Raiders of the Lost Ark with Brian Michael Bendis

[00:00:01] Blank Check Podcasts. Why'd it have to be podcasts? Great. I don't think I nailed it. Sometimes I'm able to pull a surprising Harrison out of my pocket.

[00:00:31] Needs to be growlier, even at that age. Snakes, snakes. Podcast. Fuck. It is tough now. I think I'm better at doing older Harrison. Yeah, go ahead. It's tough when he's young. Do Thunderbolt Ross seeing a snake. Snakes! Why'd it have to be snakes? You know, my joke is that he's going to turn into Red Hulk when they're like, we have to make the military more woke. He'll be like, rawr! Right? That'll be what it is. I don't even know. Is Thunderbolt Ross right wing? He is, right? Well, look, we have a guest who can answer that.

[00:01:01] I want our guest to answer this. Not to put him on the spot. Is Thunderbolt Ross a Republican? You know, I love this podcast so much that I immediately went to, I wonder what thing we're going to talk about that I couldn't predict. And right away. Right away. Is Thunderbolt Ross right wing? Have you ever written for the big man? Have you ever written Thunderbolt Ross, the best character in the Marvel universe? I have in, actually, I have. In Avengers! Oh, sure. I did a, believe it or not, a weird little mini arc in Avengers with the great Walt Simonson. Yes.

[00:01:31] And with Red Hulk front and center. Yeah, I remember that. I had this, like, I wanted Walt Simonson. You, like, joins for a minute, right? He's in the Avengers as Red Hulk, right? I forget. Yeah, something was going on. But, uh, so yes. But no, I did not, uh, in my heart lock down the politics of the time. It just had him in mission. So I can't speak to the larger- Does the Marvel universe have Democrats and Republicans? Like, does that come up or is it sort of like we don't-

[00:01:59] Well, kind of, but like mostly from a different universe than the one we live in now. So it's not even, I don't even know if people would like refer to that in that way. You know what I mean? That's why I'm so excited to see a Captain America movie that's about the president. If you see it as an Air Force One sequel, I think it is deeply exciting and a huge swing. And I appreciate that kind of thing. And let's say just incredible weave on, uh, uh, Thunderbolt Ross's ideology. Yeah. We don't really know.

[00:02:29] We don't know. We were very, very focused on where the mustache went when he turned into the Hulk. So that was a much bigger issue for us as a group. Where does it go? I'll say this. I guess, uh, Brave, what, Brave New World's what it's called now? Uh, yeah. Yeah. It's coming out right around the time of this episode, maybe a little bit after. I suppose. That's right. It's coming out in February, right? I was, not to be like a pedantic nerd, I was very thrilled in the trailer where there's

[00:02:56] a line where Harrison Ford's like, uh, they told me if I wanted to be president, I had to lose a mustache. Oh, interesting. Right. We haven't had a mustachioed president since maybe Roosevelt. But that sort of solves the Red Hulk mustache issue where they're just like, well, he just shaved before he ever became the Red Hulk. Right. I'm not joking. It was a large conversation in the Marvel retreats. Where does the mustache go? Where did you land on the logic?

[00:03:25] I just went, listen, not every fight's my fight. And I moved on with my life. Like there's a lot going on. This is not for me to solve. Yeah. I'm trying to get Miles Morales into the 616. It's a, I've got, I've got my, I've got my lane. I've got a, I've got issues that I was dealing with at the time. Red Hulk has a gun, right? That was part of his thing. But it was like, it's like, you know, the Hulk. And I'm like, yeah, I know the Hulk. He's incredibly strong. And they're like, yeah, but he also has a big gun that he shoots someone with. There are other Hulks that had guns. I guess. I guess in the 90s.

[00:03:53] Mr. Fix It would carry on a Tommy gun. In the 90s, it got cool for Hulk to have a gun. See, when I, when I saw the trailer, I was much more, I, I've been, I've, as we are going to discuss, I have lived with the Harrison Ford's energy as an actor my whole life, which has varied from the most excited bull, most movie star, movie star to his middle ages, which were, and that went on for a very long time. Yes.

[00:04:21] And then we've entered the, um, this era, which, which started around Force Awakens where he's just enjoying being Harrison Ford. All right. And I, and I, and I, I never saw this coming. I thought we were going to be stuck with cranky Harrison Ford for the rest of our lives. Yeah. When does, that's actually a great point. When does cranky Ford begin where it becomes like, do you even want to be here? Like Harrison? I would say it starts with Hollywood homicide.

[00:04:50] I think Hollywood homicide is a reflection of what was going on at the time. Yes. But I think that's sort of the, the fulcrum point. Well, I'm going to argue that, uh, in the nineties, you know, when he's Jack Ryan and Richard Kimball, he's gruff, but he's not totally grumpy all the way up to air force one. That's honed movie star persona. Not grumpy. And then post air force when you have six days, seven nights, random hearts, K 19, what lies beneath Hollywood homicide. We're getting quite grumpy there.

[00:05:20] Yeah. But here's okay. I mean, look, this is what we're here to do on this. The magically he's, he makes sense as a grump and what podcast because I want to get into this very deeply. This is a very interesting conversation in an episode about one of the, the a very famous movie, but also like one of the most definitive movie star performances of all time. No, no question. Right? Like this is obviously inarguably one of the totemic creations of the American cinema.

[00:05:48] Indiana Jones will always be on like the Mount Rushmore to a certain extent, the tapestry of like, what is this popular commercial art? But this one in particular for a guy who had already created an insanely iconic character. Yes. And a wild blockbuster franchise. And had been in two of them already. Yeah. I feel like this is one of those performances kind of like Bruce Willis and die hard, like John Wayne and stage coach. Right. Where people just study and go like, what did they fucking synthesize here? Mm-hmm.

[00:06:18] Total natural ease, humor, sexiness, you know, doesn't gives a shit, but doesn't seem like he's trying hard. You know, like you can't, you can't fake it. Right. Can't fake what he's doing. Yes. Just like we can't fake the fact that this is blank check with Griffin and David. I'm Griffin. I mean, I suppose we could fake it. I'm David. I don't. I refuse. Just like some AI that goes, what do you want from me? Every two minutes. Cranky David face.

[00:06:48] David's entering his early 2000s. What if I become the red David in 2025? We might need that. You think so? Yeah. You think I need to red Hulk to Rolk out? That's it. Maybe that's a year 15 arc. Have they done any other color hulks since red? Well, there's composite Hulk, right? All of them. Have they really? They've done a lot of Hulk. Okay. Is there like a purple Hulk? And the red Hulk famously debuted on the TV show. Like that was, that was, they even referenced it in Walk Hard.

[00:07:15] My daughter recently was watching an episode of Spidey and his friends or whatever the cartoon is, or there's small Spideys that Hulk was in. And Hulk's just walking through the carnival with Spider-Man, by the way. And I was kind of like, this is not what Hulk's supposed to be like. He's just a green man. But apart from that, the same as any, right? And she just looked at him and she was like, he doesn't have any clothes on. And I was like, you're not wrong. That's the only takeaway she could have from this child Hulk. Because he didn't seem angry. Sure. Right.

[00:07:45] So he was just a man with no clothes on. Is he bigger than the other kids? He's bigger. Yeah, he's like... But he's not like huge. He's like a big kid. He's taller. He's large. He's muscle bound. I don't know. The whole thing's weird. Some of these guys don't translate well as kid form. Like Spider-Man does. Does she like Miles Morales? Yeah, she likes all three of them. He's... Yeah, he's right there in the front. I'm just saying. I know the creator of... Please, please introduce our guests. It's Blank Check with Griffin and David. I'm Griffin and David. It's a podcast about filmographies.

[00:08:12] Directors who have massive success early on in their careers, such as making Jaws. Sure. And are given a series of blank checks, make whatever crazy passion projects they want. And sometimes those checks clear, like Raiders of the Lost Ark in the wake of a bounce, like 1941. That's absolutely true. This is another thing to talk about here. This is like one of the greatest comeback movies in Hollywood history. Instant comeback and probably one that doesn't... It's not like he was like, ah, 1941 doesn't work.

[00:08:39] I guess I'll do my sort of throwback Alan Quarterman thing. Yeah. You know, like, and everyone was like, oh, sure. Retreat to safe ground with that, Steve. Like, it's risky. It's risky. And this is also a movie that is imbued with the energy of, I need to not fuck up. Yeah. Like you feel a certain... In a weird way, it doesn't... It's only positive. But Spielberg being in his head about like, I need to get over the hump of being a wonderkind and not be a flash in the pan.

[00:09:09] Yeah, this poster. David's pulling up a really weird poster. Can you turn this around to show? A British poster. I mean, Ford just looks like 85 in this. Look at him. I don't know. Anyway. Our guest today... Yes. As David was saying right before we recorded, arguably the most important impactful comic book writer of our generation, of our lifetime. You were very much the guy that I feel like we grew up on and grew up with and activated through Brian Michael Bandis. Unbelievably is on the show.

[00:09:39] Well, that's awfully nice. Thank you for having me. I am thrilled to be here. I am a huge fan of this podcast. Good dumb. You're stupid. As I reveal over time, including knowing that I could jump in early and without being introduced. It's a pro move. Yeah. It's a big part of my obligation. Yeah. But I'm thrilled to be here. And I will say for the few people, I know you like to keep it on the down low, what you're doing.

[00:10:05] And I will say, I'm not going to be here. I'm not going to be here. I'm not going to be here. I'm not going to be here. So you've listened to us blather on about Marvel movies. But also think about this. It's the funniest thing because like, yeah, I've listened to you blab around about the mummy.

[00:10:33] I've listened to you blab around about Austin Powers. I've listened to you. It is a very, very excellent space for my head to be in when I'm doing laundry and other things like driving my kids around like an Uber. But I will say it is very funny that part of the magic of this podcast is that often you will venture into other subjects with no warning. And when I'm listening to a Marvel podcast, I'm like, hey, you might bring up some secret invasion stuff. It might come up.

[00:11:02] But it's always amazing when like you're talking about like Austin Powers, Man of Mystery, and all of a sudden you get to a Dark Avengers rant. I'm like, oh, that's hilarious. I would never have guessed that. You're you're a tremendous amount of your work looms very large in both of our minds. Absolutely. I feel like to some degree, like one of the connection points we found early on when we became friends was Bendis Comics. Yeah, I think like, you know, you know, early sort of like courtship, but then also like

[00:11:31] finding like we have the same like, oh, these arcs were as big for you as they were. I just had to move my bookshelf from one side of the room to the other. I had to take all the comic trade paperbacks off, put them all back on. I put faithfully had my my Bendis shelf, all the Daredevils, all the Avengers, all the power, you know, all the Jessica Jones. Anyway, I had the ultimate Spider-Man. I have all of your ultimate Spider-Man's. Thank you, man. That means a lot. It's really cool. Yeah. Okay, fine.

[00:12:01] Well, you should hear it then. I have them all. I have like 16 of those things. They're heavy. See, I believe I have every single issue of the original run, but that was transferred to yes, a basement that my father oversees that I am very concerned about the status of. Yeah, sure, sure, sure. Yeah, that's tough. Right. So I've almost been too scared to check. But at one point for a very long time, I had all of them as single issues buying in real time.

[00:12:30] What if I came like just brought you want to drag you about killing some character? And now I'm trying to think of what character I'd be mad about. I would be very happy to have that conversation with you. But I will say to pivot into our subject today is that I don't think there's any movie that I could refer to as more important to the DNA of how old I was when it came out and what the world was like and what the culture was like and how like everything about my life

[00:12:58] at this stage that wasn't Marvel was Lucas and Spielberg. And I was giving like a great amount of thought in some of the links I sent you, Griffin, about like, like, why do I know all of this? Like, why do I know all of this by heart? I knew every single magic trick that Lucas and Spielberg did from Star Wars through Temple of Doom. And it really was this amazing time where these two wonderkins were like doing magic tricks

[00:13:27] and then couldn't wait to show us how they did the magic trick. Like, that's a really good point. Like, here's how the landspeeder works. Yeah. And I'm 10 to 15 years old and I'm being showed the magic trick and then being showed how it's done. And mind blown constantly. Like, there's no other space I'm in with Star Wars and Indiana Jones. And it just keeps building, building. Star Wars comes out in 1977. I'm 10 years old. I see it in the theater.

[00:13:55] One of my favorite things you guys talk about is how old you are when you see certain things and the experience of what that was. And here I am right at this, like, I see Star Wars in theaters and also Star Wars stays in theaters for two and a half years. Right. So you see it multiple times. It's just the thing, a thing you can do constantly. The entire time, my entire childhood and see Star Wars up until Empire Strikes Back comes out.

[00:14:22] One of my favorite moments as a movie theater going child was my mom took me to see Empire Strikes Back. This is giant cliffhanger. I never experienced a cliffhanger outside of a comic book. With a comic book, it's always coming next month. Spider-Man is going to die. We'll figure out how in a month from now you'll find out he's not dead. This one, I literally, I just sat there in stunned silence and my mom just let me watch it again. We just never left the theater. We just like, oh, she's like, there go. They're rolling again.

[00:14:52] If nothing else, you can see that again. 40 minutes later, they're going to show you. You're not going to get the resolution you want, but at least you can just watch the same movie a second time immediately. That's so that's like method. That's an experience I didn't have. Right. I didn't get to watch an Empire Strikes Back and then have to wait three years for Return of the Jedi. Do you remember being happy with Empire Strikes Back? Like forgetting the cliffhanger? Just generally, were you satisfied or were you like, I don't know what to make of that? Yes. Also, you're very aware. Oh, they're not repeating it. They they're continuing it.

[00:15:22] It's oh, it's a snow planet and everything. Everything that we celebrate about it. The initial feeling was complete celebration. Like it's everything better. It's everything elevated. They're doing it and it's it's broadening out. Yeah. The only thing we didn't have is like like and I have a lot of kids, so I get to funnel my pop culture memories through how they're processing their pop culture memories right now. Like my son knows when the next four Marvel movies are coming out.

[00:15:51] We have no idea when and if another Star Wars is coming out unless maybe you had a subscription to Starlog. Maybe you caught something on some weird entertainment tonight thing. But other than that, unless you caught it live, unless you caught it in the moment, you really didn't know what's going to happen. Right? Yeah. I mean, my I talk about my little cousin George a lot who's now someone I'm like giving your trades to as he's like digging deeper and deeper into Marvel.

[00:16:18] But he is very much a kid who's like aware of what the upcoming Marvel slate is. Right. It's weird, you know, and he's like talking about the moves of like, so what does it mean that Downey Jr. is coming back? But he's a different character. Like he's like fully in on that. I mean, I've said this. It's just the quote that is the most fascinating to me was he was like, what Marvel movies are still coming out? This was whatever a year or two ago. You know, he always like, so what are the next three Marvel movies? And he was like, what's coming out? And I was like, well, the Marvels comes out in three months.

[00:16:48] And he goes, I hear the buzz isn't good in that. And I'm like, you're eight. Who's giving you the buzz? You don't have a cell phone. You're not on social media. What is this? But like, he's very tapped into all this stuff in a way that's just like this is the monoculture like the monoculture is in a weird way. The discussion of the industry and all of that, whereas I think, you know, David and I always felt like weird kids where we were paying attention to this at a time when like people were not. Yeah. Where most adults were not. Well, you would have one friend.

[00:17:18] Yes. I had one friend who I shared like the comics thing with or maybe two, you know, like where we, that was it. And then maybe, right, maybe you like read Wizard Magazine. Yeah. So then you know a little bit about like what's in the future. But yeah, you do not watch entire like presentations of slates on YouTube at, you know, press conferences and things like that entire cottage industry of trying to guess what will happen next.

[00:17:44] Like you talking about that experience of like Spielberg and Lucas being so pioneering and kind of serializing legitimate a level filmmaking, right? That they were sort of like bridging this gap between like the old serials that they grew up with and the comics that they grew up with and the TV shows and the radios and plays and all of that that were always seen as low art, you know, or children's art or like pop trash or whatever it was.

[00:18:13] And then elevating this to like a level craft, but getting people roped into the story in that way. Listen, I'm forgetting what the original connection point was, but if it was you messaging me or someone telling me, do you know that Brian Michael Bendis is a listener at some point? It got relayed to me. And then we started messaging and then you did the George Lucas talk show. I guess about a year ago, maybe eight months. I loved it. I absolutely adored that experience.

[00:18:42] You were wonderful on the show, but you we had already been messaging back and forth a little bit at that point of like, we got to find something for you to be on for. And we will keep potential guests in the hopper for a long time sometimes to wait to find the right fit. And there were a couple of things we were throwing out and going back and forth on. Then you come to George Lucas talk show and you came with like 10 Indiana Jones prop replicas. I don't think I've told you this, but Brian comes with like a hat, but he comes with like a grail diary replica.

[00:19:10] He comes with like maps like he comes with like all the paperwork and like you really look right there. Hey, there you go. A little Jewish boy with the cup of Christ. There's a little a little chalice. It is this thing that's very nice about doing the show is that sometimes we will have people like yourself where George Lucas was so important to them in their development as an artist or whatever. And they basically use Connor as like a surrogate to say those things. Right.

[00:19:37] You were very earnestly talking through the value of what this stuff means to you to Connor, who is very good at receiving that stuff. Well, because he can go kind of like, yeah, yeah. Well, of course it's my best movie or whatever. Right. And I like that lodged in my brain. And then a couple months after that we were like, let's do it. Let's fucking do early Spielberg. Let's do Spielberg. And I feel like you were the first message I sent of just like Raiders. That's awesome. Well, as you said, hey, we're doing early Spielberg, which I could have done any of them.

[00:20:05] And and and I and I think I said to you Temple of Doom because I will as I will describe to you, I'm now in high school learning story. And Temple of Doom is playing at my local theater across the street from my house the entire summer. Like like I saw it every day. Like I went to it every day. So it was like even though Raiders is obviously the better film, the Temple of Doom, I was things

[00:20:35] were unlocking. It was it was it met you at a pivotal moment in your life. Yes. Yes. And even the oh, this is darker. This is different. Why? Why am I feeling differently about this? Like every choice that's being made was interesting to me. So and then you and you you literally said no Raiders. And I was like, oh, of course I will. I will separate us. But I but I was like, it would be a mitzvah to us if you came on and did this one. And that gives you an opportunity to talk about Indiana Jones as a whole and Lucas and Spielberg and all of this.

[00:21:05] It feels like you saying that, like, you know, it's it's a big deal that we let you do this one. I was like, that will make our lives easier. If we have Brian talk about Raiders and like kick off this Indiana Jones run, I think it's one of the things that David and I talk about a lot with your work and how important it was for us at a sort of developmental age, like what you're talking about of like learning how story works through the stuff you're absorbing and seeing what works and what doesn't

[00:21:34] is that like I feel like we will often cite you as someone who is incredibly good at understanding the the format in which you are doing the storytelling in the sense that you are telling long form serialized stories. But there was a thing, I think a trend that started to bum me out. And I feel like we've complained about David that started in the 2000s that has only gotten more and more extreme over time where I would be reading single issues and feel like this

[00:22:01] is just a graphic novel that is being split up into six parts that I'm just now having to wait a month to read chapters. You know, very similar. A lot of our complaints about streaming television now where people are like, well, this is really just a 12 hour movie. And that balance of like doing something that has integrity as the one piece you're engaging with at that moment can also amount to something larger. You write great arcs, but I also think you understand the value of like this issue needs to be satisfying.

[00:22:29] There's like a big picture and a small picture of what's going on there. And like Indiana Jones is this basically it feels like storytelling experiment for Lucas and Spielberg to be like, can we make a movie that is just that right there are all these famous lines of what if it was just the good parts and none of the boring parts? What if it was a Republic serial that never ended at every 10 minutes? There's like another huge moment, another big cliffhanger. And where does it go from here?

[00:22:57] And then, yeah, I guess leaving you probably with the same feeling of Star Wars of like. So what happens to Indiana Jones now? So a few things are going on here. Number one, both Lucas and Spielberg are eager to let us in on the magic trick and to take us in and as a young and I'm all in.

[00:23:19] And so when I sent you that that network special on Raiders lost Ark that aired on like CBS or as as as as a as a document. Right. But if you've only can only see the movie in theaters, there's no other way to experience it. And all of a sudden they're showing you a behind this an hour long behind the scenes with genuine, interesting, you know, and also honest storytelling.

[00:23:44] There's one bit in that in that special I sent you where were Spielberg literally is exhausted in Morocco going. I'm in the middle of desert with all my friends. I'm completely embarrassing myself. This is not working like he's having complete and imposter syndrome. And I was thinking how I wonder if this would air today. Like, I wonder if if if if the director of wicked was staring and having just a moment like we all have going,

[00:24:12] you know, so so this honesty that they're sharing with us and on top of. All right. So Lucas to Star Wars Spielberg did the same thing with close encounters and Jaws. All right. So now and also we have the in the John Williams documentary, which is out right now at Disney Plus, which really does a good job illustrating this is that in lieu of DVD and VHS, we have

[00:24:41] the soundtrack to just sit in our room, stare at the ceiling and relive the movie in our mind's eye with whatever top, you know, trading cards we have. Like we're we're we're absorbing it and remembering it and recontextualizing it in in ways that are just different than what happens today. No, no better or worse. You had like novelizations, I guess, or that's another adaptations. Right. Like that's about as close as it got, I guess. Right. That was a big one, too, because even the close encounters of novelization written by Steven Spielberg, whether it is or isn't.

[00:25:10] But it says written by Steven Spielberg, it internalizes the story for a young person who's only seeing externalizing it. And now you're now I'm I feel like I know what Roy Neary like. I'm like, I know I'm hearing his internal monologue. Yeah. So that's for a young creator. All this is new. So all this is happening, including whatever 1941.

[00:25:35] What like like like but all of it is very also connected loudly to the comic book space. Star Wars and Indiana Jones are also comic books. And the Star Wars series is, you know, drawn by Howard Chaykin to start with, which is one of the greats of all time. You had Walt Simonson doing the close encounters adaptation. And it is wonderful. It is not just it is.

[00:26:02] Well, they're very much like, you know, you know, the short version of a story like the Cliff Notes version of it. But but visually spectacular. And there's a great like how they made it of the close encounters comic book that showed the differences of how things something is directed versus how something is shown on the page. First time I'd ever seen that talked about anywhere. So this is a huge moment for a young comic book creator. Right.

[00:26:29] So all I have is how to make comics the Marvel way by Stanley and everything George Lucas and Steven Spielberg are telling us like every. So and Spielberg is loud on graphic novels for close encounters makes a huge like National Lampoon's heavy metal version of 1941 that is loud and naughty and completely inappropriate by today's standards.

[00:26:56] And and then the the Raiders of the Lost Ark is a two issue miniseries cliff notes by the amazing Claude Jansen. So these are all like world class comic creators that are stopping what they're doing to adapt or to take what might have been a weekend gig for them adapting these movies. But I remember the Raiders of the Lost Ark two issue cliff notes came out and I was I was living.

[00:27:22] I was this is not enough of an adaptation. I mean, they they skip the well of the souls. I mean, there's just like major pieces missing because they just don't have the thing. And I'm looking at it though. It's Harold chicken. Yeah. Like you said, he he's the coolest. Damn. Yeah, no, it's pretty good. Yeah, I'm looking at fucking cool. Look at Blade Runner comic adaptation by Al Williamson.

[00:27:46] You're you're about to be level like right things because I right because I was too, you know, I was too old for this stuff right. Yeah. Like by the time I was watching these movies like you could, you know, rent them or you know, like I can watch the movies of the I mean that the moment you're talking about looks cool in the John Williams doc hit me really hard and kind of unlocked a thing that I just wanted. I don't think I'd ever like verbalized in such a specific way.

[00:28:12] And some of the talking heads say to your point of like the movies out of theaters at some point you have the soundtrack, you look at the liner notes, you play it in your head. And I feel like so much of my childhood, I would listen to CDs of film scores and try to reconstruct the sequences in my mind. I mean, literally listen to the beats and go, oh, that's where that happens. That's when that moment happens. This little swell here is right.

[00:28:37] If you have the same kind of demented brain that the three of us clearly have, you're trying to like deconstruct these things to understand how they were made. But you're also trying to remember the sort of pure emotion you felt the first time that relive some form of it. Yeah.

[00:28:53] But the this notion I don't think I've really thought about before of like Lucas and Spielberg kind of being the first major open source filmmakers that like I was rewatching recently a thing I watch multiple times a year. But that like Peter Bogdanovich attempting to interview John Ford and John Ford just giving him like the steeliest non answers of all time to everything. OK.

[00:29:21] And that whole generation of movie star movie directors movie makers like I don't know. Right. Who either were just like very sort of like aloof and Tony and their sort of attitude about everything or would try to just be like, oh, no, I just shoot movies. They're trash, whatever. Like try to sort of hide their emotions. Lucas and Spielberg were kind of the first enthusiasts who reached that level of success and wanted to like, as you're saying, kind of tell everyone what they did.

[00:29:50] Share the process. I think a lot of it was based off of giddiness of like, can you believe we get to do this more than them consciously trying to educate another generation? But it is why those two guys and their movies across these like 15 years primarily are so influential. We're so activating so many artists in different mediums because you were getting the pieces in that kind of way.

[00:30:14] And you were getting the supplemental material, all the merchandising and all the stuff, the adaptations, all that helps keep the movie alive in your mind. But they're also doing interviews. Fan culture is rising. There are places like, you know, Starlog and whatever they can like talk to where these things can be distributed and then lodge into heads forever.

[00:30:34] So and the same thing was going on in comics where there's a lot of our a lot of our masters were not giving like Jack Kirby often refers to when there's a job. I have to make sales. Jack Kirby was the John Ford of comics. Yeah. And and not in a but he's never never cranky like John Ford, but but certainly would not give up. I am an artist until his much later years when when enough people were yelling at him. You're an artist that he finally said, OK, OK, I'm an artist.

[00:31:03] But so there was like like getting any kind of information about how to do any of this was really if you felt like an archaeologist, you felt like you had to like really sift through, you know, issues of comics, buyer's guide and comic scene magazine and Starlog looking for just any kind of information about how to tell a story or what, you know. So anytime someone like Lucas and Spielberg particularly really couldn't wait to tell you how the magic trick worked, it was deeply exciting.

[00:31:32] I am also interested in that they kind of stopped doing that after a while. Like there was a window well into the by the time they get to the third Indiana Jones, they have stopped sharing. They he doesn't do director's commentaries. And if you think of anyone's doing director's commentaries, it's him. It's Spielberg because like it feels like all director's commentary is beholden to him and and he didn't do them.

[00:32:00] And it was strange and appealing at the same time that he stopped sharing. I found that deeply fascinating. David, February, February movie preview. OK, I got to say it's pretty interesting February we have coming up. Yeah. What do we got? Heart Eyes. Yeah. From our friend. An original horror film directed by our friend past and future guest overdue to have him back on the pod. Josh Rubin.

[00:32:29] Yeah. Well, he's been busy making films. He has. Which is wild. And he's got a new one. Heart Eyes. That's that looks really exciting. Love Hurts. I would argue one of the weirdest. That's the Kehi Kwan action movie. Movies to be pushing the fact that it stars two Academy Award winners in history. All of the marketing is Academy Award winner Kehi Kwan, Academy Award winner Ariana DeBose. And you're like, yeah, right. I guess so. That's very exciting. You've also well.

[00:32:58] Let's acknowledge that someone's coming. Hail to the chief. Stomp, stomp, stomp. Resident Red Hulk. Let me check my glasses here. I'm used to Hulks being green, but this one's red. Finally, finally, we can stop talking about Red Hulk because we'll be able to see him. And vote for him. Yes. And also opening up, you know who's going to possibly kick Red Hulk's butt? The monkey? Paddington in Peru. Oh, sure. But can we look, Paddington in Peru, we're all obviously excited to eat some marmalade sandwiches with Paddington.

[00:33:28] Although I'm a little worried about how they've maintained with the long distance flight to Peru underneath a hat. What's awesome about all this is that there's lots of interesting different kinds of movies. This is what I like. In theaters that you can go see. And with Regal Unlimited, the whole point is you sign up and seeing three, four, five, six of those movies is easy and affordable. And I find that once, you know, you have the Regal Unlimited, right? You know, sort of the option of basically like, let me pop over my theater. I have three free hours. You do it more.

[00:33:57] That's what's nice about it. You do it more. You do it more. Go see the movies. Go see the movies. Sign up now in the Regal app. Yes. Or at the link in the description in our show notes. And use code BLANKCHECK to get 20% off your three-month subscription. And then you're going to be in the Crown Club. You're going to get rewards. You're going to build up points. You can get free popcorns and sodas and upgrades. 25% off candy on Tuesdays. 50% off popcorn. Discounted ticket. Go into the Regal Crown Club website.

[00:34:26] And as I said, it's a little deep. It's a little buried in here. There is a section where you can redeem your points for old promotional movie memorabilia like Red One Socks. Right. Follow the link in the show notes. Go to the Regal app. Click on the unlimited banner. And then follow the instructions to sign up and enter promo code BLANKCHECK when prompted to receive your discount. And look, I'm just going to say it again, David. Signing up for Regal Unlimited or maybe gifting a membership to a moviegoer in your life. Sure. Great way to support the show.

[00:34:54] This is a dream advertiser. Yes. A dream partner for us. We want to keep this going. We think it could benefit everybody. Especially the movies. I want to swivel back to your childhood. So 1980, you see Empire Strikes Back. You have this experience with a cliffhanger. 1981, Raiders of the Lost Ark comes out. So you're 14? Is that right? So I'm 13. 13. How?

[00:35:24] I'm 13, 14 years old. How aware are you of this coming down the pike? Like what's all in? Right. Yeah. That's the thing. How it was sold to us. And it's funny. When I was talking to people about doing this, a couple of people said, what could you possibly say about Raiders of the Lost Ark? Sure. That hasn't been said. This is the issue. We get into sometimes the challenge of these episodes. When we do the most totemic movies of all time. Like you're like, it is kind of impossible to overstate the impact of Raiders of the Lost

[00:35:51] Ark when you're like, oh, it was one of the most successful movies of all time. It launched one of the most enduring franchises in history. It is like key movie star text, key filmmaking text. It is like a movie that everyone is still kind of ripping off or trying to like chase. And then you're also like it was fucking nominated for best picture. Like it just kind of did everything. Yeah, everything right. Everything that could be. So here's what I came up.

[00:36:18] They go, what is there left to discuss with Raiders of the Lost Ark that hasn't been discussed? And I go, I honestly don't think I've heard a serious conversation about this movie post Fablemans, which to me completely changed my perspective on some of the elements of this movie and what he was doing and why he was doing it, including the fact that he lived with the monkey. He lived with the monk. I never in the 57 years I've been alive on this planet knew that young Steven Spielberg lived with this little monkey.

[00:36:48] My my kids are growing up with a little chihuahua. My wife has a chihuahua, our pandemic dog. And I and I I wonder which one of my kids will make art out of the out of the chihuahua like like Spielberg had to with the monkey. So it's just like so there's that. And also, like, I have a very deep memory of how we were sold Steven Spielberg of the time. And it was all, you know, keeping it light and keeping it, you know, based, you know,

[00:37:17] compared to Fablemans. But like, I remember my mom going, you know, Steven Spielberg gave his mother a Bloomingdale's card with no limit. Like he can go to Bloomingdale's by whatever she wants, whatever she wants. Right. If you Brian, if you like telling stories, this is what you need to aspire to be and then how you need to handle that level of success. So that was always like and I'm saying, well, I'm going to become a creator. So that would be no problem for me to accomplish that goal.

[00:37:46] But so so but it was so interesting that it was such a it was my mom really trying to share with me like some kind of information about this thing that I won't shut up about. Right. So she heard something. She shared it with me. But it did still with me. Oh, like the the mother relationship. And then you see it for real laid out later in his later work. And in Fablemans, you're like, oh, took him a long time to get there. Yeah.

[00:38:11] Well, and it's it took us a long time in our history to get around to the balance due of early Spielberg. Or I'm so fucking happy we waited to do it post Fablemans. Yeah. Because it does really make all of these movies make a little bit more sense or whatever. I mean, we're just interesting from different more angles. Now, when I watch a movie like this, which I've seen a number of times, you know, I'll just I feel like I talked about this a little bit when we did our Crystal Skull episode

[00:38:41] eight million years ago, an episode that wasn't controversial at all. Good movie. But like Indiana Jones was a weird blind spot for me. I was yeah, I do remember you talking about this. It's not your franchise in the way that say Star Wars. Well, it just wasn't. And like I had the baby version of what you're describing with Star Wars, which is I didn't see them until the special editions came out. So I had that thing of the movies being released one month apart and feeling like, oh, there's a kid at school who says he has a VHS of Empire Strikes Back. But that's cheating.

[00:39:09] I need to wait three weeks until Empire comes out in February, you know, and like people at school being like, you know, Darth Vader's their dad. Right. And I'm like, that's impossible. What the fuck are you talking about? But having this mini three month arc of needing to wait to see the next one. I just never seen Indiana Jones. And I feel like it was a movie that most kids I know were like shown when they were five. That was the thing that like parents just passed down to people very early. I feel like it was a thing I knew through osmosis.

[00:39:39] I saw eight thousand parodies of the boulder rolling. I knew what the theme song was. I could make jokes about Indiana Jones, but like I just never got around to watching them. And then when Crystal Skull was coming out, my roommate at the time, Spike, was like, how have you never seen these? Gave me his DVD box set. I watched all three of them, I think, in the week leading up to Crystal Skull. So a lot of my opinion of Crystal Skull is also like shifted by I didn't have decades of living with this thing in expectation before I saw the one that everyone got angry about.

[00:40:09] You know, like those four movies all were seen for the first time in the same week for me. I can't even imagine what that feels like. Exactly. Yeah. And I have in whatever it's been the 15 years since then, more 18, gone back to watch Raiders a lot. And every time I do, I try to sort of like remove layers of my awareness and try to get myself into the headspace of just watching this as a pure object. Right.

[00:40:36] You're just sitting in the theater, you know, Harrison Ford's in it, but that's all you know. And you just watch this extremely fun, rip roaring adventure. Right. The thing I cannot even imagine is for you being your age, your generation already invested in this shit, the mere news of, hey, Spielberg and Lucas are going to make a movie together must have been fucking mind blowing that these two guys are like, you know, neck and neck chasing each other.

[00:41:06] You know that they're friends. That's part of the mythology that these guys are buddies. They kind of come out of the same soup. They're two sides of like the same coin. You know, here's like the Beatles and the Rolling Stones inspiring each other. And then it's like they're they're doing they're unifying their powers. Here's like the mega project. And I remember and that was like how interesting is yes, he's the director of the films.

[00:41:29] And so but I remember it growing up as it's a it's a Steven Spielberg joint that Lucas is part of. Right. But when you read the transcripts, which is part of what I was excited to bring to George Lucas talk show, that you read the transcripts and it is shocking how much Lucas had this lockdown. Like you really have this figured out from the get go in in a way that's even stronger than the way he had

[00:41:59] Star Wars lockdown. Star Wars was always, you know, you know, building and building and building until it became what it was. Right. Including the scroll like everything was like stuck onto it as it went. But he really sat down with those guys and goes, here's what we're doing and had like major parts of it locked down. I love this transcript. For those who don't know online, you can find the literally the transcript and the recording of Spielberg, Lucas and Kasdan.

[00:42:27] And just working it out, just just, you know, doing a little mini writers room and figuring it out. And it is glorious for someone like me who always sat there and going, why is it so hard for me to figure out how to create things? Right. And then when you see the three masters in a room, also not figuring it out right away. I mean, my favorite moment in the transcript is when someone says, maybe Marion's the villain. And I'm like, oh, my God.

[00:42:57] But, you know, like like because you're sitting there going, that's not a bad story. Like, that's not a bad way to go with this. But, oh, my God, I'm so glad they didn't. And, oh, my God, I'm so glad they shared this with you. Like just the idea of the multiverse of madness that could have come out of that room is so brilliant to me. And I but I I just I just was so impressed with George Lucas in those transcripts. So you really get to see the magic that is him at full blast. Well, it's right.

[00:43:26] It's the whole thing about him that is so fascinating and maddening at the same time. Where you're like this guy who just like had this incredible flow state period and a weird lack of self-awareness where he was either like so right or so wrong. And there is like a pretty dramatic moment where the pendulum kind of swings. And it's so easy now.

[00:43:48] I feel like in a modern context, people sort of write him off and go like, oh, he's like a broken clock that was right twice a day, you know. But everyone else around him made really good decisions and people saved him from his worst instincts. And Raiders is like, as you said, this thing he basically brings to Spielberg and is like, I'm hiring you to direct this. Like this is a for hire job for you to execute my vision of this thing I've mapped out.

[00:44:16] And this is a movie that has like four primary authors in Spielberg, Lucas, Kasdan and Ford, where the movie doesn't work if you're missing any one of those four guys. But I do think they all in a lot of ways contribute equally to the soup of the thing, even if Lucas is primarily the first 25 percent. It's also I mean, good moment to crack open the dossier. But talk about this as a comeback movie.

[00:44:45] This is a movie that like largely stems out of two failures, which are like the myths of 1941 and Spielberg being like, have I fucked up? Combined with all his movies up until then had gone over budget, over schedule, were lauded, were successful. You know, he had the Jaws close encounters thing like as feathers in his cap. But the second 1941 bombs, it's like, well, now we can acknowledge that this guy is is not infallible.

[00:45:15] And maybe it's not worth putting up with his shit if sometimes he's going to make something like that. That costs us a lot of money is along with everything else. And then the other big thing is Spielberg desperately wanting to be the first American to direct a James Bond movie, a thing that keeps getting fucking rejected from doing. He's made two of the biggest movies of all time and they will not let him through the door. I like that rejection at this level hits him so hard that even decades later, he still brings it up.

[00:45:42] Like he's still kind of mad he gets directed James Bond. Right. That he was like, I mean, fucking Jaws. Like, what more do you want out of somebody? So the dossier, I am opening it. Raiders of the Lost Ark, Steven Spielberg. They are admirers before their friends, we should say. Right. Like George is a little older than Spielberg. Is that right? Or at least he's a little more. He's creatively further along than Spielberg. Right.

[00:46:06] Like George Lucas is already established by the time that Spielberg is emerging as a filmmaker. Spielberg. Well, Lucas is also part of Coppola's situation for a long time. Like there's all these stories of, yeah, Lucas is three years old. Okay. But the other interesting thing is that like Lucas goes to film school. Right. Like links up with all these people.

[00:46:30] Comes out with a better reputation faster in a certain way than Spielberg, who is the wonderkind who skips straight to a studio contract. Yes. But is not getting that sort of prestige around him. Whereas Lucas, it's like you have Coppola and everyone saying like, this guy's a genius.

[00:47:15] Yes. Which is, that's the Indiana Smith is the character he comes up with. No notes. Perfect name. And he does. I mean, his original, this is George Lucas's original conception does sound about right. Which is like college professor goes off on adventures. Also can be found at a nightclub with like 30s ladies on his arms. Right. He brings in Philip Kaufman, who is, well, where's Philip Kaufman at this point?

[00:47:41] He was pretty, again, already an established filmmaker to sort of flesh it out. Kaufman is like, eh, drop the nightclub and the ladies for now. Like you don't really need that. You more want this to be like this kind of like intellectual slash adventurer thing. Like he's a professor, but he's also fighting the Nazis. He's, you know, smart, but he also is finding like magic shit. Right. Because that's the thing about Indiana Jones. We're like, he's like this smart professional.

[00:48:08] He's like, yeah, that's that magic box from God. And you're like, what? And he's like, you know, who knows? Or maybe it's just a box. I don't know. But it might be like have like Jewish magic inside of it. Don't open it. That all these movies are like about the meeting place between like hard facts and science and history. And like inexplicable religious phenomena. So as Lucas is developing this, his other passion project, Star Wars, takes off.

[00:48:36] So how did that turn out? I don't know. I can't check right now. I think it did okay. Okay. But to the theme of your podcast, it does seem that Raiders of the Lost Ark is his blank check. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. A little bit. Right. Because, I mean, obviously Empire and Jedi, it's like, well, he now owns the rights. He gets to like turn this into like an industry and map out where Star Wars goes. But there's a certain extent of like they're not an obligation.

[00:49:06] But it's like, well, of course, I have to keep doing Star Wars. This feels like the second major new thing he is creating. Well, the other thing that happens right after Star Wars comes out and begins to conquer the world is that Steven Spielberg goes on vacation with George Lucas. Yes. They go to Hawaii. Spielberg is wrapping up on Close Encounters, which also comes out in 1977, of course. And Spielberg mentions offhandedly like a dream of mine is to make like a James Bond movie.

[00:49:35] And George Lucas is like, I have that beat. I have something better. Right. I have the I have the same basic idea, but better. And it's this Raiders of the Lost Ark idea. And as Spielberg says on hearing it, he said, I felt like I was eating a barrel of popcorn at a noon matinee. Like because it's basically just like you can do a James Bond movie, but with a more fun aesthetic, a more you aesthetic in a way. Right. Not this British spy. What is the American James Bond? Right. And it can be a globe trotting adventure. That's fun. Like, you know, and all that.

[00:50:05] Yeah. And Spielberg had been says he had called Cubby Broccoli after Jaws came out being like, hello, do you want to hire me? Like like begging him for Bond. And that's not how Broccoli did business. Right. Like he you know, he had his like three British guys who did the John Glenn and Guy Hamilton. Those guys like. Yeah. He's not going to hire this American wunderkind. And so he's not going to make James Bond. I feel like it's part of the fascinating mythology of this movie that like even.

[00:50:30] And I imagine this was the case with you, Brian, like the George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, like Hawaii beach conversations have taken on this mythical quality over time where there were all these kind of regular powwows. They would do it. These sort of like check ins at like the parallel moments in their career. There's the infamous story of before Close Encounters and Star Wars come out and they're both absolutely terrified about how their movies are going to do.

[00:50:59] And they consider making a deal to swap profit participation. Like each one thinks the other guy's movie is going to work. They're both like, oh, God. Yeah. Right. And the fascinating thing of you're just like it boggles the mind that there was space for both Star Wars and Close Encounters to exist at that level in the same year. It feels like a case where the audience would vote on which version of a sci-fi movie they wanted. And both of them working to that extent is insane. I am. I am.

[00:51:29] I believe Aaron Shorkin will one day write a movie about three vacations of Lucas and Spielberg. Oh, that actually different ages. That would be fun. And so Philip Kaufman nominally is the first choice to direct the movie because he had worked with Lucas on it at a certain point. But Philip Kaufman loses interest. So Lucas brings it back to Spielberg more officially. Are you interested? Yes, I am. And so then they look for a screenplay, a writer to actually write a full screenplay. They really just have like a story sketched out.

[00:51:57] And they read this script called Continental Divide that had been written by Larry Kasdan, who had only written another script called The Bodyguard. Yes. Which had not yet been made. Takes a while to get made. And Continental Divide is the one that ends up being the Belushi movie. Yes. Yeah. But they like these scripts. Yeah. So they like they think he has a Howard Hawksian sensibility. Very fun. And so they're just basically like, you know, will you turn this into a proper screenplay for us? It's wild that they kind of take a flyer on him.

[00:52:27] It's wild that he was so firmly the right choice when neither of those scripts seem to be obvious indicators. Right. Speak to a Raiders thing. Right. And then he obviously has his like a time in the Lucasfilm trenches. But then you look at what his career becomes once he goes off as his own director. And it does feel weird to be like, wait, right. Raiders was written by the guy who did Mumford. Sure. Or even Body Heat.

[00:52:54] Like you're like, did you pitch Spielberg Body Heat? Like, did that come up? Right. Yeah. Which was at the time for people to know the sexiest thing that ever been. It's a hot movie. It's one of Connor's favorite things to bring up, which is true. Well, no, that Lucas produced Body Heat, but had his name removed from it because he thought that people would be turned off of the movie being sexy with his name attached.

[00:53:24] It's like the Mel Brooks Elephant Man thing where it's like they'll think it's a comedy. He's like, if my name is on it, it will not be taken seriously as an erotic word. Right. It's fair. Wow. I did not know that one. That's a great one. That's fantastic. Lucas and Spielberg, they do fight a little bit. As Spielberg puts it, like George loves logic. And sometimes you'll get sort of swallowed up by the logic, right? Like trying to make a fun story. But George will back off when you are like, no, I want to do this and I'm going to go shoot my movie.

[00:53:53] He says George is a bit like Disney. He does put a vision out there that's so attractive. You'd be a fool or a slave to your own ego if you denied it just because it didn't come from you. Interesting. Their biggest dispute was Tote, you know, the evil German guy, Ronald Lacey's character. Spielberg wanted to have a prosthetic hand that was like a machine gun and a flamethrower. And they have like concept art that they had built up with this. And George Lucas was like, that's the wrong genre. Like that's sci-fi. Right.

[00:54:22] Like I don't care how cool that sounds. Right. Like that's fucking James Bond shit. Yeah. That's too much. Like we're not having a robot armed Nazi. Right. Right. You know, and in my opinion, George Lucas, as metal as that sounds like George Lucas completely correct. Like these guys are all the scarier because they're just three fucking guys in hats who are like, maybe Hitler would like this coffin. But it is fascinating when the James Bond franchise is so based on technology, right?

[00:54:49] That the cornerstone of the thing is that Q is showing you the 10 new objects and what the car can do and all of that, that they are making this movie where they're like, technology is not the thing, but also magic exists. No, like Star Wars, like, like changed James Bond. They went to outer space. Right. James Bond went to the moon because of Star Wars. So he raped that moon. Yeah. Yeah. Yes, he did. So, uh, Indiana Smith, uh, there's a Steve McQueen movie called Nevada Smith.

[00:55:20] So Spielberg's like, what do we do about that? And they're like, Indiana Jones. So there you go. That's how that happened. Uh, and yes, there is the famous transcript, uh, that Brian was referencing, uh, that does have the infamous moment where they reference like how young should Marion have been when they had this tryst. Yes. That when you read it now, you're like a little skeebed out by. Um, but they are, uh, they are sort of playing with how like shocking or transgressive can

[00:55:49] they make it? Uh, the movie is very vague about it. It has the kind of like, I was old. I was old enough. You know, like, but like it does not, uh, throw down any numbers. No, I mean, I think, uh, an incredibly wise decision, uh, I think it's like a perfect kind of, um, Spielberg. Uh, what, what are, at this point in time, his judgment, 1941 aside is sort of so impeccable

[00:56:18] about like, what is the information you need to give the audience? And what do they not need to be concerned with? Like he just knows how to portion out the exact right amount of visual information, narrative information, backstory and whatever. If, if that, if numbers are left out only because he thought it was like excess fat, it is a decision that has greatly helped the legacy of the movie. Definitely. Long term. So Kasdan, you know, he writes the script, takes six months. He said he basically never checked in with them.

[00:56:48] Just went off and did it himself. Steven's working on 1941. George is working on Empire Strikes Back. Uh, they give him a researcher named Debbie Fine who brings him all this research about like Hitler and the occult and Egypt at the time and all that stuff. Uh, he delivers the script and George is like, let's take lunch. And they sit down and George is like, do you want to write Empire Strikes Back? I'm like working on this sequel. And Larry Kasdan's like, do you want to read this script first? And he was like, uh, I'll read it, but you have the job. I'll call you tomorrow if I hate this script.

[00:57:19] And, uh, you know, he didn't have to write it. But like Lucas had basically become his own studio at this point. Like this is the weird thing of he's insulating these guys from like studio notes. And, and perhaps there are early signs of things that will plague later Lucas Productions in this attitude where it's like, guess what? Like Larry Kasdan was the right horse to bet on. Yes. And he had a feeling about him and he was right. It might be a little insane to just be like, I'm not reading this draft. I'm hiring you to write another thing. Yeah.

[00:57:48] To write the Empire Strikes Back. Like once again, like a thing where it's like you weren't even in with the, the last Star Wars movie, but I don't care. I want you to write this. Some stuff that got cut though. There was a, a somewhat of a love attract, a love triangle between Marion and Bellic and Indy. They got rid of that. Just a lot of the stuff they cut was just like, this thing needs to move. Like, you know, just, just pare it down, pare it down. They go to, uh, now, so now they have this package.

[00:58:17] Luke is producing. Spielberg's directing. Kasdan wrote it. Frank Marshall is also producing it. Right. And, uh, they take it to Hollywood essentially. And they're like, let's make the greatest deal in the history of Hollywood. Like, I think they, they truly were like, I guess 1941 hadn't come out yet too. So they are like big swinging dicks. Right. But that's the big difference. Also, if, if 1941's got like a, like a tail to it, but at the time, even though it was a

[00:58:43] big loud thing that wasn't close encounters, but it didn't fail. It was like on cable forever. It wasn't. Yes. Like it just sat on show time. There were certain movies that just lived on show time and became part of our consciousness. Not all good. Like, no, of course not. Right. It's a, it's a somewhat of a long tail cult thing. I mean, yes, it failed at the lofty expectations of a Steven Spielberg follow up.

[00:59:09] There's this infamous story about in, I guess the early two thousands when Eisner was overseeing Michael Eisner, who's also involved in this film. But Eisner was overseeing the Pixar rollout of the five film deal that he had made around Toy Story. Right. And the movies were getting bigger and bigger and more and more lauded. And other Disney execs were like, we need to come up with a plan for how we continue

[00:59:38] our relationship with Pixar because our contract with them is going to run out and their value is going up so much. They're going to have all the negotiating leverage. And Eisner said to them, they're going to have a flop. And when they have a flop, they'll come back to us and we hold the cards and we pounce. And then the next movie that came out was Finding Nemo. Right. Was the highest grossing animated film of all time. And they were like, you fucked up. Right. You could have had this. Yeah. They bet on the wrong way. You could have had it.

[01:00:06] And it's one of the things that leads to Eisner's downfall. Right. I think within the industry, there was a similar thing going on with Spielberg where like Eisner was scared at that moment with Pixar. They are never going to be able to receive any oversight because they've done so well without our interference up till this point that they're not scared of us. And I think Spielberg's success was so meteoric just on like Jaws and Close Encounters back

[01:00:36] to back that I think the industry probably was excited for 1941 to not work because it's like maybe this guy's come down to earth. Maybe he can be controlled now. But the fact that he has already set up this deal with Lucas, that Lucas is the one who basically is putting himself in the position to have oversight over him. And that on top of that, he himself now has this chip on his shoulder of like, I want to prove them wrong. And become responsible.

[01:01:06] The deal they're offering to these studios, to be clear, is like we own the movie. George owns the negative. You get action for distributing it like you get some money. Universal says no. Fox and Disney and Warner Brothers say no. Paramount is like, OK, even though this is going to need to make like $60 million domestic before we even see any money, we'll take the risk. Obviously, it was a good gamble by them. But this is right. This is before the days of like, well, no, we need to own the intellectual property because

[01:01:35] the whole point is we can then create whole universes around the television, video games, action figures and all that. But it's it's the legendary Lucas deal where he gives up his salary and his points as a director on Star Wars to retain the control and the merch. And like the deal that, you know, people say like the last time that will ever fucking happen. The studios made that mistake one time, but they gave Lucas the power to be able to just

[01:02:03] demand that as his terms from here on out. So, yeah, Eisner is the guy, Paramount, who makes it happen. Just FYI. And they get 60 40 grosses until the grosses reach $35 million. And then it goes to 50 50. All merchandising and franchise rights remain with George Lucas. Sequels are planned by the plan from the jump, but, you know, they have approval and all that.

[01:02:30] Harrison Ford is not the first choice to play Indiana Jones as I feel like Tom Selleck has often listed as the famous first choice that like passed on it. And I think it's like that is kind of true. He was committed to a TV to Magnum P. I. And they definitely like screen tested him and they liked that he looked like Jim Steranko, the famous comic book illustrator, had done some concept art that kind of looked like

[01:02:57] he certainly looks like a classic square jawed pulp hero. Right. Even a little more than Harrison Ford, who's obviously maybe the hottest man who ever lived. Harrison Ford's so handsome. Yes. But have you seen these, this concept art? Has he seen the concept art? I'm just making sure. Did I just show you the cup for Christ? Anyway. So, yes, but here. So Jim Steranko, for those who don't know, is kind of like one of our Orson Welles in comics. The greatest.

[01:03:25] He was, at the time, miles ahead of what everything that was going on in the mainstream comics. And most famous for like, kind of like creating the Nick Fury that people would refer to as Nick Fury up until Samuel L. Jackson. Like the cigar choppin. But when you see his Nick Fury stuff, like his, like, it feels like it's from 80 years in the future. Right. You're like, I can't believe this is from the 60s or whenever it was, you know, like it feels so modern.

[01:03:54] But like Nick Fury, his Nick Fury looks like Tom Selleck, right? Like Tom Selleck looks like the sort of like archetypical handsome action star of comics of the 60s and 70s and 80s in just kind of the like impossible jawline, cheekbones, chin. Yeah.

[01:04:15] And so the look that what you refer to as Indiana Jones is right there, right up front in the in these storyboards and concept art pieces, as Steranko did. Sometimes he is very, very credited with this. Sometimes not in a weird way. Like I'm always interested in because one of my favorite things about Steven Spielberg that will repeat for sure during this whole run that you're doing now is how generous he is.

[01:04:43] About giving people credit for really big things in Steven Spielberg's career. Like, oh, the boulder was this person's idea. Like he'll never he'll never take credit for something that was someone else's idea, which it was we know in Hollywood is is is unicorn behavior. And I and certainly something that I even like like I will aspire to that. Like I looked at that as that's someone I want to grow up to be like someone who who who always can give credit where credit is due.

[01:05:11] Beyond that, I feel like he often will frame it as here was my bad first idea. And thank God this other person came in with the intervention. Like he's in talking about this sort of like open source way of understanding how these things are made through the way he tells you about their making.

[01:05:29] He's explaining to you what the bad draft was and crediting the person who had the spark of inspiration, which this is a this is a deeply collaborative movie. Right. It is the Selleck thing. You know, there's the infamous kind of like American Graffiti, Carrie shared casting sessions or no is Carrie and Star Wars. Carrie. Yeah, sure. I think. Yeah. But then American Graffiti has its own casting session. This sort of like generation.

[01:05:59] Am I wrong about this, Brian? That thought was Carrie and American Graffiti begat Star Wars. You're right. Like that was OK. Yes, there's there's all that like pooled casting pot, though, of all the kind of young actors in the 70s who like read for all of these movies, kept on going in. Lucas had this like very specific kind of bugbear of like, I don't want to reuse actors. He that's part. Yeah, he's the one who's like Harrison in another thing.

[01:06:26] Like, let's not like, you know, they also Peter Coyote and Tim Matheson are two names. They like. Yes. Well, when you watch the the screen test, you get you get you got your you got your Magnum PI. And it feels like they did give it to him. But when you watch the screen test, even you're like. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's it's Harrison Ford. But but the one that's closest in the screen test is Tim Matheson looks like.

[01:06:51] Well, if I was seriously looking at that footage and I had to make a choice that Tim Matheson is interesting, but not Harrison Ford. I just it's just it's just not there. And also in that Sean Young of it. Well, yes. But the the kind of like American Graffiti, Animal House, all these movies that are kind of these incubators of like, here's the next wave of people who's going to pop and who's going to be a movie star.

[01:07:17] Harrison Ford infamously had to fight really hard to get Lucas to consider him from Star Wars because he had found all these young actors for American Graffiti and then was like, I don't want to repeat the same cast. I need new faces. That's why he's doing this like pulled casting session and trying to find new people. And Harrison Ford's the reader. And finally, he's like, I guess I can't deny this fucking guy. But I think going into Raiders, he feels even more so like I can't do this a third time.

[01:07:44] Well, he had famously Ford refused to sign a three picture deal for to play Han Solo, which is why he kind of has them over a barrel when they're doing the other movies where he's like, please kill me off. And like, no, no, no. You know, so George is like, he's going to do that again. Harrison Ford reads the script to Raiders of the Lost Ark and immediately signs a three picture deal. So he's like very, very on board in a way that I guess he's more enthusiastic.

[01:08:08] Uh, and he, uh, you know, Spielberg is like the initial concept of this character was like two-fisted lover cad hellion. Right. You know, like Harrison takes him out of that mold a little bit, like makes him feel a little like more like one foot in each world. Right. Like, you know, a little, a little more, uh, academic, but also a little more like gritty and grounded.

[01:08:34] I mean, how to describe what Harrison Ford is doing when like Han Solo is like kind of the ultimate finesse character. And you obviously have your big moments where like his guard comes down. Well, you realize the whole magic of Han Solo is that he's full of shit. Exactly. In Star Wars. Right. I, I do have a hot take here. Go ahead. If you will join me on this. And if not, that's okay.

[01:08:56] But I, um, having grown up with this, uh, part of my, uh, perspective of Harrison Ford is, is, is, uh, uh, uh, altered a little bit by the, um, existence of a movie called The Frisco Kid. Uh-huh. Uh, yes. Did you know that? Yep. Uh-huh. So in, in Cleveland where I grew up. Which he makes, it comes out in between Star Wars and Empire, right? Yes. Like, or maybe, yeah, it's like 79. It's one of his like first follow up. What do I do now that I'm a movie star? Yes. Right. Yeah.

[01:09:26] Yes. It's a, it's a Western comedy starring, uh, a very, very into it Gene Wilder playing a, a very loud rabbi. Um, and, um, and Harrison Ford playing a gunslinger of, of, of Harrison Ford energy. And, um, and these, it's, it's basically a road picture where this, um, where Han Solo is taking a rabbi across the, across the, uh, thing.

[01:09:52] And eventually they get to, uh, meet each other's cultures and kind of like figure out stuff. This was the most Jewish movie I had ever seen in my life at this age. And in Cleveland, it played in a theater, in the Jewish neighborhood, in the center Mayfield theater in Cleveland, Ohio, every Saturday for years. Oh wow. And it played like fucking Rocky horror picture show.

[01:10:17] I mean, I play like the, after Shabbos, the Jewish would come and watch Han Solo give us representation. And, uh, and then of course people would whisper, you know, he's Jewish. Like this is now made famous by Harrison Ford, a quarter Jewish, not too shabby. Yeah. Yeah. Made famous by Adam Sandler's Hanukkah song. But like, but as Jews, we would, we, we, we had, we'd call them. We, at least, at least the Jews I knew had declared him. Don't forget, don't you forget, he is Jewish, he's Jewish.

[01:10:48] So watching, watching Raiders in particular, and it codes very Jewish. Like Indiana Jones codes, Han Solo doesn't code Jewish, but Indiana Jones absolutely does code as a Jewish action hero. Um, and Marion also codes Jewish. And for me at the time, I, I, I, I could feel it. I get like, Oh, what? Like there, there is Spielberg's bringing it to the, bringing it right to the table.

[01:11:16] And that was part of also how we got to know him as a, as a little Jewish boy done right. Right. Like, yeah. But the whole aspect of this movie being this like Nazi revenge movie, right? It goes beyond just being, uh, you know, an adventure film in which the Nazis are easy villains because we all know who to root for in that situation. Or at least hope that one would know who to root for in that situation.

[01:11:43] Uh, is heightened by it being all about like basically the intervention of God. And this sort of like course correction that possibly arguably creates an alternate timeline. You know, I have a very strong memory of like when the move or we're seeing the movie and then the, the arc is in the, you know, in the basement of the submarine not being attended to.

[01:12:06] And then, uh, God kind of like blocks out the, uh, the Nazi symbol with kind of an amorphous shape that kind of looks like a mug and dove it. It's got like six stars, like almost. And, and my mom like elbowed me and went mug and dove it. And I'm like, it's not like, Oh my God. Like, it's like, it was like, Oh my God is, is God just got like, it's everything about it was like, are we good? Like there's a 10 commandments sequel. Like it was just everything about it was strange. And I didn't know what was happening.

[01:12:36] Like my, but that's, what's so fascinating about this coming fairly formed from Lucas first is that he's like a hyper wasp. And then he like assigns Larry Kasdan and Spielberg to be the ones who actually realized this thing. And through some combination of like conscious effort and just their own mentality and their history and their background, all this stuff gets coded into it.

[01:13:00] But like Lucas is the one who's designing this around the, the arc of the covenant and the tablets and all of that. Right. Yeah. Well, let me, let me ask you having watched all four of them in a weekend. Yeah. Did any of this click with you? No, absolutely not. I like when I was watching this for the first time, I remember here's like a very distinctive memory. I have watching the first one. This was in the worst apartment I ever lived in where my bedroom was the living room where the TV was.

[01:13:27] And I slept on two mattresses behind a couch and I watched the movie and I came out and I knocked on Spike's bedroom and he said, so what do you think? And I went, yeah, it's a lot of fun. And he was like a lot of fun. What are you talking about? It's the best movie ever made. And I was like, no, it's like a fun movie. And then I, I don't like Temple of Doom very much. I'm excited to rewatch it. Yeah, but it's a, it's a fun movie. I have always struggled with it. Yeah. And like Last Crusade has always been the one that is my favorite. Yeah, it's a very griffy. It's a very griffy movie.

[01:13:57] And I feel like it's a very Buster Keating movie in particular. There was something that clicked for me in watching that one of like, oh, that's the huge part of the DNA of these movies is silent comedy and not just the adventure serials. That one makes brings it to the forefront. So that's when I sort of really locked in. And I saw Crystal Skull and was like, half of that works for me. Half of it doesn't. It doesn't feel sacrilegious because I haven't lived with this my whole life. I mean, right. I mean, for me, I've always, I always had locked into the three movies before Crystal Skull existed.

[01:14:26] You know, they're all religious in a different way. Like this is about Jewish mysticism. Temple of Doom is about Hindu mysticism. Last Crusade is about Christian, you know, sort of folk right mysticism. And it's sort of annoying that Crystal Skull doesn't have any of that. Crystal Skull is doing the thing where it's like, well, now it's the 50s. So we're, what was the genre of the 50s is, you know, is more like sci-fi. We're going to do aliens. And I just wish it had picked Elaine, but we can talk. We devote a whole episode to it.

[01:14:55] Yeah, I think that movie is fine. But yes, the Jewish, the weird Jewish mystic undertones of Raiders of the Lost Ark are fun to me because I think this movie is dark and scary and weird in a way that I love. Temple of Doom, you know, presses on that pedal a little too hard. And I kind of enjoy how nasty it is, but it's a mean spirited movie in a way this isn't. But this movie is sort of haunted, like and scary and it's fun.

[01:15:23] But it's also like, yeah, it's kind of terrifying to consider what's going on. There was also a lightning in a bottle thing with this movie. I mean, let's dig into actually like talking about the movie itself as it plays out. David, people like to say that one should stop and smell the roses. Today I'm doing something different.

[01:15:47] I'm imploring our listeners to stop and listen to the ad read because the ad read is going to sell you flowers that you can then smell. Valentine's Day is coming up. I mean, I was going to bring it up. You're a married man. Sure. For me, there's only one place I trust. 1-800-Flowers.com. You got to show your wife that you love her and that you care. Each year I'm ordering stunning high quality bouquets from 1-800-Flowers that my wife absolutely loves.

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[01:16:43] I trust you when you say that. Yeah, this is all that needs to be said. Ding dong. And who's that at the door? We should check quickly. Right? I mean, I know we're almost, we're getting through this ad read. Okay, but while you check the door, I will tell you that I got a great bouquet from 1-800-Flowers. It arrived right away. I'm just going to walk to the door quickly. It was really nice. Well, I didn't get roses. I got a sort of, you know, multiple calls. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hand outraged. I was in a really, really nice container. Yes? Who can plant a rose bud?

[01:17:13] My God, Dan. Black petunias too. It's been a while. How are you? Dan Candyman can. Been a dog's age. It has. It's been a long time since you guys have invited me to come over. No one invited you. I felt like it. I felt it in the air. My ears were burning. Wow, Dan. Candyman, you look like crap. It's been a rough couple years. Why? What's going on, Dan? I come from the Candyman family, of course. Of the Montreal Candymans.

[01:17:42] And we're a flower family by trade. The name does tend to confuse people, along with me singing a song that's a modified version of the Candyman, the Willy Wonka song. And it always confused people. So I'm actually here today selling candy. Oh, okay. Well, I'll buy some candy for you. To raise money for my high school's basketball team. Okay, cool. How much? You're not going to ask any questions about that? What are M&Ns? Well, you know. These are just gray shells. There's not a color in sight. Look, I'll admit. Yes, I'm selling candy.

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[01:18:39] like some, you know, local sort of bodega flowers you might buy or whatever. Comes with a little packet. A little packet to sort of spruce them up and keep them alive. Yeah. Oh, gosh. Because this is a stressful time of year for me. You know Valentine's Day is really rough on Dan Candyman. I don't. Because I'm part of a very large polycule. I have to get a lot of flowers. I hate all your lore. I think it's interesting, and people are going to be excited. Well, you better get on it because bouquets are selling fast. Lock in your order today. And of course, if you do order a dozen roses,

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[01:19:35] hand-dyed 24 stems in a purple vase with wind chime included? I'm looking at it. Okay, they do have it. Great. What a great product. Would you like to buy 1M? Sure. Fine. Give me an M. There you go. Thanks. That'll be $25. Wait a second. I have to raise money! 1-800-Flowers.com slash check. David? Yes?

[01:20:04] If I know one thing about you... Okay. ...it's that you're tired of figuring out what's for dinner every night after night, especially on those busy weekdays. When you walk into the studio every day and you go, I'm so tired, I go, don't even finish the sentence. I know the one root cause of that problem. Busy weekdays. I just said it. Busy weekdays. No, I'm saying it's you trying to decide what to make for dinner night after night. Busy weekdays! How do you make my weekdays less busy? These issues are linked.

[01:20:33] I go, how are the twins sleeping? You go, great. No problem there. I'm sleeping through the night. Yes. I have to feed my family. You have more mouths to feed now. And that is true. Although they just eat. They don't eat lovely meals. But I have to make a lovely meal. And I get home and my time limit is, my time window is limited. And it is hard to just kind of, you know, find a magic recipe in the fridge every single day. What a compelling personal experience this is. Yeah.

[01:21:02] I mean, if you really want to get into it, it's basically like it's 530, right? Dinner's got to kind of be on the table because everyone's going to bed around seven. Right. Podcasting has ended 15 minutes before that. That is why anyone who listens to the show might notice that I'm a little. But look, it's easy to find time to eat well because you can get 50 wholesome, hassle-free meals to choose from every week to get delivered right to your door. These HelloFresh ready-made meals that go from fridge to fork. Yeah. In just three minutes. One, two, three minutes.

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[01:23:02] You know, you start with one of the most infamous opening sequences of all time. That is, you're just dropped right into the action of the most like thrilling series of incidents imaginable as you watch this guy basically do his like side gig, which is being the coolest movie hero in history, you know, and avoiding slings and arrows. And as someone who was there, I can tell you that the thrill ride that is the first 10,

[01:23:28] 15 minutes of the movie is overwhelming as, as experiencing it for the first time. It is incredible. These are people pulling out tricks. We have not seen him do before stuff he would master and everything, but all of this is just working, working, working. And by the time he goes, I hate snakes. You are just your breath. It's just gone. Yeah. In a way that so few movies can achieve. It's, it's an incredible experience.

[01:23:57] I want to unpack it more fully, but like the, the back to back of that and then him in the university. Right. And to this point of my experience watching them for the first time, this is a movie that I've now like rewatched maybe every two years because I'm really like, I should study this more as a thing. Not that I need to deepen my appreciation, but I'm like, there's a, there's an element of ketchup to a certain ketchup entertainment, of course, our finest distributor.

[01:24:24] But even though I like prefer last crusade, I almost never rewatch it. Cause I'm like, I know I think that movie's fun, but there's something in the codex of this movie that is so like, uh, distributed for last crusade. It's just my sensibility. I think, I mean, but we'll see how the rewatch goes. No, it's deeply fast. I make no judgment. I just, yeah, I wouldn't say it was better by, by any argument.

[01:24:50] Yeah, but it's, I think a lot of it's the comedy of it, but the, the immediate like thrill ride you're saying followed by the university and just the feeling of, oh, this is just this guy's life. What we just saw wasn't the craziest thing that's ever happened to him. That's another adventure. And then he just flies back and teaches a class, right? There's a lightning in a bottle thing in this movie that the other movies can't totally recapture in the same way. And I think Temple of Doom being a prequel makes this even more of an issue to your point,

[01:25:21] which is all the weird spooky mysticism of it is really fascinating when you're like, this is the first time this guy is challenged in this way, which isn't to say it's the greatest challenge of his life, but it's like the greatest ideological challenge of his life, which is I don't believe in this shit. No. Yeah. Yeah. Right, right, right. He is kind of a Mulder and Scully together. Like, he's like, look, I believe that this object may be the quote unquote lost ark or

[01:25:49] whatever, but I'm not sure I believe that that means it's going to have magic inside of it. I just sort of, you know. I do scary shit for a living. Yeah, right. I'm constantly encountering weird shit. It is all explainable. Yeah. Yeah. There's a certain like power this movie has to being the one film that is him having to realize that there's a lot about the world he doesn't understand and a tremendous amount of skill and how much that is not a wildly overstated sort of plot to the movie.

[01:26:18] It is kind of just like a minor thread running the whole time. Yes, to everything you're saying. And also it's the game of expectation. Like you see the poster, you know who Han Solo is, you know who Harrison Ford is, you know the credits you're obsessing over that you're looking at the top trading cards ahead of the movie's release, trying to figure out what you think the movie is. And I can't express enough. Having these collector cards is really all you have.

[01:26:43] And Star Wars has made them like statements of fact and looks inside that you're only going to get from these top trading cards. So once the Raiders ones hit, they're like they're like the encyclopedia of everything you're going to know. And then the movie comes and you're 10 minutes in and expectations met, exceeded, and now completely surprising you. Oh, not who you thought he was. He is a nerdy professor.

[01:27:08] And also I think that the reason that none of us tripped on the Marion's age thing when we saw it in the theater was because that scene when the student blinks and has written love you on his eyes and he reacts maturely like what like like no no skeevy reaction to it. So he's not a skeevy piece of shit. Like he's not like there's a there was an excuse there for him to like wink or do something gross.

[01:27:38] And he did not. That is not who he is. So when Marion says I was a child, you just I did not think she was an actual child. I thought this is no right. She's saying, you know, I was too young and he's you know, you're older than me, which he is. But like, yeah, no, but I remember when Twitter hit that a few years ago with wait, what? And I was like, oh, yeah, that does bring badly. But I never thought it the whole time. It's a fascinating thing of like that line is a vestige of clearly the development of being

[01:28:07] like, what if she was literally a child? And it plays in the context of the finished movie more like I was young, you know, like the way we talk about like I was like my brain wasn't fully formed yet. You know, these things where there like was a power dynamic, but they're also close enough in age, the two actors in a way where you're just like, OK, so they were like on opposite sides of a narrow developmental line, maybe. But you're right.

[01:28:35] Like all every one of those characterization choices is so impactful. It's the other we've talked about before how much Harrison Ford loves Indiana Jones, right? He's always felt more enthusiastic about the sort of legacy and importance of the character versus Han Solo, where he's kind of been in and out on loving Han Solo. Yeah. Yeah. And it makes sense because Harrison. How would I put this?

[01:29:03] He talks so much about like how he approaches acting like a craftsman that he's not very like precious about it, even though I think he has a tremendous amount of technique and people who work with him are like he cares a lot more about it than he wants to let on. He tries to play like gruff. I don't give a shit. Harrison Ford. But he's like a very thoughtful, intentional person. Sort of red hulky. Right.

[01:29:28] And, you know, he has talked about how he had his period of brief frustration, I think, post Star Wars and Indiana Jones, where he is like, great, now I can do anything. I can do Mosquito Coast and I can do whatever. And very quickly it was like audiences want to see you be Harrison Ford. Yes. You better not stray too much from the now very established star persona you have. Right. There's his inside the actor studio is incredible. And James Lipton kind of like pokes him on that.

[01:29:55] And he says like to the effect of like, what am I going to do? Like cry about the fact that I'm Harrison Ford. I like try doing other stuff. I very quickly realized like audiences don't love seeing me in that kind of movie or that kind of movie starring me. It doesn't appeal to either audience. I like have peace with where I am. He'll make these jokes about like I get paid money to fall down. Well, I get it right. There's that part of it. That's kind of blood. Right.

[01:30:20] But when he talks about the craftsman aspect of it, he's like, my job is to like fulfill the needs is to like look at the story and go like what needs to be accomplished in this shot, in this moment, in this line. He thinks about it not in a technical way, but really tied to narrative. You know, it's not about like what is in my heart that I need to get out of my system or what like, you know, sort of prism of the human psychology am I trying to like capture

[01:30:48] here as much as he gets down to the brass tacks of like this is storytelling. It's visual storytelling. What is conveyed by me like tilting my head three degrees, you know, raising my eyebrows here. It is this in that sense. This franchise is so perfectly built for him because it is this like episodic serialized

[01:31:11] trying to game out how this guy is making decisions in real time and narrowly just surviving. It is like a structure for a movie and a series that is perfectly suited to the way he thinks as an actor, which is what do I need to do to get the audience to lock into this moment? And what are we trying to convey here? And in that sense, Spielberg is such a good match for him.

[01:31:36] And it remains so weird that they never work together outside of these movies. Well, Harrison Ford made a lot of weird choices. Uh, I mean, like, I feel like the choices he makes that are like, uh, making a good movie within his star persona are like Witness, Working Girl, and then the Jack Ryan movies, things like that, where it's like, he's doing a slightly different thing in The Fugitive. Slightly different thing. He's still Harrison Ford. He's the Harrison Ford we know and love. These movies are giant hits.

[01:32:04] And then there's stuff like Mosquito Coast or Presumed Innocent or Frantic or whatever, where it's like, what if I showed you a darker side? And the audience is usually like, eh, we don't really want to see that. Like, and you watch those movies later and you're like, there's a lot that's interesting about this. And he's really good at darker side stuff, in my opinion. Well, and to close the loop on a thing we set up fucking 90 minutes ago, but like, what lies beneath is the first time he weaponizes people don't expect me to be that dark. Right? Yeah.

[01:32:33] And that movie is a big hit and feels like it gets a lot of juice from like, holy shit, you've never seen Harrison Ford like this. And then right after that movie is when you start the era of him feeling like a grump. Yeah. Is he tired? Is he bored? Is he too grumpy? Are the movies written around his grumpiness? Is his persona now that he's like at odds with everything? And I think you're right, Brian, that's not until Force Awakens where he kind of owns being elder statesman.

[01:33:00] There's a glint in his eye with Force Awakens that there just isn't with so many movies. And I think like we were living through that era every time there was a new big Harrison Ford movie being like, is the magic going to be back this time? Because there's just shit like the opening of this movie where you have this like beautifully deliberately designed series of shots, the build of the sort of mystery of what's going on, even just down to the fucking the Paramount logo transition. Right.

[01:33:29] Like this movie just like sets you on its course so beautifully. And this sense of like, we're not hiding this guy in shadows, but why are you not showing me his face when he's Harrison Ford? And it's not because there's some twist coming. It's because Spielberg knows he has one chance to make a first impression. And like Harrison Ford knows how to step exactly correctly into the right at the right timing at the right angle and look like $20 million.

[01:33:57] And having having experienced that walk into the light, it was yes, we know it's Harrison Ford. But like by by the time he walked into light, it's Indiana Jones. It really is a perfectly crafted sequence where you're kind of like shedding Han Solo, which is an enormous like thing over this character is that he's he's literally played the most iconic character of our lifetime already. And the reason you're hiding his face is because you need to be introduced to this character

[01:34:27] through action before you're thinking of him primarily as Harrison Ford. Everyone knows what they bought a ticket for. Right. Yeah. His name is on the poster. His face is on the poster. I'm seeing the Harrison Ford movie. But he's like forcing you to engage with Indiana Jones as an abstract idea before he then has Harrison Ford step into the light. And it's like, and this is who he is now. And you're thinking about this character and not Han Solo.

[01:34:51] And then you just have this like perfect fucking Rube Goldberg machine sequence of just like the most classical Spielberg, like introduction of information in ways that feel charming and effortless, but stick in your brain so that he's setting up the perfect payoffs to come later. The way you build the entrance into the temple versus like what the escape is going to be of repeating the things like the golf and needing to swing over and the arrows and all that shit.

[01:35:19] It's like just incredible set of payoff shit. And because it's so, yeah, Melina, and because it's so thrillingly dark and scary and spiders and shadows and, you know, literally, you know, wet skulls. Yeah. Um, we are not like at this age that I'm, that I'm at, like, this is like, I, I'm, I'm feeling very like challenged and seen like, oh, you're not talking down to me.

[01:35:46] And then I would learn as I got older, that was kind of Stan Lee's magic too. It's like, I'm not going to talk down yet. Yeah. Come, you come here. And that was just, you feel respected almost as an audience member, like, like, oh, and so all the way through temple of doom, like they keep like pushing it and pushing and pushing it in, in, in the, in the frame they're at. So when, when people were complaining about temple of doom being too dark, I was like, I, what? That's what this is. Yeah. This is what this is. Yeah. I like the opening sequence to this film.

[01:36:16] I think it's quite fun. Yeah. I think it's really, really, uh, thrilling. Yeah. It's so fucking good. This is his first performance ever, but there's like, it's, he's already got the character actor eyes. Yeah. Yeah. Director eyes. Yeah. But if you watch the behind the scenes, you can't believe he made another movie because they literally put him in the set and dumped a bunch of spiders. Just tortured him. And then famously the spiders wouldn't move. They were just sitting on it.

[01:36:43] So they go, what you got to do is you got to put a female spider on there and all the spiders would start getting all excited. And that's what you see when you see the, the spider meat market. Yeah. Yeah. So, and, and you're sitting in, he's never made a movie before. Like, I don't know. I just feels like the worst Hollywood experience to start with. Right. Right. Energy and such like skillful control of the dial of like when he's playing scared, when he's playing cocky. You just are like, oh, maybe he's actually not going to screw Indy over. And then maybe he does.

[01:37:13] He's like, yeah, I could see him screwing. But also you're like, is this guy competent enough that Indy's in trouble that he's going to get away with it? Right. Is he overstepping? It's a lot of, right. What you're saying, like, you know, like a lot of stuff being communicated through basically nothing and you get it all. Like who are these people and what are they doing? You just understand everything without really anyone having to say much. And, you know, Harrison Ford, he's a very confident onscreen presence. Again, it's a struggle to talk about movies like this.

[01:37:44] My passion for this movie and my frustration with the comic book adaptation was so high that I spent the year of 1983 on my Passover vacation. I got a VHS copy of the movie and I sat on my couch with a big thing of like chocolate pudding, the cheapest junk food I could find at the time.

[01:38:12] And I sat there and I drew every single edited shot of the movie because I was going to do the real adaptation of Raiders of the Lost Ark. I was going to send it to Marvel and then they were going to stop publishing what they were publishing and they were going to stop the presses and publish mine. All right. Now, I can't I can't express to you enough how much I am not good. And I'm a little child and I and I literally every time there's an edit, I pause the movie

[01:38:42] and draw what's on screen. I drew 45 pages of comic book art. I never got out of the jungle. I don't think I even got into the cave because it's just like, yeah, it's just Indiana Jones walking through the jungle. Right. So, yeah, but that's how formative it was to me. Do you have this art somewhere? Yes, I absolutely do. Belongs in a museum. It absolutely doesn't. You you saying you're talking about the things like the trading cards and and the comics

[01:39:11] adaptation like them taking this movie and splitting it only into two issues. You're like this opening sequence is an entire issue. Things like the trading cards. You're like it would take 100 sequential trading cards to get through the beats of just the opening. It is like an entire movie. It's a mini movie in and of itself. It has me like how many shots are in the first 10 fucking minutes that are just like indelible history of cinema.

[01:39:41] But I'm saying the pure number of shots. No, no, no. You're right. You're right. It's both. It's that every shot is like a deliberate like diamond cut, perfect, evocative, communicative, exciting, thrilling, kind of meaningful image with like these perfectly timed edits. You know, you watch a big action sequence in a movie today. You might have as many shots and as many cuts, but it's just 20 meaningless kind of setups of like multiple cameras filming the action from multiple angles.

[01:40:10] And then it's sort of edited in whatever mishmash way. And you're like, no, these are like 60 deliberate different setups that all are like telling you something very specific from where the camera is relative to the action and where the action is and the screen direction and all of this fucking shit. It is like a sequence. The whole movie is like this. But this sequence in particular is like every single shot is moving the story forward in like a very deliberate way and in a way you could not have done in the previous shot.

[01:40:39] Even sometimes when it feels like the shift of angle is marginal, when the action plays out, you're like, that's why the camera had to be here rather than there. He's good at that stuff. He's old, pretty fucking good at it. I he has the best innate brain for that maybe of anyone who's ever lived. Yes, he does. The one influence I was not aware of at the time, but I came aware of like more recently was how important Chuck Jones was to Steven Spielberg at the time.

[01:41:05] And it's it's clearly like all over 1941 in a real that is a Chuck Jones cartoon trying to come to life. Whereas this one has the influence of Chuck Jones's mousetrap like storytelling being produced towards towards a narrative that that deserves it. It's quite an interesting kind of magic trick on its own that that that would be amongst all the John Ford and other influences.

[01:41:34] There's like a Chuck Jones bit of business every time he's kind of setting up his shots or or laying out how he's going to make his action. Who's Chuck Jones? Chuck Jones. Yeah. Sorry. I'm just asking. Oh, of course. I'm just asking, though, again, as on behalf of the audience who may not. Yes, he's kind of. I appreciate that, Ben. And also, if there's a book that came out recently called Spielberg, the first 10 years and in it, they they dive a little harder than I'd ever seen about what like how Spielberg and Chuck Jones are just hanging out together.

[01:42:04] They were having lunch. I feel like. Right. Spielberg was one of the people who was really working hard to elevate Chuck Jones in the public's eye to like this is living legend, like master of the form for the last couple decades of his life. The other thing and speaking to what you were saying, Griffin, is like he's Spielberg proudly says they shot this film in 73 days, which is, you know, very, very short shooting schedule for a movie this epic.

[01:42:31] They would shoot just three or four takes, like not like 40 takes because he storyboarded, you know, very precisely, which is a Spielberg trademark. But really, he's like really for this one, I would I you know, they were the fallbacks in my previous movies. But for this movie, it was like really to stay on schedule and to like, you know, stay to exactly what I had. It was an exercise in self-discipline for him. Like he needed to prove to himself that he could do it.

[01:43:01] So it's kind of a live action animated vibe, right? Like it's like we've already drawn what's supposed to happen. Now, there are things, of course, that change, such as the famous fight with the swordsman, which just turns into Indy shooting him versus like the whip versus sword duel. Because everyone had diarrhea. Because everyone had, you know, these are the stories where it's like they became, you know, IMDb lore that everybody recites. But this perfect combination of things being so perfectly worked out in advance and then inspiration hitting and things changing and evolving on the fly.

[01:43:31] I mean, Chuck Jones Ben, I feel like, is kind of credited as being like the real father of Bugs Bunny, but also was like the main architect of the Roadrunner Wile E. Coyote shorts, which I feel like have a lot of influence on this. And the philosophy that's talked about a lot about with the animation, but in particular, all the like termite terrorists, Looney Tunes animators was like the importance of anticipation

[01:43:57] and how to visually sort of indicate to the audience what the character thinks is going to happen, what they're thinking, what they're trying to do so that you can subvert the expectation and have the comedy of what goes wrong. You know, Wile E. Coyote running off the cliff, staying suspended in the air, looking down, recognizing he's standing in the air, and then he like falls, you know, things like that where it's like that's being conveyed wordlessly.

[01:44:24] That's why the like Wile E. Coyote thing, I feel like is very has a big influence on this where so often, despite the fact that Indiana Jones has like 40 of the most quotable lines in film history in this one movie, many of his biggest sequences, he's kind of moving not talking wordlessly. Yeah, absolutely. It needs to play out in his face. It needs to play out in his action. It's the beauty of even just like the power of the sandbag thing, right? Of just this moment of him like relishing the idol, walking towards it, the golden glow

[01:44:54] on his face, taking out the sandbag, holding the two in his hand, weighing it, pouring a little bit out. And you're like, that's a kind of complicated idea that is being conveyed to us in like 15 seconds. Okay, this is like a pressure trap. It's a weight trap. He needs to substitute it with something of equal weight. He does it. He thinks he gets away. It's wrong. The thing starts to slide down. The ground shakes. It's all such beautiful nonsense.

[01:45:21] Yes, but that's like that's where I'm very jealous of you, Brian, is I'm just like, I probably knew Indiana Jones as the guy who runs away from the boulder. That was how it was introduced to me. I cannot imagine sitting in the fucking theater and being like, already this movie's done so much. The temple idol pedestal starts to go down. You're like, what's going to go wrong now? No one could have fucking anticipated it was the biggest boulder you've ever seen. Perfectly round boulder.

[01:45:50] A thing that must have felt like impossible that this could even be depicted on camera. And like these things are so cliche now. It's a part of film history about like even like snakes. I hate them like screaming laughter in the theater. Like the first time that joke is told the first time you see him lose his shit like like lucid. He loses his cool because he's kept his shit together through all this insane shit for like 10 minutes. And then now he's annoyed by one snake. Right, right.

[01:46:19] Yeah, it's the delight is through the roof. It's incredible to even, you know, we're feeling it 50 years later. You can still like feel the embers of the joke. Hey, Ben, I'm a big fan of Ben and his taste. Ben, what was your relationship? Have you seen this before? That's a true good guess. Bringing Ben in. Oh, yeah. No, no. I was really curious what your relationship to all of this is. I am a big fan of Indiana Jones. Have you always been since childhood?

[01:46:49] Yep. Yeah, for sure. I mean, it was, you know, it was something I've, I feel like I'd catch middle of the day on the weekend playing on cable TV. I had to watch it, you know? Also, I played the video games, the computer games. Yes. Yeah. They're so good. In particular. I love that game. Also, he's dusty. He dresses well. He goes into pants. He's finding bones. He's getting stealing treasures.

[01:47:17] He's just like, he's such an amalgamation of all these characteristics in this incredible way. Yeah. He's like kind of a bad boy, but he's smart. He gets down and dirty. He's also an egghead. Right. Like, that's the weird, I just can't get over it. Every time I rewatch this. You love the cut to the universe. Yeah. That's your thing. You're just like, this is when the movie should fall apart. You almost feel like the legacy of this movie should be greatest opening sequence of all time. And then they fuck it up.

[01:47:44] So it's literally the greatest exposition scene in the history of exposition scenes. It's an incredible scene. But it's such an insane, like change of pitch that it's wild that it keeps the momentum. But I would say for me, origin wise, this is like major bone core. Oh, sure. Yes. There's just bones all over this franchise. You're right. It's a bone heavy world.

[01:48:12] And he uses it as a torch. It's a comedic device when, you know, a bunch of rattling bones come out of nowhere. I just, I love that. That's such a fun element. It's just so fun to consider this like academic being like, well, I'm going to go find this Peruvian idol. Where is it? It's in this video game level cave, you know, where it's like you have to do eight traps and dodge the spikes and like, you know, solve the puzzle and all that.

[01:48:39] And as a kid watching this movie, I'm just like, yeah, the people will build these. Of course. Of course. This is part of ancient lore. But also like we were born. Because I've been playing Super Mario my whole life. Yes. You know, like. But also we were born into a post Indiana Jones world where you're like, oh, I get it. He's like an Indiana Jones type, you know, true versus like this movie creating a thing that is like when you break it down into the elements of even how Lucas pitched it to him. It's wild that it was so fully formed because it is an odd idea.

[01:49:10] And it's odd that it's not like. There's there's such an obvious instinct, I would imagine, to make it into a Clark Kent Superman thing that you're like, oh, Professor Jones is the cover, is his boring sort of like front for his real like adventuring. Right. Or. But instead, it's. He's a nervous professor who gets thrown into these situations and he's in over his head and he doesn't like exploring.

[01:49:38] No, instead it's like, you know, U.S., you know, intelligence comes to him and is like, look, Hitler wants the Ark of the Covenant. We figure you're the guy to figure that one out. Like, you know, like he's he's a known adventurer. But to your point about being the greatest exposition in cinematic history, right? The fact that you watch him spin that blackboard and start to break down and chalk the history, giving them the fucking backstory, right?

[01:50:06] Like just dropping his bona fides and his theories. And he gets his rocks off as much doing that as he does successfully outrunning a boulder. They are both equally exciting to him. He plays them differently. And so he goes, all right, to move the story along. And then he goes to Nepal in search of really moving along. No, I am not. We should mention what? Belloc. No, he's we haven't met him yet. Excuse me. He's the one. Oh, oh, Belloc. Sorry. Sorry. Not. I thought you meant Salaf. Right now.

[01:50:36] We'll get to Salaf. Belloc's there. Yeah. We'll get back to Belloc. Brian's laughing. I mean, if you want. He's happy that he got to see. If you want to tell you who they wanted for the part of Belloc. Sure. Spielberg wanted Jacques Dutronc, who's a French actor. He really wanted this character. That guy's French. Well, let me tell you. Do you think this guy looks French to you? Jacques Dutronc. Don't. I'm seeing here a second choice for the role was Croc Monsieur.

[01:51:07] Croissant du Franch. A French musician. These are real names. These were beloved actors at the time. But I guess he had played Van Gogh. Coco Van. Happy Le Pew. Anyway, he's busy. He was busy smoking a cigarette. Right. Spielberg really wanted the character to be played by a Frenchman. Yes. Paul Freeman enters late. They've already thought about Giancarlo Giannini, which is a fun idea. Yeah. And Spielberg just liked his eyes.

[01:51:36] Said he has the champagne villain from a film noir vibe. Yeah. Right? Like, it's like, this isn't a tough guy exactly. He's like a smart, mean guy. And like, whatever. Good, good. I also like the villain that's handsome in his own way. Like, he's equally handsome. Different kind of handsome. If that's your type. Yeah. He could be a leading man in a different movie. I also, it's funny. I always go like, it's wild that he's still alive. Paul Freeman. Because he plays so much older in my mind watching this movie than he actually was at the time.

[01:52:04] I think Ford is two years older than him. They're roughly the same age. Right. And it feels like Belloc is like 15 years older than Indy. He does feel a little bit patronizing. I guess that's why. Right. Which is something he's successfully sung as an actor. I think it's also the fact that Belloc's a little more hands off. Right. And Belloc is, it's a perfect villain because he's like, yeah, he's smart, like Indy's smart. But he sells to the highest bidder. Clearly. He has no scrupulous. He's unscrupulous. Yes. That's very true.

[01:52:32] And he, like you say, like doesn't get his hands dirty like Indy does. Indy's got, you know, dirt under his fingers. But is, that's what's so frustrating is Indiana Jones can go through this whole fucking adventure, roll out by the skin of his teeth, hat intact. Right. Right. And be like, oh my God, what a thrilling set piece. And Belloc is just standing there and he's like, I'll take that. Thank you. Right. That Belloc just is able to stay one step ahead of him while avoiding the trials and tribulations that Indy had to go through. He's also wearing the uniform of an explorer, Belloc. Yes.

[01:53:01] But he's not dirty at all. Not dirty. Right. Right. Like it's like clearly he's like. He looks good. An immaculate like white suit. Yes. His cream. It's like he's trying too hard to fit the part. Whereas Indy is just fashion wise. I mean, one of the best looks of all time. It's really, it's really interesting how the villains. It's so simple too. Like I feel like the villains of every Indy movie are not merely famous actors until I guess you get to like Cate Blanchett.

[01:53:28] By the time we're doing the new ones where it's like, well, everyone wants to be. When they announced that Cate Blanchett was playing, was, was going to be in Crystal Skull. Right. I was like, well, she must be playing the new love interest. Right. Because it feels weird for a franchise that never has out and out movie stars as well. Like even Mads Mikkelsen feels too well known in that type. Well, I, God, I love Mads Mikkelsen. I do too. But his lazy casting is a villain these days. But right, like Amherst, Puri and then like Last Crusade, who would you, you know, who's

[01:53:58] the biggest villain? It's like Alice in Duty and. No, but it's, why am I forgetting his name now? Uh, uh, your favorite. Uh, from Empire. I do love him. Julian Glover. Julian Glover is the main villain of that movie. These are character actor guys. Yeah, it's a guy who Lucas liked was like, you're a good stuff shirt. Right, right. Right. And that's what Paul Freeman is. And he's, he's excellent. Like you're. But it's also part of the Indiana Jones structure where it's like you have these secondary, like third villains. You have like, you know, boss level villains.

[01:54:26] There's an overarching guy who you're fighting against in sort of like almost a conceptual battle. Um, but the actual action sequences don't happen with that person, which is, I feel like another mistake modern movies tend to make is like they want the Belloc to also be the best fighter in the world. And you're like, no, that's two separate guys. Belloc sends someone else out to punch Indy.

[01:54:53] And we, and, and, and this timeframe of James Bond, Jaws is Richard Keel, right? That's his, that's his doctor's name is Jaws. And that is an iconic villain, uh, that, that goes like that is referenced in every, you know, variety show of the time. That's also, that's also part of the, the Lucas and Spielberg is that there's always these weird, like, uh, you know, variety hours that would do sketches about Star Wars or Indiana

[01:55:22] Jones, uh, and, and James Bond. And so Richard Keel would show up as Jaws. So when you're watching Raiders and the, the, the big, the, the, the burly Nazis are, they're boxing outside the, right outside the plane. Uh, that, that's a Jaws scene. Like that's, that's a flat out James Bond Jaws scene. Right. But it's like, I mean, I, it's always the example I throw out, but like, that's a clear thing they lifted from James Bond very wisely. Right. Yes.

[01:55:48] Of like, there's a guy who they're trying to track down, who is the man in the lair, who is going to monologue. The guy who'll talk to them and wear a suit and pour, you know, serve them dinner. And that guy will give like an A-class performance. And then you're going to have some weird looking guys with gimmicks who create like different sort of like battle puzzles for Indiana Jones to get through versus I always think of Quantum of Solace where at the end, James Bond has to fight Mathieu Almerique. And I'm like, well, this fight is over.

[01:56:17] Well, there is a big general guy that he fights. Well, no, it's over. Yeah. He fights him. We'll look, we'll do Quantum of Solace one day. Very interesting movie. I defend it. I will. I will, Brian. Thank you. Do you like Quantum of Solace or are you anti-Quantum of Solace? I am such a big Casino Royale fan that it's hard to wrap my head fully around Quantum, but it is a part of Casino Royale. So it's hard to let it go as well. Yes. It's like one of those. Right. Nasty little. I don't hate it.

[01:56:45] But, you know, much like nothing's Force Awakens except for Force Awakens. Same thing with Casino Royale. I think of it as the Temple of Doom to Casino Royale's Raiders of the Lost Ark in like sort of complimentary. Okay. I'd bump on them in similar ways for similar reasons. But okay. So then they go to meet Marion. We have to talk about Marion Ravenwood. Played by Karen Allen. Yes. Obviously, they're looking for Arthur Ravenwood. What the fuck his name is? Yeah. What's the dad's name?

[01:57:14] Abner Ravenwood. Abner Ravenwood. Right. But he's dead. And his daughter is running the bar in his stead in Nepal. And she's got this medallion. And, you know, off we go. But what do we think of Karen Allen? This is an incredible performance of the highest order. It doesn't get enough credit to this day. It just. Even though the franchise eventually acknowledged like, yeah, she was always the one with these later movies. Right. Yes. We were kind of foolish. She still doesn't get enough credit. For trying to do anything else. Right. Right. Yeah.

[01:57:44] And I get the that's that's the James Bond lesson they they did wrong, I think, which is he gets a new he gets a new lady friend every thing. And also a lot of people feel like, you know, Marion Ravenwood is one of the great characters of cinema and then followed by Willie Scott, who isn't. I would know. Screaming and yelling, just screaming at the top of her lungs the whole movie, which is

[01:58:11] not anywhere near as interesting as what Marion brings to the table. Well, it's like they wanted to make the anti Marion to have fun with the flip side of it. But the anti Marion means you're doing the opposite of what works. Exactly. Marion's a good character. Right. So the anti. That was a good bad switch. And they made one bad choice. Yeah. So watching the making of that, I sent you that aired on television. There was two takeaways that were amazing.

[01:58:37] A number one that she basically says, like, I think she's one of the first people to say she says as nicely as you could possibly say. But she's basically saying, I'm doing everything he's doing, but in heels and backwards. Right. Right. And she absolutely is. And also that she would come to Spielberg with bigger ideas that he would take very seriously, including. I don't think I knew until recently that the scene between her and Bella, you know, drinking

[01:59:06] each other under the table was improv. They went off to the side, improv the scene, put it together and and gave it to Spielberg. Like, here's what we worked out because I want to wear this dress and like I want to do this for the rest of the movie. And they they went off and improv and came back and he accepted it and changed the course of the movie in a positive way. So she has authored her character in a way that few actors, particularly in a movie like this get to do.

[01:59:35] And that's amazing. It's a thing with Spielberg. I find so fascinating is most filmmakers who are this precise in their craft have a tendency to go towards the sort of like Hitchcock. Like you are a model. I am telling you what to do. You have to hit, especially because it's just like with Spielberg, it's like if you step an inch off, the shot's not going to work. Right. The timing needs to be like hair precise.

[02:00:04] And yet it feels like he's very collaborative. It never feels like he is boxing his actors in. There's this weird dance between the visual language feeling so rigid in a certain sense. And yet the performance is feeling very fluid and organic in between. And even like Marion's introduction, this long one of the drinking contest in the bar in

[02:00:31] Nepal, where the camera is just kind of slowly moving back and forth between the two of them. It's really unshowy. Obviously, the unconscious effect of it is knowing that you're watching this in real time without cuts, that you're seeing these shots being taken, even though it's probably fucking water or whatever. Right. But it's like such a perfect wordless, like drinking this guy under the table, walking off, kicking everyone out of the bar and immediately being like she's not even like tipsy. Right.

[02:00:59] And she's also I mean, she's a tiny little firecracker. So this is the other part of this character is that it feels like her first fight with Indiana Jones is also like, how dare you did this to me? And then you fucking walk out of my life and then you come back like nothing happened. And you want my fucking help on one of your stupid fucking adventures. You and my dad. Right. There is this whole feeling of this woman who is like, yeah, look, I'm this like cool

[02:01:27] badass lady who like beats tough guys in drinking contests and runs a bar and doesn't take any guff. It's like not by choice. It's an affectation. I was basically deprived of having a normal child. Right. I was I was raised this way. I mean, I was raised this way. My like first romance was a guy who was my father's protege who was trying to be my dad and pulled me even deeper into this shit. To give you some Karen Allen news, please. News? No, you got dossier stuff, you know, background.

[02:01:57] She Spielberg had noticed her in Animal House where she's Peter. We all did. Right. She really stood out in a great way as you're better than all of this. Yeah. Like she he was like she's like a Carol Lombard. She's like an Irene Dunn, like one of these sort of like 30s like heroines with like a big chip on her shoulder. Right. Natural fit. Karen Allen says some of the people who tested that she heard about Deborah Winger, Sean Young, as previously mentioned, Barbara Hershey. She Karen Allen auditioned with John Shea, Lex Luthor himself from the 90s.

[02:02:27] Lois and Clark. Yeah. And he was in Mutant X. Remember John Shea? Remember John Shea? Yeah. And then she did a screen test with Tim Matheson. And it was always the bar. It was always the bar. Like that was the that's what she's doing. And she said she just loved the character, reminded her again of all those firecracker, you know, broads from the 30s and 40s. Right. And a character that she felt had kind of vanished from movies. Right. Like like that's an old kind of female lead. Like in the 50s and 60s, that kind of character had gone away.

[02:02:56] I guess you have a Catherine Hepburn. Yeah. Catherine. The very Catherine Hepburn. Yeah. She plays the sadness of the character. Like it's the thing I think that causes people to like get up in arms and like cancel Indy. No, I was going to say when people complain about fucking like Mary Sue characters. Oh, sure. When they push back on this idea of like, oh, so now I'm supposed to believe that this woman who's smaller than everyone is tougher and a better fighter and smarter and funnier and

[02:03:25] prettier and all this sort of stuff. I think a lot of it is like people trying to recapture this character. Right. And Karen Allen correctly, I think, figures out how to dramatize all of her behavior being a bit of a defensive posture and like learned survival instincts. Rather than it feeling like, I don't know, just a show.

[02:03:52] You know, she says she went to Spielberg and said, I have a whole history for this character. I think I was in this romance with Indy when she was 16 years old. Like she also is doing this stuff. And Spielberg apparently looked at her and was like, that's an entirely different movie. We're not doing that. Like, like, it's clearly like Lucas and her are both kind of like, what if there's this twisted backstory? Spielberg's like, I'm making an adventure movie. It doesn't matter. Like, stop it. It's under the hood. It's a little bit under the hood. It's a perfect amount of spice, though. Yes.

[02:04:22] Karen Allen's exactly what he needs. Right. Her ultimate take is like, I think she had a crush on him. Like, you know, maybe there was a flirtation or whatever when she was like essentially a late teenager. I don't think it was just some major romance. Like that's she thinks that's like the movie sort of take on Marion and Indy, not something like more darker. But there's like this version of it's obviously far less tragic. Right.

[02:04:46] But like I think about the end of True Grit where like the poignancy of that story is like, oh, this girl kind of never gets over this. Right. Like she's this tough, flinty little girl and everyone thinks it's kind of cute and funny. And she goes on this wild adventure. Right. It's clear that she's very tough to interact with because she's such a tough, flinty woman. Right. With one arm.

[02:05:05] And Marion's got like a version of that where you're like, how many fucking adventures was she dragged along to between these two men in her life who were such like important figures in her development. But if you want to see Spielberg direct the scene in the bar, it's in the in the in the dock. I put on my social media because it's an incredible bit of watching him direct. Just the wonder of her putting the shot glasses down and what it's in him getting the crowd to do what they need to do.

[02:05:34] And like it reacts accordingly. That was another wonderful direction. I was looking at Drew number two, a film that we both love. Have you seen Brian? I have not seen it, but I will. It's very good. Clint Eastwood famous for doing maybe half a take. One and a half takes. Right. Is him having a long day. Right. A thing I noticed watching this movie that I want to be clear, I like a tremendous amount. But now Clint Eastwood filming digitally. It's a little brighter. You can see everything.

[02:06:01] I kept in multiple sequences noticing how bad the background actors were. And it is a thing that I'm not putting on the background actors. No, but it's the problem of these Clint movies. Yes. These late Clint movies where it's like people really had to come have to come correct because that doesn't take very long. And I think the principal cast of this entire movie of juror is doing that. But like background actors are a thing that are hard to dial in because it's like a complicated machinery. They haven't read the fucking script. They're showing up. A first ID is like, so basically what's going on in this scene?

[02:06:31] They're wearing costumes that they got five minutes ago. It's hard to get everyone synchronized on the same page. That fucking drinking contest where there's like 10 people over each of their shoulders. And you can tell it's a combination of like stunt guys, character actors, and people who seem like non-professional actors. And all of them are immaculate. And there's no editing wiggle room. This whole thing has to play out in one shot.

[02:06:57] When the camera pans over from one to the other, the people in the background need to be doing the right thing. And I like rewound it five times. And I was like, no one's doing too much and no one's doing too little. There isn't anyone who looks checked out or distracted, but there's also the opposite of people being like, yeah, Marion, go Marion. And making like huge faces. And this whole movie is like that. And that's the shit that's like astonishing for me is he's just able to get everything in the frame correct.

[02:07:26] You know, and then even down to like the Indiana Jones silhouette, you know, appearing on the wall after Marion kicks everyone out of the bar. I feel like the story with that is that because the shadow would actually be going in the opposite direction. Logically. Sure, but it doesn't. Okay, they're messing with. That he's like walking backwards. He's starting closer to her backlit and then moving further away. Okay, sure.

[02:07:54] Because if you get closer and closer to a shadow, your shadow gets smaller. Yes, right. Right. Or the opposite way. Well, it depends on where the lights. Yeah, yeah, whatever. But it's like that's a moment where Spielberg has this idea of this clear, like impactful, iconic shot. A lot of filmmakers would get so caught up with trying to capture that image that the Karen Allen performance part of it would be secondary.

[02:08:19] But that's the most important part is how beautifully she plays that moment of dropping the glasses and immediately being kind of like astonished, emotionally overwhelmed, furious. And then going up to him and slapping him in the face. It's like, here's the whole dynamic. It's true. It's all you need. Yeah. You're over there right away. And he never really gets it with any other character in the sequels. Yeah, the romantic. Well, I think Willie Scott doesn't work. And Allison Doody is kind of like a misdirect. Yeah. Allison Doody's. No, I think she's good.

[02:08:48] But I think that character is like a kind of thing. Wrong footing. And I think the thing that Last Crusade gets right is that like Indiana Jones needs a sparring partner. They just make it his dad instead of a love interest because I think they know they're not going to beat Marion on the third one. It's not worth trying a third woman. And a winning thing for Crystal Skull for me is when she comes back into it, she comes in as clearly this woman has never had a break.

[02:09:18] And as now has a glorious agent of chaos. She is. She is. We. And to get to the Jewish coding again, I feel with Marion as well. But there is in Crystal Skull. She definitely has that Jewish mother energy of get in the car. We're leaving. Like this is like and I just adore it tremendously. And there's a joy of her performance in Crystal Skull. Like she is deeply happy to be back and deeply happy to revisit this character at this age.

[02:09:47] And it's just she's shining with it. It's just it just makes the movie a lot of fun. I feel like we adore her. Animal House was a movie I was shown way too young for how overprotected my parents were. My dad basically like at like maybe six showed it to me as if it was Talmudic. It was like, you must understand this. Um, so she like loomed very large in my childhood of I feel like one of my first onscreen crushes.

[02:10:14] And as you said, I think generationally, especially for people who were alive at that time, that character, like even though she's not in that much of the movie, she is just like kind of so captivating. And there is just some sort of like inner life and sort of like there is a sense of self she has that is very fixed.

[02:10:32] And her like weird balance of like, uh, how much bullshit she will tolerate versus when she puts her foot down, which is the stuff that they're like really weaponizing very well in this film. You know, the Willie Scott problem is like Indiana Jones can't have a sidekick who doesn't want to be in the movie. And they try this with Mutt and Wombat as well, which is like he needs someone who is equal, but has a different thought process on how they should be handling things.

[02:11:00] They both need to be trying to drive the story, but with different approaches. And Marian's just the perfect example of that. We're like and it's just structurally very beautifully built about when she falls out of the movie and when she comes back, when he thinks she's dead, when he finds her in Belloc's tent, but leaves her there. The sort of like anytime she's not on screen, you're going, where's Marian? When's Marian coming back? By the way, opening weekend, 13 years old, Marian dies. Totally believed it. Oh, my God, they killed her. I feel like I will.

[02:11:29] Yeah, totally fell for it. Also, when you watch the documentaries, which I rewatched everything in preparation for this, Spielberg is so head over heels in love with Kate Capshaw as he should be in the making of that. It is distracting them. It is 100 percent. He literally the end of that documentary, it goes, Indiana Jones didn't get the girl. I did. He literally looks in the camera and says those words. So that's where his head is at when this movie is being made. So, Marian and Indy go to Cairo.

[02:12:00] They meet Sala. It's something you probably know about Sala. We have your introduction of Toad, who I will say... Oh, in the marriage. Yeah, who rocks. Is my favorite character. Of course it is. He feels... Ideologically. I like his... Ronald Lacey, in this movie especially, just looks like a puppet to me. It looks like they made him. Now, obviously, maybe that's partly because his face melts at the end in this way that... Like, you're like, yeah, he was always a puppet. They melted him in the end. He was created by Aardman. He is a plasticine man. It's just... There's...

[02:12:29] He's so good in every scene. Right. But he always... You're just kind of like, this is like a fake person. There's something uncanny about it. There's an alien in his head working the levers. I find it very captivating. Spielberg infamously wanted Klaus Kinski and couldn't get him to agree. That would completely have unbalanced this movie. Could you imagine? Might be fun. I mean, beyond like, this sounds like a production that didn't have the room for error to allow a Klaus Kinski into the ecosystem. Right. The damage he would have wrought behind the scenes.

[02:12:58] Everyone's pooping their guts out already. But I'm also like, his performance would have been very over-cranked, I imagine. That would have been fun in its own way. But there's something about Ronald Lacey kind of like never tipping over. But instead of the documentary airing on CBS on primetime, it where they aired a con. Yes. Yes. He... Spielberg said, you know, I thought he had Pierre-Laurie vibes, which I think is right. And just like kind of perfect weird look. And, you know, the three guys who get melted at the end, right?

[02:13:28] It is this perfect triumvirative villainy of like, you know, Belloc, this sort of cool erudite. Right. It's not even ideology for him. He's really just in it for the money, right? Then the big... It's lack of ideology. The big statuesque Nazi guy. Right. You're just like, can't wait just to watch this. And then the weird little creep Nazi guy who's like, I'm reading maps. Right. I want Hitler to have arc power. And seems to maybe have some weird psychosexual thing going on. Yeah.

[02:13:53] But much like a lot of other areas of the movie, it's done just the right amount, not really like delved into. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, totally. We meet him. But yeah, okay. We go to Cairo Sala. You know who was supposed to play Sala, right? Danny DeVito. Danny DeVito. He was supposed to basically be like a cantina creature from Star Wars, right? Like this fun little guy. And DeVito drops out late. I'm not sure why.

[02:14:22] And because we kind of get to see him play the character in Romancing the Stone. It's weird to like, like, we can see it. I still can't see it. Like, I'm a huge Danny DeVito fan, a huge fan and grew up with him my whole life. And I cannot see that. It's another thing that feels like it would unbalance the movie. I think so. I don't think it would work. I don't think the movie benefits from Sala being funnier.

[02:14:47] I'm sure if Danny DeVito were in this movie, every single second on screen would be funny. But does that help the film holistically, which is the sort of balance thing that Spielberg has such good instincts for at this point in time? I think especially after 1941 where he is like, maybe I don't have the handle on comedy I thought I did. Maybe I really need to, like, be deliberate about this. It's just so funny that, like, in the same way that it's weird that Paul Freeman plays Belloc, whose thing is, like, hoity-toity Frenchman.

[02:15:16] You cast John Rhys-Davies as Sala. Well, this is the thing. They send him the script and John Rhys-Davies is like, I am not a 5'2 Egyptian guy. Right. What are you thinking here? And Spielberg is basically like, I loved you in Shogun. He plays, you know, the drunk Portuguese guy in Shogun. Then Nestor Carbonell played him in that new version beautifully. I want you to do something like that mixed with, like, Falstaff or whatever. And John Rhys-Davies is like, well, of course I can do that.

[02:15:42] Which I think it's just like, even if that it doesn't make sense as casting on paper, Spielberg understands what that character needs to accomplish. Which is, exposition sounds pretty fucking good coming out of his mouth. Right? Like, just the actual register of his voice. This sort of, like, classically trained. He can make anything sound like poetry. Absolutely.

[02:16:08] And he needs to be this sort of, like, high-impact support with this sense of joy and this sort of, like, devilish, you know, sort of, like, mischievous quality. But also, it's like, he needs to be able to relay the three lines that explain what's going to happen for the next ten minutes of the movie and keep you interested. Right. Yeah, and from the time he's there helping, every joke lands. Every line read is perfect.

[02:16:35] In fact, when I was trying to imagine how you were going to open this episode, I thought you were, I literally thought it was podcast. Very dangerous. You go first, is where I thought you were going. I probably would have done an even worse job with that impression. His voice is just astonishing. It's incredible. It's incredible in dial of destiny as well. Yes. It hasn't lost a beat. And it's another thing that Temple of Doom is missing is Sala. Mm-hmm. But yeah, we meet some. We brushed over Brody entirely. We brushed over Brody. Yeah.

[02:17:05] You're right, because Brody's there from the beginning, and he's so good. Yeah. Um, and... Denzelman Elliott was nominated for Best Supporting Actor at the BAFTAs. Right. He... That's probably partly a, you know, the Brits love this guy kind of thing. I was just looking at this. Denzelman Elliott won three consecutive Supporting Actor BAFTAs. Right. So there you go. After this. Okay. I think he maybe had one nomination before this. He wins for Trading Places. Wow. Yeah.

[02:17:34] And then he wins for two other movies, British movies I didn't even know of. Um, okay. Let me see. Den, Holm, Elliott, BAFTAs. Well, just while you're looking it up, if I can be professorial for a second, there's some things in this screenplay that are just undeniably perfect. And one of them is the fact that Den, Holm, Elliott, like, the only time we're ever in Indiana Jones' house for 25 years is this scene where he comes over and goes, hey, don't do this.

[02:18:03] Just, this is, this is, this is everything wrong, everything bad. I'm getting the creeps. And, and, and then you get to see Indiana Jones just blow him off. And it's one of a series of scenes where people keep pulling him aside and we, the audience are the only person that also knows that everyone has warned him. Don't do this. Yes. The good guys, the bad guys, everyone's saying, don't go down this road and he can't help himself, which I found it's an incredible bit of business. So that's following that great exposition scene.

[02:18:32] We're not only are we getting all the information we need from the, for the movie, but we're getting Indiana Jones's perception of it and his take on it and his relationship to it. And, and that's what's often missing from exposition scenes in, in any kind of storytelling is, okay, we need this information. Of course, please. But what's your hot take on it? Why you, why, why am I hearing this from you? And what, and what, what are you not telling me? Or what are you, what are you blowing off? And all of that is just exceptional writing.

[02:19:02] Characterization, getting lost in exposition, which is what leads to scenes that feel like homework where you're like, okay, and when does the movie start versus having the perspective in the exposition of the character reacting to what they're finding out. And it's telling you things about them that are going to come in helpful later in your processing of the movie. Because I mean, Brody, it's like, okay, here's this weird, like guy who finances his expeditions clearly has this kind of like boyish glee at the idea that not only are they acquiring

[02:19:31] these objects and like protecting them in the right context where they should belong, putting them in a museum, whatever. Right. But also that he kind of loves hearing Indiana Jones report back and tell him the crazy shit he got up to. He never wants to do that. He loves that that's part of the equation. He's not about to fly to Peru and whatever. But you have like this really beautiful, very quick sort of like three scene arc of Brody being excited to hear what his expedition was like.

[02:19:59] Oh, no, Bellic took it from you at the last second. That's a bummer. Right. And the only friend Indiana Jones has that could really appreciate all that went into this is his friend Brody. Who he can really share this with. Then you have like Porkins and his partner show up. Right. Here's a new potential assignment. You're watching Brody process the information as well at the same time. And then, as you said, followed by him visiting Indiana Jones at home and being like, okay, but seriously, don't do this. Jack Porkins. Also, you can pack a gun.

[02:20:28] Back in those days, you couldn't pack a gun in your. Yeah, you could get through TSA. I can't even pack toothpaste. But also Porkins, his relationship to it. They literally come to Indiana Jones to go, hey, what do you know? And he goes, well, I know this exact information. And the guy goes, whoa, Jesus Christ. And like that. I'd never seen that in the movie before. Like, well, why are you asking him if you're not going to believe him? Yeah, it's everything about this scene is wonderful. He lost the BAFTA to Ian Holm for Chariots of Fire, which, of course, is the best picture one of that.

[02:20:58] Okay, makes sense. And then he gets BAFTA wins after this for Trading Places, which he's incredibly funny in, obviously. And then, yes, a private function, which is like an Alan Bennett, famous British dramatist, like, comedy with Michael Palin and Defense of the Realm, which is this kind of like dark British political thriller with Gabriel Byrne. Don't know what I should watch them. Yeah. Bet you he rocks them. But it is crazy that he won three BAFTAs. That's a good movie. Yeah.

[02:21:28] Not just one three. Three consecutive. It's 84, 85, 86. He is nominated for Room with a View in 87. Which is his one Oscar nomination. Which is also amazing. And this is a thing. You look through old BAFTA years and now the BAFTA is like a mirror of the Oscars too closely where it's kind of boring. They used to just have such pride in their guys. And it was a more British. That's the thing. There was not a lot of American movies making it in. And if there is, it's like Denholm Elliot and Raiders where they're like, well, we like the British guy. Right. We like that British guy in that movie.

[02:21:58] But then they also like Jamie Lee Curtis wins for Trading Places that same year. Yeah, they loved Trading Places. Yeah. It's kind of Farsi in the way they probably did. They just had interesting zags. But yes, to your point, like the fact that we're seeing the introduction of the arc as an Brody as well as through Indy means that when Brody says you shouldn't do this, that hits differently for the audience where you're like, this is the guy who likes Indiana Jones doing Indiana Jones shit. He's bankrolling it. He thinks it's fun.

[02:22:27] He likes hearing the stories. He's in favor. And he's saying this is one step too far, which is basically the introduction of like there are forces at play. There may be beyond your comprehension. This is like touching on mystical shit. That's a little scary. Maybe. Maybe. Which Indy is just like, what the fuck are you talking about? Yeah. But he literally goes the wrath of God or some shit. Right. So you're and by, you know, by Billy Wilder rules, you are promising that we're going to

[02:22:56] see some wrath of God at the end of this movie or or they put it there. You don't really think about it again. And then when the wrath of God starts coming, oh, shit, we're going. Oh, we're there. We're going to the God's coming. This is super exciting because once you hit it, you're like, what am I looking at? And you remember, oh, they told us wrath of God. Oh, shit. So it's deeply exciting. David. Yeah, that's got to hurt. That's a quip.

[02:23:25] That's a quip that people make or like, do not go in there. That's like another quip. But if they're saying that's got to hurt, maybe they're saying it about root canals. And if they're saying do not go in there, maybe they're saying that about a mouth with a bunch of plaque buildup. My point here is if you want to avoid being the subject of quips like that, maybe you should use our sponsor today, quip. Yeah. So why don't you get yourself quip 360?

[02:23:53] It's an oscillating toothbrush, Griffin. That's literally going to revolve around you. That's what I like. I've been using quip for a long time, but the 360 is the, you know, you know, the kind of like round brush. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. This is the whole thing with quip. It's an electric toothbrush that doesn't overcomplicate the most basic daily ritual. I feel like quip just exists to make this as easy as possible. Very simple designs, ultra quiet, super clean, you know, easy to maintain and is scientifically,

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[02:24:46] on get quip, that's q-u-i-p dot com, and the opportunity to subscribe to refill heads by mail every three months so you never have to go to the store. This is a part I like. That's the kind of thing I forget. You don't have to go to the store. It just happens. They just send it to you. It shows up and you go, oh, right. Time to change. I get flossed too. I get a bunch of quip stuff sent to me every, you know, a few months. It's really, really helpful. They've got 25,000 five-star reviews and, you know, people love quip. And they got a perks program. You know, I love perks programs. You do love perks. Quip perks, quip. Quip puts. Quip perks is a little hard to say.

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[02:25:46] Getquip.com slash check. Quip. Quip. I mean, obviously, right. But the weird thing about Indiana Jones that a zillion people have remarked on is, right, he probably didn't need to do anything, right? Yes. They were always going to open the arc and all get murdered by it. Do you have thoughts on this? And like this, this became right. The sort of galaxy brain nerd take of like, Indy doesn't really even do much.

[02:26:16] Well, it's like we watched this movie of Indiana Jones doing a bunch of shit. But the big question is, if you remove him from the narrative, does the outcome change at all? Well, our perspective of the narrative changes. Very much so. And it self-changes the narrative. Which I would say is kind of like the defining element of what makes an interesting lead character. This is what people get wrong is they're like, oh, an interesting lead character is a character who does a lot of shit. They're impactful because they're high functioning and capable. He makes the right kind of moral choice at the end of each of his movies. Like, you know, right?

[02:26:46] Like Indy does. But I think it's beyond that where it's like the lesson is you want to watch the movie that Indiana Jones is in. The movie where he's not in it wouldn't be fun. You could watch these same events play out even if they were unaffected without this guy doing his trick. Oh, you don't want to watch just Nazi treasure hunters? Yeah, no, it probably wouldn't be very fun. But you see so many blockbuster movies that can't answer why the main character is the main character, right?

[02:27:15] Where you're like, they're the main character because they decided that's the main character at the center of the story. It's not interesting to be telling that story from that character's perspective. But isn't there also the argument that it's like they open, they open the arc, some kind of ancient magic creatures, whatever comes out. And they look upon these Nazis and turn into demons and destroy them. And they do not destroy Indiana or Marion. Is this it's not just because Indiana is closed his eyes.

[02:27:44] Isn't it also just like they know these spirits have rendered judgment and they know that Indy and Marion are not, you know, evil of heart as everyone else gathered is? Well, that's the low level sort of like Inglorious Bastards version of like this is me creating an alternate history where there is like some modicum of like a microcosm representation of a course correction of like there being a cosmic balance.

[02:28:10] That's that's imperfect references that like we're taking history and we're just little, little tweaks so we can have some fun with it. If you I'll answer a question with the question, if you were tied to a pole with David and there was the wrath of God was swirling around you and David said, Griffin, keep your eyes shut. Would you be able to? It's actually a good question. This is what's tough. OK, I think I'm capable of keeping my eyes

[02:28:40] shut if David and yelling. But now I'm commanding you. If David's the one telling me to do it, the tone of voice is really going to make a difference. Griffin, close your eyes. There's a version of it in which I keep my eyes open just to rile him up. Look, there is there was an essay by a guy, Matt Pombroy for Esquire that was sort of like expanding on this whole how is the movie's outcome affected?

[02:29:09] What changes if you remove Indiana Jones from Raiders? And I'm just going to read the quick sort of summary of this. But he says, like, the argument is if the major things that change of Indiana Jones is not in the movie is that Tote kills Mary and probably right away. Yes. Right. Right. She won't survive. Right. Just at the bar. At the bar. The Ark would have been flown to Germany on the plane because Indiana Jones wouldn't have stopped

[02:29:39] the German mechanic. And that means that the Ark goes straight to Hitler, opens up and burns his face. So maybe we lose some good pieces. You know, we lose some heroes. This is the interesting thing. But Hitler gets burned up. You're like the main thing that Indiana Jones stops is the Ark from getting straight to Hitler, who probably wanted first-ride refusal and cracking that bad boy open. Right. Right. Right. It's an interesting perspective.

[02:30:06] And also, there's a lot of, you know, talk about, like, you know, when we heard the line in Last Crusade of, it belongs in a museum, the ongoing joke, it was a great line of dialogue. And then years later, you go, wait, no, it doesn't. It does not belong in a museum. It belongs exactly where you're stealing it from. But in most of these movies, he is keeping it from bad guys who are taking it. Like, they are going to take it.

[02:30:35] So, um, that's it. Like, he's, like, better in a museum or in a warehouse than in Hitler's front lawn. That's the better part of the argument is that the thing he stops from happening is it getting to Germany. Yeah. Right? It's that, like, it never ends up in complete Nazi control. Right. And Lord knows whatever. Maybe they could have done something bad with it. And Lucas had this thing about that the MacGuffin always has to go back where it was cut or disappear.

[02:31:03] He has, like, that he said this out loud. And I always wrestle with that back and forth, just from a storytelling point of view. And I'm like, okay, perfect ending for Raiders. And I do believe a perfect ending for Temple of Doom because he returns them to the village. He does not bring them to the museum. And you got to get a sense that young Indiana Jones has learned a lesson. Right? On some level. And then by the third one, it's the grail. And the grail is just going to go and, you know, fall into the pit.

[02:31:31] But so even though the joke of it belongs in a museum and there's a comic book out right now called The Horizon Experiment by the guys that did The Good Asian where it's like a flip side of Indiana Jones, whereas she's literally taking things out of museums and bringing them back to great adventure. It's a great idea. I wish I thought of it. That's a good idea. So, but yeah, but streets of Cairo. Right, right.

[02:31:55] To fill in the several action sequences in between the denouement and the bar, which one is which? There's the car chase, which rocks. There's that in the documentary. My favorite stuff about Cairo is these beautiful wide shots that look like the timeless shots. And then you cut to Robert Watts, the famous producer, when I had to go down and yank every one of those TV antennas off of every rooftop. And I'm like, oh, those poor people.

[02:32:24] It's just I didn't I just thought they didn't have antennas and television. Right. But it's so much part of the lore of this movie, too, that it's like 120 degrees and they all get like dysentery. There's someone who didn't. I think it might be Spielberg who like wasn't drinking the water. There's some anyway. Yes. Yes. But like a movie that is already him trying to keep himself on rails, be controlled, be precise, starts getting like more and more.

[02:32:52] He's basically like throwing dead weight off of a plane with a dying engine going like, how do we save like 10 minutes here? Right. And obviously that's how you get the sword versus gun fight. You know this story, right, Ben? You know, when Indy shoots the guy, right, the guy's like got the sword and he's swinging around and he just shoots him. It's like the most badass moment in the year. But that was supposed to be a big fight. Oh, and Harrison Ford was like choreographed, like extended set piece.

[02:33:20] Indy fighting this guy with a whip versus his sword. And they get there on the day and everyone is like shitting their pants. And Harrison Ford's like, what if I just shot him? What if he does his whole big like show? And then I just shoot him there because, of course, he's got a gun. Why would he use the whip if he doesn't have to? That's incredible. Yeah. And it's like it's incredible. It is this iconic moment that I feel like people try to replicate a lot.

[02:33:45] And a lot of times when other movies do something like this, it feels like it is an unsatisfying subversion that you are avoiding us, avoiding showing us the thing we want to see. I think there's something weirdly just in the like DNA of it being created in an organic way versus it being something that is reverse engineered. This is the problem with a lot of movies that try to be Indiana Jones is they're looking at the end results and going, we need something like this.

[02:34:15] You need the swordsman moment. You need a character like Marion. And you're starting from like the final result surface level elements. Indiana Jones also just has so much action that like you don't miss whatever you're missing there because it's on to the next thing and we're running and we're running. You know, it's like Indiana Jones is 70% set pieces anyway. So it's fine. And if you want to accuse Indiana Jones of doing anything wrong in the movie is he has caused chaos throughout this village.

[02:34:44] I mean, he's just like he has tipped over everyone's business. These are small businesses and he is just causing chaos. He is an unhelpful presence. That's true. And it's also that he can find treasure. Like as much as I love Indiana Jones, he is looking for treasure. But like talking about Chuck Jones influence, like Marion hiding in the barrels and it like having this like sequence of it almost becoming like three card Monty of like where is she feels like a thing that Bugs Bunny does to like avoid Elmer Fudd.

[02:35:14] You know, like I feel like there are 10 shorts where he does a similar thing where he's like hiding in different jars and peeking his head out. And the monkey giving her away, giving her up. Yes. Very funny. The monkey Steven Spielberg grew up with in his house. Right. And then you're just like the relationship Marion has with the monkey in that brief amount of screen time feels so mirrored to his mother's relationship with the monkey, which also kind

[02:35:40] of makes sense in terms of like what you're saying about part of the Willie Scott problem being that Spielberg was so taken with Kate Capshaw that to a certain degree, maybe his judgment is out the window. Right. I'm not saying that he wasn't noting her more because he was in love with her, but there are other considerations going on in his mind. He is so sort of like entranced by this woman's existence versus I think what helps Marion

[02:36:07] avoid ever feeling like some weird kind of like idealized little boy's fantasy of a tough girl who's also pretty and is cool and is funny is that it does feel like to some degree she's like his mom. Right. That like everything we now know about Spielberg's real mother from the failed months, but also the way he's talked about her, written about her and being this sort of person who like refused to be boxed in in life.

[02:36:35] Flowey poetic spirit who was being boxed in, but was resistant. And was like constantly pushing against it and acting out and causing trouble and all of that. It feels like he's pulling from a very personal experience of a woman he had a non-sexual relationship with. You know who she had a sexual relationship with? Seth Rogen. She did. In real life. Yeah. The Sala of his family. But, um, but, but also like, I know they, it's just like little tips and stuff.

[02:37:02] It's almost not fair to even judge the whole relationships on the four seconds they show us in the documentary. But you can see in the, in the Raiders doc, the ones made like the serious docs made about this is that you can see them, the Karen Allen and Spielberg really working, like really like, like challenging each other in, in the best way possible. Whereas every clip of him and, and Kate Capshaw is very flirty and very, they're, they're

[02:37:31] having a blast and there's nothing creepy or weird going on, but they are absolutely falling in love with each other. And it's just a different vibe. It just is. Yeah. Yeah. And the, the, the, the best part in the, in the, the stuff with Kate Capshaw is that she won't do the snake. Right. That she's so scared of everything. Yeah. But you'll do the bugs. Right. Okay. I'll do the bugs. And it cuts to the bug scene because you promised me bugs. Like they're this, they're very much in that space as a couple. Right. I would not do the bugs. I would do the snake. I was surprised by her choice as well.

[02:38:00] I think she was just trying to get out of the day. The well of souls, as you mentioned, is cut out of what the comic book or the novelization, the comic book did not have. I believe, yeah, there's like that kind of chunk is cut out of it, but you, I don't want to. I guess it's the slowest chunk of the movie. It's the least, you know, kinetic part, but it's fun. It's fun puzzle stuff. I like puzzle stuff. You like puzzles? Yeah. Yes. Yes. And this is where it helps to have Sala in this part of the movie too, that you have

[02:38:28] this like bon vivant guy who, when Indy is getting more academic, you can have Sala be big. Right. Right. But even like Sala, like trying to pull the, like, like when they're really trying to lift the lid off the well of souls, like they're, they're both, there's some tremendous shots there. One of which I've never seen someone strain that hard on camera before. Like I just like, Sala's like really looks like he's going to pop something.

[02:38:56] And then there is a shot of Harrison Ford in an almost wild eyed, like mania, like he hasn't slept. It's going to happen. And it's, it's a, it's a very rare shot of him just, um, almost like spiritually out of control. Like I, I must like, and it's what it did not, not to rewind on you, but you know, bell lock hits him with that. Hey, you and I are the same guy, which is by the way, for writers out there, never write that scene. It's been written. You don't have to write it.

[02:39:26] Please don't write it. Please, please, please. Even if you really feel like your villain and hero are two sides of the same coin, you don't need someone to say it. Don't have anyone look at the camera and say it. But, but in this time he does, he goes, Hey, you and I are the same guy. I don't even know why we're, why we're, we're fighting. We're both looking for the same shit. We both feel the same way about this stuff. And then in that moment where Harrison Ford is wild eyed to open the well of souls, you see that the villain is right.

[02:39:53] The villain that he is right, that Harrison Ford is built at the same stuff as, as this. This guy here. And when the moment's happening, he cannot stop himself. And that's great character stuff. There are movies like sorcerer and the abyss and the thing, two of which we've covered. And sorcerer will probably do one day. Right. Yeah. Where you're like, part of the magic of this movie is you telling how fucking difficult it was to shoot. Sure. That those are movies that like success raining.

[02:40:22] You can feel it. Yeah. Right. And they successfully represent the extreme environmental conditions that the characters are in, which you also know the cast and crew were put through as well. And that it's not faked. And that like the tone of Kurt Russell's skin is a legitimate reaction to him actually being like in a fucking Arctic environment for that long. It is wild to me that Raiders in particular does not have that kind of weight to it.

[02:40:51] It's a great moment where I like if I when I watch this movie, every effortless, it feels light and breezy. And then every 10 minutes, I think like Jesus fucking Christ. They this would just must have been the most exhausting gauntlet in the world is nonstop action in like very inhospitable climates and terrains and and just all the things you know about like how rushed they were and everything.

[02:41:20] It is like the magic of Michael Kahn, the editor. That's true. Like that's a simple one of the magic of this collaboration is this lifelong, you know, relationship between him and his editor and him. And he does. He makes things look effortless. And sometimes that doesn't work towards like like like a hook. It doesn't. It has that same effortless. It should look like a little harder. And with this, I don't know, there's just like there's so much grit and dust on screen.

[02:41:50] Yeah, Ben, it's a very dusty movie, Ben. So dusty. So dusty. And hook is exactly the movie to bring up, though. Yeah, you're right. Yeah. But there's a difficult balance of like you also don't want this movie being too weighed down by it feeling like too much of a struggle. There is like a weird point. Right. Hook, there's like no tension. Hook is right. I mean, I know people love Hook and we're going to talk about Hook and there's fans of that movie, you know, a whole generation. We will have a defender on the episode.

[02:42:19] It's a clunky movie. We'll tell you off, Mike. Don't tell you off, Mike. But like it's a very it's a movie that sometimes really feels like it's plotting. And it's even though these sets are large and these actors are here to have fun or whatever. That's what I'm saying. You're like you're training. You're like, oh, this movie was like filmed on air conditioned sets. Everyone's trailers were close by. The catering must have been great. You know, like you feel that lack of like Glenn Close stopped by. Right. You sure did. Like I'm sure that that movie had its own struggles in its making.

[02:42:48] But like Raiders, they're like this is like a fucking like complicated like military operation. Yeah. I mean, I think they're like willing into existence. Spielberg has said with Hook and again, we'll talk about like where he's like, I didn't have a lot of faith in the meat of the movie. And I cover for it by being like, make the sets bigger, more colors, more, more, more, you know, like. Yeah. And that's how that movie feels to me. It's like it's just kind of like trying to distract you from not much. I think you're right about Michael Kahn deserving a lot of credit.

[02:43:18] I also think like John Williams score is so much lighter than you would think. Yeah. It is so much jauntier than you would think. Yeah. There are obviously like so many different le motifs in Indiana Jones that are iconic beyond just the obvious bump, bump, bump, bump where you're like, it's wild that Indiana Jones has 10 perfect themes that alternate. And most of them feel like they're more like they would be more in place in like a screwball comedy or like a classic Hollywood romance.

[02:43:47] You know who it lost to? In 1981, it lost to Reds. Chariots of Fire. Oh, well, of course. Chariots of Fire. There you go. And obviously John Williams had various. He had like three Oscars at that point. But you're like, how did it lose? Oh, Chariots of Fire. Well, it's pretty famous. I'm sure it will be brought up numerous times throughout this wave of your podcast. But the John Williams doc on Disney Plus does a really excellent job giving you an overview

[02:44:11] of what was something I grew up in going back to the world I grew up in is John Williams delivering a bang. It's a world class, career defining banger of a soundtrack about every four months. Yes. It is. Was on one. Jaws, Close Encounters, all the Star Wars and then Superman and things in between. It's incredible.

[02:44:38] And then as expressed in the documentary, he may be one of the greatest, biggest pop stars of all time and certainly of that era. Like there was who was a bigger musician? Who did you? I knew who he was at 11 years old. I knew his name and I knew that that that that if his name was attached to the movie, I was in good hands. But also like Marion's theme is like the fifth most important theme in this film musically. Like that's the quality of like his number five.

[02:45:09] You know, it's not just like, oh, he came up with a perfect theme for Indiana Jones, the character. And then the rest of the score is just riffing in variations on that one thing. It's just incredible. It's insane. And to the point where John Williams would then take me to other filmmakers. Like I literally feel like how I met Brian De Palma and other people was was through. Oh, John Williams works with him. Then he must be equal to Spielberg. I will then go there.

[02:45:35] Well, it's almost like it's like the the famous Roger Ebert, like Emmett Walsh, Harry Dean Stanton role where you're like no movie with those guys and it can be entirely bad because those guys are always going to do something interesting. You're like there is no entirely bad movie with a John Williams score. It's an interesting question. There are certainly score. There are movies I don't like that he did the score for. Yeah. But no, you're arguing like does his score make even the most bland thing? Have some value.

[02:46:04] I mean, probably. And you can argue 1941 is among his very, very best. Like right here. Right. John Williams. I've written whole graphic novels. Just to the 1941 soundtrack. It's just an incredible soundtrack. He did the score to Heartbeeps. It is fun. Yeah. I remember the Heartbeeps score being good. There you go. Yeah. With Andy Kaufman? Yeah. The Andy Kaufman Heartbeeps? Yeah. I never heard that.

[02:46:33] I would see photos of that movie in magazines and shit as like this was one of the first best makeup nominees. And I'm like there's a Bernadette Peters, Andy Kaufman robot love story movie. How is this not my favorite movie of all time? It felt very hard to see for a very long time. They finally put it out on DVD at some point in the mid 2000s. And I was like I get to see Heartbeeps which is about to become my number one favorite movie in history. And it just so definitively doesn't work in a way that is astounding.

[02:47:02] That was another one of those movies that played for a window on Showtime all the time in the earliest days of cable when there was only like six movies and they just played constantly like the movie Scavenger Hunt would play like constantly. Right. So yeah. So I did see that. And as a fellow comedy nerd of an age, I was please. Of course, you guys don't understand it. It's brilliant. And you people don't understand it. And you watch it for four minutes. You go, oh, no. OK, that's all right. Catskills is the least funny character in the history of movies.

[02:47:32] The cigar smoking robot. I hate to cut you off, but we must finish. You don't want to hear me rant about Catskills for the fifth time in the arc of our podcast. Exactly right. I do not. Simply because we have much as he doesn't. I do. But I appreciate it. There's other episodes for that. Are there action sequences? We have not gotten into enough of the many, many action sequences in this movie. I do think the car chase is the best constructed. The truck chase? Yeah. Yeah.

[02:48:02] And also opening weekend and opening experiences. By the time we're at the car chase, it is you are truly a breathless audience member. You are. You just cannot believe how much movie you're getting. Uses every part of the truck. Go on top. Go in the hood. Go. You know, right. Like, you know, I like anything that, you know, maximizes a small space. This is more movie than you thought was previously possible. Right. Right.

[02:48:29] Like Dave and I talk about when we did the Raimi series and watch those Spider-Man movies, which were so pivotal for us because they come at a time parallel with your work and all of that. But you watch those and there was an expectation of superhero movies where for so long it was like you can't make these. they're too expensive the effects aren't there and then it finally got to the threshold point computers can make Spider-Man swing through the air but you'd watch these movies and be like he's gonna have like two fight scenes right it is just not cost effective right

[02:48:59] he will have like one fight scene in the middle I mean god bless that's what the first X-Men movie is totally where you're like oh they're out of action money right you know there's two really two to three really fun and I love I have a very soft spot for that movie yeah but I do as well but like the final battle between the Green Goblin and Spider-Man at the end of the first Rainey movie is like four minutes right you know it's like I'm physically incapable of not saying out loud that I saw that movie for the first time sitting on a couch next to Stan Lee and Sam Raimi's office

[02:49:29] on an A.B. cart that fucking they rolled in an A.B. cart and I was not told what I was doing there and then that's what I found out I was doing there and I'm now supposed to watch the movie when Stan who I don't know is sitting right next to me you must be having a lifetime time of emotions about about the special effects catching up to that which he's been trying to make this movie since he thought of it because he must have only been in the Marvel fold for like a couple years at that point right yeah no I was

[02:49:58] I was early going I did not know I was there Sam Raimi smartly figured out that he and I had the same job to right to reintroduce Spider-Man right yeah and we're interested in the things that we did that were similar and the things that we did that were different and had us come in as like the first test audience and it was genuinely an incredible moment in my life because I'm literally just a Sam Raimi fan just the evil dead guys here and then all of a sudden Stan walks in

[02:50:27] hey do you believe us sits down and we're watching the movie it was good Raimi impression by the way thank you did he like it he was I literally he got emotional at the end there was he wasn't he wasn't bawling but he was he was you know he was misty-eyed and took us down memory lane for a while it was quite wonderful and then and then they asked us you'll like this they asked us if we wanted to stay and help like rewrite work some of the dialogue situations out and Stan grabbed his windbreaker and he goes

[02:50:57] oh I wrote 126 issues of Spider-Man they're all yours goodbye and he was gone and I as a younger creator just stayed and immediately realized that he was smart and I should have ran out right and you're not talking to execs all yeah but what what an experience it was an incredible I'm sorry to start it no it's a pretty good anecdote you're allowed the reason I brought all this up is that I I have I think I imagine this is what it would have felt like to watch Raiders in the theater

[02:51:27] at the time but seeing Spider-Man 2 opening night when the subway chase sequence goes on for like 15 minutes it keeps happening and I kept feeling like this is impossible how is this still going the projector should be breaking down I don't think the infrastructure exists to let Spider-Man exist doing Spider-Man shit for this long and that's not even the final sequence of the movie where it's like by the time you get to the truck chase and you're like this is like

[02:51:56] the fifth like absolute like balls to the wall like jam extended set piece that he has constructed now in this movie and also set it up with one of the greatest lines in history which is I don't know I'm making up as I go which is such a ballsy line of dialogue for any action movie let alone this I don't know just like you're like oh oh I don't know what's happening but it's a fucking mission statement right it's a mission statement it's the thing

[02:52:26] that so many of the impostors get wrong and it's the same thing that works about John McClane in the first Die Hard is it's fun to watch a hero who is capable but doesn't totally have it figured out that we need to watch them work it out if someone is too in control of a situation it gets pretty fucking boring and you want to see the struggle the pain them doing the math in their head yeah he's smart he's passionate he can do it he's not going to

[02:52:56] stop how far will he go this is where we are in the movie in our headset like how far is this going to go and then also didn't you find out from the making of that it's mostly second unit that he that Spielberg gave over that sequence a very storyboarded sequence to the second unit and they talk about in great length in the documentary and so you're like watching a stunt team being given free reign it's almost a valentine to them like here's everything we know how to do and we're going to

[02:53:26] have the blast doing it and no one's telling us no because the director is not here and you're getting all their best stuff George Lucas also did a lot of the second unit he basically had to do that like that was how to get the movie finished but it's also I think it's a self-imposed Spielberg's like I'm not doing 1941 again I will not go over schedule I will not get this reputation right the way to keep this movie on rails is to understand what needs to be delegated to other people right so should we shout out

[02:53:56] at least the shirtless chungus nazi I love that guy he's so huge again you love his ideology no can I do David this is not quite a merchandise spotlight but here's the thing I want to say Kenner gets the Star Wars license in 1977 right and starts making all the figures and some of them they come up with these names like the walrus man you know an elephant head and whatever that later then Lucas is like no no no we need to give him canonical names this is MoMA Nidon this is whoever this

[02:54:25] Panda Baba right but the whole like Lucas-y thing of like we're gonna come up with a backstory and a name and a species and a planet for every fucking background character any object you see in any shot even if it's never explained there's an answer for it I love that across now four plus decades the history of Indiana Jones merchandise none of these characters are ever named he's named German mechanic correct when those toys are sold in 1981 they are German mechanic

[02:54:55] monkey man you know like those are their names you got Cairo swordsman right exactly wow and then like Lucasfilm loves to fucking backfill and be like never mind we finally landed on a name for that Star Wars character never does that with Indiana Jones none of them are ever fucking named like any character who isn't given a name on screen has no canon name yeah it is a looser world which is fine it's good right but also you're like who's that character he's a German mechanic big guy big man he's got a fucking

[02:55:24] Raleigh fingers mustache he does how do you know about Raleigh fingers how do I know about Raleigh fingers it's also like I just at my age like when that guy punches Harrison Ford right in the fucking face you're like oh he falls down like like he's literally his knees go to jelly and I don't think I'd ever seen that in a movie I'm sure Burt Reynolds did it and stuff in the in the Smoking the planet movies and stuff like that but I I just I had not seen it and I was oh my god

[02:55:54] he might die comparing not comparing everything to modern day but like the infamous fucking like Dwayne Johnson Vin Diesel contractual how many punches they can take and how they can never lose a fight and whatever you got two movie stars who both look like the German mechanic and refuse to ever look uncool or weak for half a second and Harrison Ford's like no this guy should fucking cold cop me I have

[02:56:29] like that's still to this day not something you see in movies really from then to the end he doesn't do much like he's really out of commission and he's tied to a pole like it's like that's right once they're on the U-boat and stuff it's really just a matter of Jones being like I think Belloc wants to test the arc you know and that's sort of gonna be the weakness here rather than this going right but you're right from that moment on you have like the moment of intimacy that comes only when he's acknowledging his own wounds and scars

[02:56:59] right this moment incredible thing right and that fucking just when you think it's gonna lead to like an ecstatic love scene it leads to like he's getting knocked out you know like he just is barely keeping his shit together and to be the end of Indiana Jones where Jewish ghosts melt Nazis is awesome yeah but it's a passive ending for Indy in a way and so it's a bold choice post the boat basically everything he tries is kind of a non-starter yeah you're like oh he's gonna put on like a German

[02:57:29] soldier Alfred he's gonna infiltrate them this will be an exciting last 30 minutes where he's amongst them almost immediately they catch him you're right up there with a fucking bazooka what do you think you're doing you look like Harrison Ford it's just surprising in a way that they whatever like it just feels like a Hollywood studio now I guess would be like well come on no Indy has to you know use the ghosts against them or whatever you know like Indy has to be more involved in this and it's their thing and they get to do what they want and who is the Hollywood studio in this case

[02:57:58] George Lucas that's what I'm saying right like you know they don't have it's like a notes I think were less bad than they are now but on top of that you basically have this movie bankrolled by another artist yeah and so they also like there's some shots in the doc about like Spielberg looking at like the models for the the ghost you know the the angel of death that's coming at the end and they look very space alien um very close encounters-ish like and to

[02:58:28] the and he's delighted he's like oh this is perfect I'm like oh I would not be able to see like what he sees like it's kind of amazing that he does see what it actually is going to look like on screen because you cannot tell with even perspective that that's what it what's going to look like the other thing I want you to say that thing about the action heroes of the time um so when I was growing up when Harrison Ford got into um shape for Temple of Doom it was international headlines about how buffed out Harrison

[02:58:57] Ford is he is jacked to the gills he got in shape and then you see it today he is just in very good yeah normal man shape right like he is Justin Long in comedies is as buff as Harrison Ford is in Temple of Doom so this this summer I had a good summer with the kids like showing them like stuff they wanted to see that hadn't seen before like Terminator 2 and and the Martian just like stuff that was they were they were too young for when they came out yes the Martian and um

[02:59:26] uh uh uh looking at uh Arnold Schwarzenegger Terminator 2 which is not him in his biggest but him at his most iconic and he is the exact same shape as Paul Rudd in Ant-Man yeah yeah basically I mean look what the biggest man in the world at that time the biggest man in the world and that is that is mid Marvel by today's standards yes I'm not throwing out the Justin Long thing wantonly no I remember exactly what you're talking about but I had a very specific moment I think probably around that time that he's

[02:59:56] just not that into you came out when I was like trying to kickstart my acting career in whatever way and I was waiting at a stoplight to cross the street in New York and I looked over and he was standing next to me and the first thing I clocked was wow he's got like guns and I was like this isn't Justin Long trying to campaign for some superhero role like our whole body image of people in movies has become so distorted that the guy who plays the skinny gawky guy in comedies is actually cut in real life

[03:00:25] like cheating in the good place but I yeah I remember like Harrison Ford working out made me go work out like I was like you can do it like I yeah this little I should get some definition like but I do I I guess I also saw it as obtainable like like here like like he had worked out and he looked good you know yeah also we haven't mentioned Harrison Ford gets hurt a lot in movies in real life like and watching all the documentaries in a row he gets

[03:00:55] hurt on every single one almost every movie gets shut down he's always breaking limbs and crashing yeah up until including Force Awakens like like like he's he like broke his arm or leg in the hydraulic presser like okay so the I'm just making it up as a go along thing I think works because in some ways that is an admission of Spielberg talking about his own creative process right yeah that is the side of Indiana Jones that is Spielberg himself who's looking around at the elements and gaming out what

[03:01:24] is the most fun way to construct this how do I get out of this right yeah no it's not even how most fun way to construct it it's what people talk about where he gets to set and goes like what is the fewest number of shots I can get this in if this person walks from here to here on this line then suddenly that's a one or and we can cover half a page in like five minutes or whatever it is he's the most famous for it it gets talked about endlessly by film nerds but you you guys will reference it often it is to watch him construct this like when he

[03:01:53] when the doc cameras are on him watching him in real time construct a scene either from this or from Lincoln with the same amount of just he's so good at it it's just in a threat he really may be the best at that that ever lived I think he is and I it's like you watch that footage and it's almost like he's like speaking in tongues where it's like he's channeling something from like another dimension where he's just like oh wait a second and he just

[03:02:22] like calls out five chess moves and he's not doing it in a bossy or demanding way it feels like it's just coming to him suddenly and then the thing comes together so quickly and he just like knows exactly how to get it really fast the other part of it is the Indiana Jones thing of talk about the fallibility of him as a hero right that he isn't worried about looking weak or failing or whatever it is there's something unified there in the fact that Harrison Ford himself hurts himself a lot and it's not just like oh he gets injured on set because he's not good at doing stunts he gets

[03:02:51] in a fucking planes and crashes them and then people go hey Harrison maybe time to stop flying planes and he's like fuck off and he gets in another plane like there is something he's playing that speaks to something very real in him which is this guy who just keeps fucking doing the shit even when he gets like knocked out he just gets back up and walks off like the fucking crash site yep but pre Indiana Jones you remember a scene where there was just a moment where the the hero licked his wounds on

[03:03:20] camera I can't even think of it yeah no and like thinking about like comparable like 70s stars uh you know I know this is an 80s movie but like you know who are the sort of towering figures of like 70s action cinema right a they're largely a lot older like you still have like you know Lee Marvin movies and like Charles Bronson movies and those things where those guys are a lot steelier and a lot more humorless Burt Reynolds is way more humor he does not want to show that

[03:03:50] he cares he's never going to get his hands that messy right like he's more the Han Solo type of wanting to be a little bit above it and then you have like Dirty Harry who is similarly just like Dirty Harry's never going to show fucking vulnerability vulnerability yeah I was like like wonder like when I was thinking back on this like how did I as a kid know that Burt Reynolds didn't give a shit like was it from him like going on the Tonight Show I mean I yeah it was messaged

[03:04:19] to me just like he doesn't he's not giving it all but it's like that was the product like that's what he was selling it was like he was like the pet rock and people were like so what do I do and they're like you just put the rock on your desk and you pretend it's a pet and you're like I gotta do the work he's just gonna sit there and flub his fucking lines also you were talking about the costuming it's also how he's wearing the costume that the costumer talks in the documentary about how how Harrison wears clothes and he's

[03:04:49] not just wearing the jacket he's kind of wearing the jacket like almost off his shoulders half the time like it's barely on him it's very unique like it's and when he like like buttons up his tie and like puts the jacket like there's there's a there's a more like a more respectful Indiana Jones in the costume but most of the time it's the jacket's almost not on his shoulders but that's like the craftsman side of it which is like he's doing things that are unnatural but he understands that he's in the business of making iconography and the

[03:05:18] tough thing to do is to do that and not have it play as self-conscious that he is able to give this very like natural behavioral performance movements with that kind of self-awareness yeah and and again you said before the other thing with Spielberg is every single one of these supporting performers and or stunt people and or just presence on the screen just really feels right and exciting and surprising like it's just

[03:05:48] everywhere you turn there's something really interesting to look at there's someone who's bringing their whole story to this one line of dialogue that they're reading even the Nazis you know also I I know we're heading towards the end here with with the Nazis but it was very interesting to me when they were talking about making Crystal Skull and he said no Nazis I'm not like like he literally the only rules people are put out there's I'm not going back to doing cartoon Nazis post Schindler's

[03:06:18] last he refused yeah like yeah like and that that arc of just maturity as a storyteller like I I have made a statement so powerful I can't go back to the Bugs Bunny Nazi I can't do that and I and him knowing he can't do it I find that very fascinating but it also feels like an admission that he shouldn't have made another Indiana Jones movie that's the problem it is what is so interesting about him that like you know I I

[03:06:47] feel like it's it's been said that part of the calculation of making a Temple of Doom a prequel was that he didn't want to just do the Nazis again and if you were setting it right after World War two isn't resolved you don't want to go too far in the future it felt like you could put it earlier and put it in a different timeline and then last crusade he's like why am I trying to like fucking perfect something he's never gonna be better than Indiana Jones fighting the Nazis but if you get to a point where you don't want to make Indiana Jones fight the Nazis anymore

[03:07:17] then maybe it's like not the time they're making Indiana Jones movie but also you get that that great line in last crusade out of the famous Nazis I hate these guys like he's the only one that hates them like this is something about me you should know I don't like Nazis is very it's a great yes a great line one of his defining characteristics you got to wait a decade for it too which is great all three face meltings so good so different I mean obviously that's the best one yes but they're all fun but it's like

[03:07:46] three of the best practical visual effects of all time all happening right next to each other and as you said what's great about it is that there are three different bites at the apple they are different philosophical approaches the practical effects are good I think also the individual freaks are you know like Paul Freeman is the best I mean I'm Paul Freeman sorry I'm Toad is the best yeah I don't know if they see the way he just goes like like you know he he hits the scream the best but yeah just one is

[03:08:15] sort of shrinking right like a sort of drying fruit tote the Nazi guy tote melts yeah and Belloc blows up yeah boom the behind the scenes of the tote head where like it was this incredibly like complicated immaculately built layer by layer basically like candle head makes sense because that's exactly what it looks like it looks like this thing is truly like being melted layer by layer right and they had like 40 fucking hair dryers on it and then

[03:08:45] we're speeding it up even further but you're like it's a thing they could only do one time successfully right and a lot of it is like theoretical where they're like we think this will work it worked it's cool and and it still works um I live I'm here in Portland where um raiders and jaws plays on theaters um at least once a summer so I got to take um the kids like my my son saw jaws for the first time completely works even by modern through modern

[03:09:14] eyes and uh raiders also works and the head melting completely like I always wonder like does this read at all or is this just something I grew up with so I love it right it's decades old that this is just look like an old like three stooges cartoon to my kids you know what I mean and they come it no does it works completely rattled them and to the point where you're watching it now I remember thinking do they find an actor that looks like this model they built because they look

[03:09:44] like this it's just so perfectly right that's part of what helps sell the illusion you're right is that he himself looks like a model right right that's why he looks like a little robot like I said like a little alien this time it also just very satisfying in that sort of careful what you wish for way it's Nazis getting what they deserve but it's also just right you're like you're like yeah I I know now maybe in the in the moment I would not know this but the viewer has the kind of confidence of like I wouldn't open that fucking

[03:10:14] box Ben you don't open the box if I open the box I think God's hand would come out and pound me be like what's up brother like hey keep it up buddy right and then just turn into a bunch of coins yeah yeah he wouldn't beat your ass he'd dap you oh yeah absolutely good job but it does it does feel exactly like in glorious bastards were like oh this is much farther along than I thought we were going with this storyline like I we are well past what I

[03:10:43] thought was the line so that very and also I don't know where this is going to end is God going to show up with the voice of Gene Hackman and give us the business I don't know what's gonna happen God Gene Hackman never played God did he yes he did I I just I just tipped my hat he it's a movie with um the movie that isn't Grease starring two of a kind he is the voice of God in the John Travolta Olivia Newton wild yes Oliver Reed plays the devil is that movie good probably not it was a

[03:11:12] notorious bomb another one I saw in theaters so just from my experience yeah watching Grease of course this must be even if it's half Grease yeah no it's it is a truly terrible movie it's a heartbeats speaking to by the way um I rewatched the Cisco Ebert of this of this movie um uh because I also I'm of an age where everything Cisco Ebert did affected me greatly they were my film school for all of my childhood and everyone

[03:11:42] they championed I I immediately took notice of and um and so you watch this clip and they are just getting with excitement over this movie they just can't believe they experienced this movie in a way that they rarely show on camera that's awesome and it really is and and and Cisco says to Ebert you know I was thinking is this is this year movie such shit that I'm just loving every second of this like because we haven't seen he goes honestly Robert we haven't seen a

[03:12:11] good movie in like six months like a really good movie he goes is it that or is it just a really good movie and they agree that it's just a it's a really good movie and this was a terrible movie the year from the cinema like it's kind of surprising that it got nominated not just for best director when they had snubbed Spielberg for Jaws yeah but it did just like this movie I think was just fucking undeniable yeah and it was obviously the biggest hit of the year um in the you know but you're right of course the Jaws had

[03:12:41] been as well now but it it's treated like these Spielberg movies pre Schindler's List is treated where it gets the noms right wins a bunch of tech awards yes and does not touch like there's no acting attention and on and it loses to uh chariots of fire and reds respectively for picture and director which are reds is this you know big egotistical passion project I love that movie but I I love that movie dearly it is is one of my favorite movies of all time I cut I covered it in great length on Scott Aukerman's oh yeah oh that's right

[03:13:11] great episode of Scott hasn't seen oh thank you um and then chariots of fire is the little movie that could that year that's the movie everyone it's the coda of its year everyone's like you know I really loved that movie those are serious movies about serious things coming out of the 70s where new Hollywood was like we gotta fucking engage with shit politically and like Spielberg is making these like fun like gumball rally movies yeah it's just not right the Oscars have not caught up to what he's doing

[03:13:40] yeah uh and they and yet they couldn't ignore him there's a weird balance of them being like come here but not too close right yeah to be clear I love reds I love reds it's a weird public narrative that goes on for the 80s like when Spielberg get his due like this is this is the narrative through every movie including color purple and all the way all the way up to Schindler's list let's play the box office game okay any final things you want to say I mean the final moment you sort of teed this up but it's like it is the one

[03:14:09] most satisfying resolution to what do they do with the relics that the movie the sequels can't ever replicate of just putting it in a crate and it's just like stacked up and then this incredible shot of this warehouse and being like every single fucking crate in this place is an arc of the covenant some fucking thing in there that caused some crazy adventure presumably yeah anyone with a little story brain just explodes like every one of these is an adventure every one of these things is a comic book I

[03:14:39] have to read yes but it's also kind of like it's this weirdly like bittersweet note of like and all that for what it like gets stacked up and then you get the shot of Karen Allen in full wardrobe and makeup like a woman about town like like which we had not seen because we've only met her at we met her at her lowest and walked through an adventure so here she is in full makeup you know like holy shit like yeah like I don't know it just it was

[03:15:08] like at the end of the movie the last thing you think of oh my god is a is a is a fun thing to think of and also I'm thinking of it like if it was today I wonder if Karen Allen would have more of like a Jennifer Lawrence career you know what I mean more of like I know she had shots where she got we talked about it on the Starman right I mean I think we said that we think she should have won the Oscar that year and she wasn't even nominated and it does feel bizarre for like either

[03:15:37] either or if it was just Animal House or Indiana Jones you'd be like either one of those should have set her up to have a dominant career for 15 years the fact that she did both it's just kind of bizarre that she didn't have a bad career but it's like she should have been like one of the top five female stars in America for all of everything yeah yeah yeah and yes she was clearly capable of doing anything and everything and still

[03:16:07] is yeah film was the biggest film of the year it was successful very successful made 220 million domestic 20 million dollar budget comes out June 12th 1981 Brian was there I was there opens number one at the box office we're in this stage where we you know wide release beginning to have right opening weekends number two is another what it opened to four million dollars robust yeah but also interesting I reading this morning was

[03:16:35] not tracking well prior to release they were worried about it there was there was a Superman 2 without tracking it by a mile interesting that is yeah I know I meant it was one of the big hits of the year but not as big but as a child I was all it was all in on Raiders like we were we couldn't wait so that's weird to hear that it is opening against another new movie that is a big adventure movie epic fantasy movie that is not as well remembered in 1981 it's

[03:17:05] a big epic it's not Excalibur is it no no even more ancient than that in terms of when it's set yes is a biblical no a little forward maybe I don't know no it's a no ancient myth ancient myth yes it's a film of the Titans there you go oh with Harry Hamlin and Laurence Olivier and you know release the Kraken mode obviously later remade with Sam

[03:17:33] Worthington yes the last work of Harry Harry is kind of our generations Harry Hamlin yes no I mean that's that's the big thing is it was the end of the Harry right and look it's a throwback we're letting Harry house and do one last yeah here's another new movie that week okay a comedy one that we also epic one that we will I'm sure cover on this show one day we will cover this someday 81 epic comedy is it a is it a genre mashup it's a comedy

[03:18:04] it hmm he's struggling to think how he would describe this is it history of the world oh history of the world part one from Mel Brooks I was gonna pull out a holy Moses it's just pretty that would have been good yeah okay but not a film I've maybe only seen once not a Mel Brooks I really know very well it's not one of my favorites but I it's it is good stuff consistently funny it's got great stuff in it yeah so all three of those movies are opening against each other that's

[03:18:33] well very weird that Raiders and Clash of the Titans like those feel like way too much overlap there but they were now number four at the box office Ben you might be interested by this movie it is it's called bone dirt river it is the third of I mean I don't know six or seven films that this comedy duo made that you might be interested by is it a prior and wilder no you're pitching this to Ben okay oh I think I know who it is I don't want

[03:19:03] to guess these guys like to you know take it easy oh you're talking about Cheech and Chong that's right my boys what is the third Cheech and Chong movie big proponents of the jazz cigarettes those two yeah uh is it the weird one where they're the it's like the brothers Corsican brothers I think is the last that is there right okay yeah way off okay the second one is Cheech and Chong's next movie is that correct uh that is the second one first one is up in smoke obviously is this first one is this sweet dreams it's called nice

[03:19:33] dreams okay in which they sell drugs out of an ice cream truck and Stacy Keech is a DEA guy who's trying to catch him should we do the Cheech and Chong movie yeah had him on patreon brackets I gotta say this I've seen I don't know if I've seen all six but I definitely have seen a lot of them and I don't remember anything about them that's weird because he must have been dead sober while watching would you

[03:20:01] include yellow beard and after hours no I feel like because we'd want to we want to save that for Martin Scorsese and Mel Damsky series any credit for pulling Mel Damsky director of yellow beard no I think it's no look up it's up in smoke next movie nice dreams things are tough all over still smoking and Corsican brothers is sort of their last live-action film together in how many years they did

[03:20:30] them very close together like like up in smoke is 78 and Corsican brothers is 84 like they did them all back to back to back to back to back and then they stopped was there a later more recent movie where they teamed up again animated am I for straight to DVD it was straight to DVD oh no it wasn't actually it did have a limited theatrical release that Cheech and Chong's animated movie exclamation point I was also thinking because I know they've both done animated roles I was like was there a thing where they cast

[03:20:58] them like brother bear style to play animals well Chong is in Zootopia that's what I'm saying and Cheech is in Lion King right they're all in you know yeah they're reliable he's of course Ramon in cars right of course I'm sure there's a Nash Bridges special episode yeah number five is a romantic comedy directed by and starring it star written directed by and starring this man is it now an Alda it's an Alan Alda I got that right you did okay is it the one

[03:21:28] with Carol Burnett it's the one with Carol Burnett and Len Carriu Rita Moreno Sandy Dennis do you know this I know it's not Sweet Liberty Sweet Liberty is young Michelle Pfeiffer Sweet Liberty is his second film okay and there's the way the the Joe Tynan one is a different one right there's the one where he plays the politician is that what it's called I don't fuck yeah the seduction of Joe time thank you okay this one is called this isn't the four seasons is it it's the four seasons his

[03:21:57] debut which is now being remade with Tina Fay and John Hamm maybe that's not a Neil Simon that feels like it feels like a Neil Simon California Sweet type thing that's a and it has a four-part structure you know season by season but I do it is not it is Alan Alda written and directed by him

[03:22:22] never seen it I never have either I'm trying to find this that there was there was an announced fucking Tina Fey four seasons yeah you're right there is some kind of Netflix show I think yes but I'm trying to remember who the other person is it can't be John Hamm he's in every TV show now like it can't it might have been Corral Steve Corral it's a date night routine yeah I could see that yeah I'm Colman Domingo sure also in the top 10

[03:22:50] you've got and I wonder if you saw any of these movies Brian you got bustin loose the Richard Pryor film that was on cable constantly all the time never seen that one Cicely Tyson is in it I don't know it looks like he's bustin loose I guess you've got the Sean Connery movie Outland which is a Peter Himes film I enjoy Peter that's like him with a shotgun but it's

[03:23:19] like set on Jupiter right it's like a space Western I've never seen it but it seems very cool and my guess is it's not as cool as I want it to be because it's not that famous but you're saying it's pretty cool it is not that cool there is a comma believe it or not there is a graphic novel adaptation by Steranko wow well full circle on this puppy but I and it's one of his great mid-career moments

[03:23:48] as a comic creator and if a comic book is so well done and so innovative and Steranko kind of thing that you go see the movie thinking you're seeing something similar and it's just not there it's very it you know like there's certain sci-fi movies of that era that just all vibe like black hole they're just depressing and dark and weird and not Star Wars it's that it's not alien it's not it's not as bad as black hole but it's it's trying it's trying to be alien and it's not it's just

[03:24:18] not connecting the tagline is on Jupiter's moon he's the only law that sounds like the best movie of all time exactly it's put in the heartbeats it's set on IO the volcanic moon not a Deborah oh okay you've also got an action film called kill and kill again good title yep don't know much about that one you've got uh something called the legend of the lone ranger yeah that was a big movie that was one of those well very marketed movies it

[03:24:46] was marketed with Star Wars energy and right with a young Michael horse as tonto Michael horse from uh Twin Peaks and then you've got the Gary Coleman comedy on the right track I can kind of see what Siskel and Ebert were talking about of like the movies just suck right now or does this rock yeah because history of the world part one is good I guess yeah pretty much every other movie I described seems mixed to bad yeah I also

[03:25:14] feel like history of the world was a hit but not on the level of his previous movies I think it was seen as a little bit of a like sometimes we smell repeating himself we do these old box office games and there's sort of like seven masterpieces in the multiplex instead you've got on the right track which was the uh yeah and by the way we'll like get to that like fucking E.T. summer is notorious for like wall to wall bangers you know like a lot of the other Spielberg movies these box office games are coming out in like peak

[03:25:41] blockbuster years 81 feels a little thin Gary Coleman plays an orphan who lives in a locker at Union Station in Chicago and then he like wins the lottery or something okay there's the Gary Coleman cartoon show written like on some snot that a guy sneezed like he didn't even have a tissue he was just like do you remember the Gary Coleman cartoon show Brian where he was like an angel yes yeah and it was called the Gary Coleman show which was confusing because I'm like is it supposed it's

[03:26:09] supposed to be Gary again kids this is a time where you there was things on TV and either you watch them or there was nothing else or you scared of the wall this is your choice you have a choice go read or watch this and there's no there's no Disney on demand or every Star Wars or every Marvel movie available at every second of the day I'm sure you're gonna stick in a hoop you could chase this is this is I will say David a perfect example

[03:26:36] of what you refer to as not really movies like the movies that don't really exist except they do they were in theater yeah on the right track on the right track yeah well it was a financial success I mean 13 million dollars I think you know back then it was like double the opening of Raiders yeah nice work if you can get it yeah so yeah so it does it does look at that box office it is interesting it does feel like 1981 was a bit of an odd year after years of Star

[03:27:05] Wars Superman right you know like you know right these like an adventure yeah oh my God where it's like the big hits of 1981 are like the Raiders Superman 2 Arthur stripes like it's like movies that do have some legacy but it's not blockbuster in the same way it's a bit of an odd moment before the 80s really ramp up and we start getting like a lot of sequels and big action movies and Arnie and Sly and all that stuff some of these movies their their tale is fully

[03:27:35] on home video in television like stripes played constantly when I was a kid to the point where all of my friends knew it by heart like every line except no one's ever seen the second half stripes my favorite thing that was ever seen it no one's ever seen it it's the most watched first half in history too long that movie is actually too long to that movie should be 82 minutes long it's like 110 minutes long oh you watch the shorter cut we got to be done Griff we've been talking for so long I'm not complaining yeah well I'm just looking I'm checking my notes here

[03:28:04] it's an episode on Raiders of the Lost Ark yes well this is a problem we have on these Spielberg episodes yes they're all a lot to talk about yeah there's a lot to talk about um you know it's interesting Harrison Ford got like six million for this I just I just saw this five million each for the the two sequels and then 65 million dollars for Crystal Skull well if I'm not mistaken I believe his deal for

[03:28:31] Crystal Skull was 20 percent of first dollar money gross right not profit like that was the deal elevated by Crystal Skull that Lucas Spielberg and Ford were like it's 20 percent to each of us right off the top probably partly why it took so long to make it do you think this movie is Harrison Ford's best performance oh boy oh come on now I think it's his most important performance and I think it's the greatest

[03:29:00] distillation of what he is uniquely great at as a movie star if that makes sense Han Solo will always be my favorite Harrison Ford character it's just the one and probably a lot of it was I saw it at the right age but single performance maybe yeah I mean I think that might be what that reaction you had was was what was that reaction you're weighing witness in your mind I feel like so much but I think

[03:29:29] it would be a little you know anorak of me to be like you can get to witness yeah um morning glory obviously I can tend to have gotten an Oscar nomination for Furtado he's also very good and presumed innocent I love him in all of those sweaty late 80s early 90s thrillers that he made and I and witness sort of the start of that and I love him in Air Force One and I love him and you know many many things but I think yeah I think Indy is probably a good argument you're posing a good question

[03:29:58] because it is an interesting case of a lot of stars like him you'd be like well there's the most iconic performance what will clearly be the first line in their obituary they're never going to surpass that and yet actually their best performance is x y or z right you're like well that's their most famous performance but their best actual work as an actor was this other thing this might be one of the rare cases where they're the same answer they're the same thing yeah yeah I

[03:30:25] think given the kind of stuff for there the greatest thing he ever put on film was on Jimmy Kimmel live the sketch where he confronts Chewbacca for sleeping with his wife yes it is an incredible comic performance which he does not break and every line he delivers is near perfection and if you think I'm joking no Google it later it is an incredible live performance

[03:30:55] where he just kills that sketch was written by Jovla Jeff Loveness who later wrote a man in the lost quantumania oh no shit I didn't even know that yeah he had done like viral videos get hired on the Kimmel that was the first thing he wrote we had on the George Lucas talk show talking about this that was okay cool him on Kimmel I think the Monday or Tuesday after Cowboys and Aliens had came out mmm and he during the interview cannot stop

[03:31:25] smarting from the fact that the Smurfs beat them at the box office like it was the mistake of him not going on to promote the movie in advance they booked it as a victory lap assuming the movie would be a blockbuster and then he's just like you know I guess we're not as good as the Smurfs but the show opens for that Chewbacca sketch which is incredible and lives in my mind forever because he's yelling at Chewbacca and he goes I don't need you anymore I'm in a movie with Dan

[03:31:49] Daniel Craig now and he says Craig and I think about it all the time is it yes was he right he's right America say it wrong I'm in movies with Daniel Craig Craig but it's not Craig it's Craig Craig we will link to that clip in the episode description Chewbacca and I think we should also wrap up the episode it's time to be done Brian anything you want to plug oh yeah listen head over to

[03:32:16] on Jinxworld.com where you can see you sign up for my newsletter and all my books that are available at darkhorse.com including powers and the brand new released masterpiece and for fans of this podcast I have a graphic novel coming out in January called fortune glory the musical which tells the very true story about how I was the writer of the spider-man

[03:32:37] Broadway musical turn off the dark for a week and a half I think people will enjoy that true Hollywood disaster story yeah wow oh I cannot wait to read that are you kidding me Brian please come to New York sometime so I can pick your brain about all kinds of things I have so many nerdy questions for you about the early 2000s in Marvel especially yeah the fucking thunder about Ross mustache conversation that was not the iceberg that was nothing I have lots to ask you that's the coolest question David

[03:33:07] all right well then I know you want to go but I just don't want to take a minute and say that I really do love you guys in this podcast a great deal it is not to be weird I do think you guys are the spiritual successors of Siskel and Ebert in the best way possible I just think it's this is elevated conversation that makes everyone I talk to about it think better about their work and make smarter choices so I just just really want to say thanks

[03:33:33] Ben is sitting behind the monitor victory laughing well no because he of course wanted us to call the podcast Griffal and Simsburg and he's gesturing like what was I telling you guys he was right he was right all along he was right all along and every time you give Ben a nickname I consider it for myself as well like dirt bike Bendis does sound oh in my younger days so I do appreciate you guys test marketing these Ben related

[03:34:03] nicknames hey happy to do it thank you so much for being here truly is an honor as the show's going on for years every once in a while we hear about someone who's a listener and it flips us out and we're like that fucking person listens to us make fart jokes but you are one that is truly humbling because of how large you loom in our development of how we understood stories for both of us personally and much the way you you talk about the Lucas and Spielberg stuff

[03:34:32] that you grew up with thank you and thank you all for listening yes join us next week for should I double check I believe it's a movie called E.T. the extraterrestrial just making sure that nothing yep yep E.T. the extraterrestrial so I'm just gonna check my notes here another the next week banger yeah another good one yeah E.T. the extraterrestrial fairly large he made it one year later yes how yeah that's amazing and by the way and after E.T. that's it he is he never goes back to there's no doubt

[03:35:02] no I mean no when he makes three movies that don't go over as much but it doesn't matter yeah he's he's unquestionably minted right from the moment of raiders on they're like we we can't it's it's not a fluke how far does this Spielberg run with you up to Schindler oh okay that's farther than I thought oh yeah yeah it gets to him winning his Oscar and then we'll win our Oscar for best podcast a category I assume they're including in next year's ceremony along with most

[03:35:28] cheer worthy most dollars for CEOs collected coming up in a few days over on the Patreon we're doing a Spielberg bonus covering something evil and savage oh yeah right it's two major TV movies in between dual and Sugar Land Express and as always Ben this you got me thinking drafting already in my head Ben's nickname for this has to be Bendiana bones right there you go there you go yes you got me thinking about it's a big deal