iTunes Exclusive Episode Blindspotting

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This is number 408 for those of you playing the home game Welcome.
My name is Rob. I am the executive producer of the Clubhouse podcast and I have my eyes checked
recently and I am in great shape, which is really surprising. That's how I roll.
But I'm not alone for this particular episode sitting in the co-host chair as he tends to do
is my co-host and a man that I think is going to be very intrigued about we're going to talk
about today. He is Chad. Welcome sir.
You have my interest peak.
Next to him is the official fact checker of this show and a man who has kind of a personal stake
in what we're going to talk about today and we're going to talk about that here in just a minute.
You may know I'm as fond on Don Goblin, but it's mom and even Don Ford. I'm going to call him Don Ford Welcome.
I like ribeyes in prime rib.
Not the steak. I was talking about that.
Okay. I blame you.
No. Rounding out the day is not deserve the rim shot.
Oh no, the rim shot is what it is.
Rounding out the day is the lady of the house and a woman who is probably asking herself,
why do I subject myself to this as often as I do? She is general. Welcome friend.
Hello everyone.
Whatever we do one of these it is to review something and this is no different.
We're going to talk today about a film that has got a lot of buzz and I mean a lot of buzz
around it. Was that South by Southwest? It was at the Sundance Film Festival.
Written by Ann Starring, Duffy Diggs and Raphael Kassal. It's called Blind Spotting.
We're starting to sell things. Yes sir.
We got things Julian Josh and everybody in Sly Fox.
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We love our vendors. They give us the opportunity to see movies in advance.
We can talk to you guys about them so you can spend your entertainment dollar wisely.
This runs right of bads 135 as you run a time in this.
Here's what you need to know.
Duffy Diggs plays Colin. Colin is a guy who is on the very last few days of probation.
He's living in a halfway house after spending some time in jail,
which that story comes out as the film goes on.
He's so close to the end. He works at a moving company with his best friends since they were 11
played by Miles, played by Raphael Kassal and they are best friends in real life.
There are collaborators in real life and Miles is kind of a mischievous guy.
They live in Oakland and they work together at a moving company.
So one night as Colin's trying to get back to his halfway house before his 11 o'clock curfew,
he gets stuck at a red light and as he's stuck at this red light he becomes a witness to an officer
involved shooting of an African-American man.
And over the last two or three days of his probation it starts to affect his brain
and he's thinking about what he saw versus what he may have saw and other factors.
Everything starts to snowball for him from there.
This movie and I put this in my written review currently located at www.theclubhousepodcast.com.
That's our website.
There's going to be a lot of people that are going to look at this movie and they're going to want
to compare it to Friday. Two best friends spending the day together and the things to come with that.
I can understand the comparisons therein.
This has a bit of a darker tone to it. I wouldn't call this a dark comedy.
Big time.
But I wouldn't call it a dark comedy.
No, it's it's gritty.
I felt that it was very very realistic. I won't call it real. I'll call it realistic because
part of this film they both spend some time when they're just hanging out basically writing hip
hop lyrics. And as the film goes on the lyrics get a little bit more intense as the story gets
more intense. And as it builds to a fever pitch what Collins going through reflects in the
lyrics that he's writing. And it's incredibly well done. And I'm going to save that for what
Don's going to talk about here in a minute because he makes a point about that in his written review
currently located at www.theclubhousepodcast.com. That's our website.
You also have a couple of cameos in this. Chad, we have a Tisha Campbell Martin citing.
Really?
She's in for a few minutes. Wayne Knight has a cameo in this. He has a great cameo in this as well.
You also have her fans of the league. The Shiva is in this.
Janita Gravonkar. She works the front desk at the moving company and she has a connection to
Colin as well. She's one of the main four. I call there. It's probably pulled me.
And then then then you're also talking about Jasmine Cephas Jones playing Ashley who is
she's a myles living girlfriend and mother of his son. Yeah.
Well, I don't know if they say they're buried or not, Nat. I don't think they are. Either way,
they're in a big relationship. Correct. They're common law. They're common law.
There's also, did you notice who played the cop in this, Don? Yeah. Do you notice who that was?
Yeah. When I did the written, www.theclubhousepodcast.com. That's our website.
Chad, could I interest you in one Ethan Embry?
Ethan Embry. We have an Ethan Embry sighting and I saw his name in the credits and I was like,
Oh, Ethan Embry is in this. And then I didn't realize it was him until I was writing my review
today because we saw this last night and I was like, that was Ethan Embry. Oh my goodness.
You mean the main cop? Yes. Yeah.
Yeah. This movie and I opened my written review. Oh my tell me who Embry is.
He's the guy in that thing. Yeah. But he was in a, they did a dragonnet revamp in the early
odds that he did with Ed. Who played Albande? Ed O'Neal. Ed O'Neal. Yeah. That was really,
really good. Yeah. But I said every year for last couple of years. I pulled him up.
He is that guy. Yeah. You don't have love Ethan Embry. Every year for like the
army last two or three, as the year goes on, it's getting harder and harder to rank films because
the films are getting so much better. This is a movie that I think is going to be a monkey wrench
for a lot of people's top 10 lists. Yeah. You know, Don and I don't tend to see eye to eye a lot
on film. And that's not a bad thing. I mean, we have different opinions. Yeah. I don't have the
great crit. Let's talk about that. But Don and I throughout this film, we're just looking at each
other like, whoa, like this is amazing. This movie is nothing short of brilliant.
And let me add, we've done together literally at least 300 films at the stage. Probably closer to
350 at this point together. Yeah. I mean, we divide and conquer. But I say at least 300 times,
we've been in a same theater, whether it be a live event or a film. And in some cases,
for films that we didn't review that, we just went and saw an RO. Yeah, exactly.
This one is, well, first off, what's your watch, watch cage? 40 minutes. Okay. I don't know if I
ever been in a film with the 300 plus that we've been to where I heard you laugh so much. And
I'm glad you said that because there's such a great balance between intensity and comedy here.
Especially in the beginning, there's a ton of comedy. You were just rolling. Not long, but
just a lot of quick. Yeah. Of course. Sticking move. Sticking move. And it's so, and a lot of
it's because of the chemistry of Cassal and Diggs. Now, if you go to my review at www.com.com.
That's our website. I'd hold on. Now, I talked about their comparison. Like these are like best
friends. Like, like what me and Gary B or you and Chad, or when I put into film, which I put
in the review, that it's like a Glover in Gibson in with the weapons. That's that type of friendship
bond they had. And I think, Chad, I think you'll see. They can finish. Don mentions this. Just
mention this. When you see this because they their work truck is their personal vehicle too.
When they're driving around and just talking, you'll probably look at this and go, yeah, I could see
Robert. I have in that same conversation because there was a time when Chad and I did work together.
And we rode together to and from work every day. This, this movie, they could finish each other
sentences. They were that close to the bond. And since you're seeing best friends in real life,
I could see how that portrays in the film. I was blown away by that. It was, it was amazing. And I
what I really liked is about the cameos, especially when you talk about Wayne Knight and Tisha Campbell
Martin. If you took those two scenes out of the film, it wouldn't change the film for me, but they
weren't unnecessary. They were really nice. They were nice little. It was nice. Like a little
breath of fresh air, given the chaos that's going on around them. Those scenes were kind of a nice
palette cleanser for the darkness that would be right around the corner. I love the mix of the
comedy in a various serious situations. And that let's pull the punch. This thing gets serious.
Oh, absolutely. This film don't take the kids. I'll start you have a lot of explaining because
there's a ton of language. There's a ton of adult situations in this. There's some violence in
this. Let's talk about it. But it gets so serious, but they kind of relieve it with the comedy.
But this gets more serious towards the end. I'm going to say that. It was nominated for the
Festival Directors Award at the Synotopia Film Festival. It won for Best Original Song,
Anthony Hamilton has a song on the soundtrack, who I'm a huge fan of. It was the winner at the
Palm Springs International Film Festival Directors to watch for Carlos Lopez Estrada. By the way,
this is his first film. He's done a lot of shorts and videos. This is his first feature length film.
And it was nominated for the grand jury prize at Sundance this year. But one thing that it's been,
which I put in my review again, that I was a probation officer. There's no thing on that. This is
the personal touch that Don's going to talk about right now. And he was on parole. There's a little
difference, but parole is after prison. And I didn't deal much with halfway houses. And
there are people, and they go by the end, as long as you don't kill somebody in the last week,
you're, you're good to go. But so there was some kind of things that me personally dealing with
this. I saw some things that were probably won't be too true. But still, I've had those relationships
with people where they're doing so good, then they do something stupid that just blows your mind
and you get so disappointed. But this really shows how people are trying to do the right thing,
have those exterior things in their environment, which tries to take them out from the straight
narrow with no father of their own. And they have to fight every day to go down that straight
narrow because everything around them wants to make them do something illegal. And there's one
scene I'm going to say is after the two leads have their blowout and he's walking down the street.
You could hear a pin drop in that theater when that thing was happening. Yeah, and there were,
there's no downside to this film at all. There's one thing which I put, which is going to boil your
mind in the chat. You want to hear this. Okay. Now, of all the films I've ever seen, there's one
scene at the climax in Robin Doe's, which one I'm talking about, because the plus is also in your
interview. Yeah. I heard the best rap sequence I've ever seen on a film in that one moment.
At the, at the absolute climax of this film, the emotion that Debbie Diggs puts into, and there's
no, there's no background to it. It's just him. There's no beat or anything. But you know he's
doing hip-hop lyrics given the structure in the meter. It matches the intensity of, it makes the
intensity of the scene jump tenfold. Nice. And that rap was just, yeah. I mean, and one
continuous shot for the most part of it. Wow. The best rap sequence I've ever seen on
film. As he's approaching somebody and the, as he's approaching the cameras approaching him at
the same time, it's really well shot. Like it's, I've seen too many movies in the last two weeks
that have raised my blood pressure. This was one of them. And the best possible way.
I'm about to say that's in the best possible way. This hits every emotional note right where it
needs to be. I will say that the, the reveal of, of Collins background is done very Michael
Pena Antman style. God. Okay. Did he get some real comedy in a certain situation? Yeah. Like it's,
and it's, it's just, everything is so well done. Nothing's too over the top. There's a lot of
symbolism and things that, that Collins sees where he's, he's flashing back to what happened that night.
And I'll be honest, the jogging scenes in the morning. Yeah. It was, I liked every morning. Yeah,
every morning he goes jogging through a cemetery. But there were times when I was appealed,
and I would jog just to get the stuff off my mind. Because I'm human. I had to look at stuff.
I saw a lot of horribly incredible, terrible stuff as a PO. But you had to look at his robot,
but still you're human. And he had sent people down and all that. But one way was to jog and just
get that out of you somehow. But this movie is so good. But I can't say enough good things about
this film. It's, it's everything you want in a film of its ilk.
Let me ask you this. Is it ranked in your top 10 right now so far for the year?
I will neither confirm nor deny that. Okay. That's, I mean, like I said, this year,
every, every, I'm Italian, every movie I've seen this year, like I do every year. But this year,
it's just, it gets harder and harder and harder because it seems like Hollywood is just uping
its game. And a lot of it's because these independent voices are getting the opportunities
from a technology standpoint that maybe they didn't have 10 years. It's getting easier and easier
to make films and these guys are just getting better at providing good stories. I'll live this movie
is good. And I, I really hope that it gets the respect it deserves. It's like one of those 93%
right now. And I think it's a low. Now we did Gleason. Uh-huh. We knew nothing about it going in
and it comes out being the best of the year. That's what I like about some of these. Yeah. It was just
don't be surprised when you hear people talking about this movie. If nothing else,
this one and another film that we've reviewed two episodes before this. I tune to exclusive 406.
The indie spirit awards better get ready. What do you think about acting for Best Actor on
this? Do you think you'd ever? Well, from an independent standpoint. That's what the independent
spirit awards are like the indie Oscars. Yeah. This one in eighth grade are going to be real tough
to beat this year. Real tough tonight. I could see in Best Actor not for him. Oh, absolutely.
To beat Diggs was amazing. Yeah, then the who played his best friend Colin. I think that was
like Colin was to be Diggs. Yeah. He was only like his second or third feature film. He has
got knocked. He hasn't done this a little bit back. But he's but he's a musician too. Yeah,
but he was acting. He did good for them. They were great. Yeah, they were great. And there's just
there's no downside to this film. Shall we get to the final analysis? That's true. The way you do
the final analysis on the show, we're not going to give you a thumbs up, thumbs it down,
letter grades, numbers, radar logos, anything like that. I'm not going to be in Vegas in a couple of
years. Two questions. Question number one is, will we see this film again if the answers know
them were done here? But if the answers yes, follow up questions. How far are we willing to go to do so?
From the best of the best of the worst of the best, here's how it goes. Full price to the theater,
down to a twilight showing, down to a matinee showing, down to early morning on the weekend,
down to second run at the dollar theater, down to actually leaving your house and getting it from
red box, down to streaming on the flakes, down to cable, done. Yes. Would you see blind spotting
again? Definitely. How far are you willing to go? Yes, coveted. So you're saying yes,
all the way coveted. Ditto. Wow. See this film as quickly as you can, get your hands on it in
any way you can legally. And I can say this may, this probably will either get an honorable
mentor to make my top 10. I wouldn't be shocked either. I mean, this movie is that good. Go
see this movie support independent film because these voices are getting more and more important
as time is going on. Carlos Lopez Estrada directs Rafael Casal de V digs co-write and star in blind
spotting. Burn the sulfing? Yes, sir. We got to thank Julian Josh, everybody. Slifox. Zining,
zining, zining, zining. We love our vendors so much. They're so great to us. Thank you guys for
letting us see this. It was an honor to do so. That being said, let's do the plugs.
Visit our website. We may have a record for the most number of times it was mentioned in a
concentrated time frame in this episode. www.theclubhousepodcast.com. You can find our written reviews
there and so much more. Follow us on social media. Twitter's on clubhouse show. Everything
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Also email me at Don at the clubhousepodcast.com. Email Don for information how we can come do a live
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solids so we can help keep this thing growing. Until next time, for Jen Rome, for Don, for Chad,
for the empire. I'm Rob, clubhouse is closed and I'm telling you, go see this film.