The King of Comedy with Stavros Halkias

I think it's that I look at my whole life and I see the awful things in my life and I turn it into a funny podcast. It just happens. But what about the opening quote? Was that strong enough? It's a pretty good De Niro in that you're not, you're not leaning too heavy on that because a lot of the De Niro stuff is right here. I was thinking a lot of like this, you know, the kind of, yeah. I think if anyone's trying to impersonate De Niro, this is the one to do because it is weirdly, it's right at the center. Yeah, and he's not yelling. Like, no, it's just taught and he's equivocating. It's understated enough. But we're all doing his hand. He has locked in all of the movie star moves at this point. Everything you would impersonate him doing is in this film in some way, but it's quiet. Well, that's the thing about De Niro versus Pacino. It's like Pacino is like overnight. He became insane and like yelled at everything. You know what I mean? It really was like a, and you saw, maybe you saw traces of it. Obviously, like heat is the absolute middle of that Venn diagram where he's still the man, but he's fucking going crazy. But that's so much later. Whereas you're right. This, this is like De Niro's over the top mannerisms. This is the seedling. And it slowly grew into a big forest of, of really over, over squinting and like frowning. Like now, now, right. And it's like, obviously, if he's just in the hands of some, you know, Bulgarian guy who's making a movie called like the gun and the guy, you know, whatever the, like, you know, whatever the De Niro movies are. I feel like he improvised pillar gun recently. That's a fucking movie called killer gun. Yeah. And by the way, I can't wait to buy that on DVD. You're buying it. I can't wait to buy it. I want to buy it. I want to buy that at a good whale. What's a disc this lower quality of the DVD? Can we just have like, you know, DV or whatever? Like DD. It's on a mini DV tape. I have to plug it into an old thing to, and then put those little yellow, red and white shits that you used to connect the fucking 64 with. But it is the thing. The guys. Yeah. You know, shout, shout those little red, red, yellow, white. Yeah. Yellow, white, bro. And one of them, you didn't even, it didn't even fucking matter. One of them didn't do anything. White or yellow didn't matter. It didn't matter. It was right speaker versus left speaker. But on most TVs at that time, it was just the one built in speaker. One cruddy speaker. Maybe audio files knew the difference, but me, I didn't give a fuck when I was playing no mercy. I didn't give a fuck where the speaker came from. But my super Nintendo didn't even have that. It just had the one plug and you would like flip a switch to switch between like the, the video game and TV. I can't even remember this. I don't remember. I, I, I could have swore it had the, it might've had it, but I don't remember the super Nintendo as much. That was more of a, I don't know. It had the red. It had the red. Well, I don't know. I don't know. Maybe some British, some weird British shit. You might be some weird British shit. Cause I had a British super Nintendo. I had Atari or something. You get to practice having tea. The British, the British super Nintendo looks like the Japanese super. I got a couple. Sorry. It's like, You're a frogger, but you're evading your headmaster pedophile. You have to walk. You're like little schoolboy shorts. You have to run across the street. You're running across the street from a ruler. I mean, I had to do, I never got hit with a ruler. I had to do lines, which I do feel like that's a British thing, but Americans do that sometimes, right? Yeah. Where you write like Bart Simpson. Oh, sure. Yeah. You know, like I promised to never talk in class. Would you do it at the chalkboard? No, you would do it in detention. Okay. Over and over again. And then like, there was a, there were like the modern, like woke teachers who were like, I think lines doesn't really teach you anything. And like the older school teachers were like, okay. Okay. I guess we'll hit him again. Cause this was our compromise. We'll go back. We'll go back. You wouldn't let me put my hands on him anymore. What do you fucking want from me? I gotta say good conceit to make it the chalkboard. If the Simpsons opened with Bart sitting at a desk and a piece of paper. It's not as cinematic. Not cinematic at all. No, you need him to throw the chalk at it. Yeah. We wouldn't be 37 perfect seasons. No. 39. Whatever it is. 39. It better not be hitting a round number soon. Cause then they're going to like act like we care. They are absolutely within. They're going to be like our milestone 40th anniversary. I'm like checked out after the 10th, but okay. That will be really fun though. I guarantee you. 37. They're on 37. So they're within like 30 months of 40. Sure. Right. Right. Right. Yeah. Rules. That's crazy. You could get on the Simpsons. Maybe. I'd be down. Of course. Have the Simpsons visited Baltimore yet? I feel like. I feel like if they go to Baltimore. Actually, one of the biggest, the, my introduction to John Waters. Yeah. It's a great episode. It was the, and by the way, that kind of, kind of started my whole, you could argue seeing who framed Roger Rabbit and that episode very quickly and generally quick succession merged my entire personality. Cause like the, it's, it's the line that stuck with me. I, even as a child was like, there's only two types of guys that wear Hawaiian shirts, gay guys and big fat party animals. And like, like incredible to that on. Yeah. Like my memory, haven't seen in a minute, a relatively enlightened episode, right? Like Homer's fully the joke. What? One of the latter. Yeah. It was like a big call out. Like at the time, this is the best, a comedy show has ever featured a gay character. That was sort of the read at the time. It was like, yeah, this do fish is friends with a gay guy. And right. And by the way, learning about camp kitschy shit, I was going to say kitsch. I don't think I would have understood what it was before that episode. And then you go, Oh, this makes sense. This is why Peewee's playhouse. Yes, bro. Exactly. The line between these things. Yeah. I just feel like back in the day, if your city was going to make it on the map, the Simpsons should visit it or it should get an absolute ad. Remember when your city would get an absolute ad? Oh, like I flew vodka. Yeah. Absolute vodka used to have all the magazine ads, right? I used to like rip them out and put them in like a big folder. Yeah. Print ads. And like, you know, name a city. I don't know. Like Des Moines. I didn't like absolute San Francisco. It was like surrounded by fog. Well, the New York episode that they had to ban for a while because Homer ran up the towers. Oh, that episode. So with the, with the crab, one of my favorite jokes. So the guy's like, he's like, you got any drinks? He's like, I got Mountain Dew and crab juice. And Homer's like, Oh, give me a crab. Crab. Kalash. What is it? Crab. Kalash. Our, our, our buddy, our buddy, Mitch from Doughboys, who we were just talking about off mic. Like he, there's the Simpsons go to Boston episode. And they gave Mitch a line at Moe's in the beginning. And I said, I've, I've been very gradually trying to watch all of the Simpsons. Wow. It started as a lockdown thing when I was trying to not eat bullets. And then I was like, I'll knock down two seasons a year when I like have a head cold. Yes. I'll knock out 10 episodes. Right. And so I fucking, how much percentage of your day do you watch shit? I mean, you motherfuckers do a movie search. It's like, it's absurd. Are you, do you, you should have VR goggles. You're the one guy who should have VR goggles. That's the only way you can live a regular life. Right. You could go outside is if you're watching fucking movies while you see the sunlight. I don't understand how David watches stuff. Cause I'm like, well, I know how I do it. I don't have shit in my life. I don't have obligations. It's this. I, I watch stuff and I come here. I kind of just put a thing on. Yeah. Like no matter what, like for me, it's an intentional, this is an activity now. No, I don't do the background. I have a mountain. I have a mountain of discs that I will not watch. I don't know why. It's like someone keep arriving at my house and my money keeps going away. I'm not sure what's going on with that. Who knows? My children keep being like, we're hungry. And I'm like, shush, your wallet gets skinnier. My vinegar syndromes are here. And so I'm always just like, I'll just watch the next disc. And it's like, but the next disc is like an Iranian movie from like 2001 about a guy who goes to prison. I'm like, well, I got to watch it. That's what's next. That's the next fucking disc. Yeah. But David, your consumption of then sports. I do love sports. You play video games. Not that much. You kind of stay on top of it a little bit. You love Iron Maiden. You read a bunch. I do love Iron Maiden. Like, I'm always so impressed with like how much you take in. I have no idea how you do it. I'm saying that I'm like an idol. Cause I'm like, what? Cause you watch, cause your kids are crying and you're like, I gotta, gotta check out some early Panahi. That's what I was doing. This is your, your bit about being like a fuck. And multitasking Ganesh, where you have like one arm for each kid, a video game controller. I think I've said it. I'm like video record player. I don't play a lot of video games. Like I, that's the one that's the one that really had to fall off. Yeah. Yeah. Once. I mean, maybe when the kids are old enough to care, like I'll do it more. Yeah. But it's great to have baseball on sports to me is what you're describing where it's like, put on anything in the background. I don't have to, or like an old dude, honestly to be, is wonderful. I love not having to choose what they autoplay is shit. You've never even thought about. Yeah. And it's like, it's like, what the fuck? Where the fuck did Jack Nicholson play a werewolf? Yeah. All right. Fuck it. Wolf is awesome. It's one of my favorite. It's so good. It started autoplay. I had to actually stop watching because the scares got me so much. So I was like moving my broken, my very broken arm at the time. And I was like, just like, like fucking jumping back. I hurt my arm, but I'm seeing, I'm going to fucking get back. And I watched all that jazz on. I mean, that's the best. - Is it not? - And then it just autoplays some fucking wild shit. - You know what else? all that jazz is like not legally streamable but 2b will serve it to you it's been in a weird legal loophole it's out of print on disc and yet 2b is like we fucking got you be fucking rules bro i want to put a special on 2b for real if you're listening to be listen listen not this one coming on this one's on netflix but you know this one's on netflix the one uh oh no no the the my next special yeah yeah but after that i'm going to the people all right i'm going right to 2b but you you got to make sure there's an ad break in the middle of a punchline absolutely completely disrupt the rhythms it would actually be funny to put in fake ad breaks in a special that's on 2b that would be great nobody steal that dibs dibs dibs dibs legal dibs legal dibs the most random fucking ad like like i listen to metz radios sometimes and like they'll just be ads for like non-lethal guns and i'm like who approved it does anyone know about this do you want to shoot someone but they won't die i mean that's the most staten island shit of all time it's like we're sort of fascist but we don't want to kill the black teens you're not gonna stop me from pulling the trigger though you can change what's coming out of the gun that's the only negotiable part oh my god anyway no this was not i had to buy i believe i i don't think there's a stream but anyway i i fucking bought i myself yeah i'm a disc guy now yeah i've caught it i've caught it i've caught the sickness uh i've been in your apartment there's space yeah there's space oh you guys came when it was real like you got to come back it's fucking beautiful now you said you sent a picture it was looking real nice oh yeah yeah but i like i like that you have this method that you were telling me started on the road of you pull into a goodwill a gas station you're like we gotta pick what we're watching tonight from what's on sale back to the sort of like right this is the curation the curation is being mandated by the what's available you're not getting wi-fi on a fucking bin touring truck no no that's how you end up watching uh what women want hell yeah when you're drunk when you're driving for fucking like i don't even know where the fuck we're going to go i don't even know where we're going to go i don't even know where We went this, but we crushed that one. Honestly, I saw that in theaters. It's hilarious. Pretty good. It's pretty good. We covered it on this podcast. It's pretty good. I feel like it's. It's shockingly good. I mean, obviously, it aged well now. Are you with me that just Helen Hunt, circa 2000, just a robo-babe? Just like, well, you're just like, why wasn't this discussed daily? And so Anna Kournikova or whatever, take a. Why wasn't Helen Hunt on the front page of whatever lab? Yeah, we know why. She's like. Her, like, sort of attractiveness comes from sort of being in control. Yeah, sure. And she's older and hot, like, compared to, like, a young tennis star. It's like, that's a late. That's like a. They don't let. America has a real problem with not letting us want to jack off to older women. I think. We're a pedophilic fucking country. Like, you go to Europe. We're here to figure this out. You go to Europe. Oh, yeah. It's that. There is a thing, like. Now, look, perhaps they got their problems there, too. But there is. Europe? There is a thing where it's like, young guys want to fucking. You want to fuck the hot older lady in your village. That's who you. She's doing fucking. She's doing laundry with the fucking things. That's what every book is about. It's incredible. She bends over in her loose, you know, house skirt as a little boy. You see a little, you know, a little more titty than she was expecting to show. And that's the kind of shit that sustains you when you're 14 in a village with no running water. And that's who we should be. That's who young boys should want to jack off to. Okay? We should not be a pedophilic nation. And Helen Hunt should have been a sex symbol at the time. Thanks for saying that. Absolutely, yes. Thank you. Thank you. I think part of it is that I. You saying it was not respected or acknowledged enough at the time. I think Helen Hunt's contemporaries were like, yeah, that's Helen Hunt. She's sturdy. I think we were of the exact right generation to be like, fuck, that's a grown-up. That is an adult woman. Like, you saying she was older. It's like, she wasn't old. She wasn't older, but I saw her when I was 12. It was that. Yeah, yeah, whatever. It was that when we were, like, children, she was playing characters that didn't feel like they were 15. Yeah, exactly. Versus a lot of, like, big female movie stars were still playing characters that were so underdeveloped that they felt like children. Or even pretending to be eight years younger than they are. What if, like, my wife is like, okay, come on. Let's have the conversation. What's your hall pass? And I'm like, Helen Hunt, now. Hunting season. Number one. Exactly. And she's like, okay. And I'm like, I'll keep going. Caroline in the city. What's she up to? Oh, Caroline in the city. Another good one. Yeah. I mean, more tyranny. That's a huge one. Ugh, tyranny. Right. Get out of here. It's mostly must-see TV, I'm realizing. That was my whole problem with the affair. I think that's actually what we're all coming to realize. Right, it's just not TV. We were all 13 when fucking that show. On Thursday. That's our sexual awakening during that. I mean, of course. It's very logical. We just weirdly jacked off to Mad About You. And now we're like, why don't people talk about Helen Hunt so much? But, like, wait. Yeah, no, wait. What did I just say, Griff? I just said. You said more tyranny than the affair. No, my whole problem with the affair. Right, where he's like, I want to have an affair. I'm like, more tyranny is so boring. I want to have. I'm like, more tyranny. You got more tyranny at home. No need for an affair, my friend. Is she. You are set. First episode of News Radio is. Oh, holy fuck. No. She's on more. I didn't actually know the. I obviously know who she is. She cheats on him, too. Okay, good, good, good. They all have. There's many affairs. But they had to get, like, six seasons. And then, like. The later season, they, like, flash forward to the future. It's a weird show. It was a show about two couples, and then, like, three of the four people quit. And it was, like, the show's still on? Yeah. That's awesome. What's it about now? I don't know. And you're like, he's starting new affairs. Cheating on whom? His wife and his mistress have both quit the show in protest. I think they got. Yeah, they got a little sick of it. I'm not familiar with the affair. That was one of my greatest, like, the Bill Simmons, when he was just, like, watch the affair. If you're, like, 15 years married with your wife, that's just no roller coaster. Can, like, compare to just watching that show with your wife Sunday night. And just, like, when do I make a joke? When do I try to deflate the tension? It was the funniest fucking review of a show ever. Now, did you feel that at all? Watching the affair? Nope. No. Stavi, re-watching this movie. Because I will say, our producer, Ben. And Ben and I both used to do stand-up. Have not in some years. He came in and was, like. It poked wounds. Oh, yeah. It got in my body. The shoulders tend to up. Totally. I just have not interacted with guys. Like, this, in a long time. Totally. But they nailed it, by the way. They nailed this guy so hard. And almost predicted it. As I said to Ben, it's crazy that this movie is before even the 90s comedy boom. I know. Where you're, like, this guy multiplies by, like, 8,000. Oh, yeah. At this moment, culturally, it was a little niche to care this much about being a comedian and not be funny. Totally. Versus the amount of people now who will, like, line up around the country to put their name. Yeah, yeah, that's a great. I mean, what is Kill Tony if not. The Rupert Pumpkin Marathon. Yeah, every. 10,000 Rupert Pumpkins. You know, it's like, that's a great point. I mean, look, this. First of all, Scorsese in general, he's my guy. Like, truly, I don't give a fuck if it's the most hack shit of all time. I just. And especially watching this, because my approach to this was, like. I. Because I've seen these. You know, I've seen his movies all over the place, right? I never looked at him in an academic way, let's say. I was. I approached this. I was like, I'm going to end. Like, what if King of Comedy is the last movie he made? Like, I'm not going to watch After Hours. Oh, sure. I'm not going to. I'm going to. Watch up to this. And I'm going to take these chronologically. Yeah. And I'm just going to get a vibe of, like, you know, these in order, whatever. And watching those, it's fucking crazy how much he nailed. I mean, between Taxi Driver and King of Comedy, that's everybody on the fucking internet. He nailed both fucking guys. He nailed, like, incels and he nailed parasocial relationships. And me watching this, I have an interesting relationship with the movie because the first time I saw it, I think I talked about this last time, I was. I worked at one of the last blockbusters in existence. There's a liquor store now on O'Donnell Street in Baltimore. It's a good liquor store, too. But. And I basically got that job because that was my first. It was truly. I was 19 and it was the summer where I was like, I think I want to do stand-up. I think I'm interested in, like, fucking movies, acting a little more than I used to be. And so I would just get whatever. And I was like, I made a list of people that I had heard were good at making movies, right? Scorsese, the Coens. Yeah. Spielberg, you know. Everybody fucking knows Spielberg, actually. But it was like, you know, basically Scorsese. Honestly, if I'm being honest, it was mostly Scorsese, the Coens, and then, like, just random fucking movies I heard were good, right? Like, fucking Platoon or whatever the fuck, you know what I mean? Like, maybe I looked up. But the only directors that I really keyed in on were Scorsese and the Coens. You've now done both on this podcast. Yeah, yeah, true. Yeah. Which is fucking awesome. So who should we do next? I don't know. I mean, you guys did Michael Mann already. We did. To do the trifecta of the, like, just bro. Loud guys are. I mean, Tarantino, obviously, if you ever do that. We haven't done him. We'll do him one day. Yeah. He makes movie 10. Yeah, yeah. Hey, Quinn. Challenge issued. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We'll do the series as soon as you make that 10th picture. Or, decide. To get over yourself. Yeah, dude. Make as many. Yeah, it's. Anyway, that's a whole different conversation. But, so I watched this movie out of context. No idea for who Scorsese is, whatever. And I'm also. I basically am Rupert Pumpkin when I watch this movie. Because I'm 19, about to start doing open mics. And I have this delusion of, like, I'm the fucking man. I haven't done dick, right? I'm fucking. I'm just, like, I've never accomplished anything creatively, right? I did an open mic in my dorm. So, I watched this movie when I was 19. And I'm like. It was so funny coming back to it. Because I. Dude, I didn't remember anything except. him kidnapping the guy for stage time and as rupert pumpkin i'm watching that being like oh he did fucking good he's fucking kid like oh his jokes aren't so bad he's you know he did okay like and i completely miss the like how pathetic this guy is like i i completely forgot like in my memories i didn't even remember the romantic sub the weird romantic subplot kidnapping comes late and it's less than half of the movie it's barely it's the right when i was before i saw this movie i thought the movie was like 10 minutes and he kidnaps jerry lewis that's what the movie's about like that's the entire plot i have to say it go ahead i had not watched this film again since tangoing with one richard t joker sure yeah right i forgot it's crazy how much they rip it off it's 90 and then it just over complicates and adds so much extra shit all it is is taxi driver plus yeah and that was the thing that yeah that's what he did that was and by the way awesome like here's the thing i don't i i i was in the complete middle because i feel like you know a lot of people hated the movie a lot of people i had friends who like both hated it i believe you guys hated it did not like it i didn't like it i didn't like it it's fine it's it's kind of stuck with me in a weird way but it no but here's the thing i'm more into following it though but but no thank you the people who act like it was a fucking masterpiece were out of their fucking minds the people who you guys are like it sucked dick you're fucking stupid too because the movie was here's what the shit is that's all marvel and dc this is what they should be i had to watch marvel dog shit of where it's like what they're stealing is like josh whedon's bullshit true you know what i mean finally a dumb bullshit comic book movie which the shit i like i love scorsese shouldn't you try to rip off the good shit rip off the good shit and todd phillips is the fuck i think he's the a great director and there's i like todd phillips a lot i'm a big todd phillips defender and i struggle with the joker but otherwise i basically like all of his stuff but the problem that everybody has with this and every fucking comic book movie is like look they're not fucking movies all right let's just i mean scorsese himself so right about it and by the way i like them right but don't fucking tell me the winter soldier is a fucking night three days the condor part two get the fuck out of here that shit is yeah it is for fucking babies if you want if you needed to teach a baby what fucking three days the condor is show them fucking winter soldier the same way if you want to show a baby yes taxi driver plus king of comedy with some dumb batman bullshit mixed in because that's the only way you can make a fucking movie great like but but that's all it is i'll never watch it again i saw it in theaters loved it we'll never see it not love you know i think that movie looks incredible yeah that's what i like there's like the craft in that movie i think the movie looks good you're halfway there truly it's kind of the in your redo thing too where people like i hate him and i'm like his movies don't really work for me at least they look good you know like it's just something i just think letting that i mean it's less about backhanding joker more about what's so impressive about taxi driver and king of comedy is by letting the character graduate to being a literal super villain and also telegraphing that by that's the poster that's the makeup that's all of that takes you off the hook of why these movies were so hot button when they came out where people saw a little too much of themselves yeah and push back of course because they're not giving you the remove of well this is the guy who's going to be the king of comedy right that's a good point i mean yes it neuters it the same way every fucking marvel movie it's like at the end of the day no matter what they're building up oh it's two fucking guys shooting lasers at each other or who gives a fuck shooting lasers at a hole in the sky yeah yeah yeah it's like but that's the thing with those movies it's like and you're absolutely right yeah i guess this probably didn't do well because after this he had to go make this movie was a bomb this movie was a bomb and was reviled awesome people were angry about it he's so good i would say i mean it there was some good reviews it got some critics awards it's not like it was completely critically reviled but it didn't it did not sure yeah i i wouldn't i wouldn't say it was he's got the famous story that he tells in the mr scorsese documentary of i think it was isabella rossolini called him and said she wanted to divorce last temptation of christ had just fallen apart for the third time it was new year's eve he's alone in an apartment he turns on the tv and whatever local chucklefox go like and the biggest bomb of the year the king of comedy that's our turkey for so that was entertainment tonight they called it the turkey or floppy of the year or whatever but like i think the the high level reviews were good the it was one of those movies that tested so bad that like the studio was almost kind of amused right where they were like oh this isn't there's nothing to be done like we showed this to kansas city and got a zero like it's over we'll release it it will make no money scorsese was not on a box office run but de niro had become such a major star that they were like a real star right there's there's a baseline like the floor for how poorly a de niro movie can do is pretty high now right right right and then this movie made hundreds of thousands of dollars it made now now now it made 2.5 million dollars so you know but yeah no i mean it's interesting de niro we'll talk about that but like right it's like he wanted to do this one too which is interesting this is a him movie marty didn't want to do it this was de niro being like please please please i love this script i want to play this guy you know it's like it was awesome at this point griff i will say about de niro he's basically still the mean streets godfather raging bull guy now that's a good guy to be he has two oscars he's got two oscars he also has the deer hunter which was a gigantic hit yep he has already made like 1900 last tycoon and new york new york which are all like big swings that don't work yeah so he or you know they're all good i'm just saying like at the time those were all movies no you're right there are a couple flops so he's not quite because it's like after this midnight run no that's not for that's not for five years so it's like he's got a weird it's like once upon a time in america which was like a mess on release banger though i love that fucking he and you know later later iconic the four it's like a fucking four hour movie it's so good yeah if you watch the shortcut right if you watch what leonie calls the compromise yeah that's literally what my mom my mom showed me godfathers one and two and once upon a time in america was your mom i know and completely out of nowhere just the sweetest like little eastern european woman that'll bake anybody cookies loved mob movies she's the reason i got into this they're romantic you know i got a romance um but then it's like falling in love brazil the mission which was a sort of you know award success but not a big hit it's 87 88 where then he suddenly is i think just finally like i think i should make fun movies so he does like untouchables angel heart midnight run we are no angels like he starts just like clearly picking stuff like a little more down the middle he's not who's this guy motherfucking loose who's this guy well the movie's called angel heart incredible clearly he must have the heart of an angel right he's someone i have not seen since i was a teenager i don't remember at all bro that's a nice throw it on in the background i might throw that you can miss half of it now lisa bonet lisa bonet's fucking throwing 120 hours out of control how hot she is in that gorgeous and honestly everybody's kind of a piece of ass deniro's got evil scary daddy devil shit and then mickey roarkson is like you know no he's still hot he's still hot yeah he hasn't done the beginning sign the beginning of twink death is happening to him you know what i mean like he doesn't exactly blow up like most guys do he does some other shit but he's still there's some fucking awesome sex scenes now wait a second i'm a little confused david you said he hasn't done it all yet and you gestured to your face by done it all you mean several boxing matches and that's the full extent of what he did right is that what rourke says like much like where michael jackson was like i got one little nose job and a little thing in my chin that's it it's regular work's line is like i i hate knives i'd never let a knife touch me wow the boxing matches fucked me up so much i had to have a few medical reconstructive surgeries i've never elected to anything that sucks because if i mean all these first of all what's the point of living in a misogynist society if you can't just like like it just like look it's not good by the way but we're not going to change it in our let's work to change in our lifetimes and in the meantime just don't just fucking age like shit who cares the thing about rourke that right where you're like okay handsome older guy of course and it's just you look at you know young rourke he's so incredibly strikingly handsome that you are like wow motherfucker looks like shrek it's fucked up now apparently the taco bell picture where he's picking up taco bell is sad dude and i he's the man obviously i think he's a great actor but anyway that the nero run that's fun as fuck the untouchables yeah he just starts midnight run more fun yeah midnight run and then we have fucking goodfellas goodfellas awakenings but even that's kind of like a crowd pleaser you know pleaser it's another mom from can i amend my back draft cape beer yeah i meant your statement a lot of right a lot of that back draft the untouchables like i'll be elder statesman ensemble right like getting paid five million dollars exactly give me the end right right um i'm gonna amend my statement i have like a couple divorces at this point and crush it and be good right he is still married to diane abbott when he makes this movie uh let's let's let's take that is his wife take her quittle who plays the the woman he fantasizes about dating whoa really yes i think they're still married at this time yeah they get divorced in 88 you know what he's only been divorced uh once and his second wife he actually never actually divorced and i think he never got divorced he now has a third grace hightower grace hightower is the second wife right but they're not actually he has a new he has a lover yes mother of a child, I believe. I think the difference is that at this point in time, if you won two Oscars, your box office almost doesn't matter. I think the industry still valued that so much that if you had done that, he won two Oscars in like five years and everyone was like, you're Brando. You get to be a movie star forever. We'd love it if you can make hits, but. People made so many more movies back then too. Now it's like every movie either makes or breaks people. People look at movie stars like stocks at this point. This is a great take. Back then, it was like, you can make fucking four pieces of shit for fun instead of doing a play, basically. It was artistic, you know what I mean? It was a little closer to doing stand-up where you're like, you're not going to kill every night. No, you got to try some shit out. This is a. What I love about this performance, I see why De Niro wants to do it. It's basically like he's doing the Roy G. Biv of anger, right? Where this is the most pathetic, it doesn't ever really explode. Is this guy actually shittier than Travis Bickle? A little bit. Or fucking Jake LaMotta or whatever. Quickly, that motherfucker turns to. And obviously, he's 36, whatever. He's older in life. But it's more low-simmering. De Niro's done so much explosion that everything is under the. And by the way, this guy's pathetic. When he's groveling, it's so good. When he tries to assert himself, when he's like, is that coming from Jerry? Like a fucking. He's being such a. He's such a dickhead there. It's like, I see why I want to do this because it's sort of let him do the final version of angry guy, but this is the most pathetic, you know, dickless version of that. It also feels like to the point of us saying he's doing all the De Niro moves here, this isn't a transformative performance. He's growing out the hair to a stupid haircut and he's got the mustache, but it's not like he's doing something to really change his voice, his physicality, all of that. He put on a little weight. A little. But you know what I'm saying. But not like totally. For a guy who had done a lot of. Who had done a lot of big, big swing, I'm learning a totally different language kind of shit. You watch this and you're like, he got this guy in some primal way. I'm not saying. Fully, bro. There's necessarily even, and I couldn't identify what specific part of him he's relating to, but it's clear that he just read the script and was like, I know this fucking guy. I got to play him. I know exactly who he is. And might it. Is the answer as simple as everyone who is successful at that level starts as Rupert Pumpkin? This is sort of my take. Is it like. Are Rupert Pumpkin's like fucking baby sea turtles and most of them don't make it to the fucking water, but the ones who do live for 200 fucking years? Where it's like. Because. So going back to the original question, I bet you De Niro, when he was a young actor, was like, I'm going to be the fucking man. By the way, which. And I think about that sometimes too, where it's like, the way I think and the way someone who I think is a real dog shit open mic. Like, my. My psyche. I was not a 19-year-old who was horrible at comedy who was like, I'm going to be fucking famous. I'm the best fucking comic of all time. You sit on the couch, you watch other people do comedy and you go like, I could fucking do that. That's easy. And you're delusional. I do that all the time. In my head, the simulation of it, I'm killing. Totally. And I want to say for the record, I was wrong. I'm not. But you are an accomplished stand-up. But what I'm saying is. I know at the time you were not. I was wrong at the time. I wasn't ready. And I needed. You're disabused and then you learn you have to do the work to get good. You're not naturally just a fucking genius. And the world tells you that fast, right? I was 19. Shit didn't really start rolling for me until I was 30, right? So it's like, that was 11 years of just being broke as fuck, pure dog shit, whatever. But part of me is like, I did get. Like, I'm telling. When I first watched it, I felt like fucking Rupert, right? I was like, I know this guy. And now it's like, you know, I'm obviously not as fucking famous as like, as, you know, a guy who hosts The Tonight Show. But it's like. And by the way, if they remade this today, they would be fucking kidnapping Nick Mullen. Like, watching this, it was like, these guys are like. Right. This type of guy would not actually care about Jimmy Fallon. No, exactly. These are guys who love podcasters more than anything. So like, watching it now from the flip side, but I bet you that was part of it for De Niro, which is like, I think every artist who makes it has to be fucking delusional. Because the odds are crazy. Hey, I kidnapped Fallon and NBC's like, who cares? Whatever. We'll just fucking run. We'll get one of the clones from the fucking. From the meat locker. One of his prestige clones. Okay, you think this is the first time fucking Fallon. We've lost a Fallon? If King of Comedy. Motherfucker. He's always wandering into the pool outside Rockerfell, et cetera. Who cares? We've got one of the backups. It's fine. The only way to defeat Jimmy Fallon is to lay a bunch of rings out on table corners. If they remade this movie tomorrow with Jimmy Fallon, it would be a quibby. Absolutely. Because NBC just goes like, oh, it's a shame to hear and hangs up the phone. Oh, okay. I guess we're going to just never do the Tonight Show again. And actually, wow, we saved a lot of money. Guys, Jay Leno's back. He's all burned. It's about time. This is A Blank Check with Griffin. Yeah, thank you. I'm David. It's a podcast about filmographies, directors who have massive success early on in their careers. It's going to be a short ep. Last week, we did two four-hour eps. Not this week, baby. It was a tough week. No, no, definitely not. This is a podcast about directors who were given. Who experienced a series of massive successes early on in their career, given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion products they want. Sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they bounce. Baby, it's a miniseries on the films of Martin Scorsese. It is called Podcast Fellows, of course. Hell yeah. Today, we're talking about. I'm not being a podcast fellow. You are. King of comedy, his second bounce, correct? Yeah. New York. New York, New York is the first big bounce. Yeah, these are the two big bounces. And then, I mean, he doesn't really have another big bounce that's kind of. Bringing out the dead, I guess, would be the third. I like that one too. It's a great movie. That's a fucking good movie. I feel like that's the true third time that everyone's like, is he cooked? Is this kind of it for him? Like, his last temptation obviously gets like swarmed with controversy, but that's not really a bounce in the same way. No, I don't think so. It's a good movie. People respected it. It's an audacious fucking swing. Yeah, right, right. Our guest today, returning to the show, the combination of Rupert and Jerry, and Jerry. Kind of, yeah. Kind of. In our modern media landscape, you're sort of both. That's what's happened. Stavros Halkins. Hello. Thank you for being here. They kind of have Jerry Lewis glasses. I do. You do? Jerry Lewis was fucking incredible in this movie too. He's so good. It's so cool to see him actually, I mean, you know, that's just his life too, dude. Him actually, like. Do you know this famous story that he, when he signed on to do the movie, he said, the character's gotta be named Jerry. And Marty said, why? And he said, because if we film in real New York City, people are gonna shout out shit at me. And if my character's name is Jerry, we can use all of it. That is, that actually does rock. And Scorsese was like, what are you talking about? And then the first day they were filming, he was like, fuck you, Jerry Lewis! Get cancer! Well, the get cancer moment is. A real moment, right? Based on something that actually happened. Yes. Correct. Yeah. No, that was. Also, to see that kind of fame is crazy. Like, fame doesn't exist like that anymore. No, not at all. This is when there were 15 people. And if you ever were that famous. He was one of the five or six. You were gonna be that famous for the rest of your life. It was even kind of that era of when you could do one stand-up set and make your entire career for life. Just do that forever. Right, yes. Crazy. Totally crazy. Right. People would go on The Tonight Show, the one thing that could launch comedians. Yeah, you go on the road. And the next morning, you're like, your milkman knows who you are. Like, everybody. You could book a tour, but then you could also get a sitcom. Immediately. Yeah. All these doors would just open up immediately. There was one gatekeeper. I have kind of no relationship to him. I will be honest. To Johnny Carson? No, no. Jerry Lewis. I mean, honestly, to Johnny Carson, too, I guess. Johnny Carson was retired by the time I was a little kid. No relationship to Jerry Lewis? No. Not even the year that you were bartending in France? Yeah, right. Weirdly, I moved to France and got so into Jerry Lewis. One-year dalliance? And all the people just came up to the bar and were just like, do you know him? Do you know the original Latin professional? I don't think I've ever seen a Jerry Lewis movie in full. You know, like any of his classic movies that play in France 24 hours a day. I don't think I've ever seen a special. I've never seen a stand-up set. I've only seen clips of him over the years. Like, I know who he is. Yeah, I mean, for me. You've never seen, like, a Martin and Lewis movie, right? I've never. To be honest, truly the only movie I ever watched. Fully was the original Latin professional because I love. Because I love the Eddie Murphy one so much. So you were like, let me check this out. So as a kid, I was like. That was kind of the budding comedy nerd shit I would do. I was like, where did this fucking come from? But you're also like, why isn't he fat? Where are the clumps? Yeah, I'm like, what the hell is this? What the. Why is he. Hercules. Why aren't six of his family members farting around the dinner table? Right. His mom, dad, brother, and grandmother should all also be played by Eddie Murphy. But you understand. The clumps is something. Go ahead. Being a fat Greek child when the fat boy was called Hercules in the biggest comedy movie of the year. Shut up. How did that go for you? You don't understand how much I heard Hercules, Hercules for like five years. And by the way, it wasn't. I was like, happy to lean in. I was that kind of fat kid where I was like, kind of doing like. I was kind of doing like. I'll take it on the chin. I was overdoing it. You were leaning into the stick. I was like, in ways that are like, you know, I was embarrassed. Demeaning. Yeah, demeaning. I was. Being a fat clown for the enjoyment of my third grade class. But everyone was. You were everyone's fan. But I figured it out. I figured out the formula where I could respect myself and, you know, still do this. But again, like. and you are wildly successful. We're doing okay. Right, yes. But yes, and then I would, so I saw that shit, and then, yeah, the telethon where he's old, and then I was like, this isn't the same guy. Well, that's all you look for. Well, like, that was, when I was, right, when I was a kid, I'm like, who's Jerry Lewis? And it's like, well, he's this kind of serious, fucked up looking guy who does these telethons. And is famously an asshole to everyone. Right, and everyone, every single person in the world is like the worst motherfucker you'll ever meet in your life. You're like, okay. And you're like, but he was a really good comedian. I'm like, was it good? And then there's like a clip of him with glasses like sideways going like, ooh. And I'm like, is this good? And they're like, no, but it's respected for some reason. But also the French love it and we make fun of them for that. That makes so much sense that the French love him. Yeah. But I mean, speaking of this, talking about The Simpsons again, probably our actual, the way we actually know Jerry Lewis is them stealing his essence for Professor whatever. Professor Frank, yeah. That was the bit. Professor Frank is one of my 10 favorite comedians. Professor Frank is funny as hell. Maybe Jerry Lewis shouldn't have ripped him off. Yeah. Full circle. My Jerry Lewis thing has always been, I still struggle with him as a performer outside of this movie. But like Jerry Lewis comedian has never been my cup of tea. I have tried to engage with the movies more. They are unbelievably well directed. Right. It's the thing that everyone says. And that's what the French people like. He directed his own movie. He's an auteur, yes. Really? He was making, he was making those movies and he was, you know, he's kind of like. A lot of the Martin Lewis ones are Frank Tashlin and these other great early comedy directors. But like the Bellboy or whatever, like the ones that people say are really good. That's all him. Huh. Yeah. So his destiny probably should have been director. A little bit. Like kind of a Mel Brooks thing. Like he was, if Mel Brooks, because Mel Brooks kind of did the opposite where it's like writer, director, and then he was like, you know what, now I'm the star. Right. Which was hilarious. It's like, come on, Mel. The thing about Mel Brooks is everyone's like, he rocked. Great person to collaborate with. Really smart. Whereas Jerry Lewis, everyone was like, what a nightmare. Like, so I think. Yeah, right. Like, why was he directing? Because he had to. Because no one wanted to fucking deal with him. That was the big part of it. But he happened to be good at it. The big thing, and a lot of these guys like Scorsese revered him as a filmmaker was a key part of him getting worked back into some of these things later in life. He invented video playback. Whoa. That's his crazy thing. He needed to see how the bit looked. Exactly. That his, his filmmaking style was hypervisual art directed like a little proto Wes Anderson. And he's doing intense physical comedy. He was like, I need to make sure that the physical comedy is registering on camera and I need to make sure the frame is maintained. So he was the guy who invented, can we find the smallest camera we can, which I'm sure at that time was still 800 pounds. Right, right. Put it as close to the film camera lens as possible and have a live tapped feedback so I can watch it in real time and refine for a take. That's awesome. He invents that. That's sick. You know, he didn't engineer it himself, but he was like, we need something. Yeah. And so he gets a lot of credit for shit like that. And if you watch his movies, you do see a lot of his influence in a bunch of different ways. What's fascinating about the Wes Anderson-y shit you were just talking about is like, this movie looks, the sets are so well designed. It looks so incredible. It's clearly, it has such a specific sense of style, which to me is very futuristic. Like I think it's interesting when you watch a movie where they almost are like, what's our alternate version of the Tonight Show, whatever. This is the first time it's ever been creative. And you could argue that they were- Rather than just doing a bad approximation, they're making choices. It's a choice. He has his own vibe. Honestly, futuristic. Like, it looks very futuristic in comparison to fucking Rupert, who feels very old-fashioned, which is an interesting thing about, again, it's hard not to watch all these movies and think about Taxi Driver, think about New York, New York, think about, especially when it's all De Niro. But it's like, Travis Bickle feels like, uh-oh, is this who's coming for us? Are these guys, this is the future? And this is like, this is kind of a loser in arrested development who's actually, his problem is that he's more, it's like he's drowning in nostalgia. He's not the new thing. It's like, one, again, one is like a dangerous, explosive whatever, and the other one is like so pathetic, he'll implode. And both are a type of young man that, you know, it's like, oh, we got to fucking fix these guys' lives or they're fucked. He's doing like, 50s street jokes with like a 70s look in the 80s. Yeah. It's a really fascinating choice. You know, he's like Sonny Bono doing like Henny Youngman. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which now, is why now you watch him and you're like, he rocks. It's kind of funny. And his style is cool and all that. But that's only from now. This guy would have crushed it over the eight, you know? Yeah, he definitely would have. He would have been a regular on the special. Bro, if a guy that dressed like that came to the over the eight mics, he would be a legend. How many guys do we know? Like, you know, there's, there's so many open mic fucking legends that are this exact guy. But anyway, my point was just like, the visual sense of style to me was like, pretty strong. I mean, not to take anything away from Scorsese because he's a fucking genius. Like New York, New York, that's what I loved about it too. It looked incredible. The thing to go sets was fascinating. And then even when they're on location, like that Harlem Jazz Club, that fucking mural, everything looks so one. And then, you know, at the end, all the musical numbers. But this was just a different, it's neon. It really feels like what they thought the future was, was going to be like. So I wonder if that's like an homage to, you know, Jerry, Jerry Lewis's film style. I don't know. The DP on this movie, Fred Schuller, it's the only time he worked with Marty. Hopefully, JJ will address this in the research. If not, I know what I'm doing. JJ on the, is he, oh yeah, hold on. A researcher who's constantly in danger of getting fired. No, I know. I saw in the bathroom, his, his, the blanket was a little over his crate. I could see his eyes. So I want, I just, I put it down, obviously. Thank you. As long as you didn't give him any. No, no, no, no, no, no. I kicked at him for, I kicked him for looking at him in the eyes, but I didn't, I didn't see him when I, yeah, yeah, yeah. I didn't get there because my foot got caught in the cage, but I do think that, you know, the, the tip of my toe made contact with the bridge of his nose. So I think he understood what I got to say. Your foot getting caught in the cage. That's our fault. And I'll apologize for that because we forgot to feed him earlier. Has anyone added water? We'll do it tomorrow. Like, you're fine. Ben, can you just make a note tomorrow? Uh, spray JJ with water and also we have some ads to do and we'll just knock those out back to back. Schuller, I will say, uh, did shoot Gloria Cassavetes. Gloria. Oh, he has a couple like he, he shot Arthur. Oh, hell yeah. But he's a pretty new DP. So I don't know what the story would be on. You're right that it's a unique style. I, what I kept thinking watching it was, I was astounded by how, how much of the movie feels like a fantasy that there is more of this film than Taxi Driver, which we've just watched really recently. These movies are fairly close together, but we're recording those episodes closer than even they were in years. But it's only, there's only two movies between them. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Raging Bull and New York. This movie feels a little bit like him being frustrated with people misreading Taxi Driver and being like, I'm going to keep this thing in a real kind of suspended dream state. I'm going to make this guy fully pathetic. There's no accidentally cool part of him. Right. Right. Even if you think he's funny, there's nothing kind of badass or heroic about this guy. Yes. And there are more sequences that are demonstrably fantasy. No question. No gray area. And they cut back and forth between fantasy and reality in a very cool way. And the stuff that's real has that same sort of weird suspended tone. It does have that heightened air where you're like, this guy's whole life is unreal because he's not engaging with shit as a real person. If this movie came out now, Twitter would be like, I didn't understand the scene where Jerry Lewis was nice to him. They would need a scene where you'd like see a thought bubble come out of his head. And then the scene plays out in the thought. Like this is just what Twitter is or whatever. Here are two big things. I'm beating up on a straw man. No, two things that jumped out to me in this movie that I thought were so good that wouldn't be the case today. One is that his trauma dump is literally the end of the movie that we don't do the tragic backstory. And it's part of his routine. That when the guy gets his fucking fulfillment of doing the act, the act is, I need to turn my pain into comedy. And then he, in a perfect bit of characterization, does not know how to make it funny, but thinks joking about it will be what works for him. The second thing that's so good is he's not nearly as bad as most people would make him if they were making this movie today. There's a version of this where he's Joker style and you're just like, this is the least funny guy. He's bombing so hard on stage. He's all right. He's just so kind of, he doesn't have a voice. It's like Lights, Camera, Jackson. He doesn't have a point of view. He's mimicking the guys he's heard. Yeah, he's just mimicking, right. But you're like, he's got a, he's a pretty good mimic. And he's got the rhythms down. He's got a metronome, yeah. But there's just nothing interesting about him. And even the feedback they give him is genuine, which is like, you're not not, you're not a bad performer. Maybe work on the material. Maybe find jokes that are a little more unique. And instead he's like, that sounds like too much work. I'm going to do this. I'm going to tape the shit out of Jerry Lewis. Yes, that point. And maybe we'll get into it more later. But the fact that, you know, he's not that bad, which by the way, it's a really good amount. Like that is what a fucking kind of good comic is like. The local reference, you're, you're fucking, he starts talking about his town in New Jersey for his first three jokes about Clifton. And you're, you're fucking, he's like, I'm going coast to coast. And it's, that's textbook. I remember that. It's like, you try your jokes, about your home, you do your first road gig and you're talking about a hyper specific neighborhood and it kills in Baltimore. more and people in fucking you know jersey like what the fuck are you talking about to do like hometown jokes as if it's i know what you're all thinking right as if you're calling out the thing that people think when they see you walk on stage and what's crazy too is i grew up near clifton in north jersey it's not that bad yeah that's what's even weird about it as bad as he is a comedian yes yes but that's what's classic about it it doesn't matter he's just plug and play you know for in reality he's probably a little too good but that doesn't matter because i think they walk i have for this movie this movie is not trying to nail the verisimilitude of stand-up what it's about one specific guy and what's interesting i think it's both a critique on the entertainment industry that's like oh look you could do schlock bullshit and as long as you're lucky shit can be fine which i think was really good but also it shows you what this character actually gives a fuck about and the second thing that i think is really interesting is that second time around now after having fucking worked i mean literally i watched this movie 17 years ago fuck that's that sucks that sounds right and like ben and i just saw you sell out madison square garden no it was radio city i'm sorry i'm sorry owned by the same people i flipped the initials yeah i would hey we're not there yet but yes i did sell out radio city thank you for coming he's better than msg it's a better it's a better comedy yeah but it's you know you fucking sell an arena that's fucking insane it's amazing it's just like i've seen no it's not good yes it's actually not good and it's bad for the fan it's radio city also looks so nice it's so fancy i said to you i was like the the contrast between what you're saying on stage that's my whole life and the sanctity of the venue is my whole life you know what great suit thank you great you were looking great i wore tux for the occasion my dad took 87 000 photos shout out to he's the man pistol p um pistol piece of men but it's that and also it shows you what this guy actually gives a fuck about because over and over again he actually gets treated with kindness he doesn't deserve and pushed in the right creative direction and if he was like they're like hey you're actually not bad usually we fucking throw these tapes in the garbage obviously but it and look maybe that's a choice obviously jerry's blowing him off but they're at least being like even if they're blowing him off they are telling him the right thing could be good you go people like that all the time who are like open mic freaks and then three years later you're like you figured your thing out and they're saying this guy could be good you see people like that all the time who are like open it could be you know how many people say that about me yeah right you're like wait that fat idiot from 20 years ago at the at high tops and timonium sold out fucking radio city yeah but but and it shows you he doesn't give a fuck about the work at all no all he cares about is what is it going to take to you know and that ending monologue story and the very end of the fucking movie shows that right where finally everyone's there to fucking talk to him and it's just like he's fucking nervous he's got nothing anyway but that was i just want to say thank you so much for talking about the making him kind of good big big thing i clocked this time this guy doesn't do open mics this guy doesn't do bringer shows all this guy does is practice his material in his living room to a pre-recorded laugh track yes yeah which is insane but he refuses to do the thing with the actual risk to refine his it is funny to do this podcast with comedians who are like if he just put in the work where he's like most people watch this movie this movie's about a psychopath they're like i don't know i know guys like this i kind of was this guy what were you gonna say ben he's kind of doing a podcast he's kind of and you know like it would be a good podcast he would actually yeah you should get his wall in your podcast absolutely it's great yeah right i mean one reason we're having stav on obviously yeah is you did for a while have a late night set in your house i did yes i mean like there was you know what's funny there was a guy when the fucking crowd work craze was going insane yeah who literally bought velvet curtains and pretended he was doing crowd work and he was it was working like for tiktok or whatever and then i was and that's the moment where i was like i have to stop doing this i was like this sucks so much but yeah there was a guy who literally it was rupert pumpkin yeah that's fucking i wonder in his defense like jay he hasn't been on network in years so like what else is he gonna do but buy curtains yeah trying to make the jay leno okay sure yeah no no we know the only joke you can make about jay leno is that like the mafia is gonna kill him well that or sure i felt that i'm rolling him down hills his model t like caught on fire you know like what like the kerosene his fucking car runs on his antique car runs on exploded or whatever uh opening i'm opening the dossier but one thing about the clumps they were funny then society i feel like fully rejected the clumps and was like this is distasteful now we're back just to like the clumps are funny because now they've gone three the children of the clumps are now we run the world right and we're like oh fyi society clumps are good we're pro clumps we look we were talking about you're you're filming an app a towel movie right now and the apatow wave we talked about this on a recent episode was largely a corrective to like 90s comedies that were big premise right heavy on makeup characters and shit like that set pieces and everyone's like this is so broad can we make comedy smaller and joke based and whatever and now everyone's like can a guy just put on a silly wig absolutely and do a voice dude and play a guy with a thing i i just i remember like seeing the trailer for the clumps running professor 2 with my mom in front of some other movie and she just leaned over and she's like i would rather die than see that movie and i was like i know yeah and i'd already seen it i was like it's pretty good meanwhile my father turned to me and was like i will die if i can't go see that movie tomorrow you're telling me he farts in space and it propels him no i'm ready i'm ready for that shit i need to the things i want to check off of my career gotta do an action movie yeah i got killed in an awesome way already which feels cool as fuck wait what did you get killed begonia oh yeah yeah that's right yeah yeah you got it i mean everyone also spoiled this for begonia like no one really makes it out of that one but you had a big rubber head right yeah that was awesome i got scanned and shit yeah uh i want to do what you're i don't know what it is the big broad like 90s version of the clumps you need a great clumps like can't you just like my big fat greek wedding plus the clumps like can't you walk in somewhere and say that yeah yeah and just get 40 million dollars i'm i'm ready can you be the first comedian to do a skinny suit comedy oh where you wear a girdle and it's called my skinny little greek wedding and you're doing your parody of real thin people shallow some kind of shallow how like the girl looks at me as hot but then i'm fat or something you're still getting married i still yeah yeah it is and i know your bros with me of our dollars i'm not talking shit about her great but like it is funny that she's like i'm making my greek movie now she got michael constantine like he's greek he is laney kazan no she's jewish yeah no because it is like that's a great mark of shame that elia kazan's a snitch even though he's one of the best laney kazan is jewish but is she greek and jewish she's got some oh that's a tough combo she's got some uh turkish and russian roots so she's kind of yeah anatolian you know what she's from the region uh fatone is greek andrea martin is armenian i think yeah fatone's fatone's italian this is a big point that was actually a big point of contention for me because i was coming out of my boy band era when now gia caritas is greek yes but she's not like that funny or anything great and carita means uh nuts so her name is gia nuts yeah it means yeah they're nuts yeah and i'm just saying like i feel like she didn't even tap all the greeks like there's greeks out there yeah yeah although for future ones she went she kind of went the complete other way and she she hired like actual greek actors oh well there was there was like a greek heartthrob that i knew from greek that she made her love interest in the greek movie and i was like respect did she fucking kill off corbett or something i never saw this is my life in rude no that's yeah right she did that but then she also made i hate valentine's day which was but that's with corbett but not part of the greek no that was just let's get let's get the band back can we just do not so that we don't disrespect our our other friend of the podcast again fucking like three amigos you galifianakis oh my god yeah that was really funny when we couldn't go with you i know and you just call it like opa you know or whatever i would die to do that together immediately galifianakis is like leave me out no chance no chance look at imagine that poster that's a great fucking poster what the premise is bro we're taking we're coming back alexander the great we're taking back all the land so many constantinople is coming back if me galifianakis and fucking and uh and our boy manzoukas yeah get on a three-hander bro the ottoman we're taking back the land so many eyes we're taking back the land so many eyes we're taking back the land so many eyes we're taking back the land the ottoman empire stole from us the three of you and togas feeding each other grapes on the poster that's great we're laughing we are laughing someone and i'd also the one other thing i would like to do is like be the in a serious like spy thriller be someone uh getting falling for a honeypot operation oh yeah that's that's so like if you're making a sexy thriller where it's like yeah we talk business later right now pleasure you know what i mean and then i get fucking you fucking somebody chokes me some hot girl right like tom cruise is on the other side being like all right now i'll kill him now all right move his head near the window he has the best answer for this yeah but our shared buddy gabrus and i feel like he's even said it on this podcast is like my number one dream role the thing i'd most want to do in a movie is play the guy who was sent to go undercover and has gotten a little too deep yeah oh yeah they sent him to the tropical island and now he's too comfortable he's Gained 400 pounds. He's drinking all the time. Yeah, gone native. yes i do i don't want to i have a i have an idea called uh i might have to change the character's name but fuckio pussy getty i mean this is the ponytail the ponytail of justice and it's spelled like spaghetti so is this your zoran you know zohan this is exactly it's basic and and he was the world's greatest he was the cia's greatest assassin right right and after he took down a left he he helped a fascist dictator take over basically they were going to nationalize oil right and in the 80s i kill the fucking leftist leader right but then and i install a beautiful fascist dictator but i fuck her so good she dies and then the and then the communists take over i'm so ashamed of that i go into the brush they can't find me and then kind of like a funny costa gavris yeah it's it's basically like commando it's my commando means z zed so then they come back yeah exactly it's like and so and i don't know what the final mission is what they need me to do maybe now it's to say maybe they have to get me to like fix the 2020 uh election yeah like i have to kill biden or something you gotta get biden get biden out of there can you get the door quickly because i think every studio executive is knocking at it and i'm look i'll i'll i'll budge on the name if i really have to it doesn't have to be the title but it can be the character name we just might not be able to put it on a book yeah fuck you f-u-c-c-i-o-p-u-s-s-i-g-h-e-t-t-i and there's an anachronistic flashback where it's like godfather 2 yeah even though it takes place in the 80s like i'm a baby you know like 1909 in the italian slump anyway there's i don't want to give i think i've already said too much right but but no one steal any of that don't steal fuck you pussy get it don't steal it okay someone please make a poster please for us everyone we have like a proof of concept if you know how to paint yeah yeah please do it in oil paint yeah all right so here's the dossier guys i'm doing it paul d zimmerman this movie is written by a film critic he was the film critic for newsweek in the late 60s and early 70s but the whole time he wrote books uh he wrote a book called the film critic and he wrote a book called the film critic and he wrote a book about the mets as jj wants me to point out in 1969 and this guy's stealing your whole fucking call of the year the mets the lost last place about the mets the amazing mets who won the world series in 69 obviously he also was a writer on sesame street for a while in like the early years back when it was like marxist propaganda or whatever right um you want those early sesame streets they're so cool yeah so interesting yeah um he says he was watching like okay a david susskind show about autograph hunters okay and like you know he was struck by this like tv segment he saw about autograph hunters and one of them apparently said like well barbara's hard to work with essentially meaning this autograph hunter is like barbara streisand doesn't want me to bother her and he translates into she's a little hard to work with we're in the same industry and we're contemporary yeah yeah and he's like the way he's using language to completely transform the experience he's having is very interesting to me he also reads an article in esquire about a guy who uh kept a diary of every single carson show he would write down things like johnny disappointed me tonight you know what i mean like it wasn't just like here's who the guests were it was like his review of every fucking night on carson so uh he writes this sort of idea as a novel at first and then turns it into a treatment that ends up in de niro's hands and what does de niro say he looks at the script and he goes pretty good not bad pretty good not bad pretty good you uh scorsese also says he got the screenplay it's a little everyone's sort of forgotten the answers here it doesn't really matter but scorsese basically thought the script was funny but also thought it was kind of like a one-line gag and was kind of like not that interested but de niro was obsessed with it and was like i found puffkin to be kind of like weirdly brave and have chutzpah he does have initiative i like the kind of single mindedness like he just like clearly relates to the character because he's kind of an obsessive person robert de niro yeah and you guys can probably tell by the way he like prepares for his role his obsession has been applied to very heavy stuff where even while this is a heavy movie in ways he's not playing a guy burdened with heaviness yeah and like just it must be fucking exhausted to be de niro and be like the world is your oyster pure series of herculean tasks right each of these movies is going to take fucking everything out yeah yeah uh buck henry worked on the screenplay at one point uh direct with milish foreman considered to direct it uh nobody really could decide on a good screenplay jj wants to disabuse people there's no it's on the wikipedia page that bob fossey considered right uh directing this movie there's no source for that that he could find that seems like either a made-up story or kind of like it feels like that kind of thing kind of makes sense because star 80 is a little less like this right but why would he do both right i don't know yeah right uh with andy kaufman would have been the is the star is the made-up idea i mean that's an that's a fun fantasy movie that's interesting milo she eventually drops out they have a new script at this point or whatever they send it to marty marty apparently is writing a script about a comedian with jay cox called nightlife that never amounted to anything but de niro just won't let it go scorsese is obsessively obsessively trying to get last temptation of christ to happen which is something obviously he keeps trying to do after new york and raging bull and all this and you know de niro just kind of sells him on it i think he just kind of like wore him down i saw the the special features i got the dvd and and uh scorsese was talking about how he didn't get because he read it before raging bull and de niro's famous and scorsese's not really and then he says once raging bull happens and he's basically scorsese's so awesome he's so like humble and guilty about doing anything good that like he really undersells it but basically what he's saying is after i got fucking famous as shit i understood this movie in a much different way um which is cool it's an interesting way you know it's interesting to think of him as like there's nothing here and then he makes it and he's like oh fuck i get it the scorsese quote that relates to this is like in the period of the last three or four years i've cut off a lot of people around me because usually they need something they want something nice to be the center of attention but you know like yeah and what it's what jerry lewis called zoo time essentially like yeah where it's just you're the monkey in the cave yes right um the the mr scorsese doc he talks a lot about this one and how kind of loathe he was to make it and how he was like hours late to set every day couldn't make it through that everyone was like is he i mean this is kind of the start of his like is he uninsurable kind of era where like is this guy spiraling so fucking cool this is sort of the because he was doing cocaine and fucking a starlet yes that's what he was doing but but also it's all crumbling like it's like if i was dating his i would feel insane every day right i cannot i would feel like his heart's on the verge of exploding like everything's in chaos and he's sort of like he's like i need that right i mean i do have it a heart thing i'm not yeah yeah watching all that jazz and it's about a guy who works too hard and lets his vices kill him i'm like why am i watching i'm watching with a broken arm and a fucking you're thrown out back fucking a hundred pounds overweight you're rewinding on a hundred and fifty milligrams crunching tape yeah it's like i'm like fuck this is too much but yes i still do think that's cool i did i have to stop that because it's going to kill me but hearing other guys that i respect almost kill themselves for their fucking you know move that shit is cool it's just interesting to me that this feels like a very tight focus movie in a lot of ways and yet he's like i basically it was like pulling teeth for me and not because i was pulling something so personal out of myself i just didn't want to do it and when i watched it later i was like i realized what i had yeah yeah you know he found it in the edit but like while making the movie yes it was torturous for him and it feels like they did find it because like i did like this more than new york new york new york new york to me had awesome stuff that had some pacing the early i think the second half is incredible there's amazing things there's amazing things but this movie you can feel the craft even five years later how he's that much better of a fucking filmmaker it's fucking anyway i fucking love scorsese so fucking much keep going sorry you've so you're watching everything up until this point and then is your plan after this to keep watching i know you had said on a recent stoppies world that you want to fill in the gaps of the non-gun ones i think i think i don't know if i'll do because some of these movies mean so much to me that i can't it's like too potent like look casino and goodfellas i've watched 4 000 times and it better fucking spielberg better be doing those boys that's all i'm saying i better see some names off is all i'm saying uh might be gay you fucking piece of shit i didn't want to be i don't want to ask for a casino but it or whatever look i love gamers it's all in flux anyway i get it i get it i get it king of comedy i get it whatever uh but i've seen those for but it's like a movie like after hours and honestly um i really love the ones he made when he's when it isn't like obviously sublime like it's next level and after hours too by the way that movie even when i was a kid i saw that one and i actually was like whoa this movie's better than goodfellas it's my personal favorite it is just so my vibe i also saw it at a time when i was 19 and i was in a shitty neighborhood and it's like it wasn't like the mafia but it's a girl in baltimore in the you know 2000s like yeah fucking your friends were criminals you know what i mean like it reminded me of that shit right it's feeling just a little bit scary yeah a little bit like you're not living boys in the hood but no no no but things are just a little bit you haven't quite figured them out yeah yeah i i would sell weed but i never got a gun pulled on me you know what i mean like i had i had a weird handoff a couple times but it wasn't like i was never in real danger because i was buying weed from my friend's brother right who if i was just some kid in a minivan he would have robbed me but because i played football with his brother he gave me a nice deal you know what i mean like so anyway the ones that i kind of had to make to prove he could put in a movie on time he was just a pro i enjoy those on another level because it's like this guy is just so funny fucking good at filmmaking even when the story he's like yeah this i have to do this to get to make the shit i want even when his soul isn't in them and he's doing them as a job you almost get to appreciate just the filmmaking yep just the crap exactly and and then paycheck gigs are better than anyone could ever do it's fucking incredible yeah and so i might skip some of the ones that really matter to me like color money i just it just for you know sentimental reasons i love too much to just like what's the way you do it yeah it is in the way that you do it yeah that's very true well i mean like it's just in the way we've recorded that episode yeah like we talk you know color money you're just like do i need to quit my job and be a low life who lives at pool halls you know what i mean like casino you're like i think i could run a casino these movies are literally the guy is like getting his head bashed in and i'm like yeah but i think i'd be good at it color money the x factor as we say in that episode is what if i could be the most handsome piece of shit right what if i could suck and actually be really depressing and depressed right have the best bone structure anyone's ever i just like to think about like paul newman's tax return in color money where they're like money made playing pool this money played made doing anything else negative five million dollars brown liquor anyway but yes i'm gonna keep going i think and just i'm definitely filling in any blind spots but i might you know do i i'll probably end up watching casino but yeah this is such a joy to to do even already watch these movies um but okay all right dad king comedy wait let me go back this is a regency movie regency enterprises of course is the production company i want to point out uh founded by arnon milchin the former israeli intelligence operative who's turned his business dealings in the aerospace chemical and electronics industries into a movie career i'm sure that guy was so normal and it's only gotten more normal uh someone who continues to uh haunt the film industry at large you would not believe how i bet he's posting really cool stuff right i bet i bet i bet he's got some awesome opinion his face isn't haunting in this but this is the first regency movie it gets picked up by fox uh after it gets made so de niro obviously starts prepping for this what does he do autograph connor hunters start coming up to him and he just starts like asking them a million questions to the point that they get freaked out right like he starts to try and like you know behave this way uh at one point wait the guy who's waiting oh right autograph country comes up hunter hunter i keep saying country this is terrible uh is waiting for him with his wife de niro is basically like can i come to dinner at your house and like they end up doing that and and like you know they get more freaked out than him of course uh that awesome story about pattinson letting a stalker in and she just left you know that one it's incredible like yeah there's some story i don't know if it's real i just saw it on twitter but it was like but it seems to make sense with how robert pattinson is a guy like some girl who was obsessed with twilight like broke into his house he's like all right we can hang out and then she's like this guy is fucking weird she was gonna suck edward's dick or whatever the fuck and it's actually just some fucking strange british guy right who's like hello god knows what in this house let me practice my voices yeah there was um i i just re-watched a larry sanders episode that's really good where larry is convinced he has a stalker and he's like oh and corbin bernson's one of the guests and he's like oh oh no larry i'll tell you what to do you just invite him in and he's like what do you mean and he's like here's one of my stalkers here and he opens his green room door and he's like yeah i cycle through them i give each of them a day like once every three months they get their fill and they're good that's hilarious yeah uh i should re-watch larry's the best of larry um so all right sandra bernhardt had been in chichen chong's nice dreams as girl nut she wrote on the richard pryor like the the network tv show yes like she was a big uh she read for it like it's like it's like you know like they just kind of like found her well she's an incredibly striking like on-screen presence it's it's one of the great like casting finds where you're just like who possibly could have done this better yeah a hundred percent no she's perfect um and uh yeah like you know like she just read for it and obviously they were kind of obsessed with her and she's like oh my god she's like oh my god she's like oh my god she's and because she was i think she's just odd at that point like she was like i didn't know how to dress or behave i'd never been around famous people that much like i was just this sort of weirdo hanging out of like the comedy store and she was like a white jewish woman who mostly wrote for black comedians uh right in this very kind of unusual space at a time where there are very few female comedians how old was she she's pretty young too stick 25 i think and but like paul mooney like you know she was paul mooney's protege right yeah that's fucking insane yeah and she's just like once deniro is in that geek outfit like everything is just natural with us like the way i'm kind of just like poking at him he doesn't have this shield on of like being a hot movie star and we could just like be crazy at each other it looks incredible they dialed it in so right where it doesn't become too much but it does just you're right completely disarm him fully and even a little bit lets you understand how people are being nice to him like when he's in those it even when he's in that in the like office he is a guy who until the third time is in a suit has good manners just seems like a guy who really cares about his craft and but it's like so it does make it it fits everything fits the character because that's he's both the fucking lunatic the dress like that but also it's the kind of thing that a different lunatic's disguise gets you kicked out of that office immediately but it sort of makes sense how he's in a suit people give him a little you know a little respect and because he doesn't have the coiled anger thing that's usually dinero's like stock and trade you kind of look at him and go at worse is this guy a little slow yes exactly people are overly gentle with him because they're kind of worried dick cabot was who zimmerman imagined when he wrote it obviously he wrote the thing initially like you know 10 years earlier he was so intellectual that's wrong of course of course they want cars like that is their white whale they're like could we actually convince carson to do this and carson's like one take is enough for me like i just don't want to make a movie like no thank you i mean the whole thing with carson right is that like as he goes on in the years he's like can i do less and less and i just sit here and it's just easier right like you know vacation right right yeah it's the best he's a guy who acts i think not accidentally but it's like i don't think he goes into being a a talk show host in the 40s or whatever the fuck thinking he's going to be the the voice of america comedic america he's a presenter that gets this foisted onto him and he looks at it as a job he's like and he's like old-fashioned he's like i'm not telling you how much i make it's very interesting that he's the what everything is based off of he's the art archetype when from then on it's people that have been doing stand-up you know it's a completely different way to get to that job and i wonder if it makes you honestly worse at it i wonder if like stand-ups aren't that good at at you know if somebody who just wanted to be a presenter hosted a tonight show would that be better now i mean those shows are probably just but anyway i that's just i mean letterman always talks about that where he's like i hated doing stand-up i didn't want to do stand-up there was no pathway to being a talk show host without proving that unless you were like an intellectual genius right you know right you were supposed to be a man of letters right you're either a reporter right who can become a little more light entertainment or you have to be a comedian another of my favorite crusty jokes is like when the old you watch like an old episode and it's like him interviewing the head of the afl-cio and it's like black and white the best so fucking fun crusty's so good crusty's my favorite sims yeah that's the best one he does the money no that's yeah that's that's correct he says it to mo right who's my other favorite character yeah mo mo is my favorite there is nothing funnier than crusty being anguished to me like anytime he's like ah god like it's just that's i i use this a lot in george lucas talk show conversations when we're doing planning not even on stage but when we're like planning or booking dates with connor and patrick is the sort of crusty i'm ruined the notion that you've accidentally blown your entire fortune on one comedic decision of course i think is the funniest shit in the world yeah he's the man is so good he's a great character so carson says no to be clear all right sinatra is their next choice another great choice like that is also crazy thing about no yeah they ask like joey bishop and fucking sammy davis jr dean martin is well this is how they get to jerry right they're like right jerry lewis they also considered orson wells which is crazy to think about they eventually kind of like he's not showbiz enough but that is in a whole other movie yeah completely different movie the thing about jerry lewis is like you can't imagine anyone else like sure with carson like that's an interesting movie it's a different movie you need someone who's as mean as jerry lewis yes yes yes and that and yes that's the i mean both him and and bernhardt it's like it's this this is another thing i love about movies where it's like they just cast they cast the person yes like he's that fucking guy right deniro is in this character he's you know everyone else is just kind of like they did five minutes of work that's just what they're like this one is arguably maybe which is not but it's an incredible performance because of that like his whole his whole life is the sum the sum of his whole life goes into this performance i was going to say is this the movie that really is the big inspiration for the modern kind of safty street casting school of thought yeah sure sure you cast one major movie star right to transform themselves and play against type everyone else is some weirdo everyone else you cast to basically play who they are or you cast them for their innate energy right that's a good point yeah and then after this it's like you know the supporting cast of goodfellas starts to be people who also fit into that sure sure but this is the one where it's like one established movie star yeah they even rounded by the thing and in the very beginning it's like that that fat guy with the weird curly hair like they don't even show his whole face but it's like that's clearly a real guy that's clearly a real fucking and they could have maybe done more of that but yes that's a good point that this feels like the first time you get that really well who knows maybe other people did it but fuck them i mean in new york new york he had new york play itself and new york is kind of like a character in that movie oh that's an interesting concept isn't that the city i've been working on a second the city's a character but it's a location no no no but it's kind of both and in fact in this specific instance it's a city so nice they named it twice wow so that's a whole other element not a title make it the title oh you know what i'm saying oh yes yes yes there's something that's that's an interesting concept yeah more people should think about that making the making the location a character yeah yeah um so jerry lewis uh he obviously of course says he's like he was the fucking guy like because he's the epitome of like a vegas guy you know what i mean like with this tension of like he's a philanthropist he's does good but then there's just something where you're like oh my god i'm a philanthropist i'm a philanthropist i'm a philanthropist i'm a philanthropist like i feel like if this guy's tired and he lets his guard down he'll be so mean to me there's a sinister edge for sure and scorsese like you were saying griff also is like he is also like in this tradition of like buster keaton or jacques tati or whoever like these sort of like auteur comedians who make movies and uh lewis said you know i was playing lake tahoe it was a great show uh scorsese calls him what gig is this i'd love to get to i'm playing the reno i'm playing when does this come out who do you call uh and he says i'll go anywhere in the world for you marty i mean this is what jerry lewis says and then he said glaven and ladies scorsese's like i really learned about being a pro from him which is basically just kind of like being an asshole right where it's like script marty's just like you know the way he would kind of like move through crowds the way he would kind of be like protect yourself at a certain time like you know what i mean have real boundaries i think about that mulaney tells that story i think it's on berbiglia's podcast oh no he makes berbiglia tell it's like berbiglia's mom right and was so excited and like and then they're all like he says get out of this the way you pigs i believe it's you fat pigs and they all are still like the greatest there ever was you know shit in my mouth frank i am a fat pig he's yelling at his biggest fans and they only love him more yeah yeah that's awesome um you know but basically scorsese i mean he sort of talks around it but he's basically like the guy's a consummate professional but this is what he's like and he's skirting this kind of like you know nasty energy the whole time and of course yes the woman who screams you should get cancer that actually happened to him that's awesome and and that the beauty of this performance is every time he looks at rupert every before every line of dialogue he has he's deciding whether he should let this fucking guy have it or not every single time he's being polite or whatever frosty but like not right but you know that he could just be like listen you piece of shit yeah like you know like he could do it probably could destroy him to a point where it's like even if he was a physical threat you could make that man melt like a puddle if you wanted to and he's considering it every single fucking time because for him it's like a sport he would actually enjoy doing it right and i think it's what he wants to do i think there are two calculations in his mind one is sometimes you're surprised by who gets successful am i gonna regret it if i shit on this guy now right when the elevator goes the other direction and then the second thing is i think there's probably some part of him like you said that's like i remember having to be this delusional in order to get my career started i want to think i didn't look as lame as this guy but and they kind of get the hustle and they have a bit of a meet cute where it's sort of you right the first meeting is not so bad you could even convince yourself that like this kid fucking pushed some lunatics out of the and look should he have gotten in my car no but it's already and you could tell the calculations making it's like this is already a weird situation let's just get the fuck out of here and it took chutzpah it did you would respect that and again in a suit yeah polite yes nervous like i could this did break just right for him the thing that's crazy is no way do they drop him off the road and he's no way do they drop him off at his house no no no way do they drop him off in his house but but you know for the movie it's a movie yeah and i guess it's sort of back when enough that it does feel like back in those days you didn't live in a gated community if you're famous i don't know i don't know well i was looking up when john lennon was assassinated it was 1980 and that does feel like maybe this moment yeah that's one of those moments where it's like oh yeah you just feel fear if you're a celebrity of like that i could be attacked or hurt by someone who's obsessed with me but by the way i think that's a big reason behind the negative response to this movie and the kind of hostility it was met with where you know that's a great point that happens and people point back to taxi driver and then it's like oh marty's coming out with a new movie about an obsessive fan yeah yeah the fuck is this guy doing is he like breeding psychopaths yeah yeah yeah interesting okay so marty has pneumonia while he's mixing raging bull he wants to do last temptation of christ deniro is like let's just do this we can do it fast we can do it in new york yeah like it won't take a long time to shoot it right there was a director's strike looming and basically like as long as you started it was going to be okay but like you know like they had to start and so he's like i wasn't really feeling ready i was like coughing and like you know writhing on the floor but we did it and the thing scorsese says is like it's funny he's like michael curtis sam fuller ida lupino those guys could make a movie in four weeks i just can't do that like i just it's just not possible and he was like were you shooting scenes multiple times right he was like we have four scenes in a day i'm gonna spend three days on one scene yeah damn yeah uh schuler okay okay jj's not fired because he does note uh it's the only scorsese film that he shoots uh but and scorsese partly blames the slowness on him the film took 20 weeks to shoot damn for that movie that's crazy marvel movie shooting like three weeks right that's fucking nuts dude uh and he says like maybe a faster cameraman would have got me moving more but he's like but fundamentally it's my responsibility well there are shooting in new york which i think is annoying like you know but a five-month shoot for this film is a lot i mean in terms of the really really striking visuals it's a lot of it is set yeah and i pretty isolated not many characters yeah in controlled environments and and i will say the most kind of dp the one the one shot the one setup that really feels like the dp was fucking putting his dick out was like the when it when they're at her apartment it's candles everywhere that shit looks like fucking uh going barry lyndon barry lyndon that shit looks like barry lyndon ben's favorite ben's best friend everything else oh barry lyndon fucking rules dude it's an irish scoundrel i fucking love my shit i just bought a i just believe i called him an irish liar yeah you did yeah and i appreciated that that's funny but it's just interesting because i didn't feel like the i didn't feel like the cinematography was like no it's not like a showy movie the camera doesn't like that though some people are very slow and meticulous in a way that doesn't even register in the final detail of the image right just kind of obsessive and it sounds like that's sometimes those people are helpful for a director who otherwise would be inclined to rush through things too much sure sure it sounds like teaming someone like that up with sorsese is a recipe for disaster yeah yeah i think he's usually better with someone who works pretty fast and i think he's usually better with someone who works pretty fast because what scorsese wants to do is collect a lot of material he wants to try a bunch of shit he doesn't want to wait a long time for things to be set up yeah interesting uh this is thelma schoonmaker's only her third film with marty so this is early in their kind of new collaboration is raging bull the first i believe so right oh no it's the second isn't the whole thing it's like she comes on to try to save new york new york no it's like she did who's that knocking at my door and then she goes i'm gonna and then she goes i'm gonna knock on my door and she reunites with him with raging bull and that's they're together forever so uh she you know that's so fucking awesome and everyone now we're at the point where people give editors their credit but it's like i fucking love scorsese so much but it's like that all that means you also love schoonmaker so much you know what i mean where it's like 50 kind of like so important the language that he settles into from from raging bull on is really a collaboration between the two it's beautiful dude and it's like that's the kind of shit that's the thing i've liked about making movies whatever is like it is collaborative again yeah where's like stand up you're all by your fucking self it's so fucking cool it's like people don't think about how important like a camera like the camera op is bro and it's like i don't know see it's just it's just especially the way those movies are edited yeah you really can't do it with a different editor you know i mean it would take so such a learning curve to figure it out you know what i think about all the time and i think this job still exists it's just very different now with technology but the specific role of the focus puller yeah dude whose job traditionally was they go like okay so in this shot we're starting on his face and we need to rack focus over there yeah you eyeball it sully style you do the math and you go okay so on this line focus pullers are talked about with total reverence but it's like one guy who's just got one control of one dial and is all about timing and like if the actor takes a step forward from where they were in blocking you're just sort of like adjusting real time and then you're like oh my god i'm so sorry i'm so sorry i'm so sorry i'm so sorry i'm so sorry and then we're not gonna know immediately until they print the film and see if you nailed it or not like in video it's totally different you know that's fucking insane that is crazy for film you had to eyeball it and pray that you got it right yeah that rocks that rocks that's cool that's what filmmaking's all about and you're just like when that guy nails it he's a hero yeah and when he botches it everyone is like it doesn't matter what we all did right it's out of focus yeah right i don't know it just feels like this movie's a fucking pain in the ass to make everyone was just tired and exhausted scorsese says they shot a whole jerry langford monologue and decided not to use it because he's kind of like i don't want you to have an opinion on his comedy like you need to know that pupkin's obsessed with him if you think he's funny or not funny it kind of starts to mess with the movie like that's not really what the movie's like it's not about like he has that one joke right to start where he's like you know thanks for waking up or you know where he ribs the sidekick and that's kind of it you really don't know what he's talking about he's talking about ever being funny again and it's all aura it's all it's all he's the fucking man yeah the thing that's important which is what you hire jerry lewis from is this guy carries himself like he's a legend that's all you need to know and the world reacts to him that way and by the way to give him credit because we were saying like oh he's just being himself the fantasy scenes that's some real he's got to do some real acting there you know what i mean like yeah no he's good and my favorite scene that with the the dream sequence where it's he's in the office and he's like you know genius some people are lucky if genius strikes them once it's like it's gonna strike you more than you know what i mean when he's just sucking him off and he's like and they do that the physical choke where you're like oh they let jerry do his thing for a second and you're like that's the funniest fucking thing in the movie where he's like choking deniro back and it goes on way too long it's edited perfect it's edited kind of like a fucking tim and eric sketch actually where it's like it he's choking for four straight fucking seconds and it's his head goes back and forth eight times really shaking his head around like a cartoon character you also get the sense it was a genuine dream came come true for deniro like deniro you know every year tribeca deniro's like which of my movies is experiencing an anniversary that ends with a five or a zero it doesn't talk back right yeah and he did several for this and he'd always do it with jerry lewis and deniro so famous famously taciturn at all these things you can watch the videos of the like king of comedy 30 years later look back things deniro's just laughing the entire time he clearly thinks jerry lewis is the funniest guy in the world this was his childhood hero he's like choke me yeah in my mouth yeah yeah well dude tell me i'm pretty the clip of him and don rickles where it's like he's just shitting on him for not knowing his lines oh the greatest it's incredible honestly no no joke i saw that i was like oh i think i can have a career it's like it's like it's like first of all deniro doesn't know his fucking lines then they just brought in a guy who can just shit on if you're good at writing you're not gonna be able to do it you're not gonna be able to do it you're not gonna even the most famous movie stars in the world will respect that and it's like and honestly they've kind of brought me in i mean tony they brought me in straight up to make fun of the david has seen it now i'm so jealous really fucking anyway yeah you texted like sims i got one question for you and it was an invisitex text of i assume did my roast make it into this bit there's one really stupid bit i really wanted and you know we'll you'll have to see the movie out uh this summer at some point i think it will have just come out sorry is that right i believe so this movie is going to be a hit i think it's going to be a hit i think it's going to be a hit i think it's this episode's coming out september 20th the movie's out baby movie's been out monster dick made it in shit there might be hey i might have a netflix special coming out soon hey wait a second i don't know yet i'll actually i'll tell you guys i'll give it yeah hey my netflix special is coming out now and then we'll put it right there ben's voice just comes in september 11th weird yeah i requested it you're not gonna forget it you'll never forget it netflix is like it's a king of comedy let's talk about it so yeah i don't know yeah let's let's find let's turn the mics on ben let's go okay we're done warming up do you have a quote you ready yeah okay cool we have a studio that's just a cut out of ben and we practice podcasting to him black and white ben hosley you know that mean which mind it it's like uh the it's like listening to this is what listening to podcasts is like oh yes of course the guy laughing along uh this like a guy with a poster oh yes right this is what it's like to listen to a podcast like you know of course we're as famous as jerry lewis that's what's important if you're listening to this right now and you feel attacked of course not you not you you're the google our friend we love you you're the one we're talking to well hold on are you a patreon subscriber you're not gonna be one of these freeloaders getting by off the ads are you So, the film starts with. It starts with Jerry, right? Does it start immediately? The first thing is Jerry. The credits are the credits of the late night show, basically. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then we're with Rupert getting into the car with him. And Sandra Bernhardt going crazy trying to get the autograph. Yeah. God bless her. She's so good. She rocks. What was she. Oh, she was just in Severance. She's still just also in Marty Supreme. She was amazing in Marty Supreme. She was great. She's just such a versatile actor. I saw Marty Supreme with my dad. And her name comes up in the credits. And he goes, where was Sandra Bernhardt in that? And I was like, she played kind of like the Sandra Bernhardt character. What the fuck do you mean? Who do you think she played? But there's, I mean, Fran Drescher. There's so many people in Marty Supreme. It is a little overwhelming. I know. Guess what? She was the woman standing next to Fran. Fran Drescher also complaining. She was meaner Fran Drescher. Yes. With her entire career. Right. Where she's like, can I get a sitcom? And they're like, what if Fran Drescher made you horny in a scary way? Instead of in a regular way. That's basically Sandra Bernhardt. Now, I'm sort of freaked out by Rupert immediately. Yeah. Right? Like, it's like, I don't think the movie's hiding the ball at all. There's something uncanny about him. Yes. That's what's different is we talked about with Taxi Driver, that part of what's interesting in that movie is you can ignore the red flags with him for a little bit. You understand why people give him a chance. Yeah. Rupert, everything just feels off. But like, at the same time, I never really think Rupert's going to kill anyone. Yeah. He's not dangerous in that way, but he is unsettling. He's unsettling. But again, he's so pathetic. And it's also, again, you can see, even though we see him for who he is through the movie does that, you also understand, you understand how in doses you could be convinced this is just a harmless guy who's a little, maybe a little slow, but even maybe not. Maybe he's kind of a weird, nice guy who really wants it. But yes, very quickly we see him because they show him in the scrum with the rest. He clearly knows these people. He's clearly one of the autograph seekers. But acts like he's above them. Yeah. They look to him like a ringleader. He wants to think that he's not at their tier because, of course, he's going to make it. Right. He is going to cross. Hasn't done a goddamn thing. No. Didn't do a fucking mic. All he's done is like just practice the cardboard cutout. It's so important that this is a I could do that guy and not a guy who's actually failing with real stakes and trying to do comedy. But he has been immersed in it seemingly every day. He studies the blade. Like he goes home to his mother's house and he goes into his room. His mother, of course, played by Catherine Scorsese. And just fucking talks to himself. Yes. And by the way, he's like, when his mom calls him, yeah. That's the best acting De Niro's ever done. He's channeled just an annoyed 12 year old. He's like, he's so pathetic and such a little bitch in that moment. I'm like, fuck this guy's. You know what? This De Niro guy's good, man. But yeah, yeah. And then he is unsettling for sure. But you're right. I mean, the movie really just like a rocket. It's like the opening is the monologue. Then it's him having the brief moment with him trying to get his attention, go into the car, freeze frame credits. And then it goes to another night of them waiting outside Sandra Barnum's hard and him getting in the backseat. And then that's like 10 minutes in. He goes to the restaurant with Jerry. Yeah. Yeah. Or he imagines going to the restaurant. Which, by the way, that I think that's the moment where they're just like, hey, and if you didn't get it. Yeah. This guy's an insane piece of shit. You're doing it so early. Yeah. Which I like because there is a reading of him that's like, yeah, even if he has that conversation and it's his big break and oh, fuck. And then what we see him imagining is working on his craft, doing shows like he's like, this is what I love. What he imagines instantly is the guy who just half did him a favor groveling. He doesn't even imagine like in a mansion with chicks getting fucked up. What he's doing this for is Jerry. Like, you'll be doing me a favor is every respect. And he can't imagine more respect than the guy he respects the most begging him streaming of big timing. And he's dreaming of big time. He's dreaming of becoming a piece of shit. Yeah. The thing you're like, you try so hard not to become a fucking guy. Forget, you know, acts like he's fucking Hollywood. Like, if you're a good person, you should, you know, fight against it. He's like, I can't wait to big time. The guy who got me my hero. Yes. Are you fucking kidding me? That's it's that to me is the moment you're like, oh, he is a piece of shit. He talks about how Jerry had like a big break where he was a guest host. Right. Like he like and he's like, I remember when I watched that. And that was he clearly thinks like, that's what will happen. I'll do one gig. I'll do one appearance on his show and I'll explode like it'll be just this exact same thing. He has no obvious real notion of what Jerry's life is, which is funny because it's like now the obsessive fan might know everything about him. And instead, he has more just like an idea of like what he is as a famous guy or whatever. We should also talk about this for half a second because it is almost a novel concept at this point in time. But you were saying this, that Johnny Carson didn't love working and every year would take more and more weeks off and they would have guest hosts and they would have people under contract where like Jay Leno is guaranteed 10 weeks of the show per year. And there were many of them in rotation. And part of that was seen as like Johnny's laziness. And part of it was seen as a generosity of giving other people a shot and letters. Totally. Right. Right. And then Joan Rivers took a rival show and he like never talked to her again. Jay was the most popular and most successful. Guest host. But Letterman obviously had the slot after. And Leno ended up getting the show because they threatened him with he's going to go to another network unless you give him the Tonight Show. He's going to gazump you. And when Leno took over, he was like, I'm never fucking taking a day off because that's how I beat Carson. I'm not letting snakes in. He's the guy who that's he got, you know, he was the he also did it for scale. Right. Like everybody. That was his nut. Everybody. Everybody. Yeah, exactly. He doesn't spend that money. Tour money. No, it's fucking crazy. Like at that at the trial period, everybody else. There's a story where I think it was in the Shandling documentary or somewhere like that where Shandling was one of these guys, too. That's why. And we got the better version of this. Like Larry Sanders. Larry Sanders. I don't want to do a talk show. I want to do a show about a talk show. Awesome. By the way, the greatest show. But yeah, everybody else like, hey, like we're going to negotiate with the network. We're all in. We feel like, you know, we're basically doing Johnny's job for him. Right. We should get paid. Not. We should get paid real money. Five or six big ones. Leno was like. Nah, fuck it. I'm doing it for scale. I'm a fucking company, man. And that's a fucking dickhead. And just made it a countdown clock and was like, you have like 15 minutes to like decide before I run off and become competition. But but this is part of his fantasy is like, well, that's how Jerry got this. Yeah. And I could get big the same way. And I wanted to get the exact line because it's the moment for me that is so definitional of what a piece of shit he wants to imagine being is that he goes like. The exact line is, I'll do anything for you. Just please don't make me do six weeks. Right. That I'll give you anything, but don't ask me to do six weeks. I can't take over the show for six weeks and that he plays it with such exasperation. It's not even he's dreaming of a brush off of being like, I don't know, six weeks is a long time. He's like six weeks said, kill me, Jerry, please. What other favor can I do for you? Yeah. Not hosting the show that I currently dream about. Oh, he's past the dream. He's. Dreaming about being past. He didn't even dream one time hosting the show. No, no, no. He jumps fucking off. He still is dreaming of having the same shitty mustache and haircut. But everyone loves the look isn't going anywhere. The worst suits of all time. He's got the look dialed in. But but also like while this conversation is happening, the Sardis caricature artist is there drawing and he's like, he made you bigger. Yeah. Which I think is really funny. In his dream, he's still like getting cucked a little bit. He's a little petty. Yeah. But this is all like. Like 15 minutes of the movie. It's so fast. You're straight to it. And then he goes right from there. He shows you the operating the the what's important to him. The like number one, big time, my hero. Number two, go to engage in a romantic relationship with the symbolic woman. The woman I loved when I was fucking 16 and I was too much of a coward. Now I'm using the cred of having a conversation. With Jerry Langford to now I immediately need to turn this into a, again, symbolic relationship. If I can convince her that I'm a big deal, I close the loop. Like, that's what it is. It's that he never got over the fact that she wouldn't, you know, that she wouldn't give him the time of day or didn't see him that way or that he never had the courage or whatever it is. He is still suck on. Man, I wish I had dated her when I was 16. I wish I had kissed her one time. Which, by the way, another thing they nail about everyone that wants to be a stand up comedian. Yes. It's like. If I had gotten pussy in high school, I'm probably a lawyer in Baltimore right now. Like, truly, it's like it's like you're just trying. Everyone is just looking. This is the one thing you can do for attention from beautiful girls. But what's interesting about him is and I think they make a very explicit point of saying this. Like, look, she doesn't even remember him. She's clearly her life's not going good because she agrees to go out with him. Yeah. And she she even is not having a good time. And then at the very end, she's like, well, I guess you're entitled to come up for some coffee. And she's like, look, I'll suck you off. Just leave me alone. And he doesn't want to. He's like, how? He's almost like offended that because this is not about that to him. No. And he also doesn't want pity. It's like, no, him. The only thing he wants is for her to be impressed by him. And in the same way, it's like he would fantasize about being like, come on, I'm tired. We've already fucked five times today. Right. Right. Yeah. Yes. He'll leapfrog to that over dreaming of sleeping with her. But it's not because it's about his king and queen. Yes. It's about it's proof of the girl, the specific girl. It's like he's just trying to be cool for high school. You made something of yourself. I mean, look at the not to jump. We can go chronologically, but jump ahead to the fucking nothing. There's not a lot of plot until he gets to his house. Like the first half of the movie is relatively disconnected. And like it's mostly just his fantasy. But it goes to drop off the tape. It goes for sure. Right. That scene that's so uncomfortable where he just keeps being like, well, we'll get back to you. And he's like, so what about what time do you think? Yeah. I can just wait here. I don't have anywhere to be. I like this chair. The first half of the movie is him getting brushed off, largely not even by Jerry. And kind of politely. A little bit. And very politely. For the for the context. Considering. Incredibly polite. Right. And then, like, I feel like it kicks into the second act once he goes to Jerry's house. And Jerry has to kind of like, you know, remove him more like, you know, it has to humiliate him. Essentially. I just was going to say, because I don't want to skip over it when he is having the. The dream sequence. The next moment or next scene is showing Jerry at home. Right. How sad his fucking life is pathetic. That's a great point. And I think that is a really I didn't pick up on that. When I first saw this movie as a younger man, but now really recognize like this guy has achieved the dream. And he is sad and lonely. Eating a fucking like sandwich and his like palatial home. Right. With his staff who are like, good job. You know, a lot of that feels like Johnny Carson commentary, who was famously a very antisocial guy, like just didn't like talk to people. Right. Didn't have friends and show business outside of the show was divorced many, many times and was just kind of like a quiet to himself alcoholic. Yeah. And that was like basically known like he would make jokes on air about like another big divorce settlement. And then that's like the most personable guy in the world. I'm telling you the joke that I think about. I think it's George Axelrod was he was basically like if people had like red lights in the middle of their heads, then Johnny would be really social. Like if he if essentially like if there's a camera on, that's when he's like that. And I just couldn't operate. And there wasn't a guy when when people weren't around. And that was the problem with every one of his marriages. Oh, yeah. He'd be a great Twitch streamer. It sounds like Johnny Carson, dude. You needed a camera going live. Could you imagine that would be awesome. Do 20 hours of a trash stream. That sounds pretty fun. Yeah. That's a great point, though. And then, yeah, like. And the funny thing about the house, too, when he visits his house, too, is like. He's going off of a conversation he had. That's when he's the most insane, because everything else is rooted in some sliver of reality. But the invitation to his house happens fully in a dream sequence. Yes. Fully. Oh, yeah. Right. There is no even hinting at it in any other point. And that's the point where you're like, oh, this guy's fucking a loon because he's been tossed out of the. - At that point he had been tossed out, right? He had been goaded into going back up there by, sandra bernhardt and i think he's already gotten the call back from the talent person oh he's been rejected he's been tossed out right but also once again like work harder on your material it's not every chance yeah it's not excuse me sir lose this number she takes the time to call him back what david again just so funny we think you guys are just like i mean he's close he's like he actually really has this moment you should have put it in the you put that persistence in i mean this is pathetic but like yeah i'm like dude i'm literally a like in everything but comedy in comedy i am a fucking like uh pull yourself up by your bootstraps republican in light you know i am the exact opposite of my political stance where i'm like they say no they say fucking promise to you you motherfucker go out and work go hit go bomb for five fucking years straight and like he has every opportunity to do that and he just does not but yes i do i cannot help it david but like see this motherfucker be like come on bro also genuinely like just try it try it twice you fucking brick but when we're saying that he's close i think like this guy could very easily have a career as like a host he could be a middle on the road absolutely he could like headline in small markets he would if he stuck with it eventually get on at least a handful of late night slots because it was a smaller industry and if you had a good enough five minutes eventually you'd get it would he get a sitcom ever no would he ever become a giant star i don't think so who knows because who knows the thing number one predicting predicting factor in somebody being successful in show business is that they are a sociopath this is that is the number one fortunately absolutely predictive thing that's what it's like not even that i respect him as an artist but it's like bro you have the insanity needed and the drive it's like how many shitty fucking people do we know that just like may like i know people have like spreadsheets of fucking journalists to to like pretend they're friends with i know people who have like you know no no when when some you know when they're being you know they're friends with agents it's like yeah you're an agent you don't even work with is that your fucking birthday party right the fuck out of here you know what i mean it's like like i don't know if you find this as well but i i think some of those people a lot of those people in fact once they get not even fame but like whatever kind of brass ring they're going for i want a headline here i want to get a tv spot i want to get this festival i want to get this festival whatever it is there's a feeling of oh fuck this doesn't complete me and i don't know how to sustain the hustle anymore i thought this would all sort of fall into place but there is that like that there are people you meet where you're like one way or another that guy's gonna figure something out because this guy's not gonna quit until he gets some sense of completion in him yeah and it's not a meritocracy at all no some guys just fucking grind and and wear everyone down and he sort of did that yeah he's not a meritocracy at all he's not a meritocracy at all he was even kind of good he's close to being the successful kind of psycho yeah and he takes a step over the line and can't go backwards the king of mics he's the yeah he could if you just show up to enough mics all the fucking time yeah you would just get booked on those shows and then that's your stepping stone to get on the bigger kind of show and to eventually get into like doing clubs because you get past i mean no there's a way to do it and it doesn't you don't even have to be funny necessarily not at all not at all you need just sort of professional enough which he is he does an impression of a professional comedian it's like a comedy adjacent enough that like audiences and clubs who aren't comedy fans would feel comforted by what he's doing if he could just have like 20 better joke writing but but but also he's definitely not a guy who ever will look inward at all and that's really the that's his limiting factor for sure is like he just cannot he cannot look within at even for one second no and even at the end when he fantasizes about doing this big you know kind of tell all uh about his life he doesn't know where the joke is exactly he just thinks saying like my dad used to beat me will like make people cheer which is another hallmark of open micers attempting yes how many open micers are like all right man we don't need to hear about your mom getting cancer bro you're not you're not you don't have the the the like tools i'm gonna scare him with dark shit you're like every time i'm gonna scare him with dark shit everyone tries to do that oh that right after that tig special that louie put oh that fucked everything you know how many fucking open mics are getting real confessional it's like get the i believe it because the whole story was like she didn't even plan on doing it just went up there right and you must feed home yeah yeah yeah yeah fuck that was a menace on mics man and yeah as an open mic at the time who just didn't do anything i was like i just watched it but it was like fuck this is brutal and i tried some of that shit about my family and guess what it wasn't funny for another 10 years right you know like now and even now it's like fuck i'm not gonna be able to write about the fucked up shit going on now but you know for another five years so your your hours like someone with a big rolling pin someone else is smashing a plate you're looking at pictures of around i'm trying to talk about this sensitively i don't know what your family is um you you talked about this your hour you did at radio city that will be out maybe on netflix on now but you january 6th yeah i requested that date storm the servers and storm the servers specials let's end this woke bullshit stop the steel three-body problem can no longer command the view counts um i uh i there was stuff in your hour where you were sort of like tiptoeing around heavier family stuff and then you'd sort of say like that's for next year yeah that's for the next special going on right now one of those things which isn't to say that you you won't someday be able to like harness this stuff you know or that you couldn't do it tomorrow if you wanted to but i was like when it just drops as like a stealth bomb of you just making this offhand comment that hints at something a lot heavier it's so much funnier than when the person comes up and tries to do the tignitaro where it's like for 40 minutes i'm going to open my soul and you're like you got to be so precise and you got to be going through such a specific set of circumstances that are actually unique to call hold everyone's attention on that you also have to be a human being with like an actual personality that has like real life maturity big rolling pin big rolling absolutely well i will say with jokes just like movies it's like you want there to be much more that you don't get to right you want it to be so layered like like the best move like the shit that has stirs up a fandom like lord of the rings or some shit like that where it's like you see a little bit but then people like yo what the fuck are those horse guys up to and then you start start i mean who am i talking to star wars you know what i mean how many fucking novels they wrote yeah exactly based on that and then you start talking about on that shit and stand-up is not as deep an art form as filmmaking at all but you still want people to want you want some more depth some jokes are boba fett some jokes are you with control of the situation acting like you're telling them slightly more than you wanted to when in reality you're telling them way less so much more to it that's actually fucked up but not funny right yeah yeah but anyway what else happens in this movie after he gets kicked out of the the house that's when i feel like they go into ransom mode yes yeah sandra bernhardt right it's kind of like he's like okay me being polite and sort of nagging people i tried the traditional route right sneaking into a man's car right right right right right i tried to pay my dues right right yeah i've tried to pay my dues show up in his home executive producer directly three times assistant directly three times no but that is his attitude and he's like unfortunately there's no other option yeah and i feel like bernhardt is the what the nuclear bomb he kind of knows like her energy will be useful to me yeah he's not like her friend and all these late night hosts have these things yeah well like they are connected by him their relationship is can we talk about this for a second because it's like i watch it again to be like am i the first time i'm like is there any sexual tension there's not he's not a very sexual character right he is a completely asexual have any desires other than respect from right he's not even like i'll be rich and i'll play golf he just wants to be rich and i'll play golf he just wants to be rich and i'll play golf he just wants to be on tv he wants he i think even more specifically than that wants like everyone he went to high school with to see him on television and go wow i used to bully that kid but he's the man and look at him now yeah he just imagines that moment and that's the kind of the beauty of this movie is that it is not about anything but symbols like this this is this is a you know we talk about we you know at the beginning we joked about it being like him inventing parasocial relationships but this is at a time where he's like i'm not going to be able to do anything and you said it david where it's like now people actually know way more about everyone this is a time where parasocial relationship you actually had to completely invent it these people are not you he's an opaque person you don't know anything about it yes sandra bernhardt is like you know clear some i'm guessing some rich girl who like her parents were you know whatever for some reason she's a rich girl who this person and this is her way of acting out well that's the harley quinn character in joker folia duh oh hell but it does feel like it's a similar backstory i will say i have not seen it but it's a similar backstory i will say i have not seen it but it's a similar oh you didn't want to see that i did not i started watching some of it i basically watched enough on a plane so i could take a picture of tim dillon and be like lol and send and text it to him uh that's all that's all i did it for uh but um like yes it's she it's all symbols or ideas they don't know this guy at all and for him too it's like he wants nothing but the symbolic like yes everyone was wrong i'm the fucking man i mean the wedding his literal principle is like - Right, 'cause that's like the most authoritative person you can think of. That's crazy. He's a child. It's interesting. It's like, when he does his set, he doesn't do any political humor, right? He doesn't make fun of Jimmy Carter. Part of that is that in a movie, you can't do topical humor. I understand. But it does still become characterization. But it does feel like, right. It's like, no, this guy doesn't even know about that. That's not really something he gets. He's in one track exclusively. I also think it's like, you talking about the parasocial, I thought for a second, Stavi, you were raising your hand to make a point, and then I realized you were doing arm exercises. I was just doing arm exercises for my broken arm. My PT told me to do them. I was going to say that it has been an extensive history. It's scaled down now that our culture is less monolithic. But these talk show hosts having really extreme stalkers, and people who are convinced delusionally that they are in a relationship with this person, and like Letterman had several who were very high profile. I believe Johnny Carson several as well. Leno maybe had zero but you're right. It was like much more of an invented backstory, and part of it was in a world where you're not getting that kind of intimacy from things like podcasts or YouTubers or fucking whatever. People were like, I fall asleep with Johnny every night. This is a ritual with me. He does monologues to me. This feels like the most consistent relationship in my life. And people you would hear always would like in court say like, well, he was we were talking all the time, and they were like, you were having conversations with him, and they'd be like, well, he would wear a blue tie to signal something to me. Like, truly, it would be stuff like that. And when he does this with his ear, that's him saying, I love you. Yeah. I mean, yeah, absolutely. That's, again, Marty, on top of it because yeah, you're right. This is the closest to a fucking podcaster you get because they're there every day, and they're not acting, right? They're just talking. I mean, they obviously are to some degree, but you don't know that as somebody watching, you're like, oh, it's just a guy. The trick is he's just really interested in people. Yeah. Yeah. And so, yeah, Bernhardt basically goads him into fucking storming. Then he goes to the house, which was a hilarious scene where Jerry's finally like, fuck, you're a fucking piece of shit. You know, Hitler made a mistake to you in comparison to Hitler. It's also funny that it's like her fantasy basically is just to like sexually dominate him. It's not even she's so undeterred by him not only being uninterested in her, but being hostile against her. It's just like, I just want to fucking rule you. Well, that makes sense, right? He's a powerful older guy, especially if she means something to her parents. He's like a father figure. He's probably been around long enough that, right, it's like he represents something nostalgic and in that creepy way for her. Yes. Well, I mean, we're all just talking around like the word like daddy issues or whatever, but yeah, sure. She's so good. Now, this is something I call me for. Yeah. Did she get critics award? She got the National Society and she got a BAFTA nom. This movie was weirdly loved by the BAFTAs. It got like seven BAFTA noms. Nothing else. Okay. Best jokes, Rupert Pumpkin. No, it's like the whole cast got nominated. Like the bat. I mean, maybe it's the Jerry Lewis effect. Yeah, Europe. But like it was like best director, best actor, De Niro, best supporting actor, Lewis, like, you know, a one best screenplay and like zero Oscar noms, right? Oh, yeah. Because it was a bomb. It was a big bomb. Yeah. The moment where she's holding the gun and she's like, can I, can I please have a second? Like that was the, I mean, I thought she was good and had an incredible presence, most of it. But that scene, I was like, holy fuck, that's incredible. She feels genuinely dangerous and it's fascinating because. Much more so than Rupert. That's the thing. And then 10 years into a career where you're like, I know what Robert De Niro movies deliver. I'm watching this guy who seems a little quiet and introverted, but he might explode at any moment. And in this, he never pops and she's the one popping and she won't fucking stop. Even when he first kidnaps Jerry and he gets out of the car, he drops the fucking gun. It's so good. His look is incredible, by the way. I tried his like sort of, yeah, his dress down look. I did immediately think I, this might be my Halloween costume this year. People would be like, are you doing a shitty Tony Clifton? Yeah. I mean, so many, like the big glasses, it's like kind of Leo from One Battle. And then the weird fedora, like everything about it is just so funny. And then the series of signs that he translates into being cue cards. That's what I was going to say. Don't walk around with a cue card that says I have a gun. I replicated one for the photo for this episode and I will throw it out. Good. I will walk into our closest place. I just want to protect you guys. Thank you. Did I tell you guys that I tell you a story about like, because I had a fake gun on Begonia. Oh yeah. And the difference between England, because we shot most of it in England. We shot the exteriors here. That, so I had a fake gun and you know, I've gotten fake guns for shit and usually they fight. They're like BB guns, whatever. This was a fully plastic gun, right? And I, so I was like, oh, funny. And I just take it out of the gun. I start fucking pointing at people's heads. I'm like, I pointed to a PA said, I'm like, give me a fucking peanut butter. I'm going to kill you. And the armor was like, ah, he's like, oh my God, what are you doing? And I was like, bro, it's a fucking plastic gun. He's like, no, no, we cannot have that. It's like the gun safe. I guess this makes sense, but I get it. But I feel like he's like my larger job is to make sure that no one ever fucking does that. Like whatever I give them, right? Like it's like rule number one, we don't pretend to shoot anyone. The whole rust issue was being like, this is a fake gun. Why would I hesitate to pull the trigger? Well, also, isn't it like a hundred year old gun? No, I know. I know. That was a perfect storm. But like those guys job is to be so intense about everything to correct for the one in eight million times that the worst fucking possible thing happens. It is funny. But he was jerking off the gun. He was just being a real Ben, about the gun stuff. That's all I'm saying. Fucking whiner. Big Ben. The disciplinarian. Big Ben! One last thing. When he's getting kicked out, I want to highlight how funny the shot of him running back and forth when it's locked on the hallway door and you see Rupert. And then the camera follows and he runs past the camera and it follows him through the fucking. That was like, holy fuck, that's an incredible. Because to go seemly, from a hilarious slapstick like him running back and forth Looney Tunes bit to then doing, I guess, I don't know, fucking they just follow him through the. It was so fucking awesome and just I mean, that was shot. That's another thing where it's like, if that's the, you know, cinematographer, that's fucking awesome. It does feel like Scorsese, Hitchcock and Spielberg are like the three big Western. They actually know how to use camera moves to evoke emotions 100% of the time. In a way that feels supernatural. And Hitchcock, it was like dread and tension and Spielberg, it's like, you know, wonder and awe and excitement. And Scorsese's the king of using camera moments to make you just feel really fucking weird. You know, just like, oh, what is this weird mood? Because it went from really funny to like now frantic, which is kind of probably what you felt like what it would feel like if a fucking lunatic was running through your office. You'd be like, who the fuck is that kind of powdered blue tuxedo knocking over the Doritos? And then it becomes like, oh, wait, is this guy a fucking lunatic? Anyway, I just wanted to point out that one camera move before we move on to the like kidnapping portion. But yeah, basically they have this, the phone call with the cue cards. Where he just negotiates that he's going to be the guy, that the guest is going to be bumped, that he's going to get his shot. And then he just leaves him with Sandra Bernhardt. And this is all like, let's see, they get into the back of the car over an hour into the movie. It's like an hour, 50 minute movie. It's not a long movie. It's one of his shortest movies. It's an hour. They get him in the car. They're on the phone. Like when he, when Sandra Bernhardt is with him for the first time, it's an hour and 20 minutes. Okay. He's in the studio around the same time. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. And then the movie at this point is just like Sandra Bernhardt's going off and De Niro's getting ready. He's all taped up and De Niro. Yeah. And his tape suit is so funny. Again, just as pure slapstick cuts. There's so many funny cuts and like how he'd be like him mad is so funny. Such a funny laugh. So much more tape than you think there would be. So much more tape than necessary. Yeah. Hold on. Let me see. Yeah. Anyway, sorry. I took a couple notes, but. Hey, we love notes. No. Anyway, you should have kept a cast. I know you don't have a cast anymore and then you could have written the notes on your I should have. No, you're right. You know what? Speaking of open mics, I do want to call out my favorite weirdo open mic guy I ever saw. Like one of those like one time open mic wonders was a guy who looked like an IT guy in his 40s who said he had taken the Metro North in to do the show. He called it a show. It was a pure open mic and his bit was that he was doing like his version of Letterman top 10 lists. It was like the top 10 websites on the Internet or I think it was top 100. Sure. And the bit was that he kept being like numbers 83 to 70 porn. Okay. But for some inexplicable reason, he's wearing like a shirt and tie and slacks and he chose to pull his tie up and act like he was reading the notes off the back of his tie. There were no notes on the back of his tie. It's almost a choice. He had planned to bring a piece of paper with him, didn't have it and was like, what makes the next? Oh, of course, tie notes. And he just really wanted to nail the cue card, like note card. But my buddy Sam Rogal and I just always talk about that guy where we're like, we genuinely laughed about as hard as that guy as we've ever laughed at any professional comedian. I mean, I remember one of the first open mics. This is how long I'm doing standup was it was Hillary Clinton was running against Barack Obama Obama, and there was an old guy, and the thing that stays in my, it's just an old guy who was doing fine, you know, not bombing, not killing, and then he just, like, it was around the time of the Iowa caucus, and he's just like, Hillary, yeah, I'm sure Hillary did really good at the cock ass, and it was like, what are you, are you saying she got, like, what are you even, but he, and he said, yeah, Hillary did real well at the cock ass, and he just kept saying caucus is cock ass. But you're like, right, is this pointed, is there any commentary here, do you just hear caucus on TV and think, that's funny, it sounds like cock and ass, and that's where the joke begins and ends. And there was, he didn't even particularly seem like a guy who hates Hillary Clinton, like, he wasn't like a weird Republican, whatever, it was, I think it was just pure, right down the middle misogyny, where it's like, oh, there's a woman running, cock and ass, you know, maybe they fuck her in the ass, whatever. He's never forgotten this. Dude, I know exactly what that guy looks like, he's an old guy, he has, like, kind of, that fucking brown gray hair, aviators on, he's wearing a sweater, it's literally seared into my mind. Do you have one, Ben, like a classic open mic weirdo? Well, I'm thinking of, and I wonder if this is a guy that crossed either of your paths, do you remember Ron? He was an older guy, he had a ponytail, and his whole shtick, he always went at the end of the show. Ron was an Eastville guy, right? Yes, definitely. I remember him vividly, yeah. I worked at the Creek briefly, he was always there. He would be at every show, and yet, everyone was so annoyed with him, because he was terrible, that he was always last, and it would, you know, it'd be like a fucking bucket show, or whatever. Last in an open mic is like, last in a real show, you're headlining, last in an open mic is everyone's left. Yes. It also means, like, you're going on after three hours, and Ron would act like he was headlining. Ron would take to the stage with the energy of, here to close it out. But it was a bucket show where it was, randomly, your name would get picked, and yet, he was always that last one, right? They would pick up Ron and be like, not Ron. They would tape a rock to Ron's slip in the bucket, so that it would always be at the bottom. Look, those mics were always rigged, you know what I mean? Those mics were like, fucking, you know. But then he would go up there. I had the votes, I had the votes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He would go up there and just mostly do eating pussy jokes, of course. Pretty good. Hell yeah. Ron awoke King. Sounds pretty good. A thoughtful lover. You're a fucking, uh. And it's like, this is a 55-year-old man. Yeah. Uncle June. Thumbs up. Yeah, right, yeah. And then he sees people singing, but he's like, no, no, no, no, no, no. Woo. Uncle June eats box. Shout out to Ron, dude. That's awesome. Yeah, Ron. I just always think of when Ricky Gervais did his stupid special where he got to talk to, it was like, Rock, CK, and. And Seinfeld. I know what you're going to say. And he brings up the guy who says, sitting on a cock because I'm gay. It's CK brings him up. Right, right. And Ricky Gervais is like, oh, that sucks. And the rest of them are like, nah, it's pretty funny. That's actually kind of terrible when I think about it every day. He does the Otis Ray. Otis Redding. And they get into the logic, and they're just like, the implication that he has to do it. Because he's gay. The wording of. Yeah. Sitting on a cock because I'm gay. Because. Yeah. And by the way, I mean, listen, what is Comptown if not sitting on a cock because I'm gay 1,000 times? Sitting on a cock because I'm gay launched a million podcasts. I'll still slip into that. I, you know, maybe, maybe they fucking went back and time traveled and watched me in an open mic. Yeah. You're going to turn out to be the looper. Oh, my God. All right. So they tie him up. They. Yeah. No, it goes straight to basically. Right. Sandra Bernhardt driving him insane. Yeah. And she's so funny. And getting getting ready. Tony Randall. Very funny. Yes. The guest host. Yeah. Yeah. Doing exactly what he's supposed to do. He's really. And Scorsese giving him the joke. Yeah. I do. I mean, this is a classic talk about like it's sort of approach to street casting. This is a movie that has like. Like four different and a special appearance by blank as themselves. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. In the opening credits. But you have Joyce Brothers. You have Victor Borge. You have Tony Randall, who's such a good like sub in. Perfect. And that guy that doesn't exist, by the way. Like, yeah, these guys are just hosts on a bench. Yeah. It's not a job that exists. Presenter, host. Entertainment has just gone in such a different direction. And a guy like Tony Randall, who's like not a comedian. He's an actor, but he's a very skilled. Comedic actor. He doesn't have like a standup act. But these guys know reliably. He's one of the best guests. If people drop out, always get Tony Randall on panel. And he can read a cue card. He'll fill in. It's fine. He doesn't want to do this, but he'll do it. There are presenters, but they're really now like on TikTok and YouTube. Well, yeah. I mean, I do think some of it is a yes. TikTokers have become, which is a real bad thing. I mean, some of them are really good, but some of them are fucking dog shit at it. So, yes, I think that. And also, like, it becomes, it's kind of seen now as like, all right, if you can't get into act. Like, I remember I was offered a couple, a couple things. And my agents were like, we don't want people to think of you as a host. So, now I think it's seen as a lower thing. Whereas at the time, I think it was like, that's the job you want. Of course. Because it's like you run the coolest club in the world. Right? Like, it's like, yeah. And I would love to. I mean, when you guys were talking about the six. Like, I don't want to. These shows seem like a fucking nightmare. I don't ever want to be tied down. But I would love to do a week. That would be fucking awesome. Like, that would be fun. I'm a little. Well, I don't know if I should say this on mic. I don't know if it's a thing you can't talk about. But I'm a little surprised you haven't gotten the ass to do these types of things yet. But it feels like that's more about these jobs disappearing. I think it's just about the disappearing. Yeah. I mean, I would love to do them. And like, yeah. Call Byron Allen. Call Byron. It's time to get on. Unleashed. Wait, have you done Byron Allen? No, I think. I think. Yeah. I don't know if I'm going to get unleashed yet. I'm scared to get fully unleashed. Right. Right. Because this is me. Lord knows what will happen. If I'm fully unleashed on Byron Allen's comics unleashed, bro. You know, I'm a different guy. It might be the first time he leashes a comic. He might go absolutely. Leash him up. He's talking about eating pussy in Israel too much. Oh, God. No, I mean. But those jobs are just. Like, you do it more like for. It's so funny because I loved Seth. Doing Seth Meyers was so awesome. And he's the man. He's great at it. And it felt more like, whoa, this is. This is just like. It almost felt like fantasy camp. Like, whereas like, I would love to do those shows. And it is an opportunity to be funny. But it's like, yeah. They just don't exist the way they used to. They're so strange now. Yeah. And it is. I guess we've. We're on the thing that replaced them. Like, we're. Of course. We're talking on it right now. And now Seth has one of these. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sure Colbert. Will soon announce that he has one of these. Or whatever. Our buddy Connor Ratliff said a year or two ago. He was like, I had the legitimate thought of which ends first. The Tonight Show or Blank Check. And I was like, Connor, the fuck are you talking about? And a year later, I was like. It might be a photo finish. Yeah. I'm not going anywhere. And I don't really get it with that. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, man. I had to like cover the last week of the Late Show because the Atlantic cares. Right. And like, I was, you know, it's like, I, you know, I grew up with Stephen Colbert. I love Stephen Colbert. I don't watch the Late Show. I don't watch the Late Show anymore. No. I don't see a clip or whatever. No. Yeah. But so I had to kind of like dial back into it. And he's kind of like peering into the past. It's weird. Like, you know, just like that format. It's not bad. No. No, there's still good stuff being done. It's a lab for some good stuff. I think Seth is good. I don't know. When's the last time I watched a full episode of Seth Meyers? I don't. I watched clips. But I watched a lot more. Yeah. I mean, I watched Fallon Every Night. Yeah, of course. That's just a jacket. Yeah. Yeah. You don't watch Seth. They feed it. You don't watch Jimmy. They feed it into your vein. Yeah. Right. Right. And then it comes out of your balls. But it was the weird thing of Colbert when he had that show. I remember being really excited because I loved Colbert and I loved the Colbert report. And I was like, oh, this guy is an interesting. He's this. He's he's he's done an interesting show. There's some of the best satire. He's going to do something different. Right. And instead, no, he more fit to the old fashioned format. He kind of neutered, in my opinion, kind of neutered himself to the same problem that I think. Like, I mean, they never let the Conan show fucking breathe for a second. But part of me is just like, I love like I want masturbating, like bring the masturbating bear to fucking 11, baby. You know what I'm saying? It's about time. They would have. I mean, Conan definitely would have figured it out. Conan was the best. For me, it was when Corden went. Right. I mean, we had to talk to you on the ledge. This is over. I mean, you were on the top of Blank Check headquarters going like, it's over. You're holding a big rock. You're going to jump. Ben, Corden was never going to last that long. He was always challenging the powers that be. Yeah, that's true. Right. Right. He spoke too much truth on that show. He was so fucking wild. Yeah. Yeah. You couldn't put it. Talk about somebody who couldn't be, who was on leash. Talk about someone who didn't give a shit. Yeah. Who was just like, I'm doing what I think is funny and I don't care what anyone else thinks. I have no ulterior motives taking this job. It has nothing to do with trying to break into America. No, I'm not trying to book other gigs. I'm not just desperate to play a mouse in Girlboss Cinderella. That's when, that's really when Late Night dies. The fat, the fat mouse. Gus is Gus? The funniest. They changed the name, right? No, the funny. Yeah, he's Gus. Yeah, he's Gus. Don't worry. It was in Bad Girlboss Cinderella. You'll get to play Gus. I want to play Gus. You'll play Gus. In a better one. It's fine. They just announced a Wicked Stepsisters only movie. Yeah. I bet you could be Gus. I was doing that. Gus was my guy, bro. Oh, really? Yeah. You should look into that. Call him up. Honestly, I'm going to try, dude. Who's got Gus, Gus? Yeah, exactly. Gus, no joke. That fat little mouse was, again, I'll throw that into Roger Rabbit and- Hercules, Hercules. Hercules, Hercules. That fat little mouse, so big for me. Yeah. I love him. how Emily Ishida talks about how Nia Nyum from Star Wars was Asian to her? Even though, like, obviously he's an alien, but she was like, there were just no Asian characters, so I was like, he is Asian. And she was, like, empowered by it. She was like, I exist in this universe. And you're just like, you see Gus, and you're like, this is me. I fucking love this guy. He's clearly my personality. My daughter loves Gus. That movie is. My daughter loves that movie so much. Really? The original? Is that her favorite of, like, the classics? I guess so, because what are the others? Like, Peter Pan, that was one I put on where it has, like, the woke Disney thing at the front where we're like, we're sorry about this movie. And you're like, oh, Jesus, who cares? Then you watch Peter Pan, and you're like, damn. Racist as hell. The Native American shit is out of control. But, like, so she never really cared about that. What are the other classics? She's never seen, like, Pinocchio. Pinocchio, Dumbo. Kind of bored her. Snow White. I've never shown her Dumbo, because that'll fuck her up. Snow White terrified her, and she refuses to watch it. Bambi, you're not going to show her. Which one? Bambi. Song of the South, I showed her that, but I was like, she loves it. Right, just absorb the information. Right. This one is new. This is cool. Right. Yeah. How fucked up would it be to show an adorable little kid, and she's just vibing with racist shit? She's like, she has no context for it. You're just like, what? Does my DNA contain a super racist? It just makes sense. That's how things should be. We've talked about this before, but, like, it'll come up in the box office game that Song of the South was re-released in theaters in, like, 1989. Where we're like, they were keeping it in circulation so much later. Brutal. By the time we're, like, growing up in conscious, they're like, we don't put this out on video. No. They never gave it that permanence, and yet, like, they were showing Zippity-Doo-Dah all the time. Zippity-Doo-Dah never went away. Kids today don't know what that's from. And they're like, don't worry. Zippity-Doo-Dah, baby. We would see the scene. It would be, like, No, I love Zippity-Doo-Dah. Yeah, of course. Everyone loves it. It's a big hit. When Zippity-Doo-Dah comes in your club. The little birds. Yeah. The little bird on his shoulder. It's back that ass up and Zippity-Doo-Dah. The two must get on the dance floors for Zippity-Doo-Dah feet, Fat Joe. That's what the 90s were, kids. I'm sorry. You might not like it, but. So, he does this monologue. Do we want it? We've talked about it already, but, like, do we. It's, like, an incredible sustained performance. I think it's incredible because it's. Right. It's just kind of funny and regular enough. Whereas, that's one thing I don't like about Joker. Oh, yeah. Brutal. He just sucks. Yes. And you're just like, yeah, right. I get it. I got it. The Joker has to follow him. My friend, Sam Morrell. Better than following the Joker. That'd be tough to win the room back after Joker gets up. Right. Ben, what were you gonna say? Uh, he performs in a way where you can tell he's practiced it in the mirror and taped himself and listened to himself a million times. It's kind of no perfect. Right. Yeah. Where it's so honed, but again, has never done it in front of anyone ever before. I will say, like, yes, watching that. I mean, obviously, we all know De Niro is the best, one of the best actors of all time. Good at being in movies. But the way that he. And they said that he did that in one take, too, which is incredible, right? There are no cuts in the sequence. It goes on. It's so long. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They did it. They filmed it like you film a real stand-up set. And the fact that, yes, not only is he doing that, but his rhythm. He does this insane thing where his rhythm is just a little off from the audience, which is like, what a guy who doesn't really know how to perform. Like, you can nitpick, like, would this guy even be this good? You can nitpick, like, oh, would they even be this nice to him? But in terms of, like, somebody performing real stand-up, that's the best I've seen, probably, other than, you know. Funny people, but that's so clearly a real stand-up show that they handle it a different way. And that's done well. But they're really doing stand-up. He's acting like he's doing stand-up. And, like, you know. Again, before I re-watched it, I thought it was way more of a stand-up movie, because I watched it when I was 19, when that's all I was thinking about. And I was planning to just sort of watch every stand-up movie. Like, I was gonna watch Punchline with Tom Hanks. I was gonna watch Lenny. I was gonna watch all this, just to see how people did it. But it ended up not really being that much of a stand-up. movie. But I was shocked at how, like, you know, no disrespect to fucking our boy Will Arnett, who I thought that movie was fun. But, like, that's not what stand-up's like. Just not at all. Which we discussed, obviously, on that episode. And everyone was happy with everything I had to say. I haven't listened, sorry. No, you should listen now. I will now that I've seen that movie. It's mostly Griffin being like, open mic doesn't work that way. Which is fair. It does not. That is a hard part with that movie, but I was able. I fucked with Cooper enough where I was able to suspend. I love Cooper. And there's some weird. I like balls. Yeah, balls. He crushes his balls, dude. But anyway. What if Cooper's like, I'm bringing back balls. Give me the balls spinoff, bro. This is balls? Yeah, this is balls. I love that. Are these balls on? I do think, to your point. Tap a guy's nutsack a little bit. I think, to your point. Are these balls on? It's very key that we see Jerry, who's escaped. He's pulling the tape off his shoe. He's walking by the electronics store. Which, by the way. I was watching that. I'm like. The whole scene, I'm like, this is crazy. This woman's lunatic. Then she just takes her clothes off. I'm like. I think I'd probably fuck her if I was Jerry. She raises some interesting points. I think I probably would. You kind of don't have a sense of Jerry's sexuality either. He's probably divorced like 10 times. I think he's so. He's just so over it at this point. Yes. I mean, that's the thing about Carson, though. It's like, he'd always get divorced for infidelity. And you're like, so Carson was fucking? Yeah. For sure. He's a drunk pussyhound. But also, it was emotionally distant. I felt like Carson was in a series of anomalisas where the second he actually got to know someone. They just turned into a blank person to him. Right. He couldn't talk to them anymore. No, but I think at that moment it's like, come on. He's gonna be like, why'd you cut a hole in the tape? Whatever you do from here, that's up to you. But hey, cut a hole in the tape. Maybe cut the nipples out as well. No, you see him walking by the electronics store. And there's the grid of TVs. And notably, the sound is off. He can't hear it. And he's just seeing it. And they cut to Jerry Lewis and the amount of contempt on his face. Yes. And it's not just this guy fucking kidnapped me. You can see that what he's angry about is if the sound is off, he looks like a real comedian. He's actually practiced his moves so much that he looks right in front of that curtain. He's got the right gestures. And it's just him seething at what is the very end of the routine, which you don't get to hear. It's the first time you cut out of the unbroken take of just De Niro doing it all straight to camera. It's pan across the electronics store, cut to Jerry walking by. He sees it. And it looks like he wants to punch through the fucking window. And he hates that. He can kind of see what the movie's about to reveal when it cuts ahead. He becomes this weird kind of folk hero. It's sort of like, it actually doesn't matter what he's saying. It doesn't matter whether or not this is funny. He looks kind of right on camera. A moment has been created that has some kind of stickiness to it. And Jerry knows TV enough to know that's happening and be like, fucking shit. And what does that say about everything he's poured his fucking life into? Yes. The reason he's fucking alone in this beautiful apartment is this thing that a fucking lunatic could fake. Was his life a fucking waste? He understands how to do something that is so delicate and so ephemeral and so rare that that justifies his life. Yeah. And this guy could commit crimes. He could do 85% of it. Right. And people are rooting for him in a way. No one's saying, hey, Rupert, go get cancer. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. And this is what's so scary about the era of going viral. People now commit crimes on social media to get clout. Yes. It is so, like, actually normal now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's just an everyday thing that you hear about. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it's really fucking scary how prescient this film is. It is. Right this very moment. This is that era where Scorsese keeps making these movies where people are like, is this socially irresponsible? To be right. Ten years later, everyone's like, man, dude nailed it with that one. Yeah. He was giving us a warning shot. Totally. He was not creating anything. He was commenting on a thing he saw and none of us knew how bad it was going to get. Yeah. Another nice thing about The Walkout, too, is like just some extra filmmaking. There's so much tension where you're like, you don't know when it is and you don't, they recorded it, but are they going to air it? Part of you is like, oh, fuck, is he going to, because now they've tricked you into rooting for Rupert, right? Right. Now you're like, fuck, I want this to go on air. Even though I, again, I misremembered so much shit from the movie for the first time I saw it that I'm like, oh, wait, does he, does it actually never air or whatever? Like, is it ambiguous if it happened? Right, right. Is it one of those, it's like the taxi driver ending? It's taxi driver-esque of him being, but like, no, you kind of want it. The ending feels real. I think more stuff is fake earlier in the film. Oh, yes. But this one's real. Yes. That's how I feel. He's clearly hallucinating. The People magazine cover being the very private world of Rupert Pumpkin is so funny where they're sort of admitting like, well, now the public is fascinated by him, but what is there? There's no guy here. You know, what are you going to say? He stays at home and talks to cardboard Liza? Yeah. He just wants to live in the TV. It's a very private world that Rupert lives in. Ma! He's so, yeah, he's so fucking awesome. But then, yeah, it works. He gets to. That just always is funny. Yeah. To me, things that are always funny, someone throws something by mistake and then you hear a cat make a noise, that's always funny. Yeah, that's really good. Or like plates smashing. A clatter and then a platter and then a cat? dynamite. Someone's like doing something really serious and then the mom's like, hey, do you want to say, shut up, mom! Always funny. That's just always going to make me laugh. Come on. Come on. I'm hitting the nuts. I was going to say, I won't get into specifics, but there was a project I worked on in which there was a producer who fancied himself an expert in comedy who had no background in comedy and was a blowhard and he would constantly come in and pitch, can't we get a little person in here to punch the lead actor in the nuts? He just kept being, there's nothing funnier in the world. So far, you're like, let's talk. A guy has an awesome idea. Big guy, big guy in the frame, little person walks in, he doesn't even have to lower his fist. It's eye level. Yeah, I understand. Nothing funnier in the world than that. You know what? I don't know, man. This is what I'm saying about the clumps coming back. Yeah, yeah. Where I'm like, we're kind of just getting back there. Yeah. If they announced tomorrow, Eddie Murphy to return for Sherman. Yeah, sure. Sign me up. I mean, or whatever. But the problem is, it would be like it's a prime original. You're like, yeah. And now he's going to film the whole thing like in his car. He's just not going to care. I mean, Eddie, obviously one of my favorite movie stars of all time. He's the best. Yeah. I now end up only watching his movies on airplanes and just going like, literally, what do we have to do to get him to make a movie for theaters again? Do we have to like pull a Rupert pumpkin on Eddie Murphy and be like, dude, it's okay to like wait and pick a good script. Well, do you think for him it was like as soon as he didn't win for Dreamgirls, he's like, all right, fuck this. I think that fucked him up. And then, you know, he kind of soft retires for close to 10 years there. He really pulls back. And then Dolomite, I think he wanted the same kind of like second wave. Which is a good movie, but it wasn't. But he wanted that to be what's the, you know, the lifetime achievement. Right. And I think what happened was he didn't get the Oscar nomination and Netflix rolled out the fucking red carpet for him. And he was like, this streaming shit's great. I had fucking 10 years of Hollywood loving to make fun of my movies bombing. Now none of this shit matters. And he's just done like three Netflix movies, three Hulu movies, three Amazon movies. It's just what he does. Tough stuff. He's the man. He's the man. And yeah, I'm with you. I do want, I think he still has one. I think he still has his basketball. He definitely does. He definitely does. Yeah. Even that documentary, which felt like half-ass. It's just like, we suck Eddie Murphy's dick for two hours. The documentary was still like him talking. Well, what it was clearly meant to be was there were all those stories that Netflix had made a big deal for him to come back to stand up. And the documentary starts in 2019 around the time of Dolomite coming out. And it's him prepping to do stand-up. And then the pandemic hits and he's like, eh, I don't feel it anymore. And they keep filming him thinking that he'll get the bug and he doesn't. And then they were like, let's just cut this into a thing about how everyone's like, it'd be cool if Eddie ever did stand-up again. That's so fucking tough though. There are interview clips in that where you're just like, this is the most charismatic performer alive. He's incredibly good. He can turn it on in a millisecond and he's fascinating. I would love if he worked with like a fucking, like a real deal director. That's the shit you want to see. He and Spike Lee are always like tempting us with the like, there was the Mary and Barry one that got floated. Holy fuck, that would be incredible. It would have been unbelievable. Holy fuck, that would be awesome. I mean, it would be very interesting. Would it break culture? I would be incredible, bro. It'd be incredible. Get a, with the scene where he's fucking, they elect him after he smoked crack. After he gets out of jail for crack. Mary and Barry, I think he passed away. Did he lose? Did we lose Mary? Yeah, he left us. R.I.P. R.I.P. to you, Marian. Alright, this film, like I said, tested horribly. Was released February 18th, 1983. Not a release date that shows a lot of confidence. That's true. A week before my birthday. Hey! Made about 2.5. There we go. Okay, a couple of Pisces. Yeah, baby. I'm technically a cusp. I dip a toe in that Aquarius pool. The water's fine, brother. Come on in. Alright, you're an Aquarius. Yeah. Gross 2.5 million on a budget of 19. So, big flop. Scorsese's like, I think it might be De Niro's best performance. He's incredible. And Zierman's basically like, I think people just didn't know whether or not they should laugh. It's not a comforting movie. Like, it's not giving you kind of like the sort of cues you might need if you're feeling kind of confused by it. But I think the movie rocks. Like, you know, that's great. It's so incredible. I mean, it's so trite to say ahead of its time. But it's like a movie like this right now. This, I mean, look. This is what people, people would just call this a straight up comedy now. They wouldn't, they wouldn't they wouldn't fucking, you know, say, oh, which genre is it? This is, and to me it is, there's some fucking hilarious part. This is a comedy to me. And yeah, fully, fully ahead of its time. It then goes to Cam in that sort of classic way of like, you know, it's already come out in America but back then. The reputation, yeah. Sergio Leone takes him backstage and is like, it's your most mature film. Scorsese's like, I don't actually even know if that meant he liked it, but I sort of just took the compliment anyway. That's a classic. You looked great up there, man. Yeah. When you didn't like your boy's performance. Like, bro, that is your most mature movie yet. Brando really liked it and like invited De Niro out to the island. Yes. Awesome. And you know. The Moreau Island. The island with all the animals. Oh, fuck. And Marty went with him and he was like, I figured he wanted to talk about some project or whatever. We got there. We were there for five days. He never showed up. What? That's awesome. And Marty's like, I fucking hate, you know, like I'm an urban person. I did not want to be on vacation. Like I didn't want to be on the beach. And, you know, at some point, like, you know, someone's like, I don't know if you walk around, you might find him. And then after five days, he finally shows up or something. And yeah, I don't know. That's just a hilarious story. Stephen Trask, the guy who wrote Hedwig and the Angry Inch, the show, at one point tried to turn this into like a Broadway or off-Broadway show. He wrote the music. I think that would work. Yeah. I think that would really work. He wrote the lyrics. Yeah. Right. Yeah. You know, didn't happen. And I feel like you said it's like everyone sort of thinks of it fondly. It's become, I feel like, the cool favorite Scorsese. Right. It's the very linden of the filmography. It's the one you don't know. It's the one if you don't want to pick the obvious one. You know which one is actually my favorite? I think After Hours is that. After Hours has been that a little bit. I think After Hours is rising more now. I think that's After Hours. I think King of Comedy's still like, look, I love the movie. I wouldn't say it's my fucking, that's insane. No, it's not my favorite. It's your favorite. Yeah. But it's a fucking incredible movie. One thing I was just thinking about, you know what I'd love to see? What? I would love to see De Niro from Copland yell at De Niro from King of Comedy. They have similar looks. You blew it! You blew it! It looks like his older brother. It's like his older brother yelling at him. I would love to see that. That's his, like, gold wash color money movie. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a mashup sequel of Copland and King of Comedy. Absolutely. Where he plays both characters. He's de-aged, plays young Rupert Pumpkin. The Pumpkins. Oh, that's good. Let's play the box office game, I guess. Okay, so this opens to number one. You guys don't have any other thoughts? Come on. You know, anything? Ben, anything? No, I'm kidding. Comedy great. So glad it's legal again. Oh, yeah, we're clocking at about 240. That's it? We can get to three. Come on. We'll do it with the box office game. Number one at the box office, David. It is a big hit of 1982. I mean, that makes sense because it's February 1983, so, you know, we got holdovers. Comedy. Gigantic, gigantic fucking hit. It's not Ghostbusters. It's Tootsie? No, Tootsie. It's Tootsie. Yep. Been out for three months at this point or whatever. We talked about Tootsie plenty in the box office game and maybe one day we'll do Sidney Pollard. Maybe. There's a lot of boring-ass movies. A lot of movies. Really? He's got a lot of boring ones in there. Tracy Letts could do like half of them. He could. And maybe we take off. Yeah, you know what? Tracy, you do it. And I'm not saying he likes boring movies. It's just like the 70s and 80s. It's just his mill years, you know. Yeah. Number two, another comedy, an action comedy just, you know, a foundation. We were just talking about The Star. It's 80. 48 Hours. You had it. You had it. I mean, it's just, you know, just like the foundational buddy comedy. It is. It is the one. Yeah, but you know, people are going to hate this. It does not. I don't think it holds up. See, I love it and I think there's four awesome scenes. Everyone thinks the scene in the bar. Yes, that scene's incredible and that's the scene that shows us what Eddie can do. Obviously, as he comes out of this, it makes so much sense and there's bang, but it's like, I rewatched it being like, ooh, ooh, ooh, can't wait. See, this is why I'm surprised you don't like him more because I think it's gotten an unbelievable premise. I remember watching it for the first time and realizing what the movie was actually about. Not just, oh, a cop clears a criminal for 48 hours to help him solve a case. The movie's about this guy now has to accompany a cop everywhere, but he's got 48 hours to get laid. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is awesome. And the fact that every scene ends with Nolte being like, let's get out of here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And Murphy's like, I was a minute away from sealing the deal. And by the way, if Nolte. It's funny to me every time. It's awesome, yeah, yeah. If he's a real bro, he lets him get sucked off quick so that he can then focus on the crime. I got no time for fellatio. And that's just bad, that's just bad leadership on Nolte's part, if I'm being honest. I got a crime to come in. I gotta solve the crime, not let you get brain. Number brain. You promise him one on the back end, too. You let him, you let him smash immediately and you prompt, like, once we catch the guy, get the fuck white. That's your bonus. It's over. Number three, the box office is a crazy fucking movie that I own on DVD. On DVD or Blu-ray? Blu-ray or 4K? I think I have a blue. You want me to check my database? I'm just curious what level of commitment you have to this movie. I was going to start a database for the bus DVDs. It's gotten unruly. You should do a Letterboxd list. That's what you should do. You should let other people lock into the canon. That's a good point. Just to check, I'm pretty sure it's a Blu-ray, but that's probably because that's the highest level. Yeah, it's a Blu-ray. It's deranged. You own it on Blu-ray. Yeah, I bought it when I was doing my Haunted House series that I curated myself. This is actually a haunted person movie. Is this an 83 or an 82 holdover? Oh, no, you know what? It's an 83 released in America. Okay. Oh, so is it. It's an 83 movie. It's a foreign film. No, no, no, no. It's a really trashy American movie. It's got a really compelling female lead performance that's very good, but it's like a movie that is incredibly nasty and uncomfortable. And thus. It's not like Demonoid, is it? No. That's a big Video Archives movie. Okay, so it's a possessed woman movie? Sort of. It's a woman being. That's a good movie. It's a great movie. Attacked by like a poltergeist. Poltergeist? It's not a poltergeist. It's not like deadly. Words you said. Not deadly friends. No, that's. A woman attacked by a computer? Deadly friend is a. A boy has a robot and then puts the robot into his dead friend's brain and she throws basketballs through people's heads. Oh, cool. A really normal movie. All right, I'm gonna. All right, I'll tell you the stars of this movie. And this is. You know movies. Definitely not gonna be trashy with these stars. Barbara Hershey and Ron Silver. They're great, by the way. It's a good movie. Is it a one-word title? Two words. I'll tell you. It's The Entity. Oh, sure. It's the movie where Barbara Hershey is being raped by a poltergeist. Holy shit. Holy shit. That's tough stuff. Exactly. And it's. The thing about it is it's actually good. Like, because the movie is actually about how no one believes her. Oh, Jean-Luc Godard directed it? Sidney J. Fury, the director of Superman 4. Okay. But other better movies, too. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, no, it's about how no one believes her. And Hershey is really good. And Ron Silver is like the one guy who believes her. He's like a weird, you know, ghost detective doctor guy or whatever. But it's a fucked up insane movie. It's kind of like Hollow Man. I mean, I like Hollow Man. That's what I'm saying. You know, where you're kind of like, this is kind of like interesting, but also it's so nasty and maybe doesn't quite have his hands around. Yeah. You know, all the, you know, the difficult topic matter here. But it's not uninteresting. They should let Verhoeven finish his Dark Universe today. They should let 80-year-old Dark Verhoeven, Monster Universe, all of the monsters or sexual predators. Is that what he wanted to do? What do you mean? No, I'm just saying it shouldn't happen. He just wanted to see that. He did one. He did What If Invisible Man was really, really horny. Gotcha. Which I would argue is part of the larger, you were talking about Wolf earlier, but the Sony Hot Monsters Who Fuck. Yeah. Right. Which was an unofficial franchise that starts with Bram Stoker's Dracula, goes to Banger, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, but then just goes modern, horny Wolf and Hollow Man. And they never got to Creature. That's sort of what I guess Del Toro's correcting with Shape of Water. With everything he's ever made. Yes. I mean, what if the monster fucks? Shout out to him, dude. It's awesome to just be like, what if a fucked up looking guy got pussy? Every movie is that. When you're a fat guy who makes movies. But maybe he's handsome from a certain point of view. But she considers him actually more handsome than regular guys. Respect, bro. Like I said, that's why I started doing standup. So you could be casting Guillermo. I think you and Guillermo would get along. I think I want to make that happen. I fucking love that guy. You like building model kits? I didn't know he lives in fucking Toronto, apparently. Oh, he spends a lot of time. He does a lot of production. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. Okay, that was number four? That was number three. Number four is the Best Picture winner of 1982. So that would have been Gandhi? Yep. That's correct. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Get an Indian guy. Apply a little layer to him, though, still. I love how they still were like, let's hit Kingsley with a little spray tan. A little. Just a little. Let's hit him with a little bronzer. Which is a funny move to be like, look, he is Indian. Right. But we're going to give him a little spritz. People aren't going to be happy. Unless he really is. Unless he really looks like a cartoon character. Yeah, it's not fucking What's-His-Face playing Genghis Khan, but it's still pretty funny. That is so insane that John Wayne did that movie. It's awesome. In between being like, we shouldn't do this, they're like, why don't we just get a guy who technically is, but fucking really amp it up a little bit. Yeah, turn up the dial. That was Hollywood being woke. That was Hollywood being woke back then, where they were like, relax, we didn't. You know, liar fucking John Wayne. So relax. But we brought out a bunch of crayons. Yeah. Number five is. A movie with the same title as a CBS TV show in the 2000s. It is a drama about a missing kid. It is basically like Eton Pats, the movie. Like, it's not about Eton Pats exactly. It was the boy who disappeared in New York in the 70s. It's the same title as a. Like, when I was a kid, like, my family was basically like, Eton Pats and Eric Clapton's kid. They were like, don't talk to strangers and hold my hand on the street. And don't you walk out of any windows, like, on any tall, tall buildings. Like, those are the two kid stories that were like, burned into my parents' brains. 2000s or 2010s? 2000s or. 2000s. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like a procedural? CSI Miami. Yeah. The movie's called CSI Miami. No, it was a CBS procedural about missing persons. Oh, missing. What was it called? Oh, three years. It ran for years. Without a trace? Without a trace. Without a trace. And that is this movie. Stanley R. Jaffe's Without a Trace. Okay. Who. It stars Kate Nelligan and Judd Hirsch. I think it's. I don't know. I mean, one of these movies where you're like, who the fuck would want to see this? But it's about a kid getting, you know. I'm Judd Hirsch. The kid's missing. Pretty good. Where's that kid at? We gotta find him. He sounds not that stressed out, I'll say. I'm a little suspicious. That's his attitude, though. It's just always lightly stressed out. It is true. Where's my cab? I want to drive my cab. Yeah, no matter if it's like life or death or he's just like, you know, on the way to meet a friend for lunch. He has the same vibe. I'm never fully calm, but I'm never too stressed out. I mean, it's just the part of Independence Day where he goes, John Lennon, nice guy. Someone shot him. And I just want someone else to be like, what the fuck? Who is this fucking guy? I know. There are aliens. Yeah. Why is he here? Also, Hirsch is like 15 days older than Goldblum and they're like, look at this ancient old Jewish fuck. Yeah, yeah. Right. He's like seven years or something. They give him like a silver tan to spray on the hair. Aliens in this economy? That movie, it's just the Roland Emmerich thing where he's like, I love America. Yeah. There's an old Jewish man. Gotta get it. Yeah. He has the wisdom. It's my favorite thing. I was, I gotta tell you, talking about ordering discs, my finger was hovering over that 2012 4K UHD the other night. I was like, do I need this on the shelf? And is there a steal is what I was asking myself. I'm with you. That's a, that's a, such a foundational. Thank you. Now that's a bus movie to its core. That's a bus movie. Hell. We actually did watch it on the bus this go around. Banger. Banger. When you talk about like 90s Grisham being like drugs to you, that's like, any Roland Emmerich movie where humanity has to band together to defeat a thing. They do band together. What else? Wait, wait, give me the other ones. Day After Tomorrow, I rewatched recently, slapped so hard. Maybe best American film of all time. Rewatched Godzilla, also recently bought the forecast deal book. Godzilla's kind of fun. All of them are half the worst film I've ever seen. Half the best movie I've ever seen. Godzilla's got enough stuff that I can never quite dismiss it. Here's what we know. He's 8,000 feet tall. He breathes fire. He's got electric scales. And he's pregnant? Yeah, maybe it's not the best. Godzilla is a mama. All I remember is, is the P. Diddy Kashmir song. Oh yeah. That's all I remember from Godfather. That was track one. I'm sorry, Godfather from, yeah, I'm the Godfather. Godzilla. Come with me. I got the real life shit from front to back. Right? Keep going? Yeah. Where, I can't remember the rest. I don't know. That also has the wallflowers. But that was the Buster-like part. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, that's what's seared into my memory because I never saw the movie as a kid, but that, they played the video all the time. And he's standing in the middle of Times Square inviting Godzilla to come face him. And like, he's wearing like a big white shirt face to face to Godzilla. Godzilla leans down to like make eye contact with Puffy. He was, the whole thing with Puff Daddy was like, even as a kid, I was like, he's not a good rapper. No, he's actually speaking once every 45 seconds. I know, but even as a kid, I knew that. You can tell, yeah. That is true. It was partly that also, like as a kid, I'm just fucking watching MTV and I do get to see Busta Rhymes or whatever. Maze. Quite a, quite a good rapper. Any time, any time. Biggie's incredible. Any time, yeah, Puffy was on any track, it was like, these lines have clearly been written for him. But you know. But meanwhile, but you know. DJ Khaled, his ears are burning and he's going like, wait a second, what if I did this, but said less? What if I did this with less effort? Which is more respectable somehow. Yeah, yeah. But like Busta Rhymes, it just felt like somebody had snuck on to MTV. Those things are, those videos are insane. They're incredible. All right. All right, so that's the top five. Number six is Sophie's Choice. Number seven, you know, good, I don't know, whatever. Roland Emmerich directed that one too. Yeah, sure. Number seven is The Verdict. Actually incredible. One of the best. Oh, man, you're in a half, bro. Number eight is Let's Spend the Night Together, which is the Stones concert movie, like, of, that's directed by Hal Ashby. Of like, kind of their 80s, you know, kind of getting it all together. I don't know. Number nine is E.T., which is obviously, It's just been out for like six months. - Quite successful. - And number 10 is "The Dark Crystal," a Griffin movie. quite a Griffin movie we will hopefully cover someday on this podcast yeah sure I'll take that like I said I'm going to string up a hammock yeah I'll just take a big old nap once in a while I'll be like I like the puppets you got to be engaged you got to be locked in David Bowie just the most clearly pedophiles ever played yeah that's Labyrinth but that character I mean that is a movie Dark Crystal is a really complicated one it's all puppets it's beautiful that's a great movie I like that one it's got like people puppets I know they're like aliens but they have like faces they have faces yeah but there's no human beings in the whole movie no but I'm saying like the puppets kind of look a little more like people they're like Brian Crowe fairy people yeah rather than like they're fucking monsters and puppets stop being obtuse you little fuck if that's how you're reacting to me then like you just might not want me talking on those episodes okay never mind I'm chill say anything you want I'm light actually what that is is right it's like John Fuck the famous puppet designer and I'm like who cares you got to show respect to Agra oh man this motherfucker's gonna have like an hour on the toys from that shit well it was mostly a cancelled toy line they didn't put it out in stores the sculpts existed they were reproduced forget a hammock just a full bed four poster bed with like netting you know so you could just like withdraw it I collected them all the time but it was quite expensive it was hard it was a hard collection a hard set to pull together any king of comedy action figures no you know what I bought I think I put it next to the blu-ray player I found what I think is the only Scorsese action figure that exists which is a Rupert pumpkin fuck yes done as if there was like no it's a Travis Bickle I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry yes it's a Travis Bickle but done as if it was like a 70s Star Wars style they never made like I don't know the Hugo toy or something I'm trying to know I don't know they're like good fellas Funko Pops now that look like dog shit who's this for me and who else collectors fans of cinema you're saying like commercially who is this for the answer is who fucking knows appreciators of American cinema yeah yeah all right Stavi yes thank you boys you got a show dropping on Netflix at some point yeah yeah my special I mean Tony's been out Tony will be in theaters now Tony is in theaters right now Tyres is out Tyres is out Tyres season two season three three Tyres is out Tyres is out and now and I'm pretty sure by now I have at least announced when the special sorry everybody I broke my arm my special was supposed to come out in July I broke my arm now I'm doing the special in July you're doing it Sully style you should have done it in July exactly yeah yeah yeah yeah and now I'm fucking you picking up the pieces and I'm at some point I think I have a Netflix special either now or hopefully within two weeks yeah yeah Uncle Stav check it out oh yeah actually it's a great hour thank you man you did yes I appreciate it I appreciate you guys coming out to see it and just we already talked about this privately but just for the pot Banderas who you worked with on Tony the man is that cool he's so he's even better than you think he's gonna be important he's not a dick he was the nicest mother he was nice as shit talked to everybody like right hung out with everybody we all had fucking because he's playing kind of an aloof guy in the movie so he could be aloof yeah no he's the man he's so fucking cool and like truly a theater nerd like being that much of a piece of ass who doesn't need to do anything to have an awesome life he he's like obviously you know it's helped how good looking he was helped him but it's like he's so about the crap like this motherfucker like he went to like a seminar on making clothes for like theater like made his own clothes for he has a in Spain he has his what he does he has a theater that he does theater at in at Malaga where he like he's from he just brought a theater there and just because he likes live theater in his hometown he was the fucking man he was so fucking cool is this like potentially his color of money moment dude I think he rocks in the movie so hard I want him to get like you know obviously he's been Oscar nominated but it took a while and then there was that sort of like have we been underappreciating him for so long I don't know obviously it's a small movie like it's going it's a small scale story blah blah blah like I have no idea how it'll go over I hope it does well but like he rocks obviously well now I don't know what you're talking about you know it's September it's been number one at the box office right right right eight weeks running it went on an obsession run it's doing Michael numbers everyone's bringing like lobster claws to the screening everyone's claiming Matt's dad helped him direct it that was the funniest thing to me we were like everyone's like oh yeah well this movie was ghost directed I'm like oh yeah the DGA they love it when other people direct movies famously so chill about that yeah people are such fucking haters man get off these kids dicks bro they truly are haters I'm also like I think that movie is good and is very well directed and will be hyper topical by the time this episode comes out well now they're also saying about the back rooms which I'm sure has been a huge hit but that movie absolutely feels like it was made by a 26 year old I think that's a lot of its value in a good way in a cool way you never see movies directed by 26 year olds who just are good at the technical side Griffin I think the corpse of Irvin Kershner ghost directed I don't even know what people think is happening I just I honestly think there is a moment right now where a lot of people in our generation we got our asses fucked truly this is true like a lot of people had no the cock ass like cock ass yes like the Iowa caucuses but like it's a tough generation to like you know 9-11 sure it's tough out there right into like recession as soon as you're out of college my mom apologized to me once she was like I really kind of botched the timing of having you didn't I I mean you've sort of gotten all of it at the business end we're the few that kind of we're on the life raft somehow we somehow the podcast thing we're on the life raft off the Titanic of being a fucking millennial yes but I think a lot of people who are like you know who we got the rug pulled out from under us what we thought and then these kids never grew up thinking traditional success was an option so they did their own shit and I think there's a lot of fucking haters who are like a 22 year old can't do a 20 year old can't do this I'm 40 and a fucking loser how did a 20 year old do this shit I think that's a lot of it yeah also a lot of it too is like these fucking kids like had to spend like high school and college over zoom right right right yeah and got like hyper because he didn't because he couldn't see his fucking friends we took away everything I interviewed him that's literally what happened yeah I mean and when in the interview he said yeah so when my first year of high school was COVID and I immediately of course shot myself in the head then you kill yourself and now we're actually podcasting with the ghost of David but then my my ghost appeared it was like oh that's interesting by the way keep talking but it's like how did they get so good so young it's like I don't know society collapsed and the technology was readily available what do you mean yeah I'm excited for this shit me too I think it's good it's awesome it's like we should more old motherfuckers should I love it's like the new Hollywood we finally replicated it where it's like the inmates are taking over the asylum people have learned how to make this shit outside of the normal systems and now the studios are just giving them money and saying we don't know we don't get why this is working but go do it thank Christ we needed this let them give us five million let them give a lot of different people five million bucks to make a movie I would love to see that that's the big no on this episode it's another three hour episode hell yeah we did it I live in hell it's great we're letting you off easy although I guess with ads you guys are you guys are yeah I mean David's very lucky this is not casino this is I could have honestly done I literally would have done any I think I would have done any movie but I think I would have you said you were very open and we just immediately felt like it makes perfect sense knowing that that you were busy it was like this was the right time to slot it in and it was great you said I'm glad you texted us and said I'm glad that what will certainly be the peak moment of my fame is cresting with you guys covering my favorite directors so that we I can convince you guys to have me on the show and we were like we're glad that us covering the biggest directors is cresting with your interest so that we can book you yeah we both feel like somehow we've tricked the other I just love dude I truly love like I never get to talk about movies in a don't be funny necessarily first and foremost way no but that was all this yeah we talk about it all the time but I just I fucking love doing movie podcasts because I this is what I have sort of you know obviously stand up I'll never stop doing it but the last the last like five years of my life I've really thought very I'm starting to think very deeply about movies and it's I have a blast talking about them I will do if people fall out I'll do every Scorsese this could be blank check with Griffin, David, and Stavros as far as I'm concerned during Scorsese that sounds great it sounds great it's a good backup you could be the guest host you could be the the Gary Shandling the Leno yes yeah how fucked like if Dave if there's an emergency and David can't be here it's just an eight hour episode don't give him the idea don't give him the idea thank you for being here thank you all for listening thank you please remember to rate, review, subscribe next up in Scorsese is After Hours After Hours can't fucking wait my favorite it's really fucking good man and as always well wait we should shout out our Patreon okay right now we are in the midst of doing Resident Evil we're doing the Resident Evil movies and just a day after this drops we will be releasing Resident Evil Afterlife ah yes the Afterlife it's a great one might be the best so sign up for that obviously covering a lot of Scorsese stuff over on Patreon as well the docs patreon.com I actually ignored a call from Martin Scorsese to do I was supposed to be on the other end of a phone call with you - For the movie. - Wow! Well, this is how much I respect the podcast. I am harming my career. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They were filming a scene. I mean, look, they should have fucking told me earlier. They should have been 10 minutes before. Don't they know you're on Blank Check? Maybe cut this. We will cut that or bleep it out and keep in the laugh because the laugh was good. Yeah, yeah. And as always, I think we can all agree. Rupert Pumpkin was this close to getting this close, man. Just hit a couple of mics, Rupert. This close to making it big. Hit a couple of mics. Blank Check with Griffin and David is hosted by Griffin Newman and David Sims. Our executive producer is me, Ben Hosley. Our creative producer is Marie Barty Salinas. And our associate producer is AJ McKeon. This show is mixed and edited by AJ McKeon and Alan Smithy. Research by JJ Birch. Our theme song is by Lane Montgomery and the Great American Novel. With additional music by Alex Mitchell. Artwork by Joe Bowen, Olly Moss, and Pat Reynolds. Our production assistant is Minik. Special thanks to David Cho, Jordan Fish, and Nate Patterson for their production help. Head over to BlankCheckPod.com for links to all of the real nerdy shit. Join our Patreon, Blank Check Special Features, for exclusive franchise commentaries and bonus episodes. Follow us on social at Blank Check Pod. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter, Checkbook, on Substack. This podcast is created and produced by Blank Check Productions.