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August 26, 2025 72 mins

In episode 1920, Jack and guest co-host Mort Burke are joined by the producer and host of Blank Check, Ben Hosley & Griffin Newman, to discuss… Movies As Cultural Unconscious Factories / Movies That Exist Vs. Don’t, War In Films: Vietnam vs. War On Terror, Where Did All The Sex In Movies Go? And more!

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Episode Transcript

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Speaker 1 (00:05):
I just showed my kid's Jaws, which is a big,
big moment for me. My kid I saw when I
was four and like watched it, yeah, three hundred times
before I was like five, and it was like my
personality and I, uh seven and nine.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
Oh, so you waited.

Speaker 1 (00:19):
I waited way too long.

Speaker 3 (00:21):
That's so funny.

Speaker 1 (00:22):
And their cousins had just showed them the Meg and
the Meg two.

Speaker 3 (00:26):
They were like, why is the sharks so small?

Speaker 1 (00:28):
They were like, they were like, it's like, I think
they were sparing my feelings when they said this. They
were like, it's not as good as the Meg two,
but it is better than the Meg, and I think
they were lying. I think they like both Megs better
than Jaws, which fucking sucks.

Speaker 3 (00:43):
I'm trying to remember what the specific was, but my
ten year old little cousin has had a thing like
that where I was trying to explain to him why
a movie was good and he was citing, like, but
I've seen movies that are newer than what you're describing,
where the characters are bigger. It wasn't Go Sla, but
it was something like that where he was just like,
that's not that tall.

Speaker 1 (01:04):
I've seen this with the rock in it.

Speaker 2 (01:06):
So have you decided on the age you're going to
show your kids? Gummo that was in infancy?

Speaker 1 (01:14):
Yeah? Oh nice. Yeah, everything's built on Gummo. Their whole
personalities are Gummo based. Hello the Internet and welcome to
season four oh three, Episode two of dir Daily's Guys.
It's a production of iHeartRadio is a podcast where you

(01:34):
take a deep dive into America share consciousness. That it
is Tuesday, August twenty sixth, twenty twenty five. Happy birthday
to my sister Shannon. August twenty six Happy belated to
super producer Justin Connor, whose birthday is the twenty fourth.
Twenty fourth. Nailed it and with such confidence too. My

(01:57):
name is Jack O'Brien aka Thaya labuff Uh. That's courtesy
of Lockerron on the Discord in reference to the fact
that I have big caked up, milky white thighs and Miles,
my co host before our creative partnership, was in a
rap group with Shila Aboff WHOA Yeah, I didn't know that.
I'm kind of like the sequel to Shilabuff. Yeah, you

(02:17):
are with big caked up, thick, milky white I would
argue more abusive, yeah, or we're not letting people in
on that side. Mort throw to be joined in our
second seed by very funny comedian actor, writer improviser filling
in for Miles who's out on assignment. His special spiritual

(02:39):
Filthy is very funny. Today's very special guest co host,
it's Mort Burn's urp. Where's Mort Burke? I always want
to say your name like Christopher Walking in What's the
movie where he keeps exclaiming things? A lot of different movies?
Cash if you can, I feel like Mort Burke, it's

(02:59):
more Burn.

Speaker 4 (03:00):
I liked how You Had to Find the Christopher Walkeett movie.
He always sounds exactly like Christopher Walkeett no matter what.
It's not a change.

Speaker 1 (03:07):
What's the one where he talks like Christopher Walks?

Speaker 3 (03:11):
There's one where his voice is weird? Which one is that?

Speaker 1 (03:14):
Mort? We are thrilled to be joined in our third
and fourth seats by two of the creators behind my
very favorite podcast, one of the best podcasts. Podcasts is
doing It Anywhere on a fucking heater right now, You
guys with the fucking Coen Brothers, please welcome from blank Check.

(03:35):
It's producer Ben Hosley and Griffin Newman.

Speaker 3 (03:39):
Thank you for the very kind of part. Oh, you've
been unbelievably supportive of us over the years.

Speaker 1 (03:46):
Anyways, it's been hard a huge soety it came to
you late and it is. I absolutely love it. I
love rediscovering, discovering like I hadn't really watched a lot
of Miyazaki before I heard you guys a series on Zaki.
It's been so cool to like have the knowledge that
comes from your podcast and like introduce my kids to

(04:06):
me Azaki, like when they're at the you know, age
Pon is my seven year old's favorite movie. So that's
been It's just been a very cool thing. And and
I love movies and it's it's a total blast. You guys,
are you had seth Rogen on The Big Lebowski just

(04:27):
dropped yesterday? Yes, Zach Kraiger on the Fargo episode the
week the weapons like was destroying the box office.

Speaker 4 (04:38):
And made all the money, every dollar, there's no money left.

Speaker 1 (04:42):
No, Yeah, it's had kind.

Speaker 3 (04:43):
Of but we're all happy for support.

Speaker 1 (04:45):
Couldn't gone to a nicer guy. Yeah, yeah, he seems
super nice. I had forgotten that he came from the
Whites kids.

Speaker 3 (04:51):
You know, people keep asking us because we have had
quite a sounding run of guests in short order, and
they're like, oh, you guys are really love up. What changed?
And we're like, literally, it's just we're doing the con
Brothers yea, and that a lot of these people are
folks that we've been like messaging with for a couple
of years. We found at some point listen to the
podcast and they're like, I don't know, I don't know,

(05:13):
I don't do that many podcasts, or I don't know
if I should talk about someone else's or right, or
I you know, I'm waiting for a film that's really
one of my favorites. And we like we do a
March Madness thing every year where once a year we
let our listeners vote on which director we're going to
cover next, and we do a whole career we go
through every film one episode at a time, and they

(05:33):
voted for Coen Brothers and they're infinite wisdom this year,
and like suddenly five of our dream guests were like, oh, sure,
it just opened all the doors.

Speaker 1 (05:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (05:42):
I mean at a time where it's like can be
a little bit challenging to be real proud of America.
It's like, you know, the Coen Brothers make us feel
good about living.

Speaker 3 (05:51):
They're also in a weird state right now, where like
Ethan just released a movie that he directed with his wife,
and Joel is about to start directing a new film.
I think that he's that Francis is starring in or
at least producing. H So they're in this sabbatical of
working separately, of both becoming wife guys right, which has

(06:13):
made their core filmography, of the like twenty one movies
they made together, I think feel like a little bit
more of a potemic fixed work. We're all hoping they
will eventually make things together again. Yeah, but I think
it puts them in an interesting place to talk about
all those films.

Speaker 1 (06:29):
Your reader or your listeners nailed it in terms of
the timing of this is like so perfect and to
your point, getting back to Fargo and Big Lebowski, the
past two weeks has just been not like those are
so foundation like more foundational than I realized. Like obviously
they're movies I've seen a hundred times, but like just
rewatching them, I'm like, oh, I think about this line

(06:51):
five times a day, Like I think about like this
is like my brain is made out of these two movies,
like in a way that I hadn't fully appreciated. It was.

Speaker 3 (06:59):
It was crazy, like I've I'm learning in real time
trying to remind myself. You can't say I to say
Seth and not Rogan because if you talk about podcasting
with Rogan, people jump to a different assumption. Yea, yeah,
even though saying Seth feels overly from all year. But
he was talking about how many things in his career
and all the movies he's gotten to make are pulled
directly from Lebowski, super open about not even in homage ways,

(07:22):
but like that's so effective. I want something like this
and using that and talking to different departments.

Speaker 1 (07:28):
Scene to the person who being like this is what
we're doing.

Speaker 3 (07:32):
And he had like twenty examples of that, and then
it also felt like there were twenty examples he in
real time realized, Yeah, oh I didn't even figure out that. Yeah,
the super Bad Trifecta is kind of similar to the
Donnie Waltz Right mclove and trifecta.

Speaker 4 (07:47):
You know that, Like, yeah, man, I saw Big Lebowski
nine times in the theater.

Speaker 2 (07:52):
That's wild.

Speaker 3 (07:54):
Yeah, was it flopped.

Speaker 4 (07:55):
Yeah, I know. And me we were at like my
sister I had seen blood Simp and my sister or whatever,
she was cool. She showed me these like cool indie films,
you know, and then just a sad little high school
nerd and my friend Paul went and we're like are
we and sayers this is the greatest movie of all time?
Like what we thought we were. Yeah, So I'm very
proud of being ahead of the car.

Speaker 3 (08:14):
That's a real bragging right there, because people were not
with it, but yeah, and seeing that it was it's
so beautiful and.

Speaker 1 (08:20):
Hilariously Yeah, yeah, they weren't onto. I want to talk
about that because it definitely is a movie that has
like pervaded the culture in a way that's crazy, even
though it was like a box office flop. So I
want to talk about the concept that you guys talk
about about like whether a movie exists or not. But
so we're gonna just talk movies with you guys, specifically,
like how they interact with the zeitgeist, because that's what

(08:42):
our show is about. I could talk to you guys
all day about blank Check, but it probably wouldn't be
fair to our listeners, and they can go listen to
fucking blank check if they want to. But before we
get into that stuff, we do like to get to
know our guests a little bit better by asking you, guys,
if there's anything from your search history that you could
share the be revealing about who you are or what
you're up to, preferably just like as embarrassing.

Speaker 3 (09:05):
I mean, you're already teeing up the notion of movies
that don't exist, which is a term we throw out
a lot for a movie that just has no cultural
stickiness whatsoever.

Speaker 2 (09:16):
Yeah, like, what's a recent example.

Speaker 3 (09:17):
Well, I'm about to get to this, okay, in my
recent search history.

Speaker 2 (09:21):
Oh wow.

Speaker 3 (09:22):
But we were very particular about how we define this.
We stumbled onto them. We've tried to refine the definition
as time goes on, because it can't be just a
movie that's obscure, right, that's a movie that people never
knew about. A movie that doesn't exist is telling someone.
Do you know? There was like one hundred and fifty
million dollars Snake Eyes movie, a Gi Joe spin off

(09:42):
that was the third live action Gi Joe starring Henry
Golding from Crazy Rich Asians, And it came out and
no one gave a shit.

Speaker 1 (09:48):
Right, and remember the trailer, and that's it.

Speaker 3 (09:52):
But that's a key to a movie that doesn't exist.
Is either you drove past billboards for it for months, sure,
and with a gun to your head, you would swear
that never happened. Or if I described the elements to you,
you go, if that had happened, I would have known
about it.

Speaker 1 (10:09):
Right.

Speaker 3 (10:10):
The amount of money they spent in this movie could
have put a serious dent in poverty.

Speaker 2 (10:14):
Right.

Speaker 4 (10:15):
Another one I always throw out one, Yeah, another one
way to put it, Yeah.

Speaker 3 (10:20):
Not as big of a budget. But one I always
throw out is no one believes that there was a
Benedict Cumberbatch Julian Assange biopic that came out fifteen years
ago and was released by Walt Disney Pictures Theseeen Years.
I think it was like it was early. It was
like twenty ten or twenty eleven. Wow, it's called I
think The Fifth Estate. I think that's right, directed by

(10:43):
Bill Condon of dream Girls.

Speaker 1 (10:44):
Right, And you don't need to say this.

Speaker 3 (10:47):
We all know this, yes, of course, but here's an
ultimate movie that doesn't exist. Thing I the other night,
hanging out with friends out here made a reference of
course to tween.

Speaker 1 (10:57):
Years ago, twelve years ago, Jesus Christ. Wow, that's crazy, but.

Speaker 3 (11:01):
You would say if that had happened, I would have
known about it.

Speaker 1 (11:03):
Yeah, he would have got nominated or something like that.

Speaker 3 (11:06):
Like he kind of looks like whatever, great actors, you know,
A huge story does not exist. My most recent Google
search is five below Nutmobile because huh, I made a
reference to the infamous Nutmobile, and everyone said, what are
you talking about? And I went, of course, the star

(11:27):
vehicle from Netflix's uh, The Electric State. The Electric State,
which of course is the biggest and most watched movie
of all time. Sure, it's one of the most expensive
films ever made, with an all star cast and the
directors of Avenger Chris but also like Hey Kwan and
Woody Harrelson, Anthony Mackie, Like everyone's in that movie.

Speaker 2 (11:49):
What what is it about?

Speaker 1 (11:51):
It's about?

Speaker 3 (11:52):
I have not seen it. It doesn't exist. Came out
this very spring, nobody has. In fact, it is like
a post apocalypse. The robots have gotten sentient and taken over.
But the robots in this universe are not like terminator robots.
They are like animatronic mascots. So it's like theme park
robots and promotional robots. So Woody Harrelson is the voice

(12:14):
of mister Peanut, literally mister Peanut and like an old
vintage World's Fair kind of lectual mister Peanut, yes, who
now has sentience, and all the robots are like that.
And so mister Peanut of course drives the Nutmobile. And
if you go into any five below store, my favorite
retail chain, Wow, they sell five dollars remote control nutmobile

(12:36):
cars that are just stacked up. They cannot get rid
of these fucking things. And it's just you see a
box that says the Nutmobile and is shaped like a
giant peanut and has a robot mister Peanut, and it's
from the hit Netflix film Electric State, and you're like,
none of this exists. Yeah, I could bring this object
into the room and you guys would call bullshit. Yeah,
that's all false.

Speaker 1 (12:55):
I've got a lot of money actually invested in those nutmobiles.
So this is this is bad news that they're not
selling like hotcakes.

Speaker 4 (13:02):
I feel like mister Peanut would have driven a model
tea or something with a.

Speaker 2 (13:07):
Fun old timey horn.

Speaker 4 (13:09):
But yeah, hark, yeah, like a puffin, like a like
a smoke stack with like like.

Speaker 1 (13:15):
The Winnermobile basically is the like a wienermobile for mister Pean,
it's a big shelled pie. Yeah. Yeah. We were talking
on this morning's Trending Trending episode about K pop Demon
Hunters and how that's like about to become Netflix Netflix's
most watched movie, catching Red Notice, which is so this

(13:36):
gets into one of my questions that I have later
that I'll tee up now and then we can talk
about their But like, do movies exist in the same
way if they only come out on streaming? Because Red
Notice for me does not exist. Maybe I'm old, like
like it just like doesn't exist the same way that
like a blockbuster movie would have that like actually came
out in theaters.

Speaker 3 (13:54):
It absolutely does not exist. It is aided in not
existing by Dween Johnson two years later making Red One
for Amazon, which also feels like it doesn't exist. And
those two movies get mushed together in people's brains. It's
the Sanda movie, yes, but the like which one is
Chris Evans, which one's Ryan Reynolds, Which Red movie for
which streamer that I was told was the biggest thing

(14:15):
of all time?

Speaker 1 (14:16):
And then there are the Red movies with the retired.

Speaker 3 (14:20):
Red and I also had yeah, yeah, yeah stuff. I
read this interview recently where.

Speaker 1 (14:30):
He read an interview, I mean, how are we supposed
to keep any of the stream, you guys?

Speaker 3 (14:35):
And that's the biggest movie Apple. It's a guy reading
an interview four trillion minutes watch. Ron Howard did this
really good interview with New York Magazine on the eve
of his new film coming out, which came out this weekend.
It barely made any sort of splash called Eden, which
is a movie starring judelaw Vanessa Kirby, Sidney Sweeney and

(14:56):
on a dharmis Nope, nothing, which is nothing crazy, Like
three of the most lusted after women are in this
movie that is highly sexual, and I believe all three
of them have nude scenes. And this movie came out
in a thousand screens and made like four dollars, right.

Speaker 1 (15:12):
And Ron Howard, like has Ron Howard made a movie
that doesn't exist.

Speaker 3 (15:15):
Up to this point, I would argue. The other one
is he did his cave diver rescue movie Vigo Mortensen
and Colin Farrell and there's a third big star in that,
maybe Joel Edgerton, And that got dumped on Amazon and
have the same thing. And I had friends who saw
it earlier screenings and were like, this is gonna win
Best Picture.

Speaker 2 (15:35):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (15:36):
And then like five weeks later it was like putting
theaters for four days with no promotion, then went on Amazon.

Speaker 4 (15:41):
No one watched it, right, Yeah, And I think the
way Ron Howard blew the Eden things, he didn't do
a Ron Howard nude scene. I feel like that anybody
rub yeah, soft as bubblegum.

Speaker 3 (15:57):
But it's like here's like America's like, you know, kind
of it's Opie right right, and they're like, he made
like a crazy island orgy movie.

Speaker 4 (16:05):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (16:06):
And friends of ours have been like, it's good. It's
really interesting, Like he's never made anything like this before,
and it's based on true story about people who got
like stranded on the island tried to build their own society.
And she's just like nothing right, wow, And he talked
about he'll BILLI elergy went to Netflix obviously saved America.
The Cave movie, which I already forget the title of,
is called something hours. It's a number.

Speaker 2 (16:26):
I think it's the Cave movie.

Speaker 1 (16:27):
It's the Cave.

Speaker 3 (16:28):
Movie that when to Amazon kind of didn't exist. He
hasn't had a theatrical movie since Solo a Star Wars story,
which also so like doesn't exist for a Star Wars movie.
It exists primarily in that it doesn't exist, right, Like
we're constantly talking about isn't it weird that that happened?
And we forget about it, which means we remember forgetting
about it, which I also think is a thing that

(16:49):
can't be the case with a movie that doesn't.

Speaker 1 (16:51):
It doesn't exist, it still exists in that it yeah, yeah, right.

Speaker 3 (16:55):
But so Eden, they were like, you know, you had
a couple big movies go to streamers for a lot
of money, and this you're having like Vertical, which is
like a very small distributor release it and like a
not huge number of screens. What's the balance for you
used to be such a big studio guy. And he said,
my experience for making a couple of streaming movies in
a world in a row in this world is that

(17:15):
it's like publishing a book and not going to hardcover first.
There was no object permanence to the movie when it
just goes up on streaming, and I think it will
benefit us in the long term if we're released in
a handful of theaters, even if no one goes to
see it, and then it goes up on a streaming service. Now,
Netflix and these places love to tout like this is
our biggest runaway success. Sure and their data whatever. You know,

(17:39):
there's no transparency in this. Who knows if we can
believe them or not. But you look at something like
kip Hop Demon Hunters, and even before they decided to
put it in theaters for exactly forty eight hours, it
was clear it existed. Right, we're telling us, like everyone's
watching Red. Notice you don't talk to a single person.

Speaker 1 (17:56):
Anyone met you talk to people, Go, I put.

Speaker 3 (17:58):
That on fifty minutes. I think sucks. I turned it off? Right,
did like eight trillion people turn it off after fifteen minutes?
And they're counting that.

Speaker 1 (18:06):
Yeah, the k top pop Demon.

Speaker 3 (18:07):
Hunters without going to theaters first, it's clear like this
organically caught a wave. Yeah, it has like seeped into
the zeikeis.

Speaker 1 (18:14):
Despite what Netflix did, no like press ahead of it.
Just like suddenly my kids are constantly listening to it,
and like two of the songs are on the Billboard
top ten right now.

Speaker 3 (18:23):
Right, and it's crazy, Yeah, only getting bigger. Yeah, And
they conceded and they were like, six weeks after it
went up, we're gonna put it in theaters for two
days as a singalong version, right, and it was the
number one movie in America, right, But no one knows
how to report on this because Netflix won't admit that
it made that money.

Speaker 1 (18:39):
Right.

Speaker 3 (18:40):
Yeah, So they're like, maybe Weapons is the number one
movie in America because they're hiding how much money it made.

Speaker 1 (18:45):
They secretly released a movie.

Speaker 3 (18:47):
And everyone was like, well, they'll keep it in theaters
and keep making money. No polled forty eight hours singalong
version now on Netflix. They don't want to concede that
putting things in theaters might be good.

Speaker 1 (18:58):
Right, then your answer has to be the same length.
What is something from your search history you're feeling about
who you are?

Speaker 2 (19:07):
Okay, I've got some options here. Let's see. Well, I
think yeah, Strawberry Glaze.

Speaker 1 (19:14):
Airwand Strawberry Glaze airwon.

Speaker 2 (19:16):
Of course, the Hilly beab Yes, because I'm in town, right,
you got to l a that's right, staying at silver Lake?
What am I gonna do? I'm gonna walk over to Airwine.
We're gonna get glazed. Yeah, and I got up. Now
all right, here's I'm glowing, absolutely glow. I look incredible
right now.

Speaker 1 (19:35):
You know you're not sitting on You're sitting one inch
above the chair. You seem to be sitting, You're just
hovering above it.

Speaker 4 (19:41):
You know, your eyes are the blue of a moon
lit ocean.

Speaker 1 (19:45):
That's how That's how it is.

Speaker 3 (19:47):
Ribe your radiance all the lights in the studio because
it was blowing out.

Speaker 2 (19:53):
It's actually angelic where it's like you can kind of
just hear faintly.

Speaker 4 (19:56):
Like there's a harmony to it. Yeah, you're like the
from Cocoon or whatever.

Speaker 3 (20:01):
And Howard there go.

Speaker 1 (20:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (20:03):
But I feel like that just says about me, Like
I'm a guy who takes care of himself.

Speaker 1 (20:07):
That's right. Yeah, twenty dollars investment in yourself exactly. It's
the thing that like when we have families visit us,
the children all are like, okay, like first stop, let's
go get the Haley Beaber. That's that is the only
like I always feel bad when people come to LA.

(20:28):
Like I went and visited my sister in New York
for the past week, and like there's just NonStop shit
to do and then you come to LA and you're like,
you don't want to go to Hollywood, and like there's
some cool parks, but there's also cool parks in New York.
What else? What else? The beach is kind of far away.

Speaker 2 (20:43):
But don't go at this time, right, Yeah, but the
Hailey Beaver that I had to do it the best.
Another thing I noticed no shopping carts. No, because I
assume if you used the shopping cart and filled it,
it would cost you two thousand dollars.

Speaker 1 (20:58):
Yeah at right, Yeah, yeah, it's physically impossible to like
pay for the something that would fill a shopping carton alone.

Speaker 2 (21:05):
It's like they've never I also just want to share.
I'm pretty proud that I bought the most expensive water,
which of course was twelve dollars. Yes.

Speaker 1 (21:14):
Good, you're making all the right decisions.

Speaker 3 (21:16):
Yeah, this is great.

Speaker 1 (21:17):
Are you thinking about moving out here? Maybe this feels yeah?

Speaker 2 (21:20):
Yeah. After a few glasses of orange wine, I mean
it's just all of a sudden, it starts to hit
for me.

Speaker 4 (21:25):
Yeah, you're going to very soon develop a really deep
interest in cosmetic surger.

Speaker 3 (21:29):
Right, have a huge, fat, beautiful lips. Next that my
cee that's got cold.

Speaker 2 (21:37):
Thick calves and like, I'm just.

Speaker 3 (21:38):
A big fat ass and.

Speaker 1 (21:41):
Absolutely right, my thighs are natural, by the way, in
case you're milky kicked up, ye, my milky caked up
thoughts are natural. All right, we're at the twenty minute mark.
We're gonna take quick break. We're gonna come back and
do some overrated, underrated and uh, maybe get to some
other stuff that I've been dying to ask you guys.
We'll be right back and we're back, and Ben, let's

(22:12):
say on you, what's something you think is underrated?

Speaker 2 (22:15):
What is underrated?

Speaker 1 (22:18):
What does it mean even you know?

Speaker 2 (22:20):
Yeah, totally trying to think of maybe like a band.

Speaker 3 (22:26):
Certainly not that smoothie.

Speaker 4 (22:27):
It feels like it feels like the Bieber Smoothie was.

Speaker 2 (22:30):
Yeah, I mean not enough people are talking about it,
and I do feel like it's so like kind of underground.

Speaker 1 (22:35):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (22:36):
I'm trying to do my part to.

Speaker 3 (22:38):
Sort of help Hollywood's best kept secret.

Speaker 2 (22:40):
Yeah, yeah, spread the gospels of it.

Speaker 1 (22:42):
It's like the punk scene in the seventies, like yeah, yeah,
people who know know, but only.

Speaker 3 (22:47):
One hundred people have ever had the Hailey Beeber Smoothie,
but every one of them went on to make a
great smart.

Speaker 2 (22:54):
You had to be there, you had.

Speaker 1 (22:55):
To be there, That's right. I mean, that's I think
one of the most underrated things we have going.

Speaker 3 (23:02):
Maxis Kansas City, and she was just there with a blender,
Like what she doing?

Speaker 1 (23:06):
She doing this?

Speaker 2 (23:08):
I mean, I guess with this sort of line that
we have going here, I'll say, pizza is really underrated.
Like you know, it's one of those things too, like
not enough people really are having it.

Speaker 1 (23:20):
So yeah, I just found out about it when I
was back in New York this week.

Speaker 3 (23:23):
Yeah, it's one of our things. Yeah, it's the Hamley
Beaper smoothie of New York.

Speaker 2 (23:27):
I guess, all right, this is actually this is actually
hard to admit, but I will say the La Bagels
I went to, I believe Bells and Highley Park so
good in a way, whereas you you're a bagel boy
big time. I gotta admit. They're they they they're they're
they're hitting, they're doing They're definitely making me think like, yeah,

(23:49):
where do they compare with New York?

Speaker 3 (23:51):
Does Larry King's New York water bagel still exist out here?

Speaker 1 (23:55):
I'm not familiar.

Speaker 3 (23:56):
Okay, it wasn't Larry King branded. He was a primary investor.
I know his name was not on it, okay, but
he was a big driving force behind it. Yeah, because
he complained that living in LA for decades, he had
never gotten a bagel as good as back in New York.
And he came to the same conclusion we all have
that it's about the water, right, the New York water. Yeah,

(24:18):
And so he started a company where he claimed that
he was working with an inventor who had built a
machine that could convert LA water into New York water.

Speaker 1 (24:27):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (24:27):
And that was their big selling point.

Speaker 1 (24:29):
Is like build a pipeline like dang a plane view
just like straight from New York.

Speaker 4 (24:35):
I like that.

Speaker 3 (24:36):
Larry King as a friend who's even crazier.

Speaker 4 (24:38):
Than Larry King.

Speaker 1 (24:41):
Mover.

Speaker 3 (24:43):
There is one of.

Speaker 4 (24:44):
Those water bagel places in Westchester. I used to live
over there, and I would go there with some consistency.
I'm gonna say it's like, uh, I'm gonna say seven.

Speaker 3 (24:52):
Out of ten bagel. Okay, maybe not bad.

Speaker 1 (24:54):
That's not bad. Not bad, that's not bad.

Speaker 3 (24:56):
Yeah. By the way, the secret of the machine was
you just held rats over it, like it's.

Speaker 2 (25:02):
Just like a banana peel.

Speaker 3 (25:04):
New York rats put in there, like sex worker tears,
that's New York waters.

Speaker 1 (25:13):
How about you? What's something he thinks under it?

Speaker 3 (25:15):
I was genuinely gonna say, pizza Ben stole mine. I
was walking towards the same bit. I'm gonna say, it's
not to be just one track about this. Movies, and
I think movies are coming back, okay, but I do think.
You know, you hear a lot of the like that
things so long. I got a park, I got sit
in a room with strangers. I gotta watch thirty minutes

(25:37):
of trailers and I'm like, yeah, but yeah, you know
what happens. Then get to see a fucking movie, a
whole ass movie, just one complete thing that so many
people worked on for so long. Yep, even when they suck.
It's crazy they did it so much money. Yeah, I
fully agree.

Speaker 4 (25:53):
It's so movie And like working in Hollywood, it's just
people don't understand what is happening. Like I'll be on
TV shows occasional and it'll be they'll build an entire
house and then tear it down and then build it
again the next week. The amount of craftsmanship that goes
into this ship to make it look like nobody worked
hard on.

Speaker 1 (26:09):
It is unbelievable.

Speaker 3 (26:10):
Yeah, all we got to do is just sit in
that room. You just got to go to that room,
you know.

Speaker 2 (26:16):
Yes, yeah we should mention a big screen, a big screen,
a silver screen.

Speaker 1 (26:22):
Yeah, goddamn, yeah you're here.

Speaker 3 (26:25):
Was it your nephew who liked the big the loves big,
big things in movies. Yeah, so he'd loves because.

Speaker 4 (26:30):
The screens are so big. I think he'd really enjoy that.

Speaker 3 (26:32):
Yeah. His thing is always who is the biggest, the biggest?
It's a good question.

Speaker 2 (26:39):
I mean, man got chunky, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (26:42):
That's true.

Speaker 3 (26:42):
Turning him on to Godzilla was a real game changer.
But now he's very caught up in the like which
Godzilla is the biggest, because Godzilla has been reinvented so
many times. There are internal cannons and sub series within
just the Japanese Godzillas. And he's like, give me the
absolute tallest.

Speaker 4 (27:00):
I love you pick movies. That's it sounds like being like,
you know what's good.

Speaker 3 (27:04):
Music, it's you know what I mean, But it's but
you for too long. And I think like the Zoomers
are starting to get it again, you know, they're coming
around and they're like, Guy's fucking you guys heard about
these you're acting above this right, This is the tits.
This is the top of the pile. This slaps as
they often think. Yes, they say that so much.

Speaker 1 (27:24):
I have no idea what it means is a bop?
This show is so fucking hip, right now? Do you
ever just stop and think about the fact that movies
are like they had the talkies and then movies was
just pictures that move, and like, how dumb that is?
That's they're just like these ones move, so we're gonna

(27:45):
call them move ease and then when they can, when
the pictures that move can talk, we'll call them talkies.
And then we got over that, but stuck with movies.
What's something Griffin that you thinks overrated TV shows? Fucking yeah,
this is I'm big on this corner.

Speaker 3 (28:02):
I don't want to go out and watch a movie.
I want to like invest in something big. You want
to fucking sit in your couch for twenty hours watch
them just string us along. Yeah, especially this prestige TV era.
I watch these shows people, I'm gonna watch these shows
like this shit's a ten hour movie and they say
that like it's a plus, right, But they're getting a
better return on their investment.

Speaker 1 (28:21):
Yep.

Speaker 3 (28:22):
Like I can watch multiple different movies in that time.
You've got ninety minutes a story. You're just slowing it
way the fuck down.

Speaker 1 (28:29):
You can feel the fill times, Yeah, you can always
feel it, like they're just like, oh, we're gonna add
like a new conflict that comes out of nowhere that's
not gonna have anything to do with how it ends up.

Speaker 3 (28:38):
Here's another thing. You got like three years in between seasons.
Now show comes back that I love. I don't remember
what the fuck was going on. Yeah, I can't do
this right. That's the gap that used to exist between
movie sequels. Yeah, that's no seasons of television because everybody's older.
I hate Adrian. I hate it.

Speaker 4 (28:55):
I don't want to be reminded by immortality.

Speaker 3 (28:56):
Don't show me.

Speaker 1 (28:59):
You are an actor who has been in both movies,
then you anything he thinks over it.

Speaker 2 (29:05):
I think this is something you'll agree with me on
Griffin the summer, it's been quite hot here in.

Speaker 3 (29:11):
LA also in New York. Very hot in New York, yes.

Speaker 1 (29:14):
Actually very temperate. When I was back there. Well, I
switched with you guys, and I got I think I
got the better end of it this past week.

Speaker 2 (29:20):
Sorry, but I feel like in general this summer, I
feel like what's been really overrated is leaving the house overrated. Yeah, yeah,
it's just like I got my couch. It's cold in here.
I don't want to go out. I don't want to
get on the subway. You kidding me?

Speaker 1 (29:37):
Unless you're going to the movie.

Speaker 2 (29:40):
That's right, because the other thing that's great about movies
cold as hell in there.

Speaker 3 (29:44):
He's gonna say another underrated is air conditioning. Growing off
of what Ben's saying, movie is one of the best
places to chill out, to literally chill out right if
you're like, fuck, I just finished this. My home is here,
it's gonna be so annoying to get from here to there.

Speaker 1 (29:59):
Midpoint Movi literally did a midpoint movie theory. See weapons
this weekend.

Speaker 3 (30:04):
Great drink a soda man, have a little down popcorn. Yeah,
Jesus Christ, it's great.

Speaker 1 (30:11):
The when you see how many like when you look
at historical box office and like, I think the movie
still that sold the most tickets ever is Gone with
the Wind.

Speaker 3 (30:19):
Right, I believe so, And like back then, though, you think.

Speaker 1 (30:22):
About what modern movies are competing with it was like
that was the only place with air conditioning in the South.
Can you fucking imagine, Like how hot that must have been,
how great it must have been.

Speaker 3 (30:33):
Either go see a movie or sit on a tree stump.
The two activities underrated.

Speaker 2 (30:41):
They're they're overrated, was like sitting on a tree stump.

Speaker 1 (30:44):
Underrated movies they had just found out. They had just
named them because like looking at pictures versus looking at movies,
the pictures that move, all right, So this is continuing
on with the subject of you know, movies that exist
verse don't exist. I've been writing and thinking about culture

(31:05):
for a long time, and a thing I noticed early
on is that the myths that we like encounter like
the things people believe about stuff that they didn't experience,
so like history, or like a foreign country or you know, physics,
like just anything. They don't come from like school, They
come from movies. Like movies are the thing that like

(31:27):
writes people's unconscious. So it's like the idea of a
movie existing verse not existing is so important because the
movies that do exist write history essentially, like that, anytime
we were debunking a myth, it would be based on
something like you couldn't go and be like, well, people
believe this because this is what the book said or

(31:47):
this is what the history class said. It was like,
this is what the movie about the thing from history
class said. So I and on the other side of
that coin, I guess is like just hearing the big
Lebowskian Fargo like from episodes and like thinking about how
much those movies exist. I'm like, when you talk about

(32:09):
movies that don't exist, like what are the movies that
you guys feel like exist the most, Like do you
know what I mean? Like Loom, the largest like one
that I have is just like Forrest Gump, like covers
so much fucking ground, so many like this big important moments,
and like so little thought is like put into like
the political content of that or maybe a lot is

(32:31):
put in, but it's like so damaging.

Speaker 3 (32:33):
That movie is fascinating.

Speaker 1 (32:35):
It's so interesting, like how popular and how much ground
it tried.

Speaker 3 (32:39):
To cover, yes, and how much it like did change
the entire culture, right, you know, It's it's just like people,
I think people who are a little younger cannot understand
that that movie played like Avengers Endgames, right, was the
biggest blockbuster globally. Tom Hanks had won the Oscar the
year before, and they were like, well, we can't not

(33:01):
give it to him again. That's what they're loathed to do.
He went Bestack for two years in a row. They're
but come on, he's Forrest Gump, Like, look at this.
He solved all of our problems.

Speaker 1 (33:11):
Is that voice?

Speaker 3 (33:12):
And we covered it on the podcast a couple of
years ago, and I swung very negative on it after
like loving it as a child, which is also an
insane thing to think about that that movie was something
that like everyone took their kids to see and kids
were like I love this right right yeah, and that
like old people were like finally one the way they
used to make them, you know, and the boomers were like,

(33:33):
finally our generation on screen. Like everyone came together on
this movie.

Speaker 2 (33:37):
I saw it as a kid, and I was like,
Lieutenant Dan Rocks into this guy.

Speaker 3 (33:43):
But like it is one of those movies where there
are like eighty different things in that film that you
can reference as shorthand that everyone gets right, you know,
Like that's part of existing for me, not just like
being able to make a joke about it, but the
idea that you can be like it's kind of like
in Forrest Gump pale, you know, and like him running
both like the leg brace is coming off as a

(34:03):
child and at the end and Lieutenant Dan and Bubba
the box of chocolate, like the bench, the feather, like
all this stuff you can just like immediately evoke. And
the book that film is based on is this like
very bizarre, dark satirical novel. My friend reminded me today.
The opening line of the book is my mama always

(34:24):
said life is no box of chocolates.

Speaker 1 (34:26):
And they were like, you know what opposite that, Psycho,
the exact opposite, right, and some fun and surprising Forrest.

Speaker 3 (34:35):
Gump goes to the moon and his best friends in
Orangutang and they start like a street band, like it's
that's the real plots of the book. And then after
the success of the movie, they made a sequel book
that is Forrest Gump basically telling you that he's the
guy the movie was based on, and how his life
has been affected by the success of the film now
that he has the money from Tom Hanks playing him,

(34:59):
who in a hit, like the books are insane, And
then they turned it into this thing that became this
like can we make this an inspirational tale that's a
kaleidoscopic view of the nineteen hundreds and what the soul
of America is and whatever? And it just hit you know, yeah,
And I think there are movies like that. We talk
about this a little in our Lebowski episode, but that

(35:20):
it has become a film like The Wizard of Oz,
where like every single element of it is iconic now
bigbi right, like the look of every character, every line
of dialogue you can reference, like shot composition, you can
reference props, you know, like Wizard of Oz is like that,
Big Lebowski is like that. Forrestcump is like that.

Speaker 2 (35:40):
I feel like Lebowski too, is the thing that everyone
had on DVD. Yes, it was so undepressent, and so
every kid in their college dorm had a copy of
Big Lebowski.

Speaker 1 (35:51):
I've watched it, like I said, like, you know, dozens
of times, and I was high every time I saw
it when I first saw it, And that was also
true of like, uh, the Lord of the Rings movies.
I watched The Lord of the Rings fairly recently. I'm like,
I didn't remember any of that shit, but I remembered
every line from Big Lebowskian. I was like, these all
live like right in there somehow, like there's something about

(36:11):
the magic of that movie that's fucking crazy.

Speaker 3 (36:13):
Lord of the Ring's absolutely in the same categories. And
I think it's interesting that, like the Diminishing Returns of
the Hobbit didn't retroactively affect Lord of the Rings at all,
But I would argue that they were contemporaneous, and the
Harry Potter films I think largely outgrossed the Lord of
the Rings films, right, but the fact that there are
seven of them it dissipates, and like you can reference

(36:36):
the Harry Potter movies right in a way that is
like distinct from the books, but also not everyone maybe
has seen all of them. The sanctity of Lord of
the Rings being like there were three and once a
year at Christmas we check in. It was like we
all have to see it. We're all excited elves, which
is kind of just like Jerry and you have the

(36:56):
tradition of life. Most people now, many people now are like, yeah,
of course, every Christmas, I watch all three of them, right,
and the extended cuts, you know, I think especially the
nineties Disney Renaissance, I think like Little Mermaid Beatying the Beast, Aladdin,
or very much in that cannon, Yes an end Lion
King Aladdin.

Speaker 1 (37:15):
You guys are talking about on the Big Lebowski episode
that that gave us Proud Boys. A deleted scene from
that gave us the Proud Boys, Like it's like so
embedded in our consciousness. Disney, I think is the most
in there, like in the just like shared consciousness. It's
just like you can't fucking get that out of there. People.

(37:35):
You talk about Disney, right about Disney, everybody like has
an opinion, everybody's seeing it. It just like lives in
people's brains.

Speaker 3 (37:42):
And Proud Boys is like a great example of that.
If you're like Aladdin is so powerful the things that
aren't in the movie have the power to destroy our.

Speaker 1 (37:51):
Fucked up Yeah. The other one that I was thinking
about that's like totally different but sort of the same,
is that the Truman Show, Like the idea of the
Truman Show either it was like so of the moment,
or it like just went into people's brains in such
a way that like that became a common psychosis for

(38:15):
people to have for like a decade. They just like
saw a spike and like an increase of people thinking
they were.

Speaker 3 (38:20):
On the Truman it's a diagnosable condition. Yeah, yeah, exactly, Yeah, No,
that one is huge. But it is interesting where I
I'm like, how much of that is almost bias mosis?

Speaker 1 (38:32):
Right?

Speaker 3 (38:32):
You know, like I think you can say to anyone
Truman show and have them understand what that means. And
yet I think some of the finer details in the
movie you could throw at someone and they go, what
are you talking about? Sure, either they saw it at
the time and they forgot or I don't know if
it's like carried on generationally, But there are things like that.
Of Like another one I'm fascinated by is like a

(38:54):
reviled movie that was a total flop, pay It Forward.
You can reference a Pay It Forward. People know what
you're talking about, Oh yeah, even though most people haven't
seen the movie. Right, Sometimes there's a core idea that
isn't dramatized well that still ends up butterfly effect bucket list,
you know, like some of these.

Speaker 1 (39:12):
Fly effect is a real one. Yeah, I hear about
that all the time from people. I've never seen butterfly effect,
but like that is the version of that concept that
I'm like, just go with Ian Malcolm from fucking Jurassic Park.
That's the movie that's in there.

Speaker 3 (39:24):
But sometimes a trailer can hit a zeitgeist in a way.
The movie doesn't run, and maybe it's an idea that
existed before, but the trailer synthesized it in a way
or gave it a clean name that made it easy
to understand. I think that's such part of it.

Speaker 4 (39:37):
Like the way that we you know, in German they
have the long words that mean eleven things all at once.
We don't have that sor we need this touchstone to
be like, oh, that's a pay it for.

Speaker 2 (39:45):
It makes me think of it. I haven't seen this either,
but is it Eat Live, Pray Love, Pray Love. Yeah,
Eat Pray Love, Eat Live, Pray Love Love. But that
feels like a thing too, where it's become like part
of like someone how they approach travel.

Speaker 1 (40:03):
Yes, Eat Pray Love. I'm living that, Eat Pray Love Life.
Never seen it, but I know exactly what that is.

Speaker 2 (40:08):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (40:08):
Groundhog Day another one where you're like, that movie is
beloved and fairly universal, and yet you can't deny the
concept of a groundhog Day is bigger than the movie. Yes,
you know, even for a film that is big. When
I saw like Truman Show means something even larger when I.

Speaker 1 (40:24):
Saw Palm Springs, I was like, oh, this should just
groundhog Day should be its own genres movies. We just
like one of these should come out every couple of months.

Speaker 3 (40:31):
Yeah tomorrow. You're like, oh, right, we haven't done like
Aliens or groundhog Day yet. It especially a good idea.
It's hard to make it bad.

Speaker 4 (40:37):
You'd be like, well, if we did it with Ninja's
You're like, no, it'd still be great. You can be
on a day with anything, or maybe.

Speaker 2 (40:42):
It's part of a series of just like kind of
like weird holidays where we like, then we do an
arbor day.

Speaker 3 (40:48):
Mm hmm.

Speaker 1 (40:49):
You've been pitching this for a while.

Speaker 2 (40:51):
I have, yeah, really pushing it. Please get in touch.

Speaker 3 (40:54):
Days of the week. It's it's also interesting you read
about both Truman Show and Groundhog Day, and both were
spec scripts that were originally written as like paranoid conspiracy thrillers.
With those premises, we're like, halfway through, if not later,
the audience and the character figure out what's going on.
And in both cases people are like, huh, we're definitely

(41:15):
gonna buy that idea from you and then rework it
into something else entirely, Like there are these cases of
a bad script with an idea that is so powerful
that they're like purchased, rebuild from ground up. What's actually
the version of this that works?

Speaker 4 (41:31):
And then both are utilizing these huge comedy stars to
play these roles that are like comedic partially yes, right, Truman.

Speaker 1 (41:38):
Show is the other one Groundhog Day and yeah, so interesting.

Speaker 2 (41:42):
It feels like Arnold Schwarzenegger as just a personality. And
then all of his movies, like obviously there's some that
maybe aren't as much like part of what we're talking about,
but it feels like he is so just ingrained and
his movie are There's so many I can think of that.

Speaker 3 (42:03):
Everyone knows you say this, And yet a friend of
ours who works on the podcast, his young son was
talking about that he thought were funny. Yeah, and he went,
there was this one with this big guy who had
a funny voice and like he said, State Farm in
a funny way. Yes, And our friend was like, that's
Arnold twool and he just thought it was like a

(42:26):
comedia de larte archetype or something, you know, so like
in a way, Arnold has become a little abstracted, and
you could point back and be like, do you know
what the terminator is? That's this guy and he would
probably no Terminator from parodies rather than seeing them, like,
but I think terminator is another idea that's like very sticky.

Speaker 1 (42:45):
Terminator two is like is I feel like I put
it in in that family of like Forrest Gaunt, Like
just there are moments in that that just live in everything,
Like I feel like everybody's version of a thermonuclear nuclear
detonation and is the playground from like that's what's in
everybody's brand.

Speaker 3 (43:03):
Titanic also, like there are eight trillion lines and images
and moments in that that are universal and evergreen. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (43:12):
I remember reading a trend where people were like, yo,
Titanic is based on a true story like that like
a few.

Speaker 3 (43:22):
Years after it came out anyways, But that's like what
you're saying about the sort of like print the legend
legacy of these things. Yeah, I mean, I My favorite
movie about what you're talking about is Inglorious Bastards, which
I think is a really smart movie about the kind
of print, the legend, lasting legacy of our pop culture
defining our history, and a lot of the you know

(43:44):
now Tarantino's done the ending is me changing what actually happened,
revisionist history thing a couple times, but that's the one
where I think it's actually kind of meaningful, because the
whole film is about these people as this war, like
the end is in sight. They can see it's winding down,
and everyone's becoming obsessed with how am I going to
be written about? You know, And like the Christoph Waltz

(44:05):
character is constantly saying, like you, I'm sure you've heard
about me, you know me by reputation, And the Daniel
Burle character is like the soldier who's been turned into
like a propaganda film hero where they changed his historic
moment and made him even more of an action star
to make the Germans feel pride. And the movie theater
owner wants to kill all the Jews by trapping them

(44:26):
in a theater and making them look at her face
on a big screen and say you need to know
I'm sorry. Yes, Yet opposite, the Jewish movie theater owner
wants to kill all the Nazis and say, like, look
at my face, remember me, I'm on a big screen.
I have this immortality, you know, and like they kill
Hitler at the end and the end the war. Because

(44:46):
if a movie tells you that's what happens, that's what happens.
There's so many things that we accept that are false
because we're used to the movie version totally.

Speaker 4 (44:54):
And also so much of arts job is to help
this process things. So, like you were talking about, it
does change, and I think for a lot of people
in a satisfying way, in to me a way that
is a little bit reductive the unimaginable horror of like
the Hall of you know what I mean, where it's
like I think, like the way that Apocalypse Now deals
with Vietnam is this profound, wondrous nightmare thing that to

(45:18):
me feels more sort of authentic a little bit to
the confusion of war.

Speaker 1 (45:24):
Does that makes sense? I want to talk about Yeah,
let's take a quick break. I want to talk about
war movies in the context of what we're talking about here.
But let's take a quick break. We'll be right back,
and we're back. And I feel like World War Two

(45:46):
probably the most like depicted movie or war in the
history of film, maybe the most depicted event in the
history possibly film. Vietnam is probably does and have as
many movies, but I feel like it's so iconic, like
it's so like it exists because of these like classic

(46:08):
movies that depicted Vietnam. We were talking about how the
song Fortunate Son, like if you hear that, you picture
yourself descending in a helicopter above like Rice Patties, like
I think from Forrest Gump. Maybe, but the current wars
that are like being fought by America like don't exist

(46:29):
in the same way. I feel like I'm just curious
to like hear you guys thoughts on like why that
might be the case or might not, Like why, you know,
I think Vietnam ended. I sound like Walter from Big
Lebowski Now, it like had a fairly definitive end, and

(46:49):
then people started making movies about it, like after the
fact a little bit, like you know, while Vienna was happening,
they made mash but it was like about the Korean
War because they didn't want to like actually touch that.
And so maybe it's just that like we're still doing
this like in the Middle East, and so people can't.

Speaker 3 (47:07):
Deal I think I think, yeah, I think the forever
war part of it is really big because there's no
ability to get closure or distance. And I you know,
there was the spat of like very ambitious prestigee war
movies that I feel like really started up around the
second Bush term that the audience just went like, no

(47:30):
fucking way to all of this, right, Like movies like
Rendition and like Stop Loss and things that were very
earnest and like we're really we need to dig into this,
and people were just like, don't don't want to talk
about any of this, no thing, we got no distance,
We're stuck in it. I don't want to be reminded
of it. Yeah, you know, I think there was a
very similar thing of people trying to make things about

(47:50):
the lockdown during the lockdown exactly. You know, where the
studios were like, oh, it's great, we'll do a siitcome
over zoom and it's about friends hanging out over zoom.
And it's like, I don't want to fucking watch this, yeah, yeah,
And I don't want to watch it five years later anymore.
I don't want to relive that.

Speaker 1 (48:05):
You know, it took ice Cubes the War of the
World's for us to finally come to terms with it
and want to watch it. Finally finally unders something too.

Speaker 3 (48:14):
There was such confusion around Vietnam, and I really think
that is a war that the movies processed for the
public in a way even more than anything else. There
was so much kind of like corruption and confusion and
smoke screening, even with journalism and the government and everything
at the time that I think there was just something

(48:35):
with that timing out with the new Hollywood movement and
studios getting less controlling and artists coming in who were
willing to like touch the nerve where we all had
to kind of I say this, we all none of
us were fucking alive, but you know, the culture used
movies to work through this shit. And I think partially
because of Vietnam, not that all the reporting the government

(48:56):
communication was better in the Forever Wars has at any point,
but there's been more of a collective conversation. And obviously
the growth of the Internet, the ability to not just
need to rely on what like one person is telling
us then makes it so that like, I don't need
a movie to fucking tell me about this, right, especially
if we don't yet have an endpoint that we can

(49:17):
look back on and step away and go, what was
this all about right, And I feel very similarly about
like last year, last two years in particular, there's a
wave of movies that feel very lockdown inspired to me
that I think are very pointedly not about the pandemic
at all explicitly, but like I weirdly think Oppenheimer very

(49:39):
much comes out of that, not just in the fear
of like a thing that can change the world forever,
but even in like the building of Los Alamos and
everyone needing to like create this bubble, and Barbie that
same year is like about this kind of bubbled living,
you know, and like relationship to culture. I think there
were these movies Asteroid Cities another one where like a
lot of our biggest commercial artists, we're making these movies

(50:01):
that exist in these small, like hypercharged bubbles of a
brief moment Los Almos in that is the NBA bubble,
like that in the metaphor, and like I love Eddington
and it's a masterpiece, but the public very much went no,
thank you because it was explicitly.

Speaker 4 (50:17):
About the yeah yeah, well, and Superman also has a
fairly clear metaphor floor Palestine in Israel, which is like
kind of incredible that they got away with that especially
in you know, something like this.

Speaker 3 (50:28):
And James Gunn in interviews has been like, look, I
wrote this movie three years ago, Like you're all astounded
by how directly it maps onto Palestine and Israel. But
we've been in some version of this for decades. Hey,
the Palestine and Israel thing has been going on for decades.
But be there like seven other analogs. You can look
at Russian Ukraine, you know, And I think it's like
we're more willing to process these types of things as

(50:51):
an element of Superman rather than making the whole movie
out of that totally, because it's too terrifying to look
at it directly. And also we're getting it directly beamed
into our phones as well, which changes every did like
our response to it. And I mean, I think purt
Locker is the only war film to win Best Picture
in the last twenty years. I'd say, like explicitly war film. Uh,

(51:12):
And that's a movie that is a character study, right.
It was the only one that was well received in
that run of films, right, because it's not a political
but it's about what it is like to be a
soldier in a war rather than the war.

Speaker 1 (51:24):
Yeah. The other two that I think exists are American
Sniper and Zero Dark thirty. Yeah, and those are the
two where they can make America the hero, like you
know what I mean, Like they can find a way
one because they're just basing on a memoir of a
guy who's like making shit off kind of and then
Zero Dark thirty is like, oh, we're fucking killing then

(51:44):
Lutton and obviously it's like, you know, more morally complex
than that. But I think that might but those two
being the only two that like broke through. An American
Sniper broke through in like a major wa like he
was huge, but.

Speaker 3 (51:56):
Zero Dark thirty was also like a very big hit
and was seen as the best Picture front runner until
many centers spoke out against it and kind of like
made it too much of a hot potato.

Speaker 1 (52:07):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, but I think those two breaking through
b makes it that Like that's where I get the
idea that it's like because we don't want to be complicit,
we don't like the fact that it's still happening. We
feel we feel guilty that it's still happening, and so
we just like need to just leave it over there
unless you can tell us the story where we're like, oh,
hell yeah, We're like we're doing a thing that matters.

Speaker 3 (52:29):
I think also, like killing bin Laden closed a loop.

Speaker 1 (52:33):
Oh yeah, you.

Speaker 3 (52:34):
Could break off a story. Yeah, exactly, a movie I
found very fascinating. But one of the things I like
about is the ending of the movie is this kind
of like Dustin Hawkins sitting in the bus at the
end of the graduate being like, fuck, what do I
do now?

Speaker 1 (52:47):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (52:48):
It has this very like striking ending of Jessica Chastain
having completed the thing clearly with this expression on her
face of like what now. I don't feel good. We
haven't solved this right, yeah, Like we're stuck in the
aft math of this. We got the guy, but it
doesn't like vindicate anything. That's why I love Thin Red Line.
The entire movie is mostly like beauty and confusion. You're

(53:09):
never there.

Speaker 4 (53:10):
It's like it's truly an anti war film because at
no point you're like, hey, that's pretty badass. Actually yeah yeah.

Speaker 3 (53:16):
I Also it was like, right after hurt Locker, She's like,
I want to do the Bin Laden movie, and she
sets it up before they got him. She had written
it and cast it. Ruoney Marro was going to play
the Jessica Chestain part. They had like half of the
supporting cast set, they were prepping it, and then the
sealed Team six rate happened and she was like, I

(53:38):
got to rebuild the movie.

Speaker 1 (53:39):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (53:40):
And the first version of the movie I think would
have not worked at all beyond the fact of like
imagining it coming out in the world where there was
an ending that the movie wasn't acknowledging. I don't think
anyone in that moment would have wanted to see that,
Whereas the actual movie came out like two years after
with enough distance, and I think it was speaking to
a desire of like, if we're stuck in Forever Wars,

(54:02):
is there at least a way to break this into volumes? Yeah,
we can start to process one thing as complete, of course.

Speaker 4 (54:08):
A new hope, Yeah, we'll store. A huge aspect of
storytelling is conclusion.

Speaker 3 (54:14):
We need things resolved, and American Sniper has like a
very dark resolution. Yes, you know, by framing it around
one guy and being like and.

Speaker 1 (54:24):
He died right, oh yeah, tragically, and therefore you don't
have to like feel weird and like think about too
much what he was doing over there, because what he
was doing at the end was undoubtedly good. So we're
all good here, right, good? Yeah, yeah, right, not have.

Speaker 3 (54:37):
To ask the question how do we actually feel about sniping?
We really love sniping.

Speaker 2 (54:42):
You know, two movies that come together are I'm thinking
of as we're talking through this is like where it's
like it doesn't really come to a conclusion. Is a Cecario?
Yeah you know that that it's like this secret war,
just the shady side of how we're conducting ourselves as

(55:02):
a country and these other countries. And it's kind of
at the end like a shrug of just like hey, yeah,
this is fucked up.

Speaker 4 (55:09):
Yeah, which is like the opposite of propaganda basically, right right,
you know, but it connects to one of my favorite
Vietnam era movies, or sure of the Rambo films, which
start with a morally complex one about like the you know,
moral weight of like what we made soldiers do over there.

Speaker 3 (55:25):
This is the business end of the psychological trauma we
put people through it.

Speaker 1 (55:29):
And then the second one he just goes back and
wins Vietnam. Yeah, and then Sacario has to a lesser degree,
but it has a sequel that's just like fuck, this
is fun. This is like an amazing action movie version
of the first one without all the nasty guilt and
like ambiguity, ambiguity, and then.

Speaker 3 (55:48):
Predator I think is a fascinating almost like response film too,
Rambo of sharing. Oh so you guys just want to
see the biggest guy go in and solve the jungle, right, right, yeah,
fucking he's gonna get eat my monster.

Speaker 1 (56:02):
Right.

Speaker 3 (56:03):
We're like walking into things we don't understand. Yeah, yeah,
the ultimate ratifications. If we're talking about war films with
cultural staying power. By the way, we should acknowledge the
Infinity War and the many heroes we lost in the blip. Okay,
we got them back thankfully.

Speaker 4 (56:18):
Yeah, well I'm still grieving. I mean, you know, I'm
sure we got him back. Never forget, you never forget?

Speaker 2 (56:23):
Should we? Actually just a moment of silence for the Yeah,
I think twenty minutes.

Speaker 3 (56:29):
On the podcast. But that's a war we got closure to.

Speaker 1 (56:33):
That's right, that's right.

Speaker 3 (56:34):
Yeah, the good guy did the snap and everything's good now.

Speaker 4 (56:38):
I really my hope is that one day we'll be
able to make movies so well we won't have to
do war anymore.

Speaker 3 (56:43):
It'd be great, that'd be pretty cool. I've always said,
the only solution to a bad guy with a snap
is a good guy with us.

Speaker 1 (56:52):
Speaking of the Avengers real quick, we'll do speed round
of a couple ideas I wanted to hit. Do you
guys buy into the idea that like sex has gone
away from movies and that like there's a great essay
everybody's beautiful, nobody's horny, or something along those lines that
talks about how like our blockbuster movies are full of
like attractive people who like don't even have like sexual energy.

(57:14):
Really they're not, like you don't think of them as
sexual beings, and that you like, we had a whole
genre of movies that was just like Michael Douglas fux
and like his Horny. That's a whole type of movie.

Speaker 3 (57:27):
And those movies are like explicit in every sense. They
are like sexually visually explicit, but they are also like
textually explicit. Yes, I think the thing that we've lost
more is like movies that have sexual energy, right right,
Like one I think of all the time is Pelican
Brief where they cast Denzil Washington the character in the
book was white. Yes, everyone freaked out. Even in fucking

(57:51):
nineties America, they were like people might revolt of Denzel
Washington Julia Roberts kiss. And so that is a movie
that is loaded with sexual chemistry that never actually like
comes to a pass. They were too worried about showing
them visually do anything, and yet the movie feels horny
as right, and I think almost all Hollywood movies used
to have that, right, Like, there is this innate voyeurism

(58:14):
to films where it's like we want to watch hot
people beat together and either they're doing stuff or we're
like charging the space in between them of like they
do stuff, they did stuff. And it's also like, you know,
a lot of this is I'm guilty of this as well.
A lot of this is blamed on like is there
a younger generation that is like more skittich and like

(58:35):
sort of anxious, you know, neurotic about ideas of sex
and power dynamics and all this, And is that why
movies don't want.

Speaker 1 (58:41):
To touch them?

Speaker 3 (58:42):
But you're also like shipping culture has only increased for
the last twenty five years, you know, and like to
an extent where people are just like I like to
imagine that these two side characters that don't even talk
are dating and draw them in this kind of way.
I think a lot of it is like this, that
that the two thousands, especially the twenty tens, were really

(59:02):
defined by this obsession with the global box office and
like Hollywood films as being this exported product where for
a couple of years the international grosses of movies were
overtaking the domestic grosses, and you read about in different
countries and different territories they just have like entirely different
cultural standards in some cases like very extreme censorship boards.

(59:24):
But also the Hollywood got really in their head about learning,
like you know, in China, you can't release a movie
with ghosts.

Speaker 1 (59:31):
Right, you know by Star Wars tanks over there.

Speaker 3 (59:34):
Yeah, they are all these metrics they have to process
that I think just kind of blanded a lot of
things out.

Speaker 2 (59:40):
They just don't want to offend anyone absolutely.

Speaker 4 (59:43):
I also want to want to say that we should
also consider the fact that sex is.

Speaker 3 (59:47):
Icky's right, gross and bad. There is like an under honestly, Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I feel like a lot of young people are like,
don't show me that that's gross, Like stop putting that
in my movies. But then like I wonder how much
of it, so like I'm of two minds about this one.
I think there's like something weird and interesting happening with

(01:00:07):
you know how Starship Troopers is like has sex, but
it like doesn't really have like sexual energy.

Speaker 1 (01:00:13):
It's just like it's like nudity that's just like completely
cut off. And it's a movie about fascism. Like I
think that that's an important part of fascism, is like
beautiful people without like sexual energy, and like.

Speaker 3 (01:00:25):
It's a beat that Forhoven repeats twice he doesn't RoboCop
and Starship Troopers where he's like, this is a culture
where men and women can shower together, right, and there's
no sense of sexual danger. Like in both of those films,
you have like locker rooms like cops and like soldiers, yeah,
who are just fully naked in a mass space and

(01:00:46):
they can like slap in asses like the football the
Starship Troopers, there's like kind of like well they won't
they jousting banter, and even still there's no threat of
actual physical things happening. Right, We've almost become a post
sexual society.

Speaker 4 (01:01:00):
Despite the incredible proliferation of pornography, which is always right,
So that's what so part of me thinks like it's
interesting that like this, uh you know, everybody is like
in great shape, hot and like not horny for one
another is happening as we're like descending into fascism in
our country.

Speaker 1 (01:01:18):
Like maybe those two are related. The other part of
me is just like, oh, it's because like porn's everywhere
and everyone's like, no, I see that over there. Get
this the fuck out of my movies.

Speaker 4 (01:01:25):
Like, and I think the shipping thing is also about romance,
it is, right, So I think that's an interesting place
for movies to ConfL.

Speaker 3 (01:01:32):
Once again, it's like that's about tension, Like it doesn't
need to escalate to nude scenes, to physicality, you know,
but a lot of that energy is dissipated where I
feel like sometimes the shipping is like my head canon is,
and you're like imagining a dynamic that is not actually
depicted in the film because in a way, they're almost

(01:01:52):
lung for any sense of that tension existing. Yeah, even
if it doesn't have to be the center. I also
think perhaps a culprit that is not discussed as much
is the rise of like pay cable television, which got
very sexual, right. I don't say this in like a
pejorative way of that so sexual, but like you know,

(01:02:15):
suddenly HBO and then Showtime and then like all these
things we're making Christie's shows, not like skin Amax softcore films,
right for Pristie shows that started leaning really hard into
nudity and sex scenes where it was almost like a prerequisite.
And then you're starting to see shows where you're like,
did they green light Californiication solely because it's a perfect

(01:02:36):
format to have twelve boobs an episode? You know, were
Masters of Sex or whatever? Like it felt like things
were skewing that way, and I think a lot of
that was a pushing of these are things you thought
you could never see on television. Sure, TV's getting serious,
it's growing up, right, We're showing you the most forbidden

(01:02:57):
things that you're not used to seeing at home. And
did that kind of swap the power dynamic where then
sex scenes and movies started to feel like a TV thing.

Speaker 4 (01:03:05):
Yeah, because even in like Game of Thrones, I remember
seeing it was like there there was nudity, but it
felt like the weirdest like softcore porn nudity with like
this is Dragon time, but also these it's clear these
women at fake breasts like it was.

Speaker 3 (01:03:16):
Just all this Spartaca shows are very horny, like all
those things. I do think something shifted there.

Speaker 1 (01:03:24):
Yeah. Yeah, and you did refer to Game of Thrones
as dragon time.

Speaker 3 (01:03:27):
I remember, Yeah, I believe.

Speaker 1 (01:03:30):
Let's put it on this Dragon time.

Speaker 3 (01:03:32):
It's two thousand and Dragon the year. All right.

Speaker 1 (01:03:34):
I feel like we can keep this conversation going for
three hours, but we have to stop. It was amazing
having you guys. Thank you so much for doing it. Ben.
Where can people find you? Follow you anything you want
to plug?

Speaker 2 (01:03:47):
Yeah, you can follow me on ig It's just my name.
If you're interested in fashion. I have a brand Congratulations.
It's congrat Wyo you relations dot com. Yeah, got some
fun stuff there. Give you a little taste. I have
a shirt with a dog right on the front. It's

(01:04:08):
long sleeve. Once sleeve says you are the other one
says a dog.

Speaker 1 (01:04:12):
So got that dog in you?

Speaker 2 (01:04:14):
Yeah, exactly if you've got that dog in.

Speaker 3 (01:04:16):
You, And if you don't have that dog in you yet, yeah,
you can get that dog on.

Speaker 4 (01:04:21):
You exactly like Truman Show will bleed in internal.

Speaker 2 (01:04:26):
Yeah. And I also put out every year an annual
holiday album called Slow Christmas.

Speaker 1 (01:04:34):
Nice.

Speaker 2 (01:04:34):
I guess it's a little early in the ear, but
you know what, why not get in the Christmas mood
and slow it down.

Speaker 3 (01:04:41):
Of course, my previous volumes are up on bank camp.

Speaker 2 (01:04:44):
Yeah, wherever you get music, band Camp, Spotify.

Speaker 1 (01:04:47):
So what kind of songs we were talking about here,
like Christmas classics?

Speaker 2 (01:04:51):
Yeah, yeah, Christmas classics, originals, nice, all kinds of.

Speaker 1 (01:04:55):
Stuff, but slower, very slow. Yeah, it's just normal Christmas
song slowed really.

Speaker 2 (01:05:01):
I know because you so. I started there with it
chopped and screwed. But now that I've been bringing bands
into the mix, they got to do it live. Yeah,
they can't do it in posts. It's got to be authentic. Nice.

Speaker 1 (01:05:16):
He's given idente hands. Is there a working media that
you've been into.

Speaker 2 (01:05:21):
Uh? Yeah, you know what, I'll give a shout out
to Wild Pink, the band. They put on an album
somewhat recently. It's just excellent. I wasn't familiar with their
music before. I'm a huge fan. Nice, I highly recommend.
And then the label they're on, fire Talk, has other
great artists, so check it out.

Speaker 1 (01:05:42):
That's what the gen Z refers to this podcast as
fire Talk. You know, sorry, I'm very old Griffin. Is
there a working media you've been enjoying.

Speaker 3 (01:05:53):
I'm Griff Lightning on the social platform, although I try
to use them with a great discretion put boundaries around
post the man looking but like Grease Lightning with the
first half of my name in it. Blink checks the
podcast we do. We're doing the comments for the rest
of the year. We also have a Patreon where we
do film franchises instead of going director base. Right now

(01:06:13):
we're doing a sort of self curated franchise of nineties
indie comic heroes adaptations. Nice so crow masks, Spawn.

Speaker 2 (01:06:22):
Dread spawn.

Speaker 3 (01:06:27):
Spawn where they could.

Speaker 2 (01:06:28):
A spawn And I don't know, it's just that this
hits for me. Is the chain.

Speaker 3 (01:06:34):
He loves the chain work.

Speaker 2 (01:06:36):
Your chain guys are talking, oh, swinging, use it as
a weapon.

Speaker 3 (01:06:42):
He's wearing them. They're coming out of him.

Speaker 2 (01:06:44):
And blossoing with it. It's just it's everything.

Speaker 1 (01:06:48):
What's the wetness on the Oh, that's interesting.

Speaker 3 (01:06:51):
One is kind of slimy in that. Yeah, it does
feel like they're slicking him down with something.

Speaker 2 (01:06:55):
The rubber suit and of course clown he is just
so sticky. Yeah, yeahs out.

Speaker 1 (01:07:07):
That is one of the Action Boys. Another film podcast,
has a theory on the difference between Vietnam and other
movies is that Vietnam is wet and green, and people
like green and like like the other movies are like
too dry, saying.

Speaker 3 (01:07:22):
That two sides of Ben's personal.

Speaker 1 (01:07:27):
That these two sides myself because one there are to climates.

Speaker 2 (01:07:31):
It's dry, you know what I mean. And then yet
you have like wet dripping Yeah, so dramatic, you know, Yeah,
the wetness is its very dramatic, cinematic. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:07:44):
I want to pitch my meme real quick, my Apocalypse
now meme real quick. The idea that I have is
that you know, when Martin Sheen comes out of the
swamp really slowly and he's got that thing if he
sees something he doesn't like and you just reverse it
where he slowly goes back.

Speaker 3 (01:07:56):
That really I just want to I want to call
out media. I like the great Jamie Loft has just
announced that she's ending her podcast Sixteenth Minute of Fame,
largely because it was a herculean task that she's done
for several years. It's a very labor intensive show, but
it's one of the best podcasts I've ever heard, and
she studies people who entered the zeitgeist in our kind

(01:08:19):
of modern internet way, and then sort of follows up
with what it's like to be someone who went viral,
who transcended the culture in a moment, circling back to them,
and yeah, she like anthologically breaks down what the thing
was and why it caught on and what it says
about us, and then goes back and talks to them
as people and really sees the poet positive and negative

(01:08:40):
effects of becoming the main character in that kind of way.
I think it's an incredible show.

Speaker 1 (01:08:44):
So Jamie's the best frequent She was like on at
least once a week when this podcast started and is
the best. And that show's on a cool zone Media,
so go check it out. Great recommendation, great pocket. We're
big fans. Yeah, where can people find you? Is there
a work media you've been enjoying?

Speaker 4 (01:09:03):
Yeah? At mort Burke on the socials, I like as
the skateboarding liaison for this that's right.

Speaker 1 (01:09:09):
We didn't even get into any skater culture. Always shoehorn
it in no matter where I am, and I love that.

Speaker 3 (01:09:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:09:15):
Yeah, the new sci fi fantasy video came out. Yeah,
pretty sick.

Speaker 3 (01:09:18):
Jerry it's got a it's got a really cool interesting,
vaguely blade runner cyberpunk ish old Internet like art design.

Speaker 1 (01:09:25):
It's cool.

Speaker 2 (01:09:26):
Nice. Yeah, what's your grind?

Speaker 3 (01:09:31):
Was like what a step dad question?

Speaker 1 (01:09:35):
What's your foot Where can people find you? Did you
tell me?

Speaker 3 (01:09:41):
At mort Burke and she got Spiritually Filthy?

Speaker 4 (01:09:43):
My stand up special on YouTube and also my wife
Ashley birch Is and my podcast Rebrand.

Speaker 1 (01:09:49):
Rebrand, very good podcast. You can find me on Twitter
and Twitter at Jack Underscore, Brian blue Sky at Jack
ob the Number One. You can find us on Twitter
and blue Sky The Zeitgeist where the Daily Zeitgeist on Instagram.
You can go to the description of this episode wherever
you're listening to it, and there you will find the footnotes,
which is where we link off to the information that

(01:10:10):
we talked about in today's episode. We probably won't do
that today because we were kind of all over the map.
But instead my work of media is going to be
go check out blank check. Hey, Yeah, you can find
a lot of very interesting, thoughtful, well sourced Can.

Speaker 3 (01:10:26):
I Change my? Can I change my?

Speaker 1 (01:10:28):
As well? Which much nicer than what I said, go ahead.

Speaker 2 (01:10:31):
I was just saying very concise episodes track tight Yeah,
and so yeah, just forewarned three hours.

Speaker 1 (01:10:42):
We also in the footnotes like to link off to
a song that we think you might enjoy. Miles is
out on assignment, and so when that's the case, we
always like to bring in super producer Justin Connor to
uh tell you about a song that we think you
might enjoy. A super pro just I'm walking over the mic. Yeah,
here in the flesh. Yeah, belated again. Yeah, thank you.

(01:11:05):
I appreciate it.

Speaker 2 (01:11:06):
You.

Speaker 1 (01:11:06):
I'm embarrassed. I'm doing a good job.

Speaker 2 (01:11:08):
You're doing a great job. I really appreciate that.

Speaker 5 (01:11:11):
I'm gonna keep the slow music theme going. That's for
Ben's suggestion. And uh, there's this song called Yasashi that
you might have heard on TikTok at some point, I'm
gonna recommend the slowed down version because it makes a
sexy song even sexier.

Speaker 2 (01:11:26):
Uh.

Speaker 5 (01:11:26):
There's some floaty scents, some some really nice flutes that
are going on in there, and then there's a saxophonist
that is just going crazy the entire time of this track.
So this song is called Yasashi slowed by Casper. You
use an X instead of an A in the word
Casper and you can find that song in the footnote.

Speaker 1 (01:11:43):
Footnote The Dailies Guys the production called iHeart Radio For
more podcast from my Heart Radio visits the iHeartRadio Wrap
Apple podcast. Wherever you listen to your favorite shows, that's
gonna do it for us today. We're back this afternoon
to tell you what's trending and we will talk to
you all then bye. The Daily Guys is exactly produced
by Catherine Long, co produced by by Wang.

Speaker 3 (01:12:04):
Co produced by Victor Wright, co written by j M mcnapp,
edited and engineered by Justin Conner,

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Stuff You Should Know

Stuff You Should Know

If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.

Law & Order: Criminal Justice System - Season 1 & Season 2

Law & Order: Criminal Justice System - Season 1 & Season 2

Season Two Out Now! Law & Order: Criminal Justice System tells the real stories behind the landmark cases that have shaped how the most dangerous and influential criminals in America are prosecuted. In its second season, the series tackles the threat of terrorism in the United States. From the rise of extremist political groups in the 60s to domestic lone wolves in the modern day, we explore how organizations like the FBI and Joint Terrorism Take Force have evolved to fight back against a multitude of terrorist threats.

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