In the Blink of an Eye with Joey Sims

0:00all we share and all we experience podcasts across time uh echoes

0:30across time yeah is the tagline i'm surprised there's no imdb quote page for what i believe holds the record for the most existent film of 2026 this is a fun recurring game when i tell people like movie that least exists that we've covered no no no no you tell people that uh we're covering what are you guys recording these days i go we're actually doing understand that oh that's exciting so wait so it's what so it's find nemo and wally right john carter oh right and then what since then and i go finding dory and they go sure sure sure and in the blink of an eye and they go what's

1:03that in the what of a what right and i go he made like a smaller live action sci-fi we're all connected drama and they go what year did that come out and i go well here's a surprise for you in fact mere months ago it premiered at this year's sundance film festival heard of it and went on hulu february 27th of 2026 yep i found myself taken aback all over again literally last night when i looked it up yeah on wikipedia i was just like checking something and at the top it said 2026

1:37and i i again had a renewed moment of like wait that's that can be right well this year it's not even a oh my god this year's been so long that no in the blink of an eye was 2026 you know in some ways this year's kind of gone past me in the blink of an eye well actually is this the most relevant movie of 2026 because of how fast things move oh so fast yeah february yeah yeah it came out and i rushed to hulu and then i was like well i'm gonna cover it on the podcast anyway so i guess i'll let

2:12it simmer ben and i were supposed to go to the premiere of this film oh yeah in new york city oh yeah that did not happen because of the snowstorm oh that's right so it was like it premiered at sundance and then there was supposed to coward soren close the subways the proper new york premiere 20 inches of snow what's the big deal the following week yep and it was like six hours before the premiere we got an email that was like never mind yeah the regal union square is closing the event is not happening fun fact on the same day if we're talking about the same weather event because there were two

2:47yeah um but on the same day i was supposed to attend a marathon play reading session of the five i think it was five different works of uh the playwrights uh the playwright tracy letts oh well well well friend of the show he's coming in next week in fact yes i i now that tracy has become a full-time podcaster i'm also just kind of like listening to tracy letts every day i i'm beginning to assume like you know parachute into the sports podcast i listen to he'll just kind of

3:22be like ever present he just like lives in the ringer offices now reviewing quiznos on doughboys and it's like you know fun fact about that guy pulitzer prize winning playwright in fact on top of all his great podcast he likes to make that joke of like that stuff that's my hobby this is my real job and increasingly it's starting to feel like he's he's actually proving that wait joey okay well they were gonna read five tracy letts plays don't quote me on the five they were gonna they were gonna do like an all-day marathon okay tracy let's wait august osage county seussical the musical what

3:56were the other two now wait now i need to look up what they were killer joe i would assume is one of the big ones we got killer joey well we do have killer joey on this episode that's a bit of a spoiler superior donuts which i should bring up to tracy next time i see him and ask him when is the next cbs sitcom adaptation of one of his plays going to premiere so funny that would just be so funny if cbs is like we're gonna do a bug sitcom it's about a wacky motel i mean it's a little like alice doesn't live here anymore where you're like that spawned a network sitcom that ran for years

4:28look her name's alice she's a waitress after that we kind of did our own thing don't same thing where you're like i don't know guy owns a donut shop people show up well i've never seen the play superior donuts but superior donuts is you know is is a lighter it's lighter it's a bit lighter relatively speaking the plays included okay in the festival which was never rescheduled i'm sad to say rude uh was tracy gonna be there or it's just i don't know presumably you could ask about it uh august osage county we're gonna open with that uh killer joe linda vista the minutes

5:02and man from nebraska that's funny that it was no yeah no bug no no donuts no bug no donuts but you know but all of his regulars were slated for this day-long thing margot martindale was going to be there lily rabe thomas sadosky this is a whole matthew lillard was going to be reading the most incredible cultural event in new york city that yes and behind ben and i attending the blink of an eye premiere uh yeah interesting that you chose not to go bug nuts uh neither bug nor donuts i guess bug is like it's like wow you can go see that on broadway but it was probably because

5:36bug was was playing on broadway and superior donuts you can scale paramount plus you can climb the mountain and watch all let's find out can you how many episodes of superior donuts do we think there were of course the tracy let's sitcom adaptation starring judd hirsch and jermaine fowler i'm gonna guess 26 i mean uh yeah like two seasons of 13 each is my guess but i'm not sure i think you want to i thought does anyone else want to wait is that a bit or was it actually renewed for a second season it was there was two seasons of superior there were two seasons i thought it was like two episodes canceled type no deal i'm gonna guess 40 yeah anyone else want to you know

6:12price is right you know kind of closest without going over 32 all right all right 30 i hear 32 i think it's at 26 you said 40 ben 33 the answer is 34 ben oh yeah by throwing out a random smart strategy ben so there were what do i get uh you get a superior donut yeah to be named later you'll you'll get one at some point one you are now responsible for rescheduling the tracy let's marathon yeah and producing it it was and the blink of an eye premiere you have to reschedule we gotta we gotta do that the first season was 13 episodes the second season

6:45was a full network season 21 episodes there we go yeah and then they canceled it uh and then they canceled it um let's see uh along with kevin can wait and uh some of my other favorite shows nine jkl yeah that was a mark biblically what the fuck is this shit right living biblically i think was um it was based on that book the year of living biblically and it's sort of like bible yes man where a guy has to catholic besides starring jr ferguson yeah from uh madman yes this is before

7:18he basically became a regular on uh the conners of course the best american comedy series and then they also canceled dan koppelman's me myself and i which was the bobby moynihan sitcom i think that was a big splashy show that i think was the first cancellation of the season it was didn't he leave snl for that yep yep wait what moynihan no yes really yes or maybe not for it but like it was the first thing he did at least yeah i guess you're right dang yeah 2017 yeah no that was i mean talk about a different time nine years back bring bobby back why not you gotta have him on someday

7:54i would bobby i would love to yeah yeah i feel like bobby's taste like my friend bobby who i'm referring to by his first name is like you know we'd want a movie that he's passionate about like you know he loves the he loves the goofy stuff the silly stuff the sci-fi stuff he loves the moppets we do hence he does love the moppets sure he's on the the whatchamacallit he's on the um daniel radcliffe uh tracy morgan show i know i need to watch that he's constantly on a tv oh i know bobby's busy it's just like bobby loved snl so bobby booked and busy bobby bb and he's hoppers he's

8:25the king george he's the king of the box office this year did you see hoppers no i didn't see why not you'll like king you know i haven't i haven't been inside like a movie theater in a few months why not i don't know if i had a lot going on i guess so you you gotta go see some movies in a few months so you saw michael early you went to several test screenings and gave them notes wait yeah i was a consultant michael that's the adam scott nonsense it's a nonsense it's hokum which of course is a synonym for

8:58nonsense yes you haven't seen wait come on wait a second now i'm gonna get i'm gonna get righteously maddie yeah this is blank check the goat you don't know the goat you haven't seen the goat hit the court or who is sylvia what are you oh goat yeah it was it was an animated that's that shows you how your brain works there's an animated uh adaptation of edward alby's the godar who is sylvia my daughter's favorite movie of the year um yeah you didn't see uh uh what else we got did you see nirvana the man the show the movie yeah oh yeah i like that way to pronounce

9:29that yeah that's the whole joke of nirvana that's an amazing nirvana well it's like it's spelled like that because that's how canadians say nirvana sure and that's why it has the double n nirvana i feel like you're pronouncing it really hard nirvana simply i'm simply going with their bit it was just it was interesting yeah so i saw that was that my last one oh my god did you see the bone temple yeah no yeah i saw the bone temple come on i mean so january and february you were getting shit done yeah yeah yeah and then you fell off and then well undertone scary podcast late at

10:00night i was actually intrigued by undertone by the first wave of reactions to undertone where people were like scariest movie ever and then there came a second wave yeah so interesting how that happens with independent horror films that the first reviews from like user i've been paid money on twitter is like the exorcist is a fucking baby compared to this you i'm dead i'm dead here's my death certificate it killed me screen dead in the theater at screen until you shock underscore xxxx

10:31and then undertone which is a movie i did not like hate but it was i found a lot is a lot of like what was that a lady in a did i hear something david is looking behind him and also made like three million domestic on like a one million dollar budget i don't think it got that far but it did insert i'm sure it made people money like let's see where did it get it's one of the teen domestic okay it's one of those movies where i was like that didn't pan out and then you see the return on investment and you're like 824 made it the budget was probably like 80 cents on that thing it said

11:02at a fucking table well they had to work overnights uh yeah right they had they had to film it at 3 a.m when she is of course logically recording a podcast uh there is some there's some shoe leather about like oh he's in a different time zone that's how they explain that away did you see half a million so it made 40 times nice work if you can get budget yeah super mario galaxy did you my daughter's naming children's movies yeah what about the christophers that's good go see that i don't

11:35want to see the christopher you like the christopher i know i would love the drama the hot button everyone must have okay the drama i nearly made it buttons being pushed i nearly nearly made it to the drama and then what happened um i just went back and watched all four seasons of 13 reasons why instead because you know it dealt with a lot of the previous part of the same material right mother mary you got to meet mother you got to meet the mother no and i wanted to see that too but you know look christopher's mother mary look these are movies that i am representative of sadly the average

12:06the average exactly but we were like yeah i want to try to find my try to try to find time for that and then but you're gonna see mortal combat too well actually yes because i saw the first mortal combat in the amc empire 25 and which is what i believe is where you're going to see mortal combat too this is priorities guys this is this is the right thing to do i had a great time of course scorpion was there sub-zero so most of the trump cabinet in fact i'm having fun you didn't see

12:38project hail mary oh no that's the kind of crazy one yeah he's got a little rock buddy yeah i don't know if you're familiar with this this gentleman named rocky rocky no i and then i he was puppeteered by a an artist who i know well yeah the cow guy right james ortiz who did exactly who did um he was the cow guy uh he did the into the woods he was he comes from the theater world he did um yeah milky white for the into the woods the best guy i ever saw rocky was like a broadway guy before he made

13:09his transition to space yeah so rocky rocky operated rocky is real yes i know this one of my good friends friend of the pod wuthering heights did you wuther i did wuther you scaled the heights yeah i did the bride did you marry this is a fun game i know i'm just having fun can you tell i'm not like that eager to talk about this movie the bride when i thought the bride was a musical i was like well i gotta go see that it has a dash of that yeah there's a dash they put on the ritz for 20

13:43minutes or whatever yeah you didn't see it no oh interesting uh return to silent hill did you return to silent hill did you get in the iron lung i'm just i'm getting deeper now this is a game i like this time of year we're recording this episode in uh may it will come out in july is that correct so the summer just kicked off and it means it's the final moment where the top 10 box office movies of the year is still kind of wacky right where it's not like there are movies that can be in the top 10

14:13that were not blockbusters sure uh so reminders of him is currently the 10th highest grossing film of the year we love it just get another holly hoover is that a hoover joint yeah but the drama might overtake it the drama might briefly be the 10th highest because the drama's really been uh had staying hold instead yeah yeah but but right now yeah super mario galaxy project hail mary michael hopper's devil wears prada 2 haven't seen uh oh no yeah i do need to see that scream 7 goat

14:43weathering heights send help i'll send help okay so you saw two out of the 10 this year's needed joey in the cinema this year but you're seeing too many dang plays you're seeing too many dang april is the height of the of the theater it's a theater it's tony season but i'm usually not totally absent from the movie theater something went wrong you work in the theater district not again not to dox you you host a theater podcast house clock about it's called house closed it's called house closed theater we saw theater we saw yes which i host my friend connor

15:17scully but and we'll talk about that and we'll introduce what this show is in one second but because you work in the theater district you are near the two busiest this is true theaters and movie theaters in new york of like you know the mc empire you know what's on screen 25 baby yeah this is what i used to do this is how my life used to be structured when i had different part-time jobs in midtown is that it would be like i'd go in in the morning do like a shift at one job go to the empire amc empire 25 take off your aladdin outfit joe used to wear an aladdin outfit

15:48you'd ride the carpet just down the line i was an usher at aladdin like a hat or something uh i think you're conflating it with with when i worked concessions at elf the musical and i wore um uh like a a little elf hat a little uh a little elf hat yes and yeah i wore like a uniform as an usher at aladdin sure just like a you know uh um but you you'd ride the carpet down to the end of the block and then i'd have a few hours before uh my evening work so then yeah i'd slot in whatever was playing in screen 24 at the 25 you know so that was how i saw a lot of

16:26wow george went originated santa claus and elf the musical yeah that was i my first job in the city was doing concessions at the revival broadway the second engagement way night was sent of elf of the musical i would it's not was not a revival it was just them it was a season last revival on wikipedia i guess it is uh you could it was basically just them doing the same thing again you know just like a second engagement of the same because it was production it was this will only run eight weeks a year it will come back only in the holiday window they brought it back two years in a

17:01row and then they brought it back again a few years and then like if they don't bring it to broadway then it tours over the the grinch musical it's been done on the west end four separate times yeah wow and it's not even set in england who was santa was santa my just my santa for my one for the second one was um wayne knight the great the only santa i recognize among the british uh revivals is the third time oh no i'm sorry no i don't know any of the british ones the third time they did it on broadway though it was sean astin now do you like getting that call as sean astin where they're

17:33like we think you're santa sized now you know sean we like santa we saw you recently yeah and sort of santa age like are you ready to put on the beard and george went both have years on him they do due credit to sean astin went and night did the original national president the original yes exactly the original santa track of that show which is he pops up basically at the beginning and at the end and that's it yeah so for them they're like great easy gig broadway money whatever yeah right for astin they reworked it so that he had a second role in the show that he uh played for a significant

18:10what was the second part mr greenway it was the he was like the evil boss okay the one who's like you're the publishing company that's thematically precedent like he's good and bad it's a captain hook mr darling kind of thing interesting no no no not the father you're saying he played the james khan character's boss yes michael learner's role in the movie i suppose that i'm just saying like sort of father figures but i guess you're right that james khan is more of a father figure to khan and asner are the two big father figures to uh buddy the elf they are film but everyone

18:43forgets that academy award nominee michael a great actor for the first time in his life played an ornery boss i want that buddy the elf feeling do you think michael learner maybe contributed to a sort of negative stereotype over the years the amount of bosses he played behind desks yelling i don't know i don't know listen this is blank check with griffin and david i'm griffin i'm david it's a podcast about filmography's directors who have massive success early on in

19:13their careers and are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion projects they want sometimes those checks clear sometimes they bounce baby and sometimes they vanish into the ether they do in the blink of an eye in the blink of an eye truly this was a one blink movie this one blinked i almost was like has it left hulu there's like no it's there okay phew it is wild that twice he has had this ultimate get out of jail free card of like guys don't worry toy story 5 is coming out in months yeah mere weeks from now yeah i will have one of the highest grossing films of

19:48the year well i also feel like john carter was an actual like much discussed bomb whereas this is more just something like no one never really knew it happened so it's less it'll stick to him a little bit it's an interesting right is is it worse to have the most existent bomb in history or a true tree falls in the middle of the woods and no one's there to hear it movie right i think it's better to have the i made a movie that didn't exist like chris whites who's been on our show and discussed this he made the golden compass a movie that bankrupted a studio god bless love you chris uh

20:21and then love you new line rest in power yeah rest in power now you're a shingle uh went went to the great shingle area in this guy uh and then he made afraid that's how i refer to it yes afraid afraid you see you don't even know what happened yeah he made a movie called i don't even know and i know about these exactly he made an ai horror movie called afraid but the ai in afraid is capitalized yes afraid not his title it had no it had it was called they listened yes and uh then sony was like

20:51it's called afraid afraid and he has copped to its non-existence on this very show he made a movie that didn't exist he went through a barton fink-esque uh atonement yes um also this movie premiered at sundance and then dropped on hulu like a month later uh like which so it's not so i don't know all the behind the scenes but that doesn't give a feeling of them being like oh we want to try to get so no i will say that was always the exact plan and he has been transparent

21:22about when they greenlit this movie they were like it's going to hulu original i think the sundance premiere if anything was sort of a a gesture of goodwill or a kind of like but you can be at a festival that's cool yes it was right we that is the way to give this movie a launch i i don't know how much of an effort they would put into a traditional marketing campaign if not for we can go to sundance you could do a bunch of interviews and a screen with a press there it can happen that the film debuts at sundance and people are like we don't like it sure and then

21:54that's bad but i know i know the date was set for when it was dropping on hulu before it went to sundance in my memory there was sort of an all-in-one announcement of this will premiere at sundance and go to hulu on february 27th uh it's called in the blink of an eye it's a film made by andrew stanton whose films we're covering in the miniseries we're calling podsy oh you don't like her all right joey it's gonna i don't want to i don't want to derail the series

22:26it's gonna look really good pretty far along too let's look really good and we've only got one story five left yeah right yeah yeah um so you better like it joey i we've done you guys have done done john carter we we leaped across that one yeah of course um who's the john carter guest matt singer the great matt singer great episode are you are you a john carter uh fan interrogator sims of mars yeah you know i re-watched a chunk of it ahead of this episode i i didn't wasn't able i didn't have time to get through the whole thing it didn't play as well

23:01to me as the first time i watched it i remember watching it a few years ago and being like this is kind of like a glorious mess like wow this is like a crazy like obviously this doesn't work but what ambition and i thought i would be revisiting that feeling and then i watched it again and was like oh jesus this is like just the way it starts is like so rough i think the book ends are tough with that one i think there were some notes on that from from me in the episode the the non-mars

23:31stuff yes yeah this is this is a similarly ambitious movie i mean this is not like that's true yes it's less uh right like the scale of it is more suggested than shown but right but it does it is i would say narratively and emotionally ambitious and it does feel like on paper a high risk movie a if you don't get this right it's going to be embarrassing kind of movie right who's our guest our guest as i said joey sims host of house closed which i i googled to make sure i was getting

24:04the name of the podcast correct and are you aware joey that there is another podcast hosted by a man named joey sims i assume not you i assume you're not doing double duty called healing word join joey sims as we are challenged by studying the bible to grow in our relationship with god and encourage to apply god's word in our life it sounds like right material for a jay ferguson sitcom uh yes house closed yes peter we saw with sims and scully big two my co-host the big two my co-host

24:40being the lovely honor scully a theater producer and we see yeah i'm doing i'm doing my plug do your plug uh we see two shows together sometimes a guest will also have seen the same two shows okay that are either currently running like broadway off broadway off of broadway whatever and then we talk about those two shows or in our latest episode the fourth episode that we just did it was three it was three shows so we're four episodes in and we already broke our format you people are sorry

25:13sorry how many of your episodes have been mj the musical so far well we're saving mj the musical so over the summer when things slow down in the theater world we'll do a 10 episode series yeah analyzing mj the musical right all the decisions that uh that that uh that that happened there will you during the slowest months like check in with more long-running shows yeah yeah we're trying to figure out like over the summer like what like fun things can we do like we want to do like perfect crime you know that's been running off broadway for a million you know about perfect

25:46crime i i have been really tempted to go see perfect crime and in fact zach cherry very recent guest on this podcast most recent guest on this podcast that's right he and i have been strategizing to go see perfect crime together because he didn't know about it and i told him and he's he's fairly obsessed now new york's longest running play i haven't seen it it bills itself as new york's longest running play it is this like god-awful like murder mystery how dare you what if it's good the theater center says here it's perfect right right what what used to be the snapple what used to be the snapple theaters uh that used to have the

26:19fantastics yes many many years ago right yeah and and the venue is owned now by the lead actress right um i guess i believe she owns the venue yes that is correct um content warning suicide this sounds dark well that's a spoiler and she has appeared on the fucking website she stars in the show produces the show like hands hands out the playbills you know like one of those she's been doing it since it started uh i think she claims she's never missed a performance i'm not sure if that's no one's checking no um they're dark on wednesdays though lazy and they were like

26:54uninterrupted you know up until until the pandemic i know i know she's like griped about that a lot but there's also she didn't want to close she was like oh good but she's like missed family members wedding oh yeah and there was her children don't know her there was a point that she was appearing in another play at the same time and she was still doing perfect murder like what's the crime for crying out loud how dare you talk about the best show on earth but she would like do her walk-on in the other play and then run over to the snapple theater and do i let me know when you

27:28actually make plans to go see it because i it has done 15 000 performances i've been really eager to go and i need the kick in the butt it's been running as long as i've been alive essentially it started a year after i was born probably in my honor i should clarify they were their performances were interrupted one other time by a very iconic event i remember this press release so well so i was just pulling it back up to remember uh off broadway's perfect crime and the office the musical because the the office parody musical runs in the same building halt performances due to

27:59theft of pipes at the theater um someone stole some copper pipes i just want to find this um burglars i'll fix your pipes for the burglars broke into the uh vacant restaurant below made their way to the basement of the building disconnected and then stole every piece of copper pipe they could find quoting from the press release that the show put out leaving the building without any access to water the criminals returned in the early hours today smashing the front doors they've not yet

28:30been able anyway so they were also interrupted when all when all their copper pipes what year was that we're pipeless that was in 2022 and i don't know if the if these if these hoodlums were ever identified did you know that after the end of the show you are given a two-page answer sheet to explain the show because it's complex yes is that because people were complaining like i don't understand the ending here's some other facts it's it's run in eight different theaters since 1987 right it premiered off broad like in the west village at the grow the courtyard playhouse if

29:05in november may not exist anymore 2016 gary bucey spent two weeks in the role of lionel two fantastic weeks november 2016 kicking america while it was down why did he do that they've starcast other people john schneider was briefly yeah perfect crime love him one of the um one of the dukes of hazard perfect politics but wait isn't he the one who isn't the other one worse or are both dukes uh no schneider's the bad one is schneider the one

29:37who is in smallville yes yeah yeah right yeah uh she's never taken a sick day she's missed only four performances katherine russell the last in 1995 to attend her brother's wedding that was the last time she was willing to go to a wedding over doing the show so the snapple has two theaters two stages no longer the snapple so used to be sponsored by snapple eternally the snapple we're gonna call no because there used to be this big uh the caps that would go around and i'd scale the building to try to see the fact underneath because it wasn't facing the street

30:12and it was like perfect crime sixty dollars come on don't steal our pipes not for sale and they took them off they took them off now it is just well do you think they were like hey snapple do you want to sponsor the theater they were like we sponsor a theater i mean i will say if you go to the wikipedia page for the theater center the image it shows you immediately is snapple yeah yeah you can't you can't shake that you can't shake but i know that the one of the theaters is the jerry robach theater after the great jerry that's where fantastic ran for many

30:45many years yes yes he was in the original and that's where i guess the office musical is the ann l i know that i go every night yeah right now they have perfect crime the office parody musical and they have one other parody musical going right it looks like they also have um friends the unauthorized the unauthorized musical parody there we go and singfeld which is an unauthorized seinfeld parody musical wow wow i saw also a sadly now closed love actually parody uh musical at the

31:15same at the same venue um i it was actually not long after theaters reopened after covet that i went to see that show and um we're happy and uh my main memory of it was that the alan rickman character was performed by a guy who was in full like snape garb and like anytime anyone would talk to him he'd pull out his wand and you get it it was kind of funny i expecto adultery there you go um perfect crime opened it reopened april 2021 it was the first show in new york city to get approval from actors

31:52equity to resume performances you just imagine that katherine russell was like yeah de blasio her thighs for 14 months like digging her nails and being like when can i get back on the fucking stage de blasio appeared at their first performance i think he like made gave a little speech there's fiorello the musical of course which is about la guardia right it's famous uh broadway musical when will we get our de blasio musical bill is there tall bill i was gonna say who's the tallest musical theater actor we have right now tommy tommy tommy tommy tommy tommy tommy tommy tommy tommy tommy tommy tommy tommy tommy tommy tommy tommy tommy tommy tommy tommy tommy tommy tommy tommy tommy tommy tommy tommy tommy tommy tommy tommy tommy tommy tommy tommy tommy tommy tommy tommy tommy tommy tommy tommy tommy tommy tommy tommy tommy tommy tommy tommy tommy tommy tommy tommy tommy tommy tommy tommy tommy tommy tommy tommy tommy tommy tommy tommy tommy to

32:49Longtime Phantom is 6'4". Pretty good. Not as tall as Bill, who's 6'7". Tommy Tune's 6'6". And then Timothy Hughes, that's the big man from Hadestown. I was thinking of the big guy from Hadestown. Now, he's more of an ensemble player. He's, you know, very hot. But I remember that with Hadestown where there was the one big guy. Yeah, the tall guy. Because they've got all the guys with the big hammers who are like, you know, in industrial hell. I mean, you're also saying he's more of an ensemble guy. This is maybe his breakout. This is the thing that makes him a leading man. I mean, de Blasio.

33:21Yeah, you know what? Get him out there. Yeah, you know, first act, de Blasio is mayor. Second act, de Blasio is horndog. I was going to say, entire second act is just sitting down with the New York Times for that piece.

33:36Just like de Blasio, like on the apps. It's just like de Blasio being like, field, eh? I'm going to match one of these days. Even if they hire someone like this Hughes guy, they should still put the actor on stilts and make him so tall that his head is not visible in the proscenium arch. That'd be good. It should be like police squad style. He's out of frame.

34:00You know, this film came out in the blink of an eye. So, look, look, look, look, look. There was nobody out here who was like, when are you guys covering in the blink of an eye and can I be on the show? Literally nobody. Nobody. Joey has a new show. He is a new podcast. It's a show. A show about shows. He is my brother. Not to mention the credits. Longtime brother. Longtime brother. Hey, and uncle. And he is my uncle. Funkle. No, he's my uncle. He's a wonderful uncle to my children.

34:31How are my kids doing? One of your younger sons has some anger issues. Sure. But overall, they're doing great. He's got a lot of rage. It's Rocksteady?

34:41No, Bebop. Oh, they have names too. Well, yeah. It's so funny to watch him do the math. To do the math, yes. It's why I tee him up every time. Because I like that he has to like seriously remember the canon he's containing.

34:56Yes. Yeah, and so you were like, I'd love to, you know, plug my show on the podcast. You know, like, what's coming up? Like, Scorsese. Could I do Hugo? And I'm like, you know, Hugo's a 2027 episode for us. It's going to be a while. It's a while away. You know? And I was like, look. You know what's coming up in the blink of an eye. I got an empty spreadsheet cell right here in front of me for a much more recent episode. If you'd care to fire up Hulu, H-U-L-U dot com. It felt sort of in keeping with my, you know, some of my appearances

35:27so far on the show. Lost in Space. I mean, my first was Lost in Space. A great movie. As a sibling's choice. Yes. Ratatouille. And Ratatouille an actually great movie. Yes. Ratatouille an actually great movie. A double sibling episode. Yes. But then Polar Express. A cancer you infected us with. That one I requested. Yes. And now, now David has seen that movie like 80 times and has like fucking Stockholm Syndrome. Yeah, I kind of like it. Never let it go on. It is fun. It was fun in theaters. I was thinking about, you know, the era of the siblings choice.

36:00A thing where we needed to fill slots on the schedule and we were like, what are fun ideas for episodes? Both of my siblings choices got 20 years later legacy sequels. Right. That's a good point, right? We just had Romilly on the show because Devil Wears Proud 2. Yeah, Devil Wears Proud 2. Space Jam, of course, got the perfect and well-remembered Space Jam, of New Legacy. They started a new legacy. Yes. Is Algy Rhythm up too lately? Running for 2028 public nomination? I was going to say.

36:30He's the entire cabinet. The greenlit Michael? Where he's selecting the captain. Algy! Did you see Space Jam, a new legacy? No. Is this the Don Cheadle AI thing? Yes. His name is Algy Rhythm. He's an Algy Rhythm. Connor Ratliff has a running bit where he insists on calling that character the king of content. Even though he's never seen the movie and he won't be corrected on it. Yeah. And I was like, oh, what are the chances we get a Lost in Space legacy sequel? And you're like, they're actually zero. We got the Netflix series. But I think with Hurt dead.

37:02Oh, yeah. That's the top reason. That's the top reason.

37:06Who's going to bring the Hurt if not Big Bill? Look, Goldsman is after amassing power at Paramount. Goldsman is like calling up the execs. Listen, I wrote a draft of Lost in Space 2. Wait a second, David. I think I know what you're going to say. Well, I mean, I was trying to point to one. I was trying to point to our President Red Hulk who's over there. We bought new shelves. We're remodeling the office. I'm not sure where President Hulk is right now. Do we know, Ben? Okay. I'm not certain. He was respectively stuffed away. He's our president! So, yeah.

37:37And I did salute him. Let's say he's visiting Camp David. Yes. Gotta see the blossoms. Yeah. Liv Tyler, where are my pills? So, are you suggesting the fucking recasses? Harrison Ford. Swap him in! Slot him in there. Be like, we got Ford. We got Ford. Everyone else is back. Mimi Rogers. Yes. Matt LeBlanc. Lacey Chabert. Blarp. The fucking kid who played the kid. Blarp. Blarp. They're all back. Jared Harris. We don't let him talk.

38:08We will re-dub him again. Gary Oldman only in spider form. Yes. Oh, Heather Graham. Heather Graham? She's probably the most, like, still looks like herself of all the people I just mentioned. Yes. Like, she's aged into. Yeah, you're like, oh yeah, she's still Heather Graham. She's doing the new White Lotus season? Is that right? Is she on that? I think so. Did you see our friend Max Minghella's on it? I did see that. Well, well, well. Well, well. Checking in. Ding, ding, ding. But Lost in Space 2, I'd love to see it.

38:38But it does seem unlikely. I also feel like Stephen Hopkins has not worked of late. Yeah. What was his last film? I don't think he did anymore. Old Stevie. Films. Didn't he just retreat back to television? No, you are wrong. And I remember his last film, of course, because it was Race. Oh, right. Jesse Owens' biopic that came out 10 years ago that has a lot of Lenny Riefenstahl. Like, you watch it and you're like, this is going to be a Jesse Owens' biopic. They're like, yeah, yeah, sure. He ran the race. Lenny Riefenstahl, though, played by Carice Van Houten,

39:09is like a big part of the movie because, of course, it's about the 36 Olympics. But like, it's maybe a little too concerned with her. Probably because she's a fascinating figure in history, but you're kind of like, isn't this the Jesse Owens movie? Well, they have a little bit of a will-they-won't-they thing going. Talk about an insane filmography, though. Dangerous Game, Nightmare on Elm Street, The Dream Child. He was a solid genre director. Predator 2, Judgment Night, Blown Away, The Ghost in the Darkness. Blown Away and Ghost in Darkness are him leveling up to like a bigger scale genre.

39:39Then Lost in Space is like, you get to do a big fucking special effects. This is a giant special effects studio movie. Yeah. Right, you know, it was New Line, but still, you know. And then Under Suspicion. Never seen. Of course, the big three. Hackman, Freeman, Bellucci. Oh. Then the Life and Death and Peter Sellers HBO movie. Which is like, not bad. Yeah. But it's TV movie. The Reaping. The Hilary Swank. That's the Hilary Swank Ten Plagues of the Bible movie. Correct. Where she's like, I have two Oscars. And I'm like, then why are you fighting locusts?

40:12Hilary. That is a brutal retort. You know what I mean? Then why are you fighting locusts? It's not like all about Steve where Sandra Bullock's like, look, I filmed this right before I won the Oscars. It's like, it's three years after Million Dollar Bay. I'm like, you have two Oscars. Yeah. You had to do The Reaping? Yeah. And then Race. And then Race. Yeah, then there's nine years between The Reaping and Race and he hasn't made a film since. He's made some TV sense. David.

40:45Yes. I've had some bad meals in my life. I can imagine. Do you know about Huel? I know about Huel. Okay. I love it. Sponsor of this show. Right. They're not a supplement. This is complete food. Very easy to make and very easy to assemble. You know, for example, 40 grams of protein. You mix it with water or milk in about 30 seconds and it's a complete meal you have instead of food. Not a shake on top of food. It's got 27 essential vitamins and minerals. Got no artificial sweeteners, colors or flavors. You can get an RTD bottle

41:17that's the grab and go version that's got 35 grams of protein, 7 grams of fiber. It's under $5 a meal. I like the RTDs. I got the chocolate peanut butter. I keep those in the fridge. You know, we often record in the morning. I don't remember to eat breakfast. I'm watching the movie and then I'm heading out the door. I didn't eat anything. I just grab one of those. I chug it down. I feel great. I'm ready to do bits. Right. H-U-E-L. So, we've got 15% offline for new customers.

41:47Code check at hewell.com slash check. That's H-U-E-L dot com slash check. 15% off online for new customers. Thank you to Hewell for partnering and supporting our show. You're here to discuss Andrew Stanton's In the Blink of an Eye. I want, this came out February 27th. Then I thought, oh, Leap Day. And then I'm like, oh, no, no, no. Leap Day is February 29th.

42:18Then I had the thought, what movies came out on February 29th? Because that's rare. Oh, sure. I found three. Okay. Want to hear them? Yep, please. Semi-pro. Yeah. February 29th, 2008. Not a good movie in my memory. No. The Other Berlin Girl. Also February 29th. Okay. 2008. Same year. Yes. Here's the most important. Well, because it's every four years. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Here's the best one. Yeah. An extremely goofy movie. Okay. February 29th, 2000. That was pretty funny. Was it? No, you have to do that. That's a DTV, though. It was direct.

42:49But that's a wonderful film. That's it. But that's a pretty excellent picture. Can you ask me? What if it's Goofy movie back to school? Oh, Goofy's got to go to school. It's like, finally, I get to move out and be my own man. Right. And Goofy's like, Hey, look, I'm the dean. He decides he wants to take classes and bring disco back. Oh, of course. Yeah. So there's a lot of shake your groove thing in that movie. B.B. Newworth plays a hot beatnik love interest for Goof.

43:20Uh-huh. Yeah. Max have a love interest? He does. I'm trying to remember. He's gay. It'd be pretty awesome if they'd done that. It'd be pretty awesome if in the year 2000. Fucking get over it. I'm trying to remember who voiced. I'm sure it was like someone who was on a fucking Fox or WB drama at the time. In the Blink of an Eye came out this year. I'm seeing here that Vicky Lewis is the charismatic dude. You're right. And B.B. Newworth is a librarian. Uh, just, just to let you know.

43:51Okay. So Vicky Lewis is the beatnik who is Max's love interest and B.B. Newworth is the librarian who is the dad's life interest. I thought that sounded off age-wise, but I was, I wasn't going to say anything. No, I, I'm here to tell you that Vicky Lewis plays PJ's love interest. Weird. Who the fuck is PJ? PJ is the best friend. Forgive me for not remembering who PJ Goofy is. Yeah, of course. He's Pete's son. Oh, he's the, the, the, the chunkier one. He's a big guy. But then wait a second. Does, does Max not have a love interest? He's an incel. Okay. Okay. He starts looking at 4chan.

44:22I can't believe that I'm doing this. Okay. Can we, we're about 45 minutes. Oh, that's right. You know what? This is going to be a 90 minute episode anyway. So let's talk about it in the blink of an eye. I do have a dossier. If you want me to open it? Oh, yes, please. Incredibly, JJ did research on this movie. This is, that is astonishing. Yeah. Look, it's a feature film. It looks science-y. Mm-hmm. That's true. I'm sure they built sets and stuff. They didn't just like make it in his backyard. 2016, Andrew Stanton made Finding Dory. 2026, he made In the Blink of an Eye. So that's 10 years. Yeah. What did he do in between?

44:53Many things. Live action television. Yes. I think basically post-Dory, his, he basically was like, I want to make live action stuff and there's lots of TV and like, it's a way to do it. He did a recent interview leading up to Toy Story 5, where he said that he intends for Toy Story 5 to be his final animated film. And he said, it's just that these movies take so long. And I love animation, but I was never primarily an animation person. I grew up like working at an art house theater in high school. And that's when I really love, fell in love with film.

45:26And I'm into all different types of movies. And it's been a great blessing to work at a place like Pixar and have that sort of freedom and leeway. But you can get a lot more done in live action. And I think there was a hope that, well, Finding Dory resets the board a little bit from the stink of John Carter. And now I will try to make a smaller budgeted live action film. And there are many scripts that he has signed up for. But to sort of get his reps in, meanwhile, he did a tremendous amount of live action TV. He directed episodes five and six of the second season of Stranger Things.

45:58I haven't seen them because Barb's not involved. Obviously, my stance on Stranger Things is no Barb, no David. My Barb purist. A Barb absolutist, in fact. Yes. Yes. You watch Stranger Things. Yeah. Do you remember Andrew Stanton's work on Stranger Things? I mean, Stranger Things has a pretty solid, like, established visual style that I feel like even when you're bringing in, like, Stanton or even, like, Frank Darabont. Like Vecna has a floor inside of him. Is it Vecna or fucking, what is it, the wildebeest? Yeah. It's Vecna. Demogorgon?

46:28Vecna lives on top of that tummy floor. He lives in the tummy. The tummy is Vecna's home. That was the twist. Joey, I have never watched Stranger Things, I believe, just because I try to keep tabs on Stanton's stuff. Yeah. He directed the Eleven, like, punk episode. Oh, did he do that one? Yes. That one that they kind of, well, it was like a... Did he? A second season, yeah, like, almost a, like, failed backdoor pilot thing. A little bit of a kind of one-off self-contained episode.

46:58A one-off self-contained story. No, he didn't direct that one. He didn't? Okay. No, that was Rebecca Thomas. Interesting. He directed episodes five and six, and I can tell you, like, Hopper, Hooper, Hopper? Hopper? This is season two. Yeah. And that's all. Yeah. Hopper. Yeah. He got lost in a tunnel, and, you know, Eleven appears to be involved. I'm sure he did a good job. You know, I got to say, the only ones that I ever remember noticing, like, oh, there's a bit of extra flavor here was when Darabont directed a couple episodes in the last season

47:30of Stranger Things. And you noticed a few things where you're like, oh, okay, that has a little swish to it. Yeah. But now, this is a show I never stuck with. I only watched the first season, but I know you watched Pinata, the sixth episode of the fourth season of Better Call Saul. It's an excellent episode. And Better Call Saul is a show I adore. Yeah, you're a big fan. I know. Yes. I think it's like a masterpiece. But that's a very good episode. He directed an episode of Legion. Legion. He did the fourth episode of Tales from the Loop. He did four total episodes of a show I love called For All Mankind on Apple TV, including,

48:02in my opinion, its best ever episode. Wow. He did the third episode. It's the one where fucking, I mean, I don't remember like the names of the episode, but like where Joel Edgert, I mean, not Joel, Joel Kinnaman, God bless. There's a lot of Joels out there. Robert Cop. Where his adoptive daughter decides like she wants to be an astronaut. They have this huge fight or she wants to be in the military or whatever, you know, like following his footsteps. And they have this huge fight in a living room, him and his wife and the daughter. And the camera like sticks with it, moves all around. And it's so good.

48:32And it's so beautifully acted. It's the show at its peak. I mean, that show. I got to start watching the show. It's fallen off a little. Season five's a little. It's kind of like, guys, I think you're done, you know, full of ideas. Our friend Alan Sepinwall in a text recently revealed to me that they are about to launch a spinoff show that is retelling everything that's happened on For All Mankind so far from the perspective of the Russians. They're just resetting. This is correct. It's called Star City. It seems like I don't think it's going to run five seasons.

49:04Put it that way. Yeah. That's just a wild idea to be like a triumphant run. We're wrapping up. By the way, the spinoff is starting in three months and it's just going back to the first point of the story. I'm like, we know what happened. So what do you like? What do we anyway? Whatever. Who knows? It's also in English, despite all the Russian scenes in the show being in Russian in the main show. But clearly they were like, well, the whole show can't be in Russian. Then I'm like, well, then what are you doing? We fucking maybe don't make it. He also directed an episode of Three Body Problem and he wrote two episodes of Obi-Wan

49:36Kenobi. A show I recently watched for the first time and I will admit, I think is quite terrible. Quite bad. But he's like the credits on that are like, you know, he's like one of like a million names. They're very qualified people. Who knows? Exactly. Who knows who? Those Star Wars shows have a lot of wacky credits attached to them because at one point this person was supposed to do this or this was supposed to be a movie. Hey, if you would like put him as an example, put Stanton in charge of like, hey, you're our like guiding vision for this show. Maybe it would have been better, but I don't think it was that.

50:06No, it's odd because, right, he gets credited as a writer on two episodes, but I don't even think he's a producer and he didn't direct any. Yeah. And it made sense. It just feels like you like stumbled into a writer's room for two weeks and then you were like, oh, fuck this. But it's also wild because it's not like he worked in a writer's room on any other shows from the time he started. No, but like, I feel like that's kind of like what being in the Pixar brain trust is a little bit. Yes. They just don't get credited that way. And I also think it makes sense that that moment Obi-Wan is where they're really starting to widen the aperture of like, maybe we're going to make a ton of stuff for Disney plus.

50:39If I understand, I'm like, I just want to get in the door at Lucasfilm. I want to fucking talk to them about Star Wars. And I think a lot of people who worked on the Star Wars TV shows were basically like, I'd like to do something to do. I'd love to be on a set with a lightsaber. Like, it would just be awesome. Like, I grew up with Star Wars. Like, this rocks. I mean, obviously, he makes sense. He does. To have done something. And a show that made sense was Obi-Wan Kenobi, a perfect miniseries that made sense. Sense. I assume I will have griped about this under Mandalorian. Everyone looks down the camera and was like, this makes sense. And Grogu episode.

51:09But it is astonishing to me that almost all of the Disney plus Star Wars shows are about a person with a child being chased by someone. Yes. Being chased by the fourth most important evil Jedi adjacent dark side guy, like, in this sector. They present someone. Like, Ray Stevenson, RIP. God bless him. Shows up and he's like, and I'm also not a Sith. Yes. But I kind of like him and I'm not a Jedi either, but I have a lightsaber.

51:40And I'm like, well, what are you? He's like, I don't know. I was just like, how are these all the exact same premise where you're like semi-stoic lead, younger, more vulnerable, sort of like under the wing, you know, they have to protect. They're looking for something and someone else is chasing them. And the person who's chasing them is established as really evil. And the longer things go on, you're like, they're only kind of half evil. Yeah. But they're all that, save for Andor.

52:11Which is probably the best one. I mean, Ahsoka is pretty good. Has anyone thrown that take out? That Andor is good? People are like, Andor. And we might want to cut that out just because. Well, my microphone's on fire.

52:27You've watched Ahsoka, right? Ahsoka? Ahsoka. I watched Ahsoka. I'm going to watch season two. Why not? I love punishment. Yeah, I want to see what happens with, um, what's the, what the hell is the blue guy who like. Yeah, Thrawn. I think Ahsoka is so fascinating to me because. I swear to God, they're like, get ready to meet the scariest villain in the world. He's fucking Joe Biden in that show. He's so quiet. He's like. But I just, the end of that season one is so wild to me because it's Filoni basically being like, I am setting up this Thrawn guy. Right. As like, this is it. Like, this is the new guy. Right, right. Because the show mostly has other smaller villains that she's dealing with.

53:01Right. No, no, but not just in the show. Like, to me, it felt like it was suggesting. Yeah, the bad. We are, this is your new bad. He's the engine of the Star Wars TV universe. He's going to extend into other shows. Like, I want to make movies and I'm sure he probably does want to do all this, but I'm watching it and I'm like, there's no fucking way that's happening. So what the hell is this? I don't know. Do we have to watch season two for the. You don't have to do shit. Well, I know that. Season two hasn't happened and won't come out. Yeah, it won't come out by next week. Thank God. Because that's your season.

53:32It doesn't even have. Yeah, it doesn't even have. But it has been filmed and Rory McCann replaced Ray Stevenson. Yeah, I mean. The man died. Look, look, I mean, we should say it was not the problem. Exactly. He actually was the best part of the show. He was the best part. And he was, you were kind of like, there's something to this idea. There's something. Right. You know, to like the idea of what he's playing. Obviously, the big problem with Ahsoka, Ahsoka, Ahsoka is just like, she's a non-character. She's a non-character. And like, I know in the cartoon, she's like a spunky teen who's like, I'm a rebel or whatever.

54:06But by the time the show, like now that she's a grownup, she's just like, her vibe is she's serene. Every character is like that. I mean, that's, yes. Yeah. I mean, they're all kind of just like, we are your friend, Ahsoka. Okay. So we haven't, we haven't, we haven't seen Mando and we haven't recorded yet. So I'm going to burn some of these takes here and just remind me to not make these complaints in the Mando episode. Okay. My takeaway watching Ahsoka was like, this feels like watching children perform Shakespeare where they don't know what they're saying. Yeah.

54:36And the only direction they're being given is play it seriously. And say it slow. So everything is like your character motivation is serious. And I think that it's partially that Filoni ran these cartoon shows. I have not watched much of Clone Wars, but I watched the majority of Rebels, which I really liked and was a show that was fun and had defined characters. And so much of Ahsoka is him being like, I'm bringing all my Rebels characters into live action and then zapping them of any personality because I'm trying to fight the perception that these are children's characters.

55:13So everyone is just like saying things really slowly and quietly. Even fucking like Ezra shows up, who's been built up as, by the way, you can't have a character called Ezra. No. Star Wars is ridiculous. But he shows up and he's been built up as like, oh, crazy wild Ezra. He's so fun. And then he's just pretty much just as dead eyed as the rest of them. Mary Elizabeth Winstead, who I always love. I think basically never misses. And we've talked about David, like she's someone who can single handedly elevate dog shit.

55:47And in this, she is so boring and lifeless. Everyone is bad. The villains. The whales. The whales. There are whales. Are fun. The whales are good. The whales are good, but everyone had told me the whales were good. I skipped the show when it aired years ago. And I remember at the time people being like, the whales kind of feel like classic Star Wars magic. I got to the whale sequence in the season and I was like, that was good. But if you're telling me that's the high watermark and I have four episodes left to go, I'm terrified.

56:18I agree with you. The whales are like the one chunk that I felt a little something. Anyway, that's my Star Wars rant. Also, Ahsoka is like basically not the lead character of that show. She's not. She's dead for half the season. Not dead. She's a lot of more. She's in a fucking. In between. She's in the Anakinverse. Right. She's in the limbo. The Anakinverse. It's just everyone being like, we got to find Ezra. Ezra will not. Have you watched Skeleton Crew yet? I'm watching it right now. That one at least has energy. What? Did they renew Skeleton?

56:48No. No. That's a one undone. I think Skeleton Crew is done. That's basically like. Ahsoka's the only thing that's coming back. And they've announced. And that'll be the end of it. Like it's over. And then Filoni will be shot in the middle of time. Probably. Everyone forgets. But they. They announced that Filoni was going to direct a movie. That was the culmination of all the. That's what I mean. I think he thought that was happening. That was happening. And I think there was a little bit of. We've changed our priorities. Let's just put Grogu on a screen. Right. And see what happens. John directs that.

57:19We're sorry. We'll let you make Ahsoka season two to wrap up those threads. Yeah. I honestly think they should just let him. Just not for theaters. But like in Disney. But let him make whatever crazy fucking movie he wants to make. But just let him. Where he brings back all of them through AI. Like you know Luke, Leia, Han. No. He wants to do this. Yeah. Let's be real. And he wants to correct everything that he thinks they did wrong. Right. In the sequel series. Right. Of like these guys should have been fighting together. And they should be fighting Thrawn I guess. Like let him make this piece of shit.

57:50Yes. Right. Like a Disney YouTube fan movie. It's in on the Disney Plus app. It's in a garbage can. And you have to like lift up the lid. And they're like really? And you're like yeah. What's in there? They're like all right. We'll get it out for you. It's like covered in banana peels. If you press play the fucking FBI breaks down your door. It's just a spinning wheel. It just turns into a question mark. And it's like come on. That wasn't going to exist. Chris Hansen shows up. Oh so you decided to watch the Filoni movie. You watched the Filoni movie and in the blink of an eye.

58:22What's going on with you? We will talk about this like two months prior to this. But yeah. I do wonder if they have like a Hail Mary guy. Like the James Gunn DC thing. Kathy has retired. Filoni. We're winding down with Filoni. He's going to go to some cartoon world. Filoni is in charge of the whole thing. I know. But after Mando does poorly. Do they go like. I don't know. We want a new steward. And it's. But then I don't know who the answer to that question is. I mean I think I know the answer. Which is. It's. They already announced.

58:53Simon Kimberg is sort of like overseeing.

58:57That ain't it my friends. Let's do it again. But they're like Filoni is in charge of operations. Which I also think is partially being like. Filoni is in charge of HR. Maybe you don't write and direct the stuff as much anymore. Right. And that Simon Kimberg is the guy who's sort of like. You got to figure out the movie problem. Everything is really good over there. In the blink of an eye. So Interstan does all this TV. I know the two movies that he came close to making. The one was Revolver. Is that correct Sims? All right. Well let me. Let me just continue this. Philosophical. Yeah. He was going to remake it.

59:28Okay. So Stanton. Just to note. He is on the Pixar senior creative team. He was the narrative guru for. Literally credited as the narrative guru for Ralph Breaks the Internet. Hey Ben. Okay. Okay. Good work. Because this is where once Disney has bought Pixar. They start to send the Pixar brain trust out to other projects at the other tendrils to give advice. Toy Story 4. He is a writer. Yeah. Alongside Stephanie Folsom. Mm-hmm. So he created Forky. So obviously he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for that work.

1:00:00It was in that same recent piece. Toy Story 4 was originally announced as a John Lasseter movie. Weirdly enough Rashida Jones was writing it with her partner Will McCormick. Right. Her writing partner. It was the Woody Bo Peeper Union movie. But a very different version of it that didn't work for years and years and years. And they kept pushing it back. And then Lasseter steps down. Hands off directing. Lasseter. Lots of hugging Lasseter. Is pushed out of Pixar entirely. And they basically go to Stanton. And they're like can you take a crack at this.

1:00:31Toy Story 4 is a disaster. And we cannot cancel it. Because there is so much money tied up in the idea of marketing. And merchandising. And the promise to our shareholders that we will have another Toy Story movie. And as he put it he like you know locked himself in a room. And within like six hours was like I think I know what the movie is. That he is the Toy Story genius. And he is the one who can constantly. Well he knows that yeah that's what they. What he and Joss Whedon did all those years ago right. Yes. When the first one was a disaster.

1:01:02And then they locked themselves in a room. Right. And Joss Whedon was gone after like a week. And then he continued to just fix everything. And that yes he came up with Forky right. And he wins the Nobel Prize. I mean his his first big take was like Bo coming back. And okay if three was the end of Andy's story. Should four be kind of like well then what does Woody do now. The other thing he said which I think this is real genius with the Toy Story stuff is the problem they kept butting against with Toy Story 4. And I've read at least one or two of the scripts that have floated around for the canceled Toy Story 4.

1:01:34They were like well we want to tell a love story. We want to make a rom-com. We want to make a movie about like Bo and Woody getting back together. And people kept writing movies where they were like this has nothing to do with them being toys. You're just writing a romance between two characters who happen to be toys. And Stanton's always been like you have to start from the perspective of what are the experiences that are unique to them. And he was just like well like how do Woody and Bo Peep get split up. What is uniquely traumatizing about that that would be connected to them being a toy.

1:02:04Oh Bo gets donated because the sister has a different relationship to her toys than Andy does. Yada yada yada and then the story comes from there. Hear that? That's now Crispy and McCrispy Strips meeting creamy Caesar sauce. Sounds extra crispy. Caesar sauce at McDonald's for a limited time.

1:02:33Jimmy Conrad here. Your favorite former U.S. Men's National Team player. And I have something to put on your radar. The core short from Viore. Because after getting my first pair I was hooked. They work for everything that I like doing. Soccer, tennis, hoops, mountain biking, hiking, lifting weights, swimming, Pilates. It truly is one short every sport. And I'm going to be honest they're unbelievably comfortable. Which is why I wear them doing everything else like running errands, hanging with friends and family or lounging around the house. They are designed to work for whatever your day throws at you.

1:03:06And that's because Viore is an investment in your happiness. For our listeners, they're offering 20% off your first purchase. So head to viore.com slash footy. That's V-U-O-R-I dot com slash F-O-O-T-Y. Exclusions apply. Visit the site for full details. So again, head over to viore.com slash footy and make it happen. May 2020, he was attached to something called Chairman Spaceman, which is an adaptation of a Thomas Pierce short story that was published in The New Yorker that he was going to do for Simon Kinberg's genre films for Searchlight.

1:03:43Which is about a corporate raider who renounces his wealth and signs up for an interplanetary mission to colonize the solar system. I don't know. Sounds somewhat interesting. It sounds like In the Blink of an Eye is sort of like the other heady sci-fi script that he that then got going. Correct. These were the two. So he jumped to that one. Yes. And obviously, Hulu, Searchlight, all owned by Disney, who owe Stanton for the billions and billions of dollars he has made them. But he put it as like, those were the two things I was really serious about.

1:04:15And in the Blink of an Eye, it came together a little faster. Revolver is Revolver. Revolver, a romantic coming-of-age comedy starring Ethan and Maya Hawke, written by a Stranger Things writer, Kate Treffery. Treffery. She's the one who ended up writing the Stranger Things Broadway play. Ah, of course, in which we saw the first shadow. The first shadow. That's right. And to explain the floor thing in that one.

1:04:39Well, stages traditionally have a floor. Exactly. Does Vecna live in a theater? Is it Vecna that has a floor? Inside your stomach. There is the fact of, yeah, there is a flat floor and people are just walking around. Hardwood. Right. Yeah, exactly. Wall-to-wall carpet.

1:04:53But be careful of the spikes. Oh, there's spikes? On the end, because there are spikes in the towel. The tummy spikes. They'll get you. They'll get you right there. You watch the finale. This is how they kill Vecna. Vecna. Right, they got Vecna. That fucker. Throw him into his spike. What did Vecna do? Into a big spike. Recession? He made a recession happen. What did he do? He was one of the craziest fucking things in the world. He wasn't a big fan of gay people. Oh? So that was why he was after Will all those years. And I am, that's barely a joke. That is basically what they imply in the last season, among many other things. It is so insane that people disliked that ending so much that within a week they were

1:05:23like, no, no, no. There's another episode. The ending's bad on purpose because it's an augmented reality experience. It's metatextual and there's a secret episode that's coming out. They would never just whiff this this hard earnestly. Revolver, it's a 60s set thing in which Maya Hawk is a teenager in Anchorage, Alaska. And a flight from to Japan carrying the Beatles is forced to stop in Anchorage and she just decides to fuck George Harrison.

1:05:54That is her goal. That is the plot of the movie. That is her goal.

1:05:59Santa wanted to make that for like five years eventually. It just never happened. Now, Colby Day, the writer of this movie, who also wrote Spaceman on Netflix, right? Yes, a movie I like a lot. Yeah. So he starts writing in The Link of the Night when living in New York in the mid-2010s. He goes to the planetarium. Heard of it? In the Hayden Planetarium in the Museum of Natural History. And, you know, they've got a big map of the timeline of the universe. It's a, you know, it's a cool place to go. Big bang and blah, blah, blah.

1:06:30And he said, it gave me an existential crisis, which that can happen when you start thinking about the vastness of the universe. So he's like, I think when you start to zoom out and you think about what does it mean to be here for not that long? You start to find the meaning of life. He wanted to talk about the idea that even if we don't get much time, the things we do ripple through it. So he's trying to reassure his own anxiety. That's certainly what this movie is about. Yeah.

1:06:55So he's like, you know, initial concept is just that he wanted to write about time. So the initial story began with the big bang, the first thing in time. Right. Kind of the ultimate prequel. He also was much more rigid about moving from past to present to future in that order. But I think Stanton pushes it more to like be fluidly jumping between them all, you know. Yeah. Not like his three segments. This movie was in development for years.

1:07:26It also, you know, from the time that Stanton came attached to the script. Was it a blacklist script? It was on the blacklist. So that's the thing. Like 2016, I want to say. Yes. It was on the blacklist in 2016, number six. But, you know, you get put on the blacklist. Everyone comes a calling, but they're also like, by the way, we have to change everything. Right. Or whatever. Stanton read the script years later, though. Mm-hmm. And was like, I'm jealous of whoever wants to try and make this. Realizes no one's making it.

1:07:57And decides to jump on board. He calls Colby and says, you love Cloud Atlas as much as I do. And Colby Day says, yeah, I do. I love story circles. That was my goal was doing a kind of a Cloud Atlas-y thing. Stanton also loves The Fountain. Another movie, I would say, that is trying this kind of thing. And he likes a triptych, he says. He's like, you know, you go to the roots of all that. And there's something deep that all of us connect to about trifectas.

1:08:28Of course, he might be thinking about our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. I don't know. Famous trifecta. Father, Son, Holy Ghost. So he starts revising. I don't know. I mean, this is... I'm going to be honest with you guys. It's pretty boring. Obviously, it's super Cloud Atlas-y. Cloud Atlas-y. It is kind of like a very small scale, if you could call it that, or not small scale isn't right,

1:08:59but a more intimate version of Cloud Atlas. It's like, what if we did what Cloud Atlas is trying to do, but we really hone it down to just these three or so core relationships. And a kind of really clean line of cause and effect. This is sort of one narrative thread that's touched in three different eras. Yes. And just very small lives. Yes. Like, in each of these... I mean, yes, he is placing them in a canvas where it's like, look how huge the impact of these small lives actually is.

1:09:36Right, that's in the contrast. But they are, you know, pretty modest little stories. Modest is a good way to put it.

1:09:43This was announced in October 2022. It was shot in 2023. And then just sort of was in stasis for three years. I've obviously wanted to do Stanton forever. So from the moment this movie was announced, I was like, well, when this comes out, we'll cover him. And then it kept on getting, like, knocked down the schedule. And it is ideal that this and Toy Story 5 are coming out so close together and we can do a series that doesn't end on this movie and that has the contrast of both of them in the same year. I did not, like, this movie went to Sundance and was, I would say, critically ravaged and then has gone to Hulu with basically, like, no impact whatsoever.

1:10:22I had, you know, after the snowstorm canceled the premiere, I was like, word's not great. I'm going to have to watch this for the podcast. If I watch it now, will I even remember it by the time we record? Let me just hold off until it's actually time to do this episode. And so I've been dreading it. I did not dislike this movie. I cannot say I liked it. But I felt a little more neutral on it than I was expecting with how negative the word was. I think, Joey, you and I are maybe in a slightly similar space of, like, nothing really works for me, but there wasn't anything I bumped on too hard.

1:10:58And I like what it's trying to do, even if I don't think it gets there. It's a fart sandwich, but it's a sandwich. This is Ben's review is that it's a fart sandwich. Ben says it's a fart sandwich. Yes. But he's just upset that he didn't get to voice the AI friend. I think the movie would have been a lot more fun if Kate McKinnon's AI friend had been voiced by you. Ben would have been very good. Ben did voice the AI friend. I spent the whole movie, for some reason, thinking that some narrative connective tissue they were doing was that the AI was voiced by Rashida Jones.

1:11:29It sounded better. I thought that's true. I thought Rashida Jones. It's some random actress. It's a little confusing. But, although I don't know what that would have meant. Anyway, my experience was like, in the first 20 minutes or so, especially the very start of the movie, I was like, oh boy. Because it starts with like the Sylvia Plath quote, you know, remember, remember, this is now and now and now. And you're like, oh boy. And then we open in, you know, like 45,000 BC with cavemen making sparks.

1:11:59And again, you're like, all right. You know, obviously, if you're going to be invoking 2001 A Space Odyssey, you got to be careful. That's the best science fiction film. So, you're inviting quite a comparison there if you're going to be doing that. So, obviously. So, you know, intensely. So, you're starting with that and then you're going into these two other, introducing us to these two other stories. The Rashida Jones and Daveed Diggs in the present day.

1:12:33And she's a research scientist and they're flirting at college. Yes. And then she's a doctoral candidate in anthropology. She'd do bones. And then Greg question mark from statistics. Oh, right. It's cute. Right. Two actors I like a lot. But they are, what is that face you're making? I'm trying to think what I like Rashida Jones in, like, of late. I like her in this movie. But we'll get there. Yeah. She's all right in this movie. Sure. I mean, I found this movie just kind of inert. That was my, like, I was not, like, raging about this.

1:13:06Like, oh, my God. This is, but it just felt like low energy. I mean, it's going to play my thought. Complete my thought. Then you're introduced to the middle. And then you're introduced to Kate McKinnon in the future. Right. And she's on a spaceship and she's on a mission to, like, save humanity by taking all of these, like, new... Babies in a bag. Babies in a spaceship to a new home. And I think for the first, like, 20, 30 minutes, you're just like, wow, this is, like, like you said, David, this is very low energy.

1:13:36This is very inert. It's cross-cutting between all of them really quickly. Right. And you're like, you are taking me right into cross-cutting between three stories and they all seem pretty boring. It's got a little bit of the Ahsoka thing of, like, it feels like the tone of this is quote-unquote serious, right? And I also think it's not even, you know, Cloud Atlas opens like this where you're weaving between all of them really quickly as they're setting it up. But Cloud Atlas has twice as many threads. And they're further apart. They're not as thematically linked in an apparent way from the get-go.

1:14:09And then after the first, like, three or four minutes, which is also more symphonic and stylized, it settles down into, like, we will focus on one for... We're going to spend some time. Right. And then go to the others to situate. The first, like, 25 minutes of this just continue to just keep ribboning. Yeah. In a way where you're, like, the energy and the pacing are pretty low and slow. Well, it's like, you're going to, okay, you've gone right into we're jumping between these, but you never, but you didn't first establish, like, here's why you should care about any of them.

1:14:40And, like, right, the prehistoric one is, like, you know, it's nonverbal. They speak in. It's very much him doing, like, a... Speaking at Huttonese, I believe. But it's like a quest for fire, you know?

1:14:56It is actors in prosthetics. Yeah, because they're Neanderthals. Right. So they, you know, or they're Paleolithic people of some sort, but... Well, it's about the meeting of... Right. Yes. Cro-Magnon and, yeah. And, right, then there's the present set, graduate school section. But I was going to say, I like both of these actors a lot. It is an interesting casting choice to hire two people who are decades older than the characters they're playing. Yeah. You know, I was just watching The Wizard of the Kremlin, the hottest movie of 2026, which is a movie that begins with Paul Dano playing, like, his character when he's, like, 18 years old.

1:15:33And he's like, I'm at college. And I was just like, just don't show me this. Like, I just, I can't buy this. And it's taking me out of the movie right away. It's the Ellen McKay thing for me, where I'm like... Ellen McKay's a good recent example. Where I'm like... As we know, we're all teenagers right now. And you're like, okay, Ellen. But also, it's like, cast for the age the character is going to spend the majority of the movie. The most time, yes. This movie jumps ahead. Eventually, we get to a point where Daveed Diggs and Rashida Jones are playing their own age. But I'd say it's a pretty short chunk of the movie.

1:16:05Yeah, because by that point, the movie is moving along time-wise quite fast. And then it even goes beyond that to them with old age makeup. So you're like, you know, 60% of their screen time is them in their 20s. Yes. And they are 44 and 50. They are. I mean, look. I know this is a good-looking people. They're good-looking people. They've aged really well. And I thought the graduate school stuff... But I didn't totally buy Rashida Jones. It's like, I'm just getting started in grad school. There is, like... With my bones. I think what is actually pretty fucking effective CGI de-aging on the two of them that I noticed was very subtle.

1:16:39And a lot of that is they're two people with very good genes who have aged very well. But there is, like, an energy thing of you just feel the two of them playing 20-something in a way that feels a little school play at times. It makes it confusing how much time is going back. Correct. It does. Because I couldn't really... I'm, like, hearing you say she's in her 20s makes a lot more sense to me now. Well, because also, it's like, you can obviously be in your mid-40s and go to graduate school. So you watch it and you're like, I'm not immediately rejecting that Rashida Jones could be in this program.

1:17:12But the longer it goes on, you're sort of like, I think she's supposed to be, like, 27. You know? There's sort of context clues that develop. And then there's the Kate McKinnon section, which is right. She is on a spaceship by herself with an AI friend. It is the year 2417. Right. So it's like 400 years in the future. And yeah, she's got an AI that is pretty... Roscoe. Pretty, I would say, like, personable. It's not a HAL. It's actually, like, conversational and feels friendly and human in its tone, its demeanor.

1:17:47But she's basically in isolation. It's a very kind of WALL-E setup of you're alone on a spaceship looking for the planet that is inhabitable, where life could restart. There's no, like, and this is deliberate, but there's no, like, great tension to her mission. Because I believe they've identified the planet. They know where she's going. They're terraforming. They're terraforming it. They have a whole plan. She's just got to get there. It should be done by the time I get there, but that's happening.

1:18:17That's not my job. Yes, she is dealing with a problem, which is that something's gone wrong in the ship's systems. But it's all played pretty low-key. And they are also very... They really drip out the information in a way that I actually kind of liked about, like, what her deal is. I was going to say, right, the big mystery is, like, how is she alive? Because she's not going to go in hypersleep. Like, how is she going to just... The thing is, though, is I... Because they keep stressing, like, she's doing this for a hundred and blah years or whatever.

1:18:48I've re-watched it, and it flies over your head. You re-watched this movie? Well, I'm saying I just skipped to see the intro of each character. It says, longevity enhance pilot. Oh, does it say that? I did not notice that. I don't know. I mean, one of her first pieces of dialogue is something about, like, oh, how many years do I have until we get there? Right. And with the suggestion of the way she's saying it, of, like, me, you know, not, like, my kids, like, me.

1:19:18So you're like, okay, there's something going on with you. I'm just going to... Let's just say the thing, right? This movie is about humanity identifying, basically, the cure for death. Cure to death. Right? Like, scientifically identifying... The way to stop aging. Yes. But not, like, you're immortal. You will eventually... She will... Yeah, we see her getting old at the end. You will eventually die. You will age very slowly. Beyond, right, curing illnesses, we have, like, identified a way to combat the gene that causes the degradation of aging, you know, and to slow it down to a real crawl.

1:19:53And everything works out. Well... Well... Well, I mean... So the movie is very sketchy about a lot of details, and again, in a way that I didn't entirely hate, one of the things that is kind of left to our imagination, unless I missed something, is that she is doing this mission to find us a new home, because our current home, presumably Earth, is no longer habitable. But what is left vague is, did that just happen naturally? No. I got the impression it was because people stopped dying, and that created a huge overpopulation issue.

1:20:27And that created, like, havoc. Yeah. I mean, like... But they don't really get into it. But she says, like, we decided that people should not actually stop aging. Like, when she's talking to the kids about it. It's definitely the most interesting scene in the movie. I think everything about that scene, I... First of all, I think McKinnon's good in this movie. She is. She's... Yeah. She's... Yes. Yeah. She's up to the assignment. I... There were moments with her when I was moved by. Like, on I... The first moment in the movie, after it was kind of going,

1:20:57by very glacially, and I was like, oh, boy. The first moment where I, like, locked in a little bit is when she has to turn off the AI, her AI friend. And she's, like... Turns it off, and then, you know, she's like, you were my only friend. And then is, like, sad about it. And I don't know. Just because she played it so well, I was like, oh, okay. This is my... I'm feeling something there. I agree. This is my biggest take with the film. And I understand, you know, this whole movie generates from thinking about the Big Bang and the ripple of time and the story circles and, you know, all of that.

1:21:29I'm like, the whole movie should have been McKinnon. I'm like, this is the interesting story. And actually, the reveals that are interesting within her story are deflated somewhat by the other two narratives. That's it. You're right. You're right. Because, like, the other two narratives just are pretty juiceless. They are. They just are. They really are. And they're, you know, they're little moments. They're little flourishes and touches. But when you actually step away from the movie, and especially when it doesn't really connect all of its threads until the end and go like, this is what's fucking been going on the whole time. That fucking nut.

1:22:00Get out of here. The nut. The acorn. Get out of here. Some scrap-esque shit. I would possibly get the nut out of here. Yes. But you're just sort of like, the whole interesting story is the Kate McKinnon thing. And actually, if you remove the other two narratives and you're slowly realizing what's going on with her, the same doling out of information gradually, but it not being supplanted by the other two, that's the movie that feels like it has a little more intrigue to it. I like this implication that it's basically like, we're watching sort of the turning point

1:22:33of humanity. The sort of notion of the two species and one outlived the other. And this was the merging of them. And this is sort of the missing link sort of moment. And then Rashida Jones is trying to, she has discovered the remnants of this missing link. What's the character's name? It's not Thork or Thog. It's Thorn and Hera. Yes. If you look on IMDb, it's something I really like is, Thorn is played by someone who is primarily like a stunt performer and a physical performer.

1:23:05Jorge Bargas. His photo on IMDb is just him as a Power Ranger. Nice. His face is not even visible. It's fucking awesome. And Tania Beatty, who's an actor. Oh my God. It's an awesome picture. He's like, power ranger made power ranger. Yes. Tania Beatty is an actor I really like. Yeah. Yes. Uh, who plays the, the, his wife. Um, but, uh, yeah, you're seeing this sort of like, this is where humanity kind of starts,

1:23:37right? Then Rashida Jones has recovered the remnants of this guy and believes like this missing link might help us understand where we came from, understand our own DNA more in a way that could lead to the breakthroughs of curing diseases, this and that. While this is happening, her mother is dying rapidly from a very aggressive form of a terminal cancer. She is starting this sort of relationship with Daveed Diggs, who clearly is all in on her, and she's kind of keeping him at arm's length. A, because she's so focused on her work, and B, because she's got the burden of caring for

1:24:09her mother. And she's sort of like, I don't know if I can take this on. And you're watching this developing relationship where she's keeping him at a distance, then she drops out of school to go be with her mother. So the relationship is mostly happening over Zoom. You know, she's in isolation there, and he's committed to her. And eventually, you know, they, he, he comes, he moves in with her, they get married, they have kids. And you realize that their son, who they homeschool and they raise in the grand tradition of science, is able to build on his parents' work and what she studied to actually crack

1:24:41the code. To cure death. To cure death. To stop aging. So the whole time of this, of their story, you're, a part of you is wondering, like, what the hell is this? Because, like, nothing is happening. Well, like, our introduction. You finally get to, when you get to the end, you're like, okay, the idea, the overarching idea he has, like, here is that she and she especially, but, and Daveed are like, they were just another little step. The link in the chain. Along the chain. And she has the moment, can you believe we made him? Yes. The, the guy who cures death.

1:25:12There is something, as, as their relationship, Rashida and Daveed, like, as I gradually settled into, I was like, okay, this is just what this is going to be, the whole movie. This, this, like, very quiet, you know. He's the most patient, understanding, gentle. Oh, mostly over video calls, which is kind of a crazy choice for a movie. But, as I settled into it, I was like, okay, there are some nice moments. There's a, there's a very lovely moment where they're just sitting together on, standing

1:25:46together on the phone silently while she's sitting by her mom in bed. And they, it's a wordless scene. And, like, there are little moments like that where you're like, okay, that was, that was good. He is a very good visual storyteller. And even in a movie like this that can't quite find itself, there will be moments like that where something kind of interesting and specific is conveyed. Right. And where you feel a sense of what he's going, what they're going for with their dynamic of, like, they're so in love. And, like, despite all these problems they have in the fight she has, and, like, at one point she tries to break up with him, it just kind of, like, doesn't come to anything because

1:26:19he's just like, no, like, you love me. I love you. Like, we're going to be together forever. I think that's kind of fun where she's really trying to break up with him because she's just like, this isn't fair to you. It doesn't matter that I'm in love with you. And then he starts laughing and he's like, I got you to admit that you're in love with me. It speaks to the weird writing style of the movie that in that particular scene is kind of charming, where it's like, you think this is about to be a dramatic moment, and then it's not. Because he's just like, no, enough of that. I think, though, the key thing here is kinda. Kinda. Kinda. Now, let's say... I just want to say something right now.

1:26:50Jorge Vargas played Blake Bradley, a.k.a. the Navy Thunder Ranger, in Power Rangers Ninja Storm. I'm glad you've been doing a deep dive on this while Joey and I talk about the movie. Who is the Blue Ranger. But it's just funny how, like, at the start, they were like, yeah, we got a Blue Ranger, we got a Green Ranger. And now they're like, he's the Blue, the Navy Thunder Ranger. Like, so we had that, like, kinda Land's End-style colors description. Yes. But he's in 36 episodes. Hey. Like, and it's him.

1:27:21Yes. Like, his human face is seen, too. That's all. Uh... I don't have any more... Do you want me to get more news for you on Ninja Storm Rangers? No. What I was gonna say is... Maybe I will anyway, though. If you remove the other two plot lines... Yes. ...and just sort of unpack, like, this is what happens in the Kate McKinnon plot line, right? She is a woman who is on a spaceship by herself. Her only connection seems to be this AI robot. And she's, like, holding on to hundreds, thousands of embryos.

1:27:52Yes. In bags. Right. You grow them in bags. That she is trying to protect while also having a sort of sunshine-esque green room to be able to provide oxygen for the ship. Uh... Uh... There is a fungus breakout. Uh... There is... Not gonna be enough oxygen for her to get to the planet that's being terraformed. There's sort of the mystery of, like, why is this one woman in isolation carrying so many embryos to repopulate humanity by herself? And, uh...

1:28:22You know, you have this sort of, I don't know, a bit of a trolley car problem, but not really, of... There's not enough oxygen to get her there. She's like, I should kill myself. You're AI. You can handle the mission on your own. All that's important is that the embryos get to this planet and you can sort of activate everything. And the AI sacrifices itself to be, like, you need a human being with, like, reasoning and feelings and the X factor of human experience. You know, it shouldn't be done by a machine. And so, the AI basically convinces Kate McKinnon to deactivate it so that they can use the extra room to plant more to create a second supply of oxygen.

1:29:03Right. Because they have to isolate... To avoid the... Right. Have a separate room with the plant life isolated so that it doesn't also get diseased. All of this is kind of like a runaround where I was sort of like, the fuck, where are we going with this? Until the moment, as you said, where I think McKinnon plays really well, the loss of, like, oh, this was the only connection she had to something that even felt like humanity was speaking to this computer. And now she's got to do the rest of this mission alone. And she activates the one child that she can, like, raise and have a relationship with.

1:29:34And she starts talking to her. And then you realize, like, this is the last human being alive. We, like, killed ourselves with overpopulation. She is functionally, if not literally immortal, close to it. And as she's raising this child, she explains this thing, what I think is the best scene in the movie, both in terms of being well-performed and well-written, but also the ideas of it being so interesting. We solved the thing that felt like the great tragedy of humanity, our own mortality. And in fact, we realized this is not good. It's not good.

1:30:04Not only did it just, like, fuck us up infrastructurally as a species, but also, like, people shouldn't live this long. It actually sucks. It's a curse and it's a burden. And we're restarting humanity. You will age normally. We're going to go to a new planet. We're going to try to get it right. And I'm the last freak alive trying to, like, reset everything. It is important, though, that the company that did this to us is also the company that is now in charge of the ship. Right. This is where the movie trips up and also is very, like, not built for this moment, is that it lands in this very optimistic place.

1:30:42You could argue about whether it's optimistic because, of course, the happy ending that we see is preceded by, like, the collapse of civilization. Well, you're, like, watching the son's breakthrough as he gives the press conference to reveal that he's cured death at the same time as Kate McKinnon is basically explaining this was a mistake. It fucked everything up. And now we're trying to reset everything back to how it was. You will age normally. And so you have, like, Daveed Diggs and Rashida Jones being, like, can you believe it? Our son changed the world.

1:31:12And Kate McKinnon being, like, the world's a nightmare. And now I have to try to do a hard reboot. Right. But then they're trying to, the mood of the thing, this is what you're saying, is that that is all a disconnect from the mood. The mood of the thing is very much like, but we figure it out. You know, like, we figure, we realize we made a mistake. And now we're pulling back. And, you know, we figured out a new way. And that's what you're seeing with this Kate McKinnon storyline. And then alongside that, also, she has this lovely AI friend who is, like, really nice and, like, helps her with everything.

1:31:49But, and who, and who the AI gives voice to, like, no, humanity is the most important thing. And, like, having you, having your X factor of being a human, that is the most important thing, more important than me. And not to, like, place other things that are, like, going on in the world right now onto the, but you do, you can't avoid it. And I'm watching that scene, and I'm like, well, that's a little bullshit. Like, that's not what, that's not, like, reflective of, that is not what we're learning and seeing about how these technologies operate. That's just you fantasizing about, like, oh, but maybe one day it will be like that.

1:32:22We have the opposite issue, which is, like, AI convincing people to kill themselves, not AI being, like, I should deactivate so humanity can persist. Right, so I was just like, eh. It also, I mean, it's, it's the whole, like. And, and Stanton was, I read an interview with him where they were asked about this, and they were like, it takes a very, like, optimistic view. And his answer was just like, well, what else can you do but, but, but just have hope and have optimism. And I was like, well, that's a lame answer, though. I find his worldview really interesting in general, because it feels like he is a guy, and I relate to this really hard, where he is, like, there is a constant fight between, like, an overriding cynicism and, like, an attempt at optimism.

1:33:01That he, like, doesn't want to drown in the cynicism, even though it's his innate state. And there is a sort of, like, sappy emotionality to him that he's a little bit embarrassed by, right? And I think that's a lot of, like, the Toy Story magic comes from that sensibility. It feels like this movie puts the thumb down too hard on the optimism, even when it's doing something that is a little bit ominous. And it's trying to, like, create the friction between, like, well, here's this amazing accomplishment in human existence that we have this breakthrough.

1:33:33But also, we're watching the business end of what was a mistake by it. But then the optimism is, but, but they're going to fix it eventually. I guess so, but that's why the end of the movie is really odd, where they're like, wow, I can't believe we made him. And I'm like, history's greatest killer. Like, it seems like he maybe was. This was a mistake, and this was a curse. And I'm like, I sort of don't need to know about that guy. It's more interesting to just spend time with Kate McKinnon, the one person who's the representative of why this was a mistake. You know? And especially her doing that in isolation.

1:34:04But it's also, like, fixing it at the same time, which is interesting. I think, like, there was a review I read at Sundance that was critiquing her casting and saying, like, her sort of, what they described as her finger guns comic energy is an ill match for this movie. And then I was like, oh, is she going to be doing, like, Ghostbusters in this film? No, not at all. No, I think she's giving, like, a good dramatic performance. But I think her being... It's just a little sedate. Like, and it's like, she has high energy. It gives her more energy than any of the other performers in the movie, even though she's playing it straight.

1:34:34She has a little bit of that off-wire energy, which I think helps. I think it could have helped to have more of the casting be on those lines. I think if you're going to have a character in the future, make them talk weird. She loves shit like that, too. You mean, like, do a Cloud Atlas thing? Like, the true true. Yeah, come on. She's also, she's kind of doing her, like, cowboy kind of, you know, Kate McKinnon sort of thing. Here's what I can tell you. Ninja Storm was the 10th Power Rangers series. The one before was Wild Force, which I guess they turned into, like, animals, like lions and eagles and stuff.

1:35:10And the one after, a one we all know well, is Dino Thunder, where they were just like, fuck it, they're dinosaurs. Again, I guess. I don't know. Because the originals are kind of dinosaurs. I just... Ninja Storm, though, they were ninjas. Ninjas. I tell you. There was a Red Wind Ranger. Are they Ninja Dinosaurs? Yeah. No. Just regular old ninja. That's kind of interesting. There's a more interesting... And I was like, do they have Zordon? And it's like, no, they have a sensei who gets turned into a guinea pig. So it's going into G-Force territory, sort of.

1:35:42That sounds possible. I think there is a more interesting version of, like, passengers in this. With her activating the one embryo so as not to be alone and go crazy. I don't think I even really clocked, if your reading is right, that that was a thing where she, like, was going against the mission or anything. I thought that was just part of the mission. That's the other part of it is, like, now she needs help because she doesn't have the AI. I think that was part of the plan. Yes. But then it's like she's forming this emotional relationship that wasn't part of the plan because she needs that. And in raising a child now and actually, like, kind of being a mother in a way she wasn't supposed to be.

1:36:16And this movie ends with a scene I think Kate McKinnon also performs well of, like, her holding the funeral for this child on the reborn Earth. And she has barely aged. You know, she looks like five years older. Right. Little crinkles in the ear. She succeeded in the mission. But, like, her curse is that she also now has to, like... She has to watch her kids die. Right. And she's like... They lived a long life. She wasn't really my child. You know, I'm not technically her mother more so than any of you, but she's the one I felt the most connected to.

1:36:46These are interesting, heady ideas. Yeah. I feel like the movie shies away from ever getting too emotional, getting too kind of, like, worked up about any of it. And so at the end, I was kind of like, yeah, okay. It's just the one idea I like is, yeah, if we could live forever, it would suck. Sure. It would cause a thousand problems. I'm always pro that. My favorite show, New Amsterdam, when Nikolai Kosterwaldo, remember? Yeah, of course. He was old. Yes. But young. Wasn't there also a different Johan Gruffet one where he was...

1:37:18That one was where every time he dies, he wakes up in the East River or something. And he's still... And it was called, like, Eternal or Forever. Right. Uh-oh. Right. It was called Uh-oh. It was that he would, like, Groundhog Day, but the next day. It was called Forever. It was called Forever. Right. I can tell you. The day wouldn't reset. He would just be reborn. It would just, like, he's in the East River again. So I guess it's a little being John Malkovich where they would just spit him out. What I liked about New Amsterdam was, like, in the pilot, he, like, meets with, like, an old man who's his son.

1:37:49And the old man's like, wow, you really don't fucking age, do you? And he's like, yeah, that's my thing. I'll have to solve a mystery. Because that's the best thing about old network shows. They're like, he's immortal. Fascinating. And he solves mysteries every week. They're like, don't worry. He solves mysteries. Don't worry about it. There's an engine. Yes.

1:38:07Yeah. You know, the ideas are interesting. I just... I also find the design a little bland of the spaceship and all that. Like, where I'm just like, it's just got this kind of vague, apple-y... Yeah. I feel that. You know, sort of look to it that is not very distinctive. Her clothes. Right. It's just, like, boring and uninspired. It was another thing I called... Like, watching that movie, Spaceman, which Colby Day wrote... Yes. Has a very different look. Has a look. Like, I found that movie also a little sleepy. But, like, that movie at least was very heady looking. I like that movie a lot. I think re-watching WALL-E for the first time in a while, it was interesting because that

1:38:43did feel new. The whole visual design language of WALL-E, both the sort of busted, rusted, old, by and large stuff, and then when you get to the Axiom and making everything that Apple influenced, you know? It's a year before Star Trek, which does the similar redesign of, like, the Enterprise is now kind of Apple Store coded and all of that. But, um, now this has just sort of become the default language for what spaceships look like, and it's not interesting to do, and it feels like someone needs to, like, shake

1:39:13up the formula again. I mean, everything about the visuals of the movie. Nothing is bad. The movie looks fine, but it's all just very, like, default and all very... I mean, that is all really, all kind of summed up by the fact that for a score, they were like, I know Stanton has worked with him before, but they were like, call up Thomas Newman and have him deliver the same fucking thing that you've heard a million times. I've never seen Quest for Fire or Clan of the Cave Bear. I recently watched Clan of the Cave Bear.

1:39:44Tell me about it. Because I'm trying to watch... It's not very good. Okay. I'm trying to watch every 1986 film for the big picture 1986 draft. Oh, sure. Our inevitable... Yeah. And, um, uh, I got to this point where I was sort of like, you know, at this point, I've probably seen most of the major films of 1986. But then I was like, all right, well, what was nominated for an Oscar... Oh, sure. ...that I haven't seen yet? The answer was, one was Clan of the Cave Bear, which got a, a, a makeup nomination. It was a gigantic bomb, that film. A huge, huge bomb.

1:40:15It's Daryl Hannah plays a cavewoman. Yes. It's great stuff. But coming off of, uh, uh, Quest for Fire being a surprise hit. Right. Exactly. Like, we'll keep it with the caveman. Uh, you've also... I also watched Franco Zeffirelli's, uh, uh, adaptation of the opera Othello, which features Placido Domingo in Makeup. Uh, I was playing that one at work on my iPad, and I was like, hmm, I might have to turn this one off. Uh-huh. And I also watched, uh, Crimes of the Heart, which got three Oscar nominations. Bruce Beresford film. Fucking sucks!

1:40:46Yes. What were they doing in the 80s? Bruce was, it's, it's a weird career. Just these, these, based on a play. Yeah. Uh, how does, go ahead. How, is any of what we're talking about right now, how did we transition into it? I thought you were talking about caveman movies? A clan of the cave bear, right. Because this movie has a bit of a clan of the cave bear vibe. Okay, all right. Anyway, Crimes of the Heart, it's just a lot of Southern Bells going like, oh, my mama never loved me! I lost the... There was an 80s micro trend of, we're gonna try to make caveman movie that are ostensibly a little more quote-unquote accurate.

1:41:16And no one's gonna talk, and it's sort of like a dramatized nature documentary sort of vibe. I mean, sometimes this movie, in a negative way, feels like a 30-minute film you would watch at a planetarium or something. Yeah, I mean, a little bit, right. Well, it's very, very hard to do any version of that caveman thing that isn't that, especially if you're gonna decide to be accurate about it. Like, it's just... It's hard to see them discover a whistle.

1:41:47Yeah. And be like, whoa. Whoa. Yeah, that bone whistle was the hit. I don't care. They should be... Do a caveman movie that's like Chris Nolan doing the Odyssey, where they're just like, hey, what's up? I'm Homer. Like, you know, like, daddy! Can I... Sorry, one more tangent. I just watched the movie Whistle. It's a horror movie. It came out in February. Oh, you blew the whistle. That's what I... Don't blow it. Great tagline. That was the tagline. That's actually really fucking good. And it's just what I was just like, we're in a high school. I'm Daphne Keene from Logan. I'm, you know, I'm a little... Got some drama. I'm bisexual, maybe.

1:42:18Blah, blah, blah. What's this Aztec death whistle?

1:42:23Don't blow the fucking whistle. Like, what if I blew it? No, don't do it. I just love any movie where it's like, there's a scary whistle. And I'm like, don't tell me someone blows it. And they're like, oh, no, they blow it. All right. Yeah, there is... It was... It's not very good. Quest for Fire then leads to Conquest, Iron Master, Iceman, and Clan of the Cave Bear. There were like five of them. Iceman wasn't about Bobby Drake? Not yet. We were too afraid. That's a Timothy, Hutt, and Fred Skepsy movie. Of course, The Big Two. Yes.

1:42:53But that's more of an unfrozen... Has anyone figured out that I have a nervous tick where if anyone says two names on this podcast, or three names, I just say The Big Two immediately, because I think it's always funny. It's always funny. Oh, yeah. That was a... He's... Timothy Hutt, and following up the Oscar win, is the caveman who discovers fire, and then he is frozen, and then he is revived. It's like Sirius and Cino, man. Oh, my God. But it was... This was like a big trend for the era, and these movies were popular.

1:43:25Quest for Fire certainly was very well regarded. Quest for Fire was popular. Clan of the Cavemare was such a huge bomb, and probably ended the whole... The whole thing. I would say the cave... No one has really dared to touch this in 30 years. It's a good point. So this has caveman stuff. Yeah. Have there been any other recent caveman dramas? Caveman? This... I'm looking on Wikipedia. Yeah. The two recent ones they've mentioned are, there's a French movie called Ayo, The Last Hunter. Literally, A-O colon The Last Hunter. And then there was the...

1:43:57I forget which Hughes brother directed it. Albert Hughes. Alpha. Oh, that's right. McPhee and a wolf. Right. For the listeners at home, Joey and I just shared a look. Yeah. A knowing look. Yeah. As you were going through... Don't forget The Croods. This tangent. Oh, sure. And then they had a new awakening. What was the Croods sequel subtitle? January 6th. The Croods stormed the Capitol. No, I don't know. Croods was one of those movies where it like... A new age. A new age. It came out on drive-ins only in like...

1:44:28Yeah, in 2020. August 2020. They were like, there's a Croods movie, and Cuomo was like, theater staying close. It's secretly... I ain't opening for that. The Croods, a new age, might have come close to Titanic's number of consecutive weeks at the top of the box office, because it had like four months where nothing else was coming out. Right, and like Florida's open. Right, and you'd be like, the Croods racked up another robust $5,000 to be number one at the box office this weekend. Yeah, look, in the blink of an eye, I found the caveman stuff like unsuccessful.

1:44:58I found it, yes. It's flatly unsuccessful. That was the least successful. Right, again, as with a lot of the other elements, as with the other three elements of the movie, it like, it gets to a thing right at the end. Yeah. Right. Where he's like, where there's a baby that's been born. Right, it's like, oh, it's about this. And then the guy, the dad is like, oh, he's like, has this happy moment and then he dies. And again, it's hitting at that same idea of like, he was just a link on the chain. And it's like, okay, all right, I get that. I get it. And that's sort of like the first man being born, the first modern.

1:45:31Right. But I'm like, but you, but that, it was all for that. I mean, again, I admire in a way the smallness of it. I'm like, you know, this is not the type of screenplay that exists anymore. Sure. In that sort of, in that smallness, but. Our buddy Bilga had a good review of this movie and he was sort of calling out like how much he admires the ambition of it. But when you make a film like this, you're like drawing those comparisons directly to 2001, which is a challenge. Like I said. And he said like, the other one this movie like really draws a line to is the tree of

1:46:05life in this sort of like, you know, the small interpersonal drama of today is linked to our origins as a species and whatever. And there is something a little mathematical in the structure of this screenplay. I mean, down to just what I'm saying of like, maybe this movie should just be all Kate McKinnon of like the need to have the prehistoric section be an equal third of the story. It feels like a mistake to me where I'm like, this could be three scenes and it's an interesting

1:46:36addition to the movie. It doesn't need to have 30 minutes of screen time divided across the film because what's interesting about it can be conveyed very quickly. And it's the same way that like tree of life is like you get one dinosaur scene and it kind of shakes your system where you're like, whoa, there's a dinosaur scene in a Terrence Malick movie, but he's not like, well, the dinosaur is an equal lead with Brad Pitt and Sean Penn. These are the three narrative strains of this movie. More dino, less man. There was actually even a moment early in the movie where our main, I think he was our main

1:47:09like guy from the Paleo Times or whatever. The Navy Ranger. The fucking Navy Thunder Ranger. Navy Thunder. He like, he falls as he's climbing. Yeah. And he like lands on a rock and it's like, dunk. And then it cuts away from him. And I was like, did he just die? Like, was that the end? Well, because I thought for a second, I was like, was that like the point of that being in this movie was just like, sometimes it's just like that. You're a guy. Blink of an eye. Living in. Blink of an eye. Blink of an eye. Blink of an eye. Blink of an eye. You're living on. You fall. You dead. That's it. Yeah.

1:47:39But no, then he gets up again. Right. He actually gets hit by a bus later in the script, but they cut that. I have to go to therapy. We should play the box office game. Great.

1:47:50Therapy. Things have been changing. This is crazy, Griffin. Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes. You got to keep it on Thursday. No, it's a one-off thing. No, it's usually Thursday. It's not like I'm playing fast and loose. I, yeah.

1:48:05Tomorrow morning is knocking. Stock your fridge now. How about a creamy mocha frappuccino drink? Or a sweet vanilla. Smooth caramel, maybe. Or a white chocolate mocha. Whichever you choose, delicious coffee awaits. Find Starbucks frappuccino drinks wherever you buy your groceries.

1:48:25Well, the box office game. Of course, this film did not actually premiere in theaters, but we can still cover the box office of February 27th, 2026. A bad weekend. A lot of theater closers because of the snowstorm, I imagine. Or was this the week after that? This might be the week after that. I can't remember. Who knows? Yeah. What's important is that number one at the box office is a giant hit. It is Wuthering Heights? No. Oh, fuck. That came out with Valentine's Day. Right, Valentine's Day. Of course it did. Of course it did. No, it stars your friend and mine, Timothy Hitmaker Simons.

1:48:55I think he's the lead role. I haven't seen it yet. It's a sequel. Scream 7. Horror film. It's Scream 7. I'm surprised you didn't see Scream 7. I didn't make the screening for reasons I can't remember, but probably my boss was like, you're not reviewing it. So I was kind of like, not that motivated and then the reviews were really bad and I just was kind of like, I think I might be waiting for Paramount Plus on this one. Like, because like, I quite enjoy five and six. I like the Scream franchise, but because this is actively rejecting five and six. Sure.

1:49:26I wasn't too pulled in by like, we've got Nev Campbell. I'm like, yeah, I've seen her in a Scream movie before. Like, this isn't like, oh, she's been missing. She wasn't in one of them. Well, congrats on not being a scab. Yeah, sure. Also, fuck Timothy Simons. No, I'm kidding. I assume, isn't he like a professor and they throw him out a window or something? I haven't seen it yet. Sounds good. That sounds fun. Big hit. Big hit. Did you see it, Joey Sims? No, I felt the same as you and I was also like, yeah, fuck them. Who directed that? Oh, Williamson directed it.

1:49:56Yeah. Also not an incredible size. No. Number two at the box office. Number two at the box office is my daughter's favorite film of 2016. Roar. No. Oh, Goat. Goat. They play Roar Ball. I was thinking about the ball. Roar? Roar Ball. Roar, isn't that the name of the Tatum O'Neill movie where they live with Tiger? Tippi Hedren. Tippi Hedren. Tippi Hedren. Where they were like, there were 10 to 12 lion maulings. Yeah. Most movies have a couple. Well, Janda Bond had like half his scalper.

1:50:27Yeah, I was going to say, production was a wild success. It only took five years and a minimum of three scalpings. It's the most insane film I've ever made. No, I was thinking so much about Roar Ball. It's the most insane production ever made. Like, the movie's weird. It's weird. Yeah. Yeah. It's weird. Yeah. No, the film is Goat. Yeah. Joey, you didn't see? Goat, no. Made $103 million domestic. It was a big hit. Very solid hit for Sony. Mm-hmm. A movie I really enjoyed. I've seen it a few times. Yeah, I liked it. Okay. Yeah, okay. He plays basketball? No, he plays Roar Ball, Joey.

1:50:59It's very different. It means that sometimes- Roar Ball? The court is ice and sometimes it's lava. That is true. Number three, The Box Office, a romantic drama adaptation of a novel. Is it the Colleen Hoover? It's- No, no, no. Come on. You just brought it. You said it was number one. It's called Reminders of You? No, no. Come on. You said it was- Oh, Wuthering Heights. Wuthering Heights. Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry. A film that I quite liked. I do too. And our buddy Allison Wilmore has the exact take I have on the movie, which is, it's an adaptation of a 15-year-old reading the book in high school.

1:51:31I agree. Yeah. Did you see? Yeah. I quite liked it. Yeah. I dug one of my heads. I was kind of into the- I have not stopped thinking about the shot where she goes back after her awful dad dies. Martin Clunes. And it cuts to his dead body in the chair and there's just like, an insanely high pile of bottles of MD alcohol. I wonder what did him in.

1:51:56You know, it's hard to tell what the movie is saying there. No, I was just like, the excess of it, I was just like, hell yeah. It's just funny to me when people are like, this movie's over the top. I'm like, yeah, it's going for that. That's sort of the idea. No, like you're in high school and you read a great book, you know, one of the most important works of literature and it says like, she walks in to find her father surrounded by bottles. And you're like, if you're 15, you imagine, oh, it's 8,000 bottles. There's a wall. There's a bone temple. So what if? Number three, sorry, four at the box office.

1:52:29New this week. Yeah. Is a concert film centered around a band. I confess, I didn't know this existed. Was this a BTS movie? No. No. You didn't know this existed. Is it a band I would know by name? This is a real band. A real band? Possibly. I think so. They're famous. Is it a K-pop band? No, they're like a rock. I don't know. Are they rock? Yeah. Alternative rock, electro pop. It's not Imagine Dragons. No, it's sort of like that. I mean, imagine them.

1:52:59Just imagine them. I'm trying to just look what this is. Oh, fuck. I wish I knew. I don't think Imagine Dragons. Anyone said that? Ben, Ben, what is this band? What is it? Tell me what they are. I don't, I know their name, but I don't actually know what the kind of music is. Wait, I can't see. Oh, for crying out loud. Come on. It's going over. Like what? I don't know what their actual deal is. Jesus, I have no idea. You just tell me. I don't think I know what the band is. All right, so the band is 21 Pilots. That's very close to Imagine Dragons.

1:53:29I think it is. I agree with you. I just don't really. What is their vibe? Ben laughed at me so much for saying Imagine Dragons. I was scared to guess 21 Pilots. You should have guessed it. They're a little bit more of a fun period.

1:53:41As far as I'm concerned. The movie is called 21 Pilots, more than we ever imagined. Okay. It made $3.7 million in its opening weekend. I would describe their vibe as Imagine Dragons. I'd say they're very... What's their song? I don't know. I just know that there's a band called 21 Pilots. That's where my knowledge ends. Same. And number five is another concert film, sort of. Not of a recent figure, but a deceased figure. Oh, the Elvis thing. Epic Elvis Presley in concert. An incredible title. Which I did not get to see, but I was told was kind of rad.

1:54:12Yeah. I've heard it's great. We will cover on Patreon whenever we do Baz Luhrmann. You've also got number six. A movie that I wanted to love and thought was okay. Crime 101. Oh, sure. I need to watch that. Fine 101. That was your Letterboxd review. Yeah. It's pretty good. Probably did numbers. Here's a twist. I'm going to let you finish the episode. Okay. You know what? I'll see you later. Get out of here. Go away. I'm not going to go. I'll tell you the next. I can only imagine two.

1:54:43Yeah. What's that? That's based on a song the guy wrote about his dad not being nice. And this is the sequel where the songs are hit. The dad's like, I still don't know if I want to be a nice guy. That's pretty good. I'll check it out. Number eight, Sam Raimi's Great Scent Help, which you saw that. You saw that, right? Of course. Great movie. Number nine, How to Make a Killing, the fairly bad A24 Glenn Powell remake of Kind Hearts and Cornets. And number 10, Zootopia 2, hanging out for its fourth month.

1:55:17Highest grossing film of 2025. Highest grossing film of 2025. Yeah. You've also got Solo Mio, their number 12. That's the Kevin James Wants a Wife movie. Griff's going to therapy. He is going to therapy. He's out of here. Wow. Maybe Joey should take over. What should we do? A coup? Sure. I mean, we could try it out. Has this ever happened before? I've done it before. This has never happened before. I have left because we went for, you know, four hours about fucking Cabbage Patch Kids or whatever. Sure. But I don't think Griffin's ever left before.

1:55:48There was a time he threw up. Yes. But he came back. Left, threw up, came back. No, he's normally the one who... Who makes it too long. Makes it too long. Shows up late. Yes. You know what? Let's hear some grievances. Let's talk about it. What else we got?

1:56:03So this is kind of, yeah, a unique position. We've never been here before. I have to see Mortal Kombat 2 in an hour. I'm going later this evening, but I'm very excited. Do you have work? Talking to my brother. No, I have a few hours. I'm going to maybe try to hang out with Lane. Lane Montgomery. Lane Montgomery. Friend of the show. Composer of the theme song and past and future guest. Your former roommate. My former roommate. We've been looking for a time to grab like a late lunch. So I'm going to see. But he may have been held up at work.

1:56:34It's unclear. So no. And then tonight I'm seeing Giant on Broadway. The play. That's the Roald Dahl not so nice movie. Roald Dahl anti-semi John Lithgow play. You excited? Getting that one in. You sound excited. Getting that one in. Did he get the nom? He got Tony Doms. I'm excited to see him. We love to see John Lithgow take on a big mammoth role on Broadway. Who doesn't? The play from what I've heard is, I don't know. I'm not that excited by this. Yeah, but Trumpty Dumpty. Is that what it's called? So it is after the giant concludes, then we all remain in the theater.

1:57:08The doors are locked and John Lithgow reads the entirety of Trumpty Dumpty. Do you know about Trumpty Dumpty? Are you aware that Don Lithgow wrote a New York Times bestseller called Dumpty, which was a series of comical nursery rhymes about Donald Trump. Then he wrote a sequel called Trumpty Dumpty Wanted a Crown. And my guess in that one, he turns around and he says, Trump not so bad. Wait, you're telling me he doubles down on how Trump is bad? And then would it shock you to learn that there's a third book called A Confederacy of

1:57:40Dumpties? Who's that for? What do you mean? Children. They love John Lithgow's hectoring poetry. And I think it's still, he only needs to write one more, which hopefully he's working on in between shows. And then that's going to, that's going to do it. Then Trump will be like, he got me. I'm out. These rhymes. I didn't think he'd do these rhymes. He's spitting hot fire. All right, Joey, just one more plug, of course, for your podcast.

1:58:11Yeah. So my podcast, thank you, Theater We Saw, which I don't know what episode we'll be on by the time this comes out. Um, you know, as I'm talking about it, it's very new. Um, it releases bi-weekly. We talk about two shows, uh, each episode, two new shows, but maybe we'll do some fun episodes as I, as I mentioned, such as about the, the, the pipe robbery at Perfect Crime. And, um, you have guests on occasionally. We have cool guests on. We just had Grace Walker, who's a great like theater TikToker on.

1:58:44And we're going to have more cool people on, including non-theater people. A big hope of ours going forward is to start having some people who are not like theater specific people, but like comedians who are like, who are into theater because many of them are, whether they proudly admit it or, or not. Um, so we're hopeful to have lots of different types of guests on and, uh, yeah, it's fun. Give it a, give it a listen. There's a link in the episode description. And wait, this is also a first, you have to take us out.

1:59:18Oh, okay. Um, yeah. So in the blink of an eye, uh, listen to Joey's podcast. Um, next week on the show is Toy Story 5. Of course, which at this point has already come out because the Stanton series premiered a little later, but we have yet to see, but I'm told there's an iPad. Uh, so that's next week. And then we will be starting our series on some fuck called Martin Scorsese. So listen forward to that. Uh, and, uh, as always, um, well, no, you got a rate, review, and subscribe.

1:59:51We have a Patreon. Yeah, sure. We got it. Okay. What's on our Patreon? Uh, yeah. Blanktick special features. We got, uh, we're starting a Resident Evil commentary series. Fun. We're going to watch the Resident Evil movies. Paul W.S. Anderson, his universe of six movies, and then the risible Resident Evil Welcome to Raccoon City. And then I guess we will touch on, uh, the Zach Quaker movie as well at some point. Uh, I don't know. Like, yeah, we'll, we'll talk about it. That's Patreon.com slash Blankcheck. We also have a newsletter on Substack Checkbook.

2:00:23It's a weekly behind the scenes look into the world of Blankcheck. I think we've done all we need to do as far as housekeeping. So, and as always, David, as always, uh, do something about the nut. Yeah, there's, there's an acorn. Golden nut. Yeah, the golden acorn comes for us all.

2:00:54Blankcheck with Griffin and David is hosted by Griffin Newman and David Sims. Our executive producer is me, Ben Hosley. Our creative producer is Marie Barty Salinas. And our associate producer is AJ McKeon. This show is mixed and edited by AJ McKeon and Alan Smithy. Research by JJ Birch. Our theme song is by Lane Montgomery and the Great American Novel. With additional music by Alex Mitchell. Artwork by Joe Bowen, Ollie Moss, and Pat Reynolds. Our production assistant is Minnick. Special thanks to David Cho, Jordan Fish, and Nate Patterson for their production help.

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