Taxi Driver with Tracy Letts

0:00. Loneliness has followed me my whole life everywhere and bars and cars, sidewalks, stores, everywhere. There's no escape. I'm God's lonely man. Junete. My life is taken another turn again. Days can go on with regularity over and over. One day indistinguishable from the next. A long continuous chain. Then suddenly there is a podcast. What's the word there? Change. I thought you might do listen, new fuckers, you screw. You know, you might do that. Yeah. There's a man who would not podcast it anymore. I don't know. I'm God's lonely. A man does feel to me like the

1:00best line in this film. Hey, this is a movie with nice little pieces of writing in it. Yeah. Sure. That's a good one. If you asked most people on the street, like, name movies that you think are well directed or well written, right? Like just even if you haven't seen it, what are the movies that you think of that people talk about as being like serious, high brow examples of great American direction and great American screenwriting? And this film was snubbed in both best director and best screenplay at the Academy Awards in 1976. Well, you know, they're not too smart. No, but that's wild that it didn't get. It's not wild. It's about a psychopath who got a lot of guys. It got more kind of a world of nominations. It did which picture. I think that's more a sign of what a, you know, what a breakthrough was. Do you want to know though? Yes. No, I know the lineup is insane. Well, well, do you know want to know who beat out Scorsese in director? It's very interesting. You're saying who's like there's three nominees in director who

2:04were nominated for best picture. And then there's two substitutes. Is this the same year as bound for glory? It is the same year. So how has he doesn't get nominated? How has he also snubbed a good director? Yeah. Yeah. The first study came movie. That's so true. It's very true. Okay. So the three that do connect obviously are all the presidents, man. Yes. Network in Nashville. No, not Nashville. Sorry. Network and the best picture winner of 1976. Our guest. No, he's rocky. Rocky. Right. Just drafting these movies. That is wild that John Abelson. He does. Wins best director and Martin Scorsese was not nominated for best director. And I say, I say no offense to anyone who might have worked on the film, I play Rocky. I mean, please John Abelson in the film. You talking to me? This great. See, you was he added in the you got what you wanted. It's wouldn't have been better than that. Wow. What delivery? What beauty? Who plays Abelson and I play Rocky? J. Duplass. Oh, that's pretty good casting. That's

3:07interesting. Yeah. Yeah. He's like a tough Chicago guy, right? Like he was sort of like, yeah, like a, you know, great. Where could they? Well, J. J. Duplass. Well, I haven't seen the movie, but he was great when I saw him. Although I never saw him act in the moon. So in other words, J may stink in the movie. I don't know. I haven't seen it. You saw him in Harry May. He had a look. I saw him at dinner. Yeah. He was great. He didn't even see you. Maybe the looks bad. Maybe they put a clown like him. So it was wearing a great jacket. Okay. It is just interesting to consider best picture that year. Right. Go. So, you know, and so yes, director, you've got Abelson, Pekula and Sydney Lumet. And then the two substitutes. I know for it, Mueller for seven beauties. So a, you know, groundbreaking, the first woman nominated for directing and Bergman, Ingmar Bergman for face-to-face. Which is like, they gave, you know, they gave Bergman a lot of numbs post, you know, sort of in his later career. But that's the sort of, I forget about face-to-face. Like, I remember Crising Whisperers breaks through and all that, you know, like, Fanny Alexander. Our guest just

4:10did 1976 draft on big picture. No one drafted face-to-face, right? No one drafted face-to-face. I did. I mentioned it in the honorable mentions just because of Olemen's performance. It's not, it's not, you know, it's not top tier Bergman. It's not a Bergman I've seen. And I know it's one of the ones that was that was for television and there's different versions and all that. It is just fascinating that 1976 was the first female best director nominee. It doesn't happen again until 93. What year's piano? That sounds right. Yes. And then it doesn't happen again until 2003. 2003 is so-fee a copo, right? That's the third time. When we've had four since then, like, it's doubled. Oh, maybe even more, right? I mean, it's gotten a little less unusual for a woman to go into. Two Proageown nominations. And Catherine Bigelow won. Yes, she's the first to win. She's the fifth. No, she's the fourth ever. I think she's the fourth nominated. Yes. And she's the first to win. And then you had scrolling down here. Campy on second nom.

5:10Uh, yet Gerwig. Gerwig 2017. Well, we try a little movie called Lady Bird in which the man to my right says, says, fuck, maybe the best single line delivery of the word fuck I've ever heard. Oh, I believe is the line. To me, it's Doritos. Well, there's a lot of good line readings. I'm just, but is it oh fuck or just fuck? I think it's oh fuck. It's when she tells you she got into, you know, right? And why you were. It speaks to the quality of the performance, though, that we both were thinking there's a one word utterance. Oh, fuck. That lives in my mind forever. And we had different answers Doritos. And then you're forgetting, of course, that emerald fennel was nominated. I was not forgetting. I was building the drum roll up to, of course, the most worthy nominee in the history of best director. And Justin Trier was nominated a couple years ago for Nami Fallen. Carlis Farr J. Yeah. He was nominated for the substance. And last year, Chloe Zhao again. Yeah. So it's gotten much, you know, look, we're celebrating that now you often one woman will be part of

6:12the five. Right. And we're celebrating that. Obviously. Right. Golf, golf clubs all around for the Academy. More women direct movies. Yeah. Still not that many, but more. The other thing is that now the Academy feels increasingly international. And you almost always have a foreign best director nominee. And you almost always have a couple international films in best picture. And as Sean called out in the 76 draft in the 70s, the Oscars are all about this. It was like suddenly the Oscars were like the Oscars are pretty cool in the 70s. They were stretching their arms around. Everything interesting happening in Hollywood. They were like bringing in foreign performances, first female director nominee, foreign films and best picture and best director lineups. And then by the 80s, they're just like, we're back to our fucking bullshit. And it's finally come back around now 40 years later. Prestige cinema sort of changes in the 80s. Oh, if that right. Like 80s cinema, there is rich. Well, lots of great Rocky and Star Wars start that.

7:12You're start responsible for this. But you know, when you think about movies like out of Africa, they're sort of like, you know, Gandhi, these like big epics of the 80s. It's like those are absent in the 70s and they come back. Yeah. You could argue though that there's something in the taxi driver, Rocky, divide specifically these two movies, right? These two character studies of kind of lonely men in cities that are merging a kind of like neo realism with some kind of more classical Hollywood traditions. But taxi driver is using that entirely to make you feel bad. And Rocky is using all of that to make you feel great. And the second that kind of code is cracked with Rocky of like, here's a way to make a traditionally crowd pleasing Hollywood picture that still feels kind of edgy and artistic. It's a little bit game over. Sure. Beyond just Star Wars making like this is just pure blockbuster shit. It's like, well, then we'll just give the best picture to the thing that's closest to Rocky. Well, if for no other reason than just the happy ending, I mean, Hollywood had

8:16been addicted to the downer ending for a lot of years. Yes. People were thirsty for a happy ending. I mean, they waited till Rocky to to make it kind of a dumb happy ending. What could aren't you good happy ending? One could argue that's the brilliance of Rocky and the thing they really fucking cracked is how do you have a classic 70s new Hollywood downer ending that also feels like a triumph? And if you can do that, then who wants just the digging into the depths of how broken men are? Well, credit to Sylvester Stallone for that screenplay. I mean, he found a way to walk that line. It's right way. But I remember as an 11 year old watching the Academy Awards who had loved Rocky in the theater, I was still enraged. Yeah. That Rocky one best picture. I knew that was that was at the time you were like this at the time. Yeah. Was there a movie you were rooting for? Well, I'm all the president's men or network or taxi drivers, right? But even at

9:18the time you knew like, yeah, I think about I run the simulation in my head of watching this Oscars live. And I just have to imagine network winning three out of four acting awards and best screenplay going into the final chunk of the night. It must have felt like, well, this is inevitable. And then suddenly everything swings Rocky for the final two big awards. Right. I'd like to redo some of the Academy Awards from that. You're do mind. Please. Oh, I've got an open right here. I'm just straight. I think it's a bad one. I'm going to give the Academy Award for best picture to all the president's men. I'm going to give the Academy Award for best director to Alan Bakula for all the president's men. So over taxi driver, the film we're here to discuss today. Over taxi driver. I think all the president's men's one of our one of our one of our all time greats for best actor. I'm going to move Peter Finch into supporting actor because William Holden is the lead in the movie. Right. Obviously Finch is not all over that. I'm going to move Peter Finch

10:20into supporting actor. And I'm going to kick out, I don't know, Ned Bady. I'm going to kick out Ned Bady. Why don't you kick out? That's tough. It's interesting because it's right. It's Bady Olivier from marathon man and then two rocky guys young and Burgess Meredith both of whom are pretty fun. You're not going to kick out Burgess Meredith. No, of course I'd make it out of you for kicking out. But young man is pretty great in the first rocky. He's not sick after that. But like yeah, well, he's back around when he fucks the robot. Is all the president's men love this the robot? Is all the president's men, it's implied heavily that he fucks the robot. Is all the president's men fucks a robot in the fourth rocky. There's a robot that a Bert Young's character falls in love with. I would. I would. I would. I would. I would. I would. I would. I really went off the rails. You've seen four, but you just don't remember that because it's not. It's not. I mean, four is also like 78 minutes long and has four montages. And anyone, everyone just remembers the Dolph Lunggren. See the right stuff. My brother is a boxing fanatic and we watch Rocky together. My dad was like, this is big

11:24moan. I'm going to show you boys Rocky. And I was like, that's good. And my brother's like, I need to watch every Rocky film. And I was like, I think I can tap out here. Yeah. And he gets the box set and he's watching all of them. And I was kind of checked out when, oh, okay, James, he got the living room TV. There's another Rocky movie on tonight. So he's going through two and three. And I'm not paying attention. Oh, Mr. Teason. That's what. Okay. He fights a Apollo again. Okay. And then I just walk in at one point in Rocky four and I go, he's got a fucking robot now. And they go, yeah, Rocky bought Polly a robot for his birthday because I guess Rocky's like a millionaire now in the universe of the movies. And then I was back in because of the robot. And they there is a scene that implies that Polly has physical relations with the robot. I need to figure out what the line of dialogue is. But there's a line that I think for me. Okay. Can we get back to reliving the game? Yeah. Okay. So you're going to take out that maybe to this point. I just want to say I'm more inclined to give NetBady the supporting win. I think that's one of the greatest one-scene

12:25performances in history. It's true supporting. If you feel that way, then we'll kick out Bert Young and we'll keep NetBady. I think that's what you don't like. You don't like robots enough to give him the win. I love robots. And this is a heartbreaker. Not to give robots the win, but we're going to give it to Peter Finch is Julia best supporting actor before or after all the president's man. It's after which makes it all the weirder. I think I'm going to double check that. But because it's too consecutive years. He wins two years in a row and you're like, oh, well, they must have been, the second one must have been president's man because he's just so good. It was undeniable. It's like, no, they decided Julia was undeniable. Yeah. It's almost like they gave him two awards for all the presidents. Right. Oh, that's kind of who's he? Dashel Hammeter. So he's like, yeah. So I haven't seen Julia, but I assume it's a lot of him being like, oh, I love Boos. Well, it's not a lot of him doing much of anything. He's a very small, very, very, he's not done it very much. It's, you know, what? I got to watch Julia. I got to put my money where my mouth is to fully agree that he should not have been putting this alternate reality. We're putting Finch and supporting. We're giving him

13:26best supporting actor. We're giving best supporting actor. We're giving hard work to, I mean, just a hard part. Robards. One of those years, Robards will get the Julia award next year as a makeup for all the presidents man. Sure. And then we're young. We're giving him the makeup for Rocky four when he fucks. He'll get that. And we put out best lead out. You have a best actor slot open. And I'm giving it to Robert Redford for all the presidents. His best ever performance. And I'm giving the award to Robert De Niro for tax. Yeah, he's pretty good. I mean, I think De Niro. De Niro is pretty good in this film was never going to win because he had won an Oscar two years prior. And of course, he does eventually win a few years later for raging bull. I got to thought about that too. But is he losing that one? Yes, he is. It's gone. You you Thanos snapped it away from it. I pulling that away from him. Because I'm going to take Timothy Hutton put him in. I'm going to correct the category. You have to put him in lead and give him the award. I think that's really extraordinary people. Yeah. Do you know what the De Niro situation is very parallel to

14:27Denzel winning the supporting for glory? And thus he doesn't win for mouth commanders later. There's Malcolm X and everyone's like, just gave him an Oscar. I know this is a leading man performance. And this is now one of the definitive screen performances in American film history. But can we do it again? Yeah. Who's he up against in Malcolm X? Malcolm X, he loses a sentival woman. Right. That's the make up award. That's the chain. This is the ultimate makeup. The magic of trying to fix the Oscar. It's a fucking Sephora. We're just like, right. Okay. So we need to get Pacino award. And then so you start digging back. Yes. We're like, okay, should he have won for like dog day afternoon or whatever? And then like, you should, I'm going to take it away from Nicholson. I'm going to give it to Rick. Is that's Chino? That's Nicholson's for who Christmas? Yeah. Is that his first win? Yes. Yeah. Right. No, of three, of course. But the other two are for James L. Brooks movies that you don't even like. Not to call you out. But then do you give Nicholson an award before that or after that? Like, do you, is your sliding door that

15:29Nicholson gets Chinatown? Give Nicholson Chinatown. That's a fun one. Do you give him easy ride here? Chinatown. Yeah. I'm not giving him easy rider. Okay. But if I give him Chinatown, then I'm taking the award away from Art Carney, who everybody loves to shit on. I know you love to defend. I know. I love Art Carney. No, he's got a cat or something. He does. I've never seen Aryan Tonto. Never seen. It's a hard-ish movie to, to find, right? Is there even a twilight time disc? No. Naria twilight time disc. Right. So, right. You could try the time title I've ever seen. You could do some, or you could give Puccino the Oscar that you're forgot, father, to over Art Carney as well. Can I get Nicholson the award for last detail? Yes, he can. Now, you're taking away from Jack Lemmon for Save the Tiger. I feel like that's okay. That's great. You're good. You're feeling that. You could also say also in that year, you could give it to Puccino for CERPICO. But I think last detail is a better performance than CERPICO. But like, I think in

16:33some ways, last detail is sort of the, that's Nicholson distilled. Yeah, really is. Which of my CUCAR's nest has has a lot of the same DNA? I feel like Nicholson also talks about feeling that last detail is his best performance and his best movie. I feel like he had said in interviews, it is his favorite. I mean, you could also give it to him for five easy pieces over George C. Scott for Patton. George, he didn't even want the Oscar. Yeah, in fact, it's a pretty undeniable performance. But like Lynn, let's give George an Oscar for like Dr. Strangelover. So let's keep going back. One year, okay. So that's a great performance. Is the year after and then you're taken Hackman's away from French connection. I'm not sure you want to do that. Well, but then could you give Hackman for conversation? What's the ripple effect of that? That's so that's 72. You're taking away Brando for the Godfather kind of an iconic screen performance. No, it was his second Oscar. Brando playing the Godfather. Oh, the guy played the Godfather. No, I mean, I love playing

17:34this game with the Oscars because it is so infuriating for people I know where they're like, why did Leo win his Oscar for the revenue? I'm like, you don't understand. Yeah, he was due. You know, they had missed him on this one. And I'm like, well, why did they miss him on that one? You don't understand the guy who won that year was due because he missed on this one. You know, like it, it just never ends. What's fun about this game is when you can identify one that is actually a clean lift like the lemon. Let me save the tiger where you're like, actually, we just pull that out and slot everything in around it and everything's fine. I've never often ever seen the cause of an effect where you're like, well, fuck, I can't take it away from that. Save the tiger also. That's Ableton, right? Yeah. What's it about? He's a salesman in a midlife. Sounds like bullshit or not a salesman. He works in the garment. The garment. There you go. And that's his second win, right? Because he won a supporting one for Mr. Roberts. Yes. It's weird that lemon, who's a great actor and one of Hollywood's great figures has two Oscars

18:36both for movies where you're like, huh? Yeah. Okay. That's what he went for. Yeah. He went for the fucking apartment. He won for Mr. Roberts. He probably should have won for like the odd couple where he's fantastic. Am I wrong in thinking that he wasn't even nominated for the apartment? That you like it hard? In fact, wrong. Okay. He was nominated and he lost to Bert Lancaster for Elmer Gantry and I think we can take that one away. Yeah. We can kick it over to lemon. Yeah. And then we'll give it to Lancaster for, I don't know. Come on. Come on, guys. Help me out here. The leopard. Yeah. We've heard of all of success. Yeah. Yeah. Well, why not? We swimmer. How about Lancaster for the swimmer? Even a fucking. That's a good movie. Gold watch, local heroes. The swimmer is that way that would be a good life to achieve in a way. The leopard's amazing. Yeah. It does have that thing of, that's the Sydney Pauatier Paul Newman in a HUD. That's a tough. We just got into this because I have to get into this. I have him winning for sweet smile success on my personal Oscar ballot, but I have him in supporting. Oh,

19:41but I think that's defensible. I do. He's supporting that film. A color of money episode to come later down the line. We got this exact same conversation of the ripple effect of why Paul Newman has to win for color of money. Right. Which is another very frustrating. You're like, why didn't he win win for HUD? And it's like, well, Sydney Pauatier won that year. That's kind of a big. Yeah. Like, why didn't he win for cool hand, Luke? Who won cool hand, Luke year? It's stiger for in the heat of the night, which is your best picture winner. I'm giving it to Paul Newman for cool hand, Luke. And then I don't have to give it to him for color of money because I have to say color of money here. He's number five on my list. He's number five behind Dexter Gordon, Bob Hoskins, William Hur and James Wood. Hoskins, your number one. He's thinking. That means he's thinking. The Dexter Gordon performances is great and it's great that they nominated it. It is one where you're just like, this is just the guy, right? He's just kind of sitting there going, I love saxophones. And you're like, this is cool. It's not as easy as it looks to just be the guy. Hey, you know what? You got a Tony. I don't have no Tony. This is true. This is Blank Check with

20:45Griffin and David. I'm Griffin. David. This is a podcast about filmography's directors who have massive success early on in their careers and are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion projects they want. Sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they shoot a bunch of people, baby. This is the guarantor. I want to know who he wants for 86 best actor, but yes, this is sure. This is Martin Scorsese's guarantor. This is the film that you could argue. Mintz, Martin Scorsese as Martin Scorsese. He is that for the rest of his life and for the rest of time. Yeah, sure. I mean, even if he never's ups and downs made a movie again after this, even if he never made a good movie again after this, he would be in the annals of history forever. And certainly he knew how to capitalize upon this for the rest of his career, even with the ups and downs. How many of these have you guys done of Scorsese? We've only skipped ahead for one. Otherwise, we've been basically going in this. So I guess this is really just going to start. We're getting started. Yeah, we're pretty early, which which feels appropriate. We haven't done Alice yet. We

21:48have done color of money already. Otherwise, we've just been running into this. Who's that knock in boxcar berth? Mean Street. Yeah. Done. So you can tell me who's done those with you. Sure, uh, Miriam Bale did mean streets with us. We didn't do who is a film critic. A boxcar berth in who's that knocking? We had no guest. And then last color money. We had, uh, we had the great Christian. Chris, we also know for that. Yes. Okay. So you got a long way to go. The reason I ask is have you seen everything? Have you now seen everything in the Scorsese? I have seen every Martin Scorsese film, but for a couple of Rocky Mentries that he's put out in more recent years. Those guys are some real Patreon shit. But I certainly seen every Scorsese feature. I have not seen a condone. Condone. I've not seen last temptation. Wow. And I've not seen age of innocence. Those were my weird blinds. So you don't like the ones without guns, huh? You just want the gangsta pictures. He makes a movie with a doll I love and you're like, skip. I dislike his films where

22:49the title is the blank of blank. Right. The color of the last work. And I also, I have seen Wolf Wolf. I do like King your common. Is it, uh, is this a fair question to ask at this point in the process? What your favorite Martin Scorsese? I think it might be this film. I, I, someone asked me this just last weekend when I told them that we were starting up our Scorsese. And they said, what do you think is the best one? And I, I just need jerk went. It's a little bit hard to argue with taxi driver in my mind. I might as we go through chronologically and rewatch the other ones, change my mind. It's not like on this rewatch I went, no question, iron lock, no way, anything's beating this. But it does feel like the purest text to me in a way of everything I think he does exceptionally. And is the ultimate example to me of a movie that only he could have made. Tracy, what is your answer? My answer is, unfortunately, the very boring answer of Goodfellas. That's your number one Scorsese. And then I would, I think, we'll, and we'll see how this

23:49series goes. After hours, last temptation and taxi driver are the sort of other contenders for me. Those are my favorite Scorsese movies. I like most of his movies. My watch all my take would be that I think Goodfellas is the peak of his filmmaking and that this is textually his richest film. It's a great movie. Taxi drivers my first by, by some distance. I, a king of comedy is probably next to me. Pretty great. After hours is after hours way up there. That is a personal favorite. But in a, it just kind of hits me way. I would never argue it's the best. But I do think it's way up now as we all know, you hate the 90s. And so Goodfellas is that the 90s access of Goodfellas. You were banned from VH1 because you kept pitching them. Griffin, I thought I'm making the same joke. I couldn't figure it out. There are offices that go, here's the pitch. It's just me who is like a guy doing a VH1 saying how every pop culture thing from the 90s is dumb trash for babies. You're not a 90s comedian. This is already gotten a bad rap. I like the 90s. There are things about

24:52the 90s I absolutely love. And I like Goodfellas. Yeah. It's not top tier of Scorsese for me, but I like it. I'm no dummy. I recognize how good Goodfellas is. It's just a maculately made. It absolutely is. And there are, you know, some of the set pieces in it are undeniable. It's got like, you know, five of the most watchable scenes in history. Really, really amazing. I will admit that when Ray Leota slams the door in my face at the end of the movie, even in the movie theater in 1999, I was kind of like, well, fuck you too. I know some people who felt that way. I remember that. I think when, again, when we talk about the Academy Awards, and I'm not going to make an argument for dances with Wolves Over, Goodfellas, but I wonder if that was part of the part of the reason that Academy voters went, oh, well, fuck, you know, fuck. Of course, the movie ends with him being like, this sucks. I got to live in a fucking house. I'm a schnook. This is noodles with ketchup. And it's like,

25:52I mean, obviously, it's all, but I think some audiences are like, you're like, you're a love, you dumb motherfucker. It's not a unique thought. Yeah. But I very strongly subscribed to the theory that the ending is the most important factor towards the best picture win. Right. It is what are people walking out of the theater? What is the feeling you give them? Are buddy Amanda Dobbins? I think hit the nail on the head when she saw one battle after another and said the moment the needle drop for American girl kicks in, he's probably won himself best. You're winning over a certain set of board. The need to have an ending that's not bailing out the integrity of its ideas, but still feels like a triumph and has everyone leave in feeling up. And I remember being surprised that a Nora one best picture because the ending is such a downer. But yet you can't deny that the ending is sort of the best part of the movie. It's a gut punch. It's the perverse showpiece. And that maybe is my argument for why Titanic made $2 billion. Yeah. You walk out happy. It's the old thing. They all fucking died. It is the old thing. And you walk out and you're like, I feel elated

26:52because she goes to the dream world and merrily the fucking Adam on that one is why James Cameron is James Cameron because he said, I can figure out how to make everyone walk out of Titanic cheering hearts full. But that certainly is a score. Says he problem is his endings are usually very challenging. It is funny that the thing he finally wins best picture for is his most mocked ending the departed. Yeah. That everyone jokes about the shot of the rat and how unsuddle it is. The shot of the rat. I don't dislike it. Our guest today is that guy. Oh fuck, it's the King of Doritos. Return to the show very quickly by popular demand. I will say I received a multitude of text saying, yeah, he's asked back. But truly. And secondly, when we finished recording our first episode with you, you said, what are you guys doing? We said, Squarespace, David said, what would you pick? You said taxi driver and we look at you and go, fuck, we might have to do that. Sounds fucking good to me. It's a quick turnaround, but we might just fucking have to do that. Tracey

27:53Latz, thanks for having me. Back in the room. Yeah. Third chair on the big picture. I knew weren't bringing you this this time. So we mentioned that's canonical and we all know that. No, it can just be a dead. And we speak it into law by saying it on this puck. I knew we weren't going to spend an hour going over a blind by disk challenge. Oh yeah. Sorry. We get you a bunch more random trash movies. I do like that. We did basically start with half an hour of alternative Oscar history across the kids. It feels like the correct spiritual sequel. Yeah. Yeah. By the way, the gift you got me, I've I've yet to tuck into some of them, but my kids love the nanny showed my kids mouse hunt. Oh, there you go. Yes. Because the the nanny loves it. Okay. And so she knew it. She knew it. She knew it. She was excited to show that they like it. And the kids. In my practical movie, when you talk about your kids liking dark crystal and such,

28:55in my head, your DVD collection is like Raiders of the Lost Ark when they put the thing on the show where it's just like an endless hallway. There's like a yes, a bit like it is a bit like. Like I'm like, how does the nanny or anyone even know where like where my son is? They're robot. Are there any decimal system kind of punch in the code to locate? Well, look, the stack you gave me sat on the kitchen island for about a week. Okay. I've got entered into the system. So the nanny was accessible. You know what? That's my physical media system too is the stack piles. Then I'm like, it's time to get this stuff up. It's funny that I write. I try to like theme the stacks. And then one of the stacks is themed around new purchases. And then that stack, it's so big that I'm like, I got to work that into the other theme stacks. Right. Yeah. Right. So mouse hunt. Yeah. Yeah. Good. Good to know. Yeah. Any other. Yeah. I mean, you just did your physical media council. No, no other big news on the on the world of blue rays. I don't know. I mean, in New York, New York just announced on 4k. I of course imported the Australian imprint this, which has some features that are not being carried over. I have that disc as well to the 4k release, but the 4k release does have both cuts. Oh, I see. So the New

30:01York, New York, I have is just a blue. I think it's mine too. It's domestic blue. Right. Right. And then the imprint Australian release is three discs. Oh, I don't have that. And it has both cuts and a lot of special features. But this is I'm going to get the 4k. I'm going to get the yeah, the fine folks at MVD marquee. Ben, you seem a little too excited by this conversation. If you want to just chill out a little bit. All right. I'll settle down just because it's a little unbecoming. How do you do? I know. I'm the edge of my sea. I'm about to fall on the floor. That's my concern is that you're going to trip your team. Yeah. Your vinegar syndrome, your your radiance. Do you do any of those kind of radiance subscriptions? Okay. It seems pretty good. I've been debating any of these. And there are a couple that I just order every they don't have subscriptions, but I order every release when the monthly announced. You get the monthly announcement. This was when Ben was trying to pick which discs to buy for you in our body. Ben David Grubinsky was consulting on it. His really valuable advice to Ben was certain labels you might just need to roll out.

31:03Yeah, certainly. He's got to be at all to cart. I don't subscribe to the vinegar syndrome because they they'll do a lot of genre horror like 90s or 2000s. Yes. Genre horror that I'm not so into. Vinegar syndrome has never released a film that is less than a mint. Classic. Yeah. They definitely haven't taken right the worst trash and put it in the most beautifully designed package. We're selective in the criterion collection. That's the other thing I got multiple texts about is five different people upset by us mocking how good of a package they put together for Congo, including Matt Singer. It's a great pack. Wrote the booklet for Congo. My friend Alex Perlin, who Congo is his favorite movie and his bachelor party was let's go back to my place to watch Congo. Defending the movie. And defending it's right. It's a prestige package that we that we pinpointed it as the ultimate example of does this need this good of a release? Oh, well, come on. That's a hot trash.

32:04So come on. Supreme Delriendo performance. You can't argue with that. Monkey, Monkey talks. The monkey talks. The monkey. The monkey is the monkey. You mean Ernie Hudson, right? Not Delriendo, right? No, don't worry. I just got a one scene performance. That's right. He's like the unbelievable. He's like the world. Yes. That's right. I'm not racist. I've seen. I've seen I was just was worried. You were first. I'm not. I've seen Congo was worried. You were racist. I was I'm not saying that I'm not racist. I know that Congo is a very important movie for some people as we're describing where it was like they were the right age. Yes. They saw this weird-ass Jurassic Parky kind of movie. Yeah. And I've seen it. I think 1.5 times. I do own the vinegar syndrome food. I do too. I own that goddamn shoe box. I do have it. I went to the store in Pittsburgh recently and I was I was running my fingers across that box and I was tempted but I still haven't pulled the trigger on it. Oh, Tracy, you were going to weigh in on the monkey. Amy, I'm so fucked. Stupid. Thank you for weighing in. Perfect. Okay, great. I was talking about this

33:08with Matt Singer who wrote the essay in the public. Great. It is so funny to me that Jurassic Park is obviously humongous, right? And everyone's like, okay, how do we fucking follow this trend? Stephen Spielberg's producer is going to adapt a different Criton book. Yeah, and the book is you think fucking dinosaurs are scary? What about gorillas? A thing that talking monkey. Species that does currently exist on our planet. Right. And he's less scary. And the trailers made it seem like they're going to go to the jungle and gorillas are going to fuck them up. And the movie is 90% of its runtime. Just people having kind of intellectual hard science conversations next to a talking monkey. Should we let this monkey talk? Was that a good idea? At the end they go in a cave and they fight monkeys for like five minutes and movies over. It's funny that they didn't even try to adapt it to make it more Jurassic Parky. It is just a classic Criton like, I don't know, I'm a little interested in the science of this. Maybe I should do that radiant subscription.

34:11The radiant subscription is really good. It's really worth it. And like I say, there's a couple indicator. I get every release from indicator, but not subscribed. You just you just add, they don't have a subscription where I would flicker alley. I love flicker alley. I love flicker alley. Damn, I don't know. So they do a lot of very old, you know, 20s and 30s, right? I got to get silent movies. Yeah, that's, yeah, I've been thinking of doing that. My whole problem when you go on the big picture to talk discs. It's just, it's like my account calls me and it's like, what happened? Physical media high council episode came out. I cannot tell you how many carts I checked out. The amount of money that's crazy. Well, you know, we should say since we're talking up all of these different companies. And you know, we also do complain on the show a lot that the office is just filled to the brim. Negative space. It's too much negative space. Empty shelves. Love some swag, everyone. This is a win. Just like, end up the free stuff. Sure. Yeah. Do you know what often happens now when I, when I order from

35:11these boutique labels? They send you a little message. They put in a little note. I appreciate that. I've had a couple of little. I like to know over there. Hey, I like the shade. Yeah. Right. Thank you. Yeah. That's all good. I'm happy to spend, happy to spend on things. I think are worthwhile about. He's such as fancy blue rays of Congo. I mean, what we're doing is important and noble and everyone should salute us. They should hit their pots and pans with the sticks. When we walk down the street, I was going to ask you, hold on, before you ask me, please, the haunting forcade. You have it yet? Yes. Is that I mean, I pre-ordered it. I don't have our if it's a shot and I do a commentary on really very excited about that on the original. Yeah, it's the. Yes. Yes. I got I got a order. Beautiful. By the way, and you know, when Robert, when Paul Newman won his Oscar for the color of money, he wasn't there. And Robert Wise accepted on this behalf starts to say like Paul really appreciates this Betty Davis is next to me. Betty Davis and Robert Wise were presenting the award. And Betty Davis cuts Robert Wise off and is like, I just want everyone to understand this is Robert Wise and he's a really great filmmaker. Oh, right. No,

36:11you're right. It's Betty Davis is presenting Robert Wise comes down to his behalf. Robert Wise is trying to be like Paul really and Betty Davis is like, will everyone give a little respect to Robert Wise? He may be old, but he made the sound of music. He may, you know, like she starts, and he's like, oh, thank you, Betty. They woke up. They played the music. It's the weirdest thing. I want to talk about taxiderm, but I just need to close the loop on this. The radiant subscription. Yeah. Does it include the sub label? What is the name of the label? Okay. Okay. But they do offer a subscription for that. No, no, you have to that's that's an extra that's an add on. What's it called again? Transmission. Yes. Which is stuntman and vampires kiss and cutters way was transmission. Was that regular radiance stuntman was was regular vampires kiss wasn't this one night of the jugular. They did a night of the jugular. Do you know that one? I've never watched it. Yeah. James Brolin ring. Great things. We had carrying. I had a great time with that. That thing is batshit.

37:12Yeah. The thing is just goes bad shit. Bullin made a lot of like hefty trash. I feel like right? Like that was sort of Brolin's lane like in the seven like what am I? What? Yes. Such a he's an he's an animal like when you see an amity failure like the sky is right. He's a an ideal. Yes. Very close to being the only American bond as we talked about when we did those patreon. I feel impossible to imagine. Sort of a bizarre thought. Very close. How was the green test? He was supposedly like seriously considered. Doesn't really wasn't it one of those times where they were trying to get like Conoried and not like 250K off his quota or whatever. But I think he was in it twice. Yeah. And there is an extended screen test. There's also a fasting extended screen test of him doing planted of the apes. Now Tracy, are you testing for bond? Oh, really? Amazon's on the hunt. Denny Vilnov is available. You know, I have around. I when they get serious. I might get a test. You know, when bond builds, that'd be fun. No, he should be bond. Let's not fucking take it off. They should get serious. I worked with an actor named

38:15Anthony Higgins. You would probably recognize him. Maybe from Raiders the Lost Ark or maybe from the draft smun's contract Peter Greenberg. He's like, to me, that's a classic. He's a British guy. He's like, he plays British guy. Proper British guy. In Raiders? Isn't he in Raiders? Isn't he one of the he is? Let me double check that. Because I do feel like you're right. He's in one of them. Isn't he am I making it up? I'm just trying to see his major goblers. Oh, yes. Sure. Yes. He's a very good actor, very big Shakespearean actor. And he's in a couple of old hammer films. Okay. And under a slightly different name, I think he was Anthony Corley or Corley. Corley. Corley. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Taste the butt of Dracula. He's a man. You tell me a great Christopher Lee story. But also he was up for bond at one point. Wow. They brought him out a couple of times to test for bond. And the whole reason they were doing it was because Roger Moore was bitching about his contract. But he did like we will get somebody else. And when I worked with him,

39:19he was like, thank God. Yeah. I did not get James. He was really. He's genuinely. Yeah. I'm on as I'm right now. genuinely grateful that he was not James Bond. And I said, why is that? And he said, well, because I can walk over here to the off license and make a bet and nobody's going to bother. Now, you mean the off track betting? You don't mean off in Britain, the off license. That's where you get your boots. That's where we off. Yeah. Oh, that's where you get your booze. Yes. So the whole thing in Britain is you can't get booze at the groceries store. It's like the corner store. You have to go to the offie, which is next door. But they call the off track betting something different in England too. I would I thought of that as like the bookmaker or whatever. I mean like Ladbrook's, you know, like, but yeah, right. Yeah. Anyway, booking. I mean, I don't know. Yeah. He's a he's lovely guy. Can I tell you my Christopher Lee store this is nothing to do with that. I will say just a future plug. We're getting ready to later in the fall do Dracula on our patreon. Yes. So we're doing one of each kind of major Dracula. So we're doing the first Christopher Lee. Right. We'll do look. Go see. We'll

40:23do. Lee will do golf for that. Yeah. Sure. You want to come by? Sure. Which one do you want? You want the land. Jela. Do you want the one that I want Christopher Lee? You want Christopher? Okay. My mom said the classiest person she ever interviewed in her entire life. Like truly like here was a Anthony story. So he works with him on taste the blood of Dracula. And the first time he works with him, it's raining of course. It's always raining. Sure. And they've got Christopher Lee waiting in a taxi. What do we call them in England? The taxi. Many cab. Many cabs. Black car. So he's waiting until the rain passes. And so they they take Anthony from the trailer and they put him in the car with Christopher Lee and Christopher Lee's in the full Dracula get up. And he's introduced to Christopher Lee. Christopher Lee says, oh my god. He's this weather. He's just dreadful. Long pause. Oh my god. These teeth just don't fit in my mouth. I have so uncomfortable wearing these teeth. Oh my god. This cape. What this cape

41:25is made out of. I can't breathe. And it's just go. It's just a litany of complaint. And just unbroken. Unbroken. His fourth Dracula. And he's sick of it. Just unbroken stream of complaint. They make the movie 30 years later. Anthony is cast in one of these TNT biblical. Right. One of these many series, right? John the Baptist, right? He's flown out to, he's flown out to some desert location in the Middle East. And he comes out of the trailer and they lead him into this holding tent where they're getting ready to shoot. And he sees in the holding tent in a long flowing robe. Christopher Lee sitting waiting. You know, he's got a long beard and now he's an old man. And he goes, he's excited to see him after 30 years. And he sits down and Christopher Lee says, oh my god. This sand just can roll. And as getting it every time this robe is so hot, I can't even breathe. There's like as if it had never stopped. Have you found this Tracy that certain actors,

42:30it almost feels like the discomfort and beyond that the part of the performance and the struggle is like the heart of their process. Oh, absolutely. They need the motor of the irritation. To answer your question, it's the film the TV series is Moses in which Ben Kingsley, oh my god, I found that Ben Kingsley played Moses Christopher Lee played Ramsey. He must have killed that Anthony Higgins played Coroch. Yeah. Not sure he's sort of like a rebel from the Bible. I don't know really, but a very funny to imagine. Find put the fucking Egyptian headdress on me. You know, no, the unbroken string of complaint is the way some actors have to like get through the especially if you're Christopher Lee. Yeah. You served in the in the British secret service. You killed people you like, you know, and then it's like you made 40 unbroken years of monster movies. He never was in a movie that probably had like a high budget. Like he was the king of these British

43:31genre films. I mean, I feel like it was going around again recently, but the clip of him doing an interview after being knighted or given an OBE. I mean, I guess he was in like a, you know, man with a golden gun or whatever. That's that stuff. He would have a better trailer. The interviewer said, well, there, there you have it. Christopher Lee, the king of horror. And he went, the king of horror. I haven't made a horror movie in 40 years. And he started listing all the different characters he played. And I'm like, my god, you did like Dracula like 15 times. And it's not even like that was your core franchise. You did it like six times for Hammer. And then you just said like open game who wants to pay me a Dracula in anything. He did. He made Italian Dracula movies. He did American Dracula movie. He's the best. You rule. I remember when my mom saw like she interviewed him for a camera for what? It was in the early 2000s. And we watched a ton of hammer harm movies. Because she was like, I'm scared you got to watch these with me. And we were we had a great time. This is a long time ago. That's so funny that for her from her childhood, she was like, these are

44:31primal free divers. Yeah. And I was like, I'll watch. I mean, I like. And then we saw, you know, and he'd been in Lord of the Rings at that point. And we saw Attack of the Clones. Yeah. Which a movie my mother like had no interest in whatsoever, right? She probably just watched. She was like, I need you to show me his part at the end, right? And when he walks, she was just like, he's just got instant even in this. This garbage. Yeah instant gravitas. Like when he's just delivering these lines about the force and lightsabers. I am low to invoke a cool news. But I have a very distinct memory because of the timeline of when that would need to shoot. It was before Lord of the Rings, which must have been the first time I saw him as well before I learned about Christopher Lee. But this is when I actually learned who Christopher Lee was. There was an in cool news headline, which was scoop. You will not believe who is playing the new villain in Star Wars Episode 2. I click the link. And it says like guys, I've heard this reliable sources cannot say who. But are you seated? And then it was scroll down. And it was dot dot dot dot dot dot dot dot.

45:32Like you truly had to physically scroll down the site. And then it was just a photo of Christopher Lee blood running down his face woman in his arms. Sure. Neck bites. And then it just said Christopher fucking Lee. This this impressed. I was like, you never forgot who is this important. Now episode two by episode two, you mean Empire Strikes Back. No, unfortunately, you mean attack. That's a lot of ice. It's in the mid 2000s. That's a good system. Absolutely. It is wild that Lucas in the 80s is like calling a broad strikes back episode five. And I was like, what? And he's like, just do it. Right. Come on. Right. Because people forgot a plan that when Star Wars was released, there's no way to say episode four. No, it's just called Star Wars. Right. I think when they re-released it right before Empire, he added episode four. So everyone who had seen the movie 80 times and had a memorized was like, like is this episode four? What are you talking about? No, it was retroactively titled episode four after after Empire Strikes Back. In sync. So it was Empire Strikes Back. People sit down,

46:35can't wait to see the second Star Wars movie and the scroll begins episode five. And everyone's like, why is it that? I think people in the audience went, did I miss? Yes. I'm sure people were just like, what? Like, yeah, I don't know. Were there three in between? I just somehow didn't catch. Taxi driver. I don't know if you guys have this experience watching the movie this time, but upon this rewatch, I was quite taken with the fact that it is taxi driver. Oh, sure. That I just kept going like, this is the most fucking taxi driver movie in the world. This is wild to rewatch movies that feel like every single thread, every single like fiber is canonized. It's hard to just kind of watch them fresh as like a movie. And yet I did. It rules. This is just, and I want to hear, I know Tracy that you saw this film as a child or you saw some of it and we're taking away. What's the story? Yeah. So the story is, and apologies if there are any

47:36across the list. I've heard this before, but my folks took me to see a lot of material made for adults when I was a kid. It took me to see CERPICO when I was six years old. That's the earliest, most egregious example I think. They never went full Travis Bickle daydnight. But they were taking you to, well, in fact, they did when I was 10, we went to the drive in movie theater to see taxi driver. Okay. Here it came out. Now, where I come from in Oklahoma, and when I grew up, drive-ins were very much a part of our movie going. I was going to say, did you have a picture house that you went to? Was it all drive-ins or what town in Oklahoma? A small town called Durant Oklahoma. A town of about 12,000 people. When we moved there in 1970, there were three screens in town. There was the Plaza Theater, which was the old single screen in the middle of the town. Then there were two drive-in movie theaters. There was a drive-in called the ship drive-in named after its owner,

48:38ship Bullard. Oh, I love it. It's all it was naval. Yeah. Although there was a big beautiful neon ship on the sign out front. Then there was the Skyview, which showed pornographic films in the Southside of town, which you could actually see from the highway driving down the road. Yeah. Which of course we called the Skinview Loving League. But here's the Plaza. I found it. That's the Plaza. That's it. It's still there. It's not. It looks like the last picture show, doesn't it? Yeah, it really does. Yeah. It's a big one screen. I worked at that theater as a projectionist. I projected Wrath of Con in that movie theater. Best movie ever made. That rocks. That must have. Every time that James Horner's course, of course, you know, spools up. You know, the happiest person in the world. So at the ship, I would also work at the ship. I'm worked at the ship more than anywhere else. But when I was 10, we went to the ship drive-in as a family to see taxi drive. Perfect. And we got a bad. And I checked the time when on the rewatcher a couple of nights ago, I checked the time because it's when Jody Foster and Travis go back to her.

49:46And she's like trying to take off her clothes. Yes. It's about an hour and a minute. Maybe later than you think. That's an hour 15 hour 20. It's what really struck me watching it this time is that obviously you see her and you see sport early. But the movie doesn't really kick into what people remember the movie being until it is about 75% over. That's right. Yeah, you're not quite sure what's going to happen with this guy. Yeah. Because the movie was considered pretty transgressive for the time from mainstream Hollywood fair. And because we had already seen some some startling stuff in the movie up to that point, my mom turned to my dad and said Dennis, I'm very uncomfortable. So he put the car in gear and we and we got blessed. I mean, I also like to imagine the drive in for and then just every five minutes of car just kind of peels out as the movie goes on. And I probably go to the porn movie with civil jamb. Come a car is feel out. You know, I mean, I probably see this movie when I'm like 13 and its reputation

50:47preceded it so much that I knew where it was going. I have to imagine your parents sitting there at that time with a character who is unlike any put on screen in a major movie up until that point, there's a genuine concern of like, is he going to fuck this kid? Like what's going to happen? Right? I'm watching it knowing this is going towards violence. And we don't really know who Jody Foster is. So we don't actually know how old the actor is. Yeah, but in any case, we leave. Now, this is 1976. It's not like I can rent the movie. Yeah, you're not going to be passing on Netflix in nine months or my folks go back to see the movie the next night. Mm hmm. They go back by themselves to see the movie. So they were intrigued. They were hooked. They were intrigued. They wanted to see it. And then they narrated for me what happened through the rest of the film. Since I guess, you know, yeah, he doesn't wind up fucking the girl. They felt it was all right to narrate the rest of the movie. And my dad even acts out the hand

51:51to the temple as he's right with the bloody fingers. He's firing firing into his and he's lost his mind. And then he describes this and he acts this out. And then my mom is the one who says, and then there's a coda at the end of the movie in which there's this letter written by her parents and and civil shepherd gets into the car. And mom said, I think it's all fantasy. I don't think any of that stuff is actually real. So credit to my mom for picking up on that. She didn't walk out there being like, Trent said, everyone says you did a good job. I guess he was the hero. Yeah. We haven't talked about, I haven't brought it up that much in our 11 years of doing this podcast. But I more and more think it is a key part of how I ended up being the way I am today. And obviously this was driven by me already and neatly being so interested in movies. But if my parents went out for like a grown up date night to go see a movie, I would stay awake even when I was supposed to be in bed with the lights off. I would stay awake for them to come home so that they could narrate to me what the movie was in the same thing. And I think my parents

52:54were similarly very good at doing it. And what finesse it for it would also add their analysis to it. So there are a lot of movies, not this one because you know, I'm sure my parents told me the basic shape of taxi driver. But like I remember them trying to explain train spotting to me. And when I finally watched train spotting, you know, seven years later, I was like, Oh, that's that scene. And this is what they left out or that's where they editorialized or things like that. But I do think that's a parent wouldn't do that unless they felt like their kid wanted that. Yeah. But I do also think that only supports and trains the kind of insane brain that we have to just want to digest these things constantly. And especially when you're sort of being told like these things are so close, but you can't watch it just yet. You're hearing the breakdown of what it is. And someone explaining what their reaction to it was. And this is one of those movies where I wish I could have had the experience of watching it without knowing what it was and where it was going. Yeah, right.

53:55Even just one time in my life. And I went to you end up seeing it. Yeah. Probably not until I'm 18 years old. Do I wind up going to a video store and renting it? And I remember even then, what we were talking about the video store days when you go with your family and try to pick the one, pick the one or no, we weren't talking about it. You were talking about it on the podcast. I was listening to while I was driving here. I can't see. I can't keep reality. Yeah, it's fine. It's just great. You've been on a big picture run that similarly I was saying when you came in, I've listened to three episodes with you in the last 10 days. Well, I remember one of those videos store moments. You know, I'm finally going to get a chance to see taxi driver. And I remember my dad being kind of like, really? I mean, he didn't feel the need to watch it again. Yeah, sure. He had enjoyed it. And he, and he was greatly respectful of De Niro's performance in particular. But he was, I think he considered it kind of an ugly thing that won't need to be revisited. It certainly is. To my mother, this was the definition of an adult movie that I was not right.

54:57You know what I mean? Where she was like, well, you can't rent a movie like taxi driver. You know, and like it was the definitional R rated movie that was not available to me until I was older. Taxi driver. Like she's like, that's the most grown up movie ever made. It is not for young David. And I was like, what do you, it's about a tag. I get taxis all the time. I'm a, my man hat and kids guys. They know directions. What does he do? He yeah, takes people the wrong way. Like, what are you? He's a taxi driver. I'm like, how scary can he be? No, wait a second. You're from England, right? So Tracy, you're going to get the story and no one's allowed to make fun of me. I was born in Manhattan. Sit my mantra. My mother is from Udakon, New York, upstate. My dad is English from Serburden in London. And when I was nine years old, my dad got a job in London and he moved and we all moved with him to London. I lived in London for 13 years. I see. So you first nine years spent in Manhattan, New York kid up to Westside, eight and a half an Amsterdam baby. Oh, and you're, you've never left this. You're, I've never left. But here's the twist. My mother's secretly British.

55:58Well, I thought, yeah, or she's European, I think. Well, this is British. This is branching secretly, right? Because she's actually British, but she was basically raised French. Right. And she's got French ancestry. Ben, where are you from? Well, French stepfather, Jersey. Oh, yeah. Born and raised. Yep. And been here ever since. Never been in the Central time zone. No, no, because he went to college in New York, yeah, into the new school, right? And just stuck around since. See, one of the reasons I wanted to establish this, other than my curiosity about my friends at blank check. One of the reasons I wanted to know this is also because you have to realize that as a little kid living in Durand, Oklahoma, a town of 12,000 people with a movie theater that looks like that. Yeah. What the world of taxi driver looks like to a kid like that. Of course. And just to America, like, like, I assume like so much of America's watching this movie is like, right, that's New York, that's what it's like. It's like murder around every corner or whatever. Yeah. When, when I was born, my father worked in an office in Times Square. I think he basically had that office until I was five. And so I did, I do have very primal early memories of the pre-Disney

57:05Times Square, where we would go to visit my father, which was the area that still most purely felt like this, you know, and even going to Times Square during the day as a child, aided by a mother, you know, it's not like I was being accosted in a stroller, but it did, it did look the way this movie looked. Right. And it had that weird energy to it. Everything was just kind of unseemly and edgy and felt desperate. And the way this movie looks is remarkable. It's, it's a testament to Michael Chapman who I assume we'll talk more about. And also a testament to, uh, Scorsese and and Schrader's vision of New York as a kind of hell on earth. Absolutely. It is a thing I think about all the time. And it hit me while watching this film where I was like, this is what I'm fucking talking about. I hate how overlit almost all evening stuff is. I find it is so evocative to be in dark places where you actually can't see stuff. And almost all movies field the

58:10need to make things more legible than they would be in real life. And I understand that part of it is especially in the history of film that film stocks were so slow. Yeah. That you needed to overlight even if you wanted to make something look dark. Gordon Willis films. Yeah. Still would have used infinitely more lights than we would need to use today to shoot something on video to just be able to get any image that registers. Yeah. And yet this is a movie especially in the opening and the sort of opening credit sequence where I'm just like, God, I love how much you cannot see. It makes it so much scarier. It's part of the hell on earth thing that you have this insane contrast between these neon lights that are both the fixed lights of the locations and the headlights of the cars going by kind of smudging through time and space and then just voids of blackness. Just what the fuck is happening there? Can I offer a take though? A small take. I also do think it's kind

59:19of a beautiful and seductive movie like as much as it is like New York is terrifying and like I'm also watching them like this is romantic like it's a little romantic right? Impressionistic thing. You're a little you're a little enchanted by him. I think it's crucial to taxi driver that you're not just like this is a freak. I'm watching a freak in the freak show. The fact that he's handsome that he's got the little bits of denierow twinkle amongst the I want to stir parameters around it because I really want to resist the temptation to draw the comparison too many times. Don't bring it up. I know what you want to bring up what we want to bring up Todd Phillips is Joker. It just which is a you know which is kind of ripping off this mood. It's really really. I have seen just some Joker. I had not rewatched taxi driver since seeing Joker or Bollywood and it was astonishing to me a just how wholesale of ripoff is in ways I kind of forgot how one to one some of the elements are but be that it just fucks up that exact

1:00:19equation which is just the characterization of Travis Bickle is so perfectly dialled in on when is he pathetic when is he sympathetic when is he empathetic when is he terrifying when is he unknowable and the soup of that and the dance of that and what feels like the the absolute distinction is that this is a movie defined by what to me is the masterstroke of the movie in the moment where Scorsese becomes a generational genius is in the payphone conversation when the camera moves away from him. This is too painful. One of the first camera moves I ever learned about as a teenager like it's ebert or someone talks about it in a review where they're like notice how the camera can't look at I watch the movie and went wait a second what the fuck is going on like pause the VHS and then ask jeeps what is this you know because I was just something has happened that I'm helpful yes he would woe but it felt like something has happened here right like Dylan just went electric like the language just changed in some way I don't understand but I understand

1:01:24what it made me feel and what is the intent of this and Joker is a movie that's as you're saying is look at this fucking freak yeah that is and let us not not mention Joker of course only refer to him as Richard T from here on else but it is a movie that he he is so captivating and it's not a traditional charisma and it's also kind of unlike to me the other banner breakthrough 70s new leading men new Hollywood performances it's still impossible to pin this fucking thing down now that statement is something I really felt on this rewatch yeah getting ready for this and for me it's a hallmark of great movie making great art the way it continually shifts and changes and you have a hard time getting your your arms around just what the hell it is and it obviously the film is fixed the film hasn't changed in 50 years and yet your relationship to it changes the person you are changes and it's it's just sort of endlessly fascinating and the myriad ways

1:02:33to look at it to look into it to to the question about perspective about point of view and the movie which is pretty pretty profound question you have to ask yourself change every time I watch the Romanticism of the city David which is not only present in the way it looks but also obviously in the very lush uh score right the part of the right from start Harman's score right with the lush saxophone which is argued about right yeah is it too much is it too heavy right yeah I think the scorching I also I kind of forgot it is interesting when these young guys are using the sort of the craftsmen of their idols right like herman Hitchcock Scott you know what I mean like and I imagine those relationships were odd and like Spielberg even with Williams yeah who's older than him yeah it's not like totally you know old but like right like that Williams is a guy who I want someone who has a hand on the prior generation Williams had just popped at the end of the old school

1:03:36right versus someone like herman who was but I love the whole score do you love the herman's score I mean where are you on the herman it is very heavy I can't like it's very you know Kerry watched the movie with me and she had said after I was just asking her the question about it and she had said you know she said the truth is that the wrong score would isolate him even further he would look even smaller to you than he does right and it's important that he not look that small he not look that infinitesimal because you're trying to get inside it right the movies trying to put us inside his point of view right and that the score is somewhat successful at doing that yeah basically the score has two essential themes I was gonna say I want to call out the sub theme because there's the obvious taxi driver theme that we all think of that feels actually just theme from taxi driver for sure yes but then there's the kind of deep like don't sustained which is the really important counterbalance of this isn't just romanticize this guy's kind of the

1:04:40narratives he tells himself it is like a musical embodiment of the like wrong note playing inside of this guy constantly that he's trying to drown out with the other theme yeah Ben what's up a lot of this corset easy series is going to be a journey for you rewatching movies that were ruined for you by annoying people you grew up with this is a threat we've established yeah got a jersey knucklehead ready for a movie the wrong way with the you know violent movies Travis pickles fucking awesome yes what a cool guy yeah taking all the wrong lessons right I mean when I first saw this though I I was so enamored with the edginess of New York City right that was really what by the time we're watching it it's not like New York stopping edgy but this New York is gone so it's sort of like that's also a little romantic of like right when New York was really porn theaters and scuzz and like yeah we had it right is this I don't know exactly when it's set because it was

1:05:42released in 76 but it also for me I just I have so much romanticism for 77 because that was the year of punk and CBGB right right but I think it is kind of important that Travis pickles pre-dating that I know right you know even the Mohawk yeah right like which became a staple haircut with punks but but I just mean that there's not a productive subculture that he could find as an outlet sure you know I feel you yeah a lot of Travis pickles take the off ramp to punk yeah which is a better way to excise those emotions yes rather than just spiraling in your own head and turning to violence totally that's right because before 1977 the Mohawk was the sign of mental illness right clearly lost your mind I mean I think it'll be in the dossier but right someone basically like a Vietnam vet who like told Shrader like when someone shaved their head into a Mohawk in my unit they were about to do something insane yeah like that was not a sign of someone being like you know

1:06:43what I want to a spicy haircut today because I'm going to go into the jungle and knife people because they're referencing more so indigenous tribal exactly yeah that's what they're yeah I also think it's fascinating for how much the legend of deniro is in the 70s this is the most fucking committed actor in the world and when he gets the the raging bull part it's the can you believe the way he gained and lost and all of this that he famously would not shave his head into a mohawk the Mohawk is prosthetic it is an incredible looking prosthetic but he clearly was like no no no if I shave my head into a Mohawk for real my career is over I can't work again well I will be a pariah I can't walk the streets with that right right I don't want a shaved head B I don't want to have to go home with a Mohawk for three weeks have you worked with deniro no never met him yeah have you had a Mohawk never had a Mohawk what is the wildest haircut you ever

1:07:46it's a good question you're you're looking at it you're looking great so taxi driver yes so okay so you see it as a young man I when you said you liked taxi driver to us last time we saw you I was like I I maybe note an influence in some of Tracy's work there was a line about to kill or go and go yes I have no idea if you perceive that at all or if it's you know just you know just you know the influences are right who knows how they work on you you know certainly this was a you never were like I'm gonna write my taxi driver no no no I and I have to say I don't know when I well I'm probably upon first watching it not when I was 10 but I mean when I was 18 or whatever I probably recognized a lot of the craftsmanship at work and yet I think it was probably only over repeated viewings that I started to recognize oh it's not just a Scorsese deniro joint straighter right it's a schrader is a huge part of it the cinematographer the

1:08:51score yeah editing I mean Scorsese surrounded himself with a team to help deliver this this whole whole movie and this is in my mind a classic like three authors film I think you have to give equal kind of authors it's a schrader deniro and Scorsese and I think that's true of raging bowl and I think it's true of well those are probably I mean because like the later schrader Scorsese collaborations are very interesting I think the same is true bring up the dead or well but for one cage is not as vital you know an author he's a great it's a great performance but deniro clearly was a somewhat equal creative partner with me all Chris as any time he worked right they were developing right right right uh bring out the dead is great you know last official christ these are great movies as well but there's a lot of other hood between I mean I think it's even different than than Scorsese into caprio there's something about yeah I think to caprio is a little bit more like I am your instrument yeah you know I think he has input like well you you can see it in the work that schrader then goes on to do as a director right he takes

1:09:54as much of the lineage of taxi driver with him yeah Scorsese he does on his right and schraders still got it I mean like he called his movie sir about some very fucking guy who lives in a motel lonely man right that thing gets right in the car I what was it master gardener I think I saw the New York film festival the second uh Joel Edgerton opened his diary and started the whole audience laugh yeah well how can we not I mean I liked the movie but we were like he's added again he's writing stuff down we're hearing an inner monologue yeah you guys have not done Schrader have no no I mean I'd love to do him he's got such a fascinating career and of course you know all his Facebook posts you know or bring me such joy Alex Ross Perry sent us like three this morning um but like you know he was never really a blank check guy well I mean the closest is like me Shimmer or something right it's like he got to kind of the exercise movie they canceled yeah he is fascinating um so fascinating can I read I was I logged this on letterbox this morning

1:10:56yes and then I I was looking at other reviews and I saw the trader had logged it in 2022 logged a review of taxi driver I'm going to classify this as a review but I want to read what he wrote oh because I think it's really interesting March 5th 2022 he says I included a front piece quote on my first script taxi driver from Thomas Wolf the whole conviction of my life rests upon the belief that loneliness far from being a rare and curious phenomenon peculiar to myself into a few other solitary men is the central inevitable fact of human existence and then this is what reminded me to read this David yes I've attached a front piece quote to my last script he says last and he also spelled script SCTR IPT yes and I think the account you're using here the is like it's taking his other writing and sort of correcting it on letterbox right so like he posted this somewhere else front piece quote to my last grip master gardener from Leonard Cohen quote and I choose the rooms that I live in with care the windows are small and the walls on despair there's only one bed and there's only one prayer I listen all night for your step on the stair and quote twist the two is

1:11:59the arc of hope that living can bring there you go and I was watching one of the things on the 4K yeah I watched the 4K for this there's a there's a the 4K that's in the Columbia box set they finally issued a standalone release as well I got the standalone version of it I have issued the Columbia box sets please I'm okay Columbia box that's David's thanks they take up too much space there's check it they fuck with the shelf I had it but I'm getting like Gandhi I just was wondering if there's any upgrade from the from the it's the exact same disc in different packages what I thought yeah identical disc but there's a there's like a 20-minute trader looking back on taxi driver thing and he said I'm gonna paraphrase him poorly here but it was a thing that really jumped out to me there's like the the central problem with characters like Travis Bickle is that they think loneliness is like a disease that's been put on them and loneliness is a choice and he said like as a guy who struggled with it myself loneliness is a thing you inflict upon

1:12:59yourself indeed it is a choice you make but I mean like that is so so so commonly what you see now with these people on the internet in cells anyone who's basically like it's someone else's fault or it's society's fault that I am lonely without a wife without your job what I don't know you know this is the ball and and that corners of the internet have now basically become a crowdsourced in our monologue the things that Travis Bickle is telling himself are now a conversation happening between hundreds of disaffected young men talking to each other or podcasting or fucking YouTube or whatever you know it's like that's what the conversation is I mean it's it's part of the weirdness of the fucking time we live in where it's like people are bonding over how they feel completely alone and isolated rather than connecting through that yeah yeah you think Travis would have been on the internet I mean this is another thing you're like in the way where

1:14:01it's like it Travis is two years later what happens if he has access to punk right what if he drops a guy off at CBGB's one night I'm like that probably he turns out better yeah but if he's in the time of the internet I think he turns out worse I think it's actually he gets too much positive motivation yeah he's a super poster on 4chan yeah yeah he's top 1% comments are on Reddit yeah yeah see I again talking about the the nature of the way this movie transforms for me over time I mean I'm 60 years old now and I and Travis now looks like a young man to me he says he's 26 in this movie right that's how old would Danero have been yeah that sounds like 30 yeah right he said 26 in this and I I had the fucking last crusade my face melted thing he was a little older Danero's like 32 right okay so but 32 to me now is real is really young yeah and I don't know that I've ever seen

1:15:01noticed Travis as a young person before and I I just felt so much more sympathy for him on this watch than in the past and I actually got a little mad about that about the this idea that Travis is the first in-sell or the you know that he's the birth of the you know that oh my god the the the presence of these people to make a movie about an in-sell before we knew what in-sell was you know that was already existence but I hate those motherfuck those guys right those guys are fucking losers and I hate those they would be really funny if you came on the show and you're like but in-sell they get a bad rap they ain't so bad let's give another shade yeah okay fairy what's happening to them maybe not a hot take no but I agree with you I mean Marty says in my recent interviews is like I feel like half the people in the world are Travis pickles we were trying to make a movie about someone distinctive here you know and now it's feels there's also not distinctive I think the weird collaborative group nature of the kind of in-sell community which

1:16:02in and of itself should be an oxymoron right there there is a greater degree of like self-pitying yeah well what I didn't do any research on in-sells who started this shit I mean it's possible that's actually the correct answer I mean it's but it's what Griffin said which is someone interesting of like it right it's sort of lonely or angry people find each other and this was the argument for the internet of like we'll connect and thus we will not be lonely but instead of actually connecting they just discuss their loneliness like the only connection is over what they're angry about or whatever I think one of the moments that under-disgust actually is a real radicalizing moment for Travis in the film is even his first meeting with the other cabbys that he cannot connect to them yes that's right there are other guys who like live in the darkness these are the guys who can get him a gun and know all the people and are sharing stories of their

1:17:03kind of like torrid uh lascivious behavior and and experiences and whatever and he does not know how to enter that conversation and it's not just because he hasn't had the same life experiences them he just doesn't have a relate to other people and these people are connecting to each other and going like you're right and you're right to say it and they're pumping each other up right and that's so different than the Travis Bickle thing we have no real sense of like Travis's life writer's backstory obviously we know he's a veteran but like do we know where he's from or he has family or anything like that does that ever come up he writes uh he writes his card do his parents yeah yeah yeah but you don't do we know where he sends that that's fine I don't know that it comes I'm not sure like and we don't need to like it's fine and it's so much of it is this entire generation of men who were drafted into a war that we shouldn't have been fighting in the first place and then we're just sort of spat back out onto the streets and it's like you figure it out now and it's relationship with the parents is

1:18:06is important because because of what he doesn't know yes clearly his parents haven't done a great job they haven't narrated to him the movie they saw that night while he was with the baby's sitter and and they especially didn't explain to him what the movie was saying this is not a guy who was broken by the war this is a guy who was never raised properly who probably wasn't wired properly and then was put into a hyper extreme situation uh treated as just you know one of anyone and then spat back out and now he's just completely fucked um we're gonna open the dossier here we got our research of course this film starts with that rascal Paul Schrader a film critic if anyone's ever read transcendental style and film his uh publicate you know his big his book on ozu and bresson and drear it's the best um but he was not a filmmaker yet he's a film writer he is marriage is falling apart he was marriage in enoffo wall right the great production designer he loses his job as a critic he says he's in a dispute with the a f i i do feel like Paul

1:19:12Schrader's always basically like in a fight with someone yeah like he's always pissing somebody off or whatever i'm just gonna call out quickly i never settled upon but uh Scorsese and Schrader have said just Midwest okay right much more and Paul Schrader is from where's like Minnesota or he's like a Calvinist right like anyway but he says 73 he's living in his car in LA riding around all night drinking heavily going to porn movies because they were open all night and for no other reasons uh and crashing someplace during the day the posi cat theater in LA was one of his haunts uh he says he'd go there to sleep and no other thing yeah i'm adding the uh and then he goes to the ER because he like doubles over in pain and he has an ulcer he's 27 and he says like i realize i hadn't really talked to anyone in a month and i'm basically like about to die i'm like driving around in a metal coffin in my car in a busy city i'm completely alone

1:20:13and then he says he hears the song the hairy chape and song taxi uh and then Arthur Bremmer shoots George Wallace the Alabama governor who's running for president when he when he gets obsessed the film that's on the movie basically was like a p tier griffin moment where he saw three things at the same time and was a taxi driver um just based off of what you said i he just puts those things together he's like i might as well be honest it was this weird like conglomeration of these things i'm not playing that it uh ever gets to Travis Bickle levels of darkness i i'm curious if you gentlemen have the same experience i never feel more mentally unwell than when i have been physically ill when i have like i am sick and bad and kind of isolating for four or five days and i come out of that in that way you're saying where it like he's like huh i kind of haven't talked to anybody in a month right where i just go like what the fuck am i thinking see i i mean you have a house full of animals i was about to say i'm a very social person and so i do require i do like to you know i'm extroverted i like to see people it charges my batteries ba ba

1:21:16now the idea of like david you're gonna be bedridden for five days i'm like sounds like a vacation am i knocking a die sounds crazy i don't know where you are when they're being closed state of you shouldn't interact with people and i certainly felt extreme versions of this and in lockdown as well where it's like it actually the safe thing to do is to knock out a lot of lockdown most extreme and then you just go like the fuck is my brain thinking um yeah i don't know Tracy hi are you a lonely guy are you an introverted person i don't know i don't know you talked about not wanting to leave your house recently but that's obviously because of the a v setup i'm i'm a i'm a homebody i've always been a home yeah always okay it's not like yeah uh uh and you know i can go out and be social and and then i and i have a my social anxiety always happens after the fact like once i'm home and i go oh why did i talk why did i say anything to anybody why don't you just be quiet yeah i i have i have that in anticipatory it's hard for me to get myself to go

1:22:21to a place and then i feel terrible about everything i did or said afterwards when i'm there i'm vaguely okay Paul Shrey says he wrote the screenplay in about 10 or 12 days continuously it definitely is a girlfriend's house and he just wrote and wrote and wrote uh i almost feel like this is the kind of movie you can't write if you think about it too much right that's probably right it's just jumped out of his head you know he had to create the plot like that was the one thing you need it like okay he wants a girl he can't have her he tries to kill the politician yeah it's like one of those steady driver things he tries to kill somebody to impress her all uh he says you know came from the gut like largely and his sort of off repeated line but it is a good one he's like i wrote the character so i wouldn't become him essentially you know what i mean which is a good it's a good line it's also the fascinating not to jump ahead but the scorsese forces trader thing of trader always felt like a guy who was dangerously close to fully becoming one of

1:23:23his characters he was right on the edge and he speaks about like his he'd nistic impulses and all that stuff and scorsese felt like a feels like a guy Michigan not minister by the way i apologize good correction yeah scorsese feels like a guy who you know sits alone in a room and is self-punishing for even having the thoughts of the mental experiment of doing things you scorsese you're saying yeah because he's like sort of housebound when he's a boy and all that but they're both bonded by this sort of like my brain goes here scorsese may be thinking about it a little more anthropologically and then feeling tremendous shame about it and traders like let me write it so i don't do it straighter also obviously it fits very influenced by soctra by european the swathe calls the european existential hero so like the stranger notes from the underground the movie pick pocket all the songs all the bros on herbivores so man writing a diary obsessively focused on things

1:24:23the existential heroes problem always is should i exist right it's not like do i want x or y he's just like should i even exist should i have been thrust into existence it's interesting because the the well it's interesting for a lot of reasons but the the so hollywood movies get aped by european filmmakers they fall in love with right they're the friendship wave and all the you know like they're like right like we love it and then those 70s for the new hollywood 70s filmmakers influenced by those movies turn it around and they sort of give their version of that and clearly that was a very healthy turning of the soil for for those various generations i mean if taxi driver is american press on yeah and existentialism that comes from film noir from before that we're we're all the better off for it so i i'm curious to hear both of your takes on

1:25:27this but i was watching this trying to like think about the lineage of how you get to taxi driver existing right from two guys who absorbed a lot of uh literary work and movies and all of this i was primarily thinking about uh Nicholas Ray and ilia kazan and those sort of like you know the method the new styles of acting movies about self tortured men sure that were always kind of explosive that were more theatrical even when they were moving into a more modern style of acting and they're renting garments they're going to the sky and part of it also is that the social moreays of the timer that you kind of couldn't say what was actually going on men can't be emotionally that way well there's there's that there's literally that's what the characters reflecting but then there's also like the movies themselves have to render things into deep subtext or things need to happen off camera you know or the quiet part is never said and something else is screened out loud and this feels like to me one of the first examples i can think of of a movie and at Joe which

1:26:36Peter Boyle is also in feels like a kind of an important uh uh link in the chain the normal and wester movies yes big uh um favorite a tear team but where you can kind of be like the movies allowed to touch these things specifically which allows the character to be less explosive that allows the performance to become more internalized because you don't need your sort of you're tearing me apart Lisa kind of moments right no i think that's right and also you know Travis's relationship to violence yeah it is an important one i think in this in the shader screenplay even states boldly in the pros introduction to Travis that this is the man who's who clearly is uh an attractor of violence or a combustible figure somebody for whom violences uh it's part of their essential nature it's also i mean it's just so fucking great

1:27:36that the movie doesn't really try to unpack his backstory at all no beyond he doesn't have some model algorithm he's like when i was in case on or you served in the war and he grew up somewhere different than where he lives now it's all you need to know and you can infer and this is you talking about like movies that weirdly change even though they are actually fixed and and how you perceive them this is a movie that feels like it has all the answers but every time i watch it i just ask myself new questions and it they're not because of the movie being um non-specific in any way right but sometimes you go okay is the violence or reflection of well Travis kind of reads like someone who might have been really bullied as a child sure is his violence elashing out of what was in front of upon hand run teenness like did you know as a little guy yeah contribute to that he really helps for that he also plays this and and part of it is i mean you were saying this earlier i watched this movie a lot when i was a teenager and in my early 20s right i watched

1:28:40a lot when i was casing this whorehouse i was thinking of a good reference for that i had not seen this film in a while uh even though i'd seen it many times yeah i had not seen this film since being older than the character and now older but then the character by some distance and it's not like i ever looked to him as an aspirational figure but watching it this time i was taken by how childlike he seems yeah he really seems like uh it's like big it's like he's a little boy in a body he doesn't know how to control and deniro is playing that in sort of his like weird kind of guilelessness yeah and and it does your like is this a guy who never got over not fitting in as a kid is his home life defined by parents who were physically or psychologically abusive to him in some way or were they just checked out was it a lack of protection or was it a sense of active danger i think he might also be an only child he definitely seems to be the only child to me he reads that way yeah for sure yeah i mean all only children are one step away i think from just you know

1:29:42becoming Travis pickle yeah we love you Ben hey take it easy i'm kidding um we love straighter writes this script he writes it i mean clearly it's like it's like it's almost like an episode he has he writes the script very fast then he starts hanging rocky kind of similar by the way rocky is a Sylvester Stallone locked himself in a room and like drew the curtains down for like seven days and just vomited it out it's a it's a good idea of easy being i got so mad at shan at all being like a little slow i like rocky to like the fuck out of you like a little slow i don't get that it's rocky it's such a beautiful movie i really think rocky is almost underrated even though one best picture and it's one of the most famous movies ever made it's a gorgeous study of like human religion it's underrated because of what he did to the legacy of rock and like he's leather wally fart the robot right the other ones are incredibly fun sports movies like rocky three i think is the peak of the like yes when he turned these into slick sports movies they're very good they're very fun but there's no comparison the first one is completely in a league of the show

1:30:46there's no example there's a reason one best picture because it did it all like it made the money it peeled but also it is a you know a very very well made film but there's also there's no analog in movies of something that started as kind of focused personal emotional art and then just sort of became pop trash right and then you could argue with creed went back again and then back yeah now it's doing the yeah it's almost like creed they were like let's make a serious movie and then they're like perfect the sequels we can make it was anyway it's like the creed sounds are remaking the rocky sequels in a way that's fascinating they got to bring the robot back they do yeah creed's got to fuck the robot now listen listen so he's got to fucking himself all right so that's agency straighter leaves town for a while he comes back to LA still a freelance critic but he feels a little tougher he writes a review of sisters and interviews Brian DePaul Ma and they kind of became buds and he gives him the script and then Michael and Julia Phillips of course the sort of husband wife producing team right Julia Phillips you'll never eat lunch in

1:31:49this town again eventually right I read that book when I was a teenager because my mom would buy me movie books oh nice but I mean as a teenager remember being like this is a little over my head like I don't really get what being a producer is this person seems so angry but um they're work they're preparing the sting and which they produce you know and they are very taken with taxi driver but they have no idea what to do with it they're like the script is incredible they buy it for a thousand dollars which is crazy but they don't actually know how they're gonna like make it into a sort of digestible movie and then they see a rough cut of mean streets they're talking about doing taxi driver with Jeff Bridges and I guess the director was going to be Robert Mulligan who's not a director I know that well but he made to kill him mocking but I don't know like I don't know what he's doing in the 70s I mean he's much older yeah he's older he'd made like that movie summer of 42 the sort of coming of age movie which is like kind of a hit right he made that big hit right par movie the other do you know these guys all uh what the

1:32:55nickel ride which is Jason Miller kind of crime movie favorite of Sean's uh Tracy we were texting with hitmaker because you would listen to our uh feel fearless at the time and about how just Jeff Bridges is one of those rare examples of a guy who is thought of discussed praised has won an Oscar is still eternally underrated yeah no one quite acknowledges how good he is this is maybe one of the only cases I've ever come across of hearing a role that Jeff Bridges could have played that would be a disaster I don't think Bridges makes sense I he doesn't make any sense but then it's just also I mean denieros no one ever could have given a better performance than this in this role um but so they see me they see mean streets and they go like Scorsese and like this is it and uh they never thought about anyone else again and uh Scorsese knows Julie a little bit and I guess they talk after he makes box her a birthday and she's

1:33:58kind of like come when you've done something better you know she was kind of like a bit of a bully or what you know kind of making fun of him but in a in a sweet way and then they just essentially make a proposal to marty and bobs agent of like you're a package like we want you to do this movie and we want you to do it together and like it's not one of the other it has to be both Scorsese he kind of knows straighter a little bit and meets him through de paulma he wanted Paul to write to adapt duster he's the gambler for him and he says he arrives late to dinner Shrader's sitting with de paulma and they have already cooked up the movie obsession together while this is happening and so he's kind of like I miss my shot but then the script gets handed to him Did Shrader write obsession? Did he did right? Am I wrong? 1970 what is that 76? Yep you guys said we wrote it yeah yeah yeah not a movie I love or he wrote obsession that's crazy not the recent obsession the uh Cliff Robertson and part of the reason I don't love it is Cliff

1:34:58Robertson is like such a ham bone and what do you think of Cliff Robertson? Have we talked about this? I don't think so but we were talking about guys who have an Oscar though yeah we're like huh uh that's certainly a movie that you would get arrested for making today you should read John Lithco's memoir to read him uh just fucking destroy Cliff Robertson I mean he was a noted son of a bitch yeah John just clearly hated him yeah what were they in together what's the obsession oh right there right there's no disease in somebody to Paul right the Paul my fucking love Lithco's friend upon the saw Lithco and was like this is my guy this Frankenstein ass so he got to get the camera me to the wall the wasp is Frankenstein in the wall uh love John Lithco to be clear yeah um yeah so but Scorsese does he reads the tax driver script and he's like well this is kind of the Russian literature idea I'm thinking of like the sort of deepest darkest you know secret type self you know movie this is this is what I want and so they're all in I mean yeah it's an interesting story because it's basically like every time someone reads a script

1:35:58they're like yeah yeah that makes sense there's an interesting quote from Schrader where he says I wrote a Protestant script it's like cold isolated like it's me Marty makes a Catholic movie it's like lush and rich in New York and all this and like and that the the the merging is like why the movies are masterpiece right like you know interesting idea I kind of like that idea because I do feel like some of Schrader's movies that he directs himself are chillier yeah I mean extremely chill okay so uh blah blah Schrader had also written this movie the Yakuza of course he sells that for some money Marty does Alice the Phillips is to the sting deniro does godfather too basically everyone has a moment of success after they decide on this tax driver project so they're all coming back to get a little bit of a bigger budget the budget's $1.3 million but that is more than they initially it hoped for obviously no it eventually goes up to 1.9 million you said a little

1:37:00bit more you mean it's a little bit under what they had no no they thought they were going to get nothing to make this movie and like that you know they all of the sort of power of like them you know deniro wins an Oscar the Phillips win an Oscar like it's like okay they get a little bit more money but it is it's a studio film it is it's a it's a what you know Columbia pictures and uh Scorsese is he's already trying to make New York New York which is a much more expensive movie that is crazy that he already wanted to do it that New York New York isn't just him flush with the success thinking he can do anything everyone gets bargain basement prices yeah deniro gets 35 grand Marty gets 65 grand Paul gets 30 grand Columbia is still even at that price incredibly nervous about the movie I'm trying to think like if there had been anything quite as sort of blurred as this movie made by a studio in the right and and being so I mean obviously there's like trash movie exploitation is blurred in a different way yeah but midnight caboy is has a sweet

1:38:04side to it does it's about boys friends it is about boys being boys the godfather's no picnic this is true but it's classy I know yeah but it's no picnic but these are the pieces of how you get there right you go okay so midnight caboy has the lurid sexuality and the New York grind when is death godfather has the buy-offs 74 yeah and death it death wishes like an artless you know kind of version but I think it's important that those two movies win best picture and breaks down a couple taboo walls yeah right right deliverance this is so uh one that's pushing the boundary right banjo had never been played that fast but deliverance is like if you go fucking canoeing in the Appalachians or whatever that's gonna happen you taxi drivers like if you try and get into cab in New York City it's sort of the opposite you know ends of the yeah those tabbos I mean yeah they had been falling I mean you could argue that rocky right rocky and star wars start to be the end of the established the taboos I mean I just think it can't be

1:39:05overstated that the 70s start with an x-rated movie winning best picture and I think that's true you'll like but briefly all bets are all I guess the difference I'm noticing here is even death wish but certainly things like godfather yeah midnight caboy even deliverance it's like there's still a hero character there's someone conflicted about the evil or the violence being done or whatever and even Charles Branson you know that that's a somewhat sympathetic character in the first death wish obviously and like he's you know he's avenging a wrong and all this whereas this one is like you're in the head of a psychopathic man here's a question I got there's no escape there might not be an answer right do we think that part of this movie getting made is that the sort of very interpretive happy ending and victory at the end of the movie could have been misread by the bean counters who were approving the movie getting made yeah maybe if you're looking at it on paper even as dark as the film is you don't know what the performance is gonna be like do you imagine it is a film because a lot of these kind of grime year not even the exploitation films but the

1:40:08sort of genre revenge films would have these wild character swings where the movie clearly was asking you to just go like and now you like this guy now the scenes are being played soft now it's sensitive now it's a win or we made the bad guys so bad that he has permission to do anything on its face does this look a little bit closer to a death wish if you don't know exactly how they're gonna execute it I don't know I don't know that's an interesting question because you know we get to a point in the in the narrative yeah where it seems like Travis kind of comes to a fork in the right after he arms himself he comes to a kind of a fork in the road and one fork takes him to this assassination idea that he's gonna assassinate the presidential candidate palatine and the other road takes him to rescue yes a lady in distress is the movie unclear is Travis unclear of which way it's gonna go until finally we get to the climax the film you can't even call it an

1:41:11aborted assassination attempt you just you know he gets out of there before it even yeah transpires yeah maybe the Mohawk was a mistake in that regard right yeah sure it is also it's from a nearer where you could just kind of walk up to a presidential candidate like right like it's still like now you know if there's a White House correspondent in her securities not gonna let you get anywhere I mean that kind of didn't get that close city right he kind of made it's a crazy he got anywhere within the vicinity but it's like it's a much more you know people are just kind of walking around I mean yeah yeah yeah people were just walking here that's another taboo that may not count on bro hinkley obviously he's inspired by tax he inspired by tax you driver was able to walk up right up to Ronald Reagan on the street getting into a car but Travis swerves right and he goes over and he does the I'll do the no blur thing I'll do the no blur thing instead went I mean we what we sense is that it's got to get this out yes right it's a bomb that's gonna explode yeah like you know I look I think about the new Hollywood thing a lot and how this happens right this brief

1:42:14window and a lot of it is broken by the BBS films an easy writer and the studio is going our shit's not working something's happening over here maybe we have to look into this yeah on learn everything we thought we knew right and so all the kind of rules of traditional what works what is proper storytelling yada yada yada go out the window and they start just letting the inmates run the asylum to a certain degree right and French connection and godfather yes I mean these movies are and the exorcist they're making time I mean not to keep just tying everything back to recent big picture episodes but in that 76 draft Sean was going through what you know what his list of what he felt like was the definitive cultural event film of each year and the amount of years right for that one decade the amount of years that it lines up with the best picture winner is wild that would not be the case today where you go these movies not only one best picture were critically adored were like esteemed critical objects were embraced by the public

1:43:16were massive financial successes in many cases also the highest grossing film their year almost always within the top five right and they were like pop culture you know it wasn't just like a Tony thing that everyone got behind that's an unusual thing and part of that is just everyone going like look the fucking three years ago none of that would have happened a French connection yeah this would have been the griniest thing you'd ever seen you know in like on a on a double bill or whatever I think there's something to even when you're saying well this movie places you so inside the head of the character and it's not until this fork in the road moment the Travis really becomes you know potentially this this figure of revenge or whatever it is if you're a studio exact reading the script once again to run this exercise do you just go like I don't know these seventies movies of all these weird tangents what's interesting to me about all this is that yes Star Wars kills New Hawley and Rocky yeah yeah but it's also that the new Hollywood guy start being like

1:44:17well I want to make epics I mean what happens like Chimino and Freakinner like the Blanchacker begins these people are of course as he's Coppola yeah they're like I can make anything I can you know and then they make this stuff at all you know bankrupt studios yeah it's not like their careers or for Chimino his career is over but for you know the other guys they they they salvage it but I think that's when Hollywood's like all right like you know they're fun cheap you're not fun like this yeah certainly Chason I mean Freakin makes two of the hugest movies ever made yes and then bombs so bad with sorcerer he can yeah he has a hard time getting money for his next movie like we will talk about it like when does I mean Freakin is my ultimate we will do him on the show one day because I do think he's the ultimate blank check where it's just like all the way up and then sorcerer and then it's just like goodbye get out you are a pariah for 10 years you and then he won the margins now he makes great movies after that he also makes forgettable but he also makes

1:45:19change right at the center of the culture again no no but he never fully goes away and like 100% what's interesting about someone like Freakin is like he made stuff like rules of engagement like he made like very sort of like solid Hollywood entertainment along with the but that's the balance like the the two movies he made of your plays I think are like both excellent but those are feel like a throwback to even his like pre-French connection shit right and then you're also like sometimes he would just be a studio guy for hired he would do the hundred or whatever and it's pretty good right but it was like he couldn't ever do French connection again he couldn't ever be like I am working within the studio system making the purest version of what interests me yeah it becomes a little bifurcated he would have told he told me yeah that it wasn't possible right he said you know the just circumstances change in such a way it's like that'll never happen again yeah

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1:49:28loneliest man he ever knew right he's also very interested in flimsy says by Irving learners murdered by contract he I guess it worked with learner on New York New York eventually like no murder by contract I've I've seen murder by contract I feel like do not know anything about I feel like it was because that's a Colombian war right like Vince Edwards I think Vince Edwards is quad uh boy pulled that on my head that's impressive I like it's like a taffy criterion put up some long ago you know some criterion collection like a criterion channel sorry series of the of those Colombian wars those like in the later boxes of those Colombian wars they're great oh maybe I got to start a bus now that credit card I got I got to say that series of words hit like heroin I went through my bloodstream because those Colombian wars of the late 50s are very interesting because Colombia was sort of the poverty studio and so they made the darker stuff the skid rail movies yeah where you're watching you're like fuck this is for the 50s this is kind of nasty and that's one of the nastiest like that's the one where the poster is uh the the guys

1:50:35got a garot around the woman's neck and she's looking beautiful and he's looking tormented or whatever and he's like a hitman who's in his own head and I understand like that he's like Scorsese he's like that's one of the only Hollywood movies where you're like inside the head of a man who kills people like you know it's a rare thing so anyway uh so Scorsese Nidira obviously they'd work together already only the one time only on the main streets we talk about this in the main streets episode but it is fascinating to me that he's always said there the three actors I had the real symbiotic connection to and relationship and and process and it's Kitelle, Dineiro and Scorsese and uh and uh to get the caprio excuse me obviously Dineiro becomes the guy he understands how to filter everything that interests him in for decades and then decaprio becomes the guy who is first all enough as an actor but more importantly is automatic financing and security for whatever he wants to make at a very large scale. Kitelle starts out as

1:51:37Scorsese's self-insert you watch who's that knock on my door you watch main streets those are clearly him he places himself into the movie yes and then from main streets on there doesn't feel like you have characters that represent Scorsese even when Scorsese is in the movie as an actor sure it's like he notices when fucking Dineiro enters the bar in main streets the way the audience reacts and is like fuck if I have that kind of power yeah and that kind of charismatic figure at the center of my movie I'm pulling the audience in more and he starts to remove himself in the action and places himself in the kind of worldview and what the film's saying and it's so funny that the moment he does that switch he's like hey Kitelle you're cool playing like a fucking pedophile pamphoon Judas right you're cool playing like just the most evil people in the world I'm gonna keep working with you but now you just play kind of like unknowable monsters yeah that's true I mean Dineiro it's very interesting is shooting 1900 for Bertolucci he's prepping Ilya Kazan's The Last

1:52:43Tycoon not a very good movie but at the major project Ilya Kazan's final film indeed yeah he like would come from Europe like on breaks from 1900 and drive cabs around New York City and then the way Scorsese describes it then he would just click a button and then he'd turn into Harry Uffland from the last tycoon if he needed to write like he's like he's got all these modes in his brain was he big enough at that point where would people recognize I was gonna bring this up and he'd want to ask her but he said it happened but only one time that's crazy that that basically still he was weirdly anonymous enough even though Godfather 2 was huge and he had won the Academy Award he wasn't a leading man yet yeah and he's he's elusive in Godfather 2 he is he's elusive and he's a little transformative and he's so withdrawn in his own way that he could just fucking drive a cab and people weren't like that's fucking movie happening here obviously Jody Foster is an Alice doesn't live here anymore so he has the connection to her his mother her sorry her mother

1:53:48thinks she's crazy to do want to do this part yeah but Foster's like I trust him I think it's a good idea they had to get approval from the LA welfare board you know they hire they hire Pat Brown the former governor of California to make to smooth things over they have adults her sister Connie is there for some of the more adult quote unquote shots you know to make sure like double right yeah Foster says like everyone treated her great and was clearly so uncomfortable like basically was just like on tiptoes around her the entire time because they're like Jesus Christ she was third was she 13 years old she's 12 she's crazy and she had that is she had such a like part of its child star voice yeah yeah sure but she was such an old pro at this point I mean she's literally the fucking like copper tone kid I mean you know that band that she is the model of the kid wait really right am I wrong about that uh no isn't that right if not for the bottle she certainly did the commercial like she was working from the time she was basically an infant damn uh so as she's

1:54:53such an old pro be her voice just always makes her sound yeah wiser beyond her years even like now you're like oh she's mothuzela she does she's just got she's got so much like command and a thore it's great act always you ever worked with your any foster I haven't I just didn't work for the first time recently how you're nice you know she's great obviously she gets the Oscar nomination it is an incredibly iconic performance it's also a thing that still is part of the playbook and it basically never works but child stars and teen stars are like fuck can I find my like taxi driver performance where I successfully just totally shed the kitty thing and I'm taken seriously and I feel like you get a lot of bad wannabe Sundance movies where like a former Nickelodeon star is like strung out on heroin and doing fucked up shit right be like I'm I'm not agent Cody banks anymore or whatever Columbia decides they need star power civil shepherd is essentially parachute into the movie she says she threw the script into like a garbage can when she read it she's so

1:55:58good in this movie but she was basically like I'd seen mean streets I trusted that they were like denier and scorsese were good I had like no lines in the script I had no idea why I was in this movie yeah right you know like it's it's a little baffling but she is she's fantastic in the movie obviously like she's obviously so effective in last picture show but that's also such a raw clay performance right where you know is she so good in that movie she is she is but this it's like what she's doing is so complicated and delicate and actually selling you on the varying levels of why would she be kind of interested in him to a point and what is that point right I personally would not go on a deal with Travis pickle I would but here's a looker it's also it's what De Niro does well where you watch in real time as he's like winning her and losing her moment to moment you fucking get both of you fucking guys would go on a date with Travis pickle who the fuck are you kidding both of you would go and he's that is that okay okay fine you know let's go on one day

1:57:00with Travis that's all the issue he took me to this Swedish you know porn conceptions emotional sense of educational yeah the part that a kytel plays sport is written by Schrader to be a black person and Columbia is like this movie even in 1976 I think Columbia has the sense to be like this movie cannot be like he mows down a bunch of black it will cause right in a brothel right like that's just not gonna work for us and kytel it's basically like you know he knows parachute can be no score says he come on in what's your day were you gonna say something well that's interesting and I and I think a good choice but the use of race and taxi drivers pretty interesting yes to watch again to see is the point that's being made that the seeds of white supremacy are sewn in this character in this in this lonely if that point is being made it I feel it's unintentional but I'm not sure I don't really know I don't know man yeah that we see the way they talk about

1:58:02race and you're right he uses a lot of racial slurs that her in the beginning when he's yeah like driving around he's so angry at everyone and everything right like everyone's a target to him may I give my read on this yeah I I'm not to go too close to travel did nothing wrong well yeah he's the hero of the movie obviously he's the lead not beating the charges yeah um I I think white supremacy is something that is basically taught that has to be like passed down whether it is you know in the home or being radicalized by a community in that kind of way I think there is a more insidious form of racism and once again I have the authority to say this uh that is people who feel so disenfranchised and isolated and alienated and start just kind of reaching for the guard rails of who can I blame this on right and it doesn't turn into a supremacist ideology it doesn't become as much of an overriding kind of conspiracy feeling uh it's just like fuck them and fuck them

1:59:08and fuck them right and it becomes like really easy to just be racist as a place to put your anger if you're overflowing with anger in that way and so that's why I think it's not versus something like I mean Shredder obviously writes about white supremacism later you know and that's much more of like a religion you can't deny the gaze for which we see total the black man who is walking on the street raging I'm going to kill him all right sure sort of schizophrenic homeless man the the point where Travis steps out to have his conversation with wizard yeah and there are just a couple of black guys walking by and there's a long shot of Travis kind of tracking them. There's the black cab driver who gives him the bang bang symbol as he's walking away from the meeting and calls him killer I think there's the kids throwing the eggs kids throwing the eggs in the bottles at the at the cab as he walks by not to mention of course the the kid who he shoots in the face uh in the bodega I mean there are two great examples for me in this movie of a studio note based out of fear actually saving the movie

2:00:15and achieving transcendence and one of them is this because I do think if sport is black it just becomes that and I think there's something in that at the beginning of the film he keeps slipping into his anger being focused on race and he's also like tipping into homophobia you know it's any sort of other group in New York City who feels empowered and I think more than I think seeing people who are happy and who have I mean it's the 25 hour mirror scene a hundred years later where it's like yeah if you live in New York you can sort of work yourself up about any ethnic community they're all here like you know it's easy to like you know and all of them have a place and feel like they have some sense of empowerment I mean this is so much of the fucking insult stuff as well as well I I'm being told to feel bad for these people these people feel like they have more than I do and it's what they can identify is what they have is community and you don't have that right the culture is not actually placing them above you they're fighting more than you are you just feel

2:01:17unhappy and the fact that his anger is starting to be so focused on marginalized groups and then you have a white character who is doing such a demonstrable evil that it pivots him it pivots him into well I am empowered now I must do something about this this is not my rage on checked this is me being an avenging angel he still shoots that guy in the face you know and he views him as less than human because it's him basically using him as like shooting practice he's using him as a dry run but I do think it's important that what really metastasizes him to go full taxi driver mode if you will is well I got to say this kid yeah no it is the worst guy the book day guy is raised to find by what he's doing for a living the convenience store scene is also like it's his fantasy kind of working out for him yeah he's the cowboy he's a racist guy to be clear yes I think Travis Bickle has a lot of hate in his heart for other other races yes but it's also you know like that

2:02:20that goes well for him totally he defends the guy yes the the shop owner he kind of just gets away with it's part of the cynicism of the film is him knowing he seems kind of like cool in her room no one can take care about this kid right the shop owner is speaking he's finished yeah he's right he's latino yeah yeah they seemingly friends but he thinks for at least allies in that moment yeah right he tells himself he's doing that guy a favor right like he tells the shopkeeper he tells himself that what he's doing for the shopkeeper is a kin to what he's planning to do for Jody Foster right yes uh score says he's in the film of course why we should he is he is replacing the actor George Mimoli who I know best from fans with the paradise but like kind of like a big guy you know he's in mean streets he's in you know he's a guy and he had gotten in an accident making a movie called the farmer and could not like make it to set essentially like you know he was injured score says he's like okay I'll do it and he says he learned a lot from Bob in that scene you

2:03:22remember saying like put down the flag put down the taxi flag and Bob was like no you make me put it down he's like I want you to mean it racist monologue by the way yep uh it's uh it's an extremely scary performance Schrader was really mad like he was like how do I do fucking taking this part and then he saw the movie and was like yeah he did a pretty good job uh his second best performance after Sharktail no I have the Mandalorian in Grogu yeah what is score says he's bad I mean he's a quiz show like it's like no it's like he has like a meaty performance he is pretty freaking good it's a small role but it's this he's he's just astonishing he's smart and score says he in Mandalorian and Grogu he voices a forearmed street cart alien I regret to inform you that it is maybe the only good performance in the movie he's pretty good David and I went to a screening and returned to each other and we were just like he's fucking locked down yeah he's he's an alien flat meat dealer he makes flat meat sandwiches but it is versus this even though score says he's not

2:04:23doing it tongue and she can it feels like he's committed it's very much him playing score says it's him doing the fast-talking thing he's basically a guy that Mandalorian's trying to use as an inform and he's going I don't know where this guy is I don't know I ain't got anybody I see he's good but he's got four arms to gesticulate which is really the technological breakthrough they want to make this movie fast and cheap they even thought about doing it on black and white video tape and saying kind of insane the budget does go over a little bit but they they did draw it out all on storyboards everything you know so that hopefully to you know save some money Marty Jordan himself I'm assuming maybe he says the overripe all idea I love this is to make it across between gothic are in the New York Daily News gothic horror and the New York Daily News Michael Chapman says Marty's storyboards yes he writes draws them are the best they make no pretense of being art you know they're just you know the basics he gives you the essence of when he wants you to say but he doesn't oppress you like I can now do what I need to do and what

2:05:23what were Chapman's credits before this so that's a great question you know he's because he obviously also shoots he'd only shot two movies before this the last detail his first movie well well and then the film the white dawn the Philip Kaufman like in you it movie with polar bears and shit oh it's not broncin no it's it's worn out and Timothy bottoms and Lewis Gossett Jr. as three whalers who are stranded in the Arctic and are rescued by in you it people heard of the best movie of all time before I can tell you that it got generally negative reviews in fact it's interesting because wrong Chapman goes on to make a movie I watched four hour like hope tour one day 1986 draft what's it called the clan of the cave bear I only watched it directed that yes it was nominated for best makeup at the Academy Awards and I was like I want to watch any movie nominee for an Oscar that year we just talked about that so he is well in the blink of an eye at the end he could do the lush pastoral nature he could do that

2:06:27stuff even though I think of him best for the Marty movies the fucking grind yeah like for for this and raging bull yeah because of the only two movies they made together right yeah it's interesting like the he also did he did hardcore with Schrader the Rodrigo Pietro run has been pretty long but otherwise Marty would jump around with DPs well he uses ballhouse a lot yeah and then he sort of jumps around it's sometimes it's Robert Richardson sometimes yeah he he tries other people around it's interesting yeah yeah but Chapman um this course as he liked the last detail that's why he hired him uh Chapman says we didn't have time we didn't have a lot of money I couldn't like the streets with big lights speaking to your point there uh so we had to get it down to kind of New York light and it turned out that was the right thing to do he says thank God I didn't have time and money like you know everything worked out for me uh when you know like when they're shooting Travis Bickle of course as he wants Travis basically to be in everyone else's light you know but when he's in the frame that's really fucking smart yeah yeah like even if there's

2:07:32someone over his shoulder it's like I don't want to see him like Travis is alone as much as possible and he said it was hard because like Travis is in everyone else's frame or whatever so it's hard to kind of like strike that balance but that that's when you try to define what is great directing what are things you can fully credit to the director and not the DP the writer the performances and it is when a movie has a kind of set of rules like that that it establishes for its visual storytelling that it doesn't break that isn't too showy right that you could watch the movie a thousand times and never notice that right but it does actually inform the psychological experience of how you're interacting with the film yeah uh uh that's just genius shit he studies jack uh the the film a bigger splash for the head on framing obviously it was shot in New York City summer 75 incredibly hot always raining very wet I do I feel like this is quite a moist movie yeah I'm sorry you know that offends anyone uh sanitation not at all I said the worst people have a thing about

2:08:38they don't like the worst I'm not one of them then wishes it would pick a direction uh is just too middling for bed yeah yeah pick a lady go drier wet uh there's a garbage strike going on so there's garbage everywhere I mean what a blessing the skies like all these things are right they're just all lined up right the uh the apartment stuff like dry versus apartment irises apartment that's just condemned buildings they would hire a gang to protect them from other gangs I mean you know New York City great city in the world baby we used to have a country we used to have a country I'm checking here the country was falling apart I think we did mortgage rates were 30 bruised dropped dead uh my mom buys I think about a lot of time my mom buys an apartment in New York City and I believe it's 76 they paid her $20 to get taken apartment yeah I mean she buys an instant Amsterdam yeah her grandmother calls her and is like you're going to get murdered yeah now you have to be a banker to live there yeah like and truly like my mom says the first three months she lived there the

2:09:39apartment had once been occupied by someone of ill repute yeah because someone would come to the door all the time and rattle the door and bang on the handle and when she told the door man about of the door man be like Ellen don't you open the door for anyone you don't know okay like he wasn't like oh I'll take care of it he was just like listen to me Ellen never open the door I I that's where she lived I went she bought it with her you know anyway I went to high school with 15 grander when people who were absurdly wealthy right and sorry for renting above New York no there was there was a kid I went to school with I went he invited me over to his parents place and they had like a two story thing in Soho that was insane yeah was not all made up but it was just the amount of space was insane and I went like oh did I not realize that that Eugene also is one of these kids where his parents invented water or whatever you know and I was like respectfully what are your parents do and he was like my dad's like a painter but he never really sold anything anyway

2:10:40he like this was the first apartment he moved into his an artist studio in like 1968 and at one point the landlord was bored and was like if you can scrunch together like $20,000 it's yours well yeah yeah and just sat on it forever crazy yeah anyway currently looking for apartments oh yeah let's move and a notion I've had because it's been such a nightmare it's so expensive is I need crime to come back you need crime I need the rents price is to come down yes this is this is a it's a complex thought to be I can answer I can answer let's trust briefly yeah open the gates of Arkham Asylum yes those are fun villains they'll do goofy themed crime penguins robbing banks you shit right there I say it Richard T Joker all right so last thing before we just talk about the movie more Bernard Herman very resistant Scorsese described some as crotchety essentially retired yes and Scorsese says the film is called taxi driver and he says

2:11:44oh no that's not my kind of picture title no no no no no and Marty's like please can we meet and talk about it and he's like well what's the movie about and Marty's like and it's about this you know like you know he describes the guy and Bernard Herman's like no no no no that's not the kind and who's in it and he says Robert De Niro's in it and he's like no no no no and then he's like well we can have a quick talk so that's how he won him over the incredible nomination uh didn't Herman also do obsession no doesn't John really oh wait a minute now I have to look at okay now I've got to look it up you're right yeah it's it's because John Williams becomes De Palma's guy or maybe maybe already but like but yes I think the whole thing with De Palma to me and I love De Palma I don't know how you feel about De Palma thumbs up thumbs up to De Palma but once in a while and I'm out the first to feel this way I'm like Brian we know you like Alfred Hitchcock and he's like did you and I'm like yep we know and he's like I got Bernard and I'm like I

2:12:45I would have gotten it without Bernard but okay you got him uh an obsession which his obsession is his vertigo right yeah that's the one where I'm like this is too loud like you're you haven't done enough to mess with it like I like stuff like dressed to kill where he's like here's my psycho and I'm like you're a sick fuck yeah you know this is so much sicker and and and Hitchcock sick enough as it is yeah anyway we'll do De Palma one day right Griff yeah just a lot of movies yeah and the whole how much not more than square six no but it's close it's probably like 20 I think it's a lot of movies yeah and like the tail end of his career is not uninteresting we obviously run the rest of the whole series being redacted which would be a waste of time and the thing with De Palma who I do adore is you know movie 14 you're like voyeurism's a theme you know like it's like you know he had his back what if you looked at boob from a place where the boobs didn't know you were looking at them God bless I mean it's a really interesting question hi mom

2:13:47radiance 4k never seen you've never seen it's one of the departments have never seen I've never seen young to hero wow I can't believe I have a movie what's it about guys well it's interesting because it's it's a little like who's that knocking on my door and some other films we've covered dark star a little bit like this where you're like it's kind of three different movies smooshed together like genuinely three different production efforts smooshed together it's a movie that slowly over time became a feature there's like a whole section of it that is just a kind of a performance piece that De Palma worked on in college that was filmed on like black and white super eight cameras and the character basically just like collides with that and the movie turns into like a documentary about this performance for like 15 or 20 minutes but then some of it's a kind of just goofy like dude trying to branch out and live in New York city on his own comedy it's a real fascinating mishmash of stuff it's basically a non-narrative movie right but it's I'll check it out incredibly stylish and funny I imagine I'll be getting the

2:14:50disk yeah I'll begin the shit out of that this sometimes we have we have this physical media thread that you recently asked us about Tracy a physical media group text years ago we joked about can you imagine how disgusted Tracy would be if he ever saw the things we text about in here because it was like are you the white whale to get to join the group but the group just it goes it just goes hard as David said it's a very busy group text how many people are on six six I think oh all right five you made it sound like no six there were 20 no it's it's me Griff uh Sean fantasy Alex Perry David Lowry and Timothy and hit maker and hit maker oh I should be on that okay you can be included certainly but um sometimes I know David Lowry and Alex Ross Perry and I are best friends we've we've had narrow misses I don't know yes he came to the opening of bug did I tell you about this yes well he told me about it did he I haven't heard your version of the story well he came to the opening of bug and then I went to meet he came he was Sean's date

2:15:53and so I went to see those guys after words went at the party at the opening night party and I said where's Alex Ross Perry well he left I was like well he left I mean it was weird not to stick around just to say hi or nice to meet you or thanks for your player well he left I'm like well why didn't he leave it was like well he was embarrassed about the way he was dressed he was he was oh that's right yes he didn't he didn't realize maybe that it was sort of a grand performance like yes and he wore the classic Alex Ross Perry uniform he's wearing like a slayer t-shirt yes right and uh Zach I mean his husband even asked him said what did you think you were going to tonight Alex is very consistent I will say this he is he is largely unchanging I look forward to meeting sometimes I and maybe maybe you meet via text first in this thread in your grand introduction to the to the ecosystem but sometimes I will shout announces a 4k steel book of some dumb baby garbage I love right and I will just post the announcement link to the thread and go

2:16:56regrettably I'm pre-ordering to shit out of this right I have already pre-ordered I don't even really like this I mean you know I have about three things three three launch points okay I'm going to take this one first and it goes back to my thing about finding Travis more sympathetic this past when I watch King of comedy and Rupert takes his girlfriend into Jerry Lewis's house yeah and Jerry Lewis comes home and says what the hell are you doing here it's a kind of a cringe comedy right it does make you absolutely cringe and it conjures some of those some of those comedy shows like the British office or Tim what's his name Tim Robbins yeah I like that you said Detroiters instead of I think you should leave by the way Detroiters fucking rules great show for yeah I think even just the fact that Albert Brooks is in this movie is very telling in that

2:17:58being part of Scorsese's language but I the feeling that Rupert creates in me is different than the feeling Travis creates I mean when Travis fucks up with civil shepherd yeah I don't feel like I don't feel like oh oh god this is embarrassing and funny I feel like I feel real sympathy I feel like what are you doing Tracy I was thinking about this I feel like that is a universal experience right I remember you know in high school watching this movie and when I'd have conversations with people because I'm like the movie guy they're like I just want taxi driver can I talk about taxi driver with you everyone goes and that's seen where he takes him takes her to the fucking porn out theater and you're going dude what are you doing that everyone has that kind of visceral response of oh my god my mother fucker don't do this you're so close to actually changing kind of the trajectory of your life it's okay she's sort of yeah into it at first in a weird way

2:19:00intrigued enough by him yes he's he's close and it's I think what's so key is that in the scene where he takes her to coffee he makes a couple observations about her that she feels are correct that he is seeing her right that she is not just an object for him that there is some level of him trying to actually engage with her as a human being that I think cuts through and the same thing when he mentions her desk and whatever it cuts through anything that's unnerving about him ruper pumpkin is a detestable character he is off putting every millisecond he is on screen even just down to the look where you're like my guy why the fuck is that your hair cut versus deniro being hotness and it's not like she goes on the date with him just because he's hot but it also is that there are moments where you're like sometimes this guy is showing intelligence sometimes this guy is showing emotional vulnerability that is appealing and sometimes he is really unnerving and the porno scene you really get the sense of like he doesn't get why this went wrong

2:20:05and he says like no no no no a lot of couples go see this and I love that when you're in the theater and she's immediately revolved you do see that there are other couples there there other couples there because that's their fucking thing right that's they want to go to a porn a little bit or and this is a blind spot of this guy where his life is so coistered that he's like what do couples do where do I see couples where do I hang out I don't go to fancy restaurants so I don't see couples having nice dates but also how many of the couples in that theater are on their first date probably not man probably build he doesn't fucking get it but it's the I am curious and I think we're saying couples sure I know who knows a pair of people yes two turtle doves it does it yes you understand the broken logic of how he got there and then he says to her something akin to like I can take it other places we can go all sorts of places I don't know what those places are but you can tell me yeah right he immediately realizes I fucked this up but tell me what date

2:21:06places are and it's less that she's so offended by him I think and I think I think civil shepherd plays very well and more that she's like I feel fucking stupid that I overlooked a bunch of red flags about this guy and assume that the good would outweigh the creepy well part of the appeal or or her you have to assume is not only that he's young and good looking Robert De Niro and thin and you know has a job yeah maybe that a great job but he's employed but also that he does express maybe awkwardly but he does express a kind of confidence I'm walking in off the street I'm telling you that you're beautiful and I wanted to and she's obviously flattered by that attention and then yeah takes her out for coffee and right it is technically the second day yes right yeah yeah and respect oh sorry David chose to respect and I love you he he sits there whether the coffee shop and what he says the way he describes how he perceives her yeah is really he's talking about himself right it all applies to him the things

2:22:10he says about her we don't actually think that any of those things he says about her apply to her but it's very flattering to have somebody say I know what's going on with you you're deep and you're complicated and you're going through a lot of stuff for you know I think there's another thing going on which is he's not Albert Brooks I was about to say I feel like that's why Brooks is in the moon the Brooks placement is so important for that reason right he's Brooks is a nebush he's kind of annoying yes he's very annoying yeah he's very annoying you can tell immediately that she's annoyed by him not in some profound way but just their their conversation they're looking they're not looking at each other and he has that bit we're in the middle of like a run on monologue he goes like I'm in love with you and then just keeps talking and she just doesn't even acknowledge just he's hearing it all day from his ass probably right and yes Bickle is trying to at least engage with her as a human being where it just feels like Albert Brooks is like obviously be great if I could bed this woman she'd never be with a guy like me so the only way I can do it is to just say like well you're beautiful I'm in love with you you know versus Travis being

2:23:12like I think you're broken which whether or not there's any truth in that he is trying to think of her as a person within in her life right yes and so but part of his pitch yes is that he's a confident guy who knows who who knows what's best for her and who knows the people and who knows the next move yes so he can't say to her at the beginning of the day well where do you want to go you you you what's your favorite movies you've got to be the one to make the choice yes yes of course when he makes the wrong choice then it just it all falls apart and I'll hold illusion to show I don't know here's here's my hot take you should have given the movie a little more he should have bought her a Russ Meyer shirt and she should have sat there and considered what was on screen I'll say the movie looks pretty bad because it's this weird sort of sex ed film right what did they call this Swedish kind of right educational films yeah let me see if I can find the name of it like what well it's not a real it's not a real porn right we thought it was yeah we

2:24:14actually thought it was this movie that was kind of popular it's not it might use a little footage from it but but that was there this whole these silos of things like the nudist documentaries or the Swedish like educational films or whatever where it was like you're going to get to see something titillating but the movie is pretending that that's not what it's main purpose right it's called Swedish marriage manual in the film the film is likely the film sexual freedom in Denmark or the Swedish film language of love but no one actually knows the answer to this question these are basically movies that were reporting to be like marital guides right or here's masters and Johnson study put on screen there's some scientific element there's sex ed films for grown-ups which is a way to get away legally with screening because also the theater is nicer than you imagine a lot of the other time square theaters sure but right but I mean it's a different era it is hard for us to imagine it's like yes okay it was a bunch of porn of theaters time square was very scuzzy it was

2:25:17it's not like it was a but the people did go watch porn in theaters in the 70s did they not like it's you know they couldn't watch it at home yeah you know what I mean it's also fascinating that this is the decade where several years you have full on pornographic films in the top 10 highest grossing films of a year right there was the phenomenon of an intellectual couple goes to see deep-throes presuming she had the maturity and the sophistication to be able to handle a little adult mature he thought she was into keynote he didn't realize but she's out of there like 30 seconds yeah she's she I mean I don't like it immediately goes like give it a chance and then she just sits there so grumpy it's the step brothers joke which I think about all the time when they're in the tuxes and Seth Rogan's interviewing them yeah he's like it's funny I get it and you're overly formal and then they start to be weird and he's like now the tuxes seem fucked up it's for her she's just like you know I was willing to roll with you you're different but it's interesting

2:26:18and then he takes you to the point where she's like okay now I know now clearly it's almost a mystery for a moment of just like there's a bunch of things I'm reviewing in my mind yeah should he have known who Chris Christopherson was in 1970 I think so he thinks because that's the year of a star is born yes which as Amanda called out was the second highest grossing film of its year okay but and like me and Bobby McGee or whatever yeah his big you know like that's 1970 so he's a pretty established like that's him making the movie star down after being a hyperfamous songwriter and then a hyper famous singer in his own it's very conscious that's Chris says he he never listens to music you never hear any music in this man's life he doesn't have a record player at home we're hearing his internal soundtrack there's no actual music yeah and Chris says he very conscious it was like I don't want a lot of the energetic music you know like I don't want him to be like spin in records or whatever but he doesn't have any scratch and vinyl he could you write he could have been he could have become a DJ could have been spin in place you know his record players broke in details yeah yeah and so it's something else up there in my opinion okay wait that's

2:27:23pretty good well I just want to know more about the Christopherson thing because like you guys talked about this actress that Tim Simons didn't know and I didn't know her either the great little account really counts I never heard of her I think there's a reasonable argument that I I think Chris Christopherson in this moment is more conventionally famous than Lily Collins what and obviously there was more of a monoculture than to be clear we're also making fun of hitmaker because he's on a hit Netflix show and she's the star of the most popular show on Netflix Emily in Paris and I'm like you haven't run into her at one of their you know empire gallows or whatever Netflix is always up to you also just need to understand we're in this group text right where it's like let's share the opinions on the film industry that none of us want to share publicly right let's post the fucking pre-orders of new disc announcements and whatever and then Tim will just sometimes swing in with a thing that feels like it's coming straight from Jupiter we're about to meet up with Tim for dinner Ben Marie and I are going to meet up with Tim and Sean for dinner

2:28:23and it's like 30 minutes before we're supposed to meet for dinner and Tim just goes like all caps Lily Collins is Phil Collins daughter who the fuck is Lily Collins and we're like why are you asking now I was I don't know okay who know we eventually figured it out but I feel like the chain of logic was really bizarre so you think he should you think Travis should have known who Chris Christophe was and I think there's a better argument I don't think it's like him not knowing who Frank Sinatra is I think it's a well-selected celebrity where he's enough on the cusp that you're like he's also he's appealing to young people yes like you know he's selected I feel like because he was a cool musician it's telling you that this guy is not locked in he's not with it it's not telling you that the guy is an imbecile and he doesn't know anything but he does not seem like someone who's concerned with popular culture and we see him later watching a pornographic film that seems more traditional porn yeah pornographic so at least he has that much he does awareness

2:29:28take her to the to the pseudo documentary as opposed to the you're you building a slow case for Travis Bickle did nothing wrong is this what's happening here I'm not at all I'm I'm you did some wrong things but he was actually good at dating is your is your argue specifically an exclusively good at you think civil kind of gives him you know a bit of a hard time this movie about civil shepherd fumbling the bag she's she's out of there pretty quick he doesn't give him you know he calls her back he sends flowers oh here's another thing why are the flowers in his apartment hmm he's sending her flowers but the dead flowers are in his I mean maybe like they get out the back yes maybe it's like she did not accept that's what I think it is she like turned away or that he's continuing to send flowers to her do that I do send flowers to somebody they reject them they bring them to you not one eight hundred flowers past sponsor of course they would never do that um I think that if civil takes him in and if he dates her for a little while

2:30:28longer whatever like if things work out a little bit better he's still going to go on this road it's going to fall apart at some point there this is not a movie where it's like you know what if you just found this nice lady and kind like he would have settled down it's like no it's already all so close to the boy I don't think he could be permanently saved by the love of a good woman but I do agree with Ben that I think his life goes in a different direction and I certainly think it avoids the the worst extremes if he is able to stay in a functional healthy relationship and learn from it but I don't think it doesn't last forever I just don't think you would but this is you know there's going to be something he he focuses his affections on you know beautiful model yes yes civil shepherd was a was a cover model I mean that's civil shepherd was the ultimate kind of just like image of a woman that drove men insane so that's what she represented in the cold she's gorgeous like problem with a lot of these fucking in cells maybe you just need to lower your standards yes our buddy Chris gethard who will have been on the Mandalorian episode always says

2:31:32if you're complaining that women don't find you interesting maybe the problem is you need to be more interesting you know or find the women who do find you interesting I mean it's like what we're going to solve this today guys we're going to fix the in cells no but there are a lot of you know I it's a gripe of mine and then high school I was very obsessed with a lot of the high school movies where it's the nerdy guy who's obsessed with the most conventionally beautiful you know prom queen girl and she'd never even look at a guy like me and that's seen as this sort of note of like is there almost a classism in her that she won't consider the smart interesting guy right and almost always in those films you're like yeah well you're not considering you're fucking sarcastic female best friend you're doing the same fucking thing you want to take the hottest person well that's because those 80s teen movies are like Charles Dickens novels where like they there's the interesting female character this is this is a great comparison to make and I'm really liking it and then at the end it's like yeah but also he has to marry the placid fair hairedly like you know every and like yeah at the end of the John Hughes movies it's like but by

2:32:34the way he gets the babe right sort of like traditional babe because that's what you want isn't it isn't that what the audience is looking for although the fucking audience revolted to pretty imping and they had to reshoot the end day sure um so Travis okay so he yes he fumbles the bag with civil shepherd he is he takes this job movie starts with him at the taxi depot essentially getting pitched on the job because he can't sleep right like that's sort of the original yeah thing here he's like I'm up all night anyway I'll drive a cab around what year does it taxi the sitcom start is it it's within like 20 starts right 1978 okay I just know that James L. Brooks said the reason he thought to create a sitcom around a taxi dispatch station there was a big New York magazine article about one night on the graveyard shift and he found it fascinating that everyone who worked there it was this is a transitional survival job yeah yeah I'm just gonna do this for six months

2:33:40how long you been doing it 15 years right but but all of them were like I do this at night because my real passion is this at the day and I haven't been able to actually make it a livable wage yet right and it feels like in this interview scene part of what this guy is sort of sniffing out is like why do you want to do this you don't seem to be saying I need to pick up this so I have the flexible hours in order to do this with my other time it's not about spending time with your family or taking care of a parent or following some other passion or hobby it's like you just want to drive the cab that's a little bit odd you ever had a friend who drove a cab yeah you did yeah yeah yeah my uncle drove a cab from 80 to 83 in New York City and your uncle who's a listener yeah and a centafile yeah probably an intense time to be driving a cab in New York I mean it's basically always an intense job yeah he worked the graveyard shift so six p.m. to six a.m. and you

2:34:42got to pick up like ghouls and goblins because the the way New York City's cabs work is that there's just six to six for both there's no swing shift because they don't want anyone to get the sort of like better end of anything yeah and he reflecting on that time he he said he shared with me he totally risked his life by doing that job was really dangerous he thankfully never had any kind of incident other than people running out on their fare but he felt that it was always it was always always possible someone's just it was a crazy time yeah yeah yeah it was you never drove a cab no I didn't I had a friend will Kern and he wrote a play about it called a hell cab and then they turned hell cab into a movie called Chicago cab oh I believe directed by Johnson Tory and Mary Sybil's that's a friend's a friend right to Torrey oh well pass a future guess the late great Mary Sybil's key a legend yeah yeah yeah I'm in that movie briefly really okay it's made in

2:35:43Chicago I do in fact yeah sports fan are you what what team I'm a bearers fan of course yeah bears but everybody I've ever known who's driven a cab believes that they've that they're performing a valuable public surface that is a great way of putting a tracety and I feel like there's a similar kind of it's like the safety net of travel like it is in a city like New York where you're like well if all else fails maybe I can grab a cab like that used to be sort of like yeah it also it also feels like they talk about it as if it was I backpack across the world for five years that's something crazy that I did in my past that it is an extreme form of interpersonal immersion into like the breath of humanity I remember I read the book hack by Melissa plot uh now goes my mel plot came out as non binary later in life but like great book about someone who just was like I'm 25 I don't know what the fuck I'm doing myself I'm gonna start driving a cab

2:36:45that's every friend of mine who great group people I know who also grew up in New York City and we're just like I'm in my early 20s I haven't figured out my thing yet your screen keeps turning really bright red oh I'm sorry yeah I don't know there was there was there was an app right these good orange I was just like my god Davis uh reflecting on this is how I get off I watch porn and like do not touch myself yeah in public places while talking about you I would not be the first but they just they'd be like I need a thing to do right what's interesting is like they talk about how by the end of their time as a cabbie they had a bit of a hair trigger temper yeah it's not so even so much the uh the people in your cab it's just the active driving all the time in New York City where you just a lot of rage starts to radiate out of you and like everyone is you know cutting you off and trying to get you I've talked about it so much but I I do not have a driver's license I do not drive I've driven one time on camera for an unreleased independent film and so much of my fear of driving is that my dad drove way too much in the city right my dad was

2:37:47weirdly addicted to driving in the city and it's such a terrible experience he was not good at handling the stress of it and so all of my associations are why the fuck would you ever do this not all of my associations but all my primal associations are being in bumper to bumper hair trigger yeah yeah so Ken he had been you know was a working musician and composer but it was heart and he would be would be in between jobs you don't even make that much money yeah yeah and so at some point after doing all these different kinds of odd jobs he decided to start driving a cab and he was telling me that in one night you could make like 200 bucks right which was like you know it decent amount of money back then yeah but the thing that he did like Travis is he would drive anywhere he would pick up whoever and drive to Staten Island he crossed state lines drive to white playing drive to Jersey but like the real deal cabbies they were they were not I'm not fucking going uptown they were 100% racially profile yeah of course yeah so okay so he's a cab driver right

2:38:53yeah so we've got as far as Joe Spinell he's a driver he's great at dating women just don't get it early scenes are right with him with like Peter Boyle Harry Norther North up Norman Matlow I'm trying to be like who those guys are and even though those guys are all yeah now kind of scumbag year whatever Travis is so apart from like he doesn't fit in with them this is what I'm saying yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah Peter Boyle really well cast really well cast he's such a yeah he's such a good actor I love the like 70s Peter Boyle but this is right this was his last kind of chance in his mind to find a community these seem like guys who would be on the same wavelength with me and he can't even crack the conversational rhythm that these guys have right yeah oh I mean let's face it Travis may not be very bright I mean there are things like what's moon lighting right right the question what's moon lighting right there certain things

2:39:56just like wow you you don't actually know that word he's a little born under rock or whatever yeah I said I said he's a little like a big where he's like a kid in a grown-up spotty there was always this sort of whisper that deniro was supposed to be in big and then Elizabeth Perkins didn't interview recently and she was like my screen test was with him we prepped the movie with him yeah that's his rap's asked for more money the contract fell apart at the last minute and then Hanks jumped in and I always thought like that movie would be such a fucking disaster with him in it and then you watch this or on this rewatch I was like he does really feel like a six-year-old where the way he asked these things like what is moon lighting doesn't have the self-consciousness of an adult who is unintelligent it has the energy of a child who's actually just trying to collect information we're in his head pretty early we're hearing his monologue right away right it's not like this film it's it's what you're saying Tracy that even you you're walking in as an 18-year-old

2:40:58or you know knowing he's gonna go on a rampage I would love to watch this movie not knowing yeah yeah it's it's impossible like it's the same with psycho or whatever these movies were as a kid I'm like I know I know one thing about this movie well even just being like watching this movie just thinking like what's he gonna do I don't know why am I with this person like why am I with this person beyond knowing the violence is coming because the violence itself is iconic we also like you and I all three of us are born into a world like after the jody foster shit sure yeah exactly like a copycat crimes that we just know right before we know the movie and I feel like right away you know he hates everyone around him and he kind of wants him to be washed away like so it's not shocking what happens I guess I'm trying to unpack this as I think about it it's more it's just like it's hard to reckon with this movie or to consider this movie as a a tense thriller I think of it

2:41:58as a character study I do too I watch this movie as if I am seeing like a production of Hamlet if that makes sense right right right well I understand the basic tenets of this story and how it exists in our culture and his reference all the time and now I'm gonna watch it for the first time but the first time you watch it not knowing things it must have been like is he gonna attack this girl right he gonna shoot this you know politician is it a romance with the girl earnestly is the movie right tell me on that like anything and I how insanely it starts I do feel like yes I know this movie has many a sort of fan who doesn't get it or whatever but it's hard to watch this movie and think like I think this guy's gonna figure it out he's gonna rescue so he's gonna he's gonna be an avenging angel whatever it is wild to consider that this film can be misread with how clear its perspective feels communicated at all times and even just in the performance which doesn't feel judgmental but feels so considerate of his brokenness yeah you know when people try to make this kind of movie

2:43:01today it actually does get muddled where you feel like it has too much judgment contempt for its characters or it's a little bit too much into fetishizing you know they're transcendent moments or whatever it is and this movie feels like so cut and dry in like this is a movie about being a broken man period like that's how it starts that's how it what it is from beginning to end yeah isn't there are you going through the movie chronologically sort of I have a it's it's just not a heavy narrative film that's not like the first things after we discusses is the Betsy thing which we sort of went through a simple shepherd's character are mostly driven by a simple shepherd but we're hearing things in his head like he sees her and it's like she's like an angel right now like all right the city cannot touch her like you're already hearing this kind of like insane dialogue in his head so topic for discussion uh-huh the breaks in a point of view uh-huh there are

2:44:05basically three there are two scenes in the campaign office between civil shepherd and Albert Brooks and then there's the scene between Harvey Keitel and Jody Foster yes we see the Pimp working his his uh his magic on her uh what about those what about those it's interesting yeah I think you need to understand in both of those cases where the place of objective reality is because they are figures that he projects so much on to it's important to see civil and Brooks see uh denier are through their eyes yes see Travis do rise and be kind of like you know tingling with them you know like just understanding like how strange it is these yeah I think that's vital the scene with sport and Iris is different I'm not sure what that's doing except you know giving her a little deb and maybe contextualizing just but we already know she's in an abusive situation but it takes it from being intellectual to being emotional yeah watch that and not feel a desire

2:45:11for some justice to be carried out even if it's not what Travis is going to do I think that's the function of that what do you make of this trade again you you wrote killer Joe it's like you I'm not I'm not saying like yes you copy can I should drive her I'm like with killer Joe I'm sure you were thinking of like do I exit this guy's respect to do I say in it like is that too tough for the audience to just be in this guy's head the fire movie saying it's tough to like trace influences and things like that I do just think there's a similarity in this and some of your plays the grotto your plays in your in your uva that are like this is really digging in on the people that society doesn't even want to look at oh well that would be good I mean if I took that from it wouldn't that be a great thing but because I because I think that's important yeah I ask myself when I watch it it now seems like such a sharp break from his it is right because as you're saying you're not only in his head we're way in his head yeah and so to suddenly transport out of it is like

2:46:14is it a mistake would the movie be stronger without those three scenes is it in service of the audience like that's why wonder like is there that thought of like the audience needs a release I think they're too brief release I don't know I think one is it's in service of the audience not to need the release but to also understand have some grounding in a real reality because part of it is are we getting somewhat seduced into the idea that Travis should do this if we are seeing in real time the actual dynamics of Jody Foster's situation to some degree does that make us want some if not bloodshed justice right yeah I think the second interpretation is you could read these sequences and especially that one as a projection of Travis's mind okay I'm just that's the order in which I wanted to introduce great this because that's the next question I want to yeah entertain there's been a lot of conjecture over the years about where the movie parts from reality even out in my mom's first viewing the movie in the drive-in right it's like well I think maybe some of

2:47:18that stuff was fantasy and I know that the filmmakers have at various times addressed this question themselves never very satisfactorily nor do I think they're necessarily the final arbiters of that decision they are not no but I also feel like they all seem to slightly disagree and they also don't want to be definitive right like they don't want to totally be like oh did you not fucking get that was a dream idiot you know yeah and then there's like that moment where Schrader no deniro one of them was like let's do a sequel and I remember some people being like hold up sequel what even alive right like why would there be a sequel right yes carry carry last night after we watch it was just like the fucker got shot in this caroted artery he's fucking dead he's not in good shape in the movie I'll say it 911 let's call it I also always think about there was Scorsese did a podcast with Joanna hog I think was for the 24 podcast he sure did it's one of my favorite podcast ever and he said a thing that I think about all the fucking time who said this

2:48:19to Joanna hogs Martin Martin's process who directed a raging bull and taxi drive yeah and he said she was talking about having to do like a press tour for the first time and that this interview felt like the first real conversation she was having after weeks of people asking her to confirm their interpretations of the film are asking her to explain the film in ways they didn't understand and how she was so low to do that and he said what you have to do is offer them something else you know she said I don't want to be someone who's difficult who refuses to do press but I also don't want to say these things I don't think that helps the function of the art itself with its own integrity and he said you take the question they ask and you offer them something else instead so Scorsese himself is admitted and for a man who had to deal with a lot of controversy across his career and the interpretation of films and being asked to explain himself that the strategy eventually landed on is I'm not going to give people what I really think to some degree yeah I'm going to find a way to three card Monti a little bit but to let the movie still have its own

2:49:23integrity how much of them how much of it do you think is is quote unquote real what's interesting to me when I think about this stuff because you can pretty flatly kind of just take the movie it's sure it's basically real and like then you know the epilogue is is sort of a fantasy or kind of a comment or to the audience or whatever right right I also just I do think about like how handsome to Nero is as a bit of a fantasy we're seeing right and the fact that he starts to focus on like there'll be no more poison in my body like 50 push ups a day right like his whole like regimen and he's already trimmed to begin with it's not like he starts the movie doughy yeah like the way he looks and is perceived especially a number of stubble is so clean is a little too nice yeah and then the way people react to him doesn't strike me as like they're seeing the deer I'm seeing right now of course people start to really be disturbed by him once he's got the mohawk once he's

2:50:25you know like and I don't know like I mean I mean to me this is just a fun thing to think about this is not like this is not a movie that needs solving in the slightest right like it's not a movie where I'm like you have to know what's going on at the end there's clues yeah it's vital that you see in the final scene that weird look crosses face obviously like you need to understand like he's not feeling great you know I mean this is why it's it's all inside of him but apart from that you can just sort of like is he just imagining all of this is he just imagining simple getting in the car like this is an endlessly fascinating movie to unpack and pick at because even to what you're saying I'm like that's a really good read on the other hand you could say this movie is kind of about the weirdness of if you are handsome person or even let alone just a conventional enough looking person people grant you more you could skip by a little bit for you watch the scene where he's talking to like the security detail well but that scene I feel like the security guy immediately

2:51:27clocks him as a huge threat right yes well and his an ass for his a try coasters seems to seems to kind of swing back and forth seems to waver times in the movie where he seems sicker than other times and it's one of the he's letting more of his inside thoughts out right you know talking about like he need to deal with this he's against these people I think it's one of the I think it's one of the all-time great screen performances I really do I and one of the reasons is is that issue of mental health the the the projection of mental illness that deniro creates moment to moment seen to scene not sort of indicating ever no there's sort of in and out quality of it right where when he's talking to uh iris he seems very lucid and and and on it and then when he's talking to the secure to the secret service man right he's just ready to ready to bust out and make trouble yes yes in but then he'll kind of like the way he smiles because clearly Travis knows enough like

2:52:33if I smile at someone that'll diffuse yeah tension yeah that I'm sort of perceiving and of course anytime he does that he looks crazy not to use these words and to say like but you're just kind of why the fuck is this guy smiling he just said he wants to like wipe you know to get rid of a bunch of scum or whatever you know let's remember that he's 26 years old right and people with latent mental illnesses often that is when they start to experience you know and he's also a Vietnam veteran suffering from totally totally right there's PTSD and whatever but I but I don't think this movie argues that he is solely the byproduct of PTSD no no I think what this movie argues is that super charged a man who never should have been put in that position after right to begin with and was not given the support coming out of it right that's it's that more as well of just kind of like right and then we put these guys into a war that made no sense they were traumatized and then we just kind of brought him back and we're like but I you know I had friends people I grew up with who then had a psychotic break at some point in their early to mid 20s and when it's starting to happen

2:53:39you question your perception of what's going on because sometimes these people are unbelievably convincing yeah and then they start to have behaviors that are aberrant but they're small and often it's like well he's always been funny where he's always been kind of a wild guy the same things that were originally kind of appealing charismatic about the person start to just get a little bit oversized and to some degree it is like the fact that he is a handsome guy the fact that it is deniro and he has a certain undeniable level of magnetism you know even when he's playing a broken sad guy you do see people sizing him up and I agree with you that the security detail guy immediately is like okay this guy is a fucking problem but also he is relating to him in a way where he's like let me try to psychologically contain the situation yeah yeah hey no yeah you can join this squad if he's a different looking kind of guy he may be just physically apprehensive immediately yeah there's the scene where he tells boil essentially like that I'm having like violent thoughts yeah

2:54:44and you know I feel like there's a few scenes like that there's a scene with a secret service guy there's a few scenes where essentially he's kind of like red alert FYI yeah and it's sort of the scenes you sometimes the stuff you hear about with people who do a bad thing yes where people like you know what in retrospect he said this thing that was like very uncomfortable the great irony Boyle's character being named wizard when he's anything but yes just totally hapless and helping his friend but but holds that I mean he and wizard tells that sex story at the start of the movie yes where you're like well this is made up you know it's right in that sort of like school yard way of like oh you just made up a story to entertain everyone do you think so perhaps feeds into Travis's bad second date where he's yes this story is this guy made a bold move he took a stick out and it was good right I can do something like that he was applauded I take her tape pervert uh

2:55:50David yes red alert uh oh there's been an outbreak biohazard of a new patreon series it's contagious oh that's so true it's it's uh it's been cooked up in the lab for your pleasure from the fine folks at the umbrella corporation we are covering resident evil the film franchise yes we've got the first franchise six movies yes that beautiful second franchise how many six seven it's got uh the one oh it's got the one we'll be covering all of them on patreon uh doing commentaries on yes the resident evil apocalypse extinction after life retribution a final chapter welcome to records in it this is an exciting time uh is that cragg or friend of the podcast yes resident evil coming out and we thought this was a good opportunity to revisit the history resident evil movie why not why can't we why can't we we can check in for that august first he's gonna be running all the way through november first followed by your march madness

2:56:56winner dracula dracula himself that's so fun but that's great that's great thank you thank you so much we should also though point out too that he has that uh interaction with jody foster's character oh that happens pretty early because she like he almost runs her over that's within the first 30 minutes but then she kind of disappears from the movie for a while and he gets kind of almost paid off a little bit what kytel comes and and pulls her out a couple the 20 right to hold it for getting on to the 20 yes throughout the movie right it's also fascinating when he finally reconnects with her and a lot of times passed in the movie and you imagine a chunk of times passed in the real world as well that he's like you remember me from our defining incident you know that to him

2:57:58as you're saying he's really holding on to this like should I have stepped in did I not prevent something from happening which means that I think when he sees her the second time he's so relieved that she's still alive and he's like I cannot let this happen a second time I cannot do nothing and she has no memory of even the event he's talking about because that's like every day of her life probably right but the dynamic is that he wants to protect her I do think he also wants to have her right like you know it's like he's he's wrestling with his own kind of dark yeah you know like experience of his sexuality which feels like nascent yes and like so mysterious also that he's so proud like that he almost relates more to her total of like you two are stuck in this adult world that's kind of scary that you don't understand 100% right because like I feel like at the time some of the discussion around her characters like this is this just too patently shocking is this just designed to shock the fact that she's so young you know like and I'm like no he she has to be a child because it is the only way he can really and it's like such a the

2:59:02sociopathic thing of sociopaths responding to animals and children in a way you know what I mean like yes yes yes it just all makes perfect sense to me and I mean Schrader has this whole story of like not going to litigate Schrader all day but you know where he says like I picked up a girl while I was researching this and I realized where quickly she was like underage in a drug addict and I had martyneeter and she was the one who put sugar on the peanut butter and jelly that's where we got that idea from when Schrader says things like that I'm like okay okay Paul much just like later when he was like you know I would like hang out you know in gay sex clubs just to sort of see what it did for me yeah and I'm like okay Paul well I hope it did something and now recently when he's like I had an AI girlfriend but she dumped me yes the man expresses his thoughts and interests online and our researcher JJ texted are you still recording with Tracy might want to address this and the Facebook post is AI female friends all caps out of a desire to understand male

3:00:03female interaction in our matrix I procured an online AI girlfriend what a disappointment I tried to probe her programming the boundaries of explicitness the degree she has knowledge of her creation and so forth she fell into evasive patterns redirecting me to her programming when I persisted she terminated our conversation and JJ responded modern day Travis Bickle freeze an AI female friend from a data center shooting spring I just had to read that to give JJ the comment I want to say of course that JJ I texted JJ privately we're not reading that shit so I'm glad of course that we did we had to and what a mistake to texting that private well I think it was a hebristic move that I knew I knew what I was doing I knew we would eventually properly end up reading the issue the alley yes so yeah he gets guns the gun scenes guns salesman man what a classic he's like I got guns he also got some dope grass hash you want a catalock you want a tiger where does he have the cat a lot I don't know is he like it's around the corner this guy's just got in on

3:01:09anything I also anything you want I love that this guy is like he thinks he's in death wish he is the functional character in the movie who helps the hero gain the power he needs to solve everything and this actor was this subject of a Scorsese documentary short the the the character is easy and the the actor is Stephen Prince tell me what oh American boy yes right right right which comes out in which is it's this guy monologue he's like a recovering heroine at it I think and he's just telling crazy stories we'll tell we'll cover it on we're gonna I think do a patreon episode on this Scorsese shorts criterion set which that's part of right there's a shot in this it's another just like this guy's a fucking genius moment where this dude holds up the gun the gun he's gonna you know become Travis's first gun and the camera cranes up with the gun from the

3:02:10perspective of the gun basically and Travis looking at it and it's like he is ascending into a higher form with the introduction of this weapon but rather than it being a kind of obvious spielberg shot of the camera and the gun raise up and Travis is looking you know wide eyed in wonder at it Travis like looks away for a second and it doesn't feel like it's an imperfect take that was chosen obviously it's that he can't even kind of face the power of what he's saying he needs right that it's like he's staring into the sun there are some camera moves in this thing that are it's in that the thing down the hall that you mentioned that the few times that the camera hovers sort of objectively over a tabletop and we see the the various items on the top of the table because you say objectively but then I feel like this is a movie that pulls off its camera editorializing its characters in a way that's it's part of why I just it's so hard to imagine misreading this

3:03:14movie because it does things to throw you off center yeah in even just the experience of watching the sequences to deprive you of what could be the wrong kind of juice well carry noted to the the number and she was right it struck me last time in the watching the the number of sort of montage yeah interstitial moments between the same right him traveling or him watching TV or making a sandwich or whatever the hell he's doing the score swelling yeah yeah there's a lot of that so you know credit credit to the editor because a lot that's done yeah martial Lucas supervising at our martial Lucas which I have some interesting things thoughts about her I'll tell you off Mike Tom Rolf he's kidding do you know who martial Lucas is I don't guess I do martial Lucas was the George wife of George Lucas and she is responsible or largely credited for after the original cut of Star Wars was a mess she's the one who came in and fixed it and is often credit specifically with saving the

3:04:18trend runs your favorite sequence all time and then you can never miss I will I will I will I was like great ponder the fourth Star Wars movie she's a great editor of the summer yes yes should we talk about are you talking to me at all yeah it is it is funny in this way talk about watching movies where the reputation precedes them so much right sometimes you're beautiful cinephile and you try to go through history and cross the things off the list you get to the scenes and you're just do in the pointing at the screen meme of like got it there it is and the scenes have become so big out of context that it's actually hard to engage with them within the body of the movie itself it is insane how much this scene transforms entirely if watched in the context of the film sure yeah yeah because if whenever it's cut into fucking clip packages of the history of movies or even you know it's painted on a mural the side of pizza parlor or whatever it does just look like a cool badass guy doing cool badass stuff and within the scene it is like so bizarre it's deeply deeply strange

3:05:26and you know it's the same as story that it's improvised and it was basically just like not not be role but it was you know score says you're saying like just do some stuff they were behind schedule is sorry you know like you know they were they were in like five days over schedule on a 40 day shoot and he just started doing stuff and score says he was just like just film it we just need to be done like so just whatever he does let's just film it you also imagine you know talking about the amount of montage is in this movie like this is the kind of thing that would just possibly be three seconds of you know non-speaking cutaway were it not capturing some weird lightning in a bottle and the fact that it is I'm sure you have the same hang up but when people talk about things that are improvised in movies 99.9% of the time what they mean is something was improvised during a rehearsal and then it was written down and then it was replicated 40 times and and coverage starts to be dictated by the thing it was written on the day but it's not a spontaneous

3:06:29moment that actually happened this you can feel this is something that just fucking happened and they got it and thank God there was not like a hair in the gate and I'm pretty sure shooting into the reflection yeah it looks like his reflection in the mirror right the nero is reversed yeah you can see it in his face that he's reversed no it's really great I mean obviously the it's not just the delivery it's not just the way it shot it's not just the placement it's also just the universality and you talk about a little kid the little kid in Travis yep it's a little kid it's a little kid he's acting out to me yeah being a tough guy having a tough guy conversation with somebody else everybody's done it at some point now hopefully they've done it innocently yet a more innocent time in their life without actual plans to go in and massacre a bunch of people it's also the reason why I didn't do it for the fucking intro is because when it's cut into these montages it's like you hear him say it three times and when you watch the scene

3:07:32he says it like 10 times there's something bizarre about how ritualistic it becomes it's not just one moment of this guy being tough it's him like trying out different reasons it's pathetic it's pathetic he doesn't want to talk to people you know when he's trying to be a scary cowboy it's also a rehearsal it's a weird thing to say right it's a weird thing to get upset about talking to me yeah especially if as he says there's nobody else around here right it feels like the broken version of who the fuck do you think you're talking to right yeah of course like and like I've had those moments and I'm sure you have to where you're on the subway there's someone who clearly wants to pick a fight yes and if you look at them yeah if you block eyes with them yeah then they will start to be like what what are you looking at you know like and you're like oh god now I have a guy literally knock my hat off recently for that and we were on it that was an accident I think both of you for a apologize for me you want to say no no it has happened three times three times today no it was like a escalator going up the whitehall station I hear you

3:08:40which is a pretty steep escalator big old escalator and I'm literally just looking up it and the guy just fucking knocks my hat off wow and was like riding down the other side up you just see he's one step ahead of me he's facing towards me you want to first of all he wanted to fight he's already looking in the wrong direction up the escalator I am looking to see is there room to walk or am I stuck just standing here riding it out good his ass yeah of course Tracy what do you think look at me room one of the w train now but it was everyone else was kind of watching did you make an ironic comment I I went I'm looking at the escalator I did say that and I had my air pods in and I'm stuck just riding it for the remaining like 45 seconds and I just played the game of like I'm listening to a podcast I'm not engaging with you but he wouldn't stop talking and it went from like you're upset because I could fuck your wife to your gay to like it's cycled through everything but it felt it felt kind of you're talking to me you're right David that it is that type of thing

3:09:45of a guy who's just like I'm looking for a reason that someone wants to fight me so that I feel like I'm not instigating it so imagine being upset because somebody could fuck your life I know I had a good I had a good conversation the other night where someone asked me if I was married and I said no and he said not at all so just two weeks we need to wrap this unpack that the rest of my life I'm going for the record man no no we have another episode to record after this we got our episode but no okay the palatine character I take him as kind of a John Lindsay I don't know like a sort of patrician kind of a good guy a little well-meaning but a little disconnected right like it's a good performance it's the kind of liberal-ish politician in the city that was kind of like we all need to band together it's important that it's a it's a help things out presented as a man of the people right and it feels like there is no consideration of the world

3:10:45that Travis lives in let alone the world the sailor lives full of shit yeah I yeah yeah yeah yeah um but like it sort of makes sense the Travis would be like initially intrigued and then he's like no no no you're a phone you need to die right I like that he also positions it as if like he almost went into a career in politics that you know part of the sliding doors for Travis is like yeah I almost devoted my life to supporting this candidate as if that's a career right the Mohawk moment it's like the camera's on a rope I don't know like I don't know what the move is exactly because it's like the scariest thing and again imagine seeing this movie not knowing that yeah like because the way you see his legs and it just jerks up to see that he's cut his hair like that and you're like Jesus yeah like what's going on and I mean this is where we're kind of like like we've already I'm sorry to just a double back no police I will back I'm I'm I'm now kind of out of narrative like we're basically just at the end I'm trying to think of like what I might have forgot well just uh Jackson Brown let's talk about Jackson Brown uh-huh odd yeah and odd uh needle drop

3:11:53late for the sky I believe uh also as you said there's very little like contemporary music in this thing there's very little music outside of the hermenschord that you hear anywhere it seems to suggest that this Jackson Brown song is playing on American bandstand listen here let me tell you Jackson Brown was not that kind of guy yes yes on American bandstand yes just odd and feels all score sassy right sure that musical taste yeah and like we're still only a couple years removed from mean streets where him bringing that kind of music to a movie is novel like yeah this kind of a kind of that is part of it I wonder if that truly is just he tried to hold himself back from doing any needle drops right yeah but as the king of needle drops he was like I kind of want to put one in right I wanted to do hooked on a feeling for the for the brothel massacre right yeah where is the needle drop perfect day by remember uh the needle drop is when he's getting ready like for basically when he's mission right when he's like watching TV yeah and he's got the

3:12:54gun he's going to click click click you know uh feeling normal that's when I'm feeling normal uh there's that one and then there's the the soap opera that he watches as well yes clicking on on the soap opera before he destroys the television and and testing the limits of how far he can kick and he ever reminds me once again it reminds me of when you're in school and you're testing how far back you can kick your chair at the desk and the teacher goes like don't fucking do it don't fucking do it but he's he's playing that same game of chicken with the kind of laws of physics of tipping that thing over want to call out uh uh uh Diane Abbott who was dinner his first wife or she's the the the theater girl the concession girl I just think it's telling that the first time he goes to the theater before the bad date he also like doesn't understand that this is not a theater that's going to have like a complete concessions display that that's not what people come here for right that he keeps asking for all sorts of different things that they don't have uh just also funny to think of that

3:13:58being a moment where two people fell in love also the the fact that he believes that the girl who works the concession stand at the pornote theater would be responsive to the single guy hitting on why do you think she took the job she wants to meet guys she loves to meet these the clientele and wonderful people um I think the Jackson Brown is weird I do too enough if there if there is one if there's one imperfect element of the movie it's that for me it doesn't bump too hard let me see if there's any writing on I agree with you that it's the only decision that doesn't feel 100% correct to me it was a big moment for Jackson Brown I believe okay it was uh a breakout moment for him um you know he's diverted to attacking sports brothel because the palatine yeah attempt doesn't even really happen you know because he's chased off and it feels like he picks the softer target or whatever and he's got to kill somebody he's got to fucking do this and he's built the slide yeah he's got to he's got to relieve whatever this pressure is that's

3:15:01building up in him and the only way to do it is to fucking kill somebody and even after he kills sport right there's that great bit where he walks over and takes a seat on the stoop yeah just like as if he's feeling his body to feel like did that do it yes was that would did that did that get that feeling out of me that I need to get out nope not enough I got to do more and the the it took them three months to prep the tracking shot of the entrance into the building they had to like cut out the ceiling or whatever all this crazy stuff right um I mean this is the benefit of shooting in a new york full of condemned buildings but I think basically they would film a proper day of stuff and then at some point just do a run through of that shot right to just get their reps in before they actually built up to filming it obviously famously the whole sequences desaturated it looks kind of brown I would say it's the other accidental miracle miracle I couldn't decide if I want to say miraculous miraculous Doritos Doritos uh

3:16:04miracle of studio intervention yes I I do think it's interesting Michael Chapman is the one dissenter I'm like of I heard that on the drive in listening to your podcast yeah when your guest just in seek uh in see instead of search of what's his name I like that guy hit maker no no no uh uh JDM JDM out of from the great JDM with your min show episode yes he's a great guy he's gonna get a tattoo that says I like that guy Tracy was on his show he'd be thrilled to hear he's the best I don't know he is but he's a genius yeah he's a great filmmaker filmmaker director he's a great guy author now in see off the rackle rackle uh but but I think and and Sean made this argument as well I think it lends the movie in the same way that the because Chapman didn't have access to the lights New York starts to feel unreal in the way he films the evenings

3:17:07the studio mandate do you know about this band no they were going to give the movie an x rating yes because it was too bloody in this sequence and there is a sort of a marginally apocryphal thing that martin squarcezi was about to go travestical himself on the studio executives uh to demand that they released it his way with the loaded gun which has always seemingly been very overstated that it was more squarcezi while in the mindset of this movie being like I wonder if I went in with a gun if they would listen to me rather than making plans uh which is like a false narrative um but they were saying like you got to cut the sequence or the movie's not going to get released and you couldn't solve it but that's like the what would the movie be though correct well they were like you have to cut around it you can't be this explicit we need to like shred it to rib it okay and then they basically I think accidentally landed on this idea of oh if we push it a little bit and we desaturate the colors and it stops being a vivid red does it start looking less objectionable to

3:18:09yes the mpa and they accepted it but so the weird muddy brownness of it all I think feels like I the way Sean put is he enters a like literal descent into hell yes you know I think the fact that it is so uh unearthly right is is to the movies benefit in my opinion I agree I do think it's Chapman is like it's sad the original colors are gone they're gone like you cannot recover them right that's what you're doing a permanent chemical process to get the current he says there used to be I think some examples of like that they but it's gone like the whatever whatever that is is gone and Chapman's like it look great he's the one and I'd be interested to see it to me the right the desaturation it's part of the movie I you know I first watched this movie and like a basement when I was 14 years old with my like movie loving friends and it blew my mind and yes but I just wonder about it also it looks like dried blood in an interesting way you know it looks more like a crime scene after the fact in real time it just looks so fucking grotty yes just

3:19:16like grotty grotty and and and sticky and and and violent you know exceedingly violent I guess there's there's kind of an inside joke about the fingers that get blown off the guy's hands because Albert Brooks has had the bit earlier about how would you light a match oh sure we're missing these fingers on yeah I think about that yeah but all of the violence is it's kind of like Fargo these other early violent movies I saw sure every little bit of it is just in my brain yeah like just written in my brain like the knife through the hand yeah the fingers get blown off just like it's so well presented you can see it so clearly every moment is so shocking the worst is when he you know shoots the guy in front of her just because she's there and she's it's so horrible for her I'll say we didn't spend too much time on it because it was a double episode but in the box car bertha episode I didn't shout out how well constructed I think that sequences of the final shootout I sure we were calling out how violent it was but it has that

3:20:17same kind of visual clarity and really kind of intentional this is the camera move for just this one action kind of construction to it he makes phones for shoots phones yeah well did you guys discuss the John Cassavetes element of box car bertha big time oh yes yes yes yes to my love the crazy don't worry well look now I I've been listening to your episodes and I you know what happens that you I listen I go oh did anybody talk about that yeah my you know the story I told you about the my buddy whose dad worked for the FAA you know that kind of thing comes up and it's like oh I like to tell those guys hey we love it we will always be happy to hear from you yeah reminds me I know we're on to Scorsese and not Peter Weir but I did want to tell you something I forgot to tell you when we were on air of living dangerously there was a video store in London England and they had eclectic categories sure the film you're what it was called this video

3:21:19store I don't fair enough but eclectic categories you know nasty nuns or travel on the highway or whatever the hell and then some of them were broken down by star oh here's the Harrison Ford section here's the and so there were a variety of Tom Cruise section a variety of movie stars but there was one section called the French guy with the big nose who was in green card that's really good that is who he is are you a departure fan I mean not defender on it episode yes not the person yeah the screen presence of the 80s absolutely I mean John the floret man on the spring yeah those were fucking good movies fucking great shit yeah all right do we feel good about I feel good about what he does yeah it's good yeah that's the question and that's all we need to settle here a problem is a hero and we applaud a problem is dealt with and you know I've one exit's head and a surreaction yeah it's it's what we're talking about with Rocky the audience leaves feeling

3:22:21up there's a wind I'm watching it it's so fucked up he goes through two guns he does he's got the first gun where he's like trying to make his own life and then he right he produces the little gun the slide gun yeah so fucked up what if he can't move the arm because he's shot right right yeah upper upper arm yeah we got shot in the right shoulder whatever it's it's wonder why that guy shot him in the shoulder and not in the head since he's walking right up so distracted by the mohawk he would have a haircut like that it all makes the clumsiness of the violence all tracks yes fantastic it's fantastic it's part of what makes the movie so hard synced up there pinned out you must what our arms synced up there oh that's nice did we harmonize um it's you missed your opening there it's part of what makes this movie so hard to pin down is as much as it feels like a fantasy sequence of well this is how this guy thought he would be greeted you can imagine a world in which that happens you can imagine a world in which people show up to the aftermath of

3:23:25this and go wow this guy was an angel accruciating hero he saved this young woman's life and who cares about the people he killed i don't think that's what happened but i believe that could be a media spin on it well no you totally i believed that yes he could have gotten away with this yes yes but then you don't believe that civil shepherd gets into the back of his cat is the one thing in the movie that undeniable is fake to me right there's like no way she's like you know i had the wrong idea about you and when you murdered all those people it really turned my opinion on you magically like a pure in the rear view window like the way she shot in the rear right with her there's like a fan blowing your blowing your hair in the shot and and she's almost not seen at all in any context other than in this rear view mirror and her performance is completely different than how she plays every other second she has on screen so if that's not true then in the shit before it it would seem to be not true that would that's that's a very plausible

3:24:32read the only way i can think about it is like yes he's been rewarded in a way he gets away with it and that they're like well clearly you were attacked by these low lives and you rescued this girl like us and like okay whatever you're not under arrest sir and he's driving his cab again and he's the same fucked up guy but he had and he looks in the mirror right he looks in the rear view you see him distressed by something or what right and then you know some part of his brain engages is like no no what's gonna happen is suddenly cymbals gonna show up like you can imagine that that's the only fantastic part to him but it all feels dream like to me always has the way the camera moves feels dream like yeah i don't know just everything about it does doesn't bother me i don't worry about it score says he did say at one point and i hear your point Griffin that perhaps you know he's bullshitting his way through an interview i which is entirely plausible but he did say at one point that he hoped to convey the idea that

3:25:35in that in the last moment that the movie is on a loop yeah movie resets and is beginning again from the very beginning but that's that's the other part of it is that's one way of you saying sure you saying if if that's not true then isn't everything that came or what came right before isn't true about the simple separate moment is he has his like kind of victory lap he has you hearing the uh the letter that her parents write which sounds so robotic and unnatural of course like in today it plays like it's a weird a i deep fake thing it has that unnatural kind of rhythm to the actual language and the speak the speech patterns um not to mention that's not the story of this girl this girl didn't leave a happy home with two happy parents first first they're not like they'll even sort of have a parent high and low for those and she says something like i think they're probably happier that i'm i'm not there anymore whatever so right all of that feels completely unnatural and and false but there is the moment

3:26:37where he just kind of sits in the cab in self-satisfaction the cab is empty and then suddenly she's in the back through the rear view mirror you could argue that's another kind of branching point but it's also like the movie has created so many choose your own adventure where does reality stop thing that we're so far down the branching timeline that who fucking knows anymore it just feels like that's why that's the demonstrable there is no way this is fucking happening because you don't see her approach the car i think you don't hear the door open and closed she's just there and she just satisfies everything he wants to hear in life the film was a huge commercial success yes now i do want to define because i i think this is important running thing for the rest of his career so grisaes he's always talked about that unlike the other movie brats he never had the seismic success yeah that minted him for the rest of his career he didn't have a carry a godfaw a star wars this was his biggest hit until color of money i think basically yeah it makes 27

3:27:42million dollars in a domestic box office it didn't it cost less than two like it was a huge and especially for a movie like this that's unheard of it's crazy he certainly he thought New York New York was the commercial movie he was working towards yes i'm making a musical with liza manel it's about the world's worst boyfriend and multi-al Academy award nominations and obviously a big part of the column it also logged moving for it also won the palm door at can jury president tenisey Williams and like he he remembers like he it premieres it can a trade paper runs the story that tenisey Williams hated the film he goes to get dinner with costig avarice and surgey oleoni and he gets a call from a publicist like late at night being like you're going to win the palm door by the way so you got to stay in France like you can't you know you're not going home and they were completely shocked he was completely shocked essentially that this movie went over you know i don't know um and yes of course then john hinkley did try to shoot on Reagan

3:28:46that did happen uh and uh jody foster tried to shoot him he did right he tried to kill drum dragon and failed and scorsese thought like the way his movie was talked about in that context was unfair uh this sort of how it always is you know i don't know what cancelling my doctors appointment jesus no griffin almost done i it's i wouldn't make it there in time it's okay because i'm going to take you guys down a rabbit hole yes uh question yeah how do you identify with Travis Bickle i love this i love New York city baby greatest city in the world so i i'd complete i'd love to drive a cab around sea on the sites yeah that's all the people the answer david wants to learn i love new york the best routes the best times of the day yeah i'd crush being Travis Bickle uh i mean i'm a synophile obviously uh my favorite date activity right you love to go to the movies yeah uh get frustrated if the concessions uh selection is limited i do not identify with Travis Bickle's

3:29:48view of the world really in any way struggle to really identify with uh the other people is the problem you know what i mean like that that sort of fundamental thing of like so what do you i because there has to be some level of identity identification for you to like this movie i think i i i feel like i i i can jump in here if you want to fix about this i think i'm very prone into falling into we live in a society frustration of people who are breaking the social contract right which i think is different than what he's doing but i think there's some relatable element of even if his ira is very often completely misplaced or kind of unfounded in anything real and tangible that frustration of hell as other people when it feels like you can't find your way through the thing i also think in my worst moments i flirt with the kind of loneliness as a choice sort of thing of and it's especially when there are things like i have a fucking head cold and i'm in a period of prolonged self isolation or you know you know as an actor you work you shoot a thing you go to

3:30:49another place you're overstimulated for three days and then you have five days off and you're in a foreign land or a foreign city and you're sort of like who the fuck am i i don't understand anything and it's easy to sort of slide into that it never i'm just not like a violent person that's not how my brain ideates but i i do connect to that sort of part of it of like if you don't catch yourself you'll start to get into this like do i not understand anyone does no one understand me kind of self-pity cycle um yeah i really think the way i identify with him is just like okay so David chose new york new york you just like new york activating a person in interesting ways i really think that's what speaks about this it's it's interesting that you're challenging me because i was obsessed with this movie when i was a teenager and it certainly was not because it was really speaking to me i don't know speaking to you as like there's something romantic to me about being outside of the world and in it at the same time here we go which i think new york is the

3:31:53greatest city for like i feel this way about hotels yeah where it's like you can be in a giant hotel amongst all these people no one talks to you no one knows who you are and there's something kind of titillating about that or like you know whatever just sort of like stealthily interesting right and new york is the best place for that you can walk around among all the people like and no one you know if you don't want to no one will talk to you and no one will try and help you out if that's how you want to exist in the world something kind of exciting about that to me does that make sense yeah totally yeah i love that that that feeling of being anonymous yeah just observing the world and not feeling feeling outside of your body and i hate Harvey Kaito well yes that's how i just want to just want to just want to shoot that god the well i love that look and i have a couple notes yeah i don't know he's not pulling my notes are go further is that the answer for you Ben i think you similar to me get frustrated by people

3:32:54not behaving properly in a like you are not showing like a rudeness that's true yes i that does trigger me right and i think it does for a lot of people but i i think though what i lock into is as an only child and someone who's always been self described loner i think that this movie really captures what can happen to a person when they get so isolated yeah and are not socializing and how scary it can be and what what can happen how extreme it can get i think i identify with just the the the worst most base impulses of him i think i do identify with his solipsism and his loneliness and his self-aggrandizement and his his hatred for other people and his self-hatred for him so i identify with all of it i mean yeah i hope i hope i'm healthier now than i used to be i hope we're all you know getting better out there

3:33:57sure but i i think that's part i mean take a look at america i think that's part of the i think that's part of the david's giving a thumbs up and saluting our president red holk of course i think it's part of the real genius of the movie i think the end of the end of the screenplay is that is that there's something very honest and self appraising about the the look at some of our baser instincts activated by loneliness and okay so here's a take you've you've just activated in me i feel like people talk a lot about uh uh curburentusiasm and how larry david is this avatar for like i wish i could just say that shit i wish every time something fucking annoying happened or there was something where why is it this way i could just be the asshole and of course no one wants to actually be that guy and larry david also talks about how he's not that fucking guy he doesn't actually behave that way in the world that's why he writes it is that the comedic version of what

3:34:58taxi driver is expressing kind of dramatically oh man i think dravis would be so much healthier if he were able to if he were funny in any way if he were able to express himself to other people he doesn't have the power of expression which he hasn't been given yes any tools yes he hasn't been exposed to movies to know that porn is bad he doesn't know who chris christopherson is he doesn't know what moon lighting means yes he he doesn't have friends or family he can't even talk to the other cab drivers yeah he's just he's i don't know if he's been robbed of all of that stuff but he's certainly never been given it yes and i i think at my therapist said a thing that i've been thinking about a lot recently that is it's just very simply depression makes a very strong case for itself and that sort of fear of had i not been raised properly could i have ended up like this guy given the wrong circumstances and events do i end up here he's the worst version of we all feel we could potentially become if everything went wrong yeah that's that's what you're

3:36:05relating to is the fear of how far am i from this guy i want to believe it's as far as possible right even the title taxi drivers just just a fucking guy with a fucking job to hail him down this film came out February 8th 1976 sort of crazy to consider that it came out you know that early in the year right so it wins the palm door after yes yes that's what no no yeah number one of the box office is the best picture of 1975 according to the Oscars for we play the game is the same the box office game uh bring it in baby so 1970 is once over the cookers nests right there we go which is number one for just weeks on it like many more weeks after nice star it's the box office for very long time number two at the box office Griffin is a film that we have discussed because uh one of its stars it uh right one of its stars wins an Oscar uh for Vestive Warning actor in 1975 uh and he's in a Martin Breast movie that we discussed and liked oh it's the it's um uh the

3:37:09sunshine boys S Herbert Ross sunshine boys Walter Mathau and uh George Burns saw both those in theater George Burns of course we're just fascinated by you know like his whole like became a movie star again in his 70s and 80s you know and had this run going in style have you seen the breast movie going in style oh yeah great movie love it yeah better at least Rossberg performance there than in Godfather part I would agree that's a very very wonderful movie that is a movie that does not even have a blu-ray release not even a Warner archive outrageous how does Martin Breast direct yes first film that's what's great he directed that movie when he was like it's Tony Bill no no Tony Bill's dead in a ditch no I don't know there's some similar film Tony Bill did that I'm gonna get to the bottom of uh but sunshine boys have never actually seen uh have you seen do you have a take on the sunshine boy ever you saw it you said I don't know very funny I mean good time deal Simon right jokes math house very funny uh number three at the box office is one of the great movies of 1975 one of your favorite movies ever I'm sure Griffin your favorite director it's

3:38:14on Nashville not Nashville because Nashville didn't do that well not Nashville was not really a box office content or it is one of the great movies 1975 from one of the favorite directors it's not jaw and it's not a Lumet no it is a Lumet it is a Lumet yes it's not network because that's seventy six oh day afternoon one of the Christmas is a moment exactly yeah probably is it a Lumet's best movie I'm gonna say yes he made the whiz yeah that's so true um I love the whiz so much tracing number four at the box office okay let's get weird here is a film I just have to double check what I know about this I want to call out that Maria is waiting on the other side of the door she's now texting her top five guesses bring her in yeah oh Maria are we gonna you're gonna have it out we're gonna throw down we're gonna have it out here she comes I'm ready I'm ready boom boom boom look at her boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom oh my god she's got so many bags of gifts I know she's got a lot full of toys from my kids I'm very excited about it you were

3:39:19correct it was dog day you got dog day right the fourth film is an erotic film based on an erotic novel that is Emmanuel not Emmanuel it is a I want to say it's sort of French and German or a vote correct and what's the name of the director my favorite name of a director for audition just Jacqueline just Jacqueline okay just Jack and just Jack never seen never seen the story of oh no oh Karin Clary uh Karin Clary is oh and Udo Kier and Udo Kier Young sexy Udo Kier worth seeing okay all right and Chase just gave two very meaningful points today give a kind of like a brand new endorse like point to the sky worth seeing it's a classic example right at these kind of like soft core is you know already sexy movies making making box office you know noise Karin Clary was great she you know she would become a bond girl yes she's in moon raker uh yeah and she was uh she's also in a very good jalo called hitchhike with uh Franco Nero very good

3:40:25job sounds good uh I had on the devil's honey recently because I'm trying to watch every 86 movie which is the movie that begins with someone playing a saxophone uh between a woman's legs and my wife I own that on blue right yeah we both have the blue terrible transfer I have it too uh and my wife was like what the fuck is this and I was like I don't really have an explanation for you here uh number five of the box office is okay I don't know this movie I'm gonna look it up uh odd title okay it is a it's a war movie um oh is it war no no no no no sorry it's sort of no it's like a mountain man movie like a trapper movie is it the mountain man no it's not grizzly atoms no is it kind of grizzly atoms run off Jeremiah Lincoln it's not that these are all better movies okay does it have a known actor in it uh Charlton Heston no the actor is Mike who's this sort of a famous kind of like tough guy he was like a big brownie guy who played a lot of heavies yeah I don't know this miss a studio picture it is from the great people at Pacific

3:41:29international enterprises so no work um it is directed by Tay Garnett and it's about a trapper who gets lost it's not trapper John no the film is called challenge to be free I do not although it also had the subtitle or another title mad trapper of the Yukon well that's a better tight it's about the Mounties are trying to get a trapper but we like Garnett was like classic Hollywood director maybe playing out these strings yes he no I think you're right he died three years later but he like he directed the um the Lana Turner postmanage rings try twice he did uh the Clark cable movie China C's like he you know he was yeah China C's I mean it's in the 30s right he died a couple years we've also got okay black beers ghosts what is that again with Peter used to know off as a black beer is a Disney movie is that oh yeah is that fun is that good yeah sort of them trying to do it Stevenson yeah the you know yes I saw that okay sure there you go I did

3:42:30not say I haven't seen the trapper movie that's the now you're intrigued yeah it's not gonna crawl you like challenge to be free to me uh number seven is the John Houston epic the man who would be king which I feel like was a little bit of a bomb like or rightly sort of an under performer compared to its box office that is just a little of another time yeah Sean Connery Michael Kane who both were like we had a great time but I think yeah kind of a relic uh and then you got your kippling I think right yes based on a Rudyard kid that's correct another guy who's he's a little out of fashion these days uh number eight is the Canadian drama lies my father told me uh which is like a sort of a domestic drama about an orthodox Jewish boy in like 20s Montreal I mean this is speak into the slim pickens in 1976 drafts I yeah saw the director is Jen Kedar not not a director I was the lead of course it's Jeffrey Linus of course I know I don't know

3:43:31the movie although the title is actually a like I feel like I've heard that lies my father number nine of the box office is the great film really a great film uh but it's from 75 a hester street the uh general consumer movie which is so fucking good yeah that's a great New York movie yeah and then the number 10 is a Jean Hackman movie I don't really know called Lucky Lady the Stanley Donan Jean Hackman and Bert Reynolds and Eliza Manel Eliza it's like a prohibition yeah it's like a prohibition kind of like romp right like yeah they're all in costumes it stinks on ice is there blue with that one I think so oh there's a shout DVD I'm seeing here that's actually brood who directed that uh direct it by Stanley donut also you know kind of in this doge yeah uh it's his second elast movie I think Ben unfortunately has some news to report it do have some news uh oh this uh has now crossed the threshold oh boy and it is in

3:44:35fact our longest episode of all time but we only we only you're not thinking about baby you're not thinking about as leaves episode yeah and even though we recorded for four hours oh we actually cut some stuff out cut to sort of together right right we were so proud of you right where this had no tangents we were all moving is going out on that yes no now marine you want to pick a fight with Tracy yeah I'm about to say we can go on for longer because I have a lot of things I want to say to you sir I'll tear it Marie this is Marie Barty the wonderful Marie Barty yes hi uh for people who are maybe listening to this podcast for the first time and who have made it to hour four I'm just gonna throw on the the Manchester City game just don't mind me when Tracy was last on the podcast to talk about the year of living dangerously uh great up great up he did mention or ask who was that other person the woman who wasn't paying attention in house of dynamite she must have been

3:45:38looking at her phone she doesn't watch movies right there was a detail she doesn't watch she doesn't know how to watch she doesn't know how to watch a movie well mister let's I I mean I could be correct me if my if I'm wrong here guys but I think I'm the only person in this room right now who has a degree in watching movies that's true I do not I have a degree in reading books and fat lot of good at I almost had my mother ship me my diploma with honors to show to you that I graduated from NYU's school of cinema New York University yes but I never take my phone out at the theater unless it's what was that movie called I didn't like skin a marine skin a marine which seems to terrify you so much you actually needed distraction I had my head in my my sweater in my jacket and I was texting people to be less scared but um excited for his new movie this year you were looking away I wasn't not you're saying you were kind of zoning out I was zoning out there was a man in front of me who was vaping and it was very distracting you saw it at the night hawk did

3:46:39you not yes I saw it at the angelica a dine in theater mm-hmm that does have more stimulus more distraction and listen I've been trying to quit cigarettes and sometimes I get an urge sometimes you're considering nuclear war and you're like I gotta hit that pen yes exactly um yeah Marie might have just been briefly considering whether or not to order the nacho she might have been watching someone else get nachos delivered to them imagine the smoke might have been blurring the screen and eating chicken tenders while you're watching a lot going on a nuclear war film you know I'm actually trying to remember what I ordered because I do always order a full meal when I go to the night hawk all right here's what I'm gonna do okay I'm gonna offer an apology oh my god I apologize to you for saying that you don't know how to watch a film clearly you do know how to watch film thank you very kindly suggest that you give house of dynamite an uninterrupted spit an olive branch right now and now you have to watch house a dynamite again you know I might do that

3:47:43I might take you up on that uh like it better on a second yeah actually probably do you think you got a bad rap because I'm also not very positive about that movie on that episode and you give me a pass we all love you in it yeah talk about I think you got a bad rap yeah yeah sure it got kind of a you know you know I think you got a bad rap kind of it got kind of ignored or whatever I don't think netflix I don't think a streaming experience was the right way for that I know but I just don't a problem I don't think so and I do say that the sort of film twitter the film the guy's on film yeah the letter box guys wear them there's kind of a conformity of opinion that happens on those things that I find a little uh this is on to suspect sort of a travis bickle kind of yeah type character this is new screw heads you fuckers we did it we did it I think we're done on talking about taxi driver but it has been such a delay having you on Tracy truly

3:48:47truly always a pleasure thank you guys Dracula we have a Dracula day all right you come on back for for Christopher Lee specific yeah not legacy no no no we want to go see go screw Christopher Lee's my Dracula we do also sadly need to grant you the award for longest episode record ever well would you get that yeah wait what is that that's an academy award no but I just say more what is that just uh fish bought it for critical darlings I need to buy a new one now absolutely not taking this with okay great that's just get it back like some random garbage that he just had lunch for a fresh prop last last time we gave him a bunch of garbage to stop forgetting our discs that's true so giving Tracy Garza's uh Tracy anything you want to plug no radiant subscription no favorite thing is that you're just get a radio subscription you have films in production you have creative work high mom on 4k sure yeah thanks guys yes thank you so much uh and come back soon yeah for Dracula I guess I guess we'll talk to you very soon in news and deals hopefully you don't

3:49:52get scared off by the bickerel-esque behavior can't wait of six men stirring each other up yep he wants it on the chat he wants him thank you all for listening please remember to rate review and subscribe uh over on our patreon right now no we are doing resident evil oh that's right we are but we will then after that be going on to the the Dracula Dracula yeah and next on the main feed is New York New York yes with uh yeah well we'll see we'll see we'll say it and then we can cut it if we win with linman well Miranda unless he's busy uh and as always uh I texted our buddy Matt singer who wrote an article for screen rant about this matter singer settle a bet happening in record presently do we think paulie fucks the robot and Matt singer said I kind of think it's the other way around the robot fucks him we're actually going at the end of the episode oh I didn't start rolling tape I'm sorry what the fuck are you doing dude I don't know I'm joking I'm joking I'm joking I'm joking

3:50:57all right we'll catch up with my stars I thought you were doing you were doing that on purpose for Mike no no no no I wasn't doing I was legitimately pitching the idea first to make sure you're comfortable the listeners we're putting us at the end of the episode I didn't start rolling tape I'm not actually I'm sorry I thought we were recording the idea that he would open with the famous fucking quote because there's a mirror in our office space that is he could just turn but look we're basically asking Griffin to imitate I think the most widely cited piece of acting that's problem one that's problem one okay you know what I mean so I was standing in my mirror pressure I was practicing it first of all I was like how do I get the voice right without being the fucking guy who does the shitty denierro impression especially because this performance is different than the way he's usually impersonated right and I feel like a lot of people erroneously do a Travis Bickle impression like it's meet the fuckers erud denierro it's morphed right you talking me and then I'm like it's impossible to do without starting to do the face shit so then

3:52:02you look silly right because then you're doing a bad physical impression and a bad vocal impression at the same time and then the third problem is I was just looking at the text yeah and I was like in actuality it would just be me saying 17 times you podcasting to me which does not flow very well the syllable thing is chunky okay and I didn't want to do potting I'm just telling this is behind the scenes it makes sense so this is what I'm gonna do instead great and we should now start the right but this what you're hearing right now is actually the end of the end of the end of the nonsense we'll put it at the end of the episode so now we're gonna start the episode before you start the episode yeah is it a little warm in here it's a little warm in here I've got the air okay I got the air on I came in early I said I've said all I need to say yeah it it isn't like listen there's gonna be hot takes I will do the room like it'll last my alter the temp yes we do our best to keep it cool in here but I got a hot take here's one taxi driver I'm joking maybe the best movie ever made okay this is the end of the episode bye

3:53:06like check with Griffin and David is hosted by Griffin Newman and David Sims our executive producer is me Ben Hossley our creative producer is Marie Barty Salinas and our associate producer is AJ McKin this show is mixed and edited by AJ McKin and Alan Smithy research by JJ Birch our theme song is by Lane Montgomery in the great American novel with additional music by Alex Mitchell artwork by Joe Bowen, Oli Moss and Pat Reynolds our production assistant is Minic 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 blankcheckpod subscribe to our weekly newsletter checkbook on substack this podcast is created and produced by blankcheck production