Wendell & Wild

[00:00:02] Blank Check with Griffin and David

[00:02:48] Blank Check with Griffin and David I'm Griffin. I'm David. It's a podcast about filmographies, directors who experience massive success early on in their careers and are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion projects they want. Sometimes those checks clear. Sometimes they bounce.

[00:03:18] Maybe here's a film where I don't even know how to define where this film exists. This is the increasing situation with temporary streaming releases from like seems kind of like a bounce, but I mean, if the whole financing model is bouncing, right?

[00:03:32] So it's a bounce within a bounce. This is the end of our Henry Selick miniseries. Ben Hosley's The Podmare Before Castmas. A good old time that we have had covering the career of a great animator. Yeah. And I was saying this to someone today.

[00:03:50] I don't know if you've had this experience, but when people ask me, so what director are you covering now? Or in the months leading up to this, what director are you covering next? And I'd say Henry Selick and they would tilt their head and say, who?

[00:04:02] It does really feel like the Burton thing is a shadow. He will never come out from under it. He will never come out from under it. But yes, I would do like Selick and they'd be like Blankface.

[00:04:11] And I'd be like, he has a new movie coming out Blankface. And I'd be like, he's the guy who did Nightmare Before Christmas. And they're like, Tim Burton? Selick? Henry Selick? I got that so many times.

[00:04:20] And then I would do the, you know, he did James and the Giant Peach in Coraline. They'd be like, oh, those were all the same guy. That's the exact conversation. So I do feel like we did a little good by making people think about these five movies.

[00:04:31] I don't bring up Monkeybone at all in this conversation. I do. Maybe I build to that eventually. I'm like, he also did this other thing. When I bring up Monkeybone, they're like, how do I not know about that movie existing?

[00:04:41] It's another one that it was sort of a federal law. And you're like, and it lost $100 billion and it stars the actor that we're all revisiting the career of right now. Right. But no one's like, ah, Brendan, let's go through, you know, school ties with honors and Cinnamon

[00:04:56] the Mummy. No one's like Monkeybone. You remember that one? It truly feels like the one that is being skipped. I feel like free vengeance comes up in conversation more than Monkeybone as part of the Brennansons or whatever the fuck we're calling it.

[00:05:09] Yes, this is the last film of Henry Selick's career. I hope it's not the last in totality. No, it's his most recent effort. Here's the thing. Like even if this movie has you cannot call it a success in terms of the public perception. Right. Sure.

[00:05:26] It's not winning critics awards. It barely got reviewed and it doesn't feel like most people know it exists. I do think it still basically operates as a comeback for Selick just in that like he finished a fucking movie and it was released.

[00:05:40] I think it might make it easier for him to get the next thing made. And it was also not like a Monkeybone thing where it was slammed. Maybe the reviews were a little tepid or maybe the reception was just in general a little quiet.

[00:05:52] I think the reviews were largely good. It just feels like people didn't cover it that much. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I feel like the reaction was generally like good. You know, I have some notes. Right. Well, our reaction is happy to have them back.

[00:06:08] Yeah, I like this movie a lot. Yes. I rank it probably the well, we'll do our. We can do all that later. Yeah. But David, most importantly, as I said before, you saw this movie at the Toronto International Film Festival. I did. TIFF where it premiered. Yes.

[00:06:27] On September 11th. Oh, no. I did not see it at the premiere screening. I saw it at a press screening that I think was maybe a day or two later. You have been building up to me the story. It's one of those accidental buildup situations. The Airbnb store.

[00:06:43] So here's how it went. I think on one episode I said, oh, I should tell that my Airbnb story. Yes. Forgot. Genuinely forgot. I think it was the Woman King episode, the first episode we recorded after you get back. Yes. And then people like, what's the Airbnb story?

[00:06:57] And I was like, oh, right, right, right. Don't let me forget. And then on another episode, I may have said it again. You said, well, it happened before I went to see Wendell in the Wild. So maybe I save it for that.

[00:07:05] Eventually I was like, you know what? I'll save it. Yeah. Now I've been saving what is a small story, but now it has become a bit of a ball of wax. Yes. That I have to contend with.

[00:07:15] It relate does relate to my viewing of this movie, though, and my experience at TIFF this year. Now you say it's a small story, but it does sound like the story is big enough that you cannot tell it alone. Well, I've decided I'm going to call Shirley Lee.

[00:07:28] The great Shirley Lee. Friend of the show. Past and future guest. Past and future guest, because she was with me for most of this. And she's my friend and I love her. One of the great people. She is one of the great people. And so let's call it.

[00:07:46] OK, let's see if this works. We're going to call her on air. New technology calling on air. Exactly. This is also just fun for us. This is fun to see if we can become a call out show. Oh, yeah. Not a call in show, call out.

[00:07:57] You cannot call in. We can call in. I guess we could do a call in show. Hello. Oh, my goodness. Who's this? Shirley. Can you hear me? Hello. Oh, boy. She can't hear me. Hello. She's laughing now. I can hear you now. OK. There you go.

[00:08:14] Remember that guy? The can you hear me now guy? Yeah. Can you hear us all? I can hear you all. Wow. Ben, good job. You're coming loud and clear. That's beautiful. Incredible. Hi, Shirley. It's David, your friend. And call colleague. Hey. Shirley, you're in Los Angeles right now.

[00:08:29] That's true. What's the weather like? It's brisk. It's chilly for L.A. It's like in the 50s. Is it sunny? Yeah, it's quite sunny. All right. Sunny Los Angeles. Great. There we go. That's what I wanted to say.

[00:08:41] You're in sunny Los Angeles right now and we are in dank windowless Brooklyn. It's actually kind of like L.A. weather here today. It's unseasonably warm. It is. It's a little bit chilly. It's a little bit chilly. It's a little bit chilly. It's a little bit chilly.

[00:08:49] It's a little bit chilly. It's a little bit chilly. It's a little bit chilly. I thought I would call you because we are recording our Windowland Wild episode and we are going to tell the Airbnb story.

[00:09:05] I don't think you know this, but it's become a bit of a thing on our podcast that I wanted to talk about the thing that happened at our Toronto Airbnb this year. And I kept forgetting. And now it's been two months longer. Three months, four months.

[00:09:20] When was Toronto? September. Three months. And remember it was my birthday. It was your birthday. You turned. We went to Mama Fuku. Remember that? Congratulations. Don't tell everybody. I shouldn't. Is that a secret? Oh, your age. I'm sorry. We can cut that out. All right. I'll bleep it.

[00:09:39] Don't worry. We did go to Mama Fuku. We went in between Bros and the Woman King. Yes. Remember they were like, we don't have a table for you unless you can finish in 45 minutes. And I was like, woman, we have to finish in 45 minutes.

[00:09:50] We have Bros to see. They were like, can you eat fast? And we were like, challenge accepted. Also, you don't have to accept anything. We only have this much time. Right. Yeah. Just quickly, quick aside. I'm sorry. I'm confused. You saw Bros? Yes, we did.

[00:10:05] But I thought straight men were the problem. We are the problem. Okay. Shirley and I were both the problem at Bros. We resolved after seeing it to never tell anyone to see it. Don't love men with a problem, David. This is what... No, you're right.

[00:10:18] It was my birthday. It was your birthday. It's not your fault. Okay. So, Shirley, you and I went to Toronto's International Film Festival together. We shared an Airbnb in Toronto's beautiful downtown district. Oh boy, here we go. Right? Uh-huh. We were there for work. Right?

[00:10:39] Yes, this is all true. I'm just laughing because I don't know how much you've built this story up over the past. I really have built it up way too much considering what it is about to be.

[00:10:50] The writers are now doing the, that's chappy meme, but with that's the Airbnb at you finally mentioning the Airbnb. They're doing Leo on the couch. Pointing. Okay. And Shirley, on the evening of September 11th, 2022, a day that will live in infinity, if

[00:11:10] you remember, we both got home incredibly late. We both got back to the Airbnb like at midnight. You had seen The Good Nurse. I believe. Right? And they had done a thing where they were like, the cast has to leave before the screening.

[00:11:25] So we'll do the Q and A in advance of the movie. Always makes sense. Yes. It was, it was, I was maybe sort of losing my mind. I liked the film fine. I ended up writing about it.

[00:11:35] Just like they, they were like, let's shuffle the cast onto the stage and do the Q and A now before anybody has seen the movie. Right. Without revealing anything about the movie. Yes. It was a very vague, just annoying waste of time. So you're a little strung out.

[00:11:53] You're a little tired. I had seen, I believe the last film I saw that day was sex drama sanctuary with Margaret Qualley coming to theaters in 2023. I didn't know that existed. Yeah. It's all right. Okay.

[00:12:06] Anyway, we're both tired and the next day I have to see three movies and then I'm going to drive out of Toronto to New York. Where you live, your home. I'm going to live where I live because I foolishly drive to and from the Toronto international

[00:12:18] film festival, which is long and tiring, but I enjoy it and I hate flying. Yeah. And also this year I'd forgotten, I don't know where my passport is right now. So the only way I can cross into the Canadian border is by land because I have an enhanced

[00:12:30] driver's ID. Wow. Okay. This is all true. Yep. So Shirley, you know, I'm stressed out about this and Wendell and Wilde is screening at 9am. I'm just remembering you were telling us this story about your passport. Yeah. Before we recorded. Yeah. Then said, oh, you know what?

[00:12:49] That reminds me. I shouldn't tell you the rest of this. I have a good story. I'll save it on my story and then I've been waiting. So I've set that up for you twice now. Yes. Okay.

[00:12:59] And so I'm just setting up that we're both a little tired and stressed out. Uh huh. How was the house? You know, Shirley, what's your review of it? Of the Airbnb? The Airbnb itself. Yeah. What was the highest we were in? Uh, let's see.

[00:13:10] What are the parameters again? I mean, like I would put a 4.9. I'd say the comfort, the cleanliness, the communication, all the C's it seems. It seemed great. All the C's. It was like Toronto, especially downtown Toronto is littered with these gigantic tower blocks

[00:13:30] of like recently built condo buildings and they're all freaking Airbnbs. It's like a problem. Yeah. Like that the city has. They're all just kind of empty. Yeah. Which is a thing we encountered, Shirley. Would you agree at this place that we were staying?

[00:13:45] That was very convenient to the Toronto fill festival. Yeah. That downtown Toronto is a Potemkin village. Yes, I agree. Right. I mean, but it was, but as Shirley says, the Airbnb itself, totally nice. Anything you need, you know, all the amenities. Lovely.

[00:13:59] Did it have like a sign that said home? They always have a weird sign that said like home on the wall. I'm taking it down a notch to 4.8. There was no coffee. I have to rush out every morning. Okay, that's true. And you got to have your coffee.

[00:14:11] I do. Shirley, would you also say my evaluation of our relationship the second we entered this Airbnb together was that we turned into teenage siblings and were constantly punching each other and so on and being like, you're stupid. You're stupid. Like we just immediately devolved into that.

[00:14:28] Or you would be like, do you need the bathroom? I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'd be like, no. And you'd be like, okay. Like we would just do that at each other. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm waiting for a screening. Is that fine with you? Right.

[00:14:41] Anyway, we're home. It's about 1230 at night. And suddenly as we're chatting and winding down, a loud noise happens in the apartment. An alarm noise like just like that. Just one tone. One. Just one. Not just one. Okay. And we were like, what was that?

[00:15:04] And it came out of like an intercom that was like built into the wall. Like not like your classic sort of smoke alarm that you can unplug. Right. Because this is like a modern building of modern convenience. Okay. This was like a 1984. Okay. Right. Okay.

[00:15:20] Surely, I think we both were just kind of like weird and like, yeah, okay, time for bed. It like went to sleep. Right? Would you agree? We turned we sort of turned in. I would agree.

[00:15:31] The sibling comparison is apt here because it was kind of like, we don't have to take care of this. Mom and dad will. Sure. We were just like, okay. And then it was either I think it was every half an hour that would happen again. Okay.

[00:15:45] Just like that. Uh-huh. Without warning or explanation. Surely who I salute somehow fell asleep. Right? Surely you actually managed to just ignore this. Yeah. Here's the thing. I think the difference was this was my first in-person test and I was really worn out. Yeah. And I had earplugs.

[00:16:08] You had earplugs. And like, I just curled up on the sectional. You were sleeping on the sofa. Right. I and Griffin, maybe you can understand this. Grew to both fear. I knew it was going to happen every half hour because the pattern emerged. Yes.

[00:16:24] So I couldn't get to sleep partly because it would wake me up and partly because I was like, it's just going to happen again. How loud? Loud. Very loud. Like that. Louder. Very loud. It was, it's an alert. It was designed to alert you.

[00:16:38] It definitely wasn't just someone going like, oh, hey, man. You know, like it was like, argh. But the weird thing was that it was not sustained. Sure. So at 330 in the morning after just hours of this, I've gone mad. Right. I have gone mad. I almost feel like-

[00:16:54] And I'm also stressed out because I have to drive the next day. So I've got so much stress. You don't want to fall asleep on the road. But you're staring at the ceiling just waiting for it. Yes.

[00:17:02] If it were a sustained thing, I almost feel like I have an easier time falling asleep because it becomes- You just make it the sonic bed. Right. You just get in. Versus even if it would be sustained for two or three minutes once an hour versus one bird.

[00:17:17] Right. I'm just like that will jostle me. It was like sleep deprivation. It was like they were like, anytime you're about to nod off, don't worry, we're going to prod you again. So at 330, I have gone a little mad. And surely sleeping is not going to-

[00:17:32] Surely is as far as I can tell asleep. I'm not like walking over to her and like poking her. Surely can you verify this? I can verify this. I can corroborate the story thus far. Okay. So sleeping sound gets a bug in the morning. At 330, I've gone mad.

[00:17:45] I get up and I'm just walking around the apartment going like, what could this be? And I start to get into my head. And this is, I just, you know, I'm just, I'm a little loosey goosey at this point.

[00:17:55] I'm like, there's a security pad at the front of by the door. And I'm like, it's like a door ajar. Is this like some weird like security system thing? I don't understand. So I go over to it and this is, I want to fully admit the wrong decision.

[00:18:11] Okay. I start punching buttons. I don't look around for how do you control this thing or like email somebody because it's in the middle of the night. I'm just kind of like, I don't know. I think I'm just delirious.

[00:18:24] And I'm like, I can just, I could just turn this off. You're grumpy. You're sleep deprived and you just start hitting things. In my memory, I truly just, it was like this one. No, this one. No. And guess what I did?

[00:18:39] Activated and armed the security system, which then immediately detected intruders and went off. And so I started a whole new problem, which was the security system, which is blaring, you know, like full of like, now not only are you guys not sleeping, the neighbors are not.

[00:18:57] Well, here's the thing. There are no neighbors. No one's in this building. This is the thing I really realized. I was worried about that obviously, but like, yeah, no one even other tiffers staying there. If there are, they're like spread out. Okay. This is a huge building.

[00:19:10] There were, I remember encountering them the next day. Yes. There are a few people. Shirley, you remember encountering people with death in their eyes and I hate David Sims printed on a t-shirt. We're not even the story's not done.

[00:19:22] I remember just, but I hate Davidson's fan club, whatever you call it. I hate club. They were there. Yeah, they, they, they were there just for the whole week. They just don't like blank check. Yeah, exactly. They were, they were prepped. Yeah. They think we're cussed.

[00:19:35] No, but also I think I'm realizing as the security system is going off, is that's not coming out of the intercom that was making the other noise. This is coming out of the security system.

[00:19:41] So I, so at this point I'm like, oh my God, surely is now awake. I mean, right. This is, this wakes you up, right? Surely you can corroborate this. Right. I, yes, I can verify that. I fully woke up. Well, not fully. That's not the right word.

[00:19:56] I woke up to a symphony of noise. If I pressed a button, it would stop it for a second. So I just kept being like beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep. Like, you know, like just to stop it. You're DJing almost.

[00:20:10] This is why I wanted to call you. Surely I want your perspective on this, on you like waking up and just finding me like crouched by the front of the apartment. Wait, I don't remember. Okay. You were crouched. My memory is standing. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:20:24] I wake up and I'm like, what the fuck? I take out my earplugs, which was not a great call because then it was immediately a thousand times louder. And yeah, I get up, I walk over and I just see you.

[00:20:40] You're standing in front of the alarm system, the security system. You're winging your hands. Anybody who knows you can probably picture you just winging your hands at like back. I've ever seen you before right now in front of me.

[00:20:53] And I think like what was truly harrowing, it wasn't even the alarm. Like, like it wasn't the alarm. It was seeing my friend David not be my friend David anymore. Like you were just like you were, you were a husk of a person.

[00:21:06] You were like, like, I think what crossed my mind was like, you look like you've been infected. Yes. You looked pale and like you were actively falling apart. And I think like your soul had left your body. That's what I remember. Right.

[00:21:28] I think I remember you came and I was ashamed. I was ashamed. I had woken you up. I felt bad. And also I knew I was like, whatever this was, I should not have started hitting the security system. But you're in too deep now.

[00:21:40] But surely I just remember you kind of like you're like, put your hand on my shoulder. Like it's going to be okay. We'll figure this out. And then so I then I was like, all right, crack the fucking, you know, folder here.

[00:21:49] Like let's, let's get this guy's phone number, the host. Like I hate to do this, but I call the guy, our host at 330 in the morning and he answers the phone. He'd been asleep too. So I feel a little bad about that. Weirdly, weirdly he was asleep.

[00:22:02] You should feel more than a little bit. To be clear, I had sent them a bunch of messages on through the Airbnb thing. Sure. But it was past midnight. Like there was no reason for that. You have to call. Yeah. I call them. I'm like, I'm so sorry.

[00:22:15] Hi, I'm your tenant or you know, whatever your person in this apartment Airbnb or right. I've activated the security system. There's an alarm going off. And he was like, Oh, we don't use that. Let me like find the code to turn it off.

[00:22:27] Like he doesn't like know it. Sure. He's like, it's written down somewhere. Yeah. So, you know, so after we do, we, we deal with that problem. Now, of course the original problem remains. We're still getting the Blair. That still is going. That's still going.

[00:22:42] Does that seem to be only contained to the apartment you're in or is that unknown? It's at that point unknown. Okay. Okay. Great. Great. Great. And I tell him that that's happening to and he's like, I don't know what that is. That sounds weird.

[00:22:57] I will try to deal with, I'll try and look into that, but it's sure 30 in the morning. I'm like, I understand. I'm so sorry. He's like, I hate you. No, he was by the way, credit to this guy who I won't name obviously, but like he was

[00:23:07] really nice about it. Okay. We're done. Surely you went back to sleep, right? Yeah, I did. I kind of just like curl back up. I don't I was I yeah, I think I also finally collapsed and did sleep for a couple hours. Humbled crank. Yeah, seriously.

[00:23:23] Then surely I'm going to say it's seven, 730 in the morning, somewhere around there. Right? I think it was earlier. It might have been earlier. Six. The sun had risen. Okay, so you maybe slept a clean 230. Yeah. The alarm shifts from once every half hour to total.

[00:23:43] Total now it's now it is going, going, going and then occasionally a voice will be like fire, fire, leave building, you know, whatever. These modern fire alarms with a voice. Yeah. And then they're very dumbly asking you if like, oh, should we should we leave? Right.

[00:24:00] Obviously one feels compelled to leave. And this is what I'm like poking my head. It's the whole floor is doing it. You can tell now. Sure. I'm poking my head out not seeing anybody.

[00:24:08] Surely I just kind of sit there for a while just being like, what do we do? I think we're both kind of like, are we in dimension X? Like, is we both gone mad? Is this a collective madness? Now we eventually go to the lobby.

[00:24:22] Surely we must have. Right? Yeah. Well, okay. I think hang on. I'm trying to think of the sequence of events. I think I said we need to find out what's going on. Like maybe we should call Airbnb person. But then like that that wasn't very logical.

[00:24:39] And you're like, why don't we just go? I think you were the one that why don't we go downstairs and just find out. Right. We go to the lobby there like we don't know what's going on. There's no fire. We've called the fire department.

[00:24:51] That's what I was waiting for. Yes. No smoke. No fire. And they're like, sorry, it's the whole floor. You can use like the lounge on like the 35th floor because this is like a fancy condo. So we go up there. I have a nice picture of us. Okay.

[00:25:06] Sleeping. It's a picture of your legs sleeping in the lobby. There's Shirley sleeping. I think that's kind of no, no, no. This is backwards. No, we went up there. We went up there and then we went down to the lobby. Look, it doesn't matter what the sequence is.

[00:25:20] I'm trying to verify the story. I'm trying to tell you the facts, which is I think we went up there first because I had remembered there was a lounge up there. Yeah. Labeled the winter lounge. Right.

[00:25:32] And then it just seemed wrong to stay there if there, I don't know, was an order to evacuate. That's all. Right. We go down to the lobby there like we don't know what to do. The fire department shows up. The Toronto fire department. A bunch of friendly Canadians.

[00:25:45] Buddies? Yeah, they were good looking. They weren't like, you know, challenging. They were like, we don't know what to do. I mean, there's a reason you sat on this story for three months.

[00:25:54] And they're like, we don't know what to do, which is a real moment where they're like, look, these buildings have these weird alarm systems run by private companies. It's going off for some reason.

[00:26:06] It was pouring outside and they were like, it's probably the rain has like short circuited something. But they basically think we detect no sign of fire. Yeah. They're like, there's nothing wrong except for this alarm system is we're not working and that's not our problem.

[00:26:19] And they're not saying they're saying in a polite Canadian way, but they are saying it in a sort of like you got to call the company. Yeah, they're saying there's no fire. It's just raining outside.

[00:26:28] So at that point, eventually, after all this madness, surely you literally did try to sleep just like in the lobby. It was all very distressing. I was like, you know what? I'm going to go to Wendland Wild. That's better than this. What time was the 9am? Okay.

[00:26:44] So I was just like, I can't do this anymore. Yes. I was literally going to put my clothes on. Yes, I may have even shout. No, I don't think I showered like in the fire alarm. That would have been too insane.

[00:26:54] But I was like, I'm going to put my clothes on and I'm going to walk my ass over to the light box and just watch Wendland Wild because at least there won't be a fire alarm. True. And surely you were like, that sounds good.

[00:27:06] I'm going to retreat somewhere. Right? Here's the thing, David. I don't think we've talked about. I was kind of genuinely worried about you and afraid of you at the time. It's good to have her on the phone. You were the walking dead. Right.

[00:27:24] You had wrung your hands so much. They looked like they were going to fall off. I was just like, this man is going to go see a movie. He had wrung his hands to the knob.

[00:27:33] But seeing a movie is the only thing he knows how to do, Cheryl. That's the thing. I was just like, you know what? You know what? There's a movie. There's a movie. And so I went in the rain to see Wendland Wild.

[00:27:45] I got a bagel and a coffee from Second Cup. Shout out, Second Cup. What kind of bagel? I think it was like a plain bagel with butter. I was like, I cannot handle hot. Jesus. We're off.

[00:27:54] And I go to the light box and I sit down at Wendland Wild and I'm like, look, I'm sure I'm going to have to end up seeing this again because like, Jesus, like I'm no fit state. Wendland Wild starts.

[00:28:03] I'm immediately like pretty locked in and I had a good experience watching Wendland Wild. Because it is an incredibly dense plot. It's a very dense movie. But I remember like walking into the light box and there's the volunteers there. And I'm like, Wendland Wild?

[00:28:15] And they're like, yeah, you know, Theater 4. And I'm like, OK. But I'm saying OK to them like they're like Florence Nightingale. Like, thank you. Thank you. Like you're checking into Benny Ford. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:28:25] They're like, I go to the theater and they're like, yeah, it's just about to start. And I was like, OK, good. And I said, there's no one I know there. And I just sort of like, good. I don't want to deal with anyone right now.

[00:28:32] Just sit down, watch the movie. I was supposed to see The Whale next. I was like, my plan was I was going to do back to back. I walk out of Wendland Wild to surely you had texted me like the alarm has stopped. Like the company came.

[00:28:37] It's over. And I was like, OK, I'm not going to fucking see The Whale after this. Like I definitely and I went home and I finally like crashed. Wow. And that is the Airbnb story. And the guy refunded us the last night. Wow. Good guy.

[00:28:45] Yeah, he was good. Just a good guy. Yeah. I mean, I think it's a good thing. I mean, I think it's a good thing. I mean, I think it's a good thing. I mean, I think it's a good thing. I mean, I think it's a good thing.

[00:28:53] I mean, I think it's a good thing.

[00:29:54] And I posted the photo of my soul finally exited my body after this ordeal. You'd been holding on, but it finally caught up to you. And let me find the photo. Maybe we'll post it. It's a great photo.

[00:30:06] You look very cute, but you are in line and you are in my memory looking up at the sky as if the sky may have an answer for you. And it won't. But you know, there's clearly just this sort of like searching look in your eyes.

[00:30:19] Let me find it. This is a self-serving story, but I just want to provide evidence that this was an ordeal, even though you could. Sorry, we just saw the photo. You can summarize the story as, oh, my God, an alarm went off in our Airbnb in the middle

[00:30:38] of the night. But it's not just that. No, that's what I mean. Something deeper, Brooke. Shirley, thank you so much for sharing this with us, helping the story live up to its full potential. Can I ask, have you seen Wendell and Wilde? I haven't.

[00:30:55] You and the rest of America, baby. It's on Netflix if you want to watch it. Yeah. Just type Wendell in. I will. It's quote unquote available for free, as people like to say about anything on Netflix. As if you don't pay for the service. $19 a month for whatever.

[00:31:11] Let's see how quickly it gives me Wendell. Ah! W-E-N. OK. I will. I will watch it. I'm going to watch it. And it's been an honor hopping on, talking about the Airbnb saga. Love you, Shirley. Always a pleasure. You're the best, Shirley. Love you. Bye! Bye.

[00:31:30] Can I get a review of the Airbnb story after all that buildup? I think it was good. Yeah. I think it was good. But it wouldn't have been as fun if I just sort of told that story myself after like a month of buildup, right?

[00:31:44] Three months of buildup. Correct. At this point, Shirley, I mean, Shirley's a delight. She'll always make anything better. I do think, yes, if you had told it solo at this point, it would have been disappointing. It would have just kind of like, oh, that sucks.

[00:31:57] Which was basically the reaction the story gets. Right. We need Shirley describing what you looked like. Right. Right. That's fun. I think to Torontonians, it tells a little bit of a story of like these creepy weird condos. Yeah! I think it's evocative. Yes. Look.

[00:32:12] Where it's kind of like, I don't know, man. The alarm's going off. What can I tell you? Look, you put yourself in a difficult position with just how much you built up the expectations for the Airbnb story. Right.

[00:32:20] Where, you know, I think people imagine so many different things that it could be. All that having been said, look forward to the story of the Chappie deal coming two and a half years from now. Right.

[00:32:30] And my Michael Shannon story, which I keep forgetting to mention as well. Oh, sure. Yeah. We'll just float that one. I'll just see people online say, have I missed it? When did you finally tell the Chappie deal story? Have it yet? You haven't. You're waiting.

[00:32:42] I'll tell you when I'll tell it. The moment people stop asking about it and forget that it ever was teased. Look, we have a few things that are in a kind of break glass in case of emergency thing. It has to be a surprise.

[00:32:52] But that is how I saw Wendell and why. No, I'm impressed. It played well for you under those circumstances. I think I was really just like, this is not, it's a story. I'm involved. I love these people. Yeah. So, so you typing in W E N.

[00:33:07] So W, I'll even give you the, you know, W and E Wednesday. Well, this is what I was going to say. It's got the same first four letters as Wednesday. No, you're forgetting how Wednesday is spelt. Wed-nes-day. Oh, so W E N. There you go. Wednesday drops off.

[00:33:25] I'm the one who's fucking functioning like I got an alarm last night. But that might be helping it on Netflix that it shares the same first two letters. I have to imagine. With the most successful television show in history.

[00:33:38] But also I have to imagine if you watch Wednesday on Netflix, surely the algorithms like, Hey, you know, you might like Wendell and why that's another thing we got. That's kind of in that zone.

[00:33:47] But when people talk about, Oh, this new movie just premiered and it's not even on the front page of Netflix. I think that's often lost is, uh, Netflix has crazy algorithms and they're showing entirely different things to entirely different people.

[00:33:58] Obviously, whatever the quote unquote empirical top 10 will be the same for everybody. But otherwise what's suggested is different for everyone. What truly astounded me is our good friend JD Amato saying it has not been presented to me once on Netflix.

[00:34:15] If Netflix with all the data it has on JD over a decade has not once thought maybe we should put this in front of this guy. Who are they recommending this movie to? They've never presented it to me. That's a stunning indictment. I agree. Right.

[00:34:28] And I'm like, if Wednesday's a hit, they should be fucking pushing this as a viewers also liked or recommended more films like this. Well, all I can say is, as you put it, it's available for free to any Netflix subscriber.

[00:34:45] And that is of an audience of 450 million people or whatever the hell it is. How many? 250? How many subscribers is that? Fuck it. Um, and, uh, and it's, it's a good movie. 250 million.

[00:34:57] Let's, let's dig in a little bit to this because a lot of the context of this movie is the context of Selick's wilderness of 13 years. Not making a film after making a triumph. That's the thing that's so weird about it. Yes. It's not like this is after Monkeybone.

[00:35:15] No. After his most successful film. Yes. He has forever to not make another one. I look well. And a film that has lasted, that it feels like has only grown in reputation. Coraline has, it feels like firmly like planted itself in the cannon.

[00:35:32] Not some flash in the plan. They continue to fucking sell merch for that. Continue to reissue it on different fucking DVD. The steel book just came out 4k had mine preordered. But yes, in short, I think Laika believed that he was going to be their main in-house guy.

[00:35:53] He is their supervising director. Yes. And in fact, after Coraline, his stated focus is I'm going to help Chris Butler with Paranorman, our next film. Right. Which Paranorman rips. A good movie. Yeah.

[00:36:05] He also had been listed as the future director of a CG film called The Wall and the Wing. This is when Laika thought they were going to do half CG. Maybe we'll do some right stop motion that never materialized.

[00:36:17] Partly I think because Selick didn't want to do it. And partly because like a dropped that idea of like, I'm going to just swing to a quick side tangent here. We talked a lot about Will Venn, Will Venn Studios, the Laika takeover in the last episode,

[00:36:31] some of which we were correcting ourselves in real time as we dug into the story. There is a documentary called Clay Dream that is fucking phenomenal. I recommend to Ben. Ben, watch it as well. I had sort of avoided watching it.

[00:36:43] I knew I'd probably like it, but I assumed it was maybe more of a Sparks Brothers type here is an artist. Let's go through their whole career and show you all the gaps of it, whatever.

[00:36:57] It is mostly a documentary about the impossibility of trying to make art within a capitalist system and the weird balance of people who try to become moguls in order to be able to control their artistic destiny. It is an incredible film.

[00:37:14] It goes so deeply into the film night like a takeover stuff. It is basically structured around videos of the depositions of the hearings years after Will Venn was pushed out of the company. The story is far more complicated than we even related in that episode.

[00:37:33] I highly recommend that people watch it. It certainly provides a lot of interesting like a context stop motion as a medium context, all of that. It only came out last year, right? It came out in 2022. Yeah, you're right. It did. It's a phenomenal film.

[00:37:46] You get to see all his like early short films, clips and high def and you know, it's great. It's such a like nice nostalgic sort of like take take me back to being a kid. Like I was I was really into the California Raisins.

[00:38:01] I forgot I had a like a toy and what would watch the watch the show. But also like a pretty brutal, unsparing look at like a country that has no support for

[00:38:14] its arts and a man who felt like he had to figure out how to become Walt Disney in order to keep an entire medium, an entire art form alive. He at one point is offered by Pixar to be bought out and he would be given a bunch of

[00:38:35] Pixar shares. This is right before things get crazy for Pixar. Things get crazy. And he says, I would own the most Disney shares if I had taken that. He would have been the primary shareholder. He would have been Steve Jobs. Yeah, right. Right. Yeah.

[00:38:52] Steve Jobs eventually basically takes that deal. Yeah. There's sort of the crazy it's a phenomenal doc that I highly recommend watching supplemental material to this whole mini series. All this to say like a takeover happens. Vitton is unceremoniously pushed out.

[00:39:05] They go after Henry Selick, who's like the other giant stop motion, at least in America. Right. Yeah. Artiman is not going to be broken up. No, they got their own thing going on. Coraline, they screen it at Pixar.

[00:39:21] Pixar will often have visiting filmmakers screen their new movies and Lasseter and the Pixar team flip for Coraline and they're like, you should be working for us. And then especially when Coraline comes out and is a big hit, they very quickly with the

[00:39:39] support of Disney go to him with the offer of like, we will let you make your own studio. You can now launch the Pixar of stop motion. Basically what Selick has tried to do his entire career since Nightmare of like, can I develop an actual continuing studio?

[00:39:57] Yes, that can be constantly working on the next film. I can be mentoring new filmmakers takeover as directors on further projects, what have you. So Selick, you can move into Pixar campus in Emeryville. We will give you a wing. It's Cinderbiter Studios. It's your deal.

[00:40:14] You do what you want to do. Disney will acquire property for you. They acquire, uh, what is it? Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book. We're going to get into that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're getting into it. This is all this stuff.

[00:40:25] But the first thing announced is the, is the Shadow King, right? Before signing with Disney, he had been choosing between three projects, an original story, which may be this, Wendell Wong, an adaptation of a Neil Gaiman book that wasn't Coraline or The Graveyard Book. Okay.

[00:40:38] And an adaptation of an unnamed book that was unlike anything you've ever made before. Okay. Lasseter brings him on, right? Yes. Selick pitches everything and Disney settles on The Graveyard Book, which I guess whatever is the game and they decide he should be doing.

[00:40:51] And the Shadow King, quote, a deliciously magical tale about a nine-year-old New York orphan named Hap who hides his weird hands with long fingers from a cruel world. Sounds pretty Selicky. And he meets a shadow girl who makes his shadows, hand shadows come to life and his

[00:41:06] hands become weapons in a shadow war against a monster that wants to eat New York. Once again, sounds very Selicky. Sounds very Selicky in that it also sounds very hard to summarize and package.

[00:41:20] But yes, a lot of what he wanted to do was, you know, this, it's like Dumbo where like his terrifying gigantic ears end up becoming this artistic gift. Yes. And then these giant long fingers he has make him the best shadow puppeteer in the world.

[00:41:37] And a lot of what Selick wanted to do was combine stop motion and like shadow animation, cut out animation. Which sounds cool as fuck. Right. And they use some of that in this film, Wendell and Wild. They do. Yes. But it enters pre-production 2011. It enters production. Yes. In 2012.

[00:41:54] He's set up at Emeryville. It's working. They roll out the red carpet. They give him the funding. They've announced this. And then they tell R2D2, like he knows John Lasseter. Yes. This is not some like random pairing here. No. They have history.

[00:42:07] This is also this period right before Disney starts acquiring shit like crazy where they were like, how do we expand? And there was that Guillermo del Toro Disney double dare you where they were like, we're giving you your own imprint to make spooky movies.

[00:42:21] Henry Selick, we're giving you your own animation studio. Like they seem to be investing in people and trying to form new Pixar's artists first rather than trying to acquire pre-existing material. This is all shifting at this point in time. The Marvel deal is happening. Marvel obviously. It's 2011, 2012.

[00:42:40] You know, everything's exploding. In 2012, the Shadow King is shut down by Disney quote for creative and scheduling reasons. The trades report that Selick is just too slow to finish in time for the planned release date 2013. And also the Graveyard book was eventually dropped as well.

[00:42:57] Disney took a $50 million write down on the Shadow King. This is what is wild and semi unprecedented. Hey Wendell, but it is wild. They basically said a year into a three year production process. They're like, no. Right. The movie is like 40% animated. Sunk cost. Yes. Right.

[00:43:18] And they're like, we would rather cut our losses now than do anything to try to salvage this. Then what is even more bananas is they go, look, we will hand back to you the 40% of the

[00:43:30] movie that you have animated and the rights and you are free to go shop it around and see if someone else will buy it. And he pitches it everywhere and everywhere passes. There is 40% of a movie that is a follow up to the man who directed Coraline.

[00:43:44] I know. And Nightmare Before Christmas when he's like on a bit of a. No, he's got. Yes. I mean, do you think that it's because of the stink of like, well, Jesus, Pixar have done this. It must. We can't touch this.

[00:43:57] I do think it was like the stink of that. Right. They must have seen that this is unworkable. Yeah. I think it was truly like a quality be damned. Is this thing ever going to get finished? Right.

[00:44:07] Is he going to be the most impossible to work with and deal with? I think he also has burned some bridges by leaving like a so abruptly with this sort of feeling of he left them holding the bag. He's a bit of a bridge burner.

[00:44:19] He's a bit of a. Here are some quotes from him. Yes. He says it was the tone a little dark and creepy for them. And I agreed to do it for a certain budget, maybe a third or a quarter of the cost of

[00:44:28] a big Pixar film, but plenty of money. The thing was, John Lasseter couldn't help himself. He's used to weighing in and changing and changing and changing. And we went through so many changes in the film that the budget started to creep up, up, up.

[00:44:39] And between that and the tone, they just decided to abandon ship. Now this is Salek's quote. Yes. I'm sure he is telling his version of the story. I don't know. You know, but he is essentially like it was sort of Lasseter's fault for for tinkering.

[00:44:50] He's throwing it all at Lasseter right now. Now this is pure conjecture on my part. Here's how I interpret that. Right. Pixar is infamous for having this brain trust. Yeah. It's got like the eight or ten like sort of. They've been there from the beginning. Doctor.

[00:45:05] And I mean, it was Dr. Bird, Stanton, Lee Unkridge, you know, whoever their top people are at any given point. I guess that's before Brenda Chapman is maybe ousted. All the brave comes out this year. Whatever. Right. And they're like very brutal with each other.

[00:45:23] They watch these movies very critically. They suggest wild changes. And Pixar, they've openly talked about their process is essentially make the wrong movie 20 times until you figure it out. It's like failure until you find success by process of elimination.

[00:45:39] It is a lot easier to reanimate rough CGI than it is with stop motion. Right. Where you you can have storyboards, you get animatics, whatever. Once you're animating it, you have to go back and just do the whole thing from scratch. Whereas with CGI, the data exists.

[00:45:59] You haven't rendered it. You haven't added textures. And you can just go back in and reanimate the models that exist in those spaces. Yeah. The other thing is, Salek is a Pixar at this point has basically honed their tenets of storytelling and what works for them.

[00:46:15] And Selick does not think along those conventional terms. And they're going, we really think in Act one, this needs to be set up so that Act three, this can happen. And Selick is basically saying, I don't take notes. He said this in other interviews, basically.

[00:46:27] If he's taking notes, he's he doesn't really like them. This isn't a committee. I'm a director. I'm the director of this movie. And they're like, well, you're part of the Pixar thing now. And we all weigh in on all of this.

[00:46:38] In the various quotes JJ's gathered here, you know, you throw some blame at Lasseter for like changing, changing, changing. He's only really dug into this during the Wendell and Wilder press tour. He's been talking about it during this press tour.

[00:46:47] For the last ten years, he's been pretty quiet about it. Yeah. He says Alan Horn, who was in charge of Disney at the time, Disney Studios, said the movie was too weird. We don't know how to sell this. Like, so he blames him too.

[00:46:59] In 2013, it was announced he'd revived it with the help of K5 International. That stalled out. Who had helped make the Beast of the Southern Wild. That stalled out pretty quickly. Selick says he does have the rights, you know, to this day.

[00:47:12] He says, I'll owe Disney a little bit of money if we set it up, but maybe it'll get made. I absolutely feel like it would be successful. And you know, it exists. Forty percent of it. He says he has five minutes finished. Interesting.

[00:47:27] That's a quote from him from very recently. Okay. There may be more unfinished. Interesting. There's a little bit of footage that's watchable online that's leaked out that looks beautiful. I mean, I have no doubt, but I also have no doubt that the man takes a long time making

[00:47:42] movies and as you say, you're going to give him notes. That's only going to make everything more complicated. I think there was a hope if this movie connected with the public that Netflix would be like, fuck it. We're in the Henry Selick business.

[00:47:53] Let's pay Disney two million dollars to get the rights back for Shadow King. That's what it sounds like. It's his, but if anyone wants to make it, then they have to pay Disney some money.

[00:48:06] With the Shadow King and this graveyard book dead, he enters a true wilderness period. At one time, Variety announced that he would be doing a live action adaptation of the 2010 children's book, A Tale Dark and Grim.

[00:48:19] Which I just cannot believe he would ever want to do live action again. Eventually that became a Netflix series, which I've definitely heard of. He has said apparently he might want to make like a live action PG-13 horror comedy.

[00:48:33] And he says like, you know, I've been looking at comedic horror films because I've been accused of being too dark, but I'm not that dark. Not compared to something like Saw. I want to do like, you know, a horror film that has humor and some social satire.

[00:48:46] He may be just like, I don't want to do CG. And I understand that stop motion is just so fucking expensive and complicated and long that maybe I just need to do something else.

[00:48:57] And at one point he meets with Laika discuss doing a different Neil Gaiman book called Ocean at the End of the Lane, which she still says he'd like to do. But that's kind of just like it doesn't take him back. Well, whatever. It does not.

[00:49:11] Travis Knight says, ultimately, we remain good friends. We talk about projects all the time, you know, kind of a sort of like. But it does feel telling that they weren't like Henry. Of course. You know, yeah. Yes.

[00:49:24] One last project he apparently was going to direct the pilot of a Russo Brothers series called Little Nightmares that never came together. Oh, that's based on a video game. Never came together. Right.

[00:49:36] But that feels like a very sellicky thing if you look at the artwork for that game. The genesis of Wendell and what is apparently when his sons were little, his sons are grown now or they were acting like demons one day.

[00:49:50] And he drew a little sketch of them as demons and wrote a little story called Wendell and Wilde. And he came up with the basic idea that is the movie and most of the characters. And he put it aside. And then years later, he was channel surfing.

[00:50:05] What's on AMC? Yes. Rocky again. What's on TBS? The Atlanta Braves. Boring. More of this. Yeah, I'm giving David the hand signal to stretch out the act out of what's on TV. Pick like a commercial maybe that was running at that Applebee's.

[00:50:20] I'm bad at commercials because I haven't had TV in years. Sham. What's a sham? Well, yeah, exactly. Then clicks on the Comedy Central Channel. Yes. Home of comedy. What's there like catchphrase? We're laughing. We don't pay Kyle Kinane. They don't pay him anything.

[00:50:39] He's been going off about this online. Good for you, Kyle. Get paid. They still reuse his stuff. He sees Key and Peele and he says he was dazzled and amazed by the third season. He was just longing to work with them. And then it hit me.

[00:50:50] Wendell and Wilde, Key and Peele. He really likes the sketch prepared. And I guess he's just like a double act. They'd be perfect to play the demons. I don't know. He likes the the sketch prepared for Terry's, which is like the guys getting on the plane

[00:51:04] with the 3D printed guns. And they're like, we're going to kill any terrorists. And the most insane wigs of all time. Which is really funny. He was like, that's Wendell and Wilde. Does Key and Peele premiere 2010 or 2011? I definitely remember.

[00:51:18] I lived in Bed-Stuy because I remember seeing it was 2012. Okay. January 2012. Okay. And I really you know what I remember. That's one of the last sketch shows where I was like, well, I'm watching that episode. Like I never would feel that way anymore. You know what I mean?

[00:51:33] Like, Arturo Castro had a sketch show. I wasn't like, gotta, you know, cue that up. And I'm not even trying to like diss it. I'm more mean like Key and Peele. I was still like, sketch shows are exciting to me. That was that was the final.

[00:51:48] A golden age. Right. A final age. Whatever. A diamond age. Amy Schumer and Key and Peele. Yes. There was a little bit of Renaissance. There were a couple others. Yeah. And there still are good sketch shows.

[00:51:59] I mean, I think should leave is like, I think it should leave is incredible. Yeah, exactly. Sketch show like that. But like, it just felt like, you know what it really is? Portlandia was also at the same time.

[00:52:07] But it's really it's that Comedy Central was still making things that I was like, got to check out. That was a good era for Comedy Central. It was. Creatively. And what was great for them was the streaming era of TV, which they just shifted seamlessly into.

[00:52:21] I think I probably said this on mic, but the thing I heard was that they they made a deal for Broad City on Hulu. Yeah. Broad City like blew up on Hulu. Unsurprisingly, it turned out to connect far more with the Hulu audience and the people

[00:52:35] who are still watching broadcast Comedy Central. And then Comedy Central was like, we fucked up. Hulu is getting rich off of our show. These jerks. We are never licensing any of our shows to a streaming service ever again.

[00:52:48] And then for like eight years, you'd be like, you should watch review. It's the best comedy on TV. Right. You're like, how do I watch it? The worst app in history. It literally shuts down every time you go to a commercial break and then you have to

[00:53:00] start the episode over again from the beginning. If you try to scrub to a later point, it goes to an episode of Tosh. Right. Exactly. So there's eight years of Comedy Central producing the best comedies on television. Really interesting stuff. And like no one's watching.

[00:53:14] And you had to be like, what's your tolerance level for dealing with bad UIs? I mean, I tried to get through watching Detroiters because you had just like talked it up. It was an amazing show. I bought it on iTunes. That's how I ended up watching it.

[00:53:26] That's what I should end up doing because I got so frustrated by it. I was like, I can't fucking deal with this anymore. There was a point where it's just like they have review Detroiters, Nathan for you, Key and Peele and Schumer were still like tailing off.

[00:53:38] They brought City, all this incredible stuff. Anyway. Anyway. And that new movie came out that they did. Oh, with every actor in it. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I love their current original movie. Work from home or whatever the fuck it was called.

[00:53:51] I want to revisit that pandemic at that time. And I want to laugh. I want to laugh. It's a thing I look back on and want to laugh. Not only did I enjoy it at the time, but it was so long ago. I know.

[00:54:05] So I've forgotten about it. You know who must be even more excited about the existence of that movie? The people who are still working from home. Where it's not even a reminiscence. It's like a funny depiction of their everyday reality.

[00:54:17] I watched The Office, the most successful TV show of all time. The only show bigger than Wednesday. They would get canceled now. I can't even say I like The Office. Their asses would get fucking canceled. You don't even like them.

[00:54:28] No, it's wild because you watch The Office and I go, I cannot believe the people writing the show thought that Michael Scott was woke and correct at every moment. They would get canceled if they made this now.

[00:54:37] The whole point of this show is that they think everything he's doing is smart. It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia airs new episodes every season. Anytime anyone's always like, oh my God, these guys would get canceled. It's Always Sunny is on right now.

[00:54:49] It's a huge hit to this day. Andy Kaling did a multi-episode arc two seasons ago. On it? Yes. Good for her. I think that was probably one of those things. Oh, absolutely. I'm not blaming her.

[00:55:00] I'm just saying every fucking episode of The Office is Michael Scott or Dwight says something you should not say and then another character looks at the camera and says he shouldn't say that. Anyway, what was your point about The Office? Oh, just that they would get canceled today.

[00:55:14] My point was when I watched The Office, I go, this is good. The one thing I wish is that none of these actors were in the same room. No, don't give me that. The chemistry in person. Chemistry is too tight. They're reacting to each other too much.

[00:55:27] It's not believable to that. They're making a documentary work from home. Anyway, like separate screens. That makes sense. It was one of those things where I was like, you know, a year into lockdown. I was like, should I watch The Office?

[00:55:39] I mean, I watched all this other TV. Yeah. Every one episode. Yeah. Put on the Dundee. So it's like, I'll skip. That's the same one I did. I put it on and I was like 10 minutes and I was like, do you not want to do it?

[00:55:48] Never have to watch this. I was like, I'm not interested in this. No disrespect. Yeah. I don't like this vibe. Yeah. I don't need to ever watch this. Selick likes Key and Peele. That's the point of that bullshit we just did.

[00:55:59] He suddenly sees he's like, I see Wendell and Wilde in front of me. Here's a comedy duo. And they'll go build a dynamic around. Here's a modern Martin and Lewis. Fuck. I mean, they've already done it in Toy Story 4.

[00:56:12] I mean, not when he's at the time, but like, you know, their voice acting has been tapped a few times. Right? Is that what they did together? Is that is Toy Story 4 the only thing they did together? There's another thing they did together. And I'm trying to remember.

[00:56:25] Right. I mean, I just find it fascinating that I mean, this is what we're going to get into now. But he basically just looks at them as a comedic duo and says, these are maybe stars I could sell a movie around. Right. Their comedic personas. Right.

[00:56:43] And I think this movie takes so long to get made that the thing that keeps it in the works that basically shields it from getting shut down at so many different points in time is that Jordan Peele ascends to becoming the continued involvement of major success. Jordan Peele.

[00:57:00] Right. Where now it gets to the point where you're like, this is maybe the last. They played wolves in storks. Thank you. Thank you. Yes. Well, let me give you a little bit.

[00:57:10] The fact that this movie is now coming out and it's like Jordan Peele does not perform at all anymore. The last time he performed in any capacity was Toy Story 4, which is now three years ago.

[00:57:23] And even that was like two years removed from the previous time he had performed. Right. He doesn't perform much anymore. Right. So this movie like comes into existence based on the idea of building a vehicle for him. And now it's. Well, it's not just that, though.

[00:57:35] Because, you know, he is a co-writer of the film. This is what I'm saying. Yeah. And then when the time comes, the co sort of creative force. He finally gets in touch with them. Yeah. Keegan-Michael Keely is like, you have a job for me?

[00:57:47] I can sign the contract right now. Yes. The man works a lot. Yeah. Do you need me to bring my own wardrobe? Yes. I can sell for poor local hire. I have three other things that day, but it's fine.

[00:57:57] I'll just I'll just get to be in every place at once. Jordan Peele is like, well, hang on, you're Henry Selick. I love stop motion animation. Yes. Monkeypaw, my company has this beautiful stop motion opening sequence. Does Monkeypaw exist at this point in time? No, might not.

[00:58:14] But you know, I'm just pointing that out. Yes. He is a huge Selick fan. He knows Selick by name and reputation. Yes. And he says, like, I'd love to be this movie.

[00:58:26] I would love this movie to be the kind of movie I would love as I loved as a kid. These stop motion films like and the other thing. Oh, this is interesting. Did you know this?

[00:58:38] Originally, the story was about the nuns and Sister Heli, played by Angela Bassett in this film, was the protagonist. OK. And Jordan Peele was like, Cat should be the protagonist. This movie should be identifiable to kids. Yes. It'll be more accessible that way.

[00:58:53] I mean, this is the whole thing of Henry Selick where he's like, you know, Lasseter, always meddling with me. Metal, metal, metal. Anyway, with Monkeypaw, I wanted every character to be a 60s, you know, retired pitch man.

[00:59:06] And with Wendell, I figured the lead character would be a middle aged nun, not the teen, the plucky teen. And Jordan Peele gave me that note. And as he says, it took a while to convince him, but he was eventually convinced.

[00:59:17] It's the easiest note in the world, Henry Selick. I also think the movie was more thoroughly about the demons at earlier points in time. Yeah. That Cat was incidental. She still served the same function in the narrative. But Peele was like, why aren't we asking questions?

[00:59:34] Why would this not be the protagonist? She's interesting. Yes. And here's the here's another. This is the story of Henry Selick, I swear to God. Here he is on developing the script with Peele. It was a back and forth. I would take a stab. He would rewrite.

[00:59:47] He was more big picture, big story. He would get into the details of characters. Sounds like writing, but OK. Dramatic storytelling. It kind of went like that. Occasionally, he would take the first pass on a new thought. Here's the quote.

[00:59:59] He was really good at dealing with studio notes. He would calm me down. Yes. He just really needs a guy who's like, I have some clout and you like me and I understand

[01:00:08] you so I can kind of like it's like, hey, they don't want the movie to have the Esso Tiger in it. Henry Selick is like, I'm opening a vein. I'll fucking shoot you. He had. Hey, calm down. Calm down. Hey, we can figure this out.

[01:00:20] Maybe the Esso Tiger doesn't need to be in it. Get Burton doing that for him. I haven't gotten that monkey. It's I know you're obsessed with it. Yes. Get Burton doing that from to a far lesser degree on the second movie. Then Monkeybone. He's got no one.

[01:00:32] So he had Bill Mechanic in the middle. Mechanic was gone. So then during the actual making the movie, it's chaos. And then like it's like, here's like the biggest independent animation studio that is just going to be hands off, let you do whatever the fuck.

[01:00:48] Coraline is the most interesting one where you're like, you know what? It does seem like he was pretty unfettered and that is his best film. So maybe I should go fuck myself and maybe Henry Selick is right all the time.

[01:00:58] But it's just things when you hear like Jordan Peele being like, hey, the girl should be the protagonist of the film. Right. Henry Selick being like, wow, you're crazy. I guess we'll figure it out. Look, I'm sure. Jesus.

[01:01:06] I am sure there was validity to the idea that like the Pixar brain trust was looking at Shadow King in if not a binary way through the prism of what had been successful for them

[01:01:20] and trying to get him to conform to their same storytelling sort of principles, which this is the same time that the brave thing goes down. It's the same thing where they're just like, she's like, I had this very personal story

[01:01:31] and they kept on saying, this is not how we do Pixar movies. You know, like this is when the brain trust is starting to fall apart a little bit and it feels like they're meddling too much. Good dinosaur. All this sort of shit that we've been said. Yes.

[01:01:45] Body body. Kenny Rogers roasted. There's the credit at the end of this film based on the book by Henry Selick and it's credited to a co-writer. The book was never published. Yes. If that book exists in any form, I'm unaware. I could not find.

[01:02:01] I was like, no, I mean, I don't even know if he has the book. And when you hear him talk about it felt very sort of amorphous. I would love to hear a more detailed accounting of like what did Selick have going in? What did Peel specifically pitch?

[01:02:17] I feel strong elements of both of them. I think so. Well, here I'll give you a little more. I think Selick basically just had the character. That's what it seems like because he did nine drafts with Peel. Yeah. You know, they get all together.

[01:02:31] The real world message of the film about the prison industrial complex, which we'll talk about a little more. I'm sure Selick credits a movie for kids. Yeah. Right. Selick credits a lot of that to his wife. Okay.

[01:02:45] Who for 10 years was an advocate for at risk youth and special needs kids. I know about that pipeline. There was a lot of research done, but it was really about boiling that down to the essence and Jordan was always good about that.

[01:02:55] But it's like that's not a Selick idea per se or even a Jordan Peel idea. Like Selick sort of drawing from his wife on that. It was in the soup. Yeah, it was in the soup from immediately. And this sort of attempted revitalization of a town and... Right.

[01:03:09] And then in case of Kat and her look, it was influenced by Afro punk, you know, modern movement that goes all the way back to the original punk movement. He says, but Jordan and me just really liked the look.

[01:03:19] You know, we really wanted her to look distinctive, all that stuff. We should talk about the soundtrack too later. It's pretty fucking great. Ben was jamming out. And Netflix, the whole thing with Netflix is I will say that I do hear this from a lot

[01:03:35] of filmmakers that once you get the green light, they are kind of like, okay, yeah, go do it. It took a long fucking time. When does Netflix announce this movie? That's a good question. I'm sure I can find it. I'm not sure when. 15 or 16. Yeah.

[01:03:49] It looks like the most crucial thing they cleared with Netflix initially. Was that the film will get a PG-13 rating. Right. He wanted to. Like they wanted to like lay out like, can we make this film kind of quote unquote grown up enough?

[01:04:02] You know, and Netflix was okay with that. This is another case of a movie that feels like it's PG-13 just in sort of like thematic and intellectual intensity. Right. There's not really anything objectionable that happens in this movie. It's more of an attitude thing. Yes. Right.

[01:04:21] Film was made in Portland, Oregon. The most prominent reason for the long production project. I'm reading here that there was some kind of like pandemic due to a novel coronavirus. I'm aware of this, but I still think there was a longer than usual development time on

[01:04:38] this movie from like the floating of Selick and Peele are working on something to Starkey and Peele to Netflix has acquired it to animation is actually starting was like four or five years versus what's maybe usually a year, a year and a half. Yeah.

[01:04:57] I mean, it took a while. Apparently the wildfires messed with them. Apparently it felt a little shadow King where you're like, are we just going to hear at some point that this thing just got shut down quietly? Right. And then they finally start animation.

[01:05:08] The pandemic starts, they shut down. And then these sort of bananas thing about this film is most of this film was animated remotely. Animators moved sets into their homes and were in isolation working on their own section. That's bananas. Yeah.

[01:05:27] Selick post Coraline is getting more and more hostile to 3d animation. He doesn't like how slick and perfect it is. He says, sure. He said Coraline was maybe a little too smooth and he wanted to go a bit backwards and show off the artifice with this movie.

[01:05:42] He says, as we mentioned, like has just started cleaning up more and more and more and using more digital aid in these things. He keeps the seams in the faces the entire movie. Right. That's one thing he wanted to become. He left the seam in.

[01:05:56] Industry standard to erase. And those are the seams from the replacement faces to swap out the expressions. Correct. Yes. Bill Knight apparently really hated the seam lines is one thing Selick said. So like that's one. I believe that. Uh huh.

[01:06:10] So that's one reason he gets to do it now. Now that he's free of the Knight family. Why wouldn't you stitch that over with a Nike swoosh? Why won't you pay a child to do that? What? Uh, okay. Bad guy. Watch Clay Dream.

[01:06:22] It does not make him seem very endearing or his dumb ass son. As you've mentioned on his previous episodes. Yeah. Nightmare Before Christmas. Selick is kind of bringing the artwork of Tim Burton to life. James and the Giant Peach. You got Lane Smith. Coraline.

[01:06:38] We talked about a Tadahiro Usagi. I'm sorry if I pronounced that wrong. Gwendolyn Wilde, Argentinian artist. Pablo Lobato. Yes. Is the big inspiration for the look of a lot of these guys. You can Google him if you want to sort of like get a sense of it. Yes.

[01:06:56] His Instagram page has a lot. His work is most known through The New Yorker. I think it is The New Yorker. Right. He does a lot of illustrations for their profiles or their reviews. So like he does a lot of these caricatures.

[01:07:10] But he's got a very unique style that's sort of a Picasso, very shape based, almost cut out style that is inherently very two dimensional. Right. Very flat. And it's like Selick almost perversely picks a design language that he loves that should not be.

[01:07:32] It should not be possible to adapt into three dimensions and goes to his modeling teams and goes like, here are Pablo's flat drawings. Figure out how to build this. Yes. Which he does say was quite challenging.

[01:07:45] But the initial thing they do is they take these caricatures of Keen Peel themselves. Right. And they turn them into puppets. Yes. And they convince Keen Peel like isn't this good? Because Keen Peel were apparently like we don't know if we want to like, you know, be

[01:07:57] represented in the film basically as ourselves. Especially at this point in time. You're like that's the selling point. No one knows it's the selling point of from the twisted mind of Jordan Peel or whatever. Keen Peel is a comedy duo.

[01:08:08] You also have to remember at this point in time, everyone assumes Keen Peel are just going to become like a comedy movie team powerhouse. Like there was this expectation of like Keanu. Great. They'll make their first movie. It probably will work.

[01:08:23] And then there'll be a new Keen Peel movie every two or three years. They felt more suited to making that kind of leap than anyone in a while. Right. It's funny that like Keanu ends up being kind of here, neither here nor there.

[01:08:39] And Peel immediately just pivots like, you know what? I'm going to make the movies I've always wanted to make. And like gives up on performing. And now Keen Peel is a comedy duo only exists in animation because animation takes so long.

[01:08:51] It's like the vestiges of things they put into work. Yeah. I don't know what the status of their relationship is. They seem to still be good friends. They did press for this movie together. But it is interesting. Yeah. I just always wonder with that kind of thing.

[01:09:01] It's like, hey, one of you became one of the most celebrated artists alive. And the other one of you is Keegan-Michael Key, who's like the hardest working man in show business. Like, but like, what is that like? Yeah. No, it's odd. It's odd.

[01:09:13] I just, I, it just felt, especially because the show was so cinematic. Yeah. Well, that was always what was so magical about it. Or like at least plausible about them making movies. Right.

[01:09:23] I just, I think it felt like, well, obviously these guys will make a bunch of films. Their natural chemistry when they do the wraparounds, the bumpers are so good. Yeah. I would watch these two guys playing versions of themselves. I'd also watch them playing characters.

[01:09:36] I could watch them in a genre riff. I could watch them in a low key buddy comedy, whatever it is. And now it's like, here's this movie where Selick is almost weaponizing. Like we have to make the characters caricatures of them.

[01:09:48] Almost like it's the incredible Mr. Limpid or something where you're like their face needs to be on screen. And I'm sure you'll agree. It's so interesting the way it looks two dimensional and three dimensional at the same time. Like, especially with them.

[01:10:04] Well, they go through different stages, different puppets. That's right. When they're on a Buffalo, um, uh, Beasle. What's his name? Um, Belzer. Buffalo Belzer. When they're like on his head, on his belly, they're purposefully making the heads of the puppets as flat as possible. Right.

[01:10:19] And then when they come into the real world, they become more three dimensional. They were kind of Lou Romano, who everyone must know from, uh, you know, didn't he work on? He was Linguini in Ratatouille. Right. Yeah. That's what I thought.

[01:10:31] He's also one of the best sort of character designers, art directors and animation. He worked on The Incredibles and all kinds of stuff. Worked on Iron Giant, has worked with Selick before. Right. Particularly because of The Incredibles, which has that similar kind of like 2D, 3D thing.

[01:10:42] You know, they were like, you'll be perfect for him. They were inspired by things like wooden masks, African masks, you know, stone carvings. That all makes sense. You see a lot of that with, uh, with Cat's parents. Yes. Right. Yeah.

[01:10:56] And, uh, you know, uh, they do use a little CG, uh, just I guess to make some of the stop motion like execute a little simpler. I don't know. It's sort of, sort of vague what they used it for. But he kind of keeps it to a minimum.

[01:11:09] He's not trying to cover up the imperfections of this medium. He's trying to embrace them. Uh, they find Lyric Ross. She's on This Is Us. Uh huh. And, uh, I don't know. He really wanted someone who is not like too Disney, I think. Sure.

[01:11:22] Which I think successful in that regard. Yeah. And you know, this movie has an interesting cast. We'll talk about it now. Yeah. Got Key and Peele. But less of a vehicle for them than you would imagine. Right. I thought they were going to be all over this thing.

[01:11:34] Absolutely. But they are prominent, obviously. They are. Angela Bassett. But they're sort of, they're Beetlejuicy in the movie. And that it's like, well, it's really about Lydia. Yeah. Right. And they're in an, yes. They're the most colorful characters. Right. Yeah. And Angela Bassett is a big name.

[01:11:49] But then I would say pretty much, and Ving Rhames as Buffalo Belzer. Yeah. Which I love Ving Rhames. Fucking wolf whistled in the theater when his name came up at the end credits. 100%. But then after that, I feel like he's mostly using character actors like James Hong, Maxine

[01:12:03] Peake, David Harewood. James Hong, fascinatingly, the other one who is caricatured off of him, he kind of looks like James Hong. Oh, it absolutely looks like James Hong. And it feels like he's, yeah. It's a big, complicated movie. It is.

[01:12:17] Look, I feel like this is one of those episodes where people are going to be like, they're pretending to like this movie because they don't want to end on a bummer. Right. And the reality is, I think all three of us really like this movie a lot.

[01:12:29] However, in talking about this movie, it is kind of hard to not make it sound bad because there are a lot of ways in which I think this film ultimately works in spite of itself,

[01:12:39] because it does a lot of things that on paper sound catastrophic just in terms of being so dense and so plot heavy that essentially it has to spend the first two thirds of its running time setting up everything.

[01:12:53] About this movie, while I was watching it the first time, that I was just like, did I? I didn't know I had entered on time. I was like, did I miss a scene? Was there something explaining who Belzer is or why they live on him?

[01:13:06] Because it's this weird contradiction of like, it's both moving so fast and also an hour and 15 minutes in. I still think the plot hasn't gotten into motion. I guess the stakes are almost set up now, like kind of.

[01:13:19] And I'm watching and going, look, this is visually a thrill. It's full of fun ideas. I'm happy he got to make another movie again. Obviously this thing is a mess. And then there's truly just the point, like two thirds in where it clicks and he basically

[01:13:32] like lays it out on the table. And everyone's there. Everyone's now ready. And you're like, you know what? Every single character he set up now serves an important function. Every plot thread he set up, every visual idea he set up. Like everything does ultimately pay off. Yes.

[01:13:48] But it does feel like a movie unlike his earlier films. Yes. Forgetting Monkeybone. That like a kid could maybe not grapple with. Absolutely. You'd need to pretty much be a teenager, maybe just below, you know, like 10, 11, 12.

[01:14:01] Like if I put this in, you know, a six year old in front of this, I feel like they would just lose interest. I think so too. Because it's all like, there's just so many new things and it's sort of hard to tell how it's connected.

[01:14:11] And even the stuff like Wendell and Wilder, the characters that would appeal most to a kid usually in terms of energy comedically and all of that. Your introduction, you're just like as an adult, it is hard to parse.

[01:14:22] OK, they live on the head of a giant demon man who is their father. His belly is a theme park for dead souls. Yes. Their job is he's insecure about his hair loss. So they have to rub magic hair cream into his skull. Correct.

[01:14:41] And then they grow his hair back and then they realize that the magic hair cream has the ability to bring the dead back to life because it is the cure for baldness. We don't have in our society that fully brings things 100 percent back to life that are dead.

[01:14:56] It can be used not just on dead hair cells. It can be used on full living creatures. Any soul that has died. But here's the other thing. And all that is communicated like just hit the ground running. But you're forgetting something. Yeah. Not just all that.

[01:15:08] They all secretly harbor a desire to make their own amusement park. And that's sort of their quest. Right. Their reason for wanting to leave Belzer's hair and or chest. Also the reason they realize that the hair cream has the ability to bring the dead back

[01:15:26] to life is because Wendell is peel. Wendell is key and Wild is peel. Wild has been eating the cream because it gets him high. Yeah. It makes him feel all tingly. It makes his tummy feel all tingly. Right. Yes. Incredibly complicated. Yes.

[01:15:45] Now that obviously Wild is a sort of like round and sort of cheerful guy and Wendell is kind of wiry and a little more antagonistic. Yes. And Wendell's got it. What's interesting is it's like the same dynamic because it doesn't feel like this was the

[01:15:59] default dynamic they had on the show. No, they would switch. Right. They were good at it. Toy Story 4 gives them basically the exact same dynamic where the one guy's the motor mouth high strung idea man.

[01:16:11] We got to do this and the other guys kind of like the good natured stoner. They're so funny in Toy Story 4. I think they're so funny. Those characters work so well. And when that first fucking teaser came out it was them doing the Liam Neeson shit.

[01:16:24] You were like oh Jesus Christ. You were like come on is this what this fucking movie's gonna be? It wasn't anything wrong with what they were doing. It was just sort of like that's all they've got is just like. They're literally just adopting. It's Key and Peel. Right.

[01:16:34] It's Key and Peel. Like why do I need this? Ducky and Bunny Hat. They're really funny. And I think they're funny in this too but it also starts out and you're like wait so they're the villains in this? That's kind of surprising to make them the villains.

[01:16:46] Does that limit how funny they can be? And then the more the movie goes on you're like they're kind of innocents. Yes. They're not innocent. Like they do bad things. But they're babes in the wood. They don't really know what they're doing.

[01:17:00] Unlike Beetlejuice who like operates from a place of pure malevolence. Right. And Beetlejuice is the classic like don't make a bargain with a demon. Of course. That guy has his own ulterior motives. Right. They do too but their ulterior motive is to make an amusement park.

[01:17:14] This is the thing. That's what they really wanted to do. I think this is one of the many things Henry Selk is trying to work through in this movie is like they are artists. Right. Yes. They have this vision of this thing they want to do.

[01:17:26] They have these paper cutouts. Yes. And it's about how much other people will enjoy it. They want to share this with other people. But unfortunately their chosen artistic medium involves so much financial capital. Yeah.

[01:17:40] That the only way to get the thing made is to make Faustian bargains with horrible people. You have to align yourself with the worst institutions old money sort of cover your eyes and not look at like who's getting thrown into the furnace in order to allow your funding

[01:17:56] to go through. Right. And so this whole thing they start like align themselves with these horrible cultural forces because they're like but ultimately the theme park will make people happy. Right.

[01:18:07] It's worth it if and it's like this is being made by a guy who is his chosen artistic medium is so expensive. Yeah. So time and labor intensive. Right. That the ask is so huge to get it off the ground. There's always going to be something vaguely unethical.

[01:18:25] You're going to have to make a deal with the devil in some way. Yes. Yeah. So you got one zone while they're eating magic hair cream. They want to make an amusement park. They live inside someone's hair does really sound like we're just saying gibberish. Right.

[01:18:38] And they were the thing especially in those early scenes where I truly was just sort of like when remember I hadn't slept but I was like I must have missed something like especially as a lover like you're just like yeah I don't get it. What is this.

[01:18:52] It's also been enough time since I think I forgot like Henry Suck films always have an underworld. Yeah that's just accepted. We don't need to even think about the fact that there's an under but this is why it's

[01:19:03] all the more disorienting is because let's back up like seven minutes. The first seven minutes of this film are like about as grounded as Selick ever gets. Yeah I mean is it seven really the whole you mean her family. Yeah. Is it that long. I was scanning.

[01:19:18] I watched it again last night. Yeah. I think it's about seven minutes before the proper introduction of Wendell and Wilde on the head. Right. So you start with the cold open in the car. The car crashes into the water. She's listening to X-Ray specs on the radio. Yeah.

[01:19:33] I mean the whole fucking soundtrack is absolutely amazing. Wall to wall punk soundtrack. Yes. Cat. Her parents own a root beer brewery in Rust Bank. Right. That's the name of the town. It's kind of like incredible revitalized town with this active art scene. Local businesses. Yeah.

[01:19:52] And she sees a worm a two headed worm in her apple. Yeah. But there is a fair like look the fair every this town works. We've done it. We brought such life. We've created a community. They've referenced the buyout in this opening to the Klax corp. Yeah. Yes.

[01:20:10] Right. And her surprise at the hour she yells the dad gets distracted they drive off the bridge the parents die. She's blame herself. The kid blames themselves. Yes. Very Roald Dahl. Right. She is now an embittered punky juvenile.

[01:20:24] The opening credits happen over her escaping from the car rising to the surface. Her parents are dead. Right. And then she names her demons and then we meet her demons. But then it's like she's going to.

[01:20:35] She says in the narration like everyone has their demon mine have names. And you're like I'm sorry where did the demons come into this. Then you go back to like family friend driving her in a van to the girls school that she has to go to. Yes.

[01:20:50] They take her out of a juvie. Right. And they pick her up and basically is like this is your last chance. You have to make this work. I made a promise to your parents. She shows up at the school.

[01:21:01] All Girls Catholic School run by an elderly Asian priest played by James Hong who's always walking on a treadmill. Great performance. He's really funny in this. Really. I love him in this. I mean I think he's just always so funny. Arguably the true villain of this movie.

[01:21:18] One of the Klax corp guys. The Klax. He's way up there though. Well but he's kind of. He sort of is like just a more advanced thing where he's like he just wants his. He's so in bed with bad people. He will excuse. To keep the school running.

[01:21:32] Right. Permit anything. And she is sort of like they're getting money for her to go to the school right. Like it's sort of part of it. Like you know she's like almost like a work release.

[01:21:41] Which is all I mean it's it ties into the whole thing this film wants to say about for profit prisons and everything. But yes this school is like the last part of this town that is in any way alive.

[01:21:54] And even they are basically hemorrhaging money and by taking in this juvenile delinquent they they accept money as you know whatever. To be her guardians in a way. Kat meets three preppy girls. The main one is called Siobhan.

[01:22:12] She's voiced by Tamara Smart who's on the worst witch and other various things. But she is the daughter of the Claxons who are the heads of this private prison company that run the town. What a great performance playing black Trump. Yes.

[01:22:27] And Maxine Peake who I think a lot of people in Britain would know. She's in Shameless. She's in Dinner Lady. She's in lots of things. Incredible character designs. Yes. She is sort of the Joanna Lumley character design. Like you know again he loves a long spindly woman. Right.

[01:22:44] Jennifer Saunders. She's always the ghoulish woman over made up overly made up. Right. Yeah. They like Kat because partly because Kat saves one of them from a falling brick. Like by the court. The three three young girls. Yes.

[01:22:59] Which Raul knocks up when it was a trans boy who goes to the boarding school and is sort of isolated away from everyone else. He's he's separate but right. But like what I just kind of liked it like they're not bullies really. Yeah.

[01:23:11] They're kind of like hey welcome to Click and Kat's like not interested. Right. I don't want to do it. But I like that they're like basically friendly. And I think this whole like it's it's similar to the sort of the boredom sequences and core

[01:23:24] line where everyone's kind to Kat. Right. Yeah. As prickly as she is. Quiet sadness. She has a cool boombox with a big eye on it. It was her dad's boombox. Very cool. That this family friend has given back to him.

[01:23:37] Ben surely you love this boombox with a big bloodshot eye on it. Yeah absolutely. It's like so fucking customized and fucking like the the era of boomboxes when it was like you know huge and it was like a statement that you would walk around with. Love it.

[01:23:54] Like that's the family heirloom. Yeah. You know it's not like she's got to lock it with her parents and or whatever. It's like her dad's cool customized painted boombox and just like his his cassette tapes his collection of his like punk like very specific 80s new wave.

[01:24:12] You have two x-ray spec songs. You have X as well. Right. There's I just had the soundtrack brought up here. OK so you have death freaking out. Yeah. I'm sorry I was thinking of death. You have the specials goes down with rules.

[01:24:29] Fishbone of course which also there's a lot of fishbone sort of merch featured throughout right. T-shirt and then you know TV on the radio for the big final sequence. Of course. Yes.

[01:24:43] And there's even some newer bands to the one I won the shout out special interests a great band their song Young Gifted Black and Leather fucking rules. Yeah it's killer. It's really good. This is the thing though Griffin it's like the amount of characters because it's like

[01:24:59] she goes to the school who's at the school. James Hong is the administrator of the school Angela Bassett is a kindly nun at the school. There's three girls who are kind of a click.

[01:25:09] Then there's you know Raul who is separate from them but is also becomes friend to Kat. There's the old Jewish demonologist in the basement. Correct played by an Israeli actor named Egal now or and a puppet that Manberg deals specifically modeled after late period Marlon Brando. Right.

[01:25:29] Or something like that. It's a distinctive look. Yeah. Perfect example when when Hallie the nun goes to Hallie goes to see him and she's like Come on you know like I know you need to collect your thing. I'm just like again did I miss something. Was this addressed.

[01:25:44] Who is this. It feels like if in the opening this is Halloween sequence of Nightmare Before Christmas instead of being a song it was 10 minutes of dialogue across 18 scenes where they tried to set

[01:25:54] up each of the denizens of the town as if they had an important plot function. And you're like why am I tracking the melting man in the suit. And then here are some other background. Everyone's being put like given a sense of importance that you cannot understand Raul's

[01:26:10] mother Mariana who's voiced by Natalie Martinez is like convinced cut out to her with her fucking yes she's got the claxons burned down the root beer factory years ago and she's trying to figure that out. She's like on the city council or whatever.

[01:26:25] Then there's the character you mentioned before I think her name is Miss Hunter who's played by Tantoo Cardinal really good performance. Yeah. Who's you know she's you know First Nations from Canada like she's sort of floating around she's like an old friend who's there to help out.

[01:26:40] There's just like this vast web of characters who are all somewhat connected. Even later you introduce like the doctor who's on the board along with Raul's mom and then like the dead. I won't get to that right.

[01:26:53] It's a lot like so when you cut to Buffalo Bowser's head seven minutes in right it's almost disorienting now to have the movie slow down to like Henry Selick pure vibes where you're like now this movie is operating on like it's breakneck.

[01:27:12] Yes no no it is because up until this point been very plotty and Selick is not a plotty filmmaker he's so much more about mood and characters. And I think his he tells stories his stories have movements but he's not really concerned about plot mechanics by and large.

[01:27:30] Right. We talk about something like James the Giant Peach is very picker ask right before Christmas has like one major objective that everyone's right. And then this is just so much plot right where you're just like has he fucking lost it.

[01:27:43] Does we haven't even gotten to that like she then gets a skull on her hand which is a sign that's what I was going to say. Yeah like it's already complicated. Yes. And then on top of it you're supposed to get your head around how this demon relationship

[01:27:58] works. Right. Which is really complicated and not anything like you've heard before. It's not like even like pull no it's not from reference material anyway. A hellmaiden. Yes which is a thing you can be. Yes. And that comes with a unique power. But that's different for everybody. Yes.

[01:28:17] So you get a skull on your hand and a connection to the underworld of some sort. Right. So now she has these designated demons which she doesn't know about. They know about her all of a sudden. Right. And Wendell and Wilde didn't force this connection.

[01:28:29] No they just identify her when they're like in a dream with her. Basically opens up and then they go oh we could use her to our ends to help make our theme park thing a reality. Well no you forget it's the Belzebear. Then she steals a stuffed bear.

[01:28:45] Because the bear is like some kind of weird possessed connection to the demon world. She like burns the hand on the bear. Yeah it is funny. It is like I need to like there's a couple times the camera like zooms in on the bears

[01:28:55] and pass if it's kind of funny. Yeah. But like she summons Wendell and Wilde using the bear and her hell powers. There's that great shot of them like coming up from underneath and then like they go like

[01:29:06] you know like that like this like thing comes down and it like diverts them like they're like a little anvil. That's when they're actually rising up to the level. That's what I'm saying she gets them. She summons them.

[01:29:15] But there's that conversation the first time she has the conversation with them. They're like in a dream. Right. And it's like I think what they've done is built giant puppets of just their heads because

[01:29:25] it looks like the faces are articulated rather than it being like replacement face animation. It looks like there's a giant rubber face and they are individually animating the lips and things like that. They look humongous.

[01:29:39] I know when they at the end of the movie they're all in Buffalo Belzer's hand. Yes. And they built that to scale. Yeah. They're not cheating and putting like smaller versions of the characters in a smaller hand. The hand is like 15 feet tall.

[01:29:52] And you see some in the credits some of the you know classic behind the scenes stuff of like those big puppets in the hand which is really cool. You see the post credits thing where she's like it's great. It's really cute.

[01:30:05] But that's the weird work from home thing. Anyway. So yes they rise up. They basically realize we have this cream. They promise we will revive your parents. We have that power to her. That's how they're getting it.

[01:30:18] First they say to her like help us start our amusement park. She's like you need to help bring my parents back to life. They're like we can't do that. She's like the no deal. They realize they have the cream.

[01:30:32] They're going to get in trouble if they use it. There's the whole sequence where they put it on the bug that's squashed and they keep like reconstituting the bug. Very fun. Your brain is switching between like left brain right brain shit because anytime you're

[01:30:44] caught up in the world of the town it's very literal. It's very like angry political pointed stuff. Yeah. Yes. I mean there's a trans character and so it's like there's just a lot of different like themes and topics going on.

[01:31:00] Versus when we're in the underworld it's like crazy cartoon logic flights of fancy Henry Salkin caught up on visual ideas. Like I love it. It just needs to show that I'm like who is Buffalo Belzer. What is his role in like the spirit world.

[01:31:14] If anything or is he just chilling. Here's the thing we don't ask these same questions of someone like Oogie Boogie. No because he's the boogeyman. It also helps that like Nightmare Before Christmas doesn't start with 10 minutes of like the political infrastructure of a small town.

[01:31:29] But this is the whole thing. I want to clear. I like this movie too but it is. I had forgotten and you know and then I rewatched the movie. I'm like right. The whole city council plot. Yeah right.

[01:31:41] The movie begins with her parents dying but then when we return to her there are characters who are like in the intervening years the factory burned down and we want to deal with that. I'm like why do I care about this town has died there no way.

[01:31:53] But it's all part of this sort of like right. This civic loss. Yes. Like this town was good. Now it's bad. It's been taken over by this prison this private prison. Is it sort of trying to be like Troy adjacent ish. Is that what we feel like.

[01:32:08] Maybe I don't because I just it's hard again to like I said there are many examples. He said like my wife was like Rust Belt. I just because like the whole idea is like cat is sort of maybe on the road to like oh

[01:32:22] she'll end up in one of these private prisons right. She's a juvie already. She's on this sort of like no one's going to help her. She herself is caught up in the headspace of I'm doomed. Who should save me.

[01:32:34] I don't deserve to be like even when people reach out a helping hand to her she's like I'm a fucking lost cause. Absolutely. But yes the brief glimpse of the town you get at the beginning of the movie feels like a utopia. It was once right.

[01:32:48] And then it is this notion of like what systems in place stopped this. Why wasn't this allowed to thrive. Why wasn't this allowed to exist. So first they revive James Hong's character Father Best who has been murdered by the Claxons. Yes. Or getting too close to there.

[01:33:07] They kill him early like in an insane quick. Yes. Without thinking about it too much way. Right. Like they're playing golf with him and then they kill him because he was the last witness to the factory fire and they drown him.

[01:33:23] Wendell and Wilde bring him back to life and then something they need him to approve where he makes the crack about. Well you're not going to get those votes unless we get those members come back to life of the board. Yeah.

[01:33:35] I know whatever their newest maybe something bigger prison. Yeah. Yeah. But he plants that idea. And again in the middle of all this it's been established that Cat is a hellmaiden. It's been established that there's a guy in the basement of the school who hunts demons

[01:33:48] and puts them in bottles. This movie is just basically for the first 15 minutes saying let's just put a pin in this and we'll come back to it over and over and over again. And you're starting to go like guys too much.

[01:34:00] I'm looking at a lot of pins on the wall and I'm holding a plate with a lot of drinks and it's wobbling. Right. They bring back Father Best they paint his face with makeup which is funny really funny. He is a living corpse but he is basically himself.

[01:34:13] Yes. Sort of works. Yeah. I love how when he comes back he's like yes I've returned. Yes. I'm here again. Don't worry about it. It's just very silly and it's starting to get more fun. Yes.

[01:34:27] You know like now we're getting into it because now it becomes the thing of reviving the dead. They realize in talking to him they're not gonna be able to open their theme park unless they get approval. Yeah. To build on the land. Right. Which they can only do.

[01:34:41] They too need the dead board members. They need to revive the dead members of the city council. Yes. The Claxton's are like well we need them for our thing but they can also vote for your thing. Right. And so Wendell and Wilder are like OK.

[01:34:57] And so they bring them back and it's very funny. Yes. Because they are old beyond old. Skeleton. They're skeleton people and they're all different. One of them is like a fucking admiral. They're from different times. Right. They all have different outfits. Yes. And it's such a clever idea.

[01:35:15] It's an idea that makes me laugh so much. Yes. I mean let's say if you brought back New York City Council from like the 18th century and there was someone was like well there's nothing in the book that says they aren't voting members.

[01:35:28] I guess they have to be listened to. It's funny. It's very funny. Where's Cat in all this. Cat also makes them swear some kind of bond to her. Yes. By mistake. Well she's trying to revive her own parents. I know but they're not dealing with that. No.

[01:35:44] It's sort of hard to eat the bread. Rowell needs to be her witness. And there are things like revive Wendell and Wilde. That's what she needs. But it's like sometimes they'll just throw out a piece of information where you're like

[01:35:57] and you need a witness and it's like why. I understand why you're doing this. All right whatever. You need another character to that's the thing. No that's the thing when she revives them. That's the whole thing. They get diverted by that weird right.

[01:36:11] And so they don't show up in the wrong place. She doesn't interact. So she doesn't even see them. They bring back best. Then they bring back the council members. The council members start to cause havoc. But then Rowell steals the cream.

[01:36:23] Seeing how it works and revives her parents himself. Rowell witnessed all of it happen because Rowell's on the top of the building on the top of the church or whatever. I mean this is our friends at Podcast the Ride just did an episode on the Kingdom Hearts franchise.

[01:36:36] Did they? Oh I should listen to that. It's really great. And they despite being like theme park people in Disney you know people obsessed with the Disney company all the sort of shit had never touched Kingdom Hearts.

[01:36:47] And it was a thing where like the listeners were like you have to do an episode trying to wade through this mythology. And a lot of the episodes the fun of Scott just reading through the rules of the lore

[01:36:58] of Kingdom Heart which is so much more confusing than you could ever imagine it to be. Great episode. Everyone subscribe for the second gig. Worth it. But it's a similar thing where you just have to accept every time they tell you and of

[01:37:10] course this happens because of this. In this world the heartless of course manifest in different worlds. Each tenant of a person's heart is represented by a different princess. They all exist in different places like you know. You're just like that's what it the hell made thing.

[01:37:25] Those are the rules because those are the rules. Those are the rules because those are the rules. Exactly. So the parents do come back. Yes. And they are nice. Yes. But of course the fundamental thing about this is like the cream only works for so long and

[01:37:38] there's only so much of it. They realize this. This is not an infinite thing. Right. There's the great scene where Pat goes back to her childhood home and it's like her finally being willing to revisit the trauma and they're there. Yes.

[01:37:51] And it's like both the exact thing she's always dreamed of and the most nightmarish version of it possible where her parents are corpse people who just woke up and are like what the fuck happened to everything. Yes. She still has barely interacted with Wendell and Wile. Correct.

[01:38:05] And we're like more than halfway into the movie. Right. It's an hour and 45 minutes long. Yeah. You're like this. And the credits are fairly long. And then they split off into two halves that barely touch each other and they just seemingly

[01:38:16] keep on adding more things to the plate. And then there's the moment where the whole thing fucking finally clicks. Yeah. Which I think is when the daughter goes and confronts her parents. Yeah. It's like Siobhan goes to see her parents. She discovers their lies. Right.

[01:38:30] I guess like they're like oh these private prisons are nice. And it's like no you pack in more people you get more money. You know it's like. You get money from the government. Google the prison industrial complex. Bella's. Right.

[01:38:42] It doesn't benefit anyone to have a town with a thriving black community. It does not help anyone to have an art scene. It does not help anyone. But it's also like we don't care about rehabilitating people in these prisons. That's the biggest thing.

[01:38:55] Having them in here is the money. Oh no. These people are fucking monsters. Yes. They look at human beings in a way that like it's alarming. Yeah but luckily this is a fantasy. It's a fantasy film with no basis in reality. No of course not.

[01:39:09] No I mean it's like it's I mean I'm glad they're spot like he spotlighted this. It's a very interesting thing to make a film. But holy shit. They're like look if the if the prisons were successful in rehabilitating people we'd go out of business.

[01:39:23] The town cannot have any health to it because then you are giving people opportunities to build lives for themselves rather than having to do these people eat babies. That's how bad they're horrendous. I like couldn't rewatch it and I'm like just seeing these characters have a daughter and

[01:39:43] exist and like have a life. I'm like these are true monsters. And they also they they deliver this to her in a like we're finally ready to teach you about the family business. Like it's not even delivered as this like villains like great Ozymandias and here's

[01:39:59] the whole time you know like secret thing. It's like I think you're old enough to understand the great way that we make a lot of money. They're so embarrassed by what they're saying and they're like it's about to get better. Right.

[01:40:11] So at some point Hallie and men Manberg man. Yes because Hallie has at this point confessed to Kat that she too is a hell. Yeah but she's spending the whole movie being like you have to listen to me I know how this

[01:40:24] works and Kat's like I don't want to listen to you. But they eventually are like you need to sever your ties with Wendell and Wilde who you've barely interacted with. But you've made a promise to them you're so therefore you're sworn to them.

[01:40:39] So you have to undo that which is intense. Yes. And in doing that she kind of finally is like getting over the parents death. This incredible sequence where they like essentially have to make like a blood pact right.

[01:40:50] Bind their hands together by remit their two demon hands and then you have this extended like shadow puppet sequence which is really cool that is like Kat living through the basic car accident the car accident but also like the things that put her in juvenile detention. Right.

[01:41:07] There's the sort of like accidental like death or injury with the staircase. There's all this sort of stuff that makes her feel like she is not worthy of rehabilitation which is you know the whole other thing this movie is into just like creating the mindset

[01:41:22] in people that they don't deserve better that there is no other outcome for them that there is no way for them to ever build a better life for themselves. You don't want to give people hope and Kat has so fully bought into this right into that

[01:41:35] sort of way right that she is forced to like accept that. And I think it's what is interesting is this movie doesn't want to wave some magic wand and go everything is fixed no one did anything wrong. Everything's good.

[01:41:49] Many of the good characters in this movie have both good and bad qualities and have done bad things for good reasons and good things for bad reasons and what have you.

[01:41:59] You have like the fucking Klaxons who are monsters who deserve to die in the fiery pits of hell but like they don't go like Kat was framed. No no I suppose you're right. Yeah sure sure sure. No she's not in this whatever she's I mean she's a child.

[01:42:15] Yes yes. Yes. And she's had a hard go. Her parents died. She got put into like you know the foster system system. This is what the whole fucking movie is about. Whole system is bad. It feeds off of people giving in and giving up.

[01:42:30] You know yeah in severing her connection with Wendell she gains full access to her precognitive powers. Yes. How he is also kind of like left kind of dead not dead but like she's like depleted by the ritual right. Like she's right. Yes. Right. Yeah.

[01:42:48] Once again there's a way we take this 10 watches of this movie to be able to. I've seen it three times. I watched it kind of recently and I just like cannot know what happens is Wendell and Wilde steal her parents. They take them to the cemetery.

[01:43:02] Siobhan realizes that the money the Klaxons have been promising Wendell and Wilde as seed money for their amusement park is like fake money. It's like Klaxon bucks right. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And then like Leo Belzer finally bursts out of the ground right.

[01:43:19] Having been like searching for his lost demons. Yes. But then there's like a mural that Raul has painted. Yes. That he's been working on for the whole movie. Correct. That convinces him like they're not so bad my kids like and so he's not going to like

[01:43:35] squish them he's going to make makeup for them. Right. And there's also this realization of you have chased all your other children away. Yes right. Because Wendell and Wilde are like his last two children. You've tried to force your own wills.

[01:43:49] You tried to force your children into being you rather than letting them be who they want to be and follow their own bliss. These are the last two. And he's like I need to love my sons for who they are. I need to accept it.

[01:44:02] I'm not going to be angry at them using this cream to revive the dead. Oh by the way you know the cream doesn't really work the hair falls out like almost right. The cream is temporary.

[01:44:13] So this is when they find out oh everyone's going to go back to being dead. Best dies again and the but it's also revealed that the many jarred demons that Manberg has been collecting are Belzer's children. So they are released. Right.

[01:44:27] So they can make this sort of deal of like they can I don't know not sedate but they can they can appeal to Buffalo Belzer by reuniting him with the family he thought he had lost. Jesus this movie is so complicated.

[01:44:41] Then there's the big sequence with the bulldozers right where the bulldozers are going to demolish the town. Well the other thing is they realize they only have a certain amount of cream left. So do you use that first instinct to get extra time with your parents.

[01:44:53] But Raul is like well we could use this to like get no testimony. The dad is the one who says yeah that's the one who does it isn't it. I don't know. Yeah. He's the one who basically says like we have loved every minute we've had with you.

[01:45:06] Yeah. So we're going to go away eventually no matter what you could use the last cream you have to do something to bring this town back to life forever. So let's get the testimony of the people who were in the fire at the Burg.

[01:45:23] So they go to like revive the three witnesses to the fire who are dead. Yes. To testify against the Klax Corp. This bulldozer fight that's awesome. This bulldozer fight that's a lot of fun. It's to the TV on the radio.

[01:45:38] It's the big sort of final sequence member whipping ass in his wheelchair. Is there a yes or anything else to it. It's just it just looks cool. Yeah. It's just like tons of bulldozers going and cat before her parents die uses her psychic

[01:45:53] powers to show them the nice future that Russ Bank is going to have. Yeah. And Wendell and Wilde say they can have VIP passes to their afterlife amusement park which they they pop up in their pop up book Buffalo Bells gets it.

[01:46:07] He sees the VTC approves your book. Normal movie very normal. It's sort of about prison. It's about parenting your loss graph correctly Griffin this sort of thing of like you have to let things go. You have to you know let your kids be different from you.

[01:46:25] You might have to you know make bed with the wrong people but you have to keep a hold of yourself. And you have things running through it but then it also is kind of like every 10 minutes you're like well I'm very engaged by how complicated this is. Yeah.

[01:46:37] And I think some people maybe are like this is too complicated for me. I don't think this movie has any dead ends. I don't think it has you know like split hairs and frayed edges or whatever you know like nothing about it feels incomplete.

[01:46:53] It's just one of those things. There are movies you know I find more often they're like the world's biggest sci fi blockbusters that some people will slam for being corny or overwritten or underwritten or whatever the fuck right. Right. That you and I will defend adamantly.

[01:47:12] And there are things like Inception or Avatar where you're like you know what you if you're going to make this movie work and you're going to get to the pure pleasure and joy of these

[01:47:22] triumphant virtuoso final act and a half set pieces you need to just have a lot of inelegant clumsy ham fisted exposition to set up the rules of this universe. You're just going to have an hour of making us eat vegetables just shoving it down our

[01:47:39] throat because then you can get to the point where you don't have to explain anything further. And Wendell Wall is a movie that operates like that for almost all of its running time. I would say it works in spite of itself a little bit.

[01:47:51] I fully but I also support that in spite of itself. This me too. That makes sense to me too. But it is that thing where it's like the whole movie is Inception style explaining to you

[01:48:02] this is a kick and this is a totem and this is my history and my wife was this and all of that. And you're doing it on like a surprisingly big canvas for an hour and 40 minute animated film narratively big canvas.

[01:48:16] When you saw it at Toronto after a perfect night's sleep and I asked you how it was you said I think it's kind of great. It's got a lot of ideas.

[01:48:27] And that's the thing I just keep on going back to where it's just like it's got no shortage of ideas. I think it's great. I'm a big I do too. And I think most movies like this where it's like oh they had too many ideas.

[01:48:39] You you feel the excess fat. You feel like this was a thing from a draft from five drafts ago that no longer has any place in this movie and it doesn't tie into anything else.

[01:48:50] It takes a very long time for him to properly weave all the threads but I do think it is cohesive by the end of the movie. I agree. I felt satisfied at the end of the movie. I did too. A little exhausted. Me too.

[01:49:05] Ben and I saw it in theaters. You did. It was playing at the quad for like five days on advertise. There was one other person in the theater and we walked out and we were like pretty fucking invigorated by it. Yeah.

[01:49:15] Like just talking about the the actual things it is saying about society. Absolutely. It's also a diverse animated movie. Yeah. Which felt really like special. Thumbs up to Salak. Absolutely. The way they deal with being trans feels very like understated. Yeah.

[01:49:39] You know the stupid reactionary fucking go woke up broke shit that people complain about. I think what is more often a problem is when like movies want to pat themselves on the back for being progressive while making well actually doing the film right.

[01:49:56] And this is just like it's a reality of the movie. It's basically like stated only through context clues you know. Yeah. There's there's I mean the idea I think is Raul was once part of the clique. Yes. And now now it feels different and alienated. And that's complicated.

[01:50:13] And you know Cat feels that way too. There's a connection there. That's interesting. It feels alienated. To be clear. Yeah. Do we say what happens though to the Claxton's they get arrested. They get arrested because the corpses testify against them. Right.

[01:50:26] But I think the detail I just want to spotlight is that they like go against each other. Oh yeah. They immediately turn on each other because they're the fucking worst people on the fucking planet. They won't sell out. Right. Right. Like immediate immediately. Yes. I don't know.

[01:50:44] I think they're great. Yeah. I think they should have interesting ideas. Yeah. Right. And they deserve a platform. You know Selleck has said that his future he is he's vague about it. He's basically like look I've got some things I want to do.

[01:50:55] I had a feature I almost did a like maybe I'll go back to that. He knows he can't wait 13 years. Right. And he says I kind of like the streaming aspect because I don't have to live and die by the opening weekend.

[01:51:05] You know I'm hopeful that that will be helpful. He has the rights back to the Shadow King. He's got that sort of game in ocean at the end of the lane thing that he's thinking about.

[01:51:15] He at least he knows he can't take forever if he wants to do another finish like that is huge for him because I think the shadow thing thing for so long just felt like they

[01:51:26] won't even let him start something again because the idea of having to take a 50 million dollar write off on an unfinished chunk of movie is what's scaring everyone else from giving him the green light. What a cool title. Yeah.

[01:51:40] The Shadow King but I will say on the pessimistic side there is just that fear of like wow this movie didn't really feel like it broke through. At all. And I don't think that's like the death of stop motion because I do think like Guillermo's

[01:51:51] movie is breaking through a little more. Yeah. There's still a lot of love for that look. I think America has another project on the way but I do wonder if people will just kind

[01:52:00] of be like well there are people who are a little easier to deal with than you than Henry Selick. You know than you Henry Selick. I'll say this I don't mean to put the pressure on any sense of I don't know cultural societal

[01:52:14] obligation but you and I were just talking about how Marcel the shell with shoes on has seemingly become the critics choice for animated. We both feel like Pinocchio is probably going to be the front runner for the Oscar but at least with critics groups. Would be my guess.

[01:52:30] Marcel seems to be popular. Yes. This does feel like a movie that needs some people getting behind it and championing it just to remind people that it exists or let them know for the first time that it exists. Yes. I mean I hope it gets an Oscar nomination.

[01:52:43] I would say right now that is maybe. It is wild that it's on the cusp because this should be a locked. I think there are three locks. In a year with that was generally pretty bad for animation the fact that this movie

[01:52:55] is not a lock is pretty damning of Netflix. You think there are three locks you think the three locks are turning red Pinocchio and when and Marcel I think Marcel is probably I think now Marcel is. And then I think I would I would put Wendell forth. Yeah.

[01:53:13] And I would put either like the sea beast which a lot of people liked on Netflix. Big hit seemingly for them. Or whatever that means. Don't make fun of me. I hear a lot of good things about Puss in Boots the last wish.

[01:53:24] Apparently Puss in Boots the last wish rips. I remember I was like I was going to something with Erlich and he was like Emma Stefanski gave the Puss in Boots movie like an A minus for us and I was like I hear it's good. It's supposedly good.

[01:53:36] So maybe that there are other things like Lightyear and Strange World that didn't really connect their stuff like the bad guys that kind of like did all right. I mean I think Mad God obviously should be nominated but that feels fringy. That would be my favorite. Me too.

[01:53:50] It'd be great to see three stop motion films. But this is the thing I voted for Mad God at the Critics Circle because I was like well that's the thing I really agree. And then Wendell I was sort of my second. More movies should go down.

[01:54:02] I don't like how movies are always going forward. I'm just realizing with Marcel basically is stop motion primarily you could have a good category where four out of the five nominees were stop motion. Yeah it's possible. And they would show a pretty diverse range of films.

[01:54:18] That would be my five. But it's also a lot of work. That's the thing. I mean watching that documentary like the claim you know. Gotta watch Claydrian David. It's just like I'm like what drives a person.

[01:54:28] What kind of person do you have to be to want to do that. And Wilvin was working in fucking clay. Yeah. Like that shit like melts and it smushes. You knock it over the whole thing's totally smushed. Crazy. Yeah.

[01:54:41] It's just you have to really be a certain kind of person to just like be willing to just like sit there and meticulously. All these guys. And it's like Phil Tippett Will Vinton Henry Selick. They're all different types of people.

[01:54:54] The one commonality here with them is like and then they go into some weird Zen flow state when they're animated. I think the key word is you have to be a fucking weirdo. You have to be a fucking weirdo. Big time. Yeah.

[01:55:04] Let's play the box off skin before we wrap up this series and announce our next series and do our rankings. OK. Number one. No merch for this movie. Another thing that makes you feel like Netflix.

[01:55:14] I understand that in some sense just because this movie was supposed to come out two years ago. Like maybe they were just like this is too big a movie target. The only way in which I'm surprised is that it's like a visually this movie looks so great.

[01:55:25] The designs are so great and all the characters and be the amount of money Selick movies have made from merch. For there not to be anything like not to be fucking T-shirts with these characters on or

[01:55:37] whatever you're like Coraline stuff is still lining fucking hot topic a store that basically exists as a testament to Jack Skellington. Yeah. I have one no. I wanted to read. OK. This is Republicans dream for our future. Ancient races vote for our future. Yeah.

[01:55:54] It is pretty funny if the Republicans were like no no no no we're very reasonable party and we revived several members from the 19th century. We don't know exactly what our founding forefathers intended because we brought them back right

[01:56:05] here and there's a skeleton going like number one at the box office on October 21st 2022 which is the weekend this movie was nominally released. No box office figures reported right most successful film of all time. The most successful movie of all time. Give me the weekend again. Sorry.

[01:56:23] October 21st 2022 most successful film ever made the most successful seats ever. Of course. Of course. Is this weekend one or two one coming out this week. Black Adam. Yep. Which opened to I'm seeing here infinity money just a little eight on its side. It's funny.

[01:56:41] I'm seeing a different report here. It says it was number one with pure profit. I should have called it in the black. I look because it got there immediately. Look 67 million dollars a lot of people would just take the W of having a big opening weekend

[01:56:58] for your big movie. Other people would throw a two month hissy fit on Twitter about it and eventually leak financial documents to a blog to prove that yes they made money definitely profit. And basically the documents reveal that the projections that within five years eventually

[01:57:16] the total make profit money to be made. And by the way half of that profit is the amount of money that Warner Brothers pays itself through HBO Max. People were just so I was like that's how always how they and they control like the fucking

[01:57:32] companies that own the billboard space so they pay themselves to buy billboards and TV ads and welcome to late capitalists. This was the funniest thing I want to dig into this. I'm sorry but just smoking gun.

[01:57:43] I can't remember if it was Harry Potter five or six but the smoking gun website like 10 years ago got the full like P&L accounts of half blood prints or order the Phoenix or

[01:57:56] whatever the fuck it was and just explained the way that Warner Brothers made it seem as if that movie lost one hundred and fifty million dollars so that they didn't have to pay out profit participation. This is why I like this.

[01:58:09] I think some people like what a pansy move by the rock to release. He's the ultimate candy to release you know doc you know basically like to leak stuff to a deadline to basically prove the black and made some money. I'm like this is good.

[01:58:24] A movie like Black Adam that was an objective failure. Yes that makes money. This is the thing that we need to start acknowledging the Hollywood refused. They'll be like oh well the business is in trouble. It's like no you can release dog shit. Yes.

[01:58:38] No applause and make money. Well well if you restore the like sort of multi-tenth world release if you just punt the thing is streaming you don't. Yeah. I mean David I agree. Don't you like money you fucks someone on our Reddit brought up when Tom Hanks and Bobby

[01:58:59] Z. Yep we're on early Roche promoting Polar Express and so many of the headlines around that movie were that it was so fucking expensive and they were like are you worried. And Zemeckis just broke down like it is basically impossible for a studio movie to lose money. Yes.

[01:59:15] That was at the time where DVD sales were so strong that they would push any movie into profit right. And then it's like and then you sell to pay TV and then you sell the network TV DVD and then whatever.

[01:59:25] And all these compressed windows shrunk the ability for any movie to go back into the black and Black Adam shows you like right. If you go through all the steps you make money eventually. Anyway number two at the box office opening against Black Adam a fairly successful movie

[01:59:42] star movie a ticket to paradise. Yeah what's the worldwide total on that. The worldwide. Well domestically it's up to 70. It's up to 66 67. So get to 70. Yeah. And worldwide I want to say it made a full hundo. Exactly it's made one hundred seventy million dollars. Yeah.

[01:59:59] It just kind of looked like a fake movie. Yeah exactly. It doesn't look like it's real money. Ben it is real. It feels like a fake. Yeah. Watching it is probably the most disappointing film I've seen all year because I wanted

[02:00:09] nothing more than for that film to be a gentleman six. And you're like four and a half. Yeah. It's maybe a five. I'm being generous. Wow. But I am happy that exists and I'm happy this is final. More of this please.

[02:00:21] Here's another film number three at the box office in its fourth week and it's made 84 million dollars on a small budget. What's the film smile smile. I'm just so pissed off that in the last six weeks. Yes.

[02:00:33] Like industry reporting is sort of turned back to like I don't know man I think this whole thing might be cooked. It's like fuck you. It's been a whole year of success. Smile suddenly they're like I don't know. I mean like this one movie isn't clicking.

[02:00:45] I strange world. I think it's over guys. Might as well just put it all on streaming. That was going to go straight to Paramount plus. It sure was. It's screened at a horror festival. They were like surprisingly good response. Should we take a flyer on this one.

[02:00:59] Two hundred million dollars worldwide franchise cost five. If that was just how much how expensive is smiling not expensive. OK number four at the box office. The flip side of smile the film that was released on streaming the same day it was put in theaters

[02:01:18] to the movie still made money but you know to a huge detriment for its brand name. You know remind me which streaming service it's on. Peacock. It's a peacock movie. It's called Halloween kills. No it's not. Halloween ends. There you go. Sorry.

[02:01:35] Sixty four million domestic got crushed by smile. Halloween ends. Jamie Lee Curtis and Michael Myers were finally. This is it guys. Well but that's not really what the movie was which people soured on and found out about pretty quickly.

[02:01:47] I mean yes people didn't like the movie but no no. But like the marketing of that movie is you know like hey we got Jamie Lee Curtis and Michael Myers smile just had smiling the word on that thing was so toxic it was so fast

[02:02:00] that like the people who go see the early Thursday night screenings all walked out and they were like Jamie Lee Curtis and Michael Myers are on screen together for five minutes. Fuck this movie. I feel like it curdled immediately. Also people didn't love kills.

[02:02:13] They didn't love the bloom was already a little off kind of overperformed considering it was also day and date on Peacock. It was surprising it made that much money you know deeper in the pen. But anyway yeah.

[02:02:23] Number five at the box office for two months the only family film available to a starved audience that was just like I guess we'll see this. It's made eighty five million dollars worldwide. I'm trying to remember what this movie is. Only family film because it was October.

[02:02:40] Legion of Superhero Super Pets was in a similar zone where it hung in there for so long because no one else was releasing any other fucking thing. Remind me what studio this is. Paramount La La Crocodile Lyle Lyle crocodile. Yes.

[02:02:53] Which Katie Rich keeps telling me is good and that Bardem deserves a Golden Globe. Evan Susser DM me being like you seen it. I was like no. Damn it. I saw it and have your bird I was really good. I just want to talk about it with somebody.

[02:03:05] And I was like well I don't know what to tell you. You got to watch it. Also in the top 10 The Woman King another solid hit. Yeah made 70 million dollars. Yeah. And then two another insane thing made 10 million dollars despite apparently being like just disgusting.

[02:03:19] Just true word about don't worry darling a piece. Sorry. A flawed film. Yeah. That made 45 million dollars. A piece de mer. Yeah. Amsterdam. There's no defending that. No. That thing just stunk. Should I see it though. Just to like stare at it. Yes go ahead.

[02:03:38] Why don't you stare at that one. It make you so angry. Really. Triangle of Sadness a Swedish two and a half hour film about barfing has made five million dollars domestically. Yeah. It's actually made some money. Yeah. Where the poster is an old lady barfing.

[02:03:55] This is what I would say. I would say the problem is that all of the Oscar movies are topping out at that exact number. It's like Triangle of Sadness is doing better than you expect.

[02:04:04] The problem is that you're like oh but like that's the same number Tara ended up at. Everyone's saying like the market's gone the market's gone and I'm like that's fine. Five to 10 seems to be the market for everything other than every everything.

[02:04:15] But I'm just like guys this is not a quick fix thing. Take your goddamn time and put your no I'm not ranting at you I'm ranting at the people in my DMs who work for the nice trees down from my throat.

[02:04:28] God no I'm like put the windows back up make an effort here give people I have so many people in my life who are like I wanted to see the Fableman's at Thanksgiving and I couldn't never why not. Right.

[02:04:39] And I'm like yeah because they were actually too scared. Yeah. To release it and then it's like well it's on P.V.O.D. Like immediately and I'm like why. And everyone at the studio is like I don't know it doesn't really hurt.

[02:04:49] And I'm like it may not hurt financially but like you're hurting your fucking business you morons. Yes. Sorry. Anyway that's the box office for Wendell and Wild. Numbers not reported. No. Has never cracked the Netflix 10. No right. I expect this episode will result in the biggest audience.

[02:05:09] That's not us patting ourselves on the back. It's how apathetic the promotion of this film has been. I get them not wanting to cannibalize against Pinocchio that they have like two movies in this one category in the same medium with both acclaimed filmmakers and one of them

[02:05:24] has got a lot more Oscar heat on it a lot more critical adoration and that's now become their biggest Oscar contender overall. But it's strange. Now my top five selling I don't know what yours is. What's yours. I I'm a little stuck on the middle.

[02:05:41] I know my top two and I know my I know I mean I think I think I got to give the hair to nightmare over core. I figured you would. I think they're both cock masterpieces. I'm not a cock. I'm not a dummy animation nerd.

[02:05:58] I'm a big I'm not as I slowly turn to a corn cup. It just it falls into like like Wizard of Oz territory for I sympathize with that. There's just some magical alchemical thing with that movie.

[02:06:13] Even if I think for a lion is kind of the greater achievement for Henry Selick O'Toole. Sure right. If that makes sense. Yeah. But you have nightmare one and Coraline two. I have Coraline one and I read two. But what's your number three. I imagine you have peach.

[02:06:26] Yeah. Peach is third. Wendell Mild is fourth monkey bone is fifth. I have it the same way but I considered putting Wendell over peach. I just want that on the record. Sure. Sure. Really. I'm going to go with Wendell Mild. That's the life for him.

[02:06:42] James the Giant Peach is a more straightforward thing for me. I get why I like it. Bugs. Roll doll. Peach. Fun. Great soundtrack of all time. Sure. Absolutely. Banger after banger soundtrack. Wendell Mild I'm like there's so much in here that's interesting.

[02:07:00] Does the movie function for me as well? I'm not sure. You know at the end of the day I'm going for like peach maybe slightly more functional but I don't know. Wendell Mild has got so much going on. I'll say this. Yeah.

[02:07:11] Peach I've watched many many times as we've covered. It remains very watchable for me. Wendell Mild I was curious if watching it a second time it would have like a glass onion effect where you're like knowing where the movie ends up I have a much greater appreciation

[02:07:26] for all the setup. I see it all from a different prism. I don't think it plays that way on a second time. No. No. It doesn't. It's got more pure joy rewatch ability than the other silent movie. I encountered that which is a problem for me. Right.

[02:07:40] It's still on second watch it is still very plotty. There's a lot to get. That was my problem was I was like right they have to establish this right they have to establish this. You know there were a few scenes where I was just kind of like yeah.

[02:07:50] But I like thinking about it. I do too. I think he's made four phenomenal movies and Monkey Bone is one of the more interesting odd duck bad objects ever that I still even kind of more like than dislike. Yeah. No I don't need to qualify that.

[02:08:09] I like that movie. I kind of do as well. Yeah yeah. Ben's mixed. Yeah. Ben's a no. Right. And Justin McElroy is going back to graduate school to get his Ph.D. Oh my God. He's gonna get seriously.

[02:08:21] I didn't like what you pointed out about Monkey Bone which is the 90s aesthetic. I've thought about that a bit since we recorded the episode. But it's just like something about it's like it's swing. Yeah revival. We're in Smash Mouth all of a sudden. And it's chain wallets.

[02:08:38] That whole movie is wearing a fedora. It really is. You know what's the weird thing in that movie we forgot to talk about? What? I mean because we'd already gone long and talked a lot about the strangeness of that film.

[02:08:49] The whole end sequence where Chris Kattan and Brendan Fraser are fighting holding onto the strings of a giant Monkey Bone like Thanksgiving Day balloon. Right? And it looks like I don't know how they did this or if this was intentional or not but

[02:09:03] it like looks like rear projection more than green screen. It looks like deliberately artificially like they're just in front of a screen kind of shit. I swear to God that whole final sequence they start styling Fraser to look more like a monkey

[02:09:18] and that final sequence he's got like a unibrow. They have like stuck his ears out further. His teeth have gotten bigger. That's clever. There's all kinds of fucking organs are falling out of his body. It's like that's right.

[02:09:30] That's what you want out of a live action Henry Selick movie. I agree. I don't know. Weird film. I hope people watched it. Super weird. And I hope this has made you consider Henry Selick. Consider him as an artist in his own right.

[02:09:46] Who will we be considering next my friend? Before we leave. Great question. David, it's someone we've been talking about for such a goddamn long time. And I will say I selected.

[02:09:56] I basically said next year when we were in the thick of Kubrick and I was like, oh my God, this is so stressful. Yes. Well, I was like next year I'm going to do someone I like you're going to do.

[02:10:06] We're going to each pick an old fake pick. And I also kind of have that feeling like we just got to get some of these guys off the board. Yeah. Some of these will do them. These are both major. We'll do them someday, guys. And major.

[02:10:19] We push them through March Madness year after year. Guys. Right. We're going to be doing our first British filmmaker. Unless you count Nolan. Isn't he Irish? Oh, David. He's not Irish. Is he not Irish? Is he not Irish? Is he not Irish? He's English. No.

[02:10:35] You're freaking me out there. And Nolan obviously does count as an English filmmaker, but not really because like he hasn't really made movies, you know, in England or about England in a long time. Well, he's our first proper English director.

[02:10:46] And what I was about to do is going to become less funny. I'm still going to do it. I'm warning everyone in advance. I'm still going to do it. It's just less funny now that I know he's not Irish. He's not Irish.

[02:10:53] Please say the name of the filmmaker. Danny Boyle. Oh, Danny Boyle. The pipes, the pipes are calling. Embarrassing for you. I believe his parents may have been Irish. I think he was like born to Irish parents. Oh, Danny Boyle. The miniseries is calling.

[02:11:10] We're going to do the films of Danny Boyle. A lot of people have been guessing a lot of different people. Yeah. Well, wait. OK, so then are you going to say yours? Oh, well, should we? No. It's up to you. It's up to you. I don't have to.

[02:11:23] Let's just stay silent. Yeah, then we'll do some. We're going to do a Griff guy. And then I guess after that, we will do whoever wins March Madness. Yeah. And then we're going to keep doing guys we like to do.

[02:11:35] Some other things we have coming in 2023, though, of course, is the Blanky Awards. M. Night Shyamalan's Knock at the Cabin, which has been rated R. His first R, violence and language. Cool. Cooler. Cooler. Cooler. Cooler. Cooler. Which is his first R since the happening. Right.

[02:11:58] Old was a P.U. 13. We also hopefully are going to have what we're going to do a main feed episode on the new Mission Impossible movie next year. Right. Because we covered all the other McHugh films at this point. We're going to do Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer.

[02:12:12] We're going to do Michael Mann's Ferrari, assuming that actually does come out. Yes. I think we'll do Aquaman 2. Oh, yeah. Whatever that's coming out. I think we will. Assuming that ever comes out. One of those weird things where they made a billion dollar movie.

[02:12:27] Now, they're like, should we even release the sequel? I'm like, you probably should. Fucking. This ball and chain. So weird. But most excitingly, yeah, Danny Boyle coming up. Danny Boyle. All right. So next week. Sunshine. One of the episodes we've been.

[02:12:42] You talk about since the beginning of this show, the things we've dreamed about doing episodes on. This is maybe one of the last huge, like, Griff and David shared obsession movie. Absolutely. One of those like, you know what's good?

[02:12:56] We're not going to have an interstitial because we just did Avatar and we're doing. Yeah, we got a lot of new releases. So we're not doing any palate cleansers. Next week, a little film called Shallow Grave. Enjoy you miserable, lovely people. Yeah. Couldn't have said it better myself.

[02:13:12] Thank you all for listening. Please remember to rate, review and subscribe. Thank you to Marie Barty for our social media and helping to produce the show. Bill Bowen, Pat Reynolds or our artwork.

[02:13:23] I know I've already called out what a good job Pat did on the Photoshop mini series artwork for Selleck, I think in the monkey bone episode. But it feels like there's a lot of versatility with the close up zoomed in photo of your face

[02:13:40] on the James puppet has been getting a lot of traction. People just think it has cold, dead eyes. Maybe I'll do my own podcast about it. Yeah, cold eyes. Yeah. Yeah. Sounds good. Sounds original.

[02:13:52] Thank you to AJ McKeon, Alex Barron for editing, Lain Montgomery, the Great American Novel for our theme song, JJ Birch for our research went deep on the Selleck stuff as he always does. You can go to BlankCheckPod.com for links to some real nerdy shit, including Blank Check

[02:14:10] special features or Patreon feed where we do franchise commentaries. And of course, we're doing Hollywood's biggest blockbuster franchise right now in the month of January. The Cotsy Trilogy. That's right. Cotsy Trilogy. Trilogy. We should call it the Cotsy Trilogy.

[02:14:25] So if you want to see us watch esoteric movies while on CBD dog biscuits. Ben's chomping on dog biscuits. I should make it clear. We emailed to Headgrass and said, can you please send us dog biscuits? Ben wants to eat them on mic.

[02:14:40] And the response was, um, we will send you dog biscuits. I just want to remind you those are not meant for humans. Or dogs. And we would like it if you spent more time talking about any of our other products.

[02:14:52] I was like, don't worry, they'll be used on mic. Crunch crunch. Crunching those fins was fun. All right, we're done. Come on. How long is this episode? Long enough. Hey, we love to hear it. Tune in next week for more of our best stories. We'll see you then.

[02:15:06] Bye. Bye. Bye. Tune in next week for Shallow Grave. And as always, crunch crunch. Ha ha.