Blank Check with Griffin & David · Blank Check Productions

Miller's Crossing with Ari Aster

July 27, 2025·2 hr 9 min·5 clips

Ari Aster explains how Miller's Crossing became a foundational script he obsessed over as a lonely, stuttering kid.

This episode of Blank Check covers Miller's Crossing, the Coen Brothers' 1990 gangster film, as part of the podcast's ongoing Coen Brothers miniseries titled Pod Country for Old Cast. Hosts Griffin Newman and David Sims are joined by filmmaker Ari Aster. The conversation opens with an extended riff on the film's distinctive dialogue, particularly the phrase giving someone the hi-hat, which becomes a recurring joke throughout the episode. The hosts discuss Christian Marclay's The Clock, a 24-hour film assembled from clips of clocks in cinema, which Aster recently saw at MoMA and enthusiastically recommends. David recounts turning down an opportunity to moderate a Q and A with the Coen Brothers during the Buster Scruggs press tour, partly because the brothers are notoriously difficult interview subjects who tend to play dumb about their own work. Aster describes discovering Miller's Crossing as a young aspiring screenwriter, printing scripts from Drew's Script-O-Rama and becoming obsessed with dialogue writing. He names the Coens alongside David Mamet, Patty Chayefsky, Paul Schrader, Bergman, and Kenneth Lonergan as formative influences. The group discusses the film's relationship to Dashiell Hammett's work and Howard Hawks' dialogue style, noting how Miller's Crossing synthesizes influences that are closer to each other than the wilder combinations in Raising Arizona. They examine the critical reception history, noting that major critics did not fully align on the Coens until Fargo, with some dismissing earlier work as pastiche or accusing the filmmakers of not liking their own characters. The hosts argue that Miller's Crossing introduced an elegiac quality absent from their previous films and represents a genuine exploration of friendship and moral decision-making beneath its complex plotting. The episode includes typical Blank Check digressions into ad reads for Mubi and Fast Growing Trees, both delivered with the show's signature irreverent style.

As heard by us

Ethics, hi-hats, and Tom's shifting intent keep the Miller's Crossing discussion moving.

Blank Check turns its Miller's Crossing conversation into a running argument about ethics, control, and how much of Tom's behavior is plan and how much is damage control.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

You should press play if hi-hats can count as a moral crisis.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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