"What if we did a whole podcast about Star Wars, Episode I: The Phantom Menace[1]?"
That was the kernel of an idea that would eventually spawn Blank Check with Griffin and David[2], the (relatively) new movie podcast from UCB Comedy that re-launched this week with part one in a series on the films of M. Night Shyamalan. Originally billed as The Phantom Podcast, the premise had co-hosts Griffin Newman (comedian and actor, Draft Day[3] and HBO[4]'s Vinyl[5]) and David Sims (movie critic, The Atlantic) diving deeper than you ever thought possible into the first episode of George Lucas' prequel trilogy.
"The movie's so weird that I guess we thought that would be funny," Sims says. "We originally wanted to do like 50 episodes on it."
Fifty episodes was shortened to ten, on the advice of podcast producer Ben Hosley, which freed the show up to jump to each subsequent episode in the Star Wars series. The hook of these episodes — not a bit; don't call it a bit; they hate bits — was that each film was analyzed as if the subsequent Star Wars movies didn't exist. The Phantom Menace was the first chapter in a series that apparently never got completed, made by the director of American Graffiti[6] and THX 1138[7]. Every ten episodes, Griffin and David (who are, full disclosure, friends and former co-workers, though I have no stake in the podcast other than as an avid listener) would "discover" the next episode in the Star Wars universe and move on from there. The news that there was an entire trilogy that began production in 1977 was a major eye-opener.
"The easiest thing you can say against The Phantom Menace is that it sucks compared to Star Wars," says Sims. "If you take that element away, what about analyzing the film in a vacuum?"
The podcast, which was branded as Griffin and David Present while it moved its way through the Star Wars franchise, poked into the odd corners of the prequel films — prepare to know more than you ever needed to know about Sebulba and Kit Fisto — and arrived at more than a few working theories about the psychology of George Lucas and why the prequels ended up being such impersonal, emotionally obtuse CGI wastelands. But the ultimate hook of the show was the chemistry between the hosts. Friendly, enthusiastic, and fearsomely smart about the film industry, Griffin and David carved out a fun dynamic, with Griffin the excitable theorist and David the patient (more or less) and wise second opinion. The podcast has the quality of a buddy-cop movie, if cops did Hayden Christensen impersonations rather than solved crimes.
At some point, the idea dawned on Griffin and David that they could apply the podcast's deep-dive sensibility to other films.
"I'm obsessed with [the Robert Duvall film] The Judge[8]," says Newman. "That was there from the beginning. And then as it became clear that we were gonna get the chance to do [another series of episodes on] Attack of the Clones, I threw out there 'What if we actually do "Judging The Judge" as a podcast cleanser?' Like a palate cleanser. And also to test the waters for us doing other things. And I think we were both so happy with how that episode turned out. And it was also that we did an episode about a movie most people didn't give a shit about, that we had to make people watch that movie for the first time in order to listen to the episode, it became a test of our audience — which at the time was smaller than it is now. Do people like the dynamic we'd built up between the two of us enough to follow us into other movies and do the homework? I think after that point we were pretty committed to the idea that once we were done with Star Wars, we're were gonna want to keep this going as a general movies thing."
And so with the completion of the Star Wars saga — up through The Force Awakens[9] — Griffin and David are now relaunching the podcast with a new name — Blank Check with Griffin and David — and a brand new series on the films of director M. Night Shyamalan.
"Films are such a collaborative process that when you see a movie, especially done on a large scale with a big budget, that is entirely the vision of one person, those results are almost always fascinating," says Newman. "And it's produced some of the best movies of all time and some of the worst movies of all time. Those films are the most interesting films to examine in terms of where someone was in their career. They're coming right off of a movie that's one of the highest grossing films of all time, or you win the Oscar, or you culturally change something, and everyone goes 'I don't know why that worked, but let's give them complete freedom to see if it works again.'"
These so-called "blank check movies" are generally big swings and end up being controversial or at least well worth picking apart. Which brought Griffin and David to Shyamalan, who had such a breakthrough with The Sixth Sense[10] and whose reliance on big twists, an easily recognizable atmospheric style, and clever (intrusive?) cameos made him one of the most identifiable directors working today. One whose failures are as interesting (if not moreso) than his successes.
"I have these two very distinct memories," says Newman, "In 2006, I go to see a movie, and they played a trailer for Lady in the Water[11]. It was only a teaser, it was very oblique; all images, no dialogue, with an Il Divo song playing, and you couldn't get a handle on what it was. And then at the end of the trailer, after the title fades away, and the music becomes more ominious, and it just goes, 'A bedtime story by M. Night Shyamalan.' And the entire audience went 'Ooooh!' There was a collective shudder. And people went 'Oh, I didn't know what this fuckin' bullshit was, but if it's an M. Night Shyamalan movie, I'm interested.'
"Then three years later, I see the trailer[12] for Devil[13] in the theaters. And Devil was the opposite, where the trailer is playing and people go, 'I don't know, this looks like a decent little horror movie, this could be fine,' and then halfway through the trailer, they throw up the title card 'Produced by M. Night Shyamalan,' and everyone in the theater started laughing. They didn't take it seriously for the rest of the trailer. And I go, 'How do you go from a bad trailer b eing saved by a guy's name, within 3 or 4 years, to a good trailer being ruined by the mere fact that the guy had produced it?'"
For the first episode in their Shyamalan series, Griffin and David are starting at the beginning, with Wide Awake[14], Shyamalan's 1998 film starring Joseph Cross, Dana Delaney, and Rosie O'Donnell.
"It's the only M. Night Shyamalan-directed movie that's streaming on Netflix[15]!" Sims says. "It's a very weird little kids' movie about a 10-year-old boy who lost his grandfather and who's trying to reconcile himself to the reality of death and its place in the Catholic faith. It's like a kid dramady. It's really melancholy."
"It's about a kid who's obsessed with death and is trying to literally have a conversation with God," says Newman. "I loved it as a kid. It was barely released, no one saw it, but I saw it in theaters opening weekend because I was obsessed with Rosie O'Donnell, and they misadvertised it as being a Rosie O'Donnell movie. I was an annoyingly precocious child obsessed with death, and it was the only movie I saw where a child behaved like me. And now watching it I'm like, 'Jesus Christ, I can't fucking deal with how insufferable I was as a kid.'"
After the Shyamalan series, Griffin and David plan on further shows about the movies that took big swings from directors who were given the permission to do whatever they wanted. Sometimes that's a good thing. Sometimes that's The Phantom Menace. Either way, the friendly chemistry and deep wells of film knowledge and movie fandom that Griffin and David bring to the table make Blank Check the one movie podcast you need to add to your subscriptions today[16].
References
- ^ Star Wars, Episode I: The Phantom Menace (decider.com)
- ^ Blank Check with Griffin and David (itunes.apple.com)
- ^ Draft Day (www.youtube.com)
- ^ HBO (decider.com)
- ^ Vinyl (decider.com)
- ^ American Graffiti (decider.com)
- ^ THX 1138 (decider.com)
- ^ The Judge (decider.com)
- ^ The Force Awakens (decider.com)
- ^ The Sixth Sense (decider.com)
- ^ Lady in the Water (decider.com)
- ^ trailer (youtu.be)
- ^ Devil (decider.com)
- ^ Wide Awake (decider.com)
- ^ streaming on Netflix (www.netflix.com)
- ^ add to your subscriptions today (itunes.apple.com)
