Blank Check with Griffin & David is a film podcast following the career output of directors who have had significant success and are then offered a figurative blank check to pursue their passion projects. Most episodes focus on a single movie from the director's filmography, and the show is grouped into "miniseries," in which some or all of the director's films are reviewed. The show is hosted by The Atlantic film critic David Sims and actor Griffin Newman. As of October 2023, the podcast is discussing the films of David Fincher.
Series overview
The Blank Check website describes the podcast as:Not just another bad movie podcast, Blank Check reviews directors' complete filmographies episode to episode. Specifically, the auteurs whose early successes afforded them the rare ‘blank check’ from Hollywood to produce passion projects. Each new miniseries, hosts Griffin Newman and David Sims delve into the works of film’s most outsized personalities in painstakingly hilarious detail.
Origins: Griffin and David Present
The podcast was originally entitled Griffin and David Present, and assessed the Star Wars prequel films as if in a universe where the other Star Wars films did not exist. Originally planning to spend 50 episodes on each film, producer Ben Hosley convinced the hosts to only do ten. Having used a lengthy analysis of a filmography as a means of discussing the films' director, Newman and Sims decided to use a similar approach in reviewing the works of other directors, and retitled the show Blank Check with Griffin and David.
Blank Check with Griffin & David
Each miniseries is given a loosely comedic title which combines the word "podcast" with either a title of a film or the director's name. If a director they've previously discussed releases a new film, they will work it into their schedule of upcoming shows.
Notable guests
Over the many years there have been a variety of guests on the podcast. Below is a selection of some of them.
Blank Check: Special Features
On January 1, 2019, Newman and Sims created a Patreon page, Blank Check: Special Features, where fans could pay a monthly amount in exchange for extra content. Blank Check Special Features focuses primarily on audio commentary about films that are part of franchises, including the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Toy Story, Mission: Impossible, The Santa Clause, and Alien. The Patreon feed also offers monthly bonus episodes and other content related to the current miniseries or general interest.
, the Blank Check Patreon was ranked 16th in the podcast category and 35th overall based on the number of paying supporters, with an estimated 17,021 subscribers.
Blank Check: March Madness
Every March since 2018 there has been a March Madness style bracket pitting thirty-two directors against each other allowing listeners to vote and decide a director to be covered later in the year. Until 2022, the votes were cast through Twitter polls, but were later moved to the Blank Check website following use of bots to influence match-ups. Since 2020 there have been brackets exclusive to the Patreon to decide a franchise to cover.
Reception
Blank Check has been positively reviewed by Paste Magazine, Decider, and The A.V. Club. The show was included in Esquire's list of the best 21 podcasts of 2018, as well as on Paste Magazine's list of the top 30 podcasts of the decade. It has also been featured in Vulture and Entertainment Weekly as a selection of the week. In May 2023, Luis A. Gómez of The New Yorker wrote about the podcast, stating that "Newman and Sims reveal themselves as connoisseurs of context in engaging, discursive conversations" and are "a positive, authoritative voice in the film-podcasting landscape."