Check Book: Zootopia 2
Bunnies and Foxes and Robert Moses.
Surprise! Blank Check has started a newsletter! Your favorite connoisseurs of context are gonna go on even more tangents, commit to even more bits, and share opinions on even more pieces of entertainment industry news because - hey, why not. Thanks for joining us!
IN THIS WEEK’S EDITION:
THE BARDI PARTY REPORT
Zootopia 2 is the number one movie in the world right now, and I can say that I contributed to the phenomenon by purchasing two tickets and two special AMC concession bundles that included sets of bunny ears and fox ears. I guess they were meant for children, because when I ripped my bunny ears out of the plastic bag to put them on, the lady at the concession stand marveled, “Oh, they’re for you.”
You may as well call me Celine Song for the way I love Zootopia. According to my Letterboxd stats, I’ve seen it 3 times, which feels like a lot for someone who doesn’t have children and isn’t part of the Fursuit community. Sure, the central metaphor of Zootopia isn’t super…uh…tidy…when it comes to race. And, of course, the B in ACAB doesn’t stand for “bunnies.” But oh my God, there’s a tiny arctic shrew who looks like Snooki and the DMV is run by sloths and Shakira is a gazelle flanked by a crew of hot tiger dancers. What can I say, I love animal puns and stories that explore the pitfalls of white feminism. Judy Hopps trying to get ahead in the Zootopia PD by giving out more parking tickets than anyone else on the force is a pretty incisive critique if you ask me.
Anyway, this brings us to Zootopia 2, a film I quite enjoyed. If Zootopia was about (sometimes too) broad ideas of racial and gender discrimination, Zootopia 2 narrows its focus to redlining and the ways that power and prejudice shape the infrastructure of cities, rewrite history, and eliminate communities under the guise of modernization. What if Robert Moses was an evil Lynx? We learn that reptiles - and most pointedly snakes - bore the brunt of this erasure, with their communities being demolished and their reputations sullied by propaganda. When Judy Hopps and Nick Wilde learn of this conspiracy through a snake named Gary de’Snake, they’re on a mission to bring the truth about reptiles (they’re not the bad guys!) to light.
THINGS I LOVED ABOUT ZOOTOPIA 2:
I love Gary de’Snake, voiced by Ke Huy Quan with such winning pathos that the idea of hugging a snake seems like a great idea. At one point he’s like “I’m Gary the Snake” and when someone asks his last name, he’s like, “It’s ‘de’Snake’,” and I found that so silly and cute. The film also makes clever use of his cold-bloodedness, if we want to go back to the hugging thing for a second.
My beloved arctic shrews return, this time overseeing a knock-off Gucci empire. I love this for her.
We spend time in Marsh Market, a section of town that is very backwater / bayou-esque, where many of the aquatic mammals live. It’s a really fun new world, and we get to meet some walruses who just say “hey bub” a lot when greeting each other.
Zootopia 2 implies the existence of “Gnu Jersey”
The villain twist in this actually got me. I gasped.
Any time a big animal has to use a thing made for a small animal, like when Chief Bogo has to drink a rodent-sized glass of champagne, or when Clawhauser has to hack into an IT system designed for a mouse.
At one point, a pig says to another pig, “That’ll do, Pig.”
There’s an extended, spot-on The Shining parody.
THINGS I DID NOT LOVE:
Disney, I implore you. Please stop edging the furry community. This movie really ramps up the bunny/fox romantic tension without actually delivering on it. I’m not exaggerating, they show them pretending to be a married couple with a baby in the first scene, they’re literally dressed like Beauty and the Beast when they sneak into a black-tie gala, THEY CONFESS THEIR DEEP FEELINGS TO EACH OTHER IN AN INCREDIBLY VULNERABLE MOMENT AT THE CLIMAX OF THE FILM, and the post-credits scene is just Judy pining over Nick in her little apartment. If Shrek let a donkey and a dragon procreate, Zootopia can ignore the laws of nature and allow the hot bunny and the hot fox to kiss.
Burning Man exists in the world of Zootopia and we’re all supposed to think it’s a fun and normal music festival. This is not what we should be teaching our children.
Speaking of things that we should not be teaching children, Fortune Feimster plays a conspiracy podcasting beaver named Nibbles Maplestick and she ends up being right about everything. Nibbles Maplestick could be a gateway to flat earth theory. I’m just saying.
Bob Iger voices a weatherman named Bob Tiger and I think that’s a tad Zaslavian of him.
LET’S CRACK OPEN THE DOSSIER
A Stupid Movie Made for a MacArthur Genius
Around the turn of the 21st century, the editor Tricia Cooke was out with her friend Mar Molina when they came up with a title they thought would make for a good movie, as Cooke told Little White Lies many years later: “The idea originated from a friend of mine and I – we came up with it at a bar. One night we’re like, ‘Drive-Away Dykes’, what a great name for a movie.”1 But that’s all they came up with: a title. So when Cooke and her husband Ethan Coen sat down to begin co-writing the screenplay for the movie that would later be retitled Drive-Away Dolls, they simply sought to write a story that deserved Cooke’s and Molina’s name, per Coen: “We were both taken with the title and, as with old exploitation films, it all derived from that. We figured, ‘All right, what kind of movie has this title?’”2 As Coen told MovieMaker, writing to the title gave him a little bit of that Barton Fink feeling: “It was like old-fashioned Hollywood. We started with the title and wrote the movie to fit the title.”3
As they years went on, Cooke and Coen worked on their co-authored screenplay—with Cooke building out the “queer world,” and Ethan providing the “bumbling men”—in their spare time away from bigger projects.4 Around the mid-2000s, the film actually came close to happening, with Gas Food Lodging’s Allison Anders in the director’s chair. Cooke and Coen had met Anders over a decade prior while flying to China for a Sundance-sponsored event in 1995. The trio became quick friends: Anders’s daughter would even later serve as a nanny for Cooke’s and Coen’s children Buster and Dusty. Before Drive-Away Dykes even had a finished screenplay, Cooke and Coen pitched Anders on the movie while on a winter holiday vacation to San Francisco in the early 2000s. She was quickly taken with her friends’ “naughty comedy”: “I could see why it would be a great fit, them and me -- there are a lot of great women characters in it. It’s really a girl buddy movie, from a female point of view, but it’s also very Russ Meyer-esque, with that same kind of innocence. The way that Ethan and Tricia always saw it was like a B movie of the past. We gotta bring back drive-ins.”5
While Anders was overseeing the film, various stars—including Selma Blair, Holly Hunter, Christina Applegate, and Chloë Sevigny—cycled in and out of the picture. But Drive-Away Dykes could never find sufficient funding, no matter what star was attached, per Coen: “[W]hen we wrote the movie … we couldn’t get it made because it was inconceivable. If it was a lesbian movie, it had to be an important drama. It couldn’t just be lesbian and fun.” Nearly two decades later, the world would finally be ready for the movie, at least in the eyes of a certain star; as Ethan revealed to Little White Lies, “I’ve gotta tell you what Kristen Stewart said about the movie. She read it [after casting] and said, ‘We need this stupid movie!’”6 And that stupid movie we would finally get…
Some of Us Made Sourdough, Others Made Home Movies That Played at Cannes
After production wrapped on Joel and Ethan Coen’s 2019 anthology film The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, the younger brother was feeling quite old: “[A]fter 30 years, not that it’s no fun, but it’s more of a job than it had been. Joel kind of felt the same way but not to the extent that I did. It’s an inevitable by-product of aging. And the last two movies we made, me and Joel together, were really difficult in terms of production. I mean, really difficult. So if you don’t have to do it, you go at a certain point: Why am I doing this? … It was just getting a little old and difficult.”7 As Coen told NPR in 2024, he had simply grown “bored” with moviemaking.8 So he consciously stepped away from movies—and his brother—in a move he characterized thusly to the Associated Press: “It was just me going, ‘Uaaagghh.’”9
But Coen’s time away from filmmaking was much shorter than he had initially planned: just a couple of weeks into the COVID-19 pandemic, he and (especially) Cooke were approached by their friend and collaborator T Bone Burnett, who wanted the married duo to work on his documentary project about the pianist, singer, and normal guy Jerry Lee Lewis. By this point—locked up in his own home, feeling claustrophobic and a little bit scared—Coen was now bored without a movie project to work on, so he and Cooke took Burnett up on his offer, assembling the film while shut away from the outside world. Per Cooke, “It was like a home movie project.”10
When Burnett first began working on the project that would become Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind, it was, per Coen, much smaller in scope: “The movie has a history preceding our involvement. It was originally conceived as being more on the gospel session T-Bone produced with Jerry Lee in 2019.” However, as work on the film continued, “archival footage kept piling up,” so, by the time Cooke and Coen were attached, it “seemed to make more sense to make it about Jerry Lee than this particular session.”11 The film premiered at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival to tepid reviews, but, more importantly, it revived Coen’s interest in filmmaking, per Cooke: “[T]hat had been a lot of fun to work on. So we thought, ‘OK, let’s revisit [Drive-Away Dykes.’”12 Wikipedia editors, please add “being responsible for Honey, Don’t” to the “Legacy” section of Jerry Lee Lewis’s article.
What, Me Worry?
Though the Coens typically keep their films’ running times under two hours, at just 84 minutes, Drive-Away Dolls was by far the shortest film Ethan Coen had ever directed. (The previous record holder: Raising Arizona at a comparably epic 94 minutes.) But, as Cooke told Little White Lies, this wasn’t by design: “[W]e certainly didn’t think it was going to be that short. It was over a hundred-page script, you know, and all of a sudden, we’re like, ‘Damn, this is only 75 minutes.’” Instead of artificially stretching out their film, Cooke and Coen leaned into its brevity, per the former: “[W]e figured, there’s so many other movies out there right now that are three and a half hours long, that maybe an 80-minute movie isn’t so bad.” As Coen said, “I haven’t seen the new Scorsese movie [Killers of the Flower Moon] yet because it’s three-and-a-half hours. I’m sure if I saw it, I’d like it, but it’s hard to see for me.” But with Drive-Away Dolls, well, “it might not be good, but at least it’s short. You can put that on the poster.”13 And with that quote, my time covering the Coen brothers has come to an end.
BEN HOSLEY’S SLOW XMAS 5 — NOW AVAILABLE FOR PREORDER ON VINYL
WHAT IS THE TEAM INTO THIS WEEK?
A note from the full team:
Blank Check is supporting City Harvest this giving season! In short, they are a nonprofit that rescues fresh, healthy food that would otherwise go to waste and distributes it to food pantries and soup kitchens in NYC to address food insecurity. It’s a really cool local organization.Unless you’ve been in a cave, you know that between some recent legislation and the shutdown-related SNAP lapse, our neighbors who live on the edge are getting pummeled right now.
We love City Harvest because:
The mission is universal: everyone should have access healthy food. When people don’t have to struggle with food, they can make progress in other areas of life.
They address two problems with one solution: not only are they feeding people, they are helping the environment by reducing food waste.
They go the extra mile: they provide nutrition education and culturally relevant food, which means folks are getting food that is a part of their culture, that they actually enjoy. Actually treating a person in need like a human being, worthy of dignity and respect, we love it!
If you are able, please, help feed some good folks who just need a little help: make a meaningful donation at cityharvest.org/blankcheck. ($100 provides 193 meals!) It takes like… one minute, and feels great.
David Sims, Host: “ I do NOT recommend everyone in your family getting a stomach bug after thanksgiving but I DO recommend PETER HUJAR’S DAY which is in theaters and is the coolest movie about New York City made in a dang minute! It is also a perfect “chat to Rebecca Hall” simulator if you’ve been searching for one of those. Also I saw and enjoyed Zootopia 2 with my daughter and she wore her Disney-provided promotional bunny ears throughout.”
JJ Bersch, Researcher: “The 101 Songs—my annual ranked playlist of my favorite songs of the year—is now LIVE FOR 2025 as of last Wednesday. You can listen to it on Apple Music and/or Spotify. Aside from my work on the show—and, like, raising a child and being a good husband or whatever—this playlist is the thing I work the hardest on each year, and it means so much to me that any of you listen to it. Songs are RANKED from #1 (“Play” by james K) to #101 (“Tears” by Sabrina Carpenter) but also organized for FLOW. Much like every year, it was a good year for music, in my opinion. Now to take a few weeks off before beginning work on The 101 Songs, 2026.”
Alan Smithee, Pseudonymous Editor: “In between sessions of stuffing my face this weekend, I read and loved Chris Bachelder’s book The Throwback Special. It’s about a group of guys who get together at a horrible hotel every year to re-enact one specific play from a 1988 NFL game (Lawrence Taylor breaking Joe Theismann’s leg). It’s extremely silly and strange, but ends up being this encyclopedic novel about modern dude-ness. Kaleidoscopic. Ka-guy-doscopic. I genuinely lol’d several times while reading it, and was left with a deep sense of melancholy. What more could you ask for?”
AJ McKeon, Editor: “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection - Was playing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV: Turtles in Time yesterday a bunch with Hayes and it’s the best. You have to play as Donatello for the reach of the bo-staff.”
Marie Bardi, Social Media: “I made this Gochujang Potato Stew last night and it was FIRE. The most flavorful broth, I need to put it on everything now.”
THIS WEEK ON THE PODCAST
Who lives in a pineapple under the sea? Find out as we chat with mxmtoon about Drive Away Dolls and a plethora of other topics!
Check out mxmtoons YouTube Channel
MEANWHILE ON PATREON…..
We begin our 2-movie series featuring one of the most famous British people not to be a Sir or Lord: James Bond (and Timothy Dalton, I guess… and David Sims while we are at it). We are discussing 1987’s The Living Daylights.
COMING SOON:
Little White Lies, March 12, 2024.
Los Angeles Times, January 10, 2007.
MovieMaker, February 22, 2024.
Associated Press, February 22, 2024.
Los Angeles Times, January 10, 2007.
Little White Lies, March 12, 2024.
Associated Press, May 23, 2022.
Associated Press, February 22, 2024.
Associated Press, May 23, 2022.
Ibid.
Little White Lies, March 12, 2024.
Really hope everyone followed up on the “Squad Up” idea for Fortnite. Not to, like, stream it or anything (although I know new forms of revenue streams are a plus for David Sims—decade of dreams), but just to have something else for a little bonding activity. Works great for me and my 7yo son (I bought him the Power Rangers Battlepass to unlock zords and shit for his birthday) and I bet it’s an even finer time when you can play a game with some likeminded 30-somethings who are all equally tired at the end of the day and are fine with just a few rounds of Fortnite before passing out.
Please do an Allison Anders mini soon! She’s a great filmmaker, one of the few directors not named Scorsese to have a film cut by Thelma Schoonmaker, worked as a PA for Wim Wenders, and is in general a total sweetheart.