The Big Picture - 300th Episode Ask-Us-Anything Mailbag Spectacular

Episode Date: October 13, 2020

To celebrate 300 episodes of 'The Big Picture,' Sean and Amanda are opening up the mailbag and answering an array of wide-ranging questions about the movies that drew them to their careers, the future of film post-COVID-19, the movies they think the critics got totally wrong, and more (5:01). Then, Sean is joined by filmmaker Garrett Bradley to talk about her new film, 'Time' (1:40:31). Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Guests: Garrett Bradley Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm Sean Fennessey. I'm Amanda Dobbins. And this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about us. That's right. It's the 300th episode of this podcast, which launched in January of 2017 and has become a repository for our hopes and anxieties about movies and the business of movies to celebrate. We are opening the mailbag to answer your questions, as many of them as we can get to today. Later in this episode,

I spoke with the director, Garrett Pradley, about her extraordinary documentary, Time, which is in theaters now and will be on Amazon Prime on Friday. I hope you will watch this film and listen to our conversation. Okay, Amanda, 300 episodes episodes how are you i'm great i feel old and young simultaneously i can't believe we got to 300 and i also don't know where the time went i agree this is truly the we're benjamin buttoning our way through this podcast you know exploring our our youthful endeavors in the movie world i think that there are going to be some questions about that. And we're also going to be rappelling into the past for a movie called Mank, which has a trailer and is the trailer hit the teaser trailer. And I watched it and my reaction was, I want to watch this movie, which I think is the purpose of trailers.

Did you feel the same way? Yes, I did. I just want to use this space to let you talk about your feelings, your hopes, your dreams. This is really your time. It is the month of Amanda, but it's the day of Sean or the trailer of Sean, at least. So take the time. December 4th will truly be my day. That will be the day when I turn into a Dragon Ball Z character and I am lit aflame and I'm powered by the energies of David Fincher and his,

I don't know. I have no idea what to expect from this movie. Honestly, there we've already entered in, in film Twitter, the takery zone on Mank, where there are some people who are like, this shouldn't be a movie because Wells needs to be celebrated.

And then there are other people who are like, finally, you know, David Fincher looks at something that isn't about murder and death. I don't have any of those opinions. Let me watch the movie first, and then I'll form the opinions. The only thing I can say from the trailer is what we had heard was true, which is that he has shot this film to look like a film from the 1940s,

and the trailer has been cut to look like a film from the 1940s. Neat idea. We'll see if it's more than a gimmick when the movie comes out. Yeah, people talk too much. So I'm excited to just watch the movie and then we can talk about it. We, you know, we don't get much in 2020. Don't spoil it before we can enjoy it, guys. Completely agree. That movie is coming on December 4th. We just learned also this week that another movie that was slated for November, November 20th, Soul, the new Pixar Disney film,

is not coming to theaters, but instead is going directly to Disney+. This is notable for a couple of reasons. Obviously, we know that most of the movies that are on the calendar this year are probably going to be moving off and moving into 2021. This one, unlike Mulan, is not going to some PVOD circumstance on Disney+. It's just going to be free on Christmas for everyone who is a Disney Plus subscriber, which is a pretty big deal. And I saw someone speculate yesterday, and I thought

this was an insightful note. This could turn out to be the most widely seen Disney movie of all time just because it will be in 70 million homes automatically on Christmas. And what will everybody want to do on Christmas? Calm their kids down by putting them in front of a movie. So, you know, just a fascinating gambit by Disney Plus as all of these studios figure out what to do with the slate of movies that they have right now. Yeah, this was inevitable.

It seems like I think we were waiting for at least the fact that this movie would be available in homes as opposed to in theaters. I think it was a bit surprising that it doesn't have that $30 price tag. And to me, it was like a little bit illuminating in terms of how Disney understands Disney Plus right now and who their audience currently is, which it would seem to be families and children. And you kind of know that from the programming and the other decisions, but that they're using this as a way to keep that customer base and add value to the people who are already there and keep Disney Plus, which is very valuable to them as a distribution system right now at a time where they don't really have any other distribution systems and they also don't have amusement parks. But it is a confirmation that that's their audience.

It's kids. It's families. And it's also something that you've noted on previous episodes, which is it's a reason to not let your subscription lapse. You know, you stay on this service. You don't churn out if you know that Soul is coming in two months. Because what would be, you know,

it's too much of a hassle to cancel your subscription for a month and then resubscribe again in December. So this just keeps people on the service. So it's smart as long as they have. And frankly, animated movies are, they're going to continue to be able to make those movies. And so they're going to be able to continue to push this stuff out over the next 12, 18, 24 months, who knows how long we're in this state of flux. So a fascinating decision there. And that's pretty much it on

the news tip. Let's bring in Bobby Wagner to help us answer your questions. Hello. Hi, Bobby. First question. Many people are asking this, and this is an actual many people are asking this, not just a Chris Ryan. Many people are asking this. What was a movie or the movie that got you into this profession?

So I'd like to unpack this question a little bit. When someone says this profession, I don't know what this profession is. How would you define what we're doing? There was another person who said, it seems like you two have hinted that you have jobs outside the ringer that you do. But I think it was just you guys referring to the other stuff that you do at the ringer. I think this is actually good. One, that's actually amazing to me and a testament to

the good fortune that we've had making this show, that people like this show and they think that this is our jobs. This is a part of our jobs and it's like a very fun part of our jobs that I love doing, but it's fractional relative to the rest of my responsibilities. And the same is true for Amanda. I am the head of content at The Ringer. And so I basically oversee almost everything that we do here, reporting up to Bill Simmons, who is the founder of The Ringer. So I have a fairly broad remit. And the podcast is definitely one of the most fun things that we have going here for me personally, but it isn't actually the primary focus of my career.

So it's fascinating that there's a perception that this is my profession. There's no finishing school for movie podcaster. And I did not aspire to this for the last 10 years. What about you, Amanda? Yes, I would say that when I was deciding what I wanted my career to be, podcasting didn't exist or maybe it existed, but I just didn't know about it. I don't want to date myself too much here. But so this as an expression of my career,

I had no idea it was coming. And also just the idea that we would be doing film criticism, that was not ever an aspiration of mine. And, you know, some people may feel that I still don't do film criticism and, you know, that's fine. That's everyone has different opinions, but I was thinking about, I do have an answer to this question of what movie started me on this particular career. And, you know, you and I have talked about like movies that made us love movies and movies that kind of drew us or movies that were significant in our careers. But I was thinking a little bit about the movie that got me both interested in the experience of watching movies, but also interested in the Oscars and interested in all of the narrative around a movie. And I

think the first time I was aware of all of that was Good Will Hunting. Because I vividly remember going to that movie, I would have been 12 or 13 and being like, oh, this is really good. And these people are smart and they're talking to each other and their ideas. And it was the same time as Titanic. And I was of an age where one way to express yourself as a teenage girl was to go to Titanic 50 times. And a lot of people did. And I was like, oh, but I am kind of also interested in Good Will Hunting. And then that Oscar campaign with Matt Damon and Ben Affleck and Robin Williams was like a very big deal. I videotaped the Oprah episode that Matt Damon and Ben Affleck were on where Matt Damon talks about how his relationship with Minnie Driver ended. But so I think in terms of investing in everything around a movie, that's kind of where it started for me.

And, you know, it's certainly those are the things that we talk about on this podcast as much as the actual films. Yeah, I had, I don't know if I have a movie like that specifically in the 90s, where I felt like this was going to chart my course for my career in part because unlike you in some respects, I took a fairly circuitous route to movies as my focus. Like you worked at BuzzFeed and you worked at Vulture and movies were like a part of your responsibilities in those jobs, right? Yeah. I mean, it was kind of general interest, but that was also when I was doing that movies were more in the center of pop culture. And so I was trying to cover pop culture. And I think always I was more of a movie watcher than a TV watcher.

Right. Yeah. I mean, I was as well in that respect. And it's strange because I started out as a music journalist primarily, but I also, you know, I worked at Complex Magazine and wrote about sneakers and wrote about fashion and wrote about lifestyle and culture and worked at a lot of different kinds of magazines, none of which really covered movies. And then I got to Vibe in 2006, I wanted to say 2007, and by some circumstance was sent to Hollywoodllywood to go to the premiere of transformers michael bay's transformers and it's a very influential and important trip in my life this is the first adult trip to los angeles i ever took this trip was, upon reflection, not ethically credible because I was provided a car during that trip by the same car company that had a sponsorship deal with the Transformers film. But that included a Cadillac Escalade that I was able to drive across Los Angeles for an entire week.

And driving through LA at night in an Escalade while staying in Santa Monica was very eyeopening experience. And then also going to a movie premiere as an adult with a VIP ticket, talking to the people that were in the movie, getting exposed to it in that way. I wouldn't say I got starstruck, but I was like, wow, this is way, way better than sitting in a conference room, listening to a publicist press play on a rap record that I don't really like that much, which is kind of what a lot of my work was at the time. And I got kind of intoxicated by the idea of doing that work. Um, and it took a long time for me to figure out how to do it. I did eventually profile Michael Bay like three or four years later.

And then I think that kind of started me off on kind of writing and editing stories about this space. But I've said this before, like the only reason I'm doing this podcast is because Bill Simmons suggested I do it. And I think the only reason that you and I are here together is because he was like, you should be doing this more often and more times a week and you need a partner. And here we are. So, you know, it's like, it was definitely not some grand plan. I think of myself as a real strategist when it comes to life. But this specific thing is just very fortunate.

Yeah, I would agree about that. And I would just reiterate that this is just a very cool part of our job. And it's the icing on the cake. It's so lucky that we get to do this. And we do know that for however much we like moan about certain things. This is certainly not something i expected and it like it rules honestly absolutely should we go to the next question yeah so just for the record transformers and goodwill hunting the brand those are the answers very strong yeah okay

so reed wants to know how has your relationship to film changed since you've made consuming and criticizing it your job as opposed to your hobby? So a little bit of a follow up there. You want to tackle this? Sure. It's interesting. I was thinking about this in terms of 2020 and how now everyone has this experience of the like the line between work and and your rest of life, the rest of your life blurring. And many people have just spent a large part of their time in their homes. And sometimes they go do work. And then sometimes they're in the same room not doing it. And it all feels a little blurry. And I guess that's how movies have become for me is that many of them, it's not totally

work because, again, part, my job is to like watch part of my job is to watch movies. There's, there's no way I'm ever going to complain about that. But there is also, sometimes you have to watch a movie at a certain time or, you know, you want to watch something else, but you need to do this. And so it just becomes, I don't want to say a chore, but there are some movies I watch because it's my job. And then there are every once in a while, the really exciting movies that like still take me away. And I'm like, oh, I, you know, the power of cinema, just like everybody else. And I think you can probably hear that when we talk about them as well. But yeah, a blurriness,

I guess, between work and play. Completely agree with that. I'll give you a real life breakdown of how that played out yesterday. Had a personal matter in the afternoon evening. So I was driving around LA from like 4 to 7 PM yesterday. When I got home, I am accredited to cover a horror movie or sort of thriller, scary movie festival called Night Stream, which is very good. It had its premiere last night. So I knew I needed to be home at a certain time to watch the premiere of this movie run, which we may talk about on this podcast. And I also knew that I needed to watch the movie French Exit, which is appearing as part of the

New York Film Festival. And that was also going to be expiring this morning. And I also needed to watch the movie The Martian because we just talked about it on the rewatchables. And so last night after a full day of work and then driving around LA for three hours, I had to knock out three movies. And that means I was up till two o'clock in the morning watching movies. Now, I liked all three of those movies to varying degrees and watching movies is not hard work relative to the rest of the people that live in the world that have real jobs, not like these kinds of jobs. But it does present some challenges in terms of evaluating and understanding how you even feel about something when it is very organizationally determined. It is very

responsibility bound. And I think this is important to remember for anybody who kind of covers movies or music or television or any of the arts in a lot of ways, which most people see as a kind of sanctity or relief from the frustrations of their daily life. And I do too in many ways, but it's also a big part of work. And so because of that, you can sometimes lose touch with the fact that, you know, The Martian is a movie that's supposed to make people feel good. And it's supposed to be a bomb for you. It's not supposed to be an object of, of heavy analysis. And that's, that's like a, that's a criticism you see levied against many critics is like, why are you taking this so seriously? This is supposed to be fun, which of course I reject that. I mean, I, I, I respect and appreciate criticism,

but it is, it, it changed, it changes your relationship fundamentally to the things that you're spending all this time with. Yeah, and I don't think that that is a bad thing necessarily. The other interesting thing is that you are trying to watch everything, but some of the movies, the movies that are just supposed to be fun and enjoyed like The Martian, everybody interprets fun a different way.

And so there are certain movies that I'm gonna watch that I know aren't Citizen Kane, but I know they're also like very much in the Amanda wheelhouse and I know they're gonna be great. And then there are some movies that I watched that other people would be like, this is so fun. And I'm like, well, it's fun for you,

but it is really, it's not fun for me, but I'm gonna try to learn about it anyway. And then remembering that this is what most people are just doing to zone out it really it does change the way that you receive something when it's when there's no pressure on it and you're just going to try it but there are honestly way worse fates so so there's a couple questions here and a few other people ask them this one's from tyler can you talk about how you decide to watch what's a day of movie watching look for you so is it completely at this point 100 geared towards

what is coming up on the big picture or the rewatchables or is there ever a movie that you sit down and you watch and think this won't contribute to any podcast in any way i mean definitively yes but i will say as I am constantly evaluating what this show is going to be, particularly during quarantine, it's harder and harder because we keep, and by we, I mostly mean me, keep setting new guidelines for very broad episodes that we're going to try to track the entire career of Alfred Hitchcock in one episode, which is just a stupid idea. But you know, worth it and like a fun episode. It was very long and it was a lot of work to do that, you know, to try to revisit that stuff and to try to

read about his career and bone up as much as we could. So I would say a year ago when we were doing this show and we were talking about Joker, which is, this is sort of like, this was Joker weekend, as I recall. Um, it wasn't as challenging from a time perspective because could go see Joker and could talk about it and then could go move on. You know, last week we talked about every single Nancy Meyers movie, every movie that she's had her name attached to. And that also took a level of time and research, which, you know, is very fun as research goes,

but it doesn't allow for, like, I'll give you another example. Like, I'm trying to figure out what's the next, like, big director filmography episode I think we should do, you know, in the next three or four months. I've got, like, a few ideas, you know? Like, I really, I want to try to do something about the Wachowskis. I feel like the Wachowskis are really interesting figures in modern movies. I'm always kind of obsessed with

De Palma and I've been revisiting a couple of his movies and I think he's a good kind of like sister episode to Hitchcock. Um, but I don't have time to re-watch like Snake Eyes, the Brian De Palma movie, which is like, you know, second tier De Palma. Nobody really cares about it. There's no conversation about it. And if there's another thing I got to watch for work, it's like, well, if I don't watch it, then I don't feel

like we're going to do the episode. And then so, you know, like viewing time just becomes a Jenga puzzle. And so how you decide is very dictated by what we're going to do in the future. Yeah. We should also just say that the answers are very different for the two of us because Sean watches three movies a night. But didn't you always stay up watching movies every night?

I mean, this is... But I never had a clock on them. You know, like watching movies for film festivals is so strange because they're like, if you don't watch this now, you will not be able to see it for four months until it comes out on a streaming service. And that's different because I feel like I have to have some sort of command of what the conversation is going to be around it. Right. But that's also just a little bit, a window into Sean's intense mind. How Sean watches movies is that he has a very large spreadsheet and he's just constantly watching them and he consumes a tremendous amount of films. And then

I look at all the movies that Sean watched and like feel intense anxiety. And I'm like, okay, well now I have to, you know, it's cause I like, I have to sleep and I can only probably do two movies in a day, three, like if you're at a film festival and the time is carved out. But one, you know, one of the things we were talking about a bit is that this answer is also very different in COVID because it, you know, when we would go to screenings or when we would even just like go to the movies, you know, I saw Joker with Chris Ryan on Friday afternoon that it was when it was released, one of four people in the theater. But, um, and there was a dog in a stroller, not counting as a person, but just, that was a thing that could happen when we

could all go out in the world just so you know just like a dog and a stroller at the ark came out of the theater and set a car on fire joker dog is a good that's a good sequel but anyway you know that required it like a bit more appointment and you would build your life around it a bit more. And now I think especially with fewer movies and we're trying to make this podcast interesting, it's just like how many movies you can fit into a day at home right now. And again, I like I miss the delineation a bit. I'm a person who likes boundaries, as we've discussed. So for me, how I watch is i just try to keep up with sean um and watch until i uh fall asleep but i'll never keep up with sean no it's okay it's all right i'm

used to it so there's this question here from bruno that says how do you guys avoid the endless movie search in the various streaming surfaces and actually lock into a movie that you want to watch every time never had a problem with this my my like list of things you want to watch every time. Never had a problem with this. My list of things I want to see is so long. Actually, I'll delineate how I organize all this. It's insane. I promise you.

I'm a member of every significant streaming service. I keep a close watch on the queues for all of the streaming services. I also still am a subscriber to the Netflix mailing service, and I keep a full queue. And any film that is not available on a streaming service that I have not seen or want to see, I keep in the long list Netflix mailer queue. So Criterion, Peacock, HBO Max, Netflix, Hulu, all of these services, I'm kind of constantly looking every month the new stuff is updated, adding them to my queue, and then taking them off the Netflix mailer queue just to keep a clear sense of the like thousand plus films I've never seen that I want to see.

Now, I'm poisoned. I have like, I'm deeply damaged. I was going to say, do you recommend this strategy? I don't know how I got here. Like, I don't know how these things, I didn't like build this plan. I just started doing stuff. And now I'm stuck and I can't get out of it.

And I know this makes me sound completely crazy. And I am a little bit, but I also feel like it's very logical because I want to have a total command this is like this is you just you do a crazy thing for fort like 45 minute rant and then you're just like but also I'm right that is what it's like having Sean fantasy in your life everybody like and also as he was just talking about all these spreadsheets and the Netflix list and all of these things and I just feel like my personal anxiety mounting because I have to like live with this. And I'm in a podcast partnership with this

person. I'm just like, I can't, I don't have the Netflix DVD subscription. Okay. Like I have to go outside and living with that. And then at the end being like, but it's the only way this is what it's like to have Sean fantasy in your life. life um I don't have to do the Netflix scroll because I'm always just trying to catch up with Sean and or trying to like agree on something that my husband will also watch with me so which is always a challenge

um so yeah I don't really get to shop around you know who's really good at that is Chris Ryan and I like we talked about this before that Chris will just like he used to just randomly go see what was ever open at the theater he will randomly watch things on um online he has that sense of discovery that I have not gotten to yet but that I admire I do too he'll just take a chance on a VOD movie that he sees in the row on iTunes and be like, could be good. Who knows?

I definitely do not play that game. I don't either. Chris is much more of a free spirit. There's a lot of people that thought that Chris was just going to be on this episode as if he was like the third co-host now. He's like wrapping his tentacles around it. Power of the movie draft, man.

Movie draft hive is so strong. Peter asked, can Chris Ryan join and do his top 10 actor impressions in honor i don't think that we can clear out he has a generic irish accent and i mean he basically has bono that he applies to anyone from like northern england and he also has the sarah kanig serial voice And then what else am I forgetting? And Pacino and Bane. The names are mounting.

I don't know. He also, he just did Lincoln on the Martian podcast. He's got a solid arsenal. The answer to the question though is absolutely not. If you want to listen to Chris Ryan, listen to The Watch. If we deign to invite him on this podcast, which is very powerful and important, maybe he'll get to do one impression, but we're not letting this be a forum for him to do all of his impressions.

He's got so many forums for that. I'm excited for him to hear this and Slack us about his favorite 10 impressions to do, since as we know, Chris is a very avid listener of the big picture. Don't worry, he'll enlist his bot army to add us instead of the slack message i promise you well speaking of bot army sean i have a question here from your bot army which exists now sf shills united we're now entering the sucking up to sean zone by the way amanda i'm sorry sean how does it feel being the lone column of support keeping the art of animated cinema alive on the big picture while other podcasting heathens who will go unnamed are trying to tear you down

i'm happy to name them amanda dobbins and chris ryan they've been trying to tear me down since day one it's a shameful act i want to thank um the members of this group i don't know how many people are managing that account could be thousands could be millions it's hard to say someone on this podcast could be an army of one um are you saying it's you bob yeah it is me yep it's all part of an elaborate scheme i just you know life is about being seen you know i just i want to be seen i just i'm in hell and can this be over please I'm gonna watch soul I like if you like animated movies then I'm happy for you you're gonna get a lot more of them and that's you know that's great everybody deserves to have things they like you know what you know I watched recently is um the South Park pandemic special loved it thought

it was really funny and then uh world of tomorrow three the new Don Hertzfeld film, comes out today. I just was singing the praises of It's Such a Beautiful Day, and he's now releasing the third installment of his World of Tomorrow series. So animated fans, we're crushing it right now. We're made. Congratulations to you all. Thank you. I love animated films.

I will not be taking Twitter heat for this take that Amanda and Chris have. Thank you, Bobby. Stand with SF Shills United. I don't know about all that it's very cool here's the here's sean's third burner it's called longtime baker fan they want to know how does sean get his hair so crisp i feel like we should not let him answer that question amanda what do you think no do you want to talk about products you i think you spend you spend more time on your hair than I spend on mine. So maybe you should talk a bit about it. Yes, it is. No, it takes me three minutes to get ready. I mean, that is true, but you actually put product in your hair. I do nothing.

I do. I just born like this. Yeah. I'll tell you exactly how I figured out how to do it. I'm sitting in a dentist's office one day and I'm looking at the magazines. I'm not a People Magazine reader. I never have been. But there was a People. I opened the People. You know, there's that page in People Magazine that's sort of like my stuff where somebody talks about like their essential items.

Yes, I've read People Magazine before. Yes. I'm explaining for all the cinephiles who are confused. John Mayer was the subject of this issue. And he's going through his items. And the things he has to have with him on a trip, john mayer was the subject of this issue and he's going through his items and the things he has to have with him on a trip i think was the conceit and you know it was like my wallet and my you know my ipod and a number of other things that obviously you'd want to travel with and one of them was something called japanese teak t-i-q-u-e which is a a lavender wax made in japan

that he uses to style his hair okay i'd never heard of this and he sang its praises so profoundly he was like this changed my life in terms of hair and i was wow, that's a pretty strong advocacy for this product I've never heard of. Maybe I'll check it out. I've never done this in my life. I worked at GQ and have written blurbs like this about products. I mean, I know how this game works. For some reason, John Mayer compelled me. Went to Amazon, ordered a couple of sticks of this lavender teak. Been using it ever since, probably been 10 years. This is incredible. I'm really glad that we asked this question. Thank you for sharing.

Great movie podcast. Okay, back to the movie questions. Anmin wants to know, what would your 20-year-old self find most shocking about your current movie taste? I was interested in your answer to this, Amanda. Yeah, I was trying to think about it. I think, you know, 20-year-old Amanda was in college and seeing a lot of movies with the young men that she went to college with who were pretty annoying. And you've heard me talk about that at a great length.

So I think maybe that it's okay to like normal movies is probably, you know, that my taste would be more mainstream, um, which, you know, that, uh, that I would develop things other than, uh, the, the undergraduate male movie taste that was kind of my introduction to at least non mainstreammainstream cinema. Yeah, I think 20-year-old self would be surprised that I would be hosting a show that dedicated an episode to Nancy Meyers. I think that would be a twist. I wouldn't have seen that coming, which is not like a criticism necessarily.

I just would have been surprised. I don't know, though. I mean, I've always tried to be pretty open-minded about as many different kinds of things as possible. And so my taste hasn't changed a lot. Like it's sort of notoriously male and film bro. I guess if you want it to distill it down to its purest form, but I still like, like a lot of different kinds of movies and I'm very, I try to be very open-minded about a lot of different kinds of movies and when i was 20 i was as interested in prestige dramas as i was kevin smith movie kevin smith movies as i was um you know the new spider-man sam raimi movie for example

like it was pretty wide so i don't think i've actually changed that much which is probably why i'm still like kind of doing this in this way. Okay. This question comes from Bob, not me. Uh, what about the future of movies excites you, especially in a post COVID world that we may not have foreseen a year ago? I feel like we've answered the opposite of this question a lot on the podcast in the last six months. So, yeah,

I mean, this is like saying, how do you get jazz music back at the center of American culture? You know, it's like, I don't know what, what is supposed to excite me? It's funny, since Alex Ross Perry was on the show last week

and he was, I thought, very incisive, but very bleak about the state of things. My opinion has only gotten more grave about how things are going to shake out here. Now, generally speaking, there is definitely going to be some sort of innovation in movie making form the way that there is in every technology as it like evolves and becomes easier to make things.

And the more streaming services there are, the more budget there is to make things. I still am of the mind that we're in the, like a, we're in a phase where the services are not evaluating and managing film projects the way that old school studios were and there were a lot of problems with old school studios in terms of the opportunities that they gave to women or underrepresented groups there were a lot of bad movies that were made in those systems because

they were very sort of heavily market tested and researched and controlled. But there were so many smart development and creative executives that helped movies get better over time. And the streaming services have this like so much responsibility to be so many things to so many people at all hours of the day that it doesn't feel like there's as much care going into some of this stuff. Plus you've got a generation of people that are making TV shows and not movies. And so the craft of movies is kind of slipping through our fingers, even if it doesn't, if we don't realize it while we're watching the kissing booth too, you know what I mean? Yeah, I, I agree with you in that it's a very tough time and this feels like trying to put an optimistic spin on what is really a dire situation for an entire industry that we love. I think if I

had to do that, you know, it feels like the system that was slowly breaking has probably broken at this point. And if movies are going to survive, then people have to figure out new ways to make them and distribute them. And, you know, you always hope that that innovation is actually, brings some life back to it. It could be possible. It was a weird time when we were all dancing around in 2017, like the way people watch movies hadn't changed. And I feel like the movie industry was doing that to an extent and the theater industry was certainly doing that.

And I didn't produce a lot of films that anybody really wanted to watch. I mean, I produced some and, you know, I miss those and I hope they keep making them. But like, you know, maybe if we have to remake it, maybe we can remake it in a way that actually reflects consumption behaviors and is actually sustainable in the future. A friend of mine, it's funny this comes up in this conversation because a friend of mine this week emailed me and said, we might look back on 1917 as the last movie that got in before the gate closed. The last movie that could open around the world, that could be award-worthy and talked about at the highest levels of culture, and that has the potential to make $500 million and represent something really significant to people's lives. And we had a few of those last year. Regardless of how you feel about them, you could look at Joker, you could look at Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, you could look at...

There were four or five movies, obviously Endgame just as the event nature, the sort of Super Bowl nature of Endgame. There were a bunch of movies in 2019 that maybe we didn't realize it, but signaled like, you know, like the grand orgy before the flame out, before the fall of Empire. And that's kind of sad to think about, but I thought that that was an astute observation. I mean, it really was like 1917 opened in January, dominated the box office January and February, and then we went into quarantine. And who knows what everything looks like on the other side of that.

So it's kind of hard. It's very hard right now to look on the bright side and say, well, this will clearly be improved aside from the fact that people will just have to get more creative based on the constraints of the circumstances of the world right now. Listen, I believe that constraints make great art or great things to a degree,

but it's a lot of constraints right now. There might be too many. Okay, this next question comes from Ben. Is there a movie that was such a lackluster finished product but was such a great idea that you feel it needs to be remade? I wrote down my suggestion here as just like a movie that I thought was straight up bad. lackluster finished product but was such a great idea that you feel it needs to be remade i wrote down my suggestion here as just like a movie that i thought was straight up bad but should have been

straight up good and you know part of it is based on like who made this movie but just the broad conceit i thought the butterfly effect the 2004 ashton kutcher movie on paper, a movie about that kind of like temporal unreality of life. And that sliding doors, like basically a science fiction version of sliding doors is a great idea for a movie. And there have been some things that represent that or close to that. I think, um,

Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson, this duo of filmmakers, they make a lot of movies that are kind of like this, but there's like soft science fiction. But this one in particular, I was like, what if this was Steven Spielberg and Colin Farrell? Like, wouldn't that just be a banger movie? You know, they'd get a better script. You know, what if Eric Roth wrote this movie? Like you just like a mainstream crowd pleasing, exciting down the middle sci-fi movie. Um, because the butterfly effect is like one of those phrases

that everybody knows now. And I think a lot of people know it because of this bad movie, which was not really a success. I think that's a good one. I went in the opposite direction. Well, maybe not. I'm going with Ocean's 8, which was just a movie that I would have loved to see

even that exact cast in a female remake of Ocean's Eleven and it just didn't work and it was very confusing why it didn't work and I would just like to to try it again because an all-female heist movie sign me up yeah I'm with you that was a disappointing experience and an on- no brainer. Yeah. Well, there's a similar question here that we have from Micah that specifically asked about director. So what is the movie that didn't quite work that you would love to have seen an alternative version made with a different director and which director would change that movie and why is it a better option? I think one of the more disappointing movie experiences I've had in the last 15 years

is Public Enemies, Michael Mann's movie. I'm sure there are going to be defenders of that movie and people angry that I say that. But that is a movie that just didn't work for me. And I haven't really revisited it. And Mann was very passionate about shooting that film on digital. And the casting had some problems, I thought. Johnny Depp in particular, I didn't love in that movie. But obviously, that story is a time-tested story in Hollywood.

And I was thinking that if Chris Nolan was going to take a bite of something that wasn't a Brain Galaxy Chris Nolan idea, this would be a cool one. Because he would be able to shoot a movie like this with an enormous amount of style and propulsion and intrigue. So Chris Nolan's Public Enemies, his John Dillinger movie, I think would be pretty cool. I am going with Tully, which is a movie that I didn't dislike. In fact, I liked parts of it very much and absolutely hated the ending. And there was one scene in there that I just thought, quite frankly, would not have been in there with a female director. And maybe that's wrong because obviously it's written by Diablo Cody, but I was just like, what is this? I don't know what it is.

So I would like to see it remade. I just think also that it's such a rich portrait of a certain time in a woman's life and a, and looking back at another part of her life. So I would like to see a female director. I, this is, this is a weird one, but Karen Kusama popped into my, popped into my head. Um, I was thinking about the invitation and, um, the kind of not really knowing what's going on and the dread of it all. I think it would be a different movie and probably not have the, um, rosy ending that Tully tries to have, which again,

that is my problem. But, um, I don't know. I'd be curious. I think that's a great call. Thank you. Okay.

Next question. This comes from a different Ben. A lot of Ben's listened to the show. Thanks Ben's. Uh, if each of you could take one movie from each decade back to the 50s to a desert island, what would they be?

Yeah, I kind of don't want to give away the goods here because if we don't have a vaccine in 2022, we need all the ideas we can get. So I think that's a pretty great question that I don't want to spoil.

I mean, tell me this want to spoil. I mean, we got to tell me this ahead of time. I spent time picking out my answers. I got answers too, but I'm not, I'm not trying to be a tease. I just, I,

I was inspired when I read it. You know what? A lot of people want to know your top five movies of all time. I see why like Jordan versus LeBron does well on TV. Cause everybody just wants to know top fives. It's like, what a hard question. That's not really a podcast mailbag. How are you going to do that?

I mean, I'm never going to do that episode. That's ridiculous. My list changes every week. How can I do that? It's no surprise that among the most listened to episodes of this show is the top 10 movies of the decade because people just want things prioritized for them and then they want to yell at you about how you're wrong about something. I respect that,

but I'm never doing top five movies of all time. Put them on the record. Okay, this next question is from Aiden. Glad you mentioned Christopher Nolan. I love this question. Would you prefer Alex Garland's next film to have a Christopher Nolan budget or the next Nolan film to have a smaller Garland budget?

I feel like I kind of gave my answer away by saying I want to see Nolan's public enemies. But I think if I had to choose between another Alex Garland movie and another Christopher Nolan movie, I want another Alex Garland movie. So if I can boil the question down to that, I would take Garland. Garland, you know, he's appeared on the show many times. I'm a huge fan of his work, but I realized that most people would look at that answer and think that I'm crazy. I mean, why can't we have both? Because it's not like we're, this is, we're just trading budgets. It's the same amount of money wholesale invested in the movie industry. I'm not going to give away any money. And I, I would love to see him make a big budget movie. I miss big budget movies. I enjoy watching them.

And also, you know, let's see whether Christopher Nolan has the range. Okay, we have a question here from Gregor. Which film that eventually fell into the abyss of development? Heck, would you have wanted most to be made slash believe could have been made a classic? What do you got here?

Any version of the secret history the donna tart novel um which i reread recently still great really recommend it if you haven't read it and at one point there was a script um by joan didion and john gregory dunn um another time or there was supposed to be and at another point gwyneth paltrow and her brother were going to be developing this film which gwyneth Paltrow and her brother were going to be developing this film, which Gwyneth Paltrow and the Secret History, like circa 2000 is just, I can't believe that didn't happen. I guess that's the one that I really want. Like, I mean, oh my God, but you know, make this a movie. You can make it a mini series at this point, which it pains me to say,

but you know, I do find for the most part that it's hard to encapsulate a novel in two hours. I would have liked to see them try. Um, I, I just, I would like to see it. Let me ask you a question. What is the heaviest book in your house? What do you mean? Like, do you mean in terms of like pounds and weight or in terms of depression? Um, well, Sean, I don't know if I've ever told you this, but recently I read Anna Karenina. It's a Russian novel that I've read in full. You read Anna Karenina? It's over a thousand pages.

Um, but it's, I have it in paperback. I mean, probably Zach has all of the, the pensionigeon and DFW, which those get pretty literally heavy. And I don't know. Is there like some three-part novel that I'm not thinking of? I don't know. You could have said the joy of cooking, maybe, you know, something like that. Something like a textbook of some kind. I'm asking for a reason.

I'll get to the reason um maybe probably like a um speaking of the secret history i too studied classics in college and i have like a greek english dictionary that somehow i still have with me even though i didn't even know how to use it when i was in college i was not a good greek student i have to tell you i didn't really do my homework uh but it's very large it's very very beautiful. So unlike you. It's a, you know what? College was my time to act out, but it's a very- Oh, college? That's rude.

It's very heavy, and it's large and beautiful, so I still have it. I'm asking because the heaviest book in my house is called Stanley Kubrick's Napoleon, the greatest movie ever made. Good segue. Which is a gigantic book that was published in 2011 that includes the shooting script, all of the production design ideas. The book is so big

that the pages are almost like telephone book pages. They're like the yellow pages. They're so thin in order to encapsulate these thousands of pages of documents that are captured in this book. It's an incredible thing. I mean, if you ever want to just feel bad about anything you've done with your life, just look at how much work, thought,

and time and care went into this document for something that never even happened that Kubrick was responsible for. And you see, like, it's a tragedy that he didn't get to make this movie and there are a lot of reasons why he didn't get a chance to make it um so that would be my pick for the movie like i most want to see that i guess was in development how there are other ones like we talked about the fincher stuff on the rankings like his 20 000 leagues under the sea i think could have been one of the signature event films of the 21st century. It's a shame that we didn't get a chance to see something like that. There are some others, but Napoleon is frequently cited as the greatest unmade movie ever.

Okay, let's just take a quick break, and then there'll be more questions after this. our next question from chauncey how would you fix the theatrical experience chauncey love that name um talk about just laying it all out there at a question lipstick on a pig here um let's let's say let's set covet 19 aside in this conversation right let's let's not talk about how to manage air filtration systems and masks let's just talk about shit i was really looking forward to that conversation air filtration systems let's just back pocket all of my scientific expertise um i there's two different there's two there's two lanes here right there's like there's the boutique movie theater that we love to go see that is like Alamo Drafthouse, to some extent, the Arclight here in Los Angeles,

the repertory theaters that we really like and like spending time in. And then there's mainstream big tent movie theater multiplexes that we've been talking about mostly on the show for the last six months that are in dire financial straits. So we should probably focus on the latter, right? Sure, though. Even without COVID-19, I mean, putting aside air filtration systems, can you fix those at this point? I honestly don't know. Many of them are in malls. Malls are also going away. They've become real estate questions. There are all sorts of things, you know, and I think I grew up going to those, you know, those movie theater malls. And I love the movie theater going experience.

And I think even before COVID, it was kind of unsustainable, like that there was just a basic supply and demand in terms of the numbers of theaters and, you know, versus the number of people with Netflix or Disney plus subscriptions. And it was going to have to even out a little bit. So I was going to say that you should make them all experience more like the boutique experience, make it more like an, a, an event that, you know, you go to and you have the drinks or you have, you know, and I, and I know that there are theaters and even like mainstream theaters that do that. And, um, but I, I think boutiquing it is the only way to get an audience back because then you make it an individual event. It is different than watching Netflix. It is not just something that you can get at home.

Yeah. I mean, there's been a lot of attention paid to should you, you know, like how do you fix the, the concessions system, for example, how do you get better food and drink into movie theaters? How do you improve the sound quality in movie theaters and the picture quality and some of these things that go overlooked. And I, I don't think that those things would ultimately change the consumer habits that you've been talking about for years now, Amanda. I don't think that there's anything, there's no technological or service industry change that is going to change how a 14-year-old thinks about movie theaters. It's a locked system, you know?

Like, there may be some modifications in terms of, like, what kind of experiences you have in the movies, but movies have been trying to build add-ons to get people more excited about movies since the days of William Castle in the 1950s. You know, trying to introduce smell-o-vision and, you know, shocking people in movie theaters and having people dressed up in bug costumes run down the alleyway.

Don't do that when I'm there. Please don't. I hate that. Yeah. I mean, but so this is like, you got to think about movies like the circus and they're always trying to innovate, but ultimately it's still just the circus. And you got to love the thing that is at the center of the experience as much as possible to participate in it. And I don't know, are people going to like it more than Emily in Paris? Like, I don't know. Like they can just watch all of Emily in Paris

in their homes and that might be enough for them. It was not enough for me. Emily in Paris should be better than it is, okay? That's, anyway. Another way to save the movie theater experience would be to keep making movies that are better than the quality of things that you get at home because people do notice. And I watched all the episodes of Emily

in Paris in under a week but let me tell you that was for 12 year olds and I wanted more and maybe people do seek out quality probably not at the scale that they used to and the business models will just have to change like that that sucks and it's going to mean a lot of people losing their jobs. And that's really, really tough. But I just, you can't put the genie back in the bottle. You know what briefly fixed the movie theater experience for me? Movie pass. Because I could just go whenever I wanted and it was affordable.

I feel like I had this conversation a million times a year when it comes to baseball. But just like building habits with baseball fans and getting them to go to the ballpark cheaply just feels like something that doesn't exist in this very bloated gilded movie theater world that we have right now where there's just like these gigantic megaplexes that nobody is in because it costs 20 to see a movie in a city so i'm wondering if like is there anything like that that you two have thought of in terms of just like a program that develops the habit of going to the movie theater because i have that habit because i would just win every weekend in middle school because there's nothing else to do and you guys obviously have that habit for similar reasons but i feel like you know 13 year old me doesn't have

that habit right i mean the problem is that there are just other things to do and amc tried it i know after the fact and i like i do think what year did movie pass start it was like it was three or four years ago 17 17 and then it was like really early 18 is when it was like really peaking right and and the movie theaters were very late to roll out their kind of answer to movie pass if movie theaters had done this in 2015 or 2016, maybe they would have developed habits and maybe we would be talking about a very different thing. It just wasn't financially sustainable.

MoviePass was a Ponzi scheme. It was a debt-ridden Ponzi scheme and it just was never going to work. And it was great for consumers for a small window of time, but all it did was it further eroded the loyalty to the moviegoing experience in a perverted way because it made people expect that they should be able to see stuff for a very small sum of money. And by that point, the movie industry had gotten to this place, this sort of belly full approach to movies where every movie has to make $300 million

to be considered a success. And so thus, ticket prices need to continue to go up. Concession prices need to continue to go up. It was like so many economies of scale in the United States and worldwide, it wouldn't settle. It wouldn't settle for its profits. It needed more profits. And the system is designed to reward growing businesses. And movies couldn't sustain it. It just couldn't sustain it long term. And this will be true of every American art form that gains a sort of a center hold on our attention and then new expectations grow around it. And so it has to get bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. And I'm reluctant to get too far into the kind of new age of capitalism conversation that comes along with this, but it has completely been victimized by that. It has been completely been victimized

by corporations around the world, buying up movie studios in the seventies and eighties and expecting them to turn mega profits. Now there's just nothing to be done about it at this point. We're 30, 40 years on from those decisions. So everything that we do now is an attempt to counter these growing expectations around these businesses, which is why we have the MCU, James Bond, the fast movies, all of these animated films, those movies define movie going in the 21st century because of these expectations. That's not all that movies are though. And I, you know, I'm very doom and gloom about this and have been for many years, but there is still a ton of stuff being made

that is beautiful and essential that I think can change people's lives. I would recommend all people just watch Dick Johnson is Dead, which 150 million people around the world can watch today if they want to. That's a small movie made by basically a single person who had an idea that was relevant to her life.

So there's still like ways to get these things in front of people. It's just the business of movies is kind of over as we know it, and then it's going to have to restart in a new way. That's my rant. I mean, yeah, well, to my baseball example, that's the core tension between those two things

is that baseball doesn't really need people to go to the ballparks to make that much money. The owners are going to make money from TV deals anyway, and movies just don't. They don't have that like nest egg in the bag right now unless it's like you're talking about streaming you're right but it is very much correlated i think to the movie question because long term if everyone has a relationship to baseball only via television and they don't build the personal relationship to the in-game experience you might see an erosion of fandom over time, which means an erosion of ratings, which means an erosion of value. Like that is

entirely plausible 10 years down the line in all, in all sports. And we're like owners and commissioners and players are thinking about this in every sport because no one's in, in able to see the games in person. And also other sports, the shortfall for the NBA is different for baseball. Like every, every like in-person experience in America is threatened right now. And it's causing every industry to reevaluate. Unfortunately, movies was arguably the most vulnerable. And had already been vulnerable. And I do think that there was, I mean, capitalism, you know, ruins everything, especially eventually, but there was just a window that was missed in terms of developing some of the behavior that Bobby was talking about in the end, figuring out

not just that, you know, Marvel is like the center of the universe, but also that the theater is the best way to see Marvel, which, you know, people would go to the theater until they could go somewhere else. But it was not a surprise. The streaming services and the fact that movie theaters were less trafficked was not a surprise. The writing was on the wall and no one adapted. I do think that there will be a desire to reclaim mass congregation event experience when we get to hopefully a new and safer stage of all this i do think that i really do believe that people like i mean seeing endgame with people

was really fun it was just way better than watching it alone at my house it was it was i remember i'll never forget seeing it with mallory and people losing their minds at three or four times in the movie and that's very cor corny. And it's about an MCU movie. And it's about one of these- He talks about the hammer thing when Captain America puts it up again. Yeah, that was great. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But yeah, I also remember seeing the hammer thing and then turning to Chris and being like, why are they cheering? And then Chris explained it to me because he was there. So that's useful, you know? Zach wouldn't have known. But it applies to things that are kind of like less profit bound too.

Like we saw the Irishman in theaters and I was like, this is fucking incredible. Like I only want to see movies this way. This is how I love to see movies and I love to see it being surrounded by people. So that just like people will want to go back to the ballpark, people will want to go back to movie theaters. It's not like dead forever. It's just the system, the structure that's been designed around it is broken. Okay.

Well, given that, we have a question from Hagen. If you both had to pick two movies that have been postponed due to COVID-19, you could watch them in a movie theater today. Which movies would you pick and why? Fire away, Amanda. I mean, my first one's pretty obvious, and it's No Time to Die, the James Bond movie, which I want to see in a theater. I don't want to see it in my home for all the aforementioned reasons it's very fun to see those the large group of people to see them at scale um and I also love those movies and I was looking forward to it so that was a real bummer

do you want me to share my other um yeah well let's trade back and forth I'll do one and then you can do yours and um I'm inclined to say Top Gun Maverick, uh, which I think that would speaks to that experience that I'm missing out on. You know, that just that, that hell yeah. Bobby Wagner experience where you're just like, we're all watching this movie. It's kind of dumb. It's also beautiful. Everybody's just kind of playing their part and it gives you like a sense of chills.

You've lost that love and feeling again, all together in the theater. Song is just playing a giant theater volume. Yeah, majestically. We want a majestic experience when we go back to movie theaters. So that's one of them. What's your next one? Deepwater, which is the Ben Affleck, Ana de Armas movie directed by Adrian Lyne. I just, I want to know.

I want it. I want to understand. I want to have all the information. I just think I'll to understand. I want to have all the information. I just think I'll enjoy it. I've been following the narrative, the outside the film narrative. Just let me in, you know,

it's great pick. When you say you want to know, you want to know like how hot the sexual heat between the armus and Affleck is. It's one of many things that I want to know, but sure. I think that will be relevant in this particular movie. Okay. I think that's a good one. that I want to know, but sure, I think that will be relevant in this particular movie. Okay.

I think that's a good one. I would also, as we approach Halloween season, love to see the new Edgar Wright movie, Last Night in Soho, which I think was supposed to open in September originally and now has been pushed to 2021. We love Edgar on this show, obviously. Listeners of the Scott Pilgrim episode know that. And that just looks like I need more horror classics. I need more instant classics. And I trust him to make episode know that. And that just looks like a, I need more horror classics. I need more instant classics. And I trust him to make something like that. He's never made a movie

quite like that. So that would have been great to have. And that's another movie that I don't think was going to work as well at home. So I'm glad they're holding it. How long they can hold it. We'll see. Okay. Here's the curve ball from Marshall. If Sean and Amanda had a freaky Friday situation, who at the ringer office would be the first one to notice? And I'm just going to add the addendum and why. So I feel like most people would say that it would be Chris, but I think Chris would be the last person to know. And I say that with a lot of love for Chris. He'd just be like, okay, whatever. They've been spending too much time together recently. I don't know. It's more just he'd be like, huh, Sean's in a weird mood today.

Like Sean is unusually like chatty about, you know, the crown or whatever, but that's fine. Chris would just roll with it. In terms of the first person, I don't know, Sean, who do you think? I mean, in some ways the answer is Juliette Lipman just because Juliette Lipman

pays attention to detail. She is very attuned to my emotional wavelength. She is the number one person who, when we get out of a meeting, will immediately follow up via text and be like, hey, how's it going? What did you think of that? Are you okay? She has a sensitivity meter and she's also a co-host on a podcast with you, so I know she has a similar relationship to you. So I think Juliet is a good call. I mean, you know, I do think WAGs would have a pretty clear sense of if we had traded bodies. In 30 seconds, I would notice. Yeah, that is true.

You know how many times I've edited all of your speech? I would just know right away. I guess that's true though. In a Freaky Friday situation, the cadence would be the same, but the voice is flipped. So yeah, I guess you would know unless we were trying to fool you. I don't know why I assumed that we would be trying to fool everybody in this because that's not the point of Freaky Friday. Who do you think would be more unhappy? Would you be more unhappy being me or would I be more unhappy being you? I would be way more unhappy being you

because I would then... Why are you surprised by that? Because it would be like all of the day-to-day, like the secondhand stress that I feel from you and your very ordered type A life. But then I would have to live in it with that firsthand while also living with my own anxiety. And that would be a lot. I do think of myself though, kind of contradictorily as easygoing. I think that's nice that you think that about yourself.

It's good to like yourself. That's not what I said. That is not what I said. I did not say that I like myself. I actually don't feel, I don't think I feel the same level of anxiety that you do. I think I have insane systems that I live by, but I don't think I feel freaked out. You might find that this is a peaceful place to be. But am I taking on your mental energy or am I just like imprisoned in your body

having to do all of the tasks you do, but as me? That one. That one. Yeah, it's the latter one. So definitely it would be less fun. Legendary Freaky Friday with Lindsay Lohan and Jamie Lee Curtis.

Jamie Lee Curtis. She has to go give the psychological evaluations to the patients. That would be Amanda being Sean in a Spotify executive meeting. Okay, yeah. No, that, yeah. I would rather be you.

Yeah. I think yes. Correct. Yeah. Okay. Well, now that we've managed that, um,

I don't, I don't know if I've seen freaky Friday. I gotta be honest. Like I certainly know what the premise is, but I don't know if I've seen it. I may have seen the original. Pretty good. Okay.

It's fine. I watched it in quarantine already. Yeah. Wow. Okay. Okay. Who do you. I watched it in quarantine already. Yeah. Wow. Okay. Bobby, who do you want to be? Me or Amanda? If you had to get Freaky Friday'd.

I feel very unequipped to talk about any of the things that Amanda talks about on Jam Sessions. So I would be really left out to dry. So I think that I would have to choose you, Sean. But mainly from like a self-preservation. Someone would find me out very quickly if I was Amanda I don't know anything about the crown or even like literally British royalty it's kind of like a running joke at the office that I don't know or care at all about that you would and you'd be well suited to have any kind of New York Mets conversation I have in my life very easily yeah I could talk about Long Island I just talk about Huntington I could

talk about podcasts in a meeting for a day people would be like he knows a lot less than he knew last week but he knows what a podcast is that's true I also for the record know what a podcast is yeah yeah of course

yeah well let's just make an effort to not ever get Freaky Friday any of us okay that sounds good okay this next question is from Hogan

if you could pick any director from the dead to direct a movie with today's landscape, CGI, actors, etc., who would you choose? How do you answer this question and not be insanely obvious?

You know, how do you not just say Stanley Kubrick, Alfred Hitchcock? I mean, like, wouldn't you just like to see what they could do with the technology now? Yes, sort of, though, you know, my answers were not for CGI purposes. they were just like i would like another movie from mike nichols i would like another movie from nora efron um you know i i would

like to see i would love a howard hawks movie like i that would just be that would be interesting but that those are more personal preferences than like what can so and so-so do with like James Cameron's, you know, lasers or whatever. It's they're not lasers. Yeah, you want you want you want like Howard Hawks is TikTok movie is what you're saying. Sure. Yeah. Why not? Okay, to TikTok influencers.

They fall in love or they, you know, cute but then they realize you know one is about influencing like um you know uh vegan lifestyle and the other is about influencing uh you know aerobics and they don't they don't totally get on the same page and then they find that they have more in common than they think you're really connecting with gen z right now that that was definitely it that'll sell tickets let me just say right now yeah number one that sean number two just many people are saying i am a member of gen z okay no movies about influencers that was one of the major problems with emily and paris is that it was just about her being an influencer and so you just watched her instagram and it's like i already have instagram so i don't actually need this tv

show to be doing this so you know they could use tiktok but they need to i don't actually need this TV show to be doing this. So, you know, they could use TikTok, but they need to, I don't know, like be, you know, be like a plant mom or something, but by day. Okay. Plant mom. Sounds like a great film. I just titled it as well. Okay. Yeah, guys, I use the internet. So. Okay. Here's the question from michael time to do an episode on bad movies you guys love we're talking the battleships of the movie world we all love bad movies and now it's time for the list appreciate listening to you guys and always making my drives around town better bad movie pod what do you think well we did we did a bad movie good bad movie week um at the ringer a while ago um i'm gonna go ahead

and say that we don't all really love bad movies and in fact i don't and if i think a movie if i enjoy a movie then i think there's something good about it and if a movie fails then i don't enjoy it because i don't like people wasting my time with failed things and that probably makes me a killjoy um but like there are plenty of movies that uh don't meet some sort of you know criterion standard that i really enjoy but i don't actually think they're bad then so it's maybe i'm being difficult on the premise i see three potential ways of looking at quote unquote bad movie. And I think Andrew Grotodaro is really like the czar of this. And if we were ever going to do it, I would want to do it with him.

But there is the bad movie that is authentically bad, you know, that they were trying to make something that would be successful and mainstream. And it was bad. That's like cat woman, right? The Halle Berry movie.

That movie is just bad. It's like unwatchable. Then there is. Or cats. That's where you were going. Yes. I'm noticing a theme same deal um and you know what frankly that's a fact because dogs are better than cats do not at me moving on um then there's movies like the room which are you know made for lower budgets by people who are slightly incompetent and you know convinced of their greatness and And then they become like, they transmogrify into cult objects that people celebrate for their badness.

I'm not as interested in that culture personally. I don't find that as appealing. I'm not against it. I've seen the room. I get the jokes. It's just not really what I come to movies for. The third category is kind of what I come to movies for, which is movies that people say are bad, but that I enjoy and want to kind of rescue.

And one of the movies that was on the list that Andrew helped oversee on The Ringer a couple of years ago was Last Action Hero, the Schwarzenegger movie, which I always thought was a really clever movie and really fun and kind of either went over or under people's heads. And I would have a fun time kind of talking about why I think it's good. So my version of a bad movies podcast is not me reveling in the badness, the shittiness of battleship. It's, it would be more about trying to save the reputations of movies that have a

bad rap. Well, actually the podcast from shot fantasy yeah i mean they're all well actually the podcast but uh and i i accept that but in particular maybe that's a good idea maybe maybe maybe well actually the podcast is a a new feed at the ringer podcast network wow uh well the next question is from dana not to give all of it away, but they ask, what's your favorite? The critics got it wrong and I will die on this hill movie. What do you think?

Well, you know, I have a standard one, which is the Thomas Crown Affair, 1999, which I just think is the most underappreciated movie of all time. But people have heard me give that presentation. By the way, you know who loves the Thomas Crown Affair in 1999? Christopher Nolan, because I've seen Tenet. um the other one that i was going to do as a marie antoinette the sofia coppola uh film that was famously booed at can and that i think many people wrote off and that is probably my favorite of her movies uh i think we're going to be talking about that more in the future which is exciting um i i have a couple of areas of discussion for this question the movie that i would advocate for that was an early movie on this podcast was a cure for

wellness the gore verbinski movie from 2016 which is way out there way out there. Really weird, kind of disgusting, but very artfully mounted, I would say. And he's like one of the only mainstream filmmakers who tries to do something new and crazy almost every time he makes a movie. And that was one that for the most part critics did not like. I don't even know what the, what do you think the Rotten Tomatoes are for a cure for wellness? Guess the percentage. Probably in the 30s. I vividly remember you being like amanda don't see this not because you didn't like it but but just because you understand me and you're like this doesn't really this isn't a necessity for you you wouldn't like it but it does have a lot to recommend it was 42 so good guess um but the movie i wanted to bring up which was a topic of some debate this week on film Twitter, was Mother, which is a...

Oh my God, I can't believe we're doing this again. Well, I thought it was kind of nice because that was really one of the first movie podcasts that you and I did. And that was three years has, I wouldn't say evolved much until this week when David Sims of the Blank Check podcast raised on the internet that perhaps this movie is a masterpiece. I kind of always thought it was. You kind of always didn't. Yeah. And a lot of people weighed in on this one, including critics at the highest levels of criticism in America. Yeah.

And, you know, I don't even know like what the score was And I don't even know what the score was. I don't even know how evenly divided it was. That was a very divisive movie by nature. But I think it's an interesting... Those are the kinds of movies that I like to look back on a few years later and see what their standings are. Yeah, I didn't tell you this, but some friends sent me a screenshot of you on Twitter being like,

yes, this is a masterpiece. And they were like, come get your boy. And I was like was like i already did this podcast i'm not doing it again thank you but that's very important that means that my word is traveling far and wide i've entered screenshot territory where people are screenshotting my tweets thank you for that that just means a lot nope got me in league with some of the great monsters of the 21st century let's go to our next question i like this one what two films would you pick if you could swap the directors so we're picking two films and then so and so directs this you know one and so and so directs the other yeah hmm we also have a more specific variation on this question which i will just pose at the same time and that is what david fincher movie would you have nancy myers direct and vice versa i feel

like i got an answer for this yeah yeah okay you want to go um yeah i mean the nancy myers movie i want to see is gone girl really yeah i well i guess she would make that. Yeah, that's a good one. I, I have so many feelings about Gone Girl, which is, it's such a rich text for me. And she could obviously possibly get the Amy character down in a way that the movie doesn't. And I would like to see that, but there is also something that is really vicious about the Amy character that Nancy Myers, who I adore would maybe soft pedal on. I mean, that's just, but maybe not. I have seen The Intern.

You're right. Yeah. I mean, irreconcilable differences. You know, I think she wields a sharp blade sometimes. That is a drama of domesticity. Sure. And who's better at that? Well, my answer is another David Fincher that is in a way a drama of domesticity, which

is Panic Room. Good one. that well my answer is another david fincher that is in a way a drama of domesticity which is a panic room um and just in terms of a house and a room that turns against you she would be engaging with a lot of the core themes in an interesting way and i would enjoy that what's your fincher pick i think there's only one answer it has to be i love Love Trouble, right? It's the worst movie either of them has made. It's the most plagued movie with problems, but it's also more or less a Fincher movie. It's a murder mystery. It's about two characters on a quest kind of

obsessively tracking what happened in this murder, and it has a kind of flintiness in its design that he's perfect for, and what it needs is that obsessive, artful attention to detail that makes his movie for and what it needs is that obsessive artful attention to detail that makes his movie so good i feel like that would be a great trade if you could give what you know one one and one it's a it's a first of all phenomenal question by kenzie thank you very much for seeing us clearly um i have a different venture answer which is the

intern because that is also a way in a way, a movie about obsessiveness and things not going the way that you want them to. And like, as we talked about, I sense a darkness at the edge of that movie that I feel that he could explore. And, you know, also be interesting to see his take both on that and Hathaway character and the kind of the younger generation. I mean, like David Fincher does like a gender movie, I guess, is Gone Girl. But The Intern could be funny too. I like that.

And messed up. Maybe that's how they should both spend sort of their twilight years. You know, just remaking each other's films. Each other's movies. That'd be a fun project. Yeah. Mind Hunter is kind of like the intern, you know? You just reverse the ages a little bit.

Jonathan Groff's character is the up-and-coming hotshot. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, mentorship. A lot of questions in this mailbag about doubling and body switching and identity. How did we get here? You told people to... You directly put out a call to action for people to ask questions that cut to your cores well we're getting there we're getting there keep cutting

tyler wants to know what is the most mad you have been at each other about a movie take do you ever get real life mad at each other about movie takes probably not definitely yes but i couldn't think of a really good one where i was like really mad at you it's funny i could think of a couple where i was just fucking mad at zach my husband i was just like get get out of my life but i can think of so many shots zach has some takes that are you know his takery kind of waves like he has some he's said things before i've been like what i know and it's god love him but you know sometimes he sees movies he's the best he's he sees him ahead of everyone else and he sees him in a room and then he comes out and he wants to tell you that Creed isn't that fun and oh yeah that was the worst one I mean that is the worst

one and that is one where it's also because he saw it so early and was like no it's not good he wouldn't go back to see it with me so So I saw it alone, the 34th Street Theater. I was just crying by myself, moved by the power of cinema because Zach wouldn't go with me because he has dumb takes. That's mean. He has a lot of other good takes. But so I remember being very mad about that. I'm sure that I've been really mad at you.

And I even texted Chris to be like, what's a really like bad Sean take that was like i was i was really mad at him but i could only get to like the irritating ones you know like the the nolan ones are he's chris suggested the nolan ones and i think a lot of listeners would suggest the nolan ones but like that's fine you don't really like them you're doing a bit i respect you doing a bit like we all have to have bits to survive um you know zach by the way i asked him and he said that marvel like you know that marvel is the center of the universe but that's not even it's a little bit a bit and it's a little bit you and it's also just a little bit the movie industry so you know we all have to have foils so i can't think of really anything.

Sure sounds like you're saying my takes are platinum. That my shit is really tight. You know, I got really annoyed when you said that the Lion King was a bad plot, but that was just like, that was good. Oh, that is the one that I was trying to call back to. That's stupid. You know, like, and I just, what actually really makes me angriest is just like something that's completely devoid of intelligence. i was just like that's dumb but i i mean that that's a that's

a buffet i do any of my takes that make you mad no you're perfect in every way thank you so much next question wow that was so nice we had a couple people ask what's your favorite thing about your co-host but i left that question off because there wasn't enough dramatic attention we already did the nancy myers episode last week um matt wants to know why hasn't anything filled the void left by studio comedies and what could can i do like a very obnoxious non-name drop name drop sure i'm gonna do it i've already i've already set it up so i can't why are you asking for permission i'm sorry um i was on a phone call for work for my for my other job uh with a very famous person uh who is who works in hollywood as a actor writer producer

director this person made a very salient point speaking of marvel movies which is that the marvel movies are comedies and the Marvel movies in addition to being TV shows and action movies and thrillers and dramas they're comedies Guardians of

the Galaxy is a comedy and Guardians of the Galaxy has effectively replaced mainstream comedies and that's a big reason why that and this is a person who would know this is

a person who understands the landscape a lot better than we do because they make movies and it has made it more difficult to get those mainstream comedies into a place so i would argue that something did fill the void of those studio comedies and it filled it by replacing them functionally also like many other things replaced it the fact that you can just just rewatch all of Friends on whatever platform. Friends is on now, but when you want to watch something

funny, you have the entire world of comedy on YouTube and podcasts. You have everything that's now available to you streaming, and then you do also have the Marvel movies. They just kind of became irrelevant. Studio comedies are also so hard to get right.

And it just seems like I think there were enough mediocre or not good ones that energies moved elsewhere. You know what's a factor in this for me is that my generation hates corniness a lot more than I feel like most generations before me did. And I feel like a lot of studio comedies hate corny or very corny we love you you're just in your 20s yeah you're in your 20s that was you and that's great bobby and that was that's a time to thrive but um we are also too cool for things and have been like too cool for things for a long time i guess yeah i i guess you're right but like i feel like even friends to me is like mostly too corny for my generation to go and watch. The laugh track element of it that I feel like studio comedies still were kind of colored by.

Not that I think that I'm too cool for a studio comedy. I love studio comedies. I grew up on them. But I'm just saying that that movie-making style of inserting joke here, hope for a laugh here, just doesn't really land. I think social mores just change over time. You know, like there is like a tonality,

the same way that watching Jack Benny right now would not be funny to me necessarily. The 40-year-old virgin is not going to be funny at all to people in 15 years. And there's a desperation to make art that lasts

and that's understandable. It's really difficult to accomplish in comedy. And it's because the culture changes very quickly. And the idea of corniness is kind of funny to look at, like what is and is not considered corny. The worst thing that ever happened to Friends was The Office because The Office created a new tonality in the most successful sitcom of its generation. And so you couldn't, all comedy started to just seem like The Office where everything was awkward and kind of deadpan and into camera. And as these things evolve, like things get replaced. I do think that movie studio comedies could have evolved if movies stayed at the center of the frame. But like,

yeah, pre-Trump, one of the funniest places in the world was twitter you know like vine was one of the funniest things you could see in the world youtube has just pure humor all over the place we see it in tiktok like the like amanda saying like there's just so many places to go to get a laugh that you don't have to wait six months for i love you man to come out in theaters you know amazing movie i like that okay nate wants to know when you put together your top five lists or even your own best movie list what criteria do you use how much do you weigh things like rewatchability innovation acting performance those things cool question what do you do you have like a system or do you just are you going by your gut it's a

little bit gut but i think i'm trained through the system of having made lists for, you know, various editorial jobs throughout my career. You know, Sean was a music journalist first, but like you make a lot of lists in that world. And I made a lot of lists at, at Vulture and we make a lot of lists at the ringer and, you know, there is a rhythm to a list, like anything else you're like your lowest rank thing has to grab people you gotta have a curveball you need to do the thing you know there's there's a formula and i'm trying to make it a complete list so i'm probably bobby don't snicker at amanda when she gets on the phone no i'm not snickering at you i was i was snickering i was snickering because sean smiled

and laughed because his lists are the most guilty of that curveball element where he just puts it on because he wants to talk about it because he knows no one else is going to put it on but we both do i do that as well it's just like that you know sometimes my curveball is also like the amanda pick because you know i'm like often going against more traditional film criticism or whatever and so I get to put in something that's for me but also something that I think is like not often highlighted in the way that I would want it to be so I probably a little bit of everything it's interesting I'd like the categories um that Nate identified are very smart. And I probably put too much emphasis on rewatch ability as opposed to innovation.

Um, just because of how I consume movies and how we talk about them and a little bit, what my taste is. Um, that's a good reminder for the next time we make a list of that, the feeling the first time you see something is so electric, but I try to spread it out.

I, I agree. I mean, I, I think one of the reasons why we have fun doing the show together is because we come at these things from a very similar point of view, even though our taste is kind of, you know, very distinct and separated and our approach even might be a little bit different. Like our, our intellectual conception of how to have a conversation about this stuff is the same and that is through some training and that is very stunty and it's worthy of a smirk bobby it's uh we're trying to have fun having a conversation about stuff that we care about so there does have to be a little bit of jerry-rigging involved i don't really think that popped into my head when i smirked was the comment threads on the 30 under 30 list that was really what got me going there oh yeah yeah on the good well like oh our comments the comments between

each other where it's like oh we gotta we gotta shoehorn this person in the 20 to 23 range because of x the flow of the conversation it's like that's what i think a lot of people miss about when they reply to the lists and they're just like well here are my five these five are bulletproof it's like okay that's not fun on a podcast which i think is something that chris is very funny and identifying absolutely um 35 under 35 people are mad about that one geez yeah i mean i was too a little bit because you made certain lists and then i had to trade with you but you know that's how it works we i mean no one should ever be invited to one of the meetings where we put together like a massive ringer list. But those are it's you know, that's not a just that's not direct democracy.

Let me just like put it that way. And you do you have to shape these things and you got to think about the pacing and and what it says as a whole. I agree. We probably favor rewatch ability a little bit too much because that's just a ringer. That's a very ringer point of view idea. But, um, I, I try not to boil it down too much. I try to think about the things that I authentically like and what I respond to and things that like Bobby is saying that I know I want to talk about. I want to have the chance to talk about because I care about it. Okay. We have just time for a few more. We have a question here from Nick. If you could have one actor's career, who would it be and why? Paul Newman.

Why? Other than like you would like to look like Paul Newman, which I think that would be great for everybody. It would certainly be great for me. I certainly would like to look like Paul Newman, but that's not the only reason. I think no one dislikes Paul Newman and everyone thinks he was, uh, great at what he did, but it was effort.

It seemed effortless and he had excellent taste and he made a handful of movies that will live forever. Um, and he was considered a very thoughtful member of his community. He was not a dumb, dim-witted, handsome leading man, but he was also not somebody who strained for a kind of importance. He was very smart on social issues at the time. He was very smart on the business of Hollywood. He had great taste in stories and filmmakers. Not everything he did was a hit,

but nobody looks back on his failures as like massive, idiotic or offensive failures. And I don't know, he's just like the modern conception of the movie star to me is in his mold

in many respects. You know, with the caveat that he's a blue-eyed, you know, heteronormative white guy he is but that is what that was the generation of hollywood was platforming those people more than anybody at that time and he was just really good at what he did he's a captivating actor who never felt like he was straining to be captivating do you think he discovered japanese teak before

john mayer or i tell you what Paul Newman had great hair great hair god bless him you into salad dressing of course I mean look at that whole thing I mean you know what a great figure for social change all that money goes to charity those businesses are thriving yeah it's it's great what a guy yeah my answer is going to go in a different direction um which which is less about what you can do for the world and what you can do for yourself but uh adam sandler who has an amazing career and is beloved by all and can still turn in a dynamite um oh my god why did i just blank on the name of where they're all yelling at each other and he's slapping the TV? And this After News movie, why can't I remember?

Uncut Gems. Uncut Gems. I can remember lots about that movie if I completely blanked on the title. But he can still turn in what we felt was an Oscar-worthy performance and also an Oscar-worthy acceptance speech at the Indie Spirit Awards.

And then also he just films movies and locations where he wants to be with his family, which is definitely how I would approach being an actor. That seems like a smart strategy. So, you know, it's Hubie Halloween season. I hope you know that. I don't know how we're going to get it going on this podcast, but it will come up. I'll watch it. I have a sense of humor. Great. If you want to be Adam Sandler, I up i'll watch it i have a sense of humor great if you want to be adam sandler i hope you'll watch it yeah of course um so there we go okay two more here jack wants to know if you could redo the nba support group video but instead make it about actors slash actresses that you haven't given up on, who would you talk about? Sean, I know your answer, but should we explain the premise of the movie first? The short?

Yeah, NBA Support Group was a Ringer original video starring in the before times when we were allowed to be in a room together, starring a number of Ringer employees. Among them, certainly Ryan Russillo was at the center of the frame. I believe it was his idea originally. And I remember an incredible Liz Kelly performance in that video.

Who else was in it? Who else was Chris Ryan in it? Chris Ryan. Chris Ryan. I think Kevin might have been in it briefly. Kevin O'Connor. Yeah. Handful of other people in our universe

in which they essentially had a support group, not unlike the one you would see in a fight club, as if they were dealing with some sort of ailment or illness or addiction. And what they were talking about, sharing their feelings about, were NBA players who they loved, who never quite got there,

who never quite became superstars, who never quite owned the sport uh i believe ryan's biggest example was jeff green he can't quit jeff green indeed it was of course this rangy you know long tantalizing player who's been on many teams now over the last 10 years a high draft pick he was a member of the oklahoma city thunder among other teams that is a key element of the support group that you need to understand with NBA-wise is that the potential, the physical

tools, the ability, the natural God-given talent is important to the support group. So I feel like that should be related to the actor's question as well. If I were in that video, Anthony Randolph would have been my pick. That was the person who I thought was the most tantalizing player of that generation. But, for movies, this is an interesting interesting one do you have a pick amanda i do

my my pick is army hammer um and i'm not gonna sell that stock and you know maybe one day it'll all come together he hasn't been bad in. There are some things that haven't worked. And even the things that did work, like call me by your name, snubbed by the Academy, never really got the breakthrough. And he is like an awe type of leading man, but I really don't want him to fall into Henry Cavill territory. I want him to shine beyond his obvious, uh, God-given talents. Yeah. Uh, I think if we're speaking solely about people that we want to get intimate with, as you are with Armie Hammer, um, my pick would be Jessica Chastain. That is who I said. I know who your pick is. It is Jessica Chastain. Um,

Which is, I mean, it's crazy to think about if you would have asked us this question in 2015, we would have never considered saying Armie Hammer or Jessica Chast chastain um and they're both still doing just fine you know i would say that they are not at jeff green levels of frustration in terms of their careers army hammer is about to be in the rebecca remake jessica chastain is the star of your new favorite movie of 2020 the 355 um 2021 2021 excuse me uh so they're doing okay i guess is there someone more along the lines of like taylor kitch or alden ehrenreich you know who it's like it didn't really happen for this person and like where are they now like what is their career now um those those were two examples that sprung to mind taylor kitch came to mind for me, but I didn't know, I guess I don't really

know who Jeff Green is. So I didn't know like how far that like we had to have given up on the person, you know, because I love Taylor Kitsch and he'll keep working and he was pretty weird in Waco. But like the whole movie career, I don't think it's going to happen. I agree. Actually, this might be a great episode. I think movie support group is a great idea for an episode where, you know, we bring on a few people and they talk about the person they just can't quit. So shouts to Ryan and all the people who worked on that video because it's a good inspiration. Final question. We started talking about your relationship to film and film criticism. We'll end talking about a similar thing.

This comes from jay in what way has film criticism changed since you got into the space and how do you think it will change in the next five to ten years i mean i have a lot of thoughts about this um is there anything that you want to say like right off the bat sure i think the ways in which it has changed is, you know, in my head of film critic is someone still, you know, in the in the Friday paper at a major newspaper. And there are still are a few of those who tells you what should you go see this week. And that obviously doesn't happen as much at newspapers anymore for reasons not having to do with films, having to do with newspapers. But I find that so much of the criticism I consume is after I have watched the film. And it's about, you know, it's less thumbs up or thumbs down and more let's, you know, let's talk about this together. I think there are positive aspects of that and negative aspects of that.

I do also think that that reflects a bit on my job. And, you know, I already know what I'm going to watch or not watch, but it does seem like people are seeking things out after the fact to have a discussion more. And in a way, I think that that's cool. Yeah, I think to that point, I've heard Chris Ryan talk about this. He's kind of an interesting

person because his father was a film critic. And I think the role of the film critic in newspapers in the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s was as a recommendation service in a lot of ways. Should you see it or should you not see it? And it doesn't mean that every film critic was trusted per se, but they were seen as an expert who had a point of view that could help them make a kind of critical decision in their lifestyle, which is, should I take my family to this movie and will it be worth it? And that was very valuable. Media has been immensely democratized in the last 20 years. People can share their opinions faster and more easily than they ever have. And so I think in many ways, obviously, there's a sense amongst the critical community, like their expertise has been

circumvented by people who are more either entertaining or who can more aggressively draw attention to themselves, but may not be as informed. I'm sure there are film critics that hear this show and are like, these two people don't know what the fuck they're talking about. I've studied film for 25 years and it's embarrassing that they get to espouse their opinions all day. So it's a really a sliding scale of who gets to talk about things and who doesn't get to talk about things and why. So I think that that has changed pretty radically. The thing that I would say is to the democratization, one of the reasons why I like Letterboxd as a platform is you have a lot of people that are as obsessed with this space as somebody like I am. And because of

that, I feel like I'm in safe hands, at least if I want to get a slightly different point of view on something that I've seen or just to see if somebody has a good joke at the expense of the thing I've just seen. Um, and that sort of thing was not possible in like a kind of coherent contained way. And one of the reasons why I thought that story that Scott Tobias wrote for the ringer.com was so good is because I thought he really tapped into that. He taught tapped into the fact that this format, like so many other things like sports gambling, like people's relationship to modern medicine, like, um, you know, any household thing you have to take care of is all kind of like at the tip of your fingers. My wife's car died the other day and she drives a hybrid. And so we had to jumpstart the car and I never jumpstarted a hybrid before.

If this were 20 years ago and there were a new technology in a car, you would pretty much just call your mechanic. I watched two YouTube videos and we figured it out and we just did it. And everything is just so much easier to kind of wrap your arms around now. And I feel like weirdly film history is easier to wrap your arms around. Everything's so accessible. Everybody can just spend two weeks watching the Criterion channel and be like, I know everything about the Australian new wave cinema. That's crazy. Like in, in 1997, when I first started getting crazy about movies, I could find maybe two Peter Weir movies on the Criterion channel. You can watch all of them. Like that is extraordinary that that is possible now. So it is democratized. It is making it

easier for more people to have access to things for less money than ever um but that also means that you'll get more bad actors because you have more people who are coming in to try to draw attention themselves and make up make a mess of things and you'll just get more bad writing um i i think when you had to go through the paces of editing and rising up through the ranks it enforced that kind of um a kind of. On the flip side of things, there were a lot of people who were not able to penetrate those ranks because of their circumstances, because of their upbringing, because of their lack of privilege. So in general, I think it's mostly a good thing, but I do think that the primacy of legacy power voice in the media is over. I don't think anybody, I think very few people under the

age of 50 are like, well, what did the Times say about that movie before I check it out on Netflix? They'll decide for themselves. I think that's true though. I'm under 50 and I still want to know what the Times had to say about it, but I agree. I think also it has been democratized, but there are still hive minds. The hive minds are different. I think in terms of who is both doing film criticism and, you know, who is like speaking very loudly at the top of their lungs about movies online, you know, it is not as many women and not as many people of color always as you would like it to be. There are studies about this from an institutional level, but I think I'm easing my way into Letterboxd. I would love to find more women on Letterboxd. So, um, you know, please DM me. That would be really nice. Not that I don't want to hear from the young men,

but I have heard from you from a long time. So for a long time. So I think, I think you're right that it's moving more towards Letterboxd. I thought that that was the point, the smart point of the, um, Scott Tobias piece was that especially now when everyone is watching things at different times, because our movie watching schedule is not centered around release dates because there aren't release dates because there are no theaters because of COVID-19 um it's where people go to have that experience and find other people who are watching movies and that's cool um you know in some ways that's what we were always doing I always used movies as as a way to find people who I wanted to talk with about other things. And now we're just doing it in different ways.

Yeah, that's the point of this podcast, right? Like, I wouldn't want to do this podcast with a film scholar. That actually was not the purpose. And I don't think that that's what other people want either. you know, because I am not one, I know, but that's okay. You know, I'm not one either. As much as I try to see as much as I can, I know that there's always going to be a layer of understanding that we still have to get to that. We're still trying to find it's like a, it's a journey get going through all of these things. And, um, I'm fine with that. I think that that does drive some film scholars crazy that the democratic

nature of this experience makes people nuts when they don't understand history. And the context is really important to me, but it's evolving. And like a lot of film criticism is being done, not even in written form. I mean, the conversations like this are a, I don't define myself as a film critic personally, but I do think that there's no doubt that we're doing a form of criticism. Yeah. And I, listen, I, again, I'm not a film as a film critic personally, but I do think that there's no doubt that we're doing a form of criticism. Yeah. And I, listen, I, again, I'm not a film scholar. I did not go to film school.

And, you know, every time that we have Adam Neiman on this podcast, or I read a piece of Adam Neiman, I'm just, wow, there is so much that I do not know. I, he's just incredibly smart and, and looks at movies through that academic way, which is extremely valuable. It is definitely not the only way to look at movies and that academic way, which is extremely valuable. It is definitely not the only way to look at movies. And movies have always been sort of, I mean, when they're working,

they are at the center of popular culture. They bring everything together. So God, I hope they keep working. I hope so too. What a great place to end. Bobby, thank you for acting as the proctor for this personal examination. Let's go now to my conversation with Garrett Bradley. Delighted to be joined by Garrett Bradley.

Garrett, how are you? I'm great. Thank you. Good to speak with you. Yeah, likewise. I'm so excited to talk to you about time. But, you know, I was looking back at some of your previous work, which I was not as familiar with before this film and having, you know, a lot of fun exploring it.

And I was curious if you could recall the first time you picked up a camera. Yeah, the first time I picked up a camera, I was 16. And it was a little like mini, a Hi8 camcorder, actually. And yeah, I used it, I think, to just interrogate my parents for the most part. And that became a little short film, which was actually the first film I made. And Stanley Crouch actually was on the jury

for it as at a Quaker Film Festival. And I think it was the first time I felt like, I remember being told that I was good at it. And I think that that's probably the only reason why I kept doing it is like, I felt like it was the first time I was good at something and could communicate easily. Were you getting positive reinforcement from Stanley Crouch at 16 years old? I was, yeah. That's pretty incredible. Isn't that amazing?

Yeah. So, you know, both of your parents are artists and I was wondering a little bit what your, kind of what your upbringing was like and what kind of sensitivities you had to, to creating art as opposed to somebody like me who didn't have that kind of opportunity. Um, well, I mean, I don't, I don't have anything to compare it to. I mean, I think that, um, I think first of all, I'm sure your parents were artists in their own right. You know, like I think we're all artists actually. It's really a question of if we,

if someone tells us, you know, in life that we can be that and we can imagine that for ourselves. So much of it is about confidence, you know? And I think that the biggest thing that I kind of took away from my upbringing actually was was less to do with art itself or making itself and more about um how to build a life for oneself you know um how to I think that there's there's sometimes this idea that you're not a good you're not a real artist unless that's the only thing you're doing right and i don't think that that could be any further from the truth i think having other jobs as a filmmaker has been incredibly important to

my practice um being involved and engaged with the world being a part of a community that is not inherently about making film, um, has been crucial, not only to myself as a human being, um, to my belief system that you need to be, um, kind of connected, you know, you need to have something to say. And I don't, I can't imagine one would have anything to say if they, if they weren't really a part of the world you know and so I think that was kind of the biggest takeaway for me growing up was how important community is you know to your practice as an artist that it's not in contradiction to it what were some of those jobs that you did like how did you find yourself in the world so that you weren't just stuck inside your own art all the time um oh, I mean, just working at American Apparel, working at flower shops, working at funeral home,

working as a data entry person. I mean, I've had so many random jobs. I'm not saying I kept them all that easily. I worked in the restaurant industry. i think i've bounced you know i think the longest job that i was able to hold like one at a time was probably three or four months you know but um you know but they're they're they were important you know one you need to pay bills you need to like actually live which is important and um you know you can't just like live off of grants and grants themselves, I think could be prohibitive in terms of how do you even write a grant? How do you even write an application? Um, so you need to have jobs and, and I've met so many amazing people, so many people

in my life, I wouldn't have met if I wasn't, you know, if I wasn't, if I was only focused on just somehow making films, which I just don't even know how that's possible unless you're just independently wealthy and don't have to do that. Has the kind of filmmaker you wanted to be changed since you were 16 and holding the high eight? Oh, that's a good question. I think that there were some things in it you know it's it's such a good question because I don't think you always know the answer to that until you like force yourself to think about why you make the things that you do you know and I I don't I'm not thinking about that always in relationship to myself I'm thinking about that oftentimes in relationship to the

individual project and what the project needs and why it's important what it wants to say but yeah i think that i think fundamentally i'm i think about filmmaking and i think about the work as sort of being a facilitation of contradictory thought you know taking two things that appear to be opposing to one another or that aren't connected to one another, either in space or in thought or theory and in race and gender. Right. And trying to find intersections, but the work becomes the intersection of those things and becomes inherently a part of sort of gray matter, you know,

and that the gray matter kind of offers new possibilities, new ways of understanding. I think all my work is kind of to a certain extent, really invested in that possibility. I was reading that you spent some time with Billy Woodbury when you were in school. I was wondering if you could just talk about that experience and kind of what you took from him as a filmmaker? Yeah, I met Billy when I went to graduate school at UCLA. And he was teaching at CalArts. And then he worked at the equipment office at UCLA. And I mean, he was somebody who I to a certain extent, it's funny to say that he made me feel at home because he was a stranger. You know, it's not, he wasn't somebody that I knew before. But I think as a filmmaker in a film program, it was incredibly, it really pushed me in a direction that I felt I needed to go in, which was, you know, I was constantly kind of questioning myself on if I was good at what I was there to do. You know, and I was perpetually failing at like, what is crossing the line, for instance? Like, what are these sort of cinematic rules that we're there to master? And I think for me, at least, I can't speak for everybody, but I do think when you're

in graduate programs, you know, you are really focused in the early years on mastering and being really great at everything that they're teaching you technical standpoint you know and i was like failing miserably at all of it um and so i think being able to uh having the privilege of being in proximity to some who was a part of this incredible movement of the la rebellion which was so inherently about thinking about adapting neorealism, you know, in post-war Italy to the American experience and formally doing that in a way that I had never seen before, um, was, was groundbreaking for me in terms of my confidence, in terms of, in terms of the stories that I wanted to tell in terms of how I felt I could tell them that, um, that, and I think as, as a young person that you, unless

you're doing your research and I think it's really important, that's part of why I went to graduate school was because I knew I needed to understand a tradition, you know, regardless of whether I was going to fit into it or not, you know, and, and, um, and it helped me further define myself, what, even if I couldn't fit into it, you know. When did you first become aware of fox and rob rich's story um i got to know uh fox in the process of making a short film uh called alone which was a 13 minute um op doc and i had even though the film ended up taking a really different direction i had initially conceived of that project as being sort of a facilitation of intergenerational conversations

between women who were in incarcerated families. Lon herself had never had to maneuver the system, really had very little guidance, very little support. And the irony in that is that there are so many of us who are affected by incarceration. And so, but because of the stigma of being in an incarcerated relationship, a lot of the stigma of being in an incarcerated relationship a lot of the time people find themselves women in particular really feeling isolated um and so the film was there to kind of address that um and i contacted an organization called flick friends and families of louisiana's incarcerated children and gina womack who was the co-founder and director of that

organization picked up and was like you have to speak to fox rich and fox so fox is actually briefly in alone for several seconds and she makes a really vivid connection between slavery and the prison industrial complex um and when alone came out i was just really invested in this idea of making a sister film making another film that was continuing that conversation of, of, of incarceration from a sort of black feminist point of view, a Southern point of view from a familial point of view. Um,

and from a point of view that was very much rooted in the, the effects of incarceration, right? The effects of the facts. What, what originally got you interested in, in telling stories about you know incarcerated families and and people who are experiencing this because it

seems obviously is a like a major point of interest for you as a filmmaker as an artist so i'm curious kind of what drives that yeah i mean it's not it's not actually so much an interest i mean um to a certain extent i it became a bit of a duty, you know. And I say that because I'm not, as a filmmaker, I'm not going into the world looking for stories. Every film I've made, every project I've made has come out of real relationships I have with people, you know? And so I, you know, and I think just by sheer numbers, you know, you, I found people in my life who were really directly affected by the prison industrial complex. And it just felt to me that, again, I think it goes back to this question of like, what do you want to say? And how is the world that you're living in being reflected in what you want to say?

And I think that's how these projects have come to fruition is that this is unavoidable. Fox is this incredibly vivid protagonist. I was wondering what her reaction was to your idea of her being kind of the subject of a film, the center of a story like this. Yeah. You know, it's funny because she, I mean, first of all, I, when we, when we were initially talking about working together, you know, the, the, I very much presented it sort of as like, you know, we made this film alone.

I feel that it's important to continue this conversation as like you know we made this film alone i feel that it's important to continue this conversation and you know you and your family have maneuvered the system at that point i think robert had been incarcerated for about 18 years um and what would it mean to make a film that showed how her and her family as as individuals were maneuvering the same system that Lon was in their own unique and very different way, right? And I asked, you know, Fox, does that resonate with you? What is the purpose of us doing this? And she said, my story is the story of 2.3 other million American families. And I hope that it can offer some hope, right? That it can offer, that can be um to a certain extent an example of different forms of resistance um so that was i think that was always very clear in the process of making the film

when she and robert saw it before we picture before we officially picture locked and premiered the film fox actually said to me you know i i didn't expect there to be so much of me in the film, you know. And I laughed about that because she is the center of the universe, you know. She is the family's son. And I think that part of her beauty is that she takes her personal experience and her personal strength and it radiates outside of her and it inspires and motivates many people around her and she does not see herself as being an individual leader i think she cannot be separated at all from herself as a part of a commune you know it is her and robert it is her and their six sons it is her and miss peggy it is her entire family that makes up that you can't you you you cannot separate her from um from that and

so i mean that's also just i think who she is you know and i um yeah i don't know if that answers your question or not no it does i i was surprised to learn that you discovered her archival footage after you'd finished filming you know you what you shot for this film like did that completely rechart what the movie was going to be for you yeah completely i mean i i had again i'd kind of i was extrapolating a lot of the aesthetic and kind of tonal choices that I developed in Alone with time, you know, and I also was thinking about time as being another 13-minute op doc. And so the archive presented all sorts of exciting challenges, you know, I mean, Gabe

Rhodes, the film's editor, and I, and we watched through about 100 hours of material, you know, without any kind of agenda, you know, or any kind of idea of what we were looking for specifically. And I think it was once we really decided to lean into this idea of the mythology of love, you know, that the film was going to be so deeply rooted in the family's love for one another and in their unity and their, in their resistance to being separated that it really freed us then to start to think about how the archive and, and my own footage could coexist in a way that was not going to be

contradictory. That was not going to be bound by a chronology that would have been confusing. You know, that love is timeless. Love surpasses all things. It can't be bound. And so the film then was able to also live by those same kind of principles, you know,

with the archive, you know, across, you know, 21 years. you know across over you know 21 years did fox say to you like oh this this tape is going to be really helpful for you or this is not like did you have any kind of guidebook for how to go through all of this footage no no i mean fox herself hadn't seen the footage um since she shot it um so in the 90s um and i think that was the other part of it i think was that the her trust in um in the film and i guess in me just in in giving me this bag that was not backed up you know like there was no backup like i just remember being so nervous getting in the car and driving and then shipping it out to the company that was going to transcode everything. Like I just was, you know, that when someone's giving you their family archive, that's not to be taken for granted.

And it was it lived outside, frankly, of the film. It was something way more profound. You know, when you think about just the family, the family archive, as as as in many cases the only evidence of our existence as we see it as we see ourselves you know um it was so it was so valuable above and beyond anything that i could do with it as a film you know what i mean um or within the film one thing i also really like that you do is you know a film like this in someone else's hands could be all dramatic beats and you take your time and show Fox, you know, not just being stymied on the phone at times, but just working out and just kind of like getting a release and showing her humanity in a different way that she isn't just like a single-minded person pursuing this thing, but she also was living her life for children or living their lives um was that approach was that always the approach that you wanted to take with this film to show it kind of more in full or how much did that grow as you expanded the scope of it um well so much of it is is me no it was me knowing that um i didn't know when i was gonna

have to stop feeling filming necessarily um and i i didn't know. And I didn't know if they would be, if Robert would be released, you know, by the time we were still filming or not. And so I, and I, it was really important for me, I think not to have any kind of vision for what the ending of the film could be. I mean, this is a family's life right and so as a as a documentary it needs to honor the present moment it needs to find meaning

and purpose and beauty and what is in front of you not what could be not what you want it to be as a filmmaker um and so that for me was really honoring their day-to-day routine their day-to-day ritual and to think how can I bare bones like bottom line make sure that people walk away from the film knowing that the system so unequivocally embeds itself in everyday life that you really can't actually separate any part of your routine from the system you know and so i focused a lot yeah on these sort of more mundane everyday moments um to show the totality of their life and the totality of that of that reality i love the score of this movie can you just tell me a little bit about you know where that came from yeah so i um i came across emma hoy's music just from a like a youtube algorithm but it just popped up on my youtube account to be honest with you i was i had all these um like playlists 1970s ethiopian

music and um and when i first heard it you know i was I was just like, it's so beautiful. The music is just so beautiful and has this amazing way of being kind of always present and moving forward at the same time, which was certainly what I think Gabe and I were really trying to accomplish within the film itself. um but then when i started to read about emma hoy and discovered that she's still living and she's a 96 year old ethiopian nun um who came from a wealthy family and uh and then was a prisoner of war was classically trained in western music um decided to kind of abandon being a musical prodigy celebrity and went back to Ethiopia and became a nun and recorded this album in 1963 for the purpose of raising money for an orphanage. There was something just so reaffirming about the idea and the possibility of bringing these two women together in the film. Wow, that's actually brilliant. I didn't even realize that that was ultimately the connection. You know, you have some major partners in this movie,

an unusually, I don't know, high-toned collection of partners. Concordia, which is Laurie Powell Jobs' company, the New York Times, and Amazon are all essentially helping this movie get out into the world. You know, what was it like trying to kind of get attention for it, to raise money for it? And now how do you feel about it kind of getting out into the world with all of these partners? Yeah, I mean, I, so I think it's really important to kind of offer some context around that because alone, you know, which was an op doc, I didn't know anybody at the New York Times.

Anybody who's listening to this can go to the op doc's website and submit an idea and make an op doc. I didn't have any connections. And I was really fortunate that they wanted to support making this short film. It was amazing that we happened to win an award at Sundance for that film and I think it certainly helped open the door then for me to um make my next film you know um and so when I was making Time which was you know untitled obviously at that point and again as I said I was really thinking about as another New York Times short film op doc. The timing just was really miraculous because Concordia, which was, I mean, it's still a very new company.

They were sort of in conversations with the New York Times op docs at that time that we were making this second film. And they were developing a fellowship that was, you know, really specifically focused on supporting filmmakers at whatever stage, you know, they were at in terms of like, what did they really need? And for me, I had never worked with an editor before. I'd cut everything, you know, from my bedroom up until this point. And there were some very concrete things that could help elevate the work that I was trying to make. And so Concordia came in as a partner in a way that was both financial,

but also really practical, you know, in terms of the practice and craft of what I was able to do. And when the film premiered as a, you know, for instance, I should mention like Gabe Rhodes, you know, this is my first time working with an editor and I probably would not have been able to work with him had it not been for Concordia's support, you know, um, just from a financial standpoint. Um, and I think that then when the film premiered and it was my first time being at Sundance with a feature length film, my first time going through the sales process, Ted Hope, who ultimately acquired the film on behalf of Amazon, you know, I had a really honest and frank conversation with him about what it would mean for this film to be released by, by Amazon. And I felt it was really important that, um,

that a film that is about incarceration, that is, that is about, um, uh, uh, uh, an American issue that was made by a black woman about a black family for black people, um, that it be, um, put in a space that was mainstream, you know, that said, this is a mainstream issue. This is a majority issue. This is not small.

And I really am thankful to him for seeing that and honoring that. And it's been really amazing that, you know, frankly, as the distributor, they've been incredibly collaborative with myself and the Richardson family. Like we are we are really involved in how how the film is being released, what the messaging is, how the trailer feels, all these elements that they frankly don't have to do. Yeah, it's just extraordinary that something like this is going to be in front of millions of people instantaneously in just a few weeks.

You know, this is the landscape has changed so radically over the last five years. I mean, it's obviously a great thing. I was just kind of curious how it feels for so many people to see or work soon. Yeah, I will. I mean, it's hard to fathom. I don't think I mean, not to be not to bring it back to this, but I think I think about the fact that, again, there's 2.3 million people who are incarcerated. And I don't think that most of us can really fathom what 2.3 million people looks like or feels like. And that's part of the power of the prison industrial complex is that

it's a sort of the erasure and seemingly invisibility of a population. And so I think in this current moment, it's really important, I think, when we think about as filmmakers and artists, how do we contribute to this moment and not only to this moment, but to a chronic problem that's been here since the beginning, since the inception of the new world.

It is, I think, to create more visibility, to think about the optics around erasure and how to combat it with our work. So I'm really grateful for that. And in my mind, it translates really directly in that way. Garrett, what are you doing next you know uh do I know what I'm doing next I'm really trying to be in the present moment man I feel like that's really important you know I think like we're all like so ready to jump onto the next thing it's like we got to just enjoy the moment and honor it you know so that's what I'm trying to do right now as a filmmaker are you do you have a sort of desire to go in either direction in terms of,

you know, narrative feature filmmaking, documentary filmmaking? Do you have, do you have any goals in that respect? I haven't, you know, I'm not like,

I'm like so uninterested in, in genre and like in, um, like the stories, the stories and what I, what I want to say and how I want to work with people and who I want to work with. That's really what comes first. And I kind of, to a certain extent, leave the classification, you know, to everybody else. So I'm just excited. I think, you know, whatever, whatever ends up

happening next, I think it will hopefully be a reflection of, of a, of a real relationship, you know, a new and exciting relationship and way of thinking garrett we end every episode of the show by asking filmmakers what's the last great thing they've seen have you seen anything great lately oh fuck all right let me think about this um oh well okay okay so i re-watched heat which was oh wow which is an amazing classic film. I was talking with a friend about the 90s and how many amazing films were made in the 90s. But then I also had a chance to see the second season of Homecoming and was so blown away. And just think it's a beautiful, masterful series and encourage everyone to see it.

And that has nothing to do with Amazon, I promise. you just no one has recommended that yet and i frankly i haven't seen it i did watch the first season what did you respond to in it i just think that that there's like cinematically and musically emil massari did the music um there's some really interesting things happening and i think the performances are also incredible and And I think, I think the overall messaging, you know, I don't, I don't want to give, give it away, but I think that the casting, uh, and the storyline are just so important for this current moment and, and so brilliantly done. Garrett, I think time is a major work. So thanks so much for coming on the show today. I appreciate it. Thank you. I really appreciate your time. Thank you to Garrett Bradley. Thank you to Amanda Dobbins. Thank you to Bobby Wagner.

Thank you to all the listeners of this show that have gotten us to 300. Really appreciate you all out there. If you like the big picture, I suggest you tune in later this week, where we will be examining one of our stars, one of our beloveds, the great and complicated Aaron Sorkin, who has a new movie on Netflix called The Trial of the Chicago 7. We'll see you then.