u/wovenstrap

Ben Stiller made this parody movie in 1987 that appeared on SNL. I remember seeing it. Stiller was 21 years old when this aired. Pretty impressive. Some familiar faces here.

I'm going through the entire Blank Check catalog in chronological order, and by pure chance I'm at Ang Lee right now.

Towards the end of the Taking Woodstock episode, Griffin tells a very memorable story about Scorsese on the set of Vinyl. It's approximately an hour and 45 minutes in but ads will obviously change that. It's pretty much right before the Box Office Game.

That is all. Enjoy.

Hanks has written one book of short stories and one novel. The novel is about the making of a MCU style movie. I’m about 2/3 of the way through it.

If you’ve read it, it prompts some irresistible speculation regarding which actors inspired the characters.

Do people have guesses? Or alternately, has anybody heard anything?

There’s a particular actor I’m thinking of, but I’m going to see if anybody else mentions him first.

I thought I saw a thread on this but when I looked for it, I didn't find any. I don't really have any but I bet you guys can come up with a few.

It starts out OK and then gets progressively worse. They get Ibold's name wrong. They add 11 years to Bob's age. They talk about the "six-year break from touring" they took starting in 1995 (I saw them 3x in 1997 alone!).

But it was all worth it because of their crossover hit OUT OF TIME released in 2002, followed by AUTOMATIC FOR THE PEOPLE two years later.

There's TONS more.

Two weeks ago, Alex (ARP) appeared on Blank Check and talked about a tradition he and his wife have created over the last few years, which is watching WW2 movies during the winter months.

ARP needs a bigger platform for that topic, Blank Check isn't the right place. The Big Picture is the right place.

Sean can ask ARP to talk about all the great movies he and his wife have seen and it's the easiest pod to do because it requires zero prep from Sean.

Make this happen!!

Based on David's recent appearance on What's All This, Then?

They mentioned Kes, Hot Fuzz, the Carry On series, and "maybe some Mike Leigh movie that never had much impact in America, like All or Nothing" (paraphrased).

They interpret the prompt to mean a movie that Britons like but never really traveled but you don't have to!

This came up in the Patreon episode on The Devil Wears Prada 2. Griffin asked whether TDWP2 is the first "summer kickoff movie" that is female-centric. They didn't get into it, it's too long a topic. David mentioned that the notion of looking at just these movies interested him.

Functionally speaking, the summer kickoff movie is the first big grosser in May. There are exceptions but not very many. In 1981 there isn't a good May option and I went with Raiders, which was a June release. In the 21st century it became the first week in May and Marvel pushed it back into late April. There are situations where someone might argue for a better answer than what I gave, please do that! This is intended to be the start of the discussion, not the end of it.

This list is not generated by AI, it was generated by me looking at Box Office Mojo and using their "Quarterly" module which was highly useful. I did use Google AI before doing that and what it gave me was rather good — but what you see here is the product of my own clicking around.

Here's the list:

1980 The Empire Strikes Back (May 21)

1981 Raiders of the Lost Ark (June 12)

1982 Conan the Barbarian (May 14)

--> Rocky III (May 28)

1983 Blue Thunder (May 13)

1984 Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (May 23)

1985 Rambo: First Blood Part II (May 22)

--> A View to a Kill (May 24)

1986 Top Gun (May 16)

1987 Beverly Hills Cop II (May 20)

1988 Willow (May 20)

1989 Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (May 24)

1990 Back to the Future Part III (May 25)

1991 Backdraft (May 24)

--> Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (June 14)

1992 Lethal Weapon 3 (May 15)

1993 Cliffhanger (May 28)

1994 The Crow (May 13)

--> Maverick (May 20)

1995 Crimson Tide (May 12)

1996 Twister (May 10)

1997 The Fifth Element (May 9)

--> The Lost World (May 23)

1998 Deep Impact (May 8)

1999 The Mummy (May 7)

--> Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (May 19)

2000 Gladiator (May 5)

2001 The Mummy Returns (May 4)

2002 Spider-Man (May 3)

2003 X2: X-Men United (May 2)

2004 Van Helsing (May 7)

--> Troy (May 14)

--> Shrek 2 (May 19)

2005 Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith (May 19)

2006 Mission: Impossible III (May 5)

2007 Spider-Man 3 (May 4)

2008 Iron Man (May 2)

2009 X-Men Origins: Wolverine (May 1)

2010 Iron Man 2 (May 7)

2011 Fast Five (April 29)

2012 The Avengers (May 4)

2013 Iron Man 3 (May 3)

2014 The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (May 2)

2015 Avengers: Age of Ultron (May 1)

2016 Captain America: Civil War (May 6)

2017 Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 2 (May 5)

2018 Avengers: Infinity War (April 27)

2019 Avengers: Endgame (April 26)

2020 ***

2021 A Quiet Place Part II (May 28)

2022 Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (May 6)

2023 Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (May 5)

2024 The Fall Guy (May 3)

--> Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (May 10)

2025 Sinners (April 18)

--> Thunderbolts (May 2)

2026 The Devil Wears Prada 2 (May 1)

Basically it would eliminate every word that does not initiate a prompt in spell-check.

I edit books for a living, and at the end of the process it would be useful to be able to scan a list of "questionable" words.

Most of them are probably going to be fine, but 3 of them will represent gross errors that I would like to catch, and the other terms can be the spine of the Style Sheet for the book.

Thank you.