Finding Dory with Zach Cherry

[MUSIC] An unforgettable podcast, she probably won't remember. So that was one of three taglines for this film. An unforgettable journey, she probably won't remember. That one's kind of clever. I don't know if you caught this. It's a subtle thread, but the character of Dory and finding Dory has memory issues. >> That's so true. >> Short-term memory loss. Second tagline, have you seen her? >> Yeah, that one I liked. I remember those are the teasers, because she'd be hiding in the post. >> She'd be really small and it would be like the man-to-ray migration or whatever. You'd see sort of the stingrays. Is that right? And then the third one was she just kept swimming. >> She just kept swimming. >> Now, I like this movie, but those three taglines show why this movie needed to happen, which was basically the Walt Disney company being like, if we just put out a poster with a picture of Dory and any of those three jokes that are just right there for the taking, it will make one billion dollars. All you need to do is be like, here's Dory again and she's still Dory. >> That is exactly what happened. >> Have you seen her? Great. She's gone missing. >> That's the thing she does. >> Sure, don't forgetable journey. She probably won't remember. >> Love it. I'm laughing and my heart is warm. >> She's a fucking fish. Come now, the Cedars seats. You can sit down in any of them, as long as you're going to be paid for your ticket. And we'll show you the fish. And then our business is done. >> Right. >> That's how Pixar should advertise. >> We fulfilled our end of the bargain. >> That's how sequels should- >> She's just, can you come? >> I'm really, I got other stuff to do. >> She's a fish. >> It was one of those movies where there was a lot of marketing, but it didn't feel like there was like audible hype or excitement for it. >> No, because like Monsters University had to be like, remember the Monsters, they went to school. I'm like, I guess they did. They're like, well, they did, okay? Listen to me, okay? And they did and it was called this. Monsters University was selling you a weirder take. >> Right. >> They had to be more of a conversational. >> Fine Dory was like, we got the Nemo. >> And everyone was like, got it? I'll circle it on my calendar. I won't talk about it until then. I'll show up, I'll give my money, I'll see. >> How far apart were Monsters one and two? >> Twelve years. >> Okay, so about the same amount. >> About the same. >> And the story is 14. >> 13, 13, 13. >> I was shocked, I was shocked in my memory of the timeline of Pixar. It was Finding Nemo and then Finding Dory, like two years later. >> Right. >> Like, I had no recollection that it was a full 13. >> You're sitting down with Finding Dory being like, it just found Nemo. >> Yes, I got to find her too. >> In my memory, that's how it took place. So then when I plugged in to do my part of the podcast, I was shocked to learn that there was a huge gap. I had no memory of that. >> Yeah, I mean first, we lost Nemo under the Bush administration. >> Yeah, W. >> And Dory was found under the Obama administration. >> And was it like, what was happening with Pixar at the time? >> Trump has not had to deal with Marlon yet. He is the first, why is Biden didn't either? >> Where's Dory? >> Yeah, but I was going to say, but Biden did have kind of a bit of a Dory brain. >> Biden kept asking for Dory and Nemo. >> Which one's lost? >> Well, maybe this inspired him. >> What were you going to ask? >> What was happening with Pixar at the time? >> Great question, I was so ready to answer it. >> Was it like, we need a big win? >> Yeah. >> For sure. >> That was, I do remember it feeling like, oh shit, they're actually doing their life. >> I'm going to correct Sims here. >> Coming back to Nemo. >> It wasn't, you need a big win. It was, guys, it's time to play ball. >> You're right, the internal politics, you're right. >> Totally. >> It was, we respect the artistic purity thing. >> But how wild we're going to fucking do something like that. >> Right, because I got a cash check. >> Yes, Toy Story 95, Toy Story 299. They don't make another sequel for 11 years. From 2009 to 2009, it's all original songs. >> Right, then 2010 is Toy Story 3. 2011 is Cars 2. >> That's true. >> 2013 is Monsters University. 2016 is Finding Dory. 2018 is Incredibles 2. >> You're forgetting in 2017. >> Is Cars 3. >> And then 2019 is Toy Story 4. >> That's right. >> That's right. >> Suddenly a lot of sequels. >> Yes, and it was just kind of the backlog of, we respect what you've done, but come on, guys. >> Right, right. >> Toy Story is right in the middle of this. >> Yes. >> Right, which is what, I remember when it came out, my reaction being like, I guess so. >> I did see it. >> This movie was a ginormous success. >> I remember being very excited. >> Memory hold just how huge it was. But I do think this was the start of the kind of Pixar fatigue of, is this really what we're doing now? You know, Toy Story 3 was beloved. Monsters University less so, but it had novelty to it. We haven't been sequelizing all of these. Cars had already kind of been written off as like. >> Cars as always. >> That's the junk buzzing. >> Yes, sure. >> This is the baby. >> It's sort of that almost a different, totally thing. >> But then the accumulation of it by the time you get to Finding Dory is really our interest. >> This stuff is so much better than Monsters University. >> Yeah, huge. Monsters University, I don't like. I know you do. >> I like it a lot. I defend it. >> How did the originals compare? >> Like was Nemo a much bigger hit than? >> Yes. Monsters University. >> Finding Nemo when it came out was the highest grossing animated film in history. It was the sixth highest grossing movie period, I believe. Something like that. It was in the top 10 of all time. >> It was a big hit. >> All for that little fish. >> Yeah, so it was crazy. >> It has crazy two whole things. >> But that was there. It was like Toy Story. A bug's life does about the same. Maybe a little less than the first Toy Story. Then Toy Story 2, huge jump up. Monsters Inc, huge jump up. Finding Nemo, ginormous jump up. And then they sort of hit a plateau. Incredibles is down a little bit. It's like Ratatouille up. And Wally are all in the like $200 to $300 million range. And then when they pull the Band-Aid off the sequel thing, the numbers go through the roof. It's humongous because there have been so much built up. You have successfully built these characters that have endured and are beloved. And have now been like activated across multiple generations. Kids are being raised on these who weren't even born when the first one came out. >> I will say I'm ready. I am ready for a whole lot more in the Finding Universe. >> Zach, they announced this week that Ellen DeGeneres, who of course has retired from public life and told us all a year ago that we were never going to see her again, has signed on to reprise the role of Dory in some sort of undefined short film. >> They are doing something new with Dory. >> Short film, I'm not. >> I'm not either. But it was just interesting. The announcement in and of itself doesn't feel that big. But it feels like it's more of a, is she coming back and is Dory going to do more? >> Yeah. >> This is her last film role. >> Currently. >> Yeah. >> This is the last time Ellen was able to. >> Who would get lost this time? >> The teacher should get lost. >> Everyone's ding, right? >> Yeah, he gets lost. >> When this came out, this cynical joke is out like, "Do you do finding Marlon to complete the trilogy?" And it's like there's no movie there. Nothing's being activated by him being lost or found. Because he also ostensibly is lost in what he's, maybe he's, maybe he's sunsetting a little bit. He's starting now. >> Oh, he Biden. >> Yep, it's all good Biden. >> He wants to talk about that. >> You got some juice there. >> Wait, the little ass turtle. >> The little turtle. >> Not squirt off about him. >> Isn't it? Well, the big one's crushed. >> Oh, so what is squirt? >> It's squirt. >> I think, yeah, totally. >> But I was more, I'm in the mood for a young Marlon prequel series. >> Sure. >> I want to see Nemo go on his own epic journey. >> Sure. >> You want to be like, here's what you want. You want young Marlon before he's this boring, henpecked family man. >> Before his trauma. >> Right, his trauma. >> Just so in his wildo, it's in the ocean. >> Yeah. >> And then, so that's prequel. And then on a separate track, you want Nemo flash forward to his 20s. >> So this is kind of a godfather too, sowing his wildoats in the ocean. >> You want two separate stories about those young fish fucking around. >> Marlon is Bilbo. >> Okay, okay. >> And finding Nemo is, finding Nemo and finding Dory are sort of Hobbit-esque. And then we need Nemo's Lord of the Rings. That's coming down the fight. He's Frodo. And then young Marlon is more sort of the lore and still more really in that type of stuff. >> And that's what I'm looking for. >> So then what's the hunt for Gollum of the Finding Universe? >> If we do Peter Jackson, do you want to do a Hobbit movie? >> I love all of this. >> This is the answer. >> Wow, I'm deep. >> This is the answer I was looking for. >> The Hobbit was like, yeah. >> One of the first like real books I ever read. >> Sure, I mean for me too, but the movies. >> Oh, I love the movies. >> Right, you exited satisfy. >> We get excited anytime we can identify a cherry pick on this podcast. >> Exactly. >> If there is a-- >> It's just Frodo, that was kind of like, hmm, because like if you go to chat GPT and you were like, predict a Zach Cherry Blink check episode. >> You can't always do it. >> Where it's like he's been on yesterday, the roller ball remake, I'm finding Dory. >> Yeah. >> Chat GPT's like, I don't know man, I need more information. >> And you'll swing in sack sometimes with a cold like, hey, if you ever did this director, I would want this. >> That's right. >> Of course, 17 to perish. >> Yes, it was my ultimate desire. You called your shot before March badness on man on fire. Love me and Tony Scott came close, came close. We'll do 'em someday. - But I'll make it. - Like a year ago maybe we threw to you and we were like, this is what we're thinking and you were like, I like the co-enbrothers but like respectfully none of these feel like they have to be my episode. You've always been very kind of like, I'm not gonna do it unless I feel the pull. - Yeah, well, except for this one. - That's what's weird. Is somehow we just all landed on, that sounds funny. - Well, do you know, do you know how I found out I was doing the Finding Dory episode? - How? - Our mutual friend Alice in Wilmore was here. - Oh sure. - Recording an episode and she goes, I saw you on the calendar. - Yeah, for Finding Dory. - Yes, I went, okay. - I guess that bit was real. - We'd say you like the year's schedule and you said, hmm, Finding Dory, I have been eager to defend my good friend, Ellen DeGeneres, on my, which was a joke. - Yes. - But then David and I looked at each other, stroked our chains and went, does sound like a good episode. - Yeah, yeah, we're gonna hold him to this. - And I will defend her to this day over her sitcom. Great sitcom. - I thought that was good. - Yeah, we were, we were talking about this in the Nemo episode of just like, Ellen was so fucking funny. - Oh, she's so funny. - No, she genuinely, there was a time when I was like, she's the funniest person on the planet. Like, I, you know, I sort of cycle through my, who's like doing it for me at the moment. And there was a time when I was like, I would watch her talk show and just everything she said would help me laugh. - It was impressive that she was still funny on the talk show. - Yeah, she's hilarious. - That there was, you know, she still was able to be kind of dry and cutting and then off camera. - Off camera occasionally, she had a bit of a sharp edge possible. - Have we discussed the second Ellen sitcom, "Yell and Show?" - We talked about it in the Nemo episode where she owns the bookstore. - No, that's the first Ellen show. - Ellen, she owns a bookstore. - Oh, the second Ellen show is the radio show? It's set in the wake. I don't see that. No, it's at the wake of the.com bubble bursting. This was a 2001 sitcom. You know, it's like really real. And her internet company goes bankrupt. She moves to her hometown. She's got a crazy mom played by Clara Sleachman. Scatterbrains sister played by Emily Rutherford. I love that actress, great actress. Meets an old prom date who thinks they can pick up where they left off, but she's gay. So he doesn't get that played by Jim Gaffigan. - This was the gay show. - This was the-- - And yes. - Martin Moll plays a befuddled teacher. Oh, yeah, that's really hard for Martin Moll. - The great Carrie Kenney on it as well. - Yeah. - And then she becomes a guidance counselor at high school. - Yes. - So it's like a very kind of like star-leading thing. - Co-created by Mitchell Witts. - Mitchell Witts have arrested by him. - And Carol Leifer, legendary comment writer. - Yeah, but like one of those things where I feel like they were like, we got A-list talent. - Yeah. - Ellen is now a fully realized like, you know, societies on board with like gay Ellen. Like there's no shock here anymore. And it aired and everyone was like, "No, thank you. "I had to cancel the piece." - This is not even.com boom of it all may have. - That is. - May have doomed it. - Who cares? - Not to psychoanalyze too much, but it was interesting when she was doing her episode of the Letterman Netflix show was before the toxic workplace stuff came out. But was the first time where I saw the mask kind of fall of, she's really angry. And maybe she did a Marin and I felt this as well. She has so much lingering anger of how much the industry threw her out while celebrating her bravery for coming out. And then all of the stuff she did after coming out was rejected. And then she has this incredible like Nemo comes out made 2003. The Ellen show premieres like that September or October. Like within the year 2003, she has completely rebounded to the height of American pop culture. And yet it feels like the longer that success extends and the bigger it gets, the more her resentment brews of what happened in that five year wilderness period. And it just like metastasized into this pit of like, - Wait, wait, wait, you see this short film? (laughing) It's called Dory's Settle Some Grudges. - Yeah, right. Dory's like, it's fine that I'm right. - Yeah, actually it's good. - Yeah. - She's just swimming back and forth really angrily. - But I like, I get the, the angle of, she was sort of pressured into coming out. There was this feeling of good for you. - Yeah, sure. - And then everyone was like, but by the way, we're done. - Yeah, you can go work anymore. - Right, right. - You're like, you're a gimmick now. I think Ellen's good. I'm pro Ellen. - I mean, she's brilliant. I think her performance in finding Nemo. - I don't think she's reminding Dory. - I don't know. - Is so good. - We, she's, we were making the case in the Nemo episode that she should have been nominated for Best Supporting Actress. - For the new one for sure. - And when you look at the lineup of who got in that year, it's almost absurd that she didn't get in. - Do, has anyone ever been nominated for a voice performance? - Never haven't. - She was bandied around at the time, 'cause I do feel like it was such a breakout thing what she was doing. - And the BAFTA Awards had nominated Eddie Murphy for Shrek, which is incredible because-- - Oh, he's so good in that. - He is? - The BAFTA Awards have historically had such a bad track record with black actors manifesting in some weird things that happen at this restaurant. - There have been no reason incidents. What are you talking about? - But like, the BAFTAs have never nominated Denzel Washington one time. - Is that really true? - Of course they often snub him, but I was like, really big never got him in there. - After the I swear thing, I was like, let me do a full ad about this. They literally never nominated Denzel. But then also you look through like, who are the black actors who get the Oscar Noms and how often do they miss the BAFTA Noms in this year? - Yeah, it's crazy. - It's telling. - And then it's wild that it's like the only one of the major groups, if you, you know, if you go-- - I know, but is BAFTA Academy, the only one of them to ever nominate a voiceover performance is BAFTA Eddie Murphy Shrek. - It's a great performance. - It is so like I salute them doing it. - Yeah. - But at the same time, is it insulting? Where they're like, we love to you as donkeys. - A little bit of it. - There's a little bit of like, is this backhanded? - It's a makeup nomination for Mushu. - This is true. - So true. - They didn't get him for Mushu. - Just he definitely would do the exact same thing, Max. We're gonna do a big Chinese epic BCO dragon in Mulan. - In Mulan. - Oh, sure. - 'Cause in the 90s post genie, it was basically like, they're better be a little guy. And he better be voiced by someone. - And it is genuinely another incredible performance. - It is. - He's got his Mushu. And the live action remake had no Mushu, right? Like no. - Correct. I think there's like a statue at one point. - Cool. - That they point at. It's like an exclusively Mushu moment. But there is no actual living representation of Mushu. But yes, you're right. It is funny that they were just like. - Might have been a mistake. - We wanna explore like Chinese folklore. Also, there is a dragon who just sounds like 80s Eddie Murphy. And he's called Mushu. - He's called Mushu. - Come on. - And the bit is that he's got like. - Oh boy. - A kind of inferiority complex. He's right. - He's like old driver. - Right, right, right. - But he also kind of finesses everyone in conversation. We're not talking about Mulan, but we might talk about Mushu some more. - Nobody from Mario was nominated for an Oscar. - You mean the recent Super Mario movie? - Yeah. - Who are you going for? Who's getting the trophy in your eyes? I've seen that movie. I'd say 15 to 20 times at this point. - We're talking the first one. - These Super Mario brothers. - I'm thinking of Galaxy. - Okay, Galaxy, it's not eligible yet. - Yes. - Yeah, okay, right, right, right. I mean, you never know who's getting the win for Galaxy. - I actually haven't seen it. - No, I've seen it. I've seen it with my daughter. She loved it, she gave everyone an Oscar. - If she knew what an Oscar was. - In our blankies, we always try to do a best voiceover category. - Yeah, sure. - If that existed at the Oscars, they would have nominated Jack Black for the first one. - Oh, yeah, he's great, right? - And it's not Chris Brown. - Yes, yes. - That would have been the lone nominee. - Who have been some of your nominees in the recent years in that category? - You know, like Ben Wish on Paddington. - It's a great example. - Well, they're really outstanding voice performance. - Yes. - Yeah, I'm trying to think. - I feel like Jake Johnson in "Spiderverse" was one we called out. - Yeah, now I want to look through the history. - You know, I love Holly Hunter in the Incredibles movie. - Yes. - Right, like that's a really advanced survival. - Honestly, there would be quite a few from both "Finding Nemo" and "Finding Nemo" and "Finding Nemo" is a great voice acting. And we're gonna talk about "Finding Dory." It does kind of the same thing as "Nemo" that I appreciate of like, we're not getting the "Super Mario" root of just like, who's famous for that? - Right. - Like we're gonna get character actors, sitcom actors, you know, "Tyberal is great in "Finding Dory." - She was the ultimate triumph of this movie for me. And I feel like this is rarely the case in a sequel. - Every new character introduced in this film is excellent. - Yeah. - There is no like, you're trying to make this happen. - Hank. - Yeah. - Where's he, Frank? - He's Hank. - You got it, you got it. He's Hank. - He's good. - But I think all the new characters are great, well-designed, funny, well-developed, well-casts. Don't feel like- - There's also not that many. - No, like, it's not bad. - It's overwhelming you with a bunch of new, yeah. - Which often is the thing. They're like, can we throw 20 new darts at the board and see which one of these cells merchandise? - Well, I have some issues with Gerald, but we'll get to him. - Gerald, and not Becky. - You're fine with Becky, but not Gerald. - Becky, I have less issues with the Gerald. - There was touchiness at that time. - Gerald and Becky, I have minor quibbles. - Okay. - Becky. - Becky's the bird with the bucket. - Oh, right. - And Gerald is the story. - Gerald's the dumbest. - Massive eyebrow. - Right, right. - This is blank check with Griffin and David. I'm Griffin. - I'm David. - It's a podcast about filmography. David's giving me a thumbs up directors who have massive success early on in their career, such as making "Finding Nemo" and are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion projects they want, such as Wally or John Carter. Sometimes those checks clear, see Wally, sometimes they bounce. - Shoot John Carter. - I did like John Carter. - Yeah, you would've been good on that. - I mean, it was a good ass. - Yeah, sometimes a filmmaker is holding such an incredible get out of movie jail free car. - Yes. - That they can immediately recover from the most notorious flop of-- - Right. - The decade, the century-- - Disney calls him and say, "Hey, by the way, John Carter's gonna lose $200 million." And he's like, "I think I just found door." (laughing) - We'll see you tomorrow, baby. - You can do anything you want. - I can cover that. - I'm good for it. - Yeah. - Oh my gosh. - It's fascinating. - I think the best voice performance in Super Mario Galaxy is Benny Safty as Bowser Jr. That's the one where I was kind of like, "Well, he's doing something and this is interesting." Like, most everyone else I was kind of like, you're kind of doing what you're supposed to do. - I truly day has more to do in a second one and I do-- - I like him and I'm affected. - I think he's good. - But yeah, the first one spends 90% movie in a fucking cage. - He's in the cage. - That's crazy. - He's finding Luigi. - The first movie is Finding Luigi. He goes missing. - All I'll tell you is I told you I think before, my daughter was very locked into Luigi both times because she really likes it. - He's scared. - He's scared. - Like she identifies exactly what-- - Is your daughter easily scared? - I mean, like, I'm not saying too much about me. - Maybe. - I'm just feeling like there's not a lot in life right now. - We've got children, I was pretty scared. - I mean, she's scared of dogs, but that's such a classic little kid thing. I'm trying to think like when else she gets scared. I mean, I'm gonna say yes because like the Halloween cat in the Disney+ show Super Kitty's scared her. - Yeah. - And I'm seeing the Halloween cat and he ain't scared. He's mischievous at best. And she's like, in bed at night being like, the Halloween cat's gonna get me. And I'm like, the Halloween cat steals candy. Like he doesn't even scare anyone. - But mischievous can be the scariest thing at all. - This is true. - I think to a kid, it's a little bit like the kind of like interrupting order. - And they're like sneaking around. Like you're not supposed to. - Yeah, I don't know. - And that's my can. - The rule of law. - I don't take this as premise on a lack of mischief. - Yeah, she really, she's just not like that Halloween cat. - I just always, especially with talking about like, children's media or things that are designed to play for children as partially. - But I saw some scary shit when I was a kid. - Like, 'cause no one was really watching the store. - I find it. - I find it. - And like, it won't scare you, right? - People can be algorithmic about these things and design these things in a lab, right? And the Mario movies are a perfect example of that. But sometimes you just hit on something where you're like, this speaks to kids. - Yes, right. - You have developed this character correctly, cast the right person, the right design and kids see this and they just go like, that's me, I get it. I'm gonna ride with this forever. - Dory. - Yeah, you have said, David, that you have watched this movie many, many more times than finding Nemo at this point, 'cause your daughter is hyper fixated on baby Dory. - Yeah, and I just feel like also just generally, it's like this movie has more Dory. - Yeah. - Dory is the best, so thus it's better. - And makes Dory the vulnerable character in a way that fascinatingly, I think kids ended up relating to harder than Nemo, the literal child in the first one. - Nemo is fine, 'cause Nemo is very confident. Like, you know, it's like Nemo is gonna be all right. And like, Marlon, I mean, I like Marlon. - Yeah, you know, like Marlon. - You know, good job, Marlon. - Well, I don't know if I like Marlon. - Yeah, right. Even though I'm running around me like, what's up with Marlon? Right, you're, maybe that's why you don't like it. - This was the first time, 'cause I was like a mirror. - I watched Finding Nemo to prepare, and it was the first time that I identified with Marlon straight down the mirror and had some hard talks with my son. - It's tough, yeah. - And I did also, I did also watch Finding Forrester to complete the trilogy. - Oh, perfect. - Thank you, thank you. - And I am not joking, I did do that. Or guess what is that, Sherry? It's a cherry pick. Finding Dory, the 2016. It doesn't win Best Animated Film. - No. - What did? - I'll find out. - In 2016, this is the Zootopia year, I believe. - My question was, is it even getting nominated for an Oscar? - It does. - Doesn't let me explain it. - Well, on the freaking Eminem's commercial. - Hey, well, actually, that sounds pretty hot. - No, no Oscar nom. - That's not what the Oscar is. - Wow, actually, no sequels. - They don't like sequels. - Yeah. - I can tell you, let's find out what the best animated film, nominees were in what, this is 2016. - I guess. - Beavis and butthead. - Okay, wait, 2016. - Okay, I will say, it's a pretty strong feel. There's a reason this did not make it. - Okay, so Zootopia wins. - Yes, correct. - Tell me the distributors at the other four. - One of them is Leica. - So that would be Kubo. - It's an excellent film. - Should've won. - Good movie. - But Zootopia won. - Zootopia's good. - I mean, these are good movies. - Still kind of a crime that Leica has not won. - Yeah, never had. - An Oscar, yeah. - It should've won Reica's Coraline. - Is the up year. - Yeah, Coraline is the one that should've been handed that one. - Yeah. - And then Pear Paranorma would've been a fine winner. - It was a great break. - That's what's embarrassing. - I was really hoping. - Reica Ralph's in there too. - Reica Ralph going in was the presumed winner. And it was sort of shocking. - Reica Ralph was the same year as Finding Dory. - No, it's the same year's break. - All right, we're jumping all over again, we got it. It was shocking, but it was also an indication back then that they were like, I don't know, isn't the Pixar thing the best one? - Which is why it's interesting that so quickly, they switched to, we're willing to snub Pixar if they're gonna do this sequel shit. - Yeah, you fuck with Ralph? - Oh, I love Reica Ralph. - He's such a great guy. - The first one, he's awesome. - Yeah. - He's like the only one. - But you were angry that he broke the internet because you were trying to use it that day. - Yeah, yeah. - I had to submit my taxes. - The only, and it takes one minute to the fuck it. - Ralph, come on, Ralph. Could you have checked in with me before? - Yeah. - The only Pixar sequel that is nominated in between the two Toy Story sequels. You know, three and four, which they, you know. - Yeah. - Gave the trophy to. - Incredibles too? - Is Incredibles too. - Yeah. - Everything else, they were like, no thank you. - And that lose it's the Spider-Verse, right? - Yeah. - Yeah, which is fine. - Yeah. Tokyo, Kubo, another giant Disney animated film. - It's a second. - Which is this is also why Finding Dory didn't get it. And it's like there's already two big Disney movies. - It was big hero of the same year. - No, no. Come on, 2016. I saw this movie right after Trump was elected. - You saw this movie right after Trump. Oh, it's Moana. - Moana. - Moana. - And then there's two indie movies. Like two-- - Are they both g kids? - One is g kids, I think. One is sort of ghibli-esque, but wasn't, I don't like actually was ghibli. - Right, it was a no, it was a production, co-production with Ghibli and some French guys. It's watery too. - It's watery. - It's watery. - It's watery. - He says it's a French watery. - It's kind of not ghibli, but it's kind of half ghibli. It's called The Red Turtle. - Oh yeah. - It's very pretty. - And then-- - It's been heard of that. - Mac Rita, Mac and Rita, that was my guess. - Oh, the other, no, no, no. - It's not that. - The other one is a French stop motion film that is really great. - No, my life is a zucchini, which rules. - One of the great titles. - And my life is a zucchini. - And fucking written by-- - Do it-- - Silly and Shum. - Yeah. - Mac and Rita's the fucking Netflix show. What's the thing I'm thinking of, or no, it was a Dianne Keaton. - Oh god, he's spiraling here. - There was that-- - Well, there's Ernest and Sala Steeves. - Yes, that's French lovely Anky and Grace, he's the Netflix show. - That's your network show. - But then there is something called Mac and Rita with Dianne Keaton. I'm thinking of the one that was kind of sexy. - Oh, I know what you're talking about. Let me find. - I'd say it was Shiko and Rita. - Shiko and Rita. - It was like, this is too much. - Spanish, you know what I'm making. - I can't see that much. - That was the tagline. - They dance pretty close. - I do think that in a, maybe a slightly less packed year, it might have gotten the norm, but that's a big, you know, there's already these two giant things in Moana and Zootopia. So they're kind of like, yeah, we don't need Dory. I might nominate Dory, did I nominate Dory? I like this movie. - I like this film a lot. - But I've grown to like it. When I saw it in theaters, when it came out, it's not like I hated it or anything, but I was just like, that's exactly what I thought was gonna be. It was totally fine. I don't remember it walking out the theater. - And also your daughter's experience I've found is not unique. A lot of our friends, your age, which children, your daughter's age are like, yeah, my kid watches Dory way more than me. - Yeah. - Dory rocks. - And now this movie. - It was the second highest grossing film of its year, but domestically, it was beaten only by Rogue One. It made $486 million domestic. - It made a billion dollars worldwide, it was. - It made a full billion, a giant hit. - Yeah, big hit. - And like that's great, but Moana, which was sort of like slightly an underperformer at the time. - Yeah. - Has outgained it in legacies by lot. - That's a fascinating one where it only seemed like an underperformer because Frozen had been so humongous. - And Zootope and songs help your legacy. - They do, they do because they exist outside of actually watching the film. - You can put them in the parks, you can put them on ice, you can put them in whatever, right? - Yeah, put them on a hit clip. - Really good looking live-action versions of these films. - You can just look the same. - David, let me rephrase what you're trying to get at the idea. You could perfect them. You could finally get them right. - Like, what if Disney just was like just tomorrow, the guy just was like, hey, by the way, we know that looks bad, we're not gonna release it. Sorry. - Or flip side, what if they said James Cameron is doing a live-action finding Dory? - Oh, that'd be great. - And he's doing it all for real. - Yeah. - Right, it's all real. - He put the computers down. - He taught a fish how to act. - Yeah. - We don't know how he did it. - Yelling. - He just keeps yelling at this fish. Now she's-- - Fuckin' blue tank. - Now she's good. - Don't you know who I am? - Right. So did you see this film in theaters that I have no specific memory of it but I'm positive I did because I was all in on Dory I love Dory rolls June 2060 I seem to be living in New York. I saw this at the now dead cineopolis Chelsea or whatever was called back then. The bow tie Chelsea, the clear view Chelsea, you know that theater which was the UCB. It was the UCB. I used to go there all the time. Yeah. It was great. You could live there. That was one of those places where you're like no one's kicking me out if I never leave this place. Well, it's also incredible about it. It was like one employee. It felt like a ghost town. It was like five floors. There was only one employee. There were never many people there and then they did a really expensive restaurant and it was so nice and still no one was there but it stayed open for another four years. There was a nice little burger shop underneath it. Yes, there was. I like that place. And there was the last remaining Boston market in the United States directly across the street. Right. Everything was happening on 23rd between 7th and 8th. I'm just also looking at the domestic box office. The top 10. Rogue one comes out in December. Finding Dory June, Captain America Civil War was notably a spring release, Secret Life of Pets. I think July. The book, Spring Release, Deadpool, February, Zootopia, March or April, Batman versus Superman, March. I can't believe Deadpool didn't make an appearance in finding Dory. Suicide Squad August, I think November, December. Like Dory was so far in a way, the highest grossing film of the summer because every other film in the top 10 basically saved for Secret Life of Pets came out spring or fall. So what was the summer at 2016? Dory, I'm sick like Dory, Dory was nothing else. Dory ran the table so fucking hard. I mean, let me see. It was, Suicide Squad ended it. And I mean, yeah, ended it. X-Men Apocalypse, Neighbors 2, The Angry Birds Movie. I'm sorry, Captain America Civil War was the first week of May. Okay. So it was kicked off. Alice through the looking glass, Ninja Turtles out of the shadows, pop star, which rules up a bomb, conjuring to now you see me to warcraft, central intelligence, independence, they resurgence. That one's so bad. Like this is a rough line. The legend of Tarzan, the BFG. Like these are kind of historic non-starter franchise movies. Lady Ghostbusters, Star Trek Beyond, which is great, but bombed. I'm underperforming. The final ice age, the only one that didn't make 100 million domestic, I believe, Jason born. And then the summer ends with Suicide Squad and fucking Ben-Hur. Those are also bad. Right. So Dory was like so far in a way, the queen of the summer. So where'd you see it? Big man. That's a good question. I'm pretty sure I saw it at AMC Lincoln Square. I saw it with my friend Scott Craderman, who's one of my oldest friends in a regular movie buddy of mine. And I have a very distinct memory of sitting there the first 20 minutes, like white knuckling the arm rest and being like, this is bad. And I have this experience every time I watch it. You were more invested in the Pixar movies being good. I feel like I was kind of at this age where I was kind of like, I don't really care anymore. If they're bad, which I sort of assume, it's like whatever. I was really. I wanted incredible two to be good, because I like Brad Burr, but like generally I would be kind of like, yeah, I felt invested in the incitification of Pixar, and I was trying to think of analogy, because it wasn't like it went from being like great to being terrible, and it was kind of like the expansion of Shake Shack, where you're like, this thing felt really special, and how are they maintaining this quality, and how does it feel different? And then it grew and you're like, it's still better than basically everything else. But what are we losing, and I'm worried about it falling further? And I think like the first 20 minutes of this movie are pretty aggressively bad and feel a little checklasty, like what do we need to do to calm you down? I assume, do you mean like post babydory, because babydory is just right at the time. Do you mean the kind of like, let's reset with like where to Marlin and Nemo live? We're going to bring Mr. Ray back, and we're going to bring the Turtles back. Like it feels like speedrunning the greatest hits from the first movie, and introducing this conflict of like, feel like alts from the first movie, it's like, is every character forgetting, or pretending this didn't already happen. And this conflict of like Marlin's like, oh, Dory, she's like, she's kind of a pain. She's kind of like tough to have around or whatever that. Now, when you saw it, had you recently watched finding, like was finding Nemo in your regular rotation? Yes. Yes. Because I don't think it was for me. And so this time when I watched them back to back, you're like, that stuff did put me off. It's crazy how much kind of like double beat you. I was like, oh, we're just, we're just kind of like running through like, hey, there's the Turtles, and there's this guy, and there's this guy. It felt like the worst version of what I was fearing this movie would be, which is just like key drunkling. Can we just do it again? And will you guys be happy? But I think when I saw it, I had probably not seen finding Nemo since it came out. Like I wasn't rewatching it. So I think I was just like, hey, my friends are back. I think everything from when it gets to the Marine X Institute is basically uniformly very good. I think you like it. I can't get there. It works. Plot kick. But I have rarely had that experience of sitting there and for like 15 to 20 consecutive minutes being like bad, bad, bad, bad, fuck, I'm spiraling. And then feel the movie just kind of like swerve, pull out a victory, and stay good. But then I remember defending it at the time. Sure. It did feel like even though it was a beer hit, you're there to defend. It was immediately greeted with this sort of like, what are they doing here? Kind of thing. Can we zoom out? Because I know you were asking these questions, Zach, but some of the things going on here. Okay. Sure. We'll get going. Go ahead, specific. You go right ahead. This is all you, baby. So I think we're restating in all of these episodes. There is a one movie contract for Pixar to produce Toy Story, which Disney will distribute and retain the rights of the characters forever. That movie is such a hit that Disney swings back around and says we want to make a five picture deal. You are an autonomous studio. You are producing films for us. We belong those characters in perpetuity. They agree to five original films. They also demand, can you please do Toy Story 2? They said we're a small company. We only have the energy to do one movie or trying to scale up to two at a time. So they establish a B team of younger guys to take on Toy Story 2, which is meant to be direct to video because that's the Return to Jafar model. You didn't put animated sequels in theaters. They devalued the brand. There was this real belief in the sanctity of the theatrical Disney movies need to mean something and the sequels being on video help kind of keep them feeling clean of the legacy of the originals. Toy Story 2 is not working. Lasseter, Stanton, the A team, when they're done with a bug's life, come on and say, will you let us take this over and fix it? We don't think this is up to our standards. We don't want it being released and if you let us take it on and push it back, we will make it good enough to put in theaters. They do that. It's a massive hit. It wins, best picture, musical or comedy at the Golden Globes, an institution whose awards mean a lot. And they go great. That was our third film on the contract and Eisner goes, no, no, no, no, no. That was not the deal. The deal was five original movies. Toy Story 2 didn't count. You still owe me three more. This starts the bad blood between Pixar and Disney. They do Monstersync, Finding Nemo, Incredibles, Cars. And by the time cars is coming out, relationships are beyond freight. And they are self-producing, Ratatouille, Wally, and up, completely self-financed and they will just sell them to the highest bidder of whoever they go to. Every studio and town is bidding on them. All of this stuff super relevant how this movie comes about. Attenberg gets pushed out. Iger comes in. Iger's first move is whatever it takes to get Pixar. He gets them. They commit to releasing those three films. But then he also cracks his knuckles and goes, but guys, can we start talking about sequels? So Disney has now spent like $6 billion to buy Pixar. Stanton has been placed as the VP of creative. He doesn't want to have to be a businessman or an administrative guy, but they're basically like, you're the king of story here. You oversee all of this. Lots of Hugg and John Lasseter, the founder of Pixar Animation, at least, is suddenly placed into three positions simultaneously. He is the head of Pixar, he is the head of Disney feature animation, and he is the head of imaginary. So now Lasseter is wearing three hats, three offices, three times as many opportunities to hug people. Two more hats than I've ever worn. It's impressive. His priority starts to become Disney animations really bad. I have to fix this. And what were they putting out at the time? So they had been putting out like chicken little. He comes on halfway through production on Meet the Robinsons and tries to sort of course correct that, tries to course correct Bolt. The first one that's sort of like this worked, he was able to kind of help oversee rebuilding it from the beginning was Tangled. Bolt made me cry. Tangled's a big hit. And then it starts the run of like Tangled frozen, mollion, Octetopia, wreck it Ralph. All these things we're saying, we're suddenly it's like, is Disney the rising studio? Right. and Pixar these days. - He's putting more of his energy and attention there because they had been the problem place and Pixar seemed to have it all figured out that the other part of it is they're saying to Pixar, guys, we just spent a lot of fucking money. And we know that the sequels were a non-starter conversation because of the bad blood over the Toy Story 2 thing for so long, but now there's so much fucking money on the table if we bring any of these characters back. And there's always this kind of polite, like, we leave it to you, the story tellers. We won't do it and we won't force it until you tell us you have an idea, but we'd really like you to try to come up with an idea. And so that energy is like behind them. Toy Story 3, they were ready to do. They had wanted to do and it was being held up by the bad blood. But with that in motion, then they're sort of like, can we revisit the monster's conversation? Can we revisit the incredible conversation? And we revisit the Dory conversation. I feel like this is where you get to the sort of creative incubation of the idea. - Sure. - When it came out, Stan was like, no. - Right, right. - We're not a sequel studio. That's not what we believe. - They're always fucking going on about that. - They're liars. - They weren't for a while. - Well, their third movie was a sequel. - But I just explained this whole thing. I mean, this is all the, I understand, but, you know, they've always had a little bit of sequel. - Toy stories feel different to me as well. - They feel like a whole separate thing. - They do. And that's because, right, because the third Pixar movie was Toy Story 2, like it does kind of set it apart. - Yeah. - So, Stanton said he was always no sequel. - Like basically, oh. - And puts it that he said he had to get on board from a VP stand point. Not a director stand. - Exactly. - It's sort of like, is this good for the company? - Right. Don't we want to keep Pixar afloat? - I mean, this is the classic kind of insuredification thing of you're the most successful movie studio in history. You get bought for like a tremendous amount of money and immediately they're like, but don't you have to think about what's good for business? And you're like, what they've been doing has been good for business. But they start getting in their ear with this logic of, well, if you make the sequels that helps pay for the originals. Now, the script for Finding Nemo 2, which was written back when Disney was like, - Yes. - Fuck you, we'll just make it, what is it? - They started a company called Circle Seven. - Circle Seven. It's like, we will make Toy Story 3, Monsters Think 2, Lost in Scaradise. - Yes. - Well, to no more. And Finding Nemo 2, we're gonna make them cheaper than Pixar makes. - This was a Katzenberg negotiation move. - He said, they're so protective of their legacy that I will develop my own animations to the ones who are allowed to sequelize. - And make them, and the only way they can stop me is if they decide to make them themselves. And this created so much bad blood, but obviously the second Iger takes over, he says, shut them fucking down. - But I wanna tell you about this script, which is written by Laurie Craig, the writer of Ella Enchanted. - Okay. - Now, is everyone sitting there? - Yeah. - Marlon's Lost. - Hold on. - That's how old is he. - The hackery of them not even landing on Dory should get lost first. - Truly, it is so funny that it's just like, okay, Nemo and Marlon are living together. They're feeling they're everything's good. Huh, why don't we switch it up? Marlon's Lost, call Finding Marlon basically, Nemo's gonna find Marlon. Dory gets her memory back by hitting her head. Nemo is given a long lost brother. - Great. - I guess so there can be some sort of tension of like, oh, you're my brother. - All of these Circle Seven movies sounded horrendous. - There's some dolphins, some polar bears. - That sounds good. - Zach, do you guys think they'd be voiced by somebody we haven't seen? - Quiet, a quiet, an accent. - I know. - Absolutely. It is funny how this time they're like, the fucking nature preserves in California. We're not doing Australia again. - I feel like there's a magical tunnel that whips you all the way to California. - Yeah, it's a difference to come here, right? So yes, as you say, Iger comes aboard and immediately is like, no more this Circle Seven nonsense. Like I'm shutting all that down. - And this is part of Iger's great strategy. Is he comes in, shuts them down, says to Steve Jobs, you name your price. I'm not negotiating here with you. I wanna make you guys feel so protected that I'm doing everything I can to respect the sanctity of your characters. I'm not gonna push you to do these things. I'm gonna shut down any crash exploitation. I'm gonna overpay you. But can you please try to organically come up with sequel ideas that you like? - And the way Andrew Stanton puts it, and I think we mentioned this on a prior episode is when the Finding Nemo 3D re-release comes out in 2010. - Yes. - We'll see, obviously works on too. But he's watching it, and yes, he is kind of like, I mean, Dory basically is lost when the movie begins. - And she's fine. - And she's fine. - And she's fine her being like, where are I going? - I was looking for my family at least I think I was. He's like, fuck, I did put it in there. - So, he's like, I do stop, you know, I couldn't stop thinking about it, I will admit. - Now, could you have something in about big bucks? I don't know, like, you know, dollar signs? - The other thing is, he's now sort of got a foot outside of Pixar, focusing on John Carter and wanting to make this John Carter-sized leap to live action. So what he says is, hey, I got a good idea. - Because he jumps big. - He jumps so far. - He jumps so big, so far, so high. - That guy can really hop on Mars. (laughs) - This guy hops. - That's what they should-- - Should call them movie hoppers. - Be back like-- - Do you see hoppers? - I did, I liked hoppers. - It's a lot of hoppers. - Hoppers very enjoy it. - Moynihan fucking roll. - Moynihan right now, kind of pole position best voice performance of the year. - Moynihan very good. - He's a big doerie of hoppers. - King George, having a big year at the box office. - Oh yeah? - Well, that's as big as hit he's had so far. - Oh, so far? - Yeah. (laughs) - Plenty of months left. - Plenty of lot of work. - King George. - Hamilton. - Oh, sure. - That's that if they do that. - Still on Broadway. Still bringing in Buffalo box office. - Oh yeah, who's playing King George right now on Broadway? - Interesting. I'm seeing it's King George from Hoppers. (laughs) - They got the beaver. They render him in real time. Originally Stanton's like, well I'm too busy on the John Carter thing. And John Carter is obviously gonna be a trilogy that I have mapped out and each of these movies is gonna take two to three years. But here's an idea I like for Finding Dory and I bless the development of this as a script. - Right. - It doesn't originate with him. It's a higher writer first. Also of course then John Carter bombs. - It does. - And he says he went into kind of a lost weekend to purge himself only one weekend. - Yeah, he might need a fucking hug. - That's pretty good. - Yeah. - It takes me about a week and a half to recover from a bad impromptu. (laughs) And this guy had a historic bomb and he was like, just give me 48. That's impressive. - It is, yeah, I mean it is yet. To make a movie like John Carter where people are like, can we, can you get that Guinness Book of World records off the shelf and like, is this the biggest one yet? Like, are we going, you know. - He also, he did an interview that just came out at the time we're recording. Or it was part of a larger entertainment weekly piece about twist, twist, twist, twist, twist, twist. - And he had, he's a very self-deprecating guy. - Sure. - But he had a joke about like, if you know me by name, I'm concerned. - Oh yeah, I saw that. - Like I understand like Pixar as a name brand is a known thing. But like only, you know, dang-ass freaks, no interest in my name, is this podcast may be fucking up that effort possibly. But I think there must be something kind of weird to having a failure that big that's also kind of anonymized. Like, there's not even the personal sort of like, look at how hard a fucking Francis Ford Copa LaFell on his flight face with Megalopolis. And it's reckoned with within the like, the story of a man's career. It's just everyone kind of being like, the fuck is this shit? - Yeah, John Carter was the failure, not him. - Right. - At least in terms of the public. Like, I didn't know who, I didn't have no idea he directed that. - No. - You knew simply that, you know, Tim Riggins went to Mars and he didn't work out for him. - Yeah. - Right. And he hopped. - And again, I did like that movie. - It's, it's, it's got stuff. - It's got it's terms. So, Bob Wager calls, standing on the phone, apparently gives him a quote about, from Teddy Roosevelt, about being the lonely man and the ring that has the guts to actually do it versus talking about doing it. - I don't know, he kind of peps him up. Stanton works on Zootopia. His college roommate is Rich Moore, who's the director of Zootopia. So he like, helps out with that. - He's got a creative consultant. 'Cause that's the other thing was at this time, they were like, "Pixers got it figured out so much that should the Pixar brain trust." - They're kind of like weighing on everything. Can they give notes on tron legacy? - Right. And then he goes to lots of hug and laughs at her. And he says, like, I think I have a story for finding Neemok too. Pitches that, they write up a treatment and then he's like, all right, I'm gonna call it on. 'Cause I guess it's a different thing to call Ellen now. - Yeah. - She's busy. - Now, Ellen had for years maintain this running bit of why, aren't they calling me to make a sequel? - She would publicly do this. You know, Hanks would be on to promote Toy Story 3 and be like, "Must be nice." - Right. - "Must be nice." I don't have any money at all. - Yeah. - I'm only selling hundreds of millions of dollars of throw pillows a year. J.J. found a very 20. 13 sentence, too, if you want to hear it. Dory is Disney's most liked character on Facebook, had 24 million likes. People just were like, "I want to like. " - Thumbs up. - "Thumbs up to the character Dory." - Right, and that's more known with that accomplished as where I went to college. - Right, can you not? - It has to be one of the five things people see about me immediately. - Ellen's statement on the announcement. I have waited for this day for a long, long, long, long, long time. I'm not mad at took this long. I know that many people Pixar are busy creating Toy Story 16, but the time they took us worth it. The script's fantastic, yeah, blah, blah, blah. - You also just know, and I don't know if it's ever been reported, but I imagine she got much more love for this part of you. What, I thought that she kind of just did everything for a lot of the game, all right? - I got to stop bragging on Ellen. - Ellen has become an incredibly savvy business person at this point in time, and Pixar and Disney, notoriously, you know, pay an exposure the first time. - Right, right. - And the second time. - And the residuals. - That's the big thing. - Right. - I think I've shared this anecdote before, but I met, or I met her a couple of times, but Kristen Shaw said she did Toy Story 3. They pay you what is scale. - She's the fucking 17th character in the movie. - Yeah. And it's like, there is a scale numbered. It's despite you being in a Pixar movie, it's the lowest amount that could pay you to be in an animated feature film. And she was like, I bought a house with the first year of residuals, theme park, video games, whatever, you know? - Hold on, I need to talk to some people. - But then if you're, if there's a sequel, and you're the central character, or you're the breakout character, suddenly you're holding a lot of leverage. - Except maybe not so much anymore, right? With, 'cause inside out, two, didn't they not? - It was a weird thing. - Yeah. They paid, I think Amy Poler got $10 million. - And then they were like, Bill Hader, here's the sandwich. - Yeah, yeah, interesting. - So the film is co-written by Victoria Strauss. Really had no credits. She'd worked on an ABC TV show called "Lactover Road," but they wanted a female screenwriter. - It is a fascinating- - Yeah, an expensive script they liked. - Pixar thing I was gonna say, where a lot of the writers, once, you know, they ramp up production, right? And this was also a big part of, I think, them conceding to the sequel push was, it's been a big effort to get to a steadiness to be able to put out one film every year. Wouldn't it be great if we could do two a year? And they were like, if it's two a year, and the staff is doubling in all of this, then maybe if it helps if every other film is a sequel, or say, for bet, but it also means they have to start reaching outside of their core brain trust and building a bigger talent pool. And so often, these writers, you see, who end up being the co-writers with whoever the director is, or the Pixar person is on these movies, you're like, how'd they get this job? And it's like, they were obsessively reading spec scripts. They were, like, checking the blacklist. They were going to plays. They were seeing independent films at Sundance. It's this fascinating thing, and I think Stanton was kind of important in sort of spearheading this of, let's not look at animation writers. Let's just look and see good writing and find young people. Because also, it's a multi-year process. It's like, if you sign onto a Pixar movie, you're moving to, like, Emoryville for three or four years to keep doing iterative work on it. So it's better to get someone who's ready to, like, be an employee rather than just take on a project, Ben. - Dory, Facebook. - Currently? - Currently. - 20 mil. - Cute. - Wait, it went down. - It just went down. - Well, I deleted my account, so that's one. - That is maybe a sign of Facebook's kind of, you know. - Was it 40 or 50 before? - 24. - Wait, what is it now? - 20 mil. - Lower. - Oh, oh, but it's really lost four? Losing seems bad to me. - I just think, with the general Facebook thing. - I guess you're right. - Also, some weird follows. - Oh yeah? Who we got? - Dory. - Dory's been liking some kind of interesting pictures on the Internet. - Dory, Dory's a huge Hubertman now. - Yeah. - So, the big issue Strauss found is, it's tough to write a main character, can't remember things, and has short-term memory loss. She pretty quickly comes up with Hank, because she's like, she needs a foil and she needs someone who can move her places. - It is hence octopus. - The smartest thing this movie does is like, how without cheating, do we have someone who's her memory and her mobile kind of-- - Can we get these characters a little more latitude, so it's not just a complete retread of the first movie of, they're in the ocean and they got a swim really far. - Yeah, and Hank has a little Marlon DNA and that he's like, "Groff and not worn." But it's a different enough, I would say, 'cause he's not anxious. He's just kind of like cynical or over it. - It's an interesting kind of combination of Gill and Marlon from the first one. But it feels like he's a little more stork-razy. - Wait, who is Gill? - Gill is the default. - Oh, yes, he is. - Oh, yes, he's the first one. - 'Cause he's got a little bit of the life. You know, I guess he's also a little kind of one flew over the Kuku's nest a lot. - Sure, I just got to get out of here. - Right. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - He just wants to go live in peace. - Yes. - I got, we get it. - We see him briefly in this movie, right? Like, they're all credited. - Oh, they're the end credits. - Post credits, yeah. - Yeah, yeah. - They're still in the bags. - They initially did want the parents to also have short-term memory loss to complete the joke of, it runs in my family, at least I think it does. - When you were watching, or when you walked into the studio today. - Yes. - I had the Blu-ray. - You were watching "Deleted", quote unquote, "Deleted." - It has 50 minutes of deleted scenes, which is quite a lot. And even when movies cut that much material, they rarely make it public. And I would say of the 50, 20 minutes were four different strikes at the opening. And they all have state and intros where he's explaining the iterative process of what kept changing. And you do realize they back themselves into a couple corners here. They're like, first of all, we wanna make the Dory movie. But how do you give Dory the character agency to go out on her own journey and grow and change and learn if she can't fucking remember anything? How does she do things of her own volition? So there's all this shit that you see them try where they're like, there's a muscle memory thing where her fins start like she's, she's sleep swimming. In her sleep, she starts swimming directions and then they lose her. But she doesn't know what's driving her there. It's the muscle memory, not a short-term memory. And then he's like, but then the first 30 minutes of the movie, she's not making any choices. It's like she's like fucking, you know, we can at Bernie's too. - Right. - And then there are multiple stabs out. Well, the reason she got lost is 'cause her parents also have short-term memory. So that helps why they haven't found her. But then also like every scene and they have like scenes, some of these are animated, some of them are roughly animated, some of them are just story-boarded. Most of them have the real voice actors. And you're hearing Eugene Levy and Diane Keaton do the short-term thing, which is incredibly funny. - Sure. - But then you're also just like all of these scenes get caught in a cul-de-sac. - Yes, yeah. - Stanton said essentially like they just, they realize it would make everyone crazy. - You cannot have any emotional catharsis. - Right. When I watched the, when I watched Finding Nemo, I was operating under the assumption that her entire species had this. - Yeah, I thought it was like a goldfish thing. - Right, right. That was their starting point. - Right, yeah. - And so then I had forgotten that, oh no, this is just Dory. Like Dory just has this issue. - So they're all, they also ran into some complaints over the fact that it is set at a, you know, marine park like a preserved blackfish. - Right. And so they consciously were like all of the fish characters will be allowed to leave if they want. - In our story, because we don't want to suggest that like they belong there or have to be there or anything like that. - Pictures usually like pretty secretive about their movies until the last possible moment. They have to volunteer information because their brand is so strong. - Right. - And that was a case where in my memory, like a game or before release were like, we are making changes to our story. They like preempted a potential controversy. - They added that third r of release. - Yeah. - Right, exactly. So, you know, like I think those are the big things they kind of come across. - I think that was a story present because if it had been to, it could have run the risk of just being a bigger version of the fish tank in the dentist's office. It helps that the problem isn't there being kept here as much as it is like this is just an entirely different kind of space. And I think what they do smartly, and it gets back to, I was saying in the Nemo episode that Nemo is weirdly feels very Indiana Jones coded. In the way he constructs the sequences of what is the challenge and how do they get out of this? It does feel like the biggest gift they gave themselves in this film is just to be like, what if there is environment that is hospitable to fish but also is largely above ground surrounded by people, tanks are separated and how do you cross these physical divides? Nemo and Marlin don't have to be on the opposite side of the ocean from Dory, but if they're in a gift shop and she's in a tank, it's actually a harder puzzle to solve. Yeah, which keeps it from feeling like just a copy of the first movie. - There was a lot more destiny and Bailey, they say both those characters are great, the way I'll shark and the blue go away all. And essentially, they just kind of like had to cut stuff but like that they all had like, you know, tons of material 'cause they were fun to write. There's an entire. storyline where Marlon and Nemo get separated from Dory early when the squid chases them. And then they go into the tank gang and they meet, you know, like Gil and all those guys. And it was funny, but they just sort of like kept being like, it is a Dory movie. This is just distracting from that. So they don't use that. It is the thing, especially after watching all these like failed alternate openings and everything you're saying, I've come to peace with the first 20 minutes that also just feel like they never totally cracked it, but they were like, you know what, we just have to get there. The movie doesn't really start until she's at the Marine Institute. Right. They should be there with her, you know, right? And can we just kind of like jangle some keys for the first 15 or 20 minutes? We're going to have to ban that phrase. We're using it too much. Yeah. It's become a systemic phrase. You're jangling keys with it sort of kind of a forecasting though. They would be like, what about Ty Burrell? Google. Ellen DeGeneres Ty Burrell. She's in every of them like five times. They could just listen to them talking. Sure. Eugene Levy. Oh, that's smart. Diane Keen, they can listen to that. Right. Cause Pixar will famously, now I feel like they do more of a traditional casting process, but they would locate an actor and then do a test animation to their dialogue from something else. Diane Keen. Right. Yeah. Diane Keen had never done animation before. Ever. When was modern family? Did that have that started? It started at 28 or not. Okay. Right. When was that? Or maybe 2010? We talked about this and it's funny and John Carter that you're like, oh, no. You can tell which TV show stand was watching. Sure. And when he cast that, do you like modern? Were you ever on modern film? Yeah. For 11 years. And I, you know, I honestly never watched it. But I, you know, when Ty Burrell popped up and Ed O'Neill, I was like, oh, this is very much. I was like, this was dominating this TV, you know, like he was watching always sunny and they were reliable. They were. Yeah. And honestly, Dory Marlin and Nima are a bit of a modern family themselves. That's true. That they're a found family. Sort of a nice. We get that. You got two people from the wire. You got it yourself. And Dominic West. Dominic West. Yeah. Yes. It's pretty funny. Yeah. Um, did you ever watch modern family? I never did. Like you've never seen modern family. I've seen it. I've seen it. We're like committed to it. Yes. Same. But I lost that for like two seasons before I was kind of like, I think I get it. It is funny that in my memory, like you thinking this movie came out like a year after finding Nima. I'm like, oh, right. This was like right after modern family popped. And this is one of the first kind of like postmodern family glow sort of jobs for the cast reaching out. And I'm like, oh, this is closer to the end of that. Yeah. And it was the beginning. It had been on the air for seven years. It would be off the air. Right. Four years later. Undergold, the voice of Nimo and finding Nimo was a grownup was a grownup. He remembers the moment because he would do the voice for the toys. Yeah. Like the moment, like a couple of years later where they were like, you can't do it. And your voice is getting too deep. That must. What she said was devastating. He was replaced by that. That fucking Kristen Shaw. I know. I heard his story. When he got in the house recently, but to just be told, like, there's a ticking clock. Yeah. Sorry, buddy. You don't sound like Nimo anymore. We will always need someone to voice Nimo. It is not going to be you. But once they catch on to my pitch for Old Marlin, he'll be back in business. Oh, sure. Is that kind of like a, like a sort of Logan S sort of like a sequel, right? Okay. Marlin. Honestly, that would be perfect because Marlin, if he, he, he is so brutal at times in these movies. If he starts to lose it, so even his amount of politeness has gone, you could have some real savage Marlin moment. I'll say this. Marlin just gotten loose. Yeah. Brooks also sounds a lot older in this one. He does. And you're like, he has age. He's still funny in this, but he does feel harder edged in this. Just from the nature of him sounding more like a grumpy old man than a nebushy guy. Yeah. But they, they really, like when he tells Dory, "Go see over there and forget." Yeah. That's the best, that's what you're best at. That's like one of the most brutal. That's what I'm saying. Yeah. And this is also post drive Brooks. Sigourney Weaver, they just thought that was funny. And it is. The voice is the blue planet in America, the American version of blue planet. And she's also the voice of the ship and Wally, obviously. She's the voice that he actually doesn't mention that. But yeah, that's true. I'm gonna mention that. Yeah. It's rather. Yeah. She's the voice of the planetarium at the Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. She's totally one of those people. Yeah. And he was just like, he could just play herself. Yeah. They didn't ask her until near the end. They just had a scratch voice and they were like, I hope she says, yes. And she did. I also just think every time they do the drug one in a house, she was actually weirdly without one. She had never found one. She was living in a box. Yeah. Every time they do the joke of someone invoking Sigourney Weaver by her full name, it gets me. Yeah. It was fun. I don't know. There's an incredibly long quote that JJ put in. He realizes this quote is too long. So I'm going to try and just, he was like, this is newsletter fodder, but I'm just gonna try and tell you that I'm gonna boil this down. He gets a call. You know, he gets his agents like finding he's like, I've never seen animation. They're just cartoons. It's not my thing. But my kids like it. Whatever. He is in Mitt Racket Ralph. He's Mr. Littwack. He is. He's the guy of your kid. And so he assumes they're like, look, you're playing an octopus called Hank. You're being paid by the session. And he assumes like, great. Is it like Mr. Littwack? Like, I did that in like one day, right? He shows up and he's like, it was like really intense like the work is grueling. The character is going through a lot of like, you know, motion and stuff. So it's like a lot of like watch out and, you know, yelling and stuff. And after three hours, he was like, all right. And they were like, you're gonna have to come back. You know, like, yeah, we're not like you're going to keep coming back. And then after a while, he's like, is this like not a cameo? And they're like, no, this is like one of the lead roles. That's so funny. He is so goodness. They have said. And he didn't know Ty Burrell was in it like, like, he's like, he's casting like I never talk about it. And then they watch a preview and he's like, what's the octopus doing? And they're like, oh, he's a mimic octopus. He can like, you know, blend with things. He's like, oh, that's cool. I didn't know that either. You know? So that, I feel like can be the experience of being in one of these movies. If you are not plugged into the Pixar world, but are famous, yes. And you get the call of like, hey, offer, you know, we don't have to audition you. You want to be this octopus and you're just like, sure, you don't know what you're in for. It's just fun. It's just such an iterative evolving story process. You like, do choose your own adventure versions of the movie. You know, you go in and you do like 15 pages and then a year later they call you and show you something new and you're like, how does that track? And they're like, well, that previous thing is gone. We've made him this and we took this out. They've said it was the most difficult character they ever had to animate that it was. I mean, that makes sense. A nightmare. It's so crazy. It feels like, you know, we talked about how Stanton likes these kind of self-imposed animation challenges. A big thing he said for the first movie is that he was like, I don't want to anthropomorphize the fish. I don't want to give them movements that are like a human. Let's just push 10% beyond what a fish could do, but try to get everything we can out of just fins and face and whatever. And it feels like, well, now you have a character who's hyper-mobile and instead of there being a limitation, it's the challenge of do as much with him as possible. And the choice to make him just like constantly in Mission Impossible mode is really good. Also he has no mouth, which is such, that's like a Stanton thing of like, oh, their mouth is at the bottom. Anyone else would be like, well, you can't have a character without a mouth. We got to cheat. And you can tell that he's like, I kind of like the idea of just the eyes. And it's like the eyes and then sort of like a nose bump, but it's basically it's like grommet. Love grommet too. We all love grommet. He's a great movie star. Angus McLean, who goes on direct, Wally, I'm sorry, like you're unfortunately, yeah, is the co-director. So, you know, he's doing a lot of work. The film does, you know, the film does have a lesbian couple as we know. This was the original disgusting lightyear kiss. We see two women pushing a stroller together for two seconds, truly, and even was elected months later. Obviously, all that was. Fuck, there's did genuinely get very upset about this, and it's the most annoying shit in the world. But they were kind of a conservative couple because they were horrified by the octopus. They were. That is true. They can't accept that someone might have an octopus or a baby. They're sort of like, it's funny, they're right. You know what? Actually, we've all got our, you know, our kind of boundaries. I mean, if you confront them sometimes, yeah. It is funny how much that was blown up. It also is fine to rewatch it and be like, I mean, I read it as two moms, but also it one of them's got like a short haircut or whatever. I get what they're going for. There are like a lot of context clues. You could be like, these are two moms who brought their kids out separately. Obviously, it is no big deal. Yeah. It would only have been annoying if they had done the beauty and the beast thing of like, we promise you the representation is in this movie, and then that's what it is, or the Avengers thing. What do you mean? The guy says something and Captain America nods. Yeah. I'm so sad that my dead gay boyfriend is dead, but still gay, and I'm still gay even though he's dead. One of the funniest things in the world is for a movie like that to pat itself on the back for finally presenting a gay character and the director to cast himself as the gay character. A straight man and be like, pretty impressive, huh? (upbeat music) - The film begins with this. - It does. - It does. - It's a movie. - This feels like something designed in a lab. - It does. - To make money and make people cry. - This is another fascinating thing. - Like just one of those things. - About the alternate openings, right? - Where they're like her eyes are the same size and everything else is tiny. - The alternate openings, some of them I thought worked better than the actual opening of the movie. But the first half of them are sort of, there's one I really like where you feel like, are we just watching Finding Nemo again? It's a Marlin running into Dory in their first conversation and then they run into the sharks. And it's a little bit of bridge, but they're literally reusing the same animation. And then Marlin starts beating the shit out of the sharks. And you realize it is, this is how Marlin tells the story to everyone now. - That is kind of funny. - And it's a sort of like visiting parent day at the school. And we get a little whiff of that. He makes a total of sharks instead of three. - So he's telling the story, you get to see it acted out. It's really funny. And then Dory's there and the kids are like, what about you Dory? So you're like Nemo's mom and she's like, no, and they're like, are you her aunt? They start asking questions about the family structure in a way that makes sense that kids would do. - But I honestly do like that we don't ever get into that. - No, but I like that it's just like, they're just a family. - I love that it's just a family thing. - What it is. - Yes. - They're not hitting right? - We don't think. - Absolutely not. - I don't think yet. I also think this movie, - Old Marlin. - This movie suggests you what I'm seeing it. - I'm seeing it. - This movie suggests to me that Dory is much younger than Ellen DeGeneres is. - Well, I mean, fish age less than humans. - Yeah. - So. - But in the first movie, I'm like, oh, this is like 240 something fish. - No, I think she's probably in her late 20s in Finding Dory. - Right. - Okay. - Yeah. - How long do you think a blue tank can live? - Is it really depressing? - Well, no. - Well, years. - They can live more than 30 years in the life. - Oh. - So they can live for a long time. It says eight to 30, which is kind of a big range, but commonly they live between 15 and 30 years. So she could be, you know, like 10 fish years making her sort of like early middle age or whatever. 'Cause what I think about is also sort of like, how long, because they say it's been years. They do say when she finally makes it to the fish who like know her parents, that was years ago. - And we get three voice iterations. - You do. - There's a teenage door which I do think they nailed the casting on. - They did. - The child is really good. - Yeah. - But the teen is the perfect bridge between the child and the Ellen. - Yeah. - I was through like one or three times. - Like two or three times. - Yeah. - But it's just interesting to watch all these openings that are all like, I haven't found it. How do you reset the board so quickly and also start to drive out why Dory is suddenly activated by the lack of her parents and all this sort of stuff? And he was like, you know, the classic stand thing of like, I want it to be a series of flashbacks that reveal them self-gradually. Or is it one flashback that comes late? Or is it the movie open with the flashback and that's a dream and it all comes later? And there was one that I thought was really stylistically interesting that was like, well, what would your memory be like as a child? And then on top of that, she's got short-term memory loss. So she's getting glimpses but they're abstracted and it's not a literal scene playing out. And then it just feels like in the evolution at some point, someone drew up a storyboard where the opening shot is baby Dory. And everyone was like, well, you've lost the argument. Unfortunately, you have just found gold. And the movie now starts with that no matter what. He's not saying this, but it definitely felt like suddenly they're all, well, as long as that's the first shot, you can do whatever you want after that. - Look, I saw some theaters. I did nothing for me. I rewatched with my daughter and I liked it. And then just I remember after my twins were born when I was a very fragile person. I watched this with my daughter put this on. My wife and I watch it. We were like sobbing and holding each other at the end of the movie. My daughter, to be clear, was just like, nah, nah, nah. But like my wife and I were like, Jesus Christ. Like you're just so like traumatized by the idea of like a child losing their parents, by the idea of like the parents waiting for years. Is it manipulative? I might accuse it of being a smidge manipulative. - I'm gonna rip the band in with the little baby Dory with her big old eyes. - I think this movie is obviously not as strong as the first one. It's not as tight as the first one. I feel some of it's sort of like searching construction. And I think this is part of the Pixar sequel shift thing is once they get them to agree to do sequels, these things get dates. Those dates are announced years in advance. Shareholders are promised. We will have a movie that will make a billion dollars in this quarter and like stickers are put on bananas with the characters and bathing suits are made. And those movies become a movable, right? Basically, maybe if something's really going poorly, you can push it back six months. But also, if an original film is struggling, they'd rather push that back and go sorry, bad news, Dory needs to come out four months later. And I think this is the kind of like shake shackification of Pixar a little bit is the movie starts sometimes feeling a little bit good enough in spots versus the classic Pixar thing being like, we will beat this like a drum until we get it as tight as it could possibly be. And I don't think everything in this movie works, but a thing I think it does incredibly well, which is the greatest justification for making this movie and making it distinct from the first one. Is it, it's like basically a movie about being a caretaker for a special needs adult, right? Yes. That it is a special needs child who is lost and a found family and this notion of like the responsibility of having to care for someone in the fear of them not being able to care for themselves. And it not being the finding Nemo thing of, well he's little, he's still young, he's not ready yet versus Dory being like, will she ever be able to do any of this stuff on her own? I do also think it's about finding, it's about like figuring out how to care for yourself as someone who, you know, my reading of the film is that Dory is a bit neurodivergent. She is. And it's something, I watched, I watched Finding Nemo with my wife when we were talking about the Dory character. My wife has ADHD and she related so hard to Dory in terms of just like this experience of kind of not always knowing like what you were just doing and like blah, blah, blah. So I think it's, it's a lot of that too where it is about the family, but it's also specifically about Dory like learning to be confident in herself. It's doing all three sides of it really well. The parents with the concern of a child. Can we just shout out the design of the Eugene Levy fish with the sort of male pattern? As you put it, we're seeing hair lines. It's so funny. Yes. And the casting also, when they announced like, it's Eugene Levy and Diane Keaton playing Dory's parents, you're like, yeah, that math works out. That makes sense. But I think their perspective of being parents, looking at a young child and feeling the concern of, will she ever be able to do this on their own? Then the chosen family going like, we know what we've inherited, right? This is part of the burden of our life. We love her. We want her here. But this is now an added thing on our plate. We always have to be concerned about her and Dory figuring out how to do things on her own. I think all three are dramatically really well done and are tricky kind of land mindy things. And I also commend this movie for, as much as it was pushing its politics on our throat with that lesbian couple. Just testing. It wasn't really doing buzz wordy representation matters, shit. Well, no, I mean, they are all fish. Yeah, but this is not like we're going to have like a fish in a wheelchair or something. Maybe we could. I mean, look, I guess it could be a little more than it is. Everything starts to just break in society, right? Well, because you're talking about ghostbusters. I feel like that's the most prime example of like, they're like, we're doing a girl ghostbusters and it became like a fight or like, a, you know, an internet kind of touch point in a way that I think a lot of people like me were just kind of like, why, who cares if there's a girl? What does it matter if there's a girl ghost? Why are you all activated by this? Why are you angry? What's happening to the beginning of the culture war as I find that? And then in retrospect, I'm like, not, you know, not that I'm like, there shouldn't be girl ghostbusters, but I'm like, I guess some of this stuff started to feel a little try hard of like, you know, you've all waited for girl ghostbusters and I'm like, I have the same indifference where I'm like, I haven't, honestly. Right. I'm not against it. I'm fine with it. But I also, but you also, you don't need to go like, take a victory lap about this. That's the thing, right? And I think especially as it's like Trump is elected, everything becomes more divisive. Donald J. Trump was actually in 2016, elected presence of the United States of America. I remember that. Oh my god. Disney starts to do the preemptive back patting. You know, a little bit like Joe Russo starts to be like, I'm so fucking gay in this adventure. Okay. In Avengers saying game, it's crazy. Gaston's going to have an exclusively gay moment, which means he did it to the boy, right? And then becomes this feedback loop of these movies are annoying. They're, they're shoving it down their throat. They're doing it disingenuously or whatever. I just feel like this movie gets there very honestly and doesn't try to weaponize it in any manipulative way. [BLANK_AUDIO] - As you're saying, it's more manipulative in the just basic. - It's just that losing a child. - Yeah, they kind of family perils. - Right. - But she just took the character of Dory seriously. - They did a smart kind of like, "Let's do the math on this." Here's the character we built. What actually makes sense if you kind of like spread the pieces out? And I know you've complained a little bit about how much this movie does the, we're going to explain every single random bit of Dory from the first movie. - Who's a bit slumdog millionaire? - Like, that's a big whale. - That is a good comparison. - Yeah. - It's like every one of these things, which in the first movie just felt like a miracle. Where did this come from? - It just felt like Ellen had a good idea every time. - I think most of them wore that, or a lot of them certainly. - Yeah, yeah. - And then they're like, "No, no, no, no, you don't understand. She does speak whale. She had whale friend." - Where's the pipe, okay. - She can read because she's surrounded by plaques, but also audio narrating the plaques. - Which is fine. - It's fine, it's fine. - But I do like the movie because I think it's very visually inventive within the, you know, the zoo, the Query. - Yeah, there's some awesome sequences. - All of the kind of picks are thinking of like, "Right, how do we get X to Y? How do we, you know, move characters through rooms and situations like, you know, the coffee pots, the octopus, you know, the floppy. I love the Nemo and Marlin using the fountains to travel. Like all that stuff. I'm like, you guys are just kind of, if nothing else at the top of that game right now. - Yes. - You know, even if things are getting a little lazy with your sequels or whatever, like you're so visually adept. - I think I think Stan is also particularly good at is the, and is credited for this within even the larger Pixar films that he's not ostensibly the main writer, main director on, that he was sort of the guy who could lock in on the like, okay, if you're Mr. Potato Head, how do you feel? You know, if you're Mr. Potato Head, that means your pieces are falling out all the time, which means you're probably angry, is it Don Rickles? And I feel like Bugs Life, which he's very involved in has that same sort of logic of like, what would the inter-emotional struggles and psychological hang-ups of each bug be based on? - The lady Bugs gotta chip on his shoulder. It could have been because I was slaring. - But this movie does similarly, after doing so much of that in the first one, where you're like, what is there left to do in the sort of like inferiority complex a fish is? - Do you like my impression of Dennis Leary's? - I really did, I really did. - Hey, it just, I just went coffee, okay? Just plain black coffee. Why's it gonna have to fucking crunch in it? - Whatever, remember that, he was so good at that. - What's that from? - It's from like Leary's, so like Leary's first special, you know, Nurkeur for cancer, which is all his stuff that he's not famous yet, and he's, you know. - I tried watching that recently, it was tough. - You know, I grew up a Leary fan. - It's tough to watch. - It's of its time. - Not even like, oh, this has an aged well, like, culturally offensively. - It's just not just like that offensive. - What were we going through? - It's more just that. - Exactly. But then lock and load is second special, is the one where he's now kind of famous and has kids and like, and so it's more him being like, "I go to fucking Dunkin' Donuts, they got maple coffee." - What's going on, you know, that kind of thing. - Wait, did he ever do commercials with that as the premise? - A hundred percent. - I'm like, "Did they ever do commercials?" - Yes. (laughing) - But I feel like there was a commercial one of me. - Yeah, whatever happened to this? - That was his whole thing. He's pretty good at it. And the best thing in lock and load is when he reigns about the Catholic church, because you're like, "Oh, he really hates the Catholic church." You know, and like, that's a little more motivated by like childhood and family, you know. - It was still a pretty touchy thing to do at that point in time. - Right, it's a little more hot load, you know, right. But the stuff I heard loved when I was a kid, I was like, "Koffee." - Yeah, Dennis, tell 'em, give it to my coffee. - Me, the like 12 year old person who's never had coffee in his life, he's like, "Yeah, you used to just get a black coffee at the diner or whatever." And then you just stop doing comedy and just voice the ladybugs and saber-toothed tigers, and I guess it did. - Oh yeah. - A clean list of issues. - Yeah. - Which were good. - I mean, I love rescuing me in a lot of ways. But like, that's another show where you watch it now, and you're like, "Oh, they'd go to jail." Oh, right to jail, all this jail. - I'm gonna have to watch that. - Yeah. - Yeah, it's starting to happen. - It's got some goods. - Yeah. - Yeah. - He's not in this movie. - No. - Although, if they made it in the '90s, he probably would be in the fucking office, I mean, right? Like, you open with the sorta core trauma, they end up, you know, after him trying to outthink himself doing a version of what he ended up having doing the first movie of just like, show the thing. Here's Dory, she can't remember shit. Her parents are worried all the time. They're trying to teach her things. Just keeps swimming in the shells that she can trace as like a Hansel and Gretel bread crumb trail back to them. But she gets caught in the, the overtime? The under-tied? - Under, under, under, under-toe. - No, under-toe is a different thing. It's the under-current, I think they say. But she's in the display. - That's what I was confused by then. - That's what you find out later. - Why would it have a current that pushes the fish into the vent? - It's the vent, it's the vent. - That's what it is. - I think ultimately it's the vent. - It's like a filtering. - Yeah. - They're sort of misdirecting you at the beginning to not think that they're not in a natural environment. - Which maybe they, 'cause the fish all seem to know that they will get released. So they may, maybe they're just training her for her eventual life in the true ocean when she's little. - Yes. - I buy that. - Yeah. But then you basically run to the section of the movie that feels like a Beatles cover band or something to me. But it's like, wake up for school, going, Mr. Ray. Yes. - Now, sure, it's not like the most original stuff. It still has bits that work. - It does. - It's like when you have Ellen doing Dory, I'm happy. - Do you know what I'm saying, though, about how the bits all just feel like ults from the first movie? Because they're not doing, yes, the sequel thing of, oh, we flipped this character's dynamic or they're in a slightly different way. I'm like, every line that the turtles say feels like something that could have been cut from the first one. - Oh, yeah, the turtles. - The turtles are like 22 seconds. - It's so. - Yeah. - They're barely part of it. But yes, but for me, I was still having fun with Dory. - Dory rolls. - Her Ellen's line readings in this movie, almost every line. I'm just like, yep, that's the good stuff. - I agree. I would agree. I will agree that when Ellen speaks that is the good stuff. - Yeah. - And like, I guess there is a world where you could say, like, you know what, Ellen has been not doing movies. She's been doing a chat show for 10 plus years at this point, this movie. She could phone this in. I do not feel that she phones this. - No, not at all. - Yes. I mean, I feel like she gets this character very well still. - Like, even in that early sequence that, you know, is kind of playing the hits, that just that bit where he's like, don't go too close to the edge and then she pushes them so far away from the edge, then she's like, no, no, no, that's too far and brings them back. Like, just, I could watch Ellen do that endlessly. - Yeah. And, you know, the first movie that characters clearly meant to be more of like a dilemma and just comic relief than the whole surprise was that she brought as much emotional grounding and well-roundedness to it that you're like, you could make her the center of the movie. This will work putting the story weight on her won't stop her from being funny. There's a universe in which there's a concern of a Dr. Ian Malcolm problem. - Uh-huh. - If he's not the guy to the side and he's the guy who has shared the story, does he not? - It's very interesting. - Goblin is the best because it's not just Malcolm even. It's also Dr. Ian Malcolm in Independence Day. I forget what his David, Dr. Scientist, Mr. I just rewatch Independence Day. I forgot that he says Moscow faster in it. Literally that they're just like, can you, can you say it again? - Yeah. - Say the thing you said in dress work. What if you just said it again? - But can we just make the whole movie out of this guy? - Right, and then right, when he's, Goblin was kind of the lead of resurgence. You're like, you know, he needs to be in the mix. Like, yeah, right. Obviously Jurassic Park Dominion. - Fixed it. - Fixed it. He was so good in that. I don't even remember what he did in that, honestly. - It's the live action moana of Jurassic movies. Wait, what does he do in that one? 'Cause is he on Lucas patrol in that one? - Yeah. - Is he? - Yeah. - 'Cause I remember Neil and Dernar. - All three of them are. - But he's in there too. - She brings them together to specifically get the Lucas and Samuel spends like a 70 year old Samuel spends the entire movie being like, "I don't know how to tell her that I have a crush on her." And I'm like, weren't you fucking in the first movie? The whole thing is that like in three, they established that she married some other guy and had kids, right? - That they broke up for whatever. - And in this one, Goblin's like, you know, she's divorced now. And Samuel's like, oh, I wouldn't even know how to tell her how I feel. - We're gonna get to this in Old Marlin, as well. - Were you a Jurassic Park Dominion fan? - I don't remember that one. I've seen every Jurassic Park movie. - That's the one about the Lucas that Barely has done. - I do, I do. - Which is a really good formula. - So they basically realized that the company that Wayne Knight smuggled the shaving cream can too in the first movie had been the one, we never, we never followed up on that. So they were a rival company that's been doing their own genetic fuckery. - Is this the second world? - This is the third world. - Yeah. - And the second world is the one that has like a haunted house movie inside of it. There comes an auction at a manor in the countryside. - I don't remember any of this. - But the dinosaurs are in the hell of them in theaters. You put dinos on your screen, I'm there. - So that movie has Gold Blue Minute, but he just has a cameo speaking in front of Congress, being like, "We should stop the dinosaurs." - And then at the end, he says, "Welcome to Jurassic World." - Ooh. - And the premise is that the little clone girl has freed all the dinosaurs. - Oh right. - That are now on mainland America? - Yeah. - And so we have to live amongst the dinosaurs. And then at the beginning, the next movie, they're all dying. - Correct, right. - Right, and they're like, they mostly just like hang out in the woods, they don't bother us. So what's this movie about? The rival genetic company. Use the shaving cream DNA to do other fuckery, but never try to do dinosaur shit. - No, they did look good. - And one of their things was that they also do like Monsanto style food fuckery, like artificially grown, or whatever. And they were trying to defeat one of their competitors by creating super locusts that would attack their competitors crops. But the locusts got too big, and now they're eating all the food, and we will all starve inner stellar style to death, unless all of our main characters from both religions have to stop the locusts. - I think the reason I don't-- - Sometimes the dinosaur shows up for a minute. - Good. - I don't remember the details of this one, 'cause I think I've been confusing you with the news. - Oh, I'm giving you profundity snaps, you know? - There's this moment in one of those. I think it's the one you said where he says, "Welcome to Jurassic World." Did you notice this moment where the character is handed like this kind of rectangular piece of paper, then he goes-- - Has a precedent face on it. - Right, no, no, it's like, and he goes to like a bank of America, and he like has a little conversation with someone, and they like put it into a slot, and then he goes, "Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding." - That was incredible, right? - I didn't know what that was going on in that scene. I don't know what that is. - Yeah, Dominion ends with Lord Dern, and she's got the Chase banking app open, and he keeps scrolling it down to refresh. (laughing) - And then she goes, "Yes, the five million go out." (laughing) - It was a great after credit. - Look, so much history. - Really, I had to like a sequel. Chris Pratt's like, "We need your help," and just has like an envelope of money. He's like, "This is for you, by the way." - I will say, actually, it's take this. - I will be disappointed if the Space Ball sequel doesn't do that. - That feels like-- - It should do that. - It should be. - I mean, to have that happens a little bit in the New Astrosic, in the Scarjo. - Yeah. - They kind of have to be like, "All right, everyone, we're gonna pay you a lot." - Right. - If you want a dinosaur-- - If you want a dinosaur, I'm like, "No." Like, Scarjo's like, "No, I've seen them." They're, "What do you mean this is so many of these movies?" He's like, "Look, if you had $20 million," - Yeah. - All right. - You got a gun? - "Openly cynical," that movie is about like, the only reason you would ever do this again is if they were paying you fuck you money. No one's hard, isn't it? Except for Jonathan Bailey, who they all mock. - Yeah. - He's like, kind of like dinosaurs. - Like, whatever. - Fucking pussy. - Call me Jonathan Bailey, 'cause I'm still like, a dinosaur. - I'm excited for the, what's the house on the end of the street with the dinosaur? - So excited for you. - I've seen this trailer's hack. It's from the director of it follows and under the silver lake. And it's a bourbon family, and half the way you-- - What's it called? - The house-- - It has a kind of annoying item. - House at the end of Oak Street. - The end of Oak Street. - And half the way you and McGregor and their kids and their house-- - Oh, it's just called the end of Oak Street. Okay, here we go. - There's like some sort of time dilution-- - Digation transported to dinosaurs. - Don't really know anything more than that. - This one suburban street gets transported to prehistoric times. It looks awesome. I'm really into it. - Me into it. - Me into it too. - I'm also really just into the idea of can someone please break the Jurassic franchise's monopoly on dinosaur movements? - And others do dinosaurs. - Well, we have the Kong verse. - Yeah. - That's true. - And they do have dinosaurs. - They're dinosaurs. - I feel like as they've gone on, they've swung further away from dinosaurs and more to come create our own creatures. - Sure. - And I miss the straight up dinosaur-- - They are adjacent. - But I always like King Kong just fucking punching a T-Rex. - What if you're a beast? - If he had a glove, it would be-- - He gets a glove and-- - It would be as good as it was when he had a glove. - Did he get glove first, then acts or other way around? - Other way or acts first and glove? - Right. Right, 'cause he build-- - The acts is made out of like a Godzilla spine or something, one scale that he puts inside a big log. And then the second one, he's got the beast glove and I'm hoping that in the next one, he gets shoes. - I think he needs a hat. - God, a little fedora? - A little Adonty, like Kong gets a little pretentious and he doesn't like literature or much work or something. But I mean, I was thinking more of a helmet, but I'd like him in a little fedora. - Sure. - How might makes me think of like, can we put him in like a cannon? Can we start shooting him out, Kong cannon? - That's fun, like Godzilla shows up and it's like one second and I'm like rolls out a big cannon and it's like, I didn't-- - Right, there's a big wick, yes, a light in it. - Oh, that sounds-- With his atomic breath-- - Yeah, and then he puts his fingers in his ears. - His fingers have to go in his ears. - I mean, now it sounds like we're just workshopping a Donkey Kong movie. Like we're moving away from King Kong and towards Donkey Kong. - Good, I did like-- - That Super Mario Galaxy did put in the weirdly realistic T-Rex from Odyssey? - Oh, yeah, yeah, sure. - Yeah, yeah, the right, the little baby Mario - The baby's fuck with a paper realistic, yeah. - Hiper, realistic T-Rex. - Right. - I just think maybe the greatest moment in the history of movies is in the Peter Jackson King Kong when he fights the T-Rex. And he like breaks his jaw from the inside. And then before he throws him off a cliff, he just plays with it a little bit like a fucking puppet. - We gotta get that back into movies. That's what Woke took from the course. - Kong rips some, whatever the Skull Island guys are. He does that to them, a little Skull crawler. - Yeah, he rips his Skull crawler a little bit. - Yeah, I just think we can just-- - He didn't play with it as much. - The playing with it. - Yeah, sort of like an animal. Right, which he is an animal. - What do we wanna say about that? - Yeah, 20 minutes. - Yada yada yada. They're like-- - They're a jewel of Moro Bay. - Right, she's like, I gotta get to California. The whole first movie is how hard it is to get anywhere. And they're just like, let's just fucking use the turtles. It feels like such like guys come on, I'm sorry. They insisted we put the turtles in for murder reasons. We're gonna use the turtles as a shortcut. They basically make them like hyper speed. And then the second they get off the turtle current, I'm like the movie's good and stays good. - Yeah, it does stay good. It moves along in the right way and it-- - Yes, I think the turtles are sort of the riders of Rohan in my, in the, if we're, they're sort of, I thought the same thing. - I was like, this is as kind of like what? An eagle can just fucking show up and take them there. - Yeah, right, that works for me. - But I think Hank immediately hits. I do like how sneaky he is. - Yes, I think, is he the first person we've seen try to sort of use Dory's condition against her? - Yeah, I feel like everyone else is kind of just like, oh, hey, yeah. - Right, it's kind of like-- - He tries to memento her a little bit. - He's a memento thing of like, can I get you to rent twice? - Yeah, right. - And it's another smart kind of like, Pixar logic thing of like, oh, does that tag, is there a power in that kind of tag? He wants to get back, or he wants to stay in. - He wants to go to Cleveland, so he can live in peace. - Yes, right, he wants to stop being charged. - I can deeply relate to it. - But yes, right, you're a meat in a box. - He's untrustworthy. - Cleveland, he's fresh water. I love the way he moves. - Yes, the way he moves is really fun to watch. And I love how frazzled he is. - He's sure, he's kind of me. - He is kind of me. - Where he's just like you, this is Chris. - Yeah. - He's like, I need to do all this stuff, and he's like, okay. - His character is 90% under eye bags. - Yeah, which is good design. - In terms of facial animation. - Right, he's a septipose, of course. - I like how touchy he is about that. - Right. - And he helps her find Bayley and Destiny. He's the moment where she jumps in with the dead fish, and how she gets to them, right? 'Cause I like that too, 'cause that is, it's just dark enough. Like that's the amount of Pixar dark I want, where she's like, just play dead, I get it, you know, where you're like, let's, yeah, we can acknowledge. - She's fucked it with Destiny, written on it. - Right. - She jumps in. - It's also this good line they maintain of like, Dory can't be too dumb, right? Like Dory misunderstanding things is funny, but especially in a movie, thank you, where, - I think, I think, I appreciate your opponent. - 'Cause I was thinking that under show is a beach thing. - Yeah. - I think it's a, but there is a real thing that they address, where it's like, all the fish moving around does create, like a kind of bottom of the sea current that humans don't think about. - Right. - They're like moves shit around. - Yeah. - But that's what they call. - The ocean is scary. - Yeah. - Very scary. - Yeah. - I love it though. - What could be in there? - Yeah, give me another one. - I don't like to go down there. - Do you ever do any sort of, like, scuba? - Yeah. - Almost, no, that never. - But like snorkeling. - I barely go in a pool. - I love to go in a pool. - I see, I feel like you're like me. - It's wonderful. - We like traveling. It's like the greatest luxury of like, work. - Sure. - When our careers are going well. - It gets nice, go places. - It is nice to get to do it by accident, essentially. - Right, but I feel like you and I are the same where what we like doing is being a city explorer. - Yeah. - Like, I don't want to necessarily go to the tour shit and I don't want to like, fucking swim in some fucking thing. - In the severance episode where you guys went up state, I mean, you went to the keyer park or whatever. Did you swim? 'Cause there was a lot of water. - No, I didn't go on the water. - You didn't get drowned there. - I'm just in the snow. - You're just in the snow. - Yeah. - Remember how you snow, I can handle. - Sure. - I know it's water, but it's less scary. Yeah, so come on. Yeah, you can walk on it. It's easy. It's no big deal. You need it. It's better. It's fine. I will inch though. That's a lot of snow. Yeah. I would like to have one thing. It's always bad. Interesting. I mean, finding Dory would argue other applies. I suppose so. I mean, okay. So it gives you way more Dory than the first time and it still works. So Destiny's deal is that she's near sight and is always bonking. Right. Which is another good reverse logic characterization thing. Yeah. Bailey is embarrassed about his nose, no. I love everything about how strength I like his weird design. I like to think almost always keep him in profile where it feels like he's a 2D character weirdly in a 3D movie. And I really like Tyberel's performance, but the logic of he now thinks he's lost his echo sonar because he bumped his head. And that's why his head looks like that. And he's self-conscious about it, even though that's just the species he is. Is really funny to me. Yeah. And it's it is fun that because they're at this sort of like rehab facility. Yeah. Everyone is a bit of a misfit. Yeah. So it's like it is really nice the way they all support each other and and basically like hype each other up and be like, you can do this. It's the other thing that post black fish stops it from feeling like they are stuck here. They're being held prisoners is the unifying thing is that all of these creatures are kind of like I don't want to be out there. Right. They're misfit toys. Right. That's scary. And I'm not ready. Right. I like not fish. That's a funny bit. Yeah. Fish sneezes. Yeah. Do they sneeze? You know what? I'm gonna go to Google and I'm gonna find out. Do fish. My favorite like no. What? They don't have lungs. So they don't and they don't really have noses. I know obviously in Nemo they have these things. Right. But yeah. So they don't really have the ability to do that. Yeah. Sorry. My favorite little one seen guy is the overly personable clam. Oh yeah. Yeah. It's so good. Oh. When they're right. When Marlon and Nemo get they get stuck with him, right? Yes. He was originally supposed to be their next door neighbor in the opening and one of these fake openings or unused opening. I like that he's like a mop it. Yeah. Right. That he doesn't have eyes or anything else that he's just a clam that opens up and is just like, this guy's not. It's not a bad guy, but I just really don't want to be stuck talking to him. I got to move on. He's like a guy at the table next to you with a restaurant who won't stop being like, that looks good. Yeah. And you try to use your sort of body language cues to slowly rotate to like decrease the interaction slowly over time, which is not really picking up on it. And it's so funny to do that with a character that doesn't have a face. Yeah. That is great. Do you know what this is? But yes, they they broke this bit in with him. And then even when they cut that opening, they were like, this guy's too good. We have to figure out another way they get stuck with him. Do you know the scientific term for the bulbous part of a toothed whale's head that contains a tecola, this is not, you know, this sort of big thing. What's it called? I'm melancholy. A melancholy. They would really just call it a melancholy. That's fun. Yeah. That's fun. You got the two seals who are sort of the high status. We know everything. Yeah. But our assholes too, Gerald, who you want to defend? Well, I do want to interrogate. I just, I think the movie's positioning of Gerald slightly undercuts the message of the film because the film, the film is all about like owning your differences and like, it's okay to have something up with you essentially. Yes. And you can do things and you should be sort of accepted and affirmed. And then Gerald shows up and they're like, you fucking freak. Get the fuck out of here. What's wrong with your fucking eyebrows? Don't touch our rock. Is Gerald a radio? Is the other thing? I don't know what's going on with Gerald. Yes. But the radio, you refer to the Q and Q in your movie, of course. Yes. The device for listening to audio transmission. No, I am aware of the fact that he is not an electronic device. They don't treat him very well. They don't. They don't. And I think your characters and honestly, the film itself, but it's a one, you know, it's whatever. I mean, it feels like they're trying to find a new version of the Seagull joke, right? The Seagulls is basically like, doesn't it kind of sound like Seagulls are saying mine. And so like with the the sea lions, the way they are, it's trying to do that again. They need to be an asshole. Not a successful. Yes. Right. I guess this is the stuff that feels similar to me. You know, it's like, yeah, we should have like these side characters that we lay information that are, yeah, kind of like a big joke. It's a it's a little like, right, because you're combining some of the Nigel, the sort of idea of the creature that can exist in both, but is the observer and the know it all and the go between for information. Nigel's the Jeffrey Rush Pelican. Oh, right. Character. Yes. So it's like combining that with like they sit on the rock and they see everything with also them being the Seagulls. I think the performances are really funny. I like them being two bloaks. Sure. You know, yeah, I have no issues with them. I guess the argument is, couldn't he have been like a donny in the Big Lebowski trio? Could they still be an asshole to him while he is a character who can speak and isn't coded as perhaps developmentally dissing? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think probably and then but I think Becky they do a much better job with because Becky Becky is very much like a microcosm of Dory story almost where they learn, right? Marlon is like, you can't do anything and then they learn, oh, just trust her and she'll she'll figure it out. Becky is a loon. A bird literally named for being crazy essentially. So interesting. Do we never hear her do the loon call? I guess kind of they are great. It is like I've like vacation on likes with loons and it does sound crazy when they're just doing that at night. It's another thing that I think helps with Becky is that the loons are all crazy are all nonverbal and Becky's just a little weirder and she's hot. Becky someone finally says it. I mean, we had to we had to get here eventually. I assume Becky would have a really big part in old Marlon. Oh yeah. Yeah. I mean, they have chemistry. She comes walking through that door again. They have chemistry. They have sort of a like Marlon almost enjoys the fact that she doesn't listen like it's almost like a they're developing a subdom type thing like important and Taylor like the fighting is the juice. Yeah. It's a they're they're headed towards fandom thread basically of yeah, they have this sort of dynamic that you know, he likes being like Becky, you do this thing and she's kind of like, I'm not going to do it anywhere. You know, it's also I think just like a smart refinement for them of Dory isn't lost. They're close enough to Dory. Their versions of the movie they clearly ran through where Dory swims off. They know where she is, but there's a parallel narrative of Marlon and Nemo need to get there versus what we're saying of like, it's a very different type of environment. It's harder to traverse, but they're never that far from her. It's me. Yeah. And then I also think it helps create this thing where the tension isn't how do we find Dory? It's what you're saying the testing of like, you're applying your Marlon logic to this and it's not going to work. Marlon has to accept her line of thinking, Becky's line of thinking. Yeah, sure. Totally. I mean, and there's this sort of mystery element to the whole narrative of like, she needs to remember like, why the shells mean something to her? Why the, right? Like, and it's very satisfying to sort of, I mean, I feel like there's too many flashbacks. Like, there's too many filling in there's maybe a car lining and then I remember that like your daughter has seen this movie 20 times. Maybe that this this narrative is not digestible for a five-year-old if you don't do that. It really shock her. It really changes your perspective on children's entertainment when you watch the movie with the with the children that the entertainment is intended for. And you're like, right, of course, like, it's on her wavelength. That's not on my way, because I've been like a 37 year old man singing animated films. Being alone. Do I detect a plot hole? Like, you know, excuse me, you don't need to spoon feed this to us. And I'm like literally sitting next to a baby being spoon fed. It's like, you know, I was spoon feeding that girl her food more recently than, you know, whatever. Like, you know, she was eating it. That was my experience watching Goat, though, where I saw Goat. And I was like, okay, so there's a little overstated. And I looked next to it. And there was like a woman feeding a baby mush. It's fair next to me in the theater. That's good. Shut the fuck up when Goat was available for purchase for 30 whole dollars on iTunes. I was like, purchase, you don't wait for the steal. No, I, I don't buy children's films on steel. Like the whole digital. It needs to be on the iPad. Yeah. It needs to be like, she's like, I won't go. And I'm like, got you go. It's ready. Watch. There it is. Get that free digital code. Are you going to buy the goat steel? No, I don't like go. Okay. Oh, come on. Stop you before you see go. Uh, I didn't go to school. I'm I'm I will get you. Yeah. I mean technically the game is called Roar ball. Yeah, I was gonna say we might want to take a little different from basketball. Yeah, you rule one. Yeah, animals can play it. Yeah, the ball is very different. It looks exactly like a basketball except it has a million holes inside of it. Yeah, so that any type of animal appendage could hold it. It falls or whatever. Yeah. And the way it works. It's like you kind of need like a giraffe on your team to like, you know, protect the rim or whatever. Right. That's the best. Right. Exactly. Yeah, the dress like the center. Uh, there's an ostrich character who's kind of a wing. Okay. Yeah. You know, like it's all tracks. Yeah, she's good. Uh, so it has your daughter transferred her love of Roar ball to basketball at all. Yeah. No, because I'm so intently trying to a brain washer until I can baseball. Ah, so she must work on baseball first. Yes, but you know, I am going to try and get her into the WMBA eventually. I was going to say I don't know if you've ever met Sims's wife, Zach. I don't think I have. She is similarly very tall. She's tall. She played volleyball. David's daughter is almost definitely destined to be. Oh, she my daughter is in the 99% basketball. She's very, very tall. Yes, no, this could all have. I mean, or softball or any athletics. The only issue is she got those David Sims jeans, you know, moving around inside of her and they may limit her athletic ability. It just might be a hampering. It might my wife did play volleyball. Uh, through college. So like she, you know, she could have. Yeah. But um, Roar ball also, yes, the home team, which might be say, like, uh, team with like a jungle environment or an ice environment, right? He's allowed to change the court. Oh, by like kind of like erupting of all cano baseball. Yeah, exactly. Like it's the home game advantage. You're allowed to kind of like press a button basically and go like volcano mode. Right. Your stadium mirrors, your natural habitat, even though all the teams have multiple different species. That's very baseball. Uh, and, and the environment can be unbelievable. Right. Field wall in a little bit. That is kind of the way it's there's like an Arctic team and their court is made of ice. So if you slam down too hard on it, it shatters and then it's just like too fucking bad. He can't walk on that part anymore. It's good. It's good. I'll be watching. I'm going to get to steal. I think you should get just a good. I think also a very funny, uh, Nick Crowe performances. He's very dragon. Yep. I own movies. I don't like on steelbook, but they are out of a specific sense of completism. They are something like fast X where it's like I own all of them. I hate this one. So if they make like five more goats, then yo, I would need to, I would need to opt in wholly on goat at some point for them to eventually get me to buy when I didn't like, if that makes sense. This is much like, yes, me owning several ghost buster sequels. I don't like. Okay. Touch pool. That's fun. We like that sequence. Very funny. It is a fun sequence. It is the one where Dory's logic made the least sense to me of just keep swimming. And then they, it didn't matter which part of the touch pool they made it to, you know, they sort of just like end up. I have what they call like poke poke at what is the part they reach at the end? Oh, something or pro sure, progan prop, but it didn't, it didn't, it didn't matter. But it is a fun sequence. And I like the hand, the hands thing. Y'all ever done a touch pool recently. I've done that a lot because I've been to the aquarium a lot. Recently, no, but in my past, David goes to the aquarium like six times a day. I do go. My daughter loves it. I go by myself. It's fun to go to an aquarium. It's really fun. Look at all the face. Yeah. But the fish really do have touch pools and they are kind of like, you know, they're very specific. It is not like in finding Dory. Sure. They're like one animal at a time. And it we're being gentle with the animals. That's good. It is fun. Progress. I don't think anything to Ferris was going on. SeaWorld, obviously, a rival of Disney's. It would be in their interest to take SeaWorld down. That's true. But I, you know, after the first movie, there were all these stories of like pet fish sales went way up. But then kids would beg their parents for a fish and then flush it down the toilet because they'd say like all drains lead to the ocean. I'm trying to free them. This movie kind of absolves you of the guilt of being a child going to an aquarium. Uh, yeah. Sure. It's like they need that. They need the help. This is good. I've never been to see. Have you guys wait, but the children are scary monsters. That's true. Yes. That's a good point. I mean, I made me feel like I can't ever do a touch pool again. It is interesting. That right. It's like this is actually a pretty good setup for them. Save the kids. If the kids weren't here, they'd have it made. They like it here. Yeah. The kids are the problem. Yeah. The kids are scary. Yeah. So adults should go to aquariums alone and keep their hands themselves. That I can agree with. Good. Uh, since I happened to see world a handful of times, because I would visit with my grandparents in Florida, they lived outside of Orlando. Gatorland was obviously your preference. For sure. Love Gatorland. Gatorland is this shitty local park near where my grandparents lived. That was just so trashy, but great. Locationally also problematic. Location of the final third act action set piece in bad boys. Uh, rider die. Yes. The fourth bad boys. Enza Gator. Oh, yeah. Yes. A lot of fun. But um, yeah, fun. I mean, the, the whale show was cool. They splash you. You're in the splash zone. Right. Like that. It is so funny that in the 90s, one whale just became a major celebrity. Shemu, like a household name, you know, and every sea world location was like, yeah, yeah, this is the one. Yeah, we got Shemu, too. We got Shemu, Shemu. He's Shemu. This is the guy. This is that guy from the commercials and the movies and everything. Shemu alive. No, well, which one? Yeah. The Shemu might have, uh, yeah, she died in August, 1971. Whoa. So even before I was free, like Shemu died 25 years before free willy. But then how did I hear so much about Shemu? It's a very common name in the way of community. Can we pick which I do impression on the podcast? Oh, oh, yes. Oh, I do. I've never seen it. You've never seen it. See, I was trying to get a picture and I can't get it fast enough. Did you get it? Come on. I think so. My angle is not great. Damn it. It's the microphone arm, if you move the microphone arm before he, oh, oh, David pushed it. I'm so but I always smile. He's lost it. Damn it. I think I got one. I think I got all right. I think I got the arm took it out of it. It did. This is the problem. The whole thing with about it about me doing my whale impression, my impression of Brendan Frazier. Yeah, the poster for the movie The Whale. You really have to let your mind go blank. Yeah, that's when he looks like on the phone. Zach, you're a tremendous actor. Thank you. And you just saw David transform in front of you. I did, but he's not classically trained. No, it's all this thing. It's a precarious process. It's very delicate. Yeah, the trans can be broken very easily. You see him drop into it so quickly. Yeah. Have you seen Brendan Frazier the whale? I have not. I've heard it described in detail on the 70 episodes of Doe Boy. 70 almost seems low. Basically syndicated on double. He said this point, but no, I have not watch. Like, double is you could just sort of like piece together the entire movie through all of the various time. It's funny. The movie I was probably never going to watch. Yeah. But when I heard he floats at the end, that was really what sold me on. I won't that would be. I did out loud go. I'll get the fuck out. You know, when that happened, I was like, wait a second. I'm sure I was not like. I'm sure I've shared this anecdote before, but that happened. And I went. And then I heard a sound behind me and I looked in the man sitting directly behind me was like sobbing and convulsing. I can't. I am interested in developing a live-action version of the whale. Yeah, we'll just do it without prosthetics. So sure. So we'll just sort of, you know, live-action it up. Yeah. But I'm that's we're in talks for that. We're in talks, right. It is funny. The way the doughboys talk about the whale, you could go, well, they're reducing it to like five things, the jerking off the meatball. So, yeah, that's all I know fucking nothing. You'd imagine like, well, they're being really kind of mean to it. If you watch it, those things are like the A-plots. Like the meatballs. You're like the whole fucking thing is this. They read the essay like 10 times. Keep coming back to that damn essay. The movie's called The Whale because the essay's about movie dick. That is why it's called that. Yeah, David, the title does not refer to him in his body. It refers to the essay. And if you thought it referred to him, you're the judgmental one and maybe look in a mirror. Shame on you, Zach. What do you make of the fact that when Dory, I'm bringing us back to the end to this movie, to the final. This movie does have whales in it, sort of learns that her parents did, you know, escape to search for her and never came back leading Dory to think that they are dead and Dory kind of. It's not like she tries to kill herself. It's just kind of like throw herself. I guess it's like Spongebob. She's despondent. It's like what like it's like the Hank scoops her up. And then I guess he drops her. She doesn't. It's not like she throws herself out of the coffee pot or whatever, right. But there is that kind of quite shocking, but like exciting moment where you're like sort of Dory, I view of like crashing out of the pot and like roll. down the drain. I don't know. It's effective. Yeah. I mean, this is another like sort of this movie, like it has like two kind of darkish moments before it's finally like they're alive and everything's fine and they found her and everyone's going to be okay. I'm rewatching it. The octopus scoops up Dory and gets caught and dropped. Yeah, that's what it is, right? Because he like, he's like, where are the others? And she's like, I don't know, my parents are dead. And then right. Yeah. When they were supposed to be affected with the same level of memory loss, she was going to find them like halfway through because finding them wouldn't solve stuff because they all keep forgetting each other. And now it just sounds so how do we save all three of them? Right. Really annoying. But then I think they end up in this position where they're like, well, fuck, then what is the explanation for why they haven't found her? They land on a good thing of they were trusting she would make it back. Yeah, I think it makes sense that they were doing everything to stay in one place. Right. And we'll just keep building a map. I don't know if that was the healthiest choice, but it was I mean, it's a little bleak if you think about it too hard because there are years that have been lately isolated. They're not near any other living creatures. No, they it seems to be they're living in the dark. You might want to build a support network of other people who can spread the world. It's also it is another fish family with one child. Yeah, you know, I mean, after like finding Nemo goes to pains to be like, look, the rest of the eggs got eaten. This is an unusual situation because it is true that like fish generally have like clutches and eggs. I also think that it works largely because this is where they really get their fucking money worth out of Diane Keaton. Sure. They're a sag scale, but buy a house with the residuals a year later. Money out of Diane Keaton where she I think really dramatically sells the like we just trusted you would find us and you did to make it a moment of triumph of like look at you you did it. I assume that's where you and your wife start sobbing. It is very effective. It's just, you know, like the fundamental thing that I think it's very affecting to watch as a parent is when you see Dory is a child suffering from memory loss. It feels much more like profoundly awful, which is the of course the drama of the the flashbacks and all that. But the young Dory is much more self-conscious about it and worried about it and you're anxious about it and all that. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. And then yeah, just the catharsis. Yeah. Just like dude though like all the you know TikToks are we serving to me like watch, you know, the child see his soldier dad returning from the airport and it's just within one second. I am just like on the edge of you know, like you watch that now and after two seconds the child like lifts up the dad and throws him through a wall and you're like, this is AI. Well for Brimley starts like you King oatmeal. Have you seen these? There's some account I keep seeing where I'm just like, this is another Wolfard Brimley interview from Larry King. I'd love to watch this. And then after three seconds, he starts like projectile vomiting Quaker votes. I can't even search for that. Like I don't want the algorithm. It's like when you want one of those. You're cook. You're a Mr. Fansky friend of the show was like, do you know about hot Hagrid? And I'm like, what are you talking about? She's like hot Hagrid and I googled it and it was like there was a whole TikTok sub-soldier people like horny for Hagrid. But then of course immediately my phone was like, oh, you like that? You want as much of that as we can give you. This might be the only opportunity I ever have to tell this story. It's related to hot Hagrid it. Okay, go on. I don't remember how it came up, but I do remember that during shooting season one of severance, I did tell Jon Jetero that people want to fuck Shrek. And what? It was fairly early in the season. And I remember him sort of being like, okay. That was just like the end of the conversation. My impression of making the show, especially the way, like I guess you would do the COVID but it's like, you guys are in that set for like forever. Yes, yes. Like for so long, it's just you're at these consoles. We ultimately did get quite close. And I bet if I told him about it now, the conversation would go different. I don't know more. But this was, it was probably in the first two weeks of shooting. I mean, it may seem new about Shrek. I guess Shrek's everywhere. All our kind of elder states, men, Italians of the screen and stage are learning about Shrek later in life. Right. Of course, Puccino's got the phone. K. That's right. Shrek knows that people want to give it to him. Yeah, he knows now. Yeah. How, I mean, how many voices is Tetero done? Well, of course, he's Francesco Bernoulli and cars too. Ah, I think I like to mention a lot. Do you see in any of the hotel Transylvanians? Never. And that's actually a shame, especially considering how close he is in the happy Madison. He was in Del Toro's Pinocchio. Goody voice. Del Toro. Okay. I saw it one time. Yeah. But yeah, I think he needs to do a little bit more. He cars too sucks and is for losers and babies. And even babies should be embarrassed that they like it. It is one of the most insane movies I've ever made. I tried to give it another watch. Reese, I did watch it through. But I was like, well, I have any perverse appreciation for just how insane it is now. And it still is more annoying than interesting to me, even with all of its weirdness. Tetero is very good in it. He's like a Formula 1 car or whatever. He's a Formula 1 car who's really like haughty. I gotta watch Transylvanian like Queen all the time. That's the slam dunk for him. Yeah. Yeah. I do want to say one more thing about Finding Dory. Yeah. My favorite part of the movie, which we maybe briefly touch on or whatever, it's sort of happening at this part of the film, is the moment where it starts with Nemo and Marlin when they're stuck in the fountain and yes, in the gift shop. And they start saying, what would Dory do? And then they reunite with her and they tell her that. And then for the rest of the movie, Dory starts saying, what would I do? And I found that quite affecting and very like, because I do think it's something, I think people who have a variety of issues, it's really hard to have confidence in yourself when you're like dealing with that kind of stuff. And so I think this idea of just like trusting in yourself and almost like making yourself a heroic figure to look up to. I thought it was really kind of beautiful, honestly. I think what it expresses very well is that Marlin is willingly bringing Dory into his family and taking on responsibility for her, but is clearly burdening him with a tremendous amount of stress. And more than being like neurotic around Nemo, he's clearly just like, fuck, I'm like on the clock at all times, making sure Dory doesn't kill herself. And what Nemo like teaches him in that moment of like, "Oh, Rach, he's self-sufficient." And she helped you fucking find me. Right. Like he has to, not that he doesn't want to still help her. Yeah, no, I know, I know. I think, because there's that scene where he's like yelling at her that is genuinely effective. Like he's being an asshole and he's not being an asshole in the way he is in the first movie of you're being annoying. No, he's being an asshole because it feels like his weight. Right. Yeah. Right. And it's it's it's appropriate. Marlin is no fun in this movie, but you know, it all lines up with the characterization. Hey, it's also nice when Dory's parents point out that Dory was able to eventually find that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's like a really it's a nice wind for Dory. Now I was texting with JJ. I researched her about this last night. Sure. And what's his status? I don't know. He took a long time to tell us that like a roof guy was coming to his house and I was not happy. I really wanted to know that kind of information right away. We texted him something. He like, and then like, he thumbs up so text hours later, like that I had said. And then said like, sorry, I thought I had thumbs up that earlier, but my roof guy was here to look at the roof. And I said, thank you so much for filling us in JJ was really worried. I was like, you think you really, you got to be keep me more updated. This is the first time hearing of it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's all about it. Right. That's the way he yet to mention it. I mean, I mean, we might have to fire. I feel like every time it hails in Wisconsin, JJ's up my ass. Like more. And I'm like, all right. And yeah, I don't even hear what's happened to the roof. He sent us a series of texts about going to the local university library to take out a bunch of books. I'm Martin Scorsese to start researching for our next mini series and was texting us about how difficult it was for him to bike home in the rain with all the books. And we just necked him so fucking hard. We're like, uh, JJ, those books look pretty fucking dry. Yeah. He sent a picture of a stack. And I was like, I don't know what. I see a single droplet. Um, now we sound like assholes. But I was going to say is that JJ, while prepping the stars here, text me and said, are you more pro on Dory than Sims? And I was, I think we're both pretty pro. And he was saying, like, good, I just want to make sure it's a positive episode. And I said, yeah, I think the first 15, 20 minutes suck, basically everything from when they get to the marine institute on rules. And he said, yeah, that's right. And it like rules rules IMO. And then I think perhaps the most dead on profound point that JJ has ever made in his years of working for this show. There's an octopus driving a truck. What the hell else do you want? Yeah. That part rules. It is the moment where I was like, stand still, got the fucking magic and the chaos in him. Yeah. Of just the audacity of being like, you know what I'm going to try to do? I'm going to try to construct an actual proper action sequence that can be driven by the fish that is affecting the human world. world that is pushing further than like, you know, the strain of the first movie is if the fish swim down will turn over the boat, right? Yeah, sure. I mean, it reminds me of Toy Story. That's what I want. It's kind of just like, what if these guys were in our world? What's the craziest thing that they might be able to achieve, you know, like, could these toys drive a car, but they, you know, it's a push, it's heightened, but it feels similarly affected by a logic of the fucking ones a year, well, here's some insane story of a thing like this that happens. If not this crazy, you know, I saw a video recently of a dog honking a horn over and over. This is the thing. There's always some story of like, it's basically the same thing that happened, right? A bear walked into a 7-11 and worked a shift and you're like, what? And then you walked the video and you're like, this room, there he goes. I feel good about the world for one hour. I just think this sequence is excellent and it feels like he keeps heightening how far you think it could possibly go and straining credibility. And it's silly, but there is a really good worked out internal logic of, like you said, in a Toy Story way, like, how much can they actually affect things? And we've already seen them sort of do a dress rehearsal with the stroller. Yes. So it's like, you kind of are just bought in to like, this octopus can move. He knows what he's going to, you know. And then weaponizing the otters is great. I feel like you want to talk about the otters, Ben. Who doesn't love an otter? I mean, I was just trying to move this along, but yeah, who doesn't love an otter? They're cute. I'm with you, man. Let's wrap up Finding Dory. I don't remember what else happens anyway. What's the song when the truck is like slow motions? Is it good headed shit? I can't remember. Um, yeah, the uncredited song in this is unforgettable, which is clever after the first one has so nice beyond the city, of course. And there's the closing little moment with Marlon and Dory looking out over the beautiful and their landscape, right, coral, neighborhood, yep, totally. But just yeah, the serenity of that moment of them, all sort of the peace and the comfort in their family. It's what a wonderful world. It's a blue yarn. Yeah. I see. I see the blue. That's the song. And over here, I was singing the song, uh, can you find me, Dorian? So that, of course, you could have used that, that was, uh, that is creed. Can you take me higher? That's right. Yeah, that's okay. But first, it, it just was, I couldn't stop doing it. It's over. Can now I'm going to be doing it. Now I'm going to be doing it. Yeah. It's beautiful. Now, can we throw down the gauntlet for the can you find me, Dorian challenge? So you were doing this walking over here? Yeah. Send us a video of you walking in public singing. Can you find me, Dorian? Can you, um, you have to do it in public while commuting? Do we want a third, Dorian, Nemo, you know, they, they, they, doctor recently kind of said, like, Hey, it's a big ocean. Like he kind of hinted at it of like, we're thinking of ideas like, Bob, Bob, and as you say, Ellen went from, I've retired from public life too. I guess I'm making a short film in which I star as Dorian. Right. He's cracking the door open. It feels like something is. Albert Brooks is old, but he was recently in a film, perfect world, Marlon. I do, I think it's such a rich world where like, it doesn't have to be about even these characters. Like, yeah, they do such great world building with each like the turtles and the sharks and the stingrays and that like, I just would watch any, any more ocean life. It does. It'll be looking good. Yeah. I will say, and then it's just like a personal preference thing. The technology, the leap between the first film and the second film is obviously huge. Not to mention. Now they basically have unlimited budgets. These movies are so profitable. These characters are so valuable that they're truly like, just send us the bill when it's done. It doesn't matter how much it fucking costs. It helps us as a company to have Dory back out there. I was talking a lot in the episode of the first film about all the cheats in that movie of how they pull off the depth and the texture and the elements of the ocean and how a lot of it is kind of like the CGI version of old stage craft where that movie feels a little bit more like an archer's film and it's sort of representational way of capturing that. And this you're just like, they have all the money and they have all the technology. They could just render everything perfectly. It does look beautiful, but I miss the sort of, I don't know, the movie magic of the first film. Maybe we do a wicked style reclaiming of Gerald. Okay. Gerald for good. Yeah. We kind of learned that in fact, Gerald was right all along. He was a genius. Yeah. Yeah. Standing in that earned him weekly article had this quote that has, I've seen the internet immediately run with misinterpreting as Toy Story 5 director announces Toy Story 6 and 7. Okay. Everyone's been running this as a headline. What he said basically was, he said, 6, 7 and he did his hands like this and everyone laughed and Disney started like doing a projection smart. Yeah. Right. No, he was talking about how they came to him and said, do you have any ideas for five and they started noodling on it? He wasn't playing direct it and then he really liked the idea. He said, we'll start writing it, start directing it, whatever. And he said, you know, it's this whole thing of it. We had always been so concerned was three, the definitive ending and then when we opened ourselves up to that's Andy's story, there are other things you can do. We keep thinking the series is ending and he said something to the like sort of effect of you sit down for two hours and start doing the mental exercise about other toys and what their lives would be and immediately you just come up with ideas for two more movies. He was basically like, everyone just took that as they have an idea for two more movies that will exist. Right. And he was just sort of saying, and I think this is his superpower that, you know, Toy Story 4 was notoriously a disaster forever that they couldn't crack. It was the one movie they kept pushing back, even though they had all these big money deals because they were like, we don't have it. And then they finally went to him post funny door and said, do you have anything? And he was like, what about this and they were like, fuck, that's good. And then he took over kind of co-writing the movie. I think he's the guy who's really smart about locating something that feels kind of organic that is sitting there in the world that you've developed and what the human story is there, the emotional story that you can like explode out of that. I dread the notion of them announcing something literally like Finding Marlin or Nemo's now grown up and his child goes missing. But I'm like, if they could come up with an idea that's just sit down and think about other things that could happen in the ocean with fish, even if it is led by these characters, I just think you can't do since this movie is the flip, flipping it again. I agree. I don't think it needs to be finding anyone. Right. Do you know who does flip? Flipper. Flipper Flippern. Yeah. Flipper hasn't worked in a while. Yeah. Well, again, there's some problematic. He was on the shitty man remedialist. This film was supposed to come out Thanksgiving 2015. I mean, instead decided to give that to the good dinosaur. I had a great meal there. 2015 Thanksgiving. Yeah. It was like top 10 beats this act. That was pretty good. It would have been good to pair with Dory. It would be the only way that Mewke and everything missing is instead yet to pair with the good dinosaur. Yeah. Good dinosaur obviously didn't do very well. That was notably one of the first. The first picture movie to lose money. I think that was a big picture movie to ever confuse me. It sucks. It's really confusing. I remember watching high watch building as an adult and I was just like, yeah, I don't know what is happening. It's also it's the first one where you're like, you guys never cracked yet. You guys have released this film because you had to, but you did not know what it was. Of course it sucks, but it is like poorly conceived and then it is a successfully executed version of their stupid idea. The dinosaur you're like, where did this start? What did you think you were making? Can any of you take pride in what you release now? I was going to say though, that was the first year that they released two in 2015. I think it was inside out and good dinosaur in the same year. So it was sort of like inside out covered the good dinosaur. Yeah. Right. That is so well. Right. Exactly. The good dinosaur because they were like, Dory is a guaranteed hit. Good dinosaur is a guaranteed flop. Can we sandwich it with the flop in between successes? Right. So Dory comes out June 2016. It opens $135 million at the domestic box office, which is an animated movie record at the time beating Shrek the third, which had held the record for a decade. It's actually just getting a very funny look. Jack just gave John Tattaro a look. Yeah. Hopefully that much. His majesty. Hey, sex sells. It makes close to $500 million domestic. It makes a billion dollars worldwide. Only the second Pixar movie to do that after Toy Story 3. It was snub by the Academy Awards, as I pointed out. And Stanton does not go on to make another animated movie until Toy Story 5, right? Yes. We'll talk about it in the next episode. Right. He moved to TV. Well, he was like, the John Carter thing wasn't a one off. I want to be directing live action. And what follows is like eight years of him signing on for a bunch of things. uh, attaching himself to Blacklist scripts, movies set up at various points in time that don't happen, uh, and directing a tremendous amount of TV. He did a fair amount of TV. He directs two episodes of Strange The Things, an episode of Better Call Saul, an episode of Legion, an episode of Tales from the Loop. Mm-hmm. Remember that one? Four episodes of the excellent show for all mankind, including one of its best ever episodes in my opinion. His Better Call Saul episodes also really excellent, I will say. Uh, sure. An episode of the, uh, well-remembered Netflix show third-body problem, and free-body problem. He's a consulting producer on that. Sure. And he was a consulting producer. There's more in that coming. There is, by obligation. Yeah. You're going to find a fourth body. I mean, look, those books are, I've read them all. I love them so much. They're the greatest. Yeah, great book. They're the greatest books ever, and you read them and you're like, anyone who thinks that they could adapt this is a fool. Like, this is the most unadaptable shit in the world. It has like 400 characters, most of whom are Chinese, like, and so you just have to immediately start like messing with it, which is what the show did over a massive timescale. Millenia. Yeah. And like, and like, you read the first book and you're like, wow, that's hard. You read the third book. You're like, that makes the first book look like fucking weird spot. Like, that makes the first book look like a cardboard book for children. Anyway, they're so good. I was going to watch the show. Also a consulting producer and writer on what we want. I recently watched and think is quite terrible, but felt like a very much. I would imagine. Everyone was just a swing and miss the dirt. Like the ball is nowhere near them, like, no, we can get it. It's just not even close. Not even close. I just find it interesting. He didn't direct any episodes of it. It's not like he was the main creator. I have to imagine that was a play. At that moment, when suddenly it was like Star Wars production was ramping way up. They're going to make a bunch of shows. Is this a way to sort of get my foot? Yeah, my foot in there. Maybe I do different Star Wars thing or under Deborah Chao was the director of that entire season. Yes. Yes. But instead, he does not make another live action film until 2026, when of course he released in the blink of an eye. Zach, do you know that Andrew Stanton released a live action movie on Hulu months ago? No. And months from now, I've been hard of it. McKinnon is the star of it where she did Jones to be digs. And very soon, Toy Story 5 will be released with him as the director. That one's going to do pretty well. It's going to do pretty well. He has once again replicated the same post John Carter thing of, you guys forgot I have another get out of jail free card. By the time this is out, Toy Story 5 has come out. So when it seems, unless it tried to like assassinate the president at a dinner or something, it did great. Like, I don't know what might happen in the meantime to derail Toy Story 5. It seems like it's on a good, I have a, I have a, a woody email dump that I've been sitting on. What he might have gone to an island. Okay. Long. He might have flown on a certain express pizza planet logs. Yeah. Pizza planet actually used to be called comic pizza. Let's, let's talk about it. It is, is there anything that could happen that would prevent that movie from making like a billion dollars? I don't know. I mean, I remember everyone felt that way about Toy Story 4. Yes. And then it slightly under delivered box office, although in the end of the day, it made a ton of money. I was wrong when we were trying to talk about the box office and whatever episode it was. It basically ended up at the exact same number as three, right? Just many years later. It was also post the sort of finding Nemo, finding doorheads such a big jump. And Incredibles 2. Incredibles 2 had such a big jump that speak while me movies were like rising on each one that people assumed, well, three was so big, four will be even bigger. And the answer is that like, three is about as big as a movie can get, did oh four. The ceiling might have been established, but it's also incredibly high. Now speaking of box office, June 17th, here we go. Any Dory's opening number one, number two, is an action comedy. So was this central intelligence? Yeah. I fucked it up. I look in at the rest of the summer lineup a little bit, but I don't know what specific. So the rock, he big. Yes. Kevin Hart. Not so big. Zach, they were in a movie. You're smiling. Of course. I love that movie. Now I remember. I saw that film with the Pavilion, which is now the Nighthawk Prospect Park. But it was in the dying days of the Pavilion. I had to see it to review it. And I like missed whatever screen. They were like, the screening is, you just missed it, you know, like one of those things. And I watched it and like, you know, probably like a freezing cold theater with like a garbage bag for a blanket or whatever. And I remember when the rock was young, he was like, he's kind of like a nerd. He was like a chubby nerd. He's very overweight. He did like his face on to like a CGI body. It's terrible. And I'm going to do a live action remake of that as well. Good. Yeah, I'm just doing it, but I'm just doing the best for you does do this. Oh, naturally. Right. God. Yeah. And there's a lot of it. Don't worry about that. Don't worry about that movie. I'm just a huge set. I'm a Kevin Hart Mark, like anything he makes back then, especially I laugh, I laugh it. He could make it. He's funny. I think the rock is funny in that as well. Yeah. But they're both good. They're locked in. Yeah. Plot is whatever. It was just one of those things where they were like rock, big, heart, small, make a poster. Well, right. The script later. Do you know what the tagline was for the fans? Yes. I do because it was the, it was what my review was about. It's so bizarre because the poster does not have their names above the title. Sure. Instead, the tagline is saving the world takes a little heart and a big Johnson. It's rare that there's a tagline that's a joke about the actor's names. It's not bad. It's not bad. It's not bad. But that movie sold itself. That's the start of their partnership. That's the first one. And then what was the one they did right after that? Jumanji. Okay. Then they start also like, they legally cannot make a movie without the other one cameo. Yeah. Right. And then they're also doing fucking commercials. I don't know. Tell me just was a hit. It was a big hit. It made 127. Yeah. Number three. The box office is a horror sequel. You did mention it already, but conjuring too. Conjuring too. Excellent film. Very good. Very good. Yes, but I do like it. And I love the scene where Patrick Wilson sings. That's him playing Elvis by the campfire. Scene Conjuring too. Oh, I've only seen the first conjuring, which is very good. I will eventually make my way through the conjuring. The devil will make you do it. Yes. But I've only seen the first conjuring. Last rights is one of those movies that I already have forgotten if I watched it. I think I did. Right. But like, like I waited, like no one liked it. I think I waited for HBO and I'm pretty sure I watched it, but it is not in there. With you. If I ever saw it or not. I think I did. But I can't have let her box because you know, I'm 40 years old, parenting's breaking the old brain. I felt sure I hadn't. I watched it. But now I can't say one and a half stars. Oh, right, haunted mirror. I might have seen some of the spin-offs. Well, there's a lot of them. A lot of them. La yora. Andabelle. La yora. Think I watched Andabelle. Yes. Do you see her? Do you want to law Euronia sequel? Yeah. Like eight years later. Sure. Apparently, that thing has just become like the most watched movie in the history of movies. I think that one did have a long, like Netflix tale. One tale. Number four at the back's office is another sequel. It's a two. It's a movie that got a three many years later, more very much for recently. And is it a three that finally landed on the right title? That is correct. This is now you see me numeral too. One of the most offensive movie titles of all time. At the very least, it should have been now you see me comma T-O-O. I agree. I agree. But it should have been called now. You see me now you don't. Right. Which they eventually did do. And then they made the bad boys mistake where by not using that title for the second one, they couldn't call the third one now you three me, which is what it should have been. I guess so. And said the third one is now you see me now you don't. I've never seen any of them. And the fourth one be called now you see me now you revolution legacy. I've always heard that they are fun. They seem like silly. Insane movies. Number five, the box office is a huge flop based on a video game. That did make $400 billion in like China alone essentially, but no money here. Yeah. That was it true. Also, I like went to the regal court street just to see it like opening weekend with like four other people and watch it was kind of like, is this so good? I'm smoking an imaginary cigarette. That's also not something I did. It's such a spec. Maybe we just make movies for China. It made so much money in China that maybe we make American blockbusters just for them. And then China was just like, no, we'll just make our own way. Have you seen Warcraft? I don't think so. Have you played Warcraft? I had a deep world of Warcraft era. I never did that in college. That's the MMR PC. You know, right. Yeah. I went to see it with Juan Nicolom, the great comedian, former PCB team Edmine. And he's a big Warcraft fan. And at the end of the movie, I think the Toby Kebble or Casababee. And he turned to me and went, so like that baby is kind of the most important character in Warcraft lore. And I'm like, this is what everyone's fucking up. Why is the movie standing? Yeah, start with the baby. - It was called Superman, but the whole movie was about Joram. - Yeah, yeah. - And you're like, that baby Superman. - This is true, I'm no a little warcraft expert, but I do know if they picked it. Number six is X-Menifocalypse, as you mentioned, terrible movie. - The original gentleman six, which is embarrassing to admit now. - It's crazy that yeah, you were like, "Yeah, it's a six." And I was like, "I don't know." - And then I called it a gentleman six. And now, once a month for the rest of our lives, someone on the Reddit starts a thread. - Can I explain to me what a gentleman six means? - And it's just people trying to parse my definition. - Number seven is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles out of the shadows, which we've covered on our Patreon. - Fun movie. - That's the one that's good. - That's the good one. - The Bebop Rocksteady one. - Right, the better live action movie. - Dave Green, director of Cody versus Ackon. - Right, the live action, I mean like CGI. - The Bay, the Platinum Dooms. - Is there any fat guys in that movie? - Bebop and Rocksteady. - And I'm gonna be doing a live action movie. - Yeah, that's fine for a live action remake. He got two big guys. You could play both. (laughing) - You could clump it. - I'm gonna do a clump, clump bebop. - I mean, you should also do a live action clumps. - I would love to do that. - So number eight is Alice Through the Looking Glass, which is terrible. - Yeah. - Number nine is me before you. That's the Amelia Clark one. - Sam Claflin. - Yeah, sure. - Oh yeah, that's like a based on a book. - She's in. - Yeah, actually. - One of them's Tear Journal Wheel Chairs. - There's a thing. - Yeah, exactly, okay. - Who wants to do assisted suicide? - Number 10 is Captain America Civil War, which obviously is a big hit. - Yes. - The thing I love to call out about Alice Through the Looking Glass, it's the rare reverse spy who shagged me, where the movie in total made less than the first movie made in its opening weekend. - Is that like a horror, a horror Alice? - No, it's just the second Tim Burton, but without Tim Burton and everyone else. It's Dapp and Hannah Bomb Carter and Ann Hathaway. And Sasha Baron Cohen plays Time. - Yes, he does. He pays the concept of time. - And a performance. - It's not that bad. - That I feel like you've always stumped him. - I'm like, he's actually doing something to make one. Yeah. - Zach is like, it looks intrigued. - Yeah, I kind of want to toss you out. - The plot of that movie is that the Mad Hatter is bummed out. - Okay. - And they have to figure out why he's bummed out. - He's lost his mojo thing. - Right, what's the matter with? - He's in a grumpy mood. - What was the tagline? - And so she has to use the time guy to go back in time to figure out that like the Mad Hatter's dad was going to stay him or something like that. - I think I'm remembering the trailers for this now. - Yeah, place the Hatter's dad. - I don't fuck out Jesus. Now I gotta look at that. - Like Keith Richards or something. - No, that's like pirates did that. - I know, but I can't do that twice. - Who would Dapp have cast to play Dad Hatter? Re-sit fans. - Of course. - Re-sit fans does it, you know. - That makes sense. - There you go. - So much sense. - Anyway, but this film, Dory, Dory's a good time. - That's Dory's a good time. - She's not changed in the world this movie, but like it's a good time. - One thing we didn't talk about yet and this is a good time for it 'cause it was sort of the, in the credits. I fucking loved the sort of tabloes with Hank, where you don't know where he's gonna be and then he pops up. - I could have watched that for a full hour. - I love when he goes into the fish bowl and makes himself look like a plant. - Yeah, it's awesome. - Like, that was great. They should do that for the sphere. - Yeah. - You put a feature length just finding Hank's slideshow at the sphere. - Well, you know, the Finding Nemo DVD, which is the best selling physical media release of all time still, or certainly movie, had a aquarium mode, was its big feature, was you could press a button and it would just play an endless loop of like a you will log equivalent of Pixar animation, your TV screen is an aquarium. - So you would love just-- - I would. - Up four hour loop of-- - Just a green saver, I guess. - Hank in a room and he's sneaking into different spots. - Yeah, and you just don't know where he's gonna be at first in there. - It's like, oh, there he is. - So many hides again? - Yeah. - Hank's a really good guy. - Zach, do you have anything you wanna plug? - When does this come out? - It comes out July 12th. - Okay, I believe there's one more rat scraps. - Oh yeah, rat scraps is in there. - I believe there will be one more show. - New York Improv's, New York Improv's show. I'd caveat theater. I believe our final show is in August, come time. So check it out, Ellen doing monologues? - Hey, we don't know yet, but I'll certainly reach out. But yeah, it's an improv show I do or have done where we're ending our run after five years, I think. Yeah, so I believe the final show is in August. caveat.com, Google it, you'll figure it out. Come to the last show. - Come to the last show. - You are in, I'm just looking at your Wikipedia page now. You're in Jane's and Movie. - That's right, I'm very excited for that. - That's really exciting. - In August, teenage sex and death at Camp Me Asma. - We got some, I got a busy year on that. - You got a good, you got a sleep. - Coming up. - Right, you're in Red Winner. - You're in the Red Winner, which is out at this point. - Yes. - The Nate Bargette movie. - That's right. - Right. - You're in Resident Evil. - Of course. - Of course. - That Kirkers Resident Evil. - Kirk and the show. - Of course. - You can, you can, you can, you're in a Kevin Hart movie called 72 Hours. - I am, that's an episode. - Wait, what? - That's a Netflix original. - I got to work with my guy. - I was stunned to learn that Kevin is making a Netflix original. - Saving the world's gonna take a little heart and a little chair. - Yeah. - I tried to push that. They said I'm not really a main character. (laughing) They said I'm more of sort of minor supporting. - Interesting, full-rude. - Yeah. - You're in Lauren Miller Rogan's new movie. - Another one when that's coming out, but that's, it's like that's a great cast. - Yeah, it was a lot of fun. - Yeah. - You got some fun stuff. - You got lots of fun stuff. You have a real son, Apple, and Fallout on Prime Video, and I don't know what that was up there. - Yeah, you start filming Severance in a couple of months, which means it will premiere next decade, right? - No comment. - There you go. - No talking about Severance. - Great show. I love it. - You're the best actor. - Best show on TV. - And you're the best guest on podcast. - Good, always good to be here. - It's very nice to have you. - And whenever that 15, 17 to Paris comes into the station. - Oh, seriously. I mean, look, I know we're about to do nine months of Marty. - Yeah. - So like one year of Clint isn't exactly like the best followup. - Yeah. - But like, if you want to give me the green light for a year, Clint. - But the Clint won't take that long because we can do each episode in one take. - That's true. We should actually like commit with the Clint's to being like, we need to be done in 80 minutes and break for lunch or whatever, right? And we have to honor him somehow. - Yeah, I love that idea. - That would actually be fun. - The Clint bit is 10 minute episodes. - Yeah, I mean, seriously. - Let's not make a big deal out of it. - It's good. - Thank you all for listening. Please remember to rate, review, and subscribe. Next week we are going straight into In The Blink of an Eye. - Oh yeah, thanks a lot. - Just making sure there's no new release stuff with all this summer. - Oh, no. - Oh, wait, shit. - It is Odyssey. - It's Odyssey. Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey. - The Odyssey. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, there you go. - So the next two weeks we will be covering the two biggest films of 2026. - I'm hyped for that. - The Odyssey and In The Blink of an Eye. - Mm-hmm. - How do we think Odyssey's gonna be? - I'm so excited for it. - It's gonna be great. - Yeah, I'm so seated. I'm seated in a horse. - And I love, I'm excited for Bernthal and the Odyssey. - I'm really excited for that. - Hey, can I fucking talk to you? - I love that guy. - Just like the idea of like-- - And have the ways, like, when will my husband come? - Yeah, no. - Yeah, I don't fucking know you. - He must have been on some sort of Odyssey. (laughing) - Okay, good, cousin. Come on. - Come on. - Come on, time. - It's cousin, he needs to open your restaurant. - A series of small trials. - He can't stop playing with me. (laughing) Anyway, tune in next week for that. And as always, Disney, make the call. Zach Cherry is ready and tech avail to develop Old Marlin. - I'd love a house. - A show about Marlin getting some strength. - Even just give me, let me do a little voice in it. - Do a little voice in Old Marlin. - I could be like, what's the, what's the secret you're they haven't done yet? - Uh, star? - No, starfish is a tadpole. - Snail. - Snail. - Oh, I'm gonna snooze. Wait a second. - Let's hear it. - Wait, what's your deal? - Bunch of cones, that, okay? - Hey, you come through us. - I have some type of trauma. - Okay. - Oh, very good. - Make it tease this out after a couple seasons. - Yeah. - Dory, I accept it in the name. (laughing) - Oh. - Dory's boyfriend. (laughing) - Yeah. (laughing) That's my pitch. - That's good pitch. (dramatic music) - Lankcheck with Griffin and David is hosted by Griffin Newman and David Simms. Our executive producer is me, Ben Hossley. Our creative producer is Marie Barty Salinas and our associate producer is AJ McKeein. This show is mixed and edited by AJ McKeein and Alan Smithy. Researched 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, Oli Moss and Pat Reynolds. Our production assistant is Minick. Special thanks to David Cho, Jordan Fish, and Nate Patterson for their production help. Head over to blankcheckpod.com. for links to all of the real nerdy shit. Join our Patreon blank check special features for exclusive franchise commentaries and bonus episodes. Follow us on social @blankcheckpod. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter, checkbook on Substack. This podcast is created and produced by blank check productions.