The Mosquito Coast with Sean Fennessey

Once I had believed in father, and the podcast had seemed small and old, now he was gone, and I wasn't afraid to love him anymore, and the podcast seemed limitless. I mean, yeah, I wasn't like, oh, Griffin better do this line. No, last line of the film. Now, I will say, the tagline for this film is extraordinary. I think potentially one of the best taglines we've ever covered. It's a good tagline. It's a good poster. It's very interesting, very intriguing. Tell me the tagline. The tagline is, This kosher be biting! No, it's not the tagline. As I said, one of the best taglines ever. Itchy.

Ready to get, Harrison Ford, this summer is getting itchy. Scratch, scratch. No, he doesn't. The tagline is, How far should a man go to find his dream? Ali Fox went to the Mosquito Coast. Line break, he went too far. That fucking rules. Just to see this poster where you're like, Here's Harrison Ford, arguably the biggest movie star of that moment. There's an article I read when this film came out and people were pushing back against it where they called out that Harrison Ford starred in more of the highest grossing films than any other star in history.

Not just at that moment, he had a greater percentage of the all-time top 10, but no one had ever dominated an all-time top 10 to that degree. And this poster is just Harrison Ford looking not great. I mean, he looks out as hell. He looks all right. But the point is, Yeah, wearing glasses. He looks concerned. This is the guy who's unflappable. And the poster is, he looks a little out of sorts, and he looks rugged. And then the tagline's telling you, this guy fucked up. This movie should have made $8 trillion off the pitch of Harrison Ford fucks up.

There's no world where this movie makes $8 trillion. Of course, no. This movie is designed to make people angry. I had never seen it before. I love this movie so much. Yes. Well, this is a real perfect movie. Sean, I think you and I are going to bond on a lot of things. I think this movie is great, to be clear. I don't, it's not like I'm contrarian. Are you both? Have you met this guy? Yeah, this is, this is the wavelength. Are you psychotic? The wavelength that Sean and I, yes. The answer is yes. The wavelength that Sean and I share.

Ben texted us this morning and said, this movie, let me find the exact quote. I believe it was, this movie is anti-smile? Anti-smile. It sure is. Which is true. I thought of this when you were describing the tagline. If the poster featured Harrison Ford smiling, rather than that being used kind of half-grimace. Would the movie have been a hit? No, no, there's no one where this movie is a hit. If there was more, like, the wry, sarcastic charm. It would have, if we're just talking poster and the movie isn't strange. Maybe it makes a little bit more funny.

It would have opened better and people would have been angry. If there were X's over his eyes, so we know from the start that this motherfucker dies. Whoa! It's, we're what, three minutes in? We've spoiled the film. God damn. What are you gonna do? Ben's quote, our finest film critic, Ben Hosley. God damn this movie a nasty bastard. It's true. And David said, it's not a feel-good film. No. Maybe don't move to the Mosquito Coast. And Ben texted, it's anti-smile. I truly would never. Not even for Harrison Ford. Now, my opinion is. That doesn't make it any less true a film, Ben.

There are so many articles from the release of this film that are fascinating, where they're like, notoriously press-shy Harrison Ford has pounded the pavement for this movie. He knows this one needs selling. Yes. Like, yeah, this isn't exactly a, like, we go to the coast and you'll have to find out what happens next. He's gotta do more than that. It's Leo during one battle. And he didn't want to. Like, whoa, why is Leo doing TikTok videos? Why is Leo on the big picture swumming it? He didn't want to missell it. He didn't want to trick people. But he was like, this is a tougher film.

I'm hoping I built up the credibility with my audiences. And then when the movie comes out, he's like, critics savaged it. And he felt betrayed by the critics. Yeah, he was mad that it didn't get a fair shake from them. He was like, I thought you guys might at least get it. And that he felt like they were saying, like, I'm not buying Han Solo doing this. And he was like, this is a movie that needed you, and it's a challenging movie, and you're all going, like, how dare he try this?

But the interesting fact when they're talking about, at the time they said it was the only movie he made that didn't make back its money. He says that, yes. He says that. Which means it must have, like, right, not even succeeded on home video or whatever. Even by the mid-90s, he still says it is the only movie I starred in that didn't make back its money. Because it's not like Frantic was, you know, cleaning up. No, but it did pretty good business, because it was just much more conventional. It's more of a thriller. Like, straightforward thriller. And he's going out there, and he's defending it.

And in this article from The Hollywood Reporter, they say that it got a B-cinema score. So you're like, it's not like the people who saw it hated it as much as no one wanted to see it. A B-cinema score is really bad. That's bad. Bad. It's not. I'm not saying it's good. But I'm saying, if you put a smiling Harrison Ford face on the poster, this movie gets F. Should we do the 1986 episode of The Big Picture, where the Mosquito Coast has just come out, and it's made $1.8 million, and it's got a B-cinema score? You're spiraling. And we're like, goddammit!

This is why we can't have nice things! No original storytelling. No literate adaptations of thoughtful men exploring the world. I think it's not even that, Sean. I think it's you in your quiet, focused mode going, I just need to accept that VHS has arrived, and cinema is not what it used to be. So depressing. Well, I just want to shout out, well, what's our podcast, but who's our guest? And then I want to say something. This is Blank Check with Griffin and David. I'm Griffin. I'm David.

It's a podcast about filmographies, directors who have massive success early on in their careers, and are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion projects they want. And sometimes those checks clear, and sometimes they use the checks to buy a town and rebuild civilization from scratch. Try to make an ice machine the size of a, like, house. Ideas! In the jungle! Good ideas! This is a miniseries on the films of Peter Weir. And then when a militia shows up, they're like, it's okay, I'll trick them. It's like, hmm, I bet these guys are afraid of ants! Ali Fox did nothing, though.

Wait a second, wait a second, wait a second. To be clear, what I love about this movie is not that much. What I love about this movie is that Ali Fox is one of the most fundamentally broken protagonists. He's a damagant. You like it because it's a peer into the soul, not because you're, like, taking notes. No. Although, I want to explore if there's any goodness in his ideas. It's a question. Well, it's more like, what's the temptation, I guess, right? Like, well, yeah, like, the temptation of the goodness. Yeah, obviously. Like, what is there? An egomaniac narcissist.

But, getting older, a couple things are sparking. I kind of feel like his analysis is correct and all of his actions are wrong, if that makes sense. Well, maybe I'm painting too broad a brain. I know, is it too soon to go to this place? It's too soon to go to this place. We're going to get there. I promise you we're going to get there. David, what did you want to say? This is the measures on the films of Peter Weir. It's called Podnik at Hanging Cast. I didn't know that. Today, we were talking about, what is his first proper blank check movie?

Certainly, his first Hollywood blank check. Sure. The success of Witness is immediately rolled into, I'm tying myself to Harrison Ford. It's the passion project. I couldn't get made right before Witness. I can now get made. Success of Witness, movie star, plus the, you know, building credibility of his Australian films, which had almost gotten the movie made before, all put together to make a very, uh, tough movie about an unlikable person doing something largely, uh, negative and unsuccessful, I guess. And the movie ends with like, yeah, that didn't work out, you know, like, which is not something you can easily pitch in a boardroom.

What did you want to say? Uh, Sean Fantasy is our guest. Uh, my friend. Steve from the big picture. And, uh. Our friend. Excuse me. I know, but I'm, I'm speaking. I'm so happy to be here for Podnik. Podnik. Podnik. That's good. Now, I wanted Podster and Castmander, the pod side of the cast. How many times are you going to bring this up? Every episode, basically. Okay. And David said, Podnik is the funniest word I've ever heard. Which I think is funny. Well, that explains it. It is. However, I do think there was a case for Podless.

Yeah, but you see, this is, there's a, there's a, to me, a fine balance between too short, which what you're doing, and kind of like the joke is just the length. I said, let's go as hard as we can. We're rarely going to get an opportunity to put in two pods and two casts. I don't like it. I think it doesn't roll off any tongues. I also don't like that Master and Commander has a subtitle. I think that's a huge mistake. What about, well, they're building a franchise. Pods have become battlefields. Yeah, but then, okay, well, now we're just throwing rules out the window. Right.

You know, that's what, right, we can say that. That's what it was at the live show. It was, it was blank check in the big picture. It was. And we were on the pod battlefield. We were in the, so, okay, so that's what I wanted to talk about. We did a live show with you guys. We'll be six months old by the time this comes out. You can watch it. Sure. And we did a draft, and we wisely did New York movies and played to the crowd, all that. But if the initial plan, before it was going to be a live show. Yes.

Had been that we were going to do 1986 films. In studio. Of which this is one. Oh, interesting. That's what I'm saying. Okay. And that's my birth year. But it was also basically like one of the, one of the, like, available years. One of the last ones. Exactly. One of the last big ones that we haven't done yet. And so I was like, hell yeah, 1986. I think I watched 30 movies from 1986. Sure. Like, to prepare for this draft that did not happen. Now, we may do it eventually.

We had the New York idea, and you got upset because you said I've already been grinding. I was just so deep in 1986. We plan to do, I would love to do a draft with you guys every year for as long as we possibly can. Right. I love the year drafts because I like the scarcity. Like, I find that the best format because, like, in terms of the gamesmanship, it's the most interesting. New York drafts is the opposite sort of gamesmanship where it's like, pick of the litter. There's a million movies. What route do you take? Right? Like, I would say, you know.

But 86 was going to be recorded, and New York was always going to be live. So I said, you guys want to come do the live show. But you're right. 86 is a really fun year. And when does Mosquito Coast go in 86? I think it might go, but it would be a later choice. Would you draft it in drama? Well, it ain't a comedy. I haven't prepared for 86. I guess no spoilers for future drafts. No comedy. No Oscar wins. No. Not a blockbuster. So, yeah, it's only a couple spots it goes.

I mean, you could sort of call it a thriller, but it's kind of a stretch. Wild card, or if you did an attempt at rebuilding civilization from scratch category, I think it would definitely go there. I might draft it. It's very possible. I have a lot of affection for this movie. I feel like this is a Sean movie. Not that it's not anyone else's movie, but it's definitely a Sean movie. Yeah, it's not. It is deeply imperfect. And Ben, I understand. I understand exactly what you mean. It is an anti-smile movie. I love an anti-smile movie.

I love a movie that is essentially a confrontation with something that is under the surface of human existence, which is we are fucked. We are so fucked. So with you here. But this movie makes me want to punch it in the face. I think it kind of wants that, right? I think it does want that. And what the author of this book, how he feels about Allie Fox, too, I think is an interesting part of this and why the filmmaker is interested, why Ford, famously a curmudgeon with a bit of a down look on society, the world, his own success.

All these smart, thoughtful guys arriving at this project is interesting to me. It's very interesting. Ben, you often say when we cover movies in which someone finds a bag full of money and their life spirals out of control, like many of the Coen films we've covered recently, that if you were in that movie, everything would turn out great and it would end with you owning an island. Now, how do you think you would have handled the circumstances of Mosquito Coast? I know they're different because you're not given the money in the first place, but the design is almost the same. It would burn down immediately.

The town would be burnt in hours. You're not municipal. That's not your direction. I'm not a planner. If you were in Mosquito Coast, things would have gone worse. Yes. I would smoke one cigarette and then the town would just go up in flames. And then it'd be like, all right, let's get out of here. But you're also, you're not an ideologue. Like if you meet Spaulding Gray, I mean, not Spaulding, Andre Gregory, not Spaulding Gray. Spaulding Gray is another movie I watched recently for Sean's podcast. Killing Fields. Or no, different one. Well, he is in the Killing Fields.

But no, Spaulding Gray is in Stars and Bars, the forgotten Daniel Day-Lewis film. Oh, wild. It's only pure comedy. Yeah, giving a performance I might describe as a touch broad. Just a touch. Fair to say. He's a horny Southern judge. Yes. Classic Spaulding Gray typecasting. While Daniel Day-Lewis is like, oh, oh, oh, oh. That's his whole performance. Yeah, it is Daniel Day-Lewis trying to be Hugh Grant in, what? I don't even know what the, in My Cousin Vinny. That's essentially the framework. Yeah. And then Hugh Grant said, pull my lager and made Mickey blue eyes himself.

It does feel like, but Daniel Day-Lewis does Stars and Bars. It's probably like, ah, it didn't work. And then sees Hugh Grant's early. And it's like, right. That's not, that's not a string to my bow. He's got it. Anyway. Yeah. You would meet Andre Gregory, the priest. And you'd be like, yeah, you seem like you can run things. Like, yeah. I don't want to be in charge here. Like, right. Like, yeah. You got some ideas. Like, I feel like you, this is a thing that's been replicated before in other places. Whereas Allie is like, no. You guys got an infrastructure. Go off.

But then you are a false god. You know, like, Allie just sees, he sees like a stop sign. He's like, I won't stop. Like, that's just his vibe. This country used to go. This sign can't run my life. Ben, would you kneel before God, though? No. I mean. God used to kneel before America. I am not religious at all. Because that's what Andre Gregory wants, right? He wants you to bend the knee to him and to. I know. I just feel like Ben just wouldn't have the where, like the sort of energy to be like, you know, fuck you, man.

You wouldn't get as riled up. I feel like you know, I guess. I mean, you're making a great point. I find the missionary practice problematic. You've got quite a history there. Yes. Of problematic behavior. More of a reverse cowgirl kind of guy. Ben, I feel like you get very. I really like that, actually. We need to call that out. Hey, 100 comedy points. Social breakout. Yeah. You get riled up, Ben, when people disrespect you. Sure. And you get riled. Who doesn't? You get riled up when you come up against, like, injustice. Yeah.

But I feel like if someone is arguing ideological points with you in this way, you're just like, I don't have fucking time for this. If I'm in the jungle and I'm sweating and getting bit by mosquitoes, I think I'm also just going to be like, I can't deal with this. Right. That's the thing with this movie is this. I'm not going to the jungle. Ever. I will never go to the jungle. Ever. Ever. There's no way you can convince me to do that. It's not a climate that appeals. No. The mosquito coast. I'm not. The penguin coast? Maybe.

I mean, as you put it right there in the title, you're identifying my least favorite kind of insect. I don't like mosquitoes. Living creature on the planet? Quite possibly. I hate mosquitoes. I do, too. Yeah. They love me, too. It's the worst. They love me. And you know why, Sean? Because you're so sweet. Thank you. Thank you for saying so. Isn't it always gross when grown-ups would say that? When you'd, like, complain about being bit and they'd be like, that's because you're so sweet. You honestly made me feel gross. It's disgusting. Or they're like, yeah, you taste good. Like, shut up. 1986.

I just have considered 1986 in more depth than, like, other years recently because of this. And you're talking about Harrison Ford, major movie star. I do think he might be inarguably the biggest movie star at that moment because this sort of, you know, Stallone's moment is waning. Uh-huh. Schwarzenegger's moment has not, like, totally solidified. Willis is in, uh, before. We haven't got to Willis yet. Cruise. Eddie Murphy is curdling slightly. Cruise is just beginning with Top Gun is this year. Yeah. You know, like, so, like, Cruise is on. No, I think at this moment. I would argue it's not close. It's not close.

At this moment, it's inarguably him. And this is a movie where, what were the top three movies of 1986? Top Gun. So, Cruise is, again, beginning. Platoon, which wins Best Picture. And Crocodile Dundee. Crocodile Dundee doing this well is kind of a, like, we don't have any stars right now. Is this guy one of our top biggest stars? Yeah. It's like, maybe we throw in with Croc? Yeah. Two things happen in the 80s for him. One, obviously, you've got two Star Wars movies, two Indiana Jones films, right? Yeah. He has locked down that specific thing. But I think Witness is the clincher.

I was going to say, this is the movie. That's the thing. And we talked about it. That confirms this. That's the thing. It's him having two franchises under his belt and then being taken seriously as an actor and his serious adult drama playing, if not like a blockbuster, surely being a hit. But it's kind of like, it's that moment that happened with, like, Jennifer Lawrence, where you're like, she has Silver Linings Playbook and the first Hunger Games in the same year. You're telling me she's unstoppable. It's a really good comparison.

And he, I think, is doing something in this next stretch of movies that is pretty admirable that great stars do, where they get passion projects, interesting filmmakers, they balance between genres. You know, his next few movies, Mosquito Coast, Frantic, Working Girl goes back for Last Crusade and then Presumed Innocent regarding Henry. That's a really interesting run of movies. Not all of them work. No. Only one of them, to me, does not work regarding Henry. Yeah. But I love that movie. It's bad, but I do love it. Written, of course, by Jeffrey Abrams. JJ. Lil' JJ.

He, I saw some interview with him where he said that he really likes working with directors two times. That he feels like, to a certain degree, making a movie with someone he's never worked with before is to test out whether they can do a second one. Not that the first one's a wash, but that he likes being able to hit the ground running and have that built-in language. And a lot of what you're talking about there, it's like, two weirs, two nickels. One Polanski, you know? He obviously does three Spielbergs. Two Pollocks. Yeah. Yeah. Like, he would double up on people.

And all of these are, you know, once you get past Spielberg and Lucas, they're like grown-up directors. Mm-hmm. They are serious, grown-up directors. It's Philip Noyce. Noyce, too. Yeah. His 90s, it's not like his stardom wanes and he makes hits. Yeah. But the movies get worse. And he has- There's a lot of bad movies. He has a couple bad things. The second half of the 90s is a bit of a steep fall. Yeah. But I, also, the second half of the 90s, the Star Wars movies get re-released and like Han Solo is renewed.

Like, even as the movies are falling off, his stardom is almost more solidified, at least in terms of like Hall of Fame iconography. I also, there's an interview, maybe it's for Return of the Jedi or Empire Strikes Back, I think, where they're interviewing the three stars and they ask them what your first feeling was when Star Wars hit, right? And, you know, Hamill has some gee whiz, like, I can't believe it. I grew up watching these movies. I'm a star now. There are people around the block. And they ask Ford and he just rubs his hands together and goes, let's get to work.

And they were like, what do you mean? And he was like, I was like 37. It hadn't happened. It happened overnight. I said, this is my moment. You know, and he's got Star Wars movies lined up. He's gonna get Indiana Jones lined up. But this run we're talking about, the start of it feels like him cashing in. What he saw in his eye the moment Star Wars hits is like, so you're telling me I can get movies made now? I know exactly what kind of movies I want to make. I know who I want to work with. I know which characters I want to play.

It got delayed a little bit in him having to fulfill sequel obligations. But like, this 80s run is, let's get to work. One of the things that I like about this movie from this kind of metatextual perspective that we're talking about it from is that it reveals that when you are a movie star, you are still in a cage. In all of his films, he is either desirable, heroic, or wrongfully imperiled. Except for this movie. This is the one movie where he's just kind of a heel. He's just, he's wrong. Everyone knows he's wrong. He's wrong from the start. Yes.

It's not, yes, it's about a descent into madness, but he's basically no good from the beginning. Yes. And we are meant to follow him closely and be engaged with his journey. Like Helen Mirren, you know, well, I'm sure we'll talk about it. Does not have a ton to do. She does nothing to do in the movie. No, it's him and it's Phoenix are the two perspective characters. We covered Robert Zemeckis' What Lies Beneath many years ago now. And that movie, the juice of that movie was, you're going to go into this so confident that there's no way Harrison Ford could be the bad guy.

And when he turns out to be like epically, you know, absurdly villainous, that movie like electrified people and it was a massive, massive hit. And it's a last five minutes reveal. Totally. And that was like, you can't get away with this, but that's like a fun house movie that can have that construction be entertaining to people. Overall, this feels like a movie where the public's response to it was, I'm confused. Am I supposed to be rooting for this guy because it's Harrison Ford that rather than saying like, oh, it's interesting that he's playing a guy I don't like.

People were confused where they were supposed to line up. And I think part of that trickiness, what makes him so good in this role, but what must have just absolutely befuddled everyone is so much of Harrison Ford's thing at this time is I seem like an asshole, but I actually care. See, that's okay. So that's the thing that I also think is really interesting about the movie. I don't know Harrison Ford personally. I've certainly seen him on talk shows and in interviews. I don't think he has the same ideas as Allie Fox. I do think he's not that far temperamentally from Allie Fox.

He has a slightly antisocial vibe. He likes to fly plane and live in ranch. And crash plane. And crash plane and smoke mountains of ganja, which I don't think Allie is doing that, but like... He could use it. There's a world where Allie should be doing that. Exactly. He should be a weed dad. Yeah. He's an inventor for fuck's sake. He's the most weed dad ever. Man, I heard a story from a film production driver.

I forget what movie it was on, but who had to pick up Harrison Ford every day and said one day he was late coming out of the house and he was like, I can't find my bong. Give me five minutes. And then he came out five minutes later with a saucepan. And he was like, what are you doing? He's like, hold on. And he took the lid off the saucepan. He sucked up the smoke. That's awesome. But he was just like, you don't understand how much weed that guy has taken in a day. Well, you certainly hear.

Then there's these moments with him now, like there's the famous David Blaine video, where you see kind of like... Because he's a good crank on... Like, he's a good crank on a publicity tour and all that. He plays into it. He enjoys it. And he's very funny. The thing where Josh Horowitz... Right? Is it Josh? Yeah. He's asking about Red Hulk, our president. Our president. Nothing but respect. Yep. You know, about like, do you feel silly? And he's like, the money, you know, poof, it's gone. Like, I watched... The Schlansky bits. Yes. I watched the... Have you ever seen...

I assume you've seen the video of Alison Hammond interviewing him for Blade Runner 2049, where he's with Gosling. And you can tell it's like early morning in London. He's doing fucking junket shit. He's not interested. And she's so like delightful and funny and silly. And you watch him wake up and be like, wow, I like this woman. And, you know, the moment where she says, so, you know, when you wanted to, when you offered this movie, what do you think? How much? And he goes like, show me the money. And you're just like, there he is. He's a silly guy. It is.

I think now he plays into it as a bit. And I, you look back at all this press I was doing for Mosquito Coast talks about how press shy he is, how private he is. And then you watch the actual interviews and he's measured. He's open. He is so fucking articulate. He's not like doing some De Niro like mumble thing, but he's not doing like movie star razzle dazzle. He's speaking as if he's like Gore Vidal. Like he's speaking in this very measured, thoughtful way.

And I think that confused people and it was received as he's cold because he's not smiling and telling stories about pranks. And now he realized I can just lean into being a crank and people find it funny. My favorite forward interview moment ever. It's after Disney acquires Lucasfilm. And, you know, part of the announcement is Disney buys Lucasfilm episode seven. Right. Yeah. And he goes on Conan to promote whatever movie he had coming out like a month or two after that. Yeah. And he says, so the cowboys and aliens are big news recently.

Disney purchased Star Wars and Harrison Ford like looks over his shoulder, like plays like, am I allowed to say anything, you know, cagey? And he's like, now I'm sure you're being told not to say anything, but just to incentivize you. And then Conan takes out like a thousand dollars in cash, hands him like ten hundred dollar bills. And he's like, does this make you want to say anything? And Harrison Ford like grabs the money quickly, counts it, shoves it in the inside of his jacket pocket and then like casually leans into his chair and goes, I, I hear they're thinking about making another one.

And it's just really good. Destroy it. The audience laughs for a minute straight. And the fact that he can now lean into I'm a grump, I hate everything and I love making money and that no one thinks he's an asshole, that it's like it scores him brownie points. Yeah. It's great. He earned it. I mean, he's freaking Harrison Ford. He's he's in 20 movies. You're like, God, I love this movie. But that's like, that's a that's a great way to be. But this has always been the thing of people saying like, oh, he's no nonsense. He's this and that.

And then everyone who works with him is like, he cares about acting so much. He cares about the movie so much. It's all this cover. It's what makes him a star with fucking Han Solo is the moment he comes back. I think he's also just a he's a gifted actor, probably an underrated actor. Didn't really get a lot of opportunity. Wasn't challenged a lot because of the work that he was best known for, but a very shrewd movie star, a good picker of projects. By and large, until that late 90s. It dips. It dips for everybody. And it's the classic late 90s.

It's the classic movie star thing of like, Harrison, you're getting older. You don't automatically match up with your female leads anymore. Like, you know, it's like, where do you go with this? And then stuff like Random Hearts is him being like, well, Pollock. And so I just saw that for the first time last year. Right. Your favorite movie of all time. And I had I had a nice time with it. Sure. And because it is largely representative of the canard that all of us say all the time about they don't make them like they used to, right?

But they really don't make them like that movie. That movie is a very strange, morose drama about two sad people. That still costs like 60 million dollars. Yeah. And the hearts are random. I was going to say, hell of random. It's random as hell. Yeah. And it's not a very good film. The movie is pretty random. It's actually a big inspiration for Family Guy. Yeah. People forget the giant chicken is like third build in Random Hearts. Actually, third build is Charles S. Dutton. This movie sounds pretty good. Carry on. You haven't seen it? No. I know the twist. It's fine. Or whatever.

That's the least interesting part of it. He's just a sad cop for two hours wandering around New York trying to figure out what he should do with his life. And it's a it's like a real test of his late period stardom. And he couldn't really hold on to it. You know, six days and seven nights like these movies where he's he's trying to touch all the different strains. He's trying to like, oh, maybe can I working girl it again? You know, can I Indiana Jones it again? Can I Jack Ryan it again? And he can't. You know, he's that moment has passed.

There's a run that because Fugitive is obviously like the best movie ever made. And then after that, it's like he did Clear and Present Danger does well. Yeah. Not a bad movie. But then it's like Sabrina mistake. Devil's Own mistake. Yeah. Air Force One, not a mistake. Great idea. Sure. Everyone loves it. It is so funny that in this movie, he has a moment where he says, get off my land. Get off my mosquito coast. He says, get off my land. I know, I know, I know. Six days, seven nights, mistake. Random Hearts, mistake. What Lies Beneath? Good pick.

But he's, you know, he's sort of a secretly supporting. Big hit though. Big hit. Huge hit. K-19, The Widowmaker, mistake. Hollywood homicide, mistake. And that's when he finally clocks. It's like, what am I? I'm two for 10 here. Yeah. I think I'm going to stop being a leading man in this way. Hollywood homicide is the first time I think he looks embarrassing. Right. He's like, what the fuck am I doing? It's not just that the movie flops. It's that it's like, this looks silly. Why did you do this? What's with the earring? You're dating Ally McBeal.

Like, everything about it, suddenly it was like, is Harrison Ford, like, lame dad having midlife crisis? Yes. He lost his cool. And then Firewall is forgotten, but it's this transit moment to like, he's more playing dad, older generation. And then like, it's like, from then on, he is grandpa. Crystal Skull, you know, Morning Glory, Cowboys, right? It's like, now he's the old guy. It's grandpa, but the other part of it is, I'm going to do Blade Runner again, I'm going to do two more Star Wars, I'm going to do two more Indiana Joneses. But Crystal Skull starts there.

Yeah, but then it's like, Extraordinary Measures, Morning Glory, Cowboys, and Aliens, 42 Enders game. You know, like, it's like, it takes him a while. Also, I think Force Awakens is when he's like, fine. A lot of him being number two on the poster behind a newer A-list. Daniel Craig, fucking, of course, Brendan Fraser and his... Yeah. So powerful. Just like, weird choices. Um, yeah. I mean, I remember, I've invoked this so many times, but it's just such a distinct memory of my broken brain. Asa Butterfield and me, the big two. I think he's the future.

My dad and I walking by a billboard for Random Hearts, and my dad just going, that's going to be a big hit. And I was like, why? And he went, because Harrison Ford's in it. And I was like, that's how it works? Like, certain stars, no matter what they do, and yet that was a moment where it was like, it's proven wrong here? Um, I have invoked this before, and one of the previous times we've talked about Harrison Ford, but his Inside the Actors Studio is amazing. I'm sure I've seen it, I can't remember.

They get into Mosquito Coast, and Lipton asks, asks him the thing that people love to ask him, of like, do you feel like you're stuck in a gilded cage? That your level of stardom and iconography and the blockbusters have become so big that there's certain things the audience won't let you do as an actor. And he, like, is very measured about it, and he basically says, like, I was very proud of that movie, and it was something I wanted to do. And it was very clear that the audiences weren't going to go with me there, and I adjusted.

And I'm never going to complain about the fact that people like me doing other things in movies, right? Like, he has an answer that's basically like, I have no sour grapes over this. I tried. I'm not going to be an asshole about, like, oh, they want me to be a different kind of A-list movie star. But it is clear that I think, and this is maybe where things start to fall apart a bit in the 90s, is post Mosquito Coast, he's like, got it, notes taken. I want to challenge myself. I want to push boundaries.

But I've identified a thing you don't want me to do. And, like, Working Girl is an interesting swing, but it's safer, right? Like, other things like that. I think by the time he gets to the mid-90s, he's like, I don't know what I'm trying to prove anymore, and it's too early for him to do the grandpa swing, where he can really shake off the shackles of his persona. We don't need to spend, like, three hours on his last, his 90s movies, but I do think that Sabrina the Devil's Own, Six Days, Seven Nights, Random Hearts are really instructive, because they all do okay.

Sabrina made 88. Yep. Devil's Own made 140. But it stays in Seven Nights, made 165. Random Hearts made 75. Who directed Six Days, Seven Nights? Evan Reitman. Reitman. And so, Tupaculas. The Tupaculas and the Tupaculas, it's kind of like this kind of, right. You're going back to the guys who were 80s, you know, big shots, and are now getting a little long in the tooth. But he is not able to, one, the material's not as good, right? So Witness probably makes a somewhat similar amount of money as those movies, relatively speaking, but it's not a forever movie the way that Witness is.

No, and you compare the interviews for those films to the interviews for Witness, Mosquito Coast, Working Girl, what have you, where there does not seem to be the same animating passion of, this is what really spoke to me in this script and why I really wanted to play this character. Right. They feel like, yeah, that's like a, feels like good material. Yeah, an adult movie. Good lineup of people. Yes. My audience will respond to this. David. What's the matter? I'm going to share for you a horrifying tale. A tale of woe and suffering. Whoa, this is scary.

It's a tale of human error, of failing on my part. Tell me. We went to the Wisconsin Film Festival. Sure. Visited our dear researcher, J.J. Birch. I'm scared already. We participated in a screening. We dined out. We had fried cheese curds. We drank Wisconsin beer. What was the mistake? Tell me. I forgot to pack my. Oh, Jesus. AG1. You didn't bring your AG1 to Wisconsin? This is a fuck. Oh. This is an ad read. This is a personal endorsement from experience. They got the travel packs because the thing I love about AG1, they give you different form factors.

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Go to drinkag1.com slash check. David. Yes. They say that the eyes are the window to the soul. They do say that. What does that make our glasses? The windows? The window frames? I don't know. The curtains? Yeah, the curtains. The point is, if you are a glasses wearer like I am or like our own producer Ben is. True. It's a big decision. Sure. Because this is how you introduce yourself to the world. This is how you engage with other people. You make eye contact through the frames. Sometimes it's just time for a refresh. Totally agree. All right. Well, so what about Zenni Optical?

Oh, the fine folks' Zenni glasses. The eyewear. They got fun shapes, sizes, and colors. They got a lot of colors. Right. Statement pieces. Bold statement pieces, they call them. And they're inexpensive, I would say. They're an online eyewear shop with prescription glasses, sunglasses, blue light lenses, all starting at under $30. That's crazy. That is very low. I feel like glasses often cost more than $30. Way more. But you go to Zenni.com, you pick a frame, you upload your prescription, they ship it to your door. No appointment, no store, no upsell at the counter. Easy. At that price, something kind of shifts.

You're not like, do I need new glasses? You're like, why don't I try something fun? Right? Sometimes you got an old pair, they got a scratch on them, it's annoying, but you're like, am I going to go through the hassle? Or the screws start to get loose and you find yourself taking out that microscopic little screwdriver over and over again to tighten them up. At this price, why not just get another pair? Ben, I ordered a pair of the Magoo. I think this is funny. Okay. We all know from Mr. Magoo, the cartoon character who can't see. And Zenni is saying, let's solve that problem.

Let's give you glasses called Magoo. They're blue and green, two of my favorite colors. A nice boxy frame. You're not agonizing over one pair that has to do everything for the next two years. Get the ones for work. Yeah. Get the fun ones. Get some options. Get the pair that only matches one outfit at under $30. You don't have to justify it. Exactly. They've got 150,000 five-star reviews. Yeah. And if you've never run glasses online before, they have a virtual try-on so you can see how it's going to look on your face before you commit.

If your glasses are overdue for a refresh, now's the time. Go to zenni.com slash podcast and use code podcast15 for 15% off your first order. The styles sell out, so don't sit on it. That's Z-E-N-N-I dot com slash podcast promo code podcast15. Here is a quote I found in that same piece where he is pleading audiences to consider the movie Mosquito Coast after being ransacked by critics. He says, The job of acting is the same in every film regardless of the material. It's storytelling and logical steps. In a good script, it is fairly easy because you have ideas to chain yourself to.

Otherwise, it's party tricks. There are few complications to the characters of Han Solo or Indiana Jones, but the demands of playing either of them are no less difficult than playing Fox. In many ways, a character with as much experience as Fox is allowed, is easier to play. You need only to note the variety of his emotions. That is one of the best descriptions of acting in an unpretentious way I have ever read. That is so like just fucking cut through the bullshit brass tacks. This is what it is. And explaining the two sides of what he can do well without putting greater importance on either.

He's clearly very smart. He's smart. He knows who he is and what he can do. I'm going to open the dossier. But to me, I do think the big question with Mosquito Coast is, is Harrison Ford too sort of inherently Harrison Fordy to play this guy? Like when you look upon... It's a William Hurt part. Right. Like you're kind of like, I'm not sure I believe that Harrison Ford would be so kind of like, you know, amoral or sort of, you know, unfeeling towards his family. It's just like, he's Harrison Ford. Like, can he pull that off? I buy it.

And I think that innate tension with his persona gives this movie an extra electricity for me. But obviously audiences and I guess critics, like we're kind of like, I don't buy it, I guess. I think he's just a really good angry actor. And he has so many great moments of being angry. And this is a very angry character. You know, get off my plane is an angry moment. I think it's playing with, you're watching him and going, this guy can't actually believe everything he's saying in that Han Solo way. Right?

Surely at some point, if his children and his wife plead with him, he will break with this act. And I think that gives the movie a really interesting dramatic tension. I agree. Do you know who we're originally wanted to? Well, let's open the dots. Let's open the dots. Let's let David tell us. Because these are the conventions of your podcast. Thank you. Author Paul Theroux. Uh-huh. Uncle of Justin. Yes. Indeed. Who later played Allie in Apple TV Plus' The Mosquito Coat. I tried to watch this. I didn't. I did not. Did you know there are two seasons and 17 episodes? This is my question.

I'm like, this movie I think is good, but it's a tough hang at two hours long. Why on earth would I want this stretched to TV like? David, I have a piece of news that is going to make you slam your own head against the Bible. Go ahead. There is a quote. Let me see if I can find it here from... I thought you were going to say season three coming soon. Yeah, right. It was Neil Cross, the creator of the TV show, the guy who did Loofah. Yes. And Tom Bissell was the co-writer of this series. He was a wonderful writer.

In a 2023 interview with Deadline Hollywood, the original novel's author, Paul Theroux, hoping for a third season that would segue into the events of his novel, praised the series. The two seasons that exist... It's all set up, baby. ...all laying runway for what happens in the book and this movie. The classic prestige TV thing of, we all know Mosquito Coast, right? What if it takes 50 hours to get to the starting point? From my, like, kind of glance at, like, what the episodes were, yes. I think, like, season one ends with them kind of getting to the Mosquito Coast.

Yeah, but there's so much stuff in it. I mean, I was reading about it last night. That's like, there's a hit man who's after Ali and, like, the CIA is involved. It's just so... Very exemplary of, you know, what went wrong on that side of the game. Yes. Give me a hundred random hearts instead of one, three seasons. I could not agree more. But Paul Theroux starts working on this manuscript. The book, the novel, was published in 1981. It is a time of, of course, existential crisis and malaise for America. Jimmy Carter, you know, interest rates going crazy, oil embargo. And, you know, he talks...

It's morning in America. That's what you mean. Well, no, it wouldn't be morning in America until this movie came out. And, of course, Ronald Reagan, as noted on the Wikipedia page, did watch this movie. I wonder what he thought of it. It's dusk in America. It's dusk in America. It's dusk in America. And Theroux says that, like, the sort of encroachment of Japanese business, I guess, was a big thing. Obviously, that's a thing in this movie. I remember that as a child. That feels so quaint now.

But, like, that he's like, yeah, you would look at your coffee cup and it would say made in Japan. Or it was always automakers. As a young kid in the 80s, I very vividly remember my parents at the dinner table talking about the incursion of Toyota and Honda. And what does this mean? So, he creates this character, Ali Fox. He sees him as a quintessentially American character that's basically like, I hate the government. I hate what's happened. I want to buy my own town and figure it out. Jonestown, Jim Jones. Oh, good guy. Yeah, great. A lot of ideas. Big, big idea guy. Yeah.

Would have been a great podcaster. Can you imagine? He had some strong ideas. If he had just gotten that out of his system in the podcast space. It would have been the gym-osphere. Ayo. Obviously, the Jim Jones experience. The Jonestown Massacre is 78, I think. So, let's see. You know, the idea of trying to create your utopia in the jungle and it all going wrong is fresh on his mind. I do like this. I think it's a little bit of a riff, too, on, like, Brook Farm and utopian societies from the 1800s, which is quite a rabbit hole if you are interested.

And I will be starting a utopian society in 2026. Haven't whittled all the details down, but, you know, let me know any ideas. Sims City. That's my pivot. Yeah. Sims City is en route. Yeah. What do they have there? What do we do there? Is it a commune style? Or we all have, we all do the same job? I'm just thinking of things I want where I'm, like, napping. Yeah. Watching movies. Who's in charge of tweeting? You know? You can do that. Sandwich place. Yeah. Yeah. Subs. Super Nintendo. Just like, what do I want to do? Nothing. I'm just imagining David being grilled.

Hang with friends. I can't respond to that yet. I can promise you there will be fries. Right, right. Yeah. Running water. We love that. So he goes to, Thoreau goes to Honduras and China also. I guess just trying to sort of take stock of things. An American author called Moritz Thompson. He meets him in Ecuador. I don't know. You know, a lot of stuff. I'm not going to get into all this. But he is right. He is, like, focused on, like, the book will be from the perspective of Ali's son, not Ali.

But, like, this needs to be, you know, not a completely, you know, just, like, you're in the brain of this man thing. Like, you're sympathetic to him. No, you're watching this man go down this path. The rights get picked up immediately, pretty much, by Salzenet's company. It's a hugely celebrated novel. Exactly. And Salzenet's company had done Cuckoo's Nest and Amadeus. So they're, you know, riding high. He's won two of his eventual three Best Picture Oscars. Right. What was the third? English person? Right. I think it's Zantz. Yeah, sorry. Yeah. Sorry. It's all Zantz. You're right. Like ants. I always, yeah, yeah, yeah. Sylvester Sloan.

Paul Schrader. A great identifier of quality prestige material. At that time. Yes. Yes, absolutely. And was Milos Forman's guy. It was, like, this guy knows how to pick him. Yeah. And also, he knew how to pick The Hobbit, which he owned the rights to for a very long time. That was an easy check to cash for a while. Unbelievable. His name's on every one of those fucking things. Yep. Paul Schrader. He made up a contract and he sat on it for 25 years. Paul Schrader. Heard of him? Yes. Another normal fella.

I guess I must have known that he wrote this at some deep recess of my brain. And yet, when the opening credits hit last night, I was rubbing my hands like Harrison Ford. Let's get to work. Obviously, of course he wrote this movie. Exactly. It appeals. Obviously, he has fully transitioned at this point to mostly directing, writing, directing. Oh, okay. You meant at this point, not present day. He takes this on, however, only to write. He wants to make Mishima. That's his sort of big... He has just done Cat People. And so, he does like it, though.

In 2021, he says Fox's All-American Hustler, the con man, the Donald Trump character, the sawdust preacher. He said that in 2021, though. He didn't say that in 82. Oh, okay. Okay. He could have said it in 82. Peter Weir, who has made Picnic and Hanging Rock in The Last Wave and is looking to pivot out of that. We talk about this a lot on Witness, that he maybe was going to direct The Thorn Birds, which eventually turns into a television miniseries. Has Year of Living Dangerously already happened? Or is this kind of contemporaneous? Yeah. Okay.

But, well, no, it hasn't happened when he's circling The Thorn Birds. That's my question. Right. That's post-Last Wave. Yeah. That's his first dip into Should I Do a Hollywood Thing? Instead, no. He goes and makes Gallipoli. Year of Living Dangerously is a co-production with MGM, so Hollywood's entering. He reads Mosquito Book. He just loves how bizarre it is. He loves how this is like a Shakespearean protagonist, right? Like you're just watching him crack, right? It's an incredible setup for a movie. And to him, it's like an American Macbeth or whatever, right?

It's just like the unraveling of a man, but this very American kind of man. I, yeah, yeah. And so he's into that and he likes the idea of a Harrison Ford or someone else. He mentions like John Wayne, Steve McQueen, like taking some American guy. Playing with someone's hero iconography. Yeah. Super cool. Brings it, you know, Paul Schrader obviously has done the screenplay. They all chat. Weir basically sticks to Schrader's script. Like he had some ideas to futz with it, but I think he ended up like, you know, basically using what he was given.

Then he printed a pamphlet of Allie Fox's rants from the book that he titled The Thoughts of Allie Fox, I guess, just to sort of get into that vibe. Allie Fox, another guy who could have gotten a lot out of his system with a podcast. And to get to what Griffin was queuing up, Jack Nicholson is the early and very logical choice to star in this film. Now, Jack Nicholson, audiences like watching him spiral. Jack. It is appealing to watch Nicholson do anything, especially when the behavior is bad and the psychosis is high.

And so I think this movie doesn't work with him as much as it makes sense because he's almost like too charismatic, too compelling. And to watch his life spiral just becomes like jungle shining. Here's a weird thing about this movie, though. I would argue Harrison Ford's character is more or less consistent through the entire movie. At the very beginning of the film, the piss and vinegar and all the speechifying, he's basically the same guy at the end of the movie. He never really moves off of any position.

He doesn't do that thing that you're talking about that Nicholson does where over the course of 100 minutes, you watch a guy go from normal to completely insane. You know, the Witches of Eastwick style meltdown. Allie, like, all the way through his death, is a true believer in himself. Right. This guy starts at 100 and he refuses to give up a single percentage point, even as he is faced with evidence that he is wrong.

You know, that's the common slam that I disagree with on Nicholson's casting in Shining is that that guy is too baseline crazy for a movie that needs to be built around him dissolving. And I think the magic of Nicholson is he can start a movie and you go, that's the most guy I've ever seen. And then he finds a way to add more. Yeah, that's why Shining is so good. But I also think, right, it's he would. There's too much eyebrow work going on in the first 30 minutes of Shining. Just like just tone down the inherent malevolence of whatever you are doing.

If Nicholson was playing Allie Fox, he would be ratcheting. Yes. He wouldn't stay at the same level where the point is this guy is unbendable. He would be going crazy. I think he'd be good. He's a good actor. I'm not saying he'd be bad. I think he makes a little more sense in the early 80s than he does in the mid 80s as well. I'm just making the case for why I think Ford is the perfect guy because you've already set out this question of was he right? Well, they considered him perfect, but Saul Zantz. Zantz? Zantz. I thought it was Zantz. Is it Zantz?

I don't know. Who knows? Okay. Zantz like Zantz. I'm only trying to remember the pronunciation of the 1997 Oscars. Basically Sharon Stone. Zantz for some reason thinks himself like as like a kingmaker for Nicholson. He's like, I made your career with Cuckoo's Nest. Cuckoo's Nest at this point is like 10 years old. I want him his first Oscar. I know, but like Jack Nicholson has gone on to, you know, continue to succeed. And so he lowballs him and Nicholson's like, fuck you. Like, you don't get to lowball me just because like you made a good movie with me a while ago. Right?

Like, uh, and so it turns into an ego thing. And of course, what does Harrison Ford get paid? The salary Jack wanted. So it's like, it's all silliness. Um, uh, Schrader calls it, uh, a pissing contest. Schrader also says it obviously would have been a much better film with Jack. So I guess we know where Schrader lands on this one. Well, that's because Ford has been publicly critical of the script that they ended up making. Right. Which is not the script he thought they ultimately should have made. Paul Schrader doesn't strike me as the kind of guy who grinds axes.

I don't know what you're talking about. Um, but, uh, while this is all happening, the film falls apart, obviously. And Weir goes over to Witness, which is this like go picture that has Ford attached, that has producers, that has studio, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah. Witness gets made, rocks. But like halfway through filming Witness, Weir starts like. Weir's like, I got this thing I want to do. Yeah, and Ford's immediately in, goes to his reps. His reps are like, you shouldn't do this. And Ford is undeterred. He's like, I like this guy. I like this character. I like Weir. I want to go.

A lot of the stuff I'm quoting is from an article that was on The Ringer in 2021, by the way, Sean. Oh, great. And Ford, you know, and Weir agree, they don't want to be completely slavish to the book. They think in the book Fox is crazy from the beginning. They think they should build up to it. Now, I am not sure they succeeded at that from, I agree with what you guys are saying, where I'm like, he's pretty crazy from the start. He's just very ranty. He's got all these, all these philosophies. Jason Alexander is like, get me out of here.

I don't want to deal with you anymore. Jason Alexander, very effective. Yeah, he's good. Yeah. Ford says, found him more right than wrong in what he was saying. There's the complexity of the family story, the relationship between a father and son and husband and wife. There's humor and pathos. I mean, like you say, Ford's very good at talking, like, in an emotional and complex way about the work he does. He loves Peter Weir. He says he's got vision. You know, like, that's great. And he calls himself an assistant storyteller.

He's like, I'm the person who calls for logic and a plotting kind of determination to have all the cards on the table. This is what I was about to say. And we talked about this a lot in Witness, that he really thinks of himself as a storyteller first and foremost. And that's his main function as an actor, especially since he usually plays the steady guy at the center to help carry the audience through the story. I would argue this is the first time he's playing a character where that is not his primary responsibility, where his primary responsibility is get this guy right.

Because in a certain way, Phoenix is carrying the story more. Weir is really carrying the story. Phoenix is carrying the emotion. Yeah. The audience is not being carried by Allie Fox in watching this film. So it's a movie where the villain is the hero. It's very uncommon. It's very uncommon, especially, obviously, for a Hollywood movie starring fucking Han Solo and Indiana Jones. The crew is mostly Australian. And this is something I think is worth noting. Both Weir and John Seale agree. If Harrison Ford was an American, he would be Australian. They're like, he's just got a very Australian vibe.

He wants to sit in a deck chair. He wants to drink beers with the mates. You know what I mean? Like, it's just kind of like an Australian without actually being from Australia. Harrison Ford suggested River Phoenix. Thought that he looked like him as a young man and had liked him in like Stand By Me and shit. Helen Mirren had only done one Hollywood movie, which is 2010. Normal movie. I guess Excalibur was released by Warner Brothers, but was British. And that was all shot in Britain and all that.

So she's kind of like a little overwhelmed and starstruck and like, Harrison Ford, this is intense. And, you know, she wants to. She envisions herself as like beautiful and floating through the jungle. And Peter Weir is like, no, you're not going to wear any makeup, bro. Like, this is. Yeah, this is a dirty movie. They shoot it in Belize, in Central America. And especially back then, I think Belize was pretty off grid. And so it was like a long sort of humid kind of tough shoot. But Ford looks back on it really fondly. He's like, I had a wooden yacht. I mean, I don't know.

That's the Harrison Ford's thing is just like, I had a vehicle, right? You know, it's notable about the time for him. And he's not yet a father. That is interesting. He hasn't had any kids. So who did he have kids with? Was it Melissa Matheson? It's the next year. He has five kids. Yeah. Total. Yeah. Is that right? Am I getting that right? And then if you think about shrinking seasons as his children, it's even more children. But is he, how old is he when this movie comes out? 43? 44? Let's think. Yeah, about, yeah. About that. Yeah. 44. No, I'm wrong. I'm wrong.

He's got an, he's got, he has an older son at this point. Okay. I misspoke. Because he has, he has kids in the, he has two kids in the 80s. And then he has one kid with Calista Flockhart as well. Right? He had, all right, I'm going to give it all to you. He had two kids. Okay, two kids. With Mary Marghart. This is sort of like way pre-fame. Okay. In the 60s. It's with Melissa Matheson. He had two sons in the 60s. Then he has two kids with Melissa Matheson, a son and a daughter in 87 and 90.

And then he did have a son with Calista Flockhart in 2001. So he does. So he is. He's a daddy. He's in alley mode. Yeah. And he is. Not Ally McBeal. He's daddy. He is daddy. We talked a lot. I got sunglasses somewhere. I was going to put them on. We talked a lot in our witness episode with your co-host, Amanda Dobbins. Wait, what? You did what? We'll delete it. We'll delete it. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. You what? I'm so sorry. Is that the hottest he's ever been in a movie? And we basically landed on that or Working Girl.

I'm shocked to hear that that was Amanda's day. He's not obviously appealing in the same way in this film. He does look fucking good. He does. He looks pretty good. The long hair. Yeah. Yeah. His hair looks good. The glasses work. Yeah. He's just a very strong man. Yes. You know, he's not diesel. He's not diesel. He's just a strong man. You know, when you met a man in 1987 and you're like, this guy, he's got some strength on him. Broad shoulders. He's got some, there's some. Significant arms. He's just a sturdy guy. This man's held lumber. Yes. In his hands. You know?

He knows what a power saw feels like. He knows how to crash a plane. That's true. He really knows. Weirdly, weirdly, weirdly close to that one. You know, they shoot the film. As Sean was alluding to, there's a lot of push and pull over. Or like, to what extent did they just shoot the script? Weir's always very like, oh, you know, I like to discover stuff on set. And, you know, like, I guess that's sort of the debate of authorship here. But, you know. I mean, Schrader makes this a Schrader movie. Like, Paul Theroux's writing. He's one of the great travel writers of all time.

He wrote this great book. If you have not read it, called The Great Railway Bazaar. It's considered one of the foremost travelogue, nonfiction, journey movies ever. He makes his name by being a white man from Massachusetts who goes to Africa, goes to Singapore, goes to all over Europe, travels the world, writes about his experiences in this very forthright but emotional way. A lot of his novels are like this. They are emotional pragmatist novels. And Paul Schrader is not an emotional pragmatist. He's the opposite. He is a person of extraordinary, outsized, biblical intensity.

And so there is this clash in what the story is meant to be and how people felt about the novel and where the movie ends up, which is, you know, it's one of Schrader's underground men. Like, that's ultimately what this movie is. So if we view, like, the spectrum of Thoreau, it feels like, is creating this Ali Fox character as, like, a shadow version of himself, right, interrogating his worst fears of who he is and what he's doing, entering these other cultures and then reporting back to other people.

And that the most curdled version of that is going, I know how, I could do this better. I could just do this. And I'd have it all figured out. And even that scene where they go to the home of the workers and he's showing the kids around and he's like, look at this, they live like kings. We can do this, right? Like, this weird kind of, like, exoticism and, like, putting them on a pedestal in a way that is condescending in its own sense. It feels like Thoreau is, like, litigating his own concerns about where do I stand on this. Yes. Right?

That's why it's written through the eyes of the child. Right. Then not within this specific world, but as you said, Schrader is a mole man. He's an underground man. And he is someone who digs in and spirals into things like this. This is not his world, but he more closely represents the psychology of someone like an Allie Fox. And then Weir is all the way on the other end of Thoreau being like, I actually have objectivity and distance from both of you. And Weir is really good at looking at different cultures butting up against each other with a sense of distance.

And Ford says that one of the things he loved about Weir is that he finds that a lot of times the best filmmakers at making films about America are the ones who are on the outside. Well, the other Weir thing that you guys, I'm sure, will be getting to in this series is that most of his best movies are about the relentless power of the natural world. That, like, getting stuck somewhere or stuck inside of something, you cannot beat Mother Nature. And this is a movie that ultimately becomes most interested in that in the third act.

I haven't read this novel, this Thoreau novel, so I can't say how much fealty there is. But to me, that's what Weir brings, which is there's a fucking typhoon happening, and there's no one better suited to putting that on screen than this director at this time. But you take those three interests, right? You take the Mole Man, you take Harrison Ford's... Harrison trying to subvert something with himself. Yeah, make a new persona for himself.

And you take this great naturalist using this text that is, like, meant to be, I think, a movie about how, when you're a kid, you think your parents are heroic and perfect, and then you turn a certain age and you realize they're as full of shit as anybody. That's the core emotional turn of this book, which is a great idea that I think most people can relate to. It just so happens that rather than, like, your parents getting a divorce or moving to a new city or changing jobs or losing their job, he moves them to a different country.

This guy is about as full of shit as you possibly could be, and the world calls his bluff so fucking hard. So it becomes an exploded version of what you're saying. I just have to bring this up because the quote is really funny. But Ford talking about his opinion that, like, foreign directors often comment on America better than American directors. And he said, you know, the problem you get into is you work with foreign directors, and if they don't have a handle on the language, then what they gain in perspective, they're losing the ability to communicate with the cast and crew.

And he said, but Peter doesn't have that problem. He's Australian. And they speak something close to English, which is a great Ford joke. Good Ford joke. David. Yes. You look like a man who doesn't know that fast-growing trees is America's largest and most trusted online nursery with thousands of trees and plants and over 2 million happy customers. I had no idea. Yeah. Yeah. Well, David, they have all the plants your yard or home needs, including fruit trees, privacy trees, flowering trees, shrubs and houseplants. My home is littered with all of these, and they're all grown with care and guaranteed to arrive healthy.

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You took the personal statement out of my mouth, Ben. That is how I feel. And then here's the other thing. You try to hire some landscapers. It's too expensive. I am so tired of spending every day of my life on the phone with landscapers. Listen, with fast-growing trees, it's just so reassuring that you know you're going to order plants and they're guaranteed to be healthy and to thrive. But let me guess, when the trees arrive, it takes a really long time for them to grow. They have their alive and thrive guarantee. It promises your plants arrive happy and healthy. No green thumb required.

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Okay, well, is there maybe something that we could take off your plate, have someone else help you out with? Perhaps a trusted tasker from TaskRabbit. David, I would love nothing more. My ideal life is to do as little as possible. As much as can be off my plate, the happier I am. I have children. I have logistical responsibilities often of like, I need to build a piece of furniture. I need to whatever, you know. I've been hearing about this for the first time, but sure, I'll buy into the premise, the bit of this ad. And I've used TaskRabbit multiple times for it.

It is literally always like, that is the best money I ever spent in my life. You know what I mean? Where you're basically like, it would have been six hours of me building this bookcase. And instead, like, I did whatever the other task I had to do, you know, like- You could be sleeping or making, like, shopping for food or whatever. But like, while that got done, and it's like, it's always just so rewarding. I had a Tasker come and build a grill for me when I bought my grill. Well, well, well, my ears are burning. Or should I say, smoking.

And that was one of those things where I was, not only was I like, this will be, this will take a long time. I was like, looking at all this, you know, masonry, all these like, where I was like, I will mess this up. Like, I just won't do this right. Hey, David, no need to speak in generalities. To me, what kind of bad boy are we talking about here? What model you buy? It's a Weber grill. I'm not going to tell you the model.

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Taskers book up fast, especially for same-day tasks. So, book trusted home help today. That's $15 off your first task using promo code CHECK with the TaskRabbit app or at TaskRabbit.com. Andre Gregory, pretty brilliant casting choice, in my opinion. Yeah, he's really good. My Dinner with Andre, the first movie he's in, period. Sure. He's obviously not someone who, I think, designs on having a movie career. He's an avant-garde theater guy. Right. And then he has this, like, weird arthouse breakout. And by the time you get to the 90s, it's like, can we plug Andre Gregory into Demolition Man and shit?

But this is a really smart place to put him. It's a different character than he is, but it's using his same ability to talk with authority. Yeah. He had been in Author, Author, the forgotten Al Pacino, Arthur Hiller movie. Author, Author! He's in the Goldie Hawn cocktail waitress congressional scandal film Protocol, also somewhat forgotten. Yes. Written by Buck Henry. Right. And then this. After this, he does Street Smart, which he's good. That's a decent movie. He's John the Baptist in Last Temptation of Christ. Normal performance. I really love that movie. Paul Schrader also took a pass at that one. Well, he wrote it. Yeah.

I mean, well, I guess, you know, the Bible first. Yeah, he took a pass on the Bible. Quick dialogue polish on the Bible. He's a good counter to Ford. He is charismatic in his own weird way, but in a very different way than Harrison. It's not movie star energy. No. He's not. He's a reedy, narrow. Yeah. Hectoring. It's intellectual titan energy. Yeah. Which he was able to translate well to movies. But yeah, the film starts before we even get to Andre Gregory with he's an inventor. That's Ali Fox's deal. What's the math? He's got six patents, three more pending.

River Phoenix is laying it all out for us. I thought it was nine patents, six pending. I think that's right. Yeah. He's trying to build an ice machine that he has dubbed Fat Boy. And he is just kind of a tough hang. He goes to the hardware store and starts yelling about how things are made in Japan, where it's like, OK, buddy, like, it's not fucking anyone's fault. Like, have some human compassion. Of Blank Track, incredibly normal guy. He's very angry about the phrase, have a nice day, which I enjoy. This is what's so... That's a great thing to get mad about. What's so funny...

But if that's what you're getting... How are you going to just draw a breath every morning? But this is what I think is fascinating about watching this movie for the first time last night, is the targets are different. But in so many ways, it feels like this movie must have been presenting a character of like, look at our creation. We've imagined the least normal, most wound up man in the world. Even when he's right, it's annoying, right? And you're just like, I can't imagine someone being this fucking on their high horse all the time.

And then you're like, the targets are different, but he has so much of a similarity to today's like, Fox News poison person getting upset about like, they don't even say Merry Christmas at Starbucks. Sure. Like all of his weird grays... So deep in a hole. Ben, what do you want to say? Somewhat triggering for me because it does remind me of my dad in a very particular way, which is that he always would just spout off about people who drove luxury cars, but in an intense way where he'd be like, fuck this BMW driver.

I hope he crashes because like the guy who cut him off. Right. Right. He goes a little... He just was like... He jumps up on the rage scale. ...monologuing about how like anyone who drives these cars is a piece of shit. And I remember being a kid being like, dude, chill out. Not to generalize. Oh my God. I do feel like everyone's dad has at least one thing like that where you're like, why are you so wound up about this thing? Can I tell you what my dad's is? Yeah. My parents split. My dad got remarried, married a lovely woman named Colleen.

Colleen loves Bruce Springsteen. My dad will not accept that Bruce Springsteen's nickname is the boss. My dad is like, he's not the boss. I'm the boss. I swear to God, my father has said that out loud at least a dozen times. Yeah. That's incorrect. So he's just like, no one but I can be the boss. I think he's like, what makes him the boss? The boss of what? I think he's genuinely rageful about this idea of him being... It's a very... I mean, it's daddish. How do you feel about the wrestler, boss man? The big boss man? Yeah. From Marietta County? Yeah.

I think he's a problematic figure. Yeah. Didn't he like wear a cop uniform? I believe he hit people with batons in the ring. What about the... Oh, interesting. That's coming back to me now. I think he probably wouldn't work now as a heel. Isn't the reason... I only know this because I've been remembering about the movie. The very good Scott Cooper movie. I thought you were going to say the big boss man movie. Yeah, I'm writing about the big boss man. Scott Cooper's doing big boss man. No, it's just they call him the boss because he did their taxes and shit and finances.

And so the E Street Band guys would be like, all right, boss. Because he's the responsible. Yeah. And then eventually that just became the shorthand of like, are you okay, boss? Like, you know, it just... It's funny. Yeah. They weren't like, you're the boss of America's sincerity and integrity. Like, it's like, you know, it was just like, oh, boss man over here. My dad is like this with tattoos. Oh, he doesn't like tattoos. If he meets a person with tattoos, he can't get over it. He's like, why did they do that? Or what does it mean? Like, what does he focus on?

It's like a ding on character. He'll describe someone as like, they look so funky. It's all the tattoos and the thing through the nose. And he describes them like, as if they are like, mutant, like Mad Max wasteland freaks. Right, right, right. But I think Ali Fox is, what if your dad was like this about every single thing? That's the thing. Right, right. He can't, he can't pick one. It's overload. It's just gas, like, peddled to the metal constantly. Because he's already complaining about one thing when Jason Alexander hands him the Japanese pipe and he's like, we're shifting. I'm taking the off ramp.

Now I'm angry about this. Like, he's interrupting his own rants with other rants that present themselves. But he's like, there's a moment where he's like, I can shop somewhere else. You're not the only game in town. I'm like, if you're like this. Yeah. How are you letting to any store? Yeah. Like, at a certain point, surely, don't people go out of here, buddy? Like, no. There's a very subtle cut to Jason Alexander when he enters the store and he underplays it beautifully, but he has that air of. Yes. Just a little.

But for every person that reacts that way, and we've already invoked Jim Jones and Joe Rogan in this discussion, but there is a massive appeal of a philosopher king, somebody who comes in and says, I have a really defined worldview and I am charismatic and propulsive in delivering the way that I see the world. And join me or don't, but if you don't, it may be at your peril. That's a very effective leadership philosophy. Not one that I practice, but one that is very appealing and actually makes sense as a lead character in a big story.

Now, Allie Fox is not charismatic, but Harrison Ford is charismatic. So even him leaning into the worst of this character, he's charismatic enough for the audience to pay attention. You throw out William Hurt, who's probably a better literal interpreter of this character at this time, right? And it's right, right at the peak of his. Yeah, this is in his wheelhouse of the type of character he plays. But I think if it's William Hurt at the center of this movie, five minutes in, you're like, well, fuck this guy. He's a bad hang. I know he's wrong.

There's just enough Harrison Ford magic for an audience to go like, can he pull it off? Even when the guy's annoying. And I think it's what I've already said that like, you're like, but is he going to kind of come to his senses? William Hurt, you're like, the guy's never going to learn. Yeah. And the movie was DOA because the word of mouth is so bad because he doesn't. Right. I mean, I do think fundamentally guys as much as we're, you know, like it's like there's no version of this movie that is much more successful.

There's a version where it like is better acclaimed by critics and it makes a little bit more money. But like, you still see this as this is like a sort of a 30 million dollar ceiling movie. There is a way to make it a more successful movie, which is at the moment post Typhoon when Mother says we could walk up the beach to Cape Cod. If he says yes and builds a boat that gets them back home. And the movie ends with them sailing. And if that movie, the movie ends in that way, it makes twice as much. It's a bigger movie.

Instead, Andre Gregory has to murk him. Just absolutely lay waste at him. Yeah. Like, you don't want to go out at the hands of Andre Gregory. No. That's not good. Pretty lame. Although in the book, his death is very different. Oh, how does he die in the book? He doesn't just die on the boat. He is picked to death by vultures. Oh, that sounds awesome. Which is a recurring theme, apparently, in the book that he keeps saying, I hate vultures. And he kind of compares. I hate vultures too, by the way. Fucking vultures. Get off my flesh. The vultures. Oh, my God. Who likes vultures?

He keeps saying like the vultures of society and, you know, drawing all these illusions. And then he is literally picking. That's a little on the nose. A little bit. Yeah. Yeah. But I like that within the movie itself, Gregory is charismatic in a way that he is not. Yeah. When you're saying. Inside the movie. Yeah, sure, sure, sure. This sort of like philosopher king, like he's able to fulfill that in a way where even though he's actually has, you could argue, less on his mind and less to represent, he is able to sell it more convincingly to people.

His ideas just don't need to be told to the audience because it's just Judeo-Christian values. That's what he represents. And the idea of the missionary as, in theory, benevolent figure, but in practice, maybe a little bit more insidious, like Ben was saying. You can auto-complete. You can fill in the blanks in knowing, yeah, both silos of that. Martha Plimpton. Okay. Is quite good in this film. When's she bad? Never. Ever. This is the start of her River Phoenix relationship? Yeah, I believe so. So she'd been in the Goonies, which the year before, right? That's kind of her breakout, right? Yes. Was there a TV thing?

No, there wasn't. Like, that was her breakout. No, I just feel like there was another film I'm forgetting. There is. There's like this movie, The River Rat with Tommy Lee Jones. But like, you know, I don't think that was a very big movie. Her breakthroughs, The Goonies. What if there was a River Rat? Exactly. A provocative question. I believe it's her. Yeah. I think, I'm not sure. And then she popped up on Family Ties at some point, but that's all. This is basically the immediate follow-up to Goonies. She's also in Charming. Running on Empty. Well, that's true, which she's very good in.

But no, she's also in Stars and Bars. Our favorite movie that we keep invoking. The cast of this movie is freaking insane. Griffin, Griffin, look. Joan Cusack, Keith David. Griffin, you will listen to the big picture episode I did about this months ago. So, I run through the list just being like, how could this movie be bad? Rockets Red Glare? Rockets Red Glare, the possible murderer of Nancy Spudgeon, is in it. Yes. Among the other things. It's an insane collection of people who are great and the movie sucks. I feel like I invoked it on our present draft episode on Big Pick.

But have any of you seen First Family? That is... No. What even is that? I want to say it's the only movie that Buck Henry directed. I was going to say Buck Henry. Yes. I haven't seen it. I think it's its only directorial work. But that is a movie I put off watching for so long. Unless... Like, he has the director credit on Heaven. Oh, of course. His only solo. With Warren. I put off watching it for so long because I had only heard horrible things. And it's the ultimate.

It is a White House comedy where the First Family is Bob Newhart as president, Madeline Kahn as First Lady, Gilda Radner as their daughter, Harvey Korman, Rip Torn, Austin Pendleton, Fred Willard, Richard Benjamin, supporting cast, written, directed by Buck Henry. You put it on. Within 10 minutes, you're like, this is the most rancid shit. I have ever seen. It is deathly unfunny and racist. It is all about them negotiating with a fictional African nation. And the second it's represented on screen, you're like, holy shit. All of this is wrong. And all the funniest actors you've ever seen are like mirthless, anti-smile.

So it is not a hidden gem. It does suck. Is Stars and Bars like that? Yeah, kind of. Stars and Bars is... It's not like deep. It's broad in its caricature of the South, but it's not offensive. It's not... And Stars and Bars is just DOA. It's just one of these things where you're like, I don't get it, but yeah. Oh, there's no way Metcalf. Yep. She's not doing much either. But Martha Plimpton's character in both of those movies is somewhat similar. Where it's like, this is an underage, teenage girl who's drawing our lead. Yeah, precocious girl. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Which is, I think, obviously, Martha Plimpton is Keith Carradine's daughter. She's related to George Plimpton in some way. You know, like, she's got this sort of precocious vibe anyway. But in this movie, she's got the tomboy thing. She's got the Jessica Lovejoy thing going on. She is the Reverend's daughter. And she's like a little bit of a rapscallion. For sure. I love Martha Plimpton. I think if you want to go to the bathroom. What a line that is. Yeah. That's something she says. Yeah. But... I think I might. All right. See you later. Bye, Ben. Ben, think of us when you're in there.

Just to set up a little bit more, though. You know, Allie Fox, right? Not only does he hate everything he sees, but he also thinks like the world's about to end. Maybe he keeps talking about nuclear war. He tries to build the ice machine for a farmer. That ends up with everyone screaming at each other. Like, it feels like any time he gets a job, it sort of descends into recrimination. It is such a good scene where the guy is like, you know, and he's getting all high and mighty about what he did well and how he's not respected.

And the guy just stops him and is like, I agree that you're a genius. That's why I hired you. You're unbelievably good at what you do. But this right here is your fucking problem. Right. Yeah. You make everything overcomplicated. This is 10 times more than I asked for. And now it's like misfiring. Yeah. And you're being a dick about it. So, I mean, this is extremely obvious. But the modern day equivalent of Allie Fox is Elon Musk. Yeah, sure. This is an inventor. This is a brilliant person. This is a person whose social and moral ideas are pretty nuts. Yeah.

Like increasingly kind of conspiratorial and bizarre. It does not matter how smart you are. That doesn't make you good. Yeah. That's an interesting idea. But that the driving force is, I have identified problems in our society, and I think I am the only one who knows how to fix them. And I swear to you, I'm doing this for your good. Right. And he is smart, but he has no other applicable or sort of demonstrable skills, reason to be doing what he's doing. He basically dropped out of school. Right. And then he's basically like, hey. Some of our greatest minds.

No offense to anybody who dropped out. It's more that like, it indicates a lack of follow through for someone who imagines himself as a... Well, and he doesn't want to play by rules. I was going to say, I read it more as, can you imagine the fights he was getting into his professors with mid-class every day? And you're like, and how did he get a lady? Oh, he's Harrison Ford. Right. So that's how he did that. But he decides to just, he tells his family like, hey, great news. We're leaving the United States. We're getting on a barge.

Andre Gregory and Martha Plimpton are going to be there. And we are going to fucking Mosquito Coast, baby. I've identified where to be. We're going to make ice there. People are really going to want ice there. It's the immigrant employees at this construction site who he starts like coveting. And he buys a village and he's like, this rocks. And everyone else is like, we're doomed. There's an immediate escalation of get off the boat. Look, it's great. And everyone's like, and then a day later, he's like, better news.

I have no money now, but I own a town and the town looks even worse than the place they landed the boat. Do you guys watch Survivor? No, I watched the first like five years. I've watched the first religiously and I've not in two decades. No. This scene has big Survivor energy. I can do this. Survivor is what happens. This is all the contestants arrive on a boat to an island. It's now been Fiji for whatever, 10 consecutive years. But prior to that, they would travel all around the world and go to different islands. And they get off the boat.

And it's obviously this diverse collection of people, men and women from all walks of life, different ages. And they arrive at, they get broken up into teams and they arrive at their individual camps. And their camps are entirely undeveloped. And they have to build. They have to build their camp. They have to start pulling, you know, branches down and trees and palm fronds. And they always come in really bullish with so much energy. Yes. This is actually easy. This is better. Yeah, it's good. We know distractions. Here we are. Yeah.

And inevitably, by the end of episode one, there's one team at least that's in over their skis and they're kind of fucked. And then over the course of the next six episodes, that tribe gets radically dismantled. And they're screaming at each other. Right. Yes. And this is that. This is that. Yeah. The arrival at the town and it just sucking so hard made me think of the National Lampoon vacation movies, kind of. You're right. It is very much that vibe of look at the hotel room I got us, reveal bad hotel room. Look how great this is. You're right.

And like everyone else is like, oh, my God. The journey to Wally world is like a very, very mild Mosquito Coast kind of thing. Right. But talking about like recognizable, relatable dad energy, right? The game with Clark Griswold is he knows this isn't good and he's in such deep denial. He cannot surrender the idea that he's fucked up this vacation. And so he's lying to all of them to try to make it true. When Ali sees shows them the city for the first time, the town for the first time, what's so compelling is that you're like this guy one thousand percent believes everything he's saying.

Look, it's incredible. There's nothing here. We get to start from scratch. Yeah. It's like the dream to him. It's very convincing. Which I you know, I I spend too much time thinking about this, but I have a belief. It's not unique to me, but it's one I've been holding on to very strongly that a lot of these people who like are absolute devotees of of Musk, of Trump, of many of these kind of like, I don't know, demagogue fascist assholes. Yes. That part of it is there and it's connected to this fucking like paleo diet shit and let's roll back restrictions on everything.

That these people do to some degree want to like reset the clock. Okay. So this is something that I did want to speak to you guys about because I'm not going with you to the mosquito coast. No, I'm not. Well, just a trip. Just a little trip. One live show. We have one live show. Here's jungle draft. We do have ice. Ice is available. At least there's ice. Big ice. Although, how flammable is your ice building? No. The thing that I... Medium. You use the ice to put out the flames created by the ice machine.

There's a kernel of alley that I relate to, which is a thing that is hitting me very hard now at this stage of my life, which is I do fantasize a little bit about leaving it behind. It's a big time. I am a little bit like I have signed up for a lot. I've been doing a lot for a long time. And how much of this do I actually like at all? I'm detecting a lot of too many projects from you. You know, like when you're always like... It's my own making. Yeah. It's my own problem. I blame no one but myself.

But when you are like that, when you live like that for a long time, and I've been living like that for about 10 years, there is a part of me that is just like, it doesn't have to be Honduras. It could be a small town north of Seattle. That sounds lovely. Is there a way to shrink my life by control? Yes. Which I think is like, yes, that is the relatable part of this, which is... And when you're in that kind of state, you get so hypersensitive to all these other indignities of civilization. That's exactly it. And society and culture. Everything else gets more annoying.

Which admittedly... It's our fault. Those things aren't working well right now. Right. Right? And you're like, okay, so I've opted into too many things that I'm now having regrets about. And then there's all this other shit that I never had the choice to opt in or out of that drives me fucking crazy. The impulse makes sense. And I do think a lot of the anger that causes people to follow these kinds of, like, insane motherfuckers is that they are speaking to some level of, can we burn it all down? Right?

And even, like, Make America Great Again isn't about, like, can we go back to 1965? But I have no urge to change... It's like, we're cavemen better than us. Yeah, I have no urge to change society or even compel anyone to join me. It's more about my own personal thing. Same. I just want to disappear. Yeah, yeah, yeah. In a cave with a good home theater system. Yes. With all of my Blu-rays. Great Wi-Fi. And I would like to go with Helen Mirren. I, too. Great choice. Sure. Yeah, why not? River Phoenix, he's a fun hang. Yeah. R.I.P. Now, the cave.

Like, you know there's not going to be air conditioning, right? Well, okay, let me finish. And this planet ain't getting colder. No. No, it's not. The cave has central air. Oh, air conditioning. I forgot to finish my thoughts. Sure. There is neither sand nor grass. Thank you. Griffin, you are the least outdoorsy guy. Yeah. So, living off the grid is really just not for you, I feel. Are you going to make a fire? How are we cooking food? Sean, are you outdoorsy? Electricity. I, if I had to be, I could be. But it's not. It's not. I would like a mid-century modern home.

That's what I actually want. It is. But I can fuck with that. You know, that sounds nice. With central air, sounds useful. Yeah. Are you sure? I'd like, can I get a playroom for my child? But also, well, this is the main thing. It's also right. You have a kid who might be like, hey, it's a River Phoenix situation of like, I might not be completely interested in what we're doing right now. Like, I might have other, you know, feelings and needs. No. So, how quickly do you go like, well, you can't go back. There's been a nuclear war. Yeah.

Which is the card that Allie plays. He does. Another thing that's upsetting about this movie is we're seeing the story from the perspective of River Phoenix. This guy has too many kids. And the more time you're spending in his son's head with the narration, seeing things through his son's eyes, you're remembering like, he's got other kids he's neglecting who are younger, who are less capable of processing this, whose heads we're not even tuned into. Yeah. And the book and the movie are like a pretty gentle social commentary on gender roles and families.

And the fact that mother is this like quieted person who has to go along with everything, all of his harebrained schemes. And just make the dresses for everybody. It's why this movie is very upsetting. You're watching a family get abused by this parent who is lying to them after forcing him into a situation they don't seem that interested in. And yeah, it's like he hates Reverend Spellgood or whatever. What's this? Yeah. Reverend Spellgood for being a zealot and for, you know, leading a mindless flock or whatever it is, you know, he thinks Spellgood's up to.

But that's what he really hates is that he has followers. Well, right. But I'm like, you're doing the exact same thing, buddy. Just less successful. Right. You're just doing it only to your family because no one else wants to hang out with you. Right. This guy's got a drive-in. Yeah. He's got people driving in to hear his words. See, my thing reliving off the grid is I don't want to live there off the grid. I want to live on the grid because it has electricity. Well, I was going to say, you want to live in the literal grid of the world of Tron.

Oh, that would be nice. By a digital jazz. I'm going to see Tron tonight. You are? I was going to go Monday, but then I went to go see Marty's Supreme. Right. I, of course, stuck to my principles and I entered the grid. But mostly for your Oscar watching. Yeah, right. Of course. I was just hearing so much Lido buzz. Yeah. You know, it's a... You liked it? Well, it's a fucking dumb movie, but it does look cool. It's visually well executed. It's got all the Tron stuff. We'll be six months old by the time this comes out.

I'm happy to hear that it is watchable. Can I spoil a plot point or do you want to go in cold? I mean, I'd rather go in cold, but we're potting. Let's just pod. A thing it does that Legacy didn't do. And I love Legacy. I think Legacy is kind of an awesome movie. JoCo. JoCo. Yeah. And I also think Legacy predicted the future of all corporate art. Like it just, it's showing you what will happen. If JoCo does Fugitive, are we excited? He's doing Miami Vice instead, right? I know, but I'm saying down the line. Eh, kind of. Yeah, that's interesting.

I mean, it's like, great. That's a vehicle for a thing you can do. And it has to be a kind of a technocrat version. Right. Like where are the vehicles? Yeah. He loves vehicles. What if it's Tron colon Fugitive? That? Sounds good. A thing that it does that is pure nostalgia bait, you know, is that it goes into 1982 Tron. I saw a little bit of this in the trailer, and it's the first thing in a year of marketing that has gotten me a little excited for this movie. Yeah.

There is everything in that, you know, sequence is, again, like I said, it's just nostalgia stuff, but it is so visually well executed that I kind of had to tip my hat to it. And of course, that is where you also get Jeff Bridges just burping. You know what I mean? Like Jeff Bridges just being like, yeah, I am your one legacy character at this point, so I will participate. But you're going to get now Bridges. Is he carrying a big barrel, though, with three X's on it? No, but like it's truly being like, how are you doing?

And I'm like, this is so far from Kevin Flynn. Isn't it in the same universe as Legacy? It is. It's a direct sequel to Legacy in ways. Is Garrett Hedlund a part of it? They like point to a picture and say like he's off doing his own thing. This is my favorite. He went to the Mosquito Coast. It's truly that. It's like Garrett Hedlund, as we know, vanished into the ether with Olivia Wilde. They are not really a part of this movie at all. They have a podcast. And now his company is in the hands of Greta Lee. Yeah.

And who's the villain from the first movie? You know, the British guy. I know, but what's the character? Like the guy, David Warner's grandson is Evan Peters. So is Evan Peters playing Cillian Murphy's son? Because remember, Cillian Murphy is set up as Stark's... Cillian Murphy is not acknowledged. Evan Peters is playing Gillian Anderson's son. Okay. But he is a Dillinger, much like Warner. Okay. Yes, he is in that. He's from the Red Guys. Right, Stark Industries, but Dillinger was the... But you know how like Tron, it still boils down to, the blue guys are good, the red guys are bad.

And like, just so you can be sure of that, Evan Peters is in a very red room when he's doing his villainy and so on. Should our bit for 2026, I'm not saying we're retiring Red Hulk. Uh-huh. But listeners being like, well, I know they record these episodes months in advance. It's very funny to listen to June episodes that still have Red Hulk talk because they've just seen it or whatever. And then I've seen our listeners get excited as like, it's October, Red Hulk's still in the convo. Right, right. They're not giving up on his past relevancy. It wasn't just that it was topical.

Should Tron Aries be our new added, we continue talking about Tron Aries for two years? Yeah, please. Let's talk about Tron Aries. Great. I mean... We gotta get a bucket. We gotta... I'm sure there will be a very elaborate bucket. There are many. There are many. The arcade machine. The cabinet. Cool. There's a bucket that's fucking Aries on the cycle and each wheel has its own popcorn. I'm getting this fucking bucket tonight. You're getting the bucket? Yeah, of course. You think I can put that in my suitcase? Absolutely. One of the big... The arcade one? Which one are you looking at?

Let's just look at the bucket. Come on. David, let's look at the bucket. I was just gonna say one of the big plot points in Aries is, of course, Jared Leto, an actor we all adore. Normal guy. Right. And a guy we adore. And Allie Fox. Right. Plays an AI called Aries that's sort of like a, you know, kind of militaristic. AI? Yeah. What's that? He's a program. Awesome intellectual is what it is. And the big plot arc of the movie is that he starts to become self-aware and more human and disobeys orders. What? Right. Can you believe it? There's the popcorn bucket.

I looked at it. I'm getting it. But then did you see the cycle one? Yeah. Where the popcorn, it goes in the two spaces. Yeah. I'm going to see this movie. And then my, my wife and daughter land at 9 p.m. tonight. So imagine. Oh, yeah. They're coming in. The motorcycle and the arcade cabinet being there waiting for her. She-Ra's gonna ride that thing. Oh, my God. Really more of a motherboard situation right now. Motherboard. Motherboard has big Tron vibes, though. Motherboard is the tech team, man. Yes, she does. Do you know that I've been sending Sean's daughter He-Man toys? I did.

Yeah, no, we've, we've, you've touched on it. Kind of a men-she move. Kind of a men-she move. Great stuff. But just to finish my point, Jared Leto, at his current level of acting effort, if you guys can reflect on his recent, right, is totally fine playing a robot, essentially. Uh-huh. Is not so good at the, ah, human emotion is beginning to enter, right? Like, my feelings are emerging. That's, that's an issue with the film, I would say. Another issue is that Greta Lee looks like she wants to just, like, drink poison the whole movie.

You know, everyone's just kind of- The little thing is bewildering, though. Like, we've known. It's because- I know. We've known. This project's been in the works for, like, nine years. It's like a $200 million movie. And Leto's been attached the whole time, and I feel like they've just been like, can we get you? And he's like, no! I saw a recent interview with him, recent October 2025, not recent next summer when you're listening to this, where he said, and the timeline's crazier than I thought, they write a more direct Tron Legacy sequel. It was initially, I think, right, like, more tied to Tron Legacy.

There was a part they offered him in that. He said, no, I'm not interested in this, but this side character you have of Ares, I think is interesting. And then that project fell apart, and then they rebooted it, went to him, and said, what if we start the script from scratch, and that's the main character, and it's you? So it's not just that, like, they wanted him and he'd been attached for so long. And they figured out what to do for him. He wanted to play Ares. Him passing on it reset the entire project, and they redeveloped it around his taste.

That's fucking nuts for a guy that no one likes. A man living in a perpetual mosquito coast. It is. Truly. I will say, and look, this is somewhat of a spoiler, but not really. Don't worry, guys, because you, again, you're not shocked to learn that Ares becomes more human. By the end of the movie, he's gone from, you know, robot, like, a programmed red guy to more of a Jared Leto in real life vibes. And I said that he looked like a sentient feather earring. That is really the vibe. It's just like, it's like, ah, right. What emerged was Jared Leto.

You got me all geeked up for this right now. Can't wait tonight. Jared Leto. I mean, is this, because the film looks like it's going to kind of do okay. It's going to do the classic Tron of like, yeah, it opens to like 40 million and like, that's all right. Tron just always makes a little less than it needs to. It's a little less than we hoped, but it's not a flop between 17 and 27 years. We'll get one more. Yeah. But like, I was, I just, I was about to say, and to bring it full circle. So then are we done with Leto?

But I forgot that he's playing Skeletor in fucking the He-Man movie. Yeah. So we're never quite rid of this guy. Fucking pumped for Masters of the Universe. I am sure. Travis Knight. Not bad. Funniest moment of CinemaCon by far with Amanda in April, which will now be one year. Hence, you and Matt Bellamy crying and Amanda just being befuddled. But just as soon as they, they show the, the logo, I was like, God damn it. The sword looks right. Yeah. And she was just so embarrassed. Also, all the other casting in that is great. Uh, sure.

Alison Brie and Idris Elba are like kind of fucking spun off. I'm a big, uh, um, Veronica from Riverdale fan. She's in it. Camila Mendez is Tila. Yes. A very important character. Tila huge in my home. Tila rules. Uh, Idris Elba is going to play like kind of like a dad guy. I don't know anything about He-Man. Don't say kind of a dad guy. He-Man is the originating character for my interest in, like, genre storytelling. It is the first thing that I fell in love with. I mean, you know what it is for me, right? What? I don't know.

And I'm just wondering if you know. Oh, oh, oh. Not what He-Man means to you. What was that for you? No, He-Man doesn't mean anything to me, sadly. Trek? Sort of, but no. X-Men. It's very much X, right. Yeah, like, that was the first thing for me where, like, my six or seven-year-old brain was like, I'm engaging with a property, with a world, with a bunch of characters, not just with, like, whatever. A simple narrative. I like X-Men. I can't wait for them to kind of ruin it. For them to do, like, oh, pretty good. That was okay. Yeah. Right?

Like, that's sort of the ceiling there. I just, yeah, I don't, I don't have much faith in their ability to do anything anymore. I think they, I, no, I see, I have total faith in their ability to produce something that is pushing my, like, kid buttons and, you know, elicits, like, a six out of ten response. I think the bigger problem... Right? Like, they'll be in the costumes, they'll, they'll obey the comics a little more, and so...

But I think we're living in the wreckage of this issue, which is, the more they do that, the more they create a cul-de-sac where there's no actual space to move forward. Possibly. I mean, but... This is the Deadpool and Wolverine problem. This is them hitting hard, like, who can we bring back? How do we make them look more like the cartoons? This is where X-Men 97 kind of fucked them. Arp and I talk about this a lot, but they clearly thought X-Men 97 was, like, a throw-off for the nerds. Yes. And then that's the best-received thing they've done in, like, five years.

And now they're like, fuck, this is what people want? This is not forward-thinking. Bringing all the old people back and putting them in Jim Lee costumes is going to be really exciting for Doomsday. That'll be cute. And it's going to fuck them in terms of resetting X-Men. I mean, I agree that it's, uh, yeah, it's risky. Because they're doing a double pop of, hey, remember those actors from 20 years ago, and remember the comics and cartoons from 20 years before. Look, James Marsden's in the Jim Lee Cyclops costume or whatever. So then when they put Patrick Schwarzenegger in a new costume... That does sound cool.

Yeah, it sounds good. We're all going to have... I think I'm going to mind because all those guys are old. I'm like, I need the latex to be tighter and brighter. Right. I don't think... This is my whole thing with these movies. I'm not going to see Marsden as, like, whatever, 90 Cyclops and be like, great, 10 more of these. I'm probably going to see it and be like, I'm glad Marsden put the costume on and I'm bidding him a fun farewell. He's going to take away from the next Cyclops, though.

In the same way that, like, Jackman re-upping, you're like, at some point someone else is going to play Wolverine. If it had been he was off the court for 10 years and then a guy gets to come to it fresh, it's fine. But bringing all these people back for one last hurrah just reminds you. And then they're bringing them back in the way that's like, and this is what Fox wouldn't let them do 20 years ago. And now all the new people are going to have to exist in the shadow. It's the same thing as all the theories that, like, is Downey Jr.

Doom a multiversal thing? And at the end of it, there will be a new neutral Doom who is the actual Doom in the Fantastic Four universe. And I'm like, well, then that Doom sucks. I don't care about second Doom. But you're doing hypotheticals. All these things, though. Yeah, who knows? Right. I don't know what they're going to do. This is going to seem very quaint when Ben cuts this out of this episode. Because is that movie coming out next year? Doomsday? No, two years from now. Two years. They pushed it? A year from, like, Christmas 27. Right, right. It's still a long time. So is...

No, it's Christmas 26. It's Speedo Coast to Thanksgiving 27, and then X-Men. Allie Fox, I need you to distract Thanos. Didn't they push Doomsday, though? Doomsday is Christmas of this year, 2026. Right. When this episode is coming out. And Spider-Man is next summer? Is summer 26? Is this summer, Griffin? It's 2026. My birthday movie. Of 2026. And those are the only two things they have next year? I believe so. By next year, I mean this year. This year. Right. But those are two big things. Yeah, they're very big. A new Spider-Man movie and Avengers Doomsday. Yeah. Those are...

It's about as big as they got, right? I mean, yeah. So... I'm thinking about seeing them. I think I'm going to see them. I'll check them out. I think I'll see them. I'll be there. When's the last Marvel movie you saw? Well, I just had COVID. Oh, Ben just did them all. I'm going to pee for this. A couple weeks ago. You have COVID? No, a couple weeks ago. I just had COVID, though, somewhat recently. When you go to the bathroom, think of me. And so normally, I'll just binge and catch up on the Marvel franchise. Every time you get COVID, that's what you do?

No, just any time I'm sick. I'm sorry. You just got to work it through your system. That would create some odd associations with the Marvel brand. I think those are already the kind of associations Ben has. Okay. Yeah. I mean, I just... I'm someone who... Phases and variants are very tight in his mind. I find it to be junk food, and it's just like something where I can shut my brain off and just spend the next half a day watching all of these movies. Who's your favorite Marvel superhero? Whoa. That's... In the movies or anywhere? Can I pitch a possibility? The Punisher?

Where are you at on The Punisher? Ben loves The Punisher. See, The Punisher, though, is too, like, Republican. Now he's been claimed by the wrong people. I feel like you grew up loving Punisher. I've read some Punisher comments. You invoke The Punisher's van a lot that you like that he has a van. Oh, yeah, he has a van. I'm a big fan of the van. It's just full of guns, though. Yeah, I know. But it's still as cool as hell. It's cool as hell. Yeah, he's got a skull. The skull. Yeah. Yeah. One of the great logos. The Punisher. Frank Castle.

And he's got a fucking trench coat. But you know who Ben's number one guy is. Spawn. Oh, yeah. Yeah. But his number one... I was happy for you guys. Oh, well, Ghost Rider. Ghost Rider, which is sort of like... Oh, Ghost Rider, yes. Oh, Ghost Rider, yes. He's very Hossley. He's so Hossley. Yes, okay. That makes sense. And are they circling, like, a new Ghost Rider or something? Like, I feel like that comes up every so often. Once a year, they're like, Ryan Gosling is definitely playing Ghost Rider, and then nothing comes of it. Can I say who my favorite villain is? Please. Juggernaut. Yeah.

And I don't think they've really captured Juggernaut properly. You didn't find Vinny Jones getting, like, the gestalt of Juggernaut? He's got to be huge. I mean, I remember him being large in the film. I need his ass to be fucking giant. I need him to be, like, nine feet tall. Deadpool 2 has a giant... Because that's how he's portrayed in the animated series. He's very large. Deadpool 2 has a giant CGI Juggernaut that I would say kind of sucks, but does get the size. I forgot about... I really forgot about... I still... More beefier. Well, I don't think Ben saw Deadpool 2. No. I did.

Oh, you did? And you forgot already. No, I just... It didn't live up to... It was bad. ...my expectation. Are you fully... Deadpool 2, good. Deadpool, good. Really? Yeah, you forget that, Sean... I genuinely am in pro-Deadpool. Yeah. I feel like it's one of the only comic book movies that actually got the comic right. Does nothing for me. No. Although, I will say... And Ben, you're gonna have to cut this out. I don't like any of them. Right. Yes. I've heard, like, a crazy industry rumor, and maybe this has come out by the time this episode has come out.

You should say this kind of stuff on air, Greg. If it hasn't come out, or it's proven false, by the time the episode's released, we can cut it out. I'm really stressed out. I've heard that Deadpool knows that he's in a movie. No! That's crazy! What? That he knows that he's read the script, he knows there's an audience watching him, he knows what studio is releasing the movie, and which studios they have acquired. Does he know who runs the studio? He knows who runs the studio. I think the better way to put it... He knows the notes they're gonna have.

He knows that he's played by an actor, and what other movies that actor's been... Does he... Does Ryan Reynolds exist in the same universe as Deadpool? Sean, are you... I know you're sitting down, but sit down twice as hard. Sit into the ground somehow. Ryan Reynolds not only exists, but Deadpool has some thoughts on some of Ryan Reynolds' previous career choices. I swear to you. Deadpool 1, he knows he's in a movie. Deadpool 2, he knows he's in a cinematic universe. Deadpool 3, he knows he's been added to a new cinema. Those are the evolutions of the Deadpool myth.

Yes, he knows he's in a multiverse. And in Deadpool 4, he will have a podcast. He will. Great. And he'll take us all down. Good. But yeah, I just met Red Hulk. Deadpool would take you down right now. So you're fully up to date now. Yeah. You saw Thunderbolts? Yeah, which was fine. I don't know. And has there been something since Thunderbolts? Fantastic Four is not on Disney Plus yet. Right, you haven't met the Fantastic. You've been taking your first step. I didn't go to the theaters for that one. No, I haven't.

That is, I do have to say, one of the worst subtitles of all time. I know we hashed out that movie on a couple Patreon episodes. They didn't relate to the film very much. Doesn't it? Yeah. Is it Galactus' first steps on Earth? I was so ready. I thought the dumb thing at the end of the movie was going to be Franklin taking his first steps and that's why they called it that. And they don't even do that. That would have been good. But like, given what we've learned about that movie, it feels like maybe that was in it and they cut it out.

Like, they cut out a lot. That's the last hour with steps. Right. The road to the NBA Finals ends here with star guards setting the tone. The Cavs eye another upset while the Knicks carry the dreams of all of New York. The Eastern Conference Finals continue on ESPN and ABC. The Mosquito Coast is a movie about a man who hates the type of conversation we're having in this room right now. Oh, you don't think Ali would like the MCU? Stop talking about when I walked out. It's an absolute sin to accept the decadence of obsolescence. Why do things get worse and worse?

They don't have to. They could get better and better. We accept things that fall apart. That could be Ali Fox on America in the 1980s or me on the MCU. It is very similar. The tone's a little different, but the words are the same. I'm just like, make me a grilled cheese sandwich, Dad. I'm hungry. I don't want to deal with you. I think Ford is like so goodness and it is tied to what you're saying that he's one of the best on-screen yellers. And even when he's not fully raising his voice, he's so good at saying the thing with intensity and the pointing.

You definitely believe, as much as this guy's tough hang to begin with, that he is not bullshitting. He believes what he thinks. He's deep in it. To the end of the line. He's not just some con artist who's like, yay, I actually just wanted to live on the Mosquito Coast and this is how I justify it. He thinks this is what he has to be doing. It's what makes the movie comply to me. He thinks he has to lie to his family eventually about the world ending. It's what makes the performance work.

I think you see in Ford that he plays the calculation in his mind. It's a three-second decision of, I'm going to tell them the world has been nuked. And it's not, you know, John Lovitz liar panicking. It is like... Now, Lovitz in this role is an interesting concept. Yeah, see? A decade of obsolescence. A mosquito cult. Yeah, a nuclear war. Yeah. Go to Honduras. Made in Japan. Yeah. A missionary, you see? It would have been good. It would have been good. It's in those three seconds, I think Ford plays, this is actually the only move.

And this is the best thing I can do as a father and as a husband. He's deranged, but he fully believes it's to the benefit of his family to tell them that the outside world is no longer an option. So, I re-watched the Siskel and Ebert episode where they reviewed this movie, and they had a fairly... Ebert was very negative on this film. He was very negative on this film. It may come to surprise you to learn that they had a tetchy exchange about the film. What? And... They lived on the Mosquito Coast. Ebert out, right?

Ebert out because he finds this to be a very unlikable character. He found the whole movie just like a slog. He said, Allie Fox is a bore. Yes. Like, he praised Harrison Ford for doing his job well, but was like, I don't want to hang with this character. Good performances that looks good, but not a good hang. Siskel's... Siskel likes it more. He doesn't love it. But he is compelled by the idea of noble wishes gone astray. I love it. That there is something... Yeah. Him looking for...

And he, as he often did, directly connects it to the optimism and hope in the movement of the 60s. Sure. Of course. And saying like... It's a curdling... Yes. There's something... And Allie Fox, you could see as a man who was probably educated at that time, as someone who's, you know, participating in various social movements, and there being a lot of hope about what could happen in the world. And I kind of liked that reading. I hadn't thought about the movie in that way.

And, you know, I think also Siskel is just doing a little bit of performative jousting for the sake of the cameras, which is something that happens sometimes. Wouldn't know. But I... That does help me accept him a little bit more. You know, that he's been a bit broken by... He actually does believe that this... This commercial hellscape that America is transforming into before his eyes is completely corroding his soul and driving him to the brink of a kind of madness. I don't know if it makes him a fun movie character, but it makes him a more acceptable... It's just killing to me.

But that's Ebert's thing probably of, like, Ebert did at the end of the day, have that Hollywood brain of, like, but, you know, how do you... You're not keeping me involved in the story. This isn't entertaining enough. I wish he was more of a mall cop that I could... Fucked up my own show. Just go right ahead. Just take as long as you want. Roger Ebert's four-star Paul Blart mall cop review where he's just like, am I crazy? This movie's good. Why do none of you get this? And he talks about the cinematic, the visual language of Paul Blart.

And he's like, this is made by a real filmmaker. Who made it? I can root for this guy. I think it's Steve Carr, maybe? Okay, I wanted to defend Ebert. He gave it three stars, not four. But he did call it... He did... This is a great lead by him. Paul Blart mall cop is a slapstick comedy with a hero who's a nice guy. I thought that wasn't allowed anymore.

And I sort of know what he means in terms of, like, it's like, the very dirtbaggy Brat Pack guys are sort of kings of comedy than the Rogan, you know, Seth Rogen, Judd Apatow, you know, and Paul Blart is like, yeah, this guy's fucking... He's a mall cop. He just wants to protect them all. He's all right. It's a John Candy movie, right? Yeah, that was Kevin James' thing. The headline of this review is Lone Rider of the Purple Segway. I like it. I like it. Ebert popping off. Should Daniel Craig someday retire? I'm supporting Kevin James for the next James Bond is his kicker.

I don't know where I am with him on that one. But excuse me, the paragraph leading into that is Paul Blart emerges as a hero and something else, colon, Kevin James illustrates how lighting and camera angles can affect our perception of an actor. In the early scenes, he's a fat schlub, but after he goes into action, the camera lowers subtly. The lighting changes and suddenly he's a good-looking action hero ready for business. This is a little bit like Roger Ebert seeing the train come into the station and being like, whoa, I think it's coming into the movie theater.

It's like, Roger, yes, we know you can shoot guys more heroically or less heroically. Why does he feel this way? The next sentence might illustrate it. He demonstrates what fat men have secretly believed for a long time. May have just given away the game a little bit too much. A little bit. Yeah. Much like as I love to cite every review that he ever had of a Jennifer Lopez movie. She's like, there's something about this lady. I can't put my finger on it. She's got something. But I want to put my finger on it. I can't put my finger on it.

It would take two handfuls. Full bear claws. You know, that is interesting that you say that too because Raj, historically a boob man, you know, but just that's, if you read his work closely as I have. Certainly. He, not just the female form, of course, an admirer of the female form, but he, he, he liked, the man likes breasts. That's what I'm saying. But I think to continue Sims' analogy, the first time he saw Jennifer Lopez on screen, it was like the caboose backing into the station. And suddenly, his worldview was rewrit.

Sean, to throw out a fantasyism, I think what you've identified is part of what I really connect to in this movie. One of my go-to, I'm locked in thematic strains of stories is what you're saying. The, the kind of idealism gone amok, right? And especially if it's coming from a place of like a semi-earned, jaded frustration with what is wrong. And I think a lot of other movies that attempt this kind of story, the stakes are lower, right? It's something like, a movie I love is Tucker, A Man and His Dreams, which is like, Great movie. Telling that kind of, Pretty similar movie. Absolutely.

In much gentler form, but you're watching someone just get out, not get out of his own way. But I think there are a lot of movies like that where they pick a very small earthbound prism of why do cars have to suck? What if a guy tried to make a better car and this is how the world knocks him down? And that's really easy to get your head around, right? And then there are things that abstract it like Megalopolis and Synecdoche, New York, where it goes into the fantastic and you get to become more allegorical.

And what I like about Mosquito Coast is it feels like something that would be a true story while the stakes are about as high as they could be. The fact that it is not a true story and is a pure fictional invention makes me not feel as uncomfortable as I would probably feel if I were watching this movie knowing that real people died or whatever, you know? But yet, it's like the scale of his ambition is so grand that I just immediately get sucked into that even if I'm never on his side. I like that kind of idea.

I do think that there's something about a movie like this coming out at this time that also felt very unacceptable because if you look at a lot of the writing about the novel, it situates it in this long arc of kind of historical American wayward men. You know, it's like it's Robinson Crusoe and Swiss Family Robinson but then it's also you know, Heart of Darkness, Walden, Moby Dick.

Like these, there are allusions to all of these figures and all of these worlds and you know, those are complex at times unlikable protagonist figures in those stories and that's not really what Eddie Murphy and Mel Gibson were up to by 1986. That's not what the American movie star was expected to pursue and so I think that there's like there's a lot being held against it because it refuses even with the biggest star on the planet to give you one ounce of fun, of the fun that Roger Ebert wants from the movie. I also think the anti-heroes of this era were also rooted in fun.

It was a sort of like wouldn't it be fun to just be able to like fucking take a machine gun to the baddies for conflicts to be this clean cut, for you to be able to be the guy with the snarky one-liner, you know, even as there's a rise of these guys who are not playing conventional clean cut hero, it is more the raging id of like throttled masculinity. Yeah, Travis Bickle, right? Travis Bickle is crazy so we can just we can assign his insanity to his actions. And Travis Bickle is a cautionary tale that within 10 years turns into like the sequel Rambo. Right.

Where now it's just pure power fantasy. Right. And this is not that. No. This guy's an asshole. And he's wrong. But he's still somebody's dad. You know, he's still just like kind of a dude. You know, he's not, he's not a, he does ultimately do very destructive things and pays for it. But two-thirds through the movie you're like, this guy's a little pretty nuts. But like, he is still he is human. Someone's family man. He remains earthbound. And he does not ever become like avenging anti-hero. He's fucking handy too. It's impressive. Early on, it's working. He's handy. Right.

But so, so he builds the ice machine to get us, you know, through the pot a little bit. It's the cornerstone of his new society. We're going to have ice. We can supply ice to others. Like, it's working. But when a bunch of, you know, essentially armed men from a near village show up, he's not great at the whole interpersonal stuff. No, never has been. damn, exactly. Exactly. So, he goes for, hey guys, you got to leave. There's a lot of ants everywhere. That doesn't work. So then he pivots right to, I'll freeze them to death in my ice building.

Yeah, he considers going full on Mr. Freeze mode, which is, has rarely worked out for anyone. Least of all, Mr. Freeze. True. Often a sad ending for that man. So true. Mr. Freeze is very tragic. Pretty bad scheme. Yeah. It's a, when you see what happens. It's a bad fucking scheme. It doesn't really work out very well. And he doesn't consider that the destruction of the centerpiece of his new civilization could be problematic.

It is the, it is the other part of this movie that I find pretty, uh, topically, uh, currently powerful is the notion of these guys who are like, if you just let me in there, I'd know how to fix this. I have the right ideas. And they start out with three ideas and then the first conflict happens. The first thing they have to adjust from their original plan and they short-circuit. Yeah. It's also that thing too of like, the ultimate freedom idea, right?

And then what ends up happening is there's some kind of violent conflict and it immediately kind of all falls apart because it's just inherent to human nature. He's also gone to a place where everyone kind of wants to do their own thing. And that's hard, it's hard to coexist with other people trying to do maybe a very different thing. Also his, you know, the thing that is revealed clearly in two different ways is that this is ultimately a very pampered middle-class American. You know, that this is a guy who has no idea what he's getting himself into.

And that includes encountering a militia force in a land that he doesn't understand and also nature. And those two things combining, and he thinks that those things will work in his favor, that there will be space to move in a land where he's not encumbered by the modes of society that America has built, but also that he's like, I'm a smart guy and I know how to make ice, so I'll be able to handle it when we have mosquitoes. But he doesn't know shit.

The whole thing is that everybody who thinks they know what they're doing and that they should take over are full of shit. Agreed. Also, much like Survivor, people get off the boat. They look great. They're all shiny. They're TV ready. Then like day three, they unlock a new kind of rugged hop. And they're like, oh, I don't have to give in all these conventions of Western beauty. I'm going on natural. They've dropped the baby fat. Right. By day 10, everyone looks fucking horrible.

And it's not just that like their skin's bitten up and they have a weird inconsistent burn and their like body weight is getting distributed in weird ways, but also they're like behind the eyes. Everyone's losing it. Yes. And I've had six scoops of rice in nine days. This is one of the most handsome movie stars in history at the peak of his hotness. And you have the same thing where he starts out and you're like, man, this dick is kind of hot. This asshole is kind of compelling to look at. And like day three, you're like, the dirt kind of looks good on him.

Getting a little rugged. And by the end of the movie, you're like, this guy's uncomfortable. Yeah. Everyone's ass is stinking. Oh, it's a real stinky butt movie. This is a stinky, I bet it smell nasty in their movie. I do. No matter where I go, I need plumbing. I need hot water. Again, guys, it's true. I am with the least off grid folks. Including me. Just a small town. Toilet situation. Like Japanese toilets. Right. Exactly. You need a toilet that like stings to you and heats you. Sean, what you're talking about is the mass New Yorker going to Hudson Valley, Adirondacks.

I want to live farther away though. I want to make it impossible to go back to from whence I came. But still in the contiguous United States. You know what I mean? Well, then it's never going to be impossible. I can drive, hop in the car and drive to a screening room in Beverly Hills where I spend way too much time in my life. This is my exact same fantasy except I know I could never actually do it. I don't, I'm not going to either. Right. But that's why we're talking about it on the podcast. You guys are so funny.

I would say I'm more, I'll go to, you know, the countryside, the woods, the rural places. Could you outdoors it? What are we talking about outdoors? Again. Well, you asked me. I'm asking you. So let me, like, so like, you know, and I rent like a cabin, like, you know. So we got heat, we got running water. Have you camped? I don't like camping. I haven't really camped since I was a teenager. Camping's fun. No. I don't mind people who camp. It's just so awful and it is my wife's favorite thing. It's like, it is the, did she grow up doing it?

Like, is it kind of sort of thing? Yeah. She's much more outdoorsy than I am, but I, it is one of the, you and I are so similar in many ways, but the, the beach and camping are two things where I'm just like, they should be exploded from the planet. Like, I have no idea how these things are so popular when you do this. No, they're not. Well, it's not like your wife's making you. My wife, thankfully not a huge beach person. I live in California and I imagine you go to the sun. This is what's so funny about Sean. I love the beach.

I spend as much time on the beach as I can, but Sean, you live in California, in LA, Los Angeles. I live very far away from the beach. Right. And I know there's a lot of people that are like, do you get to the beach? And they're like, the beach? What? It's like an hour from where I live. I had friends trying to convince me to go to Burning Man. I think people attempt every couple of years and I was talking about it to my girlfriend. You would actually die. I would be dead.

I was saying to her, I was like, you know this as well as anybody who spends a lot of time with me. The three things I care about the most in the world are sleeping in a proper bed, having a shower with no limits, and a real functional toilet. And if you take those three things out of my ecosystem, I collapse. I basically can't exist with two out of three. If one of those things is in peril, I'm fucked. I would never go to... Here's my quick Burning Man story, okay?

I was an editor at Grantland in the 2010s and my friend Rembert Brown did a series called Rembert Explains America and he drove around America and he went to just different places. So he would go to a giant thimble and he would be like, why is this thimble in Iowa?

But then he would also go to more well-known landmarks and one of the stops on his trip was to go to Burning Man and he went to Burning Man for a few days and he had been filing these pieces, these kind of long, digressive blog posts about his journeys and I was an editor of frankly too many writers at that time but I was writing, I was editing a lot of raw copy every day so I was looking at thousands and thousands of words every day trying to get them on the internet and Rem filed his piece via text message with no punctuation.

Only Rembert because he was at Burning Man. Yeah. So there's no internet, there's no laptops, nothing works. You gotta get the sentiments out there as quickly as you can. He wrote it in a note on his phone and copy and pasted it and sent it to me and I spent three hours formatting this godforsaken piece and just because of that I would never even consider going to Burning Man. It makes perfect sense to me. I track that logic so cleanly. I mean, I have friends who go to Burning Man and evangelize for it. I also am like, no thanks, but that's really funny.

I think tripping kind of would be fun and when they do the effigy burning that feels like very like... Isn't Burning Man such a wicker? This piece is so long. Yeah. Yeah, he spent three hours formatting it. Dude. I mean, they're all that long. God bless Rem. I love Rem. I love working on that project with him, but that one in particular I was like, Rem, can you please, can we just delete this? Like, do we really have to do this? And he was like, I drove out here.

Isn't Burning Man kind of coming out of the same instinct that drives Allie Fox, but how do we build this in a way that is actually communal and with like the world's strongest bowling alley bumpers and then we fucking leave? Well, but the thing with Burning Man that at least as I understand is it's all about community because it's all about, you know, doing it all together. Allie doesn't have a community vibe to me. He doesn't really want to be with other people. Let me refine this. I'm not saying this in a way that is critical of Burning Man.

I think that I get is for other people, but it's more that I feel like when the people I know who love it whacks about it, right? What they're speaking about is the same kind of fantasy that Allie Fox has in a certain way of like, what if we just stripped all of this back and we got back to how we're supposed to behave, right? And Burning Man is much more animated by like fun and love and drugs and all this shit, but it is the idea of like, can we just have our alternate version of society for like 10 concentrated days and then leave?

It has also, you know, become a playground for incredibly rich people, but it's the same kind of thing and the part of why it's been able to survive is that it only has the ambition of existing for a week and change a year rather than being like, what if we actually found a new country? My fundamental thing that I was going to say, by the way, is right, you know, I go upstate, I rent a cabin, I'm drinking coffee, I'm sitting on the porch, I'm like, this rocks, I love this. I like one part of what you said, exactly one part, yeah.

You know, I should just move up here, the simpler, just a little slower, it'd be great.

I still am like, I mostly would watch movies and cook food, like it's not like I'm like, I would work the land, like I still want to mostly do the things I like to do, but I think I'm just like, no, this is, I'm being dumb, like I think I would get bored, I need friends, I need a lot of social interaction, you know, like what I get from the city is what I need or whatever, but I have the fantasy, I have zero mosquito coast fantasies, I never want to go to the jungle, I have spoken to enough filmmakers who filmed in the jungle to know that the jungle is never your friend and you cannot conquer it, every guy who goes there is like, I think I know how to deal with the jungle and then they leave being like, the jungle kicked my ass.

But David, yes, and this is relevant to our podcast, and with the dossier in front of you, Jungle to Jungle, tell me if I'm wrong about this, this in many ways seems like one of the least dramatic jungle shoots of all time. It doesn't seem like, to Peter Weir's credit, I mean, they call it long, hot, and humid, like I don't know that it was like pleasant, but it was definitely not disastrous. Every other jungle shoot I have ever read about was disastrous. As you said, everyone comes out of it and goes.

It's not your classic, like we went 80 days over budget, over schedule, like you know, things like that. But most of them are like, I think it went fine. Right, we tried to kill each other, James Gray is like, that was a disaster, I ruined my life. Peter Weir is used to filming in the outback and in harsh conditions or whatever already. Like Peter Weir strikes me as someone who can, you know, handle an outdoorsy, rugged shoot. I just think this film has an incredible sense of place. I think especially the sound in this film is so effective.

The kind of like, atmospheric soundscape of the land and the quiet and then when that is interrupted and the photography is so lush, they're using their location so well that about halfway through I like stopped myself and I was like, wait, these things are always impossible to film and they are always accompanied with stories of four people had heart attacks, we were kidnapped, my dad drowned to death, you know, like gunfire, a town over, whatever, yeah. Every version of this we've covered but also like some of the most famously terrible production stories in history.

You know, it's Predator and it's Sorcerer and it's Apocalypse Now and it's Lost City of Z and all of these. The best case scenario is we lost our minds. Nothing horrible in a demonstrable way happened to us from the outside but we all went insane and it was impossible and this movie is like very steady in what it's doing. Yeah, to wrap the plot, like to get back to the third act of the movie we talked about the, you know, ice machine blows up the, right, the Geronimo.

Right, the true pivot point into like sort of irredeemable madness is they get to the coast like you say and the family is like thank God we can go home and he's like ah, there's no home because there's a nuclear war. I just heard you guys aren't allowed to hear about it, you know, like and then we're just in full cult of personality madness. We're in the final stages of Jim Jones like passing out. His performance is great in that sequence. Yes, it is. Really, really scary. It is scary. We gotta call out Mr. Hattie too. Mr.

Hattie, the great Conrad Roberts, who's in like, you know, in a million things, right? And yeah, he's sort of a force of sanity to some extent. He really empathizes with the family. Yes, the kids. But it's trying to also not go against father. Right, right, right. And there's, you know, all of that is a picture of the paternalistic approach that America had to Central America at this time in history. I mean, this is like at the tail end of Iran-Contra. It's a long history of trying to navigate and invade and manage the, you know, governmental role of all these countries that are near our borders.

Like, all of that is a very purposeful, intentional stuff that all comes from Theroux, you know, writing through the way that he sees societies operating outside of the United States of America. And Ali, you know, we're drawing all these allusions to these present-day figures. Like, that's not a mistake. That's obviously a huge part of this is that Reagan 80 is a thing that Ali thinks he wants to get away from. He entirely represents. I think Weir's worldview as a filmmaker is like, more than anything, defined by how hard he interrogates the relationship between the indigenous and the settlers in his homeland.

You know, that it feels like, especially of the Australian New Wave, he is someone who really drilled down into that. Oh, yeah. That's all over the last wave. Even when he moves away from it being the explicit subject matter, it feels like all of his films are animated by that clash of two different communities, ideologies, people forced to share the same space, that whole kind of thing. You also have Butterfly McQueen in this? Yes. It's her final film? She would have been, she was quite old, right? Yes. 1911, so she's in her sort of late 70s. Yeah. She lives another 10 years. She lives 84.

Yeah. This is her first Hollywood production, I think, that played theatrically since Duel in the Sun? That seems correct. She does a lot of TV. Which is 1946. And she's an incredibly important historical actor who's in Cabin in the Sky and Mildred Pierce and all these movies, but she's an icon. Yeah. Yep. It's not a big role. Avowed atheist. Butterfly McQueen is. Thought it was funny to play this role. Right, not Miss Kennewick. No, is a devotee of Christ. Right, because they end up back with Spellgood. Spellgood is the, you know, back to me. Which is, right, the ultimate insult to Ali.

The famous of this movie. Yes. I'll do it myself. And he has built a compound and this is like, His thing is working. Right, this is the ultimate insult to Ali's sort of intellectual vanity or whatever. He, you know, wants to destroy it. It goes from just like, no, I want to do my own thing or I want to live a certain kind of life to like, no, fuck this guy. I hate Christianity. I hate what he's doing. What are you going to do next, buddy? Just start like, blowing up every church you see? Like, it's like, it doesn't make any sense. I mean, whatever.

He's crazy. Yeah, but it's also, it's some cost fallacy at this point. There's no, this guy can't dig himself out. Like, how many times has Harrison Ford died on screen? Great question. Adam Driver, Merck, Sim and Force Awakens. Spoilers. Just absolute saber through the chest. Sean, we went to see that movie the last night that the Ziegfeld was in operation.

So true. with my parents and a bunch of friends and my mom went to the bathroom during Han Solo's death scene and I like, tried to stop her and she went and she came back after it was over and the movie ends and she goes, it's weird that Harrison Ford's just like, not in the last half hour at all. they just kind of forget about him. Why Chewbacca gives Leia a big hug or whatever. Oh no, he doesn't. It's a rave. I know this is like coming into another team's clubhouse or something but I still think that death works so well.

I think that stuff works so well. I just rewatched that movie because I'm doing my thing right now and there's parts of it now that do, I mean, the episode nine hurts so much of that whole enterprise but all the Ford stuff in Force Awakens is bananas. I think it's so good. I think it totally works. I think he's so good in it. I think that death works. Yeah, it works great. The stuff that doesn't work in that movie is not the stuff that people tend to point at. Oh really? Who do people point to?

I don't think they point at that, the legacy characters, the Mary Sue shit. Like, they're the four obvious complaints where I'm like, guys, those aren't the problems. The problems are the like J.J. Abrams, he built a bad infrastructure thing. It's the foundations of the house. But it's 100%. It's all to me because Kasdan wrote all the solo stuff. Like, and it's, he just knows that character like fucking inside and out. And it just, it just feels like the other films and not everything. And even in Force Awakens feels like the other films, even though it kind of looks and sounds like it.

But that stuff to me, just, it's the same emotional intensity colliding with fantasy stuff that I think is so good about those movies. I like when Maz Kanata calls Chewie her boyfriend. I like her. She's good. On The Witness 4K that Arrow put out, there is a daytime morning talk show interview that I referenced a bunch of that episode because it's funny watching Harrison Ford having to like not be actively uncomfortable. And he's talking about expanding and trying to do other things. And then she goes, what about Star Wars 4? So first of all, I like that she calls it Star Wars 4. Makes sense.

Right? Right. And he's like, no. I think we're done with those. And she's like, but 20. And he's only a year or two removed from Jedi at this point, which is a movie he didn't like making. Right. You know, it had nothing to do with it. He goes, I think we told that story. Three is a good number. We completed the arcs of those characters. I'm very proud of them. I owe George Lucas my career. But he's respectfully like, you know. And he frames it as, but the story is done. We said what we needed to say.

And the last I've talked to George, I don't think making another Star Wars movie is really in his purview right now. And if you see that movie, I'm taking a lot of orders from teddy bears for most of it. Yeah. I'm happy. I'm looking at teddy bear butts. It's teddy bears going like, you know, get over that hill. Okay. Please kill me. Whatever this guy says. I can't wait to show Alice. Jedi. That's the Ewok. Oh my God. So then the reporter goes, you say that now, of course. Right. 15, 20 years from now. Not incorrect. Time has passed. If the price is right.

And he just goes, no. Yeah. And she goes, no. And he goes, nothing's going to change my mind. 30 years later, and I'm like, oh, things like this are why he built the reputation of, he hates Han Solo. He hates Star Wars. He never wants to do it again. But then it, it took 30 years and $20 million and Kasdan and everything. It's just also just a smart way to keep your quote up. Totally. If you say you'll never do it, you know, it's going to cost more to do it. That's just good business.

I watched him give this reaction where he just says no plainly. And you're like, he's not an Ali Fox spiral. He's just like, no, I actually just know there's nothing they could do to convince me and make another Star Wars movie. And then he says, by the way, I'm going to still keep doing Indiana Jones. We're scripting a new one. We'll do one of those in two years. This is one of my favorite things, especially about big time movie stars. It's true of some actors, maybe many actors, but particularly big time stars.

They're on screen, and they perform and they show you the most, the deepest, most vulnerable parts of themselves whilst performing. But they, the ones who are really good, have no desire to truly be understood. And I feel like we live in a time, and I certainly feel this way about myself, where everyone is desperate to be understood, to be heard, and to be told, I get it, man. Makes sense. It's going to be okay. We're in it together. And movie stars are like, you don't know shit. Yeah. And I'll lie right to your face. The real true movie stars? Yeah.

I mean, I think about it all the time, but it was the A24 podcast, when Souvenir was coming out. Sure. Marty enjoying a honk. Correct. Big two. And he asked her like, how are you dealing with this kind of press cycle? You've never had to do this much for a movie before, right? And she's like, God, I hate it. And he's like, it's the worst, right? And she goes, how do you put up with it? They ask me these questions. They want me to explain the movie and explain myself, and I don't want to do that. And he goes, here's what you do.

They ask you, you don't shut them down. You give them something else. Yes. Which I was like, I have received that many a time in my career. How do you not feel like you're being cagey and read like you're holding back? Right. Don't just say nothing. Yeah. But if you don't want to answer the question, give them something else. What's some other piece of information? I have never been more excited and I guess wrong footed by a director in an interview than I was with Joanna Hogg when I did my whole, what's the last great thing you've seen thing.

She was like, I'm not answering your fucking question. She's like, I ate a good sandwich yesterday. I gave you something else. You know what I fired up last night? Heat. I love heat. Yeah, I remember. Directed by Michael Mann. I was like, I was pumping my fist, baby. Really, Joanna Hogg? And she was like, yeah. And then, you know, talked about it, you know, smartly for five minutes. But, that just goes to show you. I had a great time interviewing the Hogster. She's cool. Yeah, she was cool. You went hog wild. I did.

And I referred to the Hogverse with her because it was Eternal Daughter. So, I'm like, at this point, we're getting versy. Phase one. You know, we're entering a verse. Phase two. Dad. No, I bring all this up to say. But still Tilda Swinton. Yes. Tilda with a mustache. I bring all this up to say that I think Ford had this reputation of, he's not giving us anything. Right? He's holding back and he's not offering up an alternative. I think once he realized he could lean into the crank bit, it became a very successful version of give them something else.

There's a game I can play now that feeds into an idea of what public persona Harrison Ford is that still actually guards myself. But you hear modern stars always cite Harrison Ford as the person they wish they could be. Not just as an actor, but as like a public persona. Movie stars all the time while they were on press tours revealing way too much of themselves are like, I just admire the old school of like Harrison Ford. You keep to yourself. You're not doing a thousand interviews. You're not letting people know. And no one can do that anymore.

And I also think it's fascinating that you're like, he is really the prototype for our modern movie star. The modern movie star model is based off of having a Han Solo. And if you're lucky, a Han Solo and an Indiana Jones in your back pocket. Right. And it's just like, you're set. You're set. You can always go back to them. And then you do the other stuff. The problem is now the guys don't do the other stuff. Or if they do the other stuff, it's like, I'll take a tiny 10 day supporting role in a small indie thing to flex myself a little bit.

But they're not cashing the movie star value on building an entire vehicle that's difficult outside of like DiCaprio, who's also the last guy who still kind of does this. For as much as we like to talk about whatever 26 year old he's dating, we don't really fucking know anything about him. And he's elusive. No, there are a couple of guys who I think operate in a similar way. Like, obviously, Adam Driver is like this. I think for the most part, Ryan Gosling is like this. You know, whether it's whether you like him or not, Chris Pratt is kind of like this.

He doesn't really give you any of his interior life. But then you'll get a glimpse and you'll be like, oh, yeah. Bless of that, please. Again, like if you remove the subjectivity of the movies that they make, like he is a kind of restrained star. No, I agree. And I feel like Ford has like complimented Pratt a lot. Pratt will make the mistake of doing the like, I need to comment on people getting upset about an idea of me that's wrong. And I want to tell them that they don't know me. But I won't put forward anything else. Right. Which is like, I'm not mad.

I'm not put in the newspaper that I am mad. You can't do that. I agree that he's a little bit unknowable, but he keeps making it feel like he's hiding something. Right. Which is where you fuck that up. Of course. And yeah. Let me ask you guys about one Harrison Ford movie. Please. Have either of you seen Hanover Street? No. No. What is that? Okay. Oh, is that the one with Amy Irving? This is early. This is Leslie Ann Down. Okay. Post Star Wars. Post Star Wars. Empire. Pre Empire. It's Peter Hyams film. A Peter Hyams film from 1979. Set during World War II.

A pilot falls in love with a British woman. And it's like a classical 1947 style post-World War II movie. And it's, I think, a beautiful film. Very underrated. It was the big discovery when we did a big Harrison Ford episode around Dial of Destiny. I forgot to call it out in the Witness episode, but my favorite moment maybe in the history of Big Pick is when Amanda is just like, you know, playing grown up through the whole Hall of Fame. And then you say, Witness, and she goes, Green! She's just been waiting to yell.

This movie, actually, the energy that he's bringing to Witness, I think, starts here. It's like, it is his best pure romance film. And it is one of the only films that is like Mosquito Coast that is sort of like, I didn't see that one. You know, like, I skipped that one. I missed that one. And it's post Star Wars. It's not, you know, and it's not a tiny movie by any means. It's a big old period piece war film. And it's really, really good. And I never see anybody talking about it ever.

And so I'm always looking for someone to say, like, have you checked that one out? I mean, you know, in 79, he does Hanover Street, Apocalypse Now, and the Frisco Kid. Like, he is drafting off of the Star Wars success in a big way. And nobody's fucking seen that movie. Is there a steal? There's, I don't even think there's a Blu-ray right now. Is there a Blu-ray? There's not even Twilight Time? Out of print? Looks like there's merely a DVD. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. I would, I probably would have acquired that if I could have.

You can get a DVD two-pack with Hanover Street and Random Hearts. Hey, there it is. I'll say it again. Beginning and the end. My forlorn Harrison Ford. Yeah. Right, right, right, right. Emo, Emo Ford. I do just, I love him so much. Just to conclude the film, Andre Gregory shoots his fucking ass and they go upstream. And he's like, all right, are we, you know, as he's dying, Helen Mirren kind of lies to him. And it's like, yeah, yeah, we're getting to where you want to go. And then a thousand vultures descend upon his body.

To your point, is there a version of this movie in which he goes, my family is right. Here's a boat. Let's sail back to mainland, to civilization. Instead, this movie is his family sails off with his dying body. And you're like, where are they going? How are they going to get there? And also, in five minutes, they're going to be with a corpse of a man who fucked them up. And they're heading back. Kind of happy. They're kind of happy the dad died. Kind of? Kind of. Yeah, he's a tough hang. Like, there's a sense of relief. Yeah. But she lies to him.

Yeah, she lies to him. And that they're heading back where they came from. They're going to America. Yeah. They're getting the fuck out of them. I know, but that's a tough journey they have ahead of them. Yeah, but they're going to be okay. Helen Mirren will be a waitress or something. They'll use his dead body as a paddle. Yeah, fucking chop him up. Chop him up. Make a stew. No? Pack him in ice. People aren't into this? Send him home. We covered all the Indiana Jones movies. That's true. We covered all the Star Wars movies.

We haven't, excuse me, we have not turned the dial of destiny yet. You're right. I'm sorry. That's the one we haven't done. Will it be about time? Why not? Why haven't you done that yet? I mean, we haven't done Mangold. I guess we could. Yeah. Right, of course. Could we Mangold it up? I forgot. It's not Spielberg. Sure is it. Yeah. You can tell it's not Spielberg because it's not very good. Yeah. No, I like James Mangold. I like James Mangold. I just think that film is not very good. Yeah. I agree. I honestly liked it. It's got a couple things. I liked it.

I don't regret liking it. I think I like it more than Crystal Skull. I'm putting that out there. I like Crystal Skull. I know you guys like Crystal Skull. I don't really like it very much. I think both of them have stuff and fatal fundamental errors in their conception. And for me, I like slightly more of Skull than Dial. Oh, and Skull to me is just so much better. Skull has a point of view. And Dial of Destiny, I felt lacked.

Very similarly to the if they had done this conversation, I think I said this already, but if Indy stays with Archimedes in the past, I'm like, this movie is amazing. That's the ending. This is an amazing way to end this franchise. I'm so with you. I'm like, the cowardice of that movie is that ending for me is the only reason to go back and make a fifth one. I just, I thought that would have been clever. I got excited. Perfect for that man of his life.

Again, look, you, I will argue for this one more time, which I hate doing because I don't like the movie very much. The whole point of the movie is Indiana realizing he does have something to go home to. If he, he's saying, I have nothing to go home to. I want to stay in the past. The movie ends that way. It is a bizarre ending to Indiana Jones. It's good. And it's brave. It's not brave. It's brave. The whole point is that Karen Allen is like, I know life sucks. And I know you're getting old. And I know Mutt Williams died in Vietnam. Rip.

Like we saluted service, but you cannot simply just like turn into a Grecian urn, bitch. Come home with human beings that you love. This is why maybe we like the mosquito coast and you don't. But I do like the mosquito. I think this is a very good movie. I think it's a very successful movie. I just don't think it was a commercially appropriate movie. It wasn't a good play. Yeah. Yeah. I think this movie is great. I mean, in a way. It's a movie I like to rewatch. I have talked to people a lot in the last couple of weeks about Eddington. Uh-huh.

I think something about one battle after another, like knocked Eddington back into people's minds. As you said, when you guys covered a lot of, a lot of on my chatter of right. Like I miss like weird conversation. They're like, how do we process the last five years movie? And like I, Eddington hits harder for me because it is a better reflection of my worldview. And I don't find the ending of one battle after another false or pushed. I buy it completely.

And I, in fact, think it's kind of a miracle that they landed on a Titanic-esque ending that makes you leave the theater feeling good for a movie that should just end in Bummerville in terms of everything it's built for itself. One battle? Why would it end in Bummerville? A lot of bad things are happening in that movie and continue escalating over and over again. Right. And theoretically, you're like, the resolution of the central emotional conflict of the film should not be able to solve the external realities of the world in a way where wherever they've landed, things are still bad.

And they came up with an ending that makes the resolution of the character's inner lives feel like a triumph for us, the audience. This is very interesting to me, Griffin, that this is... Okay, go ahead. Much like Old Rose going back to the fucking Titanic and you're like... Gosh, there's so much I can't say about this. I'm trying to think of what I can say. What can't you say? Just because I know like what the original ending of one battle was. I know a lot of other things. But here's what I can say.

One battle is being called like a movie of the moment and being described as like a perfect representation because it's got these migrant detention centers and it's got this, you know, society in the enthrall to fascism. Right. But it... Like the levers of fascism are easy to pull in it. Right. It's not like it works perfectly for Mr. Lockjaw. No, but mistakes are made. Mr. Lockjaw is just a functionary inside of a bigger structure. Like he's able to use certain things. So there are things in it that really resonate with the world right now.

For the record, you could probably hear this on all the episodes I've done about the movie. But that is not what makes the movie to me at all. Like I actually don't... I think that stuff is very well executed and very smart and beautifully rendered. But like I don't care about that stuff as much as I care about the characters, the sense of humor, and then the kind of meeting points of those two things. Eddington was made specifically to do what you just said. Which is supposed to be literally here's how it felt in 2020. That is not what Paul was doing.

I am so loathe to revisit 2020 in any way. Ben and I saw that together and I'm just like, this is going so far past poking a bruise. It has like pushed its finger past the layers of skin. It is like scratching nerves. If we're going to go this deep and this thorough and really interrogate it, I'm all here for it. It's the ultimate feel bad movie. It ends on a conclusion of probably just beyond fucked. Everything's bad for everyone. And I watch it and I'm like, I think this movie's pretty honest. You know, this makes sense to me. This all rings true.

But it has a sense of humor. It does. Eddington's very funny. But the humor's rooted in like calling out things that we all try to deny. Eddington is very much like the data center will win, right? Yeah. Like, you know, and that's great. And I love Eddington. I think it's awesome. I think it's a great movie about 2020. One Battle Out isn't really about 2020 though, because this movie could have been made 20 years ago. It's about how like, no, no, we don't give up. Right. Like we have children. We have new generations. They have new perspectives. We don't understand.

And this will continue probably over time. The whole fucking magic at the ending is that he's using a cell phone. That he's like, I guess I should engage with the world. I guess I should belong to whatever's happening here. And I should let my daughter go figure it out. But also it's her time to be in charge of this. And it's not like she's going to go save the world. She might go get in trouble. She might die. But like, it's like, there's an optimism. I need to wake up again. Right. Like that's the magic. Can I say, can I say one battle?

Whereas in Eddington, of course, Joaquin is like, you know, which I love as well. It's very funny. One battle spoiler warning for people who have not seen this movie is spring of 2016. I had someone text me like, hey, can you explain me? I don't know if I'm just dumb or, and I didn't get this or the movie isn't doing this. Right. And you were like, the Christmas adventure. No, what were you? Are good and right. They just want to get rid of street trash and punks. Note that, you know, you have the emotional reunion of DiCaprio and Chase Infinity. Yes. Father and daughter, right?

Bob and Will. Cuts to Terminator Lockjaw. Then he's Christmas adventured off the face of the board. And then you go back to the resolution of everything you're saying. But truly, the first time I saw that movie, when Penn gets blasted in the face, I was like, love that. And then when he's alive, I had this momentary twinge of like, are you sure, PTA? That was a great ending for the character that he gives me the real ending. And I was like, sorry for saying anything. Absolutely. Love that. Trust you, boss. I won't talk again. I agree with your read on the ending scene, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But this is more what I want to identify, that the text was, explain to me how they're just able to return to normal society. Everything Lockjaw put into motion, wouldn't that not be solved by just taking Lockjaw off the board? And I said, there are a couple interpretations I have, right? You're like, the machinery is all ready. He has created this false flag operation to find them, to track them down, to make up the story of what they've done. And he's sick to all of the power of the military against them. Even if he's off the board, how are they OK?

How do they just go back to the same home and reset to the same life? And I said, you can either accept it as that that is just a device of the sort of level of farce that the movie has reached at that point of like, it can be represented in a battle between two people. Or, you know, my inner plot justification of that is basically at some point they identified the mess that Lockjaw created, that it was driven by his own personal vendettas, that it was an abuse of power. The Christmas adventurers say that. And that they cover up everything for everyone. Absolutely.

They are saying in that meeting where they're going to take him out, they're like, and now he's like, there's the line that one of them repeats where he's like, they hit the school. Where you can tell that they're like, this is too much exposure for us. This is all this mess for no reason, except obviously he wants to be a Christmas adventurer. That's a question then. We understand. You walk through dark tunnels to get to this meeting. Right. This is a very secret technical organization. The question on that just becomes, why don't they wipe the two of them out as well?

Because like, they don't care. I mean, like, that's my read. I think they feel like their work is done. Yeah, that's my read. Yeah, I mean, I think that the French 75 doesn't interest the Christmas adventurers at all. Not one bit. They don't view them as powerful enough to fuck with them. Of course not. The French 75 is like defunct at this point, right? I mean, Bob Ferguson is a loser. He's not going to make any change against what they're up to. And that is a huge part. I mean, that to me was also a huge part of the point of the movie.

And that I think actually makes it somewhat more philosophically in connection to Eddington. And I think PTA is definitely like, the forces are still more powerful than you. Definitely. You can have hope, but they're way bigger than what we can do in video games. They're spiderwebs in ways, right, you don't even see and all that. AI, big tech, occupy the same roles in those two movies. And the difference is that Eddington ends with a guy who you've watched Mosquito Coast himself into chaos, being like a vegetable in a bed, having to watch his mother-in-law get fucked. He's the mayor!

It's like, even the bad guy lives in hell. We're all fucked. And one battle after another is like, these two characters have each other, and they've learned something from this, and they have a good perspective, and they live to fight another day, and you can't give up hope. The needle drop at the end of Eddington is so good. Like, there's a lot of talk about the needle drop at the end of one battle, which is great, very recognizable.

But the Bobby Gendry song, Courtyard, which is so haunting as you look out onto the AI center, and you're like, Ari is really good at a final song. Great, really good. But also, the use of fireworks in that, and the Mariah Carey song, and Bo. Do we think one battle has one best picture at the time this episode comes out? Oh, good question. This episode will come out April 19th. Do you think so, Sean? You've seen Marty Supreme, which we haven't. There are no crazy release date changes for new releases. We'll be able to vet this very cleanly in six months.

But I did, having just seen Marty... Which is the last big player. Yes, which I don't think is the best... I think we'll be nominated for best picture, but it's not a contender to win. But that's, you know... Timmy seems to be whatever... I think Chalamet has a very good chance to win. We're recording this two days after the first screening of Marty Supreme. I didn't go and went to Tron. I think that Marty and Sinners will siphon votes from one battle that they will not siphon from Hamnit. Well, I haven't seen Hamnit yet. I shouldn't be so dismissive.

You know, and I've seen Hamnit and I liked it. It just kind of feels like one of the things for the Oscars are like, we have our finger on the pulse and it's saying Hamnit! Yes, I do. I am already preparing for that nightmare scenario. Hamnit! Well, the nightmare scenario was last year, Amelia Perez. That would have been the fully mystery. Like, Hamnit appears to be a well-regarded film. See, that actually would have been better, at least for my emotional state, because it would have been so absurd that we could be like, this doesn't matter. Like, this is complete nonsense.

Conan comes out and he's like, well, there are no more Oscars. Yes. When Green Book won Best Picture, I was cackling. I was like, they had an opportunity to do the funniest thing. Yes. You're in the hellscape and it's just like, let's dance together. And Amelia Perez would have been that times 10. It would have been. This is more like, oh yeah, there's like 30 of these in Oscar history. I was about to say, it feels like a very obvious Oscar choice, right? Yes, it does.

And you know, Amanda and I have been saying that there is a little bit of Saving Private Ryan, Shakespeare in Love, in reverse. But Shakespeare in Love is funny and charming and has kissing. And it sounds like Hamnit is... So does one battle after another. I know, right? The inverse is that one battle is the Shakespeare in terms of type of movie. Right. And Hamnit is the Spielberg in terms of her... Yeah, but it has Shakespeare. But he's over... Saving Private Ryan was the boomer masterpiece big scale in Saving... They're the funhouse mirror images of each other.

Yeah, because Hamnit, I haven't seen it, but it's not that big scale a movie, right? No. And I don't... Again, I don't hate it. And it's not the villain of the year. Like, I do think that that's going to happen pretty quickly where like the bros are going to be like, Hamnit, what the fuck, dude? And there are some beautiful things about Hamnit. But it winning over the three movies I named, I would be unhappy. Chloe Zhao need a second best picture in five years? I also think that the people I've spoken to have seen Hamnit. I've not seen it yet. Hamnit.

Who are the most resistant, the most cynical about it. No, Ham Hat, the birthday boy sketch. That's best picture worthy. Absolutely. Put it up. It never got a theatrical release. Could you do a limelight and have it qualify this year? No, carry on, carry on. The people you know who have seen Hamnit. The people I know who have seen Hamnit and are the most allergic and resistant to it are like, and yet I cannot deny, the fucking last five minutes. Yeah, last 20 minutes is powerful. I'm sorry. Okay, okay. There seems to be a last 20, last 10, last five.

Doesn't she just fire off that fucking Max Richter track again though? That does happen. To me that is, I mean, obviously that as the wallpaper music, that it hits hard. Right. But it's just, there's... It's the rival to that. There's some staging that really works well. I haven't read the novel. I also didn't know it was coming. I'm pumped for it because I like... Shakespeare. Yes. And if you do, this is a good movie about liking Shakespeare. Now, I don't like Children in Peril though. Well. And that's what I'm a little worried about. I have some bad news. You might have a tough go. Thanks.

Mosquito Coast does... Also has Children in Peril. I'm just going to say, that is the happy ending of the movie is the children are... The right guy dies. ...essentially out of peril. And River Phoenix gets to be Indy because of this movie. Exactly. Did we even say that? Yeah. For sure. That's why that's the connection. Yes, yes, yes, yes. He and Martha Plimpton date for years and then it leads to them both being in Running and Empty together. That's right. A movie I adore. Great movie. Back in the conversation because of one battle. Because of one battle. Very similar. Yeah.

So, um, this film, and we're going to do the, oh, oh, oh, one piece of news breaking on deadline. I want you guys to hear is Saoirse Ronan. Heard of her? Will he be playing Lillian? He's divorcing her husband and wants to get dinner with me? No. He appears to be happily married and newly has a baby and they've got a great Nuna stroller that I've seen them parading around in paparazzi pictures. A Nuna. They got Nuna. A Nuna Rava? A Nuna. I think it looks like a Rava to me. Now, look, I personally, I have a baby Zen. I'm a city guy.

I needed a lightweight stroller, but we have a baby Zen as well. They're great. A double? Well, no, our double stroller is a, I forget what it's called. I mean, that thing. There's no, there's no lightweight double stroller, unfortunately. We got about as lightweight as you can get, but it's a, um, Saoirse Ronan will be playing Linda McCartney in Sam Mendes' The Beatles, a four-film cinematic event. That feels like something she doesn't need to do. I was going to say, the casting seems appropriate, but, uh, does she really need to do that? The big four, I get it. Those are plum rolls.

That's no disrespect to the late, great Linda McCartney. A little overqualified. That must tell us specifically what era we're in then in the film. Yeah. But although I think maybe we'll each film be in a different era or something. I thought that was the idea. Maybe it's not. Maybe it's over a long period of time. I thought it was, I thought they were going to. Or is it like Zairika, you have to play them all together and they all sync up as like a four film. Yeah. Mike Myers is playing all four.

I hope each movie is one unbroken two hour close up shot of the same conversation. Right. Yeah. A continuous conversation. You got to see the next three to make sense of this. Yeah. It's just the meeting where they try to name the band. And so you watch the Ringo one and he only says something once every 25 minutes. He's like eating a sandwich. Yeah. Oh, this is good. Okay. Octopus is good. Don't do the box office game. I need to pee. Okay. Oh, okay. Should we talk while he pees? Yeah. And Sean, why are you in the bathroom thinking of me?

Griff, have you seen any other sort of fall films yet? I don't think so. You know, I'm a... Yeah, your blankies, your blankies ballot remains, you know, it's just going to start to gather steam. But I'm saying I'm a plebe. I go see films with the working people of America. Or occasionally you get invited to a fancy screening. Yeah. Yeah. Occasionally. Not that many, though. No, not that many. No, I feel like... What's the worst film you've seen this year? That's a good question. Mr. Peanut sitting very happily at the bottom of my list. I still have not visited the electric state. Believe me, man.

You're going to fire that movie up and be like, yes, I know it will be bad, but like, it's an action movie. Like, it'll be watchable. Like, right? Yeah. And it's like, it will be really hard to focus on it. My bottom list, I feel like I did some reorganizing recently. My bottom film I have right now, I got a pretty tight bottom five. And I'd say the order of these five is a little interchangeable. Can I guess the Jurassic World Rebirth is down there? It's absolutely down there. Is our president down there? No disrespect to our president.

Right now, I have Brave New World in the dead last spot. It's a tough one to defend. Where I was even like thinking between Jurassic World and Brave New World, and I'm like, Jurassic World is well shot. Yeah, it looks all right. Like, Brave New World looks bad. This is true. It has nothing I can recommend. I'm not even like, you know, you know who's good in a supporting role? No one scores it. Ford's better in it than anyone else. And yet I wouldn't be like, he punches through. And then the rest of my bottom five is Sneaks, the CGI animated film.

Oh, with talking sneakers? Correct. I haven't seen that one. Martin Lawrence plays an old-timer sneaker in a performance I would describe as Awake. Good. I'm glad they got him Awake. Snow White is in my bottom five. That's in my bottom five too. No Dyspector Queen Rachel. And then Alto Knights. Ah, right. I haven't checked in with those knights yet. That's my real like terror bottom five. That was my... And Sneaks, I will admit, I had perverse fun watching, but I cannot pretend it is good in any way. The other four, I was like clawing my eyes out.

The other four are like major corporate art that failed, you know? Yes. Yes. For sure. You guys are doing bottom fives of 2025? Yeah, I just asked him what he had down there. He had to do something or in the bathroom. What... Best actor field of this year. In the 1980s. I know Ford never had a shot, but I would fucking put him in. But he got a... He got a... I think he got like a Golden Globe nom, maybe, didn't he? Because they wanted him to show up. Yeah, I mean... That was through gritted teeth.

I can't believe you would say that the Golden Globes would behave in such a craven manner in the 1980s. It looks like it got Golden Globe nominations for Best Actor and Best Score. Maurice Jarr, who also did a wonderful score for Witness, which I feel like we didn't shout out enough. A very synthy Witness score. The Oscar nominees that year, it's a good year. Mm-hmm. This is the platoon year. Sure. But Charlie Sheen does not get a nomination. As Charlie Sheen would put it, I won Best Picture at 20 and I wasn't even warm yet.

But it is a phrasing I think about all the time. I won Best Picture. Well, you know what phrasing I think about? Flip the menu. Flip the menu. Did you hear that? Charlie Sheen talking about experimenting with the sexuality. He flipped the menu. Where he said, like, I flipped the menu. I flipped the menu. Which I just thought was perfect. He spent hours looking at the front of the menu and you go, what else is on the back? You haven't watched the doc, right? No, I haven't. Flipping the menu is a 10-minute conversation. That sounds good. And he is hot committed to that one metaphor.

I'm glad he never goes off of it. It's good. And they're like, so what kind of things did you do with men? And he's like, well, you know, on the back of the menu, there's desserts. Like, he just, everything is filtered through the menu. Okay. We saw the poll quote of the menu thing and we were obsessed with it. And then it's so much better the way it plays out. I gotta watch that. I gotta flip the menu. The Oscar nominees that year were Paul Newman for The Color of Money. He wins. He wins.

Bob Hoskins for Mona Lisa, who was sort of the critics pick of the year. A wonderful performance. And he was always arguing that in any other year, he would have won. I might have won, mate. Yeah. I'm Super Mario. I thought it wasn't for the careers for the performance. I'm gonna get King Cooper. Yeah. It's good to talk. Mushroom makes me a little taller. Just a little bit. Yeah. Like Guisamo's related to me. Does that make sense? I don't think so. Neither one of us is Italian. You got Dexter Gordon for Round Midnight, which is a really cool nomination.

And that's kind of a cool movie. You know, right. I like that movie a lot, but it sticks out a little bit. He saxed it up, baby! This guy's playing the same show. Bertrand Tarbrunier, great director. Like, it's cool that that movie got acknowledged. William Hurt for Children of the Lester Gods. I think this is his third nomination in like three years. Or is it his second? It's broadcast Spider-Woman. I think it's maybe Spider-Woman, then Children, then Broadcast. I can't remember. But he's in his hot period. He's just won Best Actor the Year Before. Yes, correct. And then James Woods for Salvador.

Really good performance by a normal guy. A Z Channel nomination. That's part of the big narrative of that doc is that that movie came out and flopped and then found such a second life within six months on Z Channel that it was the big surprise that that got in there. He's excellent in that movie. He rocks in that movie. He's an amazing actor. Do you not feel like there's... But I would sub out. You know, I hurt. Get, you know, whatever. Get him out of here.

Do you not feel like to some degree, we talked about, despite him being totally deserving of that nomination, there was something a little condescending in the Academy being like, congratulations, Harrison Ford. We take you seriously now that you're not doing little boy shit. Right? With Witness. With Witness. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right? They're like, we're giving you an Oscar not just for the performance, but for thank you for growing up and being like an adult, serious actor. And this is like, no, no, two adults. Truly. And then they never nominate him again. They never nominate him again. My question to that is, when would they have?

The Fugitive's the most obvious one. You know, that's the one where it's like, well, that movie got a Best Picture nomination. You know my argument. What is it? Best Supporting Actor, Morning Glory. Morning Glory? I need eggs from a chicken. I, you know, his clearest Oscar bait is regarding Henry. That's the film. And that movie didn't go over. It didn't go over. Like, all my Ford noms are, like, end with Mosquito Coast, I think. Yeah. On my spreadsheet. No, there's... I just gave him the credit for Han Solo and Indiana Jones and all the shit he deserves credit for. Blade Runner.

Up until that point, and then it feels like, Witness, they're like, congratulations, you've entered the room, and on Mosquito Coast, they're like, know your place. My nom... Go back to just being a matinee idol. My nominees are you're a Hoskins and Newman, plus Kurt Russell, Big Trouble in Little China. Cool. Jeff Goldblum in The Fly, and Ford. Oh, you do put Ford in there? Yeah. Great. Great. I respect you. I like Gene Hackman and Hoosiers that year, but that's another kind of, like... Never been a Hoosiers guy. Quite... I really love the first half hour of Hoosiers. Yeah, I know.

The rest of it, I'm like, it's good, but, like, just the whole, like, guys in a barn, it's five in the morning, all that shit's good. Despite, you know, working for Bill Simmons for, like, 15 years, I just have never been into Hoosiers. And Bill likes Hoosiers, but I feel like... He respects Hoosiers. At a time, he loved it. He has pointed out its many flaws many times, but I think he has a big relationship to it. I like that movie. And, you know, that's a weird one, too, because Hopper was nominated that year, but not for Frank Booth. He was nominated for Hoosiers.

But he's good in Hoosiers. He's good in Hoosiers. He provided them with a safer nomination option. Yes. But Frank Booth would have been an absolutely sick, demented nomination. It wouldn't be bullshit. Very true. The box office... Yeah. No, I was going to say, the box office, this movie, did not perform well. No, it did not. It opens on Thanksgiving, which I'm not sure how I... I'm not sure about that decision. Yeah. Do you like that decision? I think Thanksgiving release didn't mean the same thing it meant back then that it does today. I suppose so. I think that's more of an Oscar confidence. Right.

Also, of course, it's, you know, limited release. Yeah. But so, it's not in the top five, of course. I'm just saying, it's not like in 86, they were like, we're hoping Mosquito Coast clears 60 million for the five day. No, they were not. It's number one at the box office. But it's not a movie the family's going to want to see together. And I think we might have done this box office because number one is a movie we covered on Patreon. Okay. It's the fourth film in a beloved franchise, but it's sort of the biggest hit this franchise has had in a minute.

It's Star Trek IV The Voyage Home? Mm-hmm. Wales. Wales. Wales, San Francisco. Is Star Trek IV Plumber or is that three? That's six. Six? Yeah. Lloyd is three? Christopher Lloyd. Okay. And four is the one where they go back in time to San Francisco and there's Wales. Yes, of course. Right. Four is the most sort of pleasant. Our Wicked Ways. Like, you know, four is a movie that anyone can see without really any knowledge of Star Trek. Four is fish out of water comedy. It's just a fun fish out of water comedy. It's good. Okay. It's good.

It's not my favorite because it's the least sci-fi. It's six I love. Six rocks. Sean, do you know the story of how they landed on the premise for four? Eddie Murphy, under contract at Paramount, talks about how much he loves Star Trek and that he'd like to be in a Star Trek movie. And they're like, fuck, what's a premise where we could have Eddie Murphy with the Star Trek bridge crew doing his modern day? He can't be in sci-fi mode. Right. So they were like, oh, they go through a wormhole and come back to 80s San Francisco and Eddie Murphy's there with them.

And then Eddie Murphy was like, I don't want to be the fucking fifth lead in a Star Trek movie. And so they rewrite his part to be the mom from Seventh Heaven. Oh, wow. Who is their present-day San Francisco ally and becomes a love interest. But that was meant to be Eddie Murphy. And Eddie said, I'll make Pluto Nash. Well, Eddie said, I'll make The Golden Child, which is his 86th movie. Not a good film. Not a film I like. Watched it for the first time recently. Yeah, more like the... Michael Ritchie. What happened, bro? Ron's Child. Used to be beautiful.

It's a weird move from Ritchie. Number two is an animated film that is not produced by those cowards at Disney. Is it a Bluth? Yeah. Is it The Rats of Nymph? It's not. It's the second film, I believe. It's not Land Before Time? I think that's third. I can't remember the order now. It's supposed to be an American tale. It's an American tale. So, it's so funny you bring this up because my... There are no cats in there. As we are recording, my wife and daughter flying to New York City from Los Angeles. They're going to see that big green lady out their window.

They sure will. And my wife said, can you send me all the letterbox lists you made regarding Alice? Oh. So, there is a public list of all the things that she has seen and then there are a couple of private lists that are things that she could see at some point. Vetted. Possible Alice movie. I think this will work for her. My wife loves Anastasia. Don't miss Anastasia and wants to show it to her. We have not yet done it. We haven't done any of the Bluths. I was about to say, Anastasia, like all Bluths, it's just a little scarier than those Disney movies.

It is. It's just a little more intense. So, I made a Bluth letterbox list and I was like, where do we go first? Is it American Tale? Is it Land Before Time? I think it's one of those two. You start with Titan. Of course. No. She's a huge Damon head though, so that'll really fill out her Damon film. And Minnie Driver. She loves to just meet and pass on anything. And Edlund. Yeah. Yeah. We, and then I did realize she has seen Thumbelina. Oh, that's right. Which kind of stinks, but that's a bad one. Yeah. Saw it in theaters.

American Tale's kind of scary though, much like Killian Before Time. It's just a little scarier. It's also emotionally intense. Yeah. It is. It is. Yeah. But I saw it when I was a kid and I fucking loved it. I loved it in American Tale. Yeah. You maybe, do you start with Thumbelina going west? Do you go west first? That's so confusing. We're like, we're Sergio Leone-ing in reverse, right? It's like, you gotta go once upon a time in America first. She hasn't met. Then you gotta go west. She hasn't met Thumbelina. She doesn't have the reference base. I definitely saw west first.

I did too, because I think it was in theater. You guys are a little younger. Exactly. Yeah. Number three in the box office is a film we've covered as well, and I already mentioned it. It was one of the biggest hits of the year. We already covered it? Yep. On Patreon. Only on Patreon. Normal app. Normal app? Something went awry? No, we're just being insane in COVID. Okay, so it's a COVID commentary. Yep. It's not Aliens. No, 1986. It's 86. I mean, Aliens is 1986. You're correct. Yeah, thank you. 86, COVID insanity, it's Crocodile Dundee. Maybe the best single day of podcasting we've ever done.

We are riding high, and then we are not. It is like, what was the other episode that day? Crocodile Dundee 2, and then Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles. We did the whole trilogy all in one day. I think we used to do a little bit more. Yeah. Basically, birth of the first child. My memory is that was one of our last records, A, before your daughter was born, and B, before the COVID vaccine was announced. That's right. So it was right at that kind of threshold of like, is it another year of this? The woke vaccine, to be clear. Right.

And we were like, let's just knock out all three of these in a row over Zoom, and we lose our fucking minds. First one's good. Have you seen it? Crocodile Dundee? Yeah, of course. The first one is good. I mean, have you seen it lately, I guess? Not since I was 14, but I remember enjoying it quite a bit. Very enjoyable. First one's still hit. Two I've seen and thought was okay. Two New York. Two opens as well as any movie has ever opened. Fishing with dynamite. It's incredible. In the Hudson River. That's right. And then it becomes his bad Rambo rip. Right.

And it barely has jokes. That's the origin of that's not a knife. That's a knife. No, that's the first one. That's the first one. It's not on the subway. Do they run it back on the subway? They run everything back. Yeah. Okay. But everything iconic happens in the first movie. Nothing iconic happens in the second movie except fishing with dynamite in the Hudson River. Did you know that famed fantasy football expert Matthew Berry wrote Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles? But we definitely covered that. Yeah, we did. To the point that I was like, is Wikipedia misleading? Nope. It's accurate. Like, is this a broken link?

Those episodes also led to one of Ben's greatest ideas. A key Ben should be running Hollywood. Why is he not in every development meeting? Oh, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Moment. Where during Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles, which is based around him having a young son, Ben said, why isn't his son a knife? Just a giant knife. A knife. A knife with legs and arms. That sounds like something that Sora can make for you. Yeah, exactly. Now, easy. No, we want that handmade quality. I assume Sora is like the new head of Ampest by this point.

Number four at the box office is a re-release of a Disney film. I assume it's Sean's favorite film of all time. Oh, I know this as well. You assume it's Sean's favorite? So that's a backhanded joke? It's a backhanded joke. Song of the South? Yeah. There you go. That's right. In 1986, Disney decided we need to hear the song again. We, uh... What, no jokes now, Griffin? No, this is what I was gonna say. I've never seen this film. Clammed right up, didn't you? I've only seen Zippity-Doo-Dah, which was included on a VHS that I had that was like a compilation of songs.

Couch Potato Video had a ripped Canadian VHS. And I would say to my parents, like, what's this movie? And they would be like, stop asking the question. I don't know when the Disney Channel started, but I feel pretty confident that we taped this off the Disney Channel. It's probably, you know, it was still being re-released. In the 80s. Right. It just never got an American home video release. Right. It did in other countries I saw a bootleg. It is straight up available to rent at Videotech on the east side of Los Angeles right now if you want to see it. I feel like...

And doing that doesn't put you on any kind of list? I haven't done it, so I wouldn't know. But I'm just telling people that if they would like to, they can. Drew McQueenie shared a story recently on Doughboys about Michael Jackson stealing the Laserdisc copy the video store he worked at had. No, I was just going to say, when I went into my memory palace, I was trying to think of a good example, but the fantasy joke setup of putting, forcing the opinion on the other person on Mike. Right, right. You do it to Chris a lot.

This sort of like, CR, congrats on Jimmy Kimmel getting kicked off the air. Finally, you're trying to... Big week for you. Please don't demystify all of my moves. I only have three, so I need you to just keep those tight. Ben, if you could just carve that out, I'd really appreciate it. I've got very little to go on these days. Good moves. Good moves. Number five, The Box Office. We've also mentioned it won Best Actor this year. It's a legacy sequel. Color of Mine. Yep. Which is really good. It is.

That is a movie that I spent my whole childhood thinking was bad or kind of whatever because its rep was like, yeah, they gave, you know, Paul Newman an apology Oscar. You had to make a sequel to The Hustler. Marty was... And then you watch it and you're like, better than basically any movie that exists. It's one of the most five-star movies I've ever seen. I know we've been going for a while, but I now need to ask this question. Okay. What would Harrison's Color of Money be? Obviously, it's not a literal legacy sequel because he's done those and those are side-byes.

He's done every legacy sequel available, right? No, but I'm saying not like a sequel. I'm saying, what is the movie that would make them go, fuck, we have to give Harrison Ford the Oscars? It's John Book. It's a good point, though. Like, bring Book back. I'm like, what is the type of role? Who would he work with? Is there an existing figure? A fucking, like, piece of literary material? Drinking the movie? Does he have to be witness because he already played this character? Yeah, I don't know. I'm moving the legacy sequel up. I mean, oh, okay.

Well, then it's something else, but I mean, I guess you're talking about him working with a real director on a non-legace sequel thing. Right. He's become the king of the legacy sequel, so I'm putting that aside. I'm more saying the feeling of color money coming out and people being like, what are we supposed to do? Not give him the Oscar? I do think that 42 is probably as close as he gets to that kind of thing. And he's like a 20-layer ham sandwich in that movie. And that movie is like just okay. I'm the president of baseball. President of the Dodgers.

I expect you to not. I just feel like you weren't that locked into the movie. Branch Rickey. His big fucking bushy eyebrows. Yeah, he's like, he's way over the top. He's laying it on. Yeah. Also, the top 10, you've got the Chuck Norris, Lou Gossett film, Firewalker, a film I've never seen, a canon film. You've got Francis Ford Coppola's, you know, fairly underrated Peggy Sue Got Married. You've got Soul Man, Chris's other, Sean, fuck. I called you Chris. Sean's other person.

You were making a joke that I would make at Chris, but of course now I will make it at Griffin, which is of course a movie that you would like to reclaim right now on the podcast. You, before we recorded, you said, you know, I've been thinking about 1986 and the landscape of films and what made me laugh when I first saw it as I was rediscovering. I won't let you have a Soul Man. We all know that Paul Newman stole C. Thomas Howell's Oscar. Number nine, Stand By Me, a film I will admit is sort of similar to The Goonies for me.

I have never been able to really get into it. So funny you say that. One of the other podcasts that I did this week was the New York Times book podcast and the subject was non-horror Stephen King film adaptation. Was it with Gilbert? It was with Gilbert. I was about to say he was a super fan. Of course, Gilbert, one of the world-renowned Stephen King experts. Yes. And a mutual friend of ours and Gilbert kind of set up the episode by saying the exact same thing because for me, I don't really care about Stand By Me that much. It's not a big movie for me.

It's just, yeah, it's just one of those things where I'm like, well, I wasn't there. I wasn't there for this movie and I wasn't there for the nostalgic era it evokes. I don't think, I think the kids are good in it. Right. And I think it like strikes the correct tone by and large. But it's definitely generational past those things. I think many people our age and younger have claimed it as their own after discovering it for the first time as a ten-year-old or whatever. Yeah, never good for me. Never for me. But talk about a fucking River Phoenix. You know, 100%.

River Phoenix is happening. Fully happening. He's really good in that movie. And then number 10 is Top Gun. The biggest movie of the year. Yep, absolutely. And when this was released, Top Gun was number 10 at the box office. Top Gun was released in May. Yeah, yeah. It's a different time. We used to be a proper country. Top Gun has made 166 mil domestic at this point. So, yeah, of course, Mosquito Coast, you would think, made nothing. But actually, you know, it ends up, well, no, $10 million. It's not very good. No, $14. $14 domestic total. So, yeah, pretty bad. And it cost $40?

No, it cost like $20 something. But still, like, I think they could not recoup money. Like, you know. Which is fine. It's okay. Harrison Ford tended to make really successful films. And Weir goes on from this to Dead Poets? Or is there something in between? No. It's Dead Poets. Yeah. Who's doing Dead Poets? Do you guys know? Nia DaCosta. Nia DaCosta. It's already been recorded. We can call that because it's in the can. That's a spoiler. Is that a big movie for her? Yeah. It's a big movie for her and she went to a boarding school like that. And wanted to be a poet. Really?

She did want to be a poet. We get into all of it. It's a good episode. It's a good episode. Okay. But no, that was a good episode. We had fun. We've been potting so long. And I'm sorry, Sean, you have really been subjected to a lot of us this week. No. I asked for it and I've been delighting in it. I know you enjoy it, but this is the final of four recordings that I have done with the extended universe. Yes, exactly. No, I'm very... I hope that your listeners are okay with a divorced and double exposed big picture situation.

Well, I was like, this actually is timing out well in that the live episode we did is published and then my episode that I did on big picture will come out soon. And then these will come out six months later. So it's like, you know, it's not overloading it. And then it's big picture week on Blank Check. And then we got to... What are you doing next solo? That's a good question. I mean, let me get back to you on that. Okay, think about it. I might, I might do one. I might look ahead on the release calendar.

But yes, no, there will be a back-to-back big picture run on this podcast six months from now. Right. If you guys want to do a deep dive into Harmony Corrine, I'm down. Deep dive like into... How so? Hall of Fame? We could just like go through... The new stuff? Where are you at on kids? I'm obsessed. Okay. I bought him the umbrella, the hardback. For listeners at home, they can't see me, but I'm gyrating. Okay. Where are you at on Beach Bum? Beach Bum is like fun. Hasn't stuck with me, that one. Like... I had a good time.

It feels very like I've like been smoking weed all day and let's like, let's just hang out. Okay, here's the big question. Where are you at on Baby Invasion? Okay, someone recently, because I was talking shit on it, I like haven't really watched any of his like weird VR, AI, whatever. Edge Lord. Yeah, exactly. I haven't watched any of it, but someone was like, listen, he's always been a cutting edge filmmaker. Give it a chance. Watch the films. Don't just like... Sure. Just don't regurgitate what everyone else is saying.

But there definitely comes a point where when, if that's your thing and you're getting older, you might not be able to do it anymore. I know. Like be on the cutting edge. I know. Like, yeah. Yeah, it just might not hit in the same way it would maybe for someone who's, you know, Gen Z. I do think, I do think that any Edge Lord production commentary from you guys would be amazing. Amazing. My head hurts. Agro Drift commentary. I'm leaving. They're like, I am the world's greatest assassin. Have you seen that? Have you guys seen Agro Drift? I have not.

If Edge Lord, if Edge Lord runs its course soon enough, we could just do Edge Lord as a Patreon series. Yeah, if they get like three movies. I haven't seen Baby Invasion yet, but I saw Agro Drift in theaters and it was an experience. It was an experience. Very good. Okay, so Harmony Corrine, that's what you want to do? With love. Okay. Those films are like not available. Yeah, it's true. It's really hard to see a lot. Gummo is in the Criterion Collection now, but you know, Julian Donkey Boy, where do you get that? YouTube, baby. YouTube. I bet.

That has to be coming from someone at some point. Yeah, where's my Dogma box? My Dogma steal. Seriously. My Dogma 95 steal. Where's my Criterion issue? Oh, well, Dogma, I was going to say. We know where to buy that. Dogma, but Dogma. Umbrella. Dogma. Beanie included. Thank you for being here. This is so fun. Everyone should listen to Big Picture and Harmony Corrine Month coming to main feed soon. Absolutely. Yeah. A true deep dive, but Ben's solo episodes. We're not going to be on. You and Amanda are both on vacation. Especially doing a Rafferty miniseries this year.

You just let Ben go off about Harmony Corrine twice a week for a month. Like, I'm just doing popper, just rambling. Yeah, I'll talk to Bill Simmons about that. I'll say this. This is far off. Can I do the fucking Masters of the Universe episode with you guys? Oh, I would love nothing more. I think we got to do that. When is that due out? June. That sounds so good. Okay, so let's say that. Booked. Thank you all for listening. Please remember to rate, review, and subscribe. Tune in next week for Dead Poets Society with Nia DaCosta. Nia DaCosta? Yeah.

Queen of the Bone Temple herself. You'll have seen it. You'll have seen it. You'll have moved in. Bones. And as always. Am I completely blanking? What are the best bits we've done in this episode? Everyone's just on their laptop now. Everyone's just typing. Yeah, it's just been three hours. Come on. I hope the listener thinks of me when they're going to the bathroom. There you go. I mean, look, honestly, they do because it's a podcast and people listen to podcasts while they're peeing. It's turd music. Blank Check 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 and Ali Moss and Pat Reynolds. Our production assistant is Minnick. Special thanks to David Cho, Jordan Fish and Nate Patterson for their production help. Head over to BlankCheckPod.com for links to all of the real nerdy shit.

Join our Patreon, Blank Check Special Features, for exclusive franchise commentaries and bonus episodes. Follow us on social at Blank Check Pod. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter, Checkbook, on Substack. This podcast is created and produced by Blank Check Productions. We'll be right back.