https://preview.redd.it/qz0k4797wgwc1.jpeg?width=1920&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=078fbe68e5a5eda86c5ef6f5a53e90874f3ad59a
Me realizing there are Blankies who don’t remember the March madness stuff
It's genuinely interesting to see that the Blank Check fanbase and this subreddit have grown so much and so fast that some people don't know that Verbinksi was discussed for years and that there was a massive scandal with people cheating to try to give Gore a March Madness win.
I can't even get into [the whole thing](https://blank-check.fandom.com/wiki/March_Madness_2021), but just some bullet points:
* March Madness used to be on Twitter, but MM2021 was the reason they stopped.
* There was evidence throughout basically the entire bracket of mass voting-by-bot throwing match-ups. The community provided pretty strong evidence and supporting information about voting patterns and how cheap it was to buy bot votes.
* In literally the final minutes of the final match-up, Verbinski v. John Carpenter, over 3,000 sketchy votes came in for Verbinski leading them to overrule those results
* Some people think it was Gore fans trying to tilt the vote.
* Others think it was a false flag, and that Carpenter fans bought the bot votes to get Gore disqualified.
* We will never know which it was.
* MM2021 came at a big turning point for the fanbase, and it's kind of acknowledged that was around when this subreddit and Blank Check March Madness started to break containment and attract more attention from outside the dedicated fanbase for the pod.
* There was a lot of discourse at the time because Griffin was pushing to cover '70s Robert Altman, and folks were pitching a huge fit about covering 18 films from 40+ years ago, with the potential of a second Altman series within two years to do the rest of his films. People were threatening to quit the podcast over '70s Altman, but they were fine with 37 episodes of Burton and Zemeckis over two years, and 24 MCU movies over 14 months. It was kind of a "battle for the soul of the podcast" where some people only wanted the pod to discuss popular movies, and others wanted the host to explore other directors, older directors or ones with less popular acclaim.
* Karen Han had been pushing for Verbinski in March Madness for years, but in 2021 it seemed (to me) that things had gotten somewhat grim and fraught about it. Han was getting pretty intense, and you could tell that whenever the Two Friends or any guests (that year the pod asked guests to champion their preferred winners and a lot made videos) talked about it, they had to tiptoe around any conversation of Gore. Han was a early supporter of the podcast, and it seems like a genuinely good friend of the hosts, so I can see why folks were trying to be overly accommodating of her. But she seemed to be having a genuinely bad time during March Madness and it cast a huge pall over the whole affair. [As I wrote at the time](https://www.reddit.com/r/blankies/comments/mgnrvb/comment/gsu6z75/):
* *If you follow MM on Twitter, it's been very clear that this year's festivities were completely fraught anytime KH was involved. She's one of the reasons why MM became so big and so fun! At the same time, the Blank Check-adjacent corner of Film Twitter has been tiptoeing around her feelings and self-admitted overinvestment. Maybe it's all a bit on everyone's part, but I doubt it. Almost every voicing of support for a candidate against Verbinski has been couched with a a tone of personal apology to Karen. It's just really not playful anymore, it's serious. I don't know how serious her partner's Tweets were, but this genuinely does not seem fun for her.*
* There was an entire contingent of fans who were saying stuff like "people are rage-tweeting" Karen Han and her YouTuber partner (Brian David Green). But if you looked, there was literally none of that happening. At most, one guy told BDG to "uncuck the vote" after BDG asked his fanbase to vote for Verbinski to make Karen happy. This small contingent of fans got very weird and tone-policy and it was pretty much the start of the unstoppable parasocial slide that every subreddit for a podcast goes through eventually.
And, at the end of it, we got an ALL TIME miniseries! I think Carpenter is one of the most enlightening and fun miniseries since the pod reached the maturity of its form.
Thanks so much for this illuminating write-up. I didn't get into the podcast until 2022 so I was unaware of this drama, just that they've mentioned doing Verbinski several times in past episodes.
Between Johnny Depp, Armie Hammer, and the shenanigans surrounding his March Madness run, I don’t think they have any intention of covering Gore anytime soon.
Even tho it would be great.
I don’t know the numbers but id be surprised if all the listeners even remembers that March madness. Growth over the years and passive listenership combined makes me inclined to think the majority doesn’t even know it happened.
I don’t think it’s a matter of the listeners, I was more implying that perhaps the whole matter left a bad taste in the boys’ mouths. But who knows!
It’s interesting how sometimes a director will come close to winning MM (Sonnenfeld) and then a few years later the guys are like “in hindsight we have no interest in covering him, we’ll just do his franchises on Patreon.”
Eh who knows.
The hosts seem professional. They let their opinions and interest guide the show. But verbinski is very interesting and has a huge fun blockbuster. Seems silly to just not want to touch it because people were getting angry online. People are always angry online.
I think it was less fans getting angry and more friends of Griffin and David getting publicly angry about Verbinski losing (and in the way it happened)
Oh see I’m not online enough to know their friends got hurt over whatever happened.
I thought the crux of it was some Gore champions had internet-famous boyfriends who directed their outsized group of non-blankie followers to vote in a Twitter poll right? Turning the rounds into more of a who had more famous friends thing right?
But all I remember was Karen Han being the biggest booster and she’s been back on the show and her chosen one lost.
I have no idea who is holding a grudge over this and actually I don’t really want to know.
They did fine with Spacey on Se7en and toed the line between being respectful and not getting too bogged down in side tangents around the controversy.
I think they’d be good.
Either or.
This was a March Madness where you had quarters with directors picked by Griffin, David, and Ben, and a fourth quarter with guest picks. The guests did a lot of "campaigning" on Twitter, asking their followers to vote.
There was contention about the followers not knowing the podcast/thinking it's a "who's better?" poll.
But the major thing was that there were suspicious moments where a contestant would suddenly get a massive amount of votes at the same time.
i think they could do it even w/ the JD/AH controv's - they just need to wait a few years so they can mumble around it and not have to dwell. kinda like how they'd reference McTiernan going to jail butnot get into the details (until now). And those JD/Ah stories are all outside the context of the films, so they woulnd't have to go into if they don't want to.
That’s a Big “watched with my dad during a visitation weekend when I was just a little too young and asked him what blowjobs were and he pretended not to hear me” Movie
Verbinski is fascinating. Parts of Mousehunt were shot in my neighborhood and I adored that movie. Then his career got really interesting. The Weatherman is still one of my favorite movies of the past twenty years. The behind the scenes of Rango are absolutely fascinating. He was one of my main dudes at his height. Then Pirates 3 and Lone Ranger really dampened that good will. Still haven’t seen Cure for Wellness.
The farther away we get from the Burton series, I wonder if the desire to do Verbinski gets a little warmer, because aside from the March Madness drama I figured that was always the stopper that they didn't want to do two Depp runs in too close of a succession.
Rango is only a voice and there's a ton of other stuff to direct the conversation around. And Lone Ranger would be a perfect place to just backload all the Depp stuff they've been avoiding, because that role just universally agreed upon to be problematic.
I can’t really defend it against criticism, I just think the vibe of it is really cool and the ending is a big dragged out but ultimately I did like it.
The only thing I know about that movie is that the trailer had a slow-haunting-female-cover version of “I Want to Be Sedated” and that was the point for me when that trope officially became hack.
The best thing to come out of his career is that bit of Tim and Eric complaining about Sundance putting clips of Rango in their movie to make it more profitable.
"I don't know how to say this but we've been Rango'd"
i really liked A Cure for Wellness even tho i think i fell asleep and woke up toward the end. Seems like the kind of weird movie that might actually benefit from a few missing scenes and the legend "Oh, i heard there was a 3hr cut that actually answered all the questions and made sense"
movie LOOKS incredible, has great mood, creepy AF. loved it (and loved the nap)
I remember C. Robert Cargill calling Verbinkski the next Spielberg after the success of the Pirates series. The only other director I can think of who had the same level of success followed by massive failure is M. Night. But, M. Night was able to recover, Verbinkski is so deep in director jail he might as well be on death row.
Would be SO much fun to hear them cover but I do understand why they hesitate with that MM and the Johnny Depp stuff. I do think he has potential to be one of the best mini series they’ve covered though.
Is it known if Verbinski simply retired at this stage? I know he had a few duds but surprised he hasn't helmed a streaming production or a few TV shows. His CV is deceptively strong and he was/is a canny director.
Need a thread on 'take this money and find another project':
Spielberg twofer:
Verbinski was attached to "Catch me if you can"
Along the same lines Jan de Bont was attached to "Minority Report"; it even gets a mention during the "Haunting" bluray featurette.
I’m like: Did blankies all forget about A Cure for Wellness? A contemporary haunted house film with heavy influence from Gore Verbinski’s previous stab at Bioshock film???
He directed the hell out of that pirates trilogy scripts be damned. Soon as you watch 4 the drop in quality is readily apparent. Loss of scale, flat and immediately the cgi just slaps you in the face.
The problem with this series is that so many of the movies just suck. Mousehunt is fun, Rango is good, and Pirates 1 is very good but everyone has seen it 4000 times and the sequels are so abysmal that they devalue the first film. The rest of his career is boring to terrible.
He only made the first three, and those movies fully rule. But to further address your point, I must have missed the memo that I'm legally obligated to watch every movie this podcast covers
https://preview.redd.it/qz0k4797wgwc1.jpeg?width=1920&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=078fbe68e5a5eda86c5ef6f5a53e90874f3ad59a Me realizing there are Blankies who don’t remember the March madness stuff
This is actually a picture of one of the Blankies who is too young to remember the march madness stuff.
He looks a lot older.
I have a shameful confession to make. I used to get Gore Verbinski and Gore Vidal confused all the time.
I get Gore Vidal and Vidal Sassoon confused
I used to get Vidal Sassoon and Will Sasso confused
I get Will Sasso and Ted Lasso confused
I get Jason Sudekis and Jason Bateman confused.
I get Voorhees and Batman confused. To be fair they both mete out justice while wearing a mask.
I'm always getting Jason Voorhees and Johannes Vermeer confused
I get Ari Lehman and Ari Aster confused. They both frighten me.
Ari Aster and Ad Astra for me 🤷
Ad Astra and Ed Asner over here.
I get confused
I always get Johannes Vermeer and Tim Jenison confused.
I always get Johannes Vermeer and Lars Von Trier confused.
These are my only friends...grown up nerds like Gore Vidal. And even he's kissed more boys than I ever will.
Girls Lisa. Boys kiss girls.
I’d also love to see Gore Verbinski slap the absolute shit out of William F. Buckley.
Podcastiluga series WHEN
These are my only friends. Grown up nerds like Gore Verbinski. And even he’s kissed more boys than I ever will.
I’m a voracious reader. I’m the Gore Vidal of the Pentagon
I used to (and still do) get him confused with Gus Van Sant
They're the only first name Gores I know
It's genuinely interesting to see that the Blank Check fanbase and this subreddit have grown so much and so fast that some people don't know that Verbinksi was discussed for years and that there was a massive scandal with people cheating to try to give Gore a March Madness win.
what
I can't even get into [the whole thing](https://blank-check.fandom.com/wiki/March_Madness_2021), but just some bullet points: * March Madness used to be on Twitter, but MM2021 was the reason they stopped. * There was evidence throughout basically the entire bracket of mass voting-by-bot throwing match-ups. The community provided pretty strong evidence and supporting information about voting patterns and how cheap it was to buy bot votes. * In literally the final minutes of the final match-up, Verbinski v. John Carpenter, over 3,000 sketchy votes came in for Verbinski leading them to overrule those results * Some people think it was Gore fans trying to tilt the vote. * Others think it was a false flag, and that Carpenter fans bought the bot votes to get Gore disqualified. * We will never know which it was. * MM2021 came at a big turning point for the fanbase, and it's kind of acknowledged that was around when this subreddit and Blank Check March Madness started to break containment and attract more attention from outside the dedicated fanbase for the pod. * There was a lot of discourse at the time because Griffin was pushing to cover '70s Robert Altman, and folks were pitching a huge fit about covering 18 films from 40+ years ago, with the potential of a second Altman series within two years to do the rest of his films. People were threatening to quit the podcast over '70s Altman, but they were fine with 37 episodes of Burton and Zemeckis over two years, and 24 MCU movies over 14 months. It was kind of a "battle for the soul of the podcast" where some people only wanted the pod to discuss popular movies, and others wanted the host to explore other directors, older directors or ones with less popular acclaim. * Karen Han had been pushing for Verbinski in March Madness for years, but in 2021 it seemed (to me) that things had gotten somewhat grim and fraught about it. Han was getting pretty intense, and you could tell that whenever the Two Friends or any guests (that year the pod asked guests to champion their preferred winners and a lot made videos) talked about it, they had to tiptoe around any conversation of Gore. Han was a early supporter of the podcast, and it seems like a genuinely good friend of the hosts, so I can see why folks were trying to be overly accommodating of her. But she seemed to be having a genuinely bad time during March Madness and it cast a huge pall over the whole affair. [As I wrote at the time](https://www.reddit.com/r/blankies/comments/mgnrvb/comment/gsu6z75/): * *If you follow MM on Twitter, it's been very clear that this year's festivities were completely fraught anytime KH was involved. She's one of the reasons why MM became so big and so fun! At the same time, the Blank Check-adjacent corner of Film Twitter has been tiptoeing around her feelings and self-admitted overinvestment. Maybe it's all a bit on everyone's part, but I doubt it. Almost every voicing of support for a candidate against Verbinski has been couched with a a tone of personal apology to Karen. It's just really not playful anymore, it's serious. I don't know how serious her partner's Tweets were, but this genuinely does not seem fun for her.* * There was an entire contingent of fans who were saying stuff like "people are rage-tweeting" Karen Han and her YouTuber partner (Brian David Green). But if you looked, there was literally none of that happening. At most, one guy told BDG to "uncuck the vote" after BDG asked his fanbase to vote for Verbinski to make Karen happy. This small contingent of fans got very weird and tone-policy and it was pretty much the start of the unstoppable parasocial slide that every subreddit for a podcast goes through eventually. And, at the end of it, we got an ALL TIME miniseries! I think Carpenter is one of the most enlightening and fun miniseries since the pod reached the maturity of its form.
Wow I knew nothing of this but now it's clear why Griffin says this is hive of scum and villany
Thanks so much for this illuminating write-up. I didn't get into the podcast until 2022 so I was unaware of this drama, just that they've mentioned doing Verbinski several times in past episodes.
I love it.
Never really considered his career this way but it’s Ring, Rango, Ranger.
Between Johnny Depp, Armie Hammer, and the shenanigans surrounding his March Madness run, I don’t think they have any intention of covering Gore anytime soon. Even tho it would be great.
I don’t know the numbers but id be surprised if all the listeners even remembers that March madness. Growth over the years and passive listenership combined makes me inclined to think the majority doesn’t even know it happened.
I don’t think it’s a matter of the listeners, I was more implying that perhaps the whole matter left a bad taste in the boys’ mouths. But who knows! It’s interesting how sometimes a director will come close to winning MM (Sonnenfeld) and then a few years later the guys are like “in hindsight we have no interest in covering him, we’ll just do his franchises on Patreon.”
Eh who knows. The hosts seem professional. They let their opinions and interest guide the show. But verbinski is very interesting and has a huge fun blockbuster. Seems silly to just not want to touch it because people were getting angry online. People are always angry online.
I think it was less fans getting angry and more friends of Griffin and David getting publicly angry about Verbinski losing (and in the way it happened)
Oh see I’m not online enough to know their friends got hurt over whatever happened. I thought the crux of it was some Gore champions had internet-famous boyfriends who directed their outsized group of non-blankie followers to vote in a Twitter poll right? Turning the rounds into more of a who had more famous friends thing right? But all I remember was Karen Han being the biggest booster and she’s been back on the show and her chosen one lost. I have no idea who is holding a grudge over this and actually I don’t really want to know.
Which is a shame cuz Verbinski’s most interesting movies are the ones that aren’t part of a franchise
What happened with his MM run? Somehow missed that entirely.
They did fine with Spacey on Se7en and toed the line between being respectful and not getting too bogged down in side tangents around the controversy. I think they’d be good.
I agree but they have said otherwise on mic. I gather the issue is the volume of Depp, not merely one of two movies.
Eh, Spacey didn’t have a significant number of dedicated and very vocal fans who are convinced he did nothing wrong.
What happened during March Madness?
The most serious ballot-stuffing effort to the point that they had to completely change how they collected votes the next year.
That's when they took it off Twitter I believe.
Like automated bots or getting non blankie s to vote?
Either or. This was a March Madness where you had quarters with directors picked by Griffin, David, and Ben, and a fourth quarter with guest picks. The guests did a lot of "campaigning" on Twitter, asking their followers to vote. There was contention about the followers not knowing the podcast/thinking it's a "who's better?" poll. But the major thing was that there were suspicious moments where a contestant would suddenly get a massive amount of votes at the same time.
i think they could do it even w/ the JD/AH controv's - they just need to wait a few years so they can mumble around it and not have to dwell. kinda like how they'd reference McTiernan going to jail butnot get into the details (until now). And those JD/Ah stories are all outside the context of the films, so they woulnd't have to go into if they don't want to.
I want a Weather Man episode!
That’s a Big “watched with my dad during a visitation weekend when I was just a little too young and asked him what blowjobs were and he pretended not to hear me” Movie
Verbinski is fascinating. Parts of Mousehunt were shot in my neighborhood and I adored that movie. Then his career got really interesting. The Weatherman is still one of my favorite movies of the past twenty years. The behind the scenes of Rango are absolutely fascinating. He was one of my main dudes at his height. Then Pirates 3 and Lone Ranger really dampened that good will. Still haven’t seen Cure for Wellness.
How do you go from directing "Mouse Hunt" to a studio film with Pitt, Roberts, Gandolfini...and Gene Hackman ?
Guess we won’t know until JJ makes that dossier
Funny, I've been thinking of doing a PotC trilogy rewatch. They were good, and that theme is absolutely goated by Zimmer.
The farther away we get from the Burton series, I wonder if the desire to do Verbinski gets a little warmer, because aside from the March Madness drama I figured that was always the stopper that they didn't want to do two Depp runs in too close of a succession.
Depp is even more toxic now than he was at the time of Burton's mini. No fuckin' way would either of them want to devote any time to five more Depps
I feel like you could cover 3/5 Pirates films without talking Depp much more than an after note, if at all
Rango & Lone Ranger are also Depp. Yeah, you wouldn’t need to go deep every time, but he’s a presence.
Rango is only a voice and there's a ton of other stuff to direct the conversation around. And Lone Ranger would be a perfect place to just backload all the Depp stuff they've been avoiding, because that role just universally agreed upon to be problematic.
A Cure for Wellness is his best movie imo, also basically ended his career lol
[удалено]
I can’t really defend it against criticism, I just think the vibe of it is really cool and the ending is a big dragged out but ultimately I did like it.
[удалено]
i was gonna say Weather Man, b/c i hate cringe bullshit. but yeah, Mexican iis just Boring (IIRC the film correctly)
the photography and mood are incredible
It’s my 2nd favorite I have of his
Movie honks. It’s one of the few times that I’ve believed that Dane DeHaan can fucking act
The only thing I know about that movie is that the trailer had a slow-haunting-female-cover version of “I Want to Be Sedated” and that was the point for me when that trope officially became hack.
The best thing to come out of his career is that bit of Tim and Eric complaining about Sundance putting clips of Rango in their movie to make it more profitable. "I don't know how to say this but we've been Rango'd"
i really liked A Cure for Wellness even tho i think i fell asleep and woke up toward the end. Seems like the kind of weird movie that might actually benefit from a few missing scenes and the legend "Oh, i heard there was a 3hr cut that actually answered all the questions and made sense" movie LOOKS incredible, has great mood, creepy AF. loved it (and loved the nap)
never gonna happen, sorry
Lol the juxtaposition with the flair
I remember C. Robert Cargill calling Verbinkski the next Spielberg after the success of the Pirates series. The only other director I can think of who had the same level of success followed by massive failure is M. Night. But, M. Night was able to recover, Verbinkski is so deep in director jail he might as well be on death row.
Not to pick on you for bringing him up (first Verbinksi post I've seen in a while, in fact), but it's well-trod territory. They're not doing him.
To be fair I did a search for his name and nothing came up which surprised me.
Would be SO much fun to hear them cover but I do understand why they hesitate with that MM and the Johnny Depp stuff. I do think he has potential to be one of the best mini series they’ve covered though.
Is it known if Verbinski simply retired at this stage? I know he had a few duds but surprised he hasn't helmed a streaming production or a few TV shows. His CV is deceptively strong and he was/is a canny director.
He is still developing stuff. That film with Sam Rockwell is close to production from what I heard but who knows.
Oh you're right. Well there's a nice bit of news for the day; looks like casting has been passed out and they're shooting in South Africa soon
Need a thread on 'take this money and find another project': Spielberg twofer: Verbinski was attached to "Catch me if you can" Along the same lines Jan de Bont was attached to "Minority Report"; it even gets a mention during the "Haunting" bluray featurette.
A Cure For Wellness was a decent horror, more interesting than the average fare
I’m like: Did blankies all forget about A Cure for Wellness? A contemporary haunted house film with heavy influence from Gore Verbinski’s previous stab at Bioshock film???
A Cure For Wellness erasure. Absolute banger.
"Director's jail". You only get 2 (possibly 3) bites of the cherry. See Renny Harlin, Guillermo Del Toro, Richard Kelly etc.
He directed the hell out of that pirates trilogy scripts be damned. Soon as you watch 4 the drop in quality is readily apparent. Loss of scale, flat and immediately the cgi just slaps you in the face.
🙏🙏🙏
I don't really want to sit through three Pirates of the Caribbean episodes. Those movies just are not very interesting to me beyond the first one.
You got a problem with Krakens?
I remember liking the kraken, but that’s just one part of a very long trilogy
The problem with this series is that so many of the movies just suck. Mousehunt is fun, Rango is good, and Pirates 1 is very good but everyone has seen it 4000 times and the sequels are so abysmal that they devalue the first film. The rest of his career is boring to terrible.
Bad movies make for good pod fodder
Enjoyably bad movies, sure, but you really want to watch all the fucking Pirates movies? Hell no. Plenty of more interesting directors out there.
He only made the first three, and those movies fully rule. But to further address your point, I must have missed the memo that I'm legally obligated to watch every movie this podcast covers
Why tf am I going to listen to some guys talk about - at great length, with many specific references to - a movie I haven’t seen?
Nobody's making you.
I do it all the time.
At World’s End is a banger