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What year is it? Well, it’s 2024 - but not for long. It’s our last episode of the year! Director of this year’s I SAW THE TV GLOW Jane Schoenbrun joins us to talk about the conclusion of Twin Peaks: The Return, and, by default, the conclusion of our David Lynch series. In a show that intentionally defies the very concept of resolution, how do we put a bow on things? Well, we try! Shout out to Freddie and his glove. Oh, and Merry Christmas. Trauma is originary and unending.
Stream I Saw The TV Glow on MAX
Check out The Search for the Zone site
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Dougie gets it on (or, more accurately, Naomi Watts gets HER Dougie on), guest Fran Hoepfner pitches her artisanal slime for adults (don’t steal the idea), and we relitigate LOST for the hundredth time in this penultimate episode of our Twin Peaks: The Return coverage. Can adults get mono? Why is it so hard for Lucy and Andy to buy a chair? THAT is the Audrey Horne plot? Will someone please have sympathy for David Sims, who isn’t going gray yet and desperately wants a cool subway-themed videogame?
Listen to Slow Xmas 4 now on Bandcamp!
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This is the podcast. These are the (two) friends. Drink full, and descend. The famous “Atomic Bomb” episode of The Return stands as one of David Lynch’s most defining works, an “origin story” for Twin Peaks, and one of the most experimental hours ever to air on narrative television. In a rare moment of “double dipping,” Twin Peaks S2 guest Connor Ratliff joins us again to discuss this landmark episode, offering a David Lynch impression that is superior to Griffin’s, which you probably thought could not be topped. We’re offering theories and explanations this episode, but we’re also talking about when Charlie died on Two and a Half Men and how to dodge LIRR fares because, of course. Gotta light?
Listen to TinyDinos
Check out Connor’s one-person show “The Acting Class”
The George Lucas Talk Show, Live and LIVESTREAMED! In NY
The George Lucas Talk Show at SF Sketchfest
Try and find Connor’s cuts of Twin Peaks: The Return and Sully (Secret Videos) on the Blank Check Website, Sully knows the password.
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It is happening again - we’re covering TV! Or is it an 18-part movie? Much to ponder. We’re heading back to the Pacific Northwest (and Vegas…and New York…and the Red Room…and outer space?) in our first of four episodes covering Showtime’s 2017 series “Twin Peaks: The Return.” So far, we’ve got tulpas, Caleb Laundry Bag, three distinct versions of Dale Cooper, Dr. Jacobi’s gold shovels, Michael Cera doing a bad Marlon Brando impression, creamed corn barf, Matthew Lillard, a cryptic final message from the Log Lady, and a whole slew of David Lynch’s favorite contemporary indie bands. Suffice it to say - we’re hooked!
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Only on Blank Check would an episode about David Lynch’s deeply destabilizing INLAND EMPIRE turn into a heartfelt celebration of creativity and the human experience. David Rees joins us and brings receipts - including literal receipts for every movie ticket he purchased in 2007 and his high school newspaper review of Twin Peaks (a pan) - as we gush about David Lynch’s singular position in American culture. Plus, we delve into tons of Laura Dern context, discuss dreams where you inhabit a different person, and spend an inordinate amount of time talking about the Snuffy Smith comic strip.
Listen to Election Profit Makers
Watch DickTown on Hulu
Watch Going Deep with David Rees on YouTube
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Is it a dream? Is it about a dream? Is it a TV pilot? Is it the greatest film of the 21st century? In any case, Leslye Headland returns to the podcast to talk about David Lynch’s endlessly fascinating 2001 masterpiece MULHOLLAND DR. We may not have all the answers, but we do have a lot of thoughts about Hollywood, about Billy Ray Cyrus, about actors being shoved down audiences’ throats, about diners, about Patrick Fischler’s eyebrows, about the diner owned by Patrick Fischler’s dad, about Naomi Watts’ friendship with Nicole Kidman, about Corky Romano…the list goes on.
If you're in NYC starting November 20th, 2024, check out Leslye's new play Cult of Love
Get Tickets Now
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We apologize in advance if you had a profound emotional experience with the new Robert Zemeckis joint - HERE felt like more of a “Here?? What???? Why?” to us. Dinosaurs, Benjamin Franklin’s cuck son, a man dying from laughter, a horny couple who invent the LA-Z Boy, airplane man (who does NOT die from airplane), and the double whammy of the Black Lives Matter movement and Covid all come together to create a strange boomer diorama that misses much of the quotidian beauty of Richard McGuire’s graphic novel. Will Bobby Z. ever make a good movie again? Griffin’s not feeling bullish on the prospects.
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Walt Disney Pictures Presents A Film By David Lynch. And what a beautiful, expectation-defying, G-rated, cold-glass-of-beer film it is. Dana Stevens joins us to talk about 1999’s The Straight Story, a film that showcases Lynch’s fascination with Americana and his deep empathy for characters on the margins. Join us on a journey through the Midwest (Griffin can’t drive, but he’s a great passenger), where we talk about braunschweiger, cheese castles, bundles of sticks, Chicago theater actors without photos on their IMDB pages, and the fascinating career of actor Richard Farnsworth. Dude was in Gone With the Wind!
Read Dana’s writing at Slate
Listen to the Slate Culture Gabfest
Go back and listen Flashback
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1997’s Lost Highway - is it (as David Sims wrote on Letterboxd), “a movie about headache”? Is it David Lynch’s most visually beautiful film? Is it a dry run for Mulholland Dr? A radical reimagining of Bill Pullman’s screen presence? A psychogenic fugue? Lynch’s commentary on the OJ Simpson trial? An excuse for David Sims to go off on the concept of “free jazz”?? Folks - we are pleased to tell you that it is all of the above and more. The great David Lowery joins us to talk about Lynch’s deeply haunted neo-noir nightmare - a film that dares to ask the question, “What if you woke up one morning as Balthazar Getty?”
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What if they made a sequel to the Joker movie that was pretty much the finale of Seinfeld but it’s also a half-assed jukebox musical, and EVERYONE hated it? What if Michael Keaton had a 35-year-old pregnant daughter, but he also had precocious 9-year-old twins and a Los Angeles art gallery on the verge of financial collapse? Both scenarios lay the groundwork for two of the most “they don’t make ‘em like this” films of the year, and BOTH conclude with the same Daniel Johnston song. You can’t make this stuff up, folks! Join the crew for a fever dream of an episode that features an all-timer of a Madame Web tangent, Griffin’s grand theory of Todd Phillips self-sabotage, and some earnest reflections on the past 499 episodes that have led us to this monumental achievement.
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One of the more harrowing films we’ve covered on the podcast (and the second film we’ve covered in 2024 with a memorable “gobble gobble” line), 1992’s TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME was not the quirky, enjoyable plotline wrap-up fans of Twin Peaks wanted. David Lynch instead challenged the audience to identify with Laura Palmer’s humanity and pain, making her a real person - not just a girl wrapped in plastic. THE FIRST OMEN director Arkasha Stevenson joins us to talk about how this film (and WILD AT HEART) inspired her to become a filmmaker, the uncanny experience of watching it without any prior knowledge of the Twin Peaks series, and the directorial choices Lynch makes that create the film’s deeply unsettling atmosphere.
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If we told you this was the first time we’d covered a Nicolas Cage movie on the podcast - would you believe us? Well, baby - it’s true. And what a movie it is! The luminous Tatiana Maslany returns to talk about David Lynch’s smokin’ hot outlaw romance WILD AT HEART - a film that won the Palme d’Or and took Lynch away from the set of Twin Peaks. Get ready for lots of Cage career discussion (a favorite topic of Griffin Newman), a bunch of actor speak, and multiple “hey, did you know David Lynch was a fan of the Wizard of Oz?” asides.
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For a brief shining moment, Middle America went crazy for the surreal soap opera stylings of David Lynch and Mark Frost. We’re talking ABC, primetime, airing against “Cheers”-level mainstream. And then it all came crashing down. Listen as we take our first step into the intoxicating world of Twin Peaks - one of the most influential television series of all time and the project that would come to define Lynch for the rest of his career. Eva Anderson - who literally grew up in the town Twin Peaks was filmed in and can tell you for a fact that the diner cherry pie sucks - joins us to talk about how such a pop cultural oddity came to be, and why it has such staying power. Note - this episode covers Season 1 of Twin Peaks, but alludes to certain plotlines in Season 2 without directly spoiling them.
Blank Check Theme (Cherry Pie Remix) composed by Alex Mitchell, vocals by "The ghost of Julee Cruise" aka Marie Bardi.
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Lend us your (severed) ears! This week, we’re jumping back into our Lynch series with a trip to Lumberton, USA, as our beloved Jamie Loftus joins us to chat about 1986’s BLUE VELVET. We’re going deep on the star persona of Kyle MacLachlan, David Sims’ obsession with Dean Stockwell, and David Lynch’s unironic obsession with Americana. How does a movie that deals with such deeply disturbing themes end up being so watchable? That’s that Lynchian magic, baby!
Be sure to listen to Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
Buy Jamie’s Book: Raw Dog: The Naked Truth About Hot Dogs
Listen to The Bechdel Cast
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We’re taking a break from David Lynch to answer one of the year’s biggest questions - Is Burton Back, Baby? Ummmm…kind of! Grab your “Handbook for the Recently Deceased” commemorative popcorn tin and join us as we attempt to untangle the very messy BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE. Which sequences wowed us with their sparkling ingenuity? Which plotlines would we excise from the script? What song would you possess people to lipsync to and why is it Bloodhound Gang’s “The Bad Touch”? And - the most important question of all - why has David Sims not been publishing movie reviews lately, why wasn’t he at TIFF, and what the hell is going on at the Sims Swamp?
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The sleeper must awaken. The filmography must contain a flop. We’ve arrived at the Planet Arrakis aka the Desert Planet aka DUNE (1984) - David Lynch’s attempt at wrangling Frank Herbert’s space epic into a single studio blockbuster. Did it work? Not really. Do we have fun talking about it? Hell yeah, we do! John Hodgman joins us to talk about all things “spice” - including the infamous glossary of Dune terms handed out in theaters, and a wild anecdote about Peter Berg reading Dune on an airplane. We talk about Lynch’s decision to turn down directing Return of the Jedi, the differences between Lynch’s take on Dune and Denis Villeneuve’s more critically successful version, and David finally gets the chance to let his Fremen freak flag fly by going FULL NERD.
Buy John’s Books
Watch Dicktown on FX/Hulu
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See Judge John Hodgman on Tour
Subscribe to John’s Substack
Get your Congratulations merch
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We’re getting in touch with our emotions this week, as Alex Ross Perry joins us to talk about Lynch’s deeply-felt, sensitively-rendered 1980 classic THE ELEPHANT MAN. Is this the most “normal” movie in Lynch’s filmography? What does “normal” mean, anyway? As with all Alex episodes, questions are posed and hotly debated, such as: What filmmakers, aside from David Lynch, made their most important work in the later part of their careers? What is the Lynch film that young people vibe with most strongly now? Did Michael Jackson actually attempt to purchase the Elephant Man’s bones? When will the Cinematrix puzzle get rid of the godforsaken “Rotten Tomatoes score” category? What does David Sims have against the famous David Foster Wallace profile of David Lynch?
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In heaven (and in podcasting), everything is fine. Welcome to TWIN PODS: FIRE CAST WITH ME, a series on the films of David Lynch - former Eagle Scout and totally normal human man. With his 1977 debut feature ERASERHEAD, Lynch burst on to the scene somewhat fully formed as an artist, confused by normal social interactions and motivated by a seething hatred of Philadelphia. The last part of that sentence is only partially a joke. Join us as we discuss where Eraserhead fits in the pantheon of first features we’ve covered on Blank Check, where this film ranks in the “Dang Ass Freak” canon, whether we first watched this movie in a basement or on a “night porch,” the stress of parenthood, the origin story of McDonald’s mascot Grimace, and much more. Oh, and obviously - the Lady in the Radiator makes an appearance. You are not hallucinating, she is really there.
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Welp, our Kevin Costner series ends not with a bang, but a whimper. With the pulling of Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter 2 from theaters, we are left to only speculate what the future holds for Costner’s self-funded crazy passion project. What we can tell you is that Chapter 1 doesn’t really feel like its own self-contained movie. Plotlines are established, characters are introduced, and then…Giovanni Ribisi shows up.
Watch Kev on The Rich Eisen Show
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You know the Butcher? That freakin' nutjob that goes around just chopping people up? Well, we’re about to spend nearly three hours talking about him! Join us as we unpack TRAP - the devilishly entertaining new thriller from M. Night Shyamalan, with special insights from our own David Sims, who spent much of this year interviewing Night at his compound in Philadelphia. We’re talking about a bunch of things - dads, serial killers, how much we don’t like going to concerts, the sexy elephant mascot of the New York Liberty, Josh Hartnett’s career arc - when we’re not excusing ourselves to go to the bathroom to uh…check on some apps.
Read David’s Profile of M. Night
Read Esther’s Article on The Shyamalans
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