Schindler's List with David Ehrlich

[00:00:21] All around it's bits by the golf. Wait, is Nosferatu in the room? How do you do- Ben, I love- The podcast is life. I do the podcast. I can't stop doing Nosferatu. It is a problem. Yeah. Um, no, I think that was a very good Ben Kingsley in Schindler's List. Oh, that was supposed to be Ben Kingsley? Well, who else was it supposed to be?

[00:00:46] I was like debating whether to put the word bits in the quote because I was like- I think you did a good job. Well, no, because I was like, look, this might be a more serious episode, no bits. And then within 15 seconds, we're doing Nosferatu again. Yeah, we're gonna keep the Becker talk limited to like a tight 20 for this episode. I am also a fan of Becker. If we're doing Decade of Dreams, Becker talk is in the top 10 most hated sections of any episode ever that people will not stop bringing up. But then there's the 10 percenters who are like, wish they'd do more Becker talk. Yeah. I like the Becker run.

[00:01:16] Come to my castle and watch Becker with me for an entire night. I think they should have talked about the movie less. We could get into all the ways that Count Orlok is coded as Jewish and the legacy of those characters. There's so much to talk about. Well, you guys, if you're a lot of takes- Count Orlok isn't coded in like the original Nosferatu, it's pretty plainly painted on. Well, I'd say in Robert Eggers, I'm checking what kind of- Germany? Wait, what's this country? Which decade though? Don't worry. It must have been after the World War II.

[00:01:46] Stuff, right? Oh no, way before. Cool. Would you mind turning on the light switch for me? It is the Sabbath. Cut all of this out. This is a terrible way to introduce- What if Spielberg listened to this episode? Oh, he's definitely bailed by now. He's already writing- He's already writing letters. He didn't even get to hear me meta-acknowledge him listening. We've done two fucking series on his career, not to mention all the new release episodes. And he was like,

[00:02:14] I just want to see how they handle Schindler. I've heard a lot about these guys. They've taken a lot of swings. Yeah. And I haven't bothered to listen until now. Is this the first time that somebody has been on two episodes about the same filmmaker? Good point. Oh, no, no. Let's go through. Let's go through. But this is a good list. This is a good list. Sorry, I'll stop. Lawson was on both. Lawson did Saving Private Ryan and Always. Right.

[00:02:41] Fuck that guy. Well, Always is not aired yet. At the time of recording, I think you guys have only gone up through E.T. Correct. Ehrlich has done, now will have done- Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and Schindler. An inferior film in Schindler's List. Yeah. Well, we'll determine its inferiority at the end of this episode. Here's my question, though. Has anyone, are those, are you two the only two to have been on both parts?

[00:03:02] And if so, if not, has anyone done two masterpieces? Because I think both of you guys have gotten one uncontested masterpiece and one kind of left-handed oddball movie. Is that fair to say? Oh, you mean within this Spielberg series? Within the two parts of Spielberg. I believe those are the only two, Griffin. Wow. I think left-handed oddball is too generous to always and rude to Indiana Jones Kingdom. Okay, well, that's what I thought you were going to say. Do, do, do, do.

[00:03:32] Um, hello. Our energy today is normal. I don't- Look, I'm excited to talk about this wonderful film with you, my friends. I just had a big bowl of noodle soup and a couple peanut butter cups, which is not two foods that matched up, but that's how it went today for me. Um, and here we are. Introduce the show, please. Look, this is Blankstrike with Griffin and David. I'm Griffin. And I am David. Great. We're not, we're certainly not nervous about how to talk about this.

[00:04:00] No, I haven't been like sweating bullets for eight months since Sims texted me when I was on the treadmill. You were- And I put this like a cross to bear on my shoulders. There was no question you were doing. You and I have had so many- I entrust you with speaking to the legacy of all the Jewish people. Because Sims, I was like, how are we going to handle Schindler? Do we just do that without a guess? And he was like, no, Ehrlich really wants to do it. Ehrlich's got a lot to say. Ehrlich and I have had- Please finish that. I'm David. It's a podcast about filmographies, directors who have massive success early on in their careers and are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion projects they want.

[00:04:28] And sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they bounce. Baby. Baby. It's a pretty wild clear. This is- Yes, but obviously one of his more passionate projects. Yeah, but a passionate project that makes $96 million domestic, wins many Academy Awards, including finally his only Best Picture win, his first Best Director win. It is the movie that in terms of this half arc we have done, Podracic cast, the early films of Steven Spielberg.

[00:04:57] Like, this is- We're zoom out. The narrative has been a man trying to figure out how to grow up. Right? Of course. And I think that you guys chose a pretty natural point to split the filmography. But I also don't think- It's possible that in the history of Hollywood filmmaking, there has never been a more distinct inflection point in a filmmaker's career. Your lovely wife's birthday was last weekend. And we were talking- Can you introduce who he is? David Arlick! Thank you. Decade of Davids.

[00:05:25] Indie Wire, fighting in the war room. Decade of Davids. David! And we were talking about this exact idea and just saying like, man, I know why we justified starting where we did seven years ago. But man, has that paid off beautifully for us now. It paid off beautifully because imagine if we had one more episode to go and it was The Lost World. Like, that doesn't make sense as an end point. And he has the four-year break and he has the DreamWorks. But the inflection point is- What do you think he did in those four years? Jacked it. Oh, he set up like a fucking LLC.

[00:05:55] Like, he was just starting a studio. He finally set up that LLC. Yeah. He called his account and was like, I think I should set up an LLC. Business time. But I also want to clarify that we were not talking about Schindler's List just because we were about to record this episode. But that's just always what I'm talking about at any birthday party. I have had a lot of drunken conversations about Schindler's List over the years. And that is why I immediately thought of you for this episode. Also, you've been on the show before. It's my go-to subject whenever there's a lull in any conversation, really. Yeah, exactly. It is kind of the Schindler's List of movies, I would say. It's one of them.

[00:06:25] Look up. I was thinking this while watching it. It is one of those films where it's like used as shorthand almost in a like monolithic way to represent like a larger idea of a type of movie. Not just the film itself, but like the culture reputation of the movie. Like a prestige sort of gotta see it historical classic. The way people will say like, look, it's no Citizen Kane. Citizen Kane. Citizen Kane. Why am I fucking Schindler's List? Citizen Kane. Citizen Kane.

[00:06:54] The way people will say it's no Citizen Kane or going like, look, they're not trying to make Citizen Kane here. I feel like Schindler's List has a similar kind of shorthand for like serious well-made movie. But I think that is... Deeply serious. It has as much to do with the film's quality as it does with the fact that it's become synonymous with the historical event that it depicts. You know, in a way that it won't get into it, but it's sort of like inextricable now from our visual idea of a portion of World War II.

[00:07:23] And like throwing out like come and see is like, no, that's a deeper cut letterbox nerd joke for a movie that is like purposefully kind of challenging to watch versus Schindler maybe being the most successful movie that is this difficult ever. Like the most mainstream movie that is this challenging and upsetting. I can't begin to reckon with what that list is. Sorry. I mean, I guess I sort of know what you mean.

[00:07:51] I'm trying to think of like, yeah, what are other mega upsetting films that became somewhat appointment? Bohemian Rhapsody. Yeah, so true. Wicked. Now, wait a second. I know I can't back up that statement, but you get what I'm saying. Yeah, I know what you're saying. Where it's like you can make the reference of like, look, it's like Schindler's List or whatever. Everyone knows what you're saying, which I do think perhaps in the last 15 years has started to become an albatross around this movie's neck.

[00:08:19] I would actually, I mean, again, we'll get deep into it, but I think we're on an interesting part in the arc of Schindler's List's reputation and esteem and place in the culture right now because I think it was freighted with a lot more baggage immediately after its release. And now is reclaimed as way too strong a word for a movie that already occupies the place that it does in the public imagination. But I think it is easier with distance to appreciate. People watch it and they're like, oh, this is fucking good.

[00:08:48] I feel like it had 15 years of basically being like homework. Well, but also just like undeniable, kind of like largely uncontested. This is one of the great movies. Spielberg like proved himself shut down all the haters. I think about it is one of the great shut down all the haters movies. It is. I mean, he created a lot of new haters in the process. Sure. Among like the Jewish intelligentsia in particular. Yeah. But he shut down a lot of them. Yes.

[00:09:16] It's I think about the the original AFI top 100 list, which I want to say came out in like 98 or 97. And Schindler made the top 10 and going over that list with my parents and being like, whoa, they put a movie that recent in the top 10. And my parents were noted Spielberg skeptics. We're like, yeah, but it's Schindler's list. There was this feeling of this. It's just very interesting to see Griffin's relationship with this.

[00:09:46] But that's stuck in my head. Which is basically like, you know, it's the word you use for a serious movie and it really crushed the AFI top 100. I'm talking about this immediate canonization, which I then think turned into it being like homework, which then turned into a notion of like, well, like Spielberg doing the Holocaust. Is that thing like. I like how in Griffin's head, Spielberg's relationship to Schindler's list, how it's somehow separate from him is kind of similar to Griffin's relationship to his own lateness. Oh, wow. And that like it's.

[00:10:16] We're going right to. We're going right to these. Talking before you came here. You guys talk. You guys say stuff. I will say the first Oscars I really remember watching is the 94 Oscars for the 93 films of 93. And I remember, you know, you're like seven. Yeah, it would have been almost eight. And like a lot of those 90s Oscars are defined by movies that sort of sweep. So Schindler, English Patient, right? Titanic, where you're watching a three plus hour ceremony where it's like, OK, time for another award. Schindler's list again.

[00:10:46] Obviously, let's keep it going, you know. And I do remember being like what, you know, because it's like I'm watching the Oscars. People are laughing and dancing and, you know, and then occasionally they'll play like very somber black and white footage. And someone will come up and be like, this is a very important thing. And I'll say to my parents, like, so what's this movie? And they're like, yeah, we'll get to it later. It's so hard. They're not mad about it, but they're just like, we can't start to explain.

[00:11:11] Let's add another wrinkle to that, too, which is like by 1994, if you're a child. Right. And you're interested in movies in any way. Not only are you like, oh, right. Steven Spielberg, Jurassic Park guy, E.T. guy. I guess I sort of knew. I was pretty young. Yeah. I might have known who Spielberg was. But there are also like four cartoon shows that all have Steven Spielberg presents on them that are like dominating 90s pop culture. This is the Animaniacs guy? But no, I don't think that was true for me yet.

[00:11:40] I don't think I knew about Spielberg the whatever. Those shows all had him. Baked into the time. I know. I just wasn't watching them yet. Right? Like, when is Animaniacs? I think it's like 94. I think it's actually after Schindler's List. Tiny tunes. But there's a bit in the book that I have in front of me because I always like to bring a prop. I'm also clutching the... You're clutching the paranoia ancient Simbaroma. Horror and despair. The giant, yeah, pink puppy. It's my comfort animal during this record.

[00:12:08] But there's a bit in this book by Franciszek Palowski, The Making of Schindler's List, which was written before the movie came out, before the author had seen it, where he talks about how some of the young extras couldn't will themselves to be afraid in some of the background scenes because they couldn't imagine a Steven Spielberg movie. Those who are familiar with him, like the guy who made AT. Like how scary could it be? Right, exactly. Sure. And I was like, well, clearly you never saw 1941. But in terms of the... Jeez. Talking about scary.

[00:12:36] In terms of the sweetiness of it all, though, I mean, it's so hard to parse Clint Eastwood's delivery when he's giving Spielberg the best director trophy because he says... He's like trying to make a joke about how... First he tries to give it to a chair. And everyone's like, Clint, Clint, Clint. But he's like, oh, big surprise. And he looks at it, but his delivery is so stilted that it sounds out of context like it was a huge surprise because Spielberg had never actually won the award before. This fuck. I mean, surely Clint Eastwood was happy for...

[00:13:02] I've never really thought about, like, what is Clint Eastwood's relationship with Steven Spielberg? Have they ever interacted? When Spielberg... Right? When he wins Best Picture about five minutes later, he's standing backstage waiting in the wings and he hands his Best Direct Oscar to Clint Eastwood to hold. And Clint Eastwood just fucking throws it at his head. No, he seems fine. He seems like he smiles. Animaniacs premiered September 1993, so it premieres in between Jurassic and Schindler. It was the new hotness.

[00:13:31] And Tiny Toons had actually finished its main run. It's storied run. It's storied run. I'm looking at the Oscars of this year trying to think if there was, like, any movie I had seen that was nominated. Because I remember those early Oscar years when, like, The Mask had, like, a makeup nom. I would be like, The Mask better fucking win. And then they'd be like, English patient. I'd be like, what is this crap? The Mask! Children across the world these days, like this year, are going to be thinking the same thing about a better man. Raging at their televisions.

[00:14:00] I don't think I'd seen, you know, I don't think I'd made it to the cinema to see The Remains of the Day or The Fugitive. Have you seen Jurassic in theaters? So that's in the TAC categories. I don't think I saw Jurassic. Wow. Did I? I don't, I can't remember. Also, fucked up that they had Harrison Ford, star of Best Picture nominated The Fugitive, handing out the Best Picture award that year. They do that all the time. Do they? A star of a movie? That's why, who is it? There's one year that it kind of does, it's a Shakespeare in Love year.

[00:14:28] Because they have Harrison Ford do it again, thinking that Slaving Private Ryan's about to win Best Picture. And he goes, Shakespeare in Love. And everyone's like, huh? Like, you know, like, that was them assuming Spielberg was about to get his, you know, second crown. He takes three Red Hulk pills to prevent himself from hulking. He's grabbing one of the big Oscars, like, and then he crushes the big Oscars statue with a big red hand. I was late, quote unquote, to seeing Brave New World, to entering the Brave New World.

[00:14:57] You really wanted it to, you know, to matriculate, to stew in our culture for a week or two. I uncorked it and wanted it breathing. Exactly. You wanted those tannins to mellow. I was astounded that that movie is explicitly about a prescription pill refill. That is what that movie is about. I need my pills, leader. And leader's like, hey, won't be getting those pills anymore. In the proud legacy of the Bourne legacy. Right. There truly is a monologue where it's like, Harrison Ford, how did you allow this bad guy to rise to power? And he's like, I needed the pills.

[00:15:27] You were so good. He red-hulked me by mistake. I guess no one was under the impression that The Fugitive was going to win Best Picture. It seemed like a safe bet. It wasn't like cock up of the father level. The piano was the big second. How many times has Harrison Ford handed out, or that was Best Director, right? No, no, no. He hands out Best Picture. He does Picture. I'm saying The Pianist Year. He does. The Pianist Year? He is the one who announces Roman Polanski. Oh, is he? Oh, I'm sorry.

[00:15:57] Okay, you're switching to everyone. I was switching that. Okay. I was trying to remember. Well, I can tell you Harrison Ford has announced Best Picture three times. Two. Schindler's List. Shakespeare in Love. And of course, Everything Everywhere All at Once. More words than he said in a row in several on-screen performances. And also coming to Everything Everywhere All at Once. Me on streaming television. I'm in everything. Everywhere. All at once. All at once. Give me my pills. Yeah. Who's done it the most, you ask?

[00:16:27] Nicholson. Eight times. Do you think they might get him back this year? Post-50th SNL appearance? Look, I'm really happy. It was lovely to see Jack for a moment. Didn't strike me as a guy who's ready to say more than a couple words on camera. Came out and announced that Best Picture was going to Adam Sandler. That they were like, oh, there's only one thing he can say. I hate to, you know, I hope he's doing well. Nicholson announced Best Picture two. The French Connection. Rocky. Wow. Starting that early. Yeah.

[00:16:56] I mean, that's how fucking major he was, I guess. Already. And also, he was just always there. They were like, come up. Hey, you're in the front row. Rocky. Annie Hall. Driving Miss Daisy, which he did with Warren Beatty. Beatty was probably trying to, like, say it was do the right thing or something. Like, reading from the back of the envelope. Oh, no. I'm sorry. It was Faye Dunaway who fucked up that thing. Okay. Unforgiven. Then a long, long rest. Then he comes back to say crash. Crash. And he holds up the two fingers.

[00:17:26] And then the next year, he did announce The Departed with Diane Keaton. Conflict of interest. How dare he? We're back in this zone. But he doesn't remember being in The Departed, if you've seen that performance. Uh, then I have no memory of this. He gave it to Argo with Michelle Obama? Oh, he- Was Michelle Obama, like, teleconferencing in or something? Yes. He comes out on stage and presents Michelle Obama live, surrounded by military vets? I want an active military. Okay.

[00:17:56] Sure. Yeah. No memory of that. The thing about Best Picture is you're really tired by that point. And the show is kind of rushing it at that point. And usually Best Picture is actually kind of a forgotten award. Because it's some producer who comes up and is like, Oh, I'm so proud of all the money I spent on the- You know, like, it's not always the director. Look, we're obviously not avoiding talking about Schindler's List. But you pointing out that Nicholson had presented Best Picture twice already by the 70s? Pretty crazy.

[00:18:22] What is the last time someone under the age of 50 presented Best Picture? Rita Moreno's under 50, right? I just feel like that award is exclusively saved for Living Legend. Lady Gaga, who is only 38 years old. Lady Gaga, who's almost exactly my age- She presented Best Picture? Presented Best Picture to Coda with Liza Minnelli. Okay. If you remember, she was kind of helping Liza. They balance out to be about 73 on average. But if you want to go solo, let's go solo. Because Liza fits into the Living Legend category.

[00:18:50] Julia Roberts presented Best Picture to Green Book, which we all remember so well. Jesus. She would have been about 50. Okay. Like 50-50-1. So kind of on the cusp there. Mm-hmm. Sean Penn, we all remember, gave it to Birdman and was like making jokes about him being an immigrant or whatever. And everyone was like, it's his ribald sense of humor. Right. He said like, check his green card. Okay. People were like, don't, please. He would have been like- He didn't mean it rudely. They're friends. They love joking.

[00:19:20] Everyone grams. Tom Cruise presented to the artist. I remember none of these. Yeah. These are poor. And he was about 50. Yeah. So it's like, I feel like it's when you hit 50-ish. I think so too. You're sort of like, it's kind of like, all right, you know, welcome. It's like you're 50 and you've been a movie star for three decades. Congratulations. You're officially part of the tapestry. Denzel gave it to No Country for Old Men right around the age of 50. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Kirk Douglas, when he gave it to Chicago, I remember he was like 22 or 23 years old, right? Right.

[00:19:49] He's the one who goes, and the Oscar, like, and the winner is. Like, he says the old way of saying, rather than, and the Oscar goes to. Right. And then he said, Merry Christmas. Right. Famous Jew. I don't know what that joke is. Yeah. Erlich, I feel like you have things to say. I mean, I was just hoping that we'd still have some time for some Becker talk because I have some thoughts. I've really done a deep dive since the- Okay, go ahead. And here's a promise also. End of this episode, we're ranking every single Steven Spielberg movie. And we're ranking every season of Becker Talk.

[00:20:16] I was basically just lost in thought imagining if on the set of 21 Grams, Alejandro González and Yuritu needed a phone call from Adam Sandler or Robin Williams every night just to cheer him up. I'm similar to Spielberg on Sam Lutless. I think Yuritu's like a soul vampire though. He probably was making 21 Grams of being like, this is making me stronger. More misery. Just put the camera, point it at Claire Duvall for a minute. She's going to cry. I don't know. I'll fit it into the movie somewhere.

[00:20:41] It is funny that that is quietly maybe like one of the biggest parts of Schindler's List Schindler's List lasting legacy. The lore around it of like, he was editing Jurassic Park. He needed phone calls from Robin Williams to cheer up. Robin Williams would just do a jazz set over the phone for an hour every night to keep him above water. I mean, that's some serious heavily, heavy Jew work, like having to get on the phone every night and talk to Steven Spielberg and like do a tight five just to keep him off the brink, you know?

[00:21:11] But it's also the Spielberg thing where he's like, yeah, I called my friend to kind of cheer myself up. My friend, Robin Williams circa 1993. Like, it's like, I'm friends with the most funny person of the moment. Okay, can I throw out a big take? And this ties into this that I had watching it again last night. This feels to me like the kind of movie that fundamentally cannot be made in a world with cell phones anymore. Wait, wait. Explain.

[00:21:38] Even that anecdote is pointing to something which is like the level of like immersive concentration around this movie. Right? Like, not that they were like method living the Holocaust. Right? But the way he talks about it of like we were really trying to like evoke something. And there is like a disciplined, sober focus to the idea of like bringing this thing like back in front of lenses.

[00:22:05] That I feel like the second anyone is able to like after cut check their cell phone. Yeah. I mean, there is a mood and a tone that is sustained in this film. Yes. That I think speaks to him being like, I need to call Robin Williams at midnight because I've been living in this for 12 hours without break versus being like. Look, I'm not accusing Spielberg of being performative at all. I also just think that there is a whole like, how do you do press for a Holocaust movie? Yes.

[00:22:32] You have to kind of acknowledge whatever like, oh, it's so hard and serious. And like, you don't want to be like, oh, we were fucking cutting it up on set. And I don't want to be disingenuous or, you know, or unkind towards Spielberg. But I do think he's also happily performing the act of making the great film that is going to catapult into a new. He's really good at selling everything. But he really sold how serious and how grown up he was making this movie, which I think he was. I agree with you. But I also want to say like to Griffin's point, I think it's more, it feels more pressing

[00:23:01] to me that there would be less of a need to make this movie in the age of cell phones because so much of what is galvanizing this production is the act of sort of concentrating, collecting memory and serving as much of an arc in its production. We just had an incredible movie about the Holocaust that kind of felt like it was made without cell phones. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas? No, but I. The sort of interest. It will get there. But I'm not saying you can't make a movie about the Holocaust. Kind of feels like you did just say that.

[00:23:29] I'm saying that I feel like there is a type of like, and it's less about how much Spielberg was suffering and living in this world, which I do agree he like not overstates, but that is part of the narrative behind this film, which he's very good at selling his own like mythology. And the mythology of the movie. The making of Schindler's book makes the set sound positively buoyant. So I think a lot of this. I feel like there was a one for all, all for one vibe on this set too, right? Of like, you know, this isn't an ego thing, right?

[00:23:56] Like there's not really any stars in this movie and Neeson is, you know, a little famous. Ralph Fiennes is not at all right. Like Ben Kingsley is the biggest. Which is crazy that he's in the movie in a way, although he had quickly become a character supporting guy. But what you pick up when you're reading about, you know, day to day life on the set of this movie is that every day there would be another one of the Schindler Juden who would come to set and it would be these are people. These would be people who may have been thought dead or have been off the radar and who were

[00:24:25] summoned like moths to the flame to the production of this movie that sort of reconstituted the collective identity of this people in this group and of what Schindler was able to do. Griffin, Jojo Rabbit. There's a movie that feels like there's no sort of cell phone influence on set. Here is what I'm trying to say. I think more than anything is the level of like sustained concentration this movie has that more than anything is like holding on to a feeling without overstating it.

[00:24:52] That feels like it very much makes sense with what you're just saying of like daily reminders of this is what we're doing. That is less about Spielberg because that's his job to stay in it and more about like you feel like the entire crew was on the same wavelength, you know, that like the hundreds and thousands of background actors were all on the same wavelength in a way that I just like as someone who now works on shitty modern productions and you just feel that sense of like they call cut and everyone goes off and they're like, I got to check other shit, you know?

[00:25:22] Yeah, there was definitely a sense of purpose that was very cohesive on set. A brutalist feels like a movie where people are checking their cell phones and I don't say that out of disrespect. All movies feel like that now. Once again, Chris. I just wish the sets I was on these days were run with a professionalism. Yes. No, I'm not complaining about it. I'm just like, this is what it is. This is how we all live our fucking lives now. When did you first? The sense of just like shipping out and being like, we're all just going to fucking focus on making Schindler's List for 70 days.

[00:25:50] I'm so happy that there wasn't like a Universal Studios marketing intern who had to come up with TikToks from the set of Schindler's List. This is what I'm saying! Torpedo their own life. With all due respect to Reese Feldman, the king of TikTok, he was not sent to Schindler's List. I'm closing the book on this conversation. To get content. When did I first see it? Yeah, when did you first see Schindler's List? I think I first saw it when I was like 14. Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah. And it was in a, you haven't seen Schindler's List, aren't you supposed to be the movie guy? Yeah. I think probably it was similar for me. My friend Doug.

[00:26:19] It's like the Jewish equivalent of Hot Fuzz. You ain't seen Schindler's List! Basically. Yes. The five nominees for Best Drag. I'm watching this now. The Oscar clip are Jim Sheridan, Jane Campion, who I think was only the second woman ever nominated? Correct. After... James Ivory. Robert Altman, who did not bother to show up. Robert Altman. For shortcuts? Yeah, for shortcuts. He never bothered to show up. And Stevie Stills. Showed up for the Gosford year. Yes, he did. And he looked great.

[00:26:48] And he hugged Lynchie. I mean, it's... We definitely were feeling that we were doing everything in our power to delay actually confronting this movie and what it is. But I also wanted to preface this episode, at least personally, if only by way of like as a disclaimer for any sort of future glibness that I hope to avoid, of talking a little bit about like how I've lived with this film. And maybe that's true of how other people on this record have internalized this movie over the years.

[00:27:15] But like I am the grandson of a Holocaust survivor. My grandfather was two of nine siblings who survived. He left Poland in 1939 as a member of the Polish cavalry on what he described as sort of the last boat out of Poland. It was going to the World's Fair, which was his only ticket out of there. And the rest of his family, like so many of the characters in Schindler's List, did not believe the severity of the crisis coming towards him. And so they elected to stay.

[00:27:43] And my grandfather, who ended up owning movie theaters, and unfortunately, I don't have any memory of talking about Schindler's List itself with him, which I'm sure he played. He died in, I don't know, early 2000s. After he lived just long enough to tell me that he was thinking about voting for George W. Bush, which was really difficult. But anyway, people are so fucking complicated. I mean, it was all about Israel. And again, we'll get to it. But he he was always the funniest person that I knew.

[00:28:13] And he would always talk about his memories of growing up in Poland and like of the early years of the Holocaust with not with like, you know, not as if it were a comic event, but with like a certain levity that he always made it very clear to me that it was important to confront these things honestly. And with a hint of humor, albeit gallows humor, in order to be able to reckon with them and not make it so sacrosanct that became impenetrable and therefore something that would be allowed to repeat itself.

[00:28:40] And I don't know, I think that sort of seeped into my relationship with the movie Schindler's List, which I've always talked about, you know, despite what the first 30 minutes of this episode may sound like with a certain like casualness, just because it didn't it didn't feel right to hold it in this in the sacrosanct verified space. It does no favors to the movie itself. I think that's the case with basically all movies, you know, and there are other like serious

[00:29:06] important movies that have kind of like things like The Godfather are always framed around. It's so watchable. Yeah. The Godfather is undeniable, despite it being like this, like totemic best picture winner and blockbuster. And that's uniquely problematic for Schindler's List in a way it isn't for The Godfather. Right. But Schindler's List did play in a similar way.

[00:29:27] And part of the accomplishment of this movie is without belittling its subject matter or the import of the messages trying to communicate. The Spielberg X factor is it is so fucking watchable. It is watchable in a way that somehow skirts around being like exploitative, in my opinion. Some certain old European filmmakers disagree.

[00:29:53] But like you watch Color Purple and that's the first strike of him trying to do something like this. And it's like he can't stop making it like it's a popcorn movie. Right. But I also think he's not doing that. And yet it's got the Spielberg kind of magic of just like you're so locked into every scene. I think it's power. It's lasting power. And its value to me and to the culture at large and to the memory of the Holocaust lies in how it straddles the difference between those two parts of his self as an artist and also the parts of his career.

[00:30:21] But but I also had like very humble beginnings at the start of this movie and that I watched it on a built a 13 inch TV with a built in VCR in the break room at the school where I taught woodshop one summer. And there's never been a human being less qualified to do that. And so like while Timmy was sitting behind me like sanding his arm off, I was like locked into Schindler's List on TV and just like watching it over the course of a day. And that was just I don't know. And when that movie ended, I popped it out and put in like Rambo 2. Right.

[00:30:50] You're just like, it's a very well made movie. Yeah. But I've seen it. I've seen it. I think an unconscionable amount of time since then. I've seen it so many times. It's weirdly a movie that would be on TV. And there's a sort of aspect that we're like, this almost shouldn't be just on TV in between Rambo's one and two or whatever. But I would watch like chunks of it all the time. I've seen it. So I but the first time I saw it, I had the opposite. I was like, I need to know a lot more about that.

[00:31:17] I was I guess I knew plenty about the Holocaust in a sort of vague history sense. But when you're watching that, you're just like, I don't understand. Where was this? Where's everyone else? Why don't people know? Or why do you know, like I immediately sought much more context. What context seeking? You're saying the context of the actual historical events. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, that's that was a big, you know, on Holocaust. It's a big part of the motivation for for making it was just the idea that the Holocaust.

[00:31:44] It was sort of this, you know, twinfold thing that was happening where I think among Jews, the Holocaust was starting to assume a more central role in the collective identity of the diaspora, because for decades there had been. And again, I'm talking sweeping generalizations, a feeling of trying to sort of minimize and move beyond it amongst our people. Like the Holocaust survivors in my family, it was like never spoken. And I do feel like that's a bit of a stereotype. Yeah.

[00:32:11] I mean, it was part of the idea of founding the nation of Israel and was just sort of like, you know, this idea of of trying to move beyond that. And I think its power to be, you know, galvanizing for the diaspora was coming into focus at the same time as a decreasing awareness of the Holocaust on the whole in among the Goy population of the world and a rise in people not believing that it happened. I mean, there's a poll that it's something or statistic that I read that something said

[00:32:40] in the early 90s, something like 22 percent of people had expressed sentiments doubting that the Holocaust ever happened. It's crazy to me when you get to the end of this film and you have the real survivors appear on camera. Right. In this very profound, affecting way. And my immediate thought is, God, I can't believe how young they all are. Right? Sure. Right. Whereas now it's like there are very few living. How many are still alive? I mean, this is the same thing with like how many World War II veterans are still alive. It's a number that dwindled.

[00:33:09] I remember when like the last World War I veteran died when I was a teenager or whatever. It was like some ancient man. I remember being in like eighth grade in the early 2000s. About 245,000. Close to a decade after this movie comes out and at my school they were like, a Holocaust survivor is coming to speak and like everyone from every grade above, you know, third. This is like required, mandatory, whatever. And it was at that time an old woman who talked about having been a child.

[00:33:38] That's the thing. The one Holocaust survivor I know very well is a child. Was a child. She's not currently a child. She's currently a very old woman. But it's like the fact that Spielberg options this, right, gets universal to option. It spends a decade being too afraid to touch it. Says that kind of the inciting thing in the early 90s was like, I am seeing this level of like denialism starting to grow along with a kind of like edgelord neo-Nazi kind of normalization.

[00:34:06] Had no idea how bad things were going to get over the next couple of decades. Weirdly. That it was like I have a cultural responsibility from my vantage point, my power to get stuff made and communicated. My like megaphone basically to make something to make this feel vivid and present and understandable to people. And then to see the survivors at the end of the movie and you're like, these people still like have colored hair. You know, like a lot of them haven't gone gray yet. This is like such... People are kind of hot.

[00:34:35] You know what I'm saying though? You watch this and you're like, it's crazy how much more recent this history was to feel that disconnect from it versus now. He should have shot the scenes at the end there in Israel like Coralie Farge shot the substance, you know, just like really slow motion. I think it is very interesting to watch this movie now as there are like four or five huge tracks of what is happening in the world around us that echo this movie and the events that this film is representing in different ways

[00:35:03] that are terrifying that feel like going back to this question we have of like, how does this happen? What do you mean? How does this just happen overnight? And this movie is really trying to break down like the steps of understanding psychologically like through a certain little prism. I think that's what's smart about it. Yeah, this is not a history of... No, I don't think it's its main goal. And I think through picking one specific story, it does find a way to dramatize in certain ways the gradual shifts of how these things happen. But now what's scary is you're just sort of like,

[00:35:33] this feels far enough away from our present that people are losing their connection with it in the classic those who forget history are doomed to repeat it kind of way. And the fact that it felt so urgent to make Schindler in the 90s is wild to me when it's like this is still kind of fairly new. Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, Spielberg's own trepidation in approaching the subject matter, again, very metatexually reflected in our own approach to the start of this episode. Very good job, boys. I think so.

[00:36:03] Can we just make Jurassic Park quickly before we have to go off and do this? And also, I think, you know, the distance between the 90s and the Holocaust has been compounded in interesting ways between the distance between the release of Schindler's List and today in a way that we'll talk about, especially in relation when you look at some of the reactions to Schindler's List at the time. And I think also all those things you're saying about it being the right time to make it, it does. And again, I don't mean to be a cynic about it, but I do think he was sort of at a point of his career after Hook,

[00:36:31] after Always, you know, these movies that weren't really connecting. I mean, Hook is the ultimate. It's time to fucking grow up movie. And, you know, whatever, it's Charms. And while I haven't listened to that episode yet, I have to say this series, this miniseries has been revelatory in so many ways. Like, Dan Candyman is from Montreal. That's big. I never, I never would have known. I told him people were going to like the Lord Drops. And he was pushing back. He said, cut it down. And I said, they need to know he's Canadian and part of a polycule.

[00:37:01] One thing Dan Candyman is always saying is, oh, cut that down. You should cut that down. That really blew my head back. Poldeck Pfefferberg. I'm cutting off. And we're going to the dossier. Can I say something off of what Ehrlich just said, and then you can crack open the dossier talking about this inflection point. A anecdote I found very interesting is that Sid Sheinberg, when he was negotiating to do Schindler and Jurassic, was like, you have to do Jurassic first.

[00:37:28] I feel like that is also a huge part of Spielberg selling this movie. Is that that's something I've known my whole life. Like this lore of like, yeah, did you Jurassic first? Because he never could have done it after making Schindler's List. He had to call Robin Williams. He was editing Jurassic Park on like, like a video. I think it was a lot further along than that. I think he was mostly just doing the mix. Yeah, he was doing the final stuff. George Lucas was quietly overseeing a lot of the special effects. George Lucas was overseeing some of the mixing. Right, right. All this stuff where you're just like, right, this is all Janusz Kaminski.

[00:37:58] You know, in my head became, it's like, yeah, there was like a newsboy on the streets of Krakow. And Spielberg sort of discovered him, you know, like all this stuff. It'd be funny if George Lucas was like, can I just pitch in on Schindler's on the crowd control there? And someone else can do Jurassic Park. But I think the subtext of what Schindler was saying was not just like, look, after Schindler, it's going to be hard for you to mood pivot back to Jurassic. I think there was this notion of if you pull this off, it's going to fundamentally change you as a filmmaker in a way where it's going to be harder for you to ever go back to that.

[00:38:27] And yet the next movie he made was a Jurassic Park. But I think it feels not the same. Do you think it was the rationale there? It was not the same. As artistically motivated as much as it was. Do the thing that's going to make us a billion dollars first. I need to get that done. And then you can go do your fancy black and white little art project. Do the thing that comes out in the summer before the thing that comes out at Christmas. I think part one is, if you pull off Schindler, it's going to change you forever. Two is, please just give us the safety movie before you cash in the blank check, right?

[00:38:57] And the third part of it is, if you fuck up Schindler, it's really going to stick to you. I think if you, if you, there was no way he was going to fuck up this movie. But there was a possibility, I think Spielberg thought, that it would be a less seen movie. That it was Empire of the Sun? Yeah. That it would be, you know, it's a three hour drama with a lot of Polish. I do think there are ways, I mean, I do think there are ways he could have fucked this movie up. Well, obviously he could have fucked it up like, in my opinion, but I don't think people would have been like, F, what a stinker. I think if he fucked it up though, it would have been like,

[00:39:27] conclusively, he is not a grown up film. Right. The ego. He can't handle it. I mean, I admire him for having the chutzpah to, to make this movie, to take on so transparently, the weight of what this project entailed. And, but the ego required to be like, I can do this. I'm going to do this. It's extraordinary. And I think that if the movie had disappointed the people that it was meant to represent, you know, on mass, it would have been a really difficult blow. He had already made Empire of the Sun, which people didn't like. I don't know if that's quite the same.

[00:39:56] Empire of the Sun got good reviews, made okay money, got some Oscar. Like, Empire of the Sun did okay. If Schindler had gone over the way Empire of the Sun did, I think it would have been. If Empire of the Sun had been a disaster, he could have gone home for the holidays without having to like, hide in the closet. I think that. Guys, guys, I think that. We're getting into a very similar argument here. I'm just trying to say like, he had made grown-up movies. They had gone over okay. I think. Like, it's not like he'd never made a grown-up movie before.

[00:40:23] I'm just worried we're narrativizing this a little too much. I, I, I'm going to, I'm going to stand by this. I think if Schindler had gone over the exact same way as Empire of the Sun, the response would have been, okay, for every five blockbusters you deliver us, you can make one of these. Versus this being the time where it's like. We need a Schindler's list every six months from now on. Anything Spielberg makes becomes this important, whether it's a dinosaur movie or a Holocaust drama. Sure. I mean,

[00:40:50] there's nothing like what happens after you make Jurassic Park and Schindler's list in the same year. That's the, it's one of them. I'll ever do anything like that again, probably. I mean, have you guys, have you guys, uh, gone deep on his predilection for making two movies a year? We've talked about it so much, but mostly on the other miniseries. Right. Because that's when he really starts doing it. It just, it feels like this rhythm that must work for him. I mean, for whatever reason, he's done it like four times. Obviously it's over now. Now he's slowed down. But yeah, I think, I think it's a, it's a tonal balance thing. And it's a, and it worked. So why not try it again?

[00:41:21] Right. Like it worked here. So like, why not do, well, Amistad and Lost World. That didn't work out perfect. But then catch me if you can't minority port, that works out pretty good. I mean, the ending of the making of Schindler's list book is just like, and it just been announced. He's about to make Amistad and it's going to be Schindler's list all over again. And they were just like waiting for the next great American epic. Munich and, uh, war of the world. You know, sort of like a, on base single version of it working out. And then Tintin and War Horse, uh, which is sort of like, Oh,

[00:41:51] okay. He just did it five times. I think part of it is in the same way that the making of this movie is Spielberg being like, I need to tie my arms behind my back a little bit to like limit myself and challenge myself. And like put some restrictions on my filmmaking language, uh, and all of that, the way Soderbergh talks about like the compression of, of time, of crew, of set up. All Soderbergh wants is right. Like faster, faster, faster.

[00:42:20] But part of that is he's like, in order to stay sharp, I have to make this challenging for myself. I have to put restrictions on it because both Spielberg and Soderbergh, I think are so fast in their kind of brain processing of these things that I think for Spielberg, it helps him to be like, I need the challenge of the other movie to feed in. Yeah, sure. I'm so happy Soderbergh didn't make Schindler's List. Would have like edited it on the train ride home and it would have just been like musty colored frames of, It all actually just takes place in like an office, like one office room. But I,

[00:42:49] I do think it is a, it is a self challenge, right? It's like sort of like this feeds, he will say one movie ends up informing the other movie in a way I'm surprised by. Yeah, I mean, he was working in a radically different way than he'd ever worked before. I mean, he was working with, first of all, with the predominantly Polish crew. I mean, it's the first movie. Storyboarding. Storyboarding. Handheld camera, which he's often carrying himself. And he's like literally. He's got his biggest dicked star ever. Oh yeah. Evian Bottle. He's having to deal with that. The kind of dogmatic,

[00:43:17] like I'm not allowed to use Steadicam. I'm not storyboarding. Like all these things where he's just, like I'm banning pieces of equipment. I'm banning the approach of how I conceive of scenes. Griffin, David, can I read you guys a poem? What's going on? A poem. Title, My Cat Pig. Okay. My Cat Pig, elegant, good, deserves the world. Okay. We all agree. So why am I bringing up my cat pig?

[00:43:46] Apart from that you love your cat pig. You bring her up a lot. We just started recently using pretty litter at our home. Okay. Tell me all about it. I don't know if you guys have ever noticed, if you go over someone's house who has a cat. Yeah. And they've got that litter box stink. Yeah, sure. It can be, I know I try not to judge, but it can be a little gross. There's just something about that odor that can just really ruin your day. Agreed. You know? Hard agree. Spring is in the air, but you know what's not part of the air of my house?

[00:44:17] Litter box stink. Mm-hmm. Okay. That's because we use pretty litter. The odor is nothing but wonderful scents of spring. It smells like flowers in there. It's got a non-clumping formula that traps odor and moisture. It's ultra absorbent. It's lightweight, low dust, and one six pound bag works for up to a month. Don't tell Eddie Murphy. No clumps? And pretty litter gives me a peace of mind. It changes color to indicate early signs of potential illnesses in my cat, like urinary tract infections,

[00:44:46] kidney issues, and more. That's huge for me because I want to be able to monitor pig's health. Yeah, and you might have won back Eddie Murphy now that you've outlined some of the other pros of the product. Just the anti-clump stance is hard for him. Now, since pretty litter ships free right to my door, I never run out. I don't have a huge kitty litter bag taking up space in my small New York City apartment. That's the facts. Hercules.

[00:45:11] I don't have to go out in the cold and lug those huge tubs from a store to my car. Yeah, that actually does seem like a big winner. I mean, that all sounds very annoying to me. I've never had a cat. I mean, that process, what you just outlined, I don't buddy love the sound of that. My past experiences using other kitty litter, the scents were always really artificial smelling, and were really ineffective. Making the switch to pretty litter has been a huge upgrade. And again,

[00:45:39] pig deserves the world. So, for anyone out there who might be interested in trying this product out, pretty litter helps keep my house smelling fresh and clean. So, try it today. You'll love it. Go to prettylitter.com slash check to save 20% on your first order and get a free cat toy. That's prettylitter.com slash check to save 20% on your first order and get a free cat toy. Prettylitter.com slash check. Terms and conditions apply. See site for details.

[00:46:13] Poldek Pfefferberg. Like, Polish-born Jewish man who survived the Holocaust, thanks to the efforts of Oscar Schindler. Met, well, this is where his story begins. He emigrates to the United States in 1948, becomes, temporarily changes his name to Leopold Page, starts a leather goods store in Beverly Hills, continues to know Oscar Schindler, as people who know about this probably know, like, Oscar Schindler sort of survived on the goodwill of the Schindler Juden, like, later in life when he was a broke,

[00:46:42] they were Venmoing him, every month. It was like the little Caesar CEO paying for Rosa Parks' apartment. Yes, exactly. That's real. It sounds like me just making a dumb joke. I was like, did Griffin just tell a joke? But then I was like, no, that can't be. Starting in the 50s, he's like, someone should make a movie of this. Like, this is a good idea for a movie, what happened to me, like what Oscar Schindler did. I think also was like, how do I repay this man? Yeah, sure. Perhaps he needs to find, like, a vehicle to, uh, uh,

[00:47:12] forever pin him in the annals of history. A deal is reached to make a film called To the Last Hour, possibly starring Sean Connery as Oscar Schindler, uh, at MGM, written by Howard Koch, the writer of Casablanca, one of the writers. And it almost happens, since even like, uh, Schindler got a check for 37 grand, like, you know, to sort of get the rights or something, dies, you know, doesn't make it. Uh, at one point, um, Pfefferberg, uh,

[00:47:41] approaches Fritz Lang, who must have been quite old at that point, to try and get something off the ground. He goes over to like, you know, MCA of Germany. He's like, maybe I can make it in Europe. Like, doesn't, uh, happen. He dies at the age of 1974. He dies at the age of, sorry, 1,970. At the age of 66. Okay. In 1974. Makes slightly more sense. But, a few years later, Thomas Kennelly, Kennelly, I think Australian journalist, Kennelly, uh,

[00:48:10] walks into his leather goods store, after he's died, and, after Schindler's died, and Pfefferberg is telling everyone who comes in. David's looking at the dossier. Like, I misread this. I misread this. Schindler's dead. Pfefferberg's alive. Schindler is the one who died in the next season. Correct. In 1980, uh, Thomas Kennelly, Kennelly, uh, walks into this other good store, and Pfefferberg tells him the story. Like,

[00:48:38] I was saved by this Nazi called Oscar Schindler. I mean, you get the sense that anytime anyone came into the store, who was even, like, tangentially related to Hollywood, he was like, sit, fuck down. Yeah. I'm about to tell you my life story for an hour, or I size up your feet. He knew at this point how to put some, you know, spit on the ball, right? Where he's like, you don't get it. It's not just that this guy was a Nazi. It's not just that he was this kind of, like, good looking, charming guy. He was, like, fucking his way through Germany. He was carousing and drinking. He's like a lush and a party animal. Right? He's this interesting guy. cheap labor.

[00:49:09] Right. He starts out with this kind of amoral, sort of like, hey, sure, like, you know, you know. Not, not to be crass. It is, like, a perfect Hollywood hook to making a Holocaust movie. Of course it is. Of course it is. Um, and Keneally initially is like, well, look, I'm a Catholic. I'm no expert on the Holocaust. Like, I don't know if I should write this book, but he can't drop the idea. Uh, so he writes, uh,

[00:49:38] Schindler's Ark, which, have you read it? I have not. It's, it's, I've never had any desire to weirdly. It's good. It's, it's a novel. It's like a sort of like fiction, you know, a historical novel, right? So it's sort of written in this way that has, you know, he's using documents, but he's also sort of filling in gaps with kind of, and it's, it's good. And it's about, you know, the paradox of this man, right? Like, you know, it's about this person more than anything. It wins the Booker prize. Spielberg sees the book, had never heard the story before, uh,

[00:50:08] and is, uh, very interesting. Uh, and so, very interested. So Universal buys the rights in 1982. And his first response is, is this real? Like, yeah, it sounds fake. It sounds Hollywood. It's like Hollywood bullshit. If this is real, it's incredible. Yeah. Um, so Spielberg, of course, as we all know from watching that movie, grew up Jewish. Uh, the movie you're talking about is Jurassic Park? Babelman's. Okay. Um, and, uh, new Holocaust survivors when he was three years old. His parents, he has a story about, um,

[00:50:37] like someone coming to the, you know, to family dinner and telling stories, uh, his grandmother and, you know, whatever. Like he has a vivid memory of someone like rolling up their sleeve to show the tattoo to him with the numbers. And, but nonetheless, kind of like you were saying, or like, generally, it's sort of like, that's not dinner table conversation. Like we don't talk about Nazis in this house, right? We don't, uh, we don't like dwell on it too much. We're, we're happy.

[00:51:06] Michelle Williams playing the piano and buying monkeys. Dano's getting cocked all over town. I mean, like three, four, let's kind of move states to avoid getting cocked. Three fourths of my family are Eastern European Jews who immigrated to New York State before the Holocaust. Yeah. And like, and I feel like, the 1800s probably. Right. That's where my family mostly immigrated. Right. All of my grandparents were first generation, but we're born here. Right. And it did, I,

[00:51:34] I feel like whenever any of them would invoke this era, it was a like, obviously a great tragedy thing, but it did feel like there was this feeling of, we don't even want to touch that. Like, this is too profound and serious. And we're lucky that none of us had to live through that. And there was the kind of like general Holocaust museum, like nod seriously, of course, a great tragedy kind of thing. I think it must also start to seem unreal at a certain point. I think so. And when you're like living in America,

[00:52:02] you're making a life for yourself here. Things are okay. It's like this dream that happened to someone else. It is very bizarre for me to think about like my grandparents being like children and teenagers and whatever, and just hearing that this was happening. And I think, right, you like needed to apply a certain degree of cognitive dissonance to not go insane, especially when you're like a powerless American child. This is one thing I wanted to understand when I, when I start learning more, like where I was just like, when did people know in America, say, right, you know,

[00:52:32] like they didn't know during the war. They knew the war was happening, right? But like, they didn't really know the extent of this until after the war. And like, and then how quickly, obviously the Nuremberg trial start to have, you know, like how quickly does this start to come out? Like, is this information wide spread? You know, I was just fascinated by the development of all that. I mean, you can see that chronology take place on screen over the decades. I mean, it's one of the things that's so interesting about Holocaust cinema. I mean, it starts, I mean, it starts, I'm not saying this is the first Holocaust movie, but like, I think in terms of just the,

[00:53:01] the weight and the gravity of what's happened and sharing that raw imagery. I mean, I think of Alain Rene's Night in Fog. And that's, that's right in the middle. Yeah, exactly. We think of soon it'd be like instant information. It's a decade. Right. That's what's hard to think about now that you had to wait years to really start to get the gravity. But we started getting Holocaust movies in a relatively modern sense, not long thereafter and great ones. But, you know, we'll talk about in terms of Schindler's List,

[00:53:31] like none of the ones, none of them had really penetrated mass culture in a way that any of Spielberg's movies ever had. I mean, like, you know, I could wax poetic all day long about Lena Wirtmuller's Seven Beauties or about, The Boxer in Death or about Kapo, you know, and, and these are great films that have had a lasting impression on me, but only because I sought them out. Yeah, The Boxer in Death is a Slovak film. I don't think that one was burdened with The Box Office.

[00:53:58] It was screened to me in the Holocaust cinema I took with Annette Ensdorf in college, and not something that someone was just going to catch casually on TNT. No, and then there's movies, but there's movies like The Pawn Broker or whatever, where it's like, this is about a Holocaust survivor. It's about the legacy of this, but it's not about like the history of what happened. Great movie. Right. There were a lot of movies about the kind of, the ripple effects and the aftermath, and yeah, right, sort of psychological studies. Universal buys Schindler's art,

[00:54:26] but literally Spielberg says to Feffenberg, apparently, it's going to take me about 10 years to make this. Like, he basically knows even then. And he tried to shop it the whole while. That's the thing. He kept it as he says. Come on, someone. I needed more films to make more films. I wasn't about to go from Temple of Doom to Schindler's List. It would have been impossible. Right. In my burning desire to entertain, I kept pushing it back. He hadn't had children yet.

[00:54:54] Talks a lot about how having children kind of changed everything for him. It is hard to imagine. He was like, make those guns light, flashlights. It is hard to imagine someone making this movie before they have children. In a way. I mean, it's an unfair, I think I can't do it. I could do it. You think you could just, you're like Ben getting the simple plan money. You're like, I can make Schindler's List. Point the camera over there. I could roll out of bed, kidless and make this movie. I haven't seen a simple plan in a while. Does one of the characters decide to spend all their money on making a Holocaust movie? No,

[00:55:21] I agree with you that this feels like a fundamental, you are not the most important person in the world kind of movie. In a way that Spielberg wasn't always making autobiographical films, but they always felt very tied to his kind of experience and world outlook. Yeah. If that makes sense. I mean, I think, and what you're seeing in this movie is him. I don't know if the right moment to go like too big picture, but you're seeing the,

[00:55:46] the defining interest of his films philosophically go from being about the family, being, you know, stemming from divorce and things of that nature to, uh, in the process of this movie. And literally you can see it in the span of a single scene becoming about the value of a single human life, which becomes the, uh, you know, defining theme of his career. You see it obviously front and center and saving private Ryan. Then again, in AI. Um, and of course in the BFG. So I think that like, there's, these are, these are things that, I mean, a single jar,

[00:56:17] but yeah, I mean, this is, this is him entering a new phase of his existence as a person really beyond, um, that's just sort of reflected through the art. Spielberg, presumably talking about hook, LOL. So JJ Bursh, our researcher, I was seduced by my own success. I'd always played the, to the adult audience who were able to remember their childhood and enjoy the movies along with their own children. But when I began playing to kids directly, I found, I stumbled on my own shoelaces. I realized when you're making movies, you can't do things consciously.

[00:56:45] It's interesting to hear him say that because hook is indeed him being like, I'm making like essentially a film for seven year olds. And like, sure. He's made E.T. or whatever. E.T. is sort of indefinable magic. But it's like, yeah, he, he mostly made movies for like everybody, teenagers. What is the hook for the seven year old in all of us? Yeah, sure. Seven year olds in all of us are always like, I got to put my cell phone down and stop working so much.

[00:57:12] I think it's almost always a problem when filmmakers this talented try to put those kinds of limitations on themselves. Like not filmmaking challenge limitations, but are like, this is just a movie for kids. And I'm like, well, now you're not playing to the top of your intelligence. Now you're hurting your own movie. Exactly. Like, I mean, that's what George Lucas, where he's just like, I don't know, it's for kids. And I'm like, this is about sentence and shit. Like, take yourself seriously. It used to be about everything. Right. And it used to work for kids as well, which was your magic. The second you're like, well, if adults don't like this,

[00:57:42] they're up their own ass. But then again, if I made some fucking movie that made a billion dollars and children around the world enjoyed and adults were like, you're a war criminal for making it. I'm talking about like the Phantom Menace. I would be like, well, the warmth of children's love sustains me. I don't need you grownups. We were talking about this a little bit before we started recording, but there is, you know, I literally just last night sat down with my son and watched the first 30 minutes of Star Wars A New Hope, which is the fourth film. And I don't know if you guys know. We never got to that one. We never got to that. he.

[00:58:12] Is Sebulba in it? Not Sebulba. Whenever Sebulba's not on screen, Ace is saying where's Sebulba. Sebulba and Nosferatu. Those voices aren't that far from me. We did this bit about the record. Watto's the one who's similar. For the record. During Sundance, when I checked my phone between movies and saw that Watto had died, I immediately texted Griffin with horror in my heart and got nothing back. I think Griffin got 400 texts. This is true. We were in the middle of recording. You will not believe how many texts I got. It was more than my birthday. But also,

[00:58:43] I didn't, I went texting you today, do you want coffee for the episode record? Only then realized I hadn't responded to your water text. I was, not that you expect something back when you send someone a condolence call, really, but like, I just needed information. I was like, what's happening? You know, oh God, that makes sense. but I, I, no, what were you guys saying? I was going to say, I showed, I showed, I showed, I showed, I showed, I showed the first, uh, 30 minutes of Star Wars. We had, I've never in my life fielded more questions about Jawa. Uh, I don't think anybody ever has.

[00:59:11] We're really just the same question over and over and over again, which is, are they bad guys? Uh, which is usually, is there in the right in the gray area, which, and Hey, that's one of the first things you meet in Star Wars, kind of example of what a cool star Wars is, uh, ultimately, you know, one of the reasons that it appeals to children so much is it's this Manichian, uh, Manichian, however you want to pronounce it, story of good versus evil. Of course. I mean, obviously there's a black clad sadist who appears before the Jawa. I thought George Bader made some good points, but your wife's not mine. But I think that like, you know,

[00:59:40] you, uh, you have that good versus evil thing that kids whose only question at this age is, are they a bad guy? Um, can understand. And that, you know, I'm not saying that I'm showing my five-year-old Schindler's list anytime soon, but I'm saying that, you know, it's an interesting parallel when you're looking at, you know, Spielberg maturing and making a movie for adults. Here he is making the most black and white, you know, morally black and white movie he's ever made is the closest thing to the spirit of Lucas in some ways that, you know, aside from maybe Indiana Jones.

[01:00:38] Yes. Should be the first one, but then you kind of get into like, do I want to traumatize my child with your wife was like, I'm imagining his response. We maybe have to wait until he's stronger. And I was like, I think part of the right of passage of ET is seeing it a little bit. Yeah. It's sort of true. You have to time it out. I'm saying that he's also just better than any other movie that you could show your kid that age. It has someone dying or getting sick where it's like, they might be upset by that too. But ET really, you know,

[01:01:05] avoiding the risk for trauma is sort of a futile endeavor because we're talking about a kid who is currently so scared of everything. We were watching Wreck-It Ralph. And when, uh, someone just perked up. Great movie. What's her face? My daughter calls Angry Man. Um, what's the name of that actress from? Jane Lynch. Oh, Jane Lynch's character shows up. Sergeant Kelsey. Yeah. Asa decided that she was absolutely terrifying. Wait, wait, he didn't even see her shooting bugs. He was, he was out on just the Jane Lynch. Daddy, you have to pause the movie now. Um, and, uh, shrieking at me.

[01:01:33] And so you continue to tell me that your son more than anything reacts negatively to, uh, authority figures in film. Sure. Threatening to discipline characters. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, well, that would paint a picture for your listenership that I, I would say that that's very absent from his life. No, that's, that's what's funny is you're like, if a character comes on screen and feels like they might get angry at the kid, your son freaks out. I mean, maybe the problem is that when I try to tell my son to do anything, he laughs. Yeah. Maybe the problem is that like, I've done such a bad job of disciplining my son.

[01:02:01] I'm a kid that the idea of having any sort of discipline has become this very alien traumatizing. Asa was at my daughter's birthday. Yes, he was. And he was very well behaved. He, uh, he was throwing himself from the tops of, I will send you a video where he is having like a demonic possession over on the side of one of the booths and talking about venom. And I thought he was talking about venom. The cartoon. And I was like, how did you hear about venom? And then it came out to me. He was just talking about like being venomized Asa, which is like Asa, but poisonous, um, which is, I guess, poison spider. I was like, okay, um, or poison spider. You're like,

[01:02:31] you're like, Venomized is a big initiative. But, uh, who knows what they're Eric Adams administration is teaching these kids at school these days. But, uh, I do think that, um, I, you know, fucking him up with ET is fine. Uh, what was I gonna say? The, yeah, Griffin threw a great pick into the mix, which is the adventures of Tintin. I was like, Tintin's a fucking, Tintin's good. Even though it has like guns or whatever, Tintin's pretty, like the stakes are silly.

[01:03:00] I also said in the, is that a bad guy kind of fear that they're all bad guys. Ace is living with, but also with Tintin, you're like, you can tell the bad guys are because of the way their faces look. Like everyone is, Tintin looks normal. So caricatured. What about, I mean, I get BFG is also obviously pretty, yeah, I mean, it's just, I would have to watch the BFG. It's a movie for people who want to go, but Ace and I used to, when he was like two and three, we would do, I don't think this is going to translate at all. Uh, and I don't know why I'm just going to keep going with it.

[01:03:28] Cause there's no mechanism in my mind that can stop these things. But, um, we would do this game when he was young where I'd say like ET and I'd stick out my finger and he would stick at his finger touch and I'd go hook and I'd hook his little arm with my finger and I'd go Jurassic Park and he'd laugh and I'd claw at his stomach. And then I would always like throw in a curve ball just to make myself laugh where I'd be like, always. And I try to like, do something like, exactly. No, it's a little express. Dust some sugar on that bad boy. Yeah. I'd be like, war horse. Don't show him war horse. Not happening. He'll fall too.

[01:03:58] He'd want to fuck that horse too bad. He's too sexy. Too sexy. Too sexy. And NSFW. But, recommended to all the parents. Thomas, I heard you for, Keneally? Keneally? Keneally. I'm guessing. Writes the first script. Uh, they didn't like it. It was too sprawling. He couldn't figure out how to, you know, whatever. He's a novelist. He's not, you know, so then, Kurt, uh, I'm not sure how you say his own, same way. Ludetka, uh, who wrote, uh, the screenplay for Out of Africa. Um, so, obviously, a recent Oscar winner.

[01:04:28] He is a journalist. Like, he makes a lot of sense, in a way, even though Out of Africa is boring. But, says that, interestingly, he couldn't find his way into believing what he was writing. He was like, as a journalist, like, this almost feels surreal. Yes. Like, that someone would behave this way. So, that's when Spielberg turns to, well, maybe, does Sidney Pollack want to do it? Does Brian De Palma want to do it? No. Steve, I love him, but no. Take it back. Take it back. I mean, there are sequences in this movie that you could easily, you know,

[01:04:58] extrapolate to split screen. Yeah. Uh, does Roman Polanski want to do it? Roman Polanski, a literal Holocaust survivor, uh, who survived the Krakow ghetto, uh, Krakow. Uh, and, um, Polanski, I think, did take the offer somewhat seriously, but. Here's the guy who want to open this box. Yes. And, you know, makes the pianist years later. Right. Uh, if you are a writer being hired by Steven Spielberg to adapt this book and this story, and in your mind's eye, you're like,

[01:05:26] and then this will go through Steven Spielberg's camera, I think it is tough to figure out how to write it because even looking at things like Color Purple and Empire of the Sun, and this story feeling so kind of like unbelievable on its face, you're like, how do you prevent this from feeling like a magical fairy tale? Yeah, you can't get in the mindset of writing a Steven Spielberg movie. Right. Um, how could this fit into his world? Yeah. Now, Scorsese, uh, is the person who really did almost make Schindler's list. Marty Scorsese. You've heard of this guy?

[01:05:56] Um, um, Spielberg thought like, he's not going to back down from like the truth of the violence, you know, the sort of horror. Playing sympathy for the devil over at the scene when Amagarta shows up. He was a more serious, bracing, bold filmmaker. And like, it's a part, you know, I'm going to guess that this was in sort of like the late 80s, right? When, when Marty's taking it on. And so it's like right around when he's doing the last temptation of Christ, right? He's making, you know, strides to whatever,

[01:06:26] like serious. I don't know. He got a lot of blowback on King of Comedy. He got a lot of blowback on last temptation of Christ. Spielberg coming to him and being like, here's a project that everything that's challenging about it is like challenged because of history in a certain way. You could sort of see him like going like, look, it's something being delivered to me, handed on a plate. Okay. Supported by the best people. Here, I have Scorsese for you. Okay. I'm being Marty. Yeah, he's raising his shoulder. But shitless list, I hired Steve Zalian.

[01:06:56] So he, he hires Zalian, which I didn't know. Yeah. Steve Zalian, who wrote the script. He says it's around 1990. So it's right after he did last temptation of Christ. And I guess it's probably after he has filmed Goodfellas, which comes out in 1990, which is a good movie. Uh, but a better pizza brand. Um, and, uh, as long as I can remember, I always wanted to be a Nazi. The whole point of the movie to me, he says, uh, was to start a dialogue about something, which is still important to me, which is the nature,

[01:07:26] the true nature of love. Uh, which could be, this is what Scorsese says. Scorsese, it could be Jesus. I'm not being culturally ambivalent here. It's what's in us. He says it could be the force. No, he doesn't say that. Um, is God in us? I really am that way. I can't help it. I like to explore that. I want a dialogue on that. So I did last temptation. I did it a certain way. And, you know, I did the best I could. I went around the world and the arguments, I took them on. But like, in the case of Schindler's list,

[01:07:53] the trauma I had just gone through was such that I felt like I had to take, tackle this subject matter, like, so seriously. And he's worried that he's, he's a Gentile and he's not like gonna be up for it. Like, he mentions that Jewish people have been upset that the writer of the Diary Van Frank movie, I guess, was a Gentile. I don't know. Like, it's, you know, funny, like, controversies long past at this point. But it is one of those, uh, infamous, historic sliding doors that Spielberg is seriously considering remaking Cape Fear,

[01:08:23] which is a real, like, Steve, come on, you're avoiding. I mean, that is, it's so funny, right? Like, you're totally avoiding this at this point. Where Spielberg's like, should I just like remake some of my favorite movies? Like, cause that's what always is as well. Like, it's just like, I'm just gonna remake these movies I like. I mean, there was, there were rumors that Spielberg has, uh, has said are not true, that he and Scorsese effectively traded. Correct. Projects. I mean, the part of it that's,

[01:08:46] that's simplified in a way that is kind of incorrect is people missing the context that Spielberg was the one who hired Scorsese to do Schindler in the first place. I feel like the story kind of gets repeated as if like, they were just doing separate things in separate silos. And then he called one day and was like, what if we Yankee swap? Well, supposedly, according to JJ, they did swap. No, of course they swapped. I'm just saying that it was Spielberg being like, I know I offered you this. Right. But I'm kind of thinking I should make it. And of course, Cape Fear. And as repayment, do you want to do Cape Fear? Which,

[01:09:16] Amblin produces. Amblin produces, becomes Scorsese's first kind of like, mainstream hit. Yeah, makes money, obviously. A huge transition in his career to like, figuring out how to work within the studio system and all of that. Right. It's a big, big movie for him. Everyone kind of wins in this scenario. Yes. But I think that the, the legacy of English language films about the Holocaust, especially American films about the Holocaust, was really working against Spielberg in that it, it was all the more reason to make the movie, but it was also, you know,

[01:09:46] part of what made it so daunting. I mean, you have like Theodore Adorno's, you know, declaration that poetry is impossible after the, after Auschwitz resonating in your head. And then you're seeing the diary of Anne Frank movie and some other things that are really sort of trivializing or, or, or making into kitsch, um, the Holocaust in some ways that are played with, commercial interruptions from Hallmark or whatever. And Frank feels like the main vehicle for telling stories about the Holocaust in American pop culture. Yeah, for a long, long time. And, and then you have like Hitler comedies.

[01:10:15] Like you have like, to be or not to be, and a great dictator. And these movies that are made like, in progress, that are sort of like poking fun at the idea of this guy without really understanding what's going on. There was some animated movie about Anne Frank, where it was like Anne Frank, but modern in a way. It was like set in the Anne Frank house. And she escapes into modern, into the modern world that would play to Cannes a few years ago. And I saw and reviewed and has never seen the light of day. What's it called? Something, something Anne Frank, I would think. But,

[01:10:43] but then the other huge monolith that you have, I think in recent cultural memory around this time is Shoah, as Claude Lanzmann's film, which is in a way, you know, it definitely wasn't a sort of last word and testament, you know, about the, about the Holocaust or Shoah, but it was a definitive in a way. And also an opportunity for someone like Schindler or for Spielberg rather, because it doesn't contain a single frame of archival footage. It's all interview testimony.

[01:11:13] It is like the filmmaking and that is fascinating and alive. And like, it is another movie that despite its epic length does not at all feel like homework. And I highly recommend everyone who has been afraid of it, sit down and watch it because it is a really fascinating and incredible document. But, but yeah, I mean, so that's the other sort of thing where it's just like, it's been kitschy. It's also the most totemic and serious version of this has been done. Um, how do I thread the needle between these two things? Right, right. Which is like,

[01:11:42] there's something tonally he's getting from Shoah that is, you don't have to make the stately Hollywood kind of like, um, and Frank is like a very traditional movie. It is like the conventional mechanism for how, for decades, Hollywood would turn important stories into accessible drama. The 59 film with, yes, yes. You know, and, and like Shoah is sort of like, obviously this eight hour kind of like monolithic, uh,

[01:12:12] art house sensation, kind of like historically important text, but you can see him going like, is there a way to kind of like bridge the gap between these two have the unbracing, like specificity and feeling of Shoah and put it in a vehicle that audiences can like, go and see. Yeah. And I think that's exactly what Spielberg recognized to his great credit in my eye, is that part of the value of me, of him making Schindler's List is that people would see it more than exactly.

[01:12:39] I think the things that certain people like to ding this movie for are all part of the strategy of what the intended impact of this movie was, which you can't really argue with because it fucking worked. And yeah, I mean, it's, it's hard to think of any other movie aside from maybe saving private Ryan, that so definitively created a visual language for a historical event that is almost dangerous because it becomes so ubiquitous, um, and, and limiting in that way,

[01:13:09] because people think of the Holocaust as being sort of visually synonymous as one thing, just like now you can't think about D-Day or, or just like the nature of these ground battles in World War II without thinking of how Spielberg transformed them in our visual memory with, with saving private Ryan. And so like, you can't think about like horses without thinking about danger. Thank you. Sorry. Talked over that important point. No, I talked over your important point. Scorsese gives up the project. He says, I guarantee you it would have been good, but it wouldn't have been the hit it became. Uh, had some ideas.

[01:13:38] Most of it's there. It had a very different ending. I admire the film greatly. You know, I would, I, it's fascinating to consider. It'd be one thing if it was like, oh yeah, he took the movie back from Turtle Top. It's like, Marcus Scorsese almost made this. What does that look like? Yeah. Anyway, we've had so many chances to see the Turtle Top Schindler's list, uh, over the last few. And no, but it just like so many. The thing about Turtle Top is he's like, I'm going to remake it now. He's like, even though it, anyway, uh, no, he's, uh, Steven's alien. Uh,

[01:14:04] Spielberg likes the script because he doesn't tell the story from the survivor's point of view, but from Schindler's. And as Zalian puts it, I wanted it clear. He didn't do what he did out of friendship. He didn't feel sorry for them. He eventually does it because it's the right thing to do. Um, but Spielberg's like, we do need to longer. We need to broaden out. We, you know, like, yes, it should be from his perspective, but we can, you know, uh, leave his perspective to take in what's happening in Krakow and like happening in the Holocaust around him.

[01:14:32] He would have like a sub two hour script. Right. He was like, I mean, this is another Spielberg thing of him being like, I can get away with this movie being over three hours long. Don't feel the need to rush this and compress it to a traditional structure. this doesn't need to play a Sundance in 2025. It doesn't have to be a tight 82 minutes. Right. Um, at first he resists. They went to Poland together. They meet with survivors. I think, you know, they, they, they talk about like, what do we put in there? Uh, Zalian initially had this sort of hard rule of like, no,

[01:15:00] Schindler has to have been in the room essentially to have a scene, you know, to take place in this movie. And Spielberg's like, no, I think an incredibly smart decision, but show it comes out of the same soup, which is just like this feeling getting back to what we were saying earlier of these people are still alive. There are people who live through this, who are still like young enough and cogent enough that we need to get all of these stories on record and do something with them and preserve them and archive them because they're going to start disappearing.

[01:15:28] Which is part of the reason why making something like Schindler's List is so dangerous and I think was, uh, greeted by a lot of skepticism among certain critics because it has the potential to malform the collective memory of the Holocaust, um, in, in a way that as we've seen based on the movie's influence, you know, it's a real power that it had to shape, you know, our understanding of it. Um, so the biggest, you know, thing that they have to figure out, and Spielberg talks a lot about, you know, going to Poland,

[01:15:57] transforming his relationship with his religion, you know, understanding the Holocaust completely differently if you go there. Um, but they're, what they also don't really know is like, what is the motivation behind Schindler's sort of transformation? Um, because I feel like the survivors are basically just like, well, he did this thing for us, but it's like, but they don't know like, you know, what, why, why did this seemingly fairly amoral businessman suddenly, not suddenly maybe, but like, you know,

[01:16:27] fairly quickly start to, you know, behave in a different way. He's going to be in steps, and it always, I think the thing that makes him so interesting as a character is it feels like for the first two-thirds, if not three-fourths of the movie, he is fighting against the idea of any responsibility. Where every time he does something that helps someone, He's like, it's good business. Well, and then also is just like, never fucking make me do that again. Oh, yeah. That's an aberration.

[01:16:52] I think one of the reasons that this movie is a masterpiece is because it does this very controlled sense of winnowing over the course of the movie in a number of different regards where, you know, this habitable space that the Jews of Krakow have comes smaller and smaller and smaller in very understandable ways. Because you feel Schindler's sort of moral compass. This is a mixed metaphor, but like getting smaller as well as the movie goes on.

[01:17:17] And there is a geometry to how he is reaching this sort of moral epiphany that is reflected in the scope of the movie. And every time I watch the movie, I'm surprised all over again by how narrow its confines are. Yeah. I also think all those, the huge shifts and the revelations, and part of it is, and it seems like this is just the way, the accounts supported the, I'm backing myself to a sentence I can't construct properly here.

[01:17:47] It feels like part of what was fascinating about Schindler was there was a certain degree of inscrutability into like what caused these shifts and when and how, what was going on in his mind. And these sort of blurry lines of like, as you're saying, the moments where he's like, it's good for business and denying that there's any altruistic motives versus the moments where he doesn't altruistic, and then feels angry about it, that the moments of big psychological shifts and catharsis are like in between the scenes of this movie.

[01:18:16] And even the thing that is closest to a moment in the film of him until the end, which we'll talk about, the closest to a moment of him being like, oh my God, my understanding has changed, is obviously the little girl in the red coat. but yet, in that moment, the person who's having the bigger emotional reaction is the mistress on the horse next to him. Like she's... His wife. But there's a... It's the wife at that moment, not the mistress? Yeah, there is nothing that would have cheapened, I think,

[01:18:41] this story more than acting as though Schindler's moral awakening was schematic enough to like, be done like a save the cat, like version of like him. I'm shocked to learn that. Because the red coat happened so much earlier than I remembered. And then even then, he's like going back and forth and fighting it. And when you get to like the last chunk of the film where he's... Where Ben Kingsley has to pull out of him that he's purposefully making bad shell casings. But mine worked, damn it. And you're like, oh, a huge shift has happened here.

[01:19:11] Where not only has he saved people, but now he's like trying to undermine the war and everything. And those scenes happen in between the margins. Right. I mean, it's because again, with the girl in the red coat, you are seeing someone sort of awaken to this idea of the value of a single human life. He's witnessing a crime that would have gone, would have been obliviated into history, if not for him having eyes on it. Because no one else is watching this girl. I mean, and... All in it for the girl. But right. But it's, you know,

[01:19:40] I think also what is so powerful about the movie, again, going back to the good and evil of it all, is that I don't think Schindler's moral awakening happens, if not for his relationship with Amund Goethe, who is an evil that is so profound, that he has to distance himself from it. That it's like only by virtue of being exposed to that degree of sociopathic cruelty, is he able to sort of recognize his own morality and step back and find his own humanity.

[01:20:09] Most of the other Nazis you're seeing up until that point in the film, even the ones who seem to get some degree of perverse pleasure from it, are primarily the, like, just following orders guys. Which I don't think Spielberg views as any less evil, but the level of sadism and perversion in the Ray Fiennes character is, you're right, it's the thing of just like, I am fundamentally a different person than this guy. Yeah, I mean, and there's, I mean,

[01:20:37] I think the interplay between the two characters is so brilliant. And, you know, there's that great scene, I mean, there are several great scenes between them, but especially when he is, you know, talking to him, he's about to bargain for Helen Hirsch's life at the end, and he's talking. But like, Goethe, even after everything that's happened, and their various negotiations, cannot fathom why Schindler would want the Jews to work for him. He assumes it has to be some sort of financial trick that he's missing.

[01:21:06] And I think in Schindler's awareness of that sort of moral bankruptcy, it unlocks something in him that dealing with a slightly less, you know, profoundly evil, but still obviously evil Nazi commandant would not have maybe precipitated the same reaction. Well, right. The difference is the guys he has to fight with to get Kingsley off the train. I mean, okay, so that is the scene of,

[01:21:35] I think this is the most important scene in the movie in a way, because this is the scene where you're seeing one Spielberg collide with another, and sort of knot themselves together in a way that I think makes this movie what it is, and makes him eventually the artist he would become, which is that, you know, it's a very suspenseful scene of him trying to rescue Itzhak Stern from being sent away to one of the camps, and he tells the guys in this like very fun movie that has, owes as much, it's a very fun moment that owes as much to something like Casablanca, and like classic, you know, 50s film,

[01:22:05] 40s and 50s films, as it does to Holocaust narratives. He was telling them he's going to send them to the Eastern Russia by the end of the month, and then the cut is to Liam Neeson walking along the train saying, Stern, Stern, and then who enters the frame are the two Germans who you see have now bowed to his will and are working on his bidding, and it's a completely slick cut that is foregrounding the entertainment in what is ostensibly the most consequential dramatic moment of the movie so far,

[01:22:34] and it's a perfect marriage between the entertainment value and like a choice that almost no other filmmaker would make to like really squeeze the fun out of that moment. It's almost a joke. And then. It's kind of a comedy edit. It's a very funny, it's a very funny edit, and then it pivots again in the span of a single shot to what is the most horrifying moment of the movie so far, which is when they exit frame after Liam Neeson says, you know, if I had been here five minutes later, then where would I be? It's like scolding him. Exactly.

[01:23:04] And saying like, where would I be? I don't give a shit about you. Like, where would my business be? And the camera lingers on the luggage that's being taken from the Jews who were promised that it would go with them to the camps. And we follow that into a back room where it's unpacked and sorted and obviously, you know, organized so that it can be sold and they're never going to see their own belongings again. And all of this is happening with a fluidity that no other filmmaker would think to approach it. And it's really, it's, it's just so fluidly

[01:23:34] blending the Hollywood of it all with the sobriety of what the story is and the gravity of it. And I think from that moment on, you know, he's just so in the pocket as Griffin Newman would say about it. But that's also when the movie has a mission, when it doesn't really before then, you know, like, it's sort of, it takes half the movie. Everything for the sort of plot to come to coalesce. Like his plot. I don't mean, well, you guys have seen this movie far more than I have.

[01:24:03] So correct me if I'm wrong here. I feel like up until that moment, anything that he ostensibly does to help another person is profit. No, I was going to say is facilitated by Kingsley. It's like Kingsley going like this guy and then Neeson is stamping it. Kingsley is essentially using him as a vehicle for stuff. That's true. Which Kingsley is incredible. And it's, but Kingsley is also playing to his desire to save money, you know? Right. I mean, it's part of the magic of the performance.

[01:24:33] And then, right. That Kingsley is quietly the one who's, he's so fucking good. It is like running the miracle. Did you listen to Kingsley on Marin? Oh my God. It is. It is one of the hardest listens I've ever endured. I don't like, I love Ben Kingsley. He's given like many performances that I love. You have to listen to this episode. I might. I mean, but like he has such a rep now for being, you know, pretty, pretty tough.

[01:24:59] So I'm not surprised to hear that he and Marin didn't exactly buy. Here's what's incredible about it. He's really tough. And the exact way you expect him to be. And he just like immediately clams up at Marin being way too casual and conversational about stuff. And him reading Marin is kind of glib. And then also clearly like, Oh, this is one of those things where this guy wants me to like break down and like get emotional or start sharing intimate details. And that's not what Kingsley wants to do.

[01:25:26] I think Kingsley wants to be treated with like a lot of reverence. Correct. Right. He wants every interview to be like a career retrospective, like a lifetime achievement award. You're here to tell us about, you know, whatever. He talks about like the Ryan Reynolds. What was that? Like awful movie. He made so many awful movies in the last 10 years, but there's one with like Ryan Reynolds and like technology. I don't, I mean, I saw, I know the one you're fucking talking about. It was Ryan Reynolds. It's not called limitless, but it's got a title like that. It's like limitlish. It's like along those lines. Wait,

[01:25:55] what movie is this? It's a movie where like he, Ryan Reynolds consciousness is in his body or vice versa. Yes. It's a weird fucking thing. The worst part of Ryan Reynolds to have in your body, one would argue. But I think that like the, uh, the thing about Kingsley, he talks about that in the same sort of terms that he would talk about Gandhi or Schindler's list. And anyway, the thing I was going to say about that interview is as much as he is like putting up walls and being like, I'm not going to play your fucking game. And if this is what your show is like, then I'm going to give you like monosyllabic answers.

[01:26:24] By the end of the episode, even though he's doing it like with a very tight grip, he basically admits that his entire life is driven by the fact that his father never gave him an ounce of approval. And then gets him to admit that he's too critical of his sons who have also followed him into acting and he disapproves. So Marin refuses to end any interview until someone makes the same. It's kind of incredible. The movie is, uh, self less. Thank you. I knew it. It's a Tarsem movie. Right. But like his most anonymous. You know,

[01:26:53] if you go up to Tarsem and tell him that you saw the fallen theaters, he will give you a like huge hug, physical hug. That's great. On the spot. Anyone. Two to three people can. Guaranteed. I saw it in theaters. Good for you. Here's, let me finish my point I want to make here. Right. So like, this is the first moment in which Neeson does something not aided, by Kingsley. It is provoked by Kingsley. He is saving Kingsley, but he's not just like signing off on something that guy put into motion. And Kingsley,

[01:27:21] the whole first hour of the movie is walking on eggshells. It is this incredible unspoken performance of him just being like, how much can I get away with before I get a little too loud and a little too sloppy? And this guy like clamps down on me. It's sort of like a reverse assimilation that he's performing. It's just like, obviously deeply embedded in the Jewish experience that would follow the Holocaust in particular. But like, there's that amazing scene right after the one armed worker has come to him and just to thank Schindler for employing him, which obviously never let that happen. Right. And,

[01:27:50] but the way that Kingsley handles that scene where the driver comes out and Kingsley's like, fuck off, like, fuck off, go away, get in the car. Like, the effort he puts into saving Kingsley, which part of the magic is he doesn't do it with a sense of stakes or immediacy in a way. He's doing his like Schindler bullshitter. I need that guy. Right. Freaking out the two officers kind of thing.

[01:28:20] And then you think that it's like, he's not going to say anything and he's not going to show emotion. But this is an acknowledgement that he started to care about Kingsley a little too much, or at the very least has started to see him as a person a little too much. To let him get away. That there's some emotional calculation. Kingsley gets off the train. In, in a one broke, a one unbroken long Spielberg wonder, right? He gets off the train. It's like door open, train stopped abruptly. Kingsley gets off.

[01:28:48] He is playing the emotion of a guy who was 30 seconds ago convinced he was about to die. This was it. Even though Schindler's running after the chain, it's like, well, he's missed it by five seconds. It's compounded by the understanding that, that Stern has a greater awareness. Yeah. Of the consequence of being on that train than anyone else. This guy has just to some degree accepted his fate, right? Is now like being saved by a, a hair. Steps off the train. They close the door so quickly behind him. The train starts moving.

[01:29:17] He glances back for half a second. At like, holy shit, all of those people are about to die. Just gets behind Schindler and walking. Starts apologizing profusely. He's apologizing while he's still in the car. Right. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I fucked up. I fucked up. And you're expecting that Schindler's going to be stoic. And Schindler's like, no, you're right. You did fuck up. Fuck you. Never let that happen ever again. It's also one of so many different moments in this movie that hinge on a kind of divine providence, which, you know, there were some criticisms in the movie came out about how the Jews were seen as having, you know,

[01:29:46] just being this, this faceless mob in the background and not having any agency. Well, guess who took away all of their agency? but it's also Germany. It's also saying that like, you know, the flip side of that argument, which is, there's this famous village voice symposium that came out right around the time of the movie where someone was arguing that, you know, the Jews don't, it's, it's makes it seem as if they didn't do anything to save their own skin. And I think that is countered just by like, you know,

[01:30:14] and it's like only the people who survive deserve to survive. And I think it's countered by like, just the role that we see luck play in this movie time and time and time again. One person, you know, he lines up 50 people, shoots 25 by going to every other one. You know, one person hides here, one person hides there. It's all complete happenstance. I think this movie does an incredibly good job. I want to say better than maybe any other Holocaust film I have seen of really,

[01:30:39] really dramatizing the drawn out psychological warfare aspect of the dehumanization, where I feel like people who struggle to wrestle with the enormity of the Holocaust are like, I don't get it. How did they just show up one day, tell the Jews to get in cages and no one fought back? Right? Like, how did they just accept this sort of victimization and not fight back against it? And the movie is showing that it's like,

[01:31:08] their strategy was so complicated, so drawn out, so gradual, that there are these constant steps of just like, we just have to like, accept this thing and then find our moment to fight back against it or to slip away or to get our exit. And people did get away and people did survive. Right? But it all felt so kind of random and chaotic that there was this gaming of even the women on the train being like, I've heard this rumor about the showers. They're like, the fuck are you talking about? That's crazy.

[01:31:37] What you're describing is crazy. That couldn't be real. Yeah, I mean, you feel, it's again, going back to the idea of how Spielberg, you know, the gradients by which he introduces different elements, you feel the noose tightening as, as the circle where the Jews are allowed to live, grow smaller, and you feel Schindler expanding in that space. And there's that great scene that could potentially have been too on the nose. I mean, this is not an overwhelmingly subtle movie, but I think, you know, it is very effective in doing this where we see the Jews being kicked out of their apartment in Krakow.

[01:32:05] And then who takes up the apartment is Schindler. And he says, it couldn't be any better, which is kind of a ham-fisted and clunky line, but only exists so that it can be mirrored by the Jewish woman then saying, I can't get any word. Like, you know, it's, and you have that scene where they're talking in the ghetto about like the ghetto. One guy says the ghetto is liberty. They're talking, no one stole my business today. Nobody threw me on a truck. The constant rationalizations of like, at least I have this, at least I have that. And, you know, like frogs in boiling water. You know,

[01:32:35] it's, they had never, they had never been witness to a Holocaust before. No. And also like, you get to a point where people have just so fully lost their sense of selves. You're attacking them from so many strange, unprecedented angles and moving the goalposts so constantly, while also constantly maintaining this looming threat of severe violence, tragedy, nightmarish experience, that people just like don't even know what to fucking do anymore.

[01:33:05] People also just didn't understand how you could kill people on mass. Cause that's not something that, you know, they, they industrialize. Something people struggle to wrap their heads around today. Exactly. Yes. Um, one of the things that makes me very tough to watch. It's also like we go, we would also have to delve into like pre-war European, like Poland. These countries are, are nascent, you know, they, like they, they've been sort of like overrun by empires many times over the last hundred, 200 years. Like, you know, this isn't a country with a sort of like completely fixed, you know,

[01:33:34] structured government, you know, I mean, obviously it's been, you know, invaded at this point by both countries, by both Russia and Germany. We can't, I need to go back to the, uh, compelling fact that of course, Mel Gibson was one of the people considered to play Oscar Schindler. What a world. Along with Harrison Ford, who certainly makes sense both for Spielberg and for age, you know, and like, uh, time. And the name you want me to name, which is Kevin Costner. Talked about it recently. Uh, probably. I think Kevin Costner was kind of lobbying for it. Yes. He also,

[01:34:03] and as Beatty was for him, Beatty famously was as well. Period where Costner, where, where Spielberg was reluctant to direct it. Costner also took a stab at like, I think I could direct this. Schindler's list part one. I mean, look, obviously Costner is what two, two, three years removed from dances. The man is, he's feeling confident. What if he ran out of funding halfway through Schindler's list? Had to go to Santa Barbara. Or more. En route. Spielberg instead goes for Liam Neeson. Um,

[01:34:32] one wants someone who looks like the guy in his head, at least. Uh, two, not an unknown actor at this point, but not a star. Won't bring baggage for the character. Won't overwhelm the film. Obviously, if Warren Beatty was playing Oscar Schindler, it probably would. Like, would he rock it? Possibly. Would he do great in all the scenes where he's fucking his way around town? Yeah. Can we talk about that? Can we talk about Neeson for a bit? It's an incredible performance. It's an incredible performance. And, and I, I love when this kind of thing comes up on our show. An incredible performance.

[01:35:01] One of his most important performances. And yet, when you step back, you're like, one of his most important performance in his career. Complete outlier from the rest of his career. Well, this is like, first off, the movie starts, he starts speaking. Not immediately, right? But when his first dialogue kicks in. The movie starts, they light the candles, and he's like, I'm here too, by the way! It's not 100% unrecognizable. He's doing an accent. It is the only time I think he has successfully changed his voice to any degree.

[01:35:29] But he still has a hint of the brogue, and it works. He does. This is some of the best accent work of any movie I've ever seen, and that of all these movies that immediately caused me to roll my eyes at, English, and various other, you know, actors of other ethnicities. I didn't want to do subtitles. Subtitles, you're reading the movie, not watching it. You're not looking at what's happening. There's something about just, maybe they're just getting the tones right. Not that I am all that well-versed in what the right accent should sound like, beyond my own family. There are a lot of accents in this film. You know, it all feels right.

[01:35:59] I don't know. I don't question the reality of it. I feel like every other time Neeson tries to do an accent, he is putting a little something on top of his Irish brogue, and you just kind of accept, he sounds like Liam Neeson. He's making some effort to get away from pure Irish, but he's got his own voice, and no one else sounds like that. What about when he played Qui-Gon? Hey, Sebulba, give me that kid. This is what I'm saying. He never fully sounds American. He never fully sounds British. This is the best I think he's done at finding a voice that is different from him, while also retaining some of the core,

[01:36:28] like, movie star qualities. It is also... This is upon your dad. Did he bust out his Schindler's voice for that? He's incredible. Much about the character that he's playing here is a performance in and of itself. It allows for a theatricality that he can play up and sort of disappear into. And there's that incredible first sequence where he's... Trivia, the maitre d' at the nightclub where you see it is Branko Lustig, who is not only the producer of the film, but a survivor of Auschwitz.

[01:36:59] And, and yeah, he goes in there and he's putting on a show, like, one by one in this nightclub and bending everyone to his will. And the charisma is just, like, fucking off the screen. He looks like he just walked out of Casablanca. He's, like, you know, got the cigarette smoke hanging over him. Like, this is the best black and white photography. This makes... This movie is, like, this movie looks... This movie, I mean,

[01:37:28] has the eyeshadows in that first scene alone are, I mean... He's also, he's got an incredible face for black and white. And it's... Yeah, of course, because he's got a brow and crag, so the shadows can fall on his face. The movie also feels like it starts the day after Oscar Schindler has realized that his business has failed because he doesn't make it, take advantage of the fact that he's hot as shit. Like, he, he's finally figured out that the fact that I am, like, the most charismatic, and beautiful man alive

[01:37:58] is going to be my greatest asset as a businessman because I am not a great businessman. David, two anecdotes. David, David, not an ad read, I apologize for everyone who got triggered by that. Sims, uh, if you can find either of these in the dossier, there's a, there's the, like, entertainment executive whose Spielberg recommended Neeson's study where he was like, this is the kind of charisma I want you to have. He was the CEO of Time Warner. In a way where, Neeson's obviously a very charismatic guy, right?

[01:38:27] And can get away with the sort of, like, Qui-Gon Aslani, just like, this is the most important man in the world speaking, like, the word of God. Spielberg loved Steve Ross. Steve Ross was the head of Time Warner. I am not aware of Steve Ross actually being the greatest human alive. Spielberg seemed to think he was. I guess he was like a philanthropist, and he, maybe he was like, by CEO standards, standard is pretty good. That could be a loaded compliment. I don't know. Well, but no, but he's saying like, no, no, study Steve Ross. we're saying like, study how he walks. Study, like,

[01:38:57] Spielberg seems like very entranced by Steve Ross as a kind of like good businessman. I also think he's like acknowledging that this guy needs to have a certain kind of businessman charisma and not a movie star charisma. That makes sense. Right? Or I'm like, if it's, if it's Gibson, if it's Costner, if it's Beatty, you're too far in the other line of that. Neeson obviously has movie star charisma, but there's also the deep well of Irish sadness in him that is always his superpower. And also knowing that he's like, not a guy who's going to be protective

[01:39:26] of his leading man image, that he's a guy who's going to view this as an acting assignment. And he's like, watch the way that people who are good at fucking winning negotiations behind closed doors have charisma, not the people who are good at like getting on camera and charming a public. But it's like, what if Charles Foster Kane enjoyed being Charles Foster Kane? Right. Like that's sort of the vibe that he's bringing. But that's these guys who like fucking love making deals, you know? The other anecdote I wanted to say, I can't remember if it's Kingsley who's the one who gave him this advice,

[01:39:56] but that he like a week or two into filming was like, I don't know if I have any handle on this thing. Spielberg is like not giving me direction. He's not explaining it to me. I feel like I'm floundering. And I think it was Kingsley who was like, you need to just trust him. Sure. I can find that probably. Right. Like you, you are a color on his palette. He hired you because he knows you can do what you want to do. He's going to make you look good. He's adjusting around your performance. Don't get freaked out by the lack of handholding. But I think there is a little bit of panic

[01:40:27] in the lack of communication. I'd be pretty fucking panicked if I was Liam Neeson making this movie. I'm saying there's a little bit of panic that I think helps the performance. Maybe. Yeah, of course, because Schindler is kind of skating the whole time. Yeah, he's got enough money to fall back on. I mean, that's the first thing he says to Stern is like, I don't have the money for the kind of business that I like. I need you to trade enamelware with other Jews. And part of this is Spielberg being like, I want to approach this like a documentary. I want to just let the actors do their thing and then figure out how to shoot it rather than doing like perfect dollhouse arrangements,

[01:40:56] which to Neeson, he's like, why is no one giving me direction? I've never really been the lead of a big Hollywood movie like this before. Darkman dead in a ditch. I'm sorry, I forgot. That is wild. Darkman is so shortly before this. It would be funny if Spielberg was like, I just loved the way he did Darkman. I love Darkman. Well, also, let's call out, this is only the second movie for M. Beth Davids. Her first film is Army of Darkness. Sam Raimi in Universal. Is Spielberg quietly plucking the Raimi cast? Maybe he is, but you know who it's also only the second movie for?

[01:41:28] Ralph Fiennes! Voldemort himself! Which, you know, it's one of those like Spielberg things where, or like casting things where Spielberg's like, look, the man screamed evil to me. What can I tell you? And Spielberg lays on so much praise of like, I really think this guy could be like Alec Guinness or Laurence Olivier. Like, you know, like he's the talent being the Pope. Which he kind of is. Yes. I, I, excuse me, he doesn't want to be the Pope. Stop voting for him! Can I close the loop

[01:41:57] on my Neeson thoughts and then bridge to the Fiennes thoughts? Yes. It's just the way you say these things sometimes. It's like, you know, you're building another skyscraper. I'm like, we barely talked about the movie. Karen, yes. I think the lack of guidance he's giving him is because he doesn't want to feel like he's controlling the performances and he's trying to let this movie develop more organically, which is freaking out Neeson a little bit because this is a lot, a little out of his wheelhouse and working on Darkman, Raimi is notoriously like, here's the shot and I'm going to do this and at two seconds tilt your head this degree. Like, so hands-on. Yes,

[01:42:27] of course. Which Neeson, I think, does subconsciously, and I don't think this was Spielberg's intent, create a certain energy of, am I getting away with this? That helps the performance. It's part of the negotiation that we see in the movie because the first sequence of this movie, the first real sequence of Schindler at the nightclub is shot like the shadow. I mean, like it's, it is hyper precise and that gives way almost immediately when we cut to, you know, the footage of, you know, foot soldiers running down the street to the docudrama, like handheld. But he is almost sort of like

[01:42:57] finding his way into doing that around what the actors are doing rather than collaborating them to get to that point, which I think is mostly what he had done with his movies up until this film. Whereas Ralph Fiennes feels like he just is like incredibly studious and self-sufficient and just showed up and was like, I figured it out. Here's this guy. And Spielberg's like, great, you're ready to go. Like, fuck it. I don't know how you found this. He talks about it like he had like a voodoo doll where Ralph Fiennes was like, I just like lived with this horrible creation that I like understood

[01:43:26] and poked and prodded. Right. I mean, Fiennes talks about, you know, he like people who play villains all the time, like understood some sympathy for this like broken evil man or whatever. But I love that he he shows up in the ghetto with the cold from Bridge of Spies. I mean, some of the two great cold acting, I think films. You watch this movie now and you're like, there's Ralph Fiennes. And I joke, Lord Voldemort. That's literally, you know, like that's why him being cast as Voldemort to me at the time I was like, can we try again? Like,

[01:43:56] that's too obvious. Yeah, except guess what? He fucking rocked the house as Lord Voldemort. He's great. That performance is unbelievable. I have no, to be clear, he's very good in the role. One of my favorite screen actors of all time. Next year we got to see Mads Mikkelsen as a villain or something crazy like that. Imagine, oh, that'd be crazy. I joked the other day on text, it's going to be Danny Houston. I swear, the Lithgow thing, I'm like, I'm in this state where I'm like, well, I shouldn't even care about this stupid Harry Potter TV show. We need less replications of these books over and over again. Like,

[01:44:25] there's plenty done already and we don't need to be feeding that beast. I feel a relief that we're not going to like. John Lithgow is Dumbledore and I'm like, fuck that. God damn it. But also, I feel the relief that it's like, thank God we're not tying down Mark Rylance for a decade, which was the rumor. Yeah. David? Yes, quick question. Okay. And I've been remiss actually. This question doesn't feel quick. In our 10 years of doing the podcast, we've never asked you this directly before. Do you love movies?

[01:44:53] I love movies. Okay, well, there we go. Have you ever heard of an eye of the duck scene? Can you explain that to me? The late, great David Lynch, who we covered on this podcast recently, said every movie has a scene that defines the whole. Okay. He basically said the way to understand a duck is to look into its eye. This is a very David Lynchian philosophy. it's a sort of a left field way of talking about it, but okay. And movies have the same thing. One scene that sort of defines the heart of what the film's getting. You're talking about the essential scene in a film that, right, explains everything. Okay. It doesn't mean it's the big plot scene.

[01:45:23] In some ways, it's the scene that defines why the movie was birthed into existence in the first place. And it's also the name of a great movie podcast. On each episode of the Eye of the Duck podcast, host Dom Nero and Adam Volrich, friends of mine, explore a movie by finding its most essential scene. And right now, Dom and Adam are going deep on Batman movies from Keaton to Kilmer, Clooney, Bale, Pattinson, all the Batman in between. I was on recently, I've been on the show many times, but was on recently

[01:45:53] talking about Batman Returns, my beloved, which we've covered on this show, but it's been many years and I have many new takes. What was the scene that you've ever seen? In Batman Returns, it was the scene that we all three agreed on to give you a spoiler for the episode was the Suzy and the Banshees ballroom dance scene between Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle where they finally crack who each other really is. Right. And she starts crying and says, are we going to have to fight now? A beautiful scene

[01:46:22] in a phenomenal film. But it's a miniseries that they're calling Eye of the Duck Knight. It's a very clever title and you better believe they're talking about Mask of the Phantasm, baby. Sure. And speaking of Batman the Animated Series, if you want even more from Eye of the Duck, Dom and Adam just kicked off a new Patreon-supported show called Eye of the Duck After Hours. Check them out on Patreon for industry news, weekly recommendations, and the occasional deep dive like their recent episode on Bruce Timm's legendary run of Batman animated shows and films.

[01:46:52] But Batman isn't the only pop culture icon. Dom and Adam have en masse on their show. Eye of the Duck has explored franchises like Alien, Toy Story, I did a Lightyear episode for people who have asked why we never covered that on this podcast. What was the big scene in Lightyear? Well, my take was that the Eye of the Duck scene in Lightyear is a scene that doesn't work as a great Eye of the Duck explanation for why the whole movie doesn't work. What was this? Which is the conversation about juicy, meaty fingers in their universe where they have inside-out sandwiches. You know what I'm talking about? I do, yes. I've seen it many times.

[01:47:22] So bizarre. Mission Impossible, Evil Dead, Indiana Jones. I did the Dial Destiny episode with them. Sure. Connor Ratliff, Jurassic Park. They've even cataloged major movements of film history like 80s Dark Fantasy, David's Beloved Cyberpunk, Space Film, and movies about UFOs. Their next miniseries will kick off later this summer and if you join their Discord community, you can decide what it will be. Voting will begin May 1st for their latest installment of miniseries Mayhem. Head over to

[01:47:51] Eye of the Discord to make your case for the future Eye of the Duck. Explore the scenes at the heart of your favorite movies and follow Eye of the Duck wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes drop every Monday and you can listen early and ad-free on Amazon Music or the Wondery App. Hi Freunde, seid ihr gerade auf der Suche nach einer App, mit der ihr alle eure Finanzen im Überblick habt? Mit Finanzguru erhältst du genau das. Ihr könnt alle eure Konten verbinden, egal ob Girokonto, Kreditkarte, Depot

[01:48:21] oder auch eure Kryptobörse und dabei werden alle eure Eindamen und Ausgaben automatisch kategorisiert und übersichtlich in der App aufbereitet. Und habt ihr erst einmal ein Konto verbunden, zeigt ihr die App alle Verträge übersichtlich an. Ihr könnt sogar überflüssige Verträge per Fingertipp rechtssicher über die App kündigen. Falls das Ganze euch interessiert, checkt gerne mal die Finanzguru App aus und jetzt viel Spaß mit dem Podcast. Ralph Fiennes. Ralph Fiennes, imagine seeing this film in 1993, 99.9% of people do not know who Ralph Fiennes is. No, 100%. Nobody knows

[01:48:50] who Ralph Fiennes is. Unless you've been going to the National Theater in Britain or whatever. And like, this guy shows up and I do feel like people were just like, they got a Nazi from like the 40s. They just found one like in a time tunnel. Like, that's what it feels like when you're watching him in those first scenes. I find talking to people very often, people just assume he won for this. I will hear people constantly refer to Academy Award winner Ralph Fiennes and be like, he won for Schindler, right?

[01:49:20] And then he has that immediate, like it's very similar to the Edward Norton arc, which is like, out of nowhere, who the fuck is this supporting performance? Then like, immediate elevation, a leading man. I don't know if he should have won. I still, I wrestle with it to this, I wrestle with it daily. It doesn't matter who else was in that category. He should have won, but I also completely understand. Do you know who beat him? Tommy Lee Jones for the future, which is basically the greatest supporting performance ever given in a film. It's a great performance, but there is no performance in this movie that should not have won an Oscar. Well, wait a second, Ving Kingsley's losing Ray Fiennes. You've defeated yourself, my friend. They should have both won,

[01:49:50] split the trophy, or he could have pulled a Ving Rhames, one of them could have won and given it to the other. I watched that again the other day. It's a really good moment. But I, you know. It's like your favorite moment because that was bad for you as a kid because you were like, this is allowed? Why do you just do this? When Michael Caine won the Oscar for Cider House Rules, I was like. Yeah, you said this on our show, right? Sit back. I was so sure he was going to do it. I was like, it's not over yet. I'm always like, oh, it's crazy. Find Sid Wynn. Right. Tommy Lee Jones.

[01:50:20] Nobody has delivered a line better in a movie ever than Tommy Lee Jones in The Fugitive. I'm not joking. I'm deadly serious. I don't care. I don't care is the greatest line reading in the history of movies. Prove me wrong. At me, David L. Sims on Twitter, which I don't use anymore. Which you will never be reading. You can just send replies into the voice. I do think. And plus he was Tommy Lee Jones. It was like, hey man, you've been in this industry for 20 years. You're a legend. Like, it's time for you to win your Oscar. Ralph Fiennes,

[01:50:49] I think it's partly like, while he's young, he'll be back. Maybe in a conclave. Two, it's like, maybe he's just a fucking crazy person they found for this role who's so incredible and maybe it's like some magic trick. No, he had to do the English patience to be like, I actually am that hot and not a Nazi. This is what's nuts to me. It's like, within three years, it's like, oh, now you were like, matinee idol in a huge sweeping epic that like, ran the fucking gauntlet at the Oscars and was a hit. Yeah,

[01:51:19] but he had to lose to shiny McShine. And then they don't nominate him again for 30 fucking years. obviously, I think they should have nominated him for Grand Budapest. Correct. He should have won. He should have won. But there was, at the time, category confusion. In my opinion, stupidly. Are there other Ralph Fiennes movies, though, that he should have gotten an Oscar nomination for? I love a bigger splash and he's on my ballot that year, but obviously, that wasn't a big splash with voters. I feel like there was the Duchess reader in Bruges year where people were like, he kind of should get a supporting,

[01:51:49] but no one could figure out which movie to put him in for. The answer is in Bruges, but that movie kind of broke late and obviously is the silliest. David Cronenberg's Spider? He's amazing. What about? That is an incredible performance. It sure is. I've given him some... That's mostly mumble. I give him a supporting actor nom for fucking Goblet of Fire, a movie that I think is otherwise trash. Wait, wait, wait. Wait, wait, wait. Goblet of Fire? Because that's the first one that he's introduced in, right? He's in it for like five minutes. That's the one? That's the whole final set piece. You know what, maybe? I'm aware that it's the whole final set.

[01:52:19] He is great in a movie that I think has its fair share of flaws as The Constant Gardner. He's very good in that movie. Which Rachel Weisz wins an Oscar. Right, the Oscars just seemed to make one rule where they were like, it gets one win and nothing else. It's crazy how quickly he becomes a take-it. Not constant enough. He becomes a take-it-for-grandhead guy. No, Griff. I disagree with you. That's not true. You're wrong. Make your character argument. The whole thing with him is he makes Schindler's List. Yeah. This is a star-making moment before he played a villain, a Nazi,

[01:52:49] the most scary Nazi in the movie. I will say, I do think it is also a case of he doesn't win because the character is almost too evil. I think that's part of it. It is so upsetting that people are like, we have to nominate it, but it feels gross to give him a win. Unless you're going full clown mode Christoph Waltz, they do not want to... It's why Fastbender didn't win for a character as a slave. They don't want to reward people for finding texture It's why DiCaprio didn't get nominated for Django. Well, that's a bit of an over-the-top performance, too, in my opinion. I don't know if you guys noticed this, but he's kind of like dialing it up slightly in that movie.

[01:53:18] So next year, he makes Quiz Show, which is wonderful. Oh, my God. So good at quizzes. But that's a movie where clearly the Oscars liked that movie, got Best Picture nomination, did not know what to do because that movie's filled with good performances. Turturro, weirdly, doesn't get a nomination. Right, gets the precursor nominations, and then Armin Mueller-Stahl gets the surprise. I'm sorry. I always make this fucking mistake between Shine and Quiz Show. And Paul Schofield is awesome in Quiz Show, but it's kind of like an old legend giving a couple great scenes. So he misses out on Quiz Show.

[01:53:48] Also, in Quiz Show, he's kind of playing a dweeb. Like, you know... Guess what? He fucking... He's so good in it. He rolls in Quiz Show. Okay, the next year... This is his career so far. He's made... These are the only two movies he's made so far since, you know, Strange Days. Amazing performance. Quite a curveball from him. And people are like, who is this guy? Hey, man, I need my mini discs. You know, like, we were like, this is really fine? Okay. The next year after that, English Patient. Holy shit. Here he is as a romantic lead. He's taking a bath with KST.

[01:54:19] Is that movie good? Should I say that? I think it's good. I think it's good. It's very old-fashioned. It's why they invented the word sweeping. It's sweeping as hell. But here's like romantic Ralph Fiennes. He's hot in it. He's such a handsome guy. And he's really good. He loses to Shiny McShine. If he hadn't lost to him, he possibly would have lost to Tom Cruise and Jerry Maguire with greatest performance ever. But he's really good in it. Okay. So the next year, he does Oscar and Lucinda. Not a bad movie. Young Cate Blanchett, but that doesn't really... He gets an assessment. Young Failed Oscar Bates stuff.

[01:54:49] Sunshine in 99. This is what I'm trying to tell you. He kind of goes down a bit of a tricky road. Sunshine kind of fucks though. Well, the next year, he does The Avengers. Oh, The Avengers. That movie made a billion dollars. No, no, no. No, the other one. Right. Right. Hold on. There's a sort of like, okay, this guy doesn't cross over. He's a prestige guy. The Avengers where it's like 89 minutes, but like the closing credits are like 20 minutes long. That one only made $500 million, right? Yeah. Of course, the voice of Ramsey's in Prince of Egypt does a great job. 1999, right. You have this sort of

[01:55:19] sunshine, Unjin, you know, the Russian novel adaptation End of the Affair where you're like, has he become history's greatest homework actor? Right. Where it's like the man does movies based on books you read in school. He needed Terrence Davies to cast him in something I think he's great in the End of the Affair which is kind of a forgotten movie at this point. It's the kind of thing where it's similar to Rachel Weisz. It's like, oh, and look, the actress gets the nomination. Sure, sure. Like you're taking fines for granted being like, oh, this is that thing he does. Okay, so he takes he literally takes

[01:55:49] three years off. Doesn't make a movie. I'm having fun with fines of career now because it's really interesting. We're having a fines time. In 2002, Spider, an amazing movie but small. Sure. Challenge it. The Good Thief Uncredited. Okay, that doesn't count. That's a Neil Jordan movie. That's a remake? No. It's a remake of Bob LaFlamboar. It's a fun movie. It's a Nolte, very, very normal voice in it and everything. I am a flambor. Truly, that's the movie. I saw it in theaters. Let me flam. Red Dragon,

[01:56:18] lazy casting in a way but he's not bad. Do you see? As Dollar Hyde. Do you see? Do you see? And his most unnerving and strange performance maybe in his entire movie. No, you're going to have. Made in Manhattan where you're like, why is it? Lopez in love with this vampire. This Republican vampire? Like, that movie is unhinged simply because of him. Everything else in that movie, like, I get it. She's a maid in Manhattan. She takes the train. She's got a kid.

[01:56:48] She's falling in love with a rich guy. Oh, no, it's spelled maid. No, it's spelled. But, like, that's where it's like, well, hey, could Ralph Fiennes do this? And everyone's like, not really. But it was a hit. Yeah, it made money. But, like, again, does anyone walk away from that being like, you know who I loved in that? Yes. And then, yeah, another three years off, in 2005, he's in a zillion things. He's in Harry Potter. He's in The White Countess, which is a late Merchant Ivory movie that doesn't really play. He's in Constant Gardener, which is good.

[01:57:16] He's in The Chum Scrubber. Remember that? Go fish. And then he's kind of, because of Voldemort, become supporting villain guy in Bruges. The reader is a supporting role, you know, very heavily. You know, Hurt Locker rocks in it, you know, swings in like a wrecking ball. Who does he play in The Reader? Not another Nazi. He plays old, old young man. Not the Staters. He plays the... Once was enough. He's the older version of... He's the grown-up version of the kid. Have you seen The Reader more than once in your life? No. Has anyone? No. But not even...

[01:57:45] It is hard to imagine re-watching The Reader. I don't think Daldry watched it more than once beginning to end. He is the grown-up version of the kid who has to testify that she read the book to him. Or he read the book to her. Whatever. What was I going to say? It's just interesting. It's all building, obviously, to the apex of his career. Gran Brunafest? No, I was going to say the re-team of him and Neeson in the Titans films. Ah, of course. He played Hades! Hades and Zeus. Well, never... One of the greatest taglines of our time for Clash of the Titans. Titans will clash. He never got bad.

[01:58:15] But like, at all. No, you're right. It is a weird career. When Skyfall comes around, they're like, yeah, you can play M, James Bond's boss. And it's like, he's not that much older than Daniel Craig. You know? And it's like, no, no, no, Rafe. Hey, hey. You're M now. You don't get to run around. There is perhaps a weird lack of strategy to his career that I respect now stepping back and looking at and knowing that he's got a lot left to do. In the 90s, the strategy kind of seems to be like, you know, prestige movies, right? And then it's, yes,

[01:58:44] it starts to get more diffused. Obviously, he does Strange Days is a weird swing. Avengers is a weird swing. Made Manhattan's a weird swing. Anytime he went studio, it was an odd choice. You guys are forgetting his most unnerving performance, though, which was, of course, the videotaped introduction he sent in to the Toronto premiere of his recent film, Version of the Odyssey. Which is a turn. Another movie that in my, as I went straight to homework. Which unfortunately must not exist on, I mean, Christopher Nolan kind of announced, I think he waited

[01:59:14] like right until after the movie at theaters, but he like did a video from a hotel room somewhere in Europe where his eyeball was like against the camera. He was probably in the bone temple where he currently is with our friend Nia Dacosta. I love him so much. I love him too. I love him. Yeah. And no, no, you're, this is, I'm glad we took the time to outline this because it does make more sense. It's a weird career. It is a weird career. The Grand Budapest snub is outrageous. That movie is the best movie ever made. I recently watched it and I was just like, I should watch this

[01:59:44] once a week. I think he and Neeson are the same and that the career is so diffuse and so spread out and has so many weird eras to it that sometimes you're like, who is this guy again? If you were to sort of like Hall of Fame project, just be like, pick the 10 most representative projects and try to hit the different phases or modes of their career. If you reduce either of those guys to just 10 movies, you're like, that's insane, right? And they still got gas in the tank and are going to keep making stuff. But they're both sort of...

[02:00:13] Fiennes has a lot more range than Neeson ever has. I agree with you. Although... 100%. And Hollywood really sees Neeson as like one of two things, right? Like either the sort of... Especially now. But Neeson is, to his credit, a much bigger New York Rangers fan than Ralph Fiennes is. How do you know? Have you asked? I haven't asked Ralph Fiennes, but... Do you see Ralph Fiennes pointing to the Stanley Cup? Oh God, it's so far in the distance now. But I have not seen Ralph Fiennes at every hockey game I've ever gone to

[02:00:42] unlike Liam Neeson. God bless him. And I'm just like looking over there as I watch the Rangers like Panerinsky to puck up the ice and there's Oscar Schindler on the sidelines being like, carousing with ladies. Does he have a bunch of ladies with him? He's there with Margot Robbie, another classic Rangers fan. Good for that all. Janusz Kaminski, of course, famously Spielberg calls up, you know, Zygmunt, Cundy, Alan Davio, Douglas Slocum and is like, no thank you, no thank you, no no. He watches a film on TV called Wildflower, a TV movie,

[02:01:12] thinks it's beautifully photographed and is like, who shot this? And Janusz says, like, Steven watches a lot of television. Wildflower was directed by Diane Keaton on Lifetime. Crazy to imagine Spielberg being like, flipping over to Lifetime or maybe he was like, hey, Diane made a TV movie, I'll watch it. And he got offered an Amblin produced TV movie called Class of 61 and I guess Spielberg at this point learns that he's Polish

[02:01:42] and is kind of like, well, I'm making this movie in Poland and starts to look at him more seriously. It's still crazy though because like, I do feel like Spielberg mostly worked with really established names as his DPs. Yes, and had his... Janusz is basically a nobody. Had his regular guys but also like, until this point isn't like, married to one DP. And, but the other thing is with this movie, he's basically like, do what you want. Like, he's not like, hey, this is exactly what I need to do and like,

[02:02:12] I have storyboarded this. He's kind of like, you should take whatever approach you need. We're not going to do dollies. We're not going to do steady cameras. But this is all part of him being like, I need to throw myself out of my comfort zone a little. But it's all part of him being inspired by Andrzej Wadja, whose name I just captured even from my Polish background, who he was looking at as like, the guy in his mind's eye who he needed to be to make this movie and was never going to be. And thinking about the cinematography in those films and looking for someone who had an understanding of how, you know, a Polish crew would work and what shooting in Poland would look like

[02:02:41] and could approximate that aesthetic. And that's exactly what he liked to Akaminsky. All of that does make sense. It is fascinating, though, that it's just like, it's this late at the inflection point of his career that he finds the second most important collaborator of his entire life. Absolutely. Yanush is the king of, to be clear, is a god. Is the first E.T.? Yeah, E.T., that crazy motherfucker who is a runner on this one. He was the best boy. It's a slow runner.

[02:03:10] It's gotta get someone else. I love this from Yanush. I know why J.J. put this in because he knew I would like it. The problem with doing black and white is there's silver, obviously, in the emulsion, as we all know, because we've all seen in Glorious Bastards. And that creates a negative discharge of electricity so it makes these little spots on the film. So you have to avoid static being in the room. And so you would spray the room before you shoot because there's all

[02:03:40] this static electricity and weather is a problem. Weird production is a problem for all of this. So that was the biggest challenge for shooting in black and white. And this movie almost fell apart because of Spielberg's insistence of shooting in black and white because he wanted to, and his quote is that the Holocaust was life without light and he wanted to reflect that in the shooting without color, which he saw as sort of symbolic of light. But like the movie almost didn't go because Universal was so stubborn about the idea that black and white movies don't make money. There's also a thing

[02:04:09] and this is an axiom that is like still held to this day that black and white films do even worse overseas, even worse on like home video and television. And so almost all cases where a Hollywood studio has made a black and white film in the last 35, 40 years, they insist that they shoot it in color and convert it later so that there is a color version of the film that they can at least like play on foreign television. Where like, I know Nebraska did that.

[02:04:38] Where they were like on the Epyx channel playing the color version of Nebraska. And every American was glued to their television for the premiere of the color version on Epyx. I remember that well. Right. There's like shit like that. And Spielberg was just like, I refuse. I'm shooting this in black and white. But it's also a case of perpetuating the cinematic memory of an event because he, one of the, another one of the reasons why he wanted to shoot in black and white is because every Holocaust film he had seen was shot in black and white. And the footage from the Holocaust, the archival footage was shot in black

[02:05:08] and white. And he was, you know, continuing that idea, which is a fraught concept in and of itself. But he was trying to make sort of the ultimate version of the Holocaust films that he had seen. Interesting. Schindler's List, what do we want to say about it? It's funny. I was just looking at my little notes on my phone and I was just, the thing I see is that it's funny. It's like, again, we talk so much about him trying to find the right tone, negotiating these different energies. And you see that come to a head with the scene where they're hiring secretaries,

[02:05:38] which is a great comic little sequence. It's like a classic like Steve, you can't make this not fun. Yeah, exactly. He has to do it. And it's, it's an inherently funny idea that Schindler was only interested in having a hot secretary. And then this woman comes in who is not a young hottie and she can type three times as fast as anyone. He's like, motherfucker, like, I'm going to have to hire her. What is one of the moments that changes Schindler the most as a character? It is the reaction he gets to kissing the Jewish woman delivering the cake with the daughter. Right.

[02:06:08] Which is to Schindler just like, what, I'm a horny devil who kisses everything he sees. Right. It almost is the thing that makes him understand the severity of the situation in a personal way for the first time is, I love kissing women. You're telling me that some women are un-kissable? By law. Well, yeah. But it also shows that he fundamentally doesn't think of them with the same level of disdain that, like, the pure Nazis do. Right? No, not at all.

[02:06:38] As much as he's like, I refuse to care. He doesn't think about them at all. Exactly. You know, more of a Don Draper thing. But, and like Don Draper, I guess, was also, I guess, admitting in that statement that he's obsessed with them. Another, by the way, another Spielberg comedy edit moment is, if I'm going to stay here, you have to promise me that no one will ever mistake me for anyone but Mrs. Schindler. And then hard cut to her waving goodbye on the plane. It's a really funny cut. But I'd say the other moment that is a real awakening for him, in addition to when we talk to,

[02:07:07] is when somebody calls him a good man. I really feel like nobody, you know, you have the one-armed worker come in and you have, you know, much later in the film, you have the daughter of the married couple who he reluctantly pulls out of the camp. But you get the sense that nobody has ever called him a good man before and that was something he wasn't necessarily looking for. And he tries it out. Like, it's a weird fit for him. It almost feels like he's rejecting the responsibility where it's like,

[02:07:37] if I crack the door open to people thinking I can help them or save them, then suddenly the obligation is going to become so great on me, a thing I cannot handle, which is what makes the end sort of like implosion so emotionally devastating of him doing the math of like, I didn't save enough. And here's a guy who spent the entire movie being like, don't make me do anything. Yeah, because he talks so often about how the Holocaust and World War II on the whole is just bigger than he is. He's like, okay, so they're going to kill everyone. They're going

[02:08:07] to kill everyone. Like, what does that have to do with me? What can I do about that? Which is part of how the Holocaust happens. It completely abstains from any sort of moral obligations. It becomes so extreme that it is abstract. It is hard for people to get their heads wrapped regardless of what side they're on. Isn't it also self-preservation? Because he doesn't really know exactly the terms or the rules of how this is all working. Like, he doesn't want to be perceived by the Nazis to be supportive. To be clear, he is a Nazi. Oscar Schindler was a Nazi party member

[02:08:36] and he is very much in, like, the German, you know, whatever, high class, you know, that had years prior been like, we're signing up. Like, even if I'm not a true believer or whatever, like, I will happily join the party now that they run the country, right? Like, there are some people who didn't join the party, right? For Islam. There you go. Like, and like, you know, still existed in Japan where I'm not joined. He joined the party. Like, he was a, probably not a, you know, deeply idealistic person, clearly, but, he was a Nazi.

[02:09:06] Yeah, I mean, he joined the party at a convenience because he couldn't do business if you weren't a member of the Nazi party. Which is what all these fucking Germans did. Yeah, I mean, and I don't like him. And, you know, there's, it's too bad there's no historical parallel for that or else, you know, we might have something on our hands here. But that's the thing that keeps happening in the movie is I feel like Ralph Fiennes has the line later where he's like, we're going to be making so much money we won't care, right? That like, much like certain present day situations, there are people who are just like, if you're saying it's going to help the economy this much, that I will personally benefit this much,

[02:09:36] then maybe I like sort of blindly sign off on whatever this other stuff you're doing on the side is. Whereas other people were signing up explicitly in support of that stuff on the side. But I think to Ben's point, it's true that he did not and so many people would, you know, claim not to to know where this was going. I mean, I think that was the Nazi's greatest advantage. such a blind eye to like, what's happening over there. Part of what's going on with Schindler is he's actually in Poland. He's German, but because of his industry and all that, he's coming to Krakow,

[02:10:06] he's seeing what's going on where it's like a little harder to ignore. Whereas in Germany, a lot of Jews had already left, all the Jews had already And there was also, you know, he's like Hamilton talking about like how he was waiting for a war his whole life to rise up. I mean, like, I know you guys, there was a play called Hamilton. You may... I'm scratching my chin at this one. No, because I mean, there's literally a line in the movie where he talks about how the one thing that he's always been missing, in addition to realizing that he's hot as hell and needs to work that angle, is a war to cause economic instability that he can use to his advantage.

[02:10:35] Oh, he wants to. And, you know, I'm not liking Oscar Schindler and Hamilton in any other respect, but there is that idea of these circumstances being uniquely profitable for him and taking advantage of that. And I think the speed at which Poland falls to the Germans, it happens in a span of two weeks, is hugely to Schindler's advantage because everything is so up in the air he can capitalize on. This is a guy who loves to find an angle he can work. The scene where he meets Kingsley and Kingsley's like, so wait, what do you do? And he's like,

[02:11:05] I'm not good at working. I'm not good at running things. I'm good at just being like, all of you should do this and then give me all the money, right? Maybe. Maybe. That's capitalism. It's part of what he's voted for. Again, really funny that Spielberg was like, my idol, the guy who runs Time Warner, you're right. It is very funny because the moral arc of this movie is completely contrary to capitalism. Of course, what he did that was so good is gave up on capitalism and was like, I will just spend two zeros. That's the thing.

[02:11:35] It's not like he's the world's smartest businessman. It's just that he recognizes, oh, there is a uniquely bad set of circumstances here that I could maybe benefit from. And part of it is that he's like, other people don't want to touch the Jews. I view them as a cheap labor force. I can take advantage of that. Yes, it's right. They're a product to him and they're a balance book equation to him. And as you said, he's annoyed by any reminder of their humanity because it's morally

[02:12:05] inconvenienced him. He's like, I don't want to think about this. But he's also not obviously. Viewing them as vermin. Right. In the same way as some of his party members. that many Nazis are. And then when Eamon arrives, you're like, right, this is a psychopath who's been enabled by this. But don't you think Whereas, of course, there are other Nazis, you know, high-ranking Nazis who after the war were put on trial and they were like, I don't know, I did what I was told. I mean, I'm the millionth person to point this out. Yeah, but don't you think part of it

[02:12:33] in how Schindler is characterized in the movie is that he's just the kind of like, look, I don't let any attachment or relationship get in the way of smart business decisions. Right? Like, him not viewing the Jewish people with disdain. I don't invest in any enamel factory that I can't drop in 30 seconds or less. He keeps his hot-ass wife at arm's length. Like, he keeps everyone at arm's length. He's just like, these are just numbers. Should we shout out Caroline Goodall? Fourth build in this movie.

[02:13:03] And obviously, she's in Hook. I will say. She's an English rose. Very beautiful. I think it is the best thing about Hook as a movie is that it at least led to her getting cast in this film. Sure. Okay. I mean, she's good. I mean, I would say. Point about how little I like about Hook. Right. I was right. I was going to say. That's what I was getting at. But she's good in this, but it's not a huge role. Just interesting that the way that works, right? Where it's like, what's that actress famous for? Well, Spielberg really liked her for a minute there. But what's amazing about this movie is that,

[02:13:34] you know, it is one of the great ensembles, truly, like one of the true ensembles ever put together in that there are so many fucking faces in this movie. And every one of those faces has its own story to tell that becomes absolutely, you know, critical to the mega narrative that's happening around them. And you track these characters without even knowing it the first or second time you watch the movie. And the movie, I think, does such an incredible job not making it, like not holding your hand about that. Like,

[02:14:03] maybe you don't clock like, oh, this is the person I saw 15 minutes. You know, like maybe, it doesn't matter. You're always involved. And then as you rewatch the movie, you realize like, oh, I see, you know. You like very ambiently recognize that, oh, okay, this guy is here and now I see him in this one shot walking out of the ghetto and then it turns out to be the guy who, you know, Goethe's gun misfires on when he shoots him outside of the hinge factory. She's the biggest example of it, but it is so skillful the way he uses

[02:14:32] the M. Beth Devitt's character where, especially in the latter half where she's on the train, you know, the wrong train or the train going the wrong way and whatever. And now, like, you could see most filmmakers saying to themselves, the reason I've set up this character is now I have a POV character who the audience is invested in who we can show these terrors through. And she remains in the frame for most of those 15 minutes or so, and yet she is not the focus. Where she's constantly sort of around, sometimes she's going

[02:15:02] out of focus, sometimes she's moving out of the frame in moments like the fear of the shower and things like that. where what he's trying to do is remind you, like, yes, this is a character you have pinned in your mind who of course you're going to keep track of, but also she's not more important than any of them. Part of the mass, like, sort of terror of what's going on here is that everyone in this space is her. The characters that shoulder the greatest burden in that sense are the children. It's the two kids, the boy and the girl with the glasses,

[02:15:32] who we see in so many different stages in so many different places and, you know, have such, I mean, the moment where the little kid is blowing his whistle to alert the Nazis during the liquidation of the ghetto to her mother and then he stops himself when he recognizes, you know, he recognizes her and she him and he hides her and you can't tell if he's like being extra sinister in that moment or good and then we see him and I mean, like, these things all track so viscerally because they're children and because they're so instantly recognizable

[02:16:01] and also a factoid that I only learned yesterday that will be mind-blowing for exactly three people out there is that one of the most memorable scenes in this movie for me is the one where Eamon kills the Jewish engineer when after she's building his house, you know, we can't be arguing with these people. She is, like, her performance is 15 seconds in this movie. His accent is so specific. It's amazing. She is played by Alina Lowenstone who plays the clairvoyant in The Beast.

[02:16:31] That came out last time. Oh, wild. Yeah. An actress with a bajillion credits. These people are so tied to this movie in my mind that the idea that they exist in other realities is very alienated. A little bit. To paraphrase an Ehrlich tweet. Again, I think it's undone by that a little bit. It's a paraphrase an Ehrlich tweet that I think about a lot. In the year of Spotlight, you had a tweet to the effect of there are, like, 10 actors with 5 minutes of screen time in Spotlight who give

[02:17:01] the best supporting performance I've ever seen in a movie. You were sort of like, you could, like, beyond the argument of, like, oh, who do you put in supporting actor of the Spotlight cast? You were, like, basically every, like, survivor they interview for 5 minutes is giving the most indelible where the fuck did they find this guy performance and some of them are actors who were just unknown and then have gotten bigger like Michael Cyril Creighton. Some of them are, like, kind of, like, the guy who's, like, the former box or, you know, like, some of them are, like, non-professional actors and this is another movie like that

[02:17:31] where anyone who shows up for, like, 15 seconds is really I've remembered these people my entire adult life. Impactful and searing because they were on screen for 45 seconds in this movie. What is the energy being captured here? It's a remarkable testament to casting directors and also just, like, This movie has, like, six credited cast directors because it was, like, the Polish casting as well and all that. I want to shout out The Blood because I feel like Spielberg had done lots of violence in movies before but it's always more cartoonish or in, like,

[02:18:01] the case of The Color Purple or whatever. It's realistic-ish but, you know, like... But also a little bit avoided. Yes, exactly. Yes. Um, I feel like he takes... He does such a good job to make, like, when people get shot, like, blood spurts out of their head and it's gross and it's, like, disturbing and, like... But also is now this jet black like goo. It looks, like, very, like... Right. Visceral and real in a way that, like, kind of gets me every time. There's something kind of, um... Uh... You're not dealing

[02:18:31] with Rambo squibs. You know, there's something about watching in the deep background of a shot a person just get, like, uh, gunned in the head and then you see the splurt and they fall to the ground and the blood continues to trickle and it's, like... Oh, the... The commonality of this violence... There's a... I mean, the banality of evil... Banality is the word but it is... Yes. A banality to just the executions to just, like... And the movie is always... It always has less executions and murders

[02:19:00] than I remember. I think often I conflate it with... But all of those scenes are so... Yeah. But I think, like, the pianist, I feel like in my mind in the first hour, it's, like, every time you turn the camera you're seeing someone... The pianist is the same if you rewatch it. Is it? Where, right, you're like, no, I've actually just kind of been thinking of, like, three or four moments that are so shocking and, you know, distressing. Yeah, I mean... Yeah, it does... You know, obviously the horror is meant to be sort of muffled and muted in the background and sort of interpolated into daily life

[02:19:29] but they do a good job of not... I don't know, not making you numb to it. The pianist, which I think is a very good film, is also about... From the perspective of someone who this is happening to. Which a lot of the Holocaust movies are. You're watching the Warsaw Ghetto shrink around him and then he gets shipped to Trevinka and all that. But especially the post-Chindler movies are primarily these stories of the people trying to survive. What are you thinking? Of course, life is beautiful. Life is beautiful. Of course, Jacob the Liar. I was going to say

[02:19:59] bullshit like Jacob the Liar. But wait, what are other... I'm trying to think of other canonical sort of Holocaust films. Like concentration camp movies. Did they... Maybe you guys weren't old enough but they took me at school. They got us all on buses and took us to see Life is Beautiful when I got into the theaters. It makes sense to me that it became a sort of like is this important? Yeah. Right, yeah. They weirdly didn't do that but did take us to Shakespeare in Love I want to say. Well, hey man, they wanted you to have a great time. I just remember being like I can't believe I'm getting to see boobs during a school day. Hell, yeah.

[02:20:29] Well, that's St. Anne's for you. Well, hey, I was not there yet. Okay, fair enough. That's wherever you were for you. This is Joseph Fiennes. He'll be our nation's most important actor. It's in 2015. In the 2000s, yes, there are plenty of films that, you know, involve either directly or glancingly the Holocaust. There's movies like The Grey Zone, Tim Blake Nelson's movie which never went anywhere which is pretty disturbing. Yes. Other films like, you know, Costa Gavris' Amen,

[02:21:00] but like, none of these movies really hit and was there sort of a feeling There's not a lot of money in the Holocaust despite what Schindler's List may have convinced people. The closest you have is The Pianist which is, you know, a genuinely big movie but is made European and all. And The Reader which, you know, nobody actually, like, I guess it made like $100 million worldwide which is insane to consider. But there was a wild proliferation of Holocaust movies. There's a lot of Holocaust movies

[02:21:30] but they're not whatever, resonating in the culture in the same way. It kind of becomes like, oh, it's just homework. And also kind of like failed Oscar bait. Like movie. Yeah, and right. Is it some easy path to an Oscar? It becomes cynical in a way. Even just things like Defiance, right, which I know is not quite the same thing but where you just be like, oh, here's a serious director announces a movie with three serious actors that's about the Holocaust in some way. Defiance is kind of a movie people were asking for with like, well, show me a movie

[02:21:59] about Jews resisting directed by Edward Zwick. The Nazis. And it's like, well, that's a story of that and everyone was like, well, it's okay. There was a lot of concern at the time of Schindler's List's release that because of the shadow that Spielberg cast, it would be treated as the last word on the Holocaust. And I think you see that in a lot of the hesitation around academics around the time it came out and I think the opposite, well, maybe not the opposite. Again, it's complicated because the movie is so seared into our visual memory

[02:22:28] but it opens the floodgates. You know, you had to get to the zookeeper's wife where it's suddenly like, okay, but tell me about the zoos at the time. Boy with the Striped Pajamas which Erlich has already referenced as a movie that I find basically abhorrent. It's quite abhorrent. I mean, I would say the sort of major Holocaust films post Schindler's List that had a big impact on the culture are like, this is beautiful to some extent. Although, somewhat of a forgotten movie now. But at the time was Schindler's. At the time, very big. The Pianist, for sure. The Reader,

[02:22:59] sort of. Son of Saul for sure. And obviously, Son of Saul is trying to take a different approach into telling that story. And it's a very polarizing movie, I feel like. Some people were so moved by it. Others were right. We're kind of not into it at all. Zookeeper's Wife, absolutely. Jojo Rabbit, that doesn't count. It's not even really a Our buddy Chris Weitz who made Operation Finale. And Zone of Interest. Operation Finale, I think, is a really good movie. That's not really directly a Holocaust movie. When we had him on the podcast, Yes. talking about Allied.

[02:23:29] Yes. Zemeckis' Secret, my house is pretty good. Zemeckis' Secret, pretty good. This is Secret 3 out of 5, yeah. But he was saying like, I feel like I didn't get the memo that no one liked World War II movies anymore. That he felt like, this is one of those sturdy Hollywood genres from the 90s on, where this is like, a proven area where you can make a serious grown-up movie with movie stars and legitimate production values. And then the movie kind of got like, Monuments Ben. Right. But I, What happened to those monuments?

[02:23:59] I would put forward, does something kind of shift in Inglourious Bastards? A little bit, but. Right? With like, the, having such a wildly different like, genre-based tone and the revisionist history and everything, where from like, that moment on, people don't want to watch Hollywood make a serious version of this. But then they did, the zone of interest did break through. I feel like it's like, Son of Saul, Zone of Interest. Like, if you are going to mess with the film. I'm saying Hollywood. Yeah, I know. This is my point. Both of those movies are doing unconventional things with the form. They're happening in foreign countries

[02:24:28] with like, smaller budgets. I think you can't do the big shiny studio version of it anymore. No, but you also can't get to the zone of interest without Schindler's List. I think that like, you know, Schindler's List is a film that, you know, its detractors may disagree. Can we please put this stuff down there? It's crazy to look at you making these points while you have it. I've been clutching it to my chest. It didn't totally connect, but I would put a hidden life in a similar vein to... Yeah, but I think that like, you know, obviously, this is the ultimate question

[02:24:57] at the root of any conversation about Holocaust cinema is how to depict an atrocity, to what extent you are minimizing it by through recreation, by visualizing it. Schindler's List takes it to one sort of maximalist extreme, but it's in very, into my mind, one of the reasons I have such reverence for this movie is that it's in a very real and nuanced conversation with the right to do that. And the zone of interest is, I think, similarly nuanced, but obviously on the opposite end of the spectrum where it is, you know, taking away any sort of visual evidence and operating solely through absence.

[02:25:27] And I think it's not one or the other. I mean, these things have to be in conversation with each other and I think they're both valuable in their own terms. But I also think, you know, for me, one of the reasons why Schindler's List is bigger than, you know, the sum of its parts or its role as a movie is because, you know, there is a danger, as I've said, about one thing becoming the focal point for our memory of the Holocaust. But I think the work that it did to enshrine the memory of the Holocaust

[02:25:57] in the abstract, even only one version of the one telling of it, in the collective unconscious is inestimably important. And it seeded the path for all these other conversations. And you see now how even now, you know, the Holocaust is in jeopardy of being, it's questioned all the time. We see Nazism on the rise and whatnot. You know, I think it's my mind's eye, all the stories my grandfather would tell did not coalesce into something I could picture until I saw this movie. I have seen other

[02:26:26] Holocaust movies. And I do think Night in Fog, which you mentioned before, that's something where it's like, watch that. You'll see, right, you know, but again, that's through absence. I mean, you're seeing just the hair piles and the shoes and that is more in conversation with the zone of interest. But I think that like, I needed like a, and I think a lot of people who are thinking about the Holocaust less than the descendants of survivors needed a baseline understanding of what this is. They need to see it through the lens of Hollywood spectacle in order to wrap

[02:26:55] their minds around it to let their imagination sort of touch the horror that was sort of always a little bit beyond the pale. As you're saying, the undeniable effect of the conversation that Schindler's List was able to force like everyone to have being such a culturally important movie and a movie that even like, you know, when they aired on broadcast television for the first time four or five years after, they're like, it will air in its entirety without commercial breaks and no edits.

[02:27:25] And the ratings are even higher than the color premiere of Nebraska. It was at the time, like, I think 20 million people watched Schindler's List play as a Sunday night network TV movie. It was the highest ratings any TV broadcast of a theatrical film had gotten since Jurassic Park. And they played it without cuts, without commercial interruption, with nudity, with no censoring. And there was the sense of just like, this is so important. Tom Coburn, who was a senator, I think he was a congressman at the time,

[02:27:54] who back then was one of the most psychotic Republicans around now would probably be like a pillar of decency in that party. But was like, what if a child changes the channel and sees a nipple? No, it was beyond that. He was like, this is an all-time low, like, nudity, violence, profanity. I do love the idea that he's like, this Schindler's got a body mount. And he got so much shit for it that he had to publicly apologize. Of course, now he would become Secretary of Commerce for behaving that way probably. But that speaks to how active the conversation was around this movie for years.

[02:28:24] Beyond it just being a film that basically immediately went into school rotation, a thing that is shown, a thing that does start to transform it into homework. Then you have all these shitty prestige, you know, World War II movies. And then you have the good films that come out of it are like art house intellectual exercises that are critically very respected but are not engaging in a mainstream conversation. As a teenager, though, this movie, look, Saving Private Ryan was the serious Spielberg movie that all teen boys were like, oh shit, like have you seen that?

[02:28:54] You know, Mary Peppers shot that guy through the scope of his cyber rifle. They watched a fucking awesome action movie, which it is, but it's also very serious. But people would talk about the most visceral scenes in this movie, kind of like you had seen a horror movie. I remember that kind of teen boy discussion. That's the impact of having Spielberg do it. And like the scene of Fiennes trying to shoot the guy and the gun won't work. You know, these scenes that are drawn out torture. Right. I mean, there is a lot of

[02:29:24] consternation about the suspense of showing the Jewish women going into the showers. That's the scene that Hanukkah always focuses on. Right. And, you know, one, that actually happened. And two, I mean, I think that suspense is one of the film's tools to engaging viewers in participating and acknowledging history. You know, I think, again, this Village Voice Symposium that came out, you have someone like Art Spiegelman who, other than Brian Michael Bendis, who, by the way, sounds fucking exactly like Paul Schoenberg,

[02:29:55] is the only other graphic, novelist whose name I recognize. So you guys got to get Spiegelman on the show. Mouse, a classic. But, Spiegelman hated this movie. Yeah. And, I think... A lot of people who, like, are very involved in telling stories about the Holocaust hated this movie. Claude Lansman didn't like this movie. I'm aware. Claude Lansman, bit of a grump, I will say. Sure, but I think, look, this is such a sensitive, complicated subject matter that I think anyone who has spent so much time

[02:30:24] digging in and trying to figure out the responsible way to depict it, is going to then butt against what other people landed on. but I also, I think that what, and this isn't to take anything away from Mark Spiegelman, who, again, Mouse is a formative text for me, and he was the, you know, son, directly, of a Holocaust survivor. He also created garbage pile cans. I didn't know that. And also, but he did have a huge beef with Spielberg going into this movie because of American Tail, which he thought was a ripoff. Yes. Um, but, uh, he just felt like

[02:30:54] it was, I mean, points were made. I mean, he's not, but we all also in this house respect Final Moskowitz. Um, there's room in my heart for both. But yeah, he was just like, it's just too, I, I just think that they were, this isn't any, I'm like too close to it. I just looked it up. Sorry. Um, he's going to be cast in the new Harry Potter though. That's good. I went on Bill. He said some shit I don't like. He's selling weird brain pills. Um, is he still out west? Did he ever come east? He probably went west and never came back. He bought a compound

[02:31:24] in Austin, Texas. He's yoked now. Well, there turns out there were cats in America. You know, streets of just hate with cheese. But I think that they didn't recognize the extent to which our conception, our generation's conception of history would be formed by popular culture, by movies. The role, like they would, they looked as a negative in Spielberg's and his power over the public consciousness and could have been a negative. I think they underestimated one, the conversation this movie would create

[02:31:54] and two, just the good that it would do to have it on those terms. I agree. Now, this is what I, I think I'm trying to get at here, which is like the weird, I don't want to say double-edged sword, but like, that this film inspires a bunch of movies that are not as good, that do not hold up as well. Ones that were dead on arrival and ones that were lauded at the time and now feel kind of embarrassing, right? And then the conversation, how we talk about the Holocaust in art becomes a much headier, more intellectual thing rather than like

[02:32:22] a mainstream conversation. We're getting far enough away from it, the survivors are dying, it is becoming abstracted. As you said, a lot of the like collective memory or notion of this is kind of in a language, a tone, a look that this film kind of codifies for better or worse. Obviously, you make a film about any large historical event. It should exist in a dialectic with all other works in that space, right? Like, I always find it frustrating when people will critique a movie for being like,

[02:32:52] but it didn't touch on this. If it is not the first movie to ever cover that area, because the responsibility isn't to do all of it in one film. But this film has lasted in a way that others haven't, while also sort of getting flattened a little bit into like a notion of it being a homework movie, which I don't think it is in practice if you're watching it, which then allows for in like decades since there has been any work that has touched on this in a way that actually reached this widely, we start to now

[02:33:21] be far enough away that we're losing sight of what is going on, which leads to a present moment where you have like three or four different terrifying misinterpretations of what should we take away from the Holocaust that are happening on a colossal scale on our planet. But I do think like that, you know, that plays into the entertainment value of it, which I think the movie needs to be as compelling as it is for new generations to be able to see it and come in and recognize the urgency of what the movie's saying, whereas if it were totally,

[02:33:51] you know, in this rarefied space where we can't really talk about it, you know, we have to talk in hush tones about the Holocaust, it becomes that much easier to allow something that is, you know, perpetuating the same crimes but in a different guise to happen again. And, you know, I have to say, you know, we can get to the, I don't know if we were jumping ahead to the end of the movie, but it is now, the end of this movie crushes me, it always has. You know, we can talk, well, we will talk, I'm sure, about the epilogue. Yeah,

[02:34:21] I'm talking about the epilogue. You know, I was emotionally overcome the other night, as I always am, by all of these people, by the collapse of history of the actors and the people that are playing. That is such an incredible touch. You know, putting the rose on Schindler's grave and whatnot, the stones, but I think it has an extra dimension, a regrettably extra dimension of tragedy to me now in that Israel, you know, representing what Israel has become, which is like, you know, it's this point you see in the movie, we can't go east, they hate you there, you can't go west, you have to find a homeland of your own,

[02:34:51] and, you know, I think it's a dark irony in much the same way as like Jonathan Glaser's Academy Award speech called attention to about the subject matter of the zone of interest which people are very normal about. Which does kind of prove the point I feel like we're dancing around here where it's like, for that movie to be so lauded by the Academy while being a very small movie in the grand scheme of things and yet have that percentage of the people in the audience who had voted for the film get angry at the speech where he is just stating what the movie is about.

[02:35:21] Yeah, but like the never again of it all just doesn't hold water when you see the end of Schindler's List and they're now in a country that is perpetuating similar crimes on another and it's just, it, you know, it's the unbearable, it's the idea that this is going to happen and happen and happen throughout history and why I think in this moment in particular I find it more resonant rather than less that we're focusing on someone who is in power in the movie. You know, a character with agency who found

[02:35:50] some sort of moral center and awakening who used his capital for good because these are the people that we are most reliant upon right now. And these situations feel powerless. We're like reliant on or like being crushed by like, you know, sort of. I mean, the never again of it all is the thing I have been stewing on so much for the last, whatever, 18 months of our hellscape, right? In a larger 10 year hellscape in a larger centuries long hellscape. But, uh, there is this, um,

[02:36:20] sense of muddling of what this movie is, uh, not just this movie's about but the sentiment that this movie is born out of that I feel like is very similar not to take too big of a swing here but the kind of like perversion of the abstract idea of the teachings of Christ to then like alienate persecuted groups, right? Um, You're saying that Christianity has participated in the oppression? This is the first I'm hearing about this but I'm gonna hear him out. I'm saying that like all of this shit keeps happening where we're like great,

[02:36:50] I got it, you're giving me the one sentence, that's the thing I never forget, right, never again and then people lose sight of when they're like doing the thing again when they're actually acting the exact opposite of the mantra that they have now abstracted into a way where it can be twisted to their own means or just fucking lose sight of it. And while, you know, the ending of Schindler's List is obviously laudatory towards the existence of Israel in that sense, it is that, that, you know, threading the needle, collapsing the space, whatever you want to call it,

[02:37:20] between the past and the present is something that's so instrumental to what this movie is doing. I think you need, that's why those bookends work so well, why we start in sort of this like, you know, liminal present state and then fade into the past, right? You know, I think it's saying that this is a part of our world, this cannot be separated or compartmentalized and when we do that, we invite it to happen again. And I, you know, I, and the perversion of the never again doesn't mean we can't let this happen to the Jews ever again. Of course not. There is a larger responsibility

[02:37:49] to make sure this doesn't happen in our world again and that twisting has led to like such horrors. And I was afraid that I hadn't really dug too much into it because I'm very clear on where I stand and I don't know, I don't need to parse what certain celebrities have to say but with Spielberg it's different because in my mind and maybe you can understand this like Spielberg is sort of like the great Jew of my lifetime. He has become like a weird kind of cultural ambassador for Judaism. And I don't mean that morally,

[02:38:19] I just sort of mean that in his stature. Like a very famous Jewish person who like, right, speaks on and you know, deals with Jewish identity. And I think already was but then this movie makes it like, okay, great. So he's like the prominent Jew in American pop culture. Right. And pop culture was sort of my lingua franqua you know, my whole life. This is how I, this is where I wanted to interact with Jewishness. You know, it was always more interesting to me that Superman was Jewish than reading the fucking Talmud. You know, you don't read the Talmud but you know what I mean. But the, and so his comments in the wake of October 7th,

[02:38:48] I was always very afraid of what they might say and I was reading them over last night and I just couldn't imagine that someone who made Schindler's List would look at this and be like, would see it, you know, in the worst possible light. It's like totally disconnected from what had happened. And I, you know, maybe he said some things that I didn't see when searching the internet but at best I could tell. He really only made public comments about it once a minute ago. he was saying, you know, as someone who then founded the Shoah Institute and is going to be asked to for comment on something like this, he made mention of the Palestinian people and was talking about,

[02:39:18] you know, their suffering in the same breath as lamenting the deaths of the Israelis on October 7th and it seemed like, you know, he's not going to be the guy who is coming out with free Palestine, you know, hashtag. Maybe he could though. I would love that for him. That would really surpass my expectations. So incredibly impactful. I don't know. I mean, he's obviously, you know, he's a fairly, I think long been, like a fairly sort of straightforwardly supportive of the state of Israel person. Yeah. Yes. He was not,

[02:39:48] he's not, I'm just saying, you know, like there's a certain sort of streak of celebrity who became, you know, very, very polemical in a way that was kind of disturbing. He's certainly sure. Yeah. No, he's not, he's not a kind of measured statements on the facts of like, you know, but I, I would have rather than saying that, like I, I, you know, I didn't have any realistic hope for him to be like a leading voice in this issue, but I would have been heartbroken had he come out and said something unequivocally in support

[02:40:18] of Israel. the IDF rocks. Right. And he talked about killing women like Seinfeld. in Gaza. Right. Well, you know, Jerry Seinfeld's like a really normal dude. Yeah. Normal behavior. I, but I, I mean, this is part of you. Great director though. Unfrosted. Oh yeah. Laughed for days. I laughed a couple of times. That movie is well shot. It got Bill Paul. baby. It got Bill Paul. It does. I know. I know. I didn't mind Unfrosted. I didn't hate it. I mean, one of the great trials of my life was

[02:40:47] watching and writing about that movie, but teach their own. What I would love. 93 minutes. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Uh, no, I, I think watching this movie in like, uh, right? When, uh, there were not as clear, like, uh, sort of screamed, underlined parallels in the current situation of the world. You're thinking about the Tampa Bay Buccaneers recent triumph at the Super Bowl. That was top of my mind. 24-7 in 2003. You're excited for the release of the return of the,

[02:41:17] I'm trying to think of 2003 stuff. Yep. Radiohead's on tour. You got to catch them at MSG. I saw Radiohead. That's the hill of the people. It sure was. It was great. Radicalized me that summer. They opened with the gloaming. Gloaming live. Fucking rocks. Anyway. Real loud. I'm trying to remember what my point was. It's 2003. You're watching Schindler's List. Right. You know, this feeling that I think it sounds like all three of us had watching the film as young men being like, how the fuck does this happen? Like, looking to this movie for answers of, of how,

[02:41:47] how could such a thing happen? Because I feel like if you are a, a Jewish child a certain, a couple generations away like we were, you learn about this in a very large, 100% sort of like, It's not like I was like, wait, what's this now? Right. I certainly, right, had been educated. And you start pulling at strings and going like, wait, what do you mean? How is that possible? Like, how much of the terror am I allowed to dig into at this point? Right? How do I understand the steps of something escalating to this kind of point?

[02:42:16] And you watch a movie like this and you're just like, how were there not, like, thousands of Oscar Schindlers? How were there not more people standing up and like objecting and all this sort of shit? I mean, I think an amazing and sort of forgotten scene in the movies where he's talking to the other businessman trying to get him on board and the guy's like, I already did a lot and you're kind of like, you haven't fucking done anything. Like, but to him, even the slightest. Right. You know, if we're like policing, like, why hasn't Spielberg like taken more of a stance? Right?

[02:42:45] Why hasn't he used his power more? Like, deliberately and all this stuff. This is my point. A lot of what I've struggled to deal with in the last year is like, I don't know if any of this fucking works anymore. Like, I don't know if any of this has any fucking impact anymore. It is like, really kind of overwhelming to be like, there has been such a loud conversation going on for so long in what feels like kind of an immovable issue. As I do, unfortunately, think that it does. Well, maybe not unfortunately. I don't know. I mean, I, the fallout of Jonathan Glazer's

[02:43:13] speech was really, it was so sobering and in a horrible way. I felt for Glazer because I feel like he was incredibly nervous. Yeah. And. But it's also like, this is what the movie, I know. This is what the movie's about. You don't have to fucking tell me. I'm sorry. I know. He just threw his wallet at me and I'm keeping it. Yeah, you're taking anything you want from that. No, I threw my wallet at Erlich because I already threw something else at him. I know. But like, I felt like he, it's not like he bobbled

[02:43:43] the speech at all, but like you could feel, he was so nervous and the speech has kind of like a rhetorical in my memory kind of like, you know, device to it, right? Where he's like, and like, people misinterpreted the language right away in bad faith. Willfully. Exactly. But I felt so frustrated because I was like, I know what he was trying to say and I think you do too. And you're like, you know, putting a comma somewhere essentially to kind of make it work for you. And it was really infuriating. But,

[02:44:13] let me throw this out. Unlike like Michael Moore getting up there and yelling where I'm like, well, some people are just not going to enjoy Michael Moore yelling at them. And then Bill Kirsten means a joke about being shoved in a trunk and people applaud. The cognitive dissonance to do this. It was a pretty good joke. The cognitive dissonance to do this like blows my mind. Oh, you're right. Some people did watch Zone of Interest and did not pick up on any of that. They were just like, oh wow, this is really about the Holocaust and they should have known. Right. This is why we have to make sure that Jewish people are never persecuted against again. That was their entire reading of the film. I mean,

[02:44:43] maybe we should cut all this out of this episode. We have to keep it. Or be bad faith interpreted by people. Or triple it. Because, I mean, I really don't think we should triple it because that would really take a long time. Just put like a deep reverb on it that makes it sound like everything we said is heard three times. But I think that like what we went through for the past, and I say this as someone who was writing about movies, writing about Zone of Interest, writing about other, you know, Holocaust and Israel adjacent movies on the internet. And you have not avoided talking about these things. I have. I have been very clear-throated. I mean, I feel like I have mortally fortified as I've been on any subject

[02:45:12] that I've ever spoken about about the enormity of the wrong that Israel has perpetrated. And people said I was wrong. People over here said I was wrong to book David O'Neill. I said you were wrong. I said that you were framing it as he's desperate to come on and he was framing it as I'm being hounded by Sims to come on. Well, he's always framing it that way. Continue your point, Mr. Ehrlich. No, it's just that, like, there was a time and only, and this feels only slightly diminished recently, where to even name the crime that Israel has been perpetuating was verboten.

[02:45:41] To really mix my German and modern politics. But, like, you know, I would have to go through rounds of legalese to use the word genocide and make sure that I, you know, there were governing bodies in the world that I could link to to back up my decision to use such a word. And I would be accused, I'm not going to name names or go into specifics, but, like, there were heated incidents, some of which I definitely went out of my way to invite upon myself that, you know, whatever, but, um, yeah, I know,

[02:46:11] but, and some of which took me by surprise, uh, where the language I was using was, was, uh, policed and seen as being aggressive and, um, it did not feel safe for a person employed by anyone other than themselves or by a large company to, even a Jew, the grandson of Holocaust survivors, to say, uh, that what was going on and, like, and I was like, I can speak to this issue more, in a more full-throated way than I can to almost any other of the world's great atrocities of my lifetime

[02:46:40] and, even so, was still getting blowback for it and, and, and from, mostly from other members ostensibly of my community and, uh, that, you know, it's, it's, it really has, um, it's really soured me on a lot of different things over the last 18 months or so. It's been, uh, really painful a lot. Look, I think it is, uh, it is an incredible microcosm through which to underline all of the kind of, uh,

[02:47:10] social evils of social media, of, like, the actual damage it is wrecking upon, like, our brains and our society and all of that sort of shit. What, when I say, like, I don't know if any of this matters anymore, I'm working hard to not fall into a level of despondency that is, so why even bother doing any of it? But I think what I spin on is, like, let's say Glazer had somehow done the impossible and, like, perfectly worded the speech in a way that no one could object. Given some speech that everyone was like, wow, he's really

[02:47:39] thrown things into context for me. Within 30 seconds, people are doing jerk-off motions going, oh, liberal Hollywood elites in their bubble because even the idea of that happening at the Oscars doesn't mean the same thing it used to mean anymore. You know, like, everything is so blown up and so, like, endlessly expansive in a way and is so loud and just this constant pit of screaming. And, of course, I think to someone like Glazer, and I sympathize with this greatly, it shouldn't be that controversial to say, hey, remember that, you know, people-defining thing that they did to us

[02:48:09] less than 100 years ago? Maybe we shouldn't do something similar to that to someone else. Maybe we should actually learn from that and behave differently. I mean, it would seem to be a benign statement. It is part of the, in certain ways, it is a danger of the death of the monoculture, right, of just people being like, well, I'm going to my own source. I'm existing in my own bubble. I'm looking at what my social media feed is and what I watch, which outlets I pay attention to and whatever. And in other ways, the scary part is, like, the control of those outlets

[02:48:39] in certain ways, you know, and the bends that things are taking. It's a fucking nightmare situation. You watch this movie. where Stephen, you know, Stephen, Stephen, he and I are very close. He, Stevie, he says that, you know, he wants to accept this on behalf of the one billion people watching, on behalf of the six million who perished, six million Jews in Poland. But, like, a billion, I mean, really, you have the feeling watching that ceremony that really this was the center of the universe. And I will say that, though, the Oscars always used to say that. Never true. A billion people

[02:49:09] watch the Oscars and you're like, no, they don't. What are you talking about? But the Jonathan Glaser speech was one of the few moments where it did suddenly feel like the Oscars were back at the center of the universe to some limited extent for a half second. Well, it was also just one of those things where it was like, I wonder if he'll, like, you know, make a speech versus, like, going up there and being like, well, thank you. This film was hard to make and I'm glad. It's going to be very interesting in, like, four days from when we're recording this to see if and hopefully when No Other Land wins Best Documentary. That will be interesting.

[02:49:38] I imagine it's going to win. It seems like it is. Which is so, I mean, it's so wild that Glaser speech would trigger that reaction a year ago among so many people in Hollywood. Obviously, maybe not a majority, but enough. And then you would have that same body award such an outspoken film. But that movie has the narrative of, like, who made it? And look, we're getting very deep in the weeds. Have you guys, I've shouted this movie out before. I'm moving us to a slightly different tack here. By the way, you're never getting your wallet back.

[02:50:08] No, it's fine now. It's fine. He threw a wallet at a Jewish, it felt like an anti-Semitic attack. It's because I love you so much. Have you ever seen, I've shouted out before, the HBO TV movie directed by Frank Pearson, Conspiracy? No. It was acclaimed at the time, won Emmys. Like, you know, it was not like a forgotten movie or anything, but it's a TV movie. I've seen it kind of a disturbing amount of times considering it's a movie about Nazis planning the final solution. It is incredible. And I feel like

[02:50:38] it gets no recognition. 2001. It's called Conspiracy? It's called Conspiracy. It stars Kenneth Branagh, Stanley Tucci, Colin Firth. Isn't there a scene in K Street where somebody goes to see Schindler's List? I don't know. I can't answer that question for you. And if I had my wallet... Do you remember this image? Oh, sure. I feel like I saw this poster. You saw a poster. It's called K Street. It's a conspiracy. K Street is an HBO show. Okay, yes. It's the Soderbergh. It's the Soderbergh. It's about lobbyists. Weirdly, people were not that interested.

[02:51:08] I don't know why. Even though it's part of America's favorite TV star, James Carville. The whole thing, it was like classic Soderbergh where he's like, well, what if I just point cameras at lobbyists? HBO will be interested, right? Like, nobody fucking... Anyway, I highly recommend it as a sort of flip side because it's an incredibly simple film. It's basically set at a big table. There's basically nothing to it. It's about the real Vanassie... I'm probably pronouncing that wrong... Conference in 1942

[02:51:38] where Heydrich, who was a high-ranking Nazi at the time, basically gathered a bunch of people and was like... I'm thinking of The Corner, not K Street. The Corner. What was The Corner? Now we got... The Corner is David Simon's miniseries that basically was like a... As soon as you did James Carville, I was like, there's no fucking way he was in the show. I wish so badly that I had the wallet back. Well, you don't. Because now you deserve it to the dome. You don't and you can't. You only get one wallet. That's the problem. You know, he gathers the high-ranking Nazis and is like, Hitler has ordered us to exterminate the Jews in like, you know, beyond what we've been doing

[02:52:08] in a uniform way. And we're here to figure out exactly how to do it. And it's amazingly acted because it's so procedural and like, there's nothing more chilling than watching people discuss this stuff as sort of a matter of fact. Like, you know, just... And there are moments, obviously, where like, things get more, you know, bigoted and intense or whatever. And there's also moments where it's just like fucking German army, you know, big shots arguing, like having little turf wars with each other.

[02:52:38] It fucking rocks. I have a question about it. I'm interested. Does America get a shout out? In conspiracy? Wait. Because of course, it's been found... Oh, then America like, kind of knew what was going on. Okay, what are you talking about? No, it was found in... And I'm pretty sure it was during the specific meetings that you're shouting out that they were looking to America in the way that we suppressed African Americans. Yeah. I do think some of that... As a system that they could then incorporate

[02:53:07] into what they were doing to the Jews. I think they do briefly mention something like that. I can't remember, but I know what you're talking about. we have here. Yeah. Lovely series of governments. Just a nice reminder. Yeah. Sorry to pile on bummer. No, but it's... That's what's so interesting is that you watch... Interesting, whatever. Fascinating, disturbing, distressing. Like, you watch Schindler's List and you're 15 years old, you're David, me or Ehrlich, and you're like,

[02:53:36] I have so many questions. Or Ben. I would choose Sims. Oh, get out of here. Come on. You must have been cool. No. Your entire audience, you're giving them the biggest laugh this whole episode. You were a cutie pie. I... Elisa recently sent me a picture of you in college and we were both like, what a cutie pie he was. You're watching and you're like, but how could this not just like happen, it's just like, you're telling me there was like, sort of, you know, what I'm talking about. Sure.

[02:54:05] Like people writing things down and making plans and being like, yeah, yeah, use that railroad. That one's good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Use Auschwitz. Auschwitz is really good because it's kind of in the middle of nowhere so no one will see what's going on. So they know they don't want anyone to see what's going, you know what I mean? Like all of those thoughts, it's just like, every time you think about like the thought process or the conversations people had, you're like, how did this, you know, continue? Like how did like it not stop there or there? Something that I think allows Schindler's List to not spin into the maudlin

[02:54:35] or really get overly or any sentimental tour until the very end is it's focused on bureaucracy from the start. I mean, this is a story about paper. Yes, it is. It's the first line of the movie other than the prayers in the prologue is someone being like, name, and then you see them just taking down names throughout the movie. It's all just a drama of, you know, trying not to create more paperwork or less paperwork and everyone just, you know, and then of course the miracle of it all is solved by paperwork effectively at the end. It is interesting that the most thrilling thing they do is Kingsley fucking burning up that typewriter

[02:55:05] like at the end. It is interesting that Amistad is so transparently him trying to make his Schindler's List for slavery and the actual successful version is Lincoln which once again takes the approach of bureaucracy where it's like the way this gets settled is through like an absolute like kingship working of our fucked system. But like, I think Amistad he thought he had it too where it's like, well, oh, what's interesting is they put on trial the notion of like, you know, were they allowed to do this? Like, were they allowed

[02:55:34] to overthrow their masters on this boat? I think this speaks to like, oh, sorry, go ahead. Like he just thought like, that's another way to get at that question right in like a non and like, it's not like Amistad's a bad movie. I mean, we put out like 53 great minutes on it. You can go listen to any time. And then a four hour episode. Maybe we should read Amistad. Our ad reads are 53 minutes long now. I will say this. I mean, working on my like ultimate Spielberg ranking that we'll do at the end of this episode, I was just like, man, like 10 of these

[02:56:04] I need to rewatch. But I do think that when Amistad is one of them where I'm like, I would like to watch it again. But I think Amistad does then rely on like magic movie stars giving the great monologues to sell it versus like the biggest Lincoln monologues in Lincoln happen behind closed doors for two people. And then the real action is him sending out like fucking, you know, Mater and Hawks to like work it and massage it and all this sort of stuff in the same way as Schindler where it's like

[02:56:33] you have to kind of just like wheel and deal to trick people into doing the right thing. He speaks to another one of the prevailing interests of Spoke's career which is his fascination with how history is told, how it's written. And you see it even in a film like The Post which I think is underrated from the one time that I saw it. Which he also knows that he is one of the people who now is writing history. That anything he depicts is part of... doubled the twin awareness which I think, you know, he was a where-to to some degree in Schindler's List and then his fame grew I think became even more pronounced. But like, you know, he is aware

[02:57:03] that he is Hollywoodizing everything he touches and perverting the historical record to some degree. He's trying to do it responsibly rather than denying it. And I think, yeah, his films have a very sort of textual emphasis on what it means to create history, to write these stories, what the decisions are that go into that. And really, the documents and the paperwork that form the lives of the people that they touch. You see it across history. In Lincoln, what we're watching is the Civil War's about to end,

[02:57:33] you know, they've essentially quote-unquote won. And Lincoln is like, well, we still need to put, we need to write this shit down. Like, we need to put it in the Constitution before the Southern states rejoin, before like, you know, there's no chance of it ever happening. And everyone around him is like, do we have to? You know, like, we won. Like, it's fine. Take the W. Right. Walk away. like, that's a lot of work. It's hard. You have to use all your political capital on this. Like, yada, yada, yada, right? And he's like, no, no, no, I understand that this is going to be pivotal.

[02:58:03] And the movie has hindsight, so it knows it's pivotal, but nonetheless. He also is like, I have theater tickets like six months from now, so we could get it done within that window. I want to be able a little bit more paperwork would have saved him. In Schindler's list, what's so crazy is that there's an awful thing happens in front of Oscar Schindler every five minutes, and he's laughing it off. Now, he's trying to survive, like Ben's saying, like, and just sort of escape by,

[02:58:33] you know, right? Just like, hey, when, like, this is the way it is. But like, he's in the middle of insanity. Like, where is he? On Amistad and Lincoln, it's kind of like, well, we know about the insanity, but we're over here in Washington and we're kind of like trying to untangle it, like, like, legally. But this guy has been, right, unlike Lincoln, Schindler, let's also call out, Neeson could have, was supposed to be Lincoln. For like 10 years, I know, we talk about it on Lincoln. I just want to say it in this episode, for like 10 years,

[02:59:02] Lincoln was Spielberg's Schindler part two where he was like, I'm not yet ready but I know I want to make it. That man was a tall drink of water. That whole decade, it was Neeson supposed to do it. And then when he finally got the script and was like, Liam, I'm ready to go. Liam's like, I'm not the right guy. And it was, I'm not the right guy. It was a correct decision. Like, Is anyone going to take Lincoln's daughter? I have to shoot a whole movie in a parked car. I was so excited about the idea of Neeson playing Lincoln. There was some Photoshop that went around. You probably remember it. Like in those early days

[02:59:32] of the internet where like someone had Photoshopped the beard on him. And it was like, this is gonna rock. It's gonna rock, right? But beyond the fact that it's just like, you're never gonna get a performance than you got from Danny Day playing Lincoln. I also, I gotta say. Wait, your buddy Dan? Yeah. Big D? Yeah. A Neeson Lincoln coming out one year after Taken? Would have been a swing. Hey man, it's fun to imagine. I am, it would have flipped

[03:00:02] people's brains. I am going all in on the hope that the Naked Gun remake this summer brings Neeson all around. We all have our eggs in that basket. I would say. If you looked at the eggs in that basket, they have the blank check logo on them all over them. There's so many things at stake on that movie which I'm just asking to be silly and consistently funny. Neeson not just making movies set in parked cars. I'm like this, it potentially opens up the final, last golden phase

[03:00:31] of Neeson's career. Because like, the other movie he's making is called Cold Storage and I don't know what it's about but here's my guess. His fourth movie with cold in the title in the last four months. I do just want to, you know, talk to you about Neeson in like a funny vein. He's got cold pursuit and like cold trucks. Yeah, dude. The ice road, but yeah. The ice road fucking blows. Cold Pursuit is a really solid movie that had the misfortune of being the movie that he was on the press store. The disaster press store. And one more thing, Robin, and she's like,

[03:01:01] not one more thing, turn his mic off. Stop there. If I can add for the context. But there is, I mean, Liam Neeson's not in this sequence although he precipitates it but like, every time I watch this movie I am blown away by what has to be the most darkly comic sequence in maybe all of the last 30 some odd years of American film. Until Naked on 2025. Of course, which is the I pardon you sequence in Schindler's List where, you know, Schindler prevails on Goethe to show mercy his power is not control. Power is that

[03:01:30] we have the, you know, ability to kill these people and we don't. And then in what is, you know, uncomfortably a comic sequence, you know, Amon pardons, it follows the rule of three. It's like an SNL skit. I mean, like he pardons one person and another and he's like working against his demons and looking at himself in the window, in the mirror rather. And then it ultimately... Well, he does the thing where he like moves his hair across his face. Yeah. And he's sort of studying himself and then in, you know, typically Spilberian fashion

[03:02:00] the way the information comes out. I mean, he cannot commit to having any sort of redeeming qualities and ends up murdering Leszek. But it is a... I mean, again, when I think of the sequences that sort of define Schindler's List and are able to thread the needle between these very contrasting energies, having that sort of like... Gallows humor is an understatement. Like the incredibly morbid humor here and making it like... You don't laugh when you're watching that but it is inherently comic.

[03:02:30] It's not the day the clown cried but like it's funny in its way. Can we watch that yet or you have to like go to West Virginia? You have to like go to Fort Knox? Yeah. Here's like a thing in this movie that is so risky that I think pays off so beautifully which is Schindler basically has no ideology, right? He is so defined... Not that we can tell. Apart from money talks. Right. But that's really... It's sort of Chris Tucker's ideology. He is defined by this sort of sense of like I haven't quite been able

[03:02:59] to make a business work. Right? Right. I never will really. I'm sort of a disappointment. My father thinks I'm kind of like a fuck up. Right. He's sort of the ultimate large adult son. Very large adult son. I mean he's good at fucking. He's good at fucking. He's like good at charming people but you're like this guy is sort of like kind of just a dilettante to a certain extent. A hundred percent. He's like the kind of like grindset mindset quote unquote entrepreneur who you're like who does this guy like... Pardon me.

[03:03:29] Okay, carry on. No, but I'm like he is the... Schindler's tweets about this were fired. He is the version... He is like the LinkedIn lunatic of his time in a certain way. He's all in on crypto. We're about to hit the three hour mark and I can tell. It's getting good. The kind of... We haven't even talked... You know you can tell because I'm getting warm. We haven't even talked about the liquidation of the ghetto sequence really which is like maybe the marquee sequence in Spielberg's career. It's really hard to talk about. To me, the most important scene in this film or the scene I'm kind of most impressed

[03:03:58] by the dramatic execution of because it's not a complicated sequence in terms of the moving pieces as a filmmaker is the negotiation for Hirsch right? with the notion of the game of 21 and that you're kind of surprised that Schindler is willing to put his neck out to try to overplay his hand to get this, right? He's had this moment of relation to her in the basement. When he's talking to her

[03:04:27] a move that astounds me is that you can see and a lot of this is Janusz and a lot of this is Devitz visible goosebumps on her skin as he's sort of circling her and trying to get his head around her and then has that moment of the like can I kiss you but not in that way where you're starting to see these gears turning in this dude and it's also coming after like the negative response he got to the kiss upstairs and all that sort of shit. Then he goes to Kingsley. The kiss where he kisses

[03:04:56] later than he kisses the Jewish woman at the party like a sustained kiss on the lips is such an interesting moment because there's no clear indication as to why he is doing it and that you have to sort of again to his lack of ideology which is just like you know what I like doing kissing women. Yeah, but why would I judge any set of lips as not worth kissing my interpretation for that moment where he's surrounded by Nazis who are looking at each other being like what the fuck knowing that he's breaking the law is at that point it is sort of a fuck you.

[03:05:25] I think he's saying like like interesting. I think it's a fuck you. I think he doesn't need to kiss that woman. I don't know that when he gets arrested that's towards the end. My read on the movie is like he's sort of taken aback by their response where he's sort of like you actually are this disgusted by these people like he's sort of like I thought this was sort of like let's keep the trains running let's all like prosper and wealth kind of thing. That's really what he shows his cards when he's pouring water on the train car and he's like it's completely

[03:05:54] like that point it's unambiguous that he is trying to respect their humanity and the Nazis are just laughing at him. You get there, right? Him saying to Kingsley like leave one extra slot blank you don't quite understand why he's doing it. Then it gets in the negotiation where he knows Fiennes is going to pick up on that and makes the play to try to win her. Get Hirsch on the list. And Fiennes starts short circuiting, right? Like this guy is so unequivocally evil but in a way

[03:06:23] where he hates himself for being attracted to her and keeps kind of like tying himself into knots where he's just like if I want to fuck her then I must be vermin too and he's trying to square this circle and Neeson knows that that's what he can do to make him shut down where it's like challenge him on all of this. He can't push his like the value that she has to him because he will collapse. His overriding like biological sort of like drive towards this woman is being defeated by his notion

[03:06:53] of like country and what he represents which is the exact thing that Schindler lacks that allows him to gradually go like wait, this is just a fucking person. Right. Why am I treating this as any sort of ideology would be too confining for him to navigate the Holocaust the way that he does. And the more these people make money for him the more he's like well I'm kind of endeared to these people they've helped make me a millionaire why would I view them as less than? That's so like small minded to just like categorically group a whole like section of people

[03:07:22] as less and you just watch like Fiennes is doing these insane quick turns as he's like pacing back and forth as Neeson is putting him through the paces being like yeah but you're not gonna take her to Vienna let's be honest here that's not possible you know there's another moment in the movie I'm trying to remember where it is but it's earlier oh it's in the conversation the first conversation in the wine cellar with Helen where Spielberg deliberately has a cut

[03:07:51] that fucks continuity where he goes from one angle to a slightly different angle on a two shot of both of them and in the first one finds his hands are on his hips and he cuts continuous dialogue and finds his arms are straight down by his side and it is such a perfect like for a movie that is so tight and is so controlled and so disciplined most people would go like fuck you can't do that that fucks with the austerity of the film and Spielberg clearly was just like this is the best combination of performances

[03:08:20] I don't fucking care if that throws people off of the movie then we have bigger problems you know but it's a similar thing of like this scene where finds is just like wanting to punch himself in the face for wanting to kiss her that I think is such an interesting counterpoint to like here's this guy who is so dogmatic in what he thinks he needs to do and has certain psychological and biological drives that he cannot override that are tearing him up inside versus Oscar Schindler being like who fucking cares

[03:08:50] well it's one character who is at war with his humanity what little of it is left and another who is coming to embrace his humanity as the film goes on because as he's starting out he's just sort of like I go wherever the money is I don't care about anything the advantage that Schindler has over Goethe is that he knows who Amon Goethe is and the reverse is not true and that grants him all the power Amon Amon Amon Amon is not very capable of judging other people's emotions because he has clearly like

[03:09:19] a mental disorder which he was diagnosed with by the Nazi party when they finally kicked him out he was so bad at his job he was actually fired which is so crazy to think about that they were like you know you're not producing enough work I guess you know like or he was stealing you know quote unquote stealing money the reveal of the naked woman lying in bed alone and then you're like what's she doing and then cut to him on the balcony with the sniper rifle and you're like this guy doesn't want to fuck

[03:09:48] well that scene is yeah obviously very chilling and also it's right how she's like come on you know while he's doing this like unbearable psychotic thing and he's like barely taking the time to put his suspenders back on he's half naked right like the drive in this guy is so frightening the kiss just the one weird factoid about the kiss scene earlier was when he kisses the little girl before he kisses the older one on the lips the woman who that character really is was on set that day

[03:10:18] and is it the end of the movie yeah yeah and Niesen goes up to her and kisses her dressed as Schindler in the same way as the real Schindler kissed her on the cheeks at that party and it's just like that for me sort of epitomizes how the production of this movie was sort of as much of an arc as the alchemy itself and people could be playing Angry Birds in between I know it's so crazy to imagine how many cell phones there could have been I would have played so many games of Marvel's What if it turns out like that Spielberg

[03:10:47] had like a big brick cell phone that he did play like Snake on he was Snake all the time and he's actually like completely zoning out the entire movie I just need this for my sanity there's two ways I'm getting through this nighttime riffs from Robin and Snake during the day but the ghetto sequence is you know I think problematic for some because it's so electrifying and I think you know watching it in a vacuum if I was an alien coming to earth fucking burying the jewelry and the bread I mean it's as electric as anything in Raiders of the Lost Ark

[03:11:16] it also just starts happening I mean it's yeah well you get a speech about how today is history and how he's gonna make the history of Jews and Poland but at speech starts you're like holy shit the movie's up to that point that's the thing and it's happening this abruptly the time of this movie is kind of elastic you don't again have the political background you know the title you know you have some titles that come up occasionally to be like okay now this is what's going on but you're not understanding the progression of the war and you're not understanding later I mean like that much

[03:11:45] until you sort of realize like oh the war's kind of over like or is whatever Germany is now on its back foot versus it's a much later film but I was reminded in re-watching this of Tar which I think similarly you're watching and you're like I know where this movie's going when's it gonna happen and it does the trick of being like this has gotten further along in the background of the story that you're focused on than you realized Tar is so good at that where you're like oh are we about to

[03:12:15] methodically watch her get cancelled and then we've actually cut to like now it's actually this has been like nine months before trying to outrun it but it's over right but what do you guys think of the like the the way that it shot Tar of Wolves the lady I'm saying Lydia yeah of course yeah her behavior yeah yeah I don't know the liquidation of the ghetto sequence I think is as I think sort of the fulcrum of where people think the movie's problematic meet where people think the movie is more successful I don't know it's just like it's such an electrifyingly staged sequence

[03:12:44] but it's also so horrifying in what it's depicting and there's like the the rush and suspense of people fleeing for their lives at the same time they're hurted are they going to escape can they hide who is making the right choices here I mean I don't I don't really I don't know I'm throwing it open to the table I don't really know I don't have a problem with this I understand the academic you know I don't have a problem with the answer of an objection of like right can you dramatize any of this can you put any mustard on it as I would say it's just

[03:13:14] even the slightest the slightest the thinnest spread of mustard yes you absolutely can the scene where the women this is the scene that upsets me the most realize their kids are on the trucks and start running it's an incredibly devastating scene it's also once again incredibly well staged by Spielberg like the shot of them all suddenly moving and like you know that means it means you have an indelible memory of something that's like you know like you need to know

[03:13:43] and remember thank you for reminding me of a point I wanted to make is one of the most effective parts of this film to me there are no cell phones there were no cell phones on set during the making of this film or at least let me say smartphones no a thought I had while watching this is as much as he is sort of like I'm approaching this like a documentary let the actors figure it out I'll sort of like adjust around them I'm not gonna like push them into place there are obviously larger blocking maneuvers that need to be worked out and this is such Steven Spielberg yeah he's not just like hey everyone run around

[03:14:13] I'll figure it out yeah this is such an incredible like hundreds thousands of extras movie in a way that is like textually important and you'll have these Spielberg oners that like start with you know two characters talking in a train in the background and then it follows them off somewhere else but you can tell that in the background now out of frame there are still those hundreds of extras who are existing just outside the perimeters

[03:14:43] because there wasn't a cut the camera just moved they're not just running back off to their trailers or whatever you know the crafty table and it is like a constant reminder of the sheer numbers of people who were involved in this on both sides and when you see those masses of just like right as you're saying the women running towards the train and they don't stop coming and you're like there's more of them there's more of them he hasn't run out the resources to be able to like put that many people

[03:15:12] on set and to let them exist is the kind of like every one of these people is equally important even if the scene is now focused on Liam Neeson's face you're never forgetting that those people are right there yeah I mean there's a feeling that every character you see both the Jews and the Nazis are sort of in their own movie over the course of this and you feel that in the liquidation sequence where I think things that might feel glib like the Nazi playing Bach on the piano after somebody steps on and alerts

[03:15:42] them to their presence I think that symphonic feeling of it the the triumph sort of over being played over the sorrow and the horror of what's happening like people being executed summarily a point blank range you know in front of people who are sort of like giddily doing their job I mean I think it's it's it speaks to how well the movie and the energy the movie gets from the confluence of all these different energies that are happening at once where it was it's never just the

[03:16:14] unimaginable horror of what's happening or it is but the horror is compounded by the fact that so many other human emotions and experiences are happening at the same time the shit that Spielberg has always been great at is like having exposition that sets Brody into action in Jaws happening in the background of a one-er while in the foreground there's like a small like domestic comedy scene playing out with his wife and child you know this sort of like his capturing of energy of never letting a scene

[03:16:43] be only one thing it is just like yeah the amount of sort of like parallel action he is able to stage in a way that isn't cancelling itself out is astonishing because it is part of what needs to be reckoned with of just like how much was going on at every single moment which is also what pressurizes the ending so much when all of this expansive you know far-reaching energy collapses on this

[03:17:13] one moment of you know moral recognition and I with this ring I could have done more you know I could have saved more lives I think it's it's a real shift in the density of what we're seeing there's the moment where they send the boy out and they're pointing the guns at him and you're like fuck I'm about to watch this kid get shot in the back of the head at point blank and then it cuts to Kingsley walking sort of just like trying not to rock the boat and you're like oh I guess the kid survived and then as the camera is following

[03:17:43] Kingsley you see the dead kid lying right and it's just this sort of like oh at the exact moment that someone's surviving someone else has been like executed in a meaningless way and the the scene with the rabbi where they they test him on the hinges which let's just say another great thing about this movie anytime they show you the way the operations work the way the pot gets made that shit is so good that them like stop watching the hinge he feels like he's passed the test and then finds this like

[03:18:12] well but if you can make them that fast then why are there only this many in the bucket he's taken out you're like I'm about to watch another fucking horrible scene for a guy I've now fallen in love with in 30 seconds and then the guns won't work they're jamming up they're going through multiple guns it's sustained in the background people are escaping people are getting shot you're focused in on this one thing and then only after there have been like three false starts with the gun does he say like I hesitate to even bring this up but the reason I didn't have the hinges they had to reset

[03:18:42] the machinery or whatever where you're understanding the psychology of this guy in this moment who's like processing I could die at any second the way he flinches every time totally but also that he's thinking like should I even say this if I start to speak to explain myself do they shoot me even faster like what is the thing that helps me survive this when the chaos of what's going on is so extreme and so all over the place and feels kind of randomized I mean the random I mean we talked about it earlier that like so many accounts

[03:19:12] of people who survived the holocaust come down to weird flukes of luck or just literally I stepped out of line and was like if I step out of line will anyone catch me and they don't Eamon would I'm sorry go ahead I was going to say the women when they're pricking their fingers and trying to rusing up their cheeks to give themselves like to look more more alive good at working stronger more healthy that's one of those details I mean the kid jumping in the toilet and you're like I can't believe anyone had to do this and then there are four other kids already in there

[03:19:41] a lot of these details came from accounts that Spielberg only learned on set I mean it's like the idea of them eating the putting the diamonds in bread and then swallowing them that was something that someone mentioned to him on set and he was like we have to work this into the movie it's also so fascinating as Schindler starts to like buy off German officers things like the lighter and the bag of diamonds later you know and him having the breakdown of not selling the car or the pen or whatever it's like he's selling them

[03:20:11] on the notion of like we all know this is gonna crash and burn at some point which makes it all the more terrifying that people are just like well I'll just continue carrying out orders until the last possible moment and then he knows the morality test of that final moment inviting them into the warehouse and being like if you really care about this shit fucking execute them right now and everyone backs off I mean which is a big swing it's a huge swing but part of it is that like really gambling with a lot of lives there but what is this guy's like superpower at the end of the day

[03:20:41] he actually really knows how to read people and he's brash and so much of this right is like put your money where your mouth is and some people like Eamon are happy to be psychos all day and others are just like I'm just doing my job you know which their job is you know the world's most unimaginable evil but right I can understand why some people would be allergic to the end where he's saying you know he's breaking down and saying this ring I could have done more because it's the most Hollywood moment right but at the same time I don't know what other

[03:21:10] catharsis you could have at the end of the first questions all yes the entire film but it's also the first question I would have of him where I'm like yeah why didn't you know like why did it end up being this many and why did it take you this long to figure it out good for you figuring it out weird that more didn't but took you a while and also just the enormity of what Ben Kingsley says to him which is that like generations there'll be generations because of what you did and you just think about my own life but like it feels like something a movie

[03:21:40] shouldn't do which is have a character kind of be like what you did is a big deal and will be a big deal and Neeson being like are you sure and he's like yes you know like it's like movies shouldn't like historical movies about true stories don't you think that is part of what helps that movie exist in a dialectic with other stories is that he doesn't present it as like and this is how the holocaust was won this is how we solve the problem sure like the movie then acknowledges like this is kind of a drop in the bucket isn't it a deeply impactful drop well but it's like then right

[03:22:10] that's why Showa exists right I mean the statistics are mind-blowing I mean you see in the movie that there are more people alive because of Oscar Schindler than there are Jews in Poland yeah it's right if you were Jewish would you live in Poland I've never I've never done my real pain trip I've been you know I've been back and forth on the idea for so long and that movie did not really move the needle for me one way or the other but especially if Kieran Culkin is going to come with me I liked that movie but you know like yeah but I'm just

[03:22:40] saying it didn't make me want to go like buy my plane tickets to Poland and go on the history tour I went once and did not do any of the historical things and felt a kind of profound connection to like this is where my people are from without needing to really dig into all of that maybe I was also like a fucking 20 and afraid of like doing emotionally overwhelming things what I like about that movie is it's him sort of narrativizing his own conversation negotiation with the pain that he's inherited with other people's pain to what degree is it healthy

[03:23:09] to take this on to what degree do I need to create some space from it and I know that if I were to go on that tour maybe one day I will I like Jesse Eisenberg in real life and you know like his character in the movie would be so in my own head about how I should be feeling in this moment and like the solemnity I should be expressing and internalizing and how wrong am I to have my thoughts wander about whatever while I'm here that it would be sort of self-defeating and hopefully I can reach a point where I could go more pure but anyway

[03:23:38] hey congratulations guys we just passed the runtime of Schindler's list and we didn't even talk about John Williams you know what I think is the single most iconic film score ever written I think we did I think we did a lot and especially because we need to do the ranking yeah I think we should yeah I'm going to challenge you on that though I know I mean just the theme just the theme I meant to say theme it's a great theme it is not I mean it's been stuck in my head on nonstop blue for 30 years make the argument there are other more iconic film scores there are more iconic film scores John Williams wrote

[03:24:08] more iconic film scores exactly I meant to say most iconic film theme just that one piece of music that doesn't pop up in full until 2 hours 51 minutes of the movie has literally been in my head on a loop for over 30 years that's weird I've seen several none of them can figure it out but it is it's a lovely theme the part in the documentary though where they're all like the most beautiful thing he'd ever done and we all cried when we heard it and it's like cosign and you're just kind of like it would be funnier

[03:24:38] if they were saying that about his terminal score well it's not funny you know the movie's silly but like his terminal score I just started hugging him and was moved to tears alright I got therapy in 25 minutes let's go we've been talking for so long did this movie win any Oscars this film won seven Academy Awards I'm shocked it didn't win more in a way I could have won more no I like that I'm gonna be honest with you that was good who wins best actor this year instead Tom Hanks wins for Philadelphia

[03:25:07] which I you know is a performance I like but I would certainly give it to of the five nominees I would give it to Liam Neeson I and I think Neeson's just amazing it's the second best performance I personally behind Ted 2 yeah I am allowed to buy this cereal silly rabbit I personally give it to David Thewlis for Naked which is like kind of like one of the most insane performances ever put on screen but you can give it the Oscars used to have some real heavyweights

[03:25:37] well Thewlis was nominated but also that year Anthony Hopkins is nominated for Remains of the Day which is an amazing performance Larry Fishburne for What's Love Got to Do With It they're amazing nominations anyway you know the weirder thing is that it loses supporting actor sure like we said but like I'm kind of surprised that it lost you know like makeup or whatever what one makeup hello well well you can't argue with mad him downfire I think that my assessment of the movie

[03:26:07] being quotable is right hello you I think they're both quotable in their own ways both yeah I think you have helped make hello a quote in a way that solidifies your argument so wait it wins picture director correct screenplay score screenplay yes cinematography yes editing yes so that's six what's the one I'm forgetting does it win production design let's see no it lost costumes to I think Remains of the Day

[03:26:36] which you know great costumes beautiful costumes no sorry it lost costumes through the Age of Innocence but it did win indeed Art Direction okay yeah and of course Jurassic Park that year also wins three Oscars or whatever it's a you know it's a hot year for old Steve wins sound and visual effects yeah it wins both sounds and visual effects Jurassic Park in my opinion also a good movie the film opens well it's not an opening it's opening number 14 because it opened in limited release but it did make

[03:27:05] close to 100 million dollars as you said Griff 96 yeah more importantly 322 worldwide it was kind of a global hit I think in a way that Spielberg might not have predicted even though it was banned in about 10 countries no it was titties no I don't know why it was banned I mean I assume for incredibly anti-semitic reasons yeah but they they would in some countries I believe it was the Philippines they I think it's Indonesia Indonesia they overruled the ban oh sure and in some countries they didn't yeah oh it was banned in Indonesia because it's

[03:27:35] sympathetic to the Jewish cause hmm it doesn't seem like a great reason to me look we live in a very complicated world um so uh it uh won Spielberg his Oscar his long desired Oscar of course um he looks great at the ceremony hair's kind of long gives lovely speeches but speeches that are very much like I'm indebted to you know it's like he can't just get up there and be like take that fuckers no no Spielberg's on top you know which would be interesting if he had done that

[03:28:05] which it's interesting to think that this is also the Philadelphia year where Hanks gives the famous like president of Hollywood speech it's definitely a bit of a self-important this is a real the Oscars are telling you yeah yeah it is this is like peak serious speeches of like it's not about me it's about the the story um yeah and to think that it's like Spielberg wins all these Oscars presumably like goes out parties wakes up the next morning and then has to review story reels for Freakazoid

[03:28:34] it is funny you think they made him do that at 8am Monday morning I think he did it he would I don't want to disrespect Freakazoid in his struggle it opens number 14 it is funny what oh just to imagine him just how many plates he had spinning at this time even if he doesn't make a move for four years so it's the Warner Brothers but the Warner Sister Dot is there as well and he's like will there be a pigeon sort of Goodfellas thing happening in this old lady squirrel god everything I learned about the Godfather initially came through Goodfeathers

[03:29:04] um December 17th 1993 Griffin so it's opening a limited release number one at the box office it's a fun movie it's based on a bestseller a legal bestseller is it the Pelican Brief it's Denzel Washington and Julia Roberts in the Pelican Brief the Pelican Brief one of those movies that has sort of gotten reclaimed because I think it kind of slipped through the cracks yeah if that makes sense well it was a hit it was a hit and then people kind of forgot about it who usually was a little more serious minded

[03:29:34] it's him and his dotage a little bit uh famously Roberts and Denzel don't kiss sure right like there's a little bit of like Hollywood cowardice there yes anyway um Pelican Brief opening to a solid 16 million dollars on its way to a very solid hundred mm-hmm I don't know it's a fun movie it's a little long I like it a lot yeah it's fun it's Pelican long it's not that brief yeah Pelican kind of long yeah I just canceled my therapy session did you really not yeah I mean this is more important you can get out of here no no no well he already did the people

[03:30:03] the people need to know where on my Spielberg list Kingdom of the Crystal Skull falls three days ago Ehrlich was like no matter what you have to promise me I know I make it out of here for the therapy session but you know what Griffin wasn't even that late you were like five minutes late thank you that's really not making or breaking this right now let the record show I was not Mrs. Doubtfire I think I was 10 I was the exact midpoint between the two numbers you guys guessed I just said what number two was hello hello Mrs. Doubtfire crushing it number three it's a comedy sequel

[03:30:33] it's a comedy sequel David's eating a fucking ring pot gummy worm what the fuck it's like licorice great it's great for mine it's not a in my opinion good guess but no not a good movie in fact here's what's crazy the next three movies are all comedy sequels wow possibly a bad idea to have these all come out is it Wayne's World 2 this one is Wayne's World 2 yeah they rushed it a bad movie I was gonna say that would have to be before but I guess yeah but you know they finally have explained what happened with that movie that Mike Myers wrote an entire sequel he was like I want to I have want to take inspiration

[03:31:02] from Passport to Plimco Plimco yes and was like a very funny Ely Brothers movie and it's a movie about Wayne starting his own country and Paramount was like great we love it and he wrote this script and they put it into like active pre-production and then like two weeks before filming they were like we fucked up we didn't get the rights for that movie and I forgot about this I've read this article they made him rewrote the movie from scratch beyond that they had to like dynamite the sets yes what's weird about Wayne's World 2 is that right the rewrite is should we just kind of like parody the doors

[03:31:32] and you're like should we but that feels like a we have two weeks to go concept and the one thing they knew was that they had to build to the concert because they had built the stage for the performance seeing that movie in theaters as a nine year old who had never even heard of the doors was confusing there's funny stuff in it but one is a Stone Cold masterpiece you know there's funny stuff in it but one is one is so good one is perfect can we do it on this show can I make a pitch because I know we thought about Spheris but like she's got a really long complicated you know how we

[03:32:02] folded Love Guru into Austin Powers yeah I think we fold Axe Murderer into Wayne's World do those three so do another Myers trilogy yeah I'm not saying we do it immediately but I'm saying I want to pin it on the board as an idea yeah because then we basically covered all the Myers auteur films you guys have to do Axe Murderer one way or another yeah it's too important Cat in the Hat Cat in the Hat is its own fucking thing Cat in the Bat in the Hat it treks its own thing the ones that he is the driving force is the three powers

[03:32:31] the two Wayne's Worlds and Axe Murder that's it it's six so I'm like we could we do important work here we do important work here it's three hours thirty minutes number two there actually is a clock above my head I'm just noticing that yeah it's just sort of like the anyway number four it's another sequel it's new this week family movie about a pet oh it's Beethoven's second that's right is that the funniest title of all time I mean it's a good title it's up there in my memory they left work for the day after coming up

[03:33:01] with the title I mean Sister Act 2 Back in the Habits is very good up there as well well you've just guessed number five my friend I figured I was in the neighborhood that and Wayne's World are both like we got a sequel out in under a year but it feels like a mistake like don't rush it and then don't have them all up against each other Sister Act 2 is the one of those three movies where I'm like that movie's not bad that movie has juice the great Bill Duke the great Bill Duke the great Lauren Hill like you know there's stuff going on in Sister Act 2 Beethoven's second I'm pretty sure they were just like I don't know

[03:33:31] there'll be a girl Beethoven too great can we go can I make the case for Beethoven's second as a perfect title no we already agreed with you this isn't something you need to argue about I don't think they greenlit Beethoven 1 being like and obviously it's a franchise and then later we can play on the great works of Beethoven I remember my dad trying to explain it to me I have the same memory I remember your dad trying to explain it to me seriously where I was like why isn't it called Beethoven 2 and he's like well so symphony writing you know like

[03:34:00] it was a pain in the ass to explain it to a seven year old imagine the moment where they were like wow I'm checking the books here pretty good return on investment in Beethoven should we maybe do a Beethoven sequel and then some guy stands up from behind his desk at Universal sorry I know it's only my second day at the job this is a role that you would have played I'm remiss if I didn't point out there's an incredible opportunity here people in Hollywood do not understand or care about how much of a pain in the ass it is for parents to explain things to their kids like when

[03:34:29] fucking six minutes into the Incredibles you have to explain to your kid how insurance companies work Brad Bird is not spending a thought about this my whole problem with Mr. Sansweet didn't ask to be saved Mr. Sansweet didn't want to be saved I mean I put up cars I finally gave into cars in the mistaken thinking that this one would at least explain itself no cars is the most arcane we have to explain endorsements or like you thought cars is the one that would explain cars is inexplicable cars the world's greatest minds like fucking Zizek

[03:34:58] is like still like watching Cosmic I don't know where's the brain I didn't think that my kid would get to be like wait so they fly on other vehicles who are also sentient yeah they go inside Sidley the spy jet's butt and they have a conversation with him inside of him also in the top 10 he has a vehicle location and a character you've got Geronimo an American legend Walter Hill film you've got A Perfect World great film you've got The Three Musketeers lots of fun saw it in theaters you have Adam's Family Values ditto and you've got

[03:35:27] a little masterpiece called The Piano A Pianer now Steven Spielberg Griffin has made by my count 34 films if you include Jewel yep so yeah give me your top 34 for Steven Spielberg I'm just gonna we're doing it all the yes here he goes that's what we talked about here he goes I prepared and I have a list yep okay I'm just gonna try to do this fast and some of it I might bump on when I say it but I'm just locking in the order I have right here okay and I'm shooting from the hip

[03:35:57] 34 hook 33 1941 32 Terminal 31 the BFG 30 Ready Player One 29 War Horse 28 Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom 27 I don't like that movie 27 Indiana Jones Kingdom of the Crystal Skull come at me bro 26 The Lost World Jurassic Park 25 Always that high basically on the strength of Holly Hunter alone 24 The Color Purple 23

[03:36:27] The Post 22 Amistad we're now in a territory where every movie is basically incredibly good at best at worst right 21 War of the Worlds 20 Munich 19 West Side Story 18 Minority Report 17 Sugar Land Express 16 Duel 15 Tintin 14 Lincoln 13 Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade 12 Jurassic Park 11 Jaws 10 Fablemans 9 Raiders of the Lost Ark 8

[03:36:57] Close Encounters of the Third Kind 7 Saving Private Ryan 6 Bridge of Spies Face the Bridge 5 The biggest jump up for me in doing this series Empire of the Sun number 4 Catch Me If You Can number 3 Schindler's List number 2 AI Artificial Intelligence number 1 E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial I'm surprised you have Ryan so high I wouldn't have thought that look it's a film I find very difficult to watch I think it is just kind of

[03:37:26] undeniable in terms of craft I mean that's one where maybe I'm like do I do I flip Close Encounters You do what you want you do what you did that's what I listed Ehrlich you did this I did this on the fly okay I already have great issue with my picks but I did 34 BFG 33 Always 32 War Horse 31 Ready Player One should have been Lawyer 30 1941 29 movie I skipped school

[03:37:55] to go see at 11 in the morning the day came out has not aged well or was good at the time The Lost World number 28 The Terminal number 27 Amistad number 26 Sugarland Express 25 Duel 24 Hook 23 Lincoln 22 The Color Purple 21 23 Lincoln I said what I said where's my wallet you can't have it back 24 Hook 21 I need to see Lincoln again but it is not I don't know never really did much for me 21 Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom

[03:38:25] 20 West Side Story 19 The Post 18 Empire of the Sun 17 Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull I mean the most Ehrlich move of all time number 16 Minority Report number 15 Tom Hanks has a cold in the Bridge of Spies number 14 Ace's next favorite movie The Adventures of Tintin should still be a sequel holding out hope number 13 Indiana Jones I think just Indiana Jones we call it the Raiders of the Lost Ark no we don't we call this no we don't we call this The Last Crusade number 12 War of the Worlds

[03:38:55] number 11 Sammy Fableman and the Fablemans number 10 Saving Private Ryan number 9ET number 8 Close Encounters of the Third Kind number 7 another movie that would have complicated my relationship Steelburg is Munich you know what I'm talking about that in context too number 6 Raiders of the Lost Ark number 5 Jaws number 4 masterpiece called Catch Me If You Can number 3 Jurassic Park number 2 Schindler's List and number 1 AI Artificial Intelligence okay you guys ready for a third one of those now number 34 I'm now like do I put

[03:39:24] do I put Sam Private Ryan do I flip Sam Private Ryan and Jaws I don't know go on number 34 1941 number 33 the Terminal number 32 always number 31 Hook number 30 the BFG we're exiting bad movies 2 okay movies yeah that's like his only bad tier to me right number 29 Lost World number 28 War Horse number 27 Crystal Skull he's a bad adjacent right number 26 Amistad number 25 Temple of Dune number 24 Color Purple okay now we're getting into good movies

[03:39:53] number 23 Sugar Land Express number 22 Duel number 21 Empire of the Sun I might put that up higher on rewatch but whatever number 20 not that high number 20 the Post number 19 Tintin number 18 Last Crusade number 17 Ready Player 1 number 16 Munich number 15 War of the Worlds now we're in I fucking love this movie territory number 14 Catch Me If You Can number 13 Bridge of Spies number 12 West Side Stories number 11 Cuck Brigade

[03:40:22] number 10 you're calling it Rogan's Cuck Brigade number 10 Lincoln number 9 Close Encounters number 8 Save and Private Ryan number 6 7 Jurassic Park number 6 Raiders number 5 Jaws 4 Schindler's 3 Colin Farrell Kiss Me number 2 ET number 1 AI Artificial Intelligence Colin Farrell Kiss You is number 3 yeah Minority Park that's one of the best movies ever made I'm officially flipping Second Private Ryan and Jaws in the order take note people who listen to that drivel otherwise staying the same but yes I think it's interesting

[03:40:52] that we all have AI right near the top I think it's interesting that you fools don't understand Ready Player One is good I don't think it's that interesting look I bought the 3D Blu-ray and someday I will fire it up and give it another shot I have a steal well they didn't put the 3D out on steel so I bought the 4K steel and then I bought the 3D Blu-ray and I put that in and people who do that are on a government watch list created my own combo pack is Catch Me If You Can generally accepted as being one of the top 2 films I think it has of late become generally accepted but I think

[03:41:21] I think all 3 of us put it a touch higher than most would well I have it lower than you guys but I also like once we're in that top 15 yeah we're in 5 star territory I'm like I mean everything I feel like in my top 20 is 4 stars and above oh absolutely yeah yes yes yes if not even more than that Stevie you've made me some nice movies this is the thing and for that I say mwah thank you any of our rankings that seem rude it's like the guy made too many fucking great movies and even the ones I don't like

[03:41:50] all have some of the best things I've ever seen in a movie Ehrlich because the last episode you were on Eyes Wide Shut no you did Vengeance after that because Eyes Wide Shut went this long not quite this long should have gone longer sure this one went really long I need to pee very badly Ehrlich thank you so much for being here oh my pleasure you know may your memory be a blessing I feel safe in saying that I have now done the single least funny episode of Blank Check a badge that I wear with honor that's not true we had a lot of fun

[03:42:19] yeah we had a good time I think they're less funny episodes once again Amistad 53 minutes soaking wet I was just being like what do we say we could do a better job yeah let's go back and do the second half of Spielberg again let's run it back you could do like a how to train your dragon where just like one element remains CG and throw whatever it's fucking psychotic that they are just at this point now just keeping the same CGI elements of the original movie and are just putting human beings around them yes it's

[03:42:49] the other dragons at least are a little more redesigned but Toothless looks fucking 98% exactly the same with the same director and Gerard Butler I saw an interview with Dean Dubois yesterday got fed to me on YouTube of him in 2020 saying how morally bankrupt he thinks it is that the animation studios are remaking their own movies in live action well you know what helps you be less physically bankrupt is making movies like that and like pigs to the slop I will be taking my kid opening weekend of course anything you want to plug

[03:43:18] no great fighting in the war room your podcast terrible podcast don't listen to it good podcast for smart people it's even more of me if you can stand it and you probably can't I don't know I write on IndieWire I write about movies I think a lot of the people listening to the show are aware of that and wish they weren't no one has ever had a weird opinion about your movie writing ever and they never will what do I want to plug my deck on Marvel Snap is fucking crushing it right now you just inherited a new wallet full of different entertainment methods

[03:43:47] I have new credit cards what can I spend before Sims cancels them look if the first name's the same it's all good who's gonna check I have two kids you can follow their progress on Instagram two of the best kids in the game yeah I don't know you should shout out that best of the year it'll have been a while I mean I did I did I did have a fundraiser that is related to this episode in support of for the second year in a row with people of Gaza this year it was for the

[03:44:17] Palestine Red Crescent Society the amount of shit that GoFundMe has given every step of the way inventing this account to make sure that I'm not abetting their definition of terrorism whatever has been insane I've been able to get all the money out and to Palestine but they have currently shut down the page for it anyway internet is bad nightmare but I've been very proud and happy to have been able to raise money for the people of Palestine and that has brought me joy related to it is the video

[03:44:46] I put together but is seemingly inconsequential in comparison but yes I do that and this episode is not well timed for me to promote that but maybe I can come on in the fall Ehrlich do you know which filmmaker we're doing next somewhere in my brain I know but how do you announce it what am I looking at oh sure yeah great how about this how about a killer 3 DVD box set that's gonna be an episode well we're announcing right now of course the next we are doing Amy Heckerling nobody has guessed

[03:45:16] this or seen it coming as usual the films of Amy Heckerling guys next week we're straight into Fast Times at Ridgemont High I believe so with returning guest Lola Kirk that's right yes now some of these movies are they going to be kind of hard for people to get access to or is it all more or less streamable Johnny Dangerously I think is the only one where it's like quite a pickle right yes some of them are maybe not as like rentable on iTunes I don't know look I'll say this is a great time to fire up a VPN if you have one and start scanning the internet right

[03:45:46] Giant Dangerously is the one that's like pretty out of circulation but maybe that magically changes soon like I'm a you know like loser that's rentable I could never be your woman either way I just wanted to give a heads up to the audience rentable oh my god you guys are going to finally canonically disrupt rentable had the fact that Josh that she's butt crazy in love with Josh that's a movie where we're going to need to go four hours as soon as it's going to go hog wild for the clueless episode could we have multiple changes

[03:46:15] looks yeah I think we have to I don't know that we have to because you don't maybe you're only the producer of the show so you might have forgotten that this is an audio show it's important to the authenticity sound of Polaroid snapping between every point I agree you'll feel that we're wearing a sportier look I'm so tired that I just said Ben's agree can you saw radio heads just in the background or is it fake what are they no it's not just that's way too hard fake plastic trees right just over

[03:46:45] over and over again over the background of that episode yeah no we'll license that films no we haven't actually kicked that off really no my sense of timing is weird this episode of course is dropping April 20th okay 420 so Hitler's birthday it's also Hitler's birthday good job guys but we are about to drop a galaxy quest episode

[03:47:15] okay well we'll tell you what's happening next after galaxy quest superman superman is following that beginning with the richard donner film i'm seeing here that its title is superman that's not what it's called it's called superman colon the motion picture that is the official title that is why the james gunn movie is called simply superman because no film has ever had that title before well uh you're i think wrong i think i'm wrong it was marketed as superman colon the movie do you have any strong thoughts about the aesthetic of the trailer for superman

[03:47:45] i'm not sure why he's chosen that particular color progression and i hope he like you know tweaks it a little bit otherwise i'm looking excited for it i want to push the stop button why is that i don't know because this has been going on are you excited for me to talk so much about superman though a guy i really like and a guy you probably think is a bit of a square i think that movie is called superman the motion picture are we going off of what it says in the opening of the film no the film is called superman oh right well first of all it's superman the movie as i told you

[03:48:14] two minutes ago you weren't listening but it was only thrilling conversation it was only marketed that way leading up to the release of the new james gunn ben when we're done here i'm gonna make you be my therapist for the afternoon that the new james gunn film is not called like superman he's gonna lie this chair back legacy that's what it almost was called i know but like i'm trying to think of a funnier version like superman checks things out you know just just this whole thing where they're like uh superman toddles forward superman begins something well first steps is one of the worst it's so bad i think that trailer rules not very

[03:48:44] cautiously optimistic for that movie but i here's my pitch no subtitle necessary fantastic force first steps what happens in the movie galactus tries to eat earth oh is that what happens when you take your first step what are you talking about what are you fucking talking about mcu's bulletproof right now can't go wrong yeah let's all just quickly take our rolk pills we've gotten tense let no i must negotiate a treaty do the pills stop him from being rolk or they make him rolk they stop him from being rolk yeah

[03:49:13] and keep him as the great politician he is freedom you've elected an 80 billion year old man the episode's over bosta bosta bosta thank you all for listening and as always the podcast is live blank check with griffin and david is hosted by griffin newman and david sims

[03:49:41] our executive producer is me ben hosley our creative producer is marie bardi salinas and our associate producer is aj mckeon this show is mixed and edited by aj mckeon and alan smithy research by jj birch our theme song is by lane montgomery in the great american novel with additional music by alex mitchell artwork by joe bowen ollie moss and pat reynolds our production assistant is minick special thanks to david cho jordan fish and nate patterson

[03:50:10] for their production help head over to blankcheckpod.com for links to all of the real nerdy shit join our patreon blank check special features for exclusive franchise commentaries and bonus episodes follow us on social at blankcheckpod subscribe to our weekly newsletter checkbook on substack this podcast is created and produced by blankcheck productions