Bilge Ebiri

1 sketch, 23 claims, and 14 fun items attributed to them. What was said about them.

Personality, episode by episode

Blank Check with Griffin & David: Empire of the Sun with Bilge Ebiri (guest)

Loves grand, earned cinematic spectacle and big epics (The Last Emperor, Passage to India's shots), Bertolucci, John Williams, Malkovich, Christian Bale and Raising Arizona. Defends movies that made him laugh despite critical consensus (That's My Boy, Vacation remake). Cannot stand critics who enjoy a film in the room and then trash it for reasons of consensus; wary of Hollywood's sanitized history.

Stances

  • Empire of the Sun is excellent and underrated
  • Spielberg's early films are the child's view, later ones the parent's
  • Hook is the pivot
  • Spielberg is secretly a horror filmmaker at heart
  • Horizon chapter 2 is great

Humor: Dry, self-deprecating storyteller who drops personal anecdotes (his communist father, BBC job, latchkey VHS viewing) with deadpan asides.

In their words

  • “I have this theory that early period of his career, you know, 70s, 80s, that his films really can be best be understood as being from the point of view of a child.” (0:22:49)
  • “I think the last emperor is a better movie than this movie.” (0:50:13)
  • “objectively, this movie is, you know, probably a piece of shit, but I laughed my ass off.” (0:57:30)

Their shows' recurring bits

Running bits, not opinions; a critic read aloud is cited, not present.

Blank Check with Griffin & David

Their claims

Showing 1–23 of 23 claims.

  1. career (career theory): Empire of the Sun → Steven Spielberg. Bilge argues Spielberg's 70s and 80s films are seen through a child's eyes and his later ones through a parent's eyes.
    “I have this theory that early period of his career, you know, 70s, 80s, that his films really can be best be understood as being from the point of view of a child.”
    Blank Check with Griffin & David · Empire of the Sun with Bilge Ebiri · 0:22:49 · Bilge Ebiri (0.90 sure it was them)
  2. theme (motif echo): Jaws → Lincoln. The slaps in Jaws and Lincoln show the shift from identifying with the slapped child to the anxious parent.
    “So it's very much like almost like the humiliation of a little boy who's been slapped.”
    Blank Check with Griffin & David · Empire of the Sun with Bilge Ebiri · 0:25:32 · Bilge Ebiri (0.90 sure it was them)
  3. craft (score): John Williams → Empire of the Sun. Williams' score is his most classical, with a big motif that is a hymn he did not write.
    “One, the biggest motif in it is one that he did not write.”
    Blank Check with Griffin & David · Empire of the Sun with Bilge Ebiri · 0:30:04 · Bilge Ebiri (0.80 sure it was them)
  4. career (career): John Williams → Steven Spielberg. Williams is part of Spielberg's people, who apply what they know about assembling a movie and tip it darker for Empire of the Sun.
    “it really is Spielberg and his people, including John Williams, trying to take like what they know about how to put together a movie.”
    Blank Check with Griffin & David · Empire of the Sun with Bilge Ebiri · 0:30:20 · Bilge Ebiri (0.70 sure it was them)
  5. craft (craft): Terrence Malick → Hans Zimmer. Malick scored The Thin Red Line, then recut it and placed pieces of Zimmer's score where they were not written.
    “it's the classic Malic thing where it was like scored and then he recut it and put pieces where they weren't written.”
    Blank Check with Griffin & David · Empire of the Sun with Bilge Ebiri · 0:39:43 · Bilge Ebiri (0.50 sure it was them)
  6. craft (music borrowed): The Thin Red Line → Pearl Harbor. Disney used the Thin Red Line score in the Pearl Harbor trailer without permission, and Malick later cashed that in.
    “Disney uses the score for the thin red line, um, when they, uh, when they do the Pearl Harbor trailer.”
    Blank Check with Griffin & David · Empire of the Sun with Bilge Ebiri · 0:40:07 · Bilge Ebiri (0.80 sure it was them)
  7. contrast (contrast): Randy Newman → The Thin Red Line. Randy Newman's Pleasantville score is rated better than the Thin Red Line score and the likelier winner that year.
    “is better, I think, than Red Line is probably your actual winner there.”
    Blank Check with Griffin & David · Empire of the Sun with Bilge Ebiri · 0:41:09 · Bilge Ebiri (0.50 sure it was them)
  8. craft (craft): John Williams → A.I. Artificial Intelligence. The A.I. score is beautiful on its own but is not always well used in the film and overwhelms the ending.
    “And also, I would argue that the score isn't always that well used in the movie.”
    Blank Check with Griffin & David · Empire of the Sun with Bilge Ebiri · 0:41:41 · Bilge Ebiri (0.50 sure it was them)
  9. unmapped (grandiosity): A Passage to India → David Lean. Bilge's father disliked Passage to India because of its grand shot of the doctor on the train, which he found too much.
    “I dislike it because there's a shot like this.”
    Blank Check with Griffin & David · Empire of the Sun with Bilge Ebiri · 0:54:49 · Bilge Ebiri (0.90 sure it was them)
  10. unmapped (father-son taste split): 1900 → The Last Emperor. Bilge's communist father preferred 1900 and found Last Emperor too sympathetic to the emperor.
    “he was very much a 1900 man, and I was much more of a last emperor, man”
    Blank Check with Griffin & David · Empire of the Sun with Bilge Ebiri · 0:55:21 · Bilge Ebiri (0.95 sure it was them)
  11. unmapped (critic contradiction): That's My Boy → Vacation (2015 remake). Bilge defended these two comedies even though critics laughed at screenings then trashed them.
    “Same thing with vacation.”
    Blank Check with Griffin & David · Empire of the Sun with Bilge Ebiri · 0:57:39 · Bilge Ebiri (0.90 sure it was them)
  12. lineage (source): Empire of the Sun → J.G. Ballard. The novel is darker than the film, which sanitized it and condensed characters.
    “There is definitely a lot of sanitizing happening and a lot of kind of condensing of characters and turning them into more of a more of a Hollywoody plot element.”
    Blank Check with Griffin & David · Empire of the Sun with Bilge Ebiri · 1:01:53 · Bilge Ebiri (0.75 sure it was them)
  13. career (career parallel): Christian Bale → Jeff Bridges. Like Bridges, Bale came to acting as a child by family expectation and had to find his own reason to take it seriously.
    “it sounds almost a bit like what Jeff Bridges went through.”
    Blank Check with Griffin & David · Empire of the Sun with Bilge Ebiri · 1:17:06 · Bilge Ebiri (0.85 sure it was them)
  14. people (performance): Christian Bale → Ford v Ferrari. Kathleen Kennedy said his Ford v Ferrari performance is closest to the real Christian, tying to Indiana Jones casting.
    “she was like, that is the closest to his personality.”
    Blank Check with Griffin & David · Empire of the Sun with Bilge Ebiri · 1:19:32 · Bilge Ebiri (0.50 sure it was them)
  15. people (performance): The Sheltering Sky → John Malkovich. Malkovich is tender in the Bertolucci film, which Bilge saw on the BBC.
    “his character there is, I mean, tender isn't the word I would use, but, but, you know, you really feel for him, or at least I do.”
    Blank Check with Griffin & David · Empire of the Sun with Bilge Ebiri · 1:35:21 · Bilge Ebiri (0.85 sure it was them)
  16. theme (theme: learning unjust rules): War Horse → Empire of the Sun. Spielberg returns to the idea of navigating the rules of a world you do not understand, as Jim does in the camp.
    “the idea of sort of trying to learn to live by the rules of a world you don't quite understand.”
    Blank Check with Griffin & David · Empire of the Sun with Bilge Ebiri · 1:44:48 · Bilge Ebiri (0.75 sure it was them)
  17. theme (theme: people as property): Amistad → Lincoln. Bilge says Spielberg's serious films, from Empire to Schindler, Amistad, Lincoln and Ryan, all turn on people as items on a ledger.
    “they all they all become about sort of people as items on a ledger, even saving Private Ryan.”
    Blank Check with Griffin & David · Empire of the Sun with Bilge Ebiri · 1:45:35 · Bilge Ebiri (0.80 sure it was them)
  18. craft (visual allusion): War Horse → The Searchers. A red John Ford sunset is a harbinger of doom, as in The Searchers, so War Horse's ending is a what-comes-next finale.
    “I mean, you see that sunset in the searchers right before everyone's massacred.”
    Blank Check with Griffin & David · Empire of the Sun with Bilge Ebiri · 1:47:33 · Bilge Ebiri (0.80 sure it was them)
  19. theme (audience reaction parallel): Saving Private Ryan → Empire of the Sun. Bilge finds Saving Private Ryan like Empire: incredible first 30-40 minutes, then merely liked.
    “is actually not dissimilar to some people's response to Empire of the Sun”
    Blank Check with Griffin & David · Empire of the Sun with Bilge Ebiri · 2:19:11 · Bilge Ebiri (0.80 sure it was them)
  20. theme (thematic context): Empire of the Sun → Haruki Murakami. Bilge learned about Japan's wartime atrocities in China from Murakami's novel The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.
    “it's really a book about Japan's ignorance of it, the atrocities it carried out in China”
    Blank Check with Griffin & David · Empire of the Sun with Bilge Ebiri · 2:25:00 · Bilge Ebiri (0.80 sure it was them)
  21. unmapped (gateway): Raising Arizona → The Conformist. A Film Comment essay compared the Coens' self-conscious style to Bertolucci's in The Conformist, which Bilge then watched on a VHS at home, starting his cinephilia.
    “the self-conscious style of the Cohens is not unlike the self-conscious style of Bernardo Bernalucci in the conformist.”
    Blank Check with Griffin & David · Empire of the Sun with Bilge Ebiri · 2:28:51 · Bilge Ebiri (0.95 sure it was them)
  22. career (career arc): Wall Street → Platoon. Wall Street, a year after Platoon, indicated Oliver Stone's later movies would become Wall Street.
    “It's a it's a little bit of an indication of where things are going to go prematurely in his career.”
    Blank Check with Griffin & David · Empire of the Sun with Bilge Ebiri · 2:34:32 · Bilge Ebiri (0.50 sure it was them)
  23. lineage (sequel): Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter 2 → Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1. Part 2 is darker, focuses on the women, and makes Bilge rethink part one.
    “actually part 2 made me think about part one a little differently”
    Blank Check with Griffin & David · Empire of the Sun with Bilge Ebiri · 2:44:04 · Bilge Ebiri (0.95 sure it was them)

Their fun items

Showing 1–14 of 14 fun items.

  1. fun, about Empire of the Sun / The Last Emperor: Bilge, age 14 in DC, spent early 1987-88 alternating after school between Empire of the Sun and The Last Emperor at two single-screen houses.
    “alternating every week between going to see Empire of the Sun in the movie theater and the movie.”
    Blank Check with Griffin & David · Empire of the Sun with Bilge Ebiri · 0:07:52 · Bilge Ebiri (0.95 sure it was them)
  2. fun, about Steven Spielberg: Bilge's unified field theory: Spielberg's early films are from a child's point of view, the later ones from a parent's, with Hook as the pivot where he realizes he is a parent.
    “Halfway through hook. Spielberg realizes I'm a parent.”
    Blank Check with Griffin & David · Empire of the Sun with Bilge Ebiri · 0:23:25 · Bilge Ebiri (0.90 sure it was them)
  3. fun, about Spielberg slaps: Bilge noticed the many slaps in Spielberg movies (Lincoln slapping his son, Jaws hospital slap) and says you could cut a montage; the point of view shifts from child to parent.
    “there are actually a surprising number of slaps in Spielberg movies, and you could really do a fun montage.”
    Blank Check with Griffin & David · Empire of the Sun with Bilge Ebiri · 0:25:00 · Bilge Ebiri (0.90 sure it was them)
  4. fun, about Empire of the Sun making-of: In the Blu-ray making-of, Spielberg directs Bale's camp scene by calling it a real cool action figure shot, though it is a dark moment.
    “he tells them, you're in a real cool action figure shot.”
    Blank Check with Griffin & David · Empire of the Sun with Bilge Ebiri · 0:29:24 · Bilge Ebiri (0.90 sure it was them)
  5. fun, about Malick / Pearl Harbor: Disney used the Thin Red Line score in its Pearl Harbor trailer unpermitted; years later Malick had an assistant text Disney the two words Pearl Harbor and got what he wanted.
    “send them a message with 2 words, Pearl Harbor.”
    Blank Check with Griffin & David · Empire of the Sun with Bilge Ebiri · 0:40:43 · Bilge Ebiri (0.80 sure it was them)
  6. fun, about Kusturica / Cannes: Bilge on Palme d'Or double winners; he loves Time of the Gypsies and the I, Daniel Blake Cannes year was a war crime.
    “those can awards were a war crime.”
    Blank Check with Griffin & David · Empire of the Sun with Bilge Ebiri · 0:46:03 · Bilge Ebiri (0.50 sure it was them)
  7. fun, about Empire of the Sun's ending: The climax is the small, uncomfortable shooting of a Japanese soldier, and the Nagasaki flash is seen as God taking a photograph.
    “Like God taking a photograph, which, you know, bring it back to the dark power of cinema, you know?”
    Blank Check with Griffin & David · Empire of the Sun with Bilge Ebiri · 1:59:03 · Bilge Ebiri (0.70 sure it was them)
  8. fun, about Paul Schrader: Schrader saw Twisters in 4DX and posted about it on Facebook; he walked out of another film and emailed Bilge after being told to see All We Imagine as Light.
    “He loved twisters.”
    Blank Check with Griffin & David · Empire of the Sun with Bilge Ebiri · 2:03:44 · Bilge Ebiri (0.50 sure it was them)
  9. fun, about Miranda Richardson: Richardson's best performance, per David or Bilge, is Mrs. Tweedy in Chicken Run; she also plays Queen Mary in The Lost Prince.
    “Obviously, Miranda Richardson's best performance is Mrs. Tweedy and Trick and Run.”
    Blank Check with Griffin & David · Empire of the Sun with Bilge Ebiri · 2:09:16 · Bilge Ebiri (0.50 sure it was them)
  10. fun, about Wallace & Gromit: Feathers McGraw gets a performance from only head tilts, with no brow or mouth.
    “Yes, and it's truly just tilting the head that gives him characterization.”
    Blank Check with Griffin & David · Empire of the Sun with Bilge Ebiri · 2:10:30 · Bilge Ebiri (0.40 sure it was them)
  11. fun, about Raising Arizona: Bilge's cinephilia origin: after seeing Raising Arizona, he read a Film Comment essay, watched the family VHS of The Conformist six or seven times in a week, then went to Italian cinema and Bertolucci.
    “And I become obsessed with the conformist, which then leads to Italian cinema, Berlucci.”
    Blank Check with Griffin & David · Empire of the Sun with Bilge Ebiri · 2:29:21 · Bilge Ebiri (0.95 sure it was them)
  12. fun, about Planes, Trains and Automobiles: The 4K has a fabled hour of deleted scenes; there was never a 3-hour cut, Hughes just assembled too much Candy and Martin footage.
    “He just had so much good footage of Candy and Martin that his 1st assembly.”
    Blank Check with Griffin & David · Empire of the Sun with Bilge Ebiri · 2:36:27 · Bilge Ebiri (0.50 sure it was them)
  13. fun, about Sleeping Beauty: At a 70mm screening at the Museum of the Moving Image, a viewer shushed a small child who asked a question and the crowd turned on him.
    “Everyone chill the fuck out.”
    Blank Check with Griffin & David · Empire of the Sun with Bilge Ebiri · 2:40:19 · Bilge Ebiri (0.50 sure it was them)
  14. fun, about Horizon: An American Saga: Bilge saw chapter 2: Costner told him he only shot enough of chapter 3 to have that month; Part 2 is darker and ends with a montage of the next installment.
    “yeah, I only shot enough. so that I could have that month.”
    Blank Check with Griffin & David · Empire of the Sun with Bilge Ebiri · 2:45:14 · Bilge Ebiri (0.90 sure it was them)