The Moon Is…the Sun's Dream / Trio

[00:00:01] Blank Check with Griffin and David, Blank Check with Griffin and David The Moon is... The podcast dream? Eughhh. I mean sorry. Yaaaayyy. That was good. The Moon is... That was good. The Suns podcast? Uhhh. Yeahhhhh.

[00:00:35] Uh David, today we're talking about two films, neither of which have a single quote on their RTP page. No. No, they do not. Nor a single tagline to work off of. They don't have taglines? I don't think they really have posters.

[00:00:50] Uh, there's like, there's like clip art, there's like MS Paint style. I don't, yeah. Trio has more of a poster. Yeah, yeah, it has a poster. You're right. Um, but, but IODB is giving me... This must be a tagline here. Nothing. It's a, yeah, okay. Right.

[00:01:07] There's a, there's a tagline written, both of them have taglines written in Korean that are not translated for me in IODB. Okay, well you know what? I started the podcast perfectly. Uh, you started it so well, but here, here, uh, The Moon is the Sun's Dream. Tagline?

[00:01:22] No, I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna load the movie. Oh, you're just gonna load it? It's just on YouTube. Load her up. Yeah. FYI for our listeners, by the way, uh, they're a fully subtitled version of the movie on YouTube and relatively good quality.

[00:01:36] Let's just see what a piece of dialogue is. Let's see, uh. Oh, you're just gonna pick a line. I mean, it's available to me. Sure. So here, here, what's some, what's some great, uh, dialogue. I'm gonna do the same thing with Trio.

[00:01:47] This is, you can tell already, as long as you know right off the bat, you got a core curve of an episode. Yeah. You're plugged into something. Uh, sure. So this is the guy saying, I'll engrave 4 11 PM. Always think of me around this time.

[00:02:00] So you could say, I'll engrave 4 11 PM. Always podcast around this time. Uh, I was. Would that be good? Yeah. So I was like, let me just like pick a random moment and I'll just take whatever the line is on screen at this moment.

[00:02:13] It was a line that included the R word. Uh, so that was a failed attempt. Here's one. How can you trust anyone that sits down to podcast? Great. So there's a lot of options and they're important. Yes. Um, and that's okay. And that's okay. And that's okay.

[00:02:31] David, what is it? Who are we? What are we doing here? Uh, wait, I'm introducing the show. I am. It's blank check with Griffin. I'm David. It's a podcast about filmographies, directors who have massive success early on in their careers. What? We're doing a lights camera Jackson voice.

[00:02:47] Uh, no, not if I was doing a light scammer Jackson voice, it's a little more like this. You gotta get that back to you. DVD box. All right. All right. All right. Go on. Uh, yeah, go on. Go on. Go on.

[00:03:03] Podcast about filmographies, directors who have massive success early on in their careers and are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion project they want. Sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they bounce. Baby, this is a mini series on the films of Park Chan-wook.

[00:03:15] And today we are talking about his first two films. The Moon is the Sunstream. Well, you didn't take a long enough beat there. The Moon is the Sunstream. Um, David, what's the name of this mini series? We don't know. We don't know. And here's the thing.

[00:03:32] Despite there being two movies, there's not a lot for us to talk about. So we just decided let's save everything for the mic. So you have texted the great Marie Barty? I have telling her to make a poll because we don't know the name of this mini series.

[00:03:46] All right, drink some water. This is this thing that everyone loves that we do where we create on mic in episode narrative tension around a thing that will be completely resolved by the time you listen. She's posted the poll.

[00:03:59] Now here's here are the three options at the time you're listening to this. You'll know which one it is, but this is like watching the succession election night episode. Uh, yeah. Um, in the it's not about something real. No, um, it's very big.

[00:04:14] There are actually multiple options here for this mini series we're doing. Sometimes we'll do a director where you can really very, it's a real struggle to fit the word podcast into any of their films.

[00:04:24] And sometimes there is one option that is so clearly head and shoulders above the others that it's settled or David and I each have our one pick and we fight for them. This time there are three options. We went, man, they're all equally good. They're all pretty funny.

[00:04:38] Yeah. And so, uh, we have posted sympathy for Mr. Podcast on a podcast, but that's okay. I think funniest, but you're right that it's the least known of the three film or decision to podcast. Yeah. All good.

[00:04:55] I mean, let's just kind of like, we're not reinventing the wheel. They're direct here. None of these really worked well to split up pod and cast into different words. I'm kind of proud of you for that. They can be sweaty at times. You just dry. These are dry.

[00:05:11] I'm like a fucking desert of mini series nicknames. Who do you, who do you, Oh no. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Okay. Okay. Are the votes swinging while making going to be president sympathy for Mr. Podcast jumped out to an early lead. Okay.

[00:05:27] Decision to podcast is now come very close to it. Those two are very, very evenly tied. I'm a podcast, but that's okay. Is a living in the trash. Well, I'll say this. I immediately regret saying throw this to a vote and running them over on Mike.

[00:05:42] I realized that one's my favorite and now it's going to lose. I'm a podcast, but that's okay. Yep. That will be the one I say I wish had been the title for 10 episodes. David, you love that bit. No, I don't like it at all.

[00:05:56] Like it more every time we do it. Of course, Park Chan-wook won our March Madness tournament, the world cup. Correct. He was a bit of a surprise winner. Yet we had an international tournament. Yes. And so March 32 directors battle it out. Yeah, exactly. 32 candidates for the show.

[00:06:22] And Park Chan-wook, the South Korean director was a fourth seed. And I think I considered him a fairly strong middle seed. I did too. But I did not consider him one of the sort of five or six juggernauts on this list. Yes, I was pleasantly surprised.

[00:06:41] I think, you know, what's always the most fun is when March Madness reveals a passion for us that we maybe would not have anticipated. I know that he is a very loved filmmaker and had recently had a movie that was really great. That's true.

[00:07:00] There's that sort of like he was fresh in people's minds. But I think especially after Stanley Kubrick won the year before, part of us wondered like, will it just be one of the four guys in the bracket who have won best director?

[00:07:12] Will it be the four guys who are the biggest and the most well known duking it out in the final four? And he was just kind of like a buzzsaw the entire time. Well, was he a buzzsaw? Was he a buzzsaw? Let's see.

[00:07:26] Let's let's check in with the results because I don't remember them that well. I don't either. Park Chan-wook, his first matchup was against Steve McQueen of Great Britain. And he beat him fairly handily. Round two, he goes up against Peter Jackson. OK, and that was quite close.

[00:07:51] Fifty four to forty six. But once again, Jackson's a guy I thought was fucking suplex the top seed. OK, well, in the third round in the quarterfinals, he edged Peter Weir. Your favorite. Yeah, my favorite who we should be doing. No, I'm joking. I'm excited to do this.

[00:08:11] So Peter Weir sometime beat him by like 200 votes. Very, very close. Less than less than 1%. And then in the semifinals, he beat Guillermo del Toro by also quite a close vote by about 300 votes. And then, yeah, he wasn't a buzzsaw at all.

[00:08:31] Of course, in the final, he won by literally one vote. One vote. OK, so I do like the sound of a little ice pick. A nail file. He beat Bong Joon-ho, the Korean his Korean compatriot. Yeah. By one vote. Yes.

[00:08:52] In a ridiculous final matchup that saw a lot of fans in the Reddit saying if we can make them tie, they'll do both. Yeah. To which I reminded them we have a tiebreaker. We do. In fact, it is one of his many titles. That's right.

[00:09:07] Oh, that's another thing to do in this episode, by the way. Add it to the minutes. Visit the nicknames. Ben Nicknames. Great. OK, we're just filling up anything we can use. To be clear, guys, we're very excited to talk about this director. Love him. Generally. Yes.

[00:09:20] And the movies he has coming up are all interesting. Like literally there is no filler. No correct. Except from here right here at the start, which are these two movies which Park Chan-wook himself has actively disowned. I wish people hadn't seen them.

[00:09:34] He wishes they did not exist and were not accessible to anyone in any way. Yes. And they are barely accessible. So here we are. What an exciting journey we have ahead of us.

[00:09:47] Did you know that Marie did a poll for who should sing the blank check blank check World Cup theme song and hip hop Sims beat Pip the chipmunk and Lin-Manuel Miranda? That's actually incredibly good. Just some brand new news. That's actually incredibly rude.

[00:10:05] Hip hop Sims, I believe the only one of that three that isn't the main artist on a Walt Disney Records release. Also doesn't exist. Doesn't exist. Does not perform. Last I checked Andalasia track one disenchantment soundtrack. So yeah, that was our March Madness.

[00:10:23] This is our March Madness winner. And that's all very exciting. And let me just check the poll again. Should I check the poll again? Absolutely. Look, we've covered we've covered a menagerie of different types of first films. Looks like sympathy for Mr. Podcast is going to take.

[00:10:42] Well, I regret leaving it up to the people. Is that your least favorite of the three? It's not. But you know that thing where like you need to do the mental where you're like, I can't make a decision.

[00:10:51] And then you like run the simulation in your head of like what would actually make me upset if it turned out this way or if I didn't do this or whatever it is. I didn't go through that mental exercise and now I've grown really attached.

[00:11:03] I'm a podcast, but that's OK. And it's fine. It's good. Die. It's dead. It's dead. And also, again, like I put my thumb on the scale. You'd have to put a big thumb on this. You have to put one of the thumbs from Spy Kids on the scale.

[00:11:17] What if I email Lynn and ask him to? I don't think that'll work. Maybe maybe he's got a lot of followers because it's so far behind. It's going to need an insane bump. Yeah, you need Elon to hack the poll.

[00:11:32] So you better start tweeting about whatever some dank memes for him. Yeah. You know, but it's a tweeting like I don't want to make jokes about Elon Musk is a bad person. That's an arc.

[00:11:42] I spend this episode trying to become the kind of account that Elon would like. You buy by Twitter blue. Start tweeting about the Babylon B. I don't know. What does he do all day? Yeah. Shit like that. I don't know.

[00:11:55] We are talking Park Town Work today on a podcast that's almost certainly called Sympathy for Mr. Podcast. It is now first order of business. I say as we've already maybe tackled five orders of business. David Ben walks into the studio today.

[00:12:11] I don't want to make a point of it. You were five minutes early, but that made you the third one to arrive. Yeah. You guys were already here because I'm starting a new era. Yeah, you really are. Look, early griff. I literally, literally support it.

[00:12:22] I would love that. That would be great. I'm just saying early griff. Uh, they call me called Chandler in the late nineties because I'm an early edition. I'm sure. Okay. Ben walks in. He walks up to me. He goes, do you notice anything different going on with me?

[00:12:40] I go, no. I mean, he goes around this area and he gestures to his skull. Okay. Well, he's been sort of voguing now. He is, but he's got a baseball hat. You come in. You say, what's the gas? What's the gas?

[00:12:55] And he goes, I've had a really exciting life development, but I'm going to save it for the mic. Okay. What's your exciting life? And I asked once I noticed, I said, Ben, I have a lot of questions, but I'm going to

[00:13:04] wait to ask all of them on Mike David. What? It's like an eye spy. It's like a, Ben's got a little daddy earring. One ear piece. That's right. Guys. That's right. I am officially entering my bad boy era 2.0. Okay. Now can we unpack this? Please.

[00:13:30] Uh, how, why, when? Uh, Saturday. Okay. Why? Claire's accessories? Yes. I went to the mall in America. Thankfully they played the video for me ahead of time to just make me feel comfortable. Okay. Saturday. Saturday. Uh, it was called studs. Wait, was it Z? No.

[00:13:51] Just a regular S. Too bad. Yup. Like studs turkle? Yes. Yeah. Exactly. Um, it was me and mostly really cool Gen Z women and folks. So I've really felt a little bit like I stuck out as a 37 year old man. Now I must ask, how premeditated was this?

[00:14:21] This was truly, uh, we don't have bits on this part. Yes. Sorry. At least of all from you. Steve Harvey. Family feud ex. He just hit a big whammy band on this show. Where I did the thing of like, I get my ear pierced, I don't care.

[00:14:42] I'll do it. And then, wait, I'm sorry. Who are you talking to? Also, do you say this like 15 minutes before you go and do it? Kinda. Yeah. Okay. So my friend may is in town and now is this the person you went and got the steak with?

[00:14:57] It is indeed. I forget who we talked to that. Well, whatever. We talked about it. It would have been last week. It was the camera man. It's my marriage episode. Okay. All right. So she's in town.

[00:15:07] So she's been pushing you out of your comfort zone a little bit. Yeah. I guess you could say that, but there was a plan to get a piercing done. Okay. She was already planning on that. Yeah. Herself. Yeah.

[00:15:19] And I said, I'm going to go to him and get my ear pierced. I'm going to get something cooler than a 37 year old guy who gets his ears pierced. Honestly, the main reason I've never considered it.

[00:15:26] I've just always thought, well, I look, we'll look, you know, like a cry for help or what? Yeah. But also David's hair. Will it look pathetic? Yeah. Will it look sad? I could be cool. You're not 37 yet. I am 37. You're not 37. How dare he tell me my age?

[00:15:43] I am 37. I just turned 37. David, you are not 37. I 100% am 37 years old. I've been 37 for a month now. We're usually a year apart, but my birthday hasn't happened yet. So we're in that gray zone. Yeah. So you could do it, David. You could do it.

[00:16:00] Look, he set the pattern. Clearly, I could always follow it. And I encourage all older men out there in their late thirties. You never got your ear pierced. Now you're thinking, oh, it's all over for me. No, no, not so. I'm sorry. So you could be cool.

[00:16:15] So you went to studs, studs and it fucking hurt. Well, you know what? They punched a hole in your body. It's going to hurt a little bit. It was nuts. The gun or a needle? A needle. Yeah, yeah, right. The gun is real mall territory.

[00:16:32] She was like, breath in and then take a deep breath. And it just went right through my ear. Now you just have the one ear. I just have the one. No, I have two ears. I'm sorry. You've only got the one piercing. The one piercing.

[00:16:45] One, your left ear. Correct. The lobe. The bottom. The old round stud. And you're going to keep it in there? I have to do it for four months. Like you're committed. I mean, yeah. What if you wait a second? Actually, this is like what if you didn't?

[00:17:01] What if you got your ear pierced and immediately was like, I don't want to do it. I don't want an earring. This is a bad idea. If you just left it alone, would it just kind of close up quickly? Like, is that what would happen?

[00:17:12] I have no idea. I would assume so. I mean, it would be funny to actually get your ear pierced and then have the crisis. You know what I mean? Rather than have the crisis on seeing the needle. You're like afterwards, no, I don't like it.

[00:17:24] I don't like it. I hate this. I hate the hole. I'm anti-hole. Have you thought already? Do you have to keep this specific one in for the next four months or can you? Okay. Yes. To maintain. Yeah.

[00:17:40] Well, to maintain the hole, not allow it to close up and make sure it's clean. But I'm saying you need to wait four months before you can really explore the fertile bit territory of what else can you put in there, right? That's correct. Okay.

[00:17:54] And I'm thinking next I'm going to do a hoop. Sure. Big ass hoop? Maybe. Maybe a big ass hoop. Maybe a medium hoop. I'm surprised you never did it before. Honestly, you have a lot of tattoos. Yeah. That's true. That's true.

[00:18:10] And I always kind of wanted to do it and I just was scared. And then I decided, you know what? At this point in my life, I am who I am. I guess the only confounding part of this, in fact, is realizing, huh, he didn't have

[00:18:19] his ears pierced already. That's the surprising part is I guess, you know, not that I assumed or thought you had, but it would have made sense. For sure. I had tons of friends who had piercings, septum is maybe now. Maybe now I'm a piercing guy.

[00:18:37] Maybe I'll get the septum done too. Just be a guy in his late thirties walking around. Look the nose ring. I don't know. I don't think you should do that. OK, OK. So we're talking about two movies that are maybe we should just on the Twitter be very

[00:18:54] clear like our park series starts next week. Yeah. And this week is technically attached to it, but not really. Right. No, we do a palimpsest on the man himself. Look, here's the we've cartooned these like, you know, the loveless praying with anger.

[00:19:10] I guess we combine with wide awake. You know, there are other like sort of they haven't quite figured out their thing yet. Movies that we've talked about on this show. But I watched these two films and I really was like, I have no idea what I'm going to

[00:19:23] say about these, you know, and it's not that they're necessarily worse than other movies we've covered on the podcast. No, but I think especially we're pretty bad. I think they're not great. I kind of like trio, although I wouldn't say it's good. I found it entertaining.

[00:19:41] I did not. No. Bold stance. Yeah. From you? No, not bold for me. No joy in your life, David? No. You found no happiness from trio? There's three of them. No. Some movies only give you one character. That's what gives you three. Right at the center.

[00:19:58] No, it felt well, whatever. We'll talk about it. We'll talk about it. But no, it held my attention for about 10, 15 minutes. And then I was like, immediately just like, I'm losing track of why, you know, why I should be invested in this. Yeah. It's got vibes.

[00:20:13] It's got vibes. Both of them got vibes. Yes, that is true. Let's dig into general Park sort of table setting context. Park Chan-wook, who we are going to talk about, but also our first Korean director, first discussion of Korean cinema on this podcast. Right?

[00:20:38] We covered Ang Lee, who is from Taiwan. You know, we covered Hayao Miyazaki, you know, who's from Japan. But like, you know, Ang Lee ends up in Hollywood fairly quickly. Miyazaki is kind of an industry and a genre to himself in a way.

[00:20:56] Like, you know, they're not quite the same. Like, this is like a guy who is very much part of like a wave of Korean cinema. Right? Like, you know, we're talking about when there's a lot of context around that. Okay.

[00:21:07] Do you want to hear a very abbreviated history? This is from our dossier. Yes. JJ did a very good job of knowing that the movies don't matter that much. Right, right. You know what I'm saying?

[00:21:17] Specifically, just sort of like very clean table setting for like understanding the climate of Korean cinema that he enters into because you're dealing with a country that had less of a sense of its own cinematic identity for a long time than most. So, Korean cinema.

[00:21:39] First film shown in Korea as early as 1903. First film produced in Korea. Not made until around 1919. Korea was occupied by Japan for much of the early 20th century. And so those movies were being made. I mean, obviously this is also just the dawn of cinema in general. Right.

[00:21:59] Obviously. But so those movies are being made like under Japanese rule. Basically from 1910 to like the end of the Second World War. And so lots of heavy censorship in that early time. By the 30s, Korean film industry was basically just a wartime propaganda machine because

[00:22:19] Japan is at war with China much earlier than the world war two begins. All that stuff. This is all. That's all. That's all 20th century history, guys. This is not a history podcast really. But you know, 1945.

[00:22:35] But if we were, maybe we'd go to the top of the charts. Yes. Post World War Two. Yeah, we would. Right. David and Griffin's history pod. Yeah, that'll be good. And the artwork is us looking like kind of shocked and stroking our chins.

[00:22:50] You know how there's always those YouTube thumbnails? Just kind of like, huh? Battle of the Bulge? What? Killed how many people? What? I think of it as WAAF. WAAF? What is it called? Soy facing or whatever. Is that something else? That's called soy facing? I don't know.

[00:23:08] I can never remember what all these things mean. What? What? Head tilt. So after World War Two, Korea, you know, is then plunged into the Korean War and things like that. And so like really, it's 1953. The Korean War ends. Country is partitioned or honestly divided.

[00:23:30] I don't know what language is actually preferred for all that, but you know, there's North Korea and South Korea. And that is when the cinematic golden age of Korean cinema, the first sort of golden age of Korean cinema begins in the late 50s.

[00:23:42] A lot of melodramas, a lot of action films. I'm going to say now I'm going to do my best as is Griffin to pronounce these names as best we can. But obviously with the caveat that like I am not Korean and I don't speak Korean.

[00:24:02] And so I'm going to be romanizing the names a little bit, like probably just, you know, as a matter of just that's how I speak. I am also not Korean. And on top of that, I don't speak English well. I've been keeping track.

[00:24:15] You're not great with the pronunciations anyway. I believe I've said piercing wrong five times in this episode. How did you say it? Piercing? Are you a little baby? I don't know. I'm just, I don't say words right. Yes, you don't. And that's fine.

[00:24:31] So Kang Dae Jin made a film called The Coachman. Okay. That's an early classic. I've actually seen that film. It won the prize at the Berlin Film Festival. Like that was sort of an early breakthrough, you know, internationally for the industry.

[00:24:51] Some other, you know, Lee Man Hee, Kim Ki Young, who I think is a big influence on Park. You know, there's some of these early names. I have not seen much early Korean filmmaking, but I have seen Kim Ki Young's The Housemaid. Have you seen The Housemaid?

[00:25:05] I have not. That I feel like is fairly well known. And it got somewhat revived. It's a huge influence on Park, but it's also a huge influence on Bong Joon Ho. And it's an obvious influence on Parasite.

[00:25:18] And it's sort of this like classic Hitchcockian thriller of like, you know, an upper middle class family takes this new housemaid in and she's this sort of femme fatale and all kinds of drama ensues. It's been remade a couple times. Woman of Fire.

[00:25:36] He remade his own movie in the 70s. It's called Woman of Fire. We're going to talk about that in a second. But if people want to check that one out, I feel like that one is probably pretty available. That's probably on Criterion or something like that.

[00:25:46] That one has become quite celebrated and has been restored. I do think it's interesting, though, that you're dealing with a country that hasn't had the chance to really form its own cinematic identity until the 50s. So the 50s, at which point there have been several different generations, iterations

[00:26:03] of other cinema you could be watching in each country. And I you know, Japanese cinema is largely being blocked out because of the political history. But outside of that, this is a culture that's much more tied into movies being exported from other countries than their own.

[00:26:23] I don't know to what extent at this time. Right. You could see foreign films and all that. The other thing that happens is in 1961, Korea is taken over by a military, the military government and is under military dictatorship until 1972. And so that brings back like intense censorship. Yes.

[00:26:44] You know, history is a South Korean cinema called the 70s, 60s, 70s, like very low point sort of late 60s, early 70s. And Park Chan-wook, who was born in 1963, says that like he grew up watching other countries movies on TV or whatever.

[00:27:01] Like, you know, he was not steeped in Korean cinema as a young boy. He was in the classic like Hollywood stars. He unsurprisingly watched a lot of Hitchcock, which sounds like it was his mother's favorite. Right. Well, he's... Look.

[00:27:16] It's going to come up on this show a lot. Park Chan-wook really likes Alfred Hitchcock. That is going to be a big deal on this show going forward. Big Al. It's his hugest influence. He is an intense scholar of Hitchcock. And I know people who have interviewed him.

[00:27:34] And if you basically just say like Alfred Hitchcock to him, he will give you a two hour answer, you know, before you can ask another question. He's very, very steeped in Hitchcock. But okay. At the end of the dictatorship, restoration of democracy in Korea, which happens over

[00:27:49] the 70s and 80s, censorship laws start to relax. And more foreign films, I think, start to flood into the market. And in fact, by the 90s, I think like Korean multiplexes or whatever, Korean cinemas themselves are mostly dominated by foreign films, non-Korean films.

[00:28:13] And so there's a movie called Marriage Story, not directed by Noah Baumbach, directed by Kim Hwe-suk. I'm sorry. I definitely mispronounced that. That is like a rom-com. Just seems fun. Okay. Seems like a middle class couple.

[00:28:36] They get married, then they break up, then they get back together again. Don't know much else, but it was the biggest hit of the early 90s in Korea. And that is credited for kind of rejuvenating the industry to some extent.

[00:28:49] Companies like Samsung start to fund movies, give movies bigger budgets. Right. That's the big thing is that the second there are sort of like homegrown hits, you have these major companies that exist. Yeah, the Korean revival has happened.

[00:29:05] The Korean revival, you know, explosion is happening in the country. There's money. They see the future. They want a piece of it. Suddenly a bunch of money is flooded into the idea of a film industry.

[00:29:13] And like I am not an expert on Korean culture in any way, but I do feel like Korean culture is so massively important right now in all of Asia. It's very important around the world.

[00:29:24] There's music, movies, like it has become a country that has a gigantic sort of like, you know, footprint everywhere. Cultural influence. And this probably all starting in the early 90s. Yes. Take a breath. Jesus. It's a little just, you know, do my best. All right. Okay. Shocking.

[00:29:46] I have an earring now. Take a breath. This is true. If we're feeling on edge today, it's because you guys have to understand our entire sense of the world we live in has altered so radically.

[00:30:01] My coworker, Maya and I were talking about getting tattoos, which I talk about all the time. I'm like, you have no tattoos. I don't have any. And and she was like, David. I was like, but I never know what I would get. You know, the old refrain. Right.

[00:30:14] And she's like, no, David, I don't have one either. We just have to go get any tattoo. You just have to go get something. This is the Ben approach. Ben's pointing. Yeah. Yeah. You know, like fucking put something on your ankle or your upper arm or whatever.

[00:30:25] The first tattoo I got a skull. Well, I do like skulls. Can't go wrong. I mean, the problem is, what do you have that you're never going to regret? Right. In my life. Yeah. I don't know.

[00:30:39] You're saying like your friend, Maya, her approach is like just get some. Yeah. She's like, you just like a gang, something not put importance on it. Yeah. Yeah. I'm like, if you put importance on it, then you will probably think it's stupid later. I was 15.

[00:30:52] I would have gotten a fucking full chest tattoo that says John Lasseter creates a comfortable workplace. Like anything I thought. And you tried. I tried to actually like you're too young for this and your parents won't approve it.

[00:31:06] Honestly, I think it's a really weird thing to put on your body. Picture him giving a thumbs up style like in case you get short term memory loss. You can at least look in the mirror and be like, well, John Lasseter does create a comfortable work environment.

[00:31:18] Everyone feels totally normal day to day basis. Yeah. All right. So, OK. Park Tim, what? Born 63 in Seoul, sort of in a comfortable middle class family. His dad was a university professor of architecture, specialized in color. Sure. Park thinks that is very important to him.

[00:31:40] Like he says, you can see our color matters in my movies. I think it's, you know, his mom. It's bullet. You know, you got a mom taught political science and was a poet, devoutly Catholic family park himself and identifies as an atheist. But he was raised Catholic.

[00:32:00] And I would say you have that sense of sort of like judgment and sin. And like, you know, can we tell him? Yeah. All that stuff. All that Catholic stuff. Redemption. Yeah, that's in there.

[00:32:14] His adolescence and his college years, he said, you know, you're living in a totalitarian nation and individuals life is intertwined with a sense of guilt that comes from violence and being unable to resist, you know, what's happening, you know, because the dictatorship is in control. Violence is pain.

[00:32:32] And when people use violence, they destroy themselves from the inside. Violence is a power that moves the world. It's not desirable, but it is important. Art and mass media, they don't really cover violence, not action movie for 10 violence, violence itself.

[00:32:44] So I wanted to show how violence makes people behave in a certain way, how it hurts people. That's Park thinking about his sort of thematic obsessions. Sure. But also he's growing up in this family with visual sensibilities. His dad's an architect. His brother apparently is a painter.

[00:32:59] He would go to art galleries with his dad all the time. He wants to be a painter and then he very quickly realized I'm nowhere near as good as my brother. He had a comparison point right next to him. So what did he decide?

[00:33:09] He said, I'll be an art critic maybe. Can't do criticize. Yes. So movies also very important in the household. They would watch movies together. They didn't really go see movies in theaters, but there was also less of a culture that it was what was playing on curfew.

[00:33:27] You can barely go out at all. Yeah. Yeah. So they'd watch lots of old French films, classic Hollywood movies, Rebecca, North by Northwest. Yeah. Speaking of Hitchcock. But he said like because Japanese media was being blocked, he was totally closed off to

[00:33:48] Kurosawa and Ozu and all these filmmakers until he got older. And he's like, I do think my life would have been very different if I had been exposed to those guys at an early age. Yeah. Versus this Hollywood, right? This mishmash of Robert Aldrich. Yes.

[00:34:02] The towering inferno, you know, fucking kiss me deadly, you know, longest yard. A lot of B movies, a lot of noir films, a lot of Golden Age Hollywood stuff. But then he had there's the teacher he credits as being the one who he came into school and

[00:34:18] he was like less of a movie fanatic kid and more of was sort of just like obsessed with stars and was ranting to his. This is it. I know I'll get to I'm going down. Well, then you know what? Yeah. You know, jump ahead. I'm sorry.

[00:34:31] He's got a fucking earring. I don't even know my bearings are all right. Listen, Koreans start. You barely notice it at first, but it makes a big difference. Bad boy era 2.0.

[00:34:43] So he sees Woman of Fire, which is the remake of the house made also made by Kim Ki-young. Says that's a huge influence on him. OK, that film, that film, Griffin features the film debut of Yoon Yoo-jung, the lady who won the Oscar for Minari. Yeah.

[00:35:05] Just an interesting little fact to wait for you there. Yes. So the movie kind of changed his life. He says the original house made gives him shocks even when he sees it now. He thinks that guy is sort of a huge whatever.

[00:35:19] I got a lot of rock and crease. Yeah, it's good shit. As you say, couldn't really see Japanese films. Maybe if you wanted to confirm it is available on the Criterion. OK. Is it part of the that's Corsese box? Is that what it is?

[00:35:34] One of the world cinema. But no, I think they just restored it. It's a fairly major work. Maybe just it just is looking like it's part of their regular collection. OK, go on, David. As you said, he wants shit. No, he's right. Sorry, guys. Guys, right, guys. OK.

[00:35:52] All right. I was right. All right. He's thinking of becoming an art critic studying philosophy, philosophy, philosophy. Yeah. So studying philosophy third time at Sogang University in Seoul wants to be an art critic. Our university had few classes on aesthetics.

[00:36:08] OK, so instead he starts hanging out with the Cine Club. He founds alternately referred to as the film gang. Mm hmm. That's where he sees Vertigo and Alfred Hitchcock film you might have heard of with a little guy called Jimmy Stewart. And he's seen that. He's seen it.

[00:36:24] He's that's the thing. He actually didn't work at all. No, no. And he saw this movie. And according to him, that was the one that's the Thunderbolt movie that makes him want to be a filmmaker. Have you seen Vertigo? Have I seen that one? Yeah. Yeah. Pretty good.

[00:36:42] Pretty good. Have you seen Vertigo, Ben? I've seen it and I've had it. Me too. I hear you. He sees Vertigo and he says, whatever it takes, I have to be a film director after seeing Vertigo.

[00:36:54] The scene where the man is driving through the streets of San Francisco following the woman. It really felt like being sucked into a daydream. The moment where the woman is sitting in the museum and we notice the resemblance of how

[00:37:04] she tied her hair to the woman's in the portrait that element of visual motif when you figure out the connection between irrelevant objects, you know, it blew his mind. By the way, you skipped over the thing I was going to say, which is when you said, wait,

[00:37:16] I'm getting to it. What? In middle school, he watches The Towering Inferno on TV. I skipped that. I didn't know it was about The Towering Inferno. And you said, I'm getting to it. I thought you were talking about a college professor. No. Oh yeah, the teacher.

[00:37:29] And he goes to the teacher and he says like, Towering Inferno. I saw this movie. It's so great. And she went like, that's whatever. Right? I think the quote he says, she said was, well, it's just another Hollywood movie, but there

[00:37:42] are a lot of directors in Europe with profound visions and individuality. And that was the moment I learned about people called directors. You know, it's actually an interesting question. That's what loves me. When do you learn about directors? You know, I'm seeing movies when I'm a kid. Yes.

[00:37:59] Aladdin, for example. That guy, you know, he has a friend called the Genie and Abu. We love it. But I'm not like walking out of there being like, you know, Musker and Clements really knocked out. Like when is a kid am I learning about directors?

[00:38:14] Look, I've talked about in this show that Tim Burton was really my like training wheels director where I'm like, I understand there's a person behind all of these and he looks like a cartoon character.

[00:38:23] But I also remember there being a second kind of like, there is no Santa Claus moment where revealed to me that he had not written most of any of his films. None of them really. Very few. He gets any sort of credit on.

[00:38:38] And I was like, then what the fuck does this guy do? Well, that's sure. That's the second question. And what is it that they like around nine or ten? I'd sort of taken for granted the director thing is just like, well, that's the person

[00:38:49] who makes the whole movie, you know, but I thought a lot of it was mostly you see like your impressions of directors on cartoon shows or someone sits in a chair and they have a megaphone.

[00:38:59] But I was like, if they're not writing the thing, then what is that job? I guess it must have right now. I'm thinking it must have been like Lucas and Spielberg. Right. I guess those are the first directors you're hearing about in your little kid. Yeah.

[00:39:09] Interesting to think about. Anyway, I wasn't I wasn't like him. I didn't see the towering inferno and go a plus and have someone go like, that's a C minus. What you need is director. Look, it sounds like a bit of a snot, but it does.

[00:39:21] No, no, no, no. It's very interesting. It's very nice to have that thing where you're like, right, because he's he's growing up in a culture where there is not a lot of film culture and you're seeing big American movies and they just feel like so exciting.

[00:39:34] This must be the biggest thing, the best thing you can do with this medium. She opens up this idea. I just think her even saying like there are people with visions and passions and individuality. He's like, oh, you can like say things.

[00:39:47] But he doesn't even connect the dots until he sees Vertigo. There we go. And do you know what else happens when he sees Vertigo Griffin? He falls down a flight of stairs. That would suck for him. And that might have injured him.

[00:39:58] No, he meets a female student from another university that same day. His wife, the woman he marries. Yes, his first love. He calls her his first love, which is very, very, very sweet. Yes.

[00:40:11] So while he's at the university, he starts writing some film reviews to make some money. He apparently been banned from tutoring. I don't know what he did. He just says he was banned. He just told kids that the towering inferno sucks. Cycled, repeated.

[00:40:32] And then he would make stories based on the scripts of Hollywood movies before they're released in Korea with subtitles. So it sort of sounds like he was writing like bootleg novelizations of Hollywood movies in Korean. I read this a couple times. To get like ahead of him.

[00:40:50] I was very confused by it because there is obviously like the whole cottage industry of like movie novelizations that was so big in the 70s and 80s and 90s. But it sounds like this was not quite that. But I mean, I want to read.

[00:41:00] Look, I can't read Korean, so I'm probably never going to experience this joy. But to think that as he says, he wrote a Korean sort of story version of the film, Stakeout with Richard Dreyfuss and Emilio Estevez. Is that right?

[00:41:15] And then he like sees them based on the script alone. And then he sees the movie later and he's like, oh, wow, this is like nothing like what I wrote. I want to read his take.

[00:41:26] When there were like Hollywood novelizations, even if they weren't getting to see the final film, they were working hand in hand. They knew, you know, those are usually it's like you're like, oh, it's like 80% of the movie.

[00:41:35] And then there's some extra stuff that's kind of weird or whatever. Right. Stuff that got left on the cutting room floor was early part of development.

[00:41:42] This sounds like he was largely engaging in speculative fiction, writing like guidebooks that would summarize movies before they came out to get people excited about them. But he hadn't seen the films.

[00:41:53] No, he just read the scripts and he says in his way he considers this a training ground for making films, which I could sort of see. Sure. He has to like read a script and kind of transmute it. There's no film schools in Korea in 1980, he says.

[00:42:12] So, you know, instead he's basically just like studying quote unquote art, I think in general. And this is during a time of national turmoil. The whole pro-democracy movement. There's lots and lots of revolution happening. And he says he did not really participate in the pro-democracy movement himself.

[00:42:33] It doesn't go with my personality, but I have a lot of friends who were involved. Witnessed lots of conflict with the police. Felt respect for the heroic actions of students who tied themselves to buildings and risked their lives. Again, this is an important part of Korean history.

[00:42:46] We may touch on it in this series. Probably not. I'm trying to sort of think through his filmography. I don't think he really gets to that. Like The Handmaiden is set during Japanese occupation. Usually he... Anyway. But you can read all about this sort of stuff.

[00:43:04] But the way he puts it is, I felt this complex mix of emotions throughout college as did everyone who grew up in my generation just about the police and authority and you know how to resist it and all this stuff. His graduation is delayed.

[00:43:18] He takes a gap year. He completes his military service. Then he starts working as like a PA in Korean movies. And then as a first assistant director he worked on Kwak Jae-yong's film Watercolor Painting on a Rainy Day. Good title? Yeah, someone nab that title please!

[00:43:35] That's a great Chris Pratt in Watercolor Painting on a Rainy Day. Definitely sounds like a Pratt vehicle. That's the first thing that came to mind David. You hit the nail on the head with that one. Just love the name of it. You know.

[00:43:48] And then while he's working as below the line guy he's writing screenplays of his own. He marries his wife Kim Yun-hee who he remains with to this day. He runs all of his scripts past her. It's nice. He says I rely on one person's judgment.

[00:44:03] I would discuss every detail with my wife from the beginning of a screenplay to the music I use after the film is finished shooting. She comes up with some very interesting ideas and insights. And he's still writing criticism during all of this? Yes.

[00:44:16] Yes, as far as I know. He really kind of catches on as a critic in the early 90s when people really start engaging with his work seriously. Yes. He lies to his mother-in-law that he wants to pursue a career in academia

[00:44:30] starts to look for more film industry work works at a production company that's getting foreign films into Korea which is a booming business after 1988 when the restrictions get lifted. So he would select films he would design posters apparently Vincent and Theo the Robert Altman film

[00:44:47] Yes, he said that was the best film he worked on at that time. Never seen... You've never seen that? Really? No. I have not. It's... Seen it! It's really good. It's about Vincent van Gogh Yes, Vincent van Gogh and his brother who was his art dealer

[00:45:09] and it's Tim Roche Sorry, I just had to make that joke. No, I've never seen it. I've seen the Kirk Douglas one where he's like, AHHHHH MY PAINTINGS! THIS IS WHAT HE'S LIKE! I'm gonna pull my damn hair off. It's not a bad movie.

[00:45:33] Anyway, what about Vincent and Theo? No, there was a big Altman retrospective at MoMA a couple years ago and I went to see that but that's one of those movies that was, I believe, a British mini-series that was then cut down for American theatrical release

[00:45:49] so I think I saw the theatrical version which is 220 but the mini-series basically adds an hour onto that. I don't know if that's in circulation I've always kind of wanted to watch the longer version but it's incredibly good. That's that weird era of Altman's career

[00:46:07] where he's trying to rebuild and figure out who he is in between Popeye and The Player you know? Where he does a lot of play adaptations but Vincent and Theo is really good I don't know We'll do Altman at some point It'll take five years

[00:46:23] We'll do him one day Maybe Who knows? It's a lot of movies You want to do him Split up in a couple sections One reason he starts working at this production company They promise to eventually finance his feature directorial debut Right, that was the main reason

[00:46:42] he was working there was basically if I'm here long enough they'll let me make something Eventually they're like Okay, the time has come but they suggest that he makes sort of a Zucker Brothers parody of something Incredibly bizarre He says I can't do that

[00:47:03] partly because there's no script partly because I just don't want that to be my debut He talks to another friend who works at a different film company and he says Look, once you've made a movie they're going to treat you differently You just got to make a movie

[00:47:20] Right, even if your first movie is bad or whatever There's a difference of conversation if you come to them as someone who has been a feature film director has one under your belt So he says Okay, fine I'll work on a movie of my own

[00:47:35] I'll work on a screenplay His first idea is about a union buster getting murdered They shoot that down They're like that sounds too political We don't want to touch that So then instead they rush something Him and his colleague Kim Yong-Tae write The Moon is...the Sun's Dream

[00:47:55] Now look Now look Maybe that title has I could not find any I don't know why this is called that They say it at the very end of the movie I don't know if that is But even when they say it I'm like Aphorism

[00:48:09] Why are you saying this? If I'm like I really want to break into movie making I'm really trying to find something that'll click I don't know if I'm going to bust out The Moon is the Sun's Dream No as my sort of hooky title No It's also not

[00:48:24] It's like Unlike A watercolor painting on a rainy day What's that What's the title of the upcoming Chris Pratt movie we have in development? Oh yeah Sorry Water Watercolor painting on a rainy day You hear that and you're like Fuck it What am I thinking about here?

[00:48:42] The Moon is the Sun's Dream You're like What the fuck Go home You're drunk What are you talking about? Go home You're drunk Yeah well Look he busts out He's a funny parody movie He's obviously inspired by sort of you know Hollywood B-movies right? Stuff like that

[00:49:01] Fun pulpy stuff A lot of his career as a critic he was like He really tried to position himself primarily from the position of advocacy Like he was like I only want to write about things I like There's no need for me to take stuff down You know

[00:49:21] I'm not a fucking poptimist who argues let people enjoy things But it's like I'm going to use my platform to write about movies that I think should be taken seriously rather than like attacking things Right And it was a combination of sort of a tourist stuff

[00:49:35] but also like a lot of a lot of B-movie stuff Alien 3 was a movie he fought for really hard He liked Alien 3 Yeah He would stick up for that I think he was sort of an early proponent especially in South Korea

[00:49:50] When you force people to recognize the artistry in B-movies, pulp movies, genre movies it makes sense that he would start from this kind of place What is surprising about this movie is sort of the combination of It is like so broad and self-serious at the same time Right

[00:50:09] You know? Yes, I do know Like it sort of has like pretension without having depth You hear about where he was coming from when he made this movie and it would make more sense if it was just like a really trashy noir film Right

[00:50:23] No, but this movie is too like experimental and up its own ass Yeah to actually be fun Yes If that makes sense It would be much better if it was just like profound You know, fucking Yeah, it's two guns and a girl and you know

[00:50:38] a bag of money Right, right Just like a very simple simple version of this Whereas like I kept on finding this movie so confusing Yeah And then when I sort of made sense of it The plot is actually very straightforward It's just the movie is poorly constructed

[00:50:52] Well, let me tell you Park Chan-wook's take there which is he says My position was that I had to write a new script in a short period of time and I decided to shoot this conventional story in an experimental style I had a childish attitude

[00:51:06] that I would put out a new kind of movie the likes of which had never been seen in previous Korean films and I had the idea of trying to twist the structure and conventions of genre film but I wasn't satisfied with the result So he's kind of like

[00:51:17] I'll make sure it seems simple but I'll fuck it up Right You know, by doing all this cool interesting like storytelling stuff and it says like No, you just made your movie unwatchable Basically We're not all Tarantino I know Tarantino is Right is a contemporary of his Yes

[00:51:32] But still like It's hard to pull all that shit off There's not like a clear rhyme or reason to the way he fucks up too It's just like trying a bunch of shit I mean that's the prism through which this movie is kind of interesting

[00:51:43] And Trio I think has different shit going on But just You know, a lot of like especially for someone who is has been writing about film who has been thinking about film from a pretty academic perspective Yeah The difference between the way

[00:52:00] you think about movies and interpret them versus the actual act of making one on the ground let alone turning your ideas into something that is understandable to audiences This movie is him just throwing a lot of shit at the wall It doesn't have I don't know

[00:52:19] even the clarity or the excitement of someone experimenting and just having fun Right You know, it feels a little too self-serious to be even interesting as like a demo reel Yeah If that makes sense Do you know what I'm saying? But it's got flair It's got some flair

[00:52:40] I don't know if this is like horribly reductive I was like, what is this reminding me of? And so much of the time it was like the weird narrative videos that will sometimes play behind karaoke tracks Sure You know what I'm talking about? Someone like filmed this

[00:52:59] and there's like some story here There's like zooms and handheld shots and there's people in darkness And this is not a music video for this song This was made specifically for karaoke I'm not a karaoke guy I'm a big karaoke guy Yeah, I know you are

[00:53:14] The way this movie uses songs in montages felt very much like that It does feel like a series of melodramatic music videos You know what karaoke means though? What? In Japanese What? Empty orchestra And that's a name for a movie That's a cool name Yeah So yeah, alright

[00:53:37] So anything else I see about this movie So he, well according to Park It's really fortunate that not many of you have seen my first film I made it when I was in my 20s and I had blind ambition to make a film

[00:53:49] So that's how I got to make that film And it's very low budget and sentimental And it's very dot dot dot, you know dot dot dot, awful What's the basic plot of this movie? There's a gangster Yes Woo-hun who is played by Lee Seung-chul

[00:54:06] who is like a huge Korean singer This was the big thing He was a huge Korean like pop star And then he got busted for marriage of wanna What? They found wacky tabacky on him He's smoking that jazz cigarette And the government, Tess Golding him

[00:54:25] Banned him from television Damn Cause it was the early 90s Couldn't be Right So there was this business calculation of If we put him in our film He is banned from TV right now Yeah He still has adoring fans Right, they'll actually just come see it

[00:54:44] And they screen the movie the first time And it sells out And there's like fucking mob outside And Park's like, here we go I got a hit on my hands Rubbing it together, you know And then night two, no one shows up

[00:54:56] And he was like, oh they just came cause he was there And they wanted his fucking autograph No one cares about this movie The gambit did not work Right They won't come to see him in person Look, I don't even think he's good or bad In this movie

[00:55:09] But Park seems to think he was bad Because he's not an actor He took a lot of credit for Not credit He took a lot of responsibility for I did not know how to work with actors at that point He does talk about that in both these movies

[00:55:20] I treat them like cattle He was so obsessed with the Hitchcock thing And the way that Hitchcock talked about actors as props And set dressing And just like, you're not a human being You're a piece of equipment for me to manipulate

[00:55:32] Yeah but Hitchcock was also just like a salty little bitch He understood movie stars He just liked to be mean about them as well It was a mind game thing Yeah exactly The way he talked about movie stars publicly

[00:55:44] Was very different than the way he actually thought of them That's my impression of Hitchcock Yes It's like all that shit you read about John Ford Where you're like, why was he such an asshole And everyone was like, he was the most sensitive man in the world Right

[00:55:56] And it was all this defensive armor against A horrible industry that he knew preyed on insecurity But there's a gangster He's in Busan Which the film is set in Busan Which is Korea's second city After Seoul And then he has a half-brother Who's a photographer

[00:56:15] And is a bit of a, you know, nebbish I would say Sure Sort of a glasses guy And don't you hate them? And Moon Hoon is caught having an affair With his boss' mistress Yes And so they run off with some money And then they're caught

[00:56:38] And she is sold into prostitution Yes, and scarred I believe, and scarred And then he later Like a year later or something Finds a photo of her That his brother took And tries to rescue her And they get, you know They're on the run from the mob

[00:56:59] Right, like that is sort of the plot of the movie You wouldn't really pick that up From watching this movie in my opinion No, it's sort of like, right You have this woman who are all in love with the same woman Who is scarred by

[00:57:12] Yeah, the photographer is a part of all of this Right But he mostly just kind of like Ah, you know But it's told out of order Exactly And so like it begins with her getting scarred There's this odd element of everyone

[00:57:28] And there's this scene where she's getting her photo taken You know, like and all that Everyone in the reality of the movie kind of acts like She is unrecognizable but for the scar Like if you don't notice her scar She looks like anyone in the world

[00:57:41] She's like Olivia Cooke In Ready Player One Right But it's like when her hair is down People are like, who is this And then they see the scar and they're like, my god Right That's true But that's sort of how they are able to re-identify her

[00:57:59] Because the photographer brother takes the pictures of her And the mistake is that the scar is showing Yes And really hard to follow Yeah There's a part where they watch a Charlie Chaplin movie That part's fun Part's kind of fun

[00:58:15] I mean this is a little bit of the Fast X problem, right You're like, what's the best scene in this movie Honestly did not think you were going to compare this film to Fast X What's the best scene

[00:58:23] You mean the best scenes in Fast X are where they're showing you clips from Fast 5 Yeah The opening of Fast X is like 6 minutes from Fast 5 And you're like, this fucking rips And then when it cuts to the actual movie itself

[00:58:34] You're like, well now this feels twice as bad The best part of The Moon is the Sun's Dream Is just watching like 6 minutes of Charlie Chaplin in the middle I don't know I was taking a lot of notes with some of these fits Okay

[00:58:48] People look pretty good in this movie Everyone looks great The leather jacket in particular Sure Any other fits If you have photographers Also got his own sort of more fancy Looks, long trench coat Sort of cuts of the time Boxier Sort of straight leg But everyone looks great

[00:59:14] It's just The gangsters look great You know this film is frustrating to watch Because he becomes so good at this later Like Decision to Leave is a movie That is aggressively confusing But is able to hold your attention While knowing that It's not bad

[00:59:33] It's not showing it's full hand to you Right? Sure, I don't find Decision to Leave that confusing It's a jumbled movie It's meant to disorient We'll talk about it on That's not true We're never talking about that movie on this podcast Keep looking David September 3rd

[00:59:55] Okay there we go As you say they did have this gambit Of maybe we'll get this pop star's fans To show up They didn't really This legend goes This is hard to verify Because he does not read Korean The film's release was so unsuccessful

[01:00:14] That no one reviewed it So Park himself wrote a review In a university newspaper Under a pseudonym He probably He does not say whether he was positive I don't think he was So whatever Let's leave The Moon is the Sunstream now An hour Perfect

[01:00:37] Moon is the Sunstream fails Park's gotta make money for his family He has a kid, a daughter in 1994 He's not gonna make movies It seems Doesn't seem like that's gonna work out for him So this is when he starts writing more film criticism

[01:00:51] And I think this is when He really catches on Yeah Well let's see He's writing reviews for magazines of course He has a book Called The Discrete Charm of Film Watching Which is a pretty cute Title for a book Which became a bestseller in Korea

[01:01:14] He would talk about Hitchcock And Nicholas Ray But also like Sam Raimi Or Alien 3 He loves the Sam Peckinpah film Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia He's writing seriously But not exactly academically Right I think it was a little more approachable Positively Like I don't think

[01:01:38] This isn't Pauline Kael where she's like Sound of music More like the sound of a flushing toilet Yeah that was maybe the most brutal thing she ever wrote You know not exhaustive Not covering everything Covering what he likes Or what he thinks is interesting Or worth analysis

[01:01:56] There's that shift in his status People are like oh this is the movie from that guy It's the critic guy Right It's Jay Sherman Let's see if he can put his money where his mouth is So Ryo Seung Won I apologize Ryu Seung Won

[01:02:15] Who is eventually going to make the film Escape from Mogadishu And other Korean films himself But he is so fond of Park's criticism That he seeks him out He reads one of his articles and thinks I should work for this man Goes and meets him

[01:02:32] And becomes his first assistant director on Trio Quote from this guy though Unfortunately this film was considered the worst in his filmography I do like that they all just happily shit on these movies Park is even more critical of this one Than Moonsun Dream

[01:02:48] I think because this is Well I think he's like what I didn't fucking learn anything from the last one Like another crap one from me Another turd I think this is a major step up On a relative scale But I also think to him

[01:03:03] This is so much closer to being a real movie That the things that fucks up are probably more frustrating to him Than the Moon is the Sun's Dream Which is just like well this is just amateurish I don't know what I'm getting at yet

[01:03:13] Like this movie more than anything I think it has some good ideas in its basic setup And then tonally it's got like no idea How to say them or what it's even trying to say It's very propulsive It's just not that You know you like the lonely saxophonist

[01:03:28] It's a very Griffin character But no it's like Kubrick made Fear and Desire You can watch Fear and Desire and be like Hey this is the beginning There are seeds of something interesting here But if you see it in 1953 You're like BOO! Rotten!

[01:03:46] You know like it's only interesting in any context I mean our buddy Alex Raspberry Made the very good point It's nice it makes you feel good But you just had to make some shit You know to figure it out Right it's kind of

[01:04:00] With the prism through which we tend to talk about People in their careers and whatever It's so much harder if it's like This person landed and they were a genius They had great thoughts and they knew how to communicate them perfectly It's not just that it's like humbling

[01:04:12] To watch something like Fear and Desire And have it suck But it's also the fact that It gives you the ability To actually see And thought and approach Develop So there's a little of that Yeah In these I guess But you know just a little

[01:04:35] I think much more in Trio But Trio ends up being Glib in how it handles almost everything Well let me tell you how he made Trio Let's see Even though he took a break from making movies He didn't stop trying He would go from company to company

[01:04:52] He had a bunch of scripts that he'd written They would always get rejected He had been branded as a director Who knew a lot about movies But would only make cult movies that no one would see Some of the movies he wrote Something called The Flower of Evil

[01:05:08] A horror film about a set Of male and female twins Something called Fight Night The story of a rock band From JJ Sorry that's all I have about this one lol Something called Anarchists An action film about a covert group of anarchists Attempting to overthrow the Japanese government

[01:05:27] In 1924 in Shanghai And this did get made by Yu Young-sik In the year 2000 So that's cool He had a lot of friends apparently Kept him feeling sane That's good news That's good news Seeing here he had friends He was a sociable sort

[01:05:50] It'd be funny if he was like I knew no one for 5 years And was constantly lonely No he had buds He ate 3 meals a day often We hope so Sleeping was a hobby He had a bud called Upwards of 1 third of his day Lee Honi Says who

[01:06:12] Had made a low budget film He died He's no longer with us We both hated films with posturing Flash and trickery We scoured through films made by directors Who didn't pretend to be artists Or great masters And we had long discussions That's all interesting to hear

[01:06:32] I do feel like his movies These two movies are kind of a little heavy Especially Trio Trio's got like a shot that goes through Like a bullet wound in the hand It's got all this very flashy stuff For like a low budget movie

[01:06:47] He wants to make a more stripped down film He wants to make what he calls a graduation piece Ending my cinephile period Simple film Franken unobstructed Without quoting other films Without flash or trickery He says once again Not really true I saw myself as someone without the aptitude

[01:07:09] For fluff films, art films, socially conscious films I wanted to make a film That didn't belong to any category It's a lot of things he's saying But at the end of the day I don't think he succeeded He wanted to start with something very minor Sure

[01:07:26] People starting to solve problems By depending on family or religion While emphasizing that no one can solve your problems but yourself Okay Look this movie is about three characters A trio if you will People who end up together Who are all sort of at A point of

[01:07:45] Their lives have sort of atrophied Yes For different reasons in different ways They are all sort of frustrated And bored and despondent And angry In different permutations And basically End up being all drawn together To go on a crime spree And form this weird sort of family unit

[01:08:07] But you have this sort of One young guy Who's sort of a wannabe gangster Unintelligent He often says how bad His IQ scores are Yes There is one man who essentially describes himself as a simpleton Yes But he is sort of driven by machismo And rage and posturing

[01:08:30] And uh Then there's a very depressed Jazz man A suicidal saxophonist He's always trying to hang himself You have this sort of opening like Harold and Maude And I'm seeing here he wasn't played by Jason Clark Weird American remake win No you have this sequence

[01:08:52] It's a great role Jason He's a saxophonist Now he's suicidal Why is he suicidal Well He did get cocked He's got a wife I'll take it Jason you're playing a nanobot terminator And you know he gets cocked Sure Every role he plays Go on sorry

[01:09:19] Your mom cocks you with your dad Sure You're playing Abraham Lincoln I am No he did get cocked Don't worry Am I totally wrong in remembering Genesis having some weird sexual dynamic Between him and the mom I wish I could answer that question

[01:09:37] But unfortunately I do not remember I remember watching it being like It feels like he's jealous of Kyle Reese Maybe he is Maybe he is That he's not his own dad That he's not the one I almost want us to do the Terminator movies on Patreon

[01:09:54] Like partly because we can watch like two really good movies And one pretty fun movie And then three different attempts to revive the franchise That are all incredibly flawed and forgotten See Dark Fate I really like I'm a fan of Dark Fate I'm a fan of Dark Fate

[01:10:09] I remember like the best of the three But they're all forgotten And two of them have Arnie in different roles Yes One of them has fake CGI Arnie Yeah that's true They all have some version of Arnie Maybe we should do the Terminators I think we should

[01:10:27] Alright we've decided that we're going to do the Terminator movies on Patreon Next year probably Okay Wait I was going to say The suicidal guy There's the sort of stupid violent guy He walks in on his wife fucking him The woman who's got the missing child Okay okay

[01:10:46] He walks in on his wife fucking a guy While his child lies just like there in bed Right Yes he does, he does see this And he's just so depressed He sees her breasts She's nude with another man

[01:11:00] And she does not stop fucking this guy when he walks in Uh huh No she doesn't, she just locks eyes with him And he just takes all of his shit Yeah And lights the house on fire as he leaves Right And walks away And takes his daughter

[01:11:18] I'm done with this Yes And then the third woman He and his violent dumb friend Sort of decide to rob a cafe out of like apathy Right Sure wants to Yeah I don't know Why not just like do A radical thing And a woman who is

[01:11:41] In the shop when they Commit the robbery comes back to them Yeah And sort of volunteers herself to be the third member Says she has a lead On a couple that they can rob Yeah And when they get there it turns out it is her ex

[01:11:59] Right who has left her for a younger woman Yes And she has this missing child Right And he claims that he murdered the kid Briefly But he didn't No Yes And the three of them form this weird family unit Trying to find the kid Yes

[01:12:24] Apparently it has some basis Or he was sort of inspired by this like Series of armed robberies that had happened in Korea Okay It doesn't really make sense that they're on a crime spree You know what I mean It's sort of like he is just kind of like

[01:12:39] Tying it to this real thing Yeah I don't think this movie takes place in any Right World of realism I think it is more just about a mood And a vibe And I agree with Ben like I do think this movie does have Semi successful vibes at times

[01:12:55] Yeah well Ben said it was vaporwave Both of them And I said sometimes does that just mean 90s Yeah And Ben said yes Yeah Or you know just any kind of vague reference to Asian culture Sort of makes it vaporwave

[01:13:12] But to me vaporwave is like the Encarta loading screen Or whatever That's like you know supreme vaporwave You said echo the dolphin The jazz music in this movie Combined with the echo the dolphin But then sort of manipulated In some you know Slowed down

[01:13:30] You said Ben does vaporwave Sometimes just mean 90s And Ben locked eyes with you And then purple smoke started leaking out Of his ear stud While midi music started playing Air roar Park says The theme of the film is very simple

[01:13:50] It's about how no one can take responsibility for your life except yourself Apparently he gave a three hour lecture To the production staff Who were all dubious about what kind of a theme that was But I kind of like He definitely had this in his head

[01:14:03] Well because all three of them are people who are just like I've sort of been fucked by the world Right All three of them are people who are angry In a general sense or self hating But also like Furious about their circumstances And I think

[01:14:19] They're a little psycho They've all lost it They've all kind of snapped And it's right And they're like exact revenge On the world Right that they think is not fair to them Yes But it doesn't solve anything It doesn't make anything better

[01:14:40] Yeah and their issues are so different Yes That they're not They don't really make sense as an ideological team If that makes sense I think that's what I kind of like about it though That they're like incompatible Well apparently this is your favorite film of all time

[01:14:57] I'll say this, I've been making a list You're like wholly Dismissive of this entire thing I think this is a sticker Can I ask you a follow up? Yeah I'm checking it twice I'm trying to rank the Park movies As I rewatch them These are the only

[01:15:17] I've seen every Park film except for these two Which I've now seen and deem bad And I'm a cyborg but that's okay Yeah I can't believe you haven't seen that one It's the namesake of our miniseries You think you would have watched it?

[01:15:30] Wait let me check the poll Pretty sure it's winning Let me check the poll You didn't put your thumb on the scale Yeah you didn't get twitter blue Let's see the poll right now Remain sympathy for Mr. Podcast about 4 points ahead of Decision of Podcast

[01:15:44] I'm a pod just pulled to 20% Okay No I'm a cyborg You know I was in college I don't know But I did put Trio above The Moon is the Sun's Dream On my current two film list Of Park movies I'll add to it as I rewatch every film

[01:16:04] You know what I mean So it nudged ahead Okay But I did not think it was very good I just zoned out so quickly And I don't think that is true of any of his other films That I've experienced I zoned out immediately on The Moon

[01:16:20] Yeah I didn't like that one either This one was going in and out The first 10-15 minutes of Trio I was like He thinks this one's bad? I don't know And then I just kind of lost it It looks good, it moves well It's got some action Yeah

[01:16:41] There's a What was I gonna say This feels like the kind of movie that he could remake And be like you know what I now know how to tell this story People thought Cronenberg was gonna remake Crimes of the Future

[01:16:54] And he was like nah I just like that title It's just a different movie You were saying The Housemaid was remade Yeah no for sure People just being like Remaking your movie is kind of a fun vibe You're like early film

[01:17:08] I was trying to think of other examples And I kept on instead getting caught on the Cronenberg not doing that I feel like it has happened Hitchcock remade himself twice Well he remade I think he remade himself too much Not little But I do think the original is

[01:17:27] What are you squeaking over there It's my chair I do think the original is better I think the remake is much better But the remake is certainly much more dazzling And has major stars and is in color Isn't there another film of his own that he remade Probably

[01:17:45] Okay Look Trio We can talk about it more if you want Yeah It was the whole industry In cahoots to ridicule me Until I collapse from exhaustion Yeah So he thinks I'm going to walk away This isn't going to work for me You're saying like this movie

[01:18:08] You just fucking check out on it There are scenes that are incredibly bizarre There's the scene where the Violent guy in the trio comes back To the hotel room Where they're hiding out of the apartment or whatever And the depressed saxophonist Is massaging the woman's breast Yes

[01:18:26] And he thinks they're having an affair And he's instead trying to help her Because the kid won't nurse Yes That seems interesting Yeah They're all just really depressed I think you like it Yeah I do You know what I kind of relate to this movie

[01:18:46] I might go out and do some crimes Yeah probably You're going to have to get an earring That's the first crime I'm going to commit Crime of fashion Yeah Look I'm going to get a long chain coming off my ear As this film is failing

[01:19:05] Park feels like he's being tagged with He's the cult movie guy He's the B-movie guy As a critic this guy was like a champion Of kind of like pulpy or smaller movies Sure But he's actually tagging his actual directorial efforts As similar

[01:19:22] Like oh he makes like you know Glossed up trash Because that's what he likes He likes to take that kind of a movie Anti-intellectual Right so he's like fine I want to make a popular film That's much more like sort of professional Right

[01:19:38] And so Joint Security Area which is his next film Is like him being like I need to make a mainstream feeling movie Yeah Which is interesting because I've never seen them It is really good And it is like it is certainly also a movie

[01:19:53] With like a very direct Concept It's a mystery film It's set in a really specific location It is not like these movies at all And it was a big ass hit It was the biggest I think it was the biggest Korean film ever made Yeah

[01:20:09] So it is wild that he goes from You know this poo poo platter To like one of the biggest films in his country's history But that also not that it was like Made cynically but that he was like fine You want a movie that works

[01:20:22] It is just funny to think about him going like And then he was correct and he knew how to do it My mistake was not making a movie people want to see That is good Right So I guess I'll do that next time

[01:20:34] You know what fuck you guys I'm gonna make a good one next time It's on site Right I feel like any other time someone tries to do that You're like well if they knew how to make a good movie I can see if you're that like sort of

[01:20:46] Dogmatically Aiming for success at all costs That ends up feeling kind of cynical or hollow And the fact that it like worked Is a little fascinating to me But also Sometimes we gotta learn from our mistakes M. Night Shyamalan style of course

[01:21:02] He also another guy who made two movies that didn't really Connect And then Sixth Sense was like you know what I'm gonna make a movie that cannot not be a hit 100% he's like let me think about what might Like really just sort of pop

[01:21:13] And then I'm gonna make a movie in a theater that's like very old-fashioned and straightforward Again not that Sixth Sense or JSA are really that at all No They're very idiosyncratic movies But they Whatever Results both for themselves In both cases the guys were vindicated

[01:21:29] Yeah the only other thing here you already had mentioned Which is basically like he thinks he was for both of these movies Really bad with the actors Very controlling Treating them sort of like intellectual inferiors He thinks I just think that's part of why these movies Stahink

[01:21:46] It's hitting me These both feel like Memento Confusing Crime-based But Memento is like so good But that was the one thing Sure But yeah no Nolan starts off with Following And then he does Memento And those are both like You know Heavy-handed crime But again good

[01:22:13] I mean way yes Memento is incredible But even Following Following is like pretty good Would you agree Griffin? I'm just emailing Lin to ask him to You are not Loose the IMS time for me Don't waste that Do not waste that We have a comfortable email discourse

[01:22:35] You're not doing that Are you really? I'm sending out a tweet You're sending out a tweet? I'm also going through my contacts list Let me try and find box office games For these films We're gonna go I guess we're I can't summon The Korean box office

[01:22:58] I don't have that power Do you not? You tell me I mean God I'm just gonna find The US box office From the times these movies were released Okay But I mean I can try to see Korean box office coming back from like 1992 Look David

[01:23:24] It might be fun I hear what you're saying But like I might not even be able to For one I can't find a chart Going that far back To like You know the mid 2000s maybe Got it Like 2002 seems to be about as early

[01:23:45] But even then I can only find like Calendar, like yearly charts I can't really find Weekly charts Well for this week let's just do what you had planned Initially and we'll figure it out I had no plan whatsoever But I can find the fucking box office From 1992

[01:24:03] I'm gonna do what I've always planned This show has been airtight until this moment We've never made a single mistake Let's just check the list that we prepared Ahead of time Let me just cross Intentionality and perfect execution Our entire smokescreen will collapse

[01:24:20] If you admit that you did not Have a plan going into this episode Wait where is the fucking box office Here we go Alright So this film came out In some sense February 29th 1992 In Korea Oh weird we've done this box office game Really? Yeah

[01:24:47] Memoirs of an invisible man's release date Oh weird okay So number one SNL comedy It's not memoirs No that's number two What year is it again? 1992 It's Wayne's World Hudson Hawk No Stallone One of his three bombs There's three bombs in a row This is the most notorious

[01:25:16] It's not Judge Dredd No which I just did on Jamel Bui's podcast Unclear and President Oh that's a clever pick for them to Sure yeah No no come on comedy Terrible Oscar? I think I did Number four Classic quote on quote chick flick

[01:25:38] You know the story about that movie That like Schwarzenegger and Stallone Were caught up in such a competition That Schwarzenegger floated out that he was attached to this movie So that Stallone out of spite Would try to get it instead And then Stallone signed on

[01:25:52] And Schwarzenegger was like you fucking moron I never would have done that That script is dog shit He basically pranked him into making that movie I hear Schwarzenegger is going to pay like 15 million dollars for the rights He's going to team up with Getty Exactly Yes he did

[01:26:11] Schwarzenegger did confirm that Stop my mom or shoot Number four Classic chick flick Still Magnolias Fried green tomatoes Number five One day we'll cover it on this podcast One day?

[01:27:00] How do we start talking predators on this show? Yeah you want to talk predators? Yeah One way or another We gotta do it Alright now Trio Came out in Korea In May What number was it? Second Okay there we go We did okay Came out in May 1997

[01:27:26] May 24th 1997 I don't have the South Korean box office for you Okay I'm sorry Maybe as we move through As we like move on We can I could tell you maybe like We could talk about the top Films in Korea that year You know what I mean

[01:27:49] Maybe we should have JJ start digging in I'll ask him if he can find any Box office receipts That's a notion Tickets people bought at that time Receipts of tickets Yeah just literal receipts Like cell phone photographs Of dirty 25 year old Paper receipts So essentially This film is

[01:28:14] Coming out on America's Memorial Day Weekend of 1997 And this is also a box office game We have done although Long long ago Because it is the lost world Jurassic Park $90 million Number 2 Something has survived And you know What the answer is Dinosaurs Ba ba ba

[01:28:40] Such a good episode Stretch it out hand motion I really want to call Like our own shop and I'm just sitting back Watching this episode coming together In real time and it's crazy to be part of something You know is going to go down in history

[01:29:01] We have a bunch of good guests coming up For all the other episodes It's going to be a great mini series It's going to be a fun mini series A lot of great movies to cover All these movies are feeling pre-defeated No not defeated

[01:29:15] Just like what are we supposed to do But it makes it more astonishing That out of that we created the best episode We've ever done Number 2 Dark comedy that I am a huge fan of Addicted to love Alright number 3

[01:29:32] Science fiction film that I am a huge fan of Well it's not Lost in Space No 97 May Fuck It's on Event Horizon No It's a pretty big hit But not massive But very big worldwide Tell me which studio The studio is Sony Sony 1997 May Sci-fi Big worldwide Fuck

[01:30:08] Fifth Element Fifth Element Number 4 Comedy Spoof It's not a Weyans No It's not a Zucker Austin Powers International Man of Mystery Number 5 A wonderful Pulpy Thriller that I think we both really like For grown ups Good movie For grown ups Just a good adult movie 1997 Yes What studio

[01:30:56] Paramount Pictures It's a pulpy adult Grown up thriller Tell me about the star of the picture The star of this film Is a great movie star We've covered many of his films He's a favorite of John Carpenter The film is Breakdown I wish I had the courage

[01:31:16] It was the first thing that came to mind From the director The future director of Terminator 3 And U571 Which is just a fucking great movie If you ever want to check out Just a fun movie We've also got this week Father's Day Funny Liar liar Pretty funny Volcano

[01:31:43] Pretty funny What's the tagline My favorite tagline ever Things heat up The coast is toast Is there anything ever better than that Did we ever have it better than The coast is toast The coast is toast David is holding up his computer And shaking it

[01:32:06] The poster was just 90% tagline They saw that And they were like I don't even know if the movie should be called Volcano anymore I think it should be called this Was Dante's Peak Things heat up Dante's Peak which in my opinion I just remember some disaster movie

[01:32:25] That era having things heat up Like May 1997 Things heat up and then the date Let's see Dante's Peak exploding soon They didn't do a great job there I guess Coast is toast The movie aka Volcano That was a trailer that terrified me Well it's a little scary

[01:32:47] Because there was the whole idea of As we all know Los Angeles Except it turns out It is The whole 90s thing Where they're like Weird stuff is happening in LA And there's the one guy who's like

[01:33:03] Look I know no one has ever wanted to listen to me But my research indicates there's actually a volcano And Tommy Lee Jones is going like What are you saying son What are you talking about Why can't I play that guy

[01:33:15] Why can't I do that three times a year There's not as many of those movies anymore Sam from Game of Thrones going like Well my research indicates the moon is a spaceship Right that was a thing You know what I was asked to audition for that one

[01:33:28] And I didn't But I think he also wanted that You've also got Nightfalls on Manhattan Uh huh The um Who's that that's Sidney Lumet right Late Lumet With who is it Garcia Yeah It's one of those things where he would just be like

[01:33:49] You know like in the 90s What about this Andy Garcia don't know who that is Melanie Griffith undercover with a sedum No thank you Number 10 I had completely memory hold the fact that Sidney Lumet was married to Gloria Vanderbilt Uh Gloria Vanderbilt Who's Gloria Vanderbilt

[01:34:09] Of the Vanderbilts Anderson Cooper's mother Oh Cool Sidney Lumet was married to her Well seven years Yeah Um So that's the box office from America Okay When this movie sort of came out in Korea Which I think it barely did Um It made a trio of dollars

[01:34:36] Yeah exactly Uh so that's the end of that episode but you know what What My apologies to the sponsors of this week's episode Make goods coming up Hey uh the ad reads were good The episode just sucked You sure that was blank check Not dog shit podcast

[01:34:56] Cracked movie club Oh Remember when we were so mad at them For some reason Yeah But tune in next week for Joint Security Area Sort of the The sixth sense to Parks wide awake and praying with anger His first real film

[01:35:17] Now here's the thing this episode has been such a hit And also we should have mentioned Trio is impossible to watch Sure Like moon is a sun stream that's on YouTube Trio someone like just emailed the blank check account With like hey here's actually a legible Yes

[01:35:33] Subtitled version of this movie Thank you This movie is not available Thank you to Jonah for doing that Yeah I will not say his last name because you have engaged in piracy But like the subtitles either don't exist or they're really terrible What is so wild though is

[01:35:50] This not only is subtitled but like Incredibly fucking high quality Right And there are a bunch of titles at the beginning This is a digital restoration done in 4k By the Korean film archive in 2019 Using the original negative So there has been this really nice restoration

[01:36:06] Done of this movie that they don't let anyone see Right Yeah anyway But so you know apologies for that as well I just made a note at the beginning of the episode We promised to discuss my nicknames But I feel like This has again been such a banger

[01:36:22] No we got to What's the run time here because we're done Let's say I don't know just about a minute An hour 40 We're doing the fucking nickname This is a long episode Shortest episode we've done Alright mini series nickname I'll just read them out quickly Uh huh

[01:36:45] Oh we're doing it all the way Listen Uh huh Yeah Really bad actually That one's a real whiff The great mouse fart detective Uh huh Ben's in the Haas Apparently that's what we settled on Ben's with a Z He used to call himself Ben with a Z

[01:37:24] Ben skate from new Haas Really? Alright Bronco Haasley Back in business I think that was a Richard Lawson Haas the great and powerful So we have a lot of nicknames To do We really never did a Zemeckis name We never did Zemeckis

[01:37:43] Then we did the ones after Zemeckis And then the run of Fosse, Kubrick, Selick Boyle Oh fuck Jesus I'm going to throw out a couple quickly Podmare before Kasmus I think his name is Bones Audio Daddy Bone Sound Daddy Bone Sound Daddy I like that

[01:38:07] Because they called Jack Skellington Bone Daddy I'm throwing the names on the magnet wall And that's the business of cars Of course I've run So your company is called Bone Sound I'm fucking Billy Beam Jeremy Jambi Alright so Bob Fosse

[01:38:24] Well I feel like there was an obvious one for this Wasn't there? Should we go back to 18 month old Reddit threads Can we find that? Probably It's always What happened to the nicknames You know it's a lot of that Yeah Joe Gideon Joe Gideon?

[01:38:51] I'm just running through elements of these movies Matt Haas 2Z's, Olad Haas Great, CLACK Alright Spielberg Not Spielberg Zemeckis Kubrick We didn't do Zemeckis We did, we clacked that one No we clacked Selick I wasn't going in order I was going in order of ideas coming to me

[01:39:20] Alright so Kubrick We've got Kubrick We've got Zemeckis We've got Boyle Here's another I know we're going hard on the Haas's right now But Haas 9000 Yeah great, CLACK Let's make that one HOS Just for variety Cause all that Haas is 2Z's Thank god we did that Haas 9000

[01:39:47] Train Podcasting Sunshine, Icarus Millions Slumdog Million Who Wants to Be a Ben Yulner Life Ben Ordinary? No this doesn't make any sense Oh god it would be perfect I don't think it made any sense I'm going to put a thousand podcasts in your pocket Steve Haas

[01:40:13] How about The Ben Like the beach No that's bad What about this? What about this? What about The Bench What? It's like Ben and Beach Bad I feel like People use suggest nicknames I know and they always come up And I feel like I read them on Reddit

[01:40:40] If only we responded to things when they happened We've definitely pinned Ideas in the past Okay well I have a thread from 8 days ago That says Ben's Keaton nicknames Okay Alright we are getting into it This is a nightmare Okay Keaton nickname ideas go Okay Steamboat Benny

[01:41:05] Scumbum Junior Sherlock Hosley Junior I like Scumbum Junior Clack Clack it baby Clack it Okay so now we have Zemeckis And Boyle Boyle's the one I think is going to kill us here Boyle is tough Well it's not tough We can just do the work

[01:41:36] Okay who framed Ben Hosley Okay wait I got a thread for Boyle nickname Okay here we go B2 Ben Spotting Porch Dog Millionaire Sure It's better than The Ben So I get really complained The Beneral in honor of Rosaria Dawson's shaved vagina Wait but that also works

[01:42:00] For fucking Keaton Now what if we used it for both Spread it across How quickly can we get a magnet maiden duplicate We have Scumbum Dog Millionaire Benster Day Put your name in anything I think the Beneral On two is really funny Shallow Ditch Clickety Clack

[01:42:27] Shallow Ditch is kind of funny Ben Shine Oh wow What about Scumbum Junior Are we going to give up on Scumbum Junior that fast Yeah Really 120 Haas No Find me some Zemeckis nickname Alright Ben Mansing The Haas Who Bened Roger Hosley B2 Ben Spotting is kind of funny

[01:43:05] Alright we'll do that The Beneral is just kind of We're going to put that in as an alt That's kind of like a floating name Ben to the Haasley part 3 I'm sorry what Ben to the Haasley part 3 I heard the words you said Ben to the Haasley Part 3

[01:43:25] Alright did we do it Binocchio Great oh clack Wrap it up Best episode ever I mean it sucks that We're going to spend the rest of the year Living in the shadow of this episode Pace Magazine Should just go to print now Cause you fucking

[01:43:50] Absolutely go to print Best ep of the year Not since Under Siege 2 And listen if you came up with a better Nickname than the ones we came up with Too bad Here's the thing I'll say this The tiles have been clacked onto the board Right

[01:44:09] We've heard the clacking And it would be tough We have to grow out our nails In order to get underneath there To be able to peel them off Unfortunately we all clipped recently There's no give When this episode comes out Feel free to make one general thread

[01:44:27] With suggestions For the six mini series We just ran through Yeah great But put them all in one place Yeah and we'll look at it Wow you bumped I'm a pod 4% And Lynn hasn't even weighed in yet Still firmly in third place

[01:44:45] Yeah well and Lynn's going to crack this Let's keep the poll open for five days David Yeah Let's just run through the ones we just committed to Absolutely not Already closed the file All that Haas Two Z's Scumbub Junior Ben to the Hossly part 3 And B2 Ben spotting

[01:45:14] Is that what we're saying Yeah sounds good And the Beneral is just kind of out there That might be more General nickname now You might add to the long list The Beneral should be one of your titles And I say end it Great David Next week

[01:45:37] Joint security area Look forward to that And as always I'll now hand to Griffin Oh and as always thank you so much for handing to me And I'll just say Thank you all for listening Please remember to rate, review, and subscribe Thank you to Marie Barty Party Barty

[01:45:55] For our social media And to my friend I get He's going to go on live television And endorse my pic He owes me one Thank you to AJ McKeon Alex Barron For our editing Lay Montgomery And the Great American Isle For our theme song

[01:46:20] David is on wrapping a sandwich Oh baby Thank you to JJ Birch Tune in next week for JSA as we said Go to BlankCheckPod.com for links to some real Nerdy shit Such as our Patreon Blank Check special Features where we do commentaries On film series

[01:46:39] Finishing up the Apes now Getting started on the Oceans movies, we're going to swim across A couple oceans with the boys Umm And as always There's the free Patreon Membership now you can sign up for Every 10 days we unlock an episode from 3 years ago on the Patreon

[01:46:59] And we're just now getting started With our Mission Impossible Commentary series Mission Impossible Sandgun Just in time to if you want to rewatch them Before Dead Reckoning Part 1 comes out You can revisit those with Us And as always Producer Ben aka I already did those

[01:47:29] Aka the meat lover, aka the tiebreaker Aka the fart detective, you did not do any of these Aka our finest film critic, aka the peeper Aka birthday Benny, aka Hello Fennel Aka not Professor Crispy Aka the fuckmaster, aka dirt bike Benny Aka white hot Benny

[01:47:43] Aka soaking wet Benny Aka the Haas, aka Mr. Positive Aka Mr. Haasitive, aka close personal friend Of Dan Lewis who's looking good Oh my god That look crushes Jordan Hoffman had a really funny joke Which is that he's in character To do a biopic as Jay Maskis

[01:48:02] From Dinosaur Jr. Really really good joke Aka the commish, aka wishful Ben Aka Haasleywood, aka the futzer Aka producer N, aka the bass dealer Aka the mind warrior Aka the class act Aka the banter And Mr. Earring Mr. Earring Lord Studley Nicknames from other podcasts

[01:48:33] Bad boy bully Ben From the Flophouse Short Circuit 2 episode After he described all scientists As lame nerds who do homework That's what you do Okay bye Alright Joint security podcast Sympathy for Mr. Podcast Or some version of that And obviously there's two movies that basically fits

[01:49:08] I'm a podcast but that's okay It's a very funny title It is one of his less well known movies But still And the decision to podcast is Is kind of a fastball straight down the middle Nothing wrong with that I don't think anything else really fits

[01:49:26] You can't really squeeze anything Into the word sympathy You can't do like pod-mathy I don't think Right But I do think sympathy for Mr. Podcast is funny I do too I'm a podcast but that's okay It's funny decision to podcast is funny All three are funny

[01:49:51] Should we do a poll? I'm gonna text Marie Okay but maybe let's start recording So we can get this on mic Let's save nothing for not on mic I was recording that the whole time Holy shit I'm gonna do more end of episode content

[01:50:08] Because that's not how we start the podcast That's fine I just, you know I figured why not start rolling