Finding Nemo with Rebecca Alter

[MUSIC] Hey, guess what? Podcasts? I recorded one. And it was three and a half hours long. Three and a half hours long? Yep. Oh, 'cause Sandy Plankton said they only run two hours tops. Sandy Plankton? You think I would do an entire podcast and I know it's much of Sandy Plankton? It was three and a half hours, not two. Very good. So it's the end of the movie. Yeah, it's one of the last ones. The emotional lines. It does makes me cry too. There's like five different moments in this film that at very least get me right up onto the edge. On the brink of the tear. To me, the big moment is just crashing his head. That's the moment that's the thing. That's the one? Interesting. Beautiful moment. It's so beautiful. This movie is just filled with these little grace notes that are, I just think, so elegant that are like funny and charming and don't feel like they're hitting too hard. Agreed. It is, in my opinion, this is like one of those movies that should be taught in every kind of like conventional Hollywood. Sort of storytelling, or whatever. Yeah, because it's just, it is an incredible set up payoff movie. Another thing that's filled with grace notes is the notebook of the character, the main character from Project Hail Mary. Oh, because his name is Ryland Grace. I think there's not enough discussion of the fact that Ryan Goslin plays Ryland Grace. Ryland Grace. Because it's a Hail Mary full of grace, I believe, is the Jesus Christ. I think that's what Andy Weir, who's, in my opinion, a master of subtlety, is going for there. I enjoy that movie. Yeah, greatly. And I think I'm, I'm now forced by law to knock it down a star. Now that you've explained that to me. I mean, it's just by read on it. I mean, look, why do they, why is it called Tinder? Speak it up. Why is it called Tinder? 'Cause you get matches. Jesus fucking. And it's one of those things that I tell people all the time and they're like, that can't be true. And I'm like, that's literally why it's called that. Unfortunately, I'm up with that name and it's 2012. I'm required by law to go onto the app store and knock Tinder down a star as well. 'Cause famously you rated it five stars in the app store. Perfect app, only good things have ever come of it. In my mind, there are only a few perfect apps. Facebook, Twitter, X, but yeah. Yes. Truth social. Why truth social? Very good. I count Twitter and X as two separate apps. And both of them get five stars. Right, it's Terminator, X Terminator, too. Right, X, I wish I could give it six stars. That's because they improved on perfection. They did. I'm just saying that to invoke another Albert Brooks film, yeah. Everyone made a fucking meal out of your tellin' me, Emma Mackie is Ella McKay. We've gone too far. No one's sayin' really in this day and age and this economy, Ryan Gosling is Ryland Grace. Ryland. Oh, you can't spell one without the other. They're just very similar. It's weird. It's William O'Rocky. The rock character's called Rocky. Yeah. One of our biggest movie stars. I would say now he's maybe top 10, rent-track. What was Tony Erdman called? Sandra Hullar. You know, be funny if she's just called Tony Erdman. I know that's Tony Erdman named in that movie. Yeah, it's the dad's character's name. What's her name in the movie? It'd be funny if she was just like, hello. I'm Tony Erdman. I run space over here. Singy, hello. Yeah. I do think now we need to have her singing in every movie. I agree. Look, I mean, I assumed that was a reference to Tony Erdman, right? That's Lord and Miller being cute. Having her do karaoke. And I thought that was funny. And also being like, hey, you know, she does this in a movie. It kind of like knocks everyone socks off. That's an effective move that we've identified that 90% of the audience won't have seen. Like we all sit there pan ourselves on the back, go and like, oh, interesting Tony Erdman reference. I mean, they should do Tony Erdman in IMAX. Wasn't there going to be an ill-fated American Tony Erdman? Lena Dunham. Lena Dunham, right? Two chillest stars. Excuse me. Yep. You are on. Lena Dunham was writing and directing. Kristen Wigg was going to co-star with Jack Nicholson. Oh. I didn't actually know that Wigg was involved. Yes. I mean, the weird thing about that is it's like, don't do that. But I'm like, those are the people to pick, I suppose. It's also a movie. I would say on paper, a force-major had this, but downhill didn't nail this. There you're like, there is a version of this premise that works as a much broader studio comedy. I would not resent you trying to remake it and just doing the more obvious version of it. Maybe don't make it two hours and 40 minutes long or whatever. Right. They have to see where they all get naked. Yeah. Nicholson was going to show a lot of dick. That's what I heard. Tony Erdman's the one finding out. Doesn't get naked in that scene, right? Does he show up in the outfit, in the animal, in the beast outfit? No. That's the very end. Yeah, that's the end. She's naked. And the younger woman that he's with is naked. Yeah. And the boss is the boss is naked. Right. The boss is naked. Maybe he's not naked. I think Tony Erdman, yeah. Do you know that the younger naked woman, and I already resent framing it this way? Do you know that that actress? I love Tony Erdman. It's so good. That actress. That actress. Wow. And I was like, why did that happen? It angry to be sue. And then I dug deeper. She is married to James Wan. Wow. Hang. Wow. Engaged him in 2019. Tony Erdman came out in 2016. Maybe he saw it. It was like, who's this beautiful woman? Uh-huh. And what movies could she possibly have in her head about monstrous cold creatures? It is funny that she was like, you know what I've always been thinking about? What if there was face on back of face? Yes. Yeah. What if she had one extra face? One extra face. And it does martial arts. She's in Aquaman in the Lost Kingdom. Yeah. And she's in always movies. She's in the nun. We didn't make that, but. Yeah. But she does. She has a screenplay credit on the lignet, right? She sure does. Yeah. And that is a delightful screenplay. That's a well written film. Another film that should be studied in schools. That's a great film. Yeah. The only problem I have with that film is it came out in the deep pandemic and I kind of don't remember it as I need to rewatch it. Yeah. You know, that was a project popcorn movie. I saw in theaters and I overheard one of the worst post movie conversations I've ever had. Two bros at the year and all saying like, dude, is that like bad on purpose? Like he needs to have his filmmaking license revoked. Like how do you not understand that you're making a movie that is like literally bad? Right. And they just kind of kept stewing in that zone. I have no patience for people who view things like malignant in that way. You don't, you just don't deserve movies. It's not even you don't deserve nice things. You don't deserve movies. I deserve all the movies though, including the movie, Finding Nemo. In my opinion, a perfect film. Yeah. I almost think we don't deserve it as humanity. I think it's the 10 year we deserve it in 2013, every 20 or 3, we needed it in 2003. I don't know if we deserved it. It was like the dark night. We were in Iraq. It was the hero we needed, not the hero we deserved. We were in Iraq. I was 17 years old. I saw this film in America. I was here on vacation on holiday. On holiday. So by myself, I'm pretty sure at the regal union square. And I'm sure you spent the entire movie fuming at the consideration showed towards the Australian people. Oh my god. I didn't even make the connection. Why does this fucking fish want to go to Sydney, David Australian corner? It's a lot less land. I would say this movie does not make Australian humans look good. I don't know. And the only two speaking Australians are the densest and the granddaughters. I don't know. The world's most horrific. The denture is a fun guy. He's kind of fun. I guess he's sort of, he's kind of the classic dentist. I think the humor of that is really good. He's like, ah, you know what I mean? Just like torture people all day. Oh, David's whipping the stereotypes back off. Well, it's from dogs like. Sure. You know what my, yeah. Do you think the dentist should realize what's going on with Darlin's stop giving her fish? I guess he doesn't know the fish talk. This is the thing I really like. So they're like, Alison Jamie could voice one of these things. It's the thing they really like about the Toy Story, certainly the first to, um, Toy Story One has this. This has this. Some of the Pixar movies have this, but this is a movie in which no one is consciously a villain. Uh, yeah. Yeah. I guess you're right. Cause like the conflict, even the sharks are nice. Yes. And the angler fish doesn't really have consciousness. Yes, exactly. That's like not a sentient fish. Although Becca, good point, like what's up with that? Why doesn't he? Well, there's also we learn that they, there exists in the ocean petting zoos with snails. Yes. So snails aren't people, but then like little shrimp. There is a car. I love when the Pixar movie just has a fun joke because they're like, that's a fun joke. And then like 20 years later, I'm like, but I don't, how does this fit into their theory of consciousness? Yeah. This works into the implications of like, they're being a car's boat. David, David, I can explain it. That's very easy. The Witch from Brave carved 20 wooden sculptures each of them give in the well aware. Do they, are they still doing that with like, you know, like L.A.O. will come out and they're like, hey, how do we fit this into our grand Pixar unified theory? Well, L.A.O. just exists like in present day earth and present day space. Yeah, I guess recently they've been kind of hidden here. Griff, let me tell you something. And then we'll introduce the show. Okay. I just want to tell you one thing. Okay. Next week with my friend, Caitlin, uh, co-host of Hitz different my baseball podcast. Super podcast. watching the Met's game and then they're like, hey, we're doing trivia. You know, hey, you want to do Trito. They like, they have a sheet. - This is kind of how you and I became-- - This is true. - So, that's great. - And I was kind of like, for your sports part, we don't need to treat, like, pick a thing, right? Like, I'm already watching, but okay. And they're like, there's four rounds and you get to double one of the rounds and you have to pick, we'll tell you the categories now. - Like, like, daily double, you make a double or nothing for the, had the value of the park doesn't do. Wasn't the bar was, it was 99 Rodgers, not Franklin Park. - Same idea. - Same idea. - And so, he's like, the categories are gonna be like, this one's music, this one, and then he's like, the category three is animation. And I said to Caitlin, we're gonna double that one. And Caitlin's like, really? And I'm like, I'm pretty sure-- - You're out of that, yeah. - And it was 20 questions. Write down every Pixar movie, no sequels. - Yeah. - So write down every Pixar movie, excluding the sequels, there's 20. - Did you break a sweat? - I didn't, I was like, okay, great. And I got 18. Do you want to know the two? I forgot. And then I run out of steam, and I'm like, what the fuck? You know, like-- - Did you forget Elio? - Nope, how do Elio? - Does Lightyear count as a sequel? - No, yes, Lightyear counted as a sequel. He didn't want Lightyear. - This is tough because I'm like, the ones that are-- - It's all-- - Did you forget Soul? - I did not forget Soul. I'll give you a hint. One is a bad and somewhat forgotten Pixar movie. - A good dinosaur. - Think of it, do a dinosaur. - Which I've seen many times and yet still-- - I was gonna say, I assumed you to remember that one because it is the shorthand, easy, punchline bad Pixar movie. - And yet, and even then, the tan and nimity or you still heard it. The other one is one of the most iconic Pixar franchises, the worst one, but nonetheless a huge one. - All right, that's correct. - You forgot, cover. - Isn't that crazy? Just 'cause like cars suck so bad that I kept-- I had fucking Elio, I had Soul, I had turned red and-- - Where were you when you were in 2006 that-- - I didn't see cars in theaters, I'll tell you that. - I still haven't seen it. - You saw that actually-- - I've seen this one. - My daughter never got into it, like she never, she's seen it, but she never, yet, although I don't know, it hasn't really happened. I don't know. - She still hasn't watched any of it. - I love the concept of Lightning McQueen. I love the concept of later. - Speak on this. - Speak on this. - And Luigi and Doc, holiday or whatever. Like, I love the concept of all these cars, they just haven't seen the movie. - I'm a little surprised. It feels like a thing you would hyper fixate on because there's like a lot of rabbit holes to fall down in cars universe of just lines of thinking, not even like actual things to study. - That is true. - Well, I love those, like I'll watch a YouTube video where someone, yeah, does this thing, where they connect it all and cars is actually sci-fi post-apocalyptic. - See, that's the stuff to me. I mean, some of that's interesting to talk with cars. - No, but it's too literal, having to make it all. - I just think like, in the way that-- - In the way that-- - In the way that you're saying like, oh, they have a petting zoo with snails. Like, what does that mean? Cars has seven things like that in every single frame. - Every frame, it's so true. - Right, and it's not stuff that like, Pixar people are digging into online. It's the kind of stuff that like, William S. Burrows would spider roll over at a bar. - You know what? Maybe if it was a movie called High Speed Rail? - Go on, thank you, exactly. - Yeah, maybe I just don't like this. - And Biden's in it? - It's a hard culture. Wait. The Biden video that came out yesterday. - Where he's like, doesn't this guy look like Obama? And he just brings a black eye on stage. - No, but then the thing that makes him funny-- - I used to be standing on the other side. - Is he looks like him just enough trying to be the funniest. - Right, I mean, it's all like he brought out like an 80-year-old man or something. Like, what's going to happen? - Yes, you think it's just gonna be like, some, you know, like random person in the crowd, Biden is just being senile. - He brings like Aaron Pierre on stage. (laughing) - Lanterns, they're gonna solve the crime with their powers. - Where are the jackets? - Mufasa? - You don't need the full jumpsuits anymore. - He's like a person. - Aaron Pierre was the voice of John Mufasa. - He's young, well, he's like middle Mufasa. - He's young, middle Mufasa. - Middle Mufasa. - Right. And then-- - 'Cause young Mufasa sings my favorite song in the world. - Which is called the I Always Wanted A Brother Song. - I always wanted a brother. You don't remember that? - No, I guess I'm not. - I have seen Barry Jenkins' Mufasa The Lion King. - I know. - All admitted, it washed over, be pretty fast. I didn't, you know, I didn't really retain that song. - I'm making you listen to the song, Joe. - Yeah. - I still have not listened to that, watch that film. But the trailer only had one snippet of a song. The songs, of course, were written by friend of the show Lin-Manuel Miranda. - Is it the Mads Michael Sin? - No, it was just you heard them repeat. I always wanted a brother like five times. - He always wanted a brother. - So it was kind of meamed. I always wanted a brother. - It's one of the many hooks in that song. - Bye-bye. Is this song? - Yeah, that's Mads Michael Sin's villain song. - It is a little insensitive of you to invoke hooks on the Finding Nemo episode, because of course, those are the true unseen villain. - Yes, man. Like, Bambi. - The hook. - Or hook, like Peter Pan. - Yeah, if he went hand-fishing, hook-fishing. - I mean, sure. I've lost this thing. - Picture him sticking a worm on that. - Yeah. This one's like the dentist. - He's been neverland. - He's not fucking Ketchan Nemo frying him up. - He thinks he's just like my little knees. - He says I have fish in my case. - He says that he saved him. He's like, there was this little baby clam fish all alone and I rescued it. - That's a little bit of a savior complexing where it's like, all, I mean, he was in the fucking water. Like, he found Nemo. - He sure, okay. - He saw the poster, he was found in water. - It's how he's accepted. - But you're right, there's no real villain. The closest thing is Bear Bruce the Great White Shark and he has worked to overcome his villainy. - That's like a sequence. Angler fish is a sequence. - In 100 thrilling, perfect, funny sequences. - Yes, yes, exactly. - 100 thrilling, perfect, funny moments. - There are contains. - There's 100 minutes long. - Self-contained conflicts within the larger conflict, which is just how do you get across the fucking ocean? I think this movie sets up so perfectly, the moment that Nemo's taken, you just start doing the math and you're like, how could he possibly find him? - It's sort of the Pixar magic of the moving truck drives away. And Woody is but a tiny little man. - Right. - How else are you gonna get wherever they're going? - I think this is the simplest and most extreme version of that where you're just like, I don't even understand how he could begin to make contact with him, to locate where he is, to scale that distance. - I'm getting emotional at you saying that. - It is still thinking about everything that Marlon and Doria complies. - It is the movie, the moment in this film that makes me cry without fail. Every single time is when Nigel recounts the news that has. - That's a lovely moment. It's a lovely moment done well by Oscar winner, Jeffrey Rush. It's a pelican called Nigel. - And Oscar nominee Thomas Newman, kind of going hard in that moment. - Oh, the score. - His eyes widening as Nigel's story goes down in the mix. - Of his dad's hair was that. - And you see him pantomiming all the things that have happened and Nemo realizes how much his father loves him. It gets me choked up just thinking about it. - Today we're talking about finding Nemo, which is one of the most successful movies in history. - What is this mini series called? - I'm telling you what it's called. - Please. - I was talking about it with a guest who will be coming up on this mini series. - Yes. - I'm not gonna say. And I said, I've had this one locked and loaded in the chamber, no need to pitch. This mini series is called, and it's not gonna work when I say it out loud, but it's really gonna work visually. - It will spell. - This thing will spell. - Podsy. - P-o-d-d. - Hyphen C, mm-hmm, I love it. - Pod C. - I mean, what else are you gonna call it? - We're not gonna call it potting neem cast. - Right, we're finding podcasts who cares. - Potting casto. - In the pot of a cast. - Potting casty, that's what was pitched to me. And I said, I don't think that's what's. - Podsy. - Podsy. - Great, I love it. We're discussing here on blank check the films. - Pod Carter. - Pod Carter. Name it after his most famous, memorable, loved film. - You know what I also like about calling it pod Carter? It implies that it should have been called pod Carter of cast and then the of cast was cut out. - That is fun. - It could just be podcaster, but then it would be impossible to tell what that even is. - We can't do that. - Right, right. But also, to pay respect to John Carter, it has to be the version of the title that doesn't really work. - We here are discussing this summer, this lovely summer that we're, I assume, having the films of Andrew Stanton. - The six films, totally. - Yes, two of them released in 2026 along. - Yes. - Yes, a man after our own hearts. - This is blank check with Griffin and David. I'm Griffin. - I'm David. - It's a podcast about filmographies, directors who have massive success are really on in their career, such as releasing Finding Nemo. What at the time was the highest grossing animated film in history, the highest grossing film Disney had ever released in any division, and I believe it was at the time the sixth highest grossing film in history. I know you always get angry when I try to get you to pull up these, what was the record at the time? - I can't. - I did some research. I found fucking way back machine, archived box office mojo pages. It was the sixth highest grossing film of all time. - I remember when this film beat the Lion King to become the highest grossing animated film of all time, 'cause there was a big fight on the Oscar watch forums about which was the sort of more worthy film for that title. - Yes. - Like something like, yeah, this sucks, like this stupid fish movie, Lion King's so good, and other people like, yeah, Lion King's over there. I remember that. - Nemo's a fucking masterpiece. It also was humongous overseas. - Yes. - In 2003, it made, I believe, $850 million worldwide. - Yeah, it sounds about right. - And this is-- - And this is-- - The number two of 2003. - The only movie that beats it is the king and return the king becomes only the second film to ever make a billion. Can you name the animated films that since dethroned to the movie? This is what I was this is what I was trying to do the math on, right? Because it has the record for a year. It kind of like blows the ceiling off of what an animated film can do, especially globally. And then Shrek beats it a year later. It beats the opening weekend record. Shrek 2. Shrek 2. Shrek 2 beats it domestically beats the opening weekend record. Shrek 2 becomes the third highest crossing film in history at the time. We love it. At the time, I think it was Titanic Star Wars and then Shrek 2 domestically. And of those I know my favorite. Now, I would argue this is the beginning of I say this respectfully. The incitification of the all-time top 10. Yeah, it just starts to be a lot of crap. It also starts to be like every year, two movies enter the 10. So the churn becomes so fast. Yeah. Up until 2003, it felt like there was a 10 where you're like, of course, there are two Star Wars in there. Gone with the wind. Oh, it's not adjusted. Not adjusted. Well, then it's a useless metric, not adjusted. You could look, you could compare the two lists, but it also felt like the unadjusted numbers were like even unadjusted, ET is still bigger than most movies ever released. And then everything starts kind of like usurping. So Shrek 2 to Thrones finding Nemo. And then I think Shrek 2 has it until Toy Story 3. You are correct. And then basically it becomes a sequel rally. This is the thing. Just pickable me too. It does well, but I think it doesn't quite be Toy Story 3. And then finding Dory overtakes it. You have Dory, but what about, yeah, Dory never overtook Toy Story 3. Although this is a little complicated because a lot of re-releases have adjusted these numbers somewhat. Sure. But I can tell you, Frozen certainly beat it. Frozen becomes the new number one. But beat Toy Story 3. Domestically and internationally wide. This is world wide. Okay, okay, I don't have domestic. Okay. This is worldwide. And then it's sort of like, do we count the Lion King remake? This is the big question. It's entirely edited. Computer graphics and animation. They tried to defend it wasn't. I would argue it howled the record, but only for a little bit. Yes, because Frozen 2, and no, Lion King actually grows slightly more than Frozen 2. And did Incredibles 2 take over at an Incredibles 2's peak was 2. Okay, second. But I do think Incredibles 2 did take the domestic for a moment. Yeah. But then inside out 2, and Zootopia 2, and Naja 2. Right. Naja 2 is now the number one highest grossing animated film worldwide. It has made $2.2 billion. And Zootopia 2 is the highest grossing American animated triangle. Right. And also the best. Yeah. But this is another thing. I like that one. This is another thing. There were very few animated sequels until Shrek 2. Theatrically right. Shrek 2 helps break the taboo of like, Toy Story 2 was an outlier. Straight to video Disney sequels. Toy Story 2 is an outlier. Of course, bumped up from home video to Theatrical. It's massive, but it doesn't overtake Lion King. And then Shrek 2 is the first sequel to take the crown. And it does feel like the stigma is off of doing animated sequels. And then it's just everyone playing like, I don't know, it's a baton race between the first time. It's crazy that they did rescuers down under. Yes, especially when they did. That wasn't that what go ahead? No, he knows what the logic was, right? It was like Eisner and Katzenberg takeover. Right. And they're like, we want a sequel. They're like, we should do a sequel. That feels like a thing we should do. To like our least below. No, but I think they were just kind of like rescuers is one of the only ones that makes sense for a sequel. Yes. Truly. That's what's passing movies have a pretty definitive end. That's the thing. What's wild is they were like, it feels like good business sense to do a sequel, but also we should do a sequel that doesn't betray the integrity of the original film. So they still were making kind of like an artistically driven story decision where they're like, well, rescuers is a book series. It feels more episodic. You can just send them on another mission. Every other Disney animated classic feels like a closed loop with someone getting married or whatever. And it becomes a real boy. Yeah, it was truly like people. Captain Hook is beheaded. People won't be insulted if we do rescuers too. It won't be betraying the sinks. They should do Cinderella too. And just like she got divorced. Well, they did two or three even straight to video. And one of them is a crazy time. Yeah. One of them took it back to the future. Shit. People like it. Oh, they do. Oh, people like it. People humans. I'm going to ask our guests. Have you seen any of the direct video Cinderella's? I have not, but I'm sure I've watched some Jenny Nicholson or some such person recap them. Yes, yes. I think it's called a stitch in time, maybe. It's a something in time. And the weird thing about the three are twist in time, twist in time. We are thinking about those. They came out at the same time as all of the Barbie straight to video ones, which we're also doing some very exciting things with the same. This does say unlike most direct video sequels, this received generally positive reviews. Yeah, people like this one. So it's maybe it's like what's the fairy gobbin that goes back in time and like kill Hitler or whatever. That's why they like it. So yeah, focus groups were really happy about that. Do you know who wrote or I shouldn't say wrote, but much like Malignant has a screenplay credits part of the team on many of those Barbies, uh, 2000s animated films. Can you give a clue? Uh, he was played by Brian Cox in a movie. I don't know. Uh, Robert McKee. Yes. Yeah. That's one of those things where Robert McKee story, the book that everyone talks about of like this is everything you need to learn about like, uh, the three act structure, studio, western, you know, popcorn screenplay structure. And they'd be like, what is this guy done? Why am I listening to this guy as an authority? And you look it up and it's mostly Barbie animated movies, right? He was like a story consultant. Today, we're talking about finding Nemo, our guests are Becca Alter. Becca. Hi. Is this your main feed debut? It's my main feed debut. And I'm going to say the best movie you've been asked to cover on the show. Absolutely. I think this movie is talking a little better. No offense, Ben, then look who's talking now. Okay. Fair enough. It's slightly more successful. Has had slightly greater cultural impact. Both talking animal movies though. Uh, true. This is true. I'm happy to carve a lane. It feels like it is, it is an interest of yours. Is that, is that fair to say? Yeah. This is one of your beats as a true. I guess so. Um, um, other finding Nemo records. It is still the highest grossing physical media release of all time. Is that so? The finding Nemo DVD is like, and part of it is just, it comes out at the peak of DVD as a medium. That DVD went triple platinum in the built-in minivan DVD player in my mom's. In the accessibility of the video game consoles are adding DVD players. DVD players are in cars now. DVD players are in computer. It also's in cars cars in the movie cars. I don't know if you guys caught this. A very insidious announcement, uh, not to reveal the baby cars. A home, home entertainer. That's the most evil shit I have ever seen. They're doing baby cars. They announced Ben and Becca. They announced this week that there is a Disney Junior TV show that's like Muppet Babies with the cars characters. Oh, wait, but lightning has never met them before. I love that you know this much about the chronology without having seen any of the film. Well, you do you know why? Why? Because I love radiator springs in Disney's California adventure. It's one of the most beautiful places I've ever been to on earth. So I said I need to know the lore. Fellow gentleman of the Blankcheck podcast. There was going to be a good amount of theme park talk on this episode. I regret to inform you. I warned David in advance. I've brought like a sleeping bag. I could just like curl up under her hammock maybe. Poor poor the caffeine hammock on the porch. You're staying wide awake for this shit. Um, about the cars. Yeah, the baby cars. Yeah. Are they wearing diapers? No, they're just kind of they're leaking oil. They just like it's a question. I guess. What's the term I'm looking for? Why is that? Yeah, Kauai. I mean, like, they just make them squish and rounder in their eyes. Their eyes are bigger. I mean, we'll see this with finding Dory, of course, when they have baby Dory, you know, like what is genuinely a billion dollar idea? Like put baby Dory at the beginning of the Dory small. It's safe to say what I think the most consequential thing to come out of cars is on the entire culture. We all grew up with the little tikes red car yellow roof. That was a car. Yeah. Sometime after cars, they gave that car a face like eyes and a face. And now kids grew up with that car being like a like a person car that they're inside. And I don't think that would have happened. This is not for cars. Lightning racers looks like it. It only looks like 10% cuter than the regular car. Yeah, they actually look identical, but I imagine they're going to have little kid voices. But is this suggesting that like lightning went to radiator springs as a child? Right. New mater because like my cars, he's meeting them all for the first time. My understanding is that what it suggests is who gives a shit? It's going to make trillions of dollars. Much like mom and babies, which doesn't really make sense as anything other than a what if alternate universe. The series follows Lightning McQueen as he takes on fresh challenges and races around radiator springs alongside his old pal Mader. Is it just kind of like. Fuck it. Like it's parallel. Don't worry about it. The new friends are thrill seeking drag car pipes and mud loving monster truck miles. Perfect. Which is a great name for a car. I mean, it sounds like the fucking movie cast is back. Owen Wolf. and Larry the cable guy, Bonnie Hunt. So they're all gonna have growing up voices. They're recasting Paul Newman. Yeah, well, he's dead. So I mean, that is the reason to recast him, right? I'm hearing this for the first time. Um, fighting you know, best selling DVD of all time. It's also if you look at all the video game platforms of this moment, Game Boy Color, PS2, GameCube, it is like amongst the top 20 highest selling games on all of those platforms. It is just a movie that kind of coincides with like peak mainstream American media and the tendrils of it all just like rise to the top. We had the Shark Tale PlayStation 2 game, but not the Nemo. And what happens in the Shark Tale video game? There was a level where you could make the Will Smith fish dance to you can't touch this. Yeah, I'm pretty good. It was pretty awesome. Was it like Pirapa the Rapistile dancing? Like dancing? Revolution. So I'm watching a full gameplay watcher here. That's the only part I remember, but we didn't have Shark Tale on home video and we did have Nemo. Yeah. Kind of kind of everyone had Nemo. Shark Tale came out what a year after Nemo. Yes. It just never been one of those things where like Nemo, which the movie we're going to talk about today, the water affects and like the way it looks. It's just such a staggeringly good looking movie. It still looks incredible. I think it's maybe like the most beautiful movie Pixar ever made. Yes. And then Shark Tale comes out a year later and looks like a fucking like PlayStation game. Yes. And like the fish designs are horrendous, but all of it looks bad. But it also like there's like no water effects. Right. There's no lighting and you're like, how do they move? And it's like they sort of just walk upright in the water, not on the ground, not on the ocean floor. And they have like houses and stuff. Yes. There's there's an ancient bug life. Uh-huh. Bugs life. Bug life. Bug life. It's there. I'm using myself. Like they just like looked distinctive. They were they were going for different things. And in fact, you could argue that the Dreamworks one is the more realistic looking. It's absolutely the more realistic looking one. And it kind of pulls it off. Yeah. Ancene blue and ants do not have just two legs, you know, like in the in the Dreamworks one, they have four legs and two arms. It's, you know, whatever. It sort of was okay. And then like the comparison wasn't as drastic, I guess is what I mean. Uh sure. Finding the most Shark Tale disaster. I saw a thing Andrew Stanton said that really stuck with me, which he when they started working on this movie, he was like the challenge I posed to all of you is I don't want to anthropomorphize these fish. I want to figure out the way for them to be able to convey emotions within the physiology of how they actually work. It's a good call. And it's one of these things where you watch this movie and it's like they create this rule for themselves that they hold themselves to. And the movie really doesn't fucking cheat on it. And it makes it all the more impressive how good I think the performances are in this movie. And I speak of the voice acting, which is obviously like this is just an impeccably cast movie that changes a bunch of fucking careers and shit. Sure. But also the actual like character animation performances of the movie are insane. Who's your favorite? The bench is so deep. It's so deep. Deep, deep, deep. It's, um, it's impossible. I think Brooks is the reason this movie really works and we'll get into it. Watching it this time and this is a movie I have seen more times than I can count. I was really, really locking into the default performance, which I think is incredible. Very good. Who are your answers? Oh, I was thinking more than a teacher all day and night, the model of pedagogy. That guy is the best. The way he defuses various things very to that. And also when Nemo is trying to say in the name and he's like, all right, kid, don't knock yourself out. You know what I mean? Like things like that. It's so good. To your point, Becca, though, it's like this movie has like 130 perfectly executed bits. Yeah. Like any character in this movie that would be kind of just like a functional point A to point B exposition driver or whatever, they give a character game that is so efficient and memorable and charming. Yeah. Where no one in this movie feels like they're just filling a spot. The games are clear and distinct and they're all like they all feel so satisfying to the creature that they are. My other favorite is Alison Janney. I love love love peach so much. But this is what we're talking about right where it's just like there's a chain of logic that is very satisfying of like what is the personality of a starfish? And you're like, well, if she's in a tank, she sucks of the while she surveils right watching. Right. And then what's the superiority complex. She has about that. She basically becomes the know it all because her job is to be on watch. And then who's the person who voices that will of course get like the fucking lady from the west way. That's what her personality would be like all of these choices are so satisfying in a chain of logic. Everyone's incredible in this. Is anyone bad? No. And like Bob Peterson who you're calling out as Mr. Ray is one of the Pixar guys. Oh, I know. I know. He's my friend. He is Doug. Yeah. He of course was the original fire director of the good dinosaur. The movie you can't even remember. The fire director. Oh, fired. Okay, because it was son song. It became a Pete song picture. But that is the chaos period where suddenly like every director is getting fired. Every movie's being replaced. His son getting a through he's doing incredible three. He's doing incredible three. What a little bit of a step down. It should be the next generation. And it's like Jack, Jack's a dad. That would be pretty funny. Crazy Nelson's old. Maybe it's laughing. I'm laughing. I don't know. Maybe it'll be good. It's totally not. It's it's totally going to be padding to an imperu in my opinion. I wrote the script. I know. So that's cool. Like my guess is it'll be something where I'm like this resembles what I like about the you know all of this. But you know, I can it feels a little it's it's very frustrating. A little frustrating. He's on his made. This will be the third film he directs. We're going to talk about a lot about Pixar director careers in this series. A thing I studied deeply. But he's directed three films. He's one of the kind of Pixar brain trusts top story guys who's worked in all these projects. And he himself has voiced so many beloved characters like a meal and Ratatouille. Sure. Socks who is arguably the only good part of Lightyear. Socks is fun. And he definitely the only good part of. Yeah. Like he's he's a really, really fun voice actor noted. Yes there. Gun to your head. Can you name that character? I just remember that he's riffing on a level that's just sublime. It is. He does some shit with a pan. I couldn't name any fucking character in Lightyear. And it's called Lightyear and stars Buzz Lightyear. And I'm still like is that character called Buzz Lightyear? I don't I don't want you to call mental health hotlines on my behalf. But I did the other night fall down a rabbit hole of watching Lightyear videos on YouTube. Well, it's the movie on the level about the man on which the toy is based. It's Becca. I'm sorry, but this is not a movie about the toy. This is a movie about the real person Buzz Lightyear. The real person upon on which. Yes. The toy was based. Squirt in this movie is Brad Birdson. I was about to say the little baby turtle. That's Brad Birdson. Nicholas Berk. Who Andrew Stanton heard him speak and was like this is our generation's thumper. Rarely do you find he might also be the what are you waiting for to do something incredible. I guess kid in incredible. If I'm not mistaken. Something amazing. I guess. Yeah. I think that's him as well. This is the cross pollination of all these things. This is a period of time where Pixar has been super tight and focused. Right. Basically one like dream team people working in all these movies. And for the first time, it's starting to spread out. They're starting to have multiple productions running at the same time. You know, the first three movies are all directed by the same. Very normal man with really normal boundaries who just loves hugging. And Pete Doctor and Andrew Stanton were the first two people hired at Pixar. Yes. They have their sort of initial fabled kind of like early what kind of movies could we do meeting right where they like we're gonna crack up. Let's crack open the dossier. Basically, you know, Pixar is originally a computer technology company. They're like we should have an animation division. Someone should be fucking around with this computer animation thing and seeing if there's any money there. It's of course a company started by George Lucas John Lasseter is fired from Disney where he was kind of constantly the guy who was next up to maybe direct a future. The one that comes really close to happening is where the wild things are. There's animation tests you can see that's really interesting. Lasseter, like when he saw Tron was just like this is the future. There's some future in combining these things which Disney ends up obviously doing with like Beauty and the Beast and Lion King with their big set piece sequences using CGI backgrounds where the wild things are supposed to be that. He also develops Brave Little Toaster, which is taken away from him. Which feels very spiritually Pixar. Yeah, it's a movie with Pixar juice even if it's right like kind of cheap and light on execution. Toy Story definitely feels like a refinement of everything he was starting to noodle with, but he gets fired. He goes to this computer conference. I think it's SIGGRAPH. Yeah. He makes the play they hire him to be the animation guy. He's one dude nudling and when they finally go like we have. have some extra budget to see if there's more that can be built here. Who would you want to hire? He goes to his two Cal Arts classmates, Pete Doctor, who becomes the first person, other than Lacer, director of Pixar movie, Montserrat, and then Andrew Stanton's the second. That's sort of the next phase is the anointment of you guys get to make your own movies. This is true. And yeah, they're pretty good. Before I open the dossier, Becca, you're experienced the funny Nimo. You're a slightly younger than me. Do you see this in theaters? Absolutely. And I feel like everyone I've spoken to really remembers seeing it in theaters as well. I would have been nine and I think I loved it, but it was also a time when like every year of my life, like one new landmark animated movie would come out. That felt like it was just a constant heightening because it was sort of like tail end of Disney Renaissance. Yeah. And the early Pixar's and throw Shrek into the mix, throw, you know, as a kid, it was huge ice age into them. It's like every year, there was a new animated movie that felt like the biggest thing in the world. You have basically concurrent with the decline of Disney feature animation. You have three new animation studios rising. And it's still basically only like two or three animated movies a year. Yeah, it is so different than the current landscape word. We're just inundated with ships. Yeah. And they were like really trying shit, like in a quality, like way to one up each other. So even though I was I didn't see Anastasia, I was too young when it came out. Like that was a really important VHS tape. But Anastasia from random third studios joining the next. I was going to say Anastasia is part of the kind of like 90s rush. And there's the 80s rush as well of like Don Bluth has left other studios are trying to see Disney's week is there a chance to dethrone Disney and be the default animation studio. And then when Disney rises again, it's even more of a feeding frenzy of Jesus Christ, they're making so much money. We should be in this business. But you look at those movies in the 80s and 90s and it's primarily either feature length adaptations of TV shows, which are sort of their own thing and are often junkier and lower budget, right? Or it's other studios trying to figure out how to crack the Disney playbook. Anastasia is very much can we do the Disney thing? When Toy Story comes out, it's like this absolute lightning bolt of like, wait a second, is there actually not a one kind of formula pattern for what an American animated movie can be while being seen as like a level, you know, high brow. Um, and then I think Dreamworks and Blue Sky, these other studios are all going like, fuck, is there a chance to like define what your own thing is? There's new visual styles, possibly there are no storytelling styles or new styles of humor. Suddenly, these things don't have to be musicals. They don't have to be based on fairy tales. Plus, there's some stop motion entering a mix. Yep, um, I'll also say like, even though I was like, becoming aware of movies during the era that like people, that some people see as the decline of the Renaissance. Because of when they came out and the agent, like Tarzan is still maybe my favorite. This is something that as, you know, I like M in media and whatever. I'm in like, I know people who are a little younger than me. And I'm like, right, Tarzan, like, I don't, I saw that in theaters. But by then, I was like, Oh, the juice is out of this. I mean, Emma Stefansky and our treasure planet episode where I was like, right, I didn't even see this shit. And she's like, Oh, I, when I saw this, I assumed it was the biggest hit of all time. Like, yeah, it was just a giant movie for the differences. Tarzan was a huge, Tarzan was a huge Tarzan. Like, but to me was and Tarzan rips a massive soundtrack. I mean, you'll be in my heart, right. The Phil Collins. Yeah, I don't mind Tarzan. I've seen it since he's got the invisible touch. My personal choice aside, Tarzan is like very well reviewed, right? It, yeah, it was definitely a massive hit. Yes, the soundtrack is really like culturally important. But five or six months later, really culturally important. Yes, the time it was fucking humongous. We've gotten criticized for being like the Tarzan soundtrack, obviously sucks. I'm pumping the right. I think it sucks. I just don't think it was culture. It was not like a Lion King level. It was, it was the second closest they had ever gotten to that. I disagree. And you'll be in my heart was their last sort of like credits, ado, contemporary hit song of the 90s. They closed out. I don't care that much for Tarzan, but I just think these are objective facts. I think the tree surfing and the vine swinging looks awesome. This, I mean, like this is my bigger point is like big hit totally works. There is this sense of like, is Disney back? Have they saved themselves five months later? Toy Story 2 comes out. And it feels like the takeaway from everyone is like Tarzan's the end of an era. And this is the future. We all had fun with Tarzan, but like we're moving past this. Yeah, and then before me, it's no good anymore, right? In the 2000s, Lilo and Stitch is the only Disney feature theatrical animated movie that I would say unequivocally works. That is the only one I know. I think I'm pushing the frog is that I'm saying financially, critically, and test of time. Okay. And personally was a disappointment at the time. I guess it was at the box office. Financial is a little you've heard about what they're building. They're building an easema coaster in Villainland. What they're doing a pull the lever. What? Because they've downgraded from it. It was going to be a Maleficent right thing. And I think there's a lot of fun game. David, what was the villain is from saying what that could just say? From hearing her say that. So it's because I'm like really bad at this. Is it just in Walt Disney World or is it in both? It would only be in world for now because world's larger. There's more space for us. That's Orlando, but and I know world has made up of multiple parts. Right. So I know there's like Epcot and the animal kingdom and all this. You name two. Can you name the other two? Is there one that's just kind of like main Disney? Yeah. Could you think of what it's called? What would your guest be? Disney world. No, I have no idea magic kingdom. Yes, I did know it. I did know it. And then it's like Star Wars roll the tone thing or is that it's hard? Yeah, right. See, this is where they get. Think of think of the movies, the movies. Now the problem is this land has changed names many times. Okay. It give me another hand. It was called Disney MGM studios. Uh-huh. It is now Disney Hollywood studio. Yeah, I would have accepted it. I would have accepted MGM. Right. So that is them competing with universal studios. I got that. Is there another one? Epcot was Walt's dying way. I don't know about Epcot animal kingdom was them competing with sea world and postcards, right? And yeah, okay. Those are the four in Orlando. There's a fucking water parks that I think back over on the same page. Don't fucking count. That's not a problem. Yeah, I still haven't ever been the villain world is in the magic king. Correct. Yeah, it will be now. Why are they? Why are they doing that? The villains are probably descendants. No, no, no, no. What are the movies again? What are they competing with? The dark universe of course, yeah, truly really is that universal open their new park in Orlando where they reclaimed the name dark universe and applied it to monster theme park. And so no, Disney's like, fuck, they have a cool scary thing. We need a cool scary thing villain land. Now all the rumors had been it was going to be built around Maleficent as the centering force and they are sort of realizing like maybe Maleficents like kind of old. Oh no, they still are doing isn't that why they were thinking of the Maleficent water ride a third Maleficent movie like they're always claiming they're going to do that. I mean, that's part of why Tron Aries happened because they also had spent hundreds of millions of dollars building a Tron Roller coaster. Yeah, and they wanted object permanence for that franchise. But interest. So Yismo would be its own right. It's not replacing Maleficent. Yeah, it's not replacing Maleficent. But this was announced after the first announcement and I think there were conversations about them actually scaling back the scary on Maleficent. This is the thing. Disney's a little cowardly about getting too scary. Yismo's more funny than scary. Does he give them an easy out? Right. Like, but then it's just like why are you? Why are you? And they love. And they love you. And they love you. And they love you. I'm looking up villain land. Yeah, it was a minor hit at best. It was not really appreciated at the time. Yeah. And then I mean, obviously you're like treasure planted in the land as they're just like complete belly flops for them. Yeah. Home on the range is the last hand drawn. Lilo and Stitch is the one upswing there and it's the movie that basically sneaks through the cracks. Right. And then that first CGI runs a disaster. Right. And then you have Princess in the Frog at the end where it's like, did pretty good. Yeah. People liked it. But maybe even that underwhelmed. And had the pressure on it of, can this bring back the Disney Princess movie in hand drawn? Okay. But it does well. But the next year Tangled comes out. And once again, it's like, this is the future. Here's our model. This is what we're doing. We've redefined what our sort of Disney animated movie format is. But so that leaves the floor open for Pixar Dreamworks and Blue Sky to invent a new thing. And to really be like, right, it's, it's all open game. And what I understand talks about his feeling like toy story. Monster Zinc in Bugs Life all shared a similar vibe. The first three obviously, a lot of that's that they're directed by a, same huggy guy. Lots of, lots of hug and last, but also that. It's the one core team working on every movie picks are basically at this point only has enough employees to be focused on one movie at a time Yeah, and when last year goes doctor, you get a movie stand You get a movie they start expanding the crew and they're splitting up who's getting Peterson who's getting Joe ramped Who's getting Pete so in all these story guys? He said that to his doctor. He was like doctor You got a movie the doctor was like I think you should give it to one I am That'd be good. Why wasn't Dr. Mario in Super Mario Galaxy? I was sure that I sent you a video the theory that Dr. Mario is Legally classified within Nintendo's copyrights as his own character and not Mario himself would have to be like Mario has a cousin who's a doctor This is the way that's what the doubt should be disappointed about that would be funny. Why aren't you a doctor like Dr. He's got so many pills. I send you all colors. I send you this TikTok video that someone pointed out in the first Super Mario movie. There was an empty seat at the family dinner table where Mario's dad's like, I don't respect you being a plumber And there's like a little nephew there. His dad is missing and the implication is maybe does he hate his plumber son so much because his other Successful medical stew and if Mario's the last name then his name might be doctor like William Mario This is the thing Pete know every animated movie and kids movie in a bad way is about like Weird dad angst, but this is really groundbreaking and genius about weird dad angst This movie is made by a dad working through his things versus I think a lot of animated movies and Specifically illumination films and who knows why this is the case right feel very driven by To be about this. Yes. Well, and also People who cannot get over my dad doesn't respect what I do for a living Which is a little limited as a story as an emotional arc unless you're digging really deep Finding Nemo feels like it comes out of a very honest place And I also think all these early Pixar movies are really defined by these guys as young fathers You know overgrown children people who went into the field of animation Suddenly crossing this line of like I have a kid and now I'm kind of like dealing with existential terror of like Wait a second. I have to be a grown-up. How do I raise kids properly? What do I feel about how I was raised? What is the world I want them to live in and also they're in this insane industry working on these movies that are so intense That takes so long and they're all kind of fighting this like concern of am I not spending enough time with my family sure Yeah, it makes sense all these workaholics like to give joy to all the children of the world They must miss their own child's dance recital. Right. Yes, soccer practice So Andrew Stanton. I'm opening with OCA. Please do. Born 1960 December 1965 in Massachusetts Hmm, heard of it. Yeah, he does he has a couple voices in this movie, but one of the most the lobster's the Boston lobster Born and well-sleeve moved to Rockport because He'd whatever apparently his dad was sort of like well these two sort of fancy. I don't know how like rich and rich and white It is here. His father Ron Stanton was a MIT graduate founded a company called high core Which the New Yorker says did confidential radar work for the Department of Defense cool Andrew says that Ron was a classic authoritarian figure away from home a lot kind of tight-lipped Gloria the mom Puts it this way when Andrew does something wrong his father never needed to say anything He'd just come and stand in Andrew's room silently and Andrew would tell him everything who's I mean to what we were just saying Gloria's a fun mom. She was an actress who gave up acting to have a family and she loved you know To entertain and be fun all of this makes a ton of sense. Yeah, he lives at the intersection of weapons tech and Acting and fun, right. That sort of Pixar is right in the middle to your point Becca Relief that the movies aren't about this. Yeah, about my parents, right, right? My dad doesn't respect me being a plumber So Gloria this is all from a New Yorker profile of him I think for Wally is when they did this There's also an incredible New Yorker profile when John Carter comes out that we will talk about extensively in that episode It's 2011. Yeah, maybe it's right at the full-crump point of yeah, I think it's for John Carter. What's gonna happen when this movie is released? So his dad introduced him to science fiction including the John Carter novels He was a rocket scientist. He had Pulp sci-fi novels throughout the house He dragged him to like every single sci-fi movie He it's not the culture stuff isn't just coming from the mom Stanton said basically he was a precocious little boy with like undiagnosed ADD who just like Wasn't quite like a child prodigy But was clearly like very like very energetic and creative and like doing lots of stuff kind of like without much encouragement He would make little skits with a super eight camera. He had a show he did with his friends called the silly show Sounds pretty good when you watch all the vintage Pixar special features because they were really at the forefront of DVD bonus material and and showing so much of With every release like here's more about like how Pixar works and pulling back the curtain not just on the technical Which is so classic Walt that's so wonderful world of Disney This is part of why last year gets pushed into the is he the new Uncle Walt position But you watch those things and I'm just gonna say this Interest in his charismatic in a way that none of those other guys are Interest in his like personality. He is just clearly like more of a people person Versus like last year it always felt was kind of doing an impression of an Uncle Walt Yes, and Pete doctor by his own admissions is a pretty introverted guy. He seems like a pretty reserved He's a kind of classic animator. I I want to just like draw a thing and slide it over to you rather than talk An interesting and I think did a fair amount of like school acting and such when he was growing up Which I also comes across in his movie the silly show and the silly show that he's a little bit more of a performer He went to University of Harvard for one year, but then transferred to Cal Arts. Mm-hmm Griffin's alum I dropped out, but yes So obviously he's part of the sort of legendary program. I want 13 that you just You know invoked earlier but also I mean that classroom That era is also like I believe Stephen Hillenberg who create SpongeBob Brad Bird is there with them at that same time even though he comes to Pixar later. I mean, it's like 10 people in that year who went on to Make a outsized cultural impact in animation. He had been dating his Now that now wife Julie basically since he was 15 years old. She went to Georgetown. They got married Right after they graduated basically settled in Los Angeles Stand to work in a sex education film starring Martin short for Kroier films animated the sperm Is this the journey of me? Is this Coming all the way back around to look who's talking. I think so I believe there's an attraction that at one point Was part of Epcot called the journey of me the making of me. Yes. I've seen this. So yeah, it's a sex education short That played in the sort of one-time human body part of Epcot. Yeah, it was wonders of life pavilion very enough Like many color students. He wanted to work at Disney was rejected three times But then he meets John Lasseter and he had I guess some student films I had these student films that were luckily entertaining enough that they showed some at festivals that also had like Luxo and Tin Toy the early Lasseter shorts playing at them and they kind of hit it off my favorites the bicycle one Reds dream, always like that one. Yeah stands the freaky clown stand stuff is really funny too. Yeah He also, I mean, I don't I'm not gonna be off in this but you know He worked on the Ralph Bakshi mighty mouse cartoon. Yeah, I mean the sexa ed thing was I think also Bakshi studios Or maybe all right. I can't right. Yeah, I think of Bakshi making something for like Epcot goers, right? This is this weird era where Bakshi's like trying to play a little more mainstream But all the stuff he makes is just kind of subtly off and weird Not that I think he's trying to be transgressive, but that he can't be normal There's something inherently degenerate, right? coursing through that mighty mouse cartoon is like that and his fascinating. I highly recommend looking it up I think I think had writing credits on the whole season and was pretty involved in that. Yeah, can you watch the shorts? Are those available? They must be somewhere, but mighty mouse is one of those things where I could not even tell you who has the rights I'm like are the mighty mouse rights owned by like Crest tooth paste through some weird Conglomerations, so he's hired as Pixar second ever animator. Yeah, obviously Pixar has been taken under the wing of Steve Jobs at that point Andrew happy go lucky if they say relied on humor to get by He works on toy story obviously. He's that's his first Oscar nomination He's one of the many credited writers of toy stories. So let me just unpack this a little bit Because a I think he is he's as I said he's a very charismatic guy He's very sociable. There's a story I'll tell later in this episode That's kind of a thing that makes him as a filmmaker But he is an incredibly anxious somewhat cynical person He talks about like the constant battle between those two forces within himself and trying to Probably the battle between like his mom and his dad, you know being someone who is Avoncular and outgoing And sociable, but is constantly kind of like wrestling with these concerns inside of his head Everyone at Pixar says that like Woody is him. That's interesting. He says Stanton he says he said I can give you the quote. So he Ben He he came up with the character. He was he was the guy who wrote said essentially And that said is the reflection of what he was like as a teenager He liked to break his toys and then like remake them into new things right as creative projects Which is back to this point I'm making of like like, Sid doesn't know he's a fucking villain in Toy Story. Interesting, as always said this, he's like, Sid's a creative kid who just hasn't got an art school yet. He doesn't have an outlet, you know? The kind of like myth-making here is within Pixar, they're sort of like, I guess we need to bring in an outside screenwriter, Hollywood screenwriter. A number of people take passes at Toy Story in years of development, including similarly normal person, Joss Whedon. One of the fake co-ins, it's not ETAM cone, but maybe it's the other Joel Cohen spelled differently. There are like four or five credited screenwriters on Toy Story, who are mostly-- Joel Cohen, there we go. Mostly other kind of like Hollywood specks grip, punch up, rewrite guys. And they kept having people come in, they'd pay them to work on the script for like a couple months. They'd fix a couple things, but other things wouldn't be fixed. They had never really solved it. Disney wasn't giving them more budget. And the sort of like myth-making part of this is that Andrew Stanton goes like, "Can I just like try and see if I can do a pass?" And Stanton sort of holds away with the script and is the guy who like finally fixes everything and cracks everything and makes it cohesive. And Pixar realizes like, oh fuck, we have a screenwriter here. We have a guy in house who knows how to do this stuff, especially after the infamous Black Friday screening, where there was the very dark, very cynical version of the movie after-- - I mean, where would he was like an asshole? - Yes, Katzenberg had kept saying like, "I think there's a future with edgier, funnier, darker, "more adult animated movies." - He's in little did he know. - He basically gets there with Shrek. Shrek is what he always wanted to make. But he kept pushing Pixar past their natural instincts. And so there's the screening they show of the story reels right before it goes to animation. That's like a disaster where Disney's gonna pull the plug on the movie because they're like, this lead character is like a complete asshole. This movie is just unpleasant to watch and they beg for three days to rework the film. And I think Stan does a lot of the story heavy lifting and they do that just like, fuck it. Let's get back to the exact movie we wanna make. They green light that conditionally and the film ends up happening as it is. But there is this kind of like, Stan's attitude mirrors Woody very much of constantly being frustrated but wanting to put forward the face of like, I got this under control. I'm looking out for all of you. - Right. - Right. Well, that makes sense. - Yeah. - So Jim Morris says he's the best sort of genius for story structure. - Yes. - That's one Pixar guy. Michael Arden, that guy, you know, says that he's kind of good at being harsh in a story. Like he'll say the thing that's not working or what he's more blunt. - I saw him saying an interview that that was a big thing from Steve Jobs who, you know, in this era is still very hands on with Pixar that he was just like, people would get really turned off by how blunt Steve Jobs was. But he was just kind of ruthless in identifying what is the problem and what is the thing that needs to get done. - Right. - Yeah. - Some of the other credits before Nimo, obviously, he's also a co-director and writer on Bugs Life. - Yeah. - He's also the voice of Bugs, Apper, Bug 1 and Singing Grasshopper 2. - In the Disney Parks, there is an attraction that is now closed called Tough to Be a Bug that took place inside the tree and animal kingdom and had a giant animatronic hopper that they didn't need to remove when Kevin Spacey got canceled because Kevin Spacey refused to do the record. And for Stan did it instead. And for Stan does a weirdly good Kevin Spacey. - And that was already one of the scariest things in Disney Parks without Kevin even doing the voice. - True, true. - And it has been replaced by a horrible zootopia attraction. - Right. - It's interesting. - Tough to be an animal. - He's the voice, I'm sorry. - No, I was just gonna say, co-director in animation can mean a number of different things. Sometimes it means that two people are directing a film equally. In this era Pixar, it's sort of the junior director thing. Lasseter taking him on as co-director for a Bugs Life was sort of to train him to be able to make his own film. But he is by all accounts kind of the main screenwriter of a Bugs Life. And also when Toy Story 2 is saved from director video and reworked, he is the guy who does that. - So across those first three movies, he is like the main writer guy. - Right, right, so Toy Story 2's got the credit. Of course he's the voice of Ham and Buzz Lightyear star command the adventure begins. Can't say I knew that. - Yeah, that's just in the opening. This is the thing, he's a really good performer. And he would often do sound alike voices for when the stars didn't wanna come do something like a writer or commercial or whatever it is. He is the voice observed canonically in Toy Story 2. That is him, he's the real zoot voice. Obviously with a bunch of modulators on him. - So finding the most swimming around in his head. Interesting, he's words there, so it's about fish. Since Toy Story, he says, he'd always wanted to do the ocean, he was fixated on a child on his dentist's water fish tank, which was in a while, he would look at the fish tank. Which was a weird way to see humans. What's the movie about, what makes me care? He says he's in a walk with his five year old son, Ben, and he has the terrible anxiety that he realized that his terrible anxiety was making him a bad father. Did he kept being like, "Careful." - That he was like pulling him from running into the street and all the sort of things and he went, like you should do that. - Yeah, yeah, but it was the intensity of his worry that he felt, right? And he was like, here's my day, I have a day alone with my son. And I'm gonna have no good lasting memories of this because I spent the entire day concerned about everything he was doing. And not actually connecting to him. And that's the real, like, germ of the idea. I want to make a movie about that. - He also had seen an early cut of Lion King. And apparently, remember, it's just slamming on it. Says, like, sort of shows what I know. He hated the idea of the sort of circle of life of like, we're all just part of this grand chain and we're all, you know, it's all healthy. He likes the Bambi idea of like, it's a real scary predatory world. And if he's like, Nimo is set in the Bambi world. This is another thing that I really give him specifically credit for changing in the language of American movies because I really think it starts with Toy Story. Animated movies in which characters talk like roundups. - Right. - Where you're not dealing with kind of like mythical, representational voices of reason, cosmic evils. And so much of the comedy in this movie is just that it's funny that two fishes are talking in this casual away and that they're so recognizable as personality types. But I think, right, he's speaking to a very specific human anxiety rather than kind of like a larger, just so stories type of lesson. - Yeah, without tipping too far into the like, shark tail, like, A, I'm swimming here, which I'm just gonna guess they say. - Right. - If they don't say that, it missed opportunity. Arkham and fucked up. - They do sound like grownups be and not in that dream works way, which is a different thing. - Yes, I think, I think it's that the dream works movies start really iterating on other things in pop culture in a kind of postmodern, meditextual, self referential kind of way. And what stands sort of identifies is like, an audience will laugh if a character suddenly reminds you of a type of person you know. Not an archetype in sitcoms, you know? But like a type of person with a specificity, yeah. - So, finding Nemo, he settles on clownfish because he sees like a coffee table book and finds them arresting, I mean, it's obvious like, it's a great idea. - He saw a picture of two clownfish coming out of anonymity and it looked like they were sort of hiding and he was like, and it looks like a parent in a child. - He presents an hour-long pitched elaceter. Laceter is a longtime scuba diver. - This was hugging the fish down there too, unfortunately. - And Laceter says, you had me at fish. - Yeah. - And then he's like, how about a hug? - Okay. - The other part of that story is - Bring it in, buddy. Anyone else wanna join? - Stanton, the worry work, planned an hour-long pitch that involved him doing all the voices, the sound effects, and he had audio cues and-- - Laceter's like fish, that's a great idea. - We can sell fish. - Yeah, right. - Truly. - Right. - We also can't stress enough how big SpongeBob was at the time. - Everyone loved underwater. We were underwater crazy. - Let's call out though, it's a little bit of parallel thinking. Like SpongeBob premieres in '99. There's stories in between. But the lead time on animation is-- - 'Cause around 2000, I think when this movie goes into production, yeah. - It's SpongeBob was immediately hit like right out of the box. I think that was a little bit of them getting lucky with timing. Another thing I think I saw Jim Moore say this, that was unique about this movie is so often that they would come up with a big idea at Pixar, and then they would all sort of brainstorm together, and then they'd hire an outside screenwriter, three or four people would noodle on it, and they'd keep iterating and adding things to it until they finally got to something vaguely resembling a script. Stan literally just sat down and wrote a script for this one. It is like right after a bug's light. - It's different from the-- - Yeah, I know there's other people now, like other people credit it and all that. - Yeah. - Yeah, to screenplay. - But in a kind of complete vision way, it gets changed in regards, but it was like, here's the arc of my story, here's what it's about, here are the major beads. - However. - Getting to end. - The problem was the tank story. Like he had the search for Nemo stuff, I think, much more set, but the tank story kept derailing the narrative is how the other Pixar guys put it in the sort of initial pitch. - Right. How does that not feel like you're cutting away to an inactive? - Exactly, right. The original script also the lot. of Marlon's wife was communicated with reflashbacks and her spurs through the film. And only we talked about this on this podcast before. Only the third act, do you see that it was like this barracuda attack? - Allow me to restate this. - Please do it now. 'Cause basically the audiences were like, what the fuck? - I think it is so stressed out. - It is the most important thing in an interest and his career. And it swings back in a different way in John Carter and a way we need to talk about. So this is the thing that needs to be established. He, as a guy who now in the time between Toy Story and finding Nemo has gotten really serious about screenwriting and read the books and studied other movies and really tried to understand screenwriting as an art form was obsessed with movies that are able to do this as a storytelling device. Isn't that fun when a movie can kind of slowly tease out information and backfill it in multiple flashbacks? And so he just, that was the shape he conceived in his head of the movie starts with Nemo waking Marlon up his first day of school and yada yada yada. And across the film you start to get these flashbacks until you finally at the end realize, oh, his wife was killed by a barracuda, all the other eggs were destroyed. Nemo's the only son he has left. And they would play the story reels for audiences which are basically, it's usually, sometimes it's Pixar animated, sometimes it's the final cast actors and the voices, lightly animated storyboards, usually with temp music. Just so before they do the expensive part of actually starting animation, they can feel the flow of the movie. And they play it and people are just like, we hate Marlon, he sucks. - Yeah. - This guy drives me crazy. And by the time they explain why he has this level of neuroses, it's too late, the audience is an on board. - Right. - And he keeps trying to crack it and he can't. And then he's just finally like, what if I just put all this stuff at the top? - Yeah, and it makes sense. - I just do it. - It's also really helpful for me 'cause I can just not watch that with my daughter. Just skip right past it. But as you said, he was like, everyone was concerned that's too scary. You can't front load in a movie. And he said like, that's Bambi. Bambi exists and Bambi survives as a beloved film. I think you need to like look the scary thing in the eye. And the second he did that, the movie worked. The other thing that happens is. - Dory, I don't know if you know if that's what you were gonna say, but to him it's Dory. What are you gonna say? - There was a different actor cast. - Well, we'll get to that. - Let's get to that. - Okay. - His Dory. - But I just wanna say he has a TED Talk around the time of John Carter, where he shares the storytelling lesson. He learned there of not trying to out clever yourself as a storyteller, that it's important for audiences to have the emotional information they need to understand what's going on with the characters. - Talked a very fast. - And very often, if you try to be smart or stylish in your sort of devices, you actually, it's cutting those-- - You're an alienating the audience. - Correct. - Easily, 'cause with this, from the very beginning, you're like, Marlon has suffered. - Yes. - You know, you're rooting for him. - It's an incredibly devastating thing and you understand, it works perfect. - It is so, it was with Perkins crushing it. - That's the other thing. - Like Elizabeth Perkins is great. Within 30 seconds, you understand the dynamic of their marriage. A scary thing happens, you see his anxiety. Like it's just-- - And it also introduces you to like, infinding Nemo and in the ocean. It's like, danger at every turn, these fish's lives are very precarious. Like we're gonna encounter a lot of scary creatures. - There were actual stakes from the beginning. It's not just that this kid is lost. It's like the mother dies as do hundreds of eggs. - At least hundreds of fish every day die in the ocean. - Yeah, Dory to him kind of takes the film to another level. She bridges the two main characters. He was inspired by the structure of the novel Cold Mountain for this. - So Dory's the Vernezelic character. - That's right, I assume he means by that. David Reynolds, who's a Conan writer and had worked on other Pixar movies and Bob Peterson, who-- - Mr. Ray. - Right, who hadn't written a movie for Pixar yet. - But it's one of their main stories. - Exactly, like those are the other credit screenwriters. Willie M. H. Macy first castes Marlin. - Yes. - They wanted someone with a lighter touch. Is this cited reason? - Stan has always put it-- - But it's never revealed until there's like a Pixar book that reveals it, right? - So Stan always talked about the fact that they had originally cast a dramatic actor and it felt like it made the movie too heavy. He cast a guy who was funny, but comes from a dramatic background and that he felt like he was playing the anxiety, too real and too weighty, and it fought the comedy of the movie. And he always kind of, in a gentlemanly way, never named who the actor was, but then said when we brought in Albert Brooks, he didn't need to play anxiety that's his natural state and he could riff all these jokes on top of it and it worked. The book, The Pixar Touch, is the one that finally puts Willie M. H. Macy as the name. It's never really been verified, but it's basically been commonly accepted. That's who it was. It makes a lot of sense to be like, Andrew Stanton thinks, well, wouldn't like, Willie M. H. Macy's character from Fargo, in an animated movie be the correct version of this. But that's a very dark movie where you kind of want to watch that guy suffer. Totally. Albert Brooks had, it was making the in-laws. Comes out the same summer around the in-laws, essentially. He said the 11 sessions of four hours each, that's all he had to do. Yeah. It doesn't sound like that much to me. The other thing he said is that he basically would never read what was written on the page. But then would improvise for like 20 minutes. He's really good. He's like, you can't get him to say the same thing twice. He doesn't want to do line readings. But he, because he's a writer and a filmmaker in his own right, would look and be like, what's the thing that needs to be conveyed in terms of story information in this line of dialogue? And then now I will give you 20 iterations of the funniest ways that could happen. He's a really funny guy. And, and, good governor. Yes. And a good, what's he becoming secretary of labor or commerce or something? In the country in which he was born and raised. We assume, we assume. Yeah. This is a dirty russky. What if that was cut out of Ellen McKenzie? He's becoming president. He could be like an alien or something. An alien's in the room with us right now. Hi, Becca. Okay. Brooks comes up with the clown thing. He comes up with the joke, like that he can't do jokes. That was Brooks's idea. Right. Stanton's watching Ellen, the sick comments. Yes. Much better than the talk show. Late 90s. Yeah. And she kind of, you know, the Ellen delivery thing of like, she changes her mind five times into a sentence. So one line where she changed the topic seven times and turned to his wife and said, I think that story. Now, Dory was written to be male. Right. And speaking of this kind of like, interesting coming in and saying, how do we break the mold of what a Pixar movie is? A little bit, right? That he felt like Toy Story. The two Toy Story is a monster rank. Monster Sinc we're all buddy pictures. All I had Randy Newman scores. All had a kind of similar design language sense of humor and that he really felt like we need to start stretching out what these movies can be. So it doesn't start to become formulaic, right? And I think there's a, there's a way in which you can see finding Nemo's a buddy picture because it is Dory and Nemo on this journey together. But the nature of Dory is a character prevents it from feeling like that. I think they're going on a sort of buddy journey. And I think it's like one of my favorite things about the movie, especially in the context of what Pixar was before, is I love when the goofy one, funny one, stupid one is a girl. I think that was really missing in a lot of kids' entertainment as the time, because it was seen as like retrograde at some point or like, and they stopped doing it. That girl's needed to be like perfect love interest for the girl to be the hilarious comic relief silly, stupid one is so awesome. And I still love that when that happens in like an ensemble sitcom or something like today because it still is semi-rare. And so Dory I think is like huge. I give him super credit for just being like, oh, Ellen would work for this. Even if it is not how I conceived this. Obviously, you know, it's Pixar's famous for when they picked a subject being like, let's do a ton of research and let's find story discoveries from learning about the real thing. And certainly they did a lot of that with a bug's life. He replicated that model here. He found the thing about certain fish have like five second memories. - I feel like that was already a joke about bullfitch. - Yeah. - Yes. And he was like, that's kind of an interesting character childhood memory loss. - And it could so easily be that's a character you meet for five minutes and one of many segments of that. - And move one bit in the movie, right? - It gives himself like a real fucking tough challenge too. How do you make that the other character in the dynamic and not have it be annoying? - You know who's pretty funny? - Ellen Denner. - Dory. - Dory rules. - Dory's amazing. - It's a great bit. - Dory so, and Ellen is so funny in this movie. It's great. - So funny. But like, how does it not to write that character and perform that character where it's not frustrating that she's the obstacle in the movie? Because the actual goal of the film is get to Nemo. But then the person who's joining him in that goal. - She's kind of not helping. - Has her own dilemma. It makes it all the more satisfying when she can push through things. It makes every like when she has like so much more heartening. - I mean, with not her Marlon is a pain. - Totally. - So what are you gonna say Becca? - Oh, just not to skip ahead, but one of the big moments that breaks my heart, yeah. Like as a kid, when he abandons her. - Yeah. - But. to your point, Becca, to have this character be female, to have it be an entirely aromantic relationship between male and female adult characters, they do not, I'm gonna say this on the record. Marlon and Dory do not, I regret it. Not only that, but you don't even want to ship them. You don't want to ship them. That's not really. They'd be a nightmare couple. It's closer to being a surrogate, parenting relationship. Yes, sort of. Which is why it helps Marlon have a narrative within the film and emotional arc of, he's in trying to keep Dory safe, realizing the things he's fucked up with, he's realizing his parenting mistakes, but he is also, Dory is also helping him overcome, like his anxiety, his sort of, his executive function problem of kind of like, never making choice, just keeps swimming, man. Like sometimes you need someone who's just like, kind of positive energy. We gotta keep going, you know? He'd never make it to Nemo without that energy. No, even with her condition, there's the fact that she is an adult, means that he talks to her a different way than he talks to Nemo. Right, he can't be quite as patronized. And when she pushes back on him, he listens a little bit more. Yeah, he learns to trust. Yes. Dory rolls. Dory's good, Ellen's great. Yeah. I love to order her lunch. Just, that's what I love to do. I mean, this is, and get it right every time. This is the movie that saves her career. It transforms her career. The talk show from years this fall after this movie is released. So obviously it was already in the works. Yeah, but she, you know, she has the failed second sitcom. Yes. 2001 to 2002, which is called The Ellen Show, which is like, that's the one where it's like, she is gay. Like it's like, it's like baked into the show versus the first sitcom. Like that is a revelation that comes late in the show. Yeah. And that had like Jim Gaffigan and it and stuff in Martin Mall. And it was like a big CBS show and it flopped. Yeah. And it was kind of the thing. I'm like, right, was Ellen kind of just, you know, she had Ellen, she had the show. Like she was, she was important culturally, but like, but they were also like, they were putting her in movies. She's in a TV. She's obviously a disaster. But she's in a TV. She's funny in a TV. She, she is a line to think about all the time. Which one? Can I say it? Yeah. It's so funny. It's just a good line. And Rob Reiner comes in and he sees like the mean bot, the man, see the network guy. Yeah. And there's something to do about like, you know, he's like, if you did, if this happens, I'll get you more money. And she's like, could we get coffee filters? We've been using a Yamaha. And it feels like something Ellen might have made up because that's definitely sounds like it. Yeah. But they just have this sake on. Yes. Anyway. That's awesome. Sorry. She was so big in the 90s. And the arc of what happens to her is really fast. Listening to study now because there was just like years of speculation of she's gay, right? Right. We're just not saying it. Right. There's like, short haired lady with pants. There's the Larry Sanders episode that happens like two years before she comes out where the whole premise is Rip Torne's character is pressuring Larry to be like, if we could get Ellen coming out. Right. That would be a big boon for the show. So Ellen's kind of winking at it within that show. And within the episode, I feel like they never say it. They never put a name to it. And then the twist in that episode is that her and Larry sleep together. And he's like, I think maybe she's not, but much like the Seinfeld contest episode, they're never saying the word. So it was enough in the ether that she's even making jokes about the fact that she's not acknowledging it. And then they do an episode where she comes out, the character is going to be gay. And Ellen's going to come out. It's the front page. A fucking time magazine. A puppy episode. Yep, I'm gay with her sitting Chris cross apple sauce. No, she was doing a little fun, uh, fun meal. Oh, you're right. Yeah. She's doing a gay or stands, but that episode is huge in the ratings. Yeah. Yeah. I'm getting headlines. Right. It's one of these things where like she gets this huge bump of visibility. And then everyone sort of applauds her. And then immediately is like, but obviously we can't like sell car commercials on a gay show, all the sponsors go away. The listeners. Good point. Yeah. The viewer drops. I'm just going to get canceled. This shows basically canceled within a year of her coming out. Yeah. And the attitude is like, thank you for your bravery, but obviously you're not part of the popular culture anymore. And then she talks about for years fighting to be like, uh, uh, hosting the Emmys or hosting SNL when she didn't have anything to promote. Trying to just get herself back out there as a comedian. For all the offers had dried up and when she ran a book shop, yes, was it a book shop? What? Ellen. D. True. Ellen Morgan, the character and Ellen. Ellen. Was it a book shop? Yeah. Yes. It was called by the book. Funny. But this is the movie that launches the second half of her career that reintroduces her in undeniable kind of what does she make a lot of movies after this? No. Because she's doing the show. Yeah. So the only movie she made after this in which not she's not playing herself is finding this film called Finding Dory. Yeah. In which she played Dory. She did play Dory. Uh, Matt said she's never made one sense. She did more specials. She did some stand-up. Yeah. Like any movies? No movies. Yeah. Yeah. It's just Dory from that on. I think about that tweet all the time. Becca, you know what I'm talking about of like, like the lot, the loss of her of her talk show. Oh, yeah, yeah. She's like, she would have extracted. Right. She would have extracted everything usable out of Hawk Tua and like discarded her, like a carcass. Like Hawk Tua got to like have a whole year because Ellen wasn't there to just kind of be like, here is Hawk Tua. We've presented her to you. We've asked all the questions and now she can go. Yeah. Like Ellen extraction machine. Yeah. Right. Like, that's how it used to be. It was like, there's a funny video of you ordering a donut in a weird way. Come talk to Ellen for an hour and then never be seen again. But also just fascinating that Ellen went from being like Hollywood, like through me out. They like said, thank you for your bravery and then like close the door on me. And then she's the voice of one of the most famous and beloved animated characters of all time to the highest grossing animated films in history. Right. And becomes like the voice of reason for every mom in America. Like has a 20 year run of just being like, she kind of controls this like sliver of the national conversation of just like, I'm just saying which viral people get elevated. I'm deciding like what the new style and throw pillows are at target. Yeah. It is interesting that Ellen show starts and then this rise of like viral videos and social media starts and she immediately becomes, yeah, the curator of that for moms. Yes. And dancing. She invented dance. There's an Ellen bit. And for them, people just stood in the famous J Nirvana sequence. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. I've heard you're afraid of clowns. No, Ellen. That's not true. And then the clown pops up out of the jacket. So there's a movie. There's a movie. You're right. She's in. Is she coming back or is that because I know she had like a recent ish special in the last five years. You did a documentary about gorillas. Much like Alec Baldwin. She said, goodbye to public life. On her last tour, she said, this is the last time you'll ever see me. It wasn't her. I watched the special. Wasn't the special kind of like, yeah, I'm rich. I live in a spaceship. Oh, that's the one that had the claptor that went for like two full minutes. Yes. Oh. Yeah. But it looks like it was edited to be she said something very self-congratulatory. Right. And they kept it all in the edit of the special and everyone claps for like an hour. It's also her addressing the mean Ellen stuff. It was like around that time she starts doing all this press and it becomes very clear that she never ever got over the anger of how everyone in the industry respond to her coming out. That even when finding Nemo and the show bring her back to prominence, she kind of held on to this spite forever of like everyone commended me for doing a thing that was culturally important and also every job dried up. Yeah. It's just fascinating like this movie is so much hinging on that choice to cast her. It was the right choice. Yeah. As we sort of said, like every casting decision in this movie is pretty spot on even Alex Young, Alex Andrew Gould is the voice of Nemo. He's the kid from Weeds. That's right. He was the kid on Weeds. I remember that. He had a little bowl cut. His mom was dealing Weeds. He looked like a little like a little Nemo. Nemo's just a round little guy with a pair of eyes. Weeds. Talk about a show that it's entire premises defunct now. Yeah. She's like, I'm so on Weeds. I'm going to get in trouble with the law. Yeah. Oh, no, the cops are after me because I sell joints. Now you can just go to the store. Yeah. Yeah. My Nemo begins with Nemo's mom getting shumped bits by Bearcuda. What do you think? A plus? Good. I mean, I do think it's an incredible opening. It also felt jarring as a Pixar obsessive, seeing this opening weekend. They played Nicknack, which was an older short, being reissued. Is that the one in the snow globe with the jackhammer? Yes. And the sexy lady in the other snow globe. But because of woke, the sexy lady in the snow globe used to have big naturals. And I think when they re-released it for Nemo, they made her a little more flat-chested. And I have been writing angry letters to Disney every day of my life since then. I want my snow globes. Hornet. Like those early Pixar movies, right? That's what they would do. They would show the old short. They would alternate. because there was not as a series game and for the birds, they didn't have the young kids making their own shorts in within Pixar. It wasn't as consistent a pipeline. So sometimes they'd be like, we don't have a short rady. Let's throw up one of the old guys. Yeah, Nick Nacka, the fucking box. Nicknack rolls. They never did red stream, though. Cowards. They didn't. That's the one they never put on. No kid wants to see that on a big screen. It's sad. The clowns really. Oh, yeah, it's a bit creepy. And it's in like a black voice. That's why I liked it. It's about a fucking unicycle band. It's a movie about a unicycle who's sad that he can't get a clown to sit on his face. That sounds like a parody of the Pixar. Juggle, right? He wants to learn how to juggle with his two little pedals. Yeah, but there is a clown in it and it is weird. Where does he sit? Well, there's only one place to sit on a unicycle. Find the lie. But Nicknack plays, then we got our fucking jump and looks so junior guy. And then the movie, like, just kind of cold open straight, like mid dialogue. I remember that feeling jarring. It does feel like a tonal shift against the other Pixar movies that ease you in to a reality. Yeah. I mean, the opening line of this movie is wow, right? You're seeing. And you're already saying that because you're looking at this digitally animated ocean. That's also quite gorgeous. I saw this film by myself. I remember I was here on vacation. I had to fill some time. And I went to like a midday screening at you regularly in and square. And it was all kids. Yeah, because it was summertime. Yeah. And I felt a little weird. Day 17 years old. But you'd go see a matinee in the theater or be filled with fucking girl. Yes, I saw this movie multiple times in theaters. And that was part of its success was Pixar had become enough of a name brand that even people who didn't grow up with Pixar, like people who were in college when Toy Story came out. We're like, I guess I got to go see the new Pixar movie. Right. The track record was just so fucking strong at this point. The opening was humongous. And then it just played throughout the entire summer. It wouldn't go away. This was the summer that everyone assumed Matrix reloaded as the juggernaut. Right. And that was May. And this came out like a later. We played it or whatever. And then by like two months in, it was like this is zoomed past Matrix. And it keeps playing throughout the entire year, which obviously can't happen zero architects. I don't know why that happens. Just kids. Yeah. They need a mirror of engine fish. Oh, that would be fun. A French fish. Yes. Well, the shrimp chef. Yeah, the shrimp chef. He goes Jacques, you know, he's done. Oh, whatever. We didn't. Yeah. Who voices him? That's Joe Ramp. Love it. There's also Weezy. Yeah. Yeah. It's is many, many voices. It's Weezy dead. Well, Joe Ramp is dead sadly. Do you know what happened? Joe Ramp was working on the movie cars. No, what happened? He was working on the movie cars. Yes. Which I think he was maybe co-director on. Yeah, I think that was where he was rising up to right here. What's the worst way he could have died? Run over my car. It's really sad. Um, so who else died is the 399 eggs in Coral and then never forget about the 399. I do feel like they have right. Like that's why they do it as well. It was like fish do have hundreds of children. Right. So they have to come up with this kind of potty way that he's like a it's like a one father, one son. It's like how Judy hops. That's like a hundred siblings. But it's I mean, it's don't get me. Do not get me started on that. It's what's really smart about the setup. I think too, where you're like what is the only circumstance in which a parent would be this obsessive over a one child. And it's where they make these choices of like, when is the characterization being dictated more by the behavior of fish versus the behavior of humans? And with Marlin, they find this exact midpoint where you're like, well, if fish has hummed have hundreds of children, they couldn't be this helicoptery. But if he has a traumatic event that gives him only one child, then is he just like a neurotic parent in the early 2000s. I also think to my point of just like this thing that Stanton was able to identify of how to make animated characters be grown-ups. Like this is a movie in which Nemo is the title character, but Nemo is the third lead. The two leads are grown-ups. True. And same with Monsters Inc and Toy Story and a bug's life that all have kids in them, but the kids are supporting. And the grown-ups talk like modern grown-ups. And when we enter into this scene, what's immediately kind of comfortable about it is that it has the vibe of a couple who have been looking at houses all day. Right? That you feel the where their injokes are, how they need to each other. A key a couple. The satisfaction of, you know what, you're right, this place is good. And then how immediately that paradise is destroyed by this Barracuda. That's the villain of the movie, Griffin. Yeah. Barracuda. Barracuda. Yeah. Barracuda. Anyway, years later, cut to Nemo Libs. He has been sucked up. I know we're just hyper-fixating on the first scene of this movie a lot, but for how large the trauma of the Barracuda, and as you said, like many parents who are just like, I just don't show this scene to my kid, it is funny that when you look at the Barracuda, it is still cartoonish looking, like has like a goofy, goofy, googly eye. It's like a scary cartoon. It's also like a perfect kind of trauma by implication where you see the moment where she clocks the Barracuda. I know. Then she looks down. He notices it because she's no longer riffing with him. He's inside the anemone. You are fixating. He peeks out. Yes. Does perfect fucking acting of her eye line changing to the Barracuda and trying to game out if she can make the move to protect the eggs. She's going to protect them. She's just one fish. And then Marlin gets hit by the tail, blackout. You don't see her die. You just have him wake up to her not being there and only the one egg with the crack. The crack is why he has one of the problems that's the, uh, the bumps and reasoning. He's lucky. I don't think those eggs can really crack because they're like jelly, but like who cares? Lucky Finn. Yes. So they live in an enemy. Yes. Marlin and Nemo and Nemo wants to start school. I guess it's sort of a September because the year's starting. He's been eager to start. Marlin keeps holding him back. He has to remember brush his anemone. His clown fish live eight six to 10 years in the wild. 10 to 20 in an aquarium. Okay. Should have kept him at the dentist. Well, Dory will get to the aquarium. Um, yeah. It's a thing that, that state and said also when he saw that picture of them poking out of the anemone and said like, oh, what about clown fish? Then he looked into it and he was like clown fish, live in anemones and rarely leave. That he, there was like a gift in researching the species of, oh, they live in this weird like security net that also can sting them and try not to leave the bubble. I think it is a really smart characterization choice. They dialed in the exact right amount of anxiety that Marlin can have because there's an insufferable version of this movie where Marlin is like, bow is afraid. Where he is. He's at the end of that brief corner. Right. That he, he literally doesn't want to leave the anemone. There's something in the fact and even just the way he's doing bits with Nemo at the beginning, where it's like, he wants to think of himself as a funny guy. He wants to think of himself as not being up too uptight. Easy going down. Yeah. The neighborhood dads like know him already. Right. Yeah. Once he gets to the drop off. This is true. Everyone tries to relate to him like a normal person and then he just always puts a little too much in it. He always gets a little too wound up. I can't tell the joke. And no one's mean. No. But I like when he's fucking up the joke. They're just like, they're all the dads are just like, can we stop? The one guy just goes, they have a clownfish. He's not very funny. And then the other guy goes, pity. It's a jellyfish, a seahorse, and I'm trying to think the dad. Yeah. It's the type of fish of the one who says, I'm obnoxious. Yes. Which is Dewey from Malcolm in the man, which might be a yellow tank. Yeah. Yeah. An angel fish. I think that Dory is a blue tank. Yeah. But here I am speaking about a yellow tank. Oh, yeah. No, you're right. There's a bird. She's saying something different, David. And this is why she was. Oh, no. Bubbles. Bubbles is yellow. Yeah. Bubbles is yellow tank. So these might be angel fish. Oh, not to be confused though. Poodie tank. No. Everything is in the film, but you have to look for them. Let's also say we've invoked bubbles, but we're not yet getting to the root of the matter. We will do that later. Okay. Willem Dafoe is an angel fish. Okay. Bubbles is a yellow tank. So what's the kit? A butterfly fish. Cool. Okay. The others are a flapjack octopus, which is those octopuses with like the cute little legs that kind of go like she is adorable. And the seahorse. So it's not a jellyfish. It's an octopus. Per one tendril for her than the others, but you never notice when she throws them like this jellyfish in this movie are like angler fish in the racing to class a consciousness AKA eyes. Well, jellyfish didn't realize. Yeah. They don't have a brain. And my daughter has endless questions from me about jellyfish, which I fully sent because we go to the aquarium all the time. I was gonna say like four times a day, you were the best place on earth. But like where she is, she has really reasonable questions of just like why and how? Like why do they exist? And then what's what is this? Yeah. And I'm like, how do they eat? How do they? And I'm like, I don't really know. Man, they're weird. Does jellyfish are weird? Do you ever been sung in a jellyfish? Question in the room. Oh, yeah. Me too. Stainless. It really hurts. Sucks. You ever get pee'd on? Yeah, but not for that reason, just for fun. We packed sand on it. Oh, sorry, fully wasn't fine. I think I think peeing doesn't really work and sand possibly does, right? A bit more. Yes. Peeing is one of those classic like old wives' tales things. It does feel like as much as he's trying to break out of a sand. of a Pixar formula that was starting to codify at this point, this is the most traditional Pixar move of. Now let's do eight minutes of basically blackout gags of what's funny about fit. Right, right. What's the story? Has this the second Andy leaves the room and you're like what's every character's game? I feel like certainly Monsters Inc has this with Mike and Sully walking through Monstropolis the first time. And you're like, okay, what, how does a monster city work? You have all of this, which also feels like it's him knowing you have to counterbalance the trauma of what just happened in the movie. It's nice that they have a nice dynamic but also kids need to feel comfortable now. It's very economical. Yeah. You get right to Nimo going away without it feeling rushed, you know, getting, you know, in trouble. It's basically, I mean, like Nimo is taken at like minute 14. And I think Dory enters at minute 16. Like he basically gets both of those things set up within the first 15 minutes of the movie. Of course. Right. Their school is that they will ride on the back of a man to Ray. And he'll tell them things about singing teacher name Mr. Ray. He's just so good. Who likes diffusing conflict. Right. He's right. Very, very good at handling interpersonal dot inner, inner fish. Yeah. It's full of have a teacher who's also sort of also the bus. Yes. Great. Great point. And the other parents are commanding Marlin for seeming kind of chill. Right. Even if he's not funny. But then Nimo he pushes a little too far. He's encouraged by the other boys. What also happens? He finds out that the day he's finally letting his son go to school also as the day they're going to the drop off. Yes. The dads are giving him credit edge of the reef. Yeah. You seem pretty true. I was stressed out. Right. And then that's I regret it. I never should have let him do this. He runs out. He embarrasses Nimo in front of his friends. And Nimo feels the need to rebel. He's going to touch the bus. Classic comedy. And it's also nice to have the comedy there because that's hilarious if you're a kid and it helps diffuse the situation a little bit, which is very scary. It is an acting moment that I love in this film. Nimo's silent performance of challenging his father to touch the butt. And they play it like Nimo is in like an FBI standoff where he won't break eye contact. And he just taps it really quickly and intensely. Which is really a lot of the kids going. Yeah. It's really fun. But there's also such a loud smack sound when he hits the butt. There's so much force on it. And his point is proven. He's ready to swim back to his father. Unfortunately, a big bad dentist. Right. The deep sea divers come. One puts Nimo in his block bag. The other one really rudely takes a picture of Marlin. A detail I love is that when the flash goes off on Marlin, Marlin reacts by turning sideways and his eye goes wall eyed. So it's like the pose in the photo is what a fish would look like versus a cartoon thought about that. It's a really great guy. His fish's eyes go this way, but in the movie, they have to look this way. He becomes flush and pointing out. Right. I remember reading a fucking like screenplay guidebook that was showing how all Hollywood movies fit into, you know, certain story telling formulas. And it tried to argue that the dentist is the antagonist of this movie, which is wrong. The antagonist of this movie is Marlin's anxiety. Yes. That is what needs to be overcome and defeated. Right. I mean, also Nimo does get captured and that it does suck. It's a problem. No one's villainous. Right. Yes. But it is the same as these creatures just doing what they're want to do. Right. All through the ocean. Like the seagulls are, they're not villains, but they're not, they're not sympathetic. You could argue that the obstructions that almost feel malevolent in the movie are not circle of life, but like just the survival of the fittest mechanisms, right? Of just this is the ecosystem of how fish survive in relationship to each other. But there's also like the reason why the tank stuff doesn't feel stagnant is, Gil is able to kind of teach Nimo the thing that Marlin's afraid to teach him that Marlin. Marlin is so full of Marlin. Marlin is so terrified by what he perceives as Nimo's weakness because of the lucky fan that he wants to teach him how to live a life devoid of risk and is overcorrecting. And Gil is someone who similarly is like scarred and empowers Nimo to feel like he has the ability to actually do things. Yeah. We'll get into his initiation ritual, but I love that. They give him that little thing to feel brave. Okay. So Marlin bangs into Dory trying to find me like a new bangs into Dory immediately. She can't help him. Well, of course, I know right this way. And then while this following her, she starts doing the panic looking over her shoulder, who's this creepy guy? And then she does the aggro like you got a problem, huh? It's a tossed off joke. Obviously, it then becomes the premise of an entirely new movie. It runs in my family, at least I think it does. It is, I think it does. Where are they? Makes me laugh so hard. And then it's just a two shot that holds for like 10 seconds of silence. I love them thinking about it. And then she looks back and she goes, hi, I'm Dory. That it's one. It's one run on thought. The timing is so good. Right. Where are they? It's just so fucking funny because like you never need to explain it. The whole movie that explains it, but their dad is fucking pattern baldness, blue tang or whatever. We'll get to that. Yeah. But the movie's been moving so fast up until this point that when you have that sustained two shot of just letting the, the joke rhythm of Ellen drive the movie, it feels like a nice reset point. Dory and him then pretty much the next thing is the sharks, right? Like, this is the one thing in the movie that always felt an insi bit cute to me. The entire shark dynamic. I don't love the self help therapy speak. I don't love the trope of characters same with record Ralph in a therapy or in like a blank anonymous overdone. It's not my favorite. Now can I play devil's advocate and say this was pretty early in that. It is wildly overdone now. I remember not liking it in 2003. We must acknowledge that the sharks were kind of the immediate breakout characters. Bruce was big. Bruce had a big summer. Well, Dory is a movie star. Dory is like a leading lady like Dory is first on the post. She's an old Janu. Yeah. But one of the big poster. Of course, his Bruce's big face. I love, of course, that it's the great Barry Humphreys, Dame Edna herself playing scary and then Eric Banna and who's the third one? Interesting. So the third shark in this dynamic is played by Bruce Ben. Now, here's what's interesting about this guy and hold on to your seats. He played the gyrocopter pilot in the road warrior aka Mad Max too. He's also Tear on Meadon and Star Wars episode three revenge of the Sith. This very year, he is the trainman. His rangers revolution is out in just a few months. David, he was arguably the king of the box office in 2003 except he got cut out a lot of things. Entertainment Weekly did a little sidebar in their 2003 year in review where they said he was the highest grossing actor because he had matrix revolutions and finding Nemo. And if he had made the cut of return of the king, I think he would have had two billion dollars in box office. Wow. It's like how Jonathan Bailey was king of the box office last year. Now, now, why is that? Well, apart from, oh, because Jurassic, was that last year? Was that but last year? It was that last year. Did he saw a dinosaur? Right. And went, oh, cool, cried. Can I say? Then he was the scarecrow. Yes, Ben. I like the shark house. Thank you. I like that they live around bombs. Yeah. The bombs touch the chains are awesome. Yeah. That bombs are cool. And then being blown up is cool. It is funny that Ben's like attached to chains. Not just bombs. No, I forget. Let's not forget. And I like a ship wreck too. Yeah. I also feel like, what is it? Chum and what's the other sharks now? Crunch or crush. Let me find out. Well, crush, anchor, anchor, Chum and Bruce. Anchor and Chum. Yeah. A crush is the turtle. Right. And anchor is a hammerhead. Yes. And Chum has the hook through his face. They just feel like very Ben characters, specifically anchor and Chum. They should get their own movie. But yeah, like the joke, obviously, right is they they don't eat fish anymore. What will they be eating? Doesn't really come up kelp or some shit. But I just think this is like real vegan. I think sharks need like a tremendous amount of food to operate, right? Like, I think this is incredibly well-staged action sequence. It is. It's incredibly well done. Yeah. And then the bombs exploding, Dorey's blood coming out of her nose and then the way his eyes change. Like so. Yes. I just start stripping. Oh, that's good. No, no, no, don't do it, man. That's really funny. I think like several points in this movie and a film that you would not classify as an action film, Stanton kind of like pulls off a fish version of an Indiana Jones sequence. We're even just like Bruce leading them through the establishment of the mines in the sea, right? Like all the sort of visual stuff it needs to teach you that's then going to pay off in the sequence. The missile silo that they can hide out in, how they can activate that to get rid of Bruce, which then even has the comedy within it of anchor and shum jumping in between Bruce's bites to apologize for his behavior. And it's just all like he keeps teaching you things that don't feel like overstated setups that pay off in very satisfying ways, where then you can just have action happen with real tension because you know this is a universe in which death can happen. Characters can die in this movie and still get jokes in. Ben's laughing at how excited I am. Okay. Tory is so funny when she forgets that they're being chased and then launches the missile so that they go back towards the shark. Yes, yes. This is dope. Any Dory joke like that works. We should call this out too. This is the other thing is that Dory can read English even though she can't remember things. That's the reason that Marlon has to stick with her because the only thing they have to lead them towards Nemo is the address written on the back. Yes, so during this is when they find the goggles. Exactly. The divers' goggles, he clocked them. We learn she can read English because she sees the sign that says S Cuphead. This kind of perfect like he stuck with her because she can do a thing that he can't do even if she doesn't understand what she's doing and she's constantly getting it wrong. But then in this like chain of events it's like going after the goggles and the snap of the elastic band is what causes her to bleed which is activates Bruce. She's so good at even just doing the kind I'm fine, I'm fine. This is also a character design that should not be like a plausible nose bleed coming out of it. She's so fucking narrow. Her face is basically a pencil when head on. With eyes sticking out either side. Right. And she's just got like a nose bump in a mouth. There's a lot of blue tanks at the Brooklyn Aquarium. And my daughter says like Dory, there she is. This is an incredibly difficult actual species to get emotion. I got no notes. Yeah. I got no notes in any of the animation in this movie. I think it's perfect. I think it's the apex it picks are. Yeah. I really do. Yeah. I mean maybe Ratatouille. Like Ratatouille has such a beautiful kind of like approach to all of its things. I think this is a better movie. Well that's okay. Everyone relax. This is the five stars here for me. Right. Right. The two toy stories. Monsters and Finding Emo Ratatouille Incredibles. Those are the ones at the very, very top of the heap for me. Those are like perfect movies in my opinion. I do think Stanton is the guy within Pixar who starts getting most fascinated by the idea that in computer animation you can simulate a camera in a way that you can't and hand drawn. And he pushes that really far in Wally where Wally is really selling the illusion of there is a human operator like Wally has delayed zooms and shit like that. Yeah. I know this is basically spoiling our list. But do you like this more than Wally? Where are you there? I'm not sure where I am. I think Wally's a little bit more imperfect than this one. Right. The aesthetic eyes. Also you just have to like think about when that movie got announced and it was like Andrew Stanton is making a robot romcom in the style of silent films. I lost my fucking mind when it was like he's making a robot buster keep movie. It felt like they had designed a film specifically for me. That makes sense. Becca. Huh? Wally or Neema? Oh Neema. Like Wally is like I love Ratatouille so much. So that's not far behind Neema. But Wally I have a harder time with the things that are imperfect about it. But you think the Stanton's best film maybe but Wally's more of a great look. This is the grand debate. We'll have over these six weeks. It's like a godfather versus Apocalypse Now situation where you're like every that's interesting. I don't find that a tough situation anymore. I recently rewatched Apocalypse Now. It was like I think I think I can see that this movie has left me. It's a mess. It's such a big movie for me as a teen. Obviously it's incredible. I also think like the most aesthetic things that movie can accomplish are part and parcel with its messiness. Right. Totally. Which feels the same as Wally to me. Yeah. Where I'm like Wally is like a couple steps off of being perfect for me. But if it was perfect it maybe wouldn't able to achieve the weird things that's able to pull off. But this film it feels like Stanton is with really fucking limited technology at this time still. And this shit's so fucking expensive to do. And they talk about the methods they had to develop in the strategies of how to stop it from costing like $500 million. How do you continue to visually maintain the relationship between the characters and the water they're in? Right, right, right. Like in Sharktail it's just characters floating. In this they're like we can't in every shot show the bubbles or the waves of their fin motion. We can't always show the distortion of you know the thickness of the water at this point at different levels and the darkness or whatever. But they choose their battles really well. There are all these insane hacks they do where basically they create one texture surface, which is the surface of the water whenever they're peeking their heads up above. And then they copy that and put a different layer on top of it to make it the ocean floor. So basically the sand and the water are the same elements. But one is fixed and one is in motion. Similarly they couldn't figure out how to make the anemone and the monster zinc team which was working on the other side of the studio had cracked the fur thing. Right. And someone went oh if you take a ball of fur and then like size it up like crazy so every strand is really thick. Then the anemone is just overgrown hair. So there's stuff in like animation that's like when you hear stories about Sam Ramey figuring out a hack for like how to pull off a special effect in a cheap way that this movie is using to like insane effect because none of it feels like shortcuts and it's just so painterly and beautiful and even just the fucking lighting on this movie. I wanted to bring up the lighting especially because we're in a crisis in 2026 to see where it's so thoughtfully done. So vivid and beautiful and Pixar is like a big part of their process is what they call the color scripts where they do these pastel kind of storyboards not of every shot but basically of every sequence to look at the color tones of the movie which is like a classic Disney 50s type thing as well to establish the moods of like when is it brightest and when is it coldest and when do you need to establish a tone of things feeling ominous versus sad you know and I think this movie uses the like depths of the ocean to convey those things things get brighter when they're closer to the surface. Very cool where you see more reflection of the light. Obviously the whole anglerfish sequence you know is such a braver demonstration of all that to you know the light. So they get away and pretty quickly they're swimming down to retrieve right when they get away from Bruce that's when they come across the anglerfish. They don't get a second to us. No it's yeah it's pretty how male anglerfish reproduce how you know right they suck their index. I'm taking a guess they're little and they fuse to the the girl anglerfish and like melt into her and just leave behind their balls and then the the female anglerfish uses the balls to like make and make it layer. Do they come and get the balls back? No they die that's the end for them they're they they they mate they die mate you know they're just like I mean nice work if you can get it's one of those like die more for some things like the woman is like the woman the woman the female anglerfish is like 10 times bigger than the male or whatever. Yeah like the ocean floor stuff brings up like deep sea is as scary and unknowable as outer space. The creatures that are in it are alien. This one looks like an HR Geeger alien like it's terrifying. This is a great call. I mean James Cameron taught us about the aliens of the deep and the ghosts of the abyss. Goes the abyss alien to the deep. That's right. I think it is very smart that this movie avoids. If you were to anthropomorphize the deep sea creatures more it would feel like this is a bad neighborhood in a way that was coded very dangerously. Leave that shit for shark tail. Exactly. It makes it much easier to just be like this is basically outer space and we don't understand the rules of what's happening here. These characters don't have faces that you can like understand or talk to. Yeah I feel like if if it had a voice it would be too scary for kids. Totally. Be like breathing. It's already kind of scary. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it's right it's selective which characters can't speak. It's the ones where even just being around them is potentially a danger. So to move on from the attempt to you know from this like pretty quickly we are also in the tank right like around this time is when we're sort of cutting over to the tank. I was looking I feel like the tank basically comes in 30 minutes in. We stay with just Marlon Dory for a while. No excuse me it's right after the brew sequence because the bomb goes off it cuts to the two birds and the one who fixed the other one far ahead. It's a really good tension really. And a really good way to bridge ocean worlds and silly dentist world. So the tank comes in minute 25. Well and the tank is like we've already at this point we've already been introduced to like 12 incredible characters. Yeah. Let's throw in a whole perfect little chamberpiece sitcom ensemble of characters who are going absolutely stir crazy. You've got gale. Well I'm the foe. Yeah. Well, I'm the foe, baby J. Thou! Sorry, I'm being a Katherine Llanasa baby Cheeto. What name is J. Doh in the pit season two. I haven't watched the early on. There is a abandoned baby. Okay. And Katherine Llanasa. Who's going to look over this baby chain? There's a baby J. Doh sounds good. Yeah, it rocks. Yeah. And like pit fandom, which is very normal, not toxic at all, to be regular. One of the recurring jokes about this season is like, they're always like predictions for finale. Baby Jane Doh, you know, saves the day. You know, like she will have laser vision, you know, that they keep being like this abandoned baby. Yeah, someone was like, I've seen the ending and just I won't spoil it, but don't look up baby Jane Doh and rocket launcher. I don't say this lightly. Yeah, but just three shows I don't engage with in the last four months. I've just been reading and singing headlines about the way the fandom is treating these actors. I'm like broken containment on like, right, like that you are reading a fandom needs to die. It really does. It's really what's happening in pit world. The shit that was happening to the heated rivalry guys. I'm like, this isn't good, but I'm not surprised. Of course, you know, fresh show that's driven on a sort of team Edward team Jacob over obsession with. But blankies are great. I love your money. I mean, and your panda easy, easy, easy. But then like the pit shit that's been happening. And then there was the fucking Percy Jackson kid was like, I can't go to prom. Yeah. He takes to prom. The fans are going to send death threats. He was basically like, the fans have like track down every girl in my high school class and is sending death threats saying, like, you better not go on a date with him because he belongs to me. Oh my god. Everyone needs to show it. It's just, but it's the internet and it's the way the algorithm speed and all that. It's so crazy. But it is the last show I would expect to have that. Of course. And I just keep reading these things. I think that's why it took everyone by surprise. Yes. Where they're like, I went. It's it's like a sober hospital procedural. And everyone's just like, I can't believe that Robby did that. He's a fictional character. But then they're like angry at which actors aren't coming back. And when it's not there, they're being there, they're being real normal about everything. This group. Okay. So we got you. And then it's like sitcom fucking all stars, right? It's like Brad Garrett. He's the puffer fish. We have Alston training from the West Wing. We love her. Stephen Roof from News Radio. Brad Garrett from Everglow's Rammett obviously. Vicky Lewis also from News Radio. Austin Pendleton is Gurgle. He's, I mean, he's, he's a guy. That could be a theater actor, mill movies. Yeah. We love it. Max from the Muppet movie. And then Joe Ramford is Jacques, but immediately everyone has their bits. Oh, yeah. Nimo wakes up and sees all the scary imagery of the like aquarium toys and everything. You feel like, okay, so this is going to be like analogous to him being in prison now. And he stuck with a bunch of scary inmates. And then immediately, it's like, no, this is like a mental hospital. Yeah, it's kukuz now. They all have conditions. Right. Right. So, okay, let me try. So Gil is scarred. And he's kind of battle. And we learned he also has a bad fin. He's got a bad fin too. They never stopped him. I don't know if you've noticed this. The scoring pattern on his face is basically one to one with platoon. I was about to say it's platoon. They give him the same scars. To faux plays, it's so straight, but also I think it's like incredibly warm in this movie. Yeah. Yeah. He's an alternate father figure. I know. I want, I want Gil to believe in me. He's so good because you're just like, there's a universe in which they go like the joke is you're really intense. He's the drill sergeant. You play it really seriously. Yeah. And at the end, you show a little bit of warmth. But even from the beginning, he's playing the vulnerability of this guy. It's important to that he was the only fish that ever lived in the ocean. Yeah. Yeah. The rest of them are tankies. Yeah. Brad, the puffer fish. So he sometimes he goes puff mode. I guess that's his problem. Yeah. He doesn't really have any other problems. He's like a hair trigger anxiety. Right. It's it's the equivalent of having like panic attacks or whatever. I guess peach. Peach is kind of maybe the most balanced, but she's a bit of a gossip. Yeah. And I know it all. Yeah. Bubbles loves bubbles. Yeah. He's obsessed with the bubbles. He's OCD and he's obsessed with the little treasure chest that releases bubbles and trying to keep them in there. One of the great fish tank toys. The bubbles. If not, I think the top. Or I guess no. Gurgles the one who's OCD. Yeah. Gurgles are like free. Yeah. And then and then Deb, I just love the idea that she's obsessed with her own reflection. This is my sister flow. Who she thinks is alive. It tells me not to trust. It's so funny. It's really good. Yeah. And then Jock is just a a high-statist, a leadist Frenchman. He's kind of good actually. Shotgun. Shotcruls. So they all want out though, right? Like they all want out of a tank and they have like, you know, a sort of developing plan that Nemo fits into. Yeah. He's dropped into a great escape situation where it's like there have been years of failed plans. They keep on trying things that don't work. And Nemo feels to them like he offers some new opportunities, specifically in the fact that he's small, right? Yep. You can go into the filter and put the stone in the fan and but speaking to how complete the kind of vision of this movie was when Stanton wrote it, the major changes you hear about in the film are taking out things that were gilding the lily rather than needing to figure out how to ultimately get to things. So like, you know, unwinding the flashback structure. He originally had Gill be more of a, I don't know whether to trust this guy or not character. He played him more scary up top. Sure. Yeah. There's a scene where Nemo gets gilded open up and talk about what happened to him and how he ended up in the tank. And he tells this whole story about his family that went missing and where he came from. And then Nemo finds out later in the movie that Gill has been lying. It's like a joke or do you want to know how I got these scars thing. And that every detail that Gill told them is in a picture book that's in the dentist waiting room. Check that he hears a kid read. And he was just like, we don't need this. Yeah. Just let Gill be actually invested in helping this kid. Yeah. This movie is already a liar. Stuffed to the gills. Right. Right. There were originally two seagulls. How many county points there? Come on. One trillion comedy points. No. One trillion. I know OU comedy points. You're in debt. There were originally two seagulls or not seagulls. What is it? Pelican. Oh, yeah. Right. So the one who ends up trying to eat them was originally a fully developed character. And there was kind of a good and bad pelican. And Nigel's trying to protect them. And this other one's trying to eat them. And they were just like, none of this is necessary. Because they already have the seagulls. Right. That's there. Yeah. But I love Nigel is a character as just this kind of like Jeffrey rush just playing fucking warm. Right. Just playing like a lad. Who just loves coming in because he likes dentistry. Right. It's funny how they all know about dentistry. Yeah. Because they've been in this tank all these years. But there's stuck Nigel comes and visits of his own. He likes to hear the like dentist updates. What's the gossip? It's funny because it's like they are out. They are watching the dentistry like television. They are so invested. Right. But for them, it's also like studying their chapter to be like, where are the vulnerabilities? What's genius about Nigel too is you immediately recognize that is how they are going to get out of there. This is what I'm talking about. It's like there's such intentionality of this story that anytime a character is introduced, you're like, what's the function they're going to serve? Yeah. And anytime you're shown a visual element, you're sort of like, oh, right. He could keep people in his beak. Right. And none of it. It's all what everyone, you know, talks about being the ideal of what you want to achieve in dramatic storytelling, especially in like foam narratives is surprising, but inevitable. How can you in 90 minutes pay off the things that felt like they were, they had to happen. But yet when they happen, they don't feel derogre. You really locked into this movie. I've seen it so many. I've seen so many. I mean so many. Yeah. But I truly, this is one of my go-to, I can't sleep movies. This is like a real comfort movie for me. And, you know, we were talking about we did our edge of tomorrow episode on Patreon, which I guess will have just come out or recently come out. Right. And we were talking about how you will often identify a sleep movie and watch it like literally every night for like a couple of months. Pretty much. And then you kind of like squeeze all the juice out of it and you move on to something new for a while. Yeah. Nimo has just been in the rotation for 20 years for me. I probably haven't seen this movie until you rewatched it yesterday in over 15 years or something. And it was like, I know every word. Every line of every scene. A lot of the lines are also so catchy, so sticky. This is like full of just these effortless feeling catch phrases. It's not like donkey catch phrases. No, they're not dumb jokes. And so much of it is the specific. The actor makes a really interesting choice in the rhythm of their line delivery or the character, the design of the character that is saying that thing and the animation of what they do when they're saying it. So where do we leave off? Well, we've done the tank for a while. The Dory thing. They escaped the angler fish. We go from the tank to the angler fish. And then it is when basically like Dory doesn't absorb the directions of like avoid the jelly fish and they go into the jungle. Yeah. Or is this Marlon's fault? Right. She sort of remembers that they shouldn't do it. And Marlon's like, what are you talking about? This is the right way. Yeah. Yeah. The like school of fish. Yeah. They're like, they don't like you. Or they keep in person. That's John Rattenberg. Yeah. So we're going to get back to the ground. The grumpy Gus. And then an amazing way. He's like, Marlin. You have Marlin. Okay. Yeah. You have Marlin dejected that they lost the goggles, right? And that's when Dory introduces the just keeps swimming to cheer him up, that she's also invested in him. Cheer up. She was able with the angler fish because he was the light like a reading light. She was able to do P. Sherman 42 Wallaby way. Sydney. Yes. They've lost the goggles. But this is for the first time she's learning to remember. Yeah. Which I just think is so elegantly done that it's a gradual thing rather than at one moment suddenly. You have your payoff moments with her. You have the like her making the emotional plea to him that like when I'm with you, I remember things. You have the moment where the whole Nemo thing comes flashing back to her. She's so proud of herself right now for she's like, I've remembered that. It's incremental. You give her little victory. So it's not just like at one point in the movie, suddenly she's fixed. And because her will A she repeats that she repeats it a hundred times. But also like because the remembering the address is something so emotionally important to her that like, I won't remember that address of a house I grew up in, but I'll remember P. Sherman 42 Wallaby way Sydney until like I die probably. And especially her riffing on it and her turning into the songs asked me again. And I'll tell you P. Sherman 42 Wallaby way so they get to this trench and the trench looks dark and scary. Marlin. Sorry. I was pulling up to remind myself where I was instead I just got the scary sounds of the trench. And Marlin is obviously like, well, we don't want to go through the dark scary trench. We need to go over a fish who she had asked for directions earlier told her it's the school of fish. It's the final thing after they've been making fun of Marlin and he's like, fuck these guys. And they're like one last thing, but it's after he's swam off. So only she's there to hear it. And they don't know that she can't remember. Oh, right. That is then. I thought this happened later in the movie, but I'm getting them confused with the school of fish and the end to we'll get to who's also a big silver school of fish, but the clockwork kind of precision of just like, there aren't any cheats in the story. They are so funny. They're so specific like the conflicts they find themselves in why they're there. Why there isn't an easy out. Why they need to fight to work through the thing. Like if Marlin wasn't offended by them mocking him because he's so self serious, then he would have heard the thing about the trench, right? And he doesn't like asking for directions. She's very friendly. She doesn't mind going up to anyone, his stubbornness screws that they do the like, is this fellow bothering you? Yeah. It's funny. So they play a game of charades to cheer her up. And then because and so we've seen that they can move in this really fun way. And then they do a big arrow because they tell them they need to get to the EAC. Oh, right. They said they know where Sydney is showed the little waves, they show the opera house. They turn into Marlin and they do like a sad face Marlin, which is pretty funny. They do a mocking impression over his shoulder. They are. They're funny. Yes. And then they give them the directions right swim through not over. Yeah. He doesn't trust her. Right. So they get he distracts her. He's like, look, a shiny thing. Yeah. The jellyfish, fuck them up. Yeah. This is the sequence. Let's end there woken up. I mean, we cut to the tank and then when we come back to them, they're woken up on a turtle. But it's so scary and tense and so beautiful. It's another camera decision where he said they animated this whole sequence and he was like, it looks too neat and clean and perfect. There isn't tension to this. And the guy who was head of camera on the movie was like, let me try something and he clicked twice to zoom in. Like literally just did that. Sure. And did it kind of like arbitrarily and stamp was like, oh, if the compositions are asymmetrical, if the jellyfish's bodies are cut off, and it feels like there's just this weird environment that you can't see as full bodies. And so all of the camera placements within the sequence, which is a lot more quick cutie, are all kind of a little disorienting. Kind of they stopped the camera from getting wet. Really good question. It's a fun sequence. Fun. We're getting to the turtles. Turtles. Okay. The most positive representation of a Californian in the world. This is a really good take. Like of that kind of like the surfer dude thing. Andrew Stanton, a Massachusetts, although he's probably lived in California for like decades at this point. Yes. Doing like a surfer dude. Accent. Oh, man. Yeah. You know, right? But it's like the whole point across is he's just like, I'm 100 years old or 150 or whatever he is. Look at me. I'm fucking chilling. He's not going about this guy. No. He's not forcing his world view on it. Not at all. It's the more you talk and the more you're like, this guy's got it fucking figured out. He's like, you know, when there's like cool teen, like when there's cool Jesus for teens. Do you know what I mean? Crushes cool Jesus. Uh, you think he's kind of like a youth pastor, but like a really nice youth pastor. He's like the cool Jesus, he's the cool hippie Jesus that the youth pastor is talking about. Yeah, I guess like youth pastor wishes he could be crushed. But he is show he's demonstrating an extremely different parenting style, right? Marlon is being exposed to it is actually a much less helicoptery kind of parent. He'll find his way away to teach your kid away. A kid learns to be safe in the world is to fail or fall off this way and then figure it outward in their choices and feel like it's based on experiences rather than rules being placed around them. Yeah, and feel it to have a sense of adventure that feels safe. And just the whole idea of like, you know, locating the EAC as a real phenomenon and being like, man, okay, so turtles would they be like surfers? Yeah. If they're literally just in the flow of this. It's sort of like a highway, like when you see the fish that are merging on, but it also is skydiving. Yeah, right. Yeah, right. Right. Oh, when squirt gives their big big like skydiver like, okay, we have a great jump today. Yeah. Totally. I mean, incredible performance from Stanton. It's another one of these early examples where here's a role that they earmark of like, well, at some point we'll hire like a celebrity to do it. And he would do it in all the story reels and presentations, Brad Bird doing Edna Mode or whatever, right? Well, that's the opposite story where they hired much like boy, Mitch Macy. It's never been named. But everyone believes it's Lily Tomlin that he hired Lily Tomlin and she was doing the records and he kept on giving her really specific directions of being like, no, I think it's more like this and it's more like this. And Lily Tomlin, Lily, excuse me, I got myself to a tongue twister. Lily Tomlin literally goes, I think you should just do this. Yeah. Why don't you do it then? Right. Edna was born. Right. This was the opposite where when they were not mode, when they were in the early stages, everyone around Stanton was just like, you should just fucking do this. He's like a Hawaiian shirt got, well, all the Pixar guys at this point in time are Hawaiian shirt guys. Stanton's a little preppier. He's, I got that in New England thing. Yeah. Yeah. But this is outside of himself, but he just like he fucking found the character. No one's going to do it better. Should I have a Hawaiian shirt? No. Absolutely not. That would be a fucking night mayor. I think you're wearing a baseball shirt and it's awesome. I'm in my Met's era. Yeah. I keep buying jerseys. So the other thing, as we've been saying about how all the character choices make sense for the type of animal, this type of more relaxed parenting style, not only that they're surfers and whatever else, but it's also because they hatch their eggs really far away. Yeah. And Marlon goes, how do you trust that they'll come and swim all this way in the big, big ocean and find you? Yeah. And it's like, oh, when they're ready, they'll, when you know, you know, you know. But it's finding those gifts of like you do research on different species and you go, Oh, that's interesting. That's an interesting character detail. Yeah. Rather than forcing things on to characters, you find these discoveries. I want to mention that in between, right before Marlon waking up, oh, we have tank stuff. Yes. You have the first attempt to tank escape, which is genuinely like pretty. That's also an interesting. It's kind of Jones type, I really like that. It's a moment for Gil to be like, I push the kid too hard or like I was being crazy, like thinking this would work. Also, that he's only been dealing with other adults and that he's pushing Nemo to the same extent. He's the opposite of Marlon. We're rather than not letting him do anything. He's making Nemo do too much. Yeah. So he pressures him. The plan is because Nemo's small. He's going to swim into the filtration system and jam one of those little tank pebbles into the rotating, the motor to jam it and then the tank will get gunky. They will all have to be put into little bags while the dentist cleans it. We get a really fun visual where he's explaining how the plan is going to work and talk about the camera placement. It's like this POV of these bagged fish rolling across the highway. Stan, I think talks about it as the fincher sequence. He's like, this is my homage to the fight club. Here's how we're going to infiltrate. Yeah. We're working through it and all the crazy camera movements and whatever. It's really fun. It is a really smart plan. It's a good plan, but it has this assumption to it that I do like that it's like, there's a fish logic of like humans will only do one thing. Right. And they don't realize that like, yeah, human can just fucking go on Amazon and buy like a new filter. But I like that Nemo gets close like it's not like it's a total failure. But but it is so scary that it does actually set Marlon back and not Marlon. Or Gill. It makes a question everything to a degree where he's just like, these are the lies I'm telling myself. So I can survive in this fucking tank. We're never getting out of here. Right. And it flips the dynamic where Nemo is going to have. to console him basically, because Nemo finally does it because he hears about his dad's heroism. - Well, I'm sorry, let's just run through, 'cause I need to get rid of this. - 'Cause you have this lesson with the turtles, right? And they send them off the EAC, but they start spreading the message. This is a sequence that they talk about is just like, kinda Pixar at their best, where one night they were like, fuck, we gotta solve this story problem. How can Nemo possibly receive a word that his father is looking for him? At this point in the movie, wouldn't he just give up? How do we stop the character from just conceding? And they're just like, well, what if it's a fucking like game of radio, right? What if it's a chain of conversation, and then what are the opportunities for characterization and all of those things? Because all these have to be like a four second gag of what's funny is, oh, our swordfish, like Upper Crust, British fencer. - So, you know what? - And they basically just like write this all in one night, all do the voices, these are all Pixar people. It's all like Peterson and Stanton, like repeating different archetypes and cultural stereotypes. And it's like a really fun journey that just feels like a fun story exploration, but then you get to Nigel hearing it, Nigel recognizing it, being like, I gotta tell this fucking clownfish. - But you can tell that he's like, this is gonna mean a lot to this kid. I gotta tell him right away, flies through with urgency. Nimo immediately is like, what? Actually, no, not possible. He's immediately heartened, and then rejects it as like, that is not a thing my father could do. - Yeah, that my dad would never battle a shark. Like let alone even, like Sandy Plankton's dad wouldn't even battle a shark. If you told him, your dad is just swimming really far to get to you, even that would test his, his notion of his father. - But this is a beautiful moment because Nigel says some identifying features about more sport fish trout, too, man. - Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's Marlin. - Yeah. - So, you said he fought a shark. I heard he took down three, and you just fucking, like Spielberg shot, pushing on Nimo's face and his eyes widening. As he realizes the expression of his father's love in a way his father could never say to him. The understanding of what his father has gone through to try to get to him. - Yeah. - I just find incredibly emotionally overwhelming. - I think you're right. I think it's very emotionally, it's very beautiful. - And so, Nimo makes up his mind. He's gonna try the plan again. Gil wouldn't have wanted to push him. - He disappears in a cut, like Nigel's telling the story, all the other fish in the tank are so excited for Nimo, and then they realize he's missing and he's already gone back up the pipe. It's like, hearing of his father's bravery has emboldened him to believe that he can do things as well. - We should also, of course, around now is when Nimo, I mean, when Marlin and Dory get sucked into a whale, and Dory speaks whale to the whale. - Well, that's right after this. And that changes humanity forever. It changes the world. - Everyone just could not stop talking about it. - It was seismic. It is so funny, I've seen Dory so many times now because my daughter vastly prefers it to finding Nimo. And that movie, I think, is pretty fun. And we will talk about it on this show. - Yeah. - But the way that they're just like, well, Dory has to speak whale. That should be crucial, actually. The fact that Dory doesn't know where a family was, that's the emotional arc of the movie. That throw away line like in the first movie. - Where did Dory learn just to read? - Correct. Like, basically, like, what are the things about Dory? Now that is the spine of finding Dory. - I like that movie a lot. Everything that drives me crazy in it is the checklist DC issue. - Yeah, I hate that in prequel-type things. - Like, I hate that they bring the turtles back, even the way I love Crush. And it just feels like they're like, guys, you have to bring the turtles back. - We need to sell like turtle March, you know? - Yes, yes. - There's stuff like that that's really annoying it. - Turtle talk, we'll get into as well. - We'll get into turtle talk. - But whale. - Yes. - The whale. It's speaking whale. - That is one of the most biblical, ancient, important archetypes in myths and sagas and legends, is our heroes get swallowed by a whale. You just have to do it. Pinocchio, one of the greatest animated films of all time, swallowed by a whale. - Yeah, I think it's the best to core. - Inside of a whale? - Yeah, yeah. - Baleen. - That's their little teeth things. - Yeah, they're like filters. - Yeah, which is so funny because you think of them as being sort of soft and small, but if they're so packed in and hard when Marlon's trying to escape. - But anyway, they-- - But their taste buds being so pronounced that the fish can hang onto them. - That part for, I do not like Marlon rubbing up on the taste bud. - And also the water coming like as-- - Flowing against the, where the whale is swimming it's so interesting. - Yeah, whales are crazy. - Them having this fight where Marlon's like, really reaching a breaking point with Dory of being like, you keep thinking you can do, you know, you can speak to whales. You can re, you can do all this fucking shit. And meanwhile, it's just the whale approaching them so fucking slowly, yeah. - Right, and because of the weird perspective and lighting and all the tricks in the water, she's going like, "Hey, little fella." - I don't think that's a little fella. - That's Piacon. - Yeah, that is Piacon. - He is such a Piacon because he is helping them. - It's interesting that way of water inverts what you're talking about where the villains go inside the whale and do something terrible. - They take their immortality juices - Yeah, well, that's a lesson though. - Whales are something grander and more sacred than us. And we can't be trying to mess with it. - True. - I do like that the whale basically becomes a location. - Right. - That it's like- - Yeah. - Where they have a friend and they talk it out. - Right, but I like back his thing. I'm like, right, also this kind of like, they're passing through a siege perilous here. - Yeah. - The biblical thing of like that, that they are transformed by being expelled from the whale. - Right, and it's much like Nemo's character growth happening in him listening to Nigel's story. Like just really elegant show don't tell stuff through action. It's just such a fucking perfect piece of screen writing when Marlon is yelling at Dory. For trying to come up with a solution for how to save themselves. - Yeah. - And he's just saying no to everything she's fucking doing and then he finally breaks and says, my favorite line, you think you can do these things but you just can't Nemo. And what I love about it is you see the shock on her face, the reaction of why he called me Nemo. She can't quite comprehend it, but then it cuts back to him and he looks so fucking embarrassed. Like he realizes what he just said. - Pretty interesting, your name's Dory. - Yes, well that's the only reason. - Well she's like, who's Nemo? I thought your kid is Harpo Chico. - Fabio, pretty good. - Yes. But that he like, he gets it the second it comes out of his mouth. - What? - Harpo. Just laughing about Dory. - It's another class of comedy thing. Anytime she confidently says the wrong name and he just has to go Nemo. He just has to correct her so fast. - Oh, so Nemo is a very fun word to say. It's awesome that it's said like a trillion times in this movie, it's a really cute fun name. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - Of course Nemo himself escapes all by himself. Like, you know, Marlon does not rescue Nemo. - No, right. - He's there for Nemo when he comes out of the, you know, into the harbor, out of the sink. But also Dory is correct. Like Dory gets them out of the fucking house. - Dory's been talking to the whale this whole time. - The whales don't speak. - The dogs like me. - And I think whales don't speak the same language as all the other fish. So they're again, like the tulk hoons sort of like on this elevated plane of intelligence. The same way that we can't speak the same language of whales, but whales do have language. - Yes. - So that's sort of what's happening here in my mind. She's communicating with the whale. The whale is like you need to do the counter-intuitive thing, which is fall down into my throat so that I could then blow you out. I've driven you to Sydney. I'm dropping you off. - Which is also what teaches Marlon to trust Nemo and Nemo's escape, that she's doing the counter-intuitive thing. Why would you go deeper into the whale? And Nemo similarly is not trying to swim up out of the net and she's got us from down. That's how we're going to escape this thing. - She learns about swimming down also because yeah, when the fish have to get scooped out, usually to be sent to their doom at the hands of Darla, it's in a little net, and if a lot of them are in the net, they can break it. - And Nemo, the big transformation is he knows what to do. He persuades Marlon to let him do it. Marlon, you know, let's him do it. Marlon has to wear with all the let him do it and they escape. - It's the story thing I love across the Toy Story movie is that also feels very influenced by Indiana Jones where you set out like here's the clear plan. This is what needs to happen and the order of actions that will get us to the other side of this thing and then immediately shit goes wrong and your characters have to improvise, but it's like a heist movie where you're so trained into how this is supposed to go that it's exciting every time they have to veer off of the plan and the movie is telegraphing the all drains lean to the ocean things so loudly throughout as like if they can just get there, then they're in the clear, they're safe. It is the thing that Pixar people have talked about that there were a lot of incidents after this movie came out of a kid's flushing. - Be free, right. - Fished on this. - It's like they're not gonna, 'cause they thought it was making it to the harbor band. - They thought that was the two-minute story act. - Oh no. Fish shells went way up after this movie, of course. And like aquarium attendance, I feel like permanently went up after this movie. - Oh, yeah. - But there was a lot of kids trying to free fish by flushing them down. - I do think there's a very beautiful of its time sort of Y2K Frutiger arrow. Vivid, blue, and orange like aesthetic to the whole thing that feels like it was big at the time. - Those are the two colors, let's go, Matt. - Yeah, that's the other way. I'm calling this Frutiger arrow. - Is that how you say it? Frutiger arrow? - Sure. - Do you know what I'm talking about? - Yes, I know what you're talking about. - Like that one window's background. - Yeah, also a little Frutopia, I miss it. - Oh, Frutopia, I miss. That is like crush and squirt, by the way. - Yes, that's my like windows 98. Bring it back, bring it back. - Also a good reason for them to be clownfish is the blue orange contrast, is the best contrast. So. - Did you know if you ate a clownfish that it would be gross, 'cause they're covering a special mucus to protect them from the enemies that they live in. - And them and them and them and them and them. - All right, kid, don't knock yourself out. - No, and then we're done. Like, I mean, right? Like it's like-- - We skipped over, right, you think you're in the clear when he escapes. - Well, the tank gets super fucking dirty. - Oh, yeah, sure. - Austin Hilton's freaking the fuck out. Can't you see that we're all surrounded by shit, which they caught him all? - Yeah, she goes, shh, the dentist is just coming in. And he takes his readers digest into the bathroom. Oh, yeah, is that one that happens? - Yes, yes, and the kid in the waiting room is reading the Incredibles comic. I don't know if you noticed that. - And there's a little buzz like you're in the toy chest. - Yeah, but the thing they didn't account for is that he would just buy some new high-tech cleaner and install it while they were sleeping. - Yeah. - That he doesn't need to take that out or he took him out and put him back in really quickly. So they wake up, the tank is clean, all hope is lost, right. It does not know that Dory and Marlon have gotten so close. And today is the day that Doryla is coming and she's gonna take Nemo and shake him until he dies. - Yeah, she even gets her hands on him. I mean, she's got him for a sec. - She gives him a hearty shake. She's like the opposite. I think a lot of the depiction of Australia and this was this and Kangaroo Jack where my only exposure to Australia, in the first decade of life. And it so goes against the lovely intelligent children of Bluey. Doryla makes it seem like the children of Australia are monsters. - I do think it's vital in Bluey that Bluey is a relatively obnoxious child. - Yeah, but she's not, it's Doryla is like. - Oh no, Doryla is much worse. - But I mean, like, I mean, I just, - Wait, at one point, someone that character with an Australian accent calls Dory Bluey at one time. - Well, she is blue. - She is blue. But you know, in Bluey, like one of my favorite episodes of Bluey a hugely controversial episode is the one where Ellen comes out where the puppy episode. - They're all puppy episodes of Bluey. - This is true. - Is the one where Bingo, you know, first they both turn into Bluey's, right? Bingo turns into Bluey, like Bingo paints herself blue. - I don't know about this. - It's so good. It's called Mini Bluey. - Why is it controversial? - I'll tell you in one second. So Bingo turns herself into Bluey and Bluey's like, this is what it's like if you're Bluey. And essentially it's like, you need to be more obnoxious. Like you are not, like you are the good sister. - Okay. - I'm the more annoying sister. - Well, unless an dad, when he tells you to do something right, ignore people, be a little bossy, make weird noises, yeah, yeah, yeah. And they do that for a while. And then Bluey's like, this is boring. How about I be Bingo? And so they both turn into Bingo, like they Bluey paint. And then, you know, they're being nice and helpful. And the dad goes, this rocks. (laughing) This is great. And then Bluey's really upset. - You're making my life easier. - Like Bluey gets upset and they, you know, they have to resolve like, you know, that, you know, Bingo's like, I'm also annoying. Like Bingo helps you. - Bingo is a much sweeter kid. But like, Bingo's basically like, of course, like they think that, but like, I'm also annoying and weird and demonstrates how. But then the episode does end with a dad being like, but it did kind of rock when she was being Bingo, right? And a lot of fans don't like it 'cause it's like, it's not an example of amazing parenting. Like, the dad never really apologizes. - And to be these perfect parents all the time. - That's why I love it. - The issue with the Bluey parents is they're too perfect. So we need these moments. Anyway, where are we at? - Here's the thing I like in the movie. And I like this just when movies can give me this feeling. Where you feel like it's wrapping up, and you're like, it's a shame I've been having fun. I guess if it's time to end, it's time to end, but I could watch some more of this. And there's basically a fake out Danu Mott, right? - Oh yeah. - Like Darla's here, ticking clock, it's coming to a head. Marlon and Dory have made it like basically right. - In Nigel's mouth, which was another moment of learning to trust because he's like, you need to hop in my mouth. And that simplified, this is the only thing the other Pelican needs to accomplish is just being a basically non-speaking rival for like a couple of minutes. - Yeah, and they're all like lads who are perched above a fish and chips stand. - We also need to call out the mine seagulls who we haven't even talked about yet. - Right, which we're also, do you say Bruce is a breakout star? The seagulls were huge. - He must. Yeah, seagull, mine, mine, mine, it's very funny. - It's just another really good identification of like, what do seagulls feel like to us when we see them? - Right. - Yeah, so, and also Nemo is playing dead. - Yes, it's the right place. - So that he'll get flushed down the toilet and that's what Marlon and Dory come in on. So they think. - The dentist is scooping him to give to Darla. Gilles' final advice is to play dead. - Yeah. - He wants to get to the drain. But yes, there's like this tension of Nigel getting Marlon and Dory to the window. They make it, they're just in time to see what they think is Nemo dead on the counter. So they give up, Nemo wakes up. Gilles recognizes the panic of this moment and does what is potentially the sacrifice of load me into the volcano. Another thing we've set up in the movie that doesn't feel like it's gonna be a sort of mechanic for action. - Right, it was just sort of a fun gag that they could make the volcano. - Right, that's just part of the ritual, but then we've shown that like, it's not actually dangerous. But of course, yes, you could launch yourself from that. - So they all work together and they launch Gilles over to the dentist's tool tray. - Right, who uses basically the tools to break Nemo's bag to be able to let Nemo flip into the drain of the dentist's bit sink. But it's too late in the sense that Marlon and Dory think it's too late. - Right, so Nemo is flushed to see. And Marlon and Dory are back in the ocean and Nigel also thinks Nemo's gone, and it's like, I'm sorry. - I'm sorry, I truly am. His second, I'm sorry, truly am. Really gets to me. - The gravity of it. - Yeah, and then he just fucking flies away. And Marlon has his lowest moment of just like, I mean, Janie went grief across the ocean. He came so close, his son is dead. And he's like, Dory, we're going our separate ways. - He's not even angry at Dory at this point. - Yeah. - Just like I, it's over. - She gets the beautiful thing about like, I don't want to keep forgetting when I'm with you with this relationship I'm able to remember. And he's like, I don't want to. - When I'm with you, I'm home. - Yeah. - Yeah, she makes her big plea and it falls on deaf ears because he's just going through too fucking much, which leaves her alone. This is where you're like, I felt like the movie was about to end, but now they're all split up again. Where's the movie even going? What moves does it still even have? And it's, oh, Nemo can bump into Dory and Dory cannot understand what that means. - Yeah. - So at first, Nemo very sweetly is like, oh, are you lost? - Yeah, right. - It's very cute. He's just escaped from the most perilous situation ever. He's seen more than any little baby fish. - But he wants to take care of her. - Yeah, he's completely like, okay, I'll help you. He sees she's in distress. - Right. And once again, if Marlon had listened to Dory's plea, he would have been reunited with his son in five minutes. - Yeah. - Right. - So Marlon goes away, there's these crabs who are keep fun. - Dory doesn't remember. You have the moment of like Nemo, that's a nice name. - Yeah, oh, really funny. - Yeah. - Perfectly played. - Yes. - And then what is it that helps her remember again? - It's like a flashback. - Yeah, but what triggers the Pee Sherman 42-Wall-A-Be-Way-Sitney? 'Cause she has the moment where it all comes flooding back. Her like, highs or so is a moment. I'm trying to remember what the verbal trigger is. - I don't remember. - Okay, well, so that, the fact that we're forgetting this very, no, no, it's metatextual that we don't remember. And it will come to us in a flashback and it'll be like a parallel and whatever. So that happens. She remembers and they need to find Marlon. - Yeah, right. And Marlon's just sort of following the School of Fish. - Right. - I mean, he could argue he's borderline suicidal with this moment. - Yeah, so there's this big School of Fish and they're like, hey, watch where you're going. They're like really dour. He's sort of caught up in that. They briefly reunite it. - It's the pipe, I'm sorry. It's the pipe where the crabs are looking to catch the fish. And it says Sidney on it. - Oh, right, Sidney. - She sees that, she reads it. And Pee Sherman 42-Wall-A-Be-Way-Sitney comes back to her. - Yeah, and then she's like, oh, Nimo, she's hugging him with her little fins. There's this big School of Fish. - And I'm sorry, but just incredible, Ellen DeGeneres line delivery. She does her similar seven thoughts in one sentence. - She goes out, you're dead, and you're not, and your father, you're father. She has her one kind of scolding. - Yeah, while she's like squishing his face, it's really cute. - She's really good. - But we see this School of Fish where they've just reunited, up above on the shore, there's a fishing trawler that's going. - This is right, the net. - Yeah, it's gonna drop a big net and scoop up all of these fish. - Yeah, and Nemo's the only one who can basically save everybody. - Right, oh no, 'cause Dory gets caught up in it. - Yes. - And Marlin is now, even though he just, he realizes his mistake from abandoning Dory. He's not gonna lose her again. - Yes. - So it's like we need to get her out of there and free all the fish. Nemo goes inside, and Marlin has just got his son back, and he's like, you cannot do this, but then it's like, you know what? - This is going to work, you need to trust me, though. - I know that you can. - Yeah, and it's, you've already had their moment of reunion, so it's what's impactful is that Marlin has just gotten him back, and he so quickly accepts that he needs to trust him and let him go for another moment. - Yeah, so he schools all the fish, huh? - Uh-huh. - So true. - So true. - Yes. - Swim down. - It's based on a real event. - Yes. - That Stan read about in the news. - There was some event where a school if there seemed to somehow figure out how to beat a net. - To break the net. - Right. - Which is another great, like, oh shit. If you're telling me that happened for real. - Yeah. - Or maybe someone claims it, yeah. - The movie's over, right? I mean, like we end up back at the school and all that. - Excuse me. My opening quote, another moment that makes me cry, where he's looking at Nemo, who has succeeded in freeing all the fish, but he's lying kind of knocked out at the bottom of the ocean floor, at least this tier of the ocean floor, right? - Oh, yeah, this is cool. - And you have the mirroring of him going to Nemo and cradling him like the egg, and then to console him as he's like half a week, you know? - Yeah. - He tells him the sandy plankton thing. - Right. Yeah, and it's a lovely moment. To me, the lovely moment is when he gets information. - When he gets the what? - When he's like, "How old are you?" and crush goes, "150 dude?" Like that just makes me cry. - But see, it's so beautiful. - 'Cause it's so beautiful. - The past could tell. - Both are. - Both are incredible. - Both are so sweet. - But the fact that he's able to tell him that and that he knows that and that he understands the value of having experiences and learning things for yourself. And that's what he like yells at Nemo about, which is so funny. His genuine frustration of why do you still give a shit about sandy plankton is both very funny and very important. - Albert broke saying the name sandy plankton to very important SpongeBob characters. - Yes, good call. - And he just delivers it in a really funny way. It's very sweet. - And then you cut forward, basically, to their new found family. - Yeah, you did. - They're back. - And now it's Marlin jumping on Nemo 'cause he's excited for him to go to school. - There's also a great scene with the tank, that the tank gang does escape. - Which is nice. - Yes. - Oh, and Squirtz and Exchange student now. - Oh, that's right. - Hey, man. Best. I just wanna say this right now. - Awesome, but. - Okay. - It was part of the reason why I was so concerned when they announced they were even making a sequel. Is this movie does end just perfectly? - It does, but it's not like the monster sink ending where you're like, "I truly don't know what you do." - No. - Finding Nemo does end with like, they live in the ocean to our friends. They could have another adventure. - It's Nemo swimming back to hug him and say, "I love you." And then swimming off and Marlon saying, "I love you too, son." At a distance, you know? - That he says it to himself kind of. - Yeah. - It's good. - He says go have an adventure. - Nemo says okay. - But the last line is, yeah, I love you too. - Yeah. - Right before Nemo got taken away, he said, "I hate you." - Exactly. - With full forced style. - I guys, I hear you. I love this movie. I will say it does not quite activate my parent buttons in the way you guys seem to be so. - That doesn't interest it. - But like not in like a way where I'm immune to it. - Does it activate your child of a parent button? Is it more like the opposite identification? - I just like it 'cause it's about fish and dory so funny. - It's pretty awesome. - But I think all of the stuff you're saying is very well done. Like I'm not, you know? But it doesn't, this movie doesn't like. - I'm like, it's about how secure attachment styles are formed in the crucial early years of life. - Yes. I also need to correct myself. He does the swim back love you, but then he just says bye dad while on Mr. Ray yelled at at a distance. And then Marlon says bye son very quietly to himself. - Right. - The end. - Best. - Beautiful. Fucking Robbie Williams beyond the sea. - Oh yeah. - Oh okay. Obviously, famously, if you see this movie, what's the language where the end is slut? - What? - What? - So there's a language right at the end. It comes off on the screen and just says slut. - Slut. (laughs) - And that became an old, like, Twitter and YouTube, of like the end of YouTube, but then it just goes sluts. (laughs) - Well, then wouldn't that happen in like a hundred movies? - Yes, but it's just especially funny. And also, most movies don't say the end of the end of the movie. - People can't see movies, definitely do. - It's Swedish. It's Swedish. - That is awesome. - I will find it now. - Slut. - Do you know, speaking of languages, this is only the second movie ever that was dubbed into Navajo. - That's amazing. - Whoa. - Here we go. See, here's the ending, the water. - We're looking at the shot. - You know. (laughs) - And it just says, in fact, it does just say slut. - Best supporting actress of 2003. Here were the Oscar nominees. I wanna say this right now. - Yeah. - The nominees were Renée Zellwiger for Cold Mount. - One, one. - Unbelievable. - Yeah. - Yeah. - Shory Agadash Lufre House of Send and Fog. Lovely nomination, the media comment. Patricia Clarkson for Pieces of April. Better in the station agent, but still pretty good. - Yeah, that's a weird one for that movie. - It was a combo. - It doesn't exist, but there was a moment of, hey, Patricia Clarkson has always been good. She has two great performances this year. Let's give her a lifetime kind of-- - You pick. - Yeah. - In the piece of April, she has cancer or whatever. It's a little more. - But it totally forgot movie. - She's so much forgotten, yes. - She's good. - Marcia Gaye, Harden and Mystic River. Kind of an odd nom. - Baden it. - Yeah. - Holly Hunter in 13, a very good performance 'cause she's a good actor in a very sort of over robbed movie. - Yeah. - Ellen DeGeneres is better than all of those performances like by far. Like it's not even a question. - Did Baphne nominate her? - I know they nominate any Murphy. - I think they floored it with it, but like she might have made a long list or something. She got a couple of, like she won the Saturn, but the Saturns are, you know, a little. She got a couple of critics award, you know, like Chicago nominated her. - Do you remember a lot of critics saying, like this is the time to finally do this? - This is where I want to say. - And this still has not happened. - It still does not happen. - A vocal performance, no. - There are very few that are at the level that deserve it. - It is a kind of transformative performance that I think the Oscars, especially when you hear those five names. - Yes. - No offense to them. - No, but that's like a pretty small. - Well, the end of the story was also a big thing at the time, right? - Yeah, yeah, that was also a big thing. - Yeah. - But that's also like motion. - We did get a Oscar for an anime film, obviously, it was nominated for Screenplay by Sound and Music, I think. - The music, the score is beautiful. - It's Newman's best score. - I was going to ask you. - I think. - 'Cause I know sometimes you can be a little snarky about, and a man, because he has a thing that he does. - Yes. - And I enjoy the thing that he does, but I do feel that he, you know, you kind of know what you're getting with a Newman score. - I think this is his best score. I agree with you. - It is a secret power of this movie just that even though he and Randy Newman are part of the same lineage, that all the Pixar movies musically sounded so similar, and this one starts so differently. And when you hear the opening strands of the Thomas Newman score over the anemone house hunting scene at the beginning, you're immediately like, oh, Thomas Newman's whole thing he does all the time sounds like the ocean. - It does. - There is no better fit for his style. - It's 100%. - Then obviously Lord of the Rings won that year, and that is very, very, very good music. - Yeah. - But your couch or already won for the first- - She won for fellowship, but you have to give it to him for return. - It has the beacon lighting. - Like it just, it has the most like braverish that you ever did. - They didn't give it to him for two towers? - No, they didn't give it to him. - Well, we want to know too. - Let's find out. - 'Cause also the hours. - Let's travel through time. - I keep being corrected that the hours didn't win - No, no, no, no, no, no. No, right, that 'cause that's the free day here. Gold people's right. - Oh, what's it from glass? - Interesting. I think this is-- - Incredible year, 'cause Catherine, if you can, has also nominated the wonderful Elmer Bernstein score for Far From Heaven and Thomas Newman's very nice Roger British in score. - I love that score. - Very nice. - But this feels like a real, they fucked themselves by not giving it to Thomas Newman the year where it made the most sense. And now they're just constantly living in the shadow of how many nominations they've given him. - Yes. - And the idea that he's maybe never gonna have a moment as clear cut as this one again. - I wonder. - Scores incredible, scripts incredible. I feel, and I feel like this is the point you're making. - What was that? - Even with the anti-animation, you know, stigmas. This is a year where like, Wally becomes a breaking point in 2008. We'll talk about in that episode that as much as Dark Knight, I would argue leads to the expansion of the time. - It does. - It was part and parcel. - But this is a year where people were really like, do we have to nominate Finding Nemo? And it felt like the conversation couldn't get traction. Even though everyone sort of sensed like, this feels as important as Beauty and the Beast and sort of signaling a change in the industry on top of it being such a seismic success. In a year without Lord of the Rings where you didn't have a more obvious blockbuster film, maybe this would have gotten in. But even with the anti-voice actor prejudice, I feel like fucking Ellen DeGeneres was like, seven or eight on the list. - Mine have been. - And part of that's just how weird and kind of weak that supporting actress Field was. But you're right, it does feel egregious that she couldn't beat any of those five. - I agree. I was transitioning, but then I wanted to interject quickly. I never saw this movie before. - What? - That's insane. - Oh, but it's the wetdest movie. - It's true. - It is the wetdest film. When I was talking about how adults would go see this film, you were giving me a look like you were holding something back. - Yeah, it's so sweet. I loved it. - I guess it makes sense that you weren't in the market for finding Nemo at the time. - You were just enough older than us and you've also talked about right sort of like teenage, like fuck the mainstream. - I only saw it because I'm like a nerdy film fan. Like right, I had no reason to see it otherwise. - 2003, that summer is when I graduated from high school. - Right. - Pretty cool. - I say, I'm somewhat similar to Dory. Because at that point, I had already really dove head first into a lifestyle that has led to memory loss. Ben has written this out. He's reading from a prepared statement. I don't know. I'm not making fun of you for that. I just think you're saying. I want people to know the level of intentionality with which you're speaking right now. But I think it's long, long-term memory. Oh, sure. The short-term stuff, you remember. The bits. - But we should, I think, introduce the podcast. - Oh, sure. This is Blind Track with Griffin and David. - I'm Griffin. - Swish. - I want to point out, as I'm sure Griffin, you already know, that every Pixar movie before this one had come out in November. That was the Pixar spot. - Yep. - And originally this was planned for November too. But possibly because of sort of the aesthetic of the movie, right? - Summer. - Summer. - Summer. - May 30th. There are also a couple other things that factor into that, right? One is, I think they didn't want to, this not getting stuck in a rut thing we've talked about. The other thing that's happening around this time is last year goes out and poaches Brad Bird, who now is sort of orphaned after Warner Brothers Animation has collapsed. And part of that was, we're worried about repeating ourselves. We need to get someone else in to shake this up and change the pattern. And they talk about a little bit like Lilo and Stitch being seen as the secondary film. - Red-headed stepchild. - Or whatever you want. - While Treasure Planet was the main focus. That everyone was so fucking amped up about Incredibles. And it was like, we got Brad Bird, he's a genius. - The script is perfect. We're making an action film, it's a little bit older. That Nemo's sort of slipping through the cracks a little bit is seen as less exciting and less sexy. But there's also this thing that Disney is sort of pushing on Pixar, which is, if the movie comes out in May, we can sell merchandise in May, have the home video release come out around Thanksgiving, make it the number one Christmas gift and do a second wave of merchandise in December, which basically Eisner pushes on them as like, it's big to be a holiday film. But now that we know that Pixar's basically a proven brand and the movie's gonna hit no matter what, we'll make more money on these characters if you release earlier and most of the Pixar movies swing to summer after this. Famously, what were you gonna say? - No, what were you gonna say? Famously what? - There's the original Pixar deal after Toy Story where they sign them up for five films. There'll be an autonomous company, but Disney has distribution rights and will own the characters in perpetuity. And those five films are supposed to be Monsters Inc, Nemo, Incredibles, Cars, and Abuggs Life. I forgot the first one chronologically. Where they get fucked on this deal is they said, sequels don't count. We want you to make Toy Story 2 right away, but sequels don't count that's going direct to video. When they up it to theaters, last year it goes, so that's one of our five films. And Eisner goes, no, we get that for free because it was meant for video. That leads to the tensions between Pixar and Disney that made people think. When they're done with the fifth film, which is gonna be Cars, they're gonna leave. Every film was more successful than the previous film. They kept out grossing themselves. And everyone around Eisner and Disney was like, you gotta do what you, anything you can do to make good with Pixar now 'cause we can't lose them. And what Eisner kept saying was, they're gonna fail at some point. One of these movies is gonna flop and then we're gonna own their asses because they're not gonna have negotiating leverage. And he was really confident that Nemo was the one. - Well, he was wrong. - He kept saying to people, this one's not as commercial. Fish aren't gonna sell as much merchandise. Even if it's just down a little bit their weaker and they'll come begging us. - No, he's the biggest hit, yeah. - And that basically puts the death nail on Eisner. It's a big part of why he's pushed out of the company that he fucks that up with his arrogance. And that's a little bit, I think, why they wanted to go to summer to see, like if I, whatever. But the other part of the story is that it was seen as the secondary film, no one was confident about it. There were these big fucking cinema con and licensing conventions where they have to go and sell these movies years in advance in order to get people on board with them for merchandise and for the theater partners and whatever. And there was one of these where they didn't have enough footage to show or it wasn't a good enough state. And the movie had a bit of a stink around it because Eisner kept shit talking it. And they need to go combat it. And they sent Andrew Stanton out and he basically performed the movie for 40 minutes, similar to the pitch that he did for a laceter and everyone walks out of that being like, that's the fucking biggest hit. That shit, the way he told the story and did all the voices and the emotions and everything. - It's like Nigel telling the story to Neema. - Truly. And you can see it on, it's on the DVD and the Blu-ray and the fucking iTunes extras. There's like a super cut of the moments of him doing that. But he basically just kind of willed this movie into not being totally disregarded because Disney kept trying to like, slide it over and anyone who was engaging with it was like, it feels like this thing has the juice. - It opens to $70 million? - Can I guess. - Biggest hit in their time so far. Monsters think it's 62. - Ends at 3.39 domestic, 8.71 worldwide. It's made more now with re-releases and stuff. - The 3D re-release, which Stan oversaw is what convinced him to finally do, finding Dory, but it also added basically another $100 million to the groups. - But he also convinced. We'll talk about it. - It's number one of the box office on May 30th. Number two is the film that was number one the week before, no. - Matrix has been out for I think three plus week. - Okay, let me go through May and my head. - So the opening movie of the summer is X2X Men United. - That is number seven. - Then Matrix comes out the following weekend? - Matrix reloaded is number four. - And no, I think there's two weeks between them. - Okay. - And then the next May blockbuster huge comedy. - Oh, it's personal mighty. - Got a yo-yo, that's the earth. - Like also open to $70 million? - Huge huge hit. - This month was through the world. - America was just doing great. - Yeah. - And movies were doing great. - America was actually doing horrible. - We basically had four consecutive $70 million opening weekends. - I remember it so well. It was my IMDB pro era. - Right. - My mom got a subscription for work. - Yeah. - And so I had it and I had such good box office imagery and stuff and like. - Yeah. - I just remember like Bruce, terrible movie. - Yeah, awful. - It's a bad movie. - But it was the biggest comedy opening weekend of all time. Matrix had a five day. So it's three days was a little smaller, but it opened over a hundred if you count the five day. Nemo's the biggest animation opening in history. - X-Men was the biggest super sure opening. - Yeah, you got pirates coming down the pike later summer. - Hell yeah. - Oh, those crazy better. - That boys two. - That boys two, Terminator three. - Yeah. - But yeah, number three of the box office. Opening against Nemo. Slightly underwhelming in its opening, but I think it kind of legged out a pretty good growth. - It's a challenge. - It's Mark Wahlberg and Charlie Starran in the Italian. - Was a sleeper. I mean, it's a hundred. - In my memory, it's pretty fun. - It's fun. I've not seen it in 20 years. - It looked like dog shit. And everyone was like, why would they remake this? And then it kind of was a mere amount of it. - It was seen as kind of like a national crime. - This is offensive. - Yeah. - There was like, you're making one of our things. - You already did get harder. Why are you kicking us even further? - I find the British obsession with the Italian job. A little insane. Like that movie is basically like boring until the end, which does rock. - Okay. - Like the stuff with the minis is great. That's mostly not the movie. - Interesting. But it's pretty fun. - Mm-hmm. - Do you like the Italian job with Mark Wahlberg and Andrew Norton and Charlie Starran and most of them? - Can't say I've ever seen it. I remember it being huge. And back when Canada's Wonderland was Paramount, Canada's Wonderland. There was an Italian job poster where you were riding in the mini-coupers. - That sounds fun. - David Canada's Wonderland, a theme park that used to be Paramount branded and is not anymore, has like 10 rides that are all clearly connected to Paramount movies, but they lost the license. And now they're just generic. - Yeah, so top gun is now like flight deck. - Right. And the Italian job one is called like stunt track or some-- - Yeah, and Tomb Raiders called-- - Like a temple explorer. - Yeah. - There was a Wayne's World Coaster at one point called the Herlanator. - Okay, that I don't know about. That's what I'm talking about. - Yeah, I'm trying to think what the other ones are, but that park is very funny for that reason. - Yeah, the Italian job is called that clock stunt coaster. - Big icon of the park instead of like the Disney castle is like the Paramount mountain. - And now they're just like, it's a mountain. But yes, the Italian job rollercoaster still has many coups. and they're like, it's just one of those chase sequences from any Hollywood movie. - Yeah, I see it right here. Well, you're gonna change 'em. - No. - Number five of the box office is a film you've seen many times. - Many, many, many times. - It's specifically one of my movies. - You don't like it, but you've seen it. Maybe you like it, you don't love it. - I don't love it, but your sister love this movie. - I do think this movie's very good. This is way up on the list of the movies I have seen most in my life because my sister, Ramley, past and future guest, long time sister, was not a kid who obsessively watched the same thing over and over again, other than this one film, which for seven years was in constant rotation. Is Eddie Murphy's Daddy Daycare? - Daddy Daycare. - Oh yeah, we've spoken about this 'cause this was a similar thing where it's like I was watching this genuinely every single weekend at my friend's house. It's like we're gonna have a sleep over. - It's Daddy Daycare. - We're gonna watch Daddy Daycare. - I think Daddy Daycare is very funny, but it could be Stockholm Syndrome. It is a movie I will defend. It's like no, that one's actually well written and it has a good cast, but also I've seen it so many times that if I didn't find it funny, I wouldn't have been able to survive. - Number six, opening this weekend new is my favorite Eliza Dishkoohar franchise long turn, which Wikipedia calls the first installment in the wrong turn series. It's like, what's your second favorite Eliza Dishkoohar franchise out of your house? - All those other ones she's done. I do love Dishkooh though. Who doesn't love a little Dishkoohar? - Yeah, Dish it up. - Number seven Dishkoohar. - Are you a Dishbag? What do you say? You self-identify his Dishbag. - Number seven is X2. Number eight is the in-laws, so that's with our Brooks, right? - Yeah, bombing at the same time bomb. - Well. - Cute bomb. - Number nine is another bomb, but a great film, "Down with Love." - Love. - And number 10 is probably the most important cultural text of 2003, the Lizzie McGuire movie. - Yeah. - Oh my God. - Made the mistake of opening your dents text to you. - What a summer that was, the summer of the Lizzie McGuire movie. - Hey now, hey now. This is what dreams are made of. - Oh yeah. - No only risk and take you. - Sing for me, Palo. - An adventure is not taking it at all. I have a very different-- - Sort of the Finding Nemo message. - A real kind of defining memory of all the girls in my grade going to see Lizzie McGuire movie that Friday, opening day. Same day that X2, X-Men United came out. And the girls were angry that none of the boys wanted to go see Lizzie McGuire. And I, quite a big fan of the X-Men. And I remember the girls in my grade basically being like, if you come see the Lizzie McGuire movie with us, someone will make out with you. - Did anyone? - No, I didn't go see it. Of course I went to X2, X-Men United. - X-Men, the X-Men are united in this film. - I was like, I'm sorry. You don't understand what you're up against here. You have no leverage in this conversation. - X-Men X-Men was a pretty exciting day. That was pretty cool. - I was like night crawlers in this one. - I know. And it was just kind of that thing of like the first one worked so they're gonna get to be a little, like more off the leash with this. - I was like, you could promise me that Jessica Alba would make out with me and I wouldn't go see the Lizzie McGuire movie right now in herself. - Can we talk about theme parks, please? - So a couple of very important things. It was revolutionary at the time, turtle talk with crush. So Epcot has the second largest research aquarium in the country is within Epcot. It is something that Disney does not take enough advantage of. It's a wonderful little aquarium. - And I think of interest to David was basically seen as on the chopping block. In the early 2000s, all this educational scientific shit is lame. We gotta get characters back in here. - They have rescue manatees there. So they decided. - The fact that they had a blockbuster fish movie saved all this shit. - The Seas is now gonna be rebranded as the Seas with Nemo and Friends. - And one of the great attractions there is turtle talk with crush. - Yes. - That's where I've seen videos of this. - Yeah, it's really at the time. - It was live puppeteering basically, but they had animated model that could do crowd work. So the audience would be there. - It's like your name's Griffin. Wow. - They had cameras. - They made jokes about the guy wearing the silly hat. - So it's so cohesive because they're looking at all these fish tanks at the aquarium and then you go to one that's like a fish tank, but it's a screen and it's crush and he makes jokes with all the kids and it's fun. There's also a little ride where you're riding in shells and the characters from Nemo are being projected onto windows into the real tanks. - But then there are also some sculptures and you're seeing real fish. It's like they kept using Nemo characters as the bait to get children to engage with real aquatic life. - There's also, I don't wanna talk about it because it sucks, but they re-skinned at Disneyland, the submarine voyage ride with Nemo stuff. - I could not disagree more. This is one of my favorite attractions. - I want to skip over that. - It is one of my safe spaces. It's not called Finding Nemo submarine voyage. - Convince elevator pitch. - You go into a submarine that is on tracks. They make you feel like it's free-floating but you're genuinely underwater. And then it is a technical marvel where you are going around in a loop while the Thomas Newman score sues my anxiety. And you see a combination of real fish and like incredible projection where it looks like real animation is happening outside the window of the submarine. - I'm gonna be honest, you're selling me. - But what was lost? - Nothing was lost. It was just already kind of like a dull experience. But you're adding the IP onto it, doesn't it? - Yeah, it was more like-- - It's a unique ride mechanic. - A big fake octopus attacks you and you have like a Jocquisto style narrator just telling you about it. - It's just funny because it's so, to most people, it would be very anxiety inducing. You're going into a small claustrophobic capsule and going underwater. - I think people are on the sub. - No, it's a very slow moving line. - Yeah, but it's you all have your own seat, the seats face and opposite directions. Everyone has their own little hole. They get to look at. - Very well. - I think I would find it anxiety-provoking did it not have my good friends and the Thomas Newman score and the vibes and the colors. Maybe that's why I like it so much. - It's 12 minutes. - Yeah. - That seems very long. I love these rides that are just like-- - I'm not answering. - Shit's going to slow down. You just get to stay seated. Nothing's going to happen to your tummy. These are nice kind of refresh points in a theme park day. - Yeah. - Of like, I can just vibe out here. - Yeah, and it's less overstimulating than like a small world or something. - Yes, I never skip it. - The last thing I want to bring up 'cause I think it is one of the great achievements of the 21st century at the theme parks, which is at Animal Kingdom, finding Nemo the musical. I think this is a really, really significant piece of theme park entertainment. - The big, blue, and beyond. - No, this is the reap. So a few years ago, they were like, we need to cut down the run time. - Just looking, sorry. I guess they're in the context. - That's a bastardized version. - 40 minutes and out, it's like 20 minutes. - This was the first time Disney worked with Robert and Kristen Lopez. - This is what's interesting about this day. - Right, so they got them off of Avenue Q to be like-- - David's right. - I don't want to hear him. - He's holding up big foam fingers. And my sign is so far away, but my stop sign. - The way that the stage uses the vertical space for these underwater creatures. - It's some Julie Taylor's style. You see the puppeteers visibly, but the puppets are in different ways worked around their bodies. - The Nigel puppet is the most impressive, biggest thing. I've outside of the King Kong musical, it's like that Nigel puppet is jaw-dropping and the song that they do for the turtles is so good. It's like a beach boys type thing. - Sure. - And it's just awesome. - I also think not my dad is a great song. - Debo's where, well first it's where's my dad and then it's not my dad. - Right, when Nigel tries to do the story. - In the big blue world. Like these songs are genuinely for theme park entertainment. It is an excellent family musical. I don't understand why they've never tried to do it. - The Lopez over, the Lopez is over delivered on a theme park musical, which made Disney go like, oh fuck, we gotta have these people work on everything, which leads to obviously Frozen and Coco and all these other things. - I have never understood why they've never attempted to transfer this to Broadway. 'Cause even just like the visual approach, they cracked the code on how to make these characters work on stage. They cracked the puppets, the songs are good. I'm like, if you just doubled this length and I'm sure they would just write more songs. - Easily. - And there's so many good songs packed into it already. - This thing would be a huge fucking hit. And instead of ever transferring it after like 15 years they were like, let's make it shorter. And now it's like a 15 minute, like greatest hit. It's a bridge version. - Yeah, but I will never stop. - Is that just to move people through? Like why a bridge? - Maybe kid's attention spans. Nowadays and also probably some equity thing with the performer. It's like this is a really, especially crush's song for a guy to be singing that. It's tough on the vocal parts. - It looks like crush's song is called Go with the Flood. - It absolutely is. - But David, theme parks love having shows like this that are successful because they're people eaters. They take pressure off the lines for the ride. If you can get someone to sit down for 40 minutes and if you can pack a house and this was one of the few shows that people were like, this is actually good. It's not just kind of like a shitty re-staging of, you know, there was the allowed. - I know Becca has to go. I'm gonna say you guys could just keep going. I feel like you guys will wait for another hour. - Oh God, I really do, do you guys do? - Has you ever been on podcast the ride? - No, 'cause I haven't been on, we've spoken about it but then like, I don't know what I'm gonna be in LA next. - Podcast the ride and don't always really do a lot of it. - It feels like you have been inevitable on for years. - This is like, and the schedule's never line up. - This is the beginning of my life's wish triple crowd. - I feel like for you, being on Blanket is an enjoyable arc but like, it's a mere stepping stone to podcast the ride. - No, no, no, no, no, you misunderstand. I love Blanket. - Oh, that's very nice of you. I love everything you do a masterpiece of podcasts. It's a dream to be on the podcast that I like so much No, is there no other Nemo theme park stuff? Well, there's crushes coaster in Paris. There's a simulator in Disney See, but oh crushes coaster. Yeah, crushes coaster is delightful is it's very good It is the exact kind of right you hate it's a shell that's moving fast and you're spinning They play the kind of surf rocky. Yes, I like that you knew the right isn't that what they're called tiny It's very fun. It's in the Yeah, but you would you would hate it like bullshit. Yes Well, but they play the Thomas noon in like surf rock score the environment's very fun They have lights and colors. Yeah, and that's in the the bad part of Disneyland Paris, right? They branded it now they have all off there they have air and children get to learn about death by watching all off power down in front of them You're right. I saw down on a boat. It was just so Parisian. It's so the on we have make they made an animatronic Paris who who dies in front of you. Yes, I will say crushes coaster doesn't look that intense. I'm watching yeah It's a family coaster. Um, this is the other thing with Disney. Nothing is that intense But that is as close to being a thrill ride as Disney gets me. Yeah No, oh disagree. Well, what do you put higher? I'm saying even at that park, Indiana Jones is way more intense I made the mistake of getting my brother was living in France at the time And I took him to Disney and he showed up with his backpack and his laptop because he said I'm gonna have to Just do some work at some point and so he was really worried about the security of his laptop and he was like This thing isn't gonna go upside down, right? And I was like no, it's Disney. Nothing goes upside down He was very angry at me at the end of that right. Yeah, is it go upside down? It does it's the mine cart roll a coaster It does one loop. I think so Holding on to his backpack. I will plug vulture.com and That's pretty much it. I can pop corn bucket. They've canceled. They've canceled my ass. It's bullshit The man the man didn't want me speaking truth about Devil wears Prada bucket shape like a bag. I tried to fucking Michael Jackson bucket shaped like a hat. They don't want me Revealing the story and I'll say tried to force the issue through critical darlings. Yeah, we really did so actually I never released Very comment on on all the vulture's social videos and bring back the book. It still exists I came in today asking back at to do a bucket trade because I never got the fantastic car from fantastic four first steps And I said I would promise to trade her the f1 popcorn bucket that was supposed to be part of the critical darlings Oscar nominees segment you're in review and Becca has made it clear that she doesn't want the f1 bucket I have five millennia buckets on my desk. I know what to do with them. Those things talk about being worth negative comedy points Yeah, well, the millennia bucket. They make me laugh. Okay. Well then that's all the chronons the mummy. Have a bucket It's like a dead child. I'm off. I'm off the beat. They they pulled me off the case An injustice and let's just what if it was just Lee Cronin that would be good to honor Lee Cronin's the popcorn exactly Let's make it clear our listeners. Let your voices be heard. Yes Becca previously on the master chief popcorn critic. Yeah, popcorn bucket critic and we want this reinstate it We want the coverage back Bring back bucket. Yeah, but in the same way that you should all join blank check patreon. You should Subscribe to him magazine subscribe to all magazines. I'm a I'm a near magazine subscriber hashtag bring back Becca's buckets. Sure And on the day of the release of this episode June 21st over on patreon Robocop 2 is coming out. Oh a movie. I love as much as finding you know we a commentary where we're kind of like This isn't very good the whole time. Oh, sorry. Can we take that? We reveal our deepest secrets. I get pretty worked up I don't want people to think I'm pretty worked up. No, no, no, you get pretty worked up I got pretty worried. We're even handed in fair about its flaws. I try not to be an asshole. Right. We're not just like shitting all over We're just kind of like that's not right shows up randomly. We've never talked about it. It kind of looks like me Like oh, yeah, you're doing like fun sweep sweep kind of stuff. Oh, yeah, uh, Joe Biden's the guest. Her cool. Her cool peers. Right We it we have or Kell Stefano Kell. Okay, Steve Erkall Steve Erkall and the Erkall bot all appear on the episode. Yeah Yeah, take us out When AJ recently plugged Erkall in our group chat. No, did he? Yeah, he did This is another thing I've been thinking interesting and and AJ kind of looks similar. Yeah, sure Yeah, sure Got some AJ vibes a little bit. Yeah, I mean, you're talking about like a guy in a half zip with like hair I mean like a nut to insult AJ. It's kind of like a normal looking guy. Yeah Yeah, AJ's very handsome, but he looks like the default video game avatar He's your sim before you start doing stuff Sorry, sorry, AJ. You're very good with I I professed it with everyone. We employ is good looking JJ especially stupid sexy. It actually sucks. I hate it spending a weekend with his fucking hot ass I'm gonna stand next to him and former employee Nick texts me after meeting Ben being like what's his skin care routine? I was like I was like Nick. Why would I know? I mean, that is funny that he asked you to ask Ben. I don't fucking know what's my secret. I don't do shit Yeah, that was my that would have been my guess. AJ and his family came into the city And we got lunch with AJ and his son and he was telling me that he's he's into SNL now AJ's son who's like eight I think sure And so I was asking him about like which sketches he likes and which cast members he likes and I was like Do you like Colin Joest and he went who's Colin Joest and AJ went The guy where where he comes on screen you point and go daddy dude Dude someone at one of our live shows texted me like I think Colin Joest is here and I was like that's AJ Like that's just AJ Yeah, so Colin Joest Andrew Stanton AJ McKeein all on a spectrum I just want to establish this at the beginning of the mini series You guys are huge Colin Joest keep running on announced to sit in the ad that's AJ I overheard Colin Joest talking about making edits to a patreon episode Why is he doing that? I'm gonna be take us out Thank you all for listening. Please remember to rate, review, and subscribe I'm very excited to be talking about the films of Andrew Stanton I mean a few filmmakers we have ever covered or will ever cover more conform to the intro of this show Directors who have massive success early on in their careers and are made given a series of blank checks Make whatever crazy passion products they want Sometimes those checks clear Wally and sometimes they bounce baby John Carger In three films. That's the whole fucking premise of this podcast That's all I just I'm very excited to be doing this and I'm very excited that we're gonna talk about toy story five on main feed And I'm very excited and I'm glad that David's in the bathroom when I'm saying this so he doesn't get jealous That for keys getting married in toy story five For keys wedding For keys wedding Ben For keys gonna make Karen Beverly and on his knife Tune in next week for Wally With David or like a man who has seen that film 800 times. I think approximate where And as always Okay, I'm just I'm making these edits here David You're gonna have to be Nemo okay, okay. Yeah, I think that's the lighter Born for that role. Yeah, it's not a lighter. You have to be Marlin if you're not Marlin. It's a disaster I mean, I think you should just do your Marlin line that you've been doing on this show for 11 years Which is the way it's like you think you can do these things but You've said that so many times on blank check. I think it's one of the best lines It's also like clearly your Brooks is like locked into that line. Yeah, it's my activator. Yeah Link check with Griffin and David is hosted by