Se7en with Mike Mitchell & Nick Wiger

[00:00:01] Blank Check with Griffin and David Blank Check with Griffin and David Don't shy with Blank Check You're no messiah. You're a movie of the week. You're a fucking podcast at best. Very good. Do you have more? I don't know, I figured you might have more here.

[00:00:31] What's in the pod? Yeah. Say, wait, I thought all you did was kill innocent podcasts, David. Wait, I thought all you did was kill innocent podcasts. Innocent. Is that supposed to be funny? I really thought I was going to guess this one. Oh, oh, really? Okay.

[00:00:49] I had it locked and loaded. I thought you were going to do the final line of the movie. Ernest Hemingway once wrote, The world is a fine podcast and worth fighting for. I agree with the second part. That's fucking good, Wiges.

[00:01:03] Or the podcast is a fine place and worth fighting for. I don't know a lot of ways to play it. Worth podcasting. You know what that is right now, Wiger? That's the juice of a man who out of solidarity with the Writer's Guild strike

[00:01:14] has not been writing intros for his own podcast for several months. That's true. You have excess energy. I feel depleted. And why are you depleted? I just finished doing too many shows at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. My brain is trash. Too many.

[00:01:29] Too many. Can I say it officially? Too many shows. Too many shows. Yeah, you're Josh Hartnett at the end of 30 Days and 30 Nights. Mitch, he went 40 days. And we were talking Hartnett. Mitch, we were talking Hartnett for like 10 minutes. This is insane. Before you showed up.

[00:01:47] So Mitch was understandably late. No one's mad at him. He's dealing with some intestinal distress. It happens to everyone. I want to say actually. Did you not want me to say that? No, no, no. It's fine. Wiger, don't speak for me when you say understandable.

[00:01:59] If there's anything I'm not sympathetic to, it's people being late, not communicating why they're late because of stomach issues. These are things I have no experience with and I detest in other people. Go on. But we were before you arrived, we were talking.

[00:02:14] We had an extended conversation about Josh Hartnett and specifically cited 40 Days and 40 Nights as maybe like, is that his big movie? Is that what he's known for? Was that his peak? Is that a depressing peak? What do you think Hartnett's signature film is?

[00:02:28] What's his signature film is the term? The Faculty. Is he in that? Oh, fuck. That's the answer. Is it though? Yes, that's the answer. That's wild. That's one of his first things. But it is. That's what he was cashing checks on.

[00:02:40] This is why we need you here. This is why we couldn't do this episode. It was great to arrive here and then there was a group of beautiful people I don't know sitting outside the bathroom. Which is great.

[00:02:52] They all had old timey ear trumpets pointed towards the bathroom. When you walked out of the bathroom, they scurried to put their empty water glasses back on the shelf. As if they hadn't been using them to listen on the other side of the door.

[00:03:07] I was already depressed and I walked in and I was like, oh, you gotta be fucking kidding me. Because you told me that there was, first of all, you texted me and said there's only one bathroom today. Which I was like, oh my God, this is awful.

[00:03:17] And then just seeing the crew here, I was like, god damn it. I'm just gonna look like a monster. That's all I'm afraid of. For listeners, Mitch and I are at our podcast network's HeadGum's office in LA and we're doing this remotely, but we're together in LA.

[00:03:31] And the studio is uncharacteristically bustling today. Which means that there's more than like me, you and Casey in here basically. It's the post outside. I don't know if we want to say who it was, but one of our guests recently broke our toilet.

[00:03:48] Yes, he did. He did. Not with digestive force. No. With his hands by mistake. And we really should introduce the podcast. Yeah, this is Blank Check with Griffin and David. I'm Griffin. I'm David. It's a podcast about filmographies, directors who have massive success early on in their careers

[00:04:04] and are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion projects they want. And sometimes those checks clear. Sometimes they bounce baby. This is a mini series on the films of David Fincher. It's called The Curious Pot of Benjamin Butt Cast. That's right.

[00:04:15] Today we're talking about the movie Seven with the doughboys, Nick Weiger. Mike Mitchell. So recently a guest broke our toilet. Yes. Yeah. I want to get that out of the way as quickly as possible. The intro so I could get back to the most important thing.

[00:04:26] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Our broken toilet, which has since been fixed. But we record in like a windowless box. Yeah, it's a big box. Right. Now, a luxury of it is we do have our own bathroom. Yes, right there. But it's right there. We're pointing right over here.

[00:04:40] So if you're going to the bathroom, you're kind of going to the bathroom in the room. Basically. Oh, dear God. It's a guest on an episode yet to come, but has been recorded already. Maybe we'll reveal who it is after that episode's come out.

[00:04:51] But he said, can I use the bathroom? We said, sure. Walked in, closed the door, and then we heard, whoops! And like a crashing sound. It was truly like a cartoon, like, whoops! Yep. Yep. And then him going, what's happening?

[00:05:06] Essentially as the toilet lid fell to the ground. Right. Like absurd Mr. Bean effects. Yeah. And then like five minutes later, he walked out and said, your toilet is broken. It was good. It was good. Was it a friend at least? Yeah, it was. I'd say past tense.

[00:05:25] No! Friend forever. Yes. No, a future guest. A future guest. Nick and Mitch, thank you for doing this. What a treat. I love this podcast. Thank you for having us. The four of us have become, well, the two of us with the two of you

[00:05:40] have become friends via podcasting, I feel like. That's true. And that's a nice little benefit of this medium. The Blank Dough text thread. Yep, it's a great text thread. A popping social scene. I think so. Yeah, a lot of goss dropping in the Blank Dough,

[00:05:58] but also a lot of takes. Sure. I told you Gran Turismo is good yesterday. I said I liked Gran Turismo. Huge. Blew up in the text thread. I need to see that. I need to see it, right? Yeah, no, I do think the Blank Dough,

[00:06:11] I've said this before, but I think the greatest utility of the Blank Dough text thread is it's become a great place for us to type things out instead of putting them on Twitter. Yes, 100%. Basically weaning me off of social media. Right, and sometimes it's because it's spicy,

[00:06:29] you don't want to share it on main. And other times you're just like, this is so banal. This is the kind of banal thing I would tweet six years ago and I'd be fine. And if I did today, people would yell at me for reasons.

[00:06:38] I cannot even fathom. Right, yeah. Our buddy Evan Susser, the commissioner of the Doughboys Tournament of Champions, for people who know our podcast, a good friend, and he has been doing bespoke memes just for text threads, which I feel like is the next step of that.

[00:06:54] Yeah, that's good. Of like, I'm not going to put this meme on social media, I'm just going to send this to like three friends. Yes. My friends Austin Rodrigues and Yoni Lothan, who I was on a UCB sketch team with for years,

[00:07:04] would do that in our group text. It was very impressive. The speed and the effort for things that would only be seen by 10 people maximum. Right. So here's the table setting I wanted. When the burger hits. I was just wondering what his memes are. When the burger hits.

[00:07:21] So speaking of memes, there's the account Doughboys Memes. I don't know who runs this. Oh, right, yes. But someone who just makes Doughboys memes. Tried to follow me on Instagram recently, that got a delete. You can't see my pics. Okay. No, but yes, I am aware of him.

[00:07:39] And good job whoever he is. Or she. Sure. Or they. Absolutely. We just yesterday, as of the time of this recording, announced that we were doing Fincher. And the Doughboys meme account posted a picture of Mark Zuckerberg in the deposition room in social network saying if you,

[00:08:01] what was the fucking, Doughboys when they hear that Blank Check is doing the Finch man. Right. If you wanted to be Doughboys, you'd have invented Doughboys. Correct. Something like that. You guys got there first. This is the table setting I want to do.

[00:08:14] We kind of stole the whole thing from you. We stole your format. Well, here's the thing. We decided to do David Fincher on this podcast because he is certainly a Blank Check director and he, you know, has a new film out this year called The Killer.

[00:08:29] You guys decided to do it because because May, the name of the month May sounds like May. I think we need to back up even further here. Go ahead. There are a number of guys on the list of like Fincher and Tarantino and whoever

[00:08:45] where people go, how is it possible you guys have been doing this show this long and you haven't covered Blank? Right. The guys who are so canonically huge, especially I think the guys who are really big with our generation, the sort of 90s film bro auteurs.

[00:08:58] And for some of them, it was like, well, it's good to have in the back pocket. So if we do a couple esoteric people in a row, we know we can have like a bigger heavy hitter guy. And also if they've got something interesting. Yes.

[00:09:11] But with some of them also, we would get into the conversation where we're like, is it worth doing Fincher? He's so discussed. Is there anything we have to add to the conversation? We both love him and his movies. But sometimes we're like, fuck, I want to do Fincher.

[00:09:26] And other times we're like, maybe we never need to do Fincher. So you guys start doing, you did one one-off Fincher episode at first. Was Gone Girl the first one? So yeah, we started saying, and I don't remember the genesis of it,

[00:09:38] but we were saying we loved a Finch man. We would say that as like a, that was like a guy, that we loved a Finch man guy. Yeah, it was like a Northern European. We really didn't want to say where we were from.

[00:09:49] We didn't want to specify where the accent was from. And then we also kind of stopped doing the accent because it felt vaguely problematic. Yeah, Mitch just started saying how much he loved Fincher movies in an episode. And then we loved the Finch man became.

[00:10:00] We loved a Finch man. We loved a Finch man. I brought the accent back. I think he's Nordic. I'm glad you did. He's like a cheerful Nordic guy who like lives in the countryside. So he's a little, right. He's a little rural. And so we started saying that

[00:10:20] and then that led to people, like people love that to the point where we have merch that I'm wearing and the Finch man shirt we made and Kinship Goods made. And that led to us doing a Gone Girl episode. And then the Gone Girl episode,

[00:10:34] people's response to that led to us doing a theme month for Fincher called Mank. Yeah. Which we did five of his films over the course of May. Which I was going to wear that shirt today too and truly my tummy troubles just made everything chaotic

[00:10:49] and I just forgot to put it on. I'm mad. You did the Gone Girl app and in the group chat, it'd be funny if you guys piecemeal covered all the Fincher movies before we did. That's right. And it would remove the burden from us. Yes.

[00:11:08] And I let that joke just stay in the air for a while. Right? Like how Mitch let something stay in the air for a while recently. Tear cat. Sorry. It's the last. I won't do it again. Good. Not a single aroma. Not a single smell made.

[00:11:30] By the way, I'm trying to look up something and I'm not being rude by being on my phone but I met Fincher's AD on the picket line. I've never talked about this. And some guy was walking up behind me and he was like, what is that?

[00:11:44] And I was like, what do you mean? He's like, what's that shirt you're wearing? And I was wearing we love the Finchman shirt. And he's like, hold on. And he took a picture of it and he was like, I'm sending it to David. Wow.

[00:11:58] And it was Fincher's AD whose name I'm looking up. Is it Richard Goodwin? I'm looking up his ADs. Matt McKinnon? I think it might have been Bob Wagner. Bob Wagner. Governor of New York in the 50s, of course. But probably not him. But I tweeted that comment out

[00:12:18] or I texted that comment to you guys. I see him, yeah. And he also worked on The Empty Man. And David and I are trying to strategize our schedule. And David goes, let me just pitch Fincher. Right? He said, just let me make the argument.

[00:12:34] A, slots in here with what we have, this number of weeks, new movie coming out, first movie in a couple years, yada, yada, yada, makes the Fincher play. And I say, how much of this is you genuinely not wanting Doughboys to get all the Fincher movies

[00:12:48] out before we... None! Not at all! This is David's contention, okay? I text you guys and I go, hey, so I think we're gonna do Fincher, obviously, knowing you guys love Da Finch Man. We'd love to have you on one of them. You know, I think half-jokingly,

[00:13:06] like, I guess we realize we want to do it before you guys get to them. And then you went, oh, that's funny because we just decided all of May is Fincher. So I came to you saying we were doing it right before you told me that you guys

[00:13:19] had committed to doing five in a row. That's right. But we came to an agreement and I think this worked out well because we're not doing, we didn't cover seven. Yes. And that was partly because, it was largely because you said,

[00:13:33] would you like to do seven on blank check? These two things have been coordinated for a while. We just plan our podcast five years in advance. Right. And by the way, the other plus side you guys have is that we're dipshits and we didn't really

[00:13:48] cover anything at all. No. I also like that you guys didn't cover Mink. Yeah. You didn't cover Mink. You're right. We didn't cover Mink. We didn't cover Mink in Mink. Right. And you even extended it to Junk and still didn't cover Mink.

[00:14:02] We did Junk and we didn't cover, that's because we just wanted to watch one more. Right? Wasn't it? Yeah. We just wanted to get, we wanted to fit an extra movie in there. I mean, you guys are masters of planning

[00:14:14] in that way though. You really do like to maximize. I mean, not since, what was it? Hot Dober Fest? Hot Dog Fest? Hot Dog, Dog Do Bark. Dog Do Bark Fest, a month long celebration of hot dogs and pet dogs. Right. Which you did a month where

[00:14:29] you only reviewed hot dogs, a food that in that year, Nick had sworn off from eating and Mitch is infamously incapable of pronouncing. I mean, we're idiots. We don't plan things well. And we didn't say a single good thing. I'll say this. Nick Weiger doesn't like almost anything

[00:14:48] and he loves your guy's show. This is the truth. I wouldn't say that. You're saying I'm some sort of like a cynic. Sorry, sorry, sorry. I don't mean it like that. I see as someone who's been in the entertainment world for a long time,

[00:15:04] you never get excited about things the way there's some stuff I'll get excited about that you won't care about. But he gets excited about your podcast all the time. I'm not trying to say he's a man who doesn't have any joy. He does have joy.

[00:15:18] He loves the we love to finish. And he loves the blank check. Here's my question. I like I now likes canonically likes a blank check to that guy, that same guy. Yeah, that same guy. So David, David said maybe you guys do seven.

[00:15:34] And then we got to the gentleman's agreement that you would hold it off of rank. And then a couple of times we said, like, by the way, if you want a different one, you want to pick a different one. I know why you had said Zodiac's

[00:15:46] your favorite film of his. And it felt like you guys were doing well. It felt like that was maybe a conflict of interest for you to cover Zodiac just because you're still actively a suspect in that investigation. Right. If nothing else, you're cribbing, you know, right? Right.

[00:16:02] Weiger loves the Zodiac like I would love the Mike Mitchell story. But but you guys, you accepted seven, the idea of seven. Anytime we sort of throw out like alternate pitches, he kept on coming back to seven. So I'm going to give the answers to both of you.

[00:16:18] Have to seven. Oh, man. I'm gonna go first. You probably have you in a good way. You were just a year or two older than me or whatever. I don't know how much older you are than me. I'm joke that you're much older.

[00:16:34] But I was like, you know, maybe 13 when I saw it. Sure. And and saw it on VHS. And it was that thing like the like the kids in my I mean, nine inch nails and kind of the 90s discovering the dark side of

[00:16:50] something. So many kids were like, you got to see you got to see seven. And also still kind of being like a young, not religious. I don't think I was a religious kid, but like the fear of God was still in me.

[00:17:03] So the idea that like these people were going to get killed by the seven deadly sins was kind of fascinating to me. And and just, you know, like every kid that could see the movie at 13 years old or whatever who shouldn't really be seeing it

[00:17:16] telling me I had to see it was so it was so hyped up and it to me, it was like one of the big VHS tapes that I watched before. I should have probably and loved. You know what I mean? Watching it when I watch it this time,

[00:17:31] I hadn't seen it in a really long time and I appreciated it for for different things I did back then. But I think that I that I I I was like I didn't know you could be so dark in entertainment or you could make a movie that dark.

[00:17:42] I think that's what it was for me. There is an interesting like sub genre of R-rated movies that almost feel like they're designed to be best enjoyed by a 13 year old sneaking a viewing. Right? Yes. Right. And not that like they're not

[00:17:56] that the juvenile or that they don't have value for adults, but you're just sort of like, is there a better way to see seven or Robocop or the Matrix? Right. It's just I mean, it's the age we all are. I know we're you know, we're a few years

[00:18:10] apart, but the age we're all generally that this was just the touchstone. I've never seen a movie this fucked up movie for us. Like I had never seen a movie that's fucked up as seven when I saw seven. Yeah. I was also probably 12 or something on VHS. Yeah.

[00:18:26] You maybe had. I don't know. Uh, I'd seen Rugrats in Paris, which it goes pretty dark. They are lost in Paris. So that's an issue. Chuckie lost his mom, which is very sad. But like lost her like he doesn't know where she is. She's not dead.

[00:18:40] Chuckie's mom's canonically. Yeah, she died. Oh, no. Right, right, right. She's well, she's but she's dead when Rugrats begins. Right. It's Chuckie a single way. He has a single father. Does that make it better to you? Well, it's just it's not like it happens

[00:18:54] in Rugrats. We have to grapple with it because his father falls in love with a new woman. That's pretty fucking dark. That's the end. That is pretty dark. OK, so withdrawn. And obviously that's a darker film. Yes. But seven is still fairly dark. I don't think there

[00:19:08] are any bladed dildos in Rugrats in the third movie. Nick, what about you with seven? Yeah. So similar to Mitch, you know, I saw this on VHS. I was not old enough to see an R-rated movie in theater. I can't remember. I think I got my

[00:19:22] convinced my dad to rent it for me. And it was my my way into it is kids at school had told me. Yes. It like what's in the movie before I saw that was my exact thing. I was going to say it's like someone

[00:19:37] being like, dude, there's like gluttony and then like there's a big fat guy and they fucking feed him spaghetti and they kick him in the stomach. He fucking explodes. Do they talk about him kicking him in the stomach? They do. There is a line where they say

[00:19:52] he kicked him in the stomach to kill him. But it but it is a thing of like I was expecting a money python, you know, fat guy explosion. Mr. Kreosan. Exactly. We all heard about it in the playground and imagine something so ridiculous for all of this stuff.

[00:20:08] And then it makes like this guy have sex with like a spiky penis. And I'm just like that. That's not real. Hollywood didn't make that. That's not allowed. No. And specifically that thing. I mean, connected to the thing I was bringing up of like R-rated movies

[00:20:24] that feel almost laser targeted to 13 year old boys. This kind of thing where someone describes a movie to you and you cannot even visualize it. You know, like we spent a lot of time describing movies for a living, but it's impossible what you're saying.

[00:20:40] They accept it at face value. But when you're like 12 or 13, you haven't seen a ton of movies. And someone describes the thing to you where you're like, I don't even understand how that happens in front of a camera. How could how could they possibly show this? Yes.

[00:20:56] Which, you know what? Still think that when you watch the I mean, when you watch some of this movie, I still wonder how they they got away with some of that stuff. It's wild. What's the not not to you? I mean, that's that's the

[00:21:10] most brutal or the one I'd want to have the least inflicted on me. Or I think it's the sex worker. It's probably that it's probably lust. Yeah. You think it's lust? Lust. The lust as an adult's lust was like, oh, this is a lot of

[00:21:24] people are involved, too. So it's kind of like it ripples in a way that the others don't. I think it's someone still alive and is aware of what happened. The glorious and psychologically the most torture. Honestly, I think if someone was just feeding me the sauce, I think

[00:21:42] I'd be OK. It's like me watching Super Size Me where I was just like, hmm, I want McDonald's like, like that was my reaction to that movie. And he was like, oh my God, this fries making me sick. Shut the fuck up, Spurlock. Full of shit.

[00:21:59] I feel like greed is pretty bad because of the psychological torment of having to cut off part of your body to cut off his own flesh. Yeah. And that's just like that's gnarly. I think the sloth thing where he's still alive. Yeah, that was I remember that being

[00:22:17] like kind of the nastiest shock, right? Where he's in the bed or is that that sloth? Yes. Yeah. And then suddenly you're like, this is a corpse. I think the playground thing, that was the thing that was the playground thing that was so hyped up. Yeah.

[00:22:34] I mean, I think that's what you saw before you saw the movie. But that's like, I mean, like even just hearing us trying to describe this and hash this stuff out now. Right. Goonies, gluttony and sloth. Well, yeah. Everyone called Chunk Gluttony. The fifth sin, Corey Feldman.

[00:22:52] No, the weirdness of this movie where like if you're a kid and another kid has gotten a seat before you and he's describing it, you're like, is this a horror movie? Is it like a prosthetics heavy cartoon? Yeah. Is it a serious crime thriller? Like, I don't understand

[00:23:09] how these things can coexist in one film, let alone a movie that adults are taking seriously. So my dad, my dad lived in the United Kingdom without us, without the rest of my family from 1994 to 1995. He would come back every month. Wow.

[00:23:25] Because he like the whole thing was he got this job in England and he wasn't sure if he was going to stay. You know, like, and then we all moved. And in that one year, he was living alone. I think he saw more movies. Oh, sure.

[00:23:36] And so this is one of this is to me a classic. My dad actually saw this movie and he said, I can't wait till you move to London so I can take you to see seven. But I remember him telling me about

[00:23:45] it. And obviously, in a way, yes, the same way of like, you're too young for this. But I saw this crazy movie and the way again, I was just like, I was pretty young then I was probably 10. Yeah, I was just like, you're describing something that

[00:23:56] sounds like pornography to me, not in terms of like it, just in terms of like, this isn't mainstream. You said it sounds like you're talking about like some snuff movie you saw. Like, yeah, that's something that's like, oh, yeah, fucking, you know, New Line Cinema

[00:24:08] presents like well, like another movie we covered this year, Trainspotting, right? I remember my parents going to see Trainspotting and my mom describing the toilet scene to me. And I was like, well, what you're describing sounds like it happens on a Nickelodeon show that I watch and

[00:24:22] you walk by in the background and scoff and go, this is so silly. Right. Not like an art house festival. Right. And I'm like, what do you expect the movie you just saw where a man climbs headfirst into a toilet and goes down into the sewers? Right.

[00:24:35] You know, Sims, I have a question in the in the UK cut of seven. Was it still sauce with gluttony or was it like figgy pudding or something instead? Biggy sloth with a U. Yeah, they. Yeah, no, they. Shit, I'm trying to think of another

[00:24:53] Brit joke I could make right now. The dildo was made of algae. Minium. I don't know what was the UK, U.S. conversion rate in 1995. Like so seven deadly sins is actually four point five British. One of the deadly sins is oversteeping your tea. I mean.

[00:25:16] Then it tastes like. I remember my friend saying that to me once. It's like he's like he was like you can't leave the bag in too long because there's like I remember making it and I was like, he's right. It's what it tastes like.

[00:25:28] No, the weirdest thing about seven two is that it is not like an art house hit at all. It was a it played like a blockbuster. Yes. And like it was like it played at a film festival or anything like that.

[00:25:42] Like it was not being released as a prestige film. It was a bizarre September blockbuster that was being sold as like a nasty little genre movie. Right. It's like it's in the same vein in terms of its release strategy is like Kiss the Girls. Yes. Something like that.

[00:25:56] Like, you know, all those Morgan Thrillers that come after it. And then, you know, you read the reviews at the time and like it feels like 40 percent of critics just dismiss it as like this is just too much. One hundred. That's what I remember.

[00:26:06] Like because I remember reading reviews of this movie and at the time, like like in the newspaper and Newsweek and then it being like kind of like critically dismissed. I could be my memory could be wrong about that. But I remember it like

[00:26:18] being kind of like, you know, this is this is a this is a cheap entertainment or, you know, this is this is lurid for that for that for its own sake. It was spread out like there were people who were tapped into it early.

[00:26:32] Eber was like there from the beginning. I think there were people. Yeah, but I think even those reviews were like this is an exceptionally made thriller. Yes. It was not like this is a film worthy of Oscar consideration. It was more like this is a really

[00:26:45] good noir movie. You know, that's nasty because it's the 90s. And then also and his name will come up several times, I'm sure, during this episode because it has to. Kevin Spacey won a ton of critics awards that year for this and the usual. So excuse me.

[00:27:02] Right. I was looking it up. There are multiple at least five awards that gave him split supporting actor across a right. Swimming with sharks. Yeah. Yeah. Usual suspects. Yeah. Seven and outbreak outbreak. His ninety five was in fucking same. Right. It was sort of that like he's

[00:27:20] arrived this like character actor who's been hanging around. Yes. You know, watching it again. I kind of like Pitt's performance the most in the movie. I don't know if that's we can talk about it. I mean, I I think Freeman is incredible in this. I agree.

[00:27:35] Pit. It's like this. This is first serious performance. I guess 12 monkeys is the same year. Yeah. But 12 monkeys he films right after this. Right. And it comes out maybe right before the fall was just before. So bad. He's coming off the hard route run. He's coming off of

[00:27:54] Legends of the Fall River runs through it. Interview with a vampire. Yeah. Like this and 12 monkeys are him being like, I finally have cache. I need to push back on being a pretty boy. 12 monkeys came out December. So it comes out a few months later.

[00:28:09] Right. And he similarly he gets the 12 monkeys nomination that feels like it's a little bit for this. I do think spacey's usual suspects win is a little bit for this. Sure. You know, like this movie has several people who are just like really kind of cresting

[00:28:24] the cast really perfectly. But but going back to just the intensity of this film, JJ, our researcher put together a very good dossier of stuff on this movie. There are a lot of weird apocryphal myths about this film. This is the kind of movie that myths extend from.

[00:28:42] But like everyone fucking turn this movie down. The list of people who were straight off for this film huge stars. And we'll get to the development process up to this point. But like this was the biggest budget movie new line had made up until this point in time.

[00:28:58] And this was new line trying to level up and be like, here's a script that's great, but it's a little too grisly for any of the bigger studios to make. We're going to treat this as our first a movie, whereas Warner Brothers would

[00:29:12] treat this as a B movie. And it was their biggest budget ever, which was 35 and they tried to get every fucking star attached. And you read through this list and it's like everyone who reads the script goes like this is morally offensive. You know, like Denzel

[00:29:26] Al Pacino Harrison Ford, like everyone. Denzel like sounded scared. He was like, this is evil. Correct. Evil. It's not even them being like this would hurt my reputation to be in a movie that's this nasty. Their attitude is like, how dare you? I'm going

[00:29:42] to fire my reps for even passing this along to me for consideration, which this movie is still intense. But it is wild to think about at that point, almost 30 years ago, people were like this would be ruinous to not just my career but culture at large if

[00:29:58] it got made. Now it's kind of like you want to go on the doughboys podcast? We're ready to reach out to you about that. How dare you suggest this to me? I'm firing you immediately. The things that were most interesting to me

[00:30:10] about it, and I'm sure you haven't in the dossier of people who turned it down. One they talk about in the commentary is Arlie Ermey, I guess read for John Doe, which is insane to think about. And then the other one, they

[00:30:22] also, I guess, offered it to Ned Beatty who was similarly was like this is the most, this is pure evil. It's the most evil thing I've ever read. Kind of fun to imagine. They had no concept of John Doe, it sounds like, because those

[00:30:34] are three very different actors. Like Arlie Ermey, Ned Beatty. It's so weird that they'd settled on Kevin Spacey though, playing like a dead voice, you know, psychopath. Like that just it's not something he's good at. Look, I don't know the order in which we can

[00:30:48] discuss what the proper way to do it. But like while watching this movie and just thinking about like, especially a lot of things that have come to light about Kevin Spacey in the last couple of years, I'm talking post allegations, right? Sure. In Kevin Spacey's

[00:31:02] attempt to sort of defend himself and clean up his character, he has really played up the trauma of his childhood, which is legitimate. Sure, sure. But you like read about how intense his childhood was and you're like, right, this is kind of the story

[00:31:14] you hear on a true crime documentary about what leads a man to become a murderer. And instead with him, it led a man to become really good at playing murderers in movies. And then the power of stardom leading to him being a psychopath. Right.

[00:31:32] And now he's out to dinner with Elton John. That's what I saw recently. I want to give you guys some background on the film Seven from our dossier. And I do want to point out that Manc, a film that the Doughboys have never discussed, maybe will never discuss,

[00:31:54] was on deck. The script was ready. His dad, Jack Fincher, wrote the script for Manc. Yeah. And like the script was ready after Alien 3 and he thought about pursuing Manc this early in his career. He also had the attitude post Alien 3 of like, I never want

[00:32:12] to make a movie again. That was miserable. And I think you hear about a lot of guys like this and this is another thing that speaks to the sort of critical uneasiness around this movie when it came out is there was still such a like, you're

[00:32:26] just a fucking music video director. You guys are flashy. It's all style. You don't have the actual know-how or the integrity or the human depth or whatever it is. But for a lot of those guys, there are a lot of examples of like, they make their one

[00:32:42] big movie and they go like, this is not fucking worth it. I can make commercials and music videos and make $20 million a year on much shorter shoots with much less interference. Right. The Kinka ushers of the world. The Kinka usher, the Joe Pitkas. Yes.

[00:32:56] But it did feel like Fincher was kind of half in this zone of like, maybe I just fucking go back to the more lucrative thing and make sense that he's like, maybe I just make my dad script before I retire from movies forever. Um, he

[00:33:08] also met with the Bond producers, he says, when they were transitioning to Pierce Brosnan. Although he says, believe me, they didn't want to hear from me. Right. But he did have a meeting with them. He told his reps not to send him scripts, which is why

[00:33:22] he was considering Mank so seriously at this point in time because it's the only thing he's reading. He also was attached, actually attached to the remake of The Avengers, the British Avengers. Which was eventually turned into a movie with Ralph Fiennes and Uma Thurman. A movie that ultimately

[00:33:40] was directed by Jeremiah Cheshik, director of producer Ben's beloved National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, who was inexplicably the original director attached to Seven. He was the first choice. That's right. Because he was like, I want to go more serious. I've been doing too many comedies.

[00:33:56] And instead he made The Avengers. Yes. But they did a full swap years apart. Yes. So this is a spec script written by Andrew Kevin Walker. He said he wrote it in the late 80s in New York. You know, sort of nasty New York.

[00:34:12] Which he says is sort of informing the vibe. He grows up in the suburbs. He moves to New York. He's like, this is the most decrepit, degenerate, disgusting place on Earth. How can anywhere be this evil? He worked at Tower Records. Yes. Basically, this script was his

[00:34:28] motivating force to be like, I want to write a script so good I can quit my fucking job at Tower Records. And it was like a two and a half year process of writing this script. Just being like, if I can, I just need to fucking get out

[00:34:40] so this could be my last month ever working here. And then indeed it gets sold to a company called Pentafilm. And they option it for Jeremiah Cheshik. Is that how you say his name? And he demands a rewrite that includes removing

[00:34:56] the head from the box. Right. Is generally just a sanitized version of the movie. A classic Hollywood, you've written this incredible calling card script. Oh my god. What an incredible uncompromising view. Right. Obviously we're not going to let you make any

[00:35:08] of this. So he goes through like a year or two developing it with this company going along with all their rewrite pitches. Yeah, he's right. Doing a script that he basically says if it had ever gotten made would have ruined his career. Right.

[00:35:20] Would have been a dead end. It was offered to Phil Juneau who is best known as the director of many a U2 music video. Was a Fincher contemporary but was more heralded as this guy might have the goods to be a feature director than Fincher was.

[00:35:38] And he was going to make it maybe with Gary Oldman but they found it too grim. And as you say Fincher, Post Alien 3 a movie we all like I think. Good movie. Is just like don't even send me scripts. Like forget it.

[00:35:52] I fuck it. I hate all of this. And that's a movie with an unrelentingly bleak world view that Fox kept on pushing up against. So you can just imagine when he's reading a script like this, he's just

[00:36:04] like what's it going to look like at the end of this fucking process? Right. How will they ruin it? But Mike DeLuca who obviously is the Mr. New line at the time now he runs Warner Brothers right? He just got put in charge of Warner Brothers

[00:36:16] is like I want you to make this. Fincher reads the script and he's just like this is so evil and then he reads the ending and is like I can't believe this is the ending of this movie. And famously they had sent him

[00:36:32] the wrong script. They had sent him the unsanitized version and they meant to send him the no head version. So New Line had sort of rolled back the script to the earlier version before the previous company had butchered it. The Jeremiah Cheshire version. But they still were like

[00:36:50] this can't be the ending and then yes Fincher gets the wrong draft. Fincher gets the fucked up draft and is like I really want to do this and they're like oh he's saying you're on script read the other script and he's like

[00:37:00] I don't like that I want to do the thing you sent me. I want to do the fucked up version and uh. And every conversation you read from then on out is obviously head in a box as a non starter David don't even fight me on it. It's

[00:37:14] not happening. And Fincher was just like so adamant and the argument I think it's in the dossier that he puts it to the producer. What's the producers name on this film? Arnold Copelson. Yeah. He said and this is a point where he's like no

[00:37:28] one's expecting this movie is going to be a genuine blockbuster right? They think it's gonna be some weird cult curio thing. This is the weird side project a bunch of big stars made in between glossier Hollywood movies. And he said this is the ultimate outcome

[00:37:44] we want for this movie is just imagine a couple kids in a school yard 20 years from now being like have you ever seen this fucked up movie that ends with a woman's head in a box and the cop's like yeah I remember that.

[00:37:58] If we put that in the movie no one will ever forget that they've seen this movie. Even if the movie doesn't succeed in theaters at the time. It is amazing that this ending exists in such like a mainstream studio film because

[00:38:10] this was the era of like I remember like the Scarlet Letter. They like put in a happy ending they grafted a happy ending onto that and it's like that I feel like they were completely averse to doing anything ending on a down note at all

[00:38:24] throughout the 90s maybe I'm wrong about that but I can't think of any of those. No no no I think you're right I think it's yeah. Like peak sort of like the player era Hollywood they're gonna sanitize everything. Like you're saying they're sending this script to people

[00:38:36] who are big actors who are like I won't do this movie and how dare you even send me this and I burned it. They receive the script then they tie it to a brick and throw it back through the window of new life. But Brad Pitt claims

[00:38:50] I think Brad Pitt can be a bit of a fabulous god bless him but claims that he like contractually demanded the head stay in the box like when he signed on. That and also Mills shooting. And that he you know his character kills John Doe which which

[00:39:06] just watching it last night. The ending is of course heavy. Yeah and I was like what I have my what would it have bothered me if Morgan Freeman shot space. I don't know if it would have bothered me. I guess it does just take away from

[00:39:20] the bleakness of it all. Well Mitch you were putting forth the question of is Pitt the best performance in this movie and I don't know if I agree with that but he kills the final scene so hard. I love it. And he just plays

[00:39:36] he plays such a great dumb guy in this movie. That's why he's good. Which is huge. And you just read about like well like you know it's hard to gauge what was the actual first round pick if Fincher had his choice from all

[00:39:50] the people they offered it to. Right. But it's like it sounds like he really wanted a version that was like Gene Hackman and Denzel right. Where like Mills is younger than Somerset but he's not young. Right. Right. And Pitt was so outside of like the type

[00:40:06] they were thinking of he just had so much heat and studios wanted him to do anything at that point and he latched onto it and Fincher was like he's wrong for this and New Line was like please take the meeting if you cast this guy

[00:40:20] you'll be able to get away with more. Right. And he was just like I met with him and I thought he was completely wrong for the part but there was something about like you kind of wanted to root for this guy. Right. And Fincher

[00:40:32] has this quote he said it in when he was going through the whole insane process casting Dragon Tattoo which we'll obviously get to in a later episode but when he was doing such rigorous testing of like every single actress in Hollywood and he said like

[00:40:46] the reason I was so stubborn about this and relentless about it was that like I think the thing you want to find when you're casting your leads and casting your movie stars is like the essential quality they have in their being that no matter what

[00:41:00] is going to come through on camera because like shoots are long they're intense I'm going to do a hundred takes with people it's not about how good they are on the first take it's about what am I not going to be able to beat out of their system

[00:41:12] even when they're exhausted and run down and the thing that works and you kind of can't imagine this wasn't by design from the first place is that like Pitt has the energy of a guy who is trying so hard to prove that he is a

[00:41:26] serious actor. It's right where he is in his career he's like he's trying to be serious in the movie and the character is like I'm a real cop and like that's why Morgan Freeman is so good. Couldn't have been more relaxed couldn't have less to prove

[00:41:40] you know like just like he's not even he doesn't even have an attitude no he's just literally seen it all right and Morgan Freeman comes in and he's like cut like 40% of my dialogue like he goes through the script with Fincher okay okay you're you're you're and Pitt's

[00:41:54] like give me more give me more give me more so all right some of the people think that Pacino is the big one for Somerset. Hates playing cops though very different movie I don't I cannot imagine mid 90s Pacino doing this

[00:42:08] he'd be so like loud and over the I mean I love him it'd be a nightmare. Every other version that you said I mean like like just Denzel taking over Pitt's role the movie doesn't work in the same way there's just it does feel perfect

[00:42:24] well there's a scene they you know the lust interrogation with the actor's name is a scene in the movie and it's him like he's you know he's giving his hyperventilating description of what happened to him and what John Doe did to him

[00:42:40] and what he gets strapped into. The alien resurrection guy? Yes yeah and he's damn good but he's opposite Morgan Freeman and they like Fincher and Pitt who are together in the commentary like zero and I was like they're like and Freeman just sitting

[00:42:52] there like he's just looking at him he's not doing anything in that scene and that like calmness that calming presence it's just like it's like the blue doesn't show up on blue thing right like he's like the little bit of calm that's amidst all the chaos in this

[00:43:06] throughout the city and throughout this investigation. Some Sonic the Hedgehog saying the blue doesn't show up on blue? That's why his belly is a different color. Oh okay alright that's it. And his shoes Alright. Hackman supposedly passed on the movie Duvall and Harrison Ford I don't know

[00:43:22] I imagine they offer it to every single person They're still laughing about Sonic We made ourselves laugh over here We're sorry. It's quite alright Morgan Freeman loves the script this is right after Shawshank right? Yes. So he's I guess it's probably well yeah has it

[00:43:44] come out? It's 93 right? Yeah. Or is it 94? No there's the I thought Shawshank was 94 Is it 93? But they're shooting this movie in 94. Yeah yeah exactly Shawshank is just he's definitely got you know I'm just trying to pick like because like this is the beginning of Morgan Freeman

[00:44:04] movie star in my opinion even though like those two things give him a lot of prestige and other smaller roles but like now it's after this it's like Kiss the Girls, Long Came a Spider, Millionaire you know like Morgan Freeman is your star

[00:44:18] I think the tale on Daisy is very long right? Alright. Jeez. She's got a fat ass Miss Daisy that's all I'm saying I know Tandy drove you wild No I think that movie was so huge and beloved and I think almost like immediately became like a TV

[00:44:40] mainstay right? So he's like you know and then Shawshank which famously unperformed when it came out but is such a beloved performance you know he said the main reason he accepted this movie Freeman when every other actor is turning it down morally and

[00:44:58] New Line said hey what about Morgan Freeman and Fincher went like don't even offer it to Morgan Freeman he's going to be so offended Right. And they were like Freeman's read it and he's interested and he meets with him and he's like why do

[00:45:10] you want to do this? When all these other guys have said no who have done gnarlier movies than you and Freeman was basically like not to sound like ego driven but like I was not getting offered many films where

[00:45:24] I was the guy carrying the story at that point Right. You know and he was like it was basically Daisy and Shawshank but in both of those cases he's a little more secondary and even though Pitt's first build in this it really is Freeman who's

[00:45:38] moving it along and he was like the fact that Shawshank I was narrating and I got to carry the story I read the script and I was like the scripts good my guys on every page and he's sort of the steady hand

[00:45:48] how am I going to say no to that? And I'm a little bit of a freak myself too Well there might be a little of that I don't know I like putting things in boxes He did ask for stuff to get cut

[00:46:02] which I feel like is a rare demand for an actor like hey I need less lines but he's like I can just do this with a look I can do that with a look I mean you're talking about Nick just like his energy and some

[00:46:14] of the shots of him listening there is the reaction shot he gives when Gwyneth Paltrow tells him that she's pregnant that is astonishing He's so upset about it but he's doing his best to just be like you know over faced about it and the little bit

[00:46:34] that comes out is so good That's my favorite scene in the movie It's a great scene it is like a in a lot of ways it's such a, because you talked about the script being written in the late 80s, like that version of New York

[00:46:48] it's such a time stamp of that era when it's like urban decay and this is like the cities are dangerous and stay out of there and her character is so, yeah she's like friendless and isolated but just like

[00:47:00] the thing that struck me that I didn't track when I was younger and I watched this, I don't think I've seen this movie I've seen it more than once but I don't think I've seen it in 20 years watching it now is just like the profound loneliness of everyone

[00:47:10] like everyone is isolated like even this married couple they're together but they're shown in separate spaces a lot the person she can confide in is like her like his partner, his grizzled new partner his new partner who he doesn't have an emotional relationship with

[00:47:28] No, they barely know each other trying to connect the two of them and in the process she realizes that she gets along with him but I think that's such a key thing where like, the poucher, a poucher so good in this but that character plays

[00:47:40] so well despite not having a ton of screen time and I think the secret key is like that's the character that's the analog for Andrew Kevin Walker right? That's the character he relates to most in this movie Right, like this isn't like Paul Schrader

[00:47:54] where Paul Schrader is like riding taxi driver and is like I kind of feel this way sometimes. Andrew Kevin Walker is like I'm sort of a babe in the woods who moved to a big city because I want to have a career

[00:48:04] and it's so scary. Right, and like the career ambition is like Brad Pitt's character, like that's the thing that drove him that he's following and then he's just terrified by this whole city around him he's writing the script over a year so like yeah

[00:48:16] Nick as you said, by the time this movie comes out, it's coming out in a like New York that's being Giuliani'd but it's a remnant of a New York that to him was just like incomprehensibly dark Wow, we brought up Kevin Spacey

[00:48:30] and Giuliani. Is there anyone else we wanna? Don't worry, I got a list. I'm racking through them Alright, so yes. Were they were Gwyneth Paltrow and Brad Pitt dating at this point still? Yes. This is when they start dating I believe right? I think

[00:48:46] you can kind of feel it. They met on the set of Seven They dated for three years. They got engaged in 1996 and split in 97 and I can't remember when he gets with Aniston but it's not that long after that I feel like. No

[00:49:00] And does she go to Affleck after that maybe? Because she had the Affleck relationship for many years, yeah So yes, Denzel famously turned down this movie and regrets it. The other movie he regrets turning down? Mikey Clayton Michael Clayton which is amazing to think

[00:49:16] about him in that. Yes. I mean I think that is like maybe the best Clooney performance of all time. I agree. But it is cool to think about Denzel as Michael Clayton The other thing when I was reading about this movie is that it's such like a

[00:49:28] 90s thing that wasn't in my head today but it's like oh yeah of course they would have thought about that was that they were like you know older black detective, young white detective. People are just going to think it's Lethal Weapon. Which is like

[00:49:40] this is so totally completely different from Lethal Weapon but like you can see them over calculating the casting to that point and finally being like I guess we'll do it anyway Especially because Pitt's kind of manic in this movie and you know Morgan

[00:49:54] is too old for this shit. Yeah. I mean he's retiring. He's about to retire It's so weird that he became a movie star playing guys who are about to retire and then was like I can do this for 20 more years. Like you know, like that's

[00:50:06] what he did after this Like it's true. Okay you agree with me No no I do. No it's the thing of yes I think you and I find it particularly fascinating when someone who is like a very established actor suddenly locks into their movie persona. Right.

[00:50:24] Their movie star persona. They get vehicles all of a you know out of nowhere and like late into a career right where it's just like oh that's the thing where if you plant him in that suddenly there's a handle on and everyone understands it's this kind of movie

[00:50:38] right. Because yes he was just sort of like I think Mr. Serious Actor, Mr. Prestige and then there's this like odd you know what would be late career for anyone else that's really like his ascension to A-list status is just like this gentle but weary cop I do

[00:51:00] like this line from Brad Pitt that I just wanted to escape the cheese and I came to find out that David Fincher had a lactose intolerance as well. I like that It's like Pitt trying to you know get beyond Legends of the Fall. And Fincher

[00:51:12] talks a lot about like Pitt fucking saved him on this movie. Pitt just had so much power to swing around in that moment that anytime and they were so aligned in their view of what they wanted to get out of this movie that he would

[00:51:26] be losing an argument and Pitt would just place the one call and it would be settled immediately I think Fincher had been fighting over for five months and his quote was like the power of being blonde is astonishing. Right. Look he gives funny quote

[00:51:40] Did you know the reason they wanted Ned Beatty? Because he looked like the composite drawing of the Zodiac killer. That's right That is the original So that's how early he's thinking about Zodiac And Ned Beatty said this is the most evil thing I've ever

[00:51:58] read. He wanted Michael Stipe briefly. Interesting Height of REM's success I mean, Spacey in this movie is giving a very Stipe-like performance. I would argue Sure he's bald. But his whole weird Spacey energy No pun intended. You know And then yes, they settle on Spacey and whatever

[00:52:20] Then they get to run around from New Line for a while. What? Spacey does his audition Pitt and Fincher watch it. They go holy shit This guy seems totally innocent Will never commit any crimes. His performance is amazing He can hold his head high

[00:52:34] walking out of the courtroom. He will always be vindicated Put this guy in front of a fireplace maybe get a sweater on. We all know there are no crimes in art. Uh huh In fact, now that you mention it, we never did see my death

[00:52:46] did we? He said all of this His audition tape was just the original reading of Let Me Be Frank And they said what is this material It's a spec I'm working on. I don't think it's quite ready You gotta keep it in the pocket for a rainy

[00:53:00] day if you will. But Spacey was like starting to rise had shot already swimming with sharks usual suspects, outbreak. None of them had come out. Right. But he had three big movies in the can. One indie film where he was like the co-lead and then two huge films

[00:53:16] where he was, you know, a mid-sized film where he was ensemble, a huge studio film where he was getting the end And so his quote had gone up but he wasn't demonstrably a box office draw yet. Yeah. And so New Line didn't want to pay for him

[00:53:30] Yeah. They cast someone else who no one has been able to No one knows who. They had someone else on deck But they start filming with someone else trying to get Spacey Yeah, he did 12 Days. Yes Yeah. And then Pitt finds out

[00:53:48] He said what happened? Have we closed the deal on Spacey yet? Fincher says no, they won't agree. Oh no, Spacey did 12 Days. Spacey's whole shoot was 12 Days I think that guy only filmed a day or two And I think it was mostly maybe it was the foot

[00:54:00] chase stuff. It wasn't any the big dialogue stuff. Right Was it Stoltz? Did they do it to Stoltz again? Oh my God, that sucks But yeah, no Pitt was the one who got on the phone with New Line and said hire Spacey

[00:54:16] And then the deal was closed. He was on set two days later and the rest of his career was perfect Is the other actor in the They did reshoots, right? The other actor is not I think so. Yeah, okay. Yeah. And I guess the helicopter shots

[00:54:30] At the end, they shot all that with doubles because they had to shoot that months later Right. They wouldn't give Fincher the budget to do it originally I didn't realize that cop there, the helicopter was, what's his name? John C. McGinley Yeah, McGinley. Yeah. John C. McGinley

[00:54:46] is in this. Arlie Ermey apparently hated David Fincher and said that he treats actors like puppets. What was his line? If you hate acting, I recommend working with David Fincher. If you're not worth a shit at acting and you're not creative, then I recommend you go work

[00:54:58] with David Fincher. He won't let you act even if you're a fucking good actor. Now Arlie Ermey I will say is someone who seems a little intense. Salty? Yeah Just generally. A little salty, yeah And he is, it's interesting because like he seems like someone who would never

[00:55:12] like be able to take direction. He's a goddamn drill sergeant Yeah. But also he worked with Stanley Kubrick who I consider even more famously exacting. Well that's what's wild about him being that critical of Fincher but then also it's like he famously is the guy

[00:55:28] in Kubrick's Ouvre where he was like do whatever the fuck you want. Right, you're actually allowed to go off, right? Yeah, this is just you I'm giving you the space, right He's good in this movie. He is good in this. I love seeing him as a police chief

[00:55:40] and I was just gonna say it's interesting because you know, I watch the actor's commentary and that's the one that Fincher's on or one of the ones that Fincher's on and he said like Morgan Freeman specifically talks about how like when Fincher talked to him about the role

[00:55:56] he didn't really give him any notes on characterization and he was just like talking about how he wanted to shoot it and he was just talking about lighting and blocking and he felt like he was like oh okay, he's just kind of like

[00:56:08] he knows that I'm going to take care of that element. So I wonder if he treated like you know, I wonder if the puppeting was more of how he treated individual cast members but not everyone I don't know. That may well be true, yeah

[00:56:20] I mean. Here's pure conjecture on my part Great, love it. Love pure conjecture Yeah, because I was reading more quotes from Ermey talking about this right? And he was just like I came ready to do all this stuff

[00:56:32] and he wouldn't let me do any of it and he didn't trust me as an actor and whatever You watch the opening credits of this movie and it starts going like Arlie Ermey John C. McGinley, Richard Rountree right? And I'm thinking like

[00:56:44] man, I forgot this movie has a murderer's row, just a stack deck of some of the greatest cinematic yellers in history, right? Just some fucking screamy sons of bitches. And then you watch the movie and the guys are all pretty muted. It's like he's taking

[00:57:00] these guys who you know can be really volatile and he's keeping them all like a little bit domesticated Sure. And I imagine Arlie Ermey came in here and was like I want to fucking act, especially when he originally auditioned for John Doe, right? That he's like I want

[00:57:16] to show my range. Everyone knows me as the drill sergeant. I want to fucking give a dramatic showcase performance. And Fincher wisely was like you gotta be bottled because the most disarming thing is to watch Arlie Ermey, the drill sergeant sit quietly behind a desk and

[00:57:32] sort of go like okay now don't get too invested in this case, you know? Like not really blow up but maybe that was incredibly frustrating for him. I do like when he answers the phone and he's like this isn't my desk

[00:57:44] and then hangs up the phone. I think that's funny But like that exact exchange you could imagine Arlie Ermey playing in like the full J. Jonah Jameson to the nine screaming, slamming the phone down. He would have been a good J. Jonah Jameson. He's got the hair.

[00:57:58] I think that was Cameron maybe wanted to cast him as J. J. J. Yeah. But yes, I think that's part of it and it's that thing of like going back to Fincher's very strategic about what he casts actors for, you know? So someone like Pitt, it's like the

[00:58:14] fact that he wants to be taken seriously is the thing that's going to really come across on screen. Versus casting someone like Arlie Ermey or Richard Roundtree and having them sit behind a desk and never blow up. Is him sort of playing with the tension of

[00:58:26] what you expect these types of guys to do. Same with Richard Roundtree, right? Just giving these dour press conferences. I love that this is set in a non-real city where it's just raining all the time and everything sucks. It's like Blade Runner. Like it's like

[00:58:40] I know Blade Runner is technically set in a city Is it LA? It's LA. Yeah, but like yeah, it is LA. But like um... Their badges just say Metropolitan. Yeah, that it's just like, you know, they just live in like USA. I've been watching the Saw

[00:58:52] movies, which obviously are hilariously indebted to Seven. Sims! That was my big thought about this is how much I was, I forgot how much Saw stole. Saw is just like, you know, Seven that's been run through the fucking, you know, shit grinder or whatever. Not that I don't

[00:59:08] they're kind of fun, but that's another one where you're like, where is this? Yeah. Like what is this town where it's just like, yeah, there's like 1400 warehouses. This guy's just got torqued devices in. Everyone who lives here is either a victim or a cop. Like he's the most

[00:59:24] like, and it's perfect. You're just like, yeah, I don't know, you know, like whatever. Society is degraded to this point that like Saw can happen. I had a question about not only the city but the timeline because you see that the sloth victim was born in 1931.

[00:59:40] Did you notice this? Okay, okay. So that would be... I'm like, was that guy supposed to be 60 years old? And then it didn't really attract to me so I kind of like it kind of being an ambiguous time. I mean, this is also before iPhones, I guess.

[00:59:56] Well yeah, okay, so that's a big thing. Whenever it was set, it's like it feels like it's supposed to be a contemporary 90s movie, but regardless, this is like towards the end of when a movie that's set in a contemporary time would be fully pre-internet.

[01:00:10] And that's part of what I love about like loved about rewatching this and why I like this movie more is like there's no fucking there's no cell phone there's no like, you know there's a little bit of some sort of data search, but it's through like

[01:00:24] an FBI third party. They're still going to the physical fucking library to pull books off of shelves. All that shoe leather plays so much better. The data search is Mark Boone Jr. Coming back with a manila envelope, right? Right. Sorry, it's a little greasy. Mark Boone Jr.

[01:00:42] An actor that David once referred to as looking like he sleeps in pizza pizza He steals a slice of pizza in this movie. I mean, I guess there's also the fingerprint analysis, but that's like a very crude like you know, that's a hundred years old. Yeah, they

[01:00:58] also all dress like 40s noir detective. Yes definitely. I mean Somerset's little hat, right? And Pitt's like suit, you know his yeah, they're very yes. It's all very noir-y. Arlie Ermey's got the the, you know, vest Which is like an area where Fincher's control of style

[01:01:20] and stylization is really important for this movie because I think a lot of directors would have tried to set it in a more realistic city whether or not they named it and you kind of need that heightening of like no this takes place in like

[01:01:34] just kind of hell. Yeah, right. And I don't even think that it was a thing that took place in like the 80s or the 50s rather. I'm just saying it just feels like an alt universe which I agree with. Fincher is actually an unreliable

[01:01:50] narrator in a way because he will often downplay I think his own artistry He says the rain thing was we had 55 days with Pitt. He was going to do 12 Monkeys right after this movie. So we had to match everything and it was raining when we started doing

[01:02:06] the movie and so we were just like it's always going to be raining. But then he says but also I kind of wanted to make it not feel like LA because it's always sunny. I think it was an artistic choice by him but he likes to be

[01:02:18] like it's practical, you know. And it feels intentional that when it's not raining is the end of the movie is John Doe turning the table It's about in the desert. He also says he's like if I could have put rain units in that I would have.

[01:02:34] He was like that was logistical. I had no Right, hard to do that. Sometimes he does make things sound like. I think he often is like self deprecating in a way. Right. That's the other wild thing. Right. Pitt had pre-committed to 12 Monkeys

[01:02:46] and Fincher was sort of prepping this movie on like a five month schedule out from production and then when Fincher becomes interested they're like you can or when Pitt becomes interested rather they were like you can get Pitt if you're ready to film in eight weeks and he

[01:03:02] did it. They just went like rocket speed on this movie. Right. And then he has this moment apparently the AD not the AD you know Mitch, Michael Cahn a different AD. Who was Bob Wagner by the way? I confirmed it that was Bob Wagner

[01:03:16] Bob Wagner who worked on Social Network I think and many other Fincher films Michael Cahn says like once they started production he like went up to Fincher and said look we're here we're doing it we're shooting a movie there's Morgan Freeman there's Brad Pitt isn't this amazing

[01:03:28] and Fincher's like no it's awful and he's like why is it awful and he said because now I have to get what's in my head out to all of you cretins which is funny do you don't think that's funny? No I think that's very funny

[01:03:40] I just read it already. You're right you already read it that's why you shouldn't read the dossier cause I can't surprise you. Maybe you shouldn't read the dossier I just. Alright you can do the dossier if you want. You think about psychologically

[01:03:50] where Fincher is at this point where I think he knows like if I fuck this up I'm done. Right definitely. That was my question to you guys if this movie doesn't work is it over for this guy? I mean like also in the world where you know

[01:04:04] like if you have two flops right at this point are you just done? But I think particularly for a guy who's like difficult is seen as difficult and strong headed and exacting or whatever if like twice the movie doesn't turn out well

[01:04:16] even if it's a little bit successful and the reputation is like he was too stubborn he's too dark you know. There's a middle version though cause like there's obviously if the movie flops his career is toast. Yeah. This movie

[01:04:28] did about as well as it possibly could it did so incredibly well. Yes. There's a version of this movie that makes like 60 70 million dollars domestic and is seen as like yeah that was a mild hit and it was a dark movie and he probably gets

[01:04:40] to make like dark mid budget movies. He stays at this. Yeah like it's like yeah okay alright Finchy but now that's your lane. Yes. And it's not I mean that is his lane in a way it's not

[01:04:52] like it's but like he I feel like he gets much more power because of how well this movie did. What's the blank check thing we talked about where it's like when a guy basically becomes a genre right? Right. And Hollywood is so perplexed

[01:05:04] by the success of their movie that on paper shouldn't have been a hit. Yeah. And the success has to be chalked up so largely to the sensibility of the filmmaker that they're like do your thing. Yeah. We now think your thing is popular. Yeah.

[01:05:18] We don't even know what it is. Right. We can't define it. In your parlance this is guarantor? This is absolutely. And then the only weird thing is that he Fight Club is him cashing the check. Yeah. He just makes the game in between. Right. Because

[01:05:34] he kind of wants to I guess. Well he's not really cashing the check though. No. Like he probably could have made the game and he was working on setting up the game the same time he was working on Sabbath. I was going to say but the universe

[01:05:44] you're saying where this movie does okay. Yeah. He could have made the game. He probably could have made the game. That's like the exact lateral move he could have done. And he still just does it I think to do it and I love

[01:05:54] that movie but the Fight Club is him more being like okay guys I know this seems impossible but I made seven. Yeah. So like I can make this too. Yes. Right because Fight Club is impossible like that script does

[01:06:06] not read like a movie that's going to work. No. We should start digging into the plot. Plot of seven. Okay so there's a guy doing seven murder seven murders seven murders guys thank you for being here. Yeah doughboys is the podcast you know about chain restaurant.

[01:06:20] I covered all of it. Yes so well it's not like it's a plot movie in a way but every time I watch it I'm like yeah it kind of moves pretty quickly. Yeah. Like the murders do not dribble out here

[01:06:34] like you know there's like three of them are basically done in the first 20 minutes. I had forgotten because the opening credits this movie are so infamous. That's like something that was burned into my brain as a kid. And I remembered it being

[01:06:48] the cold open like I remember being new line logo and then straight into this sort of tone style setting. Yes. It's sort of his like mission statement on the movie. I mean he said that it's like I wanted to make

[01:07:02] the opening credits really extreme to prep the audience for how far the movie could possibly go. The thing I forgot is that you have the cold open of Freeman before the credits. Yeah. Which is just sort of the table setting of this guy's sort of like he's weary.

[01:07:16] He lives in the worst city in the world and he sees the worst people and this was supposed to be longer too right it was like he went to like he was going to go to his retirement home and then he was going to take a

[01:07:26] train into the city like there was like a longer thing and they simplified it to just like he's at a random crime scene. If I was one week from retirement I would not take up the seven murders case. They keep on telling not to army tells them not

[01:07:40] to know I would I wouldn't think it's just one. You start with one. No it's going to be seven. He thinks he's in a movie called one. Yeah and that's fine. This is the infamous one murderer. He killed one person Yes Let me at him like ah

[01:07:58] Yes so the opening of the movie is just a random murder right that we open on. It's not one of the seven and it's just selling this idea of like I just think his characterization is so precise in this of like he

[01:08:12] so run down and he's so weary but nine out of ten versions of this guy would also be like cynical kind of grizzled in a different way like you can't shock me with anything. This guy still has his humanity right. He can still be shocked by

[01:08:26] things. There's the key moment when he sees the kids drawing on the fridge and he says did the kid witness the murder right and they go what the fuck that's none of your business. That doesn't matter. Your job is to solve the crime. Don't worry about the kid

[01:08:42] but there's something in this guy who has sacrificed his entire life to being a detective right who like basically sabotage the one meaningful romantic relationship he ever had in his life has truly been married to his career right. There's something in this guy that's still going like

[01:09:00] oh fuck is this kid going to get fucked up. Is that the crime I need to think about now is the long tail of this kid's psychology over the next 50 years whether or not he was present and everyone's saying like just do your

[01:09:12] job and even when he's this close to the exit there's something kind of holistic in his world view I mean it's the final quote why because of like he doesn't have any faith in the world but he still wants to

[01:09:24] fight for it. He still wants to try to be doing what he can to make the world a little less evil Yeah he's kind of looking forward in the sense of like did I did what I do have any impact on anything you know

[01:09:36] right because he has nothing to retire to right he steps down it's not like well now I get to enjoy growing old around my grandkids He's like now I'm going to retire and I'm just going to stare at a wall for the rest of my life and wonder

[01:09:50] whether I made any difference and I go to sleep with a fucking metronome right because basically like I just imagine it's I need something to calm my brain down he loved that metronome I think you gotta go to a metronome clinic you think he's addicted to the

[01:10:08] gnome? Mitch 1 million comedy points I'm sorry for not laughing I was just really trying to take that joke in deep into my bones I do like the idea of someone being like can I set you up with someone who's like nah I got gnomey here

[01:10:28] she just ticks away My only note I found it's kind of a missed opportunity that the metronome doesn't talk yeah right Hey Somerset how ya doing? Good day today? How's that mills guy? Is he going to work out? Think he's got any wrath in him? Right? Wrath

[01:10:46] Oh yeah And also at the end he doesn't even get to retire with a metronome, destroys it I know That's brutal actually, that's one of the most brutal deaths in the film. Yeah it's the worst Why did you hurt me?

[01:11:02] I have a question for you guys about the opening before we go any further because I wanted to ask you this At least when I purchased this movie on iTunes and I pushed play it just goes right into the movie and then the opening

[01:11:16] credits, that's not normal right? Like I didn't see any studio logos or anything That's weird Is it just me? I watched it on Blu-ray and it had that beautiful new line clapboard Yeah the old 90s new line Not the 80s one that I love as well

[01:11:32] but that looks like you're about to watch pornography Am I fucking this up? I swear to god I think that was the case I watched the blue as well You can fucking debug your iPad You know what? I do think Blank Check is the genius bar Wow, Hayes!

[01:11:50] A couple of geniuses I think I was just thinking about watching this The framing of this being like New Line trying to level up and be like we're going to be a more legitimate serious studio where they've been seen as sort of a tiny studio or a giant

[01:12:04] independent company Have they already been acquired by Warner Brothers at the time of this movie? Let's find out when the exact timeline is here. Obviously New Line Cinemas acquisition 1994 So yes, they just happened But they started out as a distributor for cult movies

[01:12:22] and college campuses and stuff like that and they were always called the house that Freddie built because Nightmare on Elm Street was their big breakthrough and they would take a lot of stuff that the studios thought Too gross, too trashy

[01:12:34] Ninja Turtles, you can't make a movie about Ninja Turtles and then that was the most successful independent film ever made at that point in time and this is them trying to level up which they do with wild success This movie is like huge for them Absolutely

[01:12:48] And then the run after this Right, you have like Rush Hour Austin Powers, Boogie Nights American History X Yeah This combination of like huge 94 is their carry year where they have The Mask and Dumb and Dumber But they're making like some of the biggest comedies of the 90s

[01:13:08] Rush Hour and Bowers And starting franchises Oscar-y movies So their 90s level up is like insane Then they make Lord of the Rings Then they make Lord of the Rings Then they do this gambit where everyone's like If you fuck this up your studio is going under

[01:13:24] They also did Elf Huge I don't know what else, that's about it Because it's fucking Golden Compass brings it all to a crashing halt That's the thing So like the Lord of the Rings thing pays off better than anyone could have imagined

[01:13:38] They're like one of the most successful film series ever They win Best Picture for the third one And then people are like You know what? We were all wrong New Line really proved themselves And they're like great we're going to do it again

[01:13:50] Golden Compass comes out and they're like We're shutting you down, you're folded into Warner Brothers Legacy over Yeah, it's a weird company I don't know, still exists of course in its way I think even Freddie himself would be I think the seven murders are messed up, wouldn't you?

[01:14:06] Too twisted for me, bitch You think Freddie would be scandalized if they sent him the script for seven maybe? I would never attach myself to something like this Disgusting! Now this is a nightmare, bitch But I'll attach you to it

[01:14:20] And then he stabs the claws through the script to the guy Speaking of New Line film history I looked up the man who played Gluttony Yes, Bob Maddick Oh yeah, I love this No, I just

[01:14:38] When I looked him up I saw that he was a real estate guy That's all I saw He wrote the songs for this Mr. T TV special that I was obsessed with Oh my god Be Somebody or Be Somebody's Fool

[01:14:52] Oh yeah, we used to run that on VHS Yes, incredible special, so he wrote the titular song for that He has like an odd kind of journeyman career, this was his first feature film credit Oh my god David found it I'm just now selling this to Mitch

[01:15:08] Because Mitch you're the one who doesn't know Speaking of the history of New Line Cinema He has one other theatrical film credit after this, Mitch He is the on-set body double for Fat Bastard in The Spy Who Shagged Me Oh my god Yes, he was the stand-in

[01:15:26] So basically whenever Fat Bastard's in a scene with one of the other Mike Myers characters Oh my god He played film's biggest fat bastards The biggest, the fattest bastard of them all. The phone would ring He'd pick it up and he'd be like, do you want another

[01:15:42] Mr. T song? And they're like, no we have a role for you I'm sorry, I'm sorry, David In your impression The year is 1997, 1998 He called, ring ring Before he even says hello, he just says What is it, you guys want another Mr. T song?

[01:15:58] It's been over a decade since he wrote a Mr. T song and he's just hoping that's what they're asking for Mr. T's still around, yeah maybe they're gonna do a follow-up. They just want him to play a fat bastard And I'm gonna slide right into that spot now

[01:16:10] Is the guy big? I thought, because there's a lot of prosthetics right? He's definitely wearing a lot of makeup and stuff. He was 380 at the time of filming. Pretty big. There's an Entertainment Weekly article that's really good about the breakout stars of Seven

[01:16:24] and it's talking to the seven actors who play the corpses. Okay, that's pretty funny That's awesome. That's good. And they all give little like kinda capsule quotes and funny things Well it's not seven because there's not seven corpses in this movie, there's

[01:16:36] five. You're right, you're right. They talk to the five and they say we won't talk about the other two because those are spoilers But he said he was 380 on set and they added 300 pounds visually Oh wow. In prosthetics to try to make him closer to 700

[01:16:52] Sure. They covered him in real cockroaches That's that I read They put stuffing in his ears and mouth so the cockroaches wouldn't crawl into his orifices They did crawl into his underwear. Oh good Great And who knows what happened from there And then they put a Doughboyz poster

[01:17:12] on the wall and then he was good to go Fincher said he felt so bad for the guy, for how bad he made him look and how much he punished him on screen that it was as a mitzvah He said let's give the guy a really big

[01:17:24] hog in the autopsy scene Oh there you go. That's great So that was like an apology of like this is gonna help this guy's reputation It's when I lost my connection to the character but still Everything else for me I was like okay

[01:17:38] You're watching and you're like this is the hero of the picture. It's weird he's not talking much He shall certainly come back to life Okay so Alright, plot of it. Gluttony is the first death right? So they're discussing this in order I guess

[01:17:56] Right. Somerset and Mills get together It's like hey, you know someone had to eat too much let's go check it out That's murder number one and Gluttony is written on the wall. Freeman almost immediately is like can you explain to me why the fuck you wanted to be

[01:18:08] transferred here? Right Like why would you want to work here? But it's the pit thing He's got the energy of a guy who's just like let me be a movie star. This is my big shot. It's pretty early that they have that sequence

[01:18:22] Where they're talking about if they've ever fired their guns right in the car. Oh yeah That's a really good scene That's rad. Where Pit telling the story the whole time you're like you're putting too much mustard on this Mills. Cause Somerset saying like I've never fired

[01:18:36] my gun and I've only drawn it thrice Yeah. And like you never had to shoot it. You're like damn that's crazy. That's so cool. And you're thinking about that and then Mills is like yeah you know I had to fire this guy unloaded on us shot

[01:18:48] someone in the arm you know and he's so pervy and manic and you're just like you know not really buying it from him. You know you believe the story but it also ties in the bleakness of just like when he's telling this story of the

[01:19:00] guy he worked with who got shot and he can't remember his name. He's like how the fuck is that guy's name you know it's just like right yeah dude got shot in the arm and bled out and he's just like he's just trying to remember

[01:19:10] like a detail in a random anecdote. Did Pit kill the perpetrator perpetrator did he kill the suspect or whatever that situation he didn't because I think if he would have fired it. Yeah right yeah he just opened fire by the way I did do some fact checking myself

[01:19:28] my iTunes version does open with a new line logo and I believe that the Bob Mac I looked up is just a real estate guy and not related to the actor at all. So anyway so you probably shouldn't have cold called him then

[01:19:40] right like are you are you gluttony no but yes that scene what you're saying it has the energy of like mill mills is so excited to tell the story because he thinks it will make him look legit to this older cop yeah that he's not clocking

[01:19:58] a Somerset tells his story that the cooler thing is having to never have fired your gun right right he's like that's the ultimate flex on on Somerset's part yeah and he's not even flexing that's why it's such a good flex right he's just like

[01:20:14] oh yeah funny thing about me and mills basically isn't listening because he's like prepping his monologue he's about to deliver in his head right right right he's asking that question to right to to tell it's great he has the nervous energy

[01:20:26] and I don't even know if he's doing it but is he like turning around on the car as he looks like he is sitting behind him that's what it is and pits in front striving who's driving I think the next the next victim is greed which it's pretty

[01:20:46] short I feel like because that leads them right to sloth like greed is just right because they don't see gluttony written until later right greed is the first time they're seeing the word put there right but right it's in that big fancy office yeah greed on the carpet

[01:21:02] but Somerset basically immediately is just like pound of flesh this is not the energy of someone who of one random killing right because first of all everyone's going like the guy's fat he probably ate himself to death his heart collapsed whatever there's

[01:21:16] a we're not sure this is a homicide right Somerset's like there's something intentional happening here and not only that he basically recognizes the signature of an artist yes right right this is impressive right and then he just feel like greed is someone's working in a style um right

[01:21:36] and then there's a pattern the sloth murder well now you're going very fast that's no it goes right to that that's what I'm saying the first three really fast right because there's the autopsy scene where we see his big old hog and they also like have pieces

[01:21:50] of plastic that are pulled from his intestine right or right Reggie Kathy and that great job there yeah he's great and that leads um that leads uh Somerset back to gluttony and I can't remember when sequencing I think this is after they find

[01:22:04] the greed body where he goes he ends up back at his apartment right doing the second round plastic was from the floor yeah where the dresser had basically been dragged uh the fridge fridge yes but like that kind of thing of like the plastic was fed to him

[01:22:22] like he's clearly Somerset recognizes that he's dealing with someone who knows the way a good detective is going to process the case yeah right it's such a weird like puzzle kind of escape room logic of like well I'm leaving the I'm feeding the plastic to

[01:22:40] him so you find it and then try to trace where the plastic came from which means this was dragged and put back yeah that's where gluttony was written does the dinner is gluttony and there's there's like the letter on the wall too right yes the dinner is

[01:22:54] after sloth okay that was my question no it's like because I feel like it's like once they go to sloth yeah that's when they're like okay this is a franchise this guy's gonna do right yes is we now understand this concept Somerset's like

[01:23:08] this is the seven deadly sins uh and the sloth sequence is just so nasty it's nasty it's nasty it is nasty fucking nasty yeah that sequence where uh Somerset is explaining the pattern right and laying it all out and being like these are three sins this guy's

[01:23:28] gonna do it four more times uh there's a really good uh every frame a painting every frame painting yeah sure yes video from from years and years ago about the way Fincher does uh dialogue scenes and how he constructs his coverage to uh tell you

[01:23:46] who's winning a scene that there's never sort of like meaningless coverage and you do watch the evolution of all the scenes especially the scenes with Arlie Ermey in the two of them uh and he really breaks down how there's an arc to basically Mills trying

[01:24:04] to enter himself into those conversations right that first one is really Ermey and Freeman talking to each other and pits in the background the coverage is done from in between Ermey and Freeman and pits like struggling to get in there right

[01:24:20] and as the movie goes on the whole thing kind of shifts to them finally becoming equals and partners right it's sort of after the dinner that they are of a unit and before then it's you know pits also just annoying in all the crime scenes yes

[01:24:32] he's got this like irritating kind of know-it-all attitude even though it's like none of these crime scenes are ones you'd walk in and be like classic guy you know gluttony situation this happens all the time I remember you know it's like yeah but he has that attitude

[01:24:48] and what leads him to sloth is another what you're saying earlier Griffin it's like the more of the clue the breadcrumb trails he's left for them which is like you know they this is a thing another thing that a kid told me about

[01:24:58] which is like they used his severed hand to like put a fucking hand print on the wall and then like you know a bit but it's behind the painting and the wife is the widow right the lore of like all of the murders I feel like like

[01:25:10] that was a thing that was talked about so much between my friends and I and yeah what it meant what each sin meant and like why they were tortured the way they were and like I remember like breaking down sloth it's like sloth is like you're

[01:25:24] lazier whatever and then like they took a picture of the guy each day like you heard so much of that shit on the playground it's the hand he used to jack off with jack off the seven man's gonna get you that was like that was that was like

[01:25:36] Bloody Mary now sloth he's also like a drug dealer and a pedophile right that's what they say yeah like but acquitted by the way I was making a fucking spacey joke sure I mean you didn't have to say you

[01:25:52] were making a spacey joke but now we have to once again say that anything about him is alleged I guess I'm just worried he's gonna sue us you're worried he's gonna sue you that man is very online have you seen his youtube account I'm just like getting sued

[01:26:06] by him would be like a spa day and let me tell ya that's the best case scenario the guy's winning cases too for whatever reason this guy's got fucking Clarence Darrow on the case you know whoever and also Kevin Spacey has played Clarence Darrow in a movie

[01:26:22] it's a real shame that spacey didn't represent himself in court that would have been the performance of a lifetime Christ all right look here's what I want to say you go ahead to Wiger's point okay we're building off each other here yeah okay it's

[01:26:36] that thing of like what John Doe gets to later in the film of like he's got this self aggrandizing thing of just like I'm the best serial killer of all time like this is gonna be the Wikipedia entry that everyone reads for centuries right

[01:26:50] the intentionality of what I did where he's just like getting off on the cat and mouse game part of it so it's like they go and speak to the wife of greed she looks at the photos of the crime scene she notices that the painting in the background

[01:27:04] is upside down right it's the thing I don't remember if it's before this or after this when like Freeman is sort of trying to train Pitt and he says like you have to find the one detail that no one else would pick up on yes right that's

[01:27:16] always the thing that's gonna help you crack the case is the one detail that feels like it doesn't matter that everyone else would miss right and the painting is such a perfect example why is the painting upside down that's so bizarre that can't be for no

[01:27:28] reason and then that great scene of them going and being like well here we're gonna solve the mystery take the painting off the wall fuck nothing oh the wrapping in the back of the painting if we cut it open they'll be the answer fuck nothing and like

[01:27:40] Pitt's ready to give up and Freeman's like there's no way it doesn't mean something yeah they just have to keep on hitting it until like right the fingerprints show up and even then it's not a clear clue but they know like something's leading them to this painting

[01:27:56] right and the painting's gonna lead them to the next thing I love that detail that that space the seven killer like change like on the back of the of the painting he like changed the screws so that it would hang up in the in the correct

[01:28:10] way yeah yeah that's great right this guy's messing with screws he's truly depraved I think you might have a screw loose hey it's like many a noir and like the Batman which is like you know Batman version of this movie I had not seen this movie

[01:28:30] since seeing the Batman right and it is absolutely absurd I had forgotten just how indebted the Batman is to everything highly indebted the fucking handwriting in this film to much of Fincher but mostly this yes mostly this I feel like Morgan Freeman

[01:28:44] would have figured out who the Riddler was like almost instantly yes yeah Jeffrey Wright really does get kind of screwed over but both movies are both this and the Batman are about they are detectives and they are figuring clues out but they are being

[01:28:58] led on a path this is like yeah this is the thing I strongly dislike about the Batman sure a movie we've already devoted an entire Patreon episode to right a movie I love on vibes good vibes sure and I think the fundamental

[01:29:12] failing of that movie is it's 3 hours long and he's a terrible detective right yeah like cause the audience should not like the ideal is the audience should not get ahead of it like and even this way I noticed in this scene and I don't know how

[01:29:28] intentional this was it feels like it's intentional but like the way that that scene is shot where they're pulling the picture off the wall the whole time it's framed where there's another painting in the background and it's kind of like a

[01:29:40] visual red herring I feel like for the viewers kind of like a misdirect of like oh maybe that's the maybe they're investigating the wrong painting but it's not that like it's like this film I think is so good at parceling out information in such a

[01:29:52] way where you don't ever anticipate what the next move is and then the other thing it does and just to skip ahead a little bit but one thing I love about the script is that they break his fucking plan because of because of you know Somerset's

[01:30:06] inside of like we can we can see which books he checked out we can find out who this guy is and they go to his apartment and now they interrupt his fucking trail of breadcrumbs that he set up and that drives him like almost mad. Yeah I love

[01:30:16] that I also think that the Riddler is a bad as bad as Batman is as a detective the Riddler is a bad serial killer in the Batman like his clues are pretty easy I actually like the Riddler and I think he has some interesting ideas

[01:30:30] I don't know if you guys heard him on Rogan No but he's no he actually he makes some interesting points um no I just I feel like that's a movie where I'm an idiot and I feel an hour ahead of Batman

[01:30:44] whereas this is a movie where even re-watching it I struggle to remember like right how do they figure that out sure and it's a movie that really does actually impress you in watching the investigative skills of its characters. I mean this movie is also an hour shorter

[01:30:58] than Batman and that is my main note as is yours about the Batman which is I wouldn't think about it as hard if it wasn't so god damn long but um but I also think like the Riddler and Batman what's his ideology he wants to expose corruption

[01:31:14] I suppose but he's really crazy he hates nepo babies he hates a nepo baby he wrote the New York Magazine article like John Doe obviously uh alright so the gluttony guy he's being punished for his gluttony fine the greed guy is rich the sloth guy is

[01:31:32] the one where it actually doesn't there's no poeticism to it he's a bad person who's been given a horrible punishment but they don't really seem to interact right like he's not slothful he's a drug addict right like is that a part of it yeah that's the argument

[01:31:48] the guy spends a lot of time in bed zonked out on drugs on the wacky shoes Jesus Christ what yeah I'm coming around this guy's so whipped out of his mind on reefer they make it clear that he's a pothead he likes yeah the wacky sure

[01:32:04] he's ODing on pot left and right I wonder how long it would take me to be upset if the seven killer tried to get me for sloth if I was just like he tied me to a bed I'd be like alright

[01:32:16] I think I'd just be fine with it for a while also you're like also that's in alright okay I just I imagine John Doe breaking into your house and you being like if we can relocate this to Quincy I'm down right right

[01:32:30] I just don't want to do it in LA I feel like he'd be hard pressed to figure out which sin to get me for also he'd have a heart attack before he made it up all your stairs let's be clear

[01:32:44] the guy's in okay shape but there are only so many flights a man can walk up before his heart gives out he comes in and you've got a plate of spaghetti you're already eating I'm passed out in the spaghetti oh shit by the way the sloth

[01:33:00] we got a true alien chestburster moment oh yeah the sloth that he didn't they didn't tell him that he was going to have a reaction I didn't know that yeah which is cool it's such a good jump scare in that it's not accompanied by any music or sting

[01:33:18] it's just him being alive you're like this is a skeleton yes like this is a dead person yeah and so it's it still gets me to this day and it comes alive in like the just a way where it's just like not even like a it is kind

[01:33:36] of a jump scare of course but it's not like it's just a man gasping for breath uh John C. McGinley is very well established character actor at this point in time he's got very high billing on this movie his name is on the poster and

[01:33:50] everything pretty hot your firm isn't this office space yeah no no no office space is 99 oh it's late he was always hot he was always hot he was always hot but it's one of those fascinating performances where you're like

[01:34:04] oh he's like fifth build he's a really well established guy you rarely see his face in this movie he's in a lot of scenes and you forget that you forget like oh it's still they make him main SWAT guy anytime there's a SWAT

[01:34:16] team right but the nature of the role is that he's usually in very frantic scenes holding a gun in front of his face wearing a mask or like in quickly cut sequences where you're never really seeing him where you're like this

[01:34:28] guy was on set a lot for a performance that a lot of people could watch and not ever realize that was him yeah he's in the rock the year after and he's in like he did a lot of this around now a lot of like guys

[01:34:42] with machine guns yeah before I feel like office space moves him into the uh you know boss territory there's the infamous story that when they wrote the pilot script for scrubs his character in the script said think a john c mcginley type right right right right and

[01:35:00] uh a bunch of john c mcginley's friends reached out to him and they were like hey so are you doing this or what right and he was like what do you mean they're like i got sent a breakdown to read for this thing in the

[01:35:10] script it says a john c mcginley type so i'm just before i go in for it i assume you passed and he was like no no one fucking got me an appointment for this casting didn't want to see

[01:35:20] him they do that to actors all the time like actors who have been through and they're like this type and it's like just hire that person hire the fucking person available right and he was like i basically had to beg to get a read um it's also

[01:35:32] insane to me that he is a gun guy early on because i just don't even think of him was he like a former military man or something i don't understand why he is like put in these military roles are like this in the rock and platoon

[01:35:46] to yeah yeah he's a big intense guy i think that's just it he early on was playing that kind of stuff and that's what he starts being cast as but no he went to syracuse university and then tish the new york university school of

[01:36:02] the arts griffin i'm familiar they're not the military they are not with us military in any way that i know it's harder it's harder than of course yeah it's more it's more difficult boot camp yes yeah like platoon is kind of his first major role

[01:36:18] yeah and then yeah like he's in he's in a lot of oliver stone movies he's in point break he's so good no fuck he's he's uh special right yeah have you ever heard that they're looking they're looking for a griffin newman type and and not have the

[01:36:34] audition for it or like i'm sure it's happened you know what has happened uh i've been sent like a look book where my picture is used that's that's wild you know when like people are doing like very low budget things

[01:36:48] or short films or whatever they don't have previous work to show so they put together like a 20 page like yeah right here images of what i want to look like and then they'll have these sort of character breakdowns where they use photos of different

[01:37:00] actors and movies that are sort of a similar type and i've gotten sent those sometimes for like things where they're interested in me and sometimes other people going up for them in the same way they're like did you ever have you had that happen match i heard that

[01:37:16] for this movie for gluttony they said mike mitchell type but i and you were like i know i mean that's i'm like jesus they really did their research on me figure out 13 year old me was a good type for think mike mitchell five years i've

[01:37:34] heard things like that before like where people like they like said they wanted to you type but i never i'm not sure the you know how valid that was and also probably much smaller projects when when people have sent me like the look book things and my

[01:37:48] face is included sometimes i don't even think like oh this person who put this together is a fan of something i did i feel like they just googled like cuck with glasses and they grabbed the first five like i don't take this as

[01:38:04] any compliment i'm like maybe this is just it's a cheap image to license some man with class fuck up no i wasn't gonna make fun of you i was gonna say the thing that i remember where you're part of a tablo unexpectedly was something someone sent me

[01:38:18] which was someone had put together like an instagram story that was like the hottest big men of all time and it's like in the back i was like i need a big for he was like that song was playing

[01:38:28] and like it was just you know it's going through a bunch of different like famous actors and then it gets to you i was like oh i felt very proud of you which is looking good which also is insane that they got to me in that

[01:38:40] the big actors of all time how long is that song this is like 45 minutes into it i want to talk about the dinner scene yes so the next scene is the dinner scene do you like that they live underneath the railroad i like all the details

[01:39:01] it's so funny i think it is like at this point in the movie this is the zaniest thing that happens in the movie is their house like truly shaking like crazy i think this is the true artistry of this screenplay right the sequel secret artistry

[01:39:17] of like a the fact as i was saying andrew kevin walker i think relates to the paltrow character more than anyone else makes her not feel like a plot function where it's like this character exists for the sake of the reversal right not the reversal

[01:39:29] the twist at the end and it be so easy in most versions of this film to the moment this character is introduced go like she's fucking dead meat there's no reason she's included why are we meeting this character that feeling in thrillers like this

[01:39:45] where it's really tough to introduce a character and not have them feel like there's a target on their head from the beginning otherwise why are we even spending any time with them these scenes are so well written and charming and have such a weird level of

[01:39:59] like character to them between the apartment between the way she calls at the office ask pit to hand the phone to somerset somerset accepts the supper invitation you know where you're just like maybe this is just they needed comic relief maybe

[01:40:15] this is just like a little glimpse of light it doesn't make you feel like she's a target because she's so much more realized and specific than most of these things are and then even just down to the apartment where they say

[01:40:25] the thing about like every time we came to look at the apartment they would only let us see it for five minutes at a time right it's such a funny detail right because it also serves as like characterization you know and and and it like kind of

[01:40:37] informs like pits characters like a human being and so like if you're just watching this movie cold and and I do think that honestly this movie plays better watching it a second time I think this is one of those those twist movies that like just

[01:40:49] knowing everything going in it just all that stuff hits more with more intensity but like it yeah to your exact point it's like it that just seems like it's serving as like you know as like characterization you don't it's how well structured is like you aren't getting

[01:41:05] ahead and being like okay she's gonna be the last victim you aren't already anticipating that. I do such a good job of balancing that with her just the like her screen time and what her character is and I would love I would love to see this movie

[01:41:17] without in my mind I've always known that her head was in the box forever even probably from the playground I know what you mean it's hard to remember not knowing. Yeah I definitely did not know that the

[01:41:27] first time I saw it. See I don't know I think I probably I don't know a world where I didn't know I maybe didn't the first time I watched it but I don't I think that I did but I would love I would love to have

[01:41:37] watched this as an adult not knowing it and if I would be surprised by it I think I would I think that it's a surprising ending yeah for sure yeah well just a bit of a surprise it's especially for one character

[01:41:49] the amount of energy they put into making her feel like a real person the longer that goes on the more you think well they couldn't possibly decapitate her and put it in the box you know where you're like that speaks to the fundamental darkness of the script

[01:42:03] that everyone reacted to so strongly of just like you can't do that you can do that Jason Voorhees can do that to a character who has been on screen for only two minutes you know like these are the rules of these types of movies

[01:42:17] is you can introduce a character and make them so awful or so silly that no one's actually gonna feel bad if they die but you can't hire like an actress who's like a major star on the rise give her like 15 minutes of scenes that have some real

[01:42:31] weight and charm to them and then do the worst thing imaginable to her don't you feel though that when later she reveals her pregnancy to Somerset his reaction is our reaction which is like no then you're truly fucked you have that kind of reaction of like

[01:42:49] now the loss of you would be so profound nothing would be profound before that like there's I don't know a tragic air like settling around her but like Mitch I never had the luxury of watching this movie without knowing where it's going and I was trying

[01:43:03] to do the hypothetical exercise watching it this time I'm like if I'm watching this cold in a theater where no one's told me anything and I'm with my stupid brain I'm like trying to figure out the story math of this like why is he making

[01:43:15] this choice as a screenwriter what would this be setting up for later I do think maybe I assume the more conventional arc is now that Somerset knows this the end goal of this movie is for him to convince Pitt to leave the force yeah sure right don't whatever

[01:43:33] you think you're doing here it's not good the reason to disclose that information I'm like maybe the tragic ending of this movie is he convinces Pitt to retire and he re-ups he doesn't leave the force or whatever it is it's sort of this cautionary tale of a guy

[01:43:47] right but like Somerset was too deep in there was no getting out he was able to save the soul of this guy and give him an out and have a family and all that sort of shit but yeah the dinner scene is so good Freeman is doing

[01:44:01] this thing with the napkin they're like talking to him at dinner and like Paltrow's grilling him more and asking about why he never married and he's sort of dodging the question and he's like playing with his napkin and he's like tying it around his hand

[01:44:15] like he's a little child and it's so disarming where you just feel like oh no one's actually invited this guy out socially like this in possibly two decades absolutely that is a good call he has not had a social life at all except with Nomi of course

[01:44:35] right his best bud but that's a roommate I think he might bring it to like a Chinese restaurant and just sort of set it down and eat some dumplings Christmas but that's what I love

[01:44:49] he's like so... what if he brought it to this dinner and he was just do you mind if I put it on a chair next to me can I bring my spouse? it's like a Lars and the real girl situation

[01:44:59] do we have to pretend like this is a human being I just like that there's something very childlike and awkward about him you know he tries to brush off the invitation and then once he's there he kind of loves like yeah

[01:45:13] being normal like because he's so good at being normal when in a crime scene where a man ate too much spaghetti and got kicked in the tummy he is reacting to that like Pit reacts to that by going like ew and like going bleh

[01:45:27] Somerset is like pretty cool and he's like he's collected in all of this because that's his job right he's become so good at like the waves crash against him and he's like you know like whatever but that's different from like sitting

[01:45:39] at dinner and having someone go like so are you seeing anybody? I mean quite a Paltrow circa 1995 pressed you for goss who could resist John Doe he says he likes it that's why he puts her head in a box Paltrow is just so fascinating as a

[01:45:55] cultural figure right um you mean like the totality of her cultural like you know are we including like goop? yes! endorsing Rick Caruso for mayor I think it's so... did she endorse Rick Caruso? she did yeah I'm Gwyneth from LA and I'm voting for Rick

[01:46:13] he would have made the seven city look like the grove laughs I think there are a lot of actresses of her era who came in with like a lot of hype right? sure who are you thinking of? like Julia Ormond, Gretchen Maul yes um or even

[01:46:36] you come to someone like Mira Sorvino who like got an Oscar very young and then kind of could never top that or whatever it is right? kneecap by Mr. Weinstein of course but you're still none of these people are direct analogs but they're all in this similar sphere

[01:46:52] right? right on paper she's someone who either that should be the beginning of her having like a Jodie Foster like career or she's like oh isn't that weird that Gwyneth Paltrow won the Oscar when she was like 28 and then her career completely tapered off and instead

[01:47:08] you're like this is someone who's going to be wildly famous until the day she dies but what she represents now is so bizarrely different yes and she is such an odd figure that I fall into the trap of being like was she ever

[01:47:20] a good actress? like am I gonna rewatch her performances and find that they're bullshit because I do think there's certain people I don't want to take stray shots of people who we don't need to right? but there's certain actresses who I feel like had the heat

[01:47:34] and then you watch the performances 20 years later and you're like I see a couple tricks going on here but in retrospect it was kind of clear they didn't have a lot of depth right? they had like a couple like tricks, they were good on camera

[01:47:46] they were perfect, they were right place at the right time but there was not a sustainable like craft here and then you watch Paltrow anytime she's good in something and you're like holy fucking shit when she was locked in, she's locked in

[01:47:58] and she can still choose to be locked in it's been a while but then anytime she tries like Contagion she's got a very small part but you're like she's fucking acting I think that's the last time though, I mean I enjoy her in the Marvel movies sometimes obviously

[01:48:12] and then there are others where you're like I can tell that you don't remember you were in this but the three proper Iron Man movies she's fantastic in Girl Tannenbaum she is fantastic in. Well, Two Lovers as well. Two Lovers, she's incredible in That dinner scene

[01:48:26] to me is just a really, it's the moment where I wrote down just a really sweet, it is just this maybe the sweetest scene in the movie. She's so fucking good. What about the gluttony murder that's not sweet to you? I thought that was pretty sweet too because

[01:48:42] I mean I was like that's sweet Top 10 sweet scenes in 7 No, yeah and it's a real spoonful of honey in a movie that you kind of are desperate for like any kind of normal human interaction It is weird that she lights one of the her goop vagina candles

[01:49:00] in that scene though too. Yeah Right, she gives you the gay dad. They showed up close but yeah it's not directly referenced in dialogue The things I love in that scene is first off just talking about how unprepared they are for the city, the dogs who are way

[01:49:14] too fucking big for a modest apartment in the city Call them kids. Great Yeah, calls them kids and then also the other thing is like there's a moment where and it just you know Brad Pitt's character is almost cartoonishly dumb in this but there's a moment where

[01:49:28] but it all works, there's a moment where Morgan Freeman asks for a glass of wine and he brings him like a fucking tumbler of wine It's kind of unspoken and Somerset just looks at it at a certain point but that's it. But it's just like I don't know

[01:49:42] that shit. It's good. And they're like high school sweethearts? Yes I love, you do feel that vibe of like the two of them work well together in the movie I think there's just a moment where he like gets

[01:49:54] into bed with her and he's like I love you and it like works extremely well for whatever reason Did you write that was sweet in your notes? That was another sweet, that's one of my other sweet moments But the earthquake set, they used that to trick people

[01:50:10] the people who visited set Oh really? The apartment, they'd like shake it and make things They'd be like oh take a look at this set and they'd be like turn it on. Fuck with execs That's fun. Have the money fall out of their pockets Yeah right after that

[01:50:24] is the conversation between Somerset or you know pretty close to that between Somerset and Tracy. Freeman's reaction to her saying she's pregnant is the moment his performance that kills me. The moment in her performance that kills me I think is just such a good

[01:50:36] choice and such an honest reaction is he gives his whole spiel about him and his ex partner aborting the child that they had and he has that like heartbreaking line where he says like I think no I know it was the right decision

[01:50:54] there's not a day that goes by that I don't regret it and then he sort of gives his advice to her in that sort of like Freeman authority way right in the voice of God way where you're just like anything

[01:51:06] this guy says in this position is going to hold so much weight and just like look whatever you decide to do if you have that kid like you know move far away if you decide not to keep it never ever tell him and then he

[01:51:18] says and it's sort of like this intensity of her singing there and like sort of clenching her tears knowing the weight of what's being said but trying to like maintain composure to diner and then he says and just promise me

[01:51:30] if you have that kid you spoil it every single day of its life and it's him making the joke to cut the tension and Paltrow's decision as an actor is that's the thing that finally breaks her down and makes her cry rather than laughing it's like

[01:51:44] the empathy of that moment is the thing that's finally too hard for her to take it is heartbreaking it's acknowledging the reality situation but also the fact that he is being that thoughtful in the moment is the thing that finally breaks down her guard

[01:51:58] and she like loses it and then smiles to sort of acknowledge like that's a sweet thing to say but at first it's just like this is too fucking sad she's so good in that she's so good and she's so good I mean I love 90s Paltrow she's

[01:52:12] so good in Emma she's so good in Shakespeare uh she's great in Sliding Door she's great in Ripley and then I Tenenbaums after Tenenbaums I feel like she got lost doing too much sort of sort of treacly dramatic stuff like Sylvia

[01:52:26] and Proof and like these movies where it's like she's angling for another Oscar nom and why you know what I mean like she couldn't quite she was getting like Nicole Kidman runoff parts which is not what she should have been doing and then after that

[01:52:38] of course it's just like two lovers in Iron Man come out the same year and it's like you know the road not taken is two lovers like Iron Man is just like great now you just she entered the world of hard science

[01:52:48] you're forgetting that she changed her whole perspective and tried to focus on products that absolutely been backed up by serious health commissions okay right yes absolutely also she was married to Mordecai yes don't forget that yeah have you guys ever seen Mordecai?

[01:53:04] No I have not. It's on my list it's at the top of my list Do you know the thing in Mordecai a movie that I contend is actually impossible to watch like physically impossible to sit through without fast forwarding even when you

[01:53:18] would go to see it in a movie theater the projector would be like don't worry I'm hurrying it up we're not gonna play this it's the only movie that was projected at 2x yeah right the guy's just cranking it real hard yeah so the hands are on fire

[01:53:32] he Gwen Paltrow is Mordecai's wife in that film right Mordecai he of the poster and the silly comedy mustache yes right the beginning of the film she's been away on some trip she comes home and he goes honey you won't believe what happened while you

[01:53:50] were gone and he turns around and reveals that he's grown the mustache while she was gone and she sees the mustache and pukes in her mouth and the runner for the rest of the film is that she hates the mustache so fucking much and every time he

[01:54:04] tries to kiss her she pukes right that sounds good as well trying to get us not to watch this movie what are you talking about we like it I just like that even in the movie Mordecai Mordecai's wife is like

[01:54:16] we're really gonna build the whole movie around this guy and he's gonna have the mustache the whole time isn't there a character named jock strap in that movie yes yes I believe that's Paul Bettany's character he's Mordecai's body man yeah because that's what led

[01:54:32] to all the Johnny Depp Paul Bettany texts right yeah anyway okay they check out books they check out who's checking out seven deadly sins books that's what gets them to the apartment well Somerset gives Mills the reading list Mills goes and gets the cliff notes

[01:54:50] because the books are making his brain hurt yes no one must know what no one young people just don't know what cliff notes are anymore right that's just like you would just look up a Wikipedia summary even though

[01:55:00] one of the best jokes in Clueless does that mean that joke doesn't work anymore when she says she gives the Shakespeare quote yeah and then she's like that's such a good quote where'd you get it she says cliff notes it's really funny

[01:55:10] that doesn't mean anything to anyone anymore I don't think so no it's too bad I remember when the first time I found out about cliff notes there was probably someone making a joke to me and I was like wait what do you mean

[01:55:20] what are you talking about and they're like well they sell these books that are like 50 pages and they just like dumb down the thing you're supposed to read for school right so you can write a paper on it right and I was like and where

[01:55:30] do you get them back alleys you have to know a guy and they were like Barnes and Noble and I was like this is legal this shit isn't black market do I have to show my ID did they not sell them if you're underage and they're

[01:55:42] like no they let you it's just wild with everyone it's conspiring to help us cheat for so long I love it I got em I have a couple of cliff notes I do like that they're yellow though to be kind of like

[01:55:56] cheat you know like they're kind of radioactive you can't put them on a shelf and not see them you know that John Waters quote about if someone brings you home and they don't have any books on their shelves don't sleep with them or whatever

[01:56:12] what if you meet someone at a bar and you go back to their place and they're only cliff notes that's what we call the yellow shelf I'm a fan of the classics you at least do hand stuff with them right

[01:56:22] I would do hand stuff yeah that's the thing you would do a cliff note set which is a hand job um maybe even a hand job where like halfway and you're kind of like do you want to wrap this up

[01:56:34] I can hand this over to you are we bored um wait fuck oh isn't there a nick I'm going to put together a bookshelf today I didn't realize this quote John Waters heard about your ass um Mitch assembles a bookshelf just puts one kindle on

[01:56:54] Nick there's some video game where if you cheat then everyone in the game calls you cheater I can't remember what game it is now where it's like hello cheater if you do a cheat that's sort of what it's some point some Sierra point and click

[01:57:08] adventure or something something like that anyway alright so then there's the whole sequence that the one action sequence in the movie them chasing him through the rain you know it's so fucking good it's so cool that's when it breaks his arm genuinely broke his arm right

[01:57:24] and they had to write it into the movie yeah in the commentary they say that like pit says and I think venture is being modest but pince like pits like basically none of that is in and they're very very complimentary of having

[01:57:34] Andrew Kevin Walker script but they're basically nothing none of the chase sequences in the script that was all like venture like figuring it out and it is like it's awesome it's extended the other thing is like there's such a great sense of space in it and then

[01:57:46] and then another element is like it's not it's not a linear pursuit it's like they're keeping moments of like where the fuck is this guy like they're trying to find him he's not sure he gets surprised by him yeah it's it's it's just

[01:57:58] really oh yeah that's right they were they were so sick of chase sequences where you're like always seeing where the guy went yeah exactly and then this they wanted to have it be like you're losing track of this guy really could be around any corner and pit

[01:58:12] is playing it that way yeah can you make out spacey at all in this sequence like is it definitely him or is there a chance some of this is great question double or different actors yeah double right he is the crime scene photographer earlier in the right

[01:58:28] there's that because when they go to his easter egg of him right um but when they go and find the photos and pit puts it together if you look back at that scene it is spacey wearing a wig doing a voice it's like spacey doing a mad tv

[01:58:44] audition yeah i think if you were a detective wouldn't you be like that guy is weird yeah we should maybe love this guy for being weird crime scene photographer is weird possibly yeah but you'd be like this guy's doing too much business there's a little too much going

[01:58:58] on he's overselling it um yeah but i do like that he's in there early i mean this is obviously this is one of the infamous things about this movie is spacey has already shot swimming with sharks outbreak and usual suspects hence his quote as i said

[01:59:14] had gotten higher despite the movies not coming out he reads this part they finally come back around to it and go we'll meet your quote wanna offer it to you and his contractual demand is don't credit me in the movie don't put me in the opening credits

[01:59:28] he's in the closing credits twice right but not in the opening that was the make up uh but don't put me on the poster none of that and they went like what the fuck are you talking about and he said if any of these three movies

[01:59:42] i've shot that are in the can blow up which they might more so than anything i've done before up until now i'm gonna be a much bigger name by the time this movie comes out and if there are three names on the poster

[01:59:56] and they spend the first half of this movie hour plus looking for the guy and you never see his face everyone's gonna go well kevin spacey's gonna be he's in the credits like anyone who's heard of him will be like yeah he's coming right so it's

[02:00:08] one of the few examples of like movie billing actually working to support the plot it adds to the mystique of this performance in this film absolutely like i think it was a thing you would know as a young person like did you know like spacey's

[02:00:20] not you know like that was like a little when that year is him kind of like growing his reputation to have him just show up in the last 40 minutes because it's also it's such a brilliant um structural move that's the thing like fincher talks

[02:00:34] about he reads the script he's on like page 5 it's a fucking buddy cop movie i don't want to do this fucking thing i mean he's getting lethal weapon vibes right he said yeah right and then he

[02:00:42] sticks a little further in and he's like wow this movie is darker than i thought it was right and he's reading through it and he's like this is not giving up this movie is really dark and then page 100 the killer walks in and goes it's

[02:00:52] me yeah and he's like i'm physically holding the script in my hand i can feel there are still like 40 pages left and i'm so excited being like i have no idea what happens in the remaining 40 pages right the fuck is this movie doing if it plays its hand

[02:01:08] this early with who the guy is also just it also just spacey not putting his name in the opening by the way it just speaks to the character of that man um he's just kind of like a noble guy just the selflessness selfless yeah

[02:01:22] i really hope he listens to this uh i hope he doesn't i think he's bad um he's bad in kpax yeah i agree before is he yes yes this is a bad performance yes yeah i mean i believe you yes

[02:01:36] i read the book did i ever tell you that no yeah years ago never told me that i read kpax the novel both of you have read kpax i think the book is not great did you like it i don't remember it being particularly good i've never seen

[02:01:48] kpax i don't think but i've read the book i've seen the movie mitch have you seen the movie i feel like i've seen parts of kpax i also don't i don't i don't think i ever when spacey puts mustard on a roll i don't ever think i

[02:02:00] like even when he is the photographer and he's like hey let me take a picture buddy i'm like this is that's over the top but when he's just being his normal you know like spacey kind of like when he's like in this movie too

[02:02:12] just being kind of a psycho and just being like a quiet speaking spacey guy i think that he's he's fun to watch he is good it's you know it's the thing that's fucking tough to talk about because you don't want to seem like you're praising him but

[02:02:24] but the performance is good i think there's a really clear divining line which is just like you know post-american beauty i think he just gets so fucking up his own ass and just is doing things like playing whatever like sure about that

[02:02:38] it becomes i mean when the guy becomes a true mad tv sketch character yeah and and and i think that you know and also things like playing like when he was like in his he's like 50 and he's playing like a 27 year old bobby

[02:02:50] darren in a biopic that he always was an indulgent at all how dare you he's look we talk about spacey a little bit but like he always talks about and especially like in the post-american beauty era where he's just like i've won two oscars i'm now a movie

[02:03:08] star a fully minted movie star and it became so clear that like oh in his mind he is jack lemon that's the star that he's always looked up to and now he's going on talk shows and he's doing all his impressions right he wants

[02:03:20] to be a little bit of that right like the guy who can do kind of a variety show as well as winning an oscar right comedy and drama yeah yeah and it's like this is the year where he breaks out largely because of two roles where he

[02:03:30] plays stone cold right he played creepy to the scariest people in the movie like in both seven and the usual suspects in the worlds of those movies he's the worst scariest person maybe the worst human being who's ever lived the universe of the movie exactly

[02:03:44] right yes and once again we watch him now and we're like i understand why he was good at playing these things right and then he enters this period like really i'd say like 2000 he doesn't make it out of the 20th century alive right he goes into the

[02:03:58] year 2000 he's like now america loves me and i'm gonna be charming podcast the ride did a very good episode on this that is uh untitled and behind multiple paywalls so that they don't experience any legal action and i apologize for directing uh any attention over there

[02:04:12] but just the weird era of space you just wanting to be like rock on tour like i'm singing john lennon covers at a 9-11 tribute concert and shit like that sure right yeah yeah but you know so much of our modern cultures need

[02:04:26] to talk about like how do you like address bodies of work that contain canceled people in a culture where people are getting canceled at an alarming rate where we find out more and more awful things about almost everyone all the time right and spacey's been this

[02:04:40] guy where i've always started as an example where i'm like well the cosby show is impossible to watch now you cannot watch a cosby show like the cognitive dissonance is too severe right but like i don't think seven is negatively affected by kevin spacey because

[02:04:54] if anything it kind of plays into it i'm not saying it makes it better you're not wrong but like american beauty i would imagine is impossible to watch right now in a way i think it already wasn't holding up great sure yeah but

[02:05:06] when that movie is premised on the idea of like what a normal seeming suburban dad who then turns out to be a little weirder than we thought that falls apart versus this movie when kevin spacey shows up and he's like fucking cut his fingertips off you're like yeah

[02:05:22] no classic kevin spacey role i the thing with him is post this and pre-american beauty it's really interesting the roles that they find for him essentially playing like movie star creep so like yes time to kill he's the evil lawyer okay so but that's probably being made

[02:05:40] sort of before he wins the oscar la confidential where it's like he is a quote unquote hero in that movie yeah but he's a weird creep he's really good at it you know he's kind of like a slimeball the negotiator the negotiator it's like yes he's the

[02:05:56] hero sad sad but right there's a weird edge to this guy midnight in the garden of good and evil which i just watched in my effort to finally watch every single clannis with directed film i watched it in which he's playing a gay art collecting murderer

[02:06:12] a role that he definitely just had nothing to relate to in there and then a bug's life in which he plays an evil cricket yes that's his that's his in between this and american beauty yes those are all the roles like nothing they're starring roles but

[02:06:26] they're not like you know heroes right but like a perfect example of a guy like that who wins the oscar and then you're like what is hollywood do with this guy now right he's too weird he's too creepy is he gonna get caught just

[02:06:38] playing like villains in stallone action movies right and then that's a run where he makes like five or six really good choices in a row kind of nails it he wins his second oscar second oscar and then he just goes absolutely insane and kind of completely loses

[02:06:54] the thing the thing he does right after he's horribly miscast in pay it forward yes he's horribly miscast in the shipping news these are big movies you know big oscar now he's in the jack liman where he wants to be the sympathetic sort of like sad sack but

[02:07:08] like the world has shit upon him and he's a good guy fighting to get what he deserves kind of thing yeah he's he's trying to ignore the fundamental creepiness at that point right but uh yeah he's very good in seven before we discuss

[02:07:22] the finale of seven we haven't really do we need to say anything else about lust pride those are the two murders the late murders and we talked about leland orser's incredible and michael massey who is king of the scumbags yes do you guys know this no tell us

[02:07:40] michael massey the other actor in that scene they're cross-cutting who's the one who forces leland orser at gunpoint to do that horrendous killing he is the man who shot brandon lee on the set of the crowd wow yes and is a guy who is like

[02:07:58] he was traumatized by very open about the fact that it basically broke him psychologically he was so traumatized by it he like didn't act in movies for several years he was like maybe i can never act again then he went to do like a regional

[02:08:10] theater then he moved up to theater he finally got sort of like drawn back into movies but was always very reluctant and was one of these guys who was like kind of always openly like processing the drama of the thing but whenever he was cast

[02:08:24] in roles like this there is that weird edge of just like this is a guy who isn't playing how haunted he is he is also he's the first villain in 24 yeah like he is the first guy that jack bauer

[02:08:38] deals with yes he's like the villain for the first half of the first season of 24 yeah he's so fucking good he was a credible actor and was a guy who was like so conclusively not at fault at all in the incident and like i think took more

[02:08:52] responsibility for it than he even should have because it's just like such a traumatizing thing but when i did gun safety training for tomorrow war they told the brandon lee story which i didn't even know like when they told the story i didn't know how that went down

[02:09:08] like that he went they brought him to a shower you know his trailer to shower and that's when yeah when they came back and checked on him that's when they found out that he was even shot uh tomorrow war was pre rust right yes pre rust yeah

[02:09:22] because that was same everything i'd worked on except for maybe one or two really really bad borderline illegal productions would do like these big safety demonstrations anytime there's a gun on set yes and sometimes like people would roll their eyes and go like do we

[02:09:36] really need to grind everything for it to a halt for this yeah it's been like 30 years this hasn't happened since brandon lee that's that and it was kind of like look there shouldn't be any probably any guns in our country but it was

[02:09:48] one of those things where i'm like i on sets i'm like that's jobs that people have and just the fact that that happened with rust is so insane because as you saw griff they're like so crazy like about you checking because of the crow basically right

[02:10:06] right yeah there's like a thing where like right whoever the firearms expert is on set will like before each take unload the gun take out a flashlight yeah shine it through each individual barrel show it to you that it's empty before you have all these

[02:10:20] right and like they hand it to you the moment before they call action they pull it from you the moment after they say cut yeah and they basically have this like rule where they're like if you're fucking around and doing bits with the gun

[02:10:32] we take it away from you and we're not giving it back yeah like fuck the production it doesn't matter if you're not responsible we will not let that actor hold a gun anymore uh yes but michael massey died kind of tragically

[02:10:44] young he died of cancer yeah a few years ago um but always had this really intense power on screen in roles like this yeah he's great in this yeah leland dorster obviously also really good a real a real pincher type I mean this movie just

[02:11:00] he's still dining out on this role oh yeah he's like he's fantastic stacked with great character actors but i also love that none of them the bus driver from speed as well yes is the library security guard i just love that almost none of these characters

[02:11:16] have names yeah i also love that that the scumbags in this are like no ones leaning into like hey well i'm a sleazeball what do you want from me huh they're all just kind of like he's even like no i don't like my job but what the fuck

[02:11:32] that's what life is you know like they're all like and richard shifts when he's the you know kind of shitty you know defense attorney later yes he's kevin space he's also like not playing it like a scuzzball he's just like playing it like a guy

[02:11:44] the biggest character is kevin spacey is that it is yes richard shift is really well cast he's really good like he's a great actor and he can play you know a lot of stuff but he's really good at that kind of chinless dude

[02:11:58] yes you know but like you look at the proper credits at the end of this film leland or sir is credited as crazed man and massage parlor which he is he's big too but it's it just is so it's effective at that point i mean

[02:12:10] really effect i feel like the last couple of kills are you kind of you kind of do i mean except they show up it's it's crazy that we spend less time on them because it is like a big fucking knife that he that he well fuck someone to

[02:12:24] death that's but that's the whole thing i think that that's a big part of its of it uh the direction obviously but the way it's scripted is like we're not seeing any actual murders like we see one murder and it's the

[02:12:34] at the very end of the movie you know everything is in the aftermath and even then they like cut wide to when the actual gunshot happens you don't there's no like explosively bloody gag of john doe being shot in the head i just need

[02:12:50] to read this because um jj pulled this up and incredible quote the fincher interview from 2009 uh he said i thought that what was pretty amazing about what andy prescribed in his script and what he was so adamant about that you don't need to see stuff

[02:13:04] he unlocks the pandora's box of your imagination a really gripping way now you watch law and order svu and they're walking in a hallways and they say we found semen in the eye socket i would never do that but we had a lot of people insisting

[02:13:18] they'd seen more than they did i almost had a fist fight with a woman at a beverly hills cocktail party because she said there's no need to make a stand in of guinness head to find in the box you don't need

[02:13:28] to see that and i said well we didn't and she said oh yes you did so the imagination of properly prime can do more than any army of makeup artist that was always my thing get people to fear get them to

[02:13:38] see it in their heads i do think people have false memories of images that are not anywhere near this film do we ever actually even see ben affleck's dick and gun girl are we all just imagining it we're gonna talk about it

[02:13:52] believe me it's gonna come up we might have you guys zoom in for another segment you might need to come in for that scene maybe just 10 minutes on a minute per inch mitch has that scene saved on his phone so i don't think we ever do see that

[02:14:06] now i'm questioning if we've ever seen it have i just seen the affleck duck stick is that what it was you call the affleck duck the affleck duck sorry we're we're being fools over here you guys can continue on very good absolutely drinking it in we're just

[02:14:26] enjoying it um ben do you like seven i feel like this is a real haas movie yeah it's fucked up uh-huh it's the kind of thing where you smoke weed with your friends later and you like talk about how extremely fucked up it was right

[02:14:44] which would you like want to happen to you like if you had to have one of these happen to you or whatever yeah you do stuff like that do stuff like that right but i watched it again i guess as you get older uh seeing extremely violent things

[02:15:00] like this and just becoming more and more of a person with people you love in your life i was really you're horrified by it yeah interesting yeah no but also hits close to home for you because you're engaged with paltrow that's a specifically yes well

[02:15:16] of course there's that and you live underneath the railway yeah i will say though i had pasta for dinner that night afterwards okay so you were fine with this ben don't say it'll get cancelled mitch what were you about to say i was gonna say that it's funny

[02:15:28] because it i agree that it is like i find the ending cruel in many ways and i like don't want it to happen and as a kid probably thought i was like well this is fucking crazy and cool but then also as an adult i've also now

[02:15:44] i'm not as shocked by seven because everyone took a page out of its book of course and like they're like finch was saying come in the eye socket or whatever right they just show it to you right yeah right it's that both

[02:15:56] in cinema and then also just in the in the real world in our decaying reality of just like the the actual horrors you're subjected to it's it seems muted by comparison my one thing just to the the i you know i'd

[02:16:10] like this movie more on a rewatch although i had a similar reaction to ben of just like it it's it is it is repulsive it is revolting in a way that i didn't feel when i was younger but comparing it to zodiac which

[02:16:22] you know it did not not fair it's it's a it's a real world thing and it's and it's also you know that's one of my favorite films of all time so i have a little bit more favoritism towards it but you also receive residuals from it

[02:16:34] but yeah go on life rates what i like about zodiac is that it shows serial killers as we know them to actual actually be which is that they're like fucking their derivative their consumers their dumb you know i mean it's like versus here

[02:16:50] is like you know this is he's a super villain right like he's like the glorification of the serial killer the represent that john doe here he's so many steps ahead of everyone that everything goes according to his plan and even when there's a little

[02:17:02] bit of a hiccup he still manages to get back on track and have the upper hand he's in control the entire time and i kind of i kind of just i'm more interested in the the dude who you know copied his costume from you know the

[02:17:16] film the adaptation of the most dangerous game and you know uses a code that he stole from a children's book and has fucking dirty dildos and squirrel meat in his decrepit trailer like i feel like that's like closer to the to the actual psychopath that we

[02:17:32] see in our reality yeah i just wanted just give a cliff notes version of what weiger just said he likes the zodiac killer mitch what were you about to say i was i was gonna say that after watching this movie i don't i haven't seen

[02:17:52] it in a long time but i coming out of it i didn't think that this was his most hopeless movie i think that like i honestly feel like fight club was more hopeless i felt like yeah honestly

[02:18:04] i me out more yeah if i could be more of a bummer i fight club is more of a bummer i think that that honestly i think social network is a huge bummer it just for the world we live in i mean like

[02:18:14] there's also a speech that that pit gives at one point i was trying to figure out where this was but i wrote down brad pitt speech is kind of hopeful at one point which is maybe i think this is before even they captured spacey but like he is

[02:18:30] he is a hopeful character obviously at the end that's you know that's no but he thinks he can do good yeah 100% he thinks this is he's a hero yeah right i mean he thinks like that's what he wants the job for sure

[02:18:44] and and and i know i know we're headed towards the finish line but like just just one of the things that on rewatch is like a scene that really hits you know obviously kevin spacey having the blood covered shirt and it's when it's all chose blood

[02:18:54] but but i think the scene where the two of them are just joking around shaving their chest so they can put the hidden mics that tape their hidden mics their chest is like knowing what's happened you know at that point in the film like yeah yeah it's such

[02:19:06] like it's such like a great scene on rewatch yeah well cuz they're amped cuz they think they're cruising to a win exactly yes right and they're like and we stop the final two from happening it was it was it was to

[02:19:20] me it was this sort of thing of like man i remember everything about this movie and then don't remember so much of it at the same time which was fascinating for a movie i haven't watched probably in over 20 years to just be

[02:19:30] like oh yeah this is where this happens and then just picking up the little details noticing how beautiful it was too which we which we texted about it looks so great we didn't talk about the rain even that much

[02:19:40] i mean we talked about a little bit about the rain we talked about the rain we talked about the rain but you could talk about the rain forever it's great no but i do i do agree with you guys it was funny reading all the quotes

[02:19:52] of people who were just like disgusted by this film on paper and within a couple years it's not even that crazy like it's just just know what you guys are saying it doesn't even show that much stuff like it's on it's

[02:20:04] it's a testament to this movie too that like when you watch like the greatest horror moments of all time and then sloth is on there because it's not it's not really a horror movie at it's not it's not from what i remembered it there's horrible

[02:20:18] things and there is some imagery and i love that it like goes into the the horror genre but it's not it's not really gross it's not there you're not seeing any of these crimes committed like you said it's it's it's strange it's a strange

[02:20:32] and also like within 10 years like criminal minds is covering shit as twisted as this you know like it's like beyond even saw you know and like the thing with saw even is that saw one you watch it you're like wow this is incredibly

[02:20:46] restrained yeah doesn't really show you much it's sort of this and then you're by the time you're at saw five you're like oh there go her boobs like ripped off by the big claw did you know in saw three there's a trap where which saw is that sims

[02:21:02] in saw three there's a trap where there's pigs getting ground up into slop and a guy drowns in the big slop jesus you know about this that's the other thing though they become so cartoony and then you have stuff like SVU and criminal minds that is like so

[02:21:16] grounded like we did the research and whatever and then there's like the rise of true crime documentaries which leads to the rise of true crime podcasts and all this shit and you're like yeah there's like the moral decay as you said

[02:21:28] of society right that i think makes this movie not feel tamer but feel less shocking than it did at the time but i also think that like all of the stuff that's being kind of touched on in this movie has been more normalized these are no longer conversations

[02:21:42] that happen behind like closed doors with only the most grizzled people who have basically accepted monastic life of punishment needing to know like the greatest evil humanity is capable of instead like my great uncle watches it on CBS at 830 you know

[02:21:58] and so like i think the thing that maybe makes us hit a little bit harder is is the ending is the final sort of like mental trick of the thing of like oh this has become a moral test right i mean i do just love the

[02:22:14] John Doe surrendering himself DETECTIVES! just the right amount of information on him i don't remember if it's Ernie saying or whatever but they're like what do we know about this guy clearly comes from money he's got weird resources he shaved off his fingers right

[02:22:28] and you're kind of expecting like the next 30 minutes we're gonna get a full psychological profile of this guy we're gonna figure out exactly how he did it and how he works and instead he's just sitting in the backseat being like this is all going

[02:22:40] according to my plan this is what i wanted i'm here because i wanted to be here and you're like what the fuck is this guy's game he gives himself a grandizing speech with pit you know says you're a t-shirt you're a movie of the week whatever

[02:22:54] and then he is proven 100% right yes i agree with you that he is proven right obviously he enacts his plan yeah but there is that moment with the moment that you quoted to start this episode 50 or 60 hours ago yeah um in which he uh

[02:23:10] just a little joke um feel free to laugh you don't need to laugh where you know he he gets nervy he's like oh you think these people were innocent you know and that's the only moment where he does feel kind of pathetic yeah or suddenly like

[02:23:24] oh right you are just like crazy yes you have resources and this kind of you know weird criminal genius or whatever but you are fundamentally just someone who's like that disgusting person needed to die but that is that you're like he did

[02:23:38] a good job you know what i'm saying like can you cut that out and keep it in no no i'm saying it's isolated your point of like you saying that you feel like the riddler in the batman is a bad serial killer

[02:23:48] i watch this movie and i'm like this is about as good as i can imagine anyone could be at serial killing he's successful you know he is successful i'm not saying i endorse it i do but i'm not saying that but i do

[02:24:00] watch it and i'm like this guy played it pretty fucking well he did what he wanted to have and happened so yes whether that was worth it i guess is maybe a big question and you read about like all the different alternate endings they pitched right even

[02:24:16] you know leading up to shooting it pit saying i quit if you don't even after they shot it and they test screened it they were like can we please reshoot the ending because they knew they were gonna have to go back to the desert to reshoot

[02:24:26] the helicopter shit and it was like can it be the dog the dogs head in the box sure is that five degrees less upsetting to the audience it's like 1 million degrees less upsetting to the audience yes can it be inside the box is a tv screen showing

[02:24:42] Gwyneth Paltrow tied in the apartment to a chair box in a box right and then they go in there and they save her in time right and then even when they were like no it has to be her head then they were like if it's

[02:24:54] her head then pit can't shoot him he needs to be redeemable he can't give in so it can be that Somerset shoots John Doe to prevent Mills which i almost root for watching the movie again i almost root for it

[02:25:08] you want there to be the out it can be that Somerset shoots Mills so Mills doesn't shoot him he doesn't kill Mills but he stops Mills long enough to not give in they were just like is there anything to avoid the double whammy of the head is

[02:25:22] in the box and he does it and there isn't no and he's gotta do it yeah when you're watching the movie you're like yeah was this a playground rumor that the baby was in the box or was that discussed i just feel like the playground

[02:25:36] rumor was that you saw the head as you're sort of saying about like someone cast you know chastising Fincher for it like or that there was a version of the movie where you saw the head that we hadn't seen there's this insane rumor that circulates

[02:25:48] around the internet and i've seen it reported on extensively legitimate reputable outlets that in not outbreak excuse me contagion when they do the autopsy of Gwyneth Paltrow and they like cut up her head face down yes that they were like

[02:26:04] well it was easy for them to do that because they had the leftover head from seven i've seen serious websites i mean it makes sense to me that people would just make that where they were like subconscious connection we built the head for seven we never used it

[02:26:18] and then Fincher and Soderberg are friends and the head the prop was preserved for 25 years and then passed along i mean i love that idea and that's true and obviously sometimes is actually true in Hollywood of like you still got that model from fucking you know star trek 2

[02:26:36] go get it and paint it blue like it'll be a new spaceship or whatever like they also don't keep it wouldn't have built the head from seven with the layers of muscle no they had to to make the box really heavy

[02:26:48] the box had to be box had to have the proper weight not like an empty coffee cup or whatever Kevin Spacey probably as a method actor demanded i can't fake it unless there's a real head in the box i don't care whose it is

[02:27:00] just one more thing his sleepy thing was just like this is the peak of him just knowing how to weaponize that draw the draw yes yes i by the way i just want to i just want to give credit to the movie for it won three golden popcorns

[02:27:18] for best movie with Fincher David Fincher best villain Kevin Spacey one of the golden popcorn for best villain and most desirable male is Brad said like i think he had won that award for legends of the fall and was like

[02:27:36] i need to do a movie like seven to disrupt that image so i stop being a hearthrob and then he still won the award HACHIMACHI for that golden popcorn and he's like leave me alone Morgan Freeman the only one who got screwed because the best duo Morgan Freeman

[02:27:50] and Brad Pitt were nominated but they lost to Farley and Spade for Tommy Boy i mean it's a deserving loss yeah i don't know that i have a problem with that loss really just the final pit shot of him debating whether or not to do it

[02:28:08] wow it is a stack category bad boys friday and toy story for on screen duos fucking buzz and woody did buzz and woody ever win i don't know if buzz and woody never won a golden popcorn then that award is a fucking sham

[02:28:24] David open up three more tabs 99 2010 2019 and give me the mtv movie awards for each year were nominated again in 2000 for toy story 2 best on screen duo and they lost to Mike Myers and Vern Troyer for the spy who shagged me Dr. Evil and mating duty

[02:28:42] fuck okay what about 2010 no that's it those are the only two nominations the award is then turned into best on screen team and then discontinued after 2006 then brought back in 2013 discontinued again in 2015 the final winner they keep doing they did duo in 2023 last of us

[02:29:04] i hate this shit forky won movie heartthrob in 2019 he's got a killer body no i think pit plays this scene so well this scenes just so exquisitely done but it's the moment of like the way it plays out they really do get

[02:29:24] a lot of value of going to the helicopter shots and having that perspective where they're far enough away and everything's kind of abstracted and it really creates this weird tension of seeing them in this open barren space well it's also you

[02:29:36] want it isn't it you're like get me away from this like it's sort of a relax release you're like i can't look at think about this anymore but like delivery driver comes in with the box spacey's sort of just checking his watch being like

[02:29:48] oh i think it's about to happen they're far off he sees it and it's that moment where like freeman puts it together right there's the initial shock of just seeing the head in the box and then he sort of radios in and goes like john doe has

[02:30:02] the upper hand like he immediately figures out what the entire plan is and you just see freeman in his head try to calculate how do i prevent mills from doing this and he knows it's probably impossible and what would happen to mills as he gets the chair

[02:30:20] no i think that's probably a manslaughter charge he probably probably doesn't even get much he can't be a cop anymore definitely his career is over his wife is dead right right somerset says to the chief like just make sure he gets everything he wants

[02:30:34] right make sure you take care of him or whatever it is he would do time for that i'm pretty sure an active duty cop who actually would do the suspect would go to prison for some time but like he yes it would be some kind of lesser

[02:30:48] yeah i would assume i mean i guess he shoots him in cold blood but he murdered his wife put her head in a box yeah and also he's done various other elaborate murders yeah also he's kind of funny looking yeah here's a question yeah

[02:31:00] do you think mills pulls the trigger if doe doesn't drop the thing about the baby uh yes probably but obviously that's the whatever right you know the coup de gras right but he probably fucking shoots him he's got a gun right there but he's

[02:31:16] like he's holding on to a certain amount of restraint and then it's like doe genuinely seems to not know that mills didn't know and spacey's delighted that i was like oh you i know it's so nasty and it's also just the fact that like in that moment

[02:31:30] that's the thing that gets somerset to slap him which belies that somerset knew yeah and also in the box because he's trying to get him to say like tell me it's not in there yeah somerset doesn't want to lie to him but that's finally the give

[02:31:46] like that one reveal collapses mills's entire world where it's like she was pregnant i didn't know he knew that means her head's in there she's dead the baby's gone my whole future's gone and then pit just has that one fucking shot

[02:32:00] that i feel like is still like memed all the time where he goes through like ten reactions in three seconds yes yes and pit at this act at this classic gif at this point at this point in his career where he was always putting a lot of mustard

[02:32:12] on it and i think when he was well cast as an actor it was because people were playing into his desperation to be taken seriously and a lot of these roles where he's kind of playing the junior to a more august movie star leading man right

[02:32:26] i feel like that's the first moment of pit's career as an actor where he starts to tap into what he's going to actually have full control over like 10-15 years later i agree yeah no i mean i think this is a

[02:32:40] quote unquote immature performance from him in a way but it's a good performance and it's right the start of yeah and that moment's just so skillful i love him in that moment it's good it's the perfect it's the perfect movie

[02:32:54] at the perfect time for both fincher and pit and their career trajectories are obviously forever affected i wish to go back to the mtv movie awards i wish that it was william shatner's head in the box because it just would have been you wish that it was william

[02:33:10] shatner's head in the box that's in the mtv movie awards that's what happens did you see it really that was the gag 1995 mtv movie awards yeah who was hosting i think shatner that's good look no looks like the hosts were oh my god john lovitz and courtney cox

[02:33:30] jesus what a what a fucking combo but no way i think the seven that's so funny oh no the seven awards i'm sorry were the year after that was 95 okay john lovitz and courtney cox the dynamic duo yeah 96 was hosted by ben stiller and janine carofalo

[02:33:48] oh of course good a good combo yeah better combo by the way uh-huh courtney cox and john lovitz definitely fucked right jesus i don't think this is a joke i i 100 percent believe there is no way they didn't uh yes i don't remember

[02:34:04] that joke why would it be shatner i don't get it it was such a punchline kind of got like it's that era of conan bringing out like mr. t or shatner as like a quick visual punchline i'll give you i watched it last

[02:34:16] night i'll give you a little bit more the you watched the the mtv movie awards parody oh yeah i watched the mtv movie awards parody last night the the the delivery driver is a green alien babe instead of like uh our cat

[02:34:28] i know it's one of the archettes what's the timecode on this does it cut in with the actual movie footage or did they shoot both sides of it uh i think they they definitely cut it into the movie okay got it

[02:34:40] and then shatner's head is in the box and then he sings a song that's good that's pretty good when i was young and i would watch those i like could not comprehend the technical wizardry of how well the new footage they shot cut in with

[02:34:56] the old footage yeah where i was just like this feels impossible how the fuck are they matching this and i wonder if it's a thing that's my question if i rewatch it now would it all look like bullshit to me

[02:35:06] i mean i think they do a good job with like the location they get like a like a like a brown grass location or whatever so and then it's shatner is playing every role he's playing he's playing oh that's this this is what

[02:35:18] it is he's playing he's playing morgan freeman and brad pitt and kevin spacey and when they open the box he's the head in the box that's good which maybe made people think that you see the head in the box i maybe think that there was

[02:35:30] some connection to that maybe that's why i'm gonna watch this when i get home yeah uh before we do the box office game i do want to point out that this movie did so well that they wanted andrew kevin walker script

[02:35:42] called eight millimeter which of course was turned into a movie yes but they initially wanted to try and repurpose that and have morgan freeman be in that movie as somerset while like they're just like some will just do a seven sequel eight millimeter and it'll be fucking just

[02:35:58] somerset doing a new crime you know like you know that'll be it and even though this movie has like an ending yeah like it is over eight millimeter is a movie i would argue is almost more bleak and depraved than this film yeah and it's wild

[02:36:12] that that movie whatever it is two years later yeah is gets like a 60 million dollar budget and is made by like paramount where suddenly this thing had become like a script that no studio would touch where they were like please give us the next seven

[02:36:26] um there's also a film called solace that does actually get released so ted griffin yeah it's the main writer on oceans 11 and a ton of other anthony hopkins and colin farrell never seen it wall street yeah he writes a script called solace yeah that's about a uh uh

[02:36:42] tracking a serial killer where there's a psychic element sure and new line buys it die hard with a vengeance style and says can we rewrite this to make it into a seven sequel right which they title e i numeral eight great i swear

[02:37:00] to you yeah there's an in a cool story that runs that is new line desperately wants to make a uh all three guys go absolutely not right i think it really would have just come down to fincher and uh uh morgan freeman

[02:37:16] uh i don't know what role pit would have played in this but they did finally make that movie five six years ago with anthony hopkins and your boyfriend colin farrell yes it's a feral film i've never seen yeah i don't think it's supposed to be very good

[02:37:30] no by the way the trailer for the killer came out today it sure did looks fucking great to me and let's mitch i know you wanted to mention this it will be out of date by the time this episode comes out yeah just yesterday yeah was

[02:37:44] the birthday of two people very important to this episode it's true who we didn't know shared a birthday yeah nicholas weiger and defense man defense man and wags birthdays yesterday wow happy birthday wags thanks for turn 60 defense man weigerton 65 someone

[02:38:06] i've heard someone who's seen the killer and they say that it's great i'm very excited about it i'm so excited i've heard good things about the killer i'm very excited to see it also in andrew kevin walker script right

[02:38:16] do we talk do we mention that i believe he is involved he's done a lot of movies with fincher like he does not rewrite from to the guy boys yeah he is the screenwriter all right griff this movie and nick and mitch this movie opened september 22nd 1995 25 thoughts

[02:38:34] 7 out of 10 pretty good i don't know i mean hmm it was seven in the box office seventh highest grossing true that is that that is true seventh highest grossing film of 95 box office you're gonna ruin it i that's something i just saw yeah i just want to

[02:38:52] open the floor if you guys if there's anything else you want to say before we play a box office game but no pressure i don't think there's anything i've missed i mean i watched i watched clute over the weekend because i know that that both

[02:39:02] fincher and darius kanji the dp had cited that as an inspiration it is like you know i love the look of this movie we maybe didn't talk enough about that but it's just like how much it lives in the shadow how dark it is which was a criticism

[02:39:14] of the time but it like how much they're they're just just the idea of directing the the the audience's eyes via flashlights is such a neat trick that they do repeatedly it's it's it's all copied that's the thing it's like this movie so

[02:39:28] copy the bleach bypass thing doesn't look bad at all like it doesn't hurt this movie for me but it is very profoundly basically took out most of the mid tones and most of the colors so you have like like kind of jet ink blots and then the silvers

[02:39:42] in the whites my last my last shout out is just that the backwards credits are cool and then that's all yeah guilty by gravity kills because i know that they open it up with the nine inch nails kind of remix of the of whatever closer maybe but

[02:39:56] then that song gravity the guilty by gravity kills i remember being like a song i really liked yeah right around then 13 years older whatever getting into that that kind of more dark we talk about this in our fight club episode coming up i am sort

[02:40:12] of surprised that this movie did not get a decade later ill advised video game adaptation in like 2004 yeah they did feel like that would have happened you collect clues you put like pages in a book or something but that era of like the godfather games

[02:40:28] one of my club game yeah you would like end up fighting gluttony or whatever to i'm sure what the game is right shoot meatballs into his mouth sign me up i'll do the mocap for that 7 out of 7 for me 7 out of 7 good yeah do you like it

[02:40:48] i do i think it's great yeah look it's not one of my favorite finisher movies but i think i disproportionately prefer the latter half of his career i do too but this is kind of right in the middle there for me

[02:41:00] no yeah i think we're on the same page top half of his output for me my top three is you know zodiac social network gone girl i think those are 1 2 3 for me but same bro basically agree yeah but yeah no it's like impressive that he has evolved

[02:41:16] this much that this now feels like middle tier finisher because this is very much the kind of movie that someone spends a career chasing chasing 100% right and like i do i like the game i like panic room you know i like fight club fight club but the game

[02:41:34] panic room feel like movies that are kind of chasing 7 i kind of like both more than 7 sometimes not always like you know they're kind of all in the same world for me but i do feel like for a while that kind of was his

[02:41:48] rep where it's like yeah he still makes good movies but like it's kind of tough to top 7 it was one of those things where the check was just so big they were going to let him keep making movies because from the director of 7

[02:41:58] was not running out and then when he made zodiac i was just like yeah that was the holy shit i didn't know this guy had this in him and then he just sort of levels up to a whole nother whole nother thing okay box off September 22nd 1995 wow

[02:42:12] don't ring the bell where did that come from? did you hear that? something very real is happening in our studio right now it's coming from the closet oh okay wait hold on one second definitely real and not planned this is very real

[02:42:28] it's always so good when ben goes to the bathroom there's a lot of naturalism happening in this studio right now not seen since spacey played the photographer at the crime scene it would be so scary if someone okay ben has a box

[02:42:40] you have to let the dope boy see this yeah ben come on camera don't fucking not do this whatever the hell it is you're doing i need to go home soon ben is now standing in front can you guys see this? oh wow

[02:42:56] we don't know what's in the box what's in the box okay ben is cutting open the box wearing a wig and doing a weird accent kind of like playing up a kind of new york tough guy thing guys what's in the box okay there's an envelope

[02:43:12] that says david and griffin oh is there something underneath there? yeah maybe maybe you should open up that envelope maybe see what's in the envelope there was a very nuanced reaction to whatever ben just saw in the box okay inside is a note

[02:43:30] it says i visited your studio this morning i tried to taste the life of a simple podcaster it didn't work out so i played my own box office game and took her lovely bobble head signed john doe and it's d-o-u-g-h good good okay ben what's in the box

[02:43:50] what's in the box ben it's okay it's okay so it's surprisingly hard to find a gwyneth paltrow action figure we settled on um a rip off funko pop figurine of uh pepper pots as rescue from avengers endgame wait this is not a ben bit

[02:44:12] this is a wykes bit this is a doe boys ben collab wow did we get the happy meal box or that no we didn't get the happy meal box we were gonna get the happy meal box that would have been funny

[02:44:26] we also were gonna cut off the head of the doll but then we got it and we're like maybe they want it i don't know there was a perfect gwyneth paltrow head as pepper pots but it cost like $600 there's a really expensive bust really wow

[02:44:44] i guess she really has them that's not really her vibe you're not getting a sylvia plath doll funko made world hannibal stuff that looks so much like her one of those laser accurate funko likenesses you know the life in the eyes so are you both crushed for life

[02:45:02] yeah this is gonna ruin us forever who's in the box david and i are gonna shoot each other i can't believe this doll is pregnant that's the strangest part um okay let's now play the box office game

[02:45:16] i was kind of hoping a metronome was gonna be in the box what's in the box office game david is so upset i feel so bad september 22nd no i'm very happy about this to be clear it is a little frightening

[02:45:28] but i mean just her likeness is a little frightening do you want me to do it again though and you guys could really sell it september 22nd 1995 i just can't believe that the bobblehead also smells like her vagina that it also has the scent

[02:45:42] is that like a licensing demand for all products so 7 is opening to 13.9 million dollars griffin which is a sign of just how good its legs work because it made 100 and it made another 150 overseas it made 228 overseas it was such a smash hit overseas 330 total absurd

[02:46:06] massive massive hit but also in america all fall and winter i feel like 7 was just doing really well september dumping ground very much so as evidenced by the film opening at number 2 at the box office griffin that is getting dumped to hell now you said

[02:46:24] we have covered it on this podcast is it number 2? number 2 is the one that's getting dumped to hell so its opening to 8 million dollars its one of the bigger flops we've covered on the show yes and it was hoping for major shock value

[02:46:36] much like 7 propelling it to box office success are you joking or seriously serious it is a somewhat beloved film but at the time despised 95 yes it is somewhat beloved its fairly beloved at this point give me what studio made it? MGM MGM release in 1995 it is called showgirls

[02:46:58] it is paul verhoeven's showgirls that opened against 7 wow hey can i take my 5 year old to see a movie this week what's hollywood got for me showgirls opening at a fairly bad 8 million dollars its only on 1300 screens i think because it was rated NC 17

[02:47:18] here is an honest question which film has a bleaker view of humanity showgirls in showgirls its like the people who are your friends are trying to push you down the stairs such as serial killers showgirls big mom ok number 3 at the box office comedy griffin starring 3 action heroes

[02:47:40] is it to wong fu thanks for everything julie newman which has been number 1 2 weeks in a row and is now dropping to 3 you said comedy starring 3 action stars i think about how pointed the casting of that movie was i know leguizamo is a stretch as a star

[02:47:58] but he was luigi for crying out loud thats another project like the opposite of of fucking 7 where they offered it to everyone and everyone said please commit yourself to an insane asylum for even recommending the script to me you read about how hard everyone was fighting to get

[02:48:16] those roles into wong fu like in a fairly homophobic age of hollywood for whatever reason at that moment every a-list actor was like i think this is going to be the big project they were batting people off like flies spielberg was briefly

[02:48:32] he was never going to direct it but at least like shepherding it but the conception was always like 3 humongous leading men you wont believe it they are drag queens and this is the longest title a movie will ever have yes and then people were astonished that it flopped

[02:48:48] although it was number 1 for 2 weeks in a row but in the doldrums of september its made 24 million dollars in 3 weeks ok number 4 is a star driven drama some movies from your childhood you watch and you're like oh this hasn't aged well that movie the poster hasn't aged well

[02:49:36] this is the thing you guys were saying that and i remember watching it and thinking look it knows its dancing on a very thin line but i thought it was it was skillfully satirizing a very very sensitive subgenre

[02:49:56] that emerged in the mid 90s and i wonder if i would feel that way today very droll john and then this is the poster that poster is insane he has a pic in his afro i know i know and a bullet flying

[02:50:10] through the afro and the title of the movie is shaved into his hair the fucking tagline is there's a new teacher spelled teach with an a in the hood did jim abrahams direct that uh no hart bochner directed it did jim abrahams produce it or write it

[02:50:26] david zucker wrote it i knew it had a zucker locked him in for those mtv movie awards hosting jobs though with it did was it courtney love or was it who was it was courtney cox that makes way more sense i think john lovett's probably

[02:50:40] fuck courtney cox and courtney love they want to take that show on the road yes number five at the box office is a serious more serious drama about teenage violence in the inner city from one of our great auteurs are you being facetious no i'm not

[02:51:00] it's more serious yeah it's like a crime drama in 1995 from one of our great auteurs yes good movie it's a good movie yep based on a book what city is it set in new york city heard of that city i have that big apple

[02:51:14] what studio released this picture this studio was of course universal it's a universal 1995 uh the youths are in trouble movie a kid is in trouble one kid but it's a cop movie well i mean kids you know the teens of brooklyn

[02:51:30] i guess you know but it's about a kid a teenager based on a book it's about a teenage you maybe have never seen this movie it's not a boy's life no huh i've maybe never seen it but you love this movie i really like

[02:51:42] this movie it's about a kid i haven't seen it since i was in college tell me something about the director of this picture a totemic voice in american cinema it's a time for some american cinema yes important to this day it's often underappreciated

[02:51:56] underappreciate won an oscar in the last decade his first oscar is it spike lee spike lee 95 what's what am i forgetting which movie this people kind of forget about this movie brooklyn nope great movie it's not clockers clockers you love clockers i've never seen clockers great

[02:52:14] movie yeah based on richard price his novel starring harvey kytel and mckay pfeiffer it is it is a bit of a forgotten spike it's really man i'm just all i can think about is what the seven murderer would do to jay sherman you know like he'd really so

[02:52:30] many sins he wouldn't know where to begin with jay sherman i think john lovett's fuck jay sherman by the way uh john lovett's is gonna sue us weirdly we're like spacey's gonna be after us spacey doesn't notice us love its issues

[02:52:46] i just i know what jay sherman would think of what the seven killer would do to him you'd think he would think it's stank i know he would think of the gluttony crime scene it's stank i need to just get this out of my system my father like

[02:53:02] avidly read the new york post when i was growing up yeah was a fiend for page six right and i remember him excitedly telling me one morning that my dad would wake me up with news yes you won't believe what i just read in the paper right

[02:53:14] and it was um uh what's her name uh janice dickinson uh-huh the supermodel uh-huh wrote a tell-all book yeah listed all the men she'd slept with sure she's the one who famously started the liam neeson has a huge penis yes and said john

[02:53:28] lovett fell out of his pant jesus right said john lovett's was the best sex she ever had absolutely outrageous that's insane i can never not think about it number six is uh diane keaton's uh diane keaton's directorial effort unstrung heroes oh sure uh you got the usual

[02:53:46] suspect so it's the fall of spacey wow you got hackers uh-huh back the planet you got babe uh-huh and you have braveheart so two best picture nominees hanging out there yeah uh at the bottom there number 11 of course ben and i's favorite film of 1995 mortal combat mortal combat

[02:54:06] dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun hell yeah this is like such middle school this is like the start of middle school for me that's what i'm saying and then seven has a

[02:54:18] cool opening with the new line logo and then later but uh in mortal combat the new line logo is accompanied by someone screaming mortal combat so it's better sure new lines should have done that for the full year 95 to commemorate

[02:54:30] every movie they released for lord of the rings they should mortal combat what has better fatalities seven or mortal combat that's a great question great question i think i think mortal combat's fatalities are really good yeah they are see them more so i than seven

[02:54:44] how do you think scorpion got his name uh how do i think scorpion got his name he probably you know went to ac got a tattoo okay all right call back to an off mic bit hey dougboys thank you for being here

[02:54:58] thank you so much for having us thank you for doing this what a treat i wish we could we could have made this happen in person but lovely that we were at least in the same space next time we've gotten spoiled every time yeah something to aspire

[02:55:10] to we've the four of us combined as this configuration have done three doughboys apps three blank checkups and we've never gotten all four of us in the same room at the same time that's right it's true is that correct it's yet to happen

[02:55:26] yeah it's fucked up it's genuinely fucked up uh but doughboys is the best podcast in the world of all time it's a mirror we say it all the time uh truly feel it uh it's it's the high watermark absolutely uh anyone who's not listening to it and listening

[02:55:42] to our show is uh dumb has their priorities out of whack hey mitch yeah ben i've been watching the hell out of twisted metal oh there you go hell yeah i know fucking rocks bitches contractually mitch can't say anything about that i appreciate that though

[02:56:00] that is very much appreciated that's really nice i appreciate it that rules thank you i'm talking about the video game on playstation you're just watching it i think it's allowed if it comes out of nowhere right it is a it is a ben ash show

[02:56:14] i will say having seen it yeah yeah hell yeah ben thank you you rule that rocks ben i guess but that's it yeah we're done yeah yay thank you guys and uh yeah we'll see you next week on blank check for the game

[02:56:30] uh with brennan hines with brennan hines old friend brennan hines returning to the show yeah um and that's a fun app it's a fun app yeah we recorded uh 15 years ago i don't even know who i am anymore um goodbye

[02:56:44] i don't know why i'm taking this out exactly thank you all for listening please remember to rate review and subscribe thank you to marie bardy for our social media helping to produce the show wags and i are gonna go uh wags and i are gonna grab some lunch

[02:56:56] but i think we're gonna get some we're gonna eat some pasta and then kick each other in the stomach so you can last longer uh thank you to jj birch for our research thank you to lay montgomery and the grid american all for our theme song aj mckian

[02:57:11] and alex barron for our editing joe bowen pat rounds for artwork it's been a while since i've done this uh you can go to blankcheckpodcast.com for links to some real nerdy shit including our patreon blank check special features where we do franchise commentaries we're doing

[02:57:27] the pierce brosnan bond movies right now uh we'll also be doing a fincher music video episode this month i believe will be this month i want to say this month i want to say this month uh but i also think we unlock patreon episodes after three years

[02:57:47] so soon to be unlocked are commentaries on the alien franchise which coincidentally times out pretty perfectly to us having just done alien 3 again and uh it is gonna actually land next month october look at that a very spooky fincher music video halloween for all of you

[02:58:07] tune in next week for the game with brandon hines and once again i just want to say yeah i'll cut all of this