The Big Picture - 10 Irrational Best-Picture Oscar Predictions and Why ‘Belfast’ Is the Front-Runner

Episode Date: November 16, 2021

Once upon a time, this was a podcast dedicated to Academy Awards coverage, so we’re going to throwback today to discuss Kenneth Branagh’s autobiographical feature ‘Belfast’ and the state of the 2021 Oscar race (1:00). Then, Sean is joined by Alison Klayman to discuss ‘Jagged,’ her film about Alanis Morissette that is part of Ringer Films’ ‘Music Box’ documentary series on HBO (51:00). Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Guest: Alison Klayman Producer: Bobby Wagner Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Press Box is here to catch you up on the latest media stories. Hosted by Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker, these guys have the insight on the biggest stories you care about. Check out The Press Box on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Sean Fennessey. I'm Amanda Dobbins. And this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about the Oscars. Once upon a time, this was a podcast dedicated to the Academy Awards.

We're going to go back to our roots today to discuss Kenneth Branagh's autobiographical feature, Belfast, a leading contender for Best Picture at the moment and the state of the race so far. Later in this episode, I have a conversation with Alison Klayman, a documentarian who has made films about Ai Weiwei and Steve Bannon. Alison's new film is called Jagged. It's an intimate portrait of Alanis Morissette during the making of and subsequent landmark success of her album, Jagged Little Pill.

Jagged is the latest in Ringer Films and HBO's Music Box series. I'm a producer on this series and have been hard at work on it with Bill Simmons and our team for more than three years. Over the next five Thursdays, five new films from the series will debut on HBO and HBO Max. Every week during that period, I'll have a conversation with one of the directors. I hope you will stick around for my conversation with Allison, and I appreciate you watching these movies. Now let's do the awards dance, Amanda. Award season is here, sort of. This month announces several major Oscar contenders.

Belfast is the first true heavy hitter. I just want to give you one data point before we begin our conversation of this movie and the race in general. It's 131 days until the Academy Awards. 131. Great. The Academy Awards are on March 27th, 2022.

We could be destroyed by an asteroid before that. That's 131 days. Which compared to last year is just like the peak of efficiency. Just so you know. Do you remember like last year's awards season was somehow 45 years long, even though there were three movies in it. And we knew which movie was going to win on like September 2nd. That's very true. But I feel like that was only because every day felt like a year during the first year of lockdown. It went from September to April. That's so long.

That's the majority of a year. It was bad. It was bad. I got to say though, March 27th is way, way, way too late. There's no Golden Globes this year. This should have been happening like February 8th. The idea that the Winter Olympics or the Super Bowl were somehow going to interfere with the ability to promote the Academy Awards is ludicrous. I can't do this with you for five months. What are they doing? You don't have to make it about me. It's not about you particularly.

It's just like, I can't do this. No, I mean, I agree with you. And it's, I was home in Atlanta last weekend and talking with my dad who loves movies. And he was expressing his frustration that he's, that happens every year, but seems like really sharp this year of he's heard about all of these movies

and he can't see any of them. And it's like, what am I supposed to do? You're going to talk to me about these movies for like four months. And I, you know, I told him about all of these movies and I can't see any of them. And it's like, what am I supposed to do? I, you will, you're going to talk to me about these movies for like four months. And I, you know, I told him about all the movies I'd seen early and he was like, what good does that do me? I can't see them, which 100% true dad. And so, you know, I think you and I feel the fatigue particularly because the Oscar race is alive to us. And many people listening to this podcast have not had the opportunity to see almost all of these films and like probably won't for a while, which is, I guess, theoretically why the Oscar date is later in order to give people time to see the movies,

whether it's in a theater or whether it's at home, to accommodate for all the confusion and the varying distribution models. But it's so long, and it doesn't seem to be building to anything for anyone. It's so long. And the thing is, in the past, movies had a two-month, four-month, six-month, year-long shelf life in the consciousness of American popular culture. Movies get a weekend now, maybe. I mean, Eternals is gone. It's like not a movie that anybody's going to talk about ever again. It came out 10 days ago. That's incredible. Sure. Well, it was bad and no one liked it. So that's part of the reason. And not even bad in a fun way. No one liked it and no one really wanted to talk about it except for the ways in which it was a failure. I didn't even get to talk about the ways in which it was a failure, but that's fine. I'm moving on with my life. No, it's fine. It's okay. Someone people want to spend a lot of time with,

that a lot of people have access to and also want to spend a lot of time with, Dune being the exception. That's a very interesting way to put that. Dune is obviously a movie that many, many people have seen both in movie theaters and on HBO Max. And I think that that has somehow become a secret sauce this year. We talked about Spencer last week. We're about to begin a conversation about Belfast. These are movies that are opening in modest wide release and are going to roll out theoretically in more and more theaters and then find their way to VOD. The thing is, it's hard to predict what's going to work on VOD and these modest releases, the arthouse rollouts have not been terribly successful. That side of the business has not really recovered in the way that some of the ip franchise entertainment has recovered so this is very challenging dune's the only movie and

we'll get to this when we talk about the best picture race but dune's the only wide release blockbuster movie that i feel like has any clout in the race this year there's a couple of more things that are opening before the year is out but i I don't know. Let's just go to the big picture's big picture, which is all about Belfast, okay? Great. This is a problem in the big picture. Do you know what I mean? So what is Belfast? Belfast is Kenneth Branagh's 18th feature film as a director. It's told from the perspective of nine-year-old Buddy, who lives with Ma, Pa, Granny, and Pop in Northern Ireland in 1969, just as the troubles, the bloody battles between Protestants and Catholics in the capital began to break out.

I saw this movie at Telluride. It's a very sweet, personal reflection. This is very much from Brana's personal experience. What'd you think of Belfast? Delightful. Very nice movie. Come on. I saw it on, I saw it this past weekend,

and that was like a very traditional, I went like to the mall, outdoor mall. Which mall? The Grove? Glendale? No, I went to the Americana. Americana. And let me just tell you two things about the Americana.

Number one, yes, Christmas tree decorations are already there. They haven't lit the Christmas tree, but it's there and it's very large. Number two, the mall's thriving. And I was like, actually surprised and sort of impressed at the number of people who were making the best of the outdoor situation. And they mostly had masks. And it was like, I guess this is a place where like, that's open and we can gather like a very American capitalist experience, but I don't know. Everyone was trying. And I went on a Saturday night with my husband, like a date night to the movies. And we just had a great time. We definitely thought we were in the

wrong theater for the first five minutes because Belfast starts with like an in-color montage of modern day Belfast, I believe. And if you have read anything about Belfast before going, you know, it's in black and white. So we were like, we were a little confused and, you know, like Van Morrison was playing and I knew that the film was primarily scored by Van Morrison. And, you know, they kept thinking like the Northern Ireland Film Trust. And so I was like, this has to be Belfast, but there were no signs outside the theater. They weren't labeling the movies outside the theater and it didn't say Belfast in the title sequence for a while. So that was some suspense that I didn't expect. And then it was just a lovely time to be at the movies on a Saturday

night. So I really enjoyed it. I did also go see it knowing that it is a best picture front runner. And also I have diseased Oscar brain from being myself and knowing you and doing this podcast. So, you know, my top line thing is that like, I really loved it until it wins best picture. And then I'm like, oh no, is this what we want to pick as best picture? But we'll get into that later. I don't really think that that is the movie itself. It's fault no i agree with you i think it's a it's a nice film it's a very sincere tribute to a part of his life that is uh obviously you know he's talked a lot in interviews recently talked to our friend david marquez in the new york

times magazine about how he and his family never really discussed this period of their lives which ultimately leads to him leaving northern ire Ireland and moving to England, where he was largely raised after his ninth birthday. And there's something fascinating about that, about kind of reckoning with this past, this very traumatic period in his home country's history. And this movie has drawn inevitable comparisons to Alfonso Cuarón's Roma, because it is a black and white remembrance of a time in sort of a pre-adolescence and the traumatic moments that happen in Cuaron's life. Roma is a slightly more, I would say,

stylistically and intellectually dynamic movie, I'll say. Belfast is a very sweet crowd pleaser. It doesn't mean that it doesn't have traumatic aspects to it. It certainly does. But it is not primarily about the troubles. It is primarily about Buddy. And it is primarily about being nine years old at this time in history and going to school and meeting a girl that you like and going to the movies and connecting with your grandfather

and having this kind of wellspring of emotion, this memory feeling washing over Branagh as he tries to reconnect to his past, it is nice. It also has a touch of the non-absurdist Jojo Rabbit in it as well, which I was thinking a little bit as we were comparing it to Oscar contenders past and Toronto Film Festival winners passed. Just again, in that it's like there is a lot of intense political stuff swirling around this small kid who's trying to figure himself and his feelings for this other person out. It, you know, it doesn't involve like a lot of Hitler jokes. So that's good. We don't have to have a whole discussion about like the philosophy of comedy with this one but it's it's hitting that same sweet spot that i think people did respond to with with jojo rabbit i think the other reason people are really responding to it is because

it's pretty much universally brilliant performances jude hill the nine-year-old boy is terrific um katrina balfe, Jamie Dornan as his parents. Excellent. Perhaps a little too beautiful to actually be real life Northern Ireland parents. Can we just say right

now that the reason that people are liking this is because it's about the two hottest parents to ever walk the face of the earth. Like, you know, and I know I'm always a

superficial person pointing that out, but I saw this with my husband. He walked out and he was like, that was insane. And obviously it's shot in black and white and that's flattering to everyone but this is a story about a young boy trying to figure out like so you know his childhood or himself in sort of tumultuous times and it's also a movie about how hot Jamie Dornan and Katrina Balfour like it's

ridiculous and that's even before they let Jamie Darn and just like do a song a dance number which I was like I can't believe this is happening and I'm not mad but oh my god yeah is it everlasting love is that what the performance is yeah that there are some flights of fancy in this movie I would say in general I wanted to talk about the Van Morrison music quickly uh Van Morrison very important artist to me, probably the number top three artists that were played in my house growing up. Obviously Irish, Irish Catholic household.

Van Morrison is an icon to my father. We'll set aside the sort of post COVID Van Morrison experience and no masking. I really don't want to negotiate that in any meaningful way. However, there are a couple of moments in this movie musically that are unbelievable. The one that jumped out to me the most is when he's in the classroom and Jackie Wilson starts to play when he starts. Yes, yeah, of course.

That is just a magical piece of movie making is so exciting to watch. And then the Everlasting Love cover is this sort of dream sequence, sort of my dad is an incredible karaoke performer moment that is a little bit confusing, but is also just this like expression of, I guess like the post-anxiety, post-frustration exaltation, right? There's like something,

Dornan's character is kind of like getting out of his system in a way and connecting with his wife and his family. It is very nice, but also just, it feels, um, unmoored to the rest of the movie.

You know, there are a couple of times in this movie where Kenneth Ronda, it seems like he's just, you know, writing a screenplay, writing a screenplay. And then he's just like, I just want to do this now.

And, and no one was like, you can't do that. That's not how this story goes. And I guess there's something interesting about that, but it is a very odd movie. And then also, you know,

Judy Dench and Kieran Hines are in this movie as well, both wonderful as the grandparents. I think Kieran Hines in particular is fantastic as the grandfather who's forging this important relationship with his grandson. I feel like all four of these people could be nominated for Academy Awards. Yes.

And it was announced that Jamie Dornan and Katrina Balfour will both be running and supporting right which it makes it actually does make sense when you see the moving this is not category fraud this is like a acknowledgement of how the movie is structured but also does make it a lot easier to be like wow aren't these like people beautiful and they gave you like warm fuzzy feelings and then the grandparents as well i mean that's four nominations in two categories so that's a lot yeah there could be some cancellation here it's you know it's hard to know if they can if the movie will be able to support that it's kind of hard to know how this movie is going to be received it did decent box

office in a limited release this weekend the thing is is, it really is going to make people happy. And movies like that have a tendency to hold the water throughout the Oscar race. Let's talk about Branagh for a little bit. Okay. Such a weird figure in the last 30, 40 years of Hollywood, isn't he? It's, yes. It's kind of baffling. So, you know, this is his 20th feature film that he's directed.

Which is so weird on its own. You don't think of him as a filmmaker with that kind of CV, but he does. Obviously, he broke through with this bravura adaptation of Henry V.

He's adapted Hamlet, Much Ado About Nothing, many others. I think he's widely considered the modern-day, you know, Olivier in terms of adapting Shakespeare. Certainly, he's positioned himself that way. He has. And also, you know, Olivier in terms of adapting Shakespeare. Certainly his position himself that way. And also kind of as like the ambassador,

the modern ambassador of Shakespeare to larger pop culture. Yes. And, you know, frankly, I think his Shakespearean adaptations are his best films. I think this is one of his first films in a long time that I've seen that I've liked that isn't Shakespeare. And it's because he has been searching for many, many years to kind of figure out where he fits in in the Hollywood firmament. In that New York Times Magazine interview I mentioned, he talked at one point, he mentioned that for a long period of time, he would read the trades as if they were biblical because he was so desperate to find his way in the American movie studio system. And you can kind of feel that if you go through his films.

You know, I just watched Dead Again, which I'd never seen before. The Emma Thompson sort of neo-noir adaptation slash screwball comedy from the early 90s. Very odd movie. You know, a movie that really has no idea what it wants to be. It has some interesting stuff going on in it. And then he follows that up with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein,

which is this famous bomb, this sort of overwrought adaptation of the Shelley novel. And then all simultaneously, he's this kind of eager, but sort of mediocre leading man. He's always been a great actor, but he's not necessarily, you would never say like, hey, honey, it's Friday night. Should we go out and see the new Branagh? You know, he was never going to be Brad Pitt or Denzel. So he's so curious. Emma Thompson is so important to you. Yes. So where does Branagh exist to kind of in your cultural? Well, I mean, listen, that one's tough. We've talked about it before and I think I'm ready to open my heart again. Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson were married and a lot of those early nins collaborations were part of their marriage and then their marriage ended

um helena bottom carter may or may not have been involved though emma thompson has kind of worked through this in public and i go where emma thompson goes and so now she's absolved um you know i don't i don't think they're best buds anymore but um so if she's given him you know, I don't, I don't think they're best buds anymore, but, um, so if she's given him, you know, forgiven him and moved on. And also she did marry Greg wise who plays, uh, Mr.

Willoughby and sense and sensibility, which is the best thing that ever happened. So we're okay. We're okay. But I do kind of see it as, you know, they like, I actually really love his much ado about nothing.

Uh, like adaptation. I mean, it's kind of ridiculous, but it's like pretty fun as far as big budget Shakespeare goes. And so I see that there's the Kenneth Branagh, like Emma Thompson, period. And then there's Kenneth Branagh, like post Emma Thompson, which has maybe not coincidentally been in the wilderness a bit until this movie. Yeah, especially in the 2000s. He's had such a strange career as a filmmaker. a bit until this movie. Yeah, especially in the 2000s,

he's had such a strange career as a filmmaker that 10 years ago, he clearly made this decision to pursue a much more commercial kind of work for hire approach to filmmaking. And so, you know, in the last 10 years, these are the movies that he has directed. Thor, remember he made the first Thor movie? I do, it's very strange.

He made Jack Ryan's Shadow Recruit. Why not? Which should have worked. Kevin Costner and Chris Pine rebooting Jack Ryan did not work. He made the Disney Cinderella adaptation, which was with Lily James, which was hugely successful. And I thought it was fine as a movie.

It's fine. I mean, compare it with the most recent Cinderella adaptation, and it's like, it is Citizen Kane. High art, yes. It is Hamlet in many ways. He directed your favorite film of the 2010s, Murder on the Orient Express. And he ruined the canon. He ruined the Hercule Poirot canon. And I would like to have a word with him about it. Okay. Well, you'll forgive him for the sake of expediency on this conversation. So that

Cinderella and Murder on the Orient Express in particular, pretty good hits. You know, they did quite well. He comes back with Artemis Fowl, which is arguably the most reviled movie of 2020. A, uh, certainly a victim of the COVID-19 kind of closure and the Disney plus launch film, not seen by many people. And those who appreciated those kids books felt that he completely destroyed that character as well. So my guy's got some looseness with literary identity amongst the characters that he covers.

This movie is an interesting pivot away from that hardcore IP franchise-centric work, but it does feel like he's reached a moment in his life when he's ready to make films like this. You know, he's clearly in the back half of his life and he's reflecting on who he's meant to be. And I feel like people are really going to respond to this. I feel like they're going to say there's a little bit of an it's his time thing going on with Bronner, which you don't really think of as someone who we've been waiting to

celebrate because he feels so celebrated. But maybe it's just self celebration that's been happening for the last 40 years. I don't know. Well, the it's his time thing kind of, I guess, gets added on to anybody. I'm not sure. What's really appealing about this film to me in the context of his other work is that it really does feel like after decades of impersonal,

not quite like gun for hire, but like big budget, like what's really the connection to this mass market entertainment he was like i'm just gonna make this little project that i liked and it feels intimate and it feels i don't want to say small because it's like very emotional and they're like for a lot of kind of there's a lot of heavy stuff in it, but it feels personal, intimate,

a little more handmade, a little bit like, I'm just going to like go do this. Maybe not just for me, but this is, you like, you can connect the dots and you can feel his ownership from it

and that to it. And that is what makes it stand alive, especially when compared to like Thor, which is just random. It also has a great deal in common with many recent Best Picture winners, both for better or worse. You know, this is certainly a movie that feels kind of on paper like it has something in common with films like Moonlight and Green Book. You wouldn't think Moonlight and Green Book have anything in common, but those are both deeply personal stories. They're smaller films in a time of major franchise entertainment. They are intimate stories with small casts and family bound.

And that is the kind of thing that is working. And it's clear that Academy voters, almost in some ways, it feels like they are reacting against the state of their industry by rewarding films like this. How something becomes an Oscar frontrunner is a little bit confusing to me. As much as I participate in this economy, I will say I saw Belfast at like 11 a.m. on a Thursday during a film festival. And I walked out of it feeling like that was pretty nice. And then I walked down the street and I had a conversation with somebody that I knew and

they were like, Belfast isn't any best picture. That was the first thing they said to me. And some of these things kind of take on a life of their own. Well, let's identify the problem there. But it's like, that's, and that is kind of the issue with award season and why six months of it can drive us completely crazy. Because that's what, like three minutes

in between you being like, this is a great movie and someone who does this for a living needing to stake out their claim and being like, this is the best picture winner. And this is, and that is how a lot of it works. And that can drive anybody totally insane because the experience of the movie or the film itself is so quickly divorced from like the, the reception and the, the awards of it all.

And, and, and, you know, like I said that even affected the awards of it all. And, and, and, you know, like I said, that even affected my viewing of it where I walked out and I was like, I really enjoyed that, but do I need to hedge how much I say I enjoyed it?

Because if it's like the best picture winner, then that means bad things for the Academy. And also, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah,

blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. I mean, let's, let's segue right to the big race and just talk about big picture and kind

of where what's going on with all of these films well mama look at me now i'm a star you and i have now seen a lot of stuff i would say we've seen about 80 of the slate i was just looking at what's left this year it's only a handful of movies i haven't seen haven't seen west side story haven't seen the matrix movie Really just a couple that have not been sent around to critics at large. But to your point earlier, that's gonna be like four months before most people get a chance to see these movies. When is Belfast coming to VOD? I mean, it could be three weeks, but it's probably more like two months. And so we're going to talk about a lot of stuff that people are not going to get people to wrap their arms around. I'll just say there's stuff that people have seen that we

have seen out in the world right now that there is some discourse about. To me at the moment, the best picture race, I think, amounts to Belfast, The Power of the Dog, King Richard, and Dune in terms of what is out in the world right now, or at least has played festivals. Does that sound right to you? I think so. Well, I mean, with noting that The Power of the Dog is not out yet. I still have not seen Power of the Dog. Oh, okay.

And yeah, I'm behind on the Netflix movies for some reason. And King Richard will be out at the end of the week. Yes. Is that correct? Yeah. Yes. So we'll cover King Richard very soon on the show. Power of the Dog, I believe, is December 1st

is when it opens. That's a movie that obviously has been hailed widely. Jane Campion, incredible filmmaker, kind of a return to form after working in television for a number of years. And also, I think we'll have a cast

that is roundly recognized. Now, beyond that, there's a handful of other movies that I think people think have a shot at Best Picture. House of Gucci has gotten mixed reviews you and I I just loved it just just absolutely wait for that podcast okay that's what I have to say okay we'll wait just wait we're gonna have a lot of fun with that one CR will join us you and I both saw licorice pizza we will also talk about that next week very exciting Paul

Thomas Anderson's new film I think the Apple TV Plus film, Coda. There's some warm feelings for, and I could see a late push for that film. And then another Netflix movie, which it sounds like you maybe haven't seen it either, but I saw The Lost Daughter, which played at Telluride, but I just saw it a couple of weeks ago,

which I thought was fantastic. Maggie Gyllenhaal's adaptation of an Elena Ferrante novel. That's all kind of out in the world. There's a second tier of films that I don't think are going to make it into the Best Picture race. I'm going to share those with you now. I've seen most of these movies. Nothing against them. More just looking

at the landscape. There's Tick Tick Boom. Andrew Garfield as Jonathan Larson as directed by Lin-Manuel Miranda. Quasi-musical. Guess what? Twist. I liked it a lot, Amanda. I'm just going to put that out there. We can talk about that in the near future too. Parallel Mothers. Pedro Almodovar's film

played at the New York Film Festival. That's coming out at the end of this year. There's Spencer, which we discussed last week. Perhaps a bit too weird for Best Picture Academy tastes, or boring if you're Amanda. I'm not the only person who thought it was boring, just for the record. You're not. Our producer, Bobby,

did, as did a number of other people. Passing is a movie that you and i talked about in january which just recently hit netflix so if you wanted to hear us talk about that you can check out our sundance episode in january which was rebecca hall's adaptation of the novel about um two uh african-american women essentially engaging with the concept of passing in new york city and i believe it's the 1920s and a complex fascinating movie I thought extraordinary performance from Ruth Negan that movie who I think is a wonderful actor I didn't love the movie itself on the whole but the performance and I think like Hall's conception of the film is very good feels like it will be a little bit on the outside looking in I don't

know if you have a feel for if this is an Oscar film or not. I think the performances are possibly Oscar performances. I could see both Tessa Thompson and Ruth Nega. And then, but I, best picture, I'm not sure whether it's really like noisy enough. I think where you have it is right,

where it could be on the edge. But also in some of the lower categories, I felt like the stylization and like the rebecca hall's conception of it was was pretty impressive so again like is it typically all of the below the line categories go to like the really big budget showy um you know effects and production but but maybe because i do think it's like a very accomplished film yeah Yeah, you could see a world in which costume maybe or production design, there's some sort of acknowledgement. I think the other thing that's tricky is it's not likely to get cinematography because there's

literally five other movies that are shot in black and white this year, which is just an unusual coincidence, I suppose. A couple of other movies on that list. I just saw Swan Song last week. This is a film from Benjamin Cleary, also from Apple, starring Mahershala Ali. This is the first movie in which Mahershala Ali is the standalone star in his career. Mahershala Ali, who has two Academy Awards, has never been the main star of a film. Now, certainly, I suspect he's had a lot

of opportunities to be that in the last five years or so, but I thought the movie was solid. His performance is extraordinary. He is just consistent. He's an all-timer. Is he the best actor working right now? It's kind of amazing. It's like top five for sure. He's legit great in this movie.

It's like a soft science fiction story. I'll be curious to know what you think about that. We'll talk about it when it comes out in December. And then The Tender Bar, which is also coming out in December, which is the George Clooney-directed adaptation of the J.R. Moe Ringer memoir starring Ben Affleck, our beautiful boy, Ben,

who's just delightful in this movie. I don't think it's a best picture contender, though. Okay, what haven't we seen? I don't think you've seen any of these movies, right? No, I haven't. Okay, so here's a list of what we haven't seen.

Nightmare Alley. I've got a date on the books to see this in early December. Okay. Being the Ricardos. It's screened for the first time this weekend. The awards chatterers were very excited about this film. I think you and I maybe had some doubts about Aaron Sorkin's ability to tell the story of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz.

We haven't seen it. We are also, despite the last couple, well, the last movie and some of the interviews, Aaron Sorkin fans. Aaron Sorkin has had a huge impact on how I watch movies and TV. I will never not be excited to see one of his films. But it seems like it's getting off to a complicated start. How about that? Yes, the trailers have not been terribly well received, but the screening did go very well over the weekend.

We'll see. We will definitely talk about that movie on a future episode don't look up adam mckay's new film starring leonardo dicaprio and jennifer lawrence we shall see i believe i'm seeing that film very soon west side story did you get your invite for the west side story screen i did i'm going i i don't know whether we're going to the same one but i rsvp'd there was also a trailer for west side story before um before belfast so i experienced it you know like a civilian i just There was also a trailer for West Side Story before Belfast. So I experienced it like a civilian. I just, Sean, I just, I don't know.

I'm trying to keep an open heart. I know. It's Steven Spielberg and Tony Kushner. I know that I shouldn't. Yeah. And your boy, Elgort. He's not my boy. I just, I have to be honest.

I'm still so scarred by the Oscar pre-show that I may never be able to get over it. I honestly may not. Her agent is the hardest working agent in showbiz. It's Ariana DeBose is her name. And that might have been a fatal mistake. I'm putting all my apples in the Rachel Zegler cart that's yeah that's if she works it'll work it'll be so interesting right if they like remake one of the you know the the best Hollywood musicals ever made and they fix it's one glaring problem which is the Maria character

and then everything else is like not as good and I'm just like is it worth it is the trade whatever we'll talk about it we haven't seen it uh so that's West Side Story definitely going to and then everything else is like not as good. And I'm just like, is it worth it? Is the trade, whatever. We'll talk about it. We haven't seen it. So that's West Side Story. Definitely going to be an episode. I think we're going to do a big Spielberg episode, which I'm excited about.

We have never done a Spielberg episode on this show before. The tragedy of Macbeth, Joel Cohen, Francis McDormand, Denzel Washington. Still haven't seen it. Looking forward to it. Got very, very warm reviews out of the New York Film Festival. Another black and white film. Certainly some familiar IP here. Maccbeth ever heard of him um i just i love it when we talk about shakespeare on this podcast we always sound so educated just like yell play names for a while speaking of ip uh cyrano de bergerac is a famed story cyrano is the new film from another

one of our guys joe Wright. That's coming very soon starring Peter Dinklage. Also a musical. A Journal for Jordan directed by Denzel Washington starring Michael B. Jordan. My goodness. Have you seen this trailer?

I have. Well, I just, I had not watched the end until I went to the movies this weekend. And so, they had the last thing like coming soon

or whenever. It's Denzel's voice, which I hadn't noticed. Yeah, it is really smart. But you don't often have like the director of the film being like coming soon to a theater new, but it is absolutely Denzel Washington saying that last line in the trailer. I love that. That's just clever marketing. You know, you don't have to say the person's name necessarily, but just insinuate like,

trust me, it's a Denzel experience. You will enjoy it. Yeah. We haven't seen The Matrix movie, which I mentioned as well. I don't think that say the person's name necessarily, but just insinuate. Like, trust me, it's a Denzel experience. You will enjoy it. We haven't seen The Matrix movie, which I mentioned as well. I don't think that's an Oscar movie. You never know. That trailer kicks ass. That's my take on that.

The Matrix, phenomenal film. Two and three, not bad. Maybe I'll reevaluate them on this podcast. We'll see. Okay, here's some things that I've seen that I really would like to see in the mix for this race that I don't feel like are going to be in the mix. A couple of these you have seen.

I think maybe a couple you have not seen yet. A Hero, which is the new Asghar Farhadi movie, which once again, like my guy only makes like four star movies. Yeah. It's kind of amazing. He might be the most consistent filmmaker in the world. Iranian filmmaker. Just another brilliant morality play. Some people might say, oh, we've seen him kind of work his way through these complex ethical dilemmas before

with these lower middle-class characters in this milieu. I don't care. He's like an incredible writer and he elicits incredible performances from his actors. This is a film that's definitely gonna challenge for best international feature. It should be in a best picture race, in my opinion. We can talk about it more when it drops,

I think on Amazon in early January. Yeah, it's not coming out for a while uh the last duel i know this movie bombed have you seen many movies that are like a lot better than this movie this year no i haven't again to me it's still a marketing issue why was ben affleck not in the trailer just put ben affleck in the trailer just have him say the last line as denzel did you know come on people but or also put it is available on vod now right and the last line you mean and that say the last line as denzel did you know come on people but or also put it is available on vod now right and the last line you mean and that was the last duel yes that'd be great it's a great ending um it'd be it'd be house of gucci i think is going to blot out the whole last duel moment for a variety of reasons around ridley scott but um this that's a very very good

movie and the kind of movie that 20 years ago is recognized by the academy and unfortunately it is for a variety of reasons around Ridley Scott. But that's a very, very good movie. And the kind of movie that 20 years ago is recognized by the Academy. And unfortunately, it is not likely to be this year. Red Rocket, cannot wait to talk about this. I have a lot of feelings about Red Rocket from Sean Baker starring Simon Rex. Come on, come on. We'll talk about probably early next week.

New Mike Mills film does not seem like an Oscar contender despite having some wonderful performances. I think making both of us feel good about the world. It should be. Let's just, why don't we make it an Oscar contender right here? Just go see it. Did you see my tweet about to 10? I actually did, but only because Zach showed it to me.

That's cool. If that's how you want to spend your capital like that's great i think just before the oscars okay just you and i 60 consecutive minutes on today okay that'll go really well okay i don't know if we should publish it on this feed should we publish it somewhere else maybe we could get on like ben shapiro's podcast or something like that sure that'll be great okay um and then the french dispatch which um you know i think is considered slight amongst some wes anderson hardcore fans and maybe by the academy it's not doing very good business which is um unfortunate for wes and for films like this

but again i i can't say i like as i look at what you've seen and kind of what's leading in contention like do i really love a lot of these movies more than the French dispatch? Not really, you know, in terms of my personal taste, but that's of course not what the Academy Awards is about. If you had to choose your 10 right now, sight unseen on a bunch of movies,

just let's, let's just, I just want to know what you, where you think we're going to land here. Okay. So I'll do Belfast. Am I, am I picking what I'm nominating or what I think is going to be,

what you think is going to be nominated. What you think is going to be nominated. Belfast, Power of the Dog, King Richard, Dune. I don't think Dune is a lock for what it's worth. I'm not saying you shouldn't choose it because as of right now, it feels like it's very much in contention. But we shall see. I sort of feel like it's the Mad Max spot. And I think that it is good enough for the Mad Max spot.

And there's so much like technical support. And, you know, we call the Academy voting body stupid every day. And or like, you know, every week, 52 weeks a year. And I think that's true. But I do also think that this has enough kind of mass appeal. Like even, even I went and I was like, wow, this is so beautiful. And then there's some sand, you know, or spice or whatever. Like, so it's maybe not a lock, but it seems like it could happen.

And I think also that kind of the Eternals nightmare, I don't think Eternals was ever going to be nominated for an Oscar. Like, let's be real. But the fact that Chloe Zhao directed it and that, you know, Marvel was trying to take cinema more seriously and like, hey, look at like real sunsets or whatever. And then that did not pan out for anybody in any stretch of the imagination

is like, will perhaps cause people to think a little bit more about what an Oscar blockbuster looks like. I don't know. I think that's sound. I think that makes sense. But you know, obviously you can't trust them. So, okay.

You've got four and we need 10. We need 10. Because this year it is confirmed to be 10 nominees for Best Picture. Right. So, West Side Story. Okay. Sight unseen, but like,

like you said, it's Spielberg and it's West Side Story. Okay. What else is like a total, I don't know if there are any more locks i agree with you and i don't even take some risks here dune is a lock as we said and i don't even know again i haven't seen west side story so please don't like quote me as saying that's a lot okay what do i please don't quote you're talking about the aggregators who are you talking about i don't know just anybody um all right i think that i haven't seen the lost daughter but it does seem like that has carved out

a lane for itself between the maggie gyllenhaal the olivia coleman the jesse buckley and the dakota johnson of it all um and the elena ferrante of it all it just Elena Ferrante of it all. It just seems like that's a lot of boxes that get people's attention. I don't know. I think if Olivia Colman is in your movie also it has to be nominated

for Best Picture at this point which is very smart of everybody. This is a very boring take but she's brilliant in this movie. She's amazing. It's not boring. Her and Mahershala the two of them

like never been bad. And again I think like an actor turning director and making something very exciting on the first time people like that story what effect do you think the 10 minute all too well release will have on maggie gyllenhaal's oscar campaign i'm not really familiar with that what are you referring to okay so are you familiar with the taylor swift song all too well who's's Taylor Swift? Okay. It is my favorite.

I think it's the best Taylor Swift song. So you're just going to have to like play along for a little bit. Famously starts with an anecdote about a scarf that was left there at your sister's house. And you've still got it in a drawer. Even now, this song is about Jake Gyllenhaal. The sister in question would be Maggie Gyllenhaal. Maggie Gyllenhaal has the scarf. She's been asked about it for almost a decade.

Taylor Swift this weekend released a 10-minute version that is frankly deranged of that song. Like, listen, I think that her ability as a pop star to recreate this moment is fascinating. I am very interested in this project and also just how much money she's been able to make off of something that already exists.

I think people should study her, but you guys know I believe in editing. The 10 minute version of this movie, of this song is bonkers. But just like Jacob Gyllenhaal back in the news, Maggie Gyllenhaal like campaigning, but also in the news.

Like if you don't think she's going to be asked about the scarf then you don't know how the media works I'm just saying that right now uh I don't I think this will have absolutely no bearing on her academy awards race I will say um I have no idea what transpired between Jake Gyllenhaal or Taylor Swift I have no interest in negotiating that fact I will say uh Jake Gyllenhaal needs to be protected at all costs. Okay. My Mysterio needs to be protected at all costs. That's all I'm saying. That's why. Great. Did you see he signed up to make a remake of Roadhouse with Doug Liman?

Did you see that? I mean, he's on his own journey. He is on a journey. Let me tell you. I want to do a 40 part podcast uh with with jake me and jake where we just talk about his feelings you think jake is interested i i i think i would listen to like 45 minutes of that again i believe in editing this is a 40 part podcast each episode is 45 minutes amanda okay um well that seems like a, but I hope you guys have a beautiful friendship. I've been thinking a lot about Jake Gyllenhaal's friends and who does he have in his life to help him through this fairly awkward moment.

So that would be nice if he had you. Yeah, I agree. You don't have to acknowledge what's going on. We could just talk about Enemy for like 38 episodes. What do you think? You guys are both freaks. That's all I have to say about that. Alright, so you picked five movies. Five movies? Six movies six movies we got six movies here i think the lost daughter pick is is wise i don't know that's totally gonna pan out but we shall see what else you got

i don't know it's i mean it seems unwise to bet against well i don't know it's tragedy of macbeth like people we really like just having a little fun in the sandbox? Or is it also very serious? I mean, it's Macbeth, so it's very serious, right? I mean, I know that it's serious. If anyone ever cuts together all of our Shakespeare criticism, it's very serious. Father and sons. We're doing a whole Shakespeare episode around the tragedy of Macbeth.

So get excited. I think this would be a reasonable and I would go with this. OK. All right. You haven't seen it, but sure.

OK, so that's seven. You've got three more. Now you've got Aaron Sorkin here. You've got Guillermo del Toro. Oh, yeah. I forgot how much

they like Guillermo del Toro. But is this like you've got Paul Thomas Anderson, Ridley Scott. There's a lot on the board here.

And they like Adam McKay a lot. They do. and they like adam mckay a lot they do but are you getting a little nervous about the fact that we don't know anything about this movie i know you're gonna see it shortly and i know that they're kind of rolling things out but it's a star-studded cast and the thing is is it seems like ultimately an antic comedy with a big idea and comedies of course do not historically do very well. Adam has been celebrated for Vice, the big short. There's a sense that he is

in that kind of collection of Academy-approved filmmakers. But if this is more comedy than it is commentary, it might be on the outside looking in. We'll see. I don't want a Jinx House of Gucci.

You know? I don't want a... I think it has no chance. I know. It has no chance. You put it. I think it has no chance. I know. It has no chance. You put it here on the things we've seen. I know. I mean, I loved it.

I want it to be like, remember the morning that we woke up and Phantom Thread had been nominated for like six or seven Oscars and that felt like such a magical time. And I just, I want that for everybody. And I know that that's not going to happen. And that's because the academy

is full of losers i just like i honestly if you don't want house of gucci just to like run the table at the oscars then you're lame that's i'm resorting to name calling well but i don't want to jinx it if not house of do you think licorice pizza will be nominated for best picture i don't know um i could see it going either way it feels like another like sort of phantom thread thing it's like it's never totally obvious to me when the academy kind of logs on with pta and and to what extent um i think it's are we allowed to say anything about it i don't even know what it was right now because that's another movie that like it's opening in very limited engagement and i think it's gonna be hard for people to see this movie for a couple of months.

So it seems possible, but I don't know that I would put money on it right now. So to me, the two that seem most likely that are left are Nightmare Alley and Being the Ricardos. Yeah, I guess you're right. Because you've got Del Toro, who of course is beloved by the Academy, beloved in Hollywood in many ways. He's a true ambassador for Hollywood. And Sorkin is Sorkin. I mean, Trial of Chicago 7 is the worst thing he's ever done, I think. And it was nominated for like eight Oscars.

That's true. So, feels reasonable to assume those two, right? I think that only gets us to nine, though. Am I right? Yeah. And so then would you put Coda in? I think this is an interesting test of Apple. Yeah.

They had their moment in TV with Ted Lasso. Coda has not been nearly the phenomenon, though it's another movie that if people actually watch it, they'll enjoy it. I guess the tragedy of Macbeth is also Apple, but it's A24 and Apple. So it's kind of a stacked deck there. Right.

I mean, let's try Coda and see what happens. Okay. We can check our work 300 months from now when the Oscars air on ABC. That'll be interesting. Let's quickly go to Stock Up, Stock Down. If it goes bust, you can make 10 to 1, even 20 to 1 return. And it's already slowly going bust. I just have one stock up, Will Smith.

Yeah. You've been following this press tour? Excuse me? Who are you talking to? Well, I thought so. I wanted to hear from you about this. Transcendent. This is, I mean, this is all we want. And I can't wait to talk about King Richard.

I think it was Paul Thomas Anderson in the Variety interview who was just like, I can't wait to see King Richard because like when Will Smith turns it on, there's literally nothing better in the world. Hold on one second. I need to interrupt you. You saw when PTA said he liked Venom 2? Yeah. He lives in a Marvel household. I think it's great that he loves his children and consumes pop culture with them. My dude is thriving right now.

It's really delightful. He has four children. So if they like Marvel, then he can too. I think that's a great way to be a part of culture. Okay, back to Will Smith. Yeah, but as he said, when Will Smith turns it on, there's literally nothing better in the world. And he just, he's out here with the movie.

He's out here with the memoir, which out here with the memoir which i received this week i can't oh my god yes i did it's so beautiful i have a hardcover copy i can't wait to like i just i've been like saving like special like you know sacred time to read it he's been doing the press tour for the book and the movie simultaneously just like will smith charisma factor 24 7 yeah i'm not really interested in anything else besides the will smith like charisma factor it's amazing dude went on fresh air and talked about his dad for 40 minutes i was like wow this is highly relatable content here um he is uh i think he's gonna win i think it's like i don't know if it's a lock but i don't want you to jinx it my guy and i know i know i'm really good in this film people really

like him now i don't know i don't know i mean i'm mad at the people who didn't like him before i will say some of the quotes are wild they're just like being in love with soccer, Channing and you know, the ayahuasca trips and all that sort of stuff. I'm, I'm really enjoying it, but you wonder like in January, are we going to hit a wall with it? I'm just,

I'm very nervous that it's Jennifer Lopez and hustlers all over again. Oh, wow. That would be horrible. But, which is one of the biggest mistakes that the Academy's ever made. Oh, wow. That would be horrible. But, which is one of the biggest mistakes that the Academy's ever made. Shame on them.

But I think that there's such a love for King Richard that for unfair reasons wasn't extended to hustlers that, you know, we said that King Richard is a lock for best picture. Then there's no way

that Will Smith isn't a lock at least for a nomination. I mean, he will be nominated, but I don't know. You said earlier, like a few months ago, just like watch it be Benedict Cumberbatch in power of the dog and like a late surprise because people have had time to overthink of it, overthink it. And that's haunted me. He may be out on the trail too soon. Yeah, that is, that is possible. And Benedict Cumberbatch is excellent in the power of the dog. It feels weird.

I don't necessarily want to see him rewarded over Will Smith, who I quite enjoy as well. We shall see. I kind of already did my hark, which was March 27th, 2022. What the fuck are we doing? Yeah. Do you have any rants you want to unfurl here before we wrap up?

Hark! Hark! what the fuck are we doing yeah do you have any rants you want to unfurl here before we wrap up my heart is get on board the house of gucci train it's like call an academy of odor in your life and bully them into liking house of gucci it's like is this a crow bullying podcast it's no except in the case of people with access to the Academy voting platform embracing House of Gucci. We all need this. The Academy needs it. This podcast needs it. Movies need it. You need it. I need it.

You just gotta let this light into your life. Okay? Let's just do it. I'm probably like breaking campaigning rules right now and I don't even care. This is not coordinated. I'm not being paid to say this. Just let's have some fun

because that's otherwise we're just on this, you know, long March to the end of March with nothing exciting to talk about. Let's spice it up a little, you know? I agree. I think it would be very fun if House of Gucci and particularly Jared Leto was at the center of the Oscar race once again.

I just, I have so much to say. Okay, well, we will say a lot more in the coming weeks. This is a very hot time for the big picture. Next two weeks are more stacked. We're going to have a King Richard episode, a House of Gucci episode, a licorice pizza episode, a lot more to come. Let's go to my conversation now with Alison Klayman. Alison Klayman, welcome to the show. Thank you for doing it.

Congrats on Jagged. Thank you so much. I feel like you've been with me all along the way. In a way, in a way. So let's talk about where the movie started and maybe even before that, where you start with Linus Morissette and Jagged Little Pill. Yeah. So, I mean, Jagged Little Pill was the first CD that I ever bought. First cassette tape was Salt-N-Pepa, Very Necessary. But the first CD was Jagged Little

Pill. And I just remember so vividly lying on my bed with the CD in the boom box and the liner notes open, listening to it like that, not while you're doing something else, like really just paying attention to it, reading the lyrics. I definitely read, you know, like the thanks and acknowledgements, listen to the hidden song. And just really like, I think of everyone in the film, Hanif's perspective, honestly, probably is the best avatar for me. I think generationally we're close enough that when he talks about like, you know, being a 12 or 13 year old and kind of like not knowing, understanding totally what all the songs are about,

but feel, you know, understanding the emotion behind it and that it's important or that it's raw or that's exciting. That's definitely how I experienced that album. When you were that age engaging with music, kind of probably learning about the world, sexuality, femininity, all these things that are baked inside of it. Were you also aware of Alanis' story or was she just songs to you? She was kind of just songs to me, I would say. I also didn't have MTV until I was a little bit

older, just we didn't have cable. So the first music videos I watched were all of hers, for sure. But I think I was kind of watching them on the tail end of that album. I don't think it was as, you know, you ought to know, first broke. I think I experienced that on the radio, not through the music videos and then buying the album. But yeah, that's why when the idea, it really was kind of floated by The Ringer in a way to do this film. I knew that you guys were working on Music Box and it was like, yeah, and one of the artists were talking to her team is Alanis. Is that something that would interest you? And I was just like, yes, like, look at this face. Yes. And I think it's because I knew how much I loved the album. I connected to it and I understood

that there was something big there, but actually I didn't know her story. And so that's the kind of thing I like because I'm like, okay, there's something here for me to discover. And then as we started to develop it and work on it, I also think the real special thing, the sort of secret sauce of this film and how my team creatively, when we talked about it, I was like, the two things we're going to have is the immediacy of the archival and Alanis' own intimate participation, and also the fact that it's 25 years later. And I feel like we're going to get a perspective that you couldn't have had at the 20-year anniversary, 15-year anniversary. And this is an album that's had all of those re-releases.

I feel like there was a Starbucks collab re-release of the album at 15 or 20 years. You know, it's something that has been remembered a lot. But I do think in a lot of ways also, you know, where we are today, post Time's Up, Me Too, you know, popping off, the like 25-year perspective was going to be something really unique. Yeah, it seems like it's always been hailed, celebrated, appreciated, but maybe not totally interrogated or like unearthed how it came about. So where do you, how do you, where do you start? Do you, do you connect with Alanis personally? Are you digging into the archives? What's the beginning? I think it was a combo of like reading up a little bit about it. You mean

for me, for like the process of making this, exactly. I mean, I think it was kind of concurrently getting connected with Alanis and talking to her on the phone and kind of, you know, starting to read a little bit and have a vision, you know, so there's something, it's kind of like how lots of films start, you know, you kind of have to put, you know, two paragraphs at minimum on paper that everyone can look at and be like, okay, we all agree this is like the beginning of what we're going to try to make. But, you know, it was a couple months before the pandemic really, you know, shut down, I guess, really started, I should say. I mean, the pandemic was already happening. And so I talked to Alanis on the phone and then on FaceTimes. And, you know, a lot of what we talked about was, you know, patriarchy was a word that came up a lot, you know, kind of talking about what is it to look at it right now? What is the significance?

Like, this is about this album, but like, what's the legacy? And kind of just feeling out if she was kind of game for thinking about things in that way. And she totally was. So that also made me feel really good. And there was this kind of magical, mysterious archive that we knew that she had. She has the storage unit. And we got hundreds of hours of high tapes, VHS, cassette, and film reels that we digitized for this. And so I also watched kind of everything that was out there that you could watch on YouTube.

That was old interviews with her. And also some of the stuff that I could tell must have been made from some of that early material. But kind of wondering, like, ooh, I wonder if the camera was really really running the whole time or like, is this clip indicative of something longer? And it was really sort of a bet that like there was going to be a rich archive to like work on. And then I read a bunch of books about feminism in the eighties and nineties or, and what I, what I really started to pick up on was this issue, which I think is very much in the film, but actually we don't have a dedicated section for it, which is like something happened where it went from like, you know, Riot Grrls to like Spice Girls, girl power, you know, and a lot of the books that we're trying to grapple. And I really started to understand that I don't think we have a definitive understanding or like version of what is feminism in the 90s. You know, I was like reaching out to lots of writers and journalists. I knew I'm like, what's the thing I should read or what's the take? And people are like, oh, you know, I think we're all still figuring that out.

But I think there was something where Jagged Little Pill fits right in there in like 1995 as could be kind of seen as this bridge, right? From like the underground, you know, things and then, you know, you end up it being this totally commodified version of like girl power that, you know, companies, record companies can make a lot of money with. And I think there was kind of a misunderstanding there. And a lot of the like writers I talked to, I kind of started to feel like there was a little bit of looking down on Jagged Little Pill because it had this commercial success that I think it kind of unfairly got painted as, you know, this was like concocted in a lab by the powers that be in the music industry to kind of sell women's empowerment in like a palatable way to the masses. And actually, I feel like, and this is to me, what one of the things that the film really does is like finally, like reclaim the true narrative, which is like,

this is actually a deeply personal work of art by a really talented 19, 20 year old who made something that actually people weren't necessarily lining up to release. And then when it did, it fucking went nuts. And it's because it was this deeply, it was like a true, meaningful work of art. And I just got really excited. And honestly, we did sort of start to see this in the research even before we started to like do the interviews but I was like this is a movie that could really just be inspiring to like anyone who's trying to make art and remind them to just like do it for you even though this is one of the most massively commercially successful albums of all time you know I like to think the reason it's so good is

because she didn't do it for that she just did did it for herself. It feels unmediated, but it's interesting. I mean, you do such an amazing job, especially in the early parts of the film of giving us some of that kind of like traditional snapshot. Here's how she grew up. Here are the early stages of her life. But those stages are so mediated. You know, she's such a part of a machine on television and in the Canadian music industry and her evacuating that, abandoning that, and going somewhere else, seeking a kind of independence, it's almost like an inverted narrative. Like, you don't usually see that with a famous person.

It's like, usually they have to scrap and scrap and scrap. Then they get into the system, and she had to kind of flee the system. Like, did you know that going into this before you sat down with her, that she had kind of the opposite experience as a famous musician? Yeah, I mean, I think you could kind with her that she had kind of the opposite experience as a famous musician? Yeah, I mean, I think you could kind of see that. And I would say some of it was like,

you know, in the edit, kind of making sure we could really thematically like make all those connections. Because there's always so much more even than you can like fit into a story. But that really, I think it started to make a lot of sense that this early success and fame and then you could, again, paint a figure like that as so they're just after success and fame. Because, I mean, you kind of have, I mean, she also is because like how do you become that successful? It's from working really hard. I mean, she was still going to high school and she was like flying all over, making music videos, doing appearances. Like that's dedication. She wanted that.

But I think there's something about the way that it started, that the parts of it, like she says, you know, when the camera goes Dutch angle, she has a lot of really good lines about just the ways that you start to see what's rotten about it. And then also basically the fact that she had one persona and the music industry was not interested in seeing her in a multiplicity of personalities to first see her to grow up in a certain way, even if it's like a sexualized kind of teen image is not the same as like a young woman developing and having an idea of how she wants to be presented. And I think butting up against that is kind of, maybe it takes that for someone to really go out. It's almost like, it makes sense to me that someone saying, I really need to express myself and I need to be true to myself. Like if you haven't ever run into any walls, like that's a nice thing to say, but it's sort of like just a thing you're saying versus you've really experienced what it feels like to be forced into a certain role or to like

not be allowed to do something. Like it makes sense to me that those bad experiences could lead to her being like very fiercely independent in the creation of Jagged Little Pill. Maybe more ambitious than she otherwise might've been because she had something to prove. Yeah. So were you able to spend time in that massive archive before sitting for the master interview? So I think we must've been one of the first COVID productions in America. I would venture to say that. I feel like we were- Put some timing around it. Maybe we can measure this against the world. Yeah. I mean, it, we went out and we, uh, Alanis lives in the Bay area. Um, my producer, uh, Jay and I flew out, um, to California in like mid July, um, you know, got tested corn, you know, self quarantined for two weeks. Um, and then I started filming with Alanis just as a solo operator, like just me and a camera

hung out with her for like two weeks to just around her house. And it was really kind of funny to us because originally the plan, we thought we were going to be going on the anniversary tour with her because there was a Jagged Little Pill 25th anniversary, you know, stadium tour. And originally the plan would have been we'd film maybe a couple shows, film a little backstage. And instead she kept joking like, sorry, I bet you thought it was going to be way cooler than just like me and my sweatpants here. But of course that's like. It was better. Yeah, it benefited you, right? Yeah, because I think it was just the intimacy was there. And she was still doing a lot of interviews about the 25th anniversary. And she was releasing her new album, which is the first album she had in eight years that came out last year.

And I love having subjects have to sit for other people's interviews a lot in front of my camera. It's a great way to just- You've deployed this strategy before. Yes, I've done that in many films. And I think it's really useful because then I know what questions they get asked all the time, what's a stock answer, what questions annoy them. And you could cut a great montage. In the end, we didn't do that in this film. We didn't end up using a lot of the verite. We only have like a couple of verite scenes. But we could have gone that route. And the reason we didn't,

to bring it back to your question, is because we did have this tremendous archive. So the first thing that Jay and I did when we got to California after we got our COVID test was we went to this storage unit and met up with Alanis' executive assistant, EJ, who let us in. And we stayed in there for as many hours as we could until we all felt incredibly nauseous from like the no air, like fresh air, like windows. And we cataloged, you know, we figured out what we were going to take and we cataloged for ourselves, you know, close to 100 hi-8 tapes and like eight boxes of film reels, like a mixture of 35, 16 and the audio reels and loaded them up into a car and we drove right to Bay Area Video Coalition, which is this amazing

nonprofit that does great digitization and probably just had a bunch of technicians working at home doing this for us because of COVID. Right. And we ended up bringing the film reels down to LA. I mean, the car was just moved. This was like the albatross with us. We just had these huge boxes of film that we also drove down to LA. So that was the first thing we did.

And it was slow going because of the limitations of COVID. By the time we sat about a month later for the master interview with Alanis, I had received and watched as quickly as I could about 20 hours of what we had. So there was a lot more to come. But I had also watched in the lead-up, in our extended pre-production during the shutdown, I watched a lot of interviews, a lot of concert footage. I mean, I watched as much as I could that was on YouTube as well.

But I think that that was one of the challenges for this film. I mean, I think it's okay to do the master interview after we had interviewed a lot of other people as well by that point. And I'd spent a lot of time with Alanis. But we were getting some of that archive like synced up until, as you know, till like the last cut.

Like you saw stuff in the sort of last cut when everything's mostly fixed and suddenly there could be this like treasure in there. Um, and that fits perfectly. You added some gems at the 11th hour. And it was really because we like, for instance, didn't have the audio synced to a film interview until very late. And then we were like, Oh, this is our bridge. Like, this is our bridge from, you know, Jagged Little Pill era to the present or something like that. And those moments always felt a little bit like divinely inspired

or something like that because, you know, we were still getting things till the last minute. You always, your relationship with your subjects in your movies is always very interesting to me. And it seems like you and Alanis really clicked. She's very, speaks with incredible warmth and clarity throughout the film. The interview itself, I remember the first cut I saw, I was like, this is going to work. Like she just pops. You mentioned the Dutch angles line, but she has

insights over and over again. So how did you prepare for the interview? How long did you guys spend together filming her talking? Talk about that. Yeah. This was the longest like sit down interview I've ever done. Um, cause I, I've done these sort of very, um, again, like sort of up close profiles, you know, um, of, of big figures. Um, but they're usually not built around just one key interview. Cause I just spend so much time with them. I have watched them get interviewed by other people. I do interviews, but it's also like catch as catch can.

For this one, because this was going to be so archival driven and looking back, I mean, just made so much sense that this master interview could become the spine and it could, you know, get a lot of screen time. And so this one, we did it over two days i also just knowing some people i mean the stamina like i mean you're here this is like your fourth interview of the day like and i feel like as the interviewer we can do that to ourselves but you can't do that to your interviewee um and i to like, you know, have that kind of endurance. And especially when it's going to be really, really, you know, it's personal. Hopefully we're not diving as deep here as you dove with Alanis. Exactly. I mean, I could talk about this forever. And so it was essentially over two days, you know, we wore the same outfit, same like setup. And it was about three hours each day. I'm trying to remember.

It might have been like four hours of the total time of kind of her with us on set. But maybe we ended up with like around three hours with breaks and things like that. And what ended up happening was day one. And I did kind of go into this intentionally when I thought about how to prep for it. Day one was, I was like, I think it might be everything, but like up, up until Jagged Little Pill. Like, I'm not even sure if we're going to talk about Jagged Little Pill the first day. And that was what ended up happening. And it was super cool. Did that make you nervous at all that you still had a lot of ground to cover? Yeah, I was like, I'm going to, she's's going to call and tell me she doesn't want to continue. I'm going to be like, yeah, totally. But she, I mean, I also, we like knew so much or we'd spent so much time together like talking about this stuff anyway.

So yes, it did make me nervous. But I also just think that if we're here to talk about Jagged Little Pill, like if it was just one day of interviews, let's say, and it was just three hours, I still would probably spend the first hour not, you got to warm up, you got to feel around. I just wouldn't start with the thing. I also felt like she was really eager to talk about a lot of other things. And with some of the stuff like getting into the tour, the specifics, like, like it started to get more vague, like, to be honest, like it was sort of like, you know, 18 months of her life or two years of her life versus the first 19, 20 years of her life. There's a lot to say about what she thinks about music, doing the TV show as a kid, her career as a kid, her family. So I feel like I sort of just wanted to feel all that out so that then I could kind of do all the beats of of Jagged Little Pill and Jagged Little Pill I was talking to so many other people too

and I knew the narrative sort of lift doesn't have she doesn't have to like do all the play-by-play I wanted to ask you about that specifically so how do you cast a movie like this how do you figure out who you want to hear from who participated who was there versus who has some insights kind of externally? You mentioned Honey, for example. Yeah. And I feel like I heard Todd Haynes speak about Velvet Underground and he was like, you know, I only wanted people who are there. And I was like, yeah, in a way, I mean, I feel like that is kind of what Jagged Little, or Jagged, about Jagged Little Pill, this film really does as well. Because it's people who are part of the story and any of the sort of critics or writers were also covering music at the time

as well as still being music writers or culture writers. And I feel like Hanif, like I just kind of count him because he's like... He's like the fan avatar in a way. He's like a fan who was in, middle school or teens at the time. So I feel like that, you know, and that was, again, also I really related because I was like, that's me. But one thing, you know, I did watch, you know, there's been a behind the music and, you know, other also all the sort of pieces about her when she was a teen there was sort of a theme of like you know older guys who had quotes like she's just wise beyond her years she's just a real no one said spark plug but it's like something

like that you know just some these sort of like canned terms that might be true and maybe like yeah she was wise beyond her years she was very impressive but i was sort of like canned terms that might be true and maybe like, yeah, she was wise beyond her years. She was very impressive. But I was sort of like, I don't need any of that. And the rule that we ended up kind of making, you know, as a team about it was a little bit like, I don't, we don't need people to like describe her or describe her experience because you can see her and you can hear about her experience from her. And then we have other people who are talking about it and they're adding what their experience was too. So it's sort of like nobody's like armchair, just sort of like framing it because I'm like, we just are lucky we have the real people who were there. So I just feel like people telling me just sort of like,

I feel like descriptors, it's like, we don't need it. Tell me like a really evocative story about like something that you guys did rather than just sort of, I just felt like watching the things, there was a lot of like talking about her within these pieces and it, and everybody got kind of as much weight as she did. And I always thought that that was weird. Yeah. That's interesting. I feel like sometimes when someone burns so brightly, they're kind of desperate to just throw adjectives around that flame. So I want to ask you about the ending. I'm a little bit biased.

I just had a daughter, my wife and I. But the ending, every single cut that I watched, I started crying. I was like, this is unbelievable how beautiful this moment is with her kid. And for those who haven't seen it, I don't want to spoil it or anything, but it seems like that's happening at like, is it a different time or is it in that early two week period that you were spending with her?

Like where did that kind of sequence come from? It was in the first two weeks that I was filming and it was just me filming there. And again, she was doing all this promotion for her new album. So that's her performing the song of blaze and it's for like Jimmy Fallon, right? Jimmy Fallon. Um, and so, and her recording that song, um, and it was like late at night and I, you know, came to film that and it was like a totally organic thing that her daughter wanted to be there. And I was so impressed how she held her up and was belting. And she was like a totally organic thing that her daughter wanted to be there. And I was

so impressed how she held her up and was belting. And she did two takes, which is why there's such good coverage. And a lot of my films where I've shoot myself and it feels like there's a lot of cameras. It's like, you know, it's just because like that, I was so lucky she had two takes. So I could like have multiple angles. I'm always moving around but um yeah that moment with her daughter I mean that's one of those where you while you're shooting like while I was filming I was like this is good yeah I was like I think this is me and you can ask like and at the time I was staying in an Airbnb with uh um producer Jay and totally I came home that was one of those where I was like I need to show you like now I think it show you like now, I think it was like, I was like, I think it's really pretty. I was like, I think my shots

look better than like the stationary angle that they had for, you know, for Jimmy Fallon. Like, I was like, I feel like I, like, it was really like pretty and like, um, really intimate, really close, like the, their two faces together. Um, and I was looking for the opportunity. I thought it'd be cool to have a new song. Cause there's a lot of questions of like, where is she now? And what's she doing since Jagged Little Pill? And the movie doesn't go into that extensively, but we wanted to represent it in some way. So yeah. And then also, you know, the editor of the film, Brian Getz, he has, oh my God, does he have three daughters or four? But he just had another baby who is either the third or fourth.

That's terrible. I'm not remembering. But so yeah, he has a lot of daughters too. And so he also was always like, when he saw that footage, he was like, this is going in. I think he, oh, and Kyle, our other producer just had a daughter. So we had a lot of people who just were feeling, I guess, in the community. It grabs your heart. It's also an interesting snapshot of COVID. I mean, it really does feel like you never would have gotten a moment like that if we weren't going through this period in

history because you're watching her perform in her home for The Tonight Show, which is so odd. And yet it's kind of a little magical thing that happened. That's totally true. I think that's right. And I think that, I don't know, like, I'm glad that it, I'm glad that it worked that way anyway. There's a lot of revelation and sensitive material in the film too. I'm curious, like, how you engage with that. Is that something that you're talking to the subject about beforehand? Are you negotiating around what's going to be shared? Was it spontaneously shared? How did you engage

with some of the more complex, sensitive personal material that Alanis divulges? I think we were talking about that from the very beginning, like even before I got out to California, because in truth, you know, I guess like, yes, there is, there are things that I feel like it goes into, she's maybe a little more explicit than she normally is, but all of this stuff is in the, it's been in the music, you know, it's been also Hands Clean is a song that is in one of her later albums that, you know, is, you know, kind of directly about some of these things. And I was like, we're only talking about Jagged Little Pill here, so we're not going to go into that song.

And I also always thought it was really interesting that it kind of connects to the whole you ought to know of it all too, this idea that it's like there's the discretion sort of like the idea that there's this person but she doesn't say his name and everybody wants to know and I was like we need to sort of sort out when is it more universal like we don't need to go into specifics this is what Alana and I talked about a lot like when is it like you it that is helpful? And when is it the specifics are going to help us tell the story better? And this was, I remember,

one of the early phone calls that we had where I was sort of saying, here's the thing, we can talk about the patriarchy, but a lot of that, it's kind of amorphous. It's kind of highfalutin. But we know this is a real thing that you were operating within. You experienced real things.

And I think that, like I said, I was like, I might push you to figure out where are there times where we can talk about something with more specificity and when is it better to be. And I would use the term vague, but I feel like that wasn't a good word. Like we would sometimes be like, not, it's not vague, but it's sort of like, you know, when do we not need to be specific? And, you know, most things you kind of don't, but when do we, you know, it's just kind of pushing. It's the same for just storytelling and sort of like, you just want, can you give like a good example? And then it's tough because you kind of don't

want like a small example that feels like something to share but then it makes a small thing seem big because it's the only thing that's specific if that makes sense so um during the interview when we talked about some stuff we like would take breaks and like talk about it and be like you know what do you want to say and also it's like this isn't being broadcast live like all of this is like things that you know we can do in the in the um edit together and we can like change our mind we can you know frame it differently something could be anonymous or non-anonymous um and actually she suggested during the interview she was like um and there's a line in there where she's like you're gonna need to help me because i never talk

about this shit which we left in and the reason she reason she said that is because I do think I'm a pretty gentle interviewer. And it's because I never want to be like leading. I never want like, I'm always really afraid of confirmation bias. It's like the way I ask a question is going to get a certain answer, but it's not the real answer. I don't know why. It's like a thing I have. How am I doing in that respect? No, it's not the real answer. I don't know why. It's like a thing I have. How am I doing in that respect? Yeah, no, it's great. But I get really in my head about that because I want to feel like I'm

discovering something that didn't come from my brain, you know? And so she, I do think it was like I was kind of asking things in more kind of, I was sort of like opening the door and being like, do you want to walk through? And I feel like she she was like can you like help me take each step because like i i like the the big questions were the were not useful for her in that moment and she suggested maybe you should read hands clean lyrics to me and we actually did that i like pulled it up on a computer and i like read each line and if again it's like the movie's not doesn read each line. And again, it's like the movie doesn't include that song because it's not part of Jagged Little Pill. So we don't have that, but it was like as a prompt in a way. And I'm not sure if any of the lines in the film that came from that exercise,

but it was kind of part, I think of it as like, you know, as opposed to me just being like, here's a big wide open door. And like, do want to come through? Instead, it was sort of like being like, okay, here, let me help you take one step or another step. So that was kind of, and that was her idea to go with those lyrics, which shows you how much that, you know, song was about that kind of, you know, toxic, abusive relationship. Yeah. So anyone who's been following the news around the film knows that Alanis is not promoting the film with you. Obviously there's, I'm sure some frustration and complication there. You mentioned that someone asked you a question about this at a Q and A the other night, and I'm sure you've been thinking about it a lot. Like, how are you feeling about that fact specifically? Yeah. Last night at a screening in Minneapolis, someone asked, you know, I just feel like Alanis should be up there with you. And I'm like, boy, yeah. I mean, that was definitely how I envisioned it. I've never had the main character of my big films appear at a film festival or promote the film with me. And that's been for a variety of reasons you know one case it's the Chinese government in another case it's Steve Bannon and this one really did feel like it had the chance

to be that it would fit you know documentaries aren't I don't think of it as a documentary tours or is promoted by the participants necessarily at all. But this one felt like it, that could have been in the cards coming from such a celebratory place. And so, you know, I just hope that she is able to feel the love that, you know, we get at every in-person screening. And with the movie coming out today on HBO,

I just feel like, I hope she feels like the waves of love and celebration, you know, and people rediscovering the album and thinking about it in a new light. And, you know, I mean, to me, that's the main thing. Yeah. It's such a loving portrait. So I agree with you. We end every episode of the show by asking filmmakers, what's the last great thing that they've seen? Have you seen anything great? Yeah. I am on the short films jury right now for this festival at Doc NYC for the short list shorts.

So it's like some of the top short docs of the year. And there's a sort of, you know, almost 40 minute long movie, sort of like also a visual album called Don't Go Telling Your Mama. It's Topaz Jones and I think Rubber Band. It's a directing duo, the three of them made. It's like a visual album and it's sort of inspired by the Black ABCs, sort of a pedagogical, alternative pedagogical tool. And it's stunning. And what's really cool is you can watch it. I think the Op Docs, the New York Times picked it up. So you can go on New York Times, watch it for free. It's called Don't Go Telling Your Mama. It's really good. Amazing recommendation. Congrats on Jagged. Thanks, Allison Don't Go Telling Your Mama. It's really good. Amazing recommendation. Congrats on Jagged. Thanks, Allison. Thank you so much, Sean. Thank you to Amanda, Allison Clayman, and our producer Bobby Wagner for his work on this episode. Later this week, Amanda and I will be joined by a very special guest from The Ringer to talk about King Richard

and our favorite sports movies. See you then.