aware of this because I think I knew that Julia Louis-Dreyfus had played the Blue Fairy Correct True Carry plays Geppetto It was original songs written by Stephen Schwartz

[01:45:26] It was a wholly original musical that was not like obsessively beholden to the original Disney film It was designed to be a Dick Van Dyke and Julie Andrews reunion with Julie Andrews playing the Blue Fairy What? And Dick Van Dyke as Geppetto That was the whole existence

[01:45:42] of this project And it got far along Julie Andrews had her throat surgery couldn't perform and they like decided to do it with sitcom stars instead Right It is not a great movie How do you get to that? What a strange leap Yes, it's bizarre But it's like

[01:45:55] a full musical and it does feel like that one sort of is like we're gonna focus more on Geppetto We're gonna make Geppetto an active character The hunt for Pinocchio This father's quest like Finding Nemo style where we can sort of like bifurcate the narrative

[01:46:11] and show both of them going on these journeys until they reunite at the end I kind of auditioned some of this the 2022 Pinocchio to see if my wife wanted to watch more of it She bailed at five minutes Understandably, I did it solo But at that decision point

[01:46:28] we were like Oh, we gotta put on We gotta do Drew Carey, right? We like dove for the song Since I Gave My Heart Away A ballad belted out by Drew Carey I think it's a better song I agree than any of this Yes That movie is better

[01:46:44] Even as a child like a 10 year old 11 year old whatever who was obsessed with the Drew Carey show I thought that movie was not very good Yeah, sure It is inarguably better than this It weirdly feels like Drew Carey had more of a take on Geppetto

[01:47:00] in that he didn't go for the lunacy of what you're talking about, Mike He didn't go full Avery Schreiber Right, right, right He actually was like I'm gonna play this like a real guy I'm gonna play the emotional honesty of this man being bereft

[01:47:12] at the thought of his child being out in the world in danger And Drew Carey can't really sing He put a lot more energy into those songs than Hanks who's just like I fundamentally refuse to even attempt to hit any notes on any of these

[01:47:29] Your songs will be spoken staccato Rapped It means so much to Drew Carey You can tell And it's really It's sweet as he tries to like My heart away Yes He cannot get there but the song is heartfelt and you know he loves to Here's full declaration

[01:47:48] Better songs in that Since I gave my heart away The Geppetto He sings this weird song Today That I think is better than anything in this one And then there's this weird Pinocchio and the Emperor of the Night non-Disney filmation cartoon from 87 Yes Where Ricky Lee Jones

[01:48:05] sings a bizarre creepy song that is also better Better than anything There's been a lot of actually solid Pinocchio songs in Not the One We Know No, the Stephen Schwartz songs in Geppetto are pretty good Other castings in Geppetto by the way, David Brent Spiner plays Tromboli Cool

[01:48:23] That sounds good He's good I guess Usher Raymond plays like the ringmaster of Pleasure Island Of course He still does to this day Honestly If you think of, you know just the entertainment world as Pleasure Island I want to tell you that Scott Grimes was the voice

[01:48:40] of Pinocchio in that 1987 version and James Earl Jones was the Emperor of the Night Just look that up Wow That's pretty cool Yeah Scott Grimes again? Who's Scott Grimes? He was in like Party of Five and ER He's like a guy I don't know

[01:48:57] He must have just been child Scott Grimes Are there any final thoughts on this movie from any of us? Well, you know I knew from my memory as a child that this would be a little unnerving and I know Scott's not the biggest fan of Pinocchio

[01:49:16] So I wanted to try to make it a little more palatable So I fed a prompt into an AI bot to see what would happen This is all the rage now These AI bots You can tell them to make art And it didn't

[01:49:33] It didn't exactly go as planned My prompt was Peter Pan and Pinocchio eating ice cream sundaes in a Fry's Electronics parking lot So something for me Ice cream, something for Scott Fry's Electronics Very obsessed with this And another thing for Scott Pinocchio His favorite character

[01:49:53] in all of fiction Well, Pinocchio and Pan Yeah, so this is what I got Oh, these faces The eyes The eye fire What's wrong with the eyes? They're all melting What's wrong with these boys? It's the AI thing They always look like they're melting I don't know why

[01:50:15] Jason, please text us something so we can post it on our social media when this comes out These are modern freak boy children They're likely the background actors in the Pleasure Island sequence But why does that black and white one

[01:50:29] Why does one kind of look like John Mulaney? That's a good question We didn't even mention our badges either I forgot Well, of course This movie was the premiere S ticket E ticket Disney Plus Day debut Of course, the national holiday of Disney Plus Day

[01:50:53] This was the big original film And Jason went through the trouble of mailing David and I Disney Plus Day pins which he said he had lying around He texted me to say Can I please get this from you? I'm not going to send them to Scott and Mike

[01:51:09] And we can do a bit about them feeling left out Check out this swag Is this the bit? Are we doing the bit now? Scott and Mike, I gave you these badges at the end of November 2021 when I was freshly back from Disney World

[01:51:25] And I just assumed you would have been wearing them in excitement of celebrating this year's Disney Plus, Mike, you just moved and had a baby Surely you know where this button is Turn over the calendar Disney Plus Day is circled in blue Oh yeah

[01:51:41] A button that I ended up with five or six of them because my family went like Do you want these? I don't want to take this back I don't want to fit this in my luggage Hey freak, this is something you'd like

[01:51:55] And then I saw pictures from this year's Disney Plus Day And sure enough they were giving out the very same buttons with the new date on it Right, this one just says November 12, 2021 So now it's a historic artifact I just want to point out

[01:52:10] I appreciate you taking the time and energy to send it, it was absolutely worth the bit Included in the envelope was also a note handwritten on personalized Jason Sheridan stationary I do have stationary, yes What? I want a letter I'm going to show this at the screen

[01:52:29] But the note just says There was the card with the pin attached to it And then this note card Which just, a very formal Jason Sheridan and a very elegant font at the top of the card And then it just says Griffin, cherish this Signed, Jason Sheridan

[01:52:45] Now I have to be honest I might lose this button The card I will cherish I will cherish this David, I... Griffin explained that you were freshly back from Toronto Very true I over explained on the card I sent to you I probably over explained

[01:53:06] I should have just said Put this button on when we were It's fine, it's fine It made it seem more sincere though Which was funny Like you were just like explaining the entire thing to me In no form You should have just written cherish this

[01:53:20] I would have been more Because I opened it Minutes after coming home from Toronto And I drove home from Toronto So it's kind of in a daze What is this? I had a feeling that would be your mental state It was great You would get home

[01:53:35] Kiss your child goodnight And then crack open an envelope from me With a promotional Disney Plus button Yeah, dated to November 12, 2021 Of course, Disney Plus This is amazing And I think that If we feel like this movie loses magic and luster Because of a lack of physical tangibility

[01:53:58] It's so lost in the digital realm And I love that Jason created a moment of magic By using the physical mail That's right Going back to something that they Would have used to make Pinocchio in the 1940s Mailing out contracts and such

[01:54:14] Should have mentioned this during the stamps.com ad read I know, I know Would have been smart Thank you Jason and Louis DeJoy Now, David we're in a slightly weird position Because this movie obviously did not get a theatrical release

[01:54:32] And the box office weekend for when it came out Is literally just the weekend we just experienced It's the most recent weekend We're recording this on a quicker turnaround than most episodes Well because of, you know, that's how it goes It's a new release But here's the thing

[01:54:47] Yeah So I will We're going to do the box office game for this weekend Because I challenge you to name the top five movies at the box office this weekend It might be tough Probably can But it's a little tough And then I will quiz you on

[01:55:00] The most recent Nielsen data on streaming Which unfortunately is from mid-August This is my suggestion But it basically takes a month to tabulate these things So it'll take a month before we find out how many They always do the weird tabulation of like

[01:55:14] 500 million hours of Pinocchio were watched Right, right, exactly They don't measure number of viewers They measure number of hours So movies are always at a disadvantage versus series Because they'll be like You know, 800 hours of Stranger Things were watched And it's like right across four seasons now, whatever

[01:55:34] 28.6 billion hours of viewing The Gray Man Right Don't knock the metric that clearly also sells ads on this podcast Goddammit Millions of hours of blank check have been listened to Over seven years or whatever Anyway Box office Number one at the box office is Barbarian That's right

[01:55:54] I want to see it I'm going to see it tomorrow maybe Have any of you guys seen Barbarian? I haven't fitted in yet Yeah, I've heard very good things I've heard good things I've heard I'm not supposed to know anything about it Yeah

[01:56:06] Now this is the only thing I want to say about it It's not about the movie It's about that phenomenon, right? I find it very interesting I saw successive days Monday and Tuesday or whatever Monday of this week I saw The Invitation And I saw Barbarian

[01:56:23] I complained in our last episode, David That The Invitation trailer ruins every single plot beat of the movie Including what I guessed was going to be the last shot of the film It basically is the last shot of the film Except there's like a end coda

[01:56:41] That was clearly shot three weeks before the movie came out Okay At some sort of studio note That doesn't really add anything to it But that's a movie where they like didn't know how to market it Outside of telling you every single thing that happens in the movie

[01:56:55] Because that movie is a real slow burn Where if they had found any creative way to market it It would be kind of fun watching it not knowing where it's going I do think the movie kind of falls apart when it gets to its twists

[01:57:07] But I think the slow burn of that movie is actually pretty fucking good In contrast, Barbarian was like Everyone assumed probably going to Hulu Because it was like a Fox, you know, pick up Disney They're bumping all these films to Hulu

[01:57:20] It screened very well at like Fantastic Fest I think Some horror film festivals And they just went like You know what? Fuck it. Let's put it in theaters This seems to have good word of mouth They really only started advertising it like three weeks ago

[01:57:34] And their entire advertising campaign was pretty much Don't know anything about this movie Find out as little as possible Everything was as oblique as possible All the messaging was don't even watch the trailer Know nothing It opened bigger than The Invitation

[01:57:49] Now it's like one of the worst box office weekends of the year We're dealing with like a sort of depleted marketplace right now for theaters But like it opened at 10 million dollars for a marketing campaign That was basically we're not going to tell you anything

[01:58:01] Don't even know the setup of this movie Does it have a big realistic pile of shit in it? It does. That is the big twist Yeah How scary is it? How scary if I was to go see this? It's fairly scary

[01:58:16] It's one of those horror films that I would argue is more upsetting than scary If that makes sense Sure But especially the phenomenon of not knowing where it's going Does add an incredible amount of unease Because it's not a movie where you can really predict it

[01:58:30] And so in all of its build up Which it does take its time with You're just sort of on edge by like I have no idea what they're setting up here I might stick to see how they run or confess flesh No, fletch? How do you say it?

[01:58:44] Confess fletch? Confess, fletch It's not flesh, no Confess fletch Seems like the tagline of the invitation from what I've seen of the trailer Yeah a little bit David, number two at the box office? Number two is a new release It is, I believe, an Indian film

[01:59:04] You probably don't know the name of it I don't But you've probably heard of it It's an Indian language fantasy action adventure film called Brahmastra Part 1 Shiva Which looks pretty cool Am I wrong in thinking that Disney released this as well? Yes, you are correct

[01:59:24] It was distributed by Walt Disney in America So like theaters Yeah, like first weekend of September Disney having the one and two movie For like very on Disney properties Things that were considered niche Selling tickets So yeah, Barbarian number one Brahmastra Part 1 number two Number three, Griffin

[01:59:45] Top Gun Maverick? I still haven't written it No, that's number four Oh, Bullet Train Bullet Train is number three I need to ride the train It's a perfectly entertaining movie It is really benefiting from the fact that so few things are getting released now

[01:59:59] Where it just keeps on hanging on It's inching to a hundo And of course Top Gun Maverick has made $700 million And then number five is The Invitation Which you just mentioned It's a pretty boring list And that's what's out Pinocchio, if Disney had put out Pinocchio

[02:00:15] Probably would have made an easy 40 mil Right? But whatever Yeah, I don't know The first hour of Invitation I was like why isn't anyone talking about this movie being good And the last half hour I understood why no one talks about the movie

[02:00:27] It's not disastrous but it just sort of loses all momentum But you do have to think that Pinocchio would have made some money You would have done fine Being released in theaters right now Look, I don't know I don't get it Me, I don't get it But listen

[02:00:39] The streaming list from August 14th, 2022 The number one show is The top five, they're all Netflix I'm just going to spoil that for you right away The number one is Netflix's big show of the summer Very expensive show based on a very popular series Stranger Things or Sandman

[02:00:58] Stranger Things is number three Sandman is number one So you'd think Netflix would be happy with that I haven't heard about Sandman season two yet But if it was number one A perfect indication of our current entertainment industry dystopia Is Neil Gaiman will not stop tweeting please

[02:01:16] For people to watch Sandman and leave positive reviews Because they still haven't gotten a season two pick up And it's just like You have one of the most beloved comic book series of all time You have one of the most famous living authors

[02:01:30] Who is using his massive social media platform To still grassroots advertise A giant budget production Of a series on the most popular streaming service Or I guess maybe it just got supplanted by Disney Plus It's still the most popular It is the number one show in the globe

[02:01:52] It has pretty much held onto that position for a month And he's just like they still won't give us a green light for season two You're like what is the metric for success now? I don't know Isn't it nice fellow podcasters

[02:02:04] That when there's a new episode of your podcast We all get to say Hey check out the new episode of the podcast As opposed to if we're involved in a television project It's like please please dear god For my future and my life and my family Please

[02:02:20] It's running well even But they won't do it I made this joke to you guys recently That don't you feel grateful That we all got into podcasting at a good moment And have found some success with our shows So that that stable career

[02:02:37] Can support our hobby of working in film and television It's truly what it feels like It is what it is Yeah it's what it is It's what it is Our plan were definitely Carefully constructed And non-accidental plan worked Right Yeah and the now like

[02:03:01] I need to get something going Should I get a new reel Or new head shots Or make a short film Now you're just sitting there Like with a paper and pencil going Should I do another podcast Absolutely Yep Should I triple down on this

[02:03:19] Alright alright so number one salmon Number three is Stranger Things Number two is a film from February That debuted on Netflix And it's still in there It's new on Netflix this week And one billion people watched it or whatever Sorry sorry okay It was a theatrically released film

[02:03:36] That is now exploding on Netflix It's from February Can you tell me the genre Action adventure It was a hit It's not The Lost City Oh it's Uncharted It's Uncharted I saw this People were like four please Blowing up on Netflix Not only did that movie surprisingly

[02:03:55] Over perform in theaters But people are hungry for it On Netflix as well At TIFF I was told by someone Who knows what he's talking about That The Northman Which of course was sort of you know A slightly disappointing box office right It made like 30 million dollars Yeah

[02:04:12] I was told that thing was such a sensation On VOD And everyone is basically like You know ripping champagne bottles With joy over The Northman So you don't know how these things Are going to play It is this thing as studios are backing off

[02:04:27] On the idea of making expensive movies Only for streaming Where it is like If you just go through the motions Of giving these things A proper theatrical release Whether it is a hit or a failure It almost always makes the movie More desirable once it lands

[02:04:43] On the streaming service It just makes it feel More real Legitimate Like Uncharted is running circles Around Greyman Right Number four Is a Netflix original film Purple Hearts Starring an Oscar winning actor No I have not seen it I think it's an action comedy

[02:05:03] It's got sort of a supernatural element If you don't know what this is I'll tell you but Is the actor Jamie Foxx He sure is It is I don't know what it is beyond that It's Day Shift It's Day Shift It's from one of the like John Wick

[02:05:21] Stunt protege guys And it's Jamie Foxx and Dave Franco Hunting vampires That all sounds right Number I have not seen it Number five Is I have to look it up Because I don't know what it is Okay It's a romantic drama Streaming series It has four seasons

[02:05:43] It's from the noble country That I just left Canada Oh boy Great country Lovely people Romantic streaming drama Four seasons A place where There was a heat wave in Toronto And I was told this Because the Canadians kept saying Oh it's It's 20 degrees all the time

[02:06:00] And I looked that up And it means 72 degrees And that was the heat wave But no This is set in a small town Huh It's Canadian Who's in it Avril Lavigne You're not gonna You're not gonna have heard of this It's called Virgin River Yeah absolutely not

[02:06:19] Never heard of it I mean this is the shit I'm talking about Where I'm just like Like Purple Hearts Seems to have outperformed Grey Man Right? Yeah no Grey Man not on this list Yeah I don't know What's doing better? Purple Hearts Grey Man Or Red Notice Right

[02:06:36] And like I mean it's a gift Not an inexpensive movie But probably costs one fifth One fourth of what Grey Man cost Right And then you're telling me that like Virgin Island is still in the top Virgin River god damn it I couldn't even remember what it's called

[02:06:55] I'm gonna give you the rest of the top ten And then we should be done Yeah But you've also From Netflix You also have Lock and Key You have the The Cursed Child You know Esther first kill Coco Melon Oh of course

[02:07:08] Which I'm sure people have heard of I'm avoiding putting in front of my Avoid it Avoid it Yes I'm avoiding it too And you also Straight up on Netflix Number eight NCIS Just fucking NCIS Still keep watching that Always Is Lightyear on the list?

[02:07:22] There are two Disney Plus properties One Number seven is Bluey Which is the best kids TV show Around and is wonderful And just dropped a third season So that's probably why it's on the list And then at number ten In its first week of release probably

[02:07:38] Is fucking Lightyear Stinking up the joint I mean Still had seven Seven hundred million minutes viewed Or whatever But that's the thing It's like For Lightyear as one film To chart that high even Like it comes out the middle of August Right?

[02:07:56] Means that that thing is clearly doing Much better on Disney Plus Than it did in theaters Uh yeah I mean you know It's a movie that actually feels designed For Disney Plus But maybe But Pinocchio Even with everything we've said Does it still kind of feel like

[02:08:09] Pinocchio should have been in the I guess I remain confused by the Disney Plus The only things that seem Like I looked up AMC Showtime's Like last night For early this week And there's like hardly any And it seems like the stuff that Is keeping the lights on

[02:08:27] Are Bollywood releases And Dragon Ball Z Super Hero Yes Yeah And then that same press conference That live streamed hours long press conference They announced Pinocchio Peter Pan and Wendy Hocus Pocus 2 And Disenchanted Are all going to Disney Plus And it was this moment of just like

[02:09:16] Maybe the theaters don't come back Maybe we gotta put more things on Disney Plus And the model is increasingly feeling A little foolhardy I don't know I want someone to sit me down And tell me off the record How this all fucking works

[02:09:28] But I just don't know why you wouldn't do The incanto thing of just like Look make your money for six weeks That's the point Make whatever free money you can make And then put it on your streaming service Right But who cares I don't know

[02:09:40] It's also just like with DCPs and shit You're not having to like Strike up physical prints And basically they can press The release window enough That the thing they always used to Complain about which is like Having to promote the movie twice Having to advertise it in theaters

[02:09:54] And then advertise it again Six to eight months later When you put it on digital Or DVD or whatever It's like no you promote it once You put it in theaters For like fucking six weeks And then it's on your streaming service

[02:10:05] And you just do a new update On social media Should we release this episode Into theaters? We should We will Solidarity with the chains That we care about If we talk to the manager At the local Burbank AMC I feel like maybe we could get it done

[02:10:19] We could probably All of this having been said also This is the first episode Where I can acknowledge I'm the voice of Pip the Chipmunk In Disenchanted coming to Disney Plus Thanksgiving That's right It's the first host Disney employee right here For now

[02:10:32] Until they hear the rest of this episode Yeah seriously Look every other announcement That happened at D23 I thought was great And I have nothing mocking to say I love my corporate Unlawful relationship with Disney And I hope to be playing Pip the Chipmunk for years to come

[02:10:49] No but I think that film's very fun And I feel no regrets About not playing Jiminy Cricket In this film As much as I was excited At the idea of playing The wisecracking animal sidekick In a Disney film I feel like I got a better one

[02:11:02] A new one A different With less Like the shoes to fill Weren't as weighty And the What if Pip Showed up for a minute What do you think Pip would say If he saw a wooden boy Walking around? Jumping jelly sticks His famous catchphrase It registered with me

[02:11:24] I was like wow He's got a I like that Jumping jelly sticks You know it's a gift As an actor You see jumping jelly sticks On a page And it's truly a gift There's no way to mess that line up Jason, Scott, Mike So long overdue

[02:11:39] Thank you for being here Such an honor It won't be a piece of shit I promise I can't promise that Maybe it will be I was thinking how It's so nice to have you guys You guys have both been great On the show And if anyone who's listening

[02:11:54] Who doesn't know our show It's about theme parks And rides That we love David was great on a couple years ago Griffin's been on it It's nice of you to say I'm no Griffin Newman When it comes to podcasts I did my best With my challenge

[02:12:05] Well he does Griffin does have this elevated title Of accidental PTR legend Because a video played At the wrong time At a chaotic live show And thus we Just gave you a title And now I'm gunning To be the first PTR legend To become a Disney legend

[02:12:20] In that order Oh you do have the fodder To potentially Wow wow wow It's a long term plan It's a long term crossover Yeah I gotta go full gab But I'm working on it One's at least One's probably like 10-15 years off At minimum Unless Pip just like

[02:12:37] Pip pops Pip pops We owe Pip pops But I was thinking How it's funny that You've been on the show many times And we've had you on To talk about some of the greatest Rides that have ever Some of the greatest Accomplishments of man Terminator 2 3D

[02:12:52] And Toy Story Mania Muppet Vision 3D Muppet Vision 3D Yeah yeah My favorite movie Some of the best topics That exist in the world Of our podcast And you had us on To talk about Pinocchio 2020 Now I just I wanna address this for one moment

[02:13:07] I just wanna address this For one moment We're ending this episode But it must be addressed Okay We're very long overdue In having you guys on the show To the point where A lot of listeners Of both of our shows Were going like

[02:13:18] What the fuck is the deal here They've had Griffin on So many times They're clearly friends with him Even David's been on podcasts The ride at this point Why hasn't it happened In our dumb Overly organized Sort of like spreadsheet mind For so long We were like

[02:13:31] We should save them For when we do Gore Verbinski Because getting them on Pirates either one For each of the trilogy Or all three together One felt like Oh that's like a perfect one For many reasons We probably are not gonna do The Pirates of the Caribbean movies

[02:13:44] Anytime Indeed Anytime in the foreseeable future No it's not happening It's not happening People should kind of Accept that I think Absolutely It's sad but true We're gonna do Lone Ranger right Well that's not Obviously You gotta It's gonna be a Ben's choice

[02:13:59] But I threw out to you guys At the beginning of this year I said promise I'm getting you on Before the end of the year And I like outlined A couple different options To you guys At Margaritaville And Times Square Oh yes Earlier this year

[02:14:11] You came with business To handle yeah Yes And I said like Here are our options You guys can split up And pick individual movies You want across Like the mini series We have planned Right Or all three of you On Avatar 2 All three of you On Pinocchio

[02:14:28] And so We did land That's all I wanna say Avatar was potential No you're absolutely right I don't wanna make it sound Like I forced you guys To take the shit stick It was like You guys have talked a lot You Scott in particular About how creepy

[02:14:41] You find Pinocchio As a concept As a character It felt like a way To comment on like The state of Disney movies Of course both of you Being daddies now James is a dad We're daddies now Jason's aforementioned status As a wooden boy But yes

[02:14:56] We will have you on again Either together Or separately Or whatever form And hopefully You get a better movie Next time We also felt like At least I felt like The mantle of Avatar 2 Of blank check Avatar 2 That I mean You guys probably feel it Are you wondering

[02:15:11] Are you thinking You maybe shouldn't Even attempt Your own bar I wanna It's stressful I wanna psych you out For how You should be stressed I've once seen people saying, it's been five years since the blank check Avatar episode. No one even remembers it anymore.

[02:15:25] It was a big hit at the time, but that episode has been totally forgotten. No one wants to hear an episode on Avatar 2. That episode is gonna bomb. Who even remembers the names of these hosts? No one remembers them. Can you even produce the name Griffin Newman?

[02:15:40] Like nobody knows that. Nobody knows that. How do we get up? Nobody knows that. That episode just released in China and became a hit all over again. This is my argument. I think when people see what we have hooked up for that episode,

[02:15:53] I think they forget how much it was an experience at the original episode launch. And I think it's gonna be replicated again with this one. People cried after that one and they wanted to go back to the episode. Yeah, people like wanted to live there forever.

[02:16:06] They wanted to live in the episode. And there was concern there would be too much of our nonsense if we did Avatar just every five minutes. Sivako, this podcast is a fat fortress. Mighty Akron, copyright by Carlson. Yeah. Everyone should listen to the podcast The Ride.

[02:16:24] My favorite podcast. We're only friends because I was such a big fan of your guys' show and I harangued you into having me on and then over years we've become actual friends. I'm so happy about that and beyond the friendship too

[02:16:38] because this was a great example of like, wow, Griffin was so great on the show. I should check out what he does. What is this blank check about? And oh my God, guys, I love the show. I'm so thrilled to have been on the show.

[02:16:49] What a wonderful gift even just being a fan and then getting to be on it and all the hanging out. Yeah, and if you're looking to try podcast The Ride as we said, episodes Dave and I have been on

[02:17:01] can be entry points but also as you mentioned before, if you feel like I'm not a theme park person, this show feels, you know, unexplainable to me. You guys do just end up going into a lot of corners of pop culture marginalia that I think our listeners

[02:17:20] are the types to be interested in as well. It became clear pretty early on with the podcast that like theme parky vibes have permeated a lot of other pop culture and a lot of other stuff we like, you know, is copacetic. Like movies.

[02:17:36] Like McGruff the Crime Dog's movies. Movies according to Martin Scorsese. Yes, McGruff the Crime Dog's albums. Music career, yeah. Right, the Ninja Trolls coming out of your shelter or things like that. The Roofers Cafe. Yes, everyone should listen and sign up for The Second Gate and Club 3.

[02:17:54] Oh hey, the Club 3 shout. Oh thank you so much. And Google the phrase Mighty Akron. Google image it and you will learn that that is an Avatar related phrase that Mike Carlson is 100% responsible for. If they say it in the movie. Oh man. Oh man.

[02:18:14] I know I said this. I've said this before already that this is not, yeah, this is me, not them. Next week tune in for The Woman King. Yeah, which is good. The new Gina Prince-Bythewood movie which you like a lot. Maybe you won't like it.

[02:18:27] I thought it was great. I imagine I will love it. I love her movies. I feel like the critics I usually agree with including yourself think it rips. I'm excited to see it. Probably tomorrow night I will go see it at the time we're recording this.

[02:18:41] Tune in for that next week and then week after that we're back on the Kubrick train with Dr. Strangelove. Thank you all for listening. Please remember to rate, review and subscribe. Thank you to Marie Barty for our social media. Pat Rounds, Joe Bowen for our artwork.

[02:18:56] Lane Montgomery and The Great American all for our theme song. We always thank Agent Akia and Alex Baron for editing but today I also just want to shout out that AJ has ably jumped in to produce this episode because Ben was out of town this week

[02:19:11] and AJ has just been silently and respectfully keeping the train running this whole time sending me ad copy. Nice job AJ. So yeah, double thank you to AJ. This week you can go to patreon.com slash blank check for blank check special features.

[02:19:24] Do all sorts of bonus stuff including the aforementioned Confess Fletch. This month we will be talking about- Did I say it? You sure that's how you say it? Confess to the Fletch. Confess Fletch sounds like a Hellraiser sequel subtitle. Candyman. It's Candyman. It's Farewell to the Fletch.

[02:19:42] That's Farewell to the Fletch, yeah. We're doing that. We're doing Roger Moore Bond movies. You can go blank check pod for links to all sorts of other nerdy shit. And as always, holy smokey, yo.