Interstellar

Blank Jack with Griffin and David. Blank Jack with Griffin and David. Don't know what to say or to expect. All you need to know. Do not go gentle into that good night. Old age should burn and rave at close of day. Rage, rage. Against the dying of the podcast. Third take, people. Hello, everybody. I'm a very horse Griffin Newman. I'm a coffee drinking.

David Sims. This is a podcast called Blank Check with Griffin and David. We discuss filmographies of directors who have had massive success early on in their careers. Oh, God. No, he's struggling, guys. He is tired. I am. No one should ever promote it. TV show. He's a tie-tie boy. No one should ever promote a TV show. I'm Joseph Cross from Wide Awake. And this podcast is about filmography's directors who have had massive success early on in their career and are given a series of blank checks.

to make whatever crazy passion projects they want. Sometimes they clear and sometimes they bounce, baby. And now this could be an episode where David talks the entire time. So, um, just, let's work on this just a context. So you, You're filming a movie right now. I am. We can say that.

at least yeah we can say that um which you booked right after making the tick in one of your stupider uh career up decisions you know one of your stupid good decisions yes i've made a very bad decision to continue succeeding yeah you have a very bad decision to take a job that you probably should take if that makes sense yes it's just a little uh role or what it's like it's like a but you're making a movie yeah yeah yeah

Uh, yes. It's not like you're, I mean, he's not the star of a movie, but you know, he's making a movie. No, I, I, I booked this like in the last. while doing the last episode of The Tick. And I've been going back and forth between filming this movie and doing press. Doing press. Which has also required me to fly to different countries. Right, and doing post-production work.

Right. And you're going to go to Australia like tomorrow. I have to go to Australia. Right. I'm burning the candle at like five ends. Yeah. So my body is just given out. My body is given out. My voice is just quit. It is telling me to stop working, but we're here to talk about Interstellar. We got blank check to do.

I don't give a shit about any of this. Couldn't push this back because, I mean, look, I, you know, I know it might sound like a humble brag, all the talking about how busy I've been, all the things that are going on in my career. But David over here is very busy as well because he's on a two-week vacation. I am very pumped up about my vacation. Now, I'm realizing now as the vacation comes to a close, I've only got a few days left. Okay.

Because like after week one of my vacation, when I didn't go back to work for week two, I was like, this is how you do it, you know? You just don't go back. You take, you know, you really decompress. Like I went away. I came back to New York. I've chilled out for a few days and gone away again. But now I'm realizing next Monday is going to be.

Soul crushing. Yes. Yeah. The longer you're away, the worse it is to go back. That's definitely. It's like a theory of relativity. If I want to tie it into the movie we're about to discuss. Right. It's like a time cube. You got to have that bookcase, baby.

Yes, yes. You took a brief intermission from your vacation to record this episode because otherwise we were going to run out of episodes. Otherwise, I would be in bed right now. Yeah, no, no. You literally have no other choice but to record right now with my voice sounding like this. It's literally this was it.

Yes. There was a lot of one through our window. We had all these blackboards and we like wrote all the possibilities. And it was like, no, we can only do Thursday at 10 a.m. Yes. Michael Caine was lying on the bed, dying, telling us.

you can't record you will have to miss a week so we had to figure it out revive you from hypersleep and like pull the like cord off of your saran wrap and like you know you started crying when we lifted you out all wet and i did and you didn't know i was gonna be in the bag because I was uncredited. It wasn't in any of the marketing materials. Oh, boy. But it was announced, but everyone forgot. That's the thing about Damon in this movie. Right. It was announced, but...

weirdly like I feel like it was just sort of in the announcement like Matt Damon's in it yes yeah right and he wasn't in any of the marketing and then when he was doing press for other movies he'd be like I just have a small part I just did it because I wanted to work with Nolan so I went into it thinking he was going to have like a

burst in size role. Sure, sure, sure. You mean he'd be the linchpin of the movie? I thought he was going to be the comic relief. Sure. I mean, he's so funny in the Martians. That's what I mean. That is our finest comedy. This is a year before The Martian. So he was actually probably just like trying to limber up his like comedy, you know, muscles. Look, he went to his agent in 2012, right? And he said, it's time for a career invention. You know what's funny? Space.

He said, look, I need to rebrand myself. Jason Bourne has run a little dry. I don't want to have to tap that well again. Right. He made the mistake later. Yeah. He said, here's what I want to do. I want to going forward. Only make movies where I'm alone, secluded on a foreign planet, and Jessica Chastain is vaguely trying to rescue me.

And he made two and then they were like, we're out. There are no more scripts. This is tough. Come on. Jessica wants to do something else. She's sick of rescuing you. Sort of. Sort of. It's a little bit of a stretch. But I mean, look, she's in both movies. Which is crazy. It is crazy when you think about it. And these are two successive years.

And they are the only movies he was in. He was only in Interstellar in 2014, and he was only in The Martian in 2015. Yeah, it was part of his comedy rebranding. God, The Martian's so funny. He makes food out of poopoo. Because this is...

I'm sorry, The Monuments Men is also 2014. Hey! Remember? Yeah, no, I remember. He poops into a potato or whatever he does. And you see the whole thing. Yeah, that's what happens. He carves a hole into a potato and then he poops. He squeezes his poop into the little hole in the potato. And Ridley Scott then, like, walks on. set and he was like you have to see it you gotta see it and then he like leads matt damon over to a console and he's like let's edit the footage now and you watch them edit

And the Golden Globes just hurl their globes at the screen. I always thought it was a weird choice for Ridley Scott to edit the HBO first look of The Martian into The Martian. And not even like at the end, it just happens in the middle. It like interrupts the movie. Usually he saves that for the director's cut, you know? What a great opening to our episode about my favorite Christopher Nolan movie. Is this your favorite movie of this decade? It is my favorite movie of this decade. Wow.

I thought about that when I was watching it for this podcast, which is probably like my eighth. viewing of it or something, like something around there. It's a miniseries called The Pod Night Cast. It's a film of Christopher Nolan. I forgot about that part. I forgot about everything. Yeah. And I was sort of like going through like my other like very top films of the like 2010s. And I was like, yeah, no, no, no, Interstellar.

And I posted that on Letterboxd, I think, and a lot of people told me that I was stupid. Yeah, you got some. You're really gripping it up today. You're like, I got to be the grump. You're a good grump. What was I going to say? What's your number two? That's a good question.

I mean, did you make a letterbox list that was ranked? Of, like, the 20 teens? Yes. I don't know what my number two would be, like, at first thought. I'm just sort of looking at, like, the various movies I've, like, ranked number one. Margaret. Probably Margaret. That's probably Margaret. That's my favorite of the decade. That's mine with a bullet. A bullet. A bullet. Social net.

Good movie. Would be up there. Good movie. Holy Motors. Good movie. Wind Rises. Never seen it. Oh, you should see it. I know you're not really a Ghibli guy, but... It's a mountain I still have to climb. Yeah. Getting into Ghibli. To me, the great mountain to climb. That's like the most whimsical mountain you could climb. It's a very whimsical mountain.

Like every five minutes, there's a goddamn lantern with a foot that like, you know, shakes your hand or whatever. And the mountain tells you about its dreams. Yeah, it's great. So, okay. So, but I do love this movie. Interstellar. Yeah. His last movie before his current movie that's out in theaters right now. Yes. It came out in October? No, November. November 5th. Because it got that big Thanksgiving bump.

when people yeah it made actually like a surprising amount of money because when it came out the opening was considered kind of disappointing right people were like and the reviews were mixed so people were like oh he swung and missed again yeah and then it ended up it ended up doing kind of a

crazy number for what this movie is because I was talking to someone yesterday about how Dunkirk is doing so well and they were like really it's not made anything close to what Interstellar made and I was like huh and I checked and I was like right it also made a ton of money internationally. And so, yeah, Interstellar was actually kind of a hit. Weirdly. Yeah. Even though I feel like the initial perception of it was, yeah, a little bit of a disappointment. But he was coming off of...

three consecutive movies that ranked in the top ten movies that studio had ever made. Crazy, crazy hits. Just next level hits. So I think it was always going to be seen as a disappointment compared to those. Yeah. And the opening was small. For what it was, the opening was small. It got beaten out by a movie that I won't say yet because I don't want to ruin the box office game. Oh, please don't. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Of course.

But then it lingered. It was a dad movie. It was a dad movie. Much like Dunkirk, because I think Dunkirk's going to just keep chugging along for a while. I think so too. You know, the magic of a dad movie is the dad doesn't know from opening weekends. He's just like going to want to see it eventually. Like, you know, and I saw this movie at a press screening, obviously. But then the second time I saw it was at Thanksgiving with my like uncle.

You know, like, that was the experience. I saw it opening night, midnight. Midnight? Like actual midnight? Max, actual midnight. Right. Actual fucking real deal big boy midnight. That's fine because you got home like 1.30, right? This is very short.

This is his longest movie, to be clear. It's two hours and 49 minutes long. I just remember going to get a slice of pizza after the movie because I was hungry. It must have been like three in the morning. That was the thing. I was eating my pizza. I was taking my time, and I checked my watch, and it was like four o'clock in the morning. I was like, Jesus fucking Christ.

Why did you see it at midnight? Why not at like 7 p.m. or whatever? I think the other ones were sold out. I want to see it. I saw it with Derek Simon, my best friend, my oldest friend. The great Derek Simon who just has these great dogs I look at on Instagram all day now. He's got a great dog. President Bartlett.

Yes. Is his dog's name. My oldest childhood friend and a current writer of Supergirl. That's right. We used to, we went to summer camp together. When we were nine, we went to an arts camp. We used to touch dicks and stuff. But we were nine and we went to an arts camp and we were like the indoor kids at the arts camp. Sure. Right. Even at the arts camp. Yeah. Right. They had a required time where you had to go swimming. And he and I became friends because we both ran the same con.

Which was we would, quote unquote, forget to pack a swimsuit every day so that they couldn't make us swim. Right. And so what they did was they made us stay on the other side of a fence because they were like.

Well, if you can't come swimming, then you're not even allowed into the general area. Right. So we literally sat in this dirt outside of a fence and traded X-Men cards and talked about comic books. And now he writes Supergirl and I'm Arthur on the tech. You guys are both so handsome, though. Oh, get out of here. That's true. Dirk's very handsome. You're very handsome, too. So you saw it with Dirk. Right. Who, you know, Dark Knight fanatic. Okay. Specifically, the Dark Knight.

Nolan fan, I think in general, I think he would identify as a Nolan fan. But Dark Knight was kind of a big watershed movie for him. And I think he saw it 10 times in theaters. That's crazy. That's too many times to see a movie in theaters. I went with him like two of the times, I think. Two's fine. Two sounds good. Two's close. I probably saw it. Toy Story 3 10 times in theater. I don't know why.

I am shocked by that news or upset about it, but I am both. I lost count at a certain point, but it definitely was at least eight times in theaters. I have seen Toy Story 3 once and then like maybe like another 40 minutes of it total on TV. Like if you sort of aggregate all. the minutes together. So I've seen it that time that you saw it plus another 20.

So you saw it at the AMC Lincoln Square, New York's actual IMAX theater, which is colossal. Right, which is huge. I saw it at a press screening there. Okay. An empty press screen. It was literally like me, Richard Lawson, Katie Rich, friends of the show. Friends of the show. Who we were all sitting in the back row, which is where I like to sit in that fucking theater.

I'd go for the middle, baby. Well, that's where Mr. Nolan sits, I was told. They call me Patricia Heaton because I'm in the middle. 15 comedy points for me. That was so good. You get to give yourself the comedy points. And then I give myself five comedy points for giving myself 15 comedy points. Bingo. That wasn't a bad bit. No, it was good. It was all good.

It was literally like six people. For some reason, I talked my way into like the earliest screening of Interstellar. I don't know how. And it was awesome. And I had a great time. I was completely overwhelmed by it. You loved it right out the gate. Loved it right out of the gate. But also like in IMAX, it is staggering. Like just the space photography, like the size of it. Yes. And I remember being very overwhelmed, like literally like my stomach dropping out of my.

body you know like that's sort of like feeling a lot and then I walked out and Richard and Katie were like and I was like oh yeah no I think I liked it so I similarly I saw it with Derek we were both very very excited to see it and then The second we walked out, it's a thing. Derek and I share opinions on a lot of things. There's certain things that are more.

On the Griff spectrum, there's certain things that are more in the Derek spectrum where you have a lot of commonalities, but then there are the further reaches. And a lot of times I've gone to go see a movie with Derek opening night that we're both really excited for. And we walk out and one of us is like, that's a masterpiece. And the other one's like...

This is not my kind of thing. Okay. You know? Like, anything in particular? Give me an example. Like, I think his favorite movie of the decade is Take Shelter. Yeah, I think we're on the same spectrum. Right, and he walked out Take Shelter and was like, holy shit. And I was like, I thought that was solid. Yeah, sure. You know, but I remember taking him to see Synecdoche and I was like, this is my fucking movie. And he was like,

Not my kind of thing. Yeah, right, right, right. It's not like you didn't like it exactly. It's more like, you know, I see the artistry here, but not my thing. Right, right. We have that kind of thing. You know, it's very rare that one of us will like hate a movie that the other loves. Yeah, no, I get it. I get it. But this was a weird example of he walked out and was like, yeah, not my kind of movie. And I was like, I think I like it. Like I wasn't fully standing for it. Yeah, I was.

Very sure that I liked it. Definitely understood that the last hour was going to throw a lot of people off the train, essentially. Sure. Like a lot of people who had maybe been enjoying the movie would be like, fuck that. No, no, no, no, no. And definitely understood that it was very Nolan-y. Yes. So anyone who had, like, the traditional Nolan issues would be like, well, this is almost like a...

like it's all of it inflated, right? It's like sort of maximized. Yes. This feels like his most Nolan-y movie in a lot of ways. I mean, it's literally, I mean, we'll get into it. But... But I really liked it. And in Katie and Richard's defense, I think both of them eventually sort of have come around more to it. I don't know if they think it's as good as I think it is. Sure.

I think they both told me that on second viewing they were more dialed into the movie. It is a movie that I think has weirdly kind of grown since it came out. I mean, the people who don't like it stick with not liking it. Yeah, yeah. It's not like it's become a masterpiece universally regarded or anything. But I see a lot on film Twitter, the take of like, I can't believe I gave, I wrote off Interstellar as this when I saw it. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which I kind of can't believe it either.

I think now, so I hadn't seen it in full since I saw it in theaters. Oh, wow. Okay. Okay. I, you know, can't sleep at night ever. Congrats. Thank you. So I watch stuff when I'm trying to fall asleep. Sure. And I have a couple times said, you know, it was on like Amazon Prime, a great video service. Oh, yeah. Very good. Streaming. Really good company. Good company. Good bit rate. Good bit? Good bit rate. Are they pro bits?

Pro bit rate, no smit rate. They're the opposite of us. Yeah. But I would throw it on sometimes. But the first hour of that movie, I will say. is calming in a way that actually would put me to sleep. No, I was about to say, I could almost see, I find this movie incredibly soothing. I do too. And the first hour is definitely the most soothing because it's like...

Farms, and the music is very quiet and choral. And I said, you know, when we did our mailbag episode and people asked what our comfort food movies were, I said that I weirdly... fall asleep to the master a lot. And this has that same kind of like Hoyt Van Hoytema, long shot. Very like in control, masterful actors having like low volume conversations, you know, the same sort of like kind of music temperature.

It's like your ASMR, basically. Correct. Right. Hoy Van Hoytema movies are my ASMR. Well, he's, I mean, if he was going to replace Wally Pfister, he got a good guy. Yes. There was a point in time when... I thought I had found my new thing that helped me go to sleep, which was ASMR videos where people go through their criterion collections. That sounds nice.

It's so good, and there are only, like, four of them. Like, I ran out. You've run out, right. They're so good. Also, like, two of them were, like, the girl's like, these actually aren't my DVDs. They're my boyfriend. So she's like going through the movies, but she hasn't seen any of them. Just kind of annoying where she was like, this looks very artistic. It looks like they're good supplements. It just annoyed me because in the same video, she puts in some things that aren't criterion.

It's like very clear that it's not her collection. I'm only talking about one. It's one specific. What is it? I really have to know. Is it be cool? I'm trying to think of the least criterion. Is it National Lampoon's Loaded Weapon 1? I remember, I remember, the one I remember her including is a steel book of the Big Lebowski. Sure, right, right. Like Criterion would ever release a steel book.

I just imagine you like jerking off watching this and then being like, you know, like, yeah. I'm just trying to sleep. I'm like, I'm like detective dormer. It's like, no, it's like... I'm taping cushions to the window and watching Criterion ASMR and I'm just trying to sleep. I'm so tired. I've been working since February. You're a tired boy. You're a tie-tie boy. But you know how people like...

You'd like jerk off to your appearance in what's it called? That's not true. Fort Tilden. That is not true. And they cover your face. Oh, how people do that. I don't do that. No, you don't do that. No, I'm saying you made the joke about this once in a while. People have to masturbate to me because I'm nudity.

They put their hand over you. You cover the steel book of the Big Lebowski with your palm. That was my bit. Great bit. Thank you. Half a comic book. Yeah, I don't think so. It was a little sweaty in delivery. Well, you argued with me through the bit. I did. I'm still riled. I'm riled. I'm tired and I'm riled. So I've re-watched the first 30 minutes to an hour. Thank you.

So you've rewatched, right, the beginning of the movie a lot. A couple times. A couple times in the last year, I'd say. Two or three times I've tried because I never want to like, oh, I fall asleep watching it last night. Let me pick up where I left off. I felt like I had to watch the whole thing from beginning to end. It's a very rewarding experience if you... I think it's a movie about...

It's a movie about time, obviously, and Christopher Nolan is obsessed with time. But it also is. There's just something about sticking in it and riding it through. So I always would restart it. I never made it through to the end since it came out in theaters until last night. Okay. I watched it after the premiere. Are you crazy? I'm a lunatic. I almost texted you on like Sunday or Monday to say like, Griffin.

Watch Interstellar today. Watch it as soon as you can. You really should have done that. Because it's very long, and I just want you to have seen the movie and not be faced with having to fucking watch it at the last minute. I really wish you had done that, my friend. I was like, I can't.

run his life for him. I feel like I bother him too much. You should run my life. My life is in shambles. You should have tapped on those books on the bookcase and sent me a message to watch Interstellar last Saturday. David. I'm like making dust binary or whatever. Okay, so for the listener at home, that is ostensibly what David's doing. But the way he's acting it out is like...

It looks like you're fencing. There's something very regal. It's just funny in the Tesseract when he does that where he's like, God, what do I do? Bang the books. Okay. He has to like reach over and make with his. panned these dust things. Which is the beginning of the movie. Exactly. We can dive right in. Is dust on the bookshelf? Is the bookshelf...

And the dust is gathering. It's sort of floating down. You've heard about Ghost in the Shell. What about Ghost in the Shelf? You know what? He actually just nailed the whole plot of Interstellar right there. Ghost in the Shelf. That's what it is. I nailed it. Hey, Ben. You didn't introduce Ben. Do you not want to? Are you that tired? A little bit. I was like, do I have the energy yet? I'm afraid I'm going to start driving up and then lose energy and have to recede down the...

Incline. Producer Ben, hi. Are you? Purdue or Ben. Oh, here we go. Okay. Poet Laureate. Yes. The fuck master. Haas. What's up? Mr. Positive. Dirt by Benny. So I can put Fanny. And speaking of dirt, this is a dirty ass movie. This is a dirty ass movie. That's a good point. And it's a wet movie. It's wet. I mean, all right. It's a new thing. I wrote this. I like a good, dirty actor. I like what actors have. It's underlined. It's underlined.

Because, you know, they're like, on set, dirty as hell all day. That's so fun. That's true. You have to be dirty. It's so fun for me. Right. And it's like, sometimes even it's like, let's get some more dirt back on him. Oh, can we get the dirt boy out? All right, dirt boy. And then Ben comes out. He's in like a giant hamster wheel. Let dirt boy out. He's like. There's a character.

And the tick. It's not a spoiler because she's one of the main characters. Well, also, this will probably be posting after the tick is online. It will. I hope you all like it. But this character, Miss Lint, who's one of the main villains. Yes. Who has like electric powers. Uh-huh. That's a side effect of that. She has this like static electricity sort of like down effect when she's not.

powered on. Okay. So all this lint constantly sticks to her. Right. So on set they just have like a bag of dryer lint and in between takes they just have to like put lint all over her face. That's great. It was just great to watch like a makeup person come in and just apply like just sprinkle lint. Ben is our finest film critic.

He is, and he loves this movie. He loves this movie, which gives it a lot of credibility in my eyes. Mine too, yeah. And, of course, he's graduated certain tales with, of course, a different main series. Good job. Great. He's going to need a new Nolan name. And I'm still into producer Bane more than any of the other ones. Yeah. I mean, I think what the ones I'm hearing the most are Mabento. Yeah. Producer Bane. Right.

Hazel Ghul. Terrific. And then someone threw out for this movie, Ben Durant. Yeah, I love that, but that's pretty... No one's going to fucking get it. Yeah, exactly. That's pretty obscure. Yeah. But, I mean, he has endured a lot from us. He has endured a lot. Oh, my God. Yeah. And he bencepted us. He did. That's true. I say this.

So this movie. But Ben was texting us very excited yesterday about how much he loved this movie. You had never seen it before. I'd never seen it. You skipped it in the theater. Yeah, but it was so good. I got very emotional at the end of the movie. I loved it. I like space movies. I like movies about time. Yep. And this was a movie where, you know, a little confusing. Yeah. But it pays off at the end. I will say the first time I saw it was an IMAX and it had the classic IMAX.

problems where like some of the dialogue drops out in weird ways and when there's a lot of action going on you're kind of like what are they saying and you know this is a movie it's not again not like dunker you know They say things that are important. A lot of talking. So, you know, and then I saw it a second time and it definitely helped clarify things for me. I'll say right off the bat because now we're going to dig into the movie. Yeah. Here's my thing with it. Mm hmm. Mm hmm.

I agree with what Ben just said. I fucking love movies about space. I love movies about time. Two of my favorite subjects, right? Space and time, baby. Love them. Einstein, he put them together. Put them together. Yep. Doctor who? Doctor me. I'm the... one who loves space and time. Okay, good. Thank you. Thank you for that. No, no, you're welcome. I have... I've always, and by always, I mean the two times I've watched it in full, had a very hard time connecting with this movie emotionally.

Interesting. And I know the people who love it. I think, I mean, other people feel the same way as you. But the people who love this movie are like, whoo, hits me like a ton of bricks. When it fucking pays out at the end.

Oh boy, I was inconsolable. I'm definitely right there. It crushed me. And I sit there watching this movie and I go like, I love a lot of what's fucking happening here. But your problem is... It doesn't break through for me. Do you see like the bricks land, but they just don't land on you?

yes right right it's sort of like and you're like there are the bricks and there's like some brick dust on you maybe it still mostly exists as like an intellectual exercise for me when I'm watching this movie that's fair

Which is frustrating because I want to be very emotionally affected by it. I find the concept of the movie very emotionally affecting. And when I saw the trailer, I was like, oh shit, this is going to destroy me. Right, right, right, right. Like I remember choking up the trailer and I was like, oh my God, it's about a death.

dad being trapped like trying to get back to his daughter you've already said on the podcast how much you love the promotional like stuff for this movie like you love the trailers yeah I thought I think the trailers for this movie were masterful uh yeah And fall into that category of trailers that I consider to work on their own as fully functional short films. Yeah. You know? Yeah. Like, I think that trailer has an arc to it.

and tells a really complete story. I should rewatch it. My Twitter avatar, which is sort of a picture of me with like, it looks like I had my head in my hands. Celebrating. It's actually me watching the Interstellar trailer when it posted. The day it posted. Oh, really? Because I worked at The Wire and Joe Reed, a past and future guest, who used to sit across from me, took a picture of me because I was obviously so lost.

in the trailer. It looks like you're having a nervous breakdown. It looks like I'm freaking out. I'm not. I think I'm actually just sort of like concentrating and sort of blocking out a little bit of light around my eyes so I can see it a little better. Yeah. The dying of the light. Yeah. Exactly. Rage. Rage. Rage. Rage. She was only 19 years old. She was only a podcast. So... This is not like a Matrix Reloaded where I have some like, like.

thought through, you know, like theory of the movie or something. You're not going to tell us that Seraph's a password? Exactly. Well, that was good though when I did that, right? Yeah. Use the login screen, baby. Yeah, you fucking killed it. Seraph's a login screen.

I love that idea because someone's like, I hate the Matrix you loaded. And I'm like, I turn in my chair and I'm like, Seraph's a login screen. And they're like, what? They like turn into green code. Do you remember what my reaction was when you said that on the podcast? I just remember you getting...

very excited. I don't remember, yeah. I believe it was a frustrated excitement where I went like, oh, God. Yeah, right, exactly. You were like, I already like it more. Oh, no. Oh, that's good. It's working. Yeah, right, exactly. Like, I injected something into it. you i can feel it it's like fire in my veins also all those keys oh so many keys a lot of keys that's ben's finest moment uh that is i believe when we named him the finest film critic actually yeah

Take us through the movie. David, it starts on a show. It starts on... No, I was just going to finish. I just love this movie very deeply. That's mostly what it is. It's more of a Jerry Maguire where someone's like, I don't like this scene. And I'm like, oh, but that scene's great.

All of the scenes are great. It's great. Everyone's great. You don't got a take. You just love it. You're jamming on this movie. I think I know what he's going for. I have a take on the themes he's plumbing and all that. But it's not like I have some radical take. And I also just like, it's really a movie for me because it is about space. I love space movies. It's my kind of space movie. It looks so good. It has a robot called TARS. It does have a robot. It has a wormhole called wormhole. Yeah.

It's got three different planets that they go to, which is, like, my favorite shit in the world is the, like, thinking about how planets would work. Sure. I love it. You know who doesn't get enough credit? Case.

Case is good, too. I feel like everyone always talks about this. Case and Tars, they both do a lot of work. Weird brick robot. But, you know, Tars goes into the wormhole. I mean, to the black hole. Tars is a hero. He also saves Brand from the water. Yeah, he does. He does. He does. Does he?

Or is that Case? I thought that was TARS. I can't remember. That's the thing. Case is definitely doing shit too. Yeah. I mean, you do think that all brick robots look the same. I mean, they are basically designed to. Anyway. Starts on a shelf. Starts with a... Hans Zimmer, greatest score he's ever done, in my opinion. I kind of agree.

right up there with what my other option would be, which is the thin red line, which I think is like a perfect score as well. Apparently Nolan went to him and gave him like a series of restrictions, right? Well, the story I've been told or read is like he went to him and the movie wasn't, he certainly didn't show him any of the movie. He gave him like these pages that was like about the emotional themes of the movie, essentially about the father's daughter shit.

And he was like, I want you to read this, and I want you to write some music about it. And he came up with a lot of the main themes, and Nolan was like, perfect. Great. Start from there and just keep going. I just remember hearing... And I don't remember where I heard this. I think it was an interview with Zimmer where he said that Nolan came to him and he said, like, I want to...

avoid the typical sound that a score for a movie like this would have. So he asked him not to use string sections. Yes, you're right. He didn't want strings. He didn't want like big drums, you know, cause he knows he's making a 2001 kind of movie. But that's what's sort of immediately because the, um,

Trailers used Dario Marinelli's score from V for Vendetta. Interesting. Which is a really excellent score, but it's a very emotional, traditional, kind of swelling, uprising. Orchestral score. Yes. Beautiful score. Very underrated score. But immediately when this movie started and then it has this weird like Hans Zimmer haunted organ music. Yeah.

that feels like it's like what, what fucking the abominable Dr. Pheebs would play when like bringing people into his lair. I was like, Oh, this is strange. Like this is very melancholy. Yes. Organ. Yes. A lot of organs. Right. Which is a very different sound than you're expecting to hear in this movie. It is. And then when the movie, when the score is more up-tempo, it's this sort of like clanging, loud organ that's incredibly repetitive. It sounds like a panic attack. Which is...

Amazing. And the score is also very useful in the movie's most quietly audacious thing, which is just when McConaughey leaves. the farm, and you're on his face crying. And the score's going wild. I think it's called Stay is the track. And then you cut right from that, right to the rocket launching.

No explanation of anything else. There's no more building the team or them talking about what will we do. It's just right to the rocket launch. Because he's made the decision to leave. So he's like, we're leaving. But also a big element of this movie that we have to discuss, which is one of the most audacious things, is silent space. Yeah, he does that.

which is great. Which Gravity, which had come out a year before, also, I believe, I don't believe, I know, embraced, you know, there's no sound in space. Sure. And the first time I really remember that happening was in... Well, is it in 2001? I mean, 2001 is so music heavy. Right. That's the thing. I mean, it's not just that he doesn't have sound effects. It's the fact that he has these stretches, these long extended shots.

where you're seeing crazy things happening, there are no sound effects, and there's no music, and there's no dialogue. Right. That it's just a stunning amount of silence for a movie, especially when you're in a fucking IMAX theater and you're used to all the bombast. It's very overwhelming. When suddenly it was just like...

You know, an image that looks like it's out of a planetarium documentary, but in the context of a narrative feature. Yes. Yes. It's very powerful. Right. And you're not hearing the sort of like. Anything. Anything. Any kind of engine noise, as you shouldn't, because there's enough in the space. And seeing it at midnight screening with a bunch of, you know, the audience, mostly Nolan bros, like a pin could have dropped, because everyone was just like, what the fuck is this movie?

So I should say it actually. I think Ben has something to say. He's sticking up his finger. I just had a question. Is this the start of spinning in space? What do you mean? Please just explain. I don't know. Griffin died. That one killed him. Welcome to Blank Check with David. Now ships, they spin so that you can have gravity. That's a theoretical concept. Is this the start here, though? No. Sunshine has the same idea of spinning to create, like, G4.

is enough, strong enough that you could walk. There's no actual, like, that's theory. No one's ever pulled that off. But spinning in space is now a thing. Love to spin. All of them are going to have spinning. Spin time. I guess so. This is amazing. I mean, what am I supposed to do? I just want to cry. Just enjoy. Just enjoy. I just thought about it. I can't think of anything. I can't think of anything else. Oh, you know what?

Armageddon actually has a spinning in space concept when they land on the Russian space station with Peter Stormare. Okay. And he's like, yes, I will now do spinning. Because obviously they're just like, we can't fucking do 20 minutes of the movie in zero G. Well, 2001 has the... spinning wheel as well but it's obviously a different kind of right but now it's all that yeah spinning spinning oh space movies um

Griffin? Oh, wait, no, this is me. I'm just doing a solo ad read. Listen, this time of year, people are saying, ho, ho, ho, Merry Christmas, or ha, ha, ha. Happy Hanukkah or happy holidays. I guess it works for both. But what I want to encourage people to say is mo, mo, mo. Merry movies. Yeah, because this is Blank Check with Griffin David. We love movies and we are so excited.

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Earth is having a Dust Bowl crisis. Right after the shelf, we see these images from the Ken Burns documentary, The Dust Bowl. Yeah. Right from it, except for the interview with Ellen Burstyn. Yeah. where they're talking just about how the Dust Bowl worked, where there was a lot of dust. Right. And the crops were failing. Right. It's weird because like Nolan's kind of, it feels like he's pulling a Reds. Yeah, sure, sure. Where you're putting a documentary element into...

a narrative future. But it's about the future. Right. But it's about the past. And you can kind of tell, like, the... Those people are too real to be actors. Except for Ellen Burstyn. You were like, that's Ellen Burstyn. But she's good. I'm not... I mean, she's... she fits in agreed 100% she's a great actress she pulls it off but you kind of immediately go like oh this is weird he's used footage of people who lived through the real Dust Bowl and repurposed it as people talking about

from the past, from the future, the events that we're about to see unfold. Because what we are actually seeing, and when you're seeing it the first time, you don't even think about this, but like... Then later you might realize like, oh, if they're old, that means we do survive the Dust Bowl because we survive it so that someone can make a documentary about it. And what we're seeing is like museum pieces in the future space stations humans are going to live in after escaping Earth.

Which I love. I love that. Yeah, I do. I love any, like in AI, I love any movie where there's like monuments to us. Blue Fairy. So Earth is failing. This is actually, this is a movie, we'll talk about it, that is very... was inspired by science. It was like Kip Thorne, this physicist, wrote a story treatment for Steven Spielberg. That was the genesis of Interstellar. Right. Hired Jonathan Nolan to write it. Right. Steven Spielberg basically talked to, or whatever, liked this book.

Kip Thorne had written he was like I want to do a sci-fi movie that's rooted in like actual concepts of astrophysics so yeah he hires Jonathan Nolan to work with Kip Thorne and I think another I forget another scientist yeah and like like why don't we do that make that real movie Spielberg's got a lot of things in the hopper. Yeah, this is like in 2008 or 7 or something. It's sort of around there. And all we know is it's a movie about black holes. That's all that was really released.

I'm just saying this because the crop failure shit, that's actually the most fanciful part of the movie. Yes, I agree. There's no Dust Bowl that would just ravage Earth. Right. I mean, that we can conceive of at least. Sure. But still, it's a cool idea. It's a cool idea. My favorite, favorite thing about this, and I know so much about this fucking movie, is he shot the movie in Oregon.

because he wanted them to plant tons of real cornfields near mountains where none exist because cornfields are all in the flat. part of america but he wanted the extremely strange look of cornfields underneath mountains which of course is not something any viewer is really going to pick up on except maybe quietly like in the back of their head you'd think about My man planted corn on mountains. Isn't that wild? My man planted corn.

on mountains because the idea is that it's the only crop that is surviving in America now is corn yeah like it was someone some asshole next door tried to make some okra now he's gonna burn it like I do love that scene where they have the dinner later in the movie and it's just four different types of corn yeah he's Like eat your fritter. It's great. All they got is this gross corn. What I was getting at was – And they have popcorn at the ballpark too. John Lithgow doesn't like it.

I want to pop a hot dog. I can't do John Lithgow. My voice is too burnt. He is hard to do, but if you get him right, he's an awesome impression. I feel like I could do it if I was batting at full voice. Right. You know how people bat at full voice. Yeah. What I was going to say was just that, yes, the script was developed as a Spielberg movie first. Right. And then it wasn't really going anywhere. No, I can't remember if Spielberg just had... Oh, no, it was that Spielberg...

moved DreamWorks from Paramount to Disney and could no longer make it. Correct, that's what it is. Because this was under Paramount. Interstellar was under Paramount. So Jonathan was like – Jonah was like, hey, why doesn't – don't you want to do it, Chris? You can do it. Chris had like crazy blank check status at this point. For sure. And could make whatever he wanted and had so much cachet that he was able to go to Paramount and go –

Like, you own the script that I want, but also I'm always rolling with the bros. Yeah, so the bros have to be involved. Yeah, get my bros in here. The Warners. Yeah. So it's a co-production. Do you want to know something, though? Yes. Always. In exchange. for bringing in the Warner Brothers to co-produce, co-finance this movie. Friday the 13th? Paramount was allowed to co-finance Friday the 13th and have a stake in a future film based on South Park.

Oh, right. Bizarre. They thought they were going to make another South Park movie. Yeah. And also they agreed to let Paramount co-finance a co-determined A-list Warner's property. which I believe, I don't think it's ever happened. Legendary, meanwhile, who has also worked with him on the Batman movies. Right, who was at Warner Brothers Forever, now is at Universal. Agreed to forego production.

being part of Batman versus Superman in exchange to be part of this. So people really wanted to make this movie. They were like, this is Nolan. It finally gets agreed to in 2012 right after Dark Knight Rises or maybe right before. So they're like, this is Nolan. Inception worked.

like pushing all the chips making an original Nolan film is now like as big as making a Batman movie right they were just this is the hottest thing in the world we gotta be part of it I don't get Batman vs Superman fuck it who are they I've never heard of him That deal is so weird because it's like Friday the 13th was Paramount for a while. Yeah. And then the franchise went over to New Line and New Line made like the last four of them. Sure, the really shitty ones. Right.

So that was like this weird child that was like split between the two of them. And then Comedy Central used to be Warner Brothers and Paramount together. And then in the early 2000s, Paramount bought out Warner Brothers at their stake. So like South Park is the other thing that's like split between the two of them. It's like, those are weirdly the two properties that those two studios each have like a stake in. So they were like, I don't know what, what can we do to like.

Make this deal worthwhile. There was for a long time, they said they were going to make another Friday the 13th after the last one. And for whatever reason, I was listed on that IMDb for a really long time. You can see Jason burying a machete in your face. They had a date because it was linked up to one year where Friday landed on the 13th. Yeah, no, it's always like when's Friday the 13th in October. Right. Yeah, exactly. So I think the last remake was like...

2009 or 2010 and then they were going to do one in like 2013 and I was listed there was no information there was no director attached I don't know how that happened because I added myself to the Beverly Hills Cop 4 IMDb page of course we know this

I listed myself as Axel Foley Jr. because I was trying to will it into existence. But that was me. That was me playing a goof. Someone else added me for Friday the 13th and it got picked up by other places. For a while, people, I get... tweets from like horror fans asking me like what's up with Friday the 13th I was like I did nothing I haven't auditioned okay alright I'm getting back to the context now I'm barreling through this context okay I love it context

So Nolan, Johnny Nolan, Jonah, wrote the screenplay. Chris takes this screenplay, throws out most of it. which is kind of interesting. But he kept the first 45 minutes to an hour, the Dust Bowl stuff. Interesting. That was the stuff he kept. Because that's my favorite section of the movie. Interesting. He changed everything, all the space stuff. I believe you can find the original script. I've never read it. Okay. And he saw... an early cut of the film mud the jeff nichols film speaking of uh

And saw Matthew McConaughey in it and thought, this guy's kicking ass in this movie. And that was sort of the beginning of phase two of the McConaissance. Yes. McConaissance had just started percolating. Right, because Magic Mike comes out in 2012, but a little later. Right. I think Lincoln Lawyer isn't cited enough as... That is the beginning. Right.

that's, oh, that's a solid little movie. Right, when it came out and people were like, ugh, and then it came out, like before it came out, people were like, ugh, McConaughey's so fucked up. And then they see it and they're like, oh, actually, you know. And it did surprisingly well. Then it's the... His 2012 supporting role sort of renaissance thing. Killed it. Got close to an Oscar nod for Magic Mike. Didn't get it.

Mudd had screened a con, but didn't really blow up there. It wasn't very well received. Jeff Nichols talked about how he got critically trashed, and it didn't come out until a year later. But it actually also did surprisingly well. It was a very big hit. And so... But I just think it's interesting because it's always fascinating to me how these trends happen before the movies have even come out.

Dallas Buyers Club comes out a year before Interstellar, but he cast him a year before it came out. But they just kind of know in Hollywood. I remember reading some interview with Nolan where he said that he went to them and they said, so who do you want for the lead?

to Matthew McConaughey and they said, are you fucking kidding me? Yeah, you're Christopher Nolan. You can literally get anybody. Why do you want the Ghosts of Girlfriends past guy? Right, right, right, right. And he said, like, I've seen this movie Mud. I think he's really popping. And then... It's like the one time I've seen Nolan pat himself on the back in an interview.

Where he was like, they thought it was crazy, and now they think I'm really smart that I got the McConaughey before he won the Oscar. Right, right, exactly. And this becomes like his victory lap movie. It is. And this is sort of the end of the McConaissance, sadly. which I think he's so wonderful in this movie. I think this is kind of secretly his best performance. It is.

an outstanding performance. It's astonishing. And it's a performance that like, it might be. Yeah. Yeah. Didn't get any credit at the time because it is not in service of the movie. It's kind of thankless work because like,

Dallas Buyers Club, he's like giving it his all, but it's a very showy character piece. Yeah. You know? I don't care for that movie. But I mean, he's good at it. I don't either. I don't like that movie. I think he's very good in it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But this is like, he's really just kind of like... carrying this movie on his back and it's a complicated performance that he's doing with like this really bizarre economy he got to this state where somehow it's like

Like he found oil in the ground. It's like at some point in 2011, Matthew McConaughey somehow found an access port to all of the world's emotions. Look, he does some amazing stuff in this movie regarding that. Right? Like he just sort of like tapped into like all of the emotions. And then this movie is like him trying to figure out how to show as little as possible. That's the thing. And also not let go of his...

drawl and his sort of like classic on-screen persona. It's like a real movie star performance too. I agree. And he's got the weird physicality and he's got the weirdest neck in movies. He does have, he looks very strange in this one. He's always at those odd angles and he was sort of in this weird post. He looks like Groot. He does.

He's very sinew in this because it was like post Dallas Buyers Club. Like he's got the weight back, but he's still kind of, there's something a little stretched about him and tight. And he's, he's got the bronze skin. Like everything's odd about him.

He's tasked with saying a lot of science-y shit. Yes. Not as much maybe as some of the other characters, but still a lot. And having these conversations with, especially with the astronauts about relativity and stuff, that... should be bad there's no like it just it just shouldn't work he shouldn't be suited to it and he is very natural with all that stuff which is great especially I feel like

movie stars with very distinctive personas usually belly flop hard when asked to do that. Right. Like look at, I know it's a very different movie, but like Mark Wahlberg and The Happening. Sure.

You know, you just go like, that's Mark Wahlberg. I don't buy that he's a scientist. He sounds like Mark Wahlberg. He looks like Mark Wahlberg. That's the worst version of it. Right. But I feel like I'm not thinking of other examples now, but I feel like there are other examples like that where you just go like, his persona is too big to accept him.

spouting jargon you know I do and somehow McConaughey's like threading this needle in this movie where he's like doing full McConaughey and also fully disappearing into the tapestry of what the movie's asking him to do He offered McConaughey the role on the set of True Detective, which he was making. He goes over to Northern Ireland and he offers Jessica Chastain the role on the set of Miss Julie, her blockbuster hit. Yes.

We're going to do Liv Ullman next for Blink Shack, right? Yeah, of course. He hires Hoyt and Hoytama. Because Wally Pfister is busy making Transcendence. He uses even more IMAX than ever before. Hoyte figures out a way to make a mobile IMAX camera. And there's those pictures on the Dunkirk set where he's got it on his fucking shoulder. And you're like, how the hell did he do that?

that. It's huge. That guy's shoulders must look rough. He's like Freddy Rodriguez in Lady in the Water with the one big arm. And they figured out how to put an IMAX camera in a Learjet to do aerial photography. They figured out how to do it for interior scenes. It's crazy. They shot in Alberta. and Oregon and places like that for the Dust Bowl ship. They shot in Iceland on the glaciers for the glacier planet. And they shot. I filmed from The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, that country.

The weirdest reference you've ever made. Sure. And then they filmed in L.A. for a long time. You know, they did studio shit. Okay. And then the movie came out and I loved it and I cried. Anyway, so... And Hathaway, he just said, hey, stick with me, kid. Well, right. She'd been in Dark Knight Rises. He brings her back. I guess she's the... I mean, Kane's back.

Yes. I think that's it, though. Like, it's actually pretty light for the Nolan players. Well, William Devane, of course, who famously played the president in The Dark Knight Rises. Now he plays the NASA president or something. This is one of those movies where it's odd how, like, every little two-line part.

like that is someone crazy like david yellow or whatever right yeah like that point when you uh topher grace topher grace topher uh when uh they have dinner with a grown-up casey affleck and his wife i'm just like Oh, his wife is just an actress. Right. His wife is pretty much the only person. His wife isn't Angela Lansbury. You're like ready for like everyone in this movie to be someone who's like won a Tony. Oh boy. Yeah, sure. Who plays his wife, actually? I have no idea. Leia Cairns.

Okay. But isn't even like the nurse at the end of the movie who lets McConaughey in? She's very familiar. I think it's, what's her name? I always forget her name. She's such a good actress who plays the woman who gets kidnapped in Sansa the Lambs.

Oh, Lois Smith. Yes, no, yes. She's the nurse who just directs him to Ellen Burstyn's room. There's another nurse character who I was thinking of who's familiar as well. And it's like Nolan's got so much cachet that he could just be like, Lois Smith, you want to come and do it?

literally just like, oh yeah, it's right over there. Right, why not have every line be delivered by someone who is highly overqualified? He's almost Malik level where people are like, sure, yeah, I'll do it. Yeah, it's fine. Great, great, great, great, great. What do I do? Great, yeah. Because Oyelowo had kind of already popped at this point. Kind of. He was building.

He's in the middle of popping. He's popping. He's mid-pop. Because it's the same year as Selma, isn't it? Yeah. Selma comes out this year. Anyway. He had already reached. Jack reaching. Yeah. Good job. Thank you. I love you. For the listener at home, I was reaching. But not jacking. David, tell them what I'm doing. He's jerking off. And? Reaching.

So in this Dust Bowl world, they live on a farm. There's no, like, armies anymore. There's no, like, technology anymore, really. I'm just kind of giving up. It's basically just like we just got to make food and scratch out and survive because there has been there's these sort of unspecified like references to like wars that happened and are done and like old countries that kind of just don't even.

really exist anymore. You know what I mean? It's just sort of like... Too much dust. Just a lot of fucking dust. Really dirty. It's very dirty. And like the schools are mad at McConaughey's character who is a pilot and engineer. who now has to run a farm for like teaching his daughter Murph played by who's young Murph. She's so good. It's Mackenzie Foy. Yeah. Yeah. So good. Excellent.

Teaching her about, like, the moon landings and shit because the new thing is like, no, no, we didn't even go to space. That was all fake just to gin up money for the Soviets because, like, it was, like, propaganda. Right. An awesome scene with David Yellowow and, what's his name, Clet Wolfe. Who's great. Who's such a good actress. Love her. Love her. But the two of them are just like...

Oh, you're just like bringing in like home run hitters to deliver like a scene of just like laying track. She's been great on, what's it called? You're the Worst recently. Oh, I need to watch that. So good on that. But yeah, I love that notion. I love that notion that America has just kind of like given up. Right. And that they've like folded into like, look, it was all lies. It's just we can't go there anymore. Yeah, right. But.

There are weird gravitational anomalies happening at their farm that make dust fall into lines and books fall off the shelf. And Coop, who is McConaughey. Joseph Cooper is his actual name. No one ever, I don't think anyone calls him that. No one ever calls him Joe. He's Coop. Yeah. Because, yeah, Murphy Cooper. More people call him by his middle name, Robin.

He's also Timothee Chalamet, who's going to be a big star this year. Yes. In Call Me By Your Name, right? Yes. He's young Tom. He's the son. His son likes to farm, but his daughter likes to science.

Right. And he doesn't like that they're already writing off his son. They're saying he can't go to college. College is a very selective thing. At this point, you don't go to college unless you really have to. Just farm. Right. They want everyone to be farming because that's what we need. So unless you are. like beyond exceptional. They could just pick up a hoe. Yeah, it's time to farm. Pick up a hoe and hoe those fields.

Ho him away. And then you've got Lithgow. What do you do with a hoe? Do you hoe or sew? We've got to move on. Lithgow. Shut up. It helps break up the dirt. Lithgow is Donald hoeing. Hoeing, okay. Donald, who is his father-in-law. Yes. And his wife is dead, which is delivered in this sort of slightly sweaty, convoluted thing where he's like, well, we used to have MRI, and that would have got my wife's.

cancer or whatever. Oh, we lost it at the end. It was good for a bit. I'm not trying to do. You were cruising and then you crashed back down. MRI. I can say it like, you know what I mean? But you know that scene? Yeah. Where they're like, your son should be a farmer. And he's like, eh, farming.

I don't know. He just works it around so he can tell us that his wife died of cancer. He's great in the scenes. I'll say this. Nolan is not a filmmaker who overuses close-ups, which I think a lot of people do these days. I think too many movies are shot as just...

shot, reverse shot, close-up, and it's just faces. So close-ups don't have any power anymore because you abuse them. But also, you look at McConaughey in this movie and it's like, God, that's a full-body actor. Like, he sits weird in every scene. You're right. You're talking about the way he cranes and the way he... So it's always at odd angles like this. Yeah. What do you like about you? Because you just said you like all of this. Yes. Why is this like there's the early scene where they.

They snare this drone out of the sky on this sort of chase through the cornfields that's like this busted old Indian Air Force drone. Yes. And it's like a metaphor because they're like, can't we just let it roam around? He's like, it's got to adapt, you know, like it's got to learn to farm. Okay. The rest of us. Here are things I like about this.

I'm trying to think of other stuff that happens. Go ahead. They go to the baseball game. I like that in the way that AI is this weird Kubrick filtered through Spielberg thing. This feels like Spielberg filtered through Nolan. Sure, sure. There's an interesting kind of handshake going on here. I did not know that backstory that this is pretty much the section that was kept intact in the Spielberg draft. But that makes a lot of sense to me.

I think Spielberg would have made this feel a lot more magical isn't the world because it's obviously, you know what I'm saying.

Spielberg-y. Yes, Spielberg-y. But I like that this is such a mundane, boring dystopia. Sure. Do you know what I'm saying? I like that too. This is what it is. Yeah. And it's like... basically earth is basically dead yes but it's not that doesn't mean that we're dead or that the people you know like that the plants are dead right it's just like we just kind of quietly know this is we're close to it

I love that kind of tone, which I think this movie conveys perfectly. And I like that they don't over explain stuff in this section of the movie that there's just the kind of like the little details. I think this is when they interweave in a lot of the Dust Bowl talking head stuff, which I just find really interesting.

Yeah, all those little details of like turning your plates over, all that shit. Love that shit. And then the other thing I think this section of the movie has going for it, except for the fact that visually I think the shit Hoyt Van Hoytema does with these landscapes is unbelievable.

Just think this is the section of the movie where McConaughey is so fucking in the pocket because he is so good with the kids. He's great. His connection with especially, obviously, Murph, which is so crucial to what the movie is going to do, is, in my opinion...

done very well. Because this thing that McConaughey tapped into as an actor where he just found this undercurrent of emotion and figured out how to... you know, restrain as much as possible, use his charisma to keep himself engaging but not feel the need to show what he's feeling is really powerful in the stuff with the children because it feels like a very, very... specific depiction of paternal love that I feel like I don't often see actors play in a way that gets me this emotionally.

Even just the way he puts his arms around her or touches the sun. He's a very interesting actor. He's a really interesting actor. It's a little heightened, but every moment he's on screen with one of the kids in the movie, I just go like... God, this dad loves his kids so much and he's so fucking worried.

for them because of the state of the world right and i find that very heartbreaking and he cannot really accept this idea where like that he's being told over and over which is like we have to adapt we have to farm we can't look at the stars which is like

what he was sort of trained to do when he was an engineer. There's also almost like a Brad Bird element to this section of the movie where it's like an anti-exceptionalism. Sure, sure, sure. Like let's just settle for just like pick up a hoe. Right, right.

That Brad Bird strain. It's very clear. So this whole section is hitting on a lot of things that I... really like and I just think like McConaughey is like throwing straight straight heat so let me move us through what happens is they follow these gravitational anomalies that keep fucking everything up around them yes and we later learn actually fucked up

his big test flight when he was a test pilot, which you see glimpses of in his dreams. So they've been going on for decades, is what I mean. And it takes them to a weird abandoned place, him and Murph. and it's like NASA. It is NASA. And NASA, who are operating in secret, they are taken in by TARS, a robot. A good friend. In my opinion, the greatest thing that's ever happened to society.

I don't know if you guys agree. So here's the thing about TARS. TARS is a robot. He's the best. He is. Is he three? I think he's four. Three or four. He's four. What do you call it? I don't know how you even describe it. It's a very obvious word that I'm not cylinder, but the sort of cuboid shape that's long and thin. Anyway. A rectangle? But in three dimensions. A trapezoid?

No, a trapezoid is a four-sided rectangle. A rhombus? I'm throwing out terms now. You're having fun, though. I like it. But anyway, yeah, he's four rectangles, I guess is the easiest way to put it. He's like a bunch of popsicle sticks. Right. And he can unfold them into more popsicle sticks if he wants to. Right. And he mostly stays in brick formation, but the four popsicle sticks can kind of go out. And to walk, he likes sort of like two rectangles, two rectangles, two rectangles.

Let's say this. I think we're wasting time describing Tars. If you've seen the movie, you know what he looks like. I just think it's kind of delightful to try. If you haven't seen the movie, look up Tars. Tars is great. Even if you're not going to watch the rest of the film, look up Tars. You'll thank us later.

Trust me, you'll want to look at TARDIS. He is played by Bill Irwin. The great Bill Irwin. The great Bill Irwin who does a lot of physical acting on stage. He's a clown. One of our greatest living clowns. but also a good actor. He does the voice and puppetry of TARS. He just does the puppetry of Case, the other robot. Josh Stewart is the voice of Case. Who is Josh Stewart? Wait, I could have sworn it was Jeffrey Tambor. It is not Jeffrey Tambor.

Wait, do you actually? Oh, no. Go ahead. Oh, my God. I'm so disappointed. Why? Ben, what are you talking about? So I wrote TARS as Jeffrey Tambor in Arrested Development because the whole time I was convinced that was him. I don't know. Is this a bit or did you actually think it was Jeffrey Tam? I have no idea if it's a bit or not. You know, I want to dine them, but I don't let them tell me what to do.

It's my favorite tambour line in Arrested Development. Do you write that down word for word? You're reading it off of your notepad. I don't let them tell me what to do. That is arguably the funniest thing that ever happened in Arrested Development. Right? I don't. Like when he turns around and looks at the dolls. That's why, in my opinion, season two is the best of Arrested Development because Tambor in the attic.

is so weirdly rewarding. They like write themselves into the biggest corner where he can't leave the attic and they find so many ways to have fun with it. The one where he like uses the hot tub to make ramen or whatever. My single favorite. joke is from that plot line my favorite which was development joke is dad i have to tell you i have pop pop in the attic and he goes the mere fact that you called that tells me that you're not ready

But there's so many like where it's like Heidi Popper from the Nazis or whatever. And Frank jokes. Anyway. No, Tars is voiced by Bill Irwin. Jon Stewart's just like an actor. Okay. He's into Dark Knight Rises. Oh, interesting. He plays Barsat.

Okay. I don't know who that is. Erwin said when he got hired, he didn't know what he was playing, and then he thought he was just playing the voice of the robot, and then he was like, oh, fuck, this is why they hired me, because they want me to operate this brick. He operated it, and they digitally removed him, which is...

I think there are a couple shots I feel like when when TARS turns into like full asterisk yeah sure that's CGI then it's full CGI but most of the movie it's like full asterisk by the way Perfect. Well put. When that happened for the first time in the movie, I could not stop.

I was so happy when that happened. And it's in a very stressful moment of the movie. And why it's so good is when it happens, you are very stressed out because Tars has to rescue her. And you're like, he's so slow. How is he going to get there? And then he goes like. and then starts rolling and you're like, I can't believe I didn't think of that. I'm so happy. We will drop in David Reese right here.

Can we play it now? Yeah, let's play it right now. Let's explain it. Let's talk about it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. David Reese, friend of the show, past guest. Yeah, he's on the AI app. A great friend of ours and of mine. I would say I recently flew Delta. And season two of Going Deep with David Reese was available there, which is not very easy to find. So if you're on an airplane, great way to spend your time. So...

When I was talking to him about this movie, he was like, I didn't really love Interstellar, but I love TARS. I love that bit where he turns into a thingy and he rolls around. And he was like, could I just do five minutes on TARS and you drop it into the episode? That was what he asked of me. So we're going to play David Reese's. This is a new segment we're calling TARS Talk with David Reese. Hi, guys. This is David Reese with your Interstellar Robot Report.

When David told me you guys were discussing this Christopher Nolan movie, I was very excited because one of the few things I remembered about it was the moment when the robot just goes completely buck wild on the water planet. And basically turns into a fidget spinner and hauls ass to save the lady scientist. The only other thing I remember from the movie, of course, was the nine-dimensional Hallmark movie bookshelf.

I do think this is a really unsatisfying movie. It's what I would call a dumb, smart movie as compared to something like Mad Max Fury Road, which is a smart, dumb movie. I think for all the praise that people heaped upon this movie for its scientific rigor in terms of accurately visually rendering a wormhole, I think a lot of the actual important science and time travel and...

And creating Tesseracts and stuff is completely incoherent. And so I kind of feel like Christopher Nolan is having it both ways, which is that he gets some of that yay science cred. that bolsters what, to me, just seems like a total gooey mess. where gravity and love are the strongest forces in the universe. I mean, I'm sure gravity is. I'm not a physicist. Love, I'm not so sure about. But anyway, you didn't have me on to discuss my pretentious intellectual...

judgments of the physics and metaphysics of Interstellar. I came on because I wanted to talk about TARS. And then I have to admit to you, David, that I realized on rewatching the movie that I actually don't like TARS at all. I like Case, the other robot. I find TARS's humor setting and style of joking, again, I feel like this is part and parcel with what I would call the recent yay science genre.

I think TARS sounds like he would be performing comedy at the same open mic that Matt Damon would be performing at on Mars in his movie The Martian, which is also one of the least funny, funny movies ever made. And so I really don't. I love the look of TARS, obviously, and case, of course. I like the abstracted anthrop. anthropomorphism of these robots. I like their sort of impossible movements. To me, maybe this is because I have a extreme...

imaginative poverty that I'm operating with. But I find those robots and the way they move and the kind of production design of those. mechanical beings to be in a way more interesting and more rewarding than the super abstract metaphysical tesseract space, which. Visually looks great, but then the fact that, I was going to say Matt Damon, what's his name? Matthew McConaughey can just kind of float around from bookshelf to bookshelf, peeping on his daughter in different moments.

felt too literal to me to be kind of, to kind of do justice to the, what would be so curious about that actual space. Again, I must refrain from criticizing Christopher Nolan and focus only on the robots. This is the robot report, and I should keep that in mind. So I will just say this. This is a long-winded preamble to my nut, which is as follows. I think when they land on, I think it's Miller's planet, the wave planet. To me, that whole sequence is so...

Great. It's everything. It's sci-fi at its best because the environment is very dreamlike and an endless ocean that is also very shallow. To me, that is more authentically dreamlike and surreal and. wonder making than anything in his big dream movie that you guys talked about, whose name I'm completely blanking on. Inception. I think that water planet is fantastic. I think massive.

100-story high waves coming out of nowhere is also very, I mean, again, I don't know about the physics of it. You have to talk to Neil deGrasse Tyson about whether waves can operate like this. But I find it very dreamlike and very surreal in a way. that I respect in sci-fi. And then when Matthew McConaughey tells Case to go get Anne Hathaway and he just busts the sickest move I've ever seen a robot ever do.

To me, that scene is the highlight of the movie. It has as much imagination and as much kind of bewildering, slightly incomprehensible... dustings of future technologies and future ways of being. To me, that scene on that planet is the strongest in the movie and achieves what I think he wanted the entire movie to achieve, which is a true sense of wonder. And I am afraid that I am so literal minded that to me, the strange physical motion of that robot and the way it moves through the water.

is much more captivating. And I've spent much more time thinking about that than I ever have thinking about like, oh, can I go into a wormhole that my future great grandson is going to plant in the universe so I can hide behind a bookshelf and push books? onto a dusty floor. So my daughter will see, I mean, the whole fucking movie makes no goddamn sense. Um, okay. So thank you so much for letting me, um, share my love of, uh, the robot case. I'm team case.

TARS, your humor setting should be set to zero because even when it's operating at 90%, it's effectively at zero. Thank you to everyone for indulging me and goodbye Blank Check Podcast. See you in hell. Thank you for that. That has been TARS Talk with David Rees. Tune in next week for another installment. Of course, during Dunkirk. TARS is in Dunkirk. He is. He's a hero. He plays Kenneth Branagh. David? Yes.

I got great news. What's up? And it's kind of, look, sometimes you take great news for granted. Like, great news, David. You're alive. Yeah, great news. Love to hear it. There's oxygen in your lungs. The sun is in the sky. Okay. And this episode is brought to you by Movie. Curated streaming service dedicated to elevating great cinema from around the globe. But it's important to step back and really appreciate how lucky we are. Okay.

to have our episode sponsored by MUBI. We love MUBI. We love them. It's a great service. Each and every film is hand-selected on there. You can stream the best of cinema anytime, anywhere. From iconic directors to emerging auteurs, there's always something new to discover. And sometimes... You can walk out of your house. Step, step, step, step, step. Into a movie theater. That's a projector sound.

Or if it's a digital projector. At this movie theater, the popcorn is sold by like a guy from like a baseball, like a baseball popcorn. Guys are watching a movie. He's like, this is my thing. Peanuts. People come to this theater for me to do baseball popcorn sales, but in a movie theater. And all of that experience is brought to you by MUBI. No, it's not. But what is brought to you by MUBI is sometimes films that they put up on the big screen. Yes. This is what we like. We like the MUBI.

is holistically involved in movie culture. And yeah, they've been putting out a lot of interesting movies in recent times. Every year they've been stepping up their game. It's really exciting. Their new film, which is in theaters, U.S. theaters on November 8th, is Bird. the new film from Andrea Arnold. Now, they phrase it here as the long-awaited return to fiction filmmaking. It's been eight years. And the last film she made, scripted feature-length film, she made...

Was your favorite film that year? 2016, Blanky, David Sims winner, American Honey, best picture for me. Yeah. Great movie. She also made Fish Tank, which I feel like a lot of people have seen. She made Red Road. She made Wuthering Heights. And her new movie is Bird. It's a tender and compelling and beautifully surprising coming of age fable about life in the fringes of contemporary society. Kind of her strong suit.

That's absolutely right. Yes. She finds very interesting ways to explore right communities you might not see on film as often. You know what's another thing I love about Mubi? They, in their copy, for the first time, have answered for me definitively. How to pronounce the name of the star. Go ahead. This film with its buzzy cast features Barry Keown. That's right. Don't say the G. You might know him from Saltburn or...

I mean, Franz Rogowski. Anyway, but yes, and then you've got arthouse favorite Franz Rogowski. Yes. Franz Rogowski from Passages and Transit. On Dean. Great movie. One of my favorite movies of the last couple of years. And then plus a revelatory central performance from a newcomer.

Nakaya Adams. Another thing Andrew Arnold has quite a track record. Right. Latest in a series of notable debut performances from Arnold. You got a canon of formidable female characters vying for freedom from oppressive systems. You know, Red Road, of course, you had. Kate Dickey. Oh, no, sorry. Well, yeah, Red Road was Kate Dickey. That wasn't a discovery. No, but in Fish Tank.

You had Katie Jarvis and in American Honey, you had Sasha Lynn. And she's still, you know, she's still crushing it. Seeing Sasha Lynn all over the place. New York Times called it a beautifully shot, delicately moving coming of age story. Little White Lies said it's a magic. energetic marvel from one of the UK's finest filmmakers, and David wouldn't know anything about that. But...

She's the best, and the movie is really, really worth seeing, and it's really great to have a new Andrea Arnold movie out there, and it's in theaters on November 8th. Here's what you can do. You can go to Mubi.com slash bird for showtimes. and tickets, see if it's playing anywhere near you. And additionally, you want to stream some great films at home, you can try Mubi free for 30 days at Mubi.com slash blank check. That's M-U-B-I dot com slash blank check.

for a month of great cinema for free. And Bird will eventually end up there. Bird. Bird. Hi, Talk House Network listeners. This is Jason Stewart from How Long Gone. I want to tell you about a new show on TalkHouse Network from Atlas Obscura and TalkHouse called Sound Influence, the art and soul of Puerto Rico.

The show is a love letter to Puerto Rico and features incredible and accomplished artists like EGOT award winner Rita Moreno, Paciman, director Miguel Arteta, award-winning author Jaquira Diaz. Los Rivera Destino, Jose Riviera, and Andrea Cruz, telling stories of how the island inspired and moved them as artists and people set against the field recordings from the island and an amazing original score.

And it's hosted by none other than Luis Guzman. Listen to Sound Influence, the art and soul of Puerto Rico, wherever you listen to TalkHouse Network podcasts. The thing I love about TARS is... it's such a weird design. And then you look at it and you're like,

Right. Why would you design a robot to look like a human? Right. That's what Nolan's whole argument is. Like, that makes no sense. We already have humans. Right. Humans can do that shit. Right. And he's supposed to be a war robot. He was built for war. And humans are not built for war. Easy to destroy. Right. It would be better if humans were walls that walked. Yes. Yes. A walking wall would win all wars.

Like a very aggro wall too. Yes, and you get Mexico to pay for it. Of course. But I just remember hearing that the first time Danny Boyle used like a RED camera. Uh-huh. He was like, what's all this junk? And they were like, well, it's a camera, this and that. And he's like.

Right. The way a camera was built in the shape of the design of it was because you needed all of that space to house the thing. Right. It doesn't have to be in that shape. Right. So like Danny Boyle, like famously took apart the red camera and like took all the guts of it and put it in a backpack and there's had a wire.

connected to the lens so that uh anthony dodd mantel could like operate it and tars is like off of that same logic which is like well there's no reason why i just look like a person rethink this yeah exactly just what's the simplest shape a board and Just that idea of like the board, it can unfold into a million boards. Like it's boards on boards on boards. It's so good. And not only that. I love TARS. At the beginning of TARS, he is.

He's kidnapped McConaughey. Sorry, Murph is missing. Coop thinks something bad has happened. And essentially a wall with a computer screen is yelling at him. And it's like, how did you get here? In this like booming scary. voice. But the other weird choice that Nolan makes is... And McConaughey's like, I'll turn you into a harvester. He's like, he's trying to fuck with TARS. McConaughey's slipping away from me. Oh, I don't have it there. I only have MRI. Yeah, that's what I've got.

I wish I had it otherwise. Yeah. Look, if you got a good McConaughey in this business, you're made, baby. Dark Tower sketches for days. Oh, yeah. Cook that chicken, baby. The thing I love about TARS is that he made a decision not to process or treat the audio in any way. Right, right. It sounds like it's coming out of a speaker. Well, no, what I like about it is it sounds like it's clearly the live audio recorded. Oh, you mean of Irwin. Right, right, right. They don't make it sound.

like it's coming out of any sort of digital. No, but it sounds like he's just a guy in a room. It's weird. It's like disembodied. It sounds very weird. Very weird. It sounds weird to me. Yeah. But I like that. It's unnatural because they don't. The whole point is that TARS has been designed to make people feel more comfortable. So he's very conversational. He's got this dumb sense of humor. And he has a light.

Which is a perfect Nolan idea. I think Nolan would prefer that we all had lights to indicate when we were joking. Like if we make a joke and then our eye just went like... And he'd be like, great, it was a joke. I get it. Do you think he has like a red light for sarcasm? Like he has like various lights. He has like an irony light. He has like a mood ring.

Go on. No, I just love that it's like this weird disembodied voice that follows this logic of just like, well, you're just supposed to feel comfortable because he's talking like a person. Right. But we're not going to make it sound. I think it specifically doesn't sound like it's coming from a speaker, which is what I find interesting about it. I mean, like, it doesn't matter. We can't get into this right now. I don't mean it sounds.

digitized in the right way. I mean, it literally sounds like he's blaring, but it doesn't matter. Yes, to me it sounds like he's yelling his lines from off camera, which is what I like about it. But what's happening at NASA? which we can deal with very quickly is Anne Hathaway is there. She is Dr. Amelia Brand. She is the daughter of McConaughey's old teacher, Coop's old teacher, Professor Brand. Brand. Played by a hilariously made-to-look...

kind of young Michael Caine because they're going to need to age him 30 years. Let's put a little yellow in that hair. Yeah, his hair looks wild. I keep saying that, but it's true. And they're very friendly. Yes. They like putting a little scare in old Coopy, but they're friendly. Old pal. And as they finally revealed to him, they are NASA. They're operating a secret and they are dealing with a wormhole.

that was noticed in space underneath Saturn's rings 48 years ago that is to another galaxy. And in this wormhole are other worlds that we might live on. And they sent people into the wormhole to look at the planets. And now we've got to take ourselves in there. There's three that seem viable. The three astronauts. We're the two friends. They're the three astronauts. Correct. Competitive advantage in space travel. Yes. Makes them different from all other space travels. Exactly.

There's three planets in one system that seem potentially viable. So they need Coop and some scientists to go in there with a big amount of jizz. They got a jizz probe. They got a lot of jizz. full of human eggs. Like they've got like a population bomb is what they call it. Yeah. Not since something about Mary has just been so central. And they want to essentially colonize a new world because Earth is dead.

They have two plans. Plan B is what I just described, which essentially is go to a new world with the eggs, make new people. Forget everyone else. But plan A is you go... See this building here? Right. It's a spaceship. This building is a spaceship. Because of this wormhole and the shit we've been doing, we understand that gravity, which is the most crucial thing in this movie, is like a force that we might be able to harness. So maybe we can make this spaceship take off.

From Earth, without fuel. Yes. And like we can start traveling at speeds that are much faster than just like. And take a lot of people with us. Exactly. Save the human race. And McConaughey is like, why do you need me to drive? You didn't even know I was alive until, you know. whatever i mean the point the point is this is when they get into the notion of like

This weird sense of destiny. Someone was trying to communicate with you. He's been brought here by a gravitational anomaly. Gravity is what's driving them over to the wormhole. I think someone's trying to communicate with us. Right. He said, you were going to take off without me. He said, yeah, but we weren't going to be prepared. We got people who've never left the simulator.

Right, but you have been in a plane. Right place, right time. And wormholes, as anyone who studies theories of relativity know, are artificial constructs. They cannot exist as natural phenomenon because they require anti-energy to exist. Ha ha. Yes, we all know that. Because wormholes are bridges in space-time, and bridges in space-time can't be sustained because there's no such naturally occurring anti-energy. But if you start a dark matter...

Hey, man. There's a lot of Dark Matter shit. There's potential because we don't know a lot about Dark Matter. We know basically nothing. Really nothing. And we know even less about Warp Dark Matter. You know Warp Dark Matter, lead antagonist of Buzz Lightyear or Space Command?

Short-lived ABC spinoff Saturday morning cartoon show. No, I don't remember that. His name was Warp Dark Matter. I just want to pause real quick. The antagonist of Buzz Lightyear of Star Command, the short-lived ABC was part of One Saturday Morning. It was a...

Maybe 20 episodes. Can I tell you one thing about it? Can I tell you one thing about it? Stephen First was on it as well. Can I tell you one thing about that? Because I actually have something to say about Buzz Lightyear's story. It was a show. Yeah. It was a show.

I once read an interview with the people behind that show in like Entertainment Weekly or something where they said that Buzz Lightyear's hair would never be seen. He'd always be wearing his little cowl that he has. And they were like, it's kind of like our version of like how you don't see Maris and Frasier. And I remember reading that and thinking like, are these people just idiots and who are bored?

And they just said that? Or do they really think like, yeah, no, we need like a Maris joke for this Saturday morning space cartoon about Buzz Lightyear. But I will say I would have been very unnerved as a child if they ever showed his head. It's true. It would be weird. It's just the way they said it where they.

And I was just like, that's just how he looks. I don't know if that counts as Maris on Frasier. Well, but you see some of the other people take off their hoods. And they do bits about it, is what you're saying. Yes. I remember I was so excited for that show.

I was pumped and I went to see, they did like a special screening of Toy Story 2. You're so crazy. At Lincoln Center and I went with my dad and they had like some Pixar people there doing a Q&A afterwards and showing like behind the scenes clips and whatever. Right. And at the Q&A, someone asked about like, what about the- Buzz Lightyear of Star Command animated series, anything you can tell us? And the guy was like, no comment. And I was like,

Oh, they don't like this show? No. Well... Pixar's unhappy that this show exists. Of course they are. They have a very... They're obsessed with their brand not being diluted. I'm sorry. Was I saying anti... I can't write it. It's negative energy is what I'm talking about, essentially.

I watched all the extras for this podcast, and one of the biggest extras is called The Science of Interstellar. It has nothing to do with the movie, and it's just Matthew McConaughey slowly explaining basic concepts of relativity. over, you know, like basic, it's great. I mean, over basically like PBS style graphics of like wormholes and shit. That might honestly like really help me go to sleep. It's quite nice.

That sounds so soothing. Yeah, let's get back into it. I fuck with Europa. It's Matthew, I just, I'm sorry. I just want to clarify. So is Matthew McConaughey like, it's like, it's essentially like a science documentary. It's just a science documentary, but instead of like Neil deGrasse Tyson doing the voiceover, it's Matthew McConaughey.

Hey, you don't see him on screen. In a soothing voice. Just his voice, his nice voice. But at a certain point, does it turn out that he actually doesn't know all the science? It's his boyfriend's science. And you can tell because he puts a steelbook in there.

Yeah, and it's a real bummer. Your dick goes soft right away. All right. Essentially, wormholes are... A steelbook, damn it. Wormholes are... artificial constructs if they exist in reality they would disappear within seconds so for one to stay someone had to have put it there so what is motivating NASA so much is that someone seems to be helping us There seems to be an intentionality. They've given us a window into a habitable world, essentially. A window more like a shelf. Yeah, exactly. So.

This is, and of course the main thing is we know Cooper hates being a farmer. Yes. He doesn't want to live this pathetic life. He hates his son's going to be a farmer. Everyone's just giving up. But he does love Murr. He used to reach for the stars. Now we sit and worry. Now we reach for. the tars place in the dark he has that line say pass the tars please we have 40 minutes you have to catch a train I'm waiting for a train

Okay. So, and as that cut I described, what I love here is after all this setup, and there has been a lot, it's just that thing of like, will you do it? And you see him say goodbye to Murph in this very crucial scene where she won't look at him. That's the scene where I was like, I am on the hook emotionally with this movie. He does it very well. She does it well too, but he does it beautifully. That scene is my peak emotional investment in the film. I was like...

oh man, they're laying out the cards this movie's going to destroy me and I never get as emotionally invested as I do in that scene. That's fine. But I just think it's so good because he does a perfect job being very upset but also being very frustrated. I'm coming back.

Yeah, he's trying to soothe her, but he fucks up in some ways where he's like, huh, because of relativistic theory, I'll probably be, you'll be as old as me when I come back. And she's like, not helpful. Frightening. Hard pass on that. And not a performance review way. Exactly. He gives her his watch. Yes. And she throws it against the shell. She's not happy. She's not happy. But I love how he plays both being very sad to leave her and very upset that this is their goodbye.

And he doesn't got a choice. The ship's taken off. He's got to catch a train. Him in the truck driving away crying. Yes. And the straight match, like the cut straight to the ship, the rocket taking off, I think is so clever. where it's like that emotional decision is what he had to do. Forget the training and everything. We don't care. That's what happened. I remember someone saying in a review for this movie that it felt like McConaughey must have spent...

straight days looking in the mirror, studying how his face works. He looks amazing when he cries in this movie. You know? Because I feel like, weirdly, the gif of him crying later, which we'll get to, has become this universal inner... internet speak for like absolute devastation. Yeah. You know, like, you know, it's the new, uh, when people would use the clip of George, uh, see Scott and hardcore. Right. Right. Yeah. Freaking out in the theater. Yeah. Yeah.

So they're on the spaceship. Yes. Endurance. Mm-hmm. Which is pretty cool. Cool. It spins. It's a spinny ship. Mm-hmm. It has a couple of rangers, which are these sort of little glidery things that can land and take off of planets. Almost like a top with gliders on either side. And yeah, and it's got the population bomb in it and stuff like that. Bunch of jizz. Bunch of jizz. And his team is him. It's Dr. Amelia Brand and Hathaway.

It is Romilly, my sister, who is played by David Giasi, who had played. Interesting casting choice. I think he's wonderful. He's very different than my sister, though. I mean, if we're going to base it off of her. You're right. You're right.

But he had played Skinny Prisoner in The Dark Knight Rises, and Christopher Nolan was so taken with him that he cast him in this movie. In between, he's in Cloud Atlas. Right, that's what I was going to say. But, I mean, he liked him on the set of Dark Knight Rises, I guess. I don't know.

He's so interesting. It's a really weird performance. The way he plays it is so great because he's playing it like a scientist in a way that I think is... uh very realistic rather than the usual like scientist in these ships uh these in these movies yes where they're kind of like oh well you know like i don't know like the more sort of nerdy scientist he's someone who is so lost in thought At all times. Yes. Anytime something's proposed to him, he sort of looks away and he's like...

Yes. You know, like he has, he's so weird. He's very strange. He's doing something really, really specific. I think it's so good. And it's like a big bet. Like, but. God, I know you're going to hate this, so I'm hesitant to even verbalize this. What is it? I think because he's going for such a specific emotional tapestry of how a scientist would process these sorts of circumstances, I find his performance weirdly... jars with Hathaways. Yeah, but I think... Because, you know, it's like...

it's hard to reconcile both of them being scientists in a way. Sure. Because Hathaway is an actor I like a lot. Yeah. I think this is, this is my favorite Anne Hathaway performance in her career. See something about.

I don't think there's anything wrong with her performance. Something about this character doesn't work for me and I still can't figure out what it is. I love her. Like watching a second time, I think my, the part where I don't fully get on board with the movie is something with her. Yep. I'm Tarzing on the table here. He's Tarzing away. Trying to figure it out. But, you know, I think...

Nolan cast her and cast McConaughey because this is a movie that could be very, very cold and he wanted to cast two very emotional, available, accessible actors in these lead parts. And Hathaway's like an open wound. She's very vulnerable. Yeah. Right? Yeah. And that's what people who don't like her don't like about her. And those people are wrong. Okay. Yeah. But I think she is so emotionally accessible. Right.

And Gaiassi is making this really interesting choice to play someone who like only is able to figure things out in terms of numbers on a spreadsheet in a weird way. But I think, well, anyway, we got to move on. He's sort of like.

more of what we've been told are the scientists that have been sent through the wormhole already, which is these people who are not really attached to anyone on Earth, so they don't have too much of an emotional stake in what happens to people on Earth. Yeah, a bunch of nerds and losers. Whereas she...

is supposedly that, but she is this more sentimental choice. She's attached to her father, who is on Earth, and she's attached to Wolf Edmonds, who's one of the scientists who already went through who she apparently was involved with. Yes, she loves him. And so...

And that's why I'm cool with her being a little more open then. And we should say Wes Bentley is the fourth scientist. And he exists. And he's fine. I think he's fine. I mean, it was one of those things where he'd been in the Hunger Games, so I guess he was kind of. kind of back, but it was still like, wow, Wes Bentley. Haven't heard from Wes Bentley in a while. He's good. I mean, again, he's pretty chill. Yes. So they're on endurance. They go down for the long nap.

and then they wake up, and it's time to go through the wormholes. Let me ask you, in... And I love that scene where Jassi, where Romilly is listening to the rain. In his ears, like he's listening to rain music. Oh, it's so great. Where is it? I can't remember who's listening. It doesn't matter. What were you going to say? How long are they in the nap? Like, what I can never figure out with this movie is.

how long their expedition is in their time. Do you know what I'm saying? It would take, like, right now, it would take a couple years to get to Saturn. Maybe three. I think... they are going faster. Okay. You know, because it is fast. They have a more advanced ship. Okay. But so I think the idea essentially is it takes them a while to get to Saturn, but just like a couple years. Okay. And then they go through the wormhole.

And then where they lose most, like they basically lose 30 years on the first planet. Right. After that, they lose barely any time at all until the movie is over. Right. Because then it's just real time. Okay. You know, then they're just... hopping for planet it's like weeks or months right you know sure um but it's the the major time advancement obviously is after the first planet yes so they but they go through the wormhole i love that scene

How do you feel about that? It's good stuff. I mean, I could just watch that. That's the shit in IMAX where you were like, oh my God. Yeah. Kip Thorne.

who is the physicist, like he was very clear that the wormhole should be a sphere. Yes. Because wormholes are always circles. They're like doors in space. And they explain it thoroughly. Romilly does the wrinkle in time thing where he... folds the paper and puts the pencil through to explain like what a wormhole does which is fold space time um but i the way it works the wormhole

And you should really watch the documentaries on the Broadway. I will, honestly. Where, like, Kip Thorne would take scientific equations and give them to visual effects people to... And then they would put that through their algorithms to see what visual thing was created from it.

that's cool it's so cool and like he was and he was very satisfied with the black hole because he was like I'm not sure how this is going to look and then they showed it to him and they were like oh he was like wow that's actually great like that's what I thought it was going to look like but it actually looks good you know

But so the Wormhole's this sphere. This won the Visual Effects Oscar, right? It did. It was the only Oscar it won. It also was nominated for the Sound Oscars and Production Design and Music, I think. A lot of tech noms. But instead of just going in, they kind of go into orbit around the wormhole and then they just sort of let it overtake them. And then they're just in this sea of the galaxy that they're entering. And it's all rumbly.

and this weird blur touches Anne Hathaway's hand. She kind of shakes hands with the blur. which they think is like these beings that made the wormhole. And then what I love is rather than them exiting, the space just sort of unfolds and becomes new space. Yeah. Welcome to new space. It's fucking nuts, man. And the silence of this makes it. Yeah, the only music, noise you're hearing is the ship like rattling. Right. It's great. Which makes it very eerie.

I just get so happy talking about this. Her hand gets distorted. I love that. It's frightening too. And they again like Nolan was just like he was like he says in the interviews and shit. He's like I wasn't going to like sacrifice cinema for the sake of making everything like perfectly scientifically accurate. But I just wanted it to reflect science in a way that.

People often just don't bother to do, which is fine, too. I mean, like, you know, do what you want. But they reach this system that is orbiting a black hole called Gargantua. And the black hole has an accretion disk, which is what a black hole would have, which is like essentially all the shit that's getting sucked into it.

and it makes it look like this sort of ringed thing. And apparently, I just want to tell you, it's the only thing he fucked with. It's symmetrical in the movie, like it's basically a big circle, whereas the real thing would be blue. and kind of asymmetrical. It looks really weird. Okay. Same basic idea, but it's like the circle is just sort of wrong. It's like big on one side and small on the other.

Here's my take on all that. And he just sort of smoothed it out to make it look a little more normal because he thinks audiences have just been too weirded out by it. Here's my take on all that. I like it. It looks cool. So here they are in the new galaxy. Planet One is giving them like a thumbs up. Let's go check it out. So they go down.

To Planet One. And you know the old adage, first is the worst. And they have all these conversations about how do we approach it to use the least time. Because Planet One is right by the black hole. Because Makani at this point is really on the clock. He's like, my daughter promised. Gotta get back home. Exactly. And he's still thinking like plan A in which we solve gravity equations and like bring Earth out. Coop is all about plan A. And Anne Hathaway is basically with him although she's less.

like emotional about it. She's like, no, no, no. I mean, that's true. We should think about that. She's also, she's trying to rekindle and she wants to get the wolf evidence, but he's all the way up there. Right. She's all about plan E. So they go to, they go to this planet and it's just. Yep. Too much water. Now, I was like, I'm bored.

It's wet. Because it's shallow too. Right. They land and they're just sort of like, oh, okay. And it's very heavy. Gravity's low. Very strong because they're near the black hole. Keeps it grounded. Yep. It's a plan full of cloners. We should mention that. It is. It is. Yeah, it's in the Rishi maze. No, of course it is. We all know that. We should note that Dexter Jester is in charge of NASA in this movie. Yes. He runs it out of his diner. Very interesting. Oh, boy.

So this planet is terrifying, but in a way that is, again, like unique. That's, again, what I love about this. He finds this frightening shit in just waves up and down. Like, that's it. It's all this planet is. It's just waves. What I like about this movie is that all the stuff that's scary in it is scary because it is real. Right.

Like he's not heightening stuff too much. So it's just like, oh, this is just upsetting. He's created like a sci-fi nightmare, but in the idea of just like what if a planet was near a black hole and essentially it would just be waves. From where we actually are. No alien plants. No alien creatures. No aliens in the movie. No animals. It's just humans and just different terrain. Avatars. And avatars. Avatars. All right. So. Waves. Avatars. And so, yeah, thank you. What happens at the wave planet?

Big wave. TARS goes into asterisk mode to rescue Brand. Right. She's trying to get the data. The data just says like, this planet is waves. Get the fuck out of here. This place sucks. Where are the mountains? There are mountains. There are waves. Learn shapes, dummy. Wes Bentley dies here. He gets drowned by the waves. McConaughey is hopping mad now because...

They're wasting time on this planet because every hour is seven years or something crazy like that. They're wasting time. They lost to Bentley. We had just gotten him back. It's true. His career had just gotten back in order, and he seemed to be doing okay, and then just whoosh. Just right off the wagon again. That shot of him floating down there is pretty crazy when they leave. Agreed. It is a lot. And it's just, this is where he confronts Brand where he's like, you fucked up.

you don't know what you're doing. Like, you know, you didn't get that, how much of a cost there would be. Cause they essentially, by being down there for too long, they, they lose like 30 years practically. So can you explain to me? how and why they lose 30 years. I don't. I'm not smart enough about the theory of relativity to explain why it is. It's just that time dilates. Right.

in different ways the closer you are to like gravitational forces. Okay. Did they know that going to that planet would cost them that much time? Yes, but they thought it was going to be seven years because they thought what would happen would they would detach, go down. pick her up or check out the probe, leave. But because the wave knocks the boat out,

the ship out, they have to wait on the planet for an additional whatever minutes because the engines are flooding and shit. And that's just like way more time. So when they come back to the planet, to the ship, one less person. uh, Romilly has been like in hyper sleep awake. He's like age, but it's been like 30 years. This is another thing. We're talking about how like they, uh,

make the very weak attempt to yellow Michael Caine's hair a little so he looks younger later. David Gassi, like, they... I would have given him a little more hair before they leave the ship. Oh, sure, sure. Right, just so he could lose some of it. But he's not been awake for all of that time. I'm aware. He has been sleeping. I'm aware. I just think because the reveal of him there and when he tells them, like... I've been here for 30 years. Yeah, right, right.

It would have been a little more affecting if he looked a little more different. Sure. I guess you're looking at him. You're like, did I forget he had gray? She was like, oh, I don't need him to be full, whatever, you know, but I just want a little bit of that shock. They come back and he is. out the Six Flags guy. And Bran's like, you're so old. So.

But instead of what you're talking about, they present the emotional toll of the time lost in a video montage of all the messages they've gotten. It's a lot. And that's where you get the McConaughey just breaking down as he sees his son have his whole life. You also get, we all know in puberty what happens to a young man is his voice raises and goes five octaves higher.

Yeah, it's like, hey, dad, I gotta be in school. I guess I'm going to be a farmer. And then it's like, hey, kid. You're totally right. The old Casey whisper. Hey, it's Coop Jr. I can't beat this thing. I got to say, and it is one of those, it's almost Malikian where you're like, oh shit, this is Casey Affleck. Like he got Casey Affleck to be on a computer screen. Yeah. Because all you see about Casey Affleck in first, although let's admit Casey Affleck was kind of.

Kind of down at this moment in his career. I'm sorry, this is coming only, what, two years after Tower Heist? I think three. I think he was riding pretty fucking high, my friend. Because he got Tower Heist? Which he rules in. Then he takes a big old break. Then he's back, baby. Ain't them bodies saints? Them saints! Ain't them bodies! And then... Then... He comes out of the furnace.

That's right. Ain't the body saints, of course, filmed in a furnace. Many comes out of the furnace. Do you know that that movie's about a town near where I grew up? Out of the furnace? Yeah. That's rough news, man. Yeah. My condolences. I know a lot about... The people that they're based on. That's great, but I cannot give us, we can't go on and out of the furnace. We can't, but I just wanted to put that out there. Okay, we'll do a mailbag where we just talk about out of the furnace.

So yeah, I guess at this point, this is five years after the Oscar nom for Jesse James. Longer. Isn't that 2007? Yeah, this is seven years after. Oh, geez. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is 14? This is 14. That's seven. Right. And he had done Gone Baby Gone in 2007, then doesn't make a movie for three years and comes back in 2010 with the killer inside me and fucking I'm Still Here. Which is why he was not an actor. Exactly.

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The arrival of twins. Yes. Don't you think maybe you want to find a way to show them your love? By getting them an engagement ring? What are you setting up here? It's not a crazy idea. Okay. Look, I think if you want... Do you not love them? Sure. I think if you want to source an engagement ring, a great place to go.

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So he's there. You see him. He meets a woman. They get married. They have a kid. The kid dies. You're watching all this shit, and you're just seeing it in McConaughey's face as he just starts crying. It's fucking great. And he's sort of alluding to the fact that Coop doesn't want to talk to him. Murph. Murph, sorry. Because, right, you also see Lithgow. Oh, that's before where Lithgow's like, have fun in the wormhole as I tried to get her, but she's very stubborn like her dad. Yeah. And...

Then you hear that Lithgow died. They buried him out back in the back 40. And then you think that the video's done, and then out of nowhere, here comes Chassie, baby. Great. This introduction, I would say, actually, is just like you just click to her like totally white face because it's in that like sort of harshly lit webcam. Almost like night mode kind of. Exactly. And she's just like, hey, dad, I'm as old as you now.

Like you said. Her best scene in the movie. No question. She kills this. And he's losing it. And then you cut back to Earth and you see like now she works for NASA. Yeah. She's with Michael Caine who's in his wheelchair now being like, oh. solve my equation soon, don't worry, you know. And I remember everyone, like, there was a lot of Oscar hype for this performance going into it, I think just because of her function in the movie.

And Warner Brothers had this contract where she had Most Violent Year that same year, and they said she couldn't promote Most Violent Year. We've already talked about this, right, on the podcast. Which is strange. She's way better in this than she is in Most Violent Year. I think she's very good in both. I don't think she's – But I think her performance – I think she's –

Much like McConaughey, very much working at service of the movie. It's not a very showy performance. That's true. It's not the kind of thing that was ever going to get nominated. Apart from these couple scenes where she's more emotional. I'd say other than the phone calls. No, then we would have had to be like a runaway critical success for that kind of stuff to be happening. But she is, I just...

think about Sean Penn did this interview not that I usually like to quote Sean Penn but they asked him like which actors he was excited by you know if he thought there were good actors coming up and he said Jessica Chastain she's a fucking Stradivarius And I think about that all the time. Anytime I see her in a movie, I'm like, yeah, she's just like a fucking... She's a great actress. Yeah. I love her. She's a Stradivarius. She's Stradivarius. Yeah.

So back in space, though, what's most important is there's a debate over, should we go to the second planet, Dr. Man, the best of all of us, the leader of the Lazarus missions. Everyone loves him. He's like the Matt Damon of astronauts, let's say. Exactly. to Wolf Edmonds, whose data was a little better, but has not been broadcasting the thumbs up. And also, I love him. And McConaughey is basically, Coop is saying to Brand like,

you got to think about Earth rather than just yourself. And she has this speech. She's trying to explain love in scientific terms. Right, where she's saying, but what if love is this sort of definable thing that is important? has already been in the movie throughout. Because, of course, that's what guided him as we learn, you know, spoiler alert, he was her ghost. Ghost on the shelf. Ghost on the shelf. You know, like, that, like...

What we have understood about ourselves, future humans have understood about past humans, is that that's what's anchoring us and helping us to survive, is our connections to each other. Yes. And there's only one thing that goes through a black hole, gravity. Or is there two things, gravity and love? Netflix is love, starring Gillian Jacobs and Paul Rust. TARS is broadcasting it on all signals.

When he's in the black hole. People cannot get enough of love. But they go to the second planet, which is... again, the entrance to each of these planets, like the entrance to the water planet where it's just like clouds, clouds, clouds, water. And if you're in IMAX, it's suddenly like this widescreen shot. And then the second time, it's that thing where they're going through the clouds and then...

They hit a cloud because the clouds are frozen. Yeah. Pretty cool, huh? Yeah. Frozen cloud? You don't see that every day. Cool. Try saving your files in that. Cloud, you're not going to upload failed. So down here is Dr. Man. They pull him out. Who is it? Matty D. Matty D. I didn't remember that he had been cast. I was genuinely surprised by his appearance. I knew he was in it. I was waiting to see who he was going to be, but I thought...

he could just as likely be a face in a video call. I didn't think he was going to be this prominent a role. Because he could have been, I understand why they didn't want to credit him. No, no, of course. Because it tips the hand of the movie. It's kind of like a Kevin Spacey in Seven thing. But I also feel like he would have been the end Matt Damon. Yeah, he would have been on the poster. The poster billing is McConaughey, Hathaway, Chastain, and Michael Caine.

Which usually Nolan's rocking a lot of people. No, he doesn't let Topher in there. He doesn't let Lithgow in there. He doesn't let Wes Bentley or anything in there. Casey. Casey at the bat. That scene where they pull him out. and he's just crying is great. And the whole audience is like, Matt Damon. Matt Damon's sad. He's a good crier. Great crier. He's a great crier. And then you cut to him in his little warm-up blanket. And now he's getting back into the Matt Damon groove, and he's like, okay.

Steady hand. Here we go. He's the hero scientist. That's what I love about this shit. You're immediately like, yeah, this guy. Right. You know, he's a pro. He's a movie star. He's a pro. We know what he's doing. He's a stable, smart man. Oh, it feels like he's the lead of his own movie that we haven't been watching. But now, okay, smooth transition. And he's like, in my planet, it's rough. Ammonia clouds.

Every day is 67 hours long. But, you know, we could live here. Now, even I'm thinking like, that sounds bad. But that is what he's got. And so and he blew up his. Robot Kip. Named after Kip Thorne. Oh, I thought it was named after Kip Pardew. Yeah, that's correct. It's named after Kip Pardew. After from Rules of Attraction. Yeah, he was in Draven. Yes, he was also in I Remember the Titans. And...

The decision here, and then this is where they get the news from Chastain on Tars' body that Michael Caine has died. Yes. And we have that scene where Michael Caine confesses to her that I am dying. I am going to die right now. He reads the poem. He recites the poem. Dying off the podcast. And he...

admits to her that he knows they can't. It was a lie. They can't solve this gravity equation of his. They can't bring the people. Plan B, more like plan A because that's the only plan. And that's, yeah, like that's all we got. And he dies having finally admitted it. And Matt Damon knows this too. And she's like, tell me one thing did my dad know? And he's like, hold on, let me recite this poem one more time. And then dies mid-poem.

That's a great scene, too, though, because you can see her frustration where she's like, oh, fuck, this is it. He's got the poem ready. So now she's like, double fuck my dad. Like, was he just pulling a con on me this whole time? Yep. So she's mad and Hathaway's mad and McConaughey's mad, but the decision is made. Okay, everyone will just stay here. This planet is habitable. McConaughey will leave. He'll go back through the wormhole.

Back to Earth. I'll go hang out with his 50-year-old daughter. Exactly. That's the plan. So we have this scene where they're in their spacesuits, and Matt Damon's like, all right, well, let me show you where we'll live. It's below here. even though I live up here. Definitely nothing weird about that. And we'll just go down there, the two of us, just me and you. And I love their spacesuits with the little jetpack-y things that they can do big jumps with.

It's also interesting that, like, the endurance of their suits are totally white. Little, little hints of gray, but totally white. Kanahe, or Damon, rather, has the orange on his suit, which is like his fucking suit in The Martian. Yeah. It's literally like a Martian colored suit. You're right. There's a little bit of orange to it. A little bit of orange he's got going on there. This scene, what are you looking up here? Well, just that.

Okay, I want to double confirm this. There is the thing that like at this point, Chastain is supposed to be the same age as McConaughey is. Yes. McConaughey is much older than Chastain. That's a good point. I just looked at seven years older. I thought it was 10. He's 47. She's 40. And she's 40, which is funny because he's supposed to be playing about late 30s, I guess. But, you know, whatever. Sure. But yes, you're right. She looks that age. He looks older.

He's a funny looking guy. He's weathered at this point. He's leathery. He's not like Russ Cole post. No. He's like pre-Russ Cole. He's leathery. So. Man would make a mean beef jerky.

This man, though, with two N's, has this monologue that I think, every time I watch it, I love it more and more. What do you think? Essentially, it seems like he's just chatting to... coop about like the the power of the human spirit and like isn't it amazing that you're here and you're trying to help your daughter and like this is what drives humans right but then you realize like he's essentially describing why he's so great

Sure. It's this long bit of rationalization about like why he needs to survive and others don't. And why he has how he has justified. Abhorrent behavior. What he's done. Which is essentially he's been broadcasting from the planet that the planet is good when he knows it's not. Right. Because he is lonely. He's lonely and he just was sure he would have gotten it. And he didn't.

So he's led them down there to die. He should have downloaded far more podcasts before he went on the mission. He should have downloaded my check. He clearly ran out. And we have over 300 hours of entertainment. Shush. I hate you. No, I love you. Love you too. We're the best. Two friends. But I just, I love that idea of like him not being evil even. Just like.

That sort of pathetic self – not pathetic even. It is somewhat pathetic. The way he has over the years thought it through to himself where it's like humans want to survive. Yeah. And that's all I'm doing here. He's going to get on the ranger. He's going to go up. And he's going to go to the good planet. He'll do it. So he kicks McConaughey. He kicks him down a cliff. And to kill him. And McConaughey fights back. He's a fighter. And he bashes his helmet.

And cracks it. A moment that always feels weird to me because it feels like McConaughey's trying to keep him pinned down. Right, yes. And once he's got him in the pinned position, then Damon can hit the helmet. Right. Or McConaughey would just stand up and be like, okay, different type of fighting. Yeah, it's true.

true that i agree that's that moment he's on top i know i know you're right it's a little sweaty um but then mcconaughey is slowly dying of suffocation yes and i love yes and i love that man is like I thought I could watch this, but I can't. I'm sorry. He's still justifying it to himself. He's like, this sucks. Are you seeing your family? I know you will. That's what happens when you die. The part of his speech I really like is the, you know, I never once considered.

it wouldn't be the right planet. Right, right, right. However he phrases it. This guy is such the Boy Scout. He was like the Captain America of NASA that it was like... I'm going to get the winning planet. Of course I am. But what he doesn't get in describing all of this is that Coop will also try to survive. Like, it's the thing. He's describing the way that Coop's going to beat him. And so Coop escapes.

Or it's more like Damon escapes. He gets into the ranger and he flies up. But the robots kind of run to him. And poor Romilly dies too when Romilly tries to investigate the broken robot. Um, but, uh, yeah, just that. And then just like Kip Pardew's career, it is up in smoke. And then, and then Damon's. moment in the space station yeah in the endurance where he's still monologuing and his last line is there is a moment

And then because he thinks like, he's trying to dock with them. He's done it manually. He's done it badly because they like turned off the autopilot. And they're like, get the fuck away from us. We don't like you. And he's like, no, no, no. This is important. There is a moment. and he's dead and he blows up half the ship. Yeah. God. So now they're like double fucked. Man, humanity's worst enemy. They're double fucked and they also each are like, Makani's like, fuck, I just lost like 35 years.

of my daughter's life. And, and Hathaway is like, I just lost the chance to see the guy I was in love with. Right. uh, for this fucking homicidal maniac. Right. And also, well, and also there is that sort of crazy action sequence where the score is going, where they're like spinning and spinning and spinning to like lock back in because it's the only way they can stop it spinning. Yes. Which is.

Again, I feel like a cool way of like a science-y problem that's also kind of an action sequence. A genuinely nauseating sequence. It's awesome. Yeah. But yeah, I love where Hathaway knocks out and then her arm just suddenly goes like. Because she's no longer in control of her body. Yeah. She's just floating. But now they're triple fucked. Right.

Yeah, I'd say triple. I'd upgrade to triple. So the plan now is, okay, we'll just shoot Hathaway and the jizz bomb at Wolf Edmonds. Yes. The last planet. Right. will use the gravity from the black hole to do it gotta leave something behind though but in right to let her go everything the robots have to leave yeah or what case I guess TARS goes with her sure yeah TARS goes with her

No, no, Tars goes with him. Case goes with her. Case goes with her, because you see Case walking with her right at the end there. They're walking hand in hand. I think she thinks McConaughey, the coop's going with her, but he's not.

They have the whole black hole scene. The black hole scene is where they lose another 50 years practically slingshotting around it, and then he goes into the black hole. Yes. Okay, now this you love. I fucking love it. Now, I do feel like this loses some people. Time box. Yeah, the library tesseract. I don't know. Yeah.

I remember just being so freaked out in the IMAX by what was going to be in the black hole. Me too. I was shitting bricks. Because there was that thing that goes black, the instruments die, and then it's just... the screen is black and then you see this like white dust. Yeah. And you're just like, what the fuck is like, you know, it's, it's really alarming. Yeah. And the science of it to Kip Thorne and to all these other people is like, look, we can tell you everything.

that we know, but we don't know what's in a black hole. So you can really do whatever you want in there. Yeah. And inside it is a time library. David is stretching his arms like P.T. Barnum showing off his latest attraction. Where he's just falling and suddenly the image of the Tesseract appears around him and the score goes wild again. I like it a lot. Oh, God.

Well, it's like the entire history of this girl's bedroom, like a card library where he can like start to just string through it and find the moment he wants. And he's trying to get his way out of it and he's knocking stuff over. He's being a ghost. Right. He's making impacts in the past. Because what has happened here is...

Humans, some future humans, have created this thing for him to communicate with the past. Because gravity is the only thing that goes through black holes. And if we could use gravity to communicate, i.e. by knocking books down. or fucking with a watch, it is theoretically probable that you could communicate through time, which is cool. which is fucking great. But then the question is how gravity and love are intertwined. But then how did the future people create this? I don't know.

They're the future. He says that. They're amazing. He says at some point. At some point, we figured out how to exist in five dimensions. You want to exist in five dimensions? No, no, I do, but I'm saying is that he made – basically our existence continue. Sure. Right. But that would then say that the future people had an effect on that.

A period of time? So how did they... Ben, I can explain this very simply. You know when Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure? Oh, hell yeah. When they don't have the keys and then Ted's like, wait a second, we have a time machine. Let's just remember that once we're done with this, we go back in time and place the keys here. And then they look and they have the keys suddenly. Oh, okay. You know, and they're like, okay, let's just make sure that we come back.

and place the keys. And do that later. And that happens off screen after the movie's ended. But you just have to buy that they've remembered to do it and so it all fits together. They can use whatever technology they have to create the wormhole, to create things like in the black hole. Which now in the future they know they have to do because it happened because he was there. What they can't do is travel through time.

Right. That makes sense. They can't just open a time portal and go to the past and be like, Matthew McConaughey should fly a shuttle. But they can use, they can harness us and our connections to each other as these handshakes through the past. to influence time, right? And in creating the Tesseract for him, they've created this emotional memory palace that he'll understand. Yeah, it's pretty...

Tough on him, though. Tough on him, and that they know his daughter will understand because she understands him. She's smart. That's the magic and the science coming together. Rather than the science just being like, well, they make a time machine and they can move through time. He's trying to understand how could you make a time machine using gravitational relativistic physics.

rather than like, look, a phone booth, which is cool. Phone booths are cool. Phone booths are cool. But is it to suggest then that fate is a thing as well? Because like he's affecting all of the different... moments in the past like it's not so much fate as much as it's like I mean like we're fated to be connected to each other I don't like you know like it's not it's not like a I feel like not like a straight time loop thing where it's like

that happened because you knew what would happen because you had done it in the future or whatever. But, you know, it's more like he, it happened like her books are falling off. Right. So it's going to happen.

But it's not like he knows he has to do it right away. I don't know. Like, you know, we could talk about this in circles for days. We do. But no, but once he's there, he realizes what he has to do is he has to fulfill. He understands the language because he was on the other side of it. Yeah. But it's more important that she understands it. Well, that's what he realizes. Because he can't pass her a note. I'm not the one who was supposed to save the world. She is.

My job is just to communicate. All he does is communicate gravitational equations to her that they can only see inside of a black hole. And the only thing that can move through a black hole is gravity. So it's the only way to... communicate the equation just through gravity. He can't come out of the black hole and be like, I found a bunch of cool shit. Or he can, but when he does, they already know. Because he comes out in the future and she's old.

And Biff has taken over and now it's like he's running a casino. He's kind of Trump adjacent. I mean, we should wrap up soon because I got to go. You're waiting for a train. I am waiting for a turn, but I can go for another 10 minutes. He drops out of the black hole. Comes out of the black hole. It's the future future. Whoa. And he was picked up by a space station that is much like the one that Bran built. I think there's supposed to be many of them now. Yes.

This is Cooper Station. This is Cooper Station. No, named after your daughter. Exactly. Real quick, though, I do want to say it's awesome that you figure out that it was his hand. When he goes back through. Yes, yes. Because when he goes through the black hole further, when the Tesseract closes, he goes through the wormhole and he sees them. Yeah. I love that. Now, can I throw to you? Excuse me.

Can I throw to you my major complaint about this movie? Sure, yeah. I think this ending section is rough. Why do you think it's rough? Just because it's fast? Yes, I think this is a weird example of a movie that actually needs to be a little longer.

Hey, man, if this movie is three and a half hours longer, I'd be pretty happy to. I do think Nolan is also just like, we went through the black hole. The audience is so exhausted by all of that that we should just wrap it up right here. You know what I mean? I just think there are a lot of ideas in this.

I find really interesting that are really a bridge. I think a lot of people had the problem, especially with the scene where fucking Ellen burst and put herself in hypersleep to get to the space station. And he's like, he sees her and it's an overwhelming moment when he sees her on the bed. Yes. But then he sits down and he's like, I was your ghost. And she's like, yeah. And he's like, so what's up with you? And she's like, you should go. Right. I don't like that.

I wish there was longer, but it's hard. I think that... I think her closing monologue is great. The things she's saying when you're cutting to the images of Anne Hathaway. I agree. I think... It's fast. I want her to die with him by her side. I just don't like that she says. You just hate Ellen Burstyn that much. You just want her to die. I love Ellen Burstyn. No, she's great. I've told you my Ellen Burstyn story, right? I don't know.

I've been in three projects with Ellen Burstyn. We've never had a scene together, but I've been in three different things with Ellen Burstyn. Which are? There was an unproduced or rather never went to series pilot for Showtime directed by Tim Robbins called Possible Side Effects. That was my first real job. Oh, I never heard. I never knew you did that. Okay. Josh Lucas, Tim Blake Nelson, Alan Burson. It was a good catch.

It did not go to series. No. And then Political Animals, which I played Carla Gugino's assistant. She played the matriarch of the main family in the show, Sigourney Weaver's mother. And so we never crossed over. We were totally different plot lines. And then she plays Kevin Costner's mother in draft day. That's right. She does. She's pretty good, actually. I think she's very good. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, she often gets handed these very small roles, but she's great.

And she I ran I was at a like screening party thing and she was there and I went up to her and I was like, hey, you don't know me, but I was. I've been in these things with you. This was when I had done the first one, maybe, or the first two. And I'm a big fan of your work and this and that and was talking to her about stuff.

And I was like looking for an acting teacher and I asked her if she had any recommendations. She recommended me this woman, Elizabeth Camp, who I've worked with for years and is incredible. And so on draft day, I was like, I should really go thank her for that. And so I said, hey, you know, you probably don't remember me, but we were in.

possible side effects together. And she said, I've never been in something called possible side effects. I said, well, okay, you're politically animals. I said, I don't remember you. And I said, we didn't work together, but I saw you at a party once and you recommended Elizabeth Kemp to me. And she went, oh, thank you.

We were in the hair and makeup trailer next to each other. And I said that. And she said, oh, thank you. And then I went back to talking to my hair and makeup guy. And I'm like chatty. I'm a chatty person. And so I'm talking to the hair and makeup guy. And after like two minutes, she went, Griffin? And I said, yeah. And she went, try silence. Wow. That's scary. So I got shut the fuck down by Ellen Burstyn. And then there was like silence for five minutes and she was like.

I'm sorry. I'm just trying to run my lines. I was like, no, it's fine. I misburst in. It's fine. Oh my God. That's amazing. I can't believe that's the greatest story. I can't believe it. That's intense, right? Oh, my God. That's now her best moment after Alice doesn't live here anymore. She beat it.

84-year-old Academy Award winner Ellen Burson told you to shut the fuck up. Probably one of my 10 favorite actors of all time. I should say to you, try silence now. That'll be the new bit. Griffin, try silence. Try silence. He goes off to see Anne Hathaway, who is on Wolf Edmonds. Wolf Edmonds is dead, but he's on his planet, and she's settling down for the long nap. Looks good. Looks like a good planet. Looks nice. Looks sort of Mars-y.

I like that his old house is a museum that they let him move into. That's right. That scene with TARS where he revives him is fantastic. I love it. And I like him sitting on the porch with TARS. I like this whole thing of McConaughey now not knowing where he belongs, like being stuck between two worlds. I kind of want...

Him to be by her side when she dies. And then to have a section of the movie for like 10 minutes of him not knowing where to go before he goes off to Bran. Because the idea I like is that like Bran's the only person he's ever going to be able to talk to for the rest of his life. No one else is going to fucking get what he's going to do. Everyone else grew up on space stations. Right. Yeah. Right. But it just feels rushed to me. I feel like it doesn't emotionally...

That's fine. I think that's a fair, I mean, I think, yeah, that's fair. I mean, they don't even really explain the space stations, which are so cool. They are based on real theoretical like things. Yeah. They don't give us enough of that because again, they're just like, we got to wrap this up. Centrifuges. I think the movie just needs like another 10 minutes. Well, here's what I think the movie needs. What? You ready? Yeah. Sequel.

Interstellar 2. There is plenty of space for a sequel. Interstellar? Interstellar. He goes to Wolf Edmonds. There's all kinds of bullshit you can do. Life on Wolf Edmonds with Anne Hathaway. Nolan would never do it, right? No, of course not. But I mean, and I think he really feels like the emotional journey is completed at the end of the, you know, like he's told his story, but I would see Interteller too. I don't like that he leaves her and that he doesn't even.

meet the rest of her family like he walks in the room they're like here's all her family here's all her kids i know just goes straight to her she's like no one should watch their child die and he's like okay cool good point peace out and just leave i agree with you about the cleanness of it but i also think you already said it's like he is he's

like an alien to these people and he can't deal with that. But anyway, we have to play the box office game. And then you have to catch a train. I'm waiting for a train. Number one, this is November 7th, 2014. Big Hero 6. It's Big Hero 6, which opened to 56 million. Mop the floor.

When Interstellar opened to $47 million at number two. Wiped the floor with Interstellar. Big Hero 6 is a movie I saw in theaters and I had a pretty nice time with and I've never really thought much about it since. I've never heard of it. There were five others before this? No. Great joke. 50 comedy points. It won the Oscar. It did. Oddly. Oddly. It's not a bad movie. It's sweet. It's totally fine.

I'm going to stick with my same review. When it came out, Big Hero 6, more like Big Hero 2 because only two of those characters you care about. I would say more like Big Hero 6.5. Out of 10? I'm not saying 6.5 out of 10. I know, I know, I know. I'm saying only two out of the six characters are rated. Craziest thing is Big Hero 6 grosses less worldwide than Interstellar. Interesting, but more domestically. More domestically, yes. Number three at the box office is a...

Huge hit of the fall. An R-rated thriller, kind of, like drama thriller. that has made in six weeks $145 million and just went up from four to three. It's got a twist. So it's like really sticking around. It's got a bit of a twist to it. It is a great movie. Is it an Oscar play movie? It was kind of an Oscar play, but it only ended up with like two nominations. Gone Girl? Correct. Movie I love.

Great movie. We should do Fincher. I know it would be as obvious as doing Nolan, but it would be so much fun. We'll do it. We just got to do a couple weird people in between, but then we'll do Fincher. Number four is a horror movie that opened number one the week before. That is pretty bad, but the sequel was really great. I think the sequel came out this year. Uh, Ouija?

Ouija. I still haven't seen Ouija 2. Origin of Evil? Yeah, I dug Ouija 2. It looked so good and I just missed it. It was like when I was working and I wanted to. 43 million it's made in three weeks. It was number one for two weeks in a row. Yeah.

Number five is a movie people really have already forgotten about, which I don't like at all. I think you liked it a little more. It's a war movie. Like a really, real dirty war movie. Oh, I don't like this movie. Oh, you don't? Okay, okay. I think it's... I think it's kind of well made. I think the first chunk of it's pretty solid. I think it totally falls apart. Fury? Fury. The David Ayer movie. Yeah. In which World War II is twisted. Twisted.

I mean, you might like it because these actors, they dirty. It's one of the dirtiest fucking movies. I think David Ayer was like, put some dirt on him. They put dirt on me. He's like, great. Now put some grease on him. All right. Grease him up. There's also that story where like.

Shia LaBeouf was in the makeup trailer with Logan Lerman. And he's like, what? Kid, they're putting dirt on your face, huh? Is that all you're doing? And he's like, yeah, it's makeup. And Shia LaBeouf apparently took out a knife and cut his face and was like, this is how you act. You gotta live it. We learned all that knife work. What a nice guy. Yeah, what a nice boy. You're right. Thank you. Number six is St. Vincent. Not a good movie. No, you got Nightcrawler. Oh, come on. A good movie.

I like Safe Visit. Oh, okay. I find St. Vincent. John Wick is sort of hanging out on the way to its nice run. It's in the middle of its nice run. I'm thinking he's back. Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day is beginning its Oscar run. It's a platforming. That movie made $66 million. Directed by Miguel Arteta. No, no, it was directed by Ingmar Bergman. The Book of Life, the animated Day of the Dead movie. Yes. Birdman.

It's platforming in there. It actually is platforming. Worst film of 2014. It's pretty bad. The Judge is at number 12. Oh, wow. I just said the worst film in 2014. The Judge is worst. The judges are worse. You got The Maze Runner, Dracula Untold. Some fun ones. Guardians of the Galaxy is still in there. It's November. I know it came out in August, but still, that's pretty good. Yeah.

Guardians of the Galaxy made $419,000 that weekend in its 15th weekend. Too shabby. What a great movie. Well, Interstellar, it's David's favorite movie ever. He wants to marry it. Yeah, I'd marry it. I would do it. So I know you have to go. Sure. I just wanted to share final thought about this movie. Okay. So my takeaway is I think that this is Nolan's metaphor.

Velcro in the background as David literally packs a bag. I think it's like a metaphor for the artist creating art and the sacrifice that they have to make. For sure. We should mention that. Regarding their family. I would agree with that. If you think of all these like artists and geniuses over time, they have always, if they have a family, treated them like garbage. Yeah. And I think that this is like a movie that really illustrates that.

In a really amazing way. I agree. That's also what the Toy Story trilogy is about. That's why I like it so much. I can't wait for you to treat your family like garbage to make blank check. And Bob Ben. Well, yes, my dad. He thinks I'm already doing that.

Come on. You don't see your dad? Ray Tentori, friend of the podcast, a good friend of mine, last night from when we were recording was the Tick premiere. Yes. And Ray went up to him and was talking about how much he likes the podcast and apparently. told my father some of the things I've said about my father on the podcast. Wait, have you mentioned... I thought we cut the... Oh, no, we already had this discussion. Oh, I shared this with Peter. I said it's a little bit of...

My fault, because I was supposed to cut it out, and I did not. Ben did say that to my father, which is how Ben met my father. And that's the premise of the new CBS sitcom in September, How Ben Met Your Father. I had to. I had to lay it up. Great work. Well, that has been Interstellar. Tune in next week for the finale of our... Dunkirk. Yeah. Maybe bonus. Maybe bonus. We're still talking about it. Yeah, we should talk about that off mic.

Griffin's going to go to Australia, and I'm going to go to the Hudson Valley. Very similar. Please remember to rate, review, subscribe. Big thanks to Andrew for running our social media accounts, for Lane Montgomery, for doing the theme song. Pat Reynolds and Joe Bowen for the artwork. Check out our subreddit blankies.reddit.com for some real nerdy shit. Yep. And as always, I'm just going to go to sleep. You're going to leave and I'm going to sleep here in the recording.

I am done. I am finished. Okay, this is going to be rough. Gilbert Cruz suggested Rage Against the Dying of the podcast. That was one of his. I mean, is it too much? Go on. What? Is it an easy layout to just do Kane again? Do you know what I'm saying? It's an easy layup, but that doesn't mean layups are two points. Sure, sure. I've always had a hard time doing a McConaughey, and especially with my voice sounding like this today, I don't know if it'll make it easier or harder.

What would be the McConaughey line? Like, it's weird. You used to look up at the sky. Yeah, I can't do it. No, dude, just do Kane. It's fine. Yeah, okay. Boy, this could be even worse than last time. Do not go gentle into that good night. Old age should burn and rave at... What the fuck am I doing? No, it's great. It's great. Okay, let me try it again. Let me try it again. Let me try it again.

Do not go gentle into that good night. I'm fucking up the word. Okay, third take. I'm trying to pinpoint what it is. Day night. It is something about the way you do it. Mike, okay. Mike, okay.