Blank Check with Griffin & David · Blank Check Productions

Is This Thing On?

January 4, 2026·2 hr 29 min·5 clips

Bradley Cooper's character is named 'Balls', and every time he's on screen, the audience erupts in laughter.

Blank Check is a film podcast hosted by Griffin Newman and David Sims that covers director retrospectives with extended, loose-format conversations. This episode opens on what Griffin describes as eleven years into the show, technically the start of their eleventh year, and David's visible irritation with the mere fact of its continued existence. The precipitating incident is Ben the producer materializing a very large, very crunchy sandwich from Caputo's Italian specialty food store in Cobble Hill at the exact moment he said they were rolling and Griffin tried to start the recording. The crunch is captured on mic and becomes the central contested object of the intro argument. Griffin wanted to use a comedic intro he had prepared. David vetoed it. Griffin responds with an impression of David's habitual confusion and mild irritation at the start of each episode, which he has done for eleven years. The film being discussed is described as a movie about stand-up comedy that neither Griffin nor David found funny. Griffin describes it as dramatically unfunny, meaning it failed even on a dramatic level. David says it made his skin crawl. The sole comic exception is Bradley Cooper's character, who is credited under the name Balls, a nickname used throughout the film. The hosts report that every time Balls appears on screen, both the audience at the preview screening and they themselves laughed, while the rest of the film received pin-drop silence from the same audience. The conversation around this dynamic, that one comedic element was able to distinguish itself from a generally unfunny movie, becomes a way in to discussing what makes something funny and why stand-up comedy translates or fails to translate to film. Bradley Cooper is also mentioned as being Italian-American, which is treated as relevant context given that Caputo's is an Italian specialty store.

As heard by us

A lively film argument that finds real heat in one very strange scene.

The episode turns one odd movie choice into a brisk argument, with Griffin, David, and Ben circling a breakfast scene, a strange emotional gesture, and the larger question of when Cameron Crowe's precision feels sharp or simply off.

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Why you'd press play

You want Griffin and David spiraling from a sandwich joke into a Cameron Crowe argument.

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