The Game with Brendan Hines

[00:00:01] Blank Check with Griffin and David, Blank Check with Griffin and David Don't know what to say or to expect All you need to know is that the name of the show is Blank Check Discovering the object of the podcast is the object of the podcast.

[00:00:27] Uh, very good. That's the newscaster? I think that's what the newscaster? Yes. He had that kind of voice? Is he a real guy? Yes. Well, I don't mean like is he made up. He was a, he was not an animatronic if that's what you're asking.

[00:00:39] But also he was a real newscaster. Daniel Shore, he was an NPR newscaster. Yeah, those are his credits, they're all newscaster credits. And then I guess a collection of fake newscaster credits as well.

[00:00:49] I feel very, very justified in assuming that that was meant to be Dan Rather or somebody a little bit more recognizable. That would be cool if it was Peter Jennings, whatever. Or Wolf Blitzer. Well, sure. I mean, Blitzer will do anything. Yeah. Now you would get Blitzer.

[00:01:09] No offense to Wolf Blitzer. If he's listening. He'll do a cameo. You'd get Blitzer, you'd get Cooper. Cooper will do any of these things. Tapper. Kiernan. Pat Kiernan? Well, Pat Kiernan... He's the king of this. But that's only if it takes place in New York.

[00:01:23] This film takes place in San Francisco. But he is definitely, yes, he's happy to do it. Pat Kiernan must have an incredible residuals rundown. If you look at his yearly, you know? He's in the Avengers. Yeah, he probably gets some cash. Well, just the quantity of that.

[00:01:39] No, no, no, I know. But he's also in some big boys. Can I brag? Jake Tapper, Wolf Blitzer, Pat Kiernan all follow me on Twitter. Jesus Christ. Oh no. Well, can I brag? Alex Jones. Does he? On Blue Sky? Yeah. On Mastodon? No. I'm not joining Blue Sky.

[00:01:59] I'm putting out an APB. No one send me an invite to Blue Sky. This isn't me negging people. You don't want in. I don't want in. I haven't invited you. I've invited six people so far and you weren't one of them.

[00:02:13] The last couple of weeks, blank check listeners have been doing... And here's another APB. If I don't know you in real life, don't send me a DM that starts with, like, Griffey baby. Oh, wait, no, no, no, no, no. I think you should retract that.

[00:02:25] You would be... You never know who you want to do that. You would be astonished. I'm not, like, saying this because three people have done this. I'm, like, 50 strangers a year message me and go, Griffey baby. Griffey baby. Is this a reference to something specific?

[00:02:39] No. This is just people who think that you would enjoy that. Yeah. Or here you go, King. Blue Sky invite. I don't want to join. I appreciate the thought. It's considerate. Oh, I see. They're trying to get you on there. Yeah, yeah, sure. I mean, but... Right.

[00:02:53] Yes. Only one of those has been anyone I've ever spoken to in real life. Brendan, you're not really a social media guy, right? Smartly. Not anymore. Pushed away. Oh, you once were? Yeah. I mean, I was on Twitter for a few years. Sure.

[00:03:07] I have some of your favorite tweets. Some of my favorite tweets? Oh, boy. I actually saved a bunch of my favorite tweets recently. Oh, boy. I'm sure when I canceled my Twitter account, which was around 2018, I'm pretty sure... I'm sure I downloaded all of the pertinent information,

[00:03:25] but I don't know. I mean... You also hired a calligraphist, too. Yeah. And I had them all framed. Transcribe all your faves. They're hanging in one room in my house. It's a hidden room. It's locked. And you don't have the key. I don't have the key.

[00:03:39] But they do exist there. My wife doesn't know it exists. Nope. It's a private room. It's a panic room. You know how Twitter will every week now, it'll feel like, is this the last day of Twitter? Another wall falls off. And people will

[00:03:55] start those threads of like, hey, post your favorite tweets in here. You know, all-timers. And I was just scrolling through one and I was like, I'm going to screenshot some of these because I think I'm getting close to being done with

[00:04:05] Twitter. I do just want to save such... Wait, yours? No, no, no. Just famed tweets. I still have my number one contested favorite of all time. I'm paraphrasing here, but I believe it is thoughts and prayers to my little nephew.

[00:04:21] Ain't nothing wrong with him. His face just looks like a damn honey bun. It's a classic. And it does. There's a picture and it does. And you look at the photo and it does. I don't know if this one's old or recent, but I saw one recently

[00:04:33] that someone sent to me, which was something like reservations are so ridiculous. You walk in and you're like, I'm here for my spaghetti appointment. Thanks. Laughter See, there's so many good... What a bounty there is, but now increasingly buried in a mountain of shit. Yeah, absolute shit. Here's

[00:04:55] a fun one. Twitter keeps on giving me promoted posts for a podcast miniseries that seems to have the goal of exonerating Kevin Spacey. Have you been getting this one as well? Oh yeah. Produced by Kevin Spacey. I hope that check was good. That's all I'm gonna say

[00:05:11] to the production team and host of that show. There's so few people who want to advertise on Twitter, I think it's pretty easy to get out there. Yeah. An unavoidable campaign. I think it's time for me to start getting my name out there on twitter.com

[00:05:25] Kevin Spacey Truther is just a thing you think wouldn't exist. And look, we will have talked about him. David is steering the car off the road. Just trying to like get off the highway here. Yeah, that's true. We're gonna talk about him.

[00:05:41] We will have talked about him in Re7. Yes. That's the only Fincher movie he's in, right? Yes. He produced Social Network. Oh and then of course they did House of Cards. And he produced Social Network. He brought the script to Fincher. For Social Network? He optioned the book

[00:05:59] and was the one who got Fincher on board. Cool. Is it? You seem to love that. Well I'm happy the Social Network got made. Me too. What do you want from me? We're recording this episode before our 7 episode because of our guest who is in

[00:06:13] New York now. Right. And will not be when we're more deeply into Fincher. True. True, true, true. This is our second Finch episode but an early Finch. I'm biding my time cause I really bet I wanted to do 7. Yes. But happy to be here

[00:06:29] for the game. There was, look, there was a bit of a game in terms of arranging the pieces on the board for this. That's right. Our number one prerogative in life is to never do a Zoom episode ever again. Look, it's gonna happen

[00:06:45] we're gonna have to but as few as we can. We do feel like we perhaps, knock on wood, carved out a 6 month run for ourself. I know but I think we're gonna jinx it. There's gonna be a couple. One's definitely gonna fall through and maybe another one.

[00:06:59] We'll see. But we're gonna largely avoid doing Zoom. You did Zoom with us once and you know it's weird. Yeah, it wasn't my favorite way to do it but I had a blast. And who you are. And also introduce the second guest

[00:07:11] of this episode. This is of course Blank Check with Griffin and David. I'm Griffin. I'm David. It's a podcast about exonerating Kevin Spacey. Yes. No it's not. It's a podcast about filmography's directors who experience massive success early

[00:07:27] on in their careers and are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion projects they want and sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they bounce through breakaway glass onto a giant airbag baby. What a film we are talking about. I think you got the better

[00:07:41] film. Oh! I said it! Wow! And I think 7 is awesome. I'm not like anti-7. Right. I think this is better. I think Fincher would and I've interviewed Fincher and we were bragging about that a lot. I forgot to brag about it the first episode.

[00:07:59] I think he would scoff at me for saying that but I think that. This is going to be a fertile conversation. He does not seem to love this movie. I maybe land in the middle on it. This film is a masterpiece. That's wild. Okay.

[00:08:11] You're going to have to fucking explain yourself here. Really? I think this movie is solid. I think this movie is not 7. Which is I think what I thought when I walked out of the theater in 1997. It's maybe like a 7 out of 10. Abidabadee. Ben? Loved it. Yeah!

[00:08:31] Game, game, game, game. Ben and I have. We're talking about the CW sitcom right? Yeah. Remember that? Producer Ben also asked right before we recorded if JJ, our researcher had put together a dossier on the game The Rapper which he did not. It just feels like

[00:08:45] it should be part of the conversation. How many episodes do you think the game the American sitcom ran for? 122. Correct. 148. Jesus! 9 seasons on 3 networks. Okay. WB? Nope. So it starts on UPN? Correct. Then to CW? Yes. And then to BET? Correct. Wow. Did 6 seasons on BET.

[00:09:07] It's such a good name for a rapper. Isn't it also the name of a pickup artist? Or a book about a pickup artist? Mystery. His sort of his dhow. The game was his philosophy. Oh the game is how he...

[00:09:23] He is mystery but then he teaches you how to play the game. Mm-hmm. Organizing principle. Yes. Peacocking, necking. Right. That was mostly it right? Yeah. Those were the two steps. And that game is still with us today sadly. I see it and I overhear it on dates

[00:09:39] out in public. Well you live in Los Angeles. You do overhear a lot of dates. And you overhear a lot of dates. I actively eavesdrop on dates. Do you have one of those big old timey... Yeah he's like a professor calculus

[00:09:49] he's got a trumpet that he puts in his ear. I don't need one. I have exceptional hearing. Hey! Too good in fact. It's too good. It's so good it gives me panic attacks. Oh like you're like Superman

[00:10:01] and you can hear too much. And you once played a Superman-esque man. That's true. One letter off. That's true. One letter off. More like Super Ian. Right. And his name was Ian on the show right? Look... No. No I'm joking.

[00:10:15] Never had one. Yeah. Superian did not have any. That was season 3 shit. You know. That was in that pile of season 3 shit we didn't get to do. Well Jen Salke did not see fit to get to that plot point. No. And to be fair you probably shouldn't have

[00:10:27] led in the meeting with Salke with like well finally learn Superian's name. She's like wait that's that's what you got? She's like unless his name is I'm a ghost I'm not interested. Yeah. And no her response to that was who are you? Yeah.

[00:10:39] I don't think that show is on my network. The bathroom is to the right if that's what you're looking for. Yeah I've never heard of the tech. Um no here we are. Here we are. Listen. Let's talk about David Fincher's The Game. Yes. Films.

[00:10:51] David Fincher. The Curious Pot of Benjamin Bullock cast. Favid Dincher. Favid Dincher. As I like to call him. We dare call him Favid Dincher. And it's such a funny movie. Starrs Daiko Mugglis. Our guest today. Returned to the show second time first time in person. Hello.

[00:11:07] Oh yeah. Brennan Hines. I am happy to be here with my friends. My dear friends. Phenomenal actor. Phenomenal? Phenomenal. King amongst men. Pretty good. But there's a second guest also in studio. Yeah. And he's breaking a record. Yeah. That's true. The first ever in studio

[00:11:27] dog guest in the history of Blank Check. Well he's sleeping. His name is Earl. Hail Earl. And there is a plot twist that we have not revealed to you David and to you Ben. Earl is pregnant. It is Earl's birthday today. We have an in studio birthday.

[00:11:43] Dog birthday. How old is Earl? He's seven. Great age for a dog. Seven? Yeah. Sort of right in the middle there. S-E backwards numeral. He's kind of similar. Like seven in dog years is 49. And in the game Michael Douglas is turning 48. Is he not? Well they have

[00:12:07] adjusted the math on that. Apparently it's a little more nuanced than just multiplying by seven. Not one for nuance. I like to live in the 90s. Keep it simple Steven. No what's the nuance now? It's also like the bigger the dog the faster they age. The smaller dogs

[00:12:23] can age. It's all of them after a certain age age more slowly. So it's not just an always seven thing. It's just like they hit a certain... They go quickly they age quickly at first and then they slow down so it's some different... But he's in his robust

[00:12:37] prime of his life. He is killing it. He's the best behaved dog I've ever known. He's sleeping or whatever. He's resting. We were talking about right before we recorded that you would bring Earl to set every single day and that is usually playing with fire.

[00:12:51] On a set where people need to be quiet at very specific times. Dogs don't know about no red lights going off. No. They don't know about sound speed. No. Earl never fucked up a take. Never fucked up a take. He was always really good especially since he does

[00:13:09] get a little anxious when I... further the distance between me and him becomes. Because we're soulmates. And so I would go to shoot and he would watch very attentively and then someone like Carrie would hold him on her lap. The great Carrie Smith. Michael Douglas'

[00:13:27] hair dresser. And this is why I brought it up and this is why I did that. And anyway, he would be quiet and then when they would yell cut and I would walk back to him, he would

[00:13:39] give me high fives and go up on stage. And he'd give you notes. He'd give you a couple notes. Yeah. They were painful notes. Yes. He's not afraid to lay it on ya. Hands on. Carrie must have already been working with Douglas at this point, right? Yeah. Yeah.

[00:13:57] He's got great hair. Always has. Kind of iconic hair. Carrie Smith who is the head of the hair department on the Tick. Her two main guys she works with. And you'll find that most hair and makeup people at a certain height in the industry usually are

[00:14:09] like, I have like two or three stars who I always follow onto all of their projects and then I will take gigs in between. And her two are Michael Douglas and Kiana. Now. Two great heads of hair. That's what I was gonna say. That's Reeves baby. It's Reeves.

[00:14:23] Yeah. Yeah. But just like some incredible hair work across decades on both of those guys. Yes. Yeah. And she has incredible material to work with. Yeah. She did on the Tick too. I don't know why you're like, hmm. Yeah. Sure. Yes. Yeah. You had good hair on the

[00:14:41] Tick. You had great hair on the Tick. Chris' hair mostly concealed. Sometimes seen. Yeah. Tick's hair never seen. The Tick himself. He's always in the... His skin. He has no hair. Does he have no hair? Was a part of the thing. Is that canon?

[00:14:57] He never has taken the suit off and has never thought of it. And now that you've forced me to, I'm upset. We've never seen his hair. No. No pubes either. Warburton didn't... No pubes. No he has tons of pubes. He does have pubes. He has hip pubes.

[00:15:13] No hair though. Right. That's actually technically what's on his head. Yeah. Michael Douglas just a great head of hair. Yeah. Like obviously the sort of like China syndrome Michael Douglas. Early Michael Douglas he has this mane. It's absolutely incredible. But even in this he's like,

[00:15:31] you're like, guys would kill for this hair. Like you know guys on the edge of 50 or whatever. This is what they want. Was walking into a Broadway show a couple of months ago. Which one? Goodnight Oscar. Ah Sean Hayes! Smashing away on that piano.

[00:15:47] He really did. And it was the opening night Give me that Tony over every great black actor in America. What? I didn't say anything. He did. Yeah. He really did. He sure did. He said that during the performance? He says it every night. While he's playing the piano.

[00:16:01] He's like, Wendell Pierce, Stephen McKinley Henderson and both the Top Dog Underdog guys can eat my dust. I'm fucking Jack from Will & Grace and I'm doing a voice. The most successful podcast in America. I keep kicking my head over it. It's usually the David move.

[00:16:15] And he really can play the piano. Yes. Right. Anyway, all the stars were there. Lucky Luciano. Back from the dead. David Detweiler, whoever that is. I don't know. Anyway, Douglas was in front of me when I was walking in and by the way, the hair?

[00:16:35] Still got it. It's white as an eighth ball of cocaine but it is looking good. He went right white at the correct moment. He picked his spot to go white. He's got that Kaminsky money going in there. Was he when filming this?

[00:16:53] He's a little, I think slightly older than his character. I would hope so because I am 47. 46 and a half. Go off. He was 53 when he made this. He's playing a 48 year old. He's saying he's going to turn 48. Because he did He sells it.

[00:17:13] I was going to say, he did like his full movie star ascension moment happened a little late for him. Yeah, well because he was producing. The Stone episode talked about that a lot where he just really like he did what was it? Streets of San Francisco?

[00:17:29] He sure did. He was the punk youngster on that one. He was producing a lot. He had a long period where he was just like I'm never going to be my father. I'm never going to be that level of movie star. Better produce my own work

[00:17:41] and get bigger stars to play the bigger roles. The big one is Cuckoo's Nest obviously which he basically fires his own dad from being in. Then he is in Coma, a good movie. Michael Crichton? Directed by Crichton? Is this before or after Looker? I think that's his first

[00:18:01] movie in my room. It is before. Looker is his fifth movie. Crichton directed it. Crichton directed a lot. Looker is Bad Shit. I think he's a good director. Great Train Robbery? The problem with doing Crichton is then how much do you want to expand your sort of

[00:18:21] other things like all the adaptations as well. There's so many great Crichton adaptations. Well that's a Patreon series. I think it's too long to be a Patreon series. We'd have to pick. Alright let me see if I can and we would not do Jurassic Park

[00:18:35] because we can do those other times. It would be like Andromeda Strain. I think we would do the Terminal Man. George Seagal against computers? You must do Looker. Well that's him directing so we'll do that. If we do a spin off series that's adaptations of Crichton

[00:18:55] books, he didn't direct. You do Rising Sun. Speaking of Mikey D you do Disclosure. You do Congo. Yes. Bruce Campbell. You gotta look at the sphere. Gotta check it out. Right now it's very sphere vibes. Too much undersea business in the news. Maybe do the 13th Warrior

[00:19:15] and Timeline? 13th Warrior we'd save for McTiernan. Save that for McTiernan. Do we have to do Timeline? I think you have to do Timeline. I don't know the 13th Warrior. It's sort of a famous flop. One of the most costly financial disasters in the history of studio filmmaking.

[00:19:31] Antonio Banderas. Heard of him. But it was like a movie that cost over $100 million 20 years ago and made less than 10. God bless. People weren't ready for there to be a 13th Warrior. They only wanted 12. 12 was the max. They didn't want a Baker's Dessin.

[00:19:49] China Syndrome is a big movie but he's the third lead in that. He did produce that. That's what he would sort of do. He'd be like I'll be one of the guys in it. His breakout is Romance in the Stone. This brings up something that I did

[00:20:05] notice watching this movie which was this is one of the more sympathetic semi-likable Michael Douglas leads. It's on that edge of he's kind of an asshole. I looked it up and I think the most likable he ever achieved is the American president. He's a good guy.

[00:20:27] But very powerful person. Right? He's genuinely generally pretty unlikable and also no ass in this one. You don't see the tush. At no point does he don a sweater which he loved to do. He almost throws a woman up against a wall but doesn't quite do it.

[00:20:51] He definitely grabs her by the arm a few times. His daddy liked to do that a lot too. He handles cocaine. I was about to say though but he doesn't take any. He's nearly near cocaine. It's enough to just see him hold it.

[00:21:05] In the Douglas universe you gotta touch some cocaine. Let me give you his asshole run. Or you know maybe some nice guy sprinkled in. We're gonna recap. We did our Romancing the Stone episode. That is the thing where he's producing and he's developing

[00:21:21] that script at some point and he's like should I just play the guy? He does not on paper totally make sense for that role. Certainly not what he had done up until that moment. And from that moment on But he is hot. So hot.

[00:21:31] But he's also like there's something so like seedy and yuppie about him and that's supposed to be this like that's written to be like a Bruce Campbell role. Right? I mean I do think right he correctly identifies like I can play

[00:21:43] this guy as kind of a straight scumbag and it'll work. And then it's like oh surprisingly you've now finally found your movie star persona. And then he just like kicks it into the next gear with this scumbag run where his star just multiplies

[00:21:57] he wins an Oscar for playing a scumbag and he's basically just like this is what people want. I'll just be consistently the worst person in the world and audiences love to watch me like get away with shit or be tortured Romancing the Stone. Yes.

[00:22:11] Jewel of the Now. The sequel. This is the scum run? Yeah. Chorus line He's in that. He's the scummy director Not scummy but you know he's the mean director It's like it's sort of a glorified cameo right? Right. Well it's all the girls

[00:22:25] you know. God they hope they get it. Fatal Attraction. Heard of it? Yeah. In which he is of course the sympathetic protagonist but he's a scumbag Total scumbag. Getting what he deserves in a way. And that's the story I think he's at a test screening

[00:22:41] for that and one of the Paramount executives comes up to him and goes like I don't know how you do it. And he's like what? And he's just like we will watch you cheat on your wife and the next scene the audience

[00:22:53] is like back in your court. Right. Well is that because of how they made Close play it in a way that she was not comfortable playing it? Yes. I think that's part of it. Off hinged as I like to right now say. I think that's

[00:23:07] part of it but he just had some weird power. Yes. It still does but especially in this 80s 90s around Douglas where it's just like he kind of never loses the audience. It's super movie star shit. It's some really dark movie star energy. His dad

[00:23:21] had it too. His dad absolutely had it Bad and the Beautiful. Ace in the Hole. Absolutely. Like could be such a piece of shit that you just like he's so goddamn compelling. Yes. And he's feral and fully committed to every to being as much of a

[00:23:37] scumbag as possible. Kirk Douglas is scary Michael Douglas is more slimy but they both you know what's the Kirk Douglas line? I love it in Ace in the Hole. I've met a lot of hard boiled eggs in my life but you, you're 20 minutes.

[00:23:49] Great Billy Wilder line. Okay so Fatal Attraction. Wall Street. Wins an Oscar. Gordon Geico. And there's a quote I think it was in the dossier that JJ put together that he's like that was the scummiest I had ever gone. Just like

[00:24:03] unrepentant and I won an Oscar for it. So you start to go I guess this is what I do now like why would I stop doing this? Fatal Attraction, Wall Street they're the same year he's truly on top. Black Rain underrated Ridley Scott

[00:24:17] movie he's like a dark cop he never looked cooler. He never looked cool very coked up movie War of the Roses, really good movie also very dark. A hit too. Like one of the top 10 hits of the year. I remember it so well as

[00:24:33] a kid but didn't know it was a hit something called Shining Through that's... Melanie Griffith. World War II drama I don't know much about that one. Basic instinct. The coke's back. The butt is back. The butt is back throwing women up against walls non-stop

[00:24:49] Now you look at this and you're like what? He was really an actor who took on really interesting projects like God Bless We Don't Get Any of This Anymore because then it's falling down. Just not my favorite movie but that's a risky movie to make. It's a

[00:25:03] again playing basically an unsympathetic protagonist who you're gonna be with. It's a really fucked up movie. It's a little fucked up. I've revisited it. RIP Frederick Forrest by the way. It's a hard watch Disclosure which is a bad movie but was a huge hit. Humongous

[00:25:19] In which once again he's like what can I do? I'm getting sexually harassed by one of the hottest women alive. One of the top ten films of that For me. Huge hit. As well. Like he's basically he's a top ten box office star

[00:25:29] every year. Every year the moms and dads want to go see Mikey Douglas in an R-rated film. Horny Michael Douglas Dicking his way through Schittsville. I think in our Basic Instinct episode I think I said he was America's dark id for the 90s. Right.

[00:25:45] He just was the embodiment of everything. I think Disclosure is where it starts to I think we see the decline on the charts It curdles a little. Yeah. Because it was such a gross film for so many reasons But then the swerve. American President

[00:26:01] an enduring cable classic and hit at the time. He's nice. Look what he does. Single dad president! Yeah. And that monologue at the end. He just wants to be in love and then he gives a big monologue. Classic Aaron Sorkin monologue which is essentially leave me alone.

[00:26:13] Yeah. Hey be nice I'm nice. Ghost in the Darkness kind of an underrated fun period Hunter movie with Kilmer. This year The Game. The next year Perfect Murder which is not very good and similarly they're trying to go for that vibe again. Shot in 3D

[00:26:33] or attempts at 3D because it was Dialing for Murder. Dialing for Murder was shot in 3D. The original. This one never. No I think they tried a gimmick with this one. Really? I'm not seeing any 3D mentioned here. Dialing for Murder has 3D. Like old fashioned classes 3D.

[00:26:47] I think there is some sort of reference to 3D in this movie. You're just talking about Viggo Mortensen's handsomeness. It popped out at me. Yeah. It's three dimensional. It smooched me on the mouth in the theater. And then in 2000 bit of a comeback Wonder Boys which he's

[00:27:01] wonderful in. My favorite performance of him. And then Traffic which is a huge fucking hit! And he's sort of the more sympathetic version of this kind of a guy. Similarly in over his head rich guy who doesn't get how the world works right. But more sympathetic

[00:27:15] because he's like where's my daughter? Give me back my daughter sort of vibes. You darn drugs! Drugs took my daughter I will get them. Toe for grace! There are two great Fincher quotes on Douglas that JJ dug up. One is

[00:27:31] I like to subvert expectations. I hope the game is entertaining but it's also a little purrent. Purrent. Purrent. A little sadistic because you enjoy the suffering and anxiety of the central character. You want to see him learn a lesson and nobody embraces

[00:27:45] that quite as eagerly as Michael Douglas. Yes. He does have that weird balance where people like to watch him get away with shitty things and they also like to watch him learn a lesson, get his comeuppance what have you.

[00:27:57] And then he said the thing about Michael is that he gives you an interesting cachet because his name promises entertainment but it also promises friction. He's incredibly successful in mainstream and yet he stole the fascist from Falling Down, the adulterer from Fatal Attraction, he allows himself

[00:28:11] to get into tough spots and then sort things out. Yeah he usually, he doesn't die usually. He does usually kind of get away with it. Although he dies in Falling Down right? That one he does yes. Yeah definitely. But um you know

[00:28:27] largely I feel like it's like much like in the game it's kind of like he goes through hell and back but then at the end he's kind of like okay, okay, okay you know. Yeah. And Wall Street he goes to jail but then of course money never slept

[00:28:39] and out he came. Money never slept it woke up. You know in the 2000s he shifts I feel like into more daddy mode. He also starts working a lot less. Eh I don't know he did a few, don't say a word. Don't you never tell. The Sentinel.

[00:28:55] It ran in the family. That's a disaster. You mean Dupree? The In-Laws with the remake with Albert Brooks. Alan Arkin RIP. And Ryan Reynolds. The Sentinel as you said that's like a sort of CIA movie or some sort of Secret Service movie. Yeah. You mean Dupree

[00:29:15] but then now he's really kind of in debt. You know Ghosts of Girlfriends passed. He's not on the poster anymore. Not so much. I mean money never slept and there he was back. Soderbergh likes to use him a lot. Puts him in Haywire. Puts him obviously

[00:29:31] in probably his best recent performance behind the candelabra. Yeah that's I guess that is his best work ever. You think that's his best work ever? Might be. It's a very good performance. You said Wonder Boys was your favorite. Wonder Boys is kind of a really

[00:29:47] I just love that movie and that performance and I find him so funny. RIP Curtis Hanson. Yeah but did they throw Curtis on the bracket too? CH? Sure. Yeah. But Candelabra I watch like once a year. That's look I really like that movie.

[00:30:05] I think it's great. I think it's so well acted. Him and Daymer incredible. Rob Lowe hilarious. I think it's interesting to watch it once a year. Are you sure about that? It is so bizarrely compelling. It is. I love that movie. It's great. It's an underrated film.

[00:30:21] Have you seen Behind the Candelabra? Yeah I loved it. I haven't seen it since the first time I saw it. Yeah you're like 99% of America in that regard. Wait that was Soderbergh? Yeah. I totally forgot that. That was his retirement film. That was his

[00:30:33] I'm making one last one. It was at Cannes. You know but then HBO just put it on HBO. Also just go back real quick. Haywire is fucking great. Haywire rocks. Everyone knows. I don't know what's going on. It makes no sense to me. But I don't care.

[00:30:49] I like it because it doesn't try to fucking explain anything. Things just happen and the things that happen are good and cool. Yeah I like Haywire. Haywire is fun. Who does he play in Haywire? He's like the first guy. Okay. I think. Right? He's early

[00:31:05] in the film. The first guy is Channing Tatum. I guess. Yeah. He's the second guy. He gives her the assignment maybe. You know he's like a CIA boss. Paxton's her dad. Douglas is like the guy standing next to the big private plane in the airport

[00:31:19] in the hangar kind of scene. Sure. You know, Fassbender has the biggest fight and then Ewan McGregor is surprisingly the final boss. Yes. And you're like I would've swapped these. And Banderas turns out to kind of be mastermind Dave? Oh I forgot about Banderas. You got me there.

[00:31:35] I remember him having a big bushy beard. He's in it. Oh right. Yeah. Antonio Banderas. One of my favorite actors. Literally one of my favorite actors of all time. One of my favorite working actors but no one is more ready to just be in a movie.

[00:31:49] Like, it's like how's the role? Bad. I think I'll do it anyway. You know like. Right. And he doesn't phone it in but he's also not adding anything to it. He clearly is just kind of like oh this is three scenes. Fine. You get three scenes of Antonio.

[00:32:01] You see him pop up in the Uncharted trailer and you're like is he secretly going to roll in this? Nope. Absolutely not. Nope. He's just going to show up and hit the marks and collect his check. And bring the energy.

[00:32:11] He's got the best energy and he has a very similar role in Indiana Jones. Where he shows up and you're like are we with Antonio for the last act of this? Yeah. And then he's like gotta go. You know. He probably was just like I'll work with

[00:32:23] Spielberg. Sure. I'll do a scene. But it's not Spielberg. It's not even fucking Spielberg. You're right. I'll work with Mangold though. I'd work with Mangold. I'd do it. De Palma put in a good word for him after Femme Fatale probably. All that glitters is Mangold. Yeah so it's

[00:32:39] a sterling career. Michael Douglas I would say. And this is sort of right. I mean he's pretty much the tail end of his peak piece. Yes. Yes. Right? Yeah. Big movie. Yes. Big movie budget. What's the budget? 60? 70 million dollars. That is wild for 25

[00:32:57] years. The reason for that is twofold. One Michael Douglas is a big star still. Big tittied star. He's a big tittied star according to Griffin. Yes. That giant rack. Seven was a gigantic hit. And seven doing so well despite being rated R and having spiky dildos

[00:33:13] and heads in boxes. I think convinced people like okay. You can make an R rated movie a hit. This is also of course a film that was distributed by Polygram. We can talk about this. Who were not you know a studio. No. This was basically their main attempt

[00:33:35] at becoming a blockbuster distributor themselves. So I think they probably were kind of like look whatever it costs. Like we want this project. We need a marquee statement. Look at who we're attracting. Big director. Big star. And that's like Michael Douglas was very hesitant to do

[00:33:51] the movie only for that reason. You introduced Brendan right? Brendan Hines is here. I would love another introduction. He's back. If we're handing them out. From? The Tick. From MacGyver. From Lie to Me. From Lock and Key. What's Roth like? You can answer off mic. What episode

[00:34:13] were you on previously? Crime Wave. Rainy Eve. That was a fun movie. Yeah. Ben loved it. Absolutely. It ruled. If I recall correctly. Anyway. Right. Big budget. Let me tell you. Fincher's at this point where he's like Fincher's been doing the most expensive commercial music video shoots.

[00:34:39] Right? And then like Alien 3 is a lot of money but they don't give him a lot of control. 70's got more control but less money. I think now he's finally like great. I will do everything exactly the way I want to.

[00:34:51] And from this movie on he starts to become a little more like I will budget myself. I know which things I need to spend the money on and which areas I can save money. You don't want the rep of oh that guy's always over budget.

[00:35:03] Oh he's always too expensive. Blah blah blah. Does he have full control of this film? He I believe does we can talk about. I think he has final cut on pretty much anything he makes. But it's just wild. The only other Fincher episode we've recorded at this point

[00:35:15] is Panic Room. Yeah. And it is wild that five years later Panic Room costs 48. Uh yeah. This is 70. Essentially one location. Yeah. But even still that's like a very intensely constructed film. It's a complicated film but yes I think the game is more right. You're shooting

[00:35:35] constant night shoots in San Francisco. It's a big old production. It's also just very expensive to depict the ludicrously rich. It is. You gotta pay up. It doesn't get discussed. Rent these mansions. It's the succession of it all. Right. Which starts off did I press the

[00:35:53] wrong button? Am I watching Succession right now? This movie truly does start. Succession ripped it right off. Right off. The uh you know the sort of Super 8 footage. Yeah. The memories. Uh now David. Uh Depressed Looking Children

[00:36:05] yes? Just because I want to make sure I don't forget this. I'm watching the opening. So I know we'll talk more about the development of this but I just want to make sure now that Brennan's brought up the opening. The home videos that I don't forget this.

[00:36:17] You're watching this Succession-y like 8mm home video footage. Haunted sort of father with a tight smile. 70s or 60s yeah. Very stern looking child in a little blazer. And I'm like huh that guy playing the dad looks so much like the name I'm about to pull out.

[00:36:33] I think I know the name we're about to pull out. I'm going to make a joke about how much he looks like this guy and then did you two realize it is in fact that guy? So I initially thought it was at well

[00:36:43] first I had the thought of like wait is this Kirk Douglas? No it's not. That doesn't look like Kirk D-Douglas. Yeah. Then it kind of looked like another and now I can't even remember the name. Do you know who it is?

[00:36:51] I know who it is. I know who it is. Can we blow the minds of Ben and Brendan? First let me say this I thought briefly it looked like George C. Scott. Kind of looks like George C. Scott. Which would make sense. Right. He's like uncredited George

[00:37:05] C. Scott sprinkled in. But it is not George C. Scott. It is not. You can say the name. And I was like how funny that it looks this much like that guy who of course David Fincher would never cast in this

[00:37:15] role. How would he have ended up in this movie? And then I realized it is in fact Charles Martinette voice of Mario Let's-a-go himself. My God. His entire life now He's just being Mario. He's pretty he's like in his late 60s. Now he has

[00:37:31] kind of like long white hair and he's goofy and he's always on a red carpet going like It's-a-me! You know. Now he has just a dartboard with Chris Pratt's face in the middle. Look he did a lot of voices in that movie at least

[00:37:45] so he's getting resurgence. Yeah they gave him a very kind cameo where he talks like classic Mario and the characters basically shit all over him. How fucking annoying would that be for an entire movie? Uh-huh. Incredibly bizarre that this is him Very surprising

[00:38:01] I looked up who it was because I thought it might be George C. Scott I thought it was Charles Martinette And I was like who's this Charles Martinette looking motherfucker So he had been doing Mario at that point for 10 years Yeah. At least. Had he? In the 90s?

[00:38:15] Because Mario doesn't really speak until around now I watched a long video with him recently where he recounted his sort of like Mario journey. Yeah His first Mario credit Mario teaches typing 1994 Nuts ago? 94? He started working. I didn't know Mario taught typing. He taught typing in 1994

[00:38:37] He was trying to make ends meet Like Vegas tech conventions Nintendo wanted to show off tech they were playing with so they had a thing where there was a digital Mario on a screen. Right. People would come up and talk to him and he would be live

[00:38:53] responding to them and the bit was his mouth flaps in real time Not like very complicated No I get it but he was doing a voice But that's how he got hired onto Mario I think he was doing like comedy and voices

[00:39:05] and shit like that. He got hired to be a Las Vegas convention guy Big fish And then was their live Mario guy and then started teaching typing So yeah he's Mario That's how he got rich enough to buy that massive mansion and have a disaffected child

[00:39:21] Right that was actually his rider to buy me this real mansion in San Francisco It's right off of Rainbow Road Right exactly Okay David Fincher post 7. This is where we're at He wants to make a film called The Sky is Falling It sounds wild

[00:39:41] Sci-fi action thriller written by an Eric Singer Gore Verbinski later tries to take it up and fails to launch it as well Two clerics on an archaeological dig discover proof that God is actually dead Cool good start Propelled by their new nihilism and loss of faith

[00:40:05] they become target to the world's then overarching religious organization who hires a terminally ill hitman to track them down after they embark on a drug induced murder and robbery spree Why didn't Hollywood want to make this? It sounds very Fincher It doesn't touch any hot buttons

[00:40:19] He also tried to make a movie called The Crowded Room Which is what ends up being the Tom Holland show Which has been turned into a Tom Holland show like 30 years later Multiple personality project Brad Pitt was interesting The Milligan... What was the real guy's name? Billy Milligan

[00:40:37] This is based on a book? Yes, based on a non-fiction novel Yes, based on a real incident Joel Schumacher was also was first trying to make it I think with Pitt Right And then he kicks it to Fincher That didn't match up

[00:40:53] Wait, not the game The Crowded Room Cause the game feels very Joel Schumacher to me Oh there is a very very trashy version of this movie that like pretty much almost existed because it was written on spec by these guys John Brancato and Michael Ferris

[00:41:09] who have many credits to their name Pretty much all of them bad Wrote The Net didn't they? And this movie is like I kind of love The Net It's silly fun But it's the bad version of this They also wrote I mean a bunch of total nonsense

[00:41:29] Into the Sun, Flood Fist 2 But they also wrote Terminator 3 and Terminator Salvation Right, wild And a little film called Terminator Genisys No, Catwoman Oh, wow I was gonna say 8mm does feel like Schumacher doing Fincher 8mm is Schumacher ripping off 7 And 8mm in my opinion

[00:41:53] is kind of a fun watch I like 8mm The Cage performance is pretty fun and Joaquin is amazing in it But it is fundamentally not a serious movie. You know at the end of the day This is bullshit What is the George C. Scott movie? Hardcore

[00:42:09] That's my daughter Directly ripping off It's ripping off hardcore in the style of 7 90s, 9 inch nails kind of And is that Andrew Kevin Walker? Yes So the game These guys write it on spec Goes to MGM Jonathan Mostow Is attached to direct Kyle MacLachlan and Bridget Fonda

[00:42:35] are brought on board to star It just sounds like a VHS classic It does Sounds like a Ben's Choice Right So You know, it's kind of Alright, so Polygram who are a record label A Dutch record label The Dutch They invest in something called Propaganda Films

[00:42:59] Yes, along with Dominic Senna Swordfish A couple other people There was the stat that at their peak Propaganda was responsible for one third of all music videos being directed for major labels Steve Golan The kind of tastemaker, pioneer, top of the heap They eventually bought Propaganda outright

[00:43:27] And they have this script I think they had bought it off of MGM And they show it to Fincher And they're like, it's called The Game And Fincher's like, is it a most dangerous game kind of thing? Don't want that And then he reads it and he's like

[00:43:41] I like this First we can think about how rich this guy is Which will interest me, right? Delving into that kind of sphere And then you go into the Kafka-esque You know Why are they doing this to me and what does it all mean?

[00:43:55] He says this is not a movie about real life It's a movie about movies They're putting this guy in a movie but he doesn't know how to act like a movie star So he's just running around and flipping out Yeah And grabbing people

[00:44:07] And being like, what is going on? And so he brings in I think Andrew Kevin Walker The writer of Seven To fix this The big thing I kept reading him say about this movie Is that, you know, he Loves torturing his audience But usually he does that by

[00:44:25] Really following the rules of whatever genre He's playing in and then pushing things Harder than most directors would Right? Or going deeper More detailed, whatever And he was like, this is a movie that kind of Says fuck you to the audience

[00:44:39] That gives you nothing to hold on to It's like, Panic Room we get to later He's like, that's my experiment making a movie where you're In perfect lockstep, the audience is right there With you, they understand every single move Every inch of the environment

[00:44:51] And this is a movie where he's like I'm making sure you have no idea What anything is at any point in time It's all about the Dispensing of information Selectively when I want it Sure, yeah, he's in charge, you're right

[00:45:05] I mean, look, Michael Douglas isn't always going on Is it a game? I would argue that My beef with this movie is that I never Feel like I am Being gamed I never feel like There's never a moment where I'm Thinking, oh, this is real

[00:45:25] This is really happening It is my exact problem with This movie as well You're already set up in the world where It's like, oh, is this real? Is this fake? No, this is the game Oh, it's a game, it's a game, it's a game

[00:45:39] And you're just thinking, well, now they're shooting him with submachine guns Whatever they're fucking called What's about to gun Spleen in there So, I'm just thinking Oh, they went in there and set up all these squibs All I'm thinking The entire time is

[00:45:55] CRS has a lot of money This is a very expensive game Very well funded You're impressed They have a great Just this great ensemble of character actors They really do Incredible stock Stock players who just hang out in the Commissary That guy Tommy Flanagan Days of Heaven

[00:46:21] Spike Jones Well, I think he's a real EMT He's not one of the players You're gonna need a real EMT When he jumps off a building Yeah, he's post-building Yeah, because I guess he's the one going like, clear the breakaway glass

[00:46:35] But I do think, Ben and I were talking about this Oh, you conspired Together before you got in here We shut it down And after a couple of minutes we realized we were getting too close Save it for the mic So mad, no, no, no

[00:46:49] I have a comeback for you guys No, that's fine And look, this is less against the movie and more about the way this movie is talked about But I feel like people cite this as one of those great twist ending movies And I'm like

[00:46:59] The twist is the movie does the exact thing It tells you it's gonna do at the beginning Which I don't think is fundamentally a problem But that doesn't make it a twist Well, I don't know who's calling it a twist Who's out here calling it a twist?

[00:47:11] I don't know, maybe it's a fucking screen rant or some shit Leave them out of this They don't know anything, what do they know? Movie poop shoot Well, they're really smart We'll have to meet on the conversation What's your retort, David? No, I'm gonna get to that

[00:47:27] I wanna give you a little more pre-pro He was gonna make this before Seven But then Brad Pitt's like, I wanna make Seven And so Seven happens, right? That's the power of Pitt And then Seven's such a big kid, he's like, this is better for me

[00:47:39] I'm gonna get more budget And he gets AKW in there And he's like, can you make this guy more of a cynical bastard? We need to work on the protagonist He needs to have more of a thing This is the thing I like most about this movie Yes

[00:47:53] And it finally clicked for me, reading a bunch of these Fincher quotes That he's like, it's a Christmas Carol He's Scrooge He's not what you think Michael Douglas is when he's playing a master of the universe Who's in a boardroom, which is Gordon Gekko He is Scrooge

[00:48:05] He's walled himself off from the world Partly because of this horrible thing that happened to him And partly because... Capitalism But much like Scrooge, and unlike most Michael Douglas characters of this era He is not enjoying his life at the beginning No This guy is fucking Scrooge miserable

[00:48:21] He is, but I think Scrooge doesn't really enjoy it He's kind of a grump Yes A humbug But like, Scrooge is actively like You know, snarling at children in the street Like he's a real asshole This guy, I feel like If you pointed a gun at him

[00:48:41] He'd be like, what do you mean? I have a great life Look at my nice house But he's dead to the world You wouldn't believe it And he doesn't quite Scrooge snarl But I caught the moment when he goes into the CRS office for the first time

[00:48:53] And the woman's on the phone And he just starts talking And she holds up her finger I'll just do my retort now And he's just so miffed And he's just like, how dare you not drop everything I'm talking right now

[00:49:07] So you guys are complaining, I'll just get this out now That the game is happening to him And of course we know it's the game, the movie's called The Game He's been told the game will happen And then a bunch of crazy shit happens That's the game

[00:49:19] And then he keeps on thinking that was the game up until now But now it's stopped being the game Which is how they're fucking with him, obviously And it's a good bit And we should salute them and maybe put them in the bit hall of fame

[00:49:29] For all the fucking bits they're doing in this But he is so completely Completely Divorced from how reality works Because he's so rich That he cannot perceive reality At any point in this movie Everyone to him is a little aunt Who is just there to serve him

[00:49:47] Because that is how his life is constructed And so when life starts He thinks of everyone else as a character actor She's a waitress, everything she's doing is bizarre But he's probably just like, oh well she's just some Dickensian fucking urchin Because he doesn't have any conception

[00:49:59] Of how real people behave Because he never interacts with them He doesn't have any friends He's at the fucking country club And these two guys are just like, ah the game, it's good And he's just like, well they must know what they're talking about

[00:50:11] Because they're rich in here Like initially you're like, oh he must know those people And then you see them at the end No, he says to the guy, he's like, any new members? Right, right, right, right, right Exactly, but he's just like

[00:50:23] That's why I love that this movie is basically Shaking him out of The surreality of being a millionaire Well that's, yes, no The Christmas Carol aspect of it It's a wonderful life, it's Kafka's It's a Wonderful Life That's my Letterboxd review It's so fucking good

[00:50:39] What if the trial happened But then at the end of the trial it was like, see you do have friends And the guy was like, oh, that's what this was all about Whereas obviously in the trial It's just like, no, you can never escape the state You know

[00:50:51] Sure But right, if there was like a door at the end of the trial And it's just his brother giving him a hug Being like, welcome back to reality Like, you haven't been here with me But now you're here

[00:51:03] It's the thing Penn says at the end of like I didn't know any other way to stop you from becoming a total asshole Or something like that Or becoming our dad Because that's the whole thing When he talks to Ilsa, his beloved Ilsa Who's totally in on it

[00:51:17] About his dad, and she's like, you've never asked me about him And you're like, that's psychotic You know, one Of the guys in the room, you just wouldn't even know he was in a room And you're like, that's this guy's vibe

[00:51:27] Unless he's being like a corporate asshole and yelling He just has no personality Yeah He does feel a dead inside And like, he feels like one of those Like, well, he threw himself off the building at 50, why? I mean, he had a mansion He should have been happy

[00:51:43] Did he seem sad? I don't know, he never talked about anything ever Yeah, he had no personality So it's just such a good 90s fable Of like, ah, I love pre-911 movies like this so much Yeah It's like, what's the matter with this guy? He's too rich

[00:51:55] And I'm like, I'm sympathetic In a way, right? The curse of capitalism, it's reached its peak Yeah, I like that Interpretation of it And I had a similar I had a similar one, but I kind of also Was, my response to it

[00:52:11] Is sort of like, yeah, so what? Like, it's sort of like a massive Intervention therapy session For this guy And thank God this guy feels better about himself Now he doesn't know how to change a fucking tire Him and Sean Penn, neither of them know how to

[00:52:25] Change a tire in the middle of the film When the stakes are almost Not quite at their highest It's a good bit, they wouldn't know how to do it It's a great bit, but ultimately At the end, it feels, it's very shruggy to me It's very just

[00:52:39] It's very just like, oh, he's gonna be He's gonna be fine, and he may have found A love A little happiness, maybe he'll go to To the airport to have coffee with her He's going to Australia Australia, it's somewhere far away He's a man of the people now

[00:52:55] Did you guys watch the alternate ending? No, I have watched it in the past I have the criterion What is the alternate? Because I was reading, we're jumping way ahead here Yeah, we are At the end of the movie, the moment, the only moment

[00:53:09] I just remember the first time I saw This film, which is probably on DVD Like 15 years ago Oh, that's the first time we've seen it Yes, I hadn't seen it since The only moment And I watched it with my friend My roommate at the time

[00:53:25] Who was like, you haven't seen the fucking game Threw on the DVD immediately And was like, you won't believe this fucking ending Right? Sure And I was just like, the ending better not be The game was happening the whole time Because I can predict that, I believe that

[00:53:39] So this is your twist ending Villain here I just feel like it's always on amazing twist ending Listicles and bullshit I hate to break this to you But there's lazy writing on the internet Yes, yes The moment at the end of the film When he fires the gun

[00:53:57] Deborah Cara Unger is like Fuck, wait, no, he got a real gun And she's like, actually shut it down Truly now, you fucked up, we've lost control for the first time He shoots Sean Penn That is the only moment watching it the first time

[00:54:09] Where I actually consider for the first time That maybe he's gone one step too far Right? Will this be the cruel twist of fate That it was the game the whole time until right at the end And then of course that is undone within 30 seconds

[00:54:23] It feels to me like that was meant to be the original ending Yes And then you get the big drop And the cushiony pillow So what I had read was that the original ending Was the same thing But he shoots Deborah Cara Unger And then kills himself

[00:54:39] He throws himself off the building And David Fincher was like, he would not feel remorse A guy like this To kill himself when he knows that's the thing He's been trying to avoid in his life For shooting someone who's fucking tricked him to this degree

[00:54:51] His brother he would feel that Cursed by, right? So then I see on the DVD On the Criterion disc Something like, oh, this has to be the Deborah Cara Unger cut No, the alternate ending is just A minute, it is one take It starts with the clapboard

[00:55:07] And then the picture saying cut It's one shot And it is just clearly what happens right after Sean Penn says I think I saw her get in a cab Uh, right Michael Douglas walks out of the building He looks both ways She's gone

[00:55:23] But I mean, we're not seeing the reverse shot of this Right, so you just assume from his face that she's gone And the doorman at the building Says, you want me to hail you a cab? And he goes, no, I'm fine And he walks off

[00:55:35] And then there's this glummery ending of like Will he actually have Whatever, some future happiness But I do think it's weird that both of those Endings hinge on at the end of the day It was about Deborah Cara Unger Amen 90s queen! We love her, right?

[00:55:53] Yeah, is there anything else we have to say in development Before we just dig into this movie proper? Mmm, uh, let's see You know, Fincher says The original script was a little sweeter You know, it wasn't quite as mean He wanted to make it harder edged

[00:56:07] Sadistic, I mean, it's David Fincher Is that quote of his that goes around all the time That like My main life philosophy is that all people are perverts Uh, sure, yes Absolutely Oh, well, no, of course the other thing we have to mention

[00:56:21] Initially the brother character was just a friend Fincher's like, no, it needs to be Like a brother And then Jodie Foster wants to be in the film Playing the Deborah Cara Unger role Obviously, that's the female lead of the movie Fincher doesn't want her for that Fincher?

[00:56:37] Wisely is like If the waitress shows up in the movie And she's played by a two-time Oscar winner Who has been famous for 30 years It's going to destabilize the film But she really wants to do it This film in particular Or she just wants to work with Fincher?

[00:56:53] She probably wants to work with Fincher as well, right? Yes, right, Panic Room ends up happening Because of how badly she still wanted to work with Fincher But she was really into this script And I also think her production company Has a deal with Polygram At this point

[00:57:07] There is a lawsuit eventually over this fact Right But it also seems like she probably Uh, maybe Floor of Plum Any of the films that she was trying to direct Were maybe being set up at Polygram at this point in time So she's in their stable

[00:57:21] She wants to do this film specifically He says you can't play the waitress She says, well what if it's a sister instead of a brother They rewrite it to have it be her Then Fincher's like Maybe you'll be his daughter Because you are 20 years younger than Michael Douglas

[00:57:35] They had played father and daughter in a movie before And she was very young And it's like you can be father, daughter It can be the daughter that he neglected comes back into his life And Douglas hated that

[00:57:45] He's like I don't want to play her dad, that makes me feel old Right, that was the thing So then he was like she has to be my sister And then she was like well we're 20 years apart So basically Foster wanted to be daughter

[00:57:55] And he's like this is incompatible He's worried he won't If I play Jodie Foster's dad And Jodie Foster is in her own right an adult movie star My leading man romantic lead run is done immediately Totally, like the line is getting drawn under me I understand Mikey

[00:58:09] She's making contact That goes over schedule That's why she's eventually written out of the movie She then filed a huge lawsuit Saying she was supposed to be in it They settled Who knows what happened there When they switch back to brother The first choice is Jeff Bridges

[00:58:27] Who, he's got the hair He's got that Douglas hair He's got the swoosh But I weirdly buy Penn and Douglas As brothers They're similarly squirrely Yeah And slimy And look, Penn is not my favorite guy He's obviously a very capable actor at times

[00:58:47] But he can do way too fucking much He can But I really like Penn in the 90s In this kind of mode Like Carlitos Way You know, U-Turn Where it's like, ooh, this guy's a mess This and Carlitos Way Yeah, yeah

[00:59:05] This and Carlitos Way have the same thing Where it's like legendary movie star Right above the title And then Penn's just underneath it So it's not two stars above the title But he's not the and either There's no one else on the poster He's just right underneath it

[00:59:21] But he just It is really impressive how well Within that first lunch scene He is able to convey an entire history An entire relationship Everything about this guy And I think Penn Famously can be kind of a pain in the ass Sean Penn? Uh-huh

[00:59:41] But he got along really well Not nice Loves cocaine Partly I think because this is You know, in terms of screen time A small role and it's probably just kind of like Come in and have fun for three scenes Yes, he was probably paid

[00:59:57] Several million dollars to do just Three scenes Who is fourth billed in this film? James Reborn It's really truly like those three leads And then a ton of Small character actor-y guys So yeah, now the game You wanted to kick off The game You wanted to play

[01:00:19] James Reborn I say Rev-horn I bet he bought a house from the residuals From this movie Probably He left us, I don't know, it was a while ago I'm always saying he died recently and he didn't About ten years ago

[01:00:35] He just was the one who wrote the really nice obituary for himself Yes, have you ever read that, Brendan? He did? He wrote his own obituary And they publish his obituary And it is beyond touching It's a very sweet, I'm not going to read from it right now

[01:00:49] It's too long, but it's very sweet if you want to look it up I will I always liked that guy I mean, Deborah Carr Unger, 90s queen, in my opinion James Reborn, kind of a 90s queen Obviously he worked well on From the 90s

[01:01:03] But he's just like the number one guy In the 90s to be like a Reedy asshole or like Like a DA or something Or you're in a lot of trouble He's one of those character actors I love He's in fucking Carlito's way He's so specific, right?

[01:01:19] Yeah, he's got a specific kind of face And shape, energy, voice All of that He does not transform himself But he could be applied in such radically different ways He's in damn blank check He is in blank check That's right

[01:01:35] You know what I'm saying, he can play high status He can play low status He can be the butt of the joke He can be the most intimidating guy you've ever seen He can be absolute middle of the road functionary He can be a friend

[01:01:47] He can be, you know, total villain He's so good And very crucial I think to this early part of the movie Where he's doing the tests Where you're like Because you're like, I would never do this You know, the second I get there and they're like

[01:02:03] Do all this shit, I would be like This is a lot of hassle I mean, I think operation it is Which is what they're trying to convey I mean, I feel like Douglas is out But he's so bored He won't admit it to himself

[01:02:17] But he is intrigued at the idea of something Because he's a guy That motherfucker goes home and watches the news Like that's his night time treat That's like the worst show on television Especially, I'm sorry No offense to this fucking anchor Daniel Shore But the worst news

[01:02:35] He's so depressed all the time Everything he's reading is this very 90s A new survey showed that 10 out of 10 people Think the world is bad OJ is still not guilty Isn't it like market news? This guy used to come on

[01:02:49] I think when my dad would pick me up From high school The worst possible time To drive home 5.30 or 5.45 The devil's hour And it's like the NPR And this fucker would come on He would literally be this guy Daniel Shore And he would

[01:03:11] He would talk about the markets He would talk about I always equated him with someone like William Bennett Who then sort of started to Scold people on their fucking behavior And it turned out that he was an absolute crook And a gambling addict He's a classic 90s hypocrite

[01:03:27] Bennett The golden age of hypocrites But it was Good old fashioned hypocrisy They told us not to be bad For whatever way And then they would have an affair It was normal And then they would feel shame to some extent And maybe resign

[01:03:47] And now it's like they sent 1 million racist text messages And their defense was I was joking Now it's that There is no defense This is good action Triggered much Anyway he was one of those old fashioned He was like Reagan's secretary of education

[01:04:05] Yeah he sure was that fucker Dan Shore Oh he was a drug czar He was the first drug czar He was the first drug czar And then Michael Douglas was the drug czar Then he was the drug czar He's the drug czar It's coming back around Daniel Shore

[01:04:25] God bless him He was the drug czar Saturday July 10th 2010 He died July 23rd 2010 At the age of 93 Files one more report And he's like alright He died at the desk Pretty much He maybe took a week So the game I want to be clear

[01:04:49] If that sounds like I'm being negative About Daniel Shore About the film They're like the bay hive They will swarm In terms of 90s Sort of vaguely satirical thrillers About Sort of hubristic Soulless men Titans of industry Who get trapped in a game of their own Design right

[01:05:15] The trap of their own design What's the movie you like best I love the player I don't hate the game Ah Good landing baby I don't hate the game I don't hate the game When I saw this film I was a massive 7 head Right this is the thing

[01:05:35] I was coming off of Such a 7 high You were living this in real time Being like this is the fucking guy And this guy's gonna hit home runs every time 100% I saw 7 like 3 times in the theater I felt like a big old grown up

[01:05:49] Cause it was so dark It was like a real shit man It had all the sins Few movies had ever attempted that Some movies have some sins It had a foot chase in the rain With a gun being waved around My favorite thing about 7 is it's always raining

[01:06:05] Except at the end Yeah It is the Avengers of sin Yes exactly Like Sternberg could only get one sin off the ground And even then he lost most of the footage You know Still mad at you about that stupid joke I love the player

[01:06:23] I don't hate the game I also love the player to be clear And you love the player and love the game Yes I love the game even more The player's real good Hey hey The underdog's on top It's a reference to one of the games

[01:06:41] He reopened the tab He reopened the Wikipedia tab I feel like the game only had A couple years up there He was a little flash in the pan Well if JJ had done his damn job Yeah second dossier JJ I want to actually make this clear

[01:06:59] JJ worked very hard on these dossiers He did And in fact he said Please don't criticize me on air for getting this to you late And in fact we want to go out of our way To thank him for doing a couple dossiers

[01:07:11] On very short notice as the schedule flipped around That had been said JJ you fucked up You should have pro bono given us an additional dossier On American Rapper the game So Nicholas Van Orton Is a wealthy investment banker A.k.a. The Game

[01:07:29] Before 50 Cent ever heard of him Yeah Nicky the Game Van Orton He should have seen this coming Yeah there's a game with your name all over it He's an investment banker As he sort of says He's trying to move money from one place to another

[01:07:45] He himself is not He basically knows that his job is bullshit That he was born On third base Born on third base but then did have the unfortunate Luck to watch his dad Mysteriously throw himself off Their haunted ass mansion As a child Luckily someone filmed it

[01:08:05] Luckily it was being filmed by like The 14 guys who filmed JFK's assassination Mark Milad was there I could develop this style even further This also has tinkly piano It does I mean it really does Is it a Howard Short score? He does all of Pinter's early scores

[01:08:21] And they're so good Before he jumps over to Reznor I did really appreciate the Speaking of the difference between him and Reznor though Is in the chase sequences in this movie It's still just a bass And some piano There's never any like yeah it's not like a Drum

[01:08:39] The score From Howard Short feels like two different scores Being played on top of each other There's like the thumping bass thing And then there's the twinkly piano And it often feels like they're discordant With each other Which I like

[01:08:55] I mean I love Howard Short but it is crazy That the guy who did the weird discordant Cronenberg and Fincher scores And then PJ was like hey you wanna do like Lord of the Rings He's like sure you want a symphonic masterpiece Like with like 20

[01:09:07] Motifs that will like you know Last a generation You know how his career started right? He was the original music director on Saturday Night Live Oh yes I did that He's a Lorne Michaels guy who then became like weird Like thriller score guy

[01:09:21] Then came up with like the defining Blockbuster epic score Right. God bless him Yeah wild career He's got cute little glasses Nick Van Orton it's his 48th birthday It's the day when his dad killed himself Uh huh A thing he has never thought about He's divorced

[01:09:43] His wife has remarried He has a child who he seems to Consider a mild acquaintance Right? And there's another on the way Not his obviously Lives in a big haunted mansion with his devoted Housemaid Ilsa They should have had Jodie Foster play his daughter over the phone

[01:09:59] Just thinking that That would have worked Happy 8th birthday Carol Baker as Ilsa Sure Legendary Academy Award nominee Uh from Babydoll Babydoll Tennessee Williams She originated Babydoll the play She's in Giant She's in a lot of stuff He has brunch with his brother His fuck up brother Conrad

[01:10:27] Who woke up naked on a beach And used to buy meth at this restaurant He's full of colorful You know vibes Yes and this movie is so Fincher controlled from the beginning That Penn is the first Guy you're seeing in the movie Who feels a little

[01:10:45] More off the cuff Has any life to him whatsoever Yes Which is great construction because He's coming in high on the game And then we want to be as well I want to be on the game But they haven't talked in so long That he doesn't know

[01:11:03] That Douglas and his wife broke up Which seems to have been many years ago At this point she's already remarried Pregnant with another man's child They just haven't been talking to each other There's just that sense that he If you don't call him You don't hear from him

[01:11:19] And you see some scenes of him being Kind of like a corporate raider He's scary A touch I do like, unless I'm mistaken Deborah Caronger is the waitress in this first scene And they just frame her head out Which is nice because it's sort of what you're saying

[01:11:33] He does not even look at these people Hands to him He's got that scary Is it Peter Donat? As his kind of lawyer guy Love that guy That guy's always kind of scary looking Okay so Penn's like I bought you this game

[01:11:51] It'll change your life, it's so great And he goes to this fucking office Can't explain it but it's immersive You know CRS Doesn't he say something like they make you face The thing you don't realize Is missing from your life or whatever it is I mean

[01:12:09] One of the other things I do think Is pretty insightful about this film Is it does feel like it's commenting on And this is a thing that is Such a fucking Leno late night punchline Talking about all these sort of hypocrite guys But I think

[01:12:23] Especially with these 90s Of the universe assholes Is like how often There was some public reckoning of like Oh what's their weird fetish They make someone like put them In a diaper and spank them Yeah that was very hot in the 90s it turns out they're all

[01:12:39] You know sexually bizarre But beyond that it was like The through line was all these guys were fucking Like absolute conquerors of industry Like just Unrepentant assholes cigar chomping Like pieces of shit All have some secret life where they want to be Like infantilized or diminished Or punished

[01:12:59] You know that it's like These guys who Want to be masters of the universe Also get off on the I want to be out of control I want someone to have power over me I mean this movie is Pre-Finn-doming You're obsessed with Finn-doming

[01:13:17] No fetish makes less sense to me in the world Are you familiar with Finn-doming? Because you hire a dominatrix And give them like all of your passwords And you're like bank login Right and then they're like I'm gonna fucking drain you

[01:13:31] And part of it is them texting you during the day And being like I'm gonna fucking spend all your god damn money Where you're just getting off On like it's the non-physical Version of S&M Yeah Yeah Griffin's obsessed with this

[01:13:45] Obsessed with making sure it never happens to me It's also It's also essentially what happens to him That is essentially what She's standing over him and not to jump ahead too much But she's standing over him saying We drained you daddy And then he passes out

[01:14:01] But here's this guy who's like obsessed with having control of everything in his life But is also miserable He's not happy, he probably wants someone to take the control away Although he can't articulate that He has the scene where he like says

[01:14:11] Like you want to get photos of me Being spanked While I butt fuck Captain Kangaroo Like he makes the joke Basically saying I don't have a fetish like that There aren't Polaroids you're gonna find of me And so he needs to be cucked By SRS

[01:14:27] Right and he's also kind of Sorry He's also kind of like It wouldn't even matter Money, like he's so in your Like he doesn't even care about his public celebrity Which doesn't exist really He's like I'd still be rich

[01:14:43] Like I'd still be powerful even if you embarrassed me Anyway he goes to the CRS James Rebhorn's got Chinese food And is doing the whole kind of like Yeah yeah yeah no no welcome Yeah sit down I'm Jimmy Stewart all of a sudden

[01:14:57] And if Penn's the first guy in the movie to have some life And then Rebhorn is the first guy to be casual Which is so weirdly Like unnerving in the world this film has set up Where you're like Food, he's like dropping it on his shirt by accident

[01:15:09] He's distracted by five other things It's the same as the receptionist Who nags him Essentially by not Immediately catering to him So they're both They're both operating from this place Pretending they don't know who he is Right Like they're putting him off kilter

[01:15:29] Is probably what keeps him interested Like the lack of secrecy That's the game They're nagging right yeah And Rebhorn's peacocking with that Chinese food He really is That's insane And so they have him fill out a zillion forms They have him do a physical

[01:15:47] They have him watch the video from the Dharma Initiative In Lost where it's just sort of like You know stock footage of weird shit And then something that just says like pornography Masculinity Yes He's like what is this And after all that he then gets a phone call

[01:16:03] The next day or whatever That's like sorry declined No game for you Didn't pass the test And then thus the game has begun Of course It's the total recall thing where they tell you exactly what's going to happen

[01:16:17] Right at the moment where the thing is supposed to start They're like malfunction Not working I think that this movie Should not have been called The Game I think I kind of agree with you I'm gonna start there What would you call it Nick's bad day

[01:16:35] I would call it how Nicky got his groove back Sad Richie Don't you know Whatever Don't bring the wooden clown inside I think I would call it Escape Room Tournament of Champions Tournament of Daddies Have you seen those movies Oh no I was talking about actual escape rooms

[01:16:57] I know but have you seen the escape room films I am here to tell you I didn't know there was such a thing They are very game coded In that it's like We know everything about what's going on with you Fundamentally

[01:17:09] And we're going to design escape rooms that provoke How many are there Two There should be a third They kind of fucked up the release of the second one around the pandemic But they feel kind of like canon movies to me In a way I like

[01:17:23] They're really fun So okay he comes home And what's outside normal A wooden clown posed exactly as his father Lying in the sidewalk Rude by the way Incredibly rude Too soon you say It's only been 48 years I think it's been less than 30 He was probably like 12 Who knows

[01:17:49] Who can say how old he was Impossible No one tells us And there's a clown You bring the clown in right No you don't bring a wooden clown You bring the clown in and put it in a chair You put it in a chair

[01:18:05] You're not going to leave it on the ground I'm not someone who really thinks you should call the police In any scenario but wooden clown Left in a menacing way outside my apartment I might Just want to console Someone to bounce that off

[01:18:19] I operate on the principle of ACAB All clowns are bad Don't fucking Go near them ever under any circumstances And he brings it in And then I think the best most surreal touch of the whole movie The TV starts talking to him What's more fun than that

[01:18:37] The newscaster being like In America continues its long trudge towards mediocrity Are you listening to me asshole What do you think of the fucking clown The effect of the glitching It's good It's so throwbacky Because it's a broadcast Even if it's cable TV It's not computers

[01:18:57] It's wonderfully analog in general Apart from his cell phone You want to know a touch that made me very nostalgic weirdly Go ahead When the guy is talking to him And he's going up to the TV and trying to figure out What's going on Is this a window

[01:19:13] Where's the camera He puts his hand on the screen And you hear the sound of the static I forgot that was a thing Totally It was kind of fun You figure it out as a kid by accident And then it starts to become a thing

[01:19:29] Where you're like sometimes I want to do it I want to put my cheek up against it Why cheek No what cheek My face cheeks He calls his butt his face cheek He does Um Um Yeah the TV The most quaint moment to me is when

[01:19:51] Because he can't open his briefcase And he's like I'm going to read With presenting papers Now it would just be like I'll email these to you He's literally like they're in the fucking briefcase Sign now or doc you sign

[01:20:03] This is why I say it's one of the most likable Douglas characters from the beginning Because he went there in person He did go there in person to mother fucker It's true he's doing it face to face He's not a coward I was like this guy's actually okay

[01:20:17] He did go there in person to tell like some beloved Children's book man You're not making profits for me You're fired He's going to jerk off about it later Does he jerk off No I think he sees his penis and he's like what's that Oh right right

[01:20:33] That belongs to me His penis I imagine is like one of the Fucking appliances in Flintstones It's a living And it just goes like again Which is such Such a Strange thing for a Douglas performance Such a dickless performance This is one of his least horny films

[01:20:53] That is true Because even Deborah Karen Unger It's like when she takes her shirt off He almost seems a little confused And uncomfortable I think he's a little embarrassed Because it's the propriety of that moment They have a little bit of a spark But then he's like

[01:21:11] Is there talent He's not that kind of asshole Whereas in most 90s Douglas movies he'd be fucking Armin Mueller The shirt would be off Yeah he'd be fucking He'd fuck the clown That's why I brought the clown in Of course He fucks the big

[01:21:31] Bouncy castle at the end Let's get him oh he's having sex with it With the ex He's like what there's a big ex Do you want me to hail a cab sir just so I can fuck it It's got a tailpipe right So The clown yeah very cool

[01:21:47] There's a key The first key is sort of introduced here right In the mouth I love all this It's so 90s It's so good That would be a fucking app It's true Admit it It'd be a fucking face ID Yeah exactly You don't have to scan something

[01:22:11] It's a key open This idea of San Francisco is this big weird Empty playground Where it's like who knows what we've tucked away In weird basements or lobbies But also Fincher grew up here Yeah sure I think they Thought about setting it in other places

[01:22:29] Fincher was very pro San Francisco It cost several more million dollars To do it in San Francisco as opposed to New York Or Chicago or LA And I was really insistent about it I don't want to tell them no on anything I think it's such a cool

[01:22:43] Obviously Zodiac is another This is two SF movies Where's Seven Set? Seven is set in a nameless city It's set in Rain City France, San Francisco Exactly Seven Set Nowhere That's what I recall Obviously Panic Room is a New York movie Benjamin Button is down in the biggies

[01:23:05] Down in the bow And the Saints Social Network is set down in the bayou Harvard And Girl with the Dragon Tattoo That was set where? Iowa? Joke And Gone Girl is set kind of in Iowa It's in Nebraska or something Gone Girl is in the Midwest

[01:23:27] He's dragged her out to the Midwest What's the hat they make him wear? Which team is it? He wears a Mets cap Because they're from New York Where they met in New York Missouri Kansas City He's made so many good movies I like his films

[01:23:45] Do you want to name more Midwestern states? Yeah, do it North Dakota Wisconsin I'll say this I don't love this movie But I'm also watching it We gotta do the full rewatch But I'm like If this is my bottom ranked fincher Which it might be

[01:24:07] That's a pretty fucking exceptional filmography It is pretty high for sure Wow, we're gonna be different That's fun though I almost want to tell you where I have it Don't So then he has the He meets Christine Deborah Cara Unger

[01:24:25] She is a waitress who pours wine all over him And he's mean about it And she gets fired She sticks up for herself and gets fired He feels bad I Her audition tape, she sent a sex scene from Crash Yeah, that was her reel

[01:24:41] That was literally her like Just like What do you think of this? Which by the way is what self tapes should be Self tapes should be what we call reels And you should watch one fucking scene And be like this is the sex scene

[01:24:55] You decide whether I can do it or not I agree with you in principle And every time I send casting directors Deborah Cara Unger's sex scene from the game They don't hire me I fucked it up It would have fucking Let's just get you say it clean

[01:25:11] And I'll insert it later I agree with you in principle Good sir But yet Here's another fact Here lies the rub Every time what? More's the pity but every time I send a casting director Deborah Cara Unger's sex scene from Crash There you go, nailed it 2005

[01:25:38] Fuck I picked the wrong Crash Also I oversold it Oh you think you did? You think we put too much mustard on that one? I had a take Now Deborah Cara Unger, Canadian actress She's from the beautiful town of Vancouver Out there in British Columbia

[01:25:54] I feel like at this point Was basically mostly known for Crash She is in Highlander 3 The Sorcerer So maybe Ben remembers her from that I don't really Highlander 3 has not stuck in my head The final dimension? No, no

[01:26:10] I was a big Highlander head and I never even saw 3 Ben has pushed very hard to cover the Highlander movies We're all Highlander heads We like the film Highlander And we think 2 is kind of bad and funny But I was very excited to see

[01:26:22] I was very excited to see the quickening in the theater Oh That's 2 That's 2 But she's one of those actors Let's do it though Yeah I know you want to do it Griff stop playing with your ghost box My ghost tramp Sorry

[01:26:42] The thing she said was that she was very relieved That this was basically the first movie she worked on Where she got to wear a full costume She wore clothes the entire movie And a full outfit She's I just consider her such a specific presence

[01:26:56] In terms of years I like her But if she's in a movie It's the late 90s or the early 2000s Right She has white noise She's really good in Stander A movie that bizarrely doesn't exist but is hella solid No that movie's good Tom Jane right?

[01:27:16] He's a bank robber or something In South Africa I've seen that and that's the last time I remember Her really making a mark In anything But I think for how dark this movie is Harris Savitish shot it And he's also in the bathroom Yes

[01:27:34] He's the guy asking for toilet paper Harris Savitish who we will talk about on other episodes as well The God Maybe my favorite DP It looks so good This is pretty much his first big movie He had done one other With Phil Jeannot Who was similar to Fincher

[01:27:52] A kind of Wonder King young hot shot director Everyone thought was notorious But his movies never connected And Harris Savitish was like The top music video commercial DP He does this one Phil Jeannot film And he's just like not fucking worth it

[01:28:06] I don't want to deal with features I don't want to deal with fucking directors for this long Ease your money to just do What I've already been doing And Fincher had to basically beg him to do this And I think part of the appeal Was that he's like

[01:28:20] I really wanted to get caught in the weeds on the plot And the twists and turns And the details of this movie narratively And not be micromanaging the visuals As much as I usually do Because Fincher is like

[01:28:32] I usually come in with a lot of very specific takes on lighting And Harris Savitish's instincts and styles are so aligned With my own That he's like the one DP where I feel comfortable Being like Harris just do what feels right to you

[01:28:42] I'm probably going to like it I feel like the lighting This movie is warm and kind of dark and soft At the beginning This is what I was going to say It is so dark and so shadowy for so long It is incredibly helpful to have someone

[01:28:56] Like Debra Karr or Unger who does not look like anyone Fucking else Even in silhouettes You're just like unmistakably her Do you know DKU? You don't know her or anything right? Personally? I was just like anytime an actor's on the show I just like know

[01:29:14] I also do feel like you kind of know everybody Yeah, you know everybody I know everybody except Debra Karr Unger I do like her a lot but I don't know her I've never worked with her either She's in both Silent Hill movies

[01:29:26] The first Silent Hill movie is basically One of the ten best movies ever made And the second Silent Hill movie is kind of one of the worst Ten movies ever made Much like Highlander Kind of that vibe Obviously she's in Crash

[01:29:40] I believe Mel Gibson's wife is in Payback My friend Greg Henry is in Payback We love Greg Henry I do know Greg Henry Greg Henry is also a guy who's in every movie Every De Palma film for sure Obviously De Palma favorite She's one of the big members

[01:29:56] Of the Sunshine Ensemble The refined Sunshine But like what's her last What's her most recent credit as of this moment? Her most recent credit Griffin Is a 1922 horror film called The Long Night Starring Scout Taylor Compton Okay

[01:30:14] It was a well, it looks like a sort of direct to video Horror film so she is still working I just feel like I would be so excited if I saw her pop up I would like to see her

[01:30:22] She definitely has only done like a handful of movies In the last ten years and none of them Are movies I've heard of She was in a Nicolas Cage direct to video thing Called Vengeance A Love Story Okay But I feel like her last big movie

[01:30:36] Apart from Silent Hill Revelation Which is awful Is maybe 88 Minutes She's in that Like she's kind of the fourth or fifth lead in that That's the last movie I'm seeing On her IMDb where I'm like Well that was a wide release Like kind of big film

[01:30:54] She's been doing voice work on a lot of Star Wars Video games She seems to have a recurring character Across many of the games over the last ten years She's got a great voice Sure Yeah The TV show No that's the name of her character

[01:31:12] Oh in Star Wars Good for her Scorpion was the TV show I was on that Who do you play on Scorpion I was in Scorpion I played a baseball pitcher You do have a bit of a baseball pitcher look How dare you

[01:31:30] The rudest thing anyone's ever said to Bruton I'm always the ex Who comes back to cause trouble Between the people you want to Oh right and everyone's like Oh I hate this handsome man entering Fuck him He's got a chip on his shoulder or something

[01:31:46] Do you know the most extreme example Now in retrospect of that What's that? That Brandon has done in his career And there must be some Tumblr name for what you're talking about Like the wedge or the you know whatever What is it Oh sure

[01:32:02] Oh you're Megan's ex on Suits Yes Megan's ex Got in the way of the ship that people were invested in at that moment That's right An actual ship My mom would have been furious at you Oh your mom probably hates me Huge Suits fan

[01:32:18] My mom is like one of Suits' top ten all time fans I think She was just bringing up Suits to me And I was like yeah I know you like Suits It's not on anymore Deborah Carr Unger She's very distinctive She feels like an actress

[01:32:32] But because she's sort of not that famous at this moment Right She still works as this kind of Like you know You have to sort of buy that maybe she's the one person Who's not in the game Yeah she's at the exact right level of like

[01:32:46] If Foster's too famous and if someone is too green You're just gonna be like Well they can't hold their own in this story Right they can't create tension against Michael Douglas And she's just very Comfortable Confident on screen Yeah very confident she could help him out She's helpful

[01:33:04] She's kind of annoyed with him But she's got enough of a heart that if he's like in real trouble You know She's not gonna abandon him And she's not going into like total femme fatale Pestiche but she understands how to sprinkle Bits of that in

[01:33:18] In the scenes where it's appropriate I think it's very There's this whole rigmarole where like they encounter a man They get in the ambulance with him They get dropped off at this fake hospital Turns out to all be fake They go in a creepy elevator

[01:33:32] I mean this is all great game stuff Classic game And the whole time you're thinking this is the game And yet Michael Douglas does not go this is the game Well but he's having the moments because he does eventually go like

[01:33:42] Oh the key's gonna go in the elevator Whereas if I had the key it would be like me playing a video game Where I would just be like does the key go in here? Does the key go in the ambulance? Constant Does it go in my mouth?

[01:33:54] Eat the key? Yeah eat the key Fuck the key And then they have the whole thing on the fire escape Where they fall in the garbage And it's kind of a little reset for them Where they're like well now we're both covered in garbage

[01:34:08] Like now we're kind of on equal standing And that's basically when she tells him By the way someone paid me 400 dollars To spill a bunch of wine on you Right And he said what did you say He said 300 and I said 400 And then I said the handsome man

[01:34:24] In the linen suit Really? So now he knows that she was brought in on this But brought in on this in a way that she didn't Quite understand anything larger outside of that one moment And now he knows he's handsome

[01:34:36] Now he knows he's handsome which he'd never considered No He looks in the mirror in the beginning of the movie And he doesn't get that flash In his eyes No It's like a whole Michael Douglas movie

[01:34:50] He'd catch a glimpse of himself in the mirror and try to fuck the mirror You'd see the ass within half a second You'd see the tush and he'd be trying to fuck it I just don't understand my reflection isn't turning around Sorry Know your role

[01:35:02] Yeah he has that good bit about where he loses one of his shoes And he's like There goes a thousand dollars And she's like your shoes cost a thousand dollars He's like no that one cost a thousand That's a very good bit Okay what happens He goes home

[01:35:18] Brings her to office She takes the shower Then they depart Red underwear he sees that she has red underwear She's got a red bra No underwear No underwear red bra And then he goes home There's a bit of a reset

[01:35:36] Also the Armin Mueller stall thing happens before that We mentioned that And then what happens Doesn't he go to a hotel No I'm just kidding When does the hotel come in That is a good point The hotel after the house has been trashed

[01:35:52] That night he goes home that's when he has the conversation Asking about his father's suicide He has a relatively normal night He talks to Ilsa About his dad and then he goes back to work And he's being a motherfucker Or whatever He's only met the ghost of Christmas

[01:36:08] Present so far And he's the nice one who's like Yeah he's the fun one And then He You know whatever He gets home and his house has been Trashed with crazy neon graffiti And Sean Penn is there and is like I like This is like a chain letter

[01:36:30] These people have me over the barrel I passed this on to you to try and get rid of them This was not me I'm in so deep And then he opens Michael Douglas' glove compartment And he's like I'm gonna call out

[01:36:44] A site that would make even the keymaker jealous Yeah it is a lot of keys I loved it Ben lost his fucking mind You big keyhead Big keyhead My main takeaway from this The Matrix sequel Was that was a lot of keys He couldn't get over

[01:37:04] His big line That's what's really stuck with me And then he points out on him and is like You're fucking working with them With their keys Which by the way in the world of the movie His brother, great actor Really good actor That's true

[01:37:22] He's got Sean Penn skills And Douglas does not have Douglas skills It feels like you almost want the twist at the end to be like I'm the CEO of this company Yeah you were our first subject What if it was that?

[01:37:34] It was like congratulations we never tried this before It was like guinea pig And then he goes to the hotel room And there's the Compromising The pictures and the cocaine Because the front desk didn't like to check in They're like you already did check in

[01:37:50] And then he looks in his pocket and the key is there Because the guy fucking put pocketed him Bumped into him in the lobby And then yes this hotel room Thank you This movie reminded me of Dead Reckoning Which I won't talk about

[01:38:04] The hotel room is just set up perfectly To make him look like a Michael Douglas character Just coke and polaroids of sex acts They're like what's his name from Disclosure Just swung through here He's like it's not me I'm a different guy But you look like Michael Douglas

[01:38:18] If you pick me do I not bleed In fact he does start bleeding then He does He starts touching the coke and then he cuts himself One of the sort of most mundane It's all smiling out of control moments When he flushes the toilet And even it floods

[01:38:36] And you're like I don't want to know what's in there It's good shit It is yeah It's not shit it's blood There's no shit flowing out of the toilet And I feel like This is when he finds her again First he gets taxi crashed

[01:38:52] Yes by what's his name from Braveheart The man with the world's most interesting facial scars Tommy Flanagan Great guy He's in Sons of Anarchy Remember when As is Mark Boone Jr Sons of Anarchy They were like we need the guys with the most raggedy faces possible

[01:39:10] Like everyone has to have a million lines and pockmarks Mark Boone Jr in this one possibly looking The cleanest I have ever seen Even though he's supposed to be playing Like a shady P.I Yes but in the scale of Mark Boone Jr

[01:39:22] He basically looks like David Niven here He's like I wasted Mark Boone Jr for me Well it's early in his run Yes We didn't know quite He's been working I guess When's his first credit His first credit is 83 Playing porn customer In a movie called Variety

[01:39:44] Oh the Betty Gordon movie Oh sure I'm trying to imagine what the prosthetics budget must have been They had to hire Rick Baker To transform him believably into the type of man who could buy porn But then he never took it off And that's where his career began

[01:39:58] What if that's someone's origin story As a Hollywood guy It's like they put all this makeup on me and then I just left I never stopped booking Yeah I love him so much It's one of your all time best lines What?

[01:40:14] That he looks like he sleeps in pizza pie A man who looks like he sleeps in a pizza He like opens his calzone And just snugly tucks himself in I love him in Memento That's like my favorite Mark Boone Jr But obviously he's in Batman Begins

[01:40:28] If you remember Isn't he in Trees Lounge too Yes One of the most iconic scumbags Have you ever seen Trees Lounge I have and I love Trees Lounge It's a boosh It's on my list He did Lonesome Jim with Casey Affleck He did that movie with

[01:40:48] Sienna Miller called Interview Which is a remake of a Dutch film I did see that And he did Animal Factory The prison movie I still say it's the only boosh And he directed the Leap Dave Williams Episode of 30 Rock Did he? Yeah one of the best 30 minutes of

[01:41:08] I only watched like a few episodes It's the best one Maybe the best of 30 Rock's kind of later Reality is out the window era I was going to say is it in the first season Because I think that's the only It's later season Not being curmudgeonly

[01:41:24] It's just the truth You are curmudgeonly On the episode it's Leap Day And everyone keeps talking about The Leap Day traditions And everything around her is being affected by Leap Day And Liz Lemon is the only person who's like

[01:41:38] What are you talking about? Since when has this existed We do this every four years Blue and yellow are the Leap Day colors Here's the traditional Leap Day meal It's on television And it's cutting into a cable broadcast Of a movie called Leap Dave Williams

[01:41:52] That is like a parody of the Santa Claus Where Jim Carrey plays A normal man named Dave Williams Who starts turning into Leap Day Williams And it's Jim Carrey? It's Jim Carrey as himself But Buscemi had to direct the episode And direct the fake movie in the episode

[01:42:08] Which I think is incredibly well done Buscemi also directed obviously Some of the most famous Sopranos episodes He's a good director I feel like Tree's Lounge Is so good And so like Deeply felt but also you know Not over the top That you felt like

[01:42:28] Jesus is he gonna be kind of like A huge directing talent Like one of the great indie directors And he never quite whatever No I agree with you That's also one of those movies where like The 18th guy is someone Like everyone in the bar is some character

[01:42:44] Like I don't know No one You wanna be in my movie? It's called Tree's Lounge Are you sure that's what you wanna call it Steve? I think the breakout is Kevin Corrigan Love his great comeback Insane and funny Love that guy Um so okay

[01:43:04] The game the game the game Taxi crashes Turns out the magic handle he found Is uh you know The cat Oh sure Remember he has to wind down the window He's got this like special handle I could do with more of that That's a critique I have

[01:43:24] I want a bunch of those Escape roomy you find an object You don't understand what you have to apply it to Uh What else happens Um I'm just I cannot remember the order of everything But he finds his way back to Christine

[01:43:40] And he tells him where she lives And that's where she's like Don't like keep your voice down They're watching us all the time I am an employee of this and they are stealing your money Right Like this is not an alternate reality game

[01:43:54] This is just a scam where they like trick you Into giving up your passwords basically And you are gonna like lose all your money And he um What Do you log into Bank of America See that you have zero dollars and that's when you jerk off

[01:44:08] And you come You don't even need to jerk off You just come You don't touch your penis You're just like okay Uh the only time I've ever seen that depicted Is you're the worst has a big Finn Dom plot Okay

[01:44:24] Like that's reveal and I feel like that's when that was That fetish was being first discussed Cause you're the worst was always Eager I think to depict any new sexual fetish Get in on the ground floor I just wanna Say that I have kind of a fetish too

[01:44:38] It's a little different though I get off on people Just randomly giving me money Yeah Sick I know it's disgusting And you're open about it though I wanna say it openly I just wanna be like out there You know You're trying to embrace your kink Yeah exactly

[01:45:02] So if anyone wants to do that to you You know steak meal You don't mind me about that If anyone would like to compensate me For that fucking bullshit My kink is just trying very hard not to amount debt That is my entire sexual fetish Uh sure sure

[01:45:18] Let me be Eden Um yes You are scared of money wisely Yeah it's bad Whatever scared of overspending Yeah many things Terrified of credit whereas Ben He's a deposit fetish Deposit fetish Give me a slip Do you like that you can take a picture of the check

[01:45:40] And do it on your phone or do you want the old fashioned Deposit slip I like to look into the eyes of somebody Put in an envelope that has holes in it Right some teller So the money can breathe Yeah of course

[01:45:54] It's the most valuable thing you own It is Why is that Um so Uh he calls She drives him away and he calls his bank And they're like yeah you have no money sorry bro Like he calls his Swiss bank Confirms it they stop at a gas station

[01:46:12] She's like they cut up your car Right yeah yeah And then he Goes back to her place Yeah I think it's after her place They go to his cabin And she drugs him He calls The lawyer And he's like I don't know what you're talking about

[01:46:32] Not a cent has been moved you're fine And she's like he's in on it too He's fucking milking you hang up right now And immediately drugs him with tea Great conspiratorial way You know like you're trying to move right Where it's like if someone says the truth

[01:46:46] They could just be lying If anyone tells you you're not being conned They are in fact Part of the giant con And he wakes up in Mexico In a coffin Which is for dead people And has to make his way Back to San Francisco And handles this all

[01:47:06] At this point pretty Even-handedly He's pretty much just in the flow At this point He's kind of broken at that point And the guy sort of immediately Can tell his story doesn't totally check out I mean I think this guy is like You got robbed by gay hustlers

[01:47:24] He sort of doing the whole He arches his eyebrow and he says I got robbed Yeah right Cause he's got this expensive watch I was staying at a hotel I can't say the name of the hotel Yeah a lot of that

[01:47:36] Who wouldn't take the watch and the watch is inscribed To him by his mother on his birthday Which is the day daddy died And which is him surrendering The baggage He's ready for the final chapter It's a metaphor It's true he's finally letting go of this weird

[01:47:52] Kind of creepy watch I wouldn't wear that watch I always think of trauma as the ultimate gold watch It's really what it is You want your dead dad's watch He died in front of you And it literally says like you are a man now Or whatever right

[01:48:08] It's like on your 18th birthday Like here you are you have the family curse Now look up and watch me die He gets back to San Francisco And they're like Your brother's in a loony bin Your mansion's been sold It's all happened pretty fast It's all bad

[01:48:26] Was Mexico in on the game? Like the state of Mexico The country, the government itself Probably They seem to have limitless Financial resources But no no They loaned it two weeks They rented it It's got built in production value Yeah it does How much does the game cost?

[01:48:52] At the end of the movie Sean Penn is looking over a dense stack of papers And Michael Douglas goes what's that And he goes it's the bill and he goes let me split it And he goes thank god And then Michael Douglas takes a look at it

[01:49:04] And his eyeballs pop out of his head Steam comes out of his ears Awooga awooga that's a lot The film costs 70 million dollars Yeah Should we say that's what the game CRS It has to be tens of millions All those squibs placed

[01:49:20] All those places he could possibly go Yes You have to also remember that Like all of the possible permutations Of his journey You know all of the explosions That have to be laid that don't even ever get If you rewatch this movie You see CRS everywhere

[01:49:38] Like those initials It's in the taxi cab It's in the van out front of her place It's like easter eggy And everyone in the movie is there at the end Like you know every single fucking bit actor You see basically is there at the end

[01:49:52] And you were there And you were there Anyway he goes to see his ex wife Uh huh He's nice to her He's apologetic I would say The only person in the world he can trust And when he's doing that Is when he sees James Brad Porber

[01:50:10] On the TV talking something else And so he tracks him down At the zoo with the white tiger Uh huh And takes him hostage He goes to the Chinese food restaurant that he remembers he liked And they have his picture on the wall And now he's got him

[01:50:26] Uh Redbourne is so fucking good Uh he is good He really plays the maybe this guy actually Is kind of like I did my two weeks Of the game It's a gig I do a lot of stuff man I'm part one of your game You're like part six

[01:50:44] I'm not proud of my Melrose Place episode either I've made a lot of mistakes in my career I'm off the clock you can see I'm wearing a Hawaiian shirt Look do you know It's San Francisco you got Coppola And the game okay Those are the two big games

[01:50:58] Fucking pill commercials Everyone does the game It's our law and order I played a perp I played a cop I played a judge Is that like if you're in sleep no more You can kind of cycle around Next week Mark Boone Jr. plays the James Redbourne

[01:51:12] The corporate guy Oh sorry best Chinese food in the city That actually makes I like that Like there's someone in charge of the game Who's like okay who we got next This guy he's gonna want to see Mark Boone Jr. First right We'll save Redbourne for later

[01:51:28] Look it's my favorite line in the movie is at the end When Deborah Cara Unger is talking about the next bit And she goes it's just a walk on And you're like oh right you were central This narrative next time you might be the person

[01:51:38] Who checks him in at the hotel or whatever You always got a different thing to do Caravan of kooks The ensemble for the game must be Just the behind the scenes story The pranks yeah I would watch that movie That's a show Every week the game

[01:51:54] ARG happens at someone's Fucking the jury duty or whatever That's the thing I was listening to The jury duty guy do an interview And he was just like it has been Like I spent the following six weeks After we finished filming that show

[01:52:08] Being convinced it was still happening And I didn't know And I just like I watched this movie And like Michael Douglas is very relieved Once he finds out what's going on He's like a thousand pounds lighter He's like thank you for saving me

[01:52:22] I would just be fucked up for the rest of my life It is interesting also The Truman Show is a year later Which is sort of a different version of the same concept But we in the Truman Show Which I love Halfway in

[01:52:36] Kind of switch to the other side of it Where we're with Truman for the first half But anyway he takes Redhorn hostage Takes me to the real headquarters And there they all are Absolutely They're all on the same schedule Yes Everyone takes lunch off

[01:52:56] Is that like an actor joke Do you take lunch at different times on set No you break for lunch You're not on set all the time Whereas all these people are on set Brendan's joke is it does not make sense

[01:53:08] For them all to have lunch at the same time The way you would in a shoot where everyone stops down Because you're like someone's got to be fucking minding after Douglas Well that's true But I've got to be gaming him He's been led here

[01:53:20] He thinks he's doing it himself Because there's the earlier moment where Donat is like They hired the private investigator They hired Jack Cahill And he's like this company doesn't exist The floor is empty That's a cop Oh he's a cop Right Bruton Jr. is the private investigator Yeah

[01:53:40] Anyway and then yes The final scene which we already talked about Where Kara Unger at least plays like Oh god you got a real gun rather than the fake gun This is real This is the first moment where it's not been the game

[01:53:52] And when he shoots Penn he's actually driven to be like Okay like whatever And then the meager life I had Which has already been unwound Is now completely gone Let me throw myself from this building Falls off the side of a building

[01:54:06] Falls through three layers of glass windows Lands on a giant airbag And then they say like Hey be careful it's breakaway glass But it can still cut you And it's Spike Jones Spike Jones is there You know how what women want is like

[01:54:22] Male Gibson has to get electrocuted to understand that women are people And then it's like Michael Douglas had to You know have his entire psyche disassembled And reassembled and then be driven to Not just suicide but Recreating his father's traumatic suicide To understand that anyone else has

[01:54:36] Maybe I do have friends in the world Right exactly Yeah but it also has to come by By you know By way of Confirming all of like what you said Earlier David About the fact that everyone is a bit player In his The movie of his life

[01:54:56] Right it is Right yeah right that's like a real thing Right yes yes People start to think like everything is just Oh there is a word There's like a psychological It's not in the DSM But it's adjacent at this point It's a concept of first person something

[01:55:14] Right isn't that what the Main character syndrome That's just what every millennial is like Ben Redhorn so Specifically nails rap party energy I mean Fincher said like The whole thing is about this movie being built Around this guy and obviously in this last chunk Between seeing everyone

[01:55:32] At their lunch break him going through Like a stunt routine and then it truly Just being a rap party but not Just the dancing and that feeling of being Like I've watched this guy be a professional Right and play Like a stuffed shirt on set

[01:55:46] And here he is now just you know being a silly guy There's that bit where he's like Too aggressive in his chumminess Where he's like I'm just so glad you didn't Shoot me we had to prep for that possibility Right I was supposed to throw you off

[01:55:58] Right right that's what it was If you didn't shoot him I was going to have to throw you off the building Right right right Just too much Really good open bar really got to this guy And then yeah there's that one moment where he's like

[01:56:10] Okay maybe I'll go on a date with you and I think there's supposed to be Sort of the winky joke of like Is the game over You don't know anything about me and he goes You can tell me You can tell me Scott Scott Scott

[01:56:28] He watches this movie every year That's the game I love you Scott The game We did it I think of fucking rules It's one of my favorite Fincher movies I love Mike Criterion beautiful obviously I worked on Transfer

[01:56:46] This was a movie that was like not in print for a very long time Yeah because of Polygram I think And it was a late Criterion laser disc So like all the special features On the Blu-ray which weren't released Wasn't released until 2012 Were things that were shot

[01:57:00] During production explicitly for Criterion Which is kind of wild And then it got stuck in that Dead zone gulf For a long time Yeah I think they considered shooting it in continuity at one point It was a long shoot 100 days most of it at night Tough shoot

[01:57:18] They shot the airbag scene 3 weeks in He really wanted to just not do that early Apparently Which makes sense The stuff I really liked that JJ pulled up Was the Fincher-Douglas relationship Sure I can give you some of that Yeah where he was just saying that like

[01:57:34] He was very impressed with Seven but he was also like Okay so this guy is like a visual trickster Right And he's not going to be concerned with the character My concern was the razzle dazzle would obscure everything else Right And I think Douglas is such a producer

[01:57:48] Sometimes you have to remind a young man about that Okay Michael Such a producer and such a developer of his own material Even though he was not A producer on this movie credited as such No I don't think so

[01:58:00] But I think he basically is always going to wear That hat even if not in title On any set he's on Especially when he's number one on the call sheet But he was like no Fincher was like one of The better actor directors I had worked with

[01:58:12] And was there even at that early point in his career And Fincher Would say to him Because like Douglas would come in and be like Well I'm just worried about if the audience at this point Is this and that and tracking this

[01:58:24] And he was like I know you're good at all of this And you have the experience doing all this I want you to just be selfish and be an actor Think about how you would play this I don't want you to have to get caught up on

[01:58:34] The logic of the story that we're telling At large Because I feel like a lot of directors do that Where they're like Take the producer cap off be the selfish actor Make me deliver what's around it to make it make sense

[01:58:46] You don't have to help me to tell my story Right and so I think a lot of directors make Actors help them Douglas says Only two other directors he's worked with Have such strong concepts as David And that is Milos Forman Who directed Once Upon a Cuckoo

[01:59:02] Once Upon a Cuckoo And Paul Verhoeven Yes Sicko mode But yeah I think Fincher And Douglas and Penn Who I think are all strong personalities Got along fine And yeah Deborah Cara Unger

[01:59:24] Fincher says I wanted there to be the risk that she would walk out of the movie And you'd never see her again I want her to be the extra who steps into the wrong place at the wrong time And fucks something up for the movie star

[01:59:32] Like she's always trying to leave the movie That is kind of her character She's like I gotta go But she doesn't because she's part of the game She's part of the game Yeah and they shot it in San Francisco I told you all that

[01:59:46] The thing about it's very warm and dark at first And then the fluorescents start coming in It starts to get harsher and nastier as it progresses It's so cool Do you have any additional thoughts? Brendan is there anything else You've had loaded up in the game chamber

[02:00:00] No I would have Spit that fire if I had it at the ready Where's your puppy He's behind you He's in the chair He's sleeping Oh he's looking at me now He's a puppy forever He's little but he's a big boy He's a big boy

[02:00:22] He's approximately 7 years old As we discussed This movie did okay Was it so expensive? It was expensive It did okay It does have also It's Polygram's first ever Distribution So they have some expectations It made 109 million dollars worldwide 48 domestic That's a lot less than 7 Which made like 250 worldwide

[02:00:52] 7 made 327 worldwide Insane And cost Like half as much Damn So that's the math they're working on The first budget they gave him was one dollar per sin Seven dollar budget Not enough He got that off Polygram I think basically Considered it a modest success

[02:01:18] They put it out September Which is a pretty quiet time I think they were trying to kind of avoid The times This is like a sad burnished wood movie It feels like it fits in September Definitely And it got like good reviews But not raves

[02:01:36] And it was nominated for obviously Zero Oscars Which is largely how it goes with Fincher Until like Benjamin Button He's basically just not taken seriously No he was like shut out until Button The film opened September 12th September 12th 1997 Griffin Number one 14 million dollars Everything else

[02:01:58] There's two bombs Below it The number two It's been out for four weeks You know I call it an August movie Yeah I call it a bomb It did make 48 million dollars In 97 Total or at this point it had made 48 million Total It's not the Avengers is it

[02:02:20] It's the Saint with Val Kilmer Great great guess Because that is kind of the vibe Of like the stars on the downturn But no it's an action drama Is it Stallone? No it has a female lead That's right folks women can lead movies too Action? Action

[02:02:40] Women can lead action movies But this movie came in with a lot of people being like Well I don't know if I want to see a movie about a woman doing this G.I. Jane? Ridley Scott's G.I. Jane I get you know Certainly

[02:02:54] Demi Moore is on the downturn at this point Also for Ridley Scott like a real low Because his next movie is Gladiator Right It's in his kind of mid 90s where it's like 1492 White Squall G.I. Jane Like three movies that don't really matter

[02:03:08] The talk around that movie at the time was weirdly fiery And thank God everyone's chilled out about it And you can say anything you want about G.I. Jane on any stage But he never forgot about this movie Well respond normally Lodged itself in his brain She's bald

[02:03:24] I mean that is why the Chris Rock joke was so bad I was like G.I. Jane is the reference? It's 2022 Whatever That's number two Number three Griffin An action film from one of our You know primo action stars of the 90s

[02:03:40] I feel like you're saying this facetiously Yeah He's a guy of the 80s and 90s But he's not a Schwarzenegger Is he a Seagal? It is Seagal Steven Seagal Is it the, no it's not Under Siege It's On Deadly Ground That's the one where he's like

[02:04:00] The earth is important Don't take the oil You have to protect the forest He directed that one This one he did not direct So it's after On Deadly Ground It's called Only You Can Prevent Forest Fires It's before he slipped into his

[02:04:16] Vladimir Putin is a great thought leader phase In between that he has his I only work with rappers This is sort of the beginning of that Is it a three word title? Three words It's gotta be It's called Go Fuck Yourself It's called Fire Down Below Sure

[02:04:38] Kentucky mining drama But also he's like throwing an axe Who else is in it? Chris Christopherson Marge Helgenberger Harry Dean Stanton Stephen Lang This movie is a masterpiece I think this movie is seen as fairly bad Famous Steven Seagal quote about working with Marge Helgenberger

[02:05:00] I don't think she's a physical spectacular drop dead gorgeous woman She is a spectacular actress The fuck is the matter Jesus Christ Nominated for four Razzie's But it lost to the Postman which was really owning the Razzie's Number four at the box office

[02:05:16] This is a good box office game Action comedy A young star An up and coming comedy star Maybe his first Is it Money Talks? Fuck you're so fast What's Money Talks? It's Brett Ratner's first film Chris Tucker's first vehicle Charlie Sheen Heather Locklear

[02:05:40] I just knew Rush Hour was September 98 And that Rush Hour was like an immediate You're like Sherlock Being like the man's belt is blue What are you talking about Clearly the fibers Rush Hour had one of the biggest box office runs

[02:05:54] Of a September release when it came out a year later And it was You've never even heard of Money Talks I vaguely remember now that you mentioned Rush Hour I don't know if I've ever heard of it

[02:06:04] No I mean I vaguely remember it now that you mentioned it But I never would have pulled it out Tucker Sheen Locklear? Correct. Have you seen Money Talks? I mean you're a Tucker guy probably I haven't. I mean he looks like a real rascal on his poster

[02:06:16] And I love an odd couple This is sort of a Midnight run-esque type story I think so It feels more like Lose Cannons Tucker's a hustler Yes, good call Lose Cannons is the Hackman acro I love that poster where it's Hackman's holding a gun

[02:06:34] And then next to him is Dan Aykroyd And he's like holding a gun Like it's like a dainty thing They're back to back He's stressed out by it. I don't want to hold this thing I won as a whatever I However old I was at that time

[02:06:48] 13, 14 years old I won a call in to attend Two free tickets For the opening night of that Not an opening night In Hollywood And did you go? I went and I had the poster that was given to me Hanging in my bedroom For years

[02:07:08] Please do. Back to back They're standing back to back They are standing back to back He's like a neat freak Is that the bit? And I barely remember anything about the movie But the poster Had a place in my heart And bedroom

[02:07:26] We talked about this on the Crime Wave episode Do you still have the poster up? Yeah I still have it up somewhere It's above your marital bed now Wait we talked about this already? No no no It's a Bob Clark film, director of Pork Knuckles

[02:07:40] Right. What I'm saying And Baby Geniuses What I'm saying I think we already talked about On Mike in the Crime Wave episode And Super Geniuses, Baby Geniuses Yeah yeah yeah Your point about Hackman being And Black Christmas which is actually a masterpiece Your point about Hackman being

[02:08:02] Hackman was never shot on digital Yes, Hackman only shot on film They tried to shoot Mooseport on digital They were trying to be at the cutting edge But like he, while still being alive Thank God, knock on wood that will still be the case

[02:08:14] When this episode comes out Yes yes it will be No, Hackman's strong Every single piece of acting he ever did In a movie was shot on celluloid Absolutely That's kind of rare. Who else can you say that for? Yeah but I'm seeing here Hackman's coming back for

[02:08:30] Green Lantern 2 Right, he's playing Killuag He's playing fucking Tamar Ray It's just that will happen one day I do think Gene Hackman is genuinely retired And God bless him Writing cowboy novels, he's having a blast But there is just that weird thing with the comic book movies

[02:08:48] Where they're like we've hired Fucking Orson Welles, he's back from the dead And he's gonna play, you know, Lieutenant Jerk Yes For one scene in Captain America 8 Yeah Do you see that quote from Harrison Ford? Let's shoot this piece of shit Wait what? Anthony Mackie was like

[02:09:06] It's so refreshing working with him He's so down to earth You know on Captain America 4 He'll just be kind of like let's shoot this piece of shit And we're like yeah let's shoot this shit And I'm like, well you dropped a word He dropped a big

[02:09:20] Harrison Ford is playing the Red Hulk You don't know that of course No What's the Red Hulk? The Hulk was random Unlike She-Hulk who we like We like She-Hulk The Hulk was she And sometimes she is He's not playing the Red Hulk right? He is

[02:09:42] He's playing Thunderbolt Ross He turns into the Red Hulk Is the Red Hulk built of bricks? I have a vague memory of a comic book With like a brick Made of rock I'm thinking of the thing There was this moment where some nerd reporter

[02:09:58] Asked him, and I have to ask Are you playing the Red Hulk? And Harrison Ford was like what is a Red Hulk? And you were like he's either just doing the Marvel thing Of you know not letting anything out Or as plausible

[02:10:10] He doesn't know what the hell they're talking about Can I make my fucking guess on the record? The one they're shooting right now is Captain America Thunderbolt he's also signed up for And they pushed it back because of the writer strike

[02:10:20] I'm guessing that's the one where he turns into the Red Hulk He doesn't know yet Yes And if they've explained it to him it hasn't sunk in Because it's not in the script that he's writing Yeah if they explained it to him and he was like I don't

[02:10:32] The money goes into this bank account Harrison Ford LLC He also has a deposit fetish Yes Oh he sure does God bless him Bank account Number 5 at the box office Griffin and this is interesting Is a film that's been out for 5 weeks Slowly expanding

[02:10:52] It's in 387 theaters in it's 5th week It's made 6 million dollars It will be nominated for best picture Wow And it's on it's way to about 50 million dollars Edward Not Edward that movie was a flop God bless it But it got nominated One supporting actor and makeup

[02:11:12] This is best picture This film was nominated for best picture 1997 is it a Miramax No I'm trying to think of the slow roll It actually is credited to Fox Searchlight I could have sworn this was a Miramax It's not Full Monty It's the Full Monty

[02:11:30] What if men were nude That's a word of mouth hit if I ever saw one A show that now has a 25 years later A legacy Legacyquel Hulu series That no one is talking about FM2 Full Monty It's just called the Full Monty

[02:11:46] And they don't get naked in it It's not about that at all It's just here are what these guys are doing 25 years later And it's still called the Full Monty What are they doing They got everyone back except for the one guy they fired

[02:11:58] The guy with the big dick He was naked in his trailer too much Who are we talking about In the Full Monty there's the one guy who's got the big dick I forgot the actor's name He got fired for inappropriate behavior on set And his defense is

[02:12:12] I just like to be naked in my trailer And too many times PAs walked in Without knocking That old classic situation That classic For a second when you were talking about the Full Monty Because I remember very little about the Full Monty Except Robert Carlyle was in it

[02:12:28] I had a little moment in my head Where it got cross contaminated With waking Ned Devine Well which was going for a while Full Monty vibe At the US box office That's the lottery ticket movie I think that's a good movie I haven't seen it since

[02:12:46] I remember enjoying it That whole That's a Patreon series The Full Monty and then the other charming British indie comedy It's Full Monty The one where Brenda Blethen grows weed Saving Grace which is written by Craig Ferguson Yes There's a few of them Does Tumbleweeds count?

[02:13:06] Maybe that's just an actual Can you imagine if the British were chill? I know waking Ned Devine is Irish It's feather light comedy Could we do purely Belter? Like could we do the ones that didn't even come out in America? Purely Belter Look I lived in Britain man

[02:13:22] I had to suffer through six months of purely Belter ads Maybe we just do The Peter Cantonao series One of the most astonishingly Disastrous careers for someone who directed a Best Picture nominee And was nominated for Best Director Right yeah

[02:13:36] But what was he did the one Lucky Breaker? Right And he did The Rocker with Rainn Wilson Sure did, Military Wives Yep Was nominated for Best Director For what? The Full Monty I've told this story before I'm sure It's not even a story it's an anecdote

[02:13:58] But that year the Oscar party that my parents brought me to I picked Full Monty down the ballot And everyone was like Titanic's winning And I'm like yeah but if it doesn't I'm the only one who fucking gets it right Sure you were trying to zag

[02:14:08] Right and they were like if it doesn't it's not going to the Full Monty It's going to LA Confidential And I was like I'm telling you Little rap that could Look you're probably right Full Monty could have had a word of mouth bounce there Sure

[02:14:22] You've also got Air Force One Uh huh Yeah it is Which one? Spencer Garrett Get off my plane get in my bank account Get off of my plane Oh I think he's He's one of the guys in the You know there's the Glenn Close Sitting at the table

[02:14:46] Sitting at the table being like what do we do Yeah he's one of those guys Everyone is in Air Force One Macy is so good in it Hoodlum They don't make movies like that anymore Speaking of Tim Roth No it's Bill Duke Yeah Tim Roth and Fishburne obviously

[02:15:06] Fishburne is Bumpy Johnson Cool movie in my opinion Very underrated Andy Garcia Bill Duke is the shit The Mel Gibson film Conspiracy Theory This is just a great Box office game of like cable movies Like the fall man Conspiracy Theory In the game you know

[02:15:28] Similar vibes the whole world X-Files-y kind of like it's all lies Yeah Donner And that was one of those movies where it's just like If Mel and Julia Roberts want to work together They can pick any fucking script they want We don't care what it is

[02:15:44] Patrick Stewart's the villain in that one I remember Excess Baggage Alicia Silverstone's big follow up Benicio Del Toro Which I Would always get that confused With Life Less Ordinary Wait didn't like Christopher McQuarrie direct that shit? No that's Way of the Gun

[02:16:02] So all three of these movies were on the same spectrum Of like stars who just had a breakout Director or writer Give them anything Crime comedy And then yeah all three kind of imploded Who did that one? Marco Brambilla Remember him? But that was part of Alicia Silverstone's

[02:16:22] Big like overall deal Post Clueless she like developed that Produced it Oh wait maybe it wasn't him because he's the director of my favorite movie Demolition Man Oh sure You were right trust yourself And then number 10 the box office had Georgia the Jungle A classic

[02:16:40] Which must have been out for a couple months It's been out for two months It made a hundo million dollars You know come on What's better than Georgia the Jungle? A film starring Two Academy Award nominees One winner now Yeah cause THC is in it

[02:16:58] THC is a villain Leslie Mann should have been Oscar nominated Four? Knocked out Have you seen Georgia the Jungle? Never seen Georgia the Jungle You're just a doorman Doorman! Doorman! Doorman! That would have been her Oscar clip She's amazing in that movie

[02:17:16] She's been nominated for 20 years now basically I would have nominated her for Georgia the Jungle as well Sure I don't remember her in it The ape's name is ape? I don't know that's the kind of thing she probably says

[02:17:28] Brandon I'm sorry we're completely just wasting your time at this point Speaking of wasting time Earlier in the episode I interrupted rudely Let's take a screenshot Oh yeah sure So I was on a website Cause I was looking up Maybe look up some movie locations

[02:17:46] What the hell is this? Different set ups in San Francisco I was served a pop up ad I will forward this to Brandon This is the pop up ad For like one of those news sites That's written by AI One of the most cursed images

[02:18:02] It says Michael Douglas makes history with Divorced Silma But he's not divorced right? Like he and CZJ figured it out? They figured it out And he's looking How would you describe him? I always mispronounce this word But he's looking Sepulchral

[02:18:20] Yes I also don't know how to pronounce that Sepulchral Sepulchral I have to say it is impressive That Douglas and CZJ worked things out After he basically accused her vagina Of giving him cancer I mean it's Do you know the Gottfried bit about that? It's so fucking funny

[02:18:40] He would eat her ass for AIDS He's like it's a small price to pay He does like 10 minutes on it He just admitted I don't have throat cancer I got sick because I performed too much Please hold your applause Was basically his statement

[02:18:56] And then in the years since He said there's still such a stigma Around cancer That they wouldn't insure me Unless I basically counteracted The announcement that I was sick Is that a show of herility? Uh sure That's bullshit I think

[02:19:14] I mean her vagina did not cause him cancer I agree It was not her vagina He has since admitted that It was the Accumulation of all Right I think he also Smoked a lot of cigarettes I think he did a lot of stuff

[02:19:32] He attributed his cancer to stress, alcohol abuse Years of heavy smoking and yes possibly HPV transmitted by Cunnilingus you know but it's A rich gumbo He left out steak You're right The air you know just generally You said alcohol right? Yeah yeah

[02:19:52] He was a big drinker I think He was a man of vices Big appetite, big movie star When you put the mouse over the image It gets brighter It makes him look worse I think Kevin can tweet this image out if he so chooses

[02:20:08] You want to open that box but not on this episode Correct Let's try and remember if we had anything else to do What's in the box? So you're a big Seven boy, you wanted to do Seven I love Seven and I was actually Looking forward to a revisit

[02:20:22] I still will I haven't revisited it in Gosh over ten years It's one of those movies that I really like but it is I'm not usually in the mood It's unrelentingly bleak You're not always going to be like I want to do 20 minutes of Seven

[02:20:40] No it's not a remote drop movie No Where you're just like if it's on I can't help but get sucked into it Sometimes you're like I can't do this I feel that way about most feature movies That they are even though they are mostly very dark

[02:20:52] I agree with you But Seven is kind of the one where I'm like well I know where this is going It ain't good And the road there ain't good Yeah This one is though I can watch this any time I've seen the game so many times

[02:21:06] Yeah this is my second time seeing it David's wearing sunglasses now Okay Brendan Thank you so much for being here Thank you for being my friend Thank you for having me Thank you for hugging me You did Ben you're getting hugged on the way out

[02:21:26] Fair warning I didn't shower What? You're still getting hugged That's how much I care Happy birthday to Earl Yes thank you He's over there he's looking I don't even know who maintains the blank check Wikia anymore but I insist that Earl be given his own guest page now

[02:21:46] Okay Dog guest Are you cool with us posting dog? Are we allowed to post dog? Can we get a picture of Earl sitting next to but not in the Wado chair For sure Got a little Wado chair You can post as many pictures of Earl as you want

[02:22:02] He demands to be out there Alright well Griff is taking the photo That's good radio This is great Earl David say something David What a delight To do this I sprained my ankle and it hurts Brendan anything you wanna plug? Oh man yeah I wanna plug

[02:22:26] I have a new record That is finished That is good That is not coming out until next spring probably Okay but that's a thing to look forward to This episode's dropping on September 24th So at least it's closer By that point you know what I might have done?

[02:22:44] Dropped the first single There you go You should drop it today September what? I should drop it today for a single You are my father's favorite musician And I love to hear it He's gone to several of your concerts alone And I love to see it

[02:23:02] It is so funny how your dad's fandom of you extends out more To the people you've worked with Bigger fan of Zack and Brendan than he is Exactly Zack Cherry and Brendan Hines like two of his favorite guys Loves Brendan but you sent me very kindly

[02:23:14] A Dropbox link to extend to my father Of the new album Which he will never be able to open in a million years I've tried a couple different angles but I've listened to it and it's phenomenal Thank you I can't wait for people to hear it

[02:23:26] I can't wait for people to hear it either That's why I'm going to take so long to release it Gotta make it right Gotta do it That song is not on the record Lock and key that was recent right? You were on lock and key It's done baby

[02:23:42] My thing is you gotta plug these things before The streaming services memory hole them Plug them while you got them I'm wearing good terms with Netflix so let's not plug anything Alright fine That's a good point Torrent lock and key Amazon we're in great terms with

[02:23:58] I feel like I think that's We're like a year away from the rights reverting back on the tech Really? Oh interesting Might be wrong about that but I feel like there was like Five years from when the show ended The rights meaning could make a new show

[02:24:12] That and both also The show possibly existing some places I think just things could happen Well that's very Good to know Doesn't quell my anger I want the tech on crackle It has always been my wildest dream Always with me Yes no same Hurts

[02:24:34] Thank you for being here I want to end on the note my anger is always with me It hurts Thank you Brandon I love you guys I love you too It's been nice that you've been in New York a lot this summer

[02:24:48] I've gotten to hang out a lot Yeah it has been nice to see you New York Complicated feelings Get the fuck out of here Greatest shit in the world My nervous system is under constant assault And I pretend that I don't notice it

[02:25:04] And it's the best thing that ever happened to me You also like fucked up your arm and had three root canals You've had like a series of health hijinks Technically it was one root canal It was one root canal done three times

[02:25:14] Oh you mean like they were just like We just didn't get in there Kept finding roots Practice makes perfect Third time's the charm Hopefully I would love that Thank you all for listening Please remember to rate, review and subscribe Thank you to Marie Barty for our social media

[02:25:34] And helping to produce the show Thank you to Joe Bowe and Pat Rallins For our artwork Thank you to JJ Birch for our research Especially once again thank you for doing Pretty quick turnaround on these first couple of dossiers

[02:25:46] But also you fucked up by not doing the game Dossier on the side You're fired Fuck I can't open this briefcase Alright well my lawyers will be in touch Yo you're lucky JJ That he doesn't have the key Thank you to Lemon Covery for our theme song

[02:26:02] Thank you to Adrian McKee and Alex Barron For our editing Blankcheckpod.com Links, real, nerdy, shit, patreon Blankcheck special features Doing, we're on to Brosnan's Or Solutions Uh we're on oh my goodness Oceans, Oceans 13 Just no no no Brosnan Bonds started just the other day

[02:26:26] Well that's what we're doing then And you can tune in next week for Fight Club Which unfortunately this could be a very short episode Chill episode Right exactly We'll just talk about other stuff Yep and as always Just definitively for the record Wanna say

[02:26:46] Catherine Zeta-Jones' vagina does not cause cancer Okay I just wanted to say it Dick in his way through shitsville