Raging Bull with David Krumholtz

Childhood boxing and brotherly bonds

0:00Blank Jack with Griffin and David. Blank Jack with Griffin and David. Don't know what to say or to expect. All you need to know is that the name of the show is Blank Jack. Blank Jack with Griffin and David. Don't know what to say or to expect.

0:48Win. If you win, you win. If you lose, you win. You still win. There's no way you can lose. Right. No, I liked what you did. I thought that was great. Thank you. And for the listener at home, my handwork was perfect. My form was immaculate. You're not an amateur boxer? Thank you. Thank you for asking. Have you ever boxed? I trained with a boxer, yeah. Like sort of a workout thing, right? And then I pinched both nerves, one nerve in each shoulder and went to a chiropractor and he

1:18fixed me. But part of him fixing me meant I wound up with an elbow that locks up for the rest of my life. What age was this? 30, 31. Okay. Yeah. So he fixed one thing and by breaking another thing. Yes. Yeah. My father made me train in boxing to toughen me up when I was upper single digits and I hated it. And your weight was also upper single digits at that time, right? My weight was lower single digits. Oh my. I could not crack a hundred pounds.

1:51Well, single digits would be one pound, lower single digits. I'm going to ask, you trained and did the person hit back? No, it was all kind of sparring, but it was at like a real boxing gym. And your father made you do it? Yes. My father used to, my father was, this has been talked about before, a degenerate gambling addict whose favorite bar was Jimmy's Corner. Are you familiar with Jimmy's Corner? Yeah, Jimmy's Corner. Yes. No, I'm not. On 44th Street. It was owned. He's sadly passed away by Jimmy Glenn, who was a former boxing corner man.

2:24And so he had Jimmy Glenn, the owner of this bar, who was an old former boxer himself. And that's just when you're trying to get your kid a little bit of, you know, TLC. Yes. What you want to do is ask your favorite bartender for help. Right. This is like me at nine. Oh my God. And my brother was so jealous. And my brother was a very physically rambunctious child who would sometimes attack other kids just kind of like randomly. He had so much excess energy. He'd start wailing on them and he wanted to box. And my parents were like, this is a terrible idea. And it was like a year and a half, two years maybe

2:59of me begging my parents to let me stop and my brother begging to let him start. Wow. And finally the switchover happened. And the second my brother boxed, he completely balanced out. It like solved him. And he had a golden gloves. He was a licensed fighter. He almost went pro as like a featherweight. But the two years that you boxed, you came away feeling like an inferior physical specimen. Crummy, you get me. I do. You get it hard. Yeah. Yes. I hated it. It was like extra gym class.

3:29If you didn't have a Napoleon complex prior to. Which I did. But it only made it. Correct. Infinitely worse. Especially because my brother's also a little guy. I don't got no giant brother. It's why when I shake your hand, you really squeeze the shit out of my hand. I squeeze really hard. And I locked in on your eyes. By the way, I do the same thing. But your squeeze. You got to do it. Is squeezier than mine. Yes. And we did a hug. I did a full body squeeze. I pinched those nerves. I don't want to insult you, but I didn't feel that happen.

3:59I think this is a good energy for this episode, though. Because, you know, we're talking about, you know. Confrontational. Yeah. And brotherly love. Brotherly love. Right. Brotherly love. Sort of the thin line here between insecurity and, you know, manhood and all that stuff. I became his manager. I kissed my brother's wife on the mouth. This is what happened. Yeah. What do you kiss on the mouth for? What do you kiss on the mouth? Yeah. With your mother, sure. Is this the greatest repetition movie? Yes. I picked a quote that was obviously saying the same thing 87 times, but that's part of why I picked that. Well, it just feels like the way his brain has been smushed.

4:32Like, he's got to cycle through phrases over and over to kind of, like, get to the phrase. Yeah. It's also, you know, obviously all improvised, which is great. It's good? Good performance?

4:45Who's the lead guy in this? Huh. But obviously all improvised, but, you know, with improv, you know this, that you feel, there's that, there's that, oh, the joke didn't land. Let's try it again. Yes. Yes. And genuinely, because of the chemistry between him and Pesci. Yeah. Great stuff comes out of the repetition. Correct. Yeah. And, and look, Scorsese, I'd say master of repetition in general. Sure. He's good at the rhythmic repetition of dialogue. He's good at making conversation feel real. But I think you're right. I think the punch drunk nature of this and how kind of like

5:18emotionally unevolved these guys are means that he gets a lot more latitude to just like, they can just repeat the same thing for five minutes straight and just escalate the intensity of it. I came away thinking, how in the world could they have ever made this movie without Joe Pesci? And yet they just found him randomly. Yeah. And they found him around. De Niro watches a TV. De Niro watches this thing and goes, I bet I would have incredible chemistry with that actor. Yeah. And they meet and they have legendary, immediate chemistry that then they're thrusting on to

5:58film. Right. That carries through other films. You know how, that is so strange. Yeah. That, that, that De Niro intuited that. Well, especially he is the guy at this moment. He is like the new brand. Correct. Right. He's already gotten one Oscar. He's done Taxi Driver. Yes. Mean Streets. Deer Hunter. Deer Hunter and The Godfather 2. Yes. So he is the guy. He's the guy. He's, it's undisputed. The confidence is through the roof.

6:28He could get anyone to play his brother. Could get anyone to play his brother and steamroll them. Yes. And the movie's watchable. Yeah. And he goes, I'm going to let this little guy fucking shoot me out. Oh, it's amazing. Yeah. It's amazing. Joseph Pesci. Mm-hmm. Oscar nominee for this film. Sure that Little Joey Can Sing. I think that was the name of his album, wasn't it? Little Joe Sure Can Sing. Little Joe Sure Can Sing. That was his album. Yeah.

Discovering the Raging Bull

6:52Griffin, what's this podcast? This podcast is Blank Check with Griffin and David. I'm Griffin. I'm David. I said I'm David. You kiss my wife? You kiss me? You kiss my wife? You kiss my wife on the mouth, David? David's laughing. Sorry. Kiss my wife? I would just not want to hang out with Jake LaMotta. I'll just say it. Yeah. I just, I don't think I'd find him very charming. Crummy, we just did New York, New York, which will have come out the week before this, right? Okay. Correct? Because Last Waltz is in between.

7:23Last Waltz, controversially, we're doing on Patreon. I'm sorry. Sure, whatever. He's got too many documentaries, but I made the argument that Jimmy Doyle is of all the Scorsese, De Niro characters. That's the last one you want to date. Um, hmm. Now, watching this movie, I was, I was questioning it. I was weighing. He's pretty tough. I mean, Rupert Pupkin is. Rupert Pupkin's not great. Yeah, but he's going to, what? He's, you know, he's going to annoy you to death. He's going to annoy you to death. Right. Yes. I mean, LaMotta, though. LaMotta, there's some risk. There's some occupational hazard.

7:54Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He's a very, very tough customer. He is. Um, no, but like, we were kind of talking about how Jimmy is so uncharismatic on top of everything. Like, you know. No redeeming qualities. Right. He's very, very tough to imagine why you'd be around him in any sense. But LaMotta is similar, but I guess he has some swagger to him initially that you sort of can, like, you can see. And, and that's what's brilliant about this film. Yes. Is we're presenting an animal. Yes. We're telling people that he's an animal.

8:27And yet. A raging bull, if you will. A raging bull. And yet, they find a genuine humanity. Yes. In this guy. And there are, he has three kids. Mm-hmm. He has moments of being a peaceful, to some extent, person. He just wants to be a comedian. That's all he wants. You know, all this stuff. He's like Rupert Pumpkin in that sense. Yeah. And that's such a ridiculously fine line to make work. Yes. That only De Niro can do it.

8:57And what are you, what are you, what were you doing in that first screening of this film? Sitting in the audience. Yeah. How confused were you about what you are being asked? Yeah. Based on your cinematic knowledge up until 1980, what you are being asked to feel as an audience member about this guy. Well, even that was Scorsese's reluctance to making the movie of like, who cares about this fucking guy?

9:27I don't like this guy. I don't want to spend time with this guy. Right. This guy's unpleasant. He's a bore. Yes. In both spellings. Sure. Sure. Right. Three spellings. Oh boy. Sure. B-O-R-E-B-O-A-R. Yeah. Yeah. Kind of. Yeah. Yeah. He's got them all. It's an incredibly watchable film given how tough it is to watch. I guess is the way to, you know, that's the sort of Scorsese thing. It's a timeless film. Yes. That elevated the art, especially of the biopic specifically, which was not really a thing

10:00that much. And was a very limited thing. I think it existed in a very specific vein. Sort of creates the map for what a biopic in an ideal way would be. The modern biopic. Right. Yeah. Because there's obviously, there's the old boring Hollywood, like the story of Louis Pasteur. Right. Or what, you know, like that kind of. Pride of the Yankees kind of stuff. Right. Yeah. Where it's like, meet this nice guy. Meet this nice guy. That I say this at this moment, which is that it is truly an honor to talk about this film. Well. Thank you so much for asking me to talk about this film.

10:33Because I, there's only a small handful of films that I bow to. This is one of them. Oh, yes. What else is in a handful? Oh, God. Let's not start. Okay. Because we're going to get into territory where people. It's a big hand. Oh, no. It's a small hand. People are going to be asking about what's in the hand. You know, there's a couple other Scorseses in there. And a couple other, you know, there's some couple Spike Lee's and Spielberg's and Kubrick's and, you know, that kind of thing. But I'm, this is one for the ages. It completely validates the entire art form of cinema.

11:07I mean, it really does. And, and all that, all the people that work to make great cinema happen. Yes. And it ends in such a meta way. It's, it's akin to what Tarantino later did in Inglourious Basterds. Yes. Where the final line is, I believe this is my masterpiece.

11:29Essentially, you know, Scorsese does that in this film and says, this is my masterpiece. It's also him thinking it's the last movie he's ever going to make, or certainly the last studio movie he's ever going to make. I think as much as he's calling a shot, it's because he thinks it's the last chance he has to call a shot. Right. I should say this is a podcast about filmography. Thank you. It's directors who have massive success early on in their careers. This is the compulsion. I must say the full thing. No, yeah, but orientate people to what the hell we're talking about. I have to orientate people. This is many people's first episode, I'm sure. Sure. Directors who have massive success early on in their careers, such as Taxi Driver, and

12:02are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion projects they want. Sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they bounce baby, like New York, New York, which he is coming straight off of. Sort of. And it's the biggest bounce of his career.

Podcast introduction and guest arrival

12:14This is a miniseries on the films of Martin Scorsese. It is called Podcast Fellas. We are the titular Podcast Fellas. Today, we are talking Raging Bull with returning guest, the Raging Bull himself, David Krumholtz.

12:28Now, that's the sound of me, Ray, of like snorting. You're not from the Bronx. You're from Queens, right? Yeah. So you could be the Queens Bull. You can't. You could be the Bronx Bull. I, yeah, I guess so. No, you're rejecting it. It's fine. Just because of the name Queen, there's always a feminine. Sure. So what's the feminine version of a bull? Cow? Cow. Yeah. The Queens cow? I was thinking the alliteration, too. What's an animal with a Q? Well, you're getting into tricky territory now, Ben.

12:58Yeah, that's tough. What animals do exist with Q? Quail. Quail. Oh, the Queens quail. Queens quail. I like that. You're smiling. Yeah. What kind of noises do they make? Probably a little. Right. Some kind of. Looby-dooby. The Queens quail gets in the ring. Yeah, there's a lot of others. There's the quokka. Oh, yeah, the quokka. Which is kind of like a weird little, like, furry guy. Little marsupial. Yeah, that's an Australian animal. Down under animal.

13:29Have you been to Australia? I have. You've made a movie or two, and I feel like they shoot them down there. I made a movie last year that takes place in New Jersey, and we shot it in Melbourne, Australia. That's Hollywood 3.0 for you. That sure is. There it is. We've coined Hollywood 3.0 today, Ford, to describe just, like, the fucking nonsense that goes on day to day. Hollywood 3.0. Mm-hmm. Uh, what was the New Jersey movie? What the heck? It's a movie that's coming out on Christmas Day. Perfect. This year, called Mr. Irrelevant. Oh, yeah, with, um, with, um, Superman and Paul.

13:59Yes, it's supposed to be very good. It's testing off the charts, says Hollywood 3.0. It is testing off the charts. It is actually testing off the charts. It is, it actually is. Yeah, John Tuggle's story. I think we need more sports movies. I mean, it's a, it's a gap for this movie. I hear it's absolutely, Jonathan Levine directed, I hear it's absolutely beautiful. I hear it's like there's, it's a, it's a wonderful film-going experience. I have truly heard this. We have friends who were at a cinema con where they showed off a large chunk of it, and people were, like, elevating. Yeah. Yes. It's, it's, it's. Levitating.

14:30I think it's the darkest of the dark horses for Oscars. Well, well, well. Well, they called him Mr. Irrelevant, and yet. Michael Shannon's in it, right? Playing Bill Parcells. Michael Shannon is playing Bill Parcells. That is, that is casting that makes a lot of sense to me. Yeah. Bill's a real. And I have a little sneaky, funny, good role in it. What are you, what are you playing at? None of your business. No, I play, um. Shut the fuck up. So, it. What's into you? They had. Trying to blow my campaign. So, it's about the New York Giants. Yes. The New York Giants in 1983. They had an equipment manager, uh, who was with them for at least 30 years, I think, named Whitey.

15:02Sure. Whitey. Good. And, you know, for, I, the chance to play a Whitey, for me, is a huge. You need one, finally, in there. One in your, in your cap. Yeah. And so, uh, Whitey had retired and was kind of listless. They have this young player who gets diagnosed with, you know, questionably survivable cancer. Mm-hmm. Is likely gonna croak. It's awful. It's tragic. He's 21 or 22 years old. And, uh, they call, they decide, the NFL and the Giants decide to do everything they possibly can to save this kid's life.

15:40Mm-hmm. Try and, uh, pay for it all. And they call Whitey and they go, what are you doing? And he's like, ah, missing, you know, I'm missing the, uh, the action of being part of the team. Sure. And they go, how about you, will you drive this kid to all his appointments? So this older man, who's retired, becomes this kid's chauffeur and watches him slowly die. That's a good part. It's a good part. Um. I enjoyed myself. Bill Parcells, uh, you know what they called him?

16:11Mm. Griff. Mr. Elephant? No. The Big Tuna. One of the, one of the great sports names of all time. Why did he get that name? I'm not really sure where the name came from. Uh, famously, Bill, Bill Parcells looked a lot like my dad and people would mistake my dad for Bill Parcells. Oh, I can see that looking at you a little bit. Who was very famous, like, you know, when I was a kid. Like, he was the coach of the Giants and then he was the, didn't he, wasn't he the coach of the Jets for a minute? Like, he was, yeah, he was a New York figure. This was my father, of course, New York in the 80s with Howie Mandel. Your father.

16:41People thought your father looked like Howie Mandel. His father, you know, when his dad had the curly hair and Howie had the curly hair, I can see. We will post on social media. Fits like a glove. Hello. Over the head. Over the head. We will post on social media the side-by-side of Howie Mandel in this era and my father. But people would kind of Raging Bull style be like, hey, Mandel, you big-timing me? Wow. Oh, you think you're too good for your fans, Mandel? You know who my dad looked like? Who? Son of Sam. Oh, that's a good one. And literally was from Queens, lived in the same neighborhood.

17:11Good timing. And dogs talked to him. And David Berkowitz was a mailman, and so was my dad. Yeah, the only difference was that Berkowitz had blue eyes and my dad had brown. I can think of one other difference. And also, he didn't commit murder. Well, there's that. That's the difference I was thinking about. How good a mailman was David Berkowitz? Bad. I have to imagine that. I can't imagine he was very good. I probably ate the letters, right? I don't know if he was a paper eater.

17:37I have recurring dreams, coincidentally, in which I'm pulling large pieces. I'm in public in a situation where I need to talk to people. Yeah. And in the dreams, I'm pulling endless amounts of paper, chewed up paper, out of my mouth. Oh, it's in there already. It's in there already. And I have to stop. And they're very vivid, realistic dreams. I have to stop and pull paper out of, in between my teeth, out of my throat. Oh. And then I looked up, like, what those mean.

18:07And I think they said something like, you know, obviously, they're anxiety dreams, but something to the, like, you have something you need to get off your chest. Something unspoken. Yeah. You need to read what's on the paper. That's the answer. That's how you resolve the dreams. Well, it's all chewed up, man. It's all bits of paper. Unfold it, piece it back together, take a blow dryer. We're talking about mulch. We're talking about mulch. I mean, but in Inception, you know, that's, you always, right? Like, that's, it's like, you always have to find, like, the weird papers in your dream. And that's, like, where the secret is. Right. And that's how you come up with a great idea to retire and let someone else run your dad's

18:41business. You worked with Chris Nolan. You should text him every time you have a weird dream, being like, hey, Inception guy, explain this dream. You do this? I don't have any way of contacting him. Well, because he doesn't have a goddamn phone, right? Yeah, he doesn't have. He's smarter than any of us. Well, beyond that, I don't think Chris would want to. Oh, you gave a phenomenal performance. I don't think that matters to him or me, to be honest with you.

19:05I just think it'd be funny if it's like when you know a doctor. Yeah. And you're like, hey, look at this mole. Or, you know, like, hey, Chris, you did Inception. What's this dream mean? You must love people's weird dreams. David Krumholtz is here. David Krumholtz is here. Oh, yeah. Okay. The last time you were on the show, we talked about Sensible Woman, who is, you know, we're talking the other giant of this era. Well, he's talking the other best actor. Yes. You know, he did Pacino's best actor trophy, and this is De Niro's best actor trophy. Yeah. I wouldn't call Pacino the only other giant.

19:39I think there's a triumvirate. You're right. Who's the third? Hoffman. Hoffman. Of that era. Of that era. Those are the three guys who were chasing each other. Those are the three. And they're rewriting the rules of acting. Yes. And they're three guys who I feel like a generation prior, Hollywood would have been like, well, you're not a movie star. Like, you don't have the look of a movie star. Right. They look like a butcher. Right. They are ethnic American. Ethnic. They're small. They're kind of like, they're handsome, but they got kind of funny faces. Right. You know, they're not conventional. Do they make those movies?

20:09Do they make, well, maybe The Graduate, but do they make Midnight Cowboy, Raging Bull, and let's say Serpico today? Not really. No. Or Dog Day. Yeah. They don't. Raging Bull's the closest in that, like, Hollywood will still respond to it. Because it's a boxing movie. Yeah. Right. And like a true story, real person movie. What is it? It was Serpico. I mean, maybe. It feels like a TV show. It definitely is a TV show. The answer is that all three of those things would be TV shows now.

20:39Which is a shame. Yeah. I think there is sort of like a Mount Rushmore of the male acting performances, the leading male performances that people, like, lose their minds over that are sort of held up as the highest. Indelible. Right. So, Santa Fe Woman is number one. Santa Fe Woman is number one. Number two is Santa Fe Woman, Chris O'Donnell. Right. That's right. Yes. No, I think it's like, it's Raging Bull. Sure. It's Raging Bull for sure. That's the first one. If you combine the two Godfather Pacino performances.

21:11Sure. Right. Or you could pick either one. No, definitely not. You're way off now. Really? Yeah. You're getting crazy now. What do you think? Jimmy Stewart in It's a Wonderful Life. Well, that's quite a good performance. Yeah. Um, I think Denzel and Malcolm X is in it. Denzel, Malcolm X. Yes. Absolutely. Are we, are we talking streetcar? Are we talking on the waterfront? For Brando? You know, you kind of have to put Brando. I think you kind of have to. But I'm going to go, hmm, God Almighty, I'm going to go Nicholson Cuckoo's Nest. Jack is sort of outside, you know, because he's not an ethnic American.

21:44He's straight down the middle. He's straight down the middle. No. Yeah, that's true. What is, in fact, what is Jack Nicholson's? Isn't he Irish? I don't know. Yeah, I would imagine. Yes. New Jersey's on. Mm-hmm. But we're not here to talk about Jack Nicholson. We're not. No. But this one's. Irish, German, English, and Welsh descent. There you go. This is still a performance that people use as shorthand.

The impact of De Niro's performance

22:04Oh, 100%. I think this is the number one. Yes. You know? I saw this film when I was 21 for the first time. Mm-hmm. It changed everything for me because up until that point, I had only really wanted to do comedy, do comedy, done comedy. There was no, or, you know, cartoonish character shit. And suddenly, I watched this film and thought, I could do that. I don't know how.

22:34Mm-hmm. But if I just try. You want to do that. Like, trying. The goal has changed. To do that. Yeah. If I could do 10% of the immersion and the intimacy and the intensity of what De Niro did and Raging Bull, if I could do 10%, I would get dramatic jobs. I would get those jobs. The intimacy thing is fascinating. It's just an outrageously monolithic performance. Yes. It's arguably the greatest lead performance ever.

23:08That is very arguable. I think, I mean. No one's going to call you crazy for saying that. Certainly not. It's a reasonable opinion. I also think it's something where you, I have the experience of, like, I watched this film. I was very struck by it as a young man. Mm-hmm. Or, you know, like, obviously, it's a totemic film. And then you sort of. Back when you were a featherweight. I've never been a featherweight, unfortunately. Oh, I'm sorry. I hit this height when I was 13. I've always been a big boy. Yeah. And then you, you know, you have a few years from it and you're like, oh, but isn't that,

23:39it's just him screaming and yelling, isn't it? Then you watch the movie again and you're like, I forgot how good this movie. And how good, like, and I forgot how it's not whatever the stereotype. I think intimacy is the word. You said it. Yes. That's the whole, that's the magic factor. It's the volcanic stuff. You're, you know. Let me bring my, let me bring my bantamweight perspective to this. Perfect. Okay. God damn it. The sound editing in this film. Yeah. Is a new roadmap suddenly for all sound editing going forward.

24:10The intimacy of the sound of that film. There is no film that sounds like Raging Bull to this day. There are attempts, but there, so you are, as an audience member, being whispered to. You're being shouted at. Mm-hmm. They're speaking to your soul. It's, it's, it's brilliant sound editing. Do you know the thing that's. So much of it, by the way, is ADR, clearly. Yes. Oh, yes.

24:41But that Marty drove everyone crazy because he insisted that every punch, every flash bulb be a unique sound. That they not repeat any specific sounds. Mm-hmm. Which a lot of it's like Foley work. And it's over the top in a certain way. And the context. Yeah. You know, when he's in Miami at his house and he asks the photographer to take a picture. Take a picture for us. For us. Get in here, sweetheart. And they surround him. And the moment the first flash goes off, you hear one of his children scream. Yeah. You're, ah!

25:11Oh, my God. Just whatever standard film had come to just Scorsese manipulating the shit out of what was before to create something incredibly profound and new. I'm going to go even one higher than you. I think this movie is very well directed. When I was watching it, I said, who is the Scorsese kid?

25:40Yes. And Chapman. Chapman. His DP. Yes. There's not a frame in this movie that isn't a painting. It didn't win the Oscar, which it's, you know, the Oscars are not the end of the world. But it's shocking. Yeah. For cinematography. What did? Tess. The Polanski film, which I'm sure Jeffrey Unsworth, like, I'm sure had gorgeous vistas of the Moors, right? You know, like, that is, in my dim memory, a pretty movie. Sure. But this is one of those things where, one, you can show five seconds of Raging Bull in

26:14some clip package. As you see all the time in these kind of, De Niro, or, you know, you'll see him rolled out at award shows or on TV. And you're just, yeah, lean forward. And any shot. Because you cannot believe how this movie gets. An insert shot would get that response. And why black and white? Do we have theories? Oh, we can talk about it. Yeah. I'm sure that'll be in the research because I think there was a lot of reasons for the black and white. Um, and just, no one's made a sports movie look this good. I know it's reductive to call it a sports movie, but no one's made like boxing look like this ever again.

26:45And just the, the, with the smoke and the, you know, just that you're in his mind in the air. Well, yeah. And theater of it ended that sort of just the slaughterhouse of it. What were you going to say? No, the contrast of how beautifully lit, almost theatrically lit the boxing matches are with the crudeness of how the rest of it, the natural light through, through it all. Yeah. It's just. Well, the key to this movie is, you know, Marty said, I don't want to do this.

27:16I don't get this. And De Niro kept on insisting, we'll get into this in depth. But then he finally figured out, he was like, oh, boxing's a metaphor. Boxing doesn't matter. I can't think of this as a boxing movie. It's about getting in the ring. It's about whatever that thing is in your life. And let's face it, Scorsese doesn't need to be directed with, but this is the movie where he lets De Niro sort of direct. They're collaborating right on a higher level. This is a 50-50 job. Yes. In fact, I can open the dossier.

27:46The trust is through the roof. What is required of De Niro? See, I'm now going to watch. Behold, as I marry this into a discussion about AI. Perfect. Let's do it. What's required. Because AI could have done this movie. We agree. What's required of De Niro is this genuine raw soul searching, sort of an access that he is displaying to his own emotional nuance, the complicated levels of who De Niro is as

28:16a person, who an actor should be as a person, right? Someone who emulates humanity in nuanced fashion that arguably no actor before or after had. And to give of that, to bear himself raw, he had to have trained mentally for this, not just physically, right? And you know that this is all stuff you know as an audience member. And two different physical states. And two different physical states. Yes. One misshapen.

28:46Yes. Which is also two different mental states married to those. Yeah. And the confidence, De Niro's confidence, who's 36 at this point when he makes this movie. That's disgusting. He's playing a 19-year-old, though. Yes. Right, right. Essentially at the beginning. Yeah. It's through the roof. And the uniqueness of De Niro that he has to face and live with, the burden of De Niro's uniqueness, applied to the uniqueness of Jake LaMotta. And there is no way, and you know this watching it, there is no way that De Niro is not in some

29:26sort of existential pain playing this character. Yes, and also there's something clearly that drew him to it. Correct. That he needed to express. That he couldn't really shake. This role is a sacrifice and a half that he's, and he's giving. It's giving, it's constantly giving.

Humanity and the cinematic experience

29:42Now, you have to be human to understand the true depth of not only the performance, but of the film. You have to be, right? Now, here's where I married into AI. Let's do it. Who on, would you, you don't want to watch an AI basketball game, do you? Why would anyone? Why do we watch sports? We have to watch sports because it's human beings, which we are, doing what we can't do. Okay?

30:10You cannot expect AI to make an impact with audiences in a way that film can. Film, I mean real, I should say real people can't, humans can't, on film. Because the audience is human. Everybody's talking about, when they have these arguments about AI, they go, you know, well, what's the difference between a human actor and an AI actor and an AI will learn from what humans do. Everyone discounts the audience. The audience is human.

30:42It can only empathize with humanity. Well, and that's the challenge of Raging Bull is like, it's not like, I want you to understand that Jake LaMotta is a good guy. Or even that Jake LaMotta is sympathetic in a way of like, you know, here's why he behaved this way. It's not a like, don't you understand? Jake LaMotta just had a time. And that's why he was such a piece of shit. It's not that. It's more just, you need to look at this darkness and this, you know. He existed. This exists. This is part of the human existence. And, right, and understand the nightmare of the human spectrum that he was on and that there's something to relate to, which is true Taxi Driver 2.

31:18That makes it all the more compelling. Like, you know, that you're like, there's something to relate to even though he's a fairly despicable person pretty much all the time. And also that there's like a sacrifice here, not just in the characters, but in the making of this movie. That is a thing that AI can never experience. I mean, this is, the conversation right now, I just think it's like, it was such a good fucking knockout punch. It's just like, everyone flipping their shit over the Odyssey. Everyone circles back to the same thing, which is like, this looked really difficult to make.

31:48Sure. This was not easy. And I'm appreciating the sacrifice and the effort of this. And I want to see it on the biggest screen. And it's like, that's a fucking knockout punch. Which, the people who want to watch AI shit don't want to pay for it. It's not just AI. It's also just, you know, the years we went through people being like, eh, no one wants the movie experience anymore. You know, like that's being refuted is lovely. You know, Scorsese is not an insular filmmaker. Right? He's referential. But so many, you know, because, well, because he himself is a cinema expert, right?

32:23But so many filmmakers make movies, quote unquote, they say this, for themselves. You know, you've got to make the movie for yourself, be happy with it, and then the audience will love it. No. Scorsese goes, I'm the audience for my own film. I am all kinds of versions of that audience. I am the highfalutin, highbrow, erudite guy sitting in the back row. And I'm also the kid in the front row. Right. And what can satisfy everyone? And he's anticipating how the audience will feel.

32:53And he's literally framing shots and directing scenes from that perspective. The greatest trick that Scorsese pulls in this film is challenging the audience. Like, what in the world are they supposed to be feeling? Yeah. You know, Taxi Driver is a straight drama. Yeah. Right. Okay, now this movie, it's a brutal comedy. It's a funny tragedy. Sure. It's so many things in stark contrast.

33:26It's comedy, love, family, bonds, violence, paranoia, sympathy, rage, disgust, sorrow, horror, you know, peace, triumph, success, ego, tranquility, the burden of ambition, you know. And ultimately, it's the story, it's exactly what it should be, which is the story of one life to tell a story about the pugilistic nature of all lives and all life. Yeah. And just what an undertaking. And if he fucks it up and he didn't even think he should make the movie.

34:02Yes. and if he fucks this up people are come out of the theater going that director is a psychotic person and his career is like or close to it because his career is already in a little bit of trouble and it's sort of like right you know why do you do that i think the fact that he doesn't really care about sports which he's very upfront about matters a lot in the movie too because i like sports movies like i like a schematic sports movie just fine like i enjoy an underdog story i enjoy this shit but you know so many sports movies lock into like okay well we need to

34:33see where he initially succeeded then he was brought low with this battle and like his biggest triumph in this movie on in the ring is like grinning like a freak at sugar ray robinson being like you didn't knock me down yeah sugar ray robinson's just like what okay that's not a win right and it's just like you literally lost that he's so separated from whatever the point of boxing is and that's you know moment in life and like at no point is there like the scene where someone's like you did it here's the belt like you you know like the arc of his career is this sort

35:07of like just this dim noise in the movie at best i also think there's a core he buys a building at one point yeah and they're like from fights and he's like and you're like jesus he's a fucking landlord like this guy uh he can't be served a steak without having a panic attack i also i think the core thing this movie is about in a lot of ways is like the thing you're great at being a detriment to every other aspect of your life everything that makes him a good boxer well if your ego it's also about ego danger yes if you don't have emotional intelligence correct yes if you're not in

35:43conversation with yourself yeah because he's a fighter yes that's a great fighter right who is able to piece together a pretty normal life on paper on right he's got the kids he's got the family yeah that's a big thing but he becomes a clown yes he becomes more than just an actual comedian clown his life is a clown is clownish yes his whole life yeah i'm gonna open the dossier to tell you some stuff about this so can i just ask you one quick

Scorsese's struggles and production history

36:26question before you open it go ahead did you fuck my wife yes thank you okay i appreciate that's the answer i fucked your wife i fucked your brother i fucked you whatever um scorsese in the later half of the 70s is doing a lot of stuff we addressed this to some extent uh on prior episodes on top of the last waltz in new york new york he even worked on a broadway show called the act with eliza minnelli who he was having an affair with at the time he had no idea what he was doing he was sort of soft fired more kind of like he agreed to step aside and let a experienced broadway hand come in to kind of

37:00quote-unquote fix things he was also having a very sexually charged affair with cocaine the drug he was doing a lot of drugs yes uh in 1977 he goes to the telluride film festival which is very early uh to present an award to michael powell one of his heroes the great british director and michael powell says to him like my dear boy what are you doing here aren't you working on a play and scorsese's like that's when i realized like i was not cut out for theater i didn't understand like you know at this point he wants to make gangs of new york that's gonna take him a second a little

37:35obviously a little bit of time he makes american boy which we discussed in our scorsese short episode it's fascinating the profile of stephen prince have you ever seen that crummy no you would be intrigued by you would be very intrigued by it okay it's just him interviewing a guy who's got insane stories um and the the adrenaline shot back from the dead from pulp fiction is stolen from that movie that is true that's a story he tells yes um and he's got raging bull which is a movie he doesn't want to do but de niro has basically been trying to get him to do since 1974 he came to him

38:08on the set of alice doesn't live here anymore and said read this book by jake lamotta i've like optioned it there's some some good scenes he's an interesting character de niro who is obviously a tough interview in that when you ask him like why did you do raging bull he's like i don't know it was interesting you know like he's just uh but he says like i like the book because i thought it had some good scenes to repeat this a good scene is something that you think has a lot of dramatic possibilities and irony and humor and something that people can relate to it's a very simple and

38:40bland statement but you can imagine i guess de niro just reading the book and being like well this scenario is something i can play out in my head as something that would be very dramatically compelling and even talking back to the sort of point of getting in this character's head and this sort of spiritual connection he was feeling he like admits when he reads it the book is poorly written yes even de niro admits this book is bad but scorsese does not like the book it's like a portal into this guy's brain like even i think the failings of the writing are telling him something as an actor

39:11that someone's going to have to process dramatically into something that works as a story but he's seeing the scenes and he's seeing the way this guy's brain works de niro robert robert de niro is the joe de maggio of acting break please explain as i'm a huge joe de maggio had an amazing reputation for doing incredible things on the field athletic things right but making them look easy sure to the point de niro is simple yeah he is very simple deliberate yeah he i don't think there

39:41are any firm choices in his style i think he goes he lives in the moment and is and accesses whatever is necessary to tell the story if any strategy goes into that i'm sure there's some and of course extreme uh emotional intellect yes extreme but hyper subtle but it's natural yeah there's a nature to de niro that acting wasn't allowed to have yes especially on film up until really until he came on

40:14the scene you weren't and maybe brando you could argue but even brando's a little like you know making deliberate choices and speechifying and you could almost say that brando sort of had to fit the mold because he would have been so far ahead of his time that no one would have understood him he would have he wouldn't have worked he needs to have one foot in the style of film at the time but brando now has laid the groundwork yes for de niro to be as naturally simplistic but also acrobatic and as any actor had ever been and i don't think there's been an actor since very few it's hard to i

40:51think there are people maybe who have gotten into that realm in a singular performance or in a brief period i don't think there's someone who has a body of work that embodies what you're saying in the same way i also think that he has always been so mysterious about his process for how much this is known as you know the great sacrifice movie and the physical transformation movie and all of that the built-in inherent mystique of de niro right there's this coming that he's this shape-shifting

41:24guy who then he avoids interviews he doesn't want to talk about what acting is he has a reputation notably bad right he has a reputation for being very quiet on set not saying much being a quiet person yes and compare this to spooky pacino and hoffman who are incredible but we know the legends right what they went through and what they were thinking and how they strategize their roles right and here he is and he's reading this book and he goes like hey marty this is bad we should make this movie

41:55you're like why so he's like i don't know i want to play this one thing well i think there's two times because the irishman is another situation where de niro keeps coming to marty being like yeah i just think this would be interesting and marty's like i don't get it and that takes him a while right yeah marty doesn't like that the book says that there's in the book they kind of try to rationalize everything jake did like there's always a reason for the violence for what he did which scorsese is just uninterested in he also is like cinematically i didn't like boxing because the boxing shit we would see as a kid either filmed fights that maybe would be projected in

42:29movie theater or movies would be from like one angle camera all the way the back it was boring yeah right but he agrees with de niro there are incidents in the book that are interesting right like he can see that mardick martin who had already worked with scorsese on who's that knocking on my door and mean streets and new york new york and the last waltz uh is handed the book marty's kind of like i don't know if i want to do this but you know here here we go he calls jake lamotta this the bull in the china shop he's cursed because he's so macho but he's so fragile about

43:01women right just takes a woman essentially like looking at him weird for him to completely collapse and become an insane you know violent aggressive you know it's like you can tell how insecure he is right he writes a draft uh he integrates some things that marty maybe wants about his family like there's something about a fig tree in staten island that is like grandfather had cool uh de niro is like i fucking hate this like this isn't what i'm going for at all so then they hand it to paul schrader who obviously had already worked on taxi driver and who has a very deep understanding

43:36i feel like about male fragility broken man right and at one point um marty's like let's do it as a play they think about that it's a bad idea de niro is getting increasingly mad new york new york comes out to bad reviews kind of the first time marty's just gotten bad reviews like people are just like thumbs down and thanks to de niro de niro's that's true yeah yeah uh julia his scorsese's marriage to julia cameron has just collapsed uh you know he's feeling very disillusioned about everything he's

44:07using a lot of drugs uh scorsese thinks basically that he wanted to die right he's just kind of like pushing it to its limit and he kind of hits a brick wall 1978 he says september 1978 after telluride after like uh the play collapses he's hospitalized he spends four days in the hospital is this the heart attack yes yes he physically collapses he's hovering between life and death according to him de niro comes to see him they talk very openly about everything he's going through the official

44:38charge is internal bleeding okay or the official like thing on the chart damn you have to be doing a lot of drugs devastating so and he's he's you know he's fragile he's a tiny asthmatic man right yeah yeah true sure and i met him marty fairly recently recently and he i i can attest to his tininess he's very very small but he's energetic i had a fortunately brief and pointless conversation with him i didn't know what to say to them to him it was a very strange circumstance i'm not going to

45:11get into the whole story but i was sitting almost directly across from him at a dinner at a luncheon table oddly oddly sitting also next to f murray abraham neither of us knew why we were invited

Meeting Scorsese and film collaboration

45:27to this thing uh-huh but it was our big uh grand uh uh uh you know meeting with him f f murray had never met him he that's kind of wild and uh so he's 80 f murray's 80 he's sitting there and i i don't know what to say to him and and and an introduction from his casting director um goes goes poorly in other words she says hey marty this is david krummel and he's a tremendous actor and he he doesn't hear it literally doesn't hear that that's tough and she doesn't try again and so i'm thinking i should

46:00say something and he starts talking about styles of chinese food okay like sichuan hunan and he says that he in his opinion sechuan is the best we're not talking about favorites he's simply saying empirically that sechuan is the best chinese food i disagree and i say for me it's cantonese classic sort of old school new york chinese and he says cantonese really and i say yes i feel like

46:31it's because it's you know very new yorky and whatever and he looks at me like i'm a moron and switches the subject to something else i had ruined the train of thought and that was it that's the whole my whole interaction with martin scorsese is that we disagreed on the best chinese food style and uh he moved on for me in that moment and you'll take it to the grave well he'll get to his grave before i will so i'll take it to his grave maybe i'll go visit his grave drop off some cantonese with

47:05you know some lobster cantonese yeah and that's with all due respect to the great one of the greatest right of course whose movie we are of course discussing i guess de niro basically gets marty to agree to this in the hospital in the hospital which is maybe a little bit pressurized but whatever robbie robertson scorsese's roommate at the time which is a great person you want to be roommates with if you're trying to kick coke right and robbie robertson says like i noticed scorsese

47:38finally kind of got back the anger that always helps him work where it's like i can't live without doing this you know what i mean like he he suddenly got his sort of you know his druthers motor back yes right perhaps um he himself was a raging a bit of a perhaps crushed by ambition yes he says burdened by ability brought back in that ring helped him understand a little bit more about the character uh to he wanted to make a film about self-destructiveness obviously right like to sort

48:09of lay that bare he reviews the film as kind of a rehabilitation for himself he says i don't want to explain a person with like one freudian term i don't like let's take all that out so we're not going to make a movie about how like his dad was mean to him and that's why he's a piece of shit which is interesting too by the way so the the brotherly bond and in the film really that is the only representation of family oddly they never if ever really ever talk about their parents we don't know why he they both what home they came from and why they're like this these two brothers

48:44interesting i also think the brother had been minimized in the first prior projects yes it's interesting schrader similarly is not interested in this project yeah he's trying to make american gigolo you know he's sort of transitioning to being you know more of a director director himself so it's like no one de niro is the engine like both scorsese and schrader are like i don't know you know they take schrader's script with paul's blessing to a caribbean island saint martin i believe and just work on it for weeks together they combine characters they rewrite the dialogue

49:19de niro if he's due credit on a script it's this one according to you know like like he's very involved but neither of them submitted so they didn't even attempt it's credited to martin and schrader yeah um the other thing that gets changed is they they greatly minimize the presence of the mob in his life right then they pull a lot of that out fear of the mob coming in for him because they're just like we've done this that's not what this movie's about who needs this this is cliched schrader had written a long like three page masturbation monologue good in which uh lamotta

49:52is in prison trying to jerk off and failing because he's such a failure who have amongst us have not been there bob and marty took that out because they felt it was too much schrader says one of the best things i ever wrote don't know why they took it out and he's filming it next year right but scorsese was honestly like you know like it was just it's impossible to show this kind of stuff and like retain anything in terms of like the audience's interest i gotta pitch camera from the point of view of the penis sure that's how you show it it's just him going um whatever the final result is a script

50:26that people like de niro hangs out with the real jake lamotta a lot lamotta is on set for some of the boxing scenes um it's interesting because i wonder what he thought of the movie lamotta lived to be like a hundred years old yeah which is crazy pretty crazy it's that's the way like the french people eat chocolate and drink wine all day you're like maybe this is the key to long life you just get in the ring and have your face fucking beaten in he says that on set he would kind of be like oh i was such a son of a bitch like he would be self-deprecating but in kind of a charming way it must be wild to

50:58watch people act out these scenes from your life in a movie that's not glamorizing you well wait a second there's a lot there's no way lamotta lets this happen without thinking in some way it's glamorizing you're right he has to there's no way there's on that set not going they're making a movie about me baby i'm a legend i'm gonna become part of a of a wider conversation mount rushmore you know as we all know they de niro gets incredible shape to make this movie and then they take a four-month

51:31break and de niro goes on what they call essentially a pasta tour he just goes to northern italy and france for four months stuffing his face to get the weight to play later jake that sounds like the greatest trip i'm currently on a pasta tour i'm i might go on like a 30 to 40 year pasta tour had pasta just last night made great pasta um i'm like kiss where i keep saying like this is the final pasta tour and then i extend it for another three years um apparently jake lamotta in his real

52:04act would recite shakespeare and the end of the movie was him doing that and michael powell again the team director was just like that's not gonna work no like shakespeare's just all wrong for this so they they instead go for the on the waterfront because that's kind of like that's his iconography that's also a truth is stranger than fiction thing where if that were in the movie you'd be like this is too much of a flourish this is pretentious the real guy would never yeah but but yeah the the the on the waterfront thing is is a risk too it is because if you think about it the movie ends in such a

52:36ridiculously stark meta way right it's multiple layers of meta it's de niro reciting the monologue from on the waterfront he's reciting it flat without emotion without passion clearly saying that these words of dialogue require some sort of uh illustriousness some sort of performance qualities some entertainment that this guy does just does not have so then that ends and he does

53:07his on the boss on the boss on the boss on the boss on the pocket and then scorsese speaks to the audience with a bible passage he does it's the once i was blind but now i can see literally describing the intention invention and impact of the moving image literally saying we were blind we didn't have movies but now we can see and it's it's the empathy machine argument it's like this is the best way to understand other people is through movies right and here's the risk of that there's the risk in the shakespeare there's the risk in this it's essentially it can be viewed as a pat on the back as scorsese

53:43going this is my masterpiece i fucking did it i'm making more than just a film about a boxer i'm making a film about film it's it's it's again tarantino saying having you know brad pitt say it's a master it's bold it's but if you are a guy who knows you are an incredibly talented filmmaker and loves film and is losing the chance to make films because because of one film going awry new york new york

54:14and you're a drug addict yes and your wife leaves you you might be losing life you you've lost your love you've lost your wife you have a child that he's basically not going to raise okay so you have a choice at this moment you either end the movie with some shakespearean bullshit yeah or you come right out and and basically say to the audience in a pleading way i deserve to make films yeah i look at this damn thing films are my passion once i was blind and now i can see and here here it is

54:49raw as fuck and also i refuse to self-destruct in the way that this man did i refuse to be stuck hammering the fucking jewels out of my championship belt and do you come away going scorsese knew exactly what he was doing when he made this film or do you go there's no way he could have known the true impact of what this film is on a humanistic level is it an accident that this

55:21story that he didn't want to tell about this dopey egomaniacal violent conflicted boxer is it an accident that it turns out to be emblematic of of of human frailty itself does he know he's making that movie when he's making it i think he knew he had nothing to lose

The shaping of the screenplay

55:44and i think that got him into a flow state right that is what he connected to in the boxing sequences of that feeling of just being in there and it making sense and the beauty of it right even when how beautiful it is yes you know i will also say about the bible five over trader was like what the fuck is that about he was like huh what are you trying to tell me say there's some salvation it is also you know an attribute to his film teacher uh hey p manuvian oh yes yes who had passed away you know right after it says in honor of him yeah and i do feel like he is talking about

56:19like what this person did for him as well like you know changing his view of how he understood and and understood film um the the other thing i read was that i think the schrader version was more intercutting between the the older lamada and his glory days if you can call them that and they made the big structural decision of like it's bookends right it's one flashback rather than a series of him recounting his whole life dewey cox style originally was more structure than right yes which so many biopics are now right yeah yeah and you are in walk hard are you not you are i'm in walk

56:54hard i'm in ray you're in both yes you basically that's how you need yourself i basically parodied myself i'm in the springsteen movie did not see it which came out recently uh well yeah deliver us from nowhere i heard he had a hole in the floor where most people stand that kind of gets cut out of the movie does it really that's interesting oh wait can i tell a juicy story please okay i'm gonna do this because i haven't told this story yet about that so we're gonna take a little sojourn into springsteen deliver me from nowhere world briefly and you can choose to cut it if you want

57:25to uh my scene is my one-on-one scene is with jeremy strong i have playing uh john who's playing john landau i have heard what everyone has heard that jeremy strong is stays in character and blah blah blah okay and so yes i'm a little scared of jeremy strong and i show up to the set and i'm also ready to fight i'm like if he fucks with me now if i have to work around this guy i'm ready to bash him i saw the film you play the the head of like columbia i had yes and uh whatever i think cbs records and

57:59and yes that that's correct and and and so i have this scene i've only have two scenes in the movie the second scene is me hearing the first version of springsteen's uh nebraska and and and and not understanding how it's marketable and you know why we're doing why we're going in this direction and landau jeremy strong is making the case okay for having to happen something that springs okay so show up on set jeremy strong nicest guy he's not in character he is in voice he's doing the affectation

58:37a big difference that is often the case when you hear stories about people staying in character it's not where they're like they're talking to you about craft services they're just holding on they're just holding on to the accent yes yes so he's doing that and so i'm in and he's very sweet and and wonderful and he's a great actor and i'm relieved and we shoot the scene and he says after the first take he says i wrote a monologue for this scene that i'd like to try on film now

59:07mind you springsteen is there landau is there yeah while we're filming scott cooper directing sure he does the monologue the hole in the floor the hole in the floor monologue is written by jeremy strong and it's long and i'm thinking not bad by any stretch of the imagination but i'm thinking selfishly i'm like well this scene just became a six minute scene sure or an eight minute scene and if they love this monologue yeah this is all that's going to be in the movie sure is me sitting

59:38there listening to this monologue and i'm thinking oh shit they cut and they come away and they go no way it was never said this monologue is no no springsteen's like no landau's like no cooper is like no jeremy strong god love him does not take no for an answer it does not let me try again right let me try again and so he does a paraphrased version of it on the next take and the next take and it's it's changing it's evolving is he shortening it uh no he's not

1:00:14shortening it it's just changing he's trying to find the the profundity in it um and and and they got it and we step off set while they set up the next shot and i hear jeremy strong speaking to scott cooper about it and all i hear really is him making his case for it and saying sean told me to fight for what i want as an actor pen i don't know interesting and i'm just standing there and i said william scott pretty funny and pretty funny and you know what jeremy strong if he was a true

1:00:51supposed asshole would have gotten upset he laughed his ass off lovely human being i i i interviewed him for that movie i was very charmed by him he's a very nice human being normal guy and um all that to say i don't think he's that then i see the trailer for the film and the trailer is that monologue but then they cut the monologue out of the man so wait so i'm like holy shit it's in the monologue that they didn't like made the movie and now i'm starting to go wait a second am i like how there's no way

1:01:24people are going to sit through an eight minute scene and if that's in the movie then i wonder what was cut yeah i reach out to scott cooper i say wow i can't believe you know that made the movie and he goes oh it's not in the movie and it's not the monologue from the trailer is not in that it is not yeah it's amazing i watched the whole movie waiting for the trailer run so it's a wonderful marketing thing that yeah yeah that jeremy wrote haphazardly conversation they had on set with like kind of sum something up so maybe we use it for the trailer yeah yeah um no i talked to

1:01:55him about for that movie and i said you know your whole goddamn process is so insane but was it weird that you had the guy and could go check with him yeah versus like half these movies where it's like you're playing some dead person there's no right and instead this is like he's fucking sitting over there and you can go is that better is that worse like and he was kind of like it was interesting i mean he wasn't i mean the raging bull was the same way la mata is there he is there he is there and it's like that i strikes me as something that could be difficult if he tries to interfere but i

1:02:28don't think he was there at all there's no way he he did because he's probably feeling lucky they're doing it right and also they do they make him in moments into a monster yes you know i don't think there's a human being on earth that would sit there and go yeah make it more monstrous i mean i think it's vital that you start with him as a monster like that i mean not just not the you know with the stake that yes where you're just like good god this guy's like at his you know peak or whatever almost and he's a piece of shit yeah and larry calls him an animal he called me a fucking

1:03:01you're an animal larry your mother you know he's an animal your mother's an animal he goes to the mother right away all that's a lot of money he loves springing up the mom yeah joe paschi just was a child actor on the new york stage had not been in a film from 1961 hey let's twist until 1976 is the death collector right which is the tv movie that they end up seeing right yeah he was worn out he'd given up he didn't really like the business of acting he likes acting as an art he says like you know but he was pretty sick of hates the hustle yeah he catches wind that they want him for this

1:03:35role he figured it was like a small role and was basically like give it to a working actor who wants it i'm running a restaurant in the bronx for some friends of mine i feel like joe pesci the story's like he's helping some friends of his out just helping a friend uh i was out of that place in hollywood where you're at everyone's mercy all the time you know he basically just you know he's sick of it then he meets marty and bob he saw working with them would be different it was all as you said because de niro had somehow seen the death collector on tape and was like this guy's

1:04:06interesting and there's a scene i guess in that movie where he runs a crap game and they liked his energy i haven't seen the death collector and you know they just like the way he talks um and that's how that happens kathy moriarty joe pesci had seen her picture in a club liked the look of her she'd never acted she was 19 which defies logic you watch this performance and you assume they cast a 30 year old who's playing young well she's got that great old person voice it's insane he's got

1:04:38that great a little she's got a little bit of smokiness in the voice she's got more than and she is stunningly beautiful yes in a classic film she's a beauty yes yes but they obviously needed someone who is kind of flinty and tough and like you know could stand up to everyone and i don't know how they get that out of a picture in a club but i guess they meet her and they get it they shoot the fight scenes for 10 weeks they shoot then they shoot dramatic scenes for 10 weeks then they take a four-month break everyone is paid yeah while de niro is on his eating tour they shoot the damn

1:05:09thing for 20 weeks 20 weeks insane then a four-month break and then he comes back and they do the rest of it which is not too much not too much okay but i mean right the old the the older lamada stuff is is not heavy running time right you know if you add it all up no it's like a half hour 15 minutes i think it's a half hour okay yeah it's the last half hour they when they just start doing some prep they he shoots some eight millimeter footage of bobby training in a gym and michael powell again scorsese's mentor is like the gloves wouldn't be red back then because he had like red boxing gloves

1:05:42and he's like you know back then gloves were basically like that kind of like dark it's maroon brown or black and marty is basically like we got to do this in black and white number one i want to differentiate from the rockies and all the other sort of boxing movies right now like i want to look different because those movies are all bright reds and blues and all that right at this point rocky is all american flag and number two and this is a nerdy scorsese reasons he's really upset that color stocks are fading like eastman film yes the colors like not lasting in terms of preservation and yeah

1:06:18and then beyond that he's just kind of like it'll look period it'll look like an old like daily news photo from the era right like it'll have that that great argument that is what the movie gets at right for me yeah and then in the book apparently it opens with jake lamada's first sentences when my memories come back to me i have the feeling that i'm watching an old film in black and white marty says i don't remember that but apparently that is in there can i say there's a haphazard result the out of it which is which is yes let's say you know yes there's an old feeling to it there

1:06:52we're telling a classic story a crude raw story there's no color it's black and white his life is black and white it's either that he's got it together and he's handling his life well or he's a complete another dark maniac right black dark maniac but there's also this haphazard effect on the comedy because we're seeing comedy clearly in you know deliberate comedic moments mixed in

1:07:23with violence it's the three stooges it's that pattern yes it softens it in a way yeah if it's in color it's almost too vivid if you see the blood and the blood is red it's almost too much i was gonna by accident in a way yeah it is it the black and white of it softens the comedy yeah if this movie were in color it would be talked about as one of the most violent movies of all that is very true yes yeah and obviously he'd already had that experience in taxi driver right now he wanted to do the ring scenes as if like the viewers are the fighter right yeah and i you know

Black-and-white visual style and sound design

1:08:12you're not cutting to the audience much like you never really see them going like get him or whatever like and they're pretty abstracted even in the background of shots as you said it's a lot of smoke and a lot of just black backdrops uh frank warner the foley guy sound effects guy used melons he would fire rifles into them and stuff like he did all kinds of weird sound effects uh obviously at some points they dropped the sound which is so scary and impressive and then they bring it back to really get you producer ben i'm realizing in another life you could have been a foley artist

1:08:43yeah it feels like some real ben shit interesting down and go what sounds like a punch shoot a rifle into a melon totally that's the way your brain works yeah it seems really fun to come up with those concepts yes an experiment and as i said everyone is different they didn't want to repeat sounds so they did like a massive massive number of takes and different techniques uh and then obviously also this is the reunion of marty and thelma schoonmaker uh who will edit all the rest of those films yes this was i think voted by the editor society she won the oscar she won the oscar

1:09:16but i think it was voted the best edited film of all time was there a sound editing oscar at this time let's take a look here there's a sound oscar i think there wasn't but let me see because you know remember they would sort of do like special best sound look it did go to the empire strikes back which does have pretty good sound yeah high bar there uh it was nominated difficulty yeah uh but the best sound was given to the empire strike back it raging bull was nominated for best it won two oscars one for editing and one for robert de niro robert de niro won for this yes

1:09:47he did okay for acting for acting in this acting it's obviously this is um although i think he wasn't there maybe for godfather i think it's the first time i think that's correct am i crazy to say that he hasn't won an academy award since that's correct he is two he has exactly two wow and i feel like it's been buzzing around is it time to finally give him a third since silver linings right silver linings and um fire moon he was nominated for both there's a long gap like he doesn't get nominated between cape fear and silver linings is that right i think that's right yeah i don't know what his third

1:10:23oscar would have been exactly i mean it should have been the intern have you seen the intern no he's phenomenal in the intern yeah he plays an intern um this is the ordinary people year obviously that's what wins best picture and director yeah wow what a year good lord yeah it beats obviously timothy hutton wins supporting actor over um pesci pesci and mary steenbergen wins best supporting actress for melvin and howard it's a good win a lovely performance yeah uh over kathy uh and best

1:10:53adapted screenplay wasn't even nominated which is somewhat shocking yeah well but if you think about it not really because the movie is heavily improvised there's no doubt is there even a script there were multiple scripts there are but it's not like they stuck to it yes there's no way and to me the most shocking win yeah the loss is the cinematography loss yeah um so uh there's yeah let's talk about the film there's two scenes in this movie one that i don't like and one that i absolutely love

1:11:24given to him okay the only scene i don't like in this movie because it's a little on the nose foreshadowing is them at you know on their first date mini golf they lose the ball she shoots it into some structure on this mini golf thing and they the ball doesn't come out and i felt like okay he's telling us that this guy's gonna lose everything that you know sometimes you take a shot and it doesn't end up doing anything right um okay so that felt that in retrospect watching and i was like okay

1:12:00this this scene is a little like the screenwriting 101 i'm uh you know and that's not to knock anything but it's not great alternately alternatively i don't know how to speak this the bit with the champagne glasses stacked yeah at the end yes representing balance yeah sure and scorsese at that point deep into this film now we're about an hour and 45 into the two hours yeah when we're past

1:12:31his career and he's now this is running the club so why is that scene in this film right it's him proving himself that he can balance this thing but scorsese is playing now with what he established like what is the he's saying to the audience you don't know what to feel do you yeah yes there is no balance you're watching our lead character balance this this thing excess he's balancing excess you can't balance how you feel i know you can't i'm scorsese i made a movie that it is confusing

1:13:02you yeah you don't know what to feel and if you feel disturbed maybe that's the only thing you feel because you just don't you're used to being told what to feel or assuming what you should be feeling and this movie is so cross genre there's 10 genres you don't know what to feel and so you're conflicted you're uncomfortable and honestly watching that balancing and his pride in it to me is the goriest

1:13:33moment of this movie a movie filled with blood the goriest moment is him doing this champagne balance and smiling and getting the congratulations from the few people that are gathered around that there's something so disturbing about that moment and so gross the employee comes up and says

The dark comedy and character dynamics

1:13:52your wife is here and yeah just couldn't be any more decisive right he's just like let me do this that's the real point of it for me is that what he's balancing is an overflowing amount of alcohol for nobody's right and it's like what is the victory here it's an incredibly tense scene because we've watched him fail to navigate the simplest human interactions throughout the movie and anytime this guy fucking sits down for dinner or talks to someone you're like is he gonna explode is

1:14:22he gonna and then you can feel the tension in the scene and in the audience of being like are the fucking glasses gonna fall over yeah is he gonna scream at someone he does the fake out he does the fake out and then you're so you're tense because you've spent your whole life with this guy it feels like just being on edge about what i'm like monster he can be and then he does it and you're like huh i feel triumphant and then you feel bad about that yeah you're like he did a good job and then it's just like just there's this kind of revulsion and there's this weird triumph to it

1:14:56that's what i love about this movie yeah the same with him in the prison cell where you feel bad for him yeah but then you're also just like he's a monster like you know and like he made out with a 14 year old at a club it's and uh yeah you know at his club as the owner as the and and when he says they're like what i mean she she his defense isn't even i didn't know she was right it's what does she look 14 to you and then say that and then there's that the side by side of her as she is and

1:15:27her high school photo or whatever yeah and you're just you're just like i'd want him locked up and then he's you know pummeling the wall and you're just like you know i well what is locking you know like what what satisfaction am i getting out of this i already knew he was like this broken animal to get i it's well also he won't let you look away he dissolves into banging his head against the cement wall saying dummy over and over again and then that turns into boxing practice like he resorts back to the one thing he knows which is to try to punch his way out of stuff

1:16:01this is the kind of movie you exit the theater and the person you're with goes what'd you think yeah and you're afraid to answer in an elaborate way of a thousand thoughts but you don't want to be wrong yeah and so you say it was great and that's all you say it's very well shot because whatever you say whatever you say says a lot about you yeah and that's what and so and that's exactly what he's doing he's putting the audience in such an awkward position how do you is he was he likable was he fun

1:16:34to follow was he funny was he was he is he a disgusting human being you know we all spend the majority of our lives negotiating with the reality of who we are and not ever accepting who we really really are and it isn't until the i'm a dummy dash my head that we see the pain of accepting who you really really are who jake finally accepts he is a dummy you're so stupid you're so stupid yeah you ruined everything yes you're a bum you know um it's it's and it's brutal to do that but

1:17:12it's also brutal to negotiate with the reality so there's the rock and the heart place you know what i mean i also think it we would be crazy not to talk about the style of comedy in this film can we do that please so we're now entering into this nuanced sort of circumstantial comedy there's not a single written joke in this movie there's just little things being said

1:17:42behavioral maybe improved behavioral maybe just and it's gutturally funny and a lot of it's also just rhythmic it's correct there's no clever witty banter to it yeah it's the opposite of witty banter yes and some of these lines i wrote down if you don't mind there's the he says when he throws the fight and uh billy fox i think or jimmy is it billy fox yeah let me look at it i think it's billy fox is the fighter he fights who does a bad job making it look like a real fight he can't

1:18:13tell because he's too embarrassed and he ends up getting suspended lamana gets suspended and he's looking at the paper and we've had this this this very funny uh physical bit where he uh he smacks pesci says smack me let me show you something just smack me and he smacks him and pesci boom it falls down yeah that's so hot he doesn't even do that he goes put your hands up right right there's not even a smack and lamana just puts his hands up and pesci falls straight down that's right yeah there's also in that scene he picks up the de niro picks up the paper and says look at this look how they make me

1:18:46look they make me look like a bum like a mama luke and pesci goes i googled pesci goes a what and he goes like the mama luke of the year it's just like you know there's no way they don't know while they're making it that that's funny and while and while they're editing these who knows what's not in the movie from all that improv there's no way it's not improvised like the mama luke of the year um that's one of my favorite then there is the uh there's the moment where he throws the fight he knows it looked bad he's crying his eyes

1:19:22out in stark contrast to the fight where he i believe he loses it's in the beginning he loses the first fight we see him in yes um he loses but like there's a somewhat moral victory correct you kind of had him yeah yeah i think it's that fighter maybe it's one of the sugar ray fights but he's sitting in the the whatever the dressing room or whatever it'd be afterwards and there's a real peace yeah he got what he needed out yeah it's like post coital for him yeah he's sitting there

1:19:55everybody else is kind of freaking out oh yeah that's right joe pesci's like they fucking robbed you right you know and he's sitting there going it's all right it's all right and he says he goes you know maybe i deserve it maybe i've done some bad things in my life all of a sudden you get oh there's some emotional intelligence there some awareness you know what a weird thing to say from this crude guy to say you know what maybe it's just karma you know but later there's the scene where he throws it and he's there's a small hands but later he's crying hysterically yeah and his

1:20:27trainer goes you know what don't fight ever again it's a free country don't fight ever again i that line has me scream and then his his trainer that old man yes starts to cry yeah but before you know what don't fight again it's a free country don't fight again i just think the small hands thing is so big because as you said like he loses the opening fight but he has inner peace because he feels like he proved what he needed to prove right and then after he wins what is the biggest fight of his career he cannot get over the fact that he never will be able to achieve

1:21:01what he wants to achieve that's right that physically he is incapable of actually getting i can't get the fight that proves that i'm the best and then you got pesci yes what is wrong with you why would you care about that that's crazy that's sick you know what's talking about you want to fight joe you'll never you're a heavyweight you're a middleweight he's a heavyweight yeah it's never going to happen right logically like who gives a shit you worry about shit it's the things you worry about that that's why he's sick bastard that's why you're fat fuck which it's so it's so good but pesci is let loose the the heavyweight thing is really telling yeah where

1:21:34like you can tell a modest like well but i wouldn't actually be the best unless i could fucking like knock down muhammad ali right and it's just like well you're not fucking capable of that you are literally not large it's irrelevant and like even if it'd be true you if you went to the weight of a heavyweight you would just be a ball yeah so like so get over it gets to at the end of the movie he never gets over it yeah he never gets up you know she beats sugar ray one time who is kind of the king of his division and that's something but you can tell like from there on and that's very early in the movie but there's no way he's gonna ever feel like he won't never feel

1:22:05exactly vindicated in his in his and everything falls apart right the the the the comic engine of this movie that really the movie hinges on the comedy or else it's it's it's too miserable to watch is the brother dynamic it's a brother comedy two very different brothers one's a handsome tall really physically fit beast animal and his you know wise cracking but sensible uh little pugnacious

1:22:35napoleon complex tiny brother you know they both have the same size hands but other than that there's nothing and there's a ton of comedy and even that becomes tragic yes you know he beats the shit out of his brother and then he tries years later to to mean he you know his brother won't hug him back yeah help him kiss me come on kiss me basically hug attack him yeah give me a kiss give me a kiss and he won't do it he never does it he gets in his car he says yeah i'll call you pesci does yeah you know you'll call me yeah i'll call you sure yeah yeah you know it's it's it's like everything goes to shit

1:23:09yeah scorsese's going you want me to be cruel i'm gonna take the funny stuff away now i'm gonna make the funny the stuff you were watching in the beginning that really you you were enjoying i'm gonna take that away i'm gonna ruin that for you you know there are certain films and certain filmmakers who have no problem being mean to an audience you know that you know let's let's stick it to them let's make them bleed and scorsese has to he you know it's the visceral reaction that he wants he's not trying to get anyone going again no erudite responses are necessary to a

1:23:46scorsese film right you're not he doesn't want people walking out analyzing the shit which is what we're kind of doing today true right yeah that's true this is not what he wants he wants you to come out in pain feel something feel something so visceral yeah panic uh you know fear you know just yeah embarrassment i think a lack of identity you don't want to admit who how you felt about the movie because you don't want to like think make people think you're crazy if you say i like la mata right or i relate to him or i sympathize he wants you to think he's got he's got

1:24:21you on the ropes yeah how's that how's that scorsese you got us on the you motherfucker i think there's another thing and it's because i love martin scorer no but it's what he does over and over and over again and he sparks this discourse among his viewers of like well i wasn't supposed to sympathize with that was i is this movie irresponsible does he sympathize with this and he's just like human behavior like like this happens all the time right and in the world of film yes very very few filmmakers attempt to tackle the thing that kubrick's all of kubrick's movies are

1:24:56about which is the fight between the consciousness uh of humanity and the subconscious nature of animal instinct and that that inherent battle you know you you really man that's a tough line in a film but if film is made for anything it's for that and that's a real uh ambitious thing to do very few filmmakers can pull it off this is if at this point if scorsese hasn't done it with taxi driver this is him and putting an exclamation point on i can do this as a filmmaker i can show you a film

1:25:34that will get to the base issue of humanity and very few filmmakers can do it completely in a full way where the where the message is clearly sent and yet there's mystery as to how well it's done if that makes sense in a way i think there's another massive thing going on does it too yes yeah i think the other massive thing going on here is scorsese i mean you were talking about the comedy of this he unlocks how much the comedy helps all of this go down because laughter is involuntary you can make

1:26:10people laugh at bad behavior without judging it's a thing that just happens that just happens and this is all involuntary totally there is no single like i said written or deliberate joke and hard to put your finger on why is this funny this is belly laugh stuff and new york new york has the same very repetitive recursive improv but it's not funny and it's it's actually just punishing and so you're sitting there off you're thinking i hate this guy because i don't like spending time with him there's nothing even entertaining about spending time with him versus if it's entertaining if you

1:26:43can locate what is both the comedic and dramatic motor of a scene and just wind that up it's it's what he said when he read the book there are scenes in this i see that there are scenes incidents setups in this that are interesting and if you can make those entertaining the audience is with you a long way until they start to intellectualize it the map that is established in the late 70s to be able to tell these sort of human frailty stories with comedy with you know part of that map

1:27:15is is annie hall okay woody has done this thing where he goes oh you want to see a movie about human frailty cast me as the lead i'm gonna cast myself as the lead done so by the time raging bull has come out audiences are used to seeing these films about fragile men who uh are crushed by ambition and burdened by their ability and so scorsese i think uses that zeitgeist to then give you something so horrifying

1:27:54lamada is is probably a much much more classically frightening monster movie monster than lamada was as a person yes right there's some um exaggeration there's some in who he is for the film for film's sake well also the density of the story when you're limiting it to the highlights you're seeing disproportionately his explosions and it's it's in my opinion one of the scariest performances i've ever seen when i was 21 especially seeing this for the first time de niro's performance scared the

1:28:32bejesus out of me there are times he truly goes dead-eyed he he gets so animalistic yeah that you go whoa i didn't think a human being was there's a psychotic nature to this performance i also think that like the 70s new hollywood has the rise of the anti-hero that really starts in the late 60s but this is a big shift into like this guy's not even an anti-hero right this is putting the guy you'd never put at the center of the picture right there yeah right right because it's you know something

1:29:02like midnight cowboy has like well ratso rizzo is on the side yeah and you have an innocent who doesn't quite understand what he's getting into at the center that balances it out that makes you feel less dirty from where you're identifying but this is the ratso rizzo movie sort of and again another reason they don't they can't make this today no no well they don't make movies you know pesci when he blew up after winning the academy award for the 90s good fellas yeah suddenly he's doing all

1:29:35you know a couple of the super yes remember uh my cousin vinnie yes you know those movies are great they are but like movies where suddenly hollywood is like what's a vehicle for you what's a vehicle right nowadays they don't do that no if you were to ask an executive hey is it a good marketing strategy to make a movie about a freaky person right they would be like we can't do it yeah yes but wouldn't an audience like to see something different different for different sake wouldn't they like to see something like this guy small watching this chubby yes uh strange and and the

1:30:09answer on you know to any layman who isn't a communications major straight out of college who's been who's failed upward into becoming a development executive at a studio is of course

De Niro encounters and public persona

1:30:21we want to see those the problem is those people who make the decisions now are like it's like sabermetrics yeah they just go uh analytically uh it wouldn't work you on sabermetrics you know that sabermetrics are ruining hollywood we are in the sabermetric period yes of hollywood three point oh whatever i do love hollywood 3.0 though take it all back hollywood 3.0 is better than ever so then sabermetrics ruin hollywood 2.0 and now we're building something new with 3.0 i hope so i hope so because it's disgusting to be honest i i think this is what the safeties do and i think

1:30:55of the scorsese influence that clearly is on their work this is the movie that is the greatest driver and just the sort of the safety thing of like how which can be uncomfortable and can kind of backfire of like how close can we get to a real person that's uncomfortable for you told sort of yeah now have either of you ever met or seen robert de niro i have nothing beyond a sort of a you know sort of press conference type scenario no i have uh and i have told my de niro story on too

1:31:27many podcasts okay but there's a second we will syndicate it had a somewhat awkward encounter i had a very very awkward and wild i kidnapped his kids for about 10 seconds yes i remember i have heard this story it's an unbelievable thing yes saddled with it that you know i kidnapped my hero's kids by accident yes uh he's got twins he's a twin dad like me it was the twins that i kidnapped by by accident by accident by accident there was no deliberate kidnapping it was actually their fault that they got kidnapped that's a but i'm not going to get into the story because anyone can look it up

1:32:02and you'll see that i'm not lying about that part of it yeah but the second story so three years ago i'm at um the sag awards for this oppenheimer year for oppenheimer yeah and de niro is there for killers of the flower moon right and i go to the bathroom the bathroom is back behind the curtains uh backstage and i go to the bathroom and standing in front of the men's room seemingly waiting for

1:32:33someone to come out is robert de niro and i see him and people are asking to take pictures with him and he's obliging i go in and i pee i'm in there a reasonable amount of time i come out he's still out there and i realize he's not waiting for anyone to come out of the bathroom and what has formed is essentially a line of fans lined up to take pictures with robert de niro as if he's like some sort of disney mascot yeah and he's happy to oblige now this is clearly not the de niro of 1980

1:33:05no there's no way this is the near of 1990 of 2000 this is someone who's accepted being the older states correct older de niro who loves it yeah who loves the praise and so i stand online wow i joined the line now i'd met him years prior i assume there's no way he remembers me and there wasn't i went up to him and i said hi mr i'm an actor too i'm an oppenheimer and i just want to say it's great to me he has no idea who i am uh and thankfully because you know i don't think he loved

1:33:39the story of me kidnapping his children and so so i i said do you mind if i i take a picture with you too and he said yes and i took a picture and he said cheese wow and then i found out that's what he does with every fan picture he he reflexively says cheese i mean you're so here's this guy right right so here's this guy who played jake lamotta right who played what's the name of the character in cape fear yeah oh my god this is a ridiculously complicated actor a person on screen where you're

1:34:15like the devil's here you know like yes and then and then he did play the devil of course and then it's cheese well there's a little bit of jake lamotta there with his dignity still intact absolutely but especially when he had such a hard pivot to comedy right when he did the comedies and then he did the sort of era of like showing up in weird kind of red boxy movies de niro doesn't get enough credit for being a great comedic actor with a great very very funny very funny actor but but you know midnight rum yeah he made himself more of a public figure he made himself the spokesperson of tribeca and started a festival and opened a bunch of restaurants politically charged

1:34:49and with his no wait a second like donald is he pro or anything david david has he come out on this pretty sure he's taking a wait and see approach was it beau is afraid there was some movie where he was doing it no it was megalopolis okay where like he did a q a with coppola uh-huh and maybe marty was there too i can't even remember but obviously he knows coppola yeah and like everyone who was there was like one minute and he was like and by the way trump is no good either and everyone's like he can't help himself he can't second which i love i love and i love the boomer msnbc you know

1:35:25grandpa that it feels very much like there's a personal issue too yes because this is a new york guy and because de niro kind of owns a lot of property in tribeca which is you know and i'm sure trump has his you know i'm there must have been something that happened in the past i just love when he's at that award show and he says fuck trump but he doesn't just say fuck trump he puts his arms up yes yeah he goes i'm strong here's what he does a hulk hogan here's what he said just imagine donald trump directing this film it'll never go anywhere where like i'm sure everyone was

1:35:58like i don't think anyone thought trump was in the running on directing megalopolis by the way you could say that about literally any movie you could say imagine trump directing a cinderella story and i'm like yeah it wouldn't be good the guy's not a good director he lacks the basic experience to direct a motion picture and also i love megalopolis it's a fascinating document that's not something where i was watching it be trained on rails thank god trump didn't wreck this one do you remember because it relates back to this movie when it was the early stages of first trump presidency de niro going

1:36:30fuck trump yeah and trump made a public statement about it maybe a tweet wash up robert de niro yes he's a washed up old chair bum low iq right low iq right right he's lost his mind and he said i think he made one too many boxing pictures his slam on him was oh he's punch drunk right he's made one too many boxing pictures he made one he made raging bull he made one second one which is grudge match i was about to say no he made grudge match never forget which is de niro versus stallone correct and one of trump's favorite movies yeah probably but also within the same term he gives stallone like

1:37:06the national medal of arms so he's definitely seen and stallone's made a couple oh he definitely watched grudge man you're not allowed to slam de niro saying too many boxing pictures and be like by the way here's my best friend i'm sorry are you saying this is where you draw the line i have decided and i'm using this episode to speak out against it i do not like donald trump for this one reason can i take a moment please steal a moment away and just say that i know a lot of amazing

1:37:45actors who would say that without that yes in a world of pacinos and hoffmans and nicholsons and duval and and and gina roland's yes and peter fox that they'd be nothing without robert de niro yeah that robert de niro laid so much groundwork for so much amazing work to come after what and he's still doing it i mean i don't know if you guys saw that um netflix series he did that a lot of people

1:38:16didn't watch unfortunately he plays the president did not watch zero day zero day amazing uh amazing performance again it's ridiculous it's another character it's another thing the guy he's basically playing joe biden right like an elder statesman president right a big crisis the guy is just the ideal thing and it's all like there's nothing that isn't derivative at this point it's it's one of those things it's like led zeppelin or something or wu-tang clan where just completely there's no way

1:38:51you can ever say that anything new wasn't influenced by that thing de niro is that i don't know if scorsese is that i think scorsese is a definitely a dynamic filmmaker and definitely one of the for me top three of all time but in terms of completely restructuring the art itself no crumbs left on the plate and that's from crumholz finishing and that's from crumholz from crumholz god damn it i hate that

1:39:23my name is david crumholz in this moment it's a great i just want to say god i love i just i'm get emotional yeah i'm so glad that robert de niro exists but to me and i think he wants this my guess is he doesn't want to exist he wants his characters to well it's the part of him that hates doing press correct and seems like his toenails are being pulled out one what an amazing unique thing that is yeah an artist that doesn't want to take credit for his art in a way and doesn't yeah it's so

1:39:59noble sort of like it came out of nowhere it's noble right the profundity of what he was able to achieve amongst a world of actors wow robert de niro good actor beyond good actor beyond on another level it's like this thing i read about wu-tang once and you know i love the wu-tang clan where it says there's wu-tang and then there's also hip-hop you know sure robert de niro is just its own singular thing actor thing i don't know how to do that i don't know if anyone knows how to be that how to

1:40:37live with that talent all we can all do as a collective especially as ethnic you know american actors i know is strive for that but there's no escaping you there's you'll never be better than robert de niro as an actor you will never be better pound for pound than robert de niro i also and that's okay i think it's like brando where especially other guys of his generation you see that everyone goes this is the new thing to strive for and i think de niro is a thing that people strive for and you can

1:41:13tell when people want to be de niro and of course there's no de niro without brando yeah but de niro just didn't just come out of nowhere but he doesn't feel iterative that's what's different and he blasts that style through the stratosphere yes so so he sees an opening oh shit brando's doing a more sort of nuanced weird subtle off-the-cuff thing that no one else is allowed to do i'm gonna that's going to shoot i'm gonna do that but take it to oh an infinite level that that again i don't there will

1:41:45never be another actor better than robert de niro there will be actors that are good as good and there are you know denzel and you know the list goes on and on there is no such thing as better and then you it speaks to what is acting right what is it is it's a matter of degrees between the worst porn actor no offense to porn i certainly don't want to fend off the pornography acting community and robert de niro that what is the tangible thing that makes de niro better than your worst porn actor

1:42:22well even as you said there is nothing tangible that this movie it's a matter of degrees is going to build to watching this guy give a bad performance night after night right that it's a level of genius for de niro to understand what a bad performance is yes and to be able to play it i i've seen you know actors play bad actors yeah no one does it as well as de niro no it's sick it's frightening in many ways de niro is maybe the most frightening person on earth that has ever lived are there

1:42:53specific in a way that i love and revere him of course no of course and i would want to hug him and be his friend are there other specific scenes we want to shout out hmm we're talking about the steak scene a little bit steak scene right at the start just to get a uh an impression of like this guy's been a piece of shit yes he's got a wife we're barely going to get to know that you know that he just clearly treats like garbage we're watching the end of his first era yeah he did sort of the beginning of his star his athlete stardom but he's already you know watching out of a marriage

1:43:24because he's an abusive piece of shit uh there's all this stuff with frank vincent who basically always plays a guy who's gonna like get the shit beat out of him in a scorsese movie well that's what's so great right and that's what's so great about goodfellas oh well yeah it's scorsese it's scorsese going i can do this twice and and no one's and it'll be better the second time yes amazing the there's the the pool uh you know when they're at the pool talking to the fence right yeah and talking about uh kathy moriarty and you see the sort of the seeds of his um what do you

1:44:02call it uh insecurity being planted right there yes where pesci's like well you know you got this you gotta it's a girl you gotta go on a couple days you gotta go on dates she's not just gonna sleep with you you know like you know and shot through the gate yes like he's in a cage right but lamada's like caging her lamada's like well so you tried yes what you're telling me is you try you try because he doesn't want to be like sloppy seconds or whatever about she didn't go she didn't go right and so then there's a triumph of he gets her yeah um her performance is just amazing

1:44:34because you're just like she's 19 that she's so young but that just like so immediately you understand like oh this is so much more than he can handle like you know like he just thought he was like getting some pretty young girl that's where i can't believe that she's actually 19 because the amount of like presence and command she has holding her own in these scenes against these guys she's probably scared shitless and she probably it it scared her into intimidated i should use the that's the word intimidated shitless and intimidated into just hanging on for dear life

1:45:05and not fucking a damn thing up and by the end of the movie she's playing 10 15 years older than she is right and you buy it totally buy it you it feels more like it's a 30 year old playing young at the beginning than it does like a teenager playing old at the end the contrast between the scene where early on where where he tells uh joey you know hit me punch me and joey you know beats the gives him a real good beating and even opens one of his cuts you know come on you that's not come on

1:45:39you can hit me harder what's wrong with you fuck a psycho want me to hit you hard boom boom boom and the scene later the did you fuck my wife scene where there's no physical violence yeah but it's the the emotional violence between two brothers you know you're sick but you know you sick guy you know how how dare where do you get balls big enough to ask me that where do you get balls big enough to ask me did i fuck your wife you know and and how hurt how much more painful it is to watch these two

1:46:11brothers give me the right answer hurt each other like that yeah yeah but the older brother hurt him you know i believe joey's indignity oh yeah at the questioning and i believe jake's like oh well he's not saying it yeah so it must be true yes and you know jake probably did hear things and is it true yeah did did vicky suck joey's dick like she says she does later and also talks about how how his dick is bigger than than jake's at this point he had a bigger dick than you too she knows that i'll upset him she knows it or did it is it true at this point how many years have a

1:46:46schwance well i think he did and de niro has a micro penis i don't think you get that pesky energy from nowhere uh i think yeah pesky's got a good hog at the at this point let's ask him how many years have passed since yes since the the frank vinson incident so you're like he's been holding on to this for like 10 years yeah and whatever oh i don't know if it's that in the movie yeah oh no it's more like two three years even still like still yeah no he's holding on to he must have heard

1:47:18something yes you know he just wants the truth out of his brother he just can't get over this idea five years i just five years okay there you go yeah if you were this angry to attack this guy this badly what other reason could possibly exist other than my wife at the center of it right their relationship the brothers you know collapses in 1950 that's when the fight is he loses that final fight to sugar ray in 51 you see didn't go down yes but you see pet you know joey at home watching it knowing like it's because i'm not there as part of this he's just kind of like he can't be

1:47:50controlled anymore he's just wants to be murdered in the ring essentially or at least to prove something by like taking this ungodly beating and not falling down right like the cuts you know to pesky watching it at home where he's just it's not i mean i don't even get the sense that he's like i'm failing my brother but he is kind of like i understand that a piece of it he's unbalanced now right yeah exactly there's also another scene toward the end where you know this is post-arrest post-jail time he's now doing stand-up as the opening act for a stripper that he's fucking he doesn't have his own club

1:48:24anymore in a tiny dive bar in new york city yes and a guy is in the crowd heckling him saying you're not funny you suck and we know that jay clamata as we know him would normally beat the fuck out of the guy yeah but he doesn't he just kind of agrees he's like yeah i do suck you're gonna try to make me come out of retirement yeah yeah yeah you're pissing his drink for me bartender in other words he's he's he's completely castrated well there's no part of him that is even fighting anymore i think beyond that you know he knows he physically can't do it anymore right but he chooses stand-up there's

1:48:59the earlier scene where he goes to the club and sees the performance and i think he recognizes something in that guy of like this is the closest thing to what i do you are fighting the audience right and the command that guy has when he's able to throw off all these street jokes but land them is a thing he envies and what is scorsese's follow-up for agent bull king of comedy well is there something in between or is it straight it's a good question no i believe it's comedy right yeah yeah but it is it is a thing i mean clearly right movie about a delusional comedian something in that

1:49:32sticks with he's evolving yeah yes there's a there's a there's absolutely it's like a part two almost right and that guy's much closer to being a successful comedian la mata just like it's back to what we're talking about the rhythm's all wrong you watch his stand-up and he's saying these jokes that are just a little bit off there's the king of comedy the spiritual sequel to raging bull i kind of it's got it's part of the trilogy with with taxidermy right like you know like just like de niro trying to plumb the depths of like a psychology we we are like yes transfixed by but

1:50:04terrified a guy obsessed with being a different type of guy but it could you know why though because he must be fascinated with de niro yes scorsese's probably fascinated with i guess you're trying to crack him a little bit trying to crack that man well you watch mean streets and it feels like watching a director fall in love with a star you know it feels as extreme as bogdanovich introducing

Supporting cast and production details

1:50:26as sybil shepherd or whatever there is those that introduction it's like what the fuck is this that i have found and i'm going to spend the rest of my life chasing this and studying this from all angles and of course de niro no doubt is aware that he seriously stepped in some shit yeah getting to work with martin scorsese no one understands him better than this guy and no one knows about him it's that he's just one of the greatest filmmakers period end of story he's got the right guy in his corner it's amazing the symbiosis the whole thing rare rare rare rare rare rare um i love them

1:51:03stitching the meat talking about rare and pesci timing how quick they can do the stitch up on the cut there's little details like that uh nicholas colisanto coach from cheers yes yes this is his last movie role and do we know what great actor is an extra in the film we looked this up right before john totoro he's in the first club scene yeah they sit down at the table and who's sitting there a very young john totoro that's his first credit it's yeah but he doesn't say a word yeah yeah um that's sort of like the lingering element of the mob stuff you know that's in the movie still but kind of

1:51:38sure tone down yeah because like that's a different story yeah like we're trying to get inside the brain of this man there's no doubt that the mob was had heavy influence on new york's boxing scene in the 40s and 50s but that's the least interesting thing going on that's what i'm saying like the movie is kind of like yeah right that's de grueger uh yeah michael botolucho's in this film it's like a soda jerk okay like you know like you know just funny to think about yeah guys who had tiny little roles um there's a lot of people in the movie like that they're sort of hanging around

1:52:12but like it it really is basically just the the three yeah like people like frank vincent frank vincent nicholas calls out like they're in and out for little bits right um his dad's in this movie charles scorsese this is the first for the first time it's like one of the monsters yes i mean and we talked about this in the scorsese shorts episode we did on patreon but italian american and american boy really i think teach him the rhythm that he wants to replicate in his dialogue yeah it's how to get improv to get the feeling of that sort of conversational pattern the back and forth

1:52:47and so much of his parents fighting in italian american is the feeling of yes the family fight scenes in this movie no and that's the other thing about this movie and like all great scorsese movies not all not all of them have this but it's it's indelibly italian it is american yes yes a question is la mata in the movie i thought at one point that he's the referee that hands he's definitely the belt over yes i think that's who he plays to de niro when de niro finally

1:53:17wins the championship there's a shot of the referee walking toward the camera and i feel like that is la mata but i might be wrong maybe i'm wrong i might be wrong i maybe la mata is not in the movie yeah i'm not seeing anything actually i don't know not sure interesting he was certainly there he said that de niro got so good at boxing that he was like i think that guy could have like held his own in the ring like he was impressed with him but obviously he's also you know he's being a schmoozer according to imdb la mata is not in this yeah i i couldn't find him either yeah he does have like a weird semi-resurgence of acting roles la mata yes he's in a 87 movie called hangman he's a

1:53:56detective and maniac cop in 88 he's in a movie called mob war so he does sort of and he has like credits leading up to this i can't believe you just said mob war why do you know mob war i am in mob you're in mob war no i'm kidding no okay you believed it though i did believe it's believable that i would believe it like as a nine-year-old i would be in a movie called it could have been possible yeah sure you could have been limit little jimmy down the street jimmy a little jimmy jim balumbo um we haven't mentioned jim balumbo a wild thing about this movie is that it's produced

1:54:30by erwin winkler who not only had produced new york new york yeah which was his biggest failure but also produced the rocky movies like he's he's willingly signing off to make an anti-rocky i think that was part of the appeal yeah it's it's bold of him though yes it is bold of him but i mean he's obviously part of the problem with new york new york is he's not someone who'd ever made a musical before and so as a producer they keep running like wildly over schedule and all this with this at least he knows like exactly how to do it but this was an expensive movie yes uh sure it

1:55:05cost 18 million dollars and it made like 25 it wasn't a success per se yeah on release we can talk about that just to tell you a couple other things you know when they're in the final edit they have like some deadline it was opening on friday and it's like sunday they gotta be done they have a print uh where they have to get it like over to the lab by midnight and marty doesn't like that there's this one scene where a minor character played by marty's father is ordering a drink ordering a cutty sark the the whiskey and marty's like you can't hear him saying it you can't fucking hear

1:55:41cutty sark and they're like too bad we're done yeah we gotta get that and he says i'm gonna take my name off the film and they're just like winkler apparently is just like yeah okay well you can take your name off the film but it's going to the lab yeah you know like they finally had to like calm him down and scorsese's like i realized i was finally i was near collapse like i basically had walking pneumonia it wasn't a drug thing anymore but the movie like just wiped me out and it comes out it's not really a hit but it is well received there are some holdouts can be vincent can be in

1:56:13the times kind of panned it pauline kale who's obviously tough always tough to predict she kind of panned it how what in the world how what this is oh my what what right with what righteousness can you pan raging bull oh my god that disgusts but as you said people didn't have a frame of reference for it it was who gives a shit and yes they did you know citizen kane baby yeah there's people didn't get citizen kane at the time god i hate oh my god um this is enraging knowing this

1:56:48enraging bull uh kinkley tries to shoot reagan the day before the oscars and the oscars get postponed well scorsese shows up to the oscars for this movie surrounded by bodyguards yeah i guess that's everyone so the security was just insane he dressed them up and just fancy tuxedos and acted like they were just his entourage but he was worried that he was going to get shot right thomas schoolmaker wins the only other oscar for editing and she says like it was marty's oscar

1:57:18i felt like i was winning for the fight sequences and those fight weekend sequences were designed by him you know what i mean like as much as i did a good job editing the film like i felt like i was shot for the trophy yes right and obviously like robert redford wins and ordinary people is an excellent movie and like was kind of an earthquake it's like this is the thing i try to tell people when they're like i can't believe like marty lost it was a much bigger hit it was a much bigger hit but it was also just like a new kind of movie in a way and it was talking about stuff that movies weren't really like starting to talk about yet it's kind of like upper middle class like

1:57:51psychological crisis and we know how much oscars just will not respect comedy sure and ordinary people is a flat straightforward drama yes and this movie is raging bull are the chances of it winning hurt by it being somewhat funny and it's also just a movie that everyone is not sure what to think about i also i think ordinary people is like a difficult film it is an emotionally like challenging film movie but it ends with catharsis it ends with the son telling the mom off and the

1:58:21audience doesn't leave feeling good but they leave feeling like some progress and knowing what they've been what they've been told to feel and feel it yes no this is subversive this is provocative yes i also just want to call out uh kathy moriorty most of the reviews are sort of like where the fuck did they find this person she gets an oscar nomination she follows this up with neighbors the john avilton belushi ackroyd movie true and then she gets in a really bad automobile accident and doesn't act for like another five years and it does kind of really throw her career out of whack she had

1:58:54like intensive back surgery i believe um but also she just said that there was this thing of like everyone discovers her goes like this is the great new ingenue immediately can you lose the accent but there was this real push of like how do we get rid of the thing that made you unique in the first place that's sad that's unfortunate she's still working to this day she owns uh i don't know if it's still open but she owned a very popular pizza mulberry street mulberry street pizza in beverly hills yeah uh i think four locations i think in south southern california so uh that's you

1:59:33know like the film i would say is pretty quickly though i think highly you know what i mean like it was the most nominated film that year yes and it's just kind of like maybe the financial thing is not you know obviously a movie like this pays long dividends when it becomes such an established classic and all that the next one king of comedy that's the one where i feel like marty again is starting to sweat and then like the next two movies he makes are both kind of like well i gotta make something after hours and uh and uh i need to get back and get great color money yes uh and obviously i love both those

2:00:06movies but like you know it's it's not until last temptation i feel like that marty is again making like his whatever like a more direct vision of his great uh the box office game this film griffin came out on november i get it right uh 14th okay 1980 uh first in new york city uh you know unlimited release but it is on the top 10 here okay at number 10 it must have opened at like the ziegfeld or something sure crazy person right it's making 185 000 number one at the box office

2:00:38it's not a film we've covered but we've covered um works uh one of the writers on this we've covered her directorial works okay so is it it's either a nancy or it's a nora is it heartburn nope is it a nancy yes i mean she wrote it is a private benjamin it's private benjamin there we go you got any private benjamin thoughts oh i haven't seen that movie in a very very long i haven't i haven't seen that movie it's fine it's very fun yeah i like what i like about it is that it's like you know it's kind of dark it's kind of all over the place like it's a wacky movie but it's like

2:01:11it's got a you know opens with a death firmness to it yeah uh it's a fascinating film it was a huge hit yeah uh and it got uh nancy three oscar nominations total uh and it's been number one i think for like two months it's a big hit runaway smash number two at the box office we just talked about best picture winner in 1980 ordinary ordinary people another big hit uh so you know we're in this like you know so far like we've got a comedy we've got a drama this is movies that have stood the test

2:01:42of time number three at the box office which was i would say a flop um a film from a very uh very good director a female director of very few obviously were out there back then um but this was kind of her like mainstream swing and it doesn't work it's a comedy and a drama it's i don't know if you know this movie i mean maybe you do it's a it's a female director who's the female is it penny marshall no she wasn't directing it's not like joan micklin silver it's not but it's sort of it's more in that realm it's someone who had made an indie film in 1978 that isn't a wonderful bloody whale

2:02:15bloody whale okay uh and this would make girlfriends in 78 and this is her this is her studio film yes from columbia okay the stars are michael douglas and jill clayberg ooh charles groden in a supporting role oh what's this movie called um it's got a little bit of an anonymous title after this she only makes tv movies because like it's kind of like well that didn't work and you're a lady so uh it's not starting over no it's not seems like old times i'm throwing out other movies that have posters with two smiling actors it's got a song that's sung by diana ross and it's named after the song

2:02:47huh uh what's it called it's called it's my turn there we go um but it was kind of bodied by critics it even rudely got like a golden raspberry nom in like the sort of early evil years of that organization one strike you're out on her career very much so yes it's like joe clayberg's like a divorcee maybe or she's like a professor and then she meets this like widowed dad who's played by michael douglas and they have a you know romance i think you know it's pretty low stakes in a way but i've never seen it i should see it number four at the box office it's one of your favorite films of

2:03:211980 it's one of my favorite i think it's your favorite film by this director we've covered it on the podcast the movie thief nope nope that was a good guess solid guess yeah uh it's a another best picture nominee of the year um and it's another kind of like smaller director making a more mainstream film smaller director making more you know indie director we've covered it on this podcast it's one of you said it's one of griffin's one of my favorites and i ranked it as their top film you think i think this is your favorite of his films whoa yes and he's obvious he's a totemic

2:03:55director he recently died recently died yes he recently died he did who's that like recently like last year oh last year last year and he's one of my guys uh no i would say not as much one of your guys maybe more one of my guys than your guys given that we covered him on the show i feel like he's more one of my guys but this is your favorite the biopic it's a biopic whoa yes um it's a true story biopic biopic it's a true story biopic in 1980 um it's not it's not star 80

2:04:34no no uh bob fossey didn't die last year no um why why am i blanking on this because it's sort of one people forget it was not made for eight oscars whoa so it tied raging bull for the most noms that year actually who's the star of this picture it's give it away john hurt

2:04:51john oh it's the elephant man elephant it is my favorite it is my favorite you're right uh nominated for eight oscars one none that way but it is no of course it is and yet it is of course it is uh so that's also i think it more of a hit in a way than that was yeah number five of the box office is a film from one of your favorite directors but i think it is not one of your favorites of his it's a sort of a more mainstream movie from him it's not popeye no because i love

2:05:22that movie it is a movie i love this is who's maybe your favorite director beyond robert altman beyond robert altman is it lumet no that's another choice obviously for you it's not verhoeven no this is like an obvious it's a pretty big guy for you you want to do him on the show i've worried it'll be a little samey um you've worried i think he's a great filmmaker as did martin scorsese you've worried that it would be samey i've wanted to do him what why am i blanking on these today

2:05:54give me something is it gilliam no no what's the genre of this movie it's a crime thriller okay yes it's got a sort of you know it's like him doing his version of a crime movie of a sort of like a popular oh this is gloria john cassavetes gloria there we go which is a film i just feel it's not like you don't like gloria no i love gloria i think but it's it's not your favorite of his it's not my favorite but it's up there okay i love gloria i mean it's a great movie yeah rules why did i think you didn't like it as much i have no idea okay all right yeah all right i'm wrong yeah

2:06:26yeah i love gloria do you not like any cassavetes movies um i've never seen um love streams i like love streams yeah i've never seen big trouble right i've never seen the one i still haven't seen right otherwise i think i like them all do you like cassavetes yeah yeah i mean uh yeah i i guess i feel like i want to say every time i've watched a cassavetes film i feel the this is weird to say

2:07:06but i feel the camera in a weird way if that makes sense the camera uh announce itself a little bit it kind of takes me out yeah um but i'm not wrong that gloria is like you know him being like it was him trying to play the studio game yeah like can i make you a more kind of straightforward like movie with a premise that you can kind of sell and and it did fairly well right fairly well and she got an oscar nomination and she fucking rocks in it yeah um but it still has plenty of people screaming while the camera is close to their faces so don't you worry the little boy won the razzie

2:07:40i believe which was really rude this is it's the first year of the razzies where they're like do we hate the shining yeah you know and then like later even the razzies are somewhat embarrassed by their first you know awards um number six at the box office so that was the five number six is uh fade to black okay which is a horror like comedy it's like a weird little indie movie uh where a cinephile starts to turn into like famous film characters to kill people that sounds i've never seen it it

2:08:10sounds very cool i've seen it like written up as a sort of like forgotten cult classic uh very popular in france and that's when you know a movie's normal of course uh number seven at the box office is the musical drama the idol maker oh yeah first taylor hackford film yes speaking of ray which you were in i'm yes correct ray sharky starring ray sharky and peter gallagher which uh derek c in france and ryan goslin kept threatening to remake somebody stop him i know it didn't happen i don't know anything about it except that it's sort of like about a singer like who becomes famous it's about

2:08:44it's about like a producer manager i think it's about the one who makes the idol maker i heard a story about a party at ray sharky's house in the early 80s in the hollywood hills in which a live pig was slaughtered ray sharky one of the darkest figures of the post new hollywood movement yeah yes uh i believe that story if you go to ray sharky's wikipedia page you'll believe any story about him um number uh eight at the box office is the stuntman the great peter oh yes movie richard

2:09:15wonderful film yep uh number nine is a movie i've never heard of called kill or be killed okay which is oh a south african martial arts film cool that was that was called karate olympiad retitled kill or be killed and released in 1980 in the united states wow wow never heard of it and number 10 at the box of his raging bull right okay there you go there we go that's the box office of the year a very a very interesting package of movies people had interesting movies to show you in 1980 things you know what i mean like warrior ordinary people elephant man are all in the top take your pick it's

2:09:48a good oscar year it's a potpourri yes yeah so that's raging bull uh david anything uh you want to plug plug start a podcast plug i mean plug oh jesus christ i hate to hear myself do this but i'm in a sports film it's my first sports film called mr irrelevant comes out christmas day a week after doomsday and dune three perfect perfect time lots of people be in theaters yes it's an alternative

2:10:18yes film to those big giant movies go see it i hear it's lovely i have yet to see and i hear it's it's it's wonderful testing through the roof did we mention that we mentioned it's testing through the roof it's testing through the roof so that's all i got uh that and um i'm playing a grateful dead show tomorrow night this won't air no this is gonna come out in like a month but i'm gonna plug it knowing yes that it will be months late you're playing i'm playing at the orange lantern in

2:10:52paramus new jersey playing grateful dead grateful dead with with a band called golden string fiddle okay by the time you hear this i will have played this show okay uh i just want to let people know i'm doing that's what i do with my life i play it at places called the orange lantern in paramus guitar uh no i play bongos if you must know really but i sing the only reason i play bongos is because all i did was sing you needed something and i was i was asked to yeah to pick up an

2:11:25instrument and the easiest thing was the bongos perfect yeah and an incredible bongo player i i believe it you have the intensity for i'm a real bongo boy yeah uh thank you for being here dude you guys are awesome and this one it really is an honor to be asked to do this particular we were floating names we're floating ideas and the second your name came up it felt kind of right i'm just glad like you've never asked me to do like a holocaust thing drama or some sort of like jewish theme thing no talmudic movies i really appreciate that yes i figured you guys have that covered to some do you

2:12:00feel like that's usually what you get asked to do i just don't know no i'm not saying that i just don't like the idea that i'm the go-to jew for that i have no opinion on on those films sure yeah oh tune in next week for the king of comedy with davros yes yes straight up the king of comedy himself love it um we're getting into it is rupert pumpkin funny sure our argument is almost he got close over on patreon a few days ago we released our episode on the last waltz

2:12:33hey we did it we're sorry it's on patreon this is the longest filmography we've ever covered what are you doing beyond uh the king of comedy you're doing last temptation we're doing everything you're doing everything we're doing the whole film that's why last waltz is on patreon because we're doing everything you're doing what is that the one with brad pitt uh the one brad pitt yeah you gotta do that one what's the one with brad pitt you said everything isn't it with brad pitt i don't think so you think he departed on india no seven years in tibet you're confusing seven years in kundun and seven years into two films that uh angered the

2:13:10chinese government that were released by the same time similar times right around yeah 97 98 yeah you know i've never seen seven years in tibet i haven't either that was a classic where people like wow the studio is really taking a risk with this and pitt's taking a risk and china's like condemning the film and it came out and everyone was like beautiful mountains you know i mean the mountains look fucking great in this thing uh and how about the film i mean like he climbed over all this mountains like they had nothing to say about should we watch it as per i'll check it out yeah wait who's the lead in seven years in tibet brad pitt oh it is brad pitt yeah yeah it's just that's

2:13:42not scorsese no scorsese did kundun seven years the lead of kundun a child a young chinese man i mean like some playing the uh well you see why it's an easy of course it would be funny if pitt was like i will be playing the dalai lama any questions pretty bold pretty bold um no he's playing like uh you know right like it was like he was like a mountaineer to climb deverest i think he was there for like six years eight years

2:14:12something like that uh thank you all for listening thank you for listening thank you for being here crummy thank you for having me it's a lovely this is a great there's a brain trust here that's what we call ourselves we call ourselves the brain trust uh please remember to rate review and subscribe and as always david yes you fuck my wife you fuck my wife look at me look at me look at me answer my question you fuck my wife you fuck my wife what kind of a question is that i

2:14:47i'm mad you asked the question where do you get both big 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 bardi 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 in the great american novel with additional music by alex mitchell artwork by joe bowen ollie moss and pat reynolds

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