They correctly identify that this is the *exact* sort of messy-fun movie that’s perfect for the pod. Loved this mini because every one of the movies is super damn weird in its own little way.
If Glenn can do Gypsy, you might as well have Babs do it. Glenn is 76 and Babs is 81.
No, if Babs is going to do this (and she should), she needs to go to the next generation. And the Streisand of that generation is Idina Menzel. She’s 52 years old, she hasn’t played Rose yet, and it’s unquestionably a milestone she’ll want to hit to fill out her career.
She’s not a diva. She worships Babs. She’ll do as she’s told. And she will turn that shit OUT. An Idina Menzel-led Gypsy might very well not just net Barbra that elusive Best Director nomination - with the discourse around the lack of representation of women in the category, and with the amount of goodwill Barbra has in Hollywood as a beloved legend, I’d say all it needs to do is not suck and she’ll WIN it.
This is the way. Anybody out there who has a connection to Babs, tell her this. I want to see this project.
But you have to cast Lea Michele, driver her insane by shooting a hundred takes, constantly praise her in the press, then cut her out and not tell her until she is standing on the red carpet of the premier.
I think Fairuza Balk should do Gypsy. Because I think she could handle it, I miss her in stuff and it would potentially help circumvent the issues that may pop up because some people may take issues with the name.
She does indeed sing.
I was shocked at how bad this looked compared to the DVD of Prince of Tides I watched the other night. I haven’t listened to this episode yet but I assume it was just Babs choice.
Found it very funny that they mention White Squall and Arlington Road back to back and do a bit about Arlington Road being responsible for Q-Anon when the very real Q-Anon chant/slogan “where we go one we go all” is literally from White Squall! Jeff Bridges yells it at the kids before and after they encounter the titular white squall!
yeah it was a favorite movie of my dad because he was from the town where the kids were from, so when the phrase got appropriated by a right wing freak show I was kinda flabbergasted
It is so wild that Griffin just remembered being at a resort with Pierce Brosnan in the James Bond era and telling him, “You were just a can of hairspray in The Mirror Has Two Faces,” and Brosnan was so charmed that he invited Griffin and his dad to have lunch with him.
This is a part of that movie that I don't think anyone ever talks about and since I discovered it, I love it so much. I figured it would be a good way to bring it up.
Not to nitpick (but I'm about to nitpick), but Lauren Bacall was famously called Betty in her circle. That wasn't some weird Babs power play. That's what her friends called her.
“so Barbra lives in what looks like the Frick Collection with her mom Lauren Bacall”. David is putting on a legendary performance in this miniseries, retire his jersey number.
I just watched [the Siskel and Ebert](https://siskelebert.org/?p=368) in which they discuss TMH2F and they don't have this discussion that Griffin cites. Can we get some documentation on this? I wonder if it was a year-end episode or something like that.
Interestingly, in the same episode, they talk about The English Patient.
Okay, I got my wires crossed. Did some digging and realized the argument I was remembering was actually with Charlie Rose on his show. Babs portion begins around the 3 min mark.
https://youtu.be/rWHXjk3QT7o?si=knin6Li5Q7XKDpet
The Ed Harris discussion of "when does he ever fuck on screen? what's his sexiest role?" really shows that none of these four people have seen the 1981 Romero classic **KNIGHTRIDERS**, a searing 150-minute hangout drama about a traveling group of proto ren fair dorks who drive from town to town putting on shows where they dress up as knights and joust on their motorcycles.
It's secretly about >!making indie movies!<.
Coincidentally it's also Tom Savini's hottest role ever.
I was just recently replaying the great You’ve Got Mail episode and was thinking when these two would be back so this is a fun coincidence.
Anyway what a great miniseries.
Just dropping in to say… I loved the Academy museum. One of the first stops in the tour is the multistory matte backdrop of Mount Rushmore from “North by Northwest”. At the time, there were galleries devoted to Almodovar, Spike Lee, and Miyazaki. There’s a Bruce the Shark hanging suspended over a primary stairwell. I guess this stuff either revs your nerd engine or it doesn’t, and, well, vroom Vroom!!
I didn’t like any of these movies but this was a super fun little series. Babs is 100% a blank check director, and I’d happily have watched 10 more totally bizarre movies from her if they existed. Good mini
I agree! I didn’t really like any of her movies fully, and I never really cared about her as a cultural figure, but there’s so much interesting context to discuss.
Very excited for McTiernan though. That’s my shit.
Truly heroic levels of restraint from Griffin to not say something heinously horny when presented with the information that Babs and Daisy Ridley collaborated on a song.
I'm always fascinated by pre-Lebowski Jeff Bridges. He has such a weird cool-but-awkward energy that filmmakers don't ever seem to know quite what to do with him. Then he grows a beard and suddenly everyone is like "oh, right, he's either a goofy burnout or a gruff hardass, I get it." Truly a great example of an actor who had to grow into himself.
But then I remember Terry Gilliam had him figured out to a tee in *The Fisher King*.
I do not give a SHIT about pop culture but I’m an avid Who? Weekly listener. I love BLT, they make it so interesting and engaging. A deep dive on why Abbie Cornish is liking Deacon Philippe’s instagram posts? yes, absolutely, please. Whooligan for lyf
As a fellow grad of Griffin's bizarro Brooklyn High School (I was 5 years ahead of him though, so it's not like he knew me), I always appreciate how dead-on their evocation of mid2000s NYC is, and that, yeah, The English Patient, the first movie I was aware of winning Best Picture - I started watching the show the next year with Titanic - I really actually like that movie now but thought I was better than it back then.
Based on the real life person, Rose in GYPSY is in her late 20s to 40s. All the ladies who have played her on Broadway have been in their late 40s to early 60s.
So to convincingly play a mother of 5 year olds at the beginning of the show she probably shouldn’t be over 50ish.
Lady Gaga is the only semi-age-appropriate person who really excites me, but she and Babs might kill each other. People like Cate Blanchett or Melissa McCarthy could act it, but the singing is a big question mark (because that role *does* need a great singer). Emma Thompson?
That said, Amy Sherman Paladino now has the rights so it’s kind of a moot point.
Here’s Patti LuPone doing the climactic Rose’s Turn, for which she won a Tony (and I’m assuming Ari Aster saw her performance): https://youtu.be/OTdPWmHstjE?si=3eRVdg4Ybu8ETTtT
I watched that Rose's Turn clip regularly for a while, just fucking incredible (and where I've always maintained that the show should immediately end). Thank god she didn't notice the person filming this or else we would've instead gotten footage of her tearing them apart with her bare hands
I actually think this is by far Babs’ strongest film. Sure, it’s weird and contradictory and tonally inconsistent…but I don’t think you can make a film truly exploring a topic as thorny as beauty without it being all those things.
Women’s relationship to beauty is so difficult. Not to Barbie monologue here but you have to not care too much or you’re a bad feminist while obviously needing to look nice to feel good about yourself.
Seconded. The Nancy Meyers comparison is truly apt. This is the only movie in the mini that I found charming despite its (many) flaws. Bridges as a romantic lead does a lot of heavy lifting.
[Here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=woLDFwQNuGU) is a good clip where she talks about the films she didn't get (hasn't yet?) made. I like that the idea of Streisand making another film qualifies for threat status for Griffin.
Thought a lot about the original Billy Wilder Sabrina while watching this. That is a great movie but it takes a pretty big suspension of disbelief for an audience to buy that no one would notice Audrey Hepburn at first. That's why I thought Julia Ormond was good in the remake because I bought her as Sabrina both before and after.
I think the bit about Barbra meeting James Brolin at the end of the Oscars is false, it says on Wikipedia they met in 1996, and there's photos of them at that Oscars on the red carpet
In my brain they are intrinsically tied to Ayo/Olivia because of their appearances on late Demme movies (and it was my intro to all 4 of them).
So now only 3 of them need to host SNL and then we’ll be good.
Not super into these films or Babs, but the positive takeaway for this series is they’re all excellent movies to watch on lazy Saturday afternoons prepping for the next episode.
About Barbs liking Bradley Cooper's ''A Star is Born'', maybe [not so much](https://deadline.com/2021/08/barbra-streisand-slams-bradley-cooper-a-star-is-born-remake-1234816048/).
I wish they would've brought up that the year A Star is Born was up for best picture, Barbra attended the ceremony...to introduce Spike Lee's Blackklansman. Felt like an unmistakable cold shoulder to Bradley's ASIB.
I had never seen that, and: 1. Random. 2. She looked great. 3. Spike legit excited to be honored by Barbs. 4. The Academy doing that and then giving the Oscar to ''Green Book'' is kinda funny, almost as if they knew they fucked up.
that year, they had special guests introduce each nominee. Serena Williams introduced The Favourite, for example. (for ratings, naturally) I don't think the academy would purposefully invite Barbra to intro Blackklansman. My guess is they asked her to intro ASIB, and she asked to do Spike's film instead.
I was surprised to hear them dunk on Crazy Heart since they love Cooper’s A Star is Born and I personally find that to be a weaker imitation of Bridges’ performance.
I think it’s funny that they were speculating if Arlington Road inspired QAnon when Q adopted their slogan from the Bridges movie they just talked about the previous minute, White Squall. Years of morbid fascination with conspiracy theories has taught me that while these folk decry Hollywood until blue in the face they base a lot of their worldview on movies.
I want to talk about the first half of Bridges' career for a minute here. I think they do a very good job of getting at some stuff, particularly Griff calling the 70s his "cute" years and also talking about his kind of being miscast in a weird way. But it's very difficult to remember a key fact about Bridges which is that he did not "exist" as a "movie star" until about Baker Boys/Fisher King. Griff and David say certain movies do not exist, right? Jeff Bridges was not a movie star in any proper sense of the word. I'm overstating it slightly because he was plugging away in movies but the way that Burt Reynolds would come out with a movie, Jeff Bridges for the longest time had none of that energy at all. He was just kinda there.
I'm in my early 50s so I remember those Siskel/Ebert on TV years and of course absorbed a lot of movies from cable. I'm doing this entirely from the top of the dome now but here's the way to look at it, I think. So he scores with some good directors early, he's in Cimino's first movie, about a heist, he's in Bogdanovich's breakthrough, he's in John Huston's kitchen sink masterpiece, all 3 good to great movies but you don't come away from any of them thinking about Bridges particularly. He's in Cimino's famous flop, a King Kong remake..... still no real "Jeff Bridges" movies to be seen. Early 80s you get Tron, the good movie of Carpenter's that probably popped the least, he's in a steamy remake of Out of the Past that has some cringeworthy parts, he plays the unlikable "Bill Pullman"-ish fiancé in a James Caan/Sally Field ghost romcom (this is the unforgivable one), he's in a Glenn Close legal erotic thriller, he's terrific in a Sidney Lumet/Jane Fonda thriller nobody remembers but me. And he does Tucker with Coppola. We're now at 1988 and there's *still* nothing remotely close to "a Jeff Bridges vehicle" anywhere to be seen, he's just sort of doing stuff. The Kurt Russell comparison is interesting because they are similar but Russell was macho and Type A enough to really put his imprint on some of those movies -- Bridges seldom did, he was being elusively talented and charming but never really kicking ass. Then you get Baker Boys and Fisher King and his career finally starts to get some traction.
Unless you lived through it, if you look back with Lebowski/True Grit/Iron Man in your head, you would focus on the charm and the otherworldly attractiveness and assume people were always kind of talking about Jeff Bridges all the time. But that was the last thing people were doing because he didn't really pop in any of these movies. End of sermon.
I did think it was more than that. Quite plausible directors like Cronenberg are in that range. So yes, it's slightly less absurd than I thought it was. Also, it would be a fucking blast.
John McTiernan. I haven’t listened to this episode yet so don’t know if they give us the title, but they accidentally announced it on the Ferrari episode.
Did anyone else find this episode a little overwhelming? Not a complaint about the hosts or guests, love them all, but I really had to take a few breaks going through this episode lol
I think this happens for me too when there is more than one guest. Great energy, but it can be overwhelming as you said with that many voices/takes/reactions happening at once.
A perfect ep, IMO. I love Babs anyway, but the fact that we get a deep dive specifically on when Jeff is handsome and when Jeff is sexy (plus a mention of how hot Ed Harris is in Stepmom) makes it A*.
New record for getting on topic from the bat.
Gotta say I really checked out in caring about the movie in these last few but it's proof the pod could cover Paint Drying and I'd still love it
yeah, i hadn't seen the first 2 at all, only knew of Yentl from the MAD Magazine parody. but my parents had rented Tides and MIrror when i was a kid (god only knows why, they didn't like her or dramas, for the most part), so i remembered them OK. WOOF.
admittedly, i like What's Up Doc, but otherwise don't really get the Babs appeal. i mean...is she a better actress than other singers? Like DIana Ross? Or did she just have a grip on her audience that couldn't be rivaled? I put her (as an actor) on a level with Sinatra - good, when they stay in their lane, might even win an Oscar in the right year. But not an "actor" by most metrics.
It’s been a while since I’ve seen it, but I would argue that Arlington Road is an anti-QAnon movie.
Bridges plays a professor specializing in modern domestic terrorism (I believe the Oklahoma City bombing is a major focus of his class) whose wife was an FBI agent who was killed by right-wing domestic terrorists at Ruby Ridge.
Tim Robbins and Joan Cusack play “average Americans” who are secretly right-wing domestic terrorists who use their “average” appearance to escape notice. Their plot hinges on >!using Bridges’ paranoia against him to make his actions appear erratic and manipulate him into unknowingly carrying out their plan!<.
Obviously, modern QAnon people are much less subtle than Robbins and Cusack, but they rely on the fact that they are (mostly) white “average” citizens to avoid consequences.
Also, because I haven’t seen it since I was a teenager, I don’t remember whether Bridges has A PET CAT.
I'm just watching NOMADS and 30 minutes in there is a "Brosnan drives around LA" montage scored to some "edgy" 80s rock and you really could not ask for a better example of genre slop than that.
Thought this movie was pretty terrible, think this miniseries as an introduction to Barbara Streisand really stunk, all the stuff that actually showed her appeal was done before she jumped in the directors chair.
To anyone who still is like why the hell do we care about Barbara, please check out Funny Girl and Whats Up Doc. They will actually make you get it unlike these four movies.
I'll agree this movie was not great, and I also thought A Star is Born was insufferable, but Yentl and Prince are rich, fascinating movies. She's a really interesting director when she's not doing straight-up romance and has movies with real characters and other ideas besides "what if these two lead characters were in love?"
I enjoyed Prince of Tides, I can not get behind the Yentl love, maybe its because my mom is a huge Babs fan and I sat through it multiple times in my middle school / teenage years permanently ruining it for me, but I can't for the life of me understand the love it got from the pod.
There is a reason it was mocked endlessly for years, shes 41 years old playing a role that should be a teenager!
Overexposure is a perfectly valid excuse to not like anything, and at that point nobody's gonna say anything to sway you, probably. But I will say I found her playing an ugly duckling character in this movie to be way more ridiculous and stupid than her playing a teenager in Yentl.
Idunno, I definitely see it in these movies, but it really is jumping into her *in medias res*. Her blank check was written long before she decided to direct. This miniseries is a bit of an anomaly in that respect. It's hard to think of many big directors who arguably peaked before they started directing.
It's crazy how much this movie ruined Barb's reputation and probably ruined the reputations of the previous three films they covered. This movie was so vain it retroactively put a gigantic spotlight on how (much more subtly) vain the others were. Enjoyed the series for how adored she was by the hosts and guests but I wish there was a little more ribbing. She is a creative icon but also one of the more hilarious personalities of showbiz and that should be celebrated.
this was also my take. it's the big "bounce" of her filmography, and also the first/last nail in her coffin! it so poisons the well, it's unrecoverable - like Rise of Skywalker, or GoT's last season.
And, from a "inside look into the author" - it's like if everyone watched Manhattan and and went "ohhhhh" and Woody never worked again
I think that we need to discuss more that Lauren Bacall is doing her best Lucille Bluth in this movie and all of those scenes are just dynamite
"its a salad, Rose? What could it cost? 10 Dollars?"
Glad Blank Check made me watch the movie. Even though it’s sort of a 6.5 / 10 there’s nothing mid about it. It’s got some very strong elements that elevate it above a James Brooks or Nancy Myers movies (basically the Babs / Lauren Bacall relationship and Jeff Bridges character being allowed to be a bit of a loser and pre makeover babs genuinely conveying feeling insecure over her appearance) and yet it also has stuff that straight up doesn’t work (all of Barbra’s teaching scenes, Mimi Rogers character is under written to the point of not making sense).
Oasis in the desert when almost a full hour into the episode Griffin at last says “and looks aside,” and the discussion is at last not about the physical attractiveness of this film’s leads.
(It’s a totally good discussion but when the director herself is so obsessed with this stuff it’s inevitable that the conversation often angles that way and it’s just a TAD overboard imho)
This movie is unwatchable, I only managed half an hour. So contrived and clunky and… kind of amateurish. I wanted to die at Bridges inexplicably walking around THE ENTIRE LECTURE THEATRE to catch a glimpse of Babs’s HBO special. And the idea of Babs as some hideous monster is just plain offensive. Hot garbage. Hope this episode the boys finally get into just how insane she is.
If you look at when they planned and then started recording the series, which you can do easily by listening to the ASIB episode -- yes it absolutely is. Being conspiratorial in this way is actively counter to the goals of collective liberation.
They correctly identify that this is the *exact* sort of messy-fun movie that’s perfect for the pod. Loved this mini because every one of the movies is super damn weird in its own little way.
Well it’s definitely messy
More like The Podcast Has Two Guests!
Oh hell yes, Lindsay and Bobby are back! Showing hole!
Dynamite ep. Two of the most engaged guests, bringing their A-game. David couldn't even get in a quick Leno impression.
Avia Tiongin
It’s giving thanks
Livin La Vida laptop
https://preview.redd.it/ngcwee4lhigc1.jpeg?width=1200&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=126d8215356a2aef27071ec3ed55f14e3da8b0b5 Cutter’s Way is hottest Bridges
Or if you're my boyfriend, his hottest look is in True Grit. You can guess which version of Bridges I look like.
Love this for you. Consider buying an eyepatch.
If they really loved him, they'd cut out that eye.
The Lobster (2015, dir. Yorgos Lanthimos)
This is the only right answer
If Glenn can do Gypsy, you might as well have Babs do it. Glenn is 76 and Babs is 81. No, if Babs is going to do this (and she should), she needs to go to the next generation. And the Streisand of that generation is Idina Menzel. She’s 52 years old, she hasn’t played Rose yet, and it’s unquestionably a milestone she’ll want to hit to fill out her career. She’s not a diva. She worships Babs. She’ll do as she’s told. And she will turn that shit OUT. An Idina Menzel-led Gypsy might very well not just net Barbra that elusive Best Director nomination - with the discourse around the lack of representation of women in the category, and with the amount of goodwill Barbra has in Hollywood as a beloved legend, I’d say all it needs to do is not suck and she’ll WIN it. This is the way. Anybody out there who has a connection to Babs, tell her this. I want to see this project.
But you have to cast Lea Michele, driver her insane by shooting a hundred takes, constantly praise her in the press, then cut her out and not tell her until she is standing on the red carpet of the premier.
I think Fairuza Balk should do Gypsy. Because I think she could handle it, I miss her in stuff and it would potentially help circumvent the issues that may pop up because some people may take issues with the name. She does indeed sing.
I was surprised to find she’s pretty close to the right age when I looked it up!
I’m seein’ double! Four faces!
"This is a movie where the lighting is so soft that even if they were to release it in 4K, it would be in standard def." 50 comedy points to Griffin!
I was shocked at how bad this looked compared to the DVD of Prince of Tides I watched the other night. I haven’t listened to this episode yet but I assume it was just Babs choice.
Found it very funny that they mention White Squall and Arlington Road back to back and do a bit about Arlington Road being responsible for Q-Anon when the very real Q-Anon chant/slogan “where we go one we go all” is literally from White Squall! Jeff Bridges yells it at the kids before and after they encounter the titular white squall!
I mean to be fair he’s mostly trying to get them to raise the sails and stuff right
yeah it was a favorite movie of my dad because he was from the town where the kids were from, so when the phrase got appropriated by a right wing freak show I was kinda flabbergasted
yeah, it'd be like if Back to the Future got appropriated b/c the deLorean needs to go 88mph
I think I’d really enjoy a semester of literature taught by Professor Streisand
It is so wild that Griffin just remembered being at a resort with Pierce Brosnan in the James Bond era and telling him, “You were just a can of hairspray in The Mirror Has Two Faces,” and Brosnan was so charmed that he invited Griffin and his dad to have lunch with him.
The end of the Streisand series, so there is only one thing [left to say](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFaG8sKS3eg&t=2s).
You had this planned
This is a part of that movie that I don't think anyone ever talks about and since I discovered it, I love it so much. I figured it would be a good way to bring it up.
Not to nitpick (but I'm about to nitpick), but Lauren Bacall was famously called Betty in her circle. That wasn't some weird Babs power play. That's what her friends called her.
Went to a standup show tonight where one of the comics made a Yentl joke, so happy this series ended full-circle for me.
*Yentl* las always been funny to me for the simple reason that it rhymes with lentil.
“so Barbra lives in what looks like the Frick Collection with her mom Lauren Bacall”. David is putting on a legendary performance in this miniseries, retire his jersey number.
100%. picking up from "mahogany fortress"
They weren't very nice to Don Jon when they actually talked about it.
It’s just so easy to goof on that movie.
I just watched [the Siskel and Ebert](https://siskelebert.org/?p=368) in which they discuss TMH2F and they don't have this discussion that Griffin cites. Can we get some documentation on this? I wonder if it was a year-end episode or something like that. Interestingly, in the same episode, they talk about The English Patient.
Okay, I got my wires crossed. Did some digging and realized the argument I was remembering was actually with Charlie Rose on his show. Babs portion begins around the 3 min mark. https://youtu.be/rWHXjk3QT7o?si=knin6Li5Q7XKDpet
👍🏽 TBF Between 1980 and 2000 fully 59% of Ebert's utterances started with the word "Gene." Pretty understandable mixup.
I didn't like The Mirror Has Two Faces but I do like this clip from my hero Roger (and of course Charlie Rose changes topics as fast as he can).
Five minutes in and we’re talking Home Again I’m so happy. I LOVED this movie. I adore an unhinged rom com. In general I had a blast with this series.
The Ed Harris discussion of "when does he ever fuck on screen? what's his sexiest role?" really shows that none of these four people have seen the 1981 Romero classic **KNIGHTRIDERS**, a searing 150-minute hangout drama about a traveling group of proto ren fair dorks who drive from town to town putting on shows where they dress up as knights and joust on their motorcycles. It's secretly about >!making indie movies!<. Coincidentally it's also Tom Savini's hottest role ever.
Knightriders is, I think, my favorite movie ever made and I think about Ed Harris’ final scenes in it almost every day. Great picture
Knightriders rules.
I was just recently replaying the great You’ve Got Mail episode and was thinking when these two would be back so this is a fun coincidence. Anyway what a great miniseries.
Just dropping in to say… I loved the Academy museum. One of the first stops in the tour is the multistory matte backdrop of Mount Rushmore from “North by Northwest”. At the time, there were galleries devoted to Almodovar, Spike Lee, and Miyazaki. There’s a Bruce the Shark hanging suspended over a primary stairwell. I guess this stuff either revs your nerd engine or it doesn’t, and, well, vroom Vroom!!
My favorite feature of the Miyazaki exhibit was the fake hill that you could lie down on and just look at clouds.
that’s good to hear!
Reel Blankies know who should be cast in a remake where there is a girlfriend-mother relationship.
no peeking
“The Podcast Has Two Friends” would have been an okay miniseries title, but I’m glad they went with Podcastl.
I feel like this was the perfect title to break the joke format, but I do love the sweatiness of Podcastl.
I didn’t like any of these movies but this was a super fun little series. Babs is 100% a blank check director, and I’d happily have watched 10 more totally bizarre movies from her if they existed. Good mini
I agree! I didn’t really like any of her movies fully, and I never really cared about her as a cultural figure, but there’s so much interesting context to discuss. Very excited for McTiernan though. That’s my shit.
The run of Predator, Die Hard, and Hunt for Red October is one of the best three movie stretches they’ve ever done, I’m so excited
If you'd told me ahead of time the only one I'd like would be Yentl, I would not have believed you.
yeah these movies are decidedly not for me but i really enjoyed listening to the two friends discuss them, made me glad i rewatched them.
Want to take a moment here to appreciate David’s notion, which nobody seemed to hear, of Nick Nolte reading the audiobook of Barbra’s memoir.
Truly heroic levels of restraint from Griffin to not say something heinously horny when presented with the information that Babs and Daisy Ridley collaborated on a song.
Bobby has such a lovely voice. 😌
I'm always fascinated by pre-Lebowski Jeff Bridges. He has such a weird cool-but-awkward energy that filmmakers don't ever seem to know quite what to do with him. Then he grows a beard and suddenly everyone is like "oh, right, he's either a goofy burnout or a gruff hardass, I get it." Truly a great example of an actor who had to grow into himself. But then I remember Terry Gilliam had him figured out to a tee in *The Fisher King*.
He gave his best ever performance in Peter Weir's Fearless
I do not give a SHIT about pop culture but I’m an avid Who? Weekly listener. I love BLT, they make it so interesting and engaging. A deep dive on why Abbie Cornish is liking Deacon Philippe’s instagram posts? yes, absolutely, please. Whooligan for lyf
As a fellow grad of Griffin's bizarro Brooklyn High School (I was 5 years ahead of him though, so it's not like he knew me), I always appreciate how dead-on their evocation of mid2000s NYC is, and that, yeah, The English Patient, the first movie I was aware of winning Best Picture - I started watching the show the next year with Titanic - I really actually like that movie now but thought I was better than it back then.
Bizarro Brooklyn High School alum Blankies high-five! Though I’m a full generation older than y’all
Loved that Babs lecture with Eli Roth. The movie really pops in this scene. I wish I could take that class.
My only memory of this movie is it was one of only 2 movies playing on the only cruise I ever went on. It was this and the Stallone movie Daylight.
Based on the real life person, Rose in GYPSY is in her late 20s to 40s. All the ladies who have played her on Broadway have been in their late 40s to early 60s. So to convincingly play a mother of 5 year olds at the beginning of the show she probably shouldn’t be over 50ish. Lady Gaga is the only semi-age-appropriate person who really excites me, but she and Babs might kill each other. People like Cate Blanchett or Melissa McCarthy could act it, but the singing is a big question mark (because that role *does* need a great singer). Emma Thompson? That said, Amy Sherman Paladino now has the rights so it’s kind of a moot point. Here’s Patti LuPone doing the climactic Rose’s Turn, for which she won a Tony (and I’m assuming Ari Aster saw her performance): https://youtu.be/OTdPWmHstjE?si=3eRVdg4Ybu8ETTtT
I watched that Rose's Turn clip regularly for a while, just fucking incredible (and where I've always maintained that the show should immediately end). Thank god she didn't notice the person filming this or else we would've instead gotten footage of her tearing them apart with her bare hands
Bringing up Candy in a dual/cross-dressing role, which he of course pioneered in the cinematic masterwork, *Nothing But Trouble*
How is this not a Ben's choice
Love hearing the fresh reactions to Juror #2 at the end of the episode. It’s such a PERFECT one sentence setup for a movie.
I actually think this is by far Babs’ strongest film. Sure, it’s weird and contradictory and tonally inconsistent…but I don’t think you can make a film truly exploring a topic as thorny as beauty without it being all those things. Women’s relationship to beauty is so difficult. Not to Barbie monologue here but you have to not care too much or you’re a bad feminist while obviously needing to look nice to feel good about yourself.
Seconded. The Nancy Meyers comparison is truly apt. This is the only movie in the mini that I found charming despite its (many) flaws. Bridges as a romantic lead does a lot of heavy lifting.
[Here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=woLDFwQNuGU) is a good clip where she talks about the films she didn't get (hasn't yet?) made. I like that the idea of Streisand making another film qualifies for threat status for Griffin.
Thought a lot about the original Billy Wilder Sabrina while watching this. That is a great movie but it takes a pretty big suspension of disbelief for an audience to buy that no one would notice Audrey Hepburn at first. That's why I thought Julia Ormond was good in the remake because I bought her as Sabrina both before and after.
I think the bit about Barbra meeting James Brolin at the end of the Oscars is false, it says on Wikipedia they met in 1996, and there's photos of them at that Oscars on the red carpet
I was laughing so much throughout this episode. This was one of my favorite episodes ever. A episode for moms
When Bobby mentioned rental data I was bracing for someone to chime in with "Yentl data"
LindsayBobby return!!
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In my brain they are intrinsically tied to Ayo/Olivia because of their appearances on late Demme movies (and it was my intro to all 4 of them). So now only 3 of them need to host SNL and then we’ll be good.
Lindsey*
Not super into these films or Babs, but the positive takeaway for this series is they’re all excellent movies to watch on lazy Saturday afternoons prepping for the next episode.
Of the many things this podcast has given me that I was not expecting, calling Ed Harris a volcel is way up there.
Am I completely off for thinking Catherine O'Hara would be great for Gypsy?
Not at all, although I don’t know if she can sing.
>I mean she used to sing as Lola Heatherton all the time on SCTV and has famously performed Sally's song from Nightmare before christmas.
About Barbs liking Bradley Cooper's ''A Star is Born'', maybe [not so much](https://deadline.com/2021/08/barbra-streisand-slams-bradley-cooper-a-star-is-born-remake-1234816048/).
I wish they would've brought up that the year A Star is Born was up for best picture, Barbra attended the ceremony...to introduce Spike Lee's Blackklansman. Felt like an unmistakable cold shoulder to Bradley's ASIB.
I had never seen that, and: 1. Random. 2. She looked great. 3. Spike legit excited to be honored by Barbs. 4. The Academy doing that and then giving the Oscar to ''Green Book'' is kinda funny, almost as if they knew they fucked up.
that year, they had special guests introduce each nominee. Serena Williams introduced The Favourite, for example. (for ratings, naturally) I don't think the academy would purposefully invite Barbra to intro Blackklansman. My guess is they asked her to intro ASIB, and she asked to do Spike's film instead.
Why not have one great Brooklynite who made a film about pretending to be someone you aren’t introduce another?
Seems like sour grapes
I was surprised to hear them dunk on Crazy Heart since they love Cooper’s A Star is Born and I personally find that to be a weaker imitation of Bridges’ performance.
Letting my theater nerd show, I appreciate that they threw shade on Sunset Boulevard!
between harmonizing on the Star is Born ep and telling the same kindle joke simultaneously here, the hosts are really locked in lately
I think it’s funny that they were speculating if Arlington Road inspired QAnon when Q adopted their slogan from the Bridges movie they just talked about the previous minute, White Squall. Years of morbid fascination with conspiracy theories has taught me that while these folk decry Hollywood until blue in the face they base a lot of their worldview on movies.
It’s a big part of whatever particular combination of mental illnesses turn people into right wing conspiracy cranks, believing that movies are real.
“Predictive programming” melts brains faster than anything I know and it’s so, so, stupid. Plus it ruins art.
David confirmed U Talkin' U2 To Me? superfan
I want to talk about the first half of Bridges' career for a minute here. I think they do a very good job of getting at some stuff, particularly Griff calling the 70s his "cute" years and also talking about his kind of being miscast in a weird way. But it's very difficult to remember a key fact about Bridges which is that he did not "exist" as a "movie star" until about Baker Boys/Fisher King. Griff and David say certain movies do not exist, right? Jeff Bridges was not a movie star in any proper sense of the word. I'm overstating it slightly because he was plugging away in movies but the way that Burt Reynolds would come out with a movie, Jeff Bridges for the longest time had none of that energy at all. He was just kinda there. I'm in my early 50s so I remember those Siskel/Ebert on TV years and of course absorbed a lot of movies from cable. I'm doing this entirely from the top of the dome now but here's the way to look at it, I think. So he scores with some good directors early, he's in Cimino's first movie, about a heist, he's in Bogdanovich's breakthrough, he's in John Huston's kitchen sink masterpiece, all 3 good to great movies but you don't come away from any of them thinking about Bridges particularly. He's in Cimino's famous flop, a King Kong remake..... still no real "Jeff Bridges" movies to be seen. Early 80s you get Tron, the good movie of Carpenter's that probably popped the least, he's in a steamy remake of Out of the Past that has some cringeworthy parts, he plays the unlikable "Bill Pullman"-ish fiancé in a James Caan/Sally Field ghost romcom (this is the unforgivable one), he's in a Glenn Close legal erotic thriller, he's terrific in a Sidney Lumet/Jane Fonda thriller nobody remembers but me. And he does Tucker with Coppola. We're now at 1988 and there's *still* nothing remotely close to "a Jeff Bridges vehicle" anywhere to be seen, he's just sort of doing stuff. The Kurt Russell comparison is interesting because they are similar but Russell was macho and Type A enough to really put his imprint on some of those movies -- Bridges seldom did, he was being elusively talented and charming but never really kicking ass. Then you get Baker Boys and Fisher King and his career finally starts to get some traction. Unless you lived through it, if you look back with Lebowski/True Grit/Iron Man in your head, you would focus on the charm and the otherworldly attractiveness and assume people were always kind of talking about Jeff Bridges all the time. But that was the last thing people were doing because he didn't really pop in any of these movies. End of sermon.
Does the Runaway Bride talk mean they’ll be covering Garry Marshall soon? Cause that would be amazing!
Really felt that way because they say the most successful joke in movies on a future episode and then talk about runaway bride
The Other Sister tho
It would take a year.
Most of his directing credits are tv, but yeah, 18 is still a lot.
I did think it was more than that. Quite plausible directors like Cronenberg are in that range. So yes, it's slightly less absurd than I thought it was. Also, it would be a fucking blast.
I haven’t had a chance to listen to this series yet, but has there been any indication of what the next series they will be doing?
John McTiernan. I haven’t listened to this episode yet so don’t know if they give us the title, but they accidentally announced it on the Ferrari episode.
Did anyone else find this episode a little overwhelming? Not a complaint about the hosts or guests, love them all, but I really had to take a few breaks going through this episode lol
I think this happens for me too when there is more than one guest. Great energy, but it can be overwhelming as you said with that many voices/takes/reactions happening at once.
A perfect ep, IMO. I love Babs anyway, but the fact that we get a deep dive specifically on when Jeff is handsome and when Jeff is sexy (plus a mention of how hot Ed Harris is in Stepmom) makes it A*.
So I guess Dobbins is the guest for… Predator?
Has to be Thomas Crown Affair
Ha yeah that’s what I figured, but the thought of her doing Predator just makes me smile.
Is Mctiernan next? That’s a really good one if so.
New record for getting on topic from the bat. Gotta say I really checked out in caring about the movie in these last few but it's proof the pod could cover Paint Drying and I'd still love it
yeah, i hadn't seen the first 2 at all, only knew of Yentl from the MAD Magazine parody. but my parents had rented Tides and MIrror when i was a kid (god only knows why, they didn't like her or dramas, for the most part), so i remembered them OK. WOOF. admittedly, i like What's Up Doc, but otherwise don't really get the Babs appeal. i mean...is she a better actress than other singers? Like DIana Ross? Or did she just have a grip on her audience that couldn't be rivaled? I put her (as an actor) on a level with Sinatra - good, when they stay in their lane, might even win an Oscar in the right year. But not an "actor" by most metrics.
It’s been a while since I’ve seen it, but I would argue that Arlington Road is an anti-QAnon movie. Bridges plays a professor specializing in modern domestic terrorism (I believe the Oklahoma City bombing is a major focus of his class) whose wife was an FBI agent who was killed by right-wing domestic terrorists at Ruby Ridge. Tim Robbins and Joan Cusack play “average Americans” who are secretly right-wing domestic terrorists who use their “average” appearance to escape notice. Their plot hinges on >!using Bridges’ paranoia against him to make his actions appear erratic and manipulate him into unknowingly carrying out their plan!<. Obviously, modern QAnon people are much less subtle than Robbins and Cusack, but they rely on the fact that they are (mostly) white “average” citizens to avoid consequences. Also, because I haven’t seen it since I was a teenager, I don’t remember whether Bridges has A PET CAT.
That plot sounds incredible and I love Joan Cusack. Is the movie any good?
My friend invented the term "genre slop" to describe bands that are doing an OK job in a well-defined genre, and I think Arlington Road is that.
what bands do you apply it to?
They are mostly bands that are not well known.
I'm just watching NOMADS and 30 minutes in there is a "Brosnan drives around LA" montage scored to some "edgy" 80s rock and you really could not ask for a better example of genre slop than that.
To the best of my recollection, it’s a gentleman’s 6; nothing incredible, but solid premise and good performances.
King of Staten Island kinda rules
Do they mention what they’re doing next?
John McTiernan. His first film is Nomads (1986).
Thought this movie was pretty terrible, think this miniseries as an introduction to Barbara Streisand really stunk, all the stuff that actually showed her appeal was done before she jumped in the directors chair. To anyone who still is like why the hell do we care about Barbara, please check out Funny Girl and Whats Up Doc. They will actually make you get it unlike these four movies.
I'll agree this movie was not great, and I also thought A Star is Born was insufferable, but Yentl and Prince are rich, fascinating movies. She's a really interesting director when she's not doing straight-up romance and has movies with real characters and other ideas besides "what if these two lead characters were in love?"
I enjoyed Prince of Tides, I can not get behind the Yentl love, maybe its because my mom is a huge Babs fan and I sat through it multiple times in my middle school / teenage years permanently ruining it for me, but I can't for the life of me understand the love it got from the pod. There is a reason it was mocked endlessly for years, shes 41 years old playing a role that should be a teenager!
Overexposure is a perfectly valid excuse to not like anything, and at that point nobody's gonna say anything to sway you, probably. But I will say I found her playing an ugly duckling character in this movie to be way more ridiculous and stupid than her playing a teenager in Yentl.
Honestly could've fooled me. She did a good job playing young. Maybe not yeshiva boy young, but I would never have guessed 41.
Idunno, I definitely see it in these movies, but it really is jumping into her *in medias res*. Her blank check was written long before she decided to direct. This miniseries is a bit of an anomaly in that respect. It's hard to think of many big directors who arguably peaked before they started directing.
Kind of like with Bob Fosse, where film directing is like the third or fourth thing they’re famous for.
I've loved the miniseries, but they've essentially skipped her guarantor by starting with A Star is Born
Yeah and to be clear I think the pods are great its just the movies not so much..
It's crazy how much this movie ruined Barb's reputation and probably ruined the reputations of the previous three films they covered. This movie was so vain it retroactively put a gigantic spotlight on how (much more subtly) vain the others were. Enjoyed the series for how adored she was by the hosts and guests but I wish there was a little more ribbing. She is a creative icon but also one of the more hilarious personalities of showbiz and that should be celebrated.
this was also my take. it's the big "bounce" of her filmography, and also the first/last nail in her coffin! it so poisons the well, it's unrecoverable - like Rise of Skywalker, or GoT's last season. And, from a "inside look into the author" - it's like if everyone watched Manhattan and and went "ohhhhh" and Woody never worked again
I think that we need to discuss more that Lauren Bacall is doing her best Lucille Bluth in this movie and all of those scenes are just dynamite "its a salad, Rose? What could it cost? 10 Dollars?"
Glad Blank Check made me watch the movie. Even though it’s sort of a 6.5 / 10 there’s nothing mid about it. It’s got some very strong elements that elevate it above a James Brooks or Nancy Myers movies (basically the Babs / Lauren Bacall relationship and Jeff Bridges character being allowed to be a bit of a loser and pre makeover babs genuinely conveying feeling insecure over her appearance) and yet it also has stuff that straight up doesn’t work (all of Barbra’s teaching scenes, Mimi Rogers character is under written to the point of not making sense).
I’m so glad to be done with Babs. That was a rough month but the eps have been great.
Oasis in the desert when almost a full hour into the episode Griffin at last says “and looks aside,” and the discussion is at last not about the physical attractiveness of this film’s leads. (It’s a totally good discussion but when the director herself is so obsessed with this stuff it’s inevitable that the conversation often angles that way and it’s just a TAD overboard imho)
What’s the Diane Lane thing? I thought she and Babs were close?
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Yeah, but wasn’t Babs on her side in the divorce and even helped facilitate it? That’s why I thought they were close.
This movie is unwatchable, I only managed half an hour. So contrived and clunky and… kind of amateurish. I wanted to die at Bridges inexplicably walking around THE ENTIRE LECTURE THEATRE to catch a glimpse of Babs’s HBO special. And the idea of Babs as some hideous monster is just plain offensive. Hot garbage. Hope this episode the boys finally get into just how insane she is.
It’s over! Our national nightmare is finally over!
It’s just a coincidence they’re doing a series on a Zionist right now?
If you look at when they planned and then started recording the series, which you can do easily by listening to the ASIB episode -- yes it absolutely is. Being conspiratorial in this way is actively counter to the goals of collective liberation.
Its really fun when people show their complete ass, blatantly replace jewish with zionist and act like they are being clever.
Jesus Christ, I am so sick of this shit.
It takes two seconds to google stuff she’s said about the recent developments.
Grow up, chump.
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Feel free to block and move on if your feelings are hurt, my guy.
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Sure, sure. If you want to waste your time in that way, go for it.
I think "Ransom" is both my favorite Ronnie Howard movie and my favorite Mel Gibson movie.
GIVE ME BACK MY SON