Empire of the Sun with Bilge Ebiri

Blank Check with Griffin & David

Blank Check Productions / Talkhouse

Tv & Film, Society & Culture, Comedy, Film Reviews

4.6 • 6.1K Ratings

🗓️ 16 March 2025

⏱️ 182 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Our Spielbergian journey takes us to new dramatic heights with 1987’s Empire of the Sun, the film that brought us Christian Bale (discovered by Amy Irving!), unexpected Joey Pants and Ben Stiller appearances, and a perfect use of John Malkovich. Bilge Ebiri joins us (and the Five Timers Club) to chat about how underrated this film is within the Spielberg canon, and how this movie evolves Spielberg’s perception as a serious dramatic artist. Read Bilge's writing at Vulture Sign up for Check Book, the Blank Check newsletter featuring even more “real nerdy shit” to feed your pop culture obsession. Dossier excerpts, film biz AND burger reports, and even more exclusive content you won’t want to miss out on. Join our Patreon for franchise commentaries and bonus episodes. Follow us @blankcheckpod on Twitter, Instagram, Threads and Facebook! Buy some real nerdy merch Connect with other Blankies on our Reddit or Discord For anything else, check out BlankCheckPod.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Blank Jack with Griffin and David
0:04.7	Plank Jack with Griffin and David
0:08.7	Don't know what to say or to expect
0:11.7	All you need to know is that the name of the show is Blank Check
0:17.7	Can't remember what my podcast looks like.
0:24.5	It's a really sad line from the movie.
0:26.7	Yeah.
0:27.2	Thank God we started out that way.
0:29.3	Look, I mean, I was like, oh, you know, it feels like any line of dialogue is going to be said.
0:33.2	Maybe I should do the tagline instead.
0:35.2	The tagline is, to survive in a world at war, he must find a greater strength than all the events that surround him.
0:41.6	I'd say also a bummer.
0:43.3	I mean...
0:43.9	Just try not to think so much.
0:46.2	Surely there's a...
0:46.9	That's a good.
0:48.2	Maybe I...
0:48.6	Yeah.
0:49.1	I feel like I've always struggled...
0:50.3	Also, yeah, do you want to bust out of Malcovic?
0:51.5	With Malcovich's. I feel like, we have not covered a lot of Malcovich.
0:55.0	Our main Malcovich talk episode was Portrait of a Lady, which were like, that's a weird
	...

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