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PODCAST

Blank Check with Griffin & David

Blank Check Productions

Not just another bad movie podcast, Blank Check reviews directors" complete filmographies episode to episode. Specifically, the auteurs whose early successes afforded them the rare ‘blank check’ from Hollywood to produce passion projects. Each new miniseries, hosts Griffin Newman and David Sims delve into the works of film’s most outsized personalities in painstakingly hilarious detail. Produced by Ben Hosley.

tv & film film reviews

All Episodes

134:11

Cabaret with Rachel Zegler

Blank Check with Griffin & David ·

2022/07/10

Wilkommen and Bienvenue to our “Cabaret” episode! Literal Disney Princess and musical theater superstar Rachel Zegler joins us to gush over Fosse’s 1972 film - a game-changer for the musical genre, and an Oscar-winning guarantor for Fosse’s cinematic “blank check” after the failure of “Sweet Charity.” Topics discussed include: the differences between the screen version and the stage show; Joel Grey’s Emcee being nearly cut out of the film; Liza Minnelli crafting her own unique look for Sally Bowles;

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129:45

Sweet Charity

Blank Check with Griffin & David ·

2022/07/03

The minute you walked in the joint…I could see you were a man of distinction, A REAL PODCASTER! “Pod That Jazzcast” - our series on the films of Bob Fosse - kicks off with a real humdinger of an episode, as the boys discuss 1969’s swinging technicolor musical “Sweet Charity.” For folks unfamiliar with Fosse, we give an overview of his life and career in dance and theater leading up to his film directorial debut, and attempt to decipher his creative obsessions (women, fear of balding, isolated body

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132:30

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness with...

Blank Check with Griffin & David ·

2022/06/26

Our Sam Raimi series concludes with his most recent film - not to mention the first MCU film we’ve covered on the main feed - it’s time for Doctor Strange 2! Patrick Willems joins us to address the important questions: What was Raimi *doing* for the nine years between this and Oz? Does Kevin Feige and his Marvel Machine overpower Raimi’s creative voice? Should “Wandavision” have been released after this movie? Is Schnipper’s on 8th Ave the ideal place to debrief after seeing a movie in Times Square

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128:17

Oz the Great and Powerful with Dana Schwartz

Blank Check with Griffin & David ·

2022/06/19

Ah, yes - we’ve arrived at the reason why we held off on covering Sam Raimi for so long…because we didn’t want to end our series on such a dismal note! “Oz the Great and Powerful” - Raimi’s last feature until the recent “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” - features James Franco in a performance that guest Dana Schwartz (“Noble Blood”) characterizes as “having the energy of a hot boy in a school play who’s laughing with his friends in the front row.” It doesn’t have the tactile, zippy

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122:55

Drag Me to Hell with Jamie Loftus & Caitlin Durante

Blank Check with Griffin & David ·

2022/06/12

After the massive box office success of his Spider-Man movies, Sam Raimi went “back to basics” - returning to the gnarly demonic possession genre that he put his stamp on back in the “Evil Dead” days. This time, instead of the chin-god Bruce Campbell, we’ve got a particularly cherubic Alison Lohman in the starring role! The Bechdel Cast’s Caitlin Durante and Jamie Loftus join the #TwoFriends to chat about the goofy gross-out scares and economic recession relevance of 2009’s “Drag Me To Hell,” plus,

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150:09

Spider-Man 3 with Jamelle Bouie

Blank Check with Griffin & David ·

2022/06/05

If “Spider-Man 2” had the reputation of being the greatest superhero movie of all time, “Spider-Man 3” had the inverse - a bloated mess with too many villains, and a very goofy Peter Parker going to the darkside, if by “darkside” you mean a trip to Men’s Warehouse and Hot Topic. But is that reputation justified? We’re gonna air on the side of…not REALLY. Notable Spidey 3 defender Jamelle Bouie (The New York Times, his podcast “Clear and Present Danger”) returns to Blank Check to praise this film’s

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186:42

Spider-Man 2 with Chris Gethard

Blank Check with Griffin & David ·

2022/05/29

For a while, “Spider-Man 2” was considered the high water mark for superhero movies - but does it hold up 14 years deep into the MCU? We’ve got two words for you - ALFRED MOLINA. Self-professed “Blank Check rabble rouser” Chris Gethard returns to the pod (and apologizes to the Blankie Community) as we trace the history and legacy of this iconic Spidey sequel. We love this movie so much, David doesn’t even care that the subway sequence isn’t accurate to New York! Other topics covered - why Aunt May

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182:57

Spider-Man with Matt Singer

Blank Check with Griffin & David ·

2022/05/22

Upside down kissing, Bonesaw McGraw, and a soundtrack featuring not just one, but TWO of Avril Lavigne’s ex-husbands…it’s SPIDER-MAN! Screen Crush’s Matt Singer (who literally wrote a book about Spider-Man) joins us as we take a look back to a much different Hollywood landscape; a time when Marvel was a struggling comics company, when both Sam Raimi and Tobey Maguire were considered odd choices for a superhero adaptation, and when no film had yet to open to $100M at the US Box Office. Is the hyphen

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134:22

The Gift with Starlee Kine

Blank Check with Griffin & David ·

2022/05/15

Katie Holmes in a lazy southern accent asks, “What’s the matter? See somethin’ bad?” and we are immediately transported back to the year 2000 when the trailers for this movie were EVERYWHERE. Writer and podcasting icon Starlee Kine joins us to talk about Sam Raimi’s “The Gift” - a film with an incredibly stacked cast of actors who were eager to sink their teeth into a Southern Gothic Billy Bob Thornton creation. Do we buy Keanu as a wife-beating redneck? Is Cate Blanchett actually a terrible

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134:19

For Love of the Game with Olivia Craighead

Blank Check with Griffin & David ·

2022/05/08

Is this not America? Is baseball not America’s favorite pastime? Is “For Love of the Game” a Sam Raimi movie? Technically speaking, sure! It’s about a guy who’s trying not to lose both his hand and his lady - some very Raimi-esque themes. Gawker’s Olivia Craighead returns to the pod to talk about Kevin “Straight Outta Compton” Costner, and we go long on crackerjacks, Vin Scully’s screenplay notes, and the cinematic pleasures of baseball. The crack of the bat, baby! Plus - the boys open up about

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151:58

A Simple Plan with Kevin Smith

Blank Check with Griffin & David ·

2022/05/01

$4.4 million, a murder of crows, and a cursed crashed plane…the ingredients for a real nail-biter of a fable! Filmmaker Kevin Smith (yep, THAT Kevin Smith) joins us to talk about one of his favorite films - 1998’s “A Simple Plan” - and to pay tribute to the late producer Jim Jacks, who shepherded several filmmakers (such as Raimi, the Coens, Richard Linklater, and Smith himself) as they made their transitions from scrappy indies to the big leagues. How successfully is Raimi able to meld his

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134:17

The Quick and The Dead with Roman Mars

Blank Check with Griffin & David ·

2022/04/24

Considered a bit of a “blank check” for actress Sharon Stone (she used her clout to bring Sam Raimi, Russell Crowe, and a babyfaced Leonardo DiCaprio to the project), “The Quick and The Dead” may have been too quirky for mainstream audiences and too earnest for the post-Tarantino generation of cinephiles back in 1995. But boy, does it slap in 2022! Roman Mars - The golden-voiced host of “99% Invisible” - joins us as David offers his definitive Russell Crowe performance ranking, and as we finally get

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153:48

Army of Darkness with Eva Anderson

Blank Check with Griffin & David ·

2022/04/17

KLAATU BARADA NIKTO - did we get that right? Writer Eva Anderson (WeCrashed, You’re the Worst) joins us as we attempt to answer several questions related to the final entry in the Evil Dead trilogy - 1993’s Army of Darkness. Why was this film not called MEDIEVAL DEAD? Did Embeth Davidtz and Liam Neeson talk about Sam Raimi on the set of Schindler’s List? How does Ben feel about the concept of a town pit? And most importantly, we introduce a tantalizing Hollywood mystery - was there a falling out

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139:07

Darkman with Chris Weitz

Blank Check with Griffin & David ·

2022/04/10

Who’s Darkman? A man of a thousand faces! A walking fleshwound who probably smells awful! A dude who probably would be into night eggs! Filmmaker Chris Weitz joins us to geek out over Sam Raimi’s homage to the Universal Monsters - a film that establishes the comic book style that Raimi would later perfect with his “Spider-Man” trilogy. We discuss the early 90s run of pulpy comic book films (“Dick Tracy”, “The Shadow”), the shock of seeing Frances McDormand in what she describes as a “bimbo role,”

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169:51

Evil Dead II with John Hodgman

Blank Check with Griffin & David ·

2022/04/03

It’s the definitive Sam Raimi film - a “symphony of silly” with a bravura performance from Bruce Campbell, and a prevailing sense of, “the more gore the merrier!” John Hodgman - who, believe it or not, was Bruce Campbell’s literary agent! - joins us to chat about the magic of “Evil Dead II” and what puts it in the pantheon of “sequels that improve upon the original installment.” Also in this episode - we imagine the time when Sam Raimi, the Coens, Frances McDormand, and Holly Hunter were all

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129:45

Crimewave with Brendan Hines

Blank Check with Griffin & David ·

2022/03/27

Sam Raimi directed a movie between “The Evil Dead” and “Evil Dead II” that was written by the Coen Brothers and no one ever talks about it…until NOW! Actor Brendan Hines (“The Tick”, “Locke and Key”) joins us to make sense of this early career oddity - a tonal mishmash of slapstick and film noir that we’d later see more successfully executed in films like “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?” and “The Mask”. Topics discussed include: the difficulties in scaling up the indie production model; Bruce Campbell’s

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121:22

The Evil Dead

Blank Check with Griffin & David ·

2022/03/20

It’s Sam Raimi time - groovy! Our new series PODCAST ME TO HELL kicks off with a banger - 1981’s ultra-low-budget horror classic “The Evil Dead”. We’ll be taking you back to Royal Oak, Michigan, to explain how Raimi linked up with Bruce Campbell and the Coen Brothers, thus establishing a very consequential partnership. We’ll be dissecting exactly why this film (from a lean 14-page script!!) works so well. David will admit that he first learned about this movie from watching “Donnie Darko”. And then

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165:04

The Seventh Annual Blank Check Awards with Joe Reid

Blank Check with Griffin & David ·

2022/03/13

It’s Hollywood’s biggest night - that’s right, it’s the Seventh Annual Blankies! “This Had Oscar Buzz” host Joe Reid joins us as always to celebrate our favorite films of 2021. Will Griffin award something weird this year? Is anyone going to stump for Being The Ricardos? What crazy categories will Ben come up with? Walk down the red carpet and find out! Join our Patreon at patreon.com/blankcheck Follow us @blankcheckpod on Twitter and Instagram! Buy some real nerdy merch at

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140:16

The Power of The Dog with Richard Lawson

Blank Check with Griffin & David ·

2022/03/06

An unseen presence looming over the two friends, a man who has definitely ridden a dang horse, a larger than life character about whom many have speculated…are we talking about Bronco Hosley or Bronco Henry? Trolls impresario and Vanity Fair critic Richard Lawson makes his tenth (!!) appearance on the pod to unpack Jane Campion’s “The Power of the Dog.” Did Campion figure out the best use of Benedict Cumberbatch’s screen presence? Is anthrax the poison with the coolest name? Can you imagine Gerard

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128:41

Bright Star with Fran Hoepfner

Blank Check with Griffin & David ·

2022/02/27

You may as well call this episode “Ode to a Whishaw” because we love that gentle gent! Fran Hoepfner joins us (and joins the Five-Timers Club!) to discuss Jane Campion’s 2006 John Keats biopic “Bright Star,” a movie that prompts Griffin to wonder if he, too, would die of tuberculosis if he took a long walk in the rain in 1820. Of course we talk about Hampstead Heath (David being canonically from London), of course we wonder what the hell happened to Paul Schneider (canonically incredible in this

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564 results

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