Revisionist History - Oscar Season with Talk Easy

Episode Date: March 5, 2024

Development Hell will return on Thursday with an all-new episode about a chimpanzee. In the meantime, here's a Hollywood-related episode from our friends at Talk Easy. Host Sam Fragoso talks with the New York Times critic Wesley Morris about all things Oscars, his career, and the state of the film industry. Find more Talk Easy at talkeasypod.com.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey friends, Malcolm here. I hope you're enjoying the Development Hell series as much as we are. We've got more great ones in the pipeline. But while we've got our heads in Hollywood and the Oscars coming up this weekend, I want to share a great interview from our friends over at Talk Easy. Sam Fragoso talks with the brilliant New York Times critic Wesley Morris all about this year's Oscar contenders and the movies that should have made the cut but didn't, plus the state of the industry in general.

It's a great listen, and don't worry, we'll be back on Thursday with the next episode from Development Hell. This is Talk Easy. I'm Sam Frag and fellow podcaster, Wesley Morris. Since 2015, Morris has served as the critic-at-large for the New York Times, where he's also co-hosted the popular podcast, Still Processing, alongside Jay Wortham. While the show has been on hiatus, Wesley has continued publishing, searching, and often moving essays that explore the intersection of race and pop culture.

His work was first awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 2012 during his tenure at the Boston Globe, and then again, most recently, in 2021, at the height of the pandemic. But what I think makes his work special, and you'll hear it a fair bit in this conversation, is not only his ability to connect the dots or to see the bigger picture, but to do so in real time with readers and listeners alike. Wesley doesn't come to the page or the microphone with the puzzle pre-assembled. The pieces of the story, or the theory,

are always there, yes, but the road to a good idea, the discovery process, which can often be vulnerable and vexing, is one he invites us into with wit, wisdom, and warmth. And so, this week, I wanted to sit with Morris on the heels of this year's Academy Award nominations to try to make sense of what

these 10 films both say and represent about movies in 2024. Pictures like Barbie, Oppenheimer, Killers of the Flower Moon, The Holdovers, are they a window into the future of cinema, or merely a reflection of this precarious moment in Hollywood? We also discuss his early adventures in moviegoing growing up in Philadelphia, the indie boom of the late 90s, the gradual erosion of what he calls the middle-brow movie in the wake of Marvel, now Mattel, and how the film industry has continued to struggle in its attempts to create a more diverse and equitable ecosystem, both in front and behind the camera. When Wesley accepted his second Pulitzer Prize in 2021, he said, At its most essential, criticism does save people money, and it can expose them to new, mind-blowing work.

It doesn't save lives, but it can give life. And so, by the end of this conversation, it's my hope that this episode will do the same for you. And with that, this is Wesley Morris. Hi, Wesley. Hello, Sam. How are you? Thanks for having me. That sounded a little labored. I mean, this is the year of our Lord, 2024. I think we're all in for some labor. If I sound like this in January,

I think you need to check with me in 11 months or 10 months and see where I am. Do you want to schedule a time to come back on November 15th, 2024? That guess should not be me. You can do better than me. I think David Remnick has signed up for that slot. Remnick?

For better or worse. Oh, all right. Well, then bring your tissues. We can do a panel. We can do a panel. Have you ever? You've never done a panel on this show. No, we don't do panels.

I mean, that's not how this works. I want to start with maybe less apocalyptic news in the recent Oscar nominations. I mean, it depends on who you're talking to. Well, we're talking to you, so we're going to start there. I mean, it was apocalyptic for Greta Gerwig. Yes, we'll have to get into that. In the past, you've called the Oscars, quote, a diagnosis of the health of the movies.

And the five to 10 films nominated for Best Picture operate as a class that doubles as an x-ray of the Academy and the movie business at large. So now that we have the nominations and the dust has settled a little bit, what is your diagnosis? I was thinking about the pandemic years and the dust has settled a little bit. What is your diagnosis? I was thinking about the pandemic years and the Oscars and all the rule bending that the Academy did in order to not not have a show.

Moving dates, expanding the release or the sort of eligibility windows. What constituted a motion picture? There were all these adjustments the Academy was trying to do in order to keep the show going on. And it was pretty funny because things looked really bad.

And how things looked a couple of years ago was that we weren't going to go to the movies again. And every Best Picture nominee was probably going to be watched on a TV by more people than saw it in a movie theater during its initial run and that is how in some ways you wind up with a movie like coda winning best picture which is the kind of movie where like you know i watched it the way pretty much everybody in the academy who voted for it and And you just gotta think like... With your eyes closed? I like that movie.

And it's funny because I watched it and I knew instantly by the time, like, when they go to the audition and she does the song and the family's up in the balcony and you experience it from their point of view, I was

like, there's no way in the world this movie does not win the Oscar for Best Picture. It's your winner. I felt like this is what the movies deserve. The movies deserve Coda winning Best Picture. The point is, I feel comfortable with where we are now versus where we were in 2019 to 2020, 2021, mostly because the movies are better. I think the movie attendance is not as bad as it seemed like it was going to be. You know, it's funny, Coco Gauff,

in her press conference the other day after she lost to Irina Sabalenka in the semifinals of the Australian Open, was talking about how bad, how she wasn't going to get too down on herself. And she's like, you know, tomorrow's another day. I'm just going to go see a movie and say that I didn't do so bad. And I was like, this is a 19-year-old person

saying they're going to cheer up by going to a movie. Incredible. It just kind of gladdened my heart a little bit. It made me feel like it was possibly 1989. And I just think that for one thing, the Best Picture nominees include the two movies that made people believe that moviegoing was going to be okay and would survive and would remain profitable. And it's not just the money, it's also just the cultural lifespan of what Barbie and Oppenheimer managed to do. It created a sort of side imagination in the culture where we could not stop mocking,

memeing, overthinking, rethinking, defending some aspect of both those movies. And they're Best Picture nominees. Well, let's start with those two because as the nominations came out, people once again came to the defense of Barbie, in part because Greta Gerwig was not nominated for Best Director and also because Margot Robbie was not recognized in the Best Actress category. Even former Secretary Hillary Clinton chimed in on Barbie Gay with a sentence that I'm going to read for you here.

Oh, I did not know this. Hit me. She wrote, Greta and Margot, while I can sting to win the box office, but not take home the gold. Oh, no. Hillary went there. Let me try it again. Oh, Lord.

I'm sorry. Keep going. Greta and Margo. Oh, God. You know, sometimes being a Democrat is so embarrassing. It's so embarrassing. But at least Democrats seem to watch things and then have feelings about them. Yes.

Anyway, just go on. Okay. Greta and Margot. Take three. While it can sting to win the box office but not take home the gold, your millions of fans love you. You're both so much more than Knuff. Hashtag Hillary Barbie. Oh, you know, as Hallmark cards go, I mean, I don't know any other presidential loser who would do a better job, frankly. But Hillary Clinton is more than entitled to look at the results of the Oscar nominations

and go to a place. I think that it's a little, I've been thinking about like, well, what do I actually think about the fact that Greta Gerwig's not a best director nominee having watched the movie like three days ago? And what do you think? Oh, I mean, first of all, I think that Barbie is extremely well-made. It's so well-made in some ways that you can't believe that the things that are interesting about it are even in the movie. There are avant-garde sequences in this movie. There are things that come out of beach movies from the 60s and John Waters. There are all kinds of influences being pulled from here

in a movie that is very funny. There's a line I don't know at some point she winds up in the boardroom. I don't know who's speaking but at some point the lowly guy who is the only person who is a free thinker in the land of suits doesn't even have a suit. I think he's

in a vest or a sweater. He's like I'm a man with no power. Does that make me a woman? And he meekly asks it. I just think that line is really funny. I mean, the speech, the America Ferrara speech is really good. I think

that the big problem with the movie in a weird way, it's that Ken, Ryan Gosling as Ken, is too good. And it's hard in some ways to not see past what he's doing because it's just so much better and richer and more shaded.

There's something underneath that person he's playing. Something like he's tapping into a pain that's not dissimilar or like an aspect of being a particular kind of human that is not dissimilar from what Margot Robbie is finding

and she's got like two really good scenes where she's connecting her dullness the character's dullness to the character's humanness but the problem with the Ken thing is that like the Ken-ness kind of overwhelms the Barbie-ness in a particular way, but not the sort of politics of the movie itself, right?

The movie's politics are completely intact and very coherent and legible and funny and right in so many ways. I mean, okay, they're bald, they're a little bit blatant, but there's so much humor to be had. I watched 9 to 5 and it's so funny that those

movies, you could play Barbie in 9 to 5, movies that are 24 years apart and nothing really would have changed about them except how much better the filmmaking is it sounds like you and hillary are on the same side of history no because i mean i don't think that it's a crime what happened to her right there are 9 000 something voting members in the academy they don't nominate the individual the guilds

each other right the craft categories nominate each other so nine thousand people don't have a say in whether whether greta gerwig is the best director nominee 500 and maybe 60 or 80 something people do and they don't really care to see uh the achievement of what it is that she managed to do i mean just the colors alone i don't like if you look at the color palette of the five best picture of the best director nominees movies i mean hers is the one that you know came from a candy shop and even that alone is probably a deterrent for an entire class of director's branch member. It isn't explicitly her being a woman, but it's her interests as a woman

that are kind of alien. I mean, she should have been nominated for Little Women. And it wasn't. But, you know, this is her, like all three of her movies have been best picture nominees as a all three of her movies as a director have been best picture nominees and they've all been screenplay nominees she'll probably win she and noah bombach will probably win in the in the adapted in the hilarious adapted screenplay category i don't know what this movie's adapted

from when we look at these 10 films nominated and how they are, as you say, an x-ray of the industry, I wonder if we can't divide the list into three groups. Because the first one to me are historical dramas that have arrived at the right place and the right time and speak to the country we live in and the politics of the moment. Those are Oppenheimer by Christopher Nolan, Killers of the Flower Moon by Scorsese, and Zone of Interest by Jonathan Glaser.

Oppenheimer is the prohibitive favorite, but what in that cluster stands out to you? I mean, it's funny. I think all these movies operate, I should say, in different modes. Alphabetically, we'll start with Killers of the Flower Moon. I think Killers of the Flower Moon is a perversely effective movie. It's a weird movie for Martin Scorsese because a lot of his typical priorities aren't apparent, or they're not foregrounded in this movie. He's not interested in acting here. It's one of the rare instances to me in which his interest in acting and actors is kind of secondary to the politics

and the sort of thematic urgency of what it is he's trying to do. I am not surprised that Leonardo DiCaprio is not a Best Actor nominee. For instance, if we're going to keep this in the realm of the Academy Awards, this is maybe his least convincing performance of all the ones he's given in Scorsese movies alone.

This is an impossible part to play. He's playing a truly stupid person who is also truly in love and truly evil, easily duped into doing horrible things to people. On that, I want to play a little bit of this clip featuring Leonardo DiCaprio and actress Lily Gladstone in the new film Killers of the Flower Moon. Let's take a listen. Why did you come here? For what? To live here. of the Flower Moon. Let's take a listen. Why did you come here? For what?

To live here. Yes, I live here. Why? For my uncle. I work with him. Your brother is Brian? Byron, that's right. Byron. You scared of him?

My brother? Who? Your uncle. Well, no. No, he's the king of the Osage Hills. He's the nicest man in the world. I know if you cross him what he could do. No, I'm my own man. I do my own work.

I'm a businessman. In a weird way, the thing that sort of comes through in this movie to me is the thing that in reading January 6th reports really leapt out at me which is like all the people who stormed the capital who were like I don't know

I was just following the crowd and the crowd went up the steps and into the Capitol. So I did. And this movie is really, to me, about so I did. It's people sort of betraying their own souls, selling their souls. I mean, and really for nothing, honestly, for nothing. I mean, it's land, but I mean, there's land everywhere. For oil, I mean, I don't know,

go find some oil with some land on it. I mean, the movie is steeped in such incredible, vivid pettiness. But I would say, God, you know, I mean, I think that the Oppenheimer, Oppenheimer doesn't really interest me as a movie. And part of it is it doesn't really feel like it's living. I felt like Oppenheimer to me was a series of talking heads. The movie isn't really asking any questions. It's just recapitulating. And the recapitulation just never got me as filmmaking. I mean, I don't know. I just sort of feel like the introduction of the communist end of things was way more, was more than the movie necessarily needed. And I feel like if you're going to do that, you kind of have to make Oppenheimer more of who he actually was to the culture.

I mean, there was a period during which he was an extremely famous American, and lots of people admired the turn that he took away from the building of the bomb and his outspokenness against it. So all the stuff with Louis Strauss and the McCarthy hearings, I just feel like there's a bridge from the creation of the bomb to those hearings that's missing. And it can't be that it's Albert Einstein on the lawn with a pipe. I actually like the film, but I mean, when you describe it like that, I don't even know how I like it because I was moved by the Albert Einstein with the pipe. Well, let's talk about that. Like, what got you? What I mean, I always what what about the movie worked for you?

There's a lot that got me. I feel probably the same as you about him, which is it's pretty hit or miss and mileage varies. And I don't like the movies that seem to feel soulless. And I felt that this one did have a kind of beating heart, an emotion that I had not found in Dunkirk or Interstellar. Oh, sure. None of those. So I was moved by it. But I want to ask you, because the second group that I had divided for us is Barbie and Maestro. Both are actors turned directors. Both are making big, ambitious films that are kind of upending the genre that they're working in. Even in Time this week,

there was an article by Stephanie Zakarek titled Greta Gerwig, Bradley Cooper, and the Strange Curse of Ambition. Do those two pictures feel linked to you? I feel like Maestro solves a lot of the problems that I have with biographical movie making. I did not need a movie about Leonard Bernstein. But I think the reason that it works as well as it does is because the movie really isn't about Leonard Bernstein. I mean, let's just talk about the movie formally for a second. I mean, it spans time. There are shifts in aspect ratio, which if you do

that, you know, you have my heart. But it also is really, I mean, the movie is being sold to us as being about a marriage. And I don't really know if, I mean, it's not about a marriage. It's about a man's behavior's effect on a marriage. And all of its impulses to avoid showing Leonard Bernstein really doing the thing that makes him one of the great Americans of the 20th century, and to focus on his energy, his insatiable, unquenchable thirst for all kinds of things and people. His unembarrassability. And I guess it's shamelessness, his shamelessness. I don't know. I just love that it wasn't a love letter to Leonard Bernstein.

It was a real portrait of an asshole. And the asshole happens to be a musical genius. But the movie isn't about what a musical genius it is. It's actually about what an asshole he is. It's definitely not about what a genius he is. And I actually liked that. And in that way, it kind of frees the movie to be whatever it is the person who made it wants it to be.

And I also feel that way. I mean, it's funny because now that you put me in this position, I mean, I think Barbie is also doing a similar thing where at no point in watching it, although at every moment up until the point I actually saw the movie, did I think that Greta Gerwig was beholden to Mattel in doing its bidding? She clearly had thought about, had had some connection to,

not only the dolls, but the politics of girlhood itself and the politics of the evolution of girlhood into womanhood. I think that there is such a struggle happening in that movie that's about living with the capitalist impulse to own, consume, buy things that are not in your political or in some cases ontological self-interest. Things that are designed to oppress, dehumanize, demotivate, even when you start putting glasses on them and lab coats and give them clipboards and stuff. I don't know. There's a real conflict here about what it means to have a consumerist girlhood. And I thought it was so smart to invent the America Ferrara character finding herself estranged from her daughter.

There's so many layers of conflict here that are sort of Barbie adjacent, but entirely human. Part of the reason that, like, you know, if you're some serious filmmaker from Japan or, I don't know, some other part of the world, and you are looking at this movie and you like have to say the words Barbie land. I can see you being like, I don't know who's, whose movie really is this. But to me, it is entirely Greta Gerwig's. I mean, it's like

this movie is of a piece with Lady Bird and Little Women. They're all dealing with the same themes of girls and mothers and comings of age of various sorts. The arrival at womanhood, even if you have been invented to automatically look like a woman, which to me aligns Barbie more with poor things than maestro. I can think of very few better examples of how to both integrate and subvert corporate interests into your auteur sensibility than Barbie. I think Greta should have had you on the campaign trail with her. It's funny because I don't really, I think a lot about these awards. I've been thinking about these awards, the Oscars especially, since I was six years old, seven years old. And it always just seemed so final and binding, these certificates of bestness.

And now that I'm older, I can see in it the kind of bogusness of it. I mean, the thing that, like, everybody always knows about. It's like I discovered that Santa Claus is also my dad. My very human, extremely fallible dad, who also just wants me to not have my fantasy disturbed about where the gifts come from. But the Wesley at boarding school who walked around with a contraband Walkman listening to the nominees, this person believed in the Oscars. Ah, I did. I mean, and I still, I mean, I guess professionally now, I do still believe in the Oscars because they're important. And in the ways that you said when we started this conversation, I mean, I still believe that they're an important framing mechanism for now, not just American movies, really, just like the American stop on the movie station, the global movie station.

After the break, more from Wesley Morris. You know, there's a way in which any discussion about these movies or contemporary cinema in general turns into an elegy for the medium itself. And so in that spirit, I want to understand exactly what we may be losing by talking about what we had or what specifically you had. Because growing up, you went to boarding school, much like the characters in The Holdovers, in North Philadelphia. Okay. It was this enclosed campus with giant walls. But eventually you were able to go back home on the weekends and stay with your mother, Judith. And I think it's with her in that house that your love of movies was born.

Because your parents got a VCR and then two video store memberships. One to Blockbuster and one to West Coast Video. What did that early fascination look and feel like to you? You were discovering that there was a world that was bigger than the world you were living in. It was very different from the world you were living in. The school that I went to, we had group movies and we'd watch this movie called

Digby the Something Wonder Dog or something. I don't know. It was about a giant dog. And I was like, wow, they made this shaggy dog really big. I don't know. There was just something about seeing with your own eyes someone imagine other ways of being or other options for life that just, I don't know.

It just really captivated me. I mean, it's the same experience i had becoming a reader but this was a different thing because you in a weird way it's kind of pre-imagined for you and then you can take this thing these these images that you've been given and sort of rethink what their meanings are and and how they relate to your life or don't relate to your life or, you know, have nothing to do with relating to anything. It's just a world that exists and you don't, you'll never really be a part of it, but it's great to think about every once in a while.

But like Coco Gauff on her off day, you in 1987, seeing fatal attraction five times in a theater, what did that do for like an 11 year old wesley morris it was uh i probably had turned 12 by the fifth time because i'm my birthday's in december so i was probably 11 and 12 um there's just nothing that like operates like this now like where you were it's something a movie really is a like that movie is a straight up contra contraption. You get on the ride, and very slowly you go up and up and up the incline,

and then at some point you reach a peak, and it just drops you off. And the movie is so blatantly aware of what it is that it throws in an actual rollercoaster sequence. There's an actual ride in the movie. And it's perverse in that way and i sort of loved the perversity of it i loved that like you were watching adult behavior that is recognizably adult like i didn't watch that movie and want to fuck michael douglas i just knew though that there

was a power in attraction right there was a power in two, right? There was a power in two people meeting and responding to the desire that they felt for each other. Can I ask you something? What? Why don't you have a date tonight, Saturday night? I did have a date. I stood him up. That was the phone call I made. Does that make you feel good?

Does it make me feel bad? So where's your wife? Where's my wife? I don't know. My wife is in the country with her parents visiting weekend and you're here with a strange girl being a naughty boy i don't think having dinner with anybody's a crime not yet i think it's right around that time when the film comes out that you write your first review it It's in the eighth grade.

It's an assignment given to you by a social studies teacher named John Kozemple. You write that review in eighth grade. You continue writing through high school. You go to Yale in the late 90s. You graduate. You quickly land a job at the Examiner, then the Chronicle. Movies are at a pretty fascinating place at that point. There's a wave of young, independent filmmakers. I'm thinking about Paul Thomas Anderson, Wes Anderson, Steven Soderbergh, Tarantino. Those are just the white straight men, but there's many more. Those are some pretty good white straight men. They're pretty good. I mean, just that year, I mean, you know, back at the late 90s, you had

Boogie Nights, you had Rushmore, you had Out of Sight, you had Jackie Brown. But when you hold this period in cinema, especially when you started writing professionally, did you see it as something that would continue to expand? Did you think that the form would continue to evolve, or did it feel like perhaps movies were peaking in the late 90s early 2000s i don't know that i felt that i definitely knew that a that something like the year 1999 which has been acknowledged has been a great movie it was clear in 1999 itself how good a movie year that was i didn't think that there couldn't have been like another year that was as good as 99 and there's probably there I mean 2008 was also a really good year for movies too I mean 2008 I think is also the year that Iron Man comes out Iron Man to me is the beginning of that sea change oh yeah I I mean, the reason to mention it at all is that it is the beginning. It's definitely the beginning of what we, what people call the Marvel Cinematic Universe. 2008 was a fraught year in general, I'd say.

Oh, well, I mean, yes. In that movie itself is a depiction of Afghanistan that is kind of troubling, right? Like the way it kind of runs roughshod over the war, essentially. But it was clear at that moment, by 2008 at least, that things were changing in all kinds of ways, right? I mean, Obama's election is the beginning of this divergence, right? Where like some people saw a glorious horizon and some people saw the end of the world. It just is a pivotal year. But I also think that in terms of movies, again, like the forces of capitalism were much stronger than the forces of culture.

And the idea that Iron Man, you could take a movie like Iron Man, although it's hardly the first example of this, but you could just play it everywhere. And then you could start making versions of these movies where you would cater to the places whose money you wanted most. Because in the case of China, it just has the most people. So you start doing what the Chinese government wants you to do to these movies it just i don't know it like something you lose something and right like the thing that that tyrannically got lost was a whole class of movies that just wouldn't get made anymore i mean we're talking about like the entire middle of the american movie goinggoing ecosystem. I mean, you look at these Best Picture nominees for 2023, and really the only one of these that I can see being something that would have come out in May and had no real Oscar aspirations, except for the fact that it was made by Alexander Payne,

who's been nominated for a bunch of Oscars, is the holdovers the rest of these movies i mean i guess barbie is kind of innocent of this and oppenheimer to its credit did open in the middle of summer and it's not that these other movies are guilty but i mean it's it's more like these movies would have been recognizable in 1987 as movies bound for academy awards in one way or another whether it was the intent of the studio or the thing or a thing the academy couldn't resist but if you look at a year like 1988 and what was nominated for best picture and i'm gonna try to do this off the top of my head it was like the accidental tourist what What the fuck? It's like a travel writer who's getting a divorce

and starts having a relationship with a woman who walks his dog or trains his dog. Best Picture nominee. Dangerous liaisons. Costume drama about two people manipulating each other because they can't have sex with each other anymore. What? 88.

Mississippi burning. I don't even know if that movie would get made now, given his point of view, which is the FBI. Rain Man, the winner. That movie would definitely not get made now. It just would, like, that style of movie just does not exist. It's not based on real people. You have Dustin Hoffman playing an autistic person.

I don't know how that would go over now. And the last one was Working Girl. My favorite of the five. I love Working Girl. And again, a movie that just wouldn't get made now. It would probably show up on some streaming service, maybe even in six parts or something. It would be a show.

But yeah, I mean, 88's an interesting year. I mean, you could do this like a cross, but not one of those movies, of those five movies, is a movie that's screaming, nominate me for a bunch of Oscars. Maybe Dangerous Liaisons. But even that movie is so weirdly done.

I mean, John Malkovich is the sex interest in that film. Glenn Close is still at her movie star peak, is the other sex star of that movie, which makes sense given that it comes after Fatal Attraction. There was real interest in her, there was real belief in her erotic power because she actually had erotic power. Those movies just don't get made now. And I'm not nostalgic. I'm actually angry, right? Because there's a whole realm, there are whole realms of human experience, of American life,

American regional life. There are places we don't see in movies anymore that you used to see all the time in movies. Places the movies just don't go. You're either in LA or you're in New York or you're in outer space or wherever Nick Fury lives. Or you're in the past, right? You're in the deep past. You're in the past in order to not be in the present.

And one of the things about Kill're in the past in order to not be in the present um and one of the things about killers of the flower moon that i love is that it's so aware that it's being made in 2024 or 2023 it's so much about looking at these incidents with the osage from the vantage of its present, of the filmmaker's present. I think the thesis here is what we've lost is the middle of movies. What we've lost is the drama or the comedy that has no great aspirations, was not made to win a bunch of awards or be nominated for awards. I want to try to unpack how and why we're here. Do you see any parallels between the decline in film criticism with the decline in movie making? Did one precipitate the other? Well, that's a more complicated

proposition, right? Because the decline in film criticism is related to the decline of periodicals where film criticism thrived, right a sort of downgrading of what a review can do and should do. There's this tension between coming up with a review or liking something a lot, they love that, or really panning something. When I worked at the Boston Globe, for instance, we gave things stars. If I was like, Killers of the Flower Moon, two stars. That would have superseded anything I necessarily wrote about it. I think a kind of mixed criticism. People sort of lost patience for that. That a movie can't have things that work and don't work. I mean, the disappearance of the middle is... There's so many middles that have disappeared, right? Middle ground, middle brow, middle class. There's either or there's no there's very little room for not even debate disagreement, but like just complexity, you know, like I find it really interesting that none of the 10 movies on this best picture list include may december um i don't know did you

see that movie i love it yeah um i did not the first time i saw it and then i went and saw it again and was like what was my problem i saw it the next day i don't know i just i think that's a movie that that has so much going on that is so some it's it's so of a piece with where we are right now. It just doesn't, it's not telling you what it's doing or how it's feeling or what even it is. It's like the weird touchlessness of Todd Haynes. Even though there's so much touching in this movie. The music is touching. Like the butterfly metaphors are touching you. Like his fingerprints are all over this thing,

but it still feels like the hand guiding it is completely invisible. And these characters are just doing, they're just doing whatever it is that they've been set on this earth to do to sit down and talk about this movie. And like, what is happening here? It's really deep and really satisfying to unpack it or argue with people about it i don't i mean there's some movies where you just i

and it doesn't happen very often like you leave them i leave a movie and i do not trust my response to it and in the case of may december i just went the next day and saw it again. It was like seeing something dead come to life right before your eyes. I found that expansion of my mind exhilarating, but we don't have time for that movie now. It's just like, it's too, it asks too much. It asks too much. It's funny that that line you had right there, that watching something dead come to life. I think in some ways that's kind of what we've been trying to do in this conversation, talking about something that's dead, trying to will it back into existence. And in this last decade in Hollywood, I'm thinking about 2014 to now, because back then in 14, you wrote this really beautiful review of Selma. Oh, wow. Okay.

A film directed by Ava DuVernay. I reread the piece last night and I was thinking about how that picture in so many ways jump-started the Oscar So White campaign, which forced some to finally reckon with how the academy and the industry treats artists of color.

And oddly enough, exactly a decade later, DuVernay is releasing a new film right now. It's called Origin. It got completely shut out at the Oscars. Funny how Hillary Clinton did not tweet about Origin. She didn't see Origin. Nevertheless, I sat with Ava a couple weeks back on the show. I asked her about the state of movies

and how the industry seems to be backsliding into a kind of conservatism. And I just wanted to take a listen to that passage for a second. So this is her reflecting on the last decade of working in Hollywood, in the system, through the system, and how she's starting to think about her future as a filmmaker.

I don't know. I'm not sure about the way that I, how to define how I'm doing it now. All I know is that I feel like I'm tapping out. I've tried to work within the system for the last 10 years. I've sat on the boards of Sundance. I am DGA board. I am a governor of the academy in my second term. I really wanted to learn. I wanted to understand how these institutions worked. And there's some great people there and beautiful legacy, but ultimately the shifts and the cumulative effect of this, like how the overall industry works,

are so insignificant in their velocity, in their scope, in their real impact that I feel like, you know what, I've done what I could because it was a lot. It's a lot of extra time, a lot of extra effort, a lot of calls, a lot of meetings, a lot of thinking, a lot of trying, a lot of thinking, a lot of trying. And it's time to pass the baton to someone else who has a fresh energy and who wants to take. And I've achieved some things within those organizations that I'm proud of. But for me, it's just not. I feel like I'm tilling ground that I'm like an old pioneer on a bad plot.

It's like and I think that I started and I was like, oh, this place can change. There are people here. This was a little town, it'll change. And there have been some beautiful things that happened, but my success is not change. Nia DaCosta's success, Gina Prince-Bythewood suggests, when you can name us all on two hands, that's not change. That's a few lovely things that happen to a few people. And for me, that's not worth it. I would rather just try to build something sustainable and beautiful and smaller and lovely in my own likeness with people who think like me. And in some ways, I think, is that small minded? Is that just closing ranks?

But at some point, it just becomes what's healthy. What does that look like for her, though? Does she say what it looked like for her? Well, in the case of Origin, it looked like getting funding from jobs, the Ford Foundation, Melinda Gates. But she went the kind of route that Soderbergh has done, getting financial investments from private sources and stuff like that. But what did you make of that? I'm not surprised. I also think that it's funny because I think Ava DuVernay is the apotheosis of black American woman filmmaker. She's the person that people automatically think of, reflexively think of when they think those things. And I think there's a burden that's on her that doesn't have anything to do with her

personal ambitions. I think that she feels responsible for ensuring that she's not the last person to get through the door. And I don't know. I have a lot of sympathy for her because she's taken on a lot. I'm curious what being done, handing the clipboard and the Frola decks to somebody else, what do those things look like for her art? I think that there are people like me out there, we actually believe that this movie is a turning point in some way. Which movie? is that this idea of what the Academy Awards are in terms of thinking about how they're a snapshot of a business,

it's also kind of a game, right? Like, it's a system you have to know how to work. And for many years, Ava was a publicist. She knows how to work the system. She knows how the system works. And at some point, you don't want to keep doing that if the thing on your business card says filmmaker. If it says artist, you want to make things. You don't want to bureaucratize the making of things right but i mean she's so historically minded she's so much

about you know she's so aware of history and the in the archives and the the record uh that she does feel responsible for making sure that it has as many black woman nonwhite, non-straight names as can be put. And, you know, that work, you know, ask the civil rights folks. They will tell you it takes a toll. If it doesn't actually literally get you killed, it definitely burns you the fuck out. And especially when you can look at the labor, the struggle, the everything, right? Like, Selma... I mean, what was Selma about? It was about

getting one thing passed. It was about getting, like, the voting rights bill passed. That was one thing. And look at all the shit that had to happen to get that. I mean, the movie's not about any of this stuff, but, like, think about all the stuff that happened in the passing of the Civil Rights Act

and the Voting Rights Act happened, and then all the shit that happens after that happens. And people were just like, well, what the fuck? What did we just do? And now y'all are killing people? Like, actually assassinating our leaders? For what?

For us to be able to just like have a say in who runs our county. That's it. So what does it have to do with board of governors? Well, it means that change is hard and people don't like it. And it's hard to make the change, but it's hard for the change makers. And for the change makers. And so the change makers eventually just want to change things for themselves because the making of the change writ large, it's just too much at stake. It costs too much.

People are so resistant. The Academy's membership, just to sort of come back to the Oscars, it has expanded meaningfully in the last 10 years, right? They've gone out of their way to recruit all these younger, browner, more international, like less American eyes, voices, tastes. Which Ava is partly responsible for. Yeah. I mean, to her point, I mean, it's interesting, right? Like just to stay with black people for one second, the math on this is tricky, but like there have been more Asian

and people of Asian descent winning the directing Oscar in the last few years, I think than black people have ever been nominated. And I don't know what to do with that number. I mean, it's great for changing the scope of who is in that club. I mean, the same is true for the three Mexicans, you know, Del Toro and Iñárritu and Cuarón. I think that the sort of expansion of what a best director is, is it's grown so wide,

but not wide enough to say that a Black American also best directed something. And there is a real, real, real resistance to thinking about Black people in a new way. Right? What do you in a new way. Right? What do you mean by new way?

I mean, I've been really struggling with, oh God, I can't even get into that. Well, what can't we get into? We're here to get into it. I mean, I just, I don't know. It's just, it's too thorny. I mean, it's not too thorny, like I'm scared to say a bad thing, but I have, sort of work out exactly what it is I'm saying.

But just, all right. Just think about the Best Supporting Actress nominees across the history of the Academy Awards. Okay. What have those women been nominated doing? That's too generous. I mean, they're housekeepers. They're cooks. They're servants.

They work in the Jim Crow South. As people who would have been doing that work, I mean, Danielle Brooks playing Sophia in The Color Purple, I mean, that's her job. Her business card would say working for white people. Divine Joy Randolph? I mean, she's a cook at the school. I mean, it is not about the quality of the performances of these women.

Divine Joy Randolph is fantastic. at the school. I mean, it is not about the quality of the performances of these women defined. Dave Vine, Joey Randolph is fantastic. Danielle Brooks, I mean, she is doing Sophia karaoke like nobody has ever

Sophia karaoke-ed before. It's about the job they have in the film. It's about their function in the movie. Right? And how many best actress,

how many black American women have been nominated for carrying a movie, regardless of their job? We'll start there. But if you make them something other than working for white people, how many? I don't have that fact at hand here. I mean, you don't need it because I'm telling you we wouldn't get to this many fingers for best actress, right? I wouldn't use them all. But my point is that I wouldn't need all 10 of my fingers, A. B, the real point is that the thing that's great about the Oscars is they're telling the truth about the movies, right? They're telling the truth about what the priorities actually are and who counts who belongs

what gets made who stars in it how much do they make who writes these things who does the costumes it's just like the whole industry i mean the reports come out from the annenberg center of the usc annenberg center we know the numbers the numbers the numbers are The numbers are the numbers, but the numbers tell a story. And that's where people like, you know, I guess me and you, stubborn, deep, deep, deep historical problems. And there's so many of us who honestly believe that if we just got in there, if we just got in there and made the calls and sent the emails and had the meetings and did it, did it, did it, it would just be better. It would just be better. But this is now a woman, Ava DuVernay, who is as far away from being a best director nominee. And I'm laughing because it's fucking tragic and sad. She's as far away 10

years after the closest she was ever going to get to being a best director not and not getting nominated now as she was that and i'm not this is not about origin or the quality of origin or should she even be nominated it's like the the it's just about the the scope and entrenchedness of the problem um and i think in some ways, in her case, she's thinking it through. She's at least thinking through this question of justice in her work. And, you know, why are we like this,

America? Why are we like this? But, you know, the tidy fact of the Academy Awards is that it tells us that we are still like this. A mirror and a window. Well, and a ceiling. And what are we like?

Deluded. I mean, you know, we think we're one way, but like I have a report that says we're not. We're this other way. But we keep saying we're not like the report. We're like these other things. We're these other people. We don't have the values this report is saying we have. We've got different values. Look at us changing our values. But it doesn't matter how many more people you bring in.

They're bringing their values, right? And a lot of the times those values have just been installed. I mean, this is sort of Barbie. This is Greta Gerwig thinking here, right? They've been installed in you from birth and it's hard to let them go. Barbie is about how hard it is to let some toxic ass shit go. And sometimes how good toxic shit feels. How good it feels to just be a fucking asshole. I don't know what you do with that. I don't know what you do with how good it feels to just oppress people

because it's easy and fun. To like bend an entire country's attention to your dysfunctional personality because you can't it's just i don't know it's a really really crazy time to be an american to be a new arrival to this country and to see what people are saying about you and what you're doing here? To be a critic at large at the New York Times? Yeah, I don't know so much about critics.

I mean, I guess if my brain is applied to some of these problems, sure. I mean, but one of the great things that I love about my job is I don't have to... I get to think about the meaning of the stuff that people make for us to enjoy. And I get to think about how the stuff that people make makes me feel. I don't have to weigh in on things. I just don't like that. I don't believe in having takes, right? I mean, I believe in the having of takes. I just don't believe that I need to be having one.

Yeah, we've done a podcast of takes. Right. I mean, you and me just now? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think that we've been doing, we've been really thinking through these problems. These aren't really takes. I want to understand how you see your role and job in this moment, how you're thinking

about it, how you're thinking about doing it, what it means to do it in this country in 2024, and where you're at with what you've committed your life to. I don't know. I mean, I feel like everybody tells you that the therapist qualities that you have are intense. It's like I'm talking to a person that I... I mean, we and I have had conversations before, but I think there's something kind of unburdening in a weird way about being asked to think about your life. So to answer your question, I feel like my job hasn't changed. The nature of my job has not changed. I feel like my job hasn't changed. Like the nature of my job has not changed. I feel more certain about the way I want to do my job

than I've ever felt. What does that mean? The people whose work I like to read, the people that I love talking to, the people I love hearing talk to other people, we're all trying to figure out how to live in whatever way it means it to be alive. And so much of the creation of art, the making, the writing, recording of a song, the labor that goes into making a book, especially a good book, filmmaking, any kind of art, it's hard.

And it takes something really special to make something that touches other people. And that, to me, it's life-giving. You are giving part of you to the rest of us. And the way I think about my job is to respond to that offering. Sometimes I wish you had given me more, maybe given me less, given me something different. But I'm always grateful to have received it. I mean, I do think that so much of the thing that I want to try to do is never lose sight of the biggest picture that we have, especially as Americans, because it's so easy to do that. Again, I hate to keep going back to Barbie, but Barbie is secretly deep. Barbie is really about like lost connections, displaced desires, like personal revelation, epiphany. And these are white people having these revelations too, right? These are white people

waking up to the reality of themselves. And Barbie doesn't even know she's white, but she discovers it. I mean, not necessarily in the movie but part of this this schematic of awakening and barbie has to eventually involve her being aware that she is a white woman stereotypical stereotypical barbie is what they call her and i feel like that's a great euphemism for white but i just feel like trying to make these connections between where we currently are and where we've been, you know, I don't always want to be like, but you know, 35 years ago, X, Y, Z thing. Because sometimes an experience just doesn't have a historical corollary. Or even if it does, it can't be used to cheapen the intensity of the thing you're experiencing now. If you're 17

years old and, you know, hearing In the Air tonight for the first time, it's new to you! So let's sit with it! I mean, I so deeply want to capture that sensation of, oh my god, holy shit, Jesus fucking Christ, how did you,

why did you do it again? Try to just think as historically as I can about the present without using the history to oppress our enjoyment of what we are currently doing, but to say that we're on a continuum and to figure out where on the continuum we currently are at a given moment in present time with respect to the past and to always keep that awareness with us. We don't want to bring it with us is the problem. You know, I wanted to ask you that because when we first sat down in 2016... Was that in San Francisco? Was that at the San Francisco Film Festival? At the headquarters of the San Francisco International Film Festival? That's right. It was episode five of the podcast.

Congratulations to you, by the way. I just, you know, it's funny. I'm just going to interrupt you for one second to say that I got very moved when I saw the art of the guests at some point. This is like four or five years ago. I was like, huh, look at all this. So once a month, I'm just like, well, I missed that one. Oh, look, Minjin Lee looks really good. You know what I mean? I'd love that. Oh, look, Minjin Lee looks really good. You know what I mean? Like, I just, I'd love that.

So congratulations. I mean, just congratulations on eight years, but go on. Well, thank you. In that conversation that we had, I kind of asked you this same question back then about purpose and why and where you were at. And I thought perhaps we should take a listen to that for a second. Oh my God. What the fuck? Really? This is Wesley Morris in 2016.

I think, and you, you know, anybody who spends enough time writing about directors should know this. Like at some point you just start to lose it. I mean, I might have already peaked i don't know but i'm somewhere in that like somewhere between 35 and 50 right is that zone i mean if

some of it's subjective um it's probably all entirely subjective when it comes to the question i'm actually asking which is which is like what happens to does the energy run out right like do i suddenly just get bored doing this? And there are a lot of days where I'm like, this is dumb. Really? No. I mean, yes. Yes.

No. Like really. Like, I mean, I believe in it, but you know, it's like six o'clock in the morning and you're like dragging yourself across your apartment. You're like getting dressed to go to work and you're just like, what do I have to do today? Oh, right. yourself across your apartment you're like getting dressed to go to work and you're just like what do i have to do today oh right i have to write something that sounds smart about girls is that really important and then i'm like yes it is i get to a point where like yes it's fucking important but it takes it like sometimes there are days when it just takes a little bit

longer to get to like yes this is important some days it's like instant like i don't even have to there is no sort of meta conversation you have to have with yourself about whether or not you should be doing what you're doing but i i will never really ever be satisfied with what i'm doing because I live in constant fear that I will lose the will to do it. I still feel that way. I still feel that way. I truly do. I don't know. Every day that I wake up, Sam, I think, is today the day that it won't be there? Will it not be there today like not only the will to do it the will to do it that is that is it that is eight years ago me like now i'm like is there still ink in the well can i still get it up is the magic still there because what's really what we're talking about honest to god i swear to god sam

it's magic like there's a lot of work that goes into it. There's a lot of suffering and, you know, revising and, you know, false start, everything that involves, you know, the creative process entails. But at the end of the day, at the beginning of the day, it's magic. I still have the will to do it, but now I'm like, it's not even about the will.

It's just truly about, is the sparkle of the thinking and the writing still going to be there, even if I want to still be wiggling my fingers across the keyboard. And I just thank the universe that... And my ancestors, somebody in my family had this. I really believe that.

Somebody in my family who never got a chance to... Somebody in my genealogy, in my family history, somebody was cooking and really loved it. And whatever that was, I really feel like I got it from them. I got it from them. And hopefully I will have it so that when I die, it is a through line to my sister's kids and their kids and their kids' kids. I don't know. I'm holding on to something really old. I'm not even holding on to it. It's just what's passing through me feels really old. I hope it outlives me, essentially. Well, I feel like the only way we can end this is on a piece that that magic produced, a piece of writing that came out last year about the film that we keep mentioning but not discussing this is your review of the holdovers

and i have to say these last three paragraphs are maybe some of my favorite bits of writing that you've ever done so i thought oh thank you perhaps uh you'd want to read it for people as we leave. Me? Okay. I have not seen these words, by the way, Sam, since they entered the New York Times. Okay, well, this is Wesley Morris on the new film, The Holdovers, directed by Alexander Payne.

Once it's all over, and the movie is reminding you of Dead Poets Society or maybe half a dozen films from the 1970s like The Paper Chase, you might also feel what I did. Like you've seen an inversion of Wes Anderson's Rushmore, which opened 25 years ago. Payne and Anderson arrived at roughly the same moment in the mid-1990s.

Only Payne's milieu is world-weary, harsh, slouched, bluer-collared, grayer. I saw Rushmore when I was loosely older than Max Fisher, the movie's go-getting adolescent old-soul protagonist. Anderson's declarative archness and rigorous eye rocked my world. A geek had gotten his revenge, opening a nerdcore floodgate. But more important, his romanticism felt true. Cruelly, my peer is now Paul Hunnam, a figure humbled by principle, hampered by pride, and by the end of the holdovers, humbled some more. He's Max Fisher, slumped. Watching Anderson's films has steadily made me the ogler

Matthew McConaughey plays in Dazed and Confused. I keep getting older, and they just stay the same. The romanticism is calcified. His movies are less ardent, as much sculptures to passion as passionate themselves. Payne's weakness was for pessimism, a hardened, freewheeling version. His movies were about cynics,

the native-born, the Arabists. But somewhere along the way, he and Anderson swapped, and the romantic intruded. Paine's characters began needling each other and connecting, and that crackle kicked in. That's especially true of his last two. The other is downsizing, a soulful futurist satire with Matt Damon and Hong

Chow that nobody saw. In middle age, pain has come newly to life, whereas the Anderson of 2021's The French Dispatch and this year's Asteroid City seems to me as alienated from sensation as ever. Hiding in and fussing over the past rather than interrogating or inhabiting it. The Holdovers kicks off with the same kind of twerpy, entitled, under- and upper-class folk that dominate Rushmore, but he sends them away to get down to a more pungent, nitty-gritty kind of comedy. One character tells another his near-murderous sob story, and at some point a different character deadpans to him, here you go, killer. This is Payne's first movie set in any kind of past. It's using the old MPAA rating card and was shot digitally by Igle Brilled to achieve 35

millimeters coziness. But it doesn't feel stuck there. Pain's not locking us out, he's letting us in. Practicing what I suspect is Paul Hunnam's stock and trade during the school year, bringing ancient civilizations to aching life. Alright.

What was your point? Annoyed? Is this an annoyed Wesley I see? No! I mean, thank you for that. I appreciate it. I really appreciate it. It's a moving piece of writing, in part because you kind of put yourself in there. You saw some of yourself in the Giamatti character, in disposition, in spirit, not quite age, but perhaps in vocation as well. I don't know, because his job as a teacher in that film is to, as you write, bring ancient civilizations to aching life. I was thinking, like, at its best, at your best, isn't that kind of what you do in writing? I mean, fair.

It's well observed. I mean, sure. Yes. I mean, it can't come at the expense of the new. I would just want to emphasize that, right? Like, it can't come at the expense of not being in the present. And the thing that I kind of admire about The Holdovers is it's like, it's Thomas Paine.

Alexander Paine sort of thinking about what it would mean for him to go back to the 1970s. I don't know. This guy is, this is a filmmaker who's only ever wanted to tell us who we are as a culture, as a people,

as a national civilization. So if that guy wants to spend one movie in 1970-something thinking about these spoiled people who have to eke out a life in a real city like Boston during the end of the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War, he gets to do it because he's earned it. And again, it does not feel like he wants to stay there at all. I bring this up because to end, does this new film

that is very much the kind of film that has vanished from the landscape, does it give you hope for the future of this medium? I mean, maybe, but how old is Alexander Payne? 62, I think. I mean, where's the equivalent now of the guy who made Citizen Ruth? Where's that person? Because that's the thing that's giving me hope,

not that this great director who's done his work, right? Where is a 30-year-old person who wants to give me an abortion comedy right now, who wants to give me a really perfectly etched comedy about reproductive rights in America and the hypocrisies therein? Utterly cynical, very funny. Where's that person? Because I'm waiting for them, and I don't know where they are. Well, I think right now, there are a lot of people listening to this conversation that are going to try to answer the call. God bless you, and God help you. But I'm here when you're ready.

When you do it, I want to be the first person to see it, read it, something. And whenever you write about it, I am excited to read it. You talked about how filmmakers, at their best, make work that shows us how to live, what it means to be alive,

is what you said. And I think you have done that a whole lot in the last eight years since we first spoke. So I want to thank you for that. And I want to thank you as always. My God, eight years. Thank you for the time. No, don't do that. Thank you, Sam. Thanks for having me. Wesley Morris. Take care. Take care, Sam. ¶¶ And that's our show.

I want to give a special thanks this week to Davon Darby and of course our guest today, Wesley Morris. To read or to learn more about any of the 10 films nominated for Best Picture, be sure to visit our website at talkeasypod.com. If you enjoyed today's conversation, I'd recommend our episodes with David Remnick, Jay Wortham, Matt Bellany, and Ava DuVernay. To hear those and more Pushkin podcasts, listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you like to listen. If you want to help us out, be sure to leave us a review on Apple or Spotify or wherever you are listening to this right now. If you want to go above and beyond sharing the program on social media, sharing it

with a friend, all of it really does help us continue doing the work we do here every Sunday. You can follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram at TalkEasyPod. If you want to buy one of our mugs that come in cream or navy or the vinyl record we made with writer Fran Lebowitz, you can do so at TalkEasyPod.com slash shop. Talk Easy is produced by Caroline Reebok.

Our executive producer is Janik Sabravo. Our associate producer is Caitlin Dryden. Today's talk was edited by C.J. Mitchell and Caitlin Dryden and mixed by Andrew Vastola. It was taped at Spotify Studios here in Los Angeles, California. Our music is by Dylan Peck.

Our illustrations are by Krisha Shenoy. Our video and graphics are by Ian Chang, Derek Gaberzak, Ian Jones, and Ethan Seneca. I also want to thank our team at Pushkin Industries. They include Justin Richman, Our video and graphics are by Ian Chang, Derek Gaberzak, Ian Jones, and Ethan Seneca. I also want to thank our team at Pushkin Industries. They include Justin Richman, Julia Barton, John Schnarz, Carrie Brody, Eric Sandler, Jonah McMillan, Kira Posey, Tara Machado, Jason Gambrell, Justine Lang, Malcolm Gladwell,

Greta Cohen, and Jacob Weisberg. I'm Sam Fragoso. Thank you for listening to Talk EZ. I'll see you back here next week with filmmaker Lulu Wong. Until then, stay safe and so long.