The Big Picture - An Ask-Us-Anything Mailbag, and ‘I Saw the TV Glow,’ with Jane Schoenbrun
Episode Date: May 10, 2024Sean and Amanda answer your questions about the 2024 box office, roasts, YouTube movie clips, repertory theaters, and more (1:00). Then, Sean is joined by Mean Pod Guy Adam Nayman to discuss an exciti...ng new release, Jane Schoenbrun’s ‘I Saw the TV Glow,’ and its unique blend of body horror, nostalgia, and identity (1:15:00). Finally, Sean is joined by Schoenbrun to discuss the making of the movie, growing up hooked in to television, and what kind of films they’re interested in making moving forward (1:45:00). Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Guests: Jane Schoenbrun and Adam Nayman Senior Producer: Bobby Wagner Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Transcript
Discussion (0)
This is Bill Simmons. I am thrilled to announce our newest YouTube channel. It's called Ringer Movies.
If you're a fan of our movie coverage here at The Ringer, then you're in luck.
Because every episode of The Rewatchables and The Big Picture, now on YouTube.
Like Bill said, Ringer Movies will feature full episodes of my show, The Big Picture, The Rewatchables,
as well as special live episodes, deep dives into movie history,
and a bunch of other fun stuff featuring other movie loving ringer personalities search ringer movies on youtube and experience the joy chris ryan impersonating wayne jenkins on camera
i'm sean fennessey i'm amanda do. And this is the Big Picture, a conversation show about anything that you wanted to know.
We're opening up the mailbag today.
Later in this episode, we have a double-hit discussion of one of the year's most acclaimed movies,
Jane Shonbrun's coming-of-age drama that is drenched in big themes about identity, cultural obsession, and isolation.
I'm talking about I Saw the TV Glow.
First, Adam Naiman will join me to talk about the movie.
Then Jane and I talked about making it,
how movies and TV help us understand ourselves,
and a lot more.
I hope you'll stick around for that conversation.
It was a really good one.
Okay, mailbag time.
What did you write on the little clapboard?
Is that like the...
Yeah, I wrote,
ask us anything, mailbag, parentheses,
except about Thanos.
Okay, good.
So no questions about Thanos. That's true. In this mailbag. Did you get rid of your so no questions about thanos that's true in this
mailbag did you get rid of your little thanos guy no he's there he's there my friend i have a i have
a concept for what i want on my side of the desk if you're just listening if you're listening to
this on audio number one thank you for sticking with us in our purest form and number two we got
to decorate our desks and also please subscribe to ringermovies.com
but you know I don't want you to feel excluded
subscribe but you're also included
youtube.com
slash at ringermovies
good job but so I have
a concept but I
do you know how to print photos
do I know how to print photos
yes but like
high quality frameable well I don't But like high quality, frameable.
Well, I don't have a high quality frameable printer.
Right.
So there we go.
Do you know where to find that?
That's my mailbag question to you.
At a Kinko's?
I don't know what you...
Do you know where a Kinko's is near our house?
I do.
Yeah.
Well, I think they're all FedEx now.
Oh, yeah.
Is FedEx acquired Kinko's?
Oh, now I do know about a nice one. No free ads here,
though I have used the FedEx Kinkos in my day. And there's one in Pasadena, as I recall. That's
the one I know. Yeah, it's like on a warehouse, you know, like on an alley. Why are we talking
about this? What's happening? Because I got to embellish my side of the desk, but I'll do it in
my own time. Okay. This is riveting content for those who are not watching video though I hope you are watching video
because so much effort
is going into my makeup every morning.
I'm waking up at 4 a.m. every day.
I'm getting in the chair.
Are you still exfoliating every day
with your St. Ives?
Yeah.
It's like me on the set
with Rick Baker in 1999.
They're just making me look like an ape
and I feel great about it.
No, we're doing a mailbag.
Did you want to talk about
the announcement of the new
Lord of the Rings film? Speaking of announcement of the new Lord of the Rings film?
Speaking of effects.
A new Lord of the Rings film was announced, produced by Peter Jackson.
I think the subtitle...
No, I would prefer to keep talking about FedExKickos, honestly.
Did you see what the subhead of the movie is?
No.
It's Lord of the Rings colon, and this is true,
The Hunt for Gollum.
That's just good stuff so is that is that post trilogy pre-trilogy it's post because it's it's everything gollum did on january 6th
all i saw is that joanna robinson was like i don't know if this is a good idea she i think
she said it was kind of off menu like it was outside of the book content and that's which I don't know knowing what I know about
Tolkien we can we can stray every once in a while okay not such a big deal but is it like is it what
Gollum gets up to after yeah he holds the ring yeah stuff he said on Rogan you know like all
that stuff it's been it's it's interesting much more modern adaptation well you brought this up
now I'm just asking you questions.
No, I'm excited about it
because I like the Lord of the Rings films.
Peter Jackson is producing,
but not directing.
Yeah, well, good luck.
Last time that happened,
he actually did direct.
He said,
step aside, Guillermo del Toro.
I will be directing the Hobbit films.
And that's what he did.
So maybe that can happen here.
Maybe not.
I like Lord of the Rings.
Animated Lord of the Rings movie
coming out this winter.
Did you know that?
No, I didn't.
I think it's The War for Rohirrim. Who's that? One of the Rings. Animated Lord of the Rings movie coming out this winter. Did you know that? No, I didn't. I think it's The War for Rohirrim.
Who's that?
One of those kings.
I honestly don't know.
The only Lord of the Rings content that I like is that meme of, it's a photo of Paul Meskel and Andrew Scott and two others.
I think maybe Pedro Pascal, though I don't want to malign anyone who's not actually in the photo.
And it's just like the hobbits after the Shire got a Zara.
And then they're like all, you know, because they're all in their Zarkos.
Because they're short boys?
Well, the angle isn't like doing them a lot of favors.
Is Paul Meskel short?
I think so.
Relatively speaking, that's okay.
You know, but he's powerful.
So it works out.
That's always a great moment when an actor comes into the studio for an interview,
and I'm like, I'm seven inches taller than you, sir.
This is very exciting for me.
It was a funny meme.
I like that meme.
Okay.
That's the only Lord of the Rings content.
You don't like anything about the Lord of the Rings?
This is literally one of the best franchises.
It just hasn't really stayed with me.
Okay.
It's not like what I carry around day to day.
Like, I'm daydreaming, and then I'm just, like, thinking about, you know I know. It just hasn't really stayed with me. Okay. It's not like what I carry around day to day. Like I'm daydreaming and then I'm just like thinking about, you know, elves.
Okay.
It sounds like me and CR will be continuing our tradition of the day after Christmas going to see a movie with hobbits in it while holding hands and crying together.
Yeah.
And hobbits in general.
Not your thing.
They like, they feast, they sing.
Mm-hmm.
I mean.
Again, I'm waiting for something bad.
I'm looking forward to that movie.
It does seem a bit craven to be trying to do this yet again after they made a wonderful trilogy.
But whatever.
I get it.
I understand why these things happen.
Anything else in the world of movies you want to get off your chest before we have Bob open the mailbag?
No, let's speak to the people.
Okay.
You know, that's what I came in here to do.
Let's speak to Bobby.
Hi, Bob.
Hi.
Honestly, I think hobbits are kind of Dobbob, if we're being honest the feasting the singing the being outside
yeah hob mob that's true they're pretty jolly i don't know whether like jolly is one of like our
core values you know i would say no so we try to enjoy things but like jolliness i don't know and it's it's a little too much
singing outside there are rules about like who can sing and who cannot sing you know
right because then you're going on lumineers territory and then we know what we know what
happens then yeah no thank you uh hob mob will be a thing though i will i will circle back to that
when this film comes out okay uh bobby let's what's our first question the first question comes from scott on the heels of the successful tom brady roast are there any filmmakers
or hollywood icons that you would like to see step into the hot seat for a future netflix roast
so this is tricky because i think a lot of what we trade in with quote-unquote hollywood icons
are beloved people who we just don't know a ton about with athletes and with
comedians or public figures, you know, like Pamela Anderson or Justin Bieber or Donald Trump or
people who've been in these situations before. They're kind of famous for all the things that
they have done or been entrenched in, you know, like a Brad Pitt roast. I'm not sure that's such a good idea.
Tom Cruise. I mean, no one, there would be so many legal complications,
like complications that no one would go for it. But like, if you could do it,
Tom Cruise is the answer. Yeah. On the one hand, I would say like,
well, that'll never happen. But I honestly can't believe the Tom Brady thing happened.
Yeah. It's remarkable. I have to assume he was paid a vast sum of money to do that.
I saw Jason Kelsey was
also speculating about that. Why else would you do it? That's how I keep out the Eagles now is that
I get updates about what retired Eagles Jason Kelsey has said on the podcast. Okay. But like
what are we thinking number wise? Like 3 million? No, way more. Like 10 million?
I think more.
Like 25 million?
I don't know if it's that high, but more, significantly more than like 3 million.
Yes.
Okay.
So you think.
This is a person who's already worth $500 million.
You're thinking eight figures.
I am.
Okay.
And you've also got to pay every single person on the dais, I think.
Now, obviously, you know, Nikki Glaser and Tom Segura are not making nearly as much money
as someone like Kevin Hart.
But I mean, think about Kevin Hart.
That's an incredibly successful person.
Maybe he's got an overall with Netflix.
I was going to say, isn't it just kind of in-house talent?
But that's a hard job.
That was a three-hour show that he basically emceed.
He's got to write material.
He's got to keep the show on its feet.
And he did a good job.
So I don't know. I think that's a really, really expensive show. That being said,
man, I bet it's super successful. I saw it was number one on Netflix last night.
If you could get a Tom Cruise to do something like that, insane gangbusters. I was trying to
think of somebody a little bit more removed from the day-to-day of movies. Tom Cruise in his own
way is extremely removed. Well, he's just active. But he's just parachuting.
Literally.
In London or like in the greater UK area.
Yeah.
That's all he's doing.
What about Al Pacino?
I mean, sure.
Should we put CR on the desk?
The thing about Al Pacino is that you do want like peers to roast someone.
And it's just like suddenly you're just at a convention of of people of a certain age oh it's a fair point which would be like interesting because they've got the good
stories and obviously like they don't care anymore but nikki glazer cooking al pacino is
that sounds great i don't i mean i guess okay uh i don't know it's a tough it's a tough one because
hollywood icons no longer expose themselves to these kinds of activities.
When in the Dean Martin days, this was more common.
Yeah.
Because it felt like everything was very literally fraternal.
And the kind of clubbiness that we had an access to was an exciting part of it.
Hollywood doesn't really operate this way anymore.
And when it does, they try to like, you know, like the pussy posse comes up.
That's like, hey, don't talk about that.
Oh, Leo would be good.
Leo would be very good.
That would be funny.
Leo would be very good.
Will never happen.
No.
Literally will never happen.
Good question, though.
What's next, Bob?
Next question comes from Rachel.
How does AMCA list or other similar movie subscriptions
factor into a film's box office total?
Let's just be clear that you inserted box office total
into what was just like $2 signs.
Right, I have to assume that it's box office total
that Rachel is talking about.
I've spent $125 this year, but I've seen 40 movies.
How do I factor into a movie's profit?
The AMC and the studios
are not terribly transparent about this.
This is a very interesting question.
I am a Stubbs member.
And so sometimes I do go see movies and I'm paying, I think what ultimately amounts to like $4 total relative to the number of movies I could go see in a given month, maybe even less.
It's like 25 bucks a month.
I can see three movies a week.
I can see them in premium formats.
So you can, it does cover imax yeah like i'm going to see apes again tonight the new kingdom of the apes movie
i was gonna go i was gonna go tomorrow okay that's fine i just can't go tomorrow you know
why i'm seeing oh are you yeah oh yeah okay so we'll see you Nevertheless, I'm seeing, so I'm seeing apes tonight in IMAX with stubs.
And you'd think, you know, that's, so if it's $25 a month, if I see in a four week month, three movies a week, 12 movies.
So I'm paying two bucks a movie, basically $2 and 10 cents a movie.
But that's not how they're counting it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So AMC is negotiating with the studio to license the movie to show it,
and then splitting profits from the ticket sales.
But also, when you have a subscription program,
you basically need to pre-negotiate a determined fee.
Let's just say, the number I've seen speculated about online is $8.
That $8 for every ticket goes to the studios on a pre-negotiated.
But that's not represented in the box office total.
I would imagine that the box office total is representing a full ticket price.
That's what I would assume as well based on the research that I did this morning.
But it's not widely available information.
Right.
So this actually raises...
And also, I assume it's changing all the time.
Completely.
And every different subscription theater chains have different pricing,
and some get more, some get less.
AMC represents a bigger bulk of the business,
so maybe they get a smaller number that they get to negotiate against the studios.
The thing that this is...
The reason this is interesting to me is not just because I go to a lot of movies
and we talk about box office on the show sometimes.
It's just how pointless the discussion of box office is when you really consider all of
the contingent factors. So one, it's always compared to budget. We will never know the
budgets of these movies. Whatever is reported to you is either a lie or inaccurate because the
studio is either trying to keep that number too low or high enough to be representative of the kinds of films
that they're willing to make in certain spaces.
It's not accounting necessarily for marketing P&A.
It's also, when you're totaling the box office,
they're never accounting for PVOD.
And now there's so many movies that come out,
they're in theaters for 17 days or 28 days,
and then they're probably making some anywhere from
120th to one-fifth of their money streaming at home and we never we don't add that up to the
total but that's effectively box office revenue as evidenced by the conversation we had earlier
this week on the show where we're like this is the way that people watch movies now they spent
1999 on a movie and when it comes to their house in three weeks because they didn't want to take
their five kids to the movie theater or they just watch it on amazon
prime and you know or they just stream it order more stuff right which is i guess in a way an
additional kind of box office you know the same way that movie theaters are using concessions yeah
to make their money i mean movie theaters don't make their money on showing movies they make
their money on everything else in the movie theater that people are spending money on.
So, I don't know.
It's an interesting question that got me thinking a little bit about the exercise that we were doing last week.
Because the industry needs so many different things to happen to make this a solvent business.
And it's hard to do that.
And also, different parts of the industry need different things.
And that box office number and what and how Stubbs in particular contributes to AMCs.
Accounting means more, means a different thing for their business than it does for like Universal.
Right.
Or something.
And it affects how those two entities interact with each other and how they set prices and what's available or, you know, but.
I think Universal is getting their full dollar regardless on something like that. those two entities interact with each other and how they set prices and what's available or, you know, but.
I think Universal is getting their full dollar regardless on something like that,
but this AMC is not. And so if they're subsidizing ticket sales in that way,
and then when you think about it, it's like, okay, so the movie made actually less money when you account for the fact that somebody only spent quote unquote $8 or whatever that
pre-negotiated. Anyway, it's a fascinating little wrinkle in the way that this industry is very quietly
and slowly collapsing from within.
You really like your membership, though.
You use it.
It's just a great deal.
I mean, if you like going to the movies,
if you have a good AMC near you,
it's illogical to not have it
because you go to two movies a month
and it's worth it, period.
So I rep for it.
I mean, AMC is a complicated company and they've done some pretty dumb shit over the years.
But you're just like always proudly in the Stubbs line, even if it's longer than the
other line.
I wouldn't say that, but I would say that the...
Which it often is here in Los Angeles.
The efficacy of the Stubbs line, they need some work.
They could use your mind.
Thank you so much. Thanks. I know you didn't mean that as a compliment but i'm accepting it i did
okay uh okay what's next that was another question that i don't think made it into this mailbag list
that i put together but it was about why don't why isn't box office basically just amount of
tickets sold and i think that relates interestingly to the conversation that you guys just had in
response to this question so why why isn't it that?
I don't remember who asked that.
I apologize.
Because they don't want you to know the answer.
It's the same reason that Netflix isn't telling you how many people actually complete, you know, whatever series they're excited about.
This is a way for them to...
They don't want you to have information.
It means there are less ways to make money off of you.
I should have like
a little tinfoil hat
that I can put on.
I mean, you actually should
like ready at all times
to just pull out
from under the desk.
You know, I...
But that's not tinfoil.
That's true.
But there's some meaningful data.
Like, I think the only three
of the 10 highest grossing movies
of all time
adjusted for inflation
have been released
in the last 30 years.
Like, it's not...
It would be very... It would look very bad for the preeminence of movies
if you showed that tickets sold as a data point.
But they should.
They do.
I mean, that's what they did for years with albums sold in the music industry.
It's what they do for television for how many people have watched a show.
Movies are just putting top dollar in front.
How many billions?
What's your favorite billion dollar grocer? Barbie. Oh, yeah. Yeah. All right. Remember that? Titanic?
I do like Titanic. Do you prefer Barbie to Titanic? I mean, I haven't lived with it for as
long. It hasn't been in my life, but I do think Barbie is pretty delightful. Like, I don't know
what everyone's problem is. I mean, I do, but I don't have time to go into it, you know, but I do think Barbie's pretty delightful. Like, I don't know what everyone's problem is.
I mean, I do, but I don't have time to go into it,
you know, and I'm not Hillary Clinton.
So let's keep it moving.
Some people were asking for us to like release the old tapes
from before we were doing video of your Hillary rant.
I don't think we can do that,
but I would have loved to have been able to see that.
I've got them in storage, you know, surrounded by dry ice.
The next question, Sean directly asked me to put this in the mailbag on his Twitter account.
This comes from Mac.
With the announcement of Survivor 50 being an all-returnee season, curious to see who Sean wants to see return.
I don't really care about returnees that much.
I do like all-star seasons. I'm not choosy about who gets cast in the show.
I think Jesse from a couple of years back was like one of the best contestants they've had in a while.
And his elimination was painful for me.
But aside from him, I don't care that much.
That being said, I do want to talk about Survivor very quickly.
You and I have never really...
I'm Googling Jesse Survivor right now.
Jesse Lopez, yeah.
Jesse Lopez, great.
He has an incredible story.
Only 26,000 followers on Instagram.
So let's try to bump that up.
He got okie-doked a little bit at the end of his season,
but he played very well.
And he reminded me of like some of the best players.
I think Survivor is in a real free fall right now.
Oh boy.
This has been my favorite TV show for 20 years,
aside from Jeopardy.
And I've been very loyal to it.
I've watched every season since I
graduated college. I understand why they're struggling because they've basically done
every possible permutation of this reality competition TV show that they possibly can
to keep it afloat. But man, they're changing the rules every episode. They're changing the
expectations for the players. And they've done something that is happening on a lot of TV shows
like this that I think you will understand even though you don't watch shows like this they used to thrive on
casting villains and building narratives around characters that you love to hate or that the other
contestants love to battle and now we're in a much nicer era of our culture we're in a safer
kinder era and so they don't cast villains anymore in fact they have almost publicly said we don't
cast villains anymore so now it's just have almost publicly said we don't cast villains anymore.
So now it's just about building community
and healing and stuff.
That sucks.
It's just like people being nice to each other.
Are you saying that Survivor got ruined by woke?
Is that what you're trying to say?
No, Survivor got ruined by therapy,
which is different.
It's more that.
Therapy culture is ruining all art forms,
high and low.
Because Survivor has always been a diverse show.
It's sort of the point of the show.
It's more that there is an energy
that they're trying to communicate
about how meaningful this experience
can be to people's souls
that I think is crap.
Like, it's actually the opposite.
It's people physically battling each other
for a million dollars.
It is the core tenet of capitalism.
Like, it is,
and you have to accept that it is kind of evil
as a premise.
And the show wants to convince you that it's decent. I don't care that it's evil. I kind to accept that it is kind of evil as a premise and the show wants to convince
you that it's decent i don't care that it's evil i i kind of like that it's evil i kind of think
it shows people's real selves in these competitive environments so for now there's like an existential
contradiction at the heart of the show because they're like no no no no but this is we're all
you know mending past traumas through competing for a million dollars
by punching people.
There's so much of that
in the narrativizing of the show.
Truly, we should just ban
the word trauma from, like, all...
You know I'm with you.
From TV and film.
You can find other ways to say it,
and I hope that everyone
will address and heal
from their trauma.
It's great for, like,
day-to-day lives.
It's bad for art
and entertainment.
I think a dollop of it would be fine on a show like this.
But for it to be the pervasive feeling of every episode is annoying.
The other thing too is they're only casting people who are super fans now.
And so they know the whole history of the show and they're constantly out thinking themselves.
And so they know every permutation of every move.
And then so they're trying to land on the least predictable move
and inherently
it leads to a lot
of bad gameplay
and I love watching
the gameplay on the show.
This is also like how
the other thing
that's ruined the world
is fan culture
because it's just like
you have to be
the number one
full expert
life devoted to it
to be able to enjoy it
in any way.
You nailed it.
It is an extension
of that for sure.
So anyway,
it's a show that I love. I really appreciate what an amazing job they've done with it in any way. You nailed it. It is an extension of that for sure. So anyway, it's a show that I love.
I really appreciate what an amazing job they've done with it over the years.
It's in a bad spot.
I'm actually actively frustrated every week
and it used to be myself.
It used to be the thing where it's like,
I'm not at work.
I'm not watching a movie for work.
This is something my wife and I have done together
for two decades.
And it's now actively pissing me off.
So thank you for letting me get it off my chest.
I agree. Thanks, Gavel. Okay. I wish I had a ga off. So thank you for letting me get it off my chest. I agree.
Thanks, Gavel.
Okay.
I wish I had a gavel.
Thank you, Amanda.
Can we get one?
We're just so many more items that we're adding to the list for you.
Yeah, props.
Next question comes from Emily.
How do you guys think the Paramount sale or not sale
will affect the franchises involved,
such as Mission Impossible, Transformers, etc.?
We haven't talked to Paramount at all.
Do you have any perspective on this?
My perspective is just like, make a decision, you know? I understand that Hollywood is first
and foremost a business and that this is a major business transaction that will change
how the town works that's like happening in front of us with
interesting characters and a lot of people dramatically leaking to you know so it's good
business goss I get it but I first of all it's taking forever like truly sorry make a decision
and then well I guess the problem is like she's made one decision her board has made another
um you know it's always the board board. That's my daily struggle.
But I have gotten depressed reading about it because it is like such a reminder that nothing
about like the quality of Mission Impossible or even, dare I say, Transformers, but I'm trying
to be nice to you today. I don't know why. I actually do know why. It's because I need you
to pay for my parking so I can get out of the lot because i have a wallet and you do not i forgot my wallet so i literally cannot leave this building unless sean
helps me um anyway such power well again you know it all comes back to the money and this has just
been like a deeply just boring turned depressing reminder of like, oh, like no one actually cares about movies. It's this is all just money pieces on a money chessboard.
Yeah.
If you are not a listener of the Town podcast
where they've been covering this very well,
Matt Bellany knows this stuff inside and out.
There are effectively two significant bidders
for the Paramount studio and everything that comes with it.
One of them is Skydance and David Ellison.
And Chris Ryan. And Chris Ryan Skydance and David Ellison. And Chris Ryan.
And Chris Ryan's boy, David Ellison.
They are the producers of the Mission Impossible franchise.
They're the producers of a lot of the Terminator films.
They take on a lot of big tentpole projects.
They're kind of similar to like Legendary, which is, you know, has Godzilla versus Kong and has Dune.
And Legendary is also involved on the other side with a separate deal which is an Apollo
which is a sort of like a massive money market like hedge fund and their partnership with Sony
and Legendary so you've got one big legacy studio effectively bidding against one kind of
independent billionaire right partner obviously Larry Ellison is David Ellison's
father. He's one of the richest men in the universe. He's obviously backstopping that offer.
I think people who like movies are rooting for the Skydance proposal to win, not because I care
about how much money Shari Redstone makes. I really don't care. I don't care about the board.
I'm not interested in any of that stuff. That's not really my, that's not, I'm just like you.
I'm like, what's it going to mean for the movies?
If they get bought by Sony, it's just one less studio.
Yeah.
And that's bad.
Fewer jobs.
It's already bad.
Yeah, no, it's already bad.
Tons of people are going to lose their jobs.
Fewer movies, fewer quality movies.
I don't know if David Ellison is the right person to manage a major movie studio or series of television channels.
At some point, it is just sort of like you need someone with unlimited resources.
Yeah.
Who's willing to win some and lose some.
He likes movies.
He wouldn't be in this business if he didn't like making these movies.
And I love the Mission Impossible movies.
So that's a check plus.
No, Skydance hasn't always done great.
They've made some stinkers in their day.
But you're right. The money made some stinkers in their day. But I, you're right.
The money's going to talk in either direction.
And what's it going to mean for Mission Impossible if it goes to Sony?
What will it mean for Transformers?
I don't know.
We're in kind of a transitional moment.
Tell me.
Let's dive in.
I'm opening it for you.
We're in a transitional, formational moment.
Okay.
Where did we last see the Transformers?
What were they up to?
New York City
in the 1990s.
Oh, that's cool.
And there was a kind
of heist movie
that then went to Cybertron
and there was like
a big battle
between all the robots
as there always is.
Is Cybertron
a place or a robot?
Cybertron is their planet.
Oh, okay.
They're confined
to one planet?
Well, no.
They come to Earth. earth okay and then they
they get involved in uh the moon landing and the Kennedy assassination and I do remember that one
yeah Transformers films are super super good and normal um they the last one was a bit of a
disappointment at the box office was it a disappointment to you no I enjoyed it you did
a solo podcast yeah it was bad but I liked it that's great you? No, I enjoyed it. You did a solo podcast about it. It was bad, but I liked it.
That's great.
You know?
You have those.
Of course I do.
Yeah.
The next Transformers film is animated.
It's coming out in September.
It's called Transformers 1.
Okay.
Chris Hemsworth and Brian Tyree Henry are doing the voices.
I don't think a live-action Transformers movie has been greenlit to come after that.
So, who knows?
Maybe they're waiting for the sale.
We'll see.
Still a valuable property.
I need Michael Bay to come home.
I need him to come home
to his Transformers
where he belongs.
Focus on that
for a little while
then make Ambulance 2.
That sounds like
a wonderful future for you.
It's all possible
at David Ellison's
Skydance Paramount.
Ambulance 2 colon Chaser.
And it's about a guy who drinks a lot of vodka
while driving an ambulance.
It's a scary movie.
How about Ambulance 2 colon fire truck?
Like what else comes when you call the ambulance?
Just like we could,
this is a whole IP that we could flesh out here.
It's a good call.
Yeah.
Ambulance colon helicopter.
I like it.
Sure.
Ambulance colon drone.
You guys are just like really,
like it's like
Knox Barron
is running a movie studio
right now
and you're just pitching
right to him.
Ambulance colon cement mixer?
Ambulance colon dump truck?
I'm in.
That's good.
I'm in on that.
That's cool.
Next question
comes from Rembert.
Should we get back
to films that end with a dramatic freeze frame?
Is that what's missing from this age of cinema?
Yes.
And they should all be of Rembert's face.
Yeah.
Just zoomed right in.
Can I just say, so this is from, from our Rembert.
Um, Rembert Brown.
And it's just, it's really nice to know that at least one friend of mine reads one of these
things once in a while, you know?
I think...
Thank you, Rembert.
I love you.
I hope you're well.
I love Rem.
Where's Rem?
I don't know.
Rem, you know, Rem worked on the forthcoming Clipped, the Clippers series on FX.
Yes, I did know that.
Which is very exciting.
So I am not legally allowed to make any comments about whether that show is good or bad, but I bet it will be amazing.
That's what I'm saying.
I love Freeze Frame.
It is extremely 1987.
Yeah.
But if a contemporary movie decided to do it, I would approve.
I can't even think of a...
I guess the last movie that comes to mind is Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.
I believe Death Proof ended on a Freeze Frame where they all did the high five together at the center.
Cool. I believe Death Proof ended on a freeze frame where they all did the high five together at the center. This isn't a movie, but one of the last seasons of Girls, remember, ended with Hannah, a.k.a. Lena Dunham, doing the freeze frame towards the camera.
No one?
Anyone?
Can't recall.
I am currently in season six of Girls right now.
Jack Sanders is repping for Girls season nine.
I'm currently in season six, which right now jack sanders is repping for girls season nine um i'm currently in season six which is the final season so maybe you just potentially spoiled the last shot of it
for me but that's okay i'm 10 years late no i actually didn't spoil the last shot the last shot
you and i will have a personal conference about when you get to it um season six for the first
time yeah yeah how's girls been for you um do you feel like it was like
you understand us better i felt like i kind of understood that whole oeuvre of art pretty well
at the time even though i wasn't watching it because there was just so much discourse about
it when i was in college is when it was kind of like wrapping up or like peeking and then wrapping
up so i was just hearing a lot of discourse and reading a lot about it, but not really participating.
I was kind of sitting that one out for a while.
You know, I had to let myself mature a little bit first.
The series finale,
which I believe you talked about on Stick the Landing.
I did.
Of Girls is deeply unfortunate, in my opinion.
Yeah, spoiler alert for that podcast.
I did not think that it stuck the landing.
But Bobby, maybe you will.
Excellent show.
Honestly, incredible zag.
If you think it's beautiful, I'll re-record a podcast with you.
And we'll talk about it, okay?
Okay, great.
That sounds like a great opportunity.
The third hour right there.
I wonder...
The third hour written all over it.
Like, I just...
What do you think happens based on what we're talking about?
Because in a million years, I don't think you can actually guess what the final shot is.
I don't know.
Thanos comes down and kills half of the cast.
That would be sick.
I mean, that would make more sense.
But anyway, I'm looking forward
to following up with you, Bobby.
We'll dialogue offline.
Next question comes from Ryan.
I love this question.
Curious what everyone's go-to YouTube movie clip is.
For example, mine is the ending of Before Sunset
or the defined
dancing clip from wally the first thing that came to my mind was the um philip seymour hoffman
rant from charlie wilson's war it's a great one which you pointed out to me when we did the philip
seymour hoffman hall of fame like it did coincide kind of with the rise of of youtube so i i think
that part of the reason that made the hall
of fame is because we all just watch it i spent the last three years learning finnish and i'm
never ever sick at sea uh that's a good one the one that immediately popped to mind for me was
darlene farron worked at the vallejo house of pancakes on the corner of tennessee and carol
arthur lee allen lived in his mother's basement on Fresno Street. Door to door that is less than 50 yards.
Is that true?
I've walked it.
From Zodiac?
That's like hair standing up on my arms when I watch that scene.
So just to feel alive, you know, just to feel in the palm of Fincher's hands, you know.
Finch man, God bless him.
Beautiful stuff.
It's a good one.
I guess there are a lot of social network scenes that would also qualify for this.
The opening scene.
The whole movie.
Yeah, it'll be because you're an asshole.
Yeah.
But, you know, that one kind of stands alone.
I'm 6'5", 220, and there's two of me.
Yeah.
Which you'll never take away from me.
When I was a kid, it was just rewinding the VHS copy of You Can't Handle the Truth.
That was...
Oh, okay.
That was memorizing that
and being a dork about that.
And then 35 years later,
just talking about how cool it is.
I guess mine was rewinding the VHS
of Sound of Music
through various musical numbers.
Sounds terrible.
And now you just do that on YouTube.
It's a beautiful movie.
Is it?
Yeah.
I mean, you're an imbecile.
Okay.
Few Good Men truly is the dead center of our triple Venn diagram.
That is all three of us that have that in our top four.
So what is yours, Bob?
Mine is the Ryan Gosling pitch to Carell and Jeremy Strong.
Jared Bennett?
Yeah, when he's taking the Jenga blocks and chucking them in the trash can.
That's a good one.
When he brings his quant.
Yeah.
Exactly.
It's good stuff.
It's so great.
It's so great.
Some of Ryan Gosling's
best stuff.
And what's so beautiful
about that is that
then I don't need to watch
the rest of that movie.
I got everything I need
right there from that scene.
Are you saying you have
a moral opposition
to the film The Big Short?
Not a moral opposition.
It's just that I feel like
I get the whole essence.
And that's what
going back to YouTube for movie clips to me is for,
is you get the whole essence of what the movie is about,
but you maybe don't want to fire up this movie,
this two hour movie twice a month.
I still have like a,
a bigger emotional dedication to trailers that I love.
I prefer a trailer that speaks to the power of the movie to capture what you're talking about more so than a scene, honestly, because the scene just makes me want to watch the movie.
A trailer just gets me.
It almost like gratifies my desire to remember how I felt seeing it.
That's beautiful.
Okay, thank you.
What's next?
Next question comes from Jason.
Does this year's box office mean we are going to get more smaller, leaner films, or will studios double down on massive budgets and IP-driven stories?
I feel like we get this question in every single mailbag,
and it's just a lot of wishful thinking from me.
I mean, Jason, I don't ever think we're going to get smaller, leaner films.
No.
You know?
I hate to break it to you.
The biggest movie of the year is Dune Part 2.
What are you talking about, dog?
No.
I think you're just going to get fewer movies, period.
Yeah.
They're trying to find ways to eventize as many movies as possible so that they can make the maximum profit, which is cool.
It doesn't mean that small movies are going away.
They're not going away.
They're not going to make more.
We need more $18 million movies.
No one's saying that.
Except for us.
We say it.
Yeah.
I'll say it until I die.
We are not in charge of the money. And I'll say it till i die you're not in charge of
the money and i don't even have my wallet so i'm in charge of your money today in the office
otherwise yes i feel like maybe we should just let this continue rolling the camera should follow
you guys out to the parking garage so do you we're making social content on a regular basis here do
you have a lunch plan i told you i have five hours no no i know but it's back to back to back no you
literally speak with adam neiman immediately after we're done i know but you okay how am i a lunch plan? I told you I have five hours of recording today. It's back to back to back. I'm literally speaking
with Adam Neiman
immediately after we're
done here.
I know, but you,
okay.
How am I going to get
out then?
I don't know.
We'll have to figure
something out.
Okay.
God damn it.
Am I letting you
borrow a credit card?
Would I dare lend you
a credit card?
That would be fine.
I feel like I'm giving
it to my teenage daughter.
This feels very dangerous.
Okay, honey, be careful
in Nordstrom.
It was more just like
we can go to the bagel truck together.
And you can get some sustenance.
Oh, you want to try to have a meal with me.
Well, as you know, that's not something I'm good at.
It's a to-go.
But you have so many recordings.
Imagine.
You actually do need.
Picture this.
Picture this.
We go to Yeasty Boys together.
We get a bagel sandwich together.
We don't have to eat it together.
I eat it here.
Yeah.
And then I have to record for four more hours.
How do I feel having eaten a bagel sandwich?
I have been thinking about the line from the fall guy of like, you need glucose for cognitive function.
Yeah.
Like every day, pretty much in respect to you.
Look at how well I've been doing though with my method.
Okay.
SF method.
It's been working.
Okay.
I'm stronger than ever.
I was, I had a physical yesterday. Got the blood work back this morning. We're been working. Okay. I'm stronger than ever. I had a physical yesterday.
Got the blood work back this morning.
We're all green, baby.
No reds.
You just told me you sustained an injury while walking your daughter to work today.
Right.
Yeah, I did.
Or to school, rather.
I did sustain an injury.
Well, I mean, I'm...
Your spine will never recover from 40X.
So, it's like like that's fine but i'm somehow at my absolute peak and my
absolute lowest at the same time yeah it's remarkable the human body and the human mind
they don't agree okay would you describe it as sort of a we're so we're so back it's so
over dynamic for your body that's fair to say i think that is fair to say. I wish we were getting more $18 million movies.
God damn it.
The hell.
What's next?
Next question comes from Soundgarden.
How do y'all feel about the current trend of studios pushing out
way more anniversary re-releases or themed repertory screenings at major chains?
Does this help or hurt small rep theaters?
Is it like Jim Soundgarden?
What's this person's name?
Allison Soundgarden? I don't really know. That's the like Jim Soundgarden? What's this person's name? Allison Soundgarden?
I don't really know.
That's the display,
Soundgarden.
Usually when I put
a display name
that's not a real name
in there,
it's because the at name
is even crazier.
This is just like
the simplest version
of how I could have read
that person's name
on the pod.
I'm sure you noticed
that over the weekend,
I think two or three
of the top ten movies
in the box office
were movies that came out
25 or 30 or 50 years ago.
One of them was Phantom Menace. One of them was Phantom Menace.
One of them was Phantom Menace.
Phantom Menace did quite well
in re-release.
You went.
You went in 40X.
Right.
What'd you think?
Dressed as Darth Maul.
This is the,
right,
he's the guy with the red dots,
right?
Uh-huh.
Yes.
Yeah.
And this is also the one
with Jar Jar Binks.
Correct.
Well,
he's in all three of the
prequels.
Oh, he is?
Yeah.
He doesn't get killed?
He becomes a senator in one of the later ones is yeah he doesn't get he becomes a senator
in one of the later ones that's a true story are you still haven't seen that movie phantom
menace is pretty bad but it's also pretty good okay kind of a transformer situation you know
just feel like it doesn't work and yet i would love to watch the final 20 minutes many times
that it it's nice that people like it and it's nice that people like going to the movies,
which is sort of my answer to this question.
I do think that there is a difference
between the type of person
who's going to see Phantom Menace in re-release
and who's checking out Scarface
on a Tuesday night at a rep theater or whatever.
I agree.
But encouraging the habit of going to the movies to see something,
I think is a tide that lifts all boats.
I agree.
I think it's on people's minds because these films seem to be doing well.
But the truth is that studios have been doing this for 100 years.
Anniversary screenings of movies have been happening.
Re-releases of significant releases have been happening
since probably the first 10-year anniversary
of a box office hit.
Yeah.
So you'll see movies like
The Sound of Music
or Gone with the Wind
or Star Wars
or The Godfather
or The Conversation.
You know, like,
just big movies
from movie history
find their way
into movie theaters
all the time.
Because there are
so few new releases this year
because of the strikes,
I think they have more prominence
than they usually do. This is sort of paired with the rep screening question that this year because of the strikes, I think they have more prominence than they usually do.
This is sort of paired with the rep screening question that we have later in the pod,
and we can hold that.
But that is a little bit different to me, as you said, than what this is.
This is almost like studio mandated or like Fathom events or theater chain mandated,
as opposed to all of the incredible hundreds or thousands of programmers
at small theaters around the country who are just like picking cool old movies to run, which is a little different than what
this is.
What's next, Bob?
Next question comes from Max.
Speaking of repertory theaters, I'd love to hear a ranking or just discussion of your
favorite rep theaters, either here in LA or anywhere in the world, and what you guys are
looking for in a great theater, great programming lineups, theater quality, location, et cetera.
You want me to just do this?
Just go through it?
I mean, I have opinions, but I think you have an international list. programming lineups, theater quality, location, etc. You want me to just do this? Just go through it?
I mean, I have opinions, but I think you have an international list.
I certainly don't have that.
Oh, wow.
Well, there's the Cinematek in Mexico City, the Cinematek in Paris.
Those are both incredible places to go see movies outside of the country. Beyond that, I mean, obviously, we just did an event at the Prince Charles Cinema last year in London,
which was amazing, and that's a really cool theater.
Those are the only independent ones I think I could, like, credibly rep for that I've spent a lot of time in.
I mean, the BFI in London is amazing.
That's a great, great, great space.
As far as LA goes, man, it is high time.
It's an awesome time if you like going to rep screenings.
Between the three American Cinemat american cinema tech theaters you've got
the arrow on the west side you've got the egyptian just reopened and you've got the los
filos three all the programming there is dynamite so good you've got the two quentin tarantino
screens now you've got the new beverly of course legendary like some of the best programming
anywhere some of the most like idiosyncratic so i went to the first half of a double of obscure
70s movies at the New Beverly,
one of which was called Drive-In,
which was sort of like
if American Graffiti took place in Texas in the 70s,
which was a really cool, fun movie
that I saw with some friends, some ringer friends.
And so New Bev is amazing.
The recently reopened The Vista is also amazing.
They're showing mostly new movies on 35,
but they have a small room
where they show 16 millimeter prints.
Our beloved Vidiot's,
which is, you know,
over in the Eagle Rock,
Mount Washington, Highland Park area,
which has only opened a year now.
We just saw a press screening there.
Which was incredible.
Please, please,
if anyone listening
is in charge of press screenings
of any movie anywhere,
put it at Vidiot's
and I will come see your movie. Yeah. I mean, there are a ton more repertory theaters in los angeles those are the
ones that i spend the most time at um i mean braindead on fairfax is a real braindead studios
is a really good one gosh i'm trying to think more off the top of my head um the academy is
doing a lot of them as well amazing programming at the academy yeah there's just so many places
to go see good movies and the thing that is so exciting
is just like
seeing pretty full houses
on Tuesday nights
for obscure films
is great.
LA is just so vibrant
when it comes to this stuff.
Did you know they do
Cinespia
inside the Rose Bowl now?
I have.
I haven't been there
since they did it.
I haven't been either
but I was just like
I saw a poster the other day.
Almost famous
over Memorial Day
inside the Rose Bowl.
Interesting.
Cinespia when I first moved to Los Angeles, was at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery.
And it was projected out.
It was outdoor screening.
So Fridays and Saturday nights.
And it was like rock concerts.
CR and I and our partners saw the film Aliens.
Yeah, I've heard tell of this one.
And let me tell you, Eileen fell asleep in 15 minutes.
Not me. Drank two bottles of wine and was vibing. I'm just having the tell of this one. And let me tell you, Eileen fell asleep in 15 minutes. I know. Not me.
Drank two bottles of wine and was vibing.
I'm just having the time of my life.
We love rep screenings.
It's a good time.
I mean, I can't say...
New York, similarly, as I understand it, is really, really thriving when it comes to this.
Bobby, I know you're at a lot of screenings like this, too.
Yes.
I'm usually at a rep screening at least one or two times a week.
Metrograph in the Lower East Side is a hugely popular scene for people in the movie world. As well as just film fans.
They have great programming there.
Excellent popcorn.
Best movie theater popcorn out there.
It's not suffering from this big chain issue where the popcorn is stale and bad.
Which I'd like to call out AMC theaters. Not doing well enough in the popcorn is stale and bad yeah i'd like to call out amc theaters not doing
well enough their popcorn is in here you're right okay um film forum which they show a lot of like
kind of more obscure older films like a lot of black and white stuff a lot of international stuff
um the angelica on houston is an institution they show old stuff and new stuff and then film at
lincoln center obviously which like they put on the new york film festival they they should show
a ton of stuff that you just really can't see in many places across the world.
And I see a lot of movies there as well.
So it's a great time to be a fan of repertory screenings.
It's really just like, for me, it's just, do I want to see this movie in a theater?
So much that I will go out of my house and get on the subway for an hour.
And frankly, they are curating
in a way that is worthwhile to me to not just watch it you know at home on Criterion I think
that's the whole game is do you want to see this movie projected for me personally at this stage
of my life it's mostly things that I haven't seen that I'm curious about doing but I understand that
I think the reason for a lot of the success is either young people going to see older movies
they've never seen before or people who
want something right some people right wanting something that is like a comfort to them and
seeing it in a new way well as i said when i introduced the talent to mr ripley at the arrow
um it was a lot of people who had were seeing the movie full stop for the first time but it
was the first time that i had seen it projected the first time i'd seen it with a crowd and you
know that philip seymymour Hoffman's entrance,
just everyone absolutely lost it
in that seeing it,
seeing everyone together
collectively crack up
was very fun and memorable.
Hopefully I can,
you and I can introduce
some more movies this year.
Yeah, that would be great.
There was a call
for a big picture tour.
I'm not really going to promise
a big picture tour
because I don't think
that's going to happen
anytime soon
but
when we do do it
I only want to do it
at movie houses
like what I want to do
is go to the music box
show a movie
and then talk
that is like
that's the most fun
version of doing a tour
what do you think about that?
I'm game
I mean we had a great time
in London doing that
I had a great time
at the Arrow
you know
it would be great
if there was like
a cool bar next door
to the movie theater for afterwards, but
we can look into that. Okay. Okay, Bob,
what's the next question? You want to let people know that
you only intend to just show Skin of Meringue
every time. And no talk.
We're just showing the film. Like there's no content
really. It's just the big picture presents Skin of Meringue
with CR with ADR.
Yeah, ADR. Exactly. We're all
on the same wavelength great uh next question
comes from aaron comedic actor doing a serious role or a dramatic actor doing a comedic role
which is more entertaining and which is harder what do you think i think the answer to both
is dramatic actor doing a comedic role that's more entertaining and is harder yes oh because
you don't believe acting is real no i do believe that act well that's true i sort is harder. Yes. Oh, because you don't believe acting is real?
No, I do believe that acting... Well, that's true.
I sort of don't.
But I think that comedic acting is very difficult.
And it's hard.
And not everybody has the gift.
And not everybody has the timing.
But also, people who are very talented,
people who have studied on the...
Like, true actors can sometimes really
pull out the stops in a comedic role think of al pacino doing duncacino in jack and jill
that's great acting on the flip side i i the the skills aren't transferable both ways and
sometimes there are comedic actors who get cast in dramatic roles.
And I'm just not buying it.
And maybe that's a little...
Name names.
Like Kristen Wiig's entire serious drama career.
Why is Kristen Wiig in The Martian?
What's she doing?
You know?
I think that's an energy check.
I think she brings a different energy to the movie.
Okay.
That they're attempting to seed.
Because that's kind of a comedy, that movie. Sort of. Donald Glover's in seed. Because that's like, that's kind of a comedy,
that movie.
Sort of.
Donald Glover's in it.
But she's like not,
it's confusing.
I think you have a little bit
of wig blindness.
I do have a tiny bit
of wig blindness.
I love wig.
I've been a huge wig guy
for a long time.
when she shows up
with Will Ferrell
at any awards show,
it's hilarious.
But in the drama roles,
I'm a little like,
no, no, no, no,
you're Kristen Wiig. Yeah, I mean, there's obviously, for, I'm a little like, no, no, no, no, you're Kristen Wiig.
Yeah. I mean, there's obviously for a lot of male comedy stars, a rite of passage where they
want to do something more serious and be taken more seriously. Like when we were growing up,
Jim Carrey went through this with making The Truman Show and The Majestic and Man on the Moon.
Will Ferrell has gone through it. I think I'm trying to I mean Adam Sandler
obviously is kind of
pinging back and forth.
Yeah but he's good at it.
He is but sometimes
you get a spaceman
you know like spaceman
really didn't work like
it's cool that they try
that.
I mean sometimes with
everyone you get
something that doesn't
work.
Love the Sandman don't
get me wrong.
His Meyerowitz stories
he has on Cut Gems.
Yes.
Punch Drunk Love.
Yeah Punch Drunk Love. He's a a real one yes um I think in general I like seeing someone who we would
never expect trying to be funny actually being funny that's pretty rare though I mean there's
just not there aren't enough funny people in the world yeah there's not enough funny in the world
so anytime anyone can actually do it I'm i'm thrilled that's like you
just gave the opening monologue at a comic relief 1997 there's not enough laughter in the world
there's not enough funny in this world just things aren't very funny do you think
laughter cures pain oh i don't know i don't do we have to get theoretical i'm not interested
specific world conflicts as examples no we're not going to do that.
Next question.
Okay, the next question comes from Dylan.
Given what happened last weekend with the Drake and Kanye beef,
what's the best movie beef of all time?
There was no Kanye beef.
There was Kendrick beef.
Do we mean Kendrick?
Oh yeah, this is a typo.
Apologies.
Okay.
What's the best movie beef of all time?
Disc movies, cinematic battles of actors or directors versus peers.
So there was a good thread on Twitter about this that I'm just going to steal from whole thought that Will Sloan had going.
I don't really think that there are quote unquote like movie beefs where actors are like, fuck you, no, fuck you.
Like it doesn't work the same way that hip hop works.
But there are a lot of movies that are essentially diss movies.
Yeah.
Oh.
Yeah.
Like, you know,
in this thread he pointed out
that like Deconstructing Harry,
the Woody Allen movie,
is this direct diss at Philip Roth
because Philip Roth was close friends
with Mia Farrow, right,
as their relationship was coming apart.
And that's obviously,
that's a tangled web,
but that movie is so nasty
and so dyspeptic that it's obviously that's a tangled web but that movie is so nasty and so dyspeptic
that it's a it's a hell of a diss um there are there are a lot of examples of this over the
years how did you define this question i mean the difference between like a director writer
making the entire movie about someone versus actors who hate each other and refuse to be in scenes together.
And, you know, and that happens more on TV shows, but you can tell when people just don't want to be in the same frame.
It's two different things.
But in terms of just vicious movies about hating someone, the first thing that came
to mind was Irreconcilable Differences, which is sort of like the lost
Charles Shire, Nancy Meyers movie
that bears a striking resemblance
to Peter Bogdanovich and Polly Platt's marriage.
And then also somehow forecasts
certain events that might happen in their own lives.
Yes.
Would now probably be looked on as like a self-diss,
but in a weird way was actually about real people.
Harder movie to find, but it's really, really good.
Also very funny Sharon Stone performance in that movie
as a kind of Sybil Shepard stand-in.
Irreconcilable Differences was in this list.
One that I thought was really interesting
was While We're Young, the Baumbach movie,
which is perceived to be kind of a Joe Swanberg
diss, who is a former collaborator of
Greta Gerwig's. The Adam Driver
character in that movie has some Swanberg
energy, which I think, I mean, that's not been confirmed.
I mean, Heartburn is an interesting example of that.
Heartburn also is on the list.
Kind of a diss movie. Yeah, but it's like
a diss book about politics,
you know? It's not like movie on movie
violence. Do you think Bergman Island is a diss at Olivier Assay's?
A little bit.
Yeah.
That's a pretty good one.
She takes some shots.
This is a very fun, you know, Barton Fink is Clifford Odette's diss.
That idea of the diss movie is pretty entertaining.
Yeah.
Good question.
In terms of like in the media, there's a handful of stuff too.
Like Brian Cox's last five years
is just oh yeah i mean sure of the entire fire the best one of all time is john carpenter openly
dissing spielberg and lucas on in that video clip or he's just like nah they're not real i'm the
real one um from like 1982 like at the height of their all of their successes uh but you know you
never see that anymore nobody has ever yeah, that guy's movie sucks.
Yeah.
It's too expensive.
When was the last time that major directors went at each other?
It was like PTA, I guess, kind of,
like in the 90s was kind of throwing some shots out there.
Always been a rumor that PTA and Fincher despise each other.
I don't know how true that is.
But I believe it's been rumored that the cancer stuff in Fight Club,
PTA did not appreciate.
Don't know if that's true.
Next question comes from Matt. If you could only watch one actor's filmography for the rest of
your life, who would it be? I've been thinking a lot about this and think Matt Damon is an
incredible well-rounded pick given some of the cameos he has in random movies.
Is your favorite Matt Damon performance interstellar?
It's all the Jay and Silent Bob cameos. Those are good. Euro trip? That's a
banger. No, my answer for this is Harrison Ford. I feel like that, I mean, which is like in the
Matt Damon spirit, I guess, of it's well-rounded. There's a lot. I mean, obviously multiple
franchise movies, because sometimes you got to watch stuff with your kids or, you know,
sometimes you want to have fun
but then also
Witness and Working Girl
Morning Glory
super underrated rom-com
Presumed Innocent
you know
The Fugitive
like there's
there's a little bit
of everything
plus it's Harrison Ford
yeah
Return of the Jedi
sure
you'll be able to see that
for the first time
that'll be exciting
yeah
what else of his movies Random Hearts yeah why not Return of the Jedi. Sure. You'll be able to see that for the first time. That'll be exciting. Yeah.
What else?
Of his movies?
Random Hearts.
Yeah, why not?
But also, like, Apocalypse Now is also technically on this list. That's a good point.
And then also regarding Henry.
So, you know.
I feel my luck.
Thank you to Jeffrey Abrams, the screenwriter.
The Sabrina remake.
Clear and Present Danger.
The Sabrina remake?
You're not writing for that.
Come on. No, I'm not. But it's like, I don i don't know sometimes where are you at on kaneer these days where is where is kaneer
he appeared in the series finale of the tv show curb your enthusiasm as a prosecuting attorney
in the city of atlanta oh against larry david who is being tried for breaking the one of the
voting laws where you can't give people
glass of water if they're standing in line to vote iconic television show truly very special
really really funny uh Kinnear's okay I like uh Julia Ormond from Sabrina okay they didn't have
to remake they didn't have to remake Sabrina but it's just like to the to who asked the question
to Matt's point there's
there's a lot
depending on what mood
you're in
along with
a core
10 Stone Cold Classics
I'm with you
I think it's a good call
thank you
I
went with like
a slightly older stripe
and I was trying to decide
between
like a Jimmy Stewart
or a Henry Fonda
because then you just get
60 movies 30 of which are historicallyonda because then you just get 60 movies
30 of which are
historically significant
yeah
so you get
John Ford movies
and Alfred Hitchcock movies
and William Wyler movies
and Frank Capra movies
that was smart
so I think that works
you know like
the same is true
of like Meryl Streep
or Katharine Hepburn
like if you just pick
somebody who's been
in a lot of good movies
the other way to go
is to pick like
M. Emmett Walsh
who just passed away
and you just get
a character actor who's been in everything I mean M. Emmett Walsh, who just passed away. And you just get a character actor
who's been in everything.
I mean, M. Emmett Walsh is in
multiple Coen Brothers movies.
He's in Blade Runner.
He's in Romeo and Juliet.
He's in A Time to Kill.
He's in Catch Me If You Can.
He's in Fletch.
He's in so many movies over there.
He's in The Jerk.
He's in Slapshot, like Mikey and Nikki.
He's just been in 30 movies that you just love, but he's only in it for three minutes.
But that would be, I think, by the letter of the law following the questions arc.
So you could do that.
Sean always likes to play on a technicality.
I do.
I do.
That's how I win.
Okay.
What's next?
Next question comes from Drake.
I'm just going to go out on a limb and say this is not the same Drake thing.
OVO?
Probably the most meaningless question,
but the people have to know,
where does the intro and outro music come from?
It's a banger every time.
This is,
it's a real song.
It's called Orange Shirt.
It's by the band Discovery,
which was back in the 2000s,
kind of an offshoot of Rostam from Vampire Weekend.
And they only put out one record.
It's an incredible record.
And got to know Rostam a little bit,
got a little friendly with him,
asked him if we could do it, and he said yes.
Thank you, Rostam.
So thank you to Rostam.
Gabby asks,
I want to know about the most polarizing movies between you.
What's a movie Amanda loves that Sean can't stand and vice versa?
I know that there are a lot of movies that I like that you're like, fuck this.
Are there a lot of movies that you like?
Well, The Sound of Music just came up.
I don't really like that movie.
Yeah.
But there's not a lot of movies that you love that I'm like, no, it is against my soul to agree to this content.
Right, and also like, to some extent, that's the nature of the podcast,
is me just being like, you're a moron.
Like, that isn't that good.
The ones that, to me, feel the most polarizing are the,
and that's how Sean and I communicate.
That's our friendship.
The ones that feel the most polarizing are the ones
where it's like, I know it really means something to you,
and I'm like, yo, that did not,
that did, like, not come together.
But, like, I don't,
I actually don't want to be a jerk about it.
So, but that does happen sometimes
where something is like very like emotionally resonant
for one of us and the other person is like,
I'm going to be honest.
Just, it wasn't there.
I think, I'm sure people can hear us
when we're being gentle and not gentle.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
It really depends on the quality or importance of the project.
And that's like, I don't want to name those movies either because it's not some sort of, you know, I know I'm an asshole about pretty much everything, according to a lot of people.
But sometimes I don't have like a, sometimes just like something doesn't, that clearly was spent a lot of time and effort.
It like doesn't really connect for me or doesn't that clearly was spent a lot of time and effort it like doesn't
really connect for me or doesn't land and you don't want to like diss that person's effort and
art making but i think if uh i've thought about this a lot over the years and really evolved my
stance i think a lot of people i've gotten face-to-face feedback from people listening
to the show who are like why don't you just absolutely annihilate a movie sometimes and not every once in a while
I will do it but I don't really think it's not something that I like to do um I genuinely am
like spending all of my time with all of this stuff and doing this show because I just really
really like movies and want them to be successful and I don't really have a problem and when people
are like you're why you're a critic one of the reasons why I'm not I feel like I'm not a critic is because
I'm actually just rooting for the success of movies and it doesn't mean that I can't be critical
and we're certainly critical and try to like better understand intention execution when things
don't work saying here's why something doesn't work you're very you can you can say that um I
have high standards.
You have personal standards.
You know, like you have particular standards.
I do, but I also think I do just generally.
I'm like, if it doesn't work, it doesn't work.
I agree.
I agree.
You are more unsparing for sure.
But I don't, it's rare that I hate something.
Something needs to be deeply cynical and poorly made for me to hate it.
And it happens sometimes
Fast X comes along
sometimes where you're just like
I'm being treated
like a fucking asshole
and I don't appreciate it
and I don't like that
when Free Guy comes along
that's how I felt
I felt like I was being treated
like an asshole
and
so I will always stand up
for that kind of an experience
beyond that
like
I'm not the biggest
rom-com fan in the world,
but I have no problem with
a B- or C- plus rom-com.
I'm not going to be like,
God, what a...
Fuck you, Amanda.
What a waste of time.
How could you make me talk about this?
That's just not...
I'm not interested in that.
Okay.
Next question.
Homemade Pepsi.
What would result in a better movie?
One that were written by Amanda
according to her tastes
and directed by Sean or one written by Sean to his taste and directed by Amanda?
Both films are produced by me and star Chris Ryan.
Well, there's an inherent conundrum in this question.
Yeah.
Because I think, here's my gut reaction.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I think that I would do a better job of directing a film that you've written
yeah then you would have directing a film that i've written however i can write for chris ryan
i know in my soul that i can write something that will tap into his inner power i also was just
gonna say it like you actually could not direct anything that I wrote to my standards like I know you think you
could and like every decision which I just like that's absolutely wrong like no you didn't get
it at all no it's not this like it's not that you know so but I do think that I could direct
what you've written I think and especially again CR is what's bringing us together. Yeah. You know, like if CR is your muse,
he can also be my muse.
Okay.
And I can like get on the level,
you know,
in some ways it's what I'm doing every day.
But what if I just wrote Avengers colon Endgame 2?
You think you could execute on that?
Endgame 2.
So it's what,
well,
what,
tell me what happens.
End your game.
End your game.
Endest game.
Go on.
Keep telling me what happens.
Thanos comes back to life.
Okay.
And it's Chris Thanos. He's Chris's Thanos. And it's actually happens. Thanos comes back to life. Okay. And it's Chris Thanos?
Chris is Thanos.
And it's actually told through Thanos' perspective.
Okay.
It's actually Avengers colon.
So you're probably wondering how I got here.
I'm Thanos.
Great.
See?
Listen, we're already creating.
It's beautiful.
And just imagine Chris getting to continue on the legacy of one of his beloved actors,
Josh Brolin.
Once Chris is in it,
I think it's very positive
and we can meet on the...
It's Thanos and it's Guardians of the Galaxy
and they're best friends
and you're the director.
Right.
I also don't know...
I love Chris so much
and I truly...
There's no one who I'd rather see
starring in a movie,
a reality show,
a video series,
whatever.
I like, I, no one entertains me more than Chris, but I don't know if he could really
interpret my vision of the world, you know, as a performer, as a performer.
Yeah.
Okay.
I mean, you know, at least like one scene, someone's going to have to cook and then,
and then you've got wet chicken everywhere.
Oh, make food.
Yeah.
And it's like, fuck. it's a good point okay let's rethink this whole Chris trying to stretch you know and
I was like no no here's how you know because he's like starting his own version of Pilates
but it's you know we're not there yet we're getting there it's good that it's good that
they're trying are you implying that Chris is trying to start like a competitor exercise to Pilates right now?
No, no, no, not at all.
I think it's great.
And my husband is as well.
But like a really interesting thing, we were talking about this last night, is like, you know, part of whatever form of exercise you do in your late 30s and 40s to save your ailing body is just like learning how better to use your muscles or use
muscles that you never learned your entire life. And, you know, I don't want to gender essentialize,
but like most women go to an exercise class or two before the age of 40 and are like taught at
some point. And then all the boys just like roll up to 40 and they're like, oh, so that's what my
core is. So it's like a very fascinating time to be a middle-aged man learning
about your core is what I'm saying. I just want to say over on Macro Boys, which is the new official
title of the bulking pod that Craig and I came up with today, we are talking about engaging your
core and your posterior chain. We're talking about all that stuff, all the good stuff.
You know what? And that's why the children are the future, you know, because your generation
is starting young and you're going to be okay. And you know, and that's why the children are their future you know because your generation is starting young and you're
going to be
okay
and you know
old man river
over here
doesn't know
where his
core is
but my mind
is so strong
right now
I've engaged
this core
the brain stem
and the power
is just radiating
out of it
I feel so
powerful
next question
next question
comes from
Saul
has there been
a movie so far this year
that maybe wasn't totally on your radar
that was a pleasant surprise in theaters,
on streaming, or on VOD?
Just something that made you feel good
or excited as you watched it.
Good question that I forgot to prepare for.
There is one that's at the tip of my tongue
that is coming out today,
I think is on VOD today.
It's called Last Stop in Yuma County,
which is starring
my friend Jim Cummings
and is a really nifty movie.
I think Francesco Gallupi
is the filmmaker's name.
He was also just hired
to make an Evil Dead movie.
It's basically just like a
modernized Western
that takes place in a diner.
Everybody finds themselves
all stuck in a diner together
for an hour and a half.
That was pretty nifty. Imagine if you and I ever got to be stuck in aer together for an hour and a half that was pretty
imagine if you and i ever got to be stuck in a diner for an hour and a half and you
would actually eat something and also buy me you've been in diners with me
no that's true for hours at a time uh are you up on hundreds of beavers
are you up on it do you know what that is this is what i bring to the show
i have i have her tell but as soon as you said that number one that was funny delivery that
made me laugh good job but then also i just started thinking about the feral hogs. Do you remember the 30 to 40 feral hogs?
And what will you do?
That was peak COVID content.
But then we tried to go on vacation, remember?
They'd eaten up the ground.
The feral hogs had come.
That is something that happened.
This is incoherent to anyone at home that is trying to consume this show.
Tell me what. Hundreds of beavers. what are the beavers gonna do they are terrorizing this fellow so it is like
the feral hawks kind of like that here's how it's described a drunken applejack salesman must go
from zero to hero and become north america's greatest fur trapper by defeating hundreds of
beavers it's a silent movie that is like one part Buster Keaton
one part
Duck Hunt the video game
where it's literally
just a dude
for an hour and 40 minutes
battling beavers.
And it's
grown men
in beaver costumes.
It's ridiculous
absurd
and a lot of fun.
It's very very funny.
I highly recommend
people check it out.
It's better in a movie theater
than it would be at home
but I think people would really enjoy that too as far as recommendation
there's a shitload more like we didn't even mention hamaguchi's evil does not exist is out
oh yeah well that's because yeah i saw it last year that's an incredible movie amazing movie
that movie and and also enough people should see about it because i would like to talk about the
ending yeah i should revisit it we probably need to give it like a month or so to talk about it
but fascinating i you said actually when you saw it
you were like
I'm not sure I totally
understand it
I feel similarly
like I'd like to kind of
watch it again
but also one of the best
scores of like the last
beautiful fascinating movie
this is the director
of Drive My Cars
follow up to that film
but that's a really
really good movie
that's out right now
if you have access to it
did they ever make
the Feral Hogs movie
30 to 40 Feral Hogs
I think Wild Hogs
was the prequel
the motorcycle movie
with Tim Allen
so we're still waiting on the follow up to that Wild Hogs re the prequel, the motorcycle movie with Tim Allen. So we're still waiting on the follow-up to that.
Wild Hogs rewatchables when, bro?
Yeah, definitely soon.
Is the Feral Hogs moment not like a thing for you guys the way it was for me?
No, it's a huge thing for me, though.
I love the Feral Hogs.
I mean, you're right that it was like de-pandemic, but I have not laughed that hard before or since.
We needed it, you know? Anyway, congratulations to Hundreds of or since. We needed it.
Anyway, congratulations to Hundreds of Beavers.
That sounds funny.
It's pretty funny.
Yeah, I recommend it.
I wish I had more to rip off, but I don't.
Okay, what's the last one?
Final question comes from A.
Often my enjoyment of a movie depends on my mood
when I'm walking into the theater.
Is there something that you do to neutralize your mood
before a screening to try and have an objective opinion on the film this is a very yeah thoughtful question this what
so you i would say you swing a little higher and lower than i do what do you think um there i mean
i agree with this is that certainly context has a role to play.
I try to do two things.
Number one, can't go in hungry.
That's really tough.
So I try to eat beforehand.
If there's a cheesecake factory nearby, great.
But I try to know as little as possible, honestly,
about anything, especially if I'm early enough in the cycle
where it's a screening or it's a new movie
because I find that putting aside
all environmental factors,
the way I feel about a movie
is so much a response to my expectation
and what people have told me.
Me too.
There's no getting around that.
Yeah, but I think you can sometimes know less i
mean that's like every single marketer who's listening to this is like dying inside because
i know that's not how you get people to the theater um but i i don't watch every single
trailer 50 times i don't look at all the posters yeah i mean i do and i always will i think because
i am as much fascinated by movie
marketing as i am about movies when it comes to hollywood movies i think that the relationship
between those two things are inextricable to my experience of movies and so i'm i can't really
get around it it also helps make the show it's also like there's a difference between knowing
a lot about like the fall guy before you go in and knowing about not about like evil does not
exist totally and so in those environments,
I will,
I will try to not learn very much about what a movie like that is about.
It's one of the reasons why the festival screening experience for those that
can,
can do it is a gift and a curse.
Cause on the one hand,
you're often going in pretty blind and things that you're seeing and you're
taking a lot of chances on things you wouldn't expect that you would like,
or would be excited about,
or that you'd be planning to talk about on the show.
For example,
for us on the other hand, there's so much groupthink that comes
out of festival screenings where people come out and they all start sharing their opinion and
everybody's opinion gets formed by those reactions. So it's tricky, but that I find is the best way to
do it because there is no marketing material to look at when you're into seeing a movie in that
way. For us, I don't know, I'm trying to plan the show like three, four, five months in advance.
Kind of need to know what something's looking like, what people are saying about it.
I mean, we're not, you know, another way to answer this question would be like, well, I try not to sit in traffic for an hour and a half before I go to the movies.
But that's like specific to us.
I think for people who are interested in movies, who are seeing a lot of movies, you know, if you find like the art house or the local theater with a broader range of programming.
And just try not to Google too much.
Just see what they're showing this weekend.
And get in the mix for something that you maybe haven't heard as much about.
I think that is probably the best way for a discovery.
Which is the really fun part of this.
When you go in not expecting much or not knowing anything.
And you're just like, wow, I had a great time.
That is the best feeling.
I think I personally don't,
if I'm in a bad mood, a movie can take me out of it.
If I'm in a good mood, a movie will keep me in it.
I'm not, it's what I want to be doing with my free time.
So I don't struggle as much with,
I've had a bad day and now I have to sit and watch this movie.
Unless the movie is Fast X, then I'll be like,
yo, my daughter kicked me in the teeth this morning
and I got into a car accident
and then I sat down and had to watch Vin Diesel.
Then I will be upset.
But that doesn't happen very often,
if I'm being totally honest.
It's very rare that I get pissed off by something.
But it is something for us to consider
because we see so many goddamn movies.
These are great questions.
Thank you very, very much.
Thanks, Bob, for picking out these good ones.
Any closing thoughts?
Should I see Hundreds of Beavers?
But you kind of like spoiled it now.
It's sort of good.
I think I did not.
You should try to recreate it.
Hundreds of Beavers situation.
You get the damn...
See what goes on.
I mean, it's so funny, but like...
What if you rewrite it for Chris and then I direct it?
He could do it.
And then Bobby and everyone in the booth are the Beavers.
I could never come up with a guess.
Plus our children.
Well, I was going to say,
I think Knox would probably like it more than you would.
It is an inherently slapstick-y movie.
If I dress up as the Beaver, am I a member of SAG?
Is this like, give me a card?
Yeah, there you go.
You're in the union officially.
But you got to pay dues.
You got to pay Beaver dues.
You got all those Beaver dollars.
No, I'm good with that. uh okay thanks guys let's go to my conversation
now with adam naman Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express.
Shop online for super prices and super savings.
Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points.
Visit Superstore.ca to get started.
It's our very own mean pod guy, Adam Naiman, our old pal.
How are you, buddy?
I'm good, Sean. How are you?
I'm doing really well. I'm glad you're here.
It's been too long.
You're here to talk about a fascinating new movie,
I Saw the TV Glow.
Did you ask me or did I ask you to do this?
How did we even land here?
I think we asked each other.
We did.
I think just instinctively we thought this would be a good a good movie to
talk about you know what i had jane schoenberg the filmmaker on the show and they pointed out
that they're big fans of cronenberg and lynch and i wonder if that's the reason why maybe you and i
are here talking about their new movie because there's there's there's flex of that inspiration
in this story yeah which of those two guys is the Canadian? I forget. I'll let the listener decide.
In this case, it's you.
So, yeah, Cronenberg and Lynch for sure.
And then probably you could go alphabetically
through a bunch of other filmmakers
who you and I and everyone we know enjoy,
which is not to diminish the originality of the film,
which is what makes me excited.
Anytime there's something that is sort of,
I've seen the same movies as you,
you've seen the same movies as me,
we are in this together,
and yet we're making something original out of it.
That's exciting.
I fully agree.
I saw the TV Glow premiered at Sundance earlier this year.
It's a largely rave reviews.
I didn't get a chance to see it in that format,
but it's now, it's opening in theaters
and going wide throughout the rest of this month.
It stars Justice Smith and Bridget Lundy-Payne.
As I said, James Schoenbrun writer and director.
This is their second feature film
after 2021's We're All Going to the World's Fair.
Another movie that I think you and I both liked,
but I never got the chance to talk about on this show.
Yeah, I mean, it's probably worth talking about briefly insofar as it really is a good setup for it, right?
And so is Jane's other film, A Self-Induced Hallucination, which is one of the first movies that kind of dealt, I think, with that, the kind of psychic residue of a lot of online creepy pasta horror media i mean i think a couple of years ago
the hollywood actually made a slender man movie and there was that hbo doc beware the slender man
about the murder that was committed by those two girls sort of under the influence of these things
that they read but self-induced hallucination was like a semi doc fictional hybrid of online
testimonies.
That's really just about these,
I guess,
communities of horror aficionados and that slippage between reality and,
and,
and,
and fantasy.
I thought that that movie went really well with a room two 37 by,
by our,
our pal Rodney Asher,
you know,
that's like kind of of like message board movies
or online forum movies where people share experiences
and not just, oh, I like the same movies
or I like the same shows,
but these things have an effect on me
or these things have an effect on all of us.
So we're all going to the World's Fair,
which I wrote about the one year I ever covered Sundance
was remotely for The Ringer during the good old plague days.
You know, I'm sure you remember, too.
I do.
And I only remember thinking happily at the time I was getting to see the thing without going to Park City.
Right.
Because that was much hyped.
We're all going to the World's Fair, a kind of webcam diary movie, a preteen kid who is drawn into this world of websites by a sort of
unreliable online guide, and a really legible movie in a lot of ways. People read all sorts
of stuff into it about dysmorphia and sort of, you know, the risks of unchecked online
time, but also the kind of adventure, the kind of adventure that the internet didn't know all the backstory about the
movie and watched as a kind of straight up online horror movie, like unfriended or pulse, it's still
kind of good. Yeah. You know? Yeah. So all of which is to say, when you get to, I saw the TV
glow and maybe, you know, in your practiced way of describing plots without spoiling them, I'll
let you take a crack at it, but it it's like this is not a movie about the internet
now and yet I can't imagine it without the internet because the internet is like the
structuring absence it's like since the internet is where a lot of the things that this movie is
nostalgic about have been lost I don't know if that's how you read it well but it's sort of like
a weird movie about a different period of media consumption and it's both nostalgic for that
period and it recognizes something kind of dangerous about it too i i did read it that way
i think obviously it's not about the internet because it largely takes place in i guess what
feels like the 1990s it's a period piece about a teenage boy who becomes kind of obsessed with
a television show that feels like felt like to me one part buffy the vampire slayer one part kind of obsessed with a television show that felt like, to me, one part Buffy the Vampire Slayer,
one part kind of late-night Nickelodeon,
Snick, Are You Afraid of the Dark?
And maybe just like a little drizzle of Twin Peaks
on top of it as well.
And he forms this friendship with a girl
who he goes to school with,
and their bond is almost entirely over this show,
which is called The Pink Opaque.
And it really becomes a movie about realization through culture.
And I think even though it's not about the internet, it is about screens.
And it is about getting into touching distance with something that is impossible to touch.
That really feels like one of the primary themes that Jane is fascinated by,
which is finding community in an impossible space,
finding out about yourself through
the delineation of consumable culture.
And I think for a certain generation of cinephile, whether you're queer or trans, which this
film is obviously very clearly a trans allegory and I think will be deeply relatable through
that experience.
But if you're a person who just grew up obsessed with movies or with TV or video games
or something that you felt very close to but couldn't form an actual two-way emotional bond
with, the movie has a lot for you, a lot to say and a lot to understand. And I also just think
from a filmmaking perspective, those first two films that you talked about that Jane made are
very much internet-constructed films as much as they are about
the internet. And this is a true blue feature. It is a feature film made with a real budget,
made with real Hollywood actors, with a real sound design and production design and exciting
performance is a great soundtrack. And so it is a big step up in that way. And yet it has not lost
that discomforting but
mesmerizing feel of those first two movies so i think it's pretty impressive execution
you ever heard of a 24 i have come up on this show time and again come up on the show i mean
this is one of the things that happens there's all kinds of different things are at stake when
movies come out this show is often about the different things that are at stake,
whether it's,
you know,
financially,
reputationally,
you know,
critically,
I mean,
what's at,
at stake for movies.
And I think that when you have a small filmmaker,
a kind of cult filmmaker,
a filmmaker who not only speaks to,
you know,
a very online audience and some,
to some extent,
a niche audience,
but makes movies that resonate with themes that
matter so much to that niche audience. In the case of Jane Shonberg with those first two films,
it is that idea of transness and queerness. You get a big distributor getting their hands on the
movie. There's all sorts of questions about what's at stake. Is this filmmaker becoming
commodified? Is their vision going to be smoothed out or sharpened in a way that's more mainstream facing?
Are they not going to let that happen?
And are they going to get in trouble?
I mean, in a way, I thought of a movie like Bo is Afraid, which I think you've also heard of.
I think you talked about it on the show 800 times.
Big fan.
We talked about it on the show.
Big fan, I know.
I like it too.
Yep.
And, you know, different things are at stake for a filmmaker, you know asterisked industrial stature than Jane Sherman,
but kind of the same things are at stake,
which is like bigger canvas, bigger resources,
what happens to the identity of the filmmaker?
And it's interesting, I thought you used a phrase
that I would agree with, but also think needs to be unpacked,
which is step up, which is in some ways what I like about this film,
the craft of it is excellent, but yeah, it loses nothing of the modest handmade quality that those
other movies had. In fact, it leans into it in a way where it's like, oh, that wasn't just a matter
of resources. That's a vision that Jane Schoenberg has, which is quite small. Not small in the sense of puny, or not small in the sense of petty, but very intimate.
Intimate, yeah.
And this movie has the intimacy that We're All Going to the World's Fair has.
And when you also mention that idea of trans and queer themes in writing about the movie,
not only try to be sensitive to it, I think you'd have to be a completely insensitive
viewer to not notice that stuff and to either want to be curious about it, right, or to listen to what others have to say about it instead of assuming anything.
But I was also kind of confident in writing about the movie and borne out by other people I've spoken to about it, different critics.
It doesn't limit itself to that, and you don't want to limit the filmmaker to that either because there are aspects of the film that without undermining its incredible specificity and the personal nature of it they are universal about
what it means to feel like a product belongs to you and whether you feel really good about the
fact that someone shares it with you or you feel like somehow your scenes being invaded yeah you
know yeah and there's all kinds there's all kinds of scenes in it that speak to this in ways that are
funny.
You know,
my favorite scene,
just cause I,
I have a mental Google alert for anytime anyone mentions REM.
I like when the girls are sitting around ranking like alt rock heart
throbs,
you know,
there's Evan,
Evan,
Evan Dando and stuff.
And then,
uh,
Maddie's character,
the,
as you say,
the,
the girl who brings the protagonist into the world,
the pink opaque, she's like, I like Michael Stipe. And I'm like, I bet say, the girl who brings the protagonist into the world of Pink
O'Pig, she's like, I like Michael Stipe. And I'm like, I bet you do. And given Stipe's status at
the time as a closeted but queer pop singer and a big face of the monoculture who came from
something small and independent in the first place, I'm like, that's just so smart. Yes.
And not just because I like REM.
I'm like, what a good bit.
Well, I think the movie itself is very amusingly and endearingly littered with all of,
I wouldn't say that they're Easter eggs in the Marvel form.
No. They're really more just these personal little droplets of experience or point of view or taste
that Jane has dropped throughout that I think are probably ultimately
satisfying to them,
but also fun for us to pick apart and to identify and to grab onto,
because that is also very similar to what it was like to watch shows like
this when in the nineties,
where we obsessed over the minutia and found probably illegitimate meaning in it or or intention at
least in a lot of the decisions that the creators were making but it's it meant something to us
nonetheless or legitimized the things through the meanings that they sort of held for us i don't
think that you know i mean i i called a good friend of mine after i saw the movie she and i
when we were in university used to watch buffy without ever feeling like Buffy was too young for us.
Definitely didn't feel too old for us, but it was a good show.
I called her and I was sort of like, remember we used to watch this show together, but here's literally a movie that's sort of about that.
And she's like, oh, what happened to the movie?
Well, that didn't happen to us.
But the premise is essentially the same.
And I found the way that their friendship develops in the first part of the movie through this kind of coded language of, like, notes and physical trinkets and objects and videotapes so evocative and so moving, like not just the idea of appointment television that you have to stay up to watch, but, you know, that you're sharing something instead of just partaking in that which belongs to everybody.
And that's a really powerful feeling that you can build out into a bunch of different allegorical directions that, again, I don't want to intrude on.
But to the extent that I identified with them from my own position as a viewer,
I felt like I identified with them significantly.
Well, I think in part because that feeling of dysphoria
and disassociation that comes with what the character is experiencing
was common for a different kind of lonely teenager in the 1990s
than the lonely teenager you hear about in the 2020s.
The lonely teenager in the 1990s, I suspect that you and I were somewhat similar in this respect,
where we were just like, I'm really into the things that I'm into. And I maybe have one or
two friends who really get the ways in which I am into them. And after that, this is for me.
This is for me to better understand myself for the things that I like. And maybe I wasn't using
it to do that specifically in literal terms at the time.
But when I look back on what I loved,
it was an instruction manual for my feelings.
And that's really what I think this movie is speaking to
is the way that you kind of better understand
and figure out who you are
and where you fit in in the world
by contorting something that exists to your own desires,
which is just really powerful.
Yeah, I mean, when I wasn't just hitting game-winning jump shots,
that's exactly how I felt too.
Sometimes it can be basketball though, that's the thing.
No, no, I wasn't the one hitting the game-winning jump shots.
I'm teasing.
I mean, I'm saying what you're saying is true
and that there's a certain romance in recognizing yourself that way.
There's a self-deprecation in it.
And there's a big,deprecation in it and there's a big potent
feeling that a movie like this is going to tap into especially because it's all framed very
smartly and very cleverly within aspects of horror that that this filmmaker is a real student of not
a derivative student or an imitative student, but a smart postmodern filmmaker,
you know,
you mentioned Cronenberg,
you mentioned Cronenberg,
you mentioned,
you know,
you,
you,
you mentioned Lynch.
I think there's elements of other horror filmmakers from other countries,
you know,
aspects of a filmmaker like Kiyoshi Kurosawa or,
or for less auteur brand filmmaking than just very familiar online
fan fiction and creepypasta tropes. They control all of them, right? But I think the thing that
makes the movie really work and that's worth talking about is just the excellence of the
acting in this film and the excellence of the casting, the use of these actors who kind of
suggest both less and more than you think in terms
of their characters and really again without spoiling in the case of the lead character who's
played by two different actors over the course of the movie as a sort of pre-teen and then a teen
the impression of containing multitudes and the idea of being alienated from oneself there's a
line that the main character has when they're being played by the second actor uh justice smith i believe is the actor the actor or the actor
says something to the effect of uh you know i feel like my insides are sort of getting hollowed out
which is a pretty on the nose line takes a lot to make a line like that work and there's something
in that line reading where it's like you can almost feel his insides escaping as he's as he's saying it right there's a loneliness there
there's a sense of you know a sense of disconnect a sense of self-recognition again without spoiling
it because on a plot level it's both a hard movie to spoil and i think it would be the wrong movie
to spoil i do not want to tell people what happens in this movie. But insofar as stuff happens, that idea of maybe recognizing something that you're missing or that
you're losing, and that feeling of being trapped and not doing anything about it, it becomes so
suffocating. It made me think of a filmmaker who I had not associated with Jane Shonbrun before,
but since then I think has to be in conversation with him, which is Charlie Kaufman.
There's so much of aspects of Synecdoche, New York, and I'm thinking of ending things
in this movie.
And I mean that as a compliment.
I've not turned on Charlie Kaufman yet.
I feel like that idea of interiority where it's like multiple interiorities and kind
of seeing your own life happening through your own eyes and being like, I'm not participating in this.
That's a horrifying feeling.
And the movie, I think, treats it very sensitively and very empathetically, but also ruthlessly.
There's things in this movie that made me very upset while watching it.
And I'm a pretty, you know, battle-hardened horror movie viewer. So I admire
the filmmaker's ability to do that, not through manipulation, which I think is kind of a soft word,
but like through a kind of ruthlessness, you know, credit where it's due. When it goes,
it goes pretty hard on things that are upsetting. You know, it's funny that you say that though,
because you keep using the word horror and that it is an accurate way to describe the film but i never thought of it from that perspective i continue to think of it in the
coming of age frame because it does have that episodic feeling of a person in a house their
parents don't understand them they're struggling to make social connections in their high school
like it does have a lot of these very familiar modes of a story like that. But then there are moments of incredible oral and visual devastation, as you said, where things just feel very deeply uncomfortable, deeply unsettling or deeply unsafe.
And then there's also like a little bit of there's a lot of humor.
And there's also, I think, a skepticism about its own premise in a way i think ultimately the film without like giving
away too much shows its hand in an interesting way when it suggests that maybe the things that
we were consumed by that helped us get through periods of our lives were not as good or as
meaningful and that's okay to accept that like it's okay for them to live in their time and then
when you move past it to not hold on to it forever. And that's kind of skepticism
towards a sort of like
brutally militant nostalgia
for what you loved
when you were a teenager
is also not totally healthy.
So I feel like
there's a real knowingness
about this movie
that I really appreciate.
You could tell Jane
had thought through every step
of if I'm going to make my movie
that is like this,
I've got to make sure I can talk about that sort of like depth and specificity of my feelings at that time.
But also with some distance reveal that it isn't everything and it doesn't have to be everything.
So I appreciated that about it as well.
Well, you know me, I'm just so mean and I can only enjoy movies that exist in some pinnacle of a of a
pretension but what i was going to say about this film that i find very emotional is exactly what
you just said but but turned inside out a bit which is i like that the thing that you just said
that it seems to be suggesting that you that these things that define us you can let them go a little
better you can't let them consume you it is also possible to read that
aspect of the movie as no that's just what they want to tell you because the truth that you're
letting go of in that case or the distance you're you're you're cultivating from the things that
you connected to and the people that you connected to that's actually how you're going to lose
yourself and don't let these things go because you know that that's who you are and i think
there's different kinds of ambiguity in movies and we've talked about this in regards to some great
filmmakers like we've talked about this with the cullens a lot which is there's a different kind
of movie that stakes out the middle ground because it has nothing to say and movies that arrive at
something ambiguous because reality is really complicated and i like to think that this movie
is in the second category where if you read it as a movie about the need to let go of certain things, I think that's fair enough.
And if you read it as a movie about the need to hold on to certain things, that's fair enough.
And it's not because the filmmaker doesn't know or care.
And it's not trendily ambiguous.
It's because these are complicated issues. And I felt that towards the end of the movie,
when I guess, as you say, it's kind of showed its hand,
there's not a lot of plot, but to the extent that there is plot,
it's kind of revealed itself.
I kind of found myself thinking,
I can go either way with this movie,
and I don't think it's going to be betraying itself.
If this movie is literal, good for it. If this movie is abstract, it's good for it. More likely, there's some kind of middle ground, not that it's compromising on, but that it's occupying felt. Again, those last 10 or 15 minutes,
they are harrowing as hell. Even if horror isn't the word you're going to use. And they can be
harrowing in a universal way too. Just the way that you feel time passing. This is not a spoiler,
but I love the idea that to some extent, the difference in life between 15 years is just what tv are you using
you know and like the the the old tv gets moved out and then the new flat screen and instead of
watching vhs he's kind of the live streaming but every other problem or every other problematic
kind of remains in place and we should give it up to when we're talking about pop cultural
references i know there's other stuff we could say or maybe there's not time about the soundtrack and stuff but give
it up to the casting coup of the year which is fred durst i asked jane about this it's a it's a
brilliant stroke uh you know fred durst uh obviously represents a kind of end of century
aggression and masculinity that dominated popular music at the
time so jane is playing on that but also fred durst is a filmmaker and a cinephile and so him
existing in this world of movie and television obsession in the way that it makes us think about
who we are in our adolescence i mean we were in our adolescence when Fred Durst rose. So it's so funny.
There's a scene.
It's not inconsequential, but it's not so consequential that you can't talk about it, where the protagonist, who, again, is a young mixed race child.
His parents are played by Fred Durst and Danielle Deadweiler.
There is a sense in which he's kind of infantilized by his parents.
He is certainly not old and wise by the standard of his class, right?
Which is why he's drawn to Maddie, who sort of seems alienated from her parents, but has that kind of cool alienation where she's an authority figure, especially on the pinko pig.
But he's being driven home by his parents, and he asks his dad, like, can I stay up to watch this show?
The dad's like, well, that's a show for girls.
And it's a powerful scene for a lot of reasons tied to the movie.
But the fact that it's delivered by Fred Durst is so,
it's just that extra, you know, that extra little nudge,
that extra little bit of intertextual meaning.
And even though it's not like really a tour de force performance or anything,
a lot of it is reaction shots and stuff.
He's really good. I'm giving up for fred durst yes early bet early best supporting actor
campaign fred durst were you uh were you at all swayed by the uh fact that there is a significant
broken social scene cover uh that appears in this film canadian that you are a canadian that i am
yeah well there's a song in the film i wrote about it in the Ringer piece called Anthems for a 17-Year-Old Girl, which you are just issued a copy of if you're from Toronto. And it's like, even if you did not have a breakup or a crush pertaining to thats, like Sarah Pauly's Take This Waltz.
And it's the best song Broken Social's seen ever put out, mostly because their lead singer's barely on it.
It's Emily Haynes.
Yeah, yeah.
R.I.P. Kevin Drew, I suppose.
Yeah, Emily Haynes and Leslie Feist, obviously. And it's a beautiful, circular little song with very direct emotional
meaning, even if the story is kind of vague. And yeah, if you're a Canadian, you just kind of like
well up instantly. But I thought also having a cover of that song is important because it speaks
to the idea that aspects of pop culture remain static and consistent, but are also open to
reinvention. And it's not just that song that gets covered or remodeled in the movie. A song
that more of your listeners will recognize plays a huge part of the movie, which is Tonight Tonight
by the Smashing Pumpkins, which is like the apotheosis of high school embarrassment. I cannot
think of something more embarrassing now than watching on YouTube the video for Tonight Tonight.
But when I was 15, I was like, this is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.
It reminded me a little bit of Lady Bird reclaiming Dave Matthews Band.
Sort of being like, actually, this doesn't suck.
And I was watching the movie, and I'm like, no, it really sucks.
But I mean, I'm glad you feel that way.
There's something about the earnest love of the music you listen to in high school that this movie honors by including the songs, but it modernizes them a little bit too.
And I am not cool enough to really go through the soundtrack and recognize everybody.
I've just learned enough about Phoebe Bridgers to be sick of her.
But some of the performances are really,
really great.
That's why we invite you on the show is bangers like that.
Thank you,
Adam.
Yeah.
But,
but,
but some of the performances are great and I love that they take place in a
Lynchian roadhouse.
Yes.
You know,
yes.
Where the movie will just stop and it's like,
here's a song,
which I thought was awesome.
Yeah.
That,
that the live performance in the film is really exciting.
And then there's also even more musical kind of Easter eggs.
You know, Lindsay Aaron Jordan from Snail Mail
plays one of the characters in the fictional TV show.
There's a Snail Mail song on the soundtrack.
It's just a great collection of...
Well, I'm trying to think of what is like the...
Because there were versions of this when we were kids
where there were 90s soundtracks that had a lot of covers or reimaginings of
classic 70s and 60s songs and i'm missing one at the tip of my tongue but it feels like almost an
homage to that experience too of being introduced was there a cover of something on the soundtrack
for the faculty oh god am i making that up i mean that's exactly the kind of movie that i'm thinking
of but i don't really remember yeah yeah you know. You know, or, well, the Scream had a cover of a whisper to a scream on the soundtrack.
There you go.
There's an example.
Which was really, really, really brilliant idea because it had the word scream in it.
But yeah, I mean, every generation clings to its own nostalgia, but also the layers of everything that sort of came before.
Right. Buffy was like that. It was. nostalgia, but also the layers of everything that sort of came before, right?
Buffy was like that.
It was.
I mean, the Buffy TV show is like a model of 90s-ness, but it's also suffused with all these kind of 80s nods.
And again, I keep saying this without spoiling the movie, but for people who maybe watch
the movie and listen to the pod, I do want to point out there is a moment where the pink opaque, as we have seen it through the eyes of the characters, gets seen again with a mixture of, I think, somehow more distance and more clarity.
And my heart was just in my throat in terms of the show that they think they were watching versus maybe the show they were watching all along.
This is what I'm referring to when I say that there's a little bit of skepticism about how we remember things.
I love that moment in the movie.
I love that.
Just very intuitive reading of, like, I wonder what it would be like to go back.
I was not a huge consumer of Buffy, but there were a lot of shows, like those Nickelodeon shows I mentioned that I watched at the time and I'm sure if I went back and watched them I would never be able
to rechannel the
excitement and the
way I was enthralled
by them when I was
12 but that's what
the movie is doing
it's capturing this
very specific thing
that is so powerful
that obviously kids
to this day like they
have their own
versions of it I'm
even watching my
little three-year-old
like build relationships
with characters and
movies that she's
seen and then build
worlds around them
at such a young age.
And it's amazing. It's a pure thing. When is the big picture Bluey symposium?
Oh, I don't know. You want to be invited to that one? The nine hour pod?
Well, I mean, you know, I should be, I'm not invited to anything, but I would say that if
we ever, we ever talk about Bluey, I have a lot of unresolved, a lot of unresolved Bluey feelings.
Well, if i'm being
honest with you i'm in a we're in a heavy disney princess's face and my daughter is such a girly
girl and i don't know how this happened because i would not describe my wife as a girly girl but
she's pink and purple and unicorns and princesses and she has some imperative to follow that stuff
down the rabbit hole we did have our time with bluey but bluey has not been at the at the at the forefront of late well don't worry i mean you're years three
mine is is seven and we've gotten out of the girly girl phase into just straight sociopathic uh
she's she just wants to watch all the best itchy and scratchies she's like dad she's like can we
watch the itchy and scratchy where the head explodes and my wife's like you're very bad at
those and i'm like am i that's incredible but that's also that's in the spirit of i saw the tv glow is
giving to your children this thing you know and can and can i say i mean i'm always happy
to be on but i love that you not just that you had me on to talk about this movie but that a
a podcast that you know has to make time for the apes you know the the the the apes and the fall
guys of the world.
I mean, I'm not surprised because you always have good smaller movies on, but it's really awesome that there's a segment on Saw TV, TV Glow on an outlet like Ringer. I'm saying that
spontaneously. I don't need to say that to be invited back. I'm just saying.
Well, sometimes we like to have you to destroy things. So it's nice when you can come on and
sing something's praises. Um, I,
it's just,
it's a really interesting film. And I think Jane is a part of a generation of filmmaker that is becoming more
prominent in independent filmmaking,
which is just raised on the internet too.
And raised on the internet is a mode of experience that I don't really feel
like David Leitch is necessarily understands,
you know,
that I don't,
I don't think that the kingdom of the planet of the apes is really interested in. So, you know, part of the fall guy was really fun
was when it kept yelling at me to have fun. I love that. That was, that was great. The 800
times that that happened, I just really, really, really made me want to have fun.
There he is. There's the mean pod guy.
Yeah. Well, it's a long year, you know, it's, it's, it's,'s it's it's a it's a it's a it's a friend
we have a long way to go i know but a month from now we're going to be reading can discourse about
a new david cronenberg movie it's all it makes all the pain go away do you think a month from now
jalen brunson will be hoisting the larry o'brien trophy oh now see now now you're talking you know
no one no one no one ever asks me for you, my J, my Jalen Brunson thoughts.
That guy is an animal.
Yeah.
He's so good.
Thank you.
How did you get, how did you get, you got Kyle Lowry on steroids?
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's exciting.
You know, he's incredible.
I, uh, I'd like to thank you personally for OG Ananobi.
And, um, I'd like to thank you for, for joining the bandwagon.
We, we, we welcome all Knicks fans.
Well, we like to think of New York as like a smaller version of Toronto.
That's right.
And, you know, having won a title five years ago, we'd like for you to experience
some of the things. I will tell you that if you guys end up playing the Celtics, I will channel
every scintilla of psychic energy I have into that Boston team losing, I will voodoo dolls, effigies, put pins in things.
I hate the Celtics so much.
And, you know, go Knicks.
And, you know, maybe by the next time we talk, Brunson will, you know, have truly entered the realm of the Knick immortals.
He's close already
yeah
this playoffs has been my
I saw the TV glow
I'm just
I'm just
mesmerized by him
staring at the screen
thinking about how the world
really works
Adam
thank you so much for coming
I really appreciate
hearing your voice
absolutely man
nice to see you James Schoenbrun is here.
One of the more exciting movies of the year.
I saw the TV Glow.
This is, I guess, technically your second feature film.
You're calling it your second feature film.
Is it your second feature film?
I think second feature film is right.
Okay.
So I did note that you had done some other things previously before this.
And most of the things that I had seen were located primarily in the life of the internet
and how we live inside the internet.
And this film, this new film, is much more about something fixed in media,
more formative, more adolescent, more nostalgic.
What informed the decision to make that shift to something from the past?
I suppose even though this is kind of invisible in the film itself, the internet,
it's such a part of my television upbringing. I would watch Buffy at 8 p.m on tuesday and then like at 8 59 after
the like next time on trailer it was like straight to the family desktop to like join all of the
other nerds were you a dell household what were you rocking in those days it would have been it
was windows 95 for sure um yeah it was like on one end of the basement, and then the TV was on the other end.
And sometimes during commercial breaks,
I would like shuttle between.
Yeah, many formative memories.
It was like my two like big internet,
I need to like see what the heads are saying.
So it was just on forums?
Like what were you looking at?
Chat rooms?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Forums.
This was like what would have been.
It would have been like 98, 99.
It was like Buffy and the X-Files.
Okay.
And yeah, I think mostly forums.
So was it because this was like an entry point for that internet life
that this felt like a natural evolution in terms of like the stories
that you're trying to tell?
I think that the films to date have like really enjoyed the metaphor of like the screen. And I do feel like when I cracked that, I cracked some kind of secret code of like, seeing characters watching things or seeing characters using computers, at least in, like, that millennial era before, like, screens just became completely ubiquitous.
There was always this idea that, like, it was boring to watch somebody watch something or boring to watch somebody text or use the computer.
You know, I think the argument was that it was like inherently uncinematic um when i kind of realized like oh write what you know like all i do is stare at
various screens um and then when i took that both to its like aesthetic end place but also it's sort
of like emotional and thematic um like deepest deepest point. Something cracked in terms of, like, first of all,
just, like, watching people watch, I think,
is one of, like, the great joys of cinema history.
Like, one of my favorite movies, Spirit of the Beehive.
Like, or even just, like, Passion of Joan of Arc.
Like, that's a movie that's mostly you just watching somebody's eyes,
watching something else.
And it's, like, I could watch that for hours.
There's something so technological,
though, about it now.
And there's this kind of ongoing discussion
about how the great auteurs
are only making period pieces now
because they don't want to use cell phones
in their stories.
And they don't,
maybe they don't want to see those screens.
Because they're cowards.
Well, that's what I was going to say.
Do you feel like you're part of something
that is in defiance of that?
Or just because you've been raised differently, you were in a media experience.
It was totally, we both were in a media experience.
It was totally different.
I think like that first generation to sort of recognize the strangeness of it rather than having it be like just what it was from birth, right?
Like I kind of like came up with, yeah, I came up in a pre-Tevo era.
Yeah.
When the screen had like a different mystique i think than
it does now and like certainly when like the availability of anything ever at the click of
a button wasn't necessarily all the way there but it also wasn't at zero you know right yeah i find
myself saying all the time now on the show, this was before YouTube.
Yeah.
And YouTube feels like this
watershed thing.
this thing that just,
we can't go back
from where that went.
Well,
I've been thinking about like,
I just went back to my hometown
as part of my
illustrious press tour
and went to my
childhood Barnes and Noble
to buy a present for a friend
and was just remembering
like how much time I spent finding.
You remember how you could like scan a CD
and then put on the headphones
at like that little desk
and listen to like 30 seconds
of like the Death Cab for Cutie album or whatever?
Like that was so exciting to me.
In 2006 or seven or whatever when i was stuck in the suburbs and
like to go to a place and have culture sort of be there and available it felt like science fiction
yeah but like also like it was still there was still scarcity to it you know it's like i was
gonna have to spend like my allowance money on a Flaming Lips album. And like that's what I was committing to.
Yeah.
You can really feel that in the movie.
Obviously, I was just consumed by and saw myself in movies and television.
It was very easy for me to lock into Owen and Maddie in the movie.
Just very understandable.
You make your movie for different reasons than I would understand the story.
But I assume that you were a person that was just like glued to the television for sure I mean for sure how did your
I think about how my family reacted to that then and how they feel okay about it now like what
what would how did they react to you when you were a person who was consumed by Buffy or the X-Files
I think that there was like a dual impulse of like maybe concern and also like well at least they're
engaged in something um i think i was kind of left alone with it to a certain degree and i do think
that like because i know that from the youngest age me watching television even when it was like
nickelodeon or even before it was nickelodeon
there was like something going on that to my parents credit i do think they recognize that
was not just straightforward like glued to the boob tube energy that it was there was some kind
of like i would literally i would watch like like darkwing duck and then i would like sit in the back
of my parents car getting driven somewhere and just like tell them episodes of Darkwing Duck that I was making up in my head that were completely incoherent and indecipherable to anyone except the inside of my head.
Yeah, I used to say that as a kid.
I used to say, I feel like I'm learning a kind of linear storytelling by becoming obsessed with this stuff, by understanding the mythologies of these worlds. And I do think that like,
this was what made me like head straight to the desktop after an episode of
Buffy wasn't so much like,
Oh,
I just want to like read what the internet has to say.
It was like,
let me look under the hood of the car with other weirdos who want to do that a
little bit.
And like,
there's something obviously like,
and I'm far from the first,
like right.
So like talk about like episodicic storytelling and that week in between one episode and the next one when it's almost like you are in conversation with the developing narrative.
And I think that that's almost become too present in a lot of ongoing storytelling.
It almost becomes like, how can we trick people in the most elaborate way possible?
I feel like in our post-Lost era.
But I do think there was this moment of like, it was just such a joy to be 12 years old and like watching characters slowly grow and change while you're slowly growing and changing.
Yeah, that's interesting.
So like you're obviously learning kind of the grammar of TV storytelling.
Are you thinking about filmmaking at that time
too? Like how it's being done or does it feel like it's in an elevated place?
I'm spending a lot of time in the video store.
I'm buying tickets to the Pokemon movie and sneaking into Memento.
Yeah, I'm like renting like Requiem for a dream and watching it in my friend's basement at age 13
and um and i think what i'm getting from movies and i do think it's like a core difference between
the two mediums that like there's no real way to fully bridge like i i don't think i could make
something in the feature film form that like actually exemplifies what I loved about like
that ongoing, you know, over many years development of a TV show. But I, I, so I think what I was
looking for more in like the movies were like, maybe like the other side of my preoccupation,
right? If, if like the, the, if, if the first two movies at least are very much about fandom and about engaging in this love of storytelling, that's something I was getting from television. What I got from movies was more like, oh, you feel like a word that I try to use is mischief.
And I think I was always drawn to films that felt like they like,
weren't allowed for whatever reason.
Usually less like,
Oh,
that's not allowed because it's just like provoking for the sake of
provoking.
Like I liked Tarantino back then,
but like it always left me also like a little empty.
It was more like,
how the heck does this exist? So do you think that's a generational thing that is now having
an impact too? Because it feels somewhat similar to the YouTube thing where if you're encountering,
say, early Nolan movies, Aronofsky, Tarantino, like there is a sense of like chaos, a sense of
rule breaking going on in that
period and now there's this whole group of people who are coming up as filmmakers who are maybe
trying to like kind of replicate that sensation I sense that I mean this with it with kind of
no judgment either way but like amongst an a24 cohort of filmmaker I feel like I have a smell
test for like provocation that's fundamentally based in nostalgia versus provocation that's fundamentally based in like wanting to do something that is like unprecedented. Maybe a lot of my cis or straight filmmaking contemporaries are much more interested in recapturing a lost grit or something.
Right, right.
That used to be able to be found in the video store or in the new American cinema of the 70s.
I think it's why I've always gravitated to the Lynches or Cronenberg or like a peach pongs of the world because it feels less
about like how can we like provoke within the classical kind of like counterculture of film
language and more about like how can we continue to like warp this medium in new and strange ways
that like feel not allowed yeah i like how you put that i'm trying to think of what's the
delineation and genre then between those two things too. I mean, I do think my friend Michael Koresky is writing a
book about this and about this as something that you could draw a correlation to with queerness.
I do think that in hindsight, not that I understood this at all at the time, but like my desire to sort of like create a counter cultural canon or like
create this like underground idea of like what it's like the,
the secret film history that's like provocative in this way underneath the
canon,
the kind of like classic film bro canon.
I do think you could like sort of correlate that to like a
desire a queer desire to like create spaces that shouldn't and and in many ways couldn't exist
well you mentioned nickelodeon and this kind of relates to what you were saying about that
that dividing line between nostalgia and and a kind of like anbroken ground, like new ground that you're trying to land on. But you did
find something
and you mentioned Buffy as a
linchpin, but there's also a kind of like
snick, are you afraid of
the dark? Like that
feels like a completely undiscovered
area of nostalgia.
Like I don't know if I've ever seen a movie
attempt to recreate
that energy.
Yeah.
And it's weird that they haven't, right?
Because it's so...
God, I was like, when I was like 23, 24, maybe.
What was it called?
There was like some like streaming platform that...
Oh, God, I really, I forget the name of it.
But it was one where it was like, you had to tune in.
You couldn't choose what you were watching.
Okay, okay.
It was basically like, I think what actually happened
was this unnamed streaming platform had just like access
to what must have been the Paramount library
and was just basically like you would find on cable.
Okay, I think that's how Pluto is now.
Maybe it was even like an early iteration of Pluto,
but they would air sometimes at like 1 a.m like old episodes of like the secret world of alex mac or are you
afraid of the dark and a lot of that stuff like wasn't available even in the streaming era and
probably a lot of it still isn't available even in the streaming era at least officially um and
and i remember tuning into that and it was like it would air at like 1 a.m and i would like
stay up late to watch it and it was like such a strong dose of a particular kind of like
yeah that i i and for me it obviously is associated with like being a millennial and
like that stuff being some of like the first stuff that i was like being obsessed by yeah yeah but
like returning to that like early 90s Nickelodeon space, very powerful.
It really is.
And I'm sure basically only our relative generation will catch that discreetly in your film.
But I fucking loved it.
Like I was like, I've never really seen somebody try to recreate this.
And you did it so well.
Well, SNCC was so, SNCC, you know, it was like more than an event.
It was like.
It's a phenomenon for people our age.
It was like this thing that all week it was like, oh, if you get to Saturday night, like that's magic.
Yeah, yeah.
And it was the staying up past your bedtime thing.
And it was like all new episodes.
And it was like, I was like hosted by Stick Stigley, the little stick figure.
That's right.
And I think there's something about the block of programming that's different than just the new episode of something, right?
And the idea that it's 8 p.m. and the night's starting with
Clarissa Explains It All, and that's almost wholesome and sitcom-y,
but coming at 9.30, you're going to see some gnarly, scary stuff.
Yeah, even more so than movies.
Those are like the original gateway horrors in some ways too, where you never really seen
anything until you saw like that kind of campfire storytelling style that they were using.
Can you talk about making those things?
Because there's also like a mixed media approach to a lot of the films that you made.
This film has a kind of classical structure, but then you're making something inside of
it.
Like, did you make one first and then the other?
How did you conceive of those two things working in harmony?
That sort of the created show and then the film around it?
Well, I think there is an idea in the movie
and that's in World's Fair as well,
which is that like, there's not like,
there are different gradients of reality
rather than like two things.
One is reality and one is fiction.
Like, especially with this film because the world of this film for like reasons that become clear as you watch the
movie like all of it is kind of heightened in this like memory of 90s television kind of way
um and and and so i think the first rule was that, it's not like there's like the gritty, realistic 90s and then like the Nickelodeon heightened fictional world.
Like there are different, there are parts of the TV show that feel more real than other parts of the TV show.
And there are parts of quote unquote reality that feel more real than other parts of reality.
And like the whole film is sort of this like, yeah, you're dancing around these various aesthetics of like that, of that, of I would always say like less how that stuff actually looked and more like how it felt to watch it as a kid.
Like to me, like the film is a success if like it conjures the magic that you felt as like an eight year old staring at Snick, which is very different than being like a 35-year-old like revisiting that stuff with a lot of critical distance. Well, I mean, the movie, you know, I hope
I'm not spoiling anything by saying like there's an incredible magic trick at the end of the movie
where you realize that things are just not as you remember them. You know, that their elegance,
their grace, their power is maybe a little bit overemphasized because you were young and you
were maybe not as sophisticated a consumer.
Was that born out of the catching these shows at one o'clock in the morning and realizing like,
oh, actually this isn't quite how I remembered it.
I think at that stage in the movie, it's more of like an emotional metaphor. You know,
there is this sort of like arc that the movie takes and the movie, you know, probably a pretty
mild spoiler to say that it like
it runs its course over like decades like we we start in the early 90s and by the end of the movie
we're very much in like a a different time and a different world um and this sort of tracing this
evolution of like and i don't want to say like i don't want to make it sound like 1994 was this
time of like purity,
but I was eight years old and like the glow of this screen and of like the
promise of Nickelodeon SNCC was like very rich and colorful and felt like in
its way to me at the time,
you know,
in my tiny little brain,
like utopian and tracking that to like our current,
like everything is available all the time. Stream streaming screens on screens on screens, neon hellscape, became one which that kind of like childhood magic
that you could see in the screen can sort of almost become this like prison
as you get older.
Or like the process of being so deeply in love with a TV show
that the rest of your life seems bled of magic is like, is,
is,
is,
um,
and certainly for me,
like that's like a coping mechanism of some sort,
or it becomes this like dissociative practice.
Um,
and so while we're tracing like this evolution of media over a number of
decades,
like on a personal level and an emotional level,
we're tracking this character sort of like almost decaying,
you know, and decaying through the sort of like interaction with the screen.
Yeah, almost the way a VHS tape would slowly kind of like erase itself.
What was it like mounting a more traditional production?
Because this feels, you know, it's a period piece.
You've got Hollywood actors.
You know, you've got sets and you've got a lot of production design.
Like, was it a big transition for you?
Were you ready for that?
I knew what it was.
And I knew that, like, when I made World's Fair,
that I was making a movie that, like, could be made a certain way,
had to be made a certain way, but also could be made a certain way had to be made a certain way but also could be
made a certain way because of the fact that it was just like 12 people in the woods um and i knew
going into this process that like yeah jumping up in budget but also jumping up just like
industrially in terms of like how many moving parts there are to a film set like like I needed on this one um I just I knew that like I think I
I think I like made myself like the promise to like really almost think of it as like a different
medium like it's it's it's a completely different set of strengths and set of limitations and one
isn't necessarily better than the other I knew knew that like the, yeah, the budget and the scope
and the resources that I would have on this one
would let me do a thing that I couldn't do on World's Fair,
which was like paint and build worlds.
And so the, you know, like from its inception point,
like I thought of the movie as an opportunity
to do a lot of that.
But at the same time, I like also knew that like
we couldn't just escape upstairs
because anna was reading tarot cards and i was like oh it'd be amazing to just like do like a
half day of improv of you just like reading tarot cards right right um did you feel like a loss of
invention because of that i think i just planned for it from the beginning. And so it was less like, it just became less of the plan.
Like, you know,
I think I'd been around enough bigger sets
to understand the difference
and sort of like not try to push against it.
But I definitely did feel stifled by how,
like I'm an over planner
and I think you can probably see it in the movie and that it's like
you know I've like made my shot list
18 times over and it's
quite designed and it's really thought
through and like
you know in a way that like
there is a formalism there but like
if I get to set
and I feel like for those
two months of insanely
hard work all I'm doing doing is following my blueprints. I'm very quickly going to get bored. And if I get bored, I think that you are missing out on one of the chief joys of the medium, which is that you're filming something that's really happening in front of you you need to be like alive and engaged with that thing in like a present tense way and so i did find it a challenge
and kind of like me challenging myself constantly every day to find ways to be like not just
pushing that boulder that i had like planned to push up the hill up the hill according
to schedule but to find ways to like create chaos within what was a very ordered presentation
give me an example of something you did that kind of broke that paradigm of blueprint I mean there
yeah it was like really like every day like every day I would just find any number of things, um, you know, like I would
change like a line, uh, on, on the fly. If it, if it felt like someone should be,
you know, expressing something less stock or, you know, um, like one, I'll give you like one
random small example. Like, I really remember there was this one day that we were shooting,
um, we were shooting by this like little dock by a lake
where a lot of the scenes of the TV show happen.
And it was just like one of these days
where like all of the things that you buy
when you get the bigger budget,
like are just a fucking headache.
Like you're like, you know,
it's just like everyone is setting up
and we were just like running behind
from the start of the day.
And I'm just like going back over the shot list and like cutting shots and pushing everything into like a smaller and smaller sort of like bucket.
And just like also like energy on a set this big is so much harder to control because you're working, you know, there are teamsters around.
Yeah.
And it's like if everyone is wiped and morale is kind of like wiped,
then everything is going
to kind of feel wiped
and maybe you won't be able
to see that in the finished
product of the film,
but I'm sensitive to it
and I think for me
to feel excited
about doing good work,
I need to be like more alive
than just like get us
to the end of the day.
Would you feel nervous
when you could sense that?
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And it's like,
so much of directing is performative
and so much of directing is like keeping the vibe good.
And when the vibe isn't good, it's like playing with that maybe.
Yeah, it's like managerial coaching.
It's like a lot of weird skills that I imagine would be hard to develop
making the kind of work that you made to this point
because it's been relatively intimate, right?
I think that yes. And also I've had enough experience. Like I do think that if you're,
if you've made a film, you've like learned a little bit about the managerial qualities.
I think a lot of filmmakers don't think about it because it's like the thing that you kind of have
to do to get your way. But to me, it's like such, it's kind of the core of production.
I think writing, I think development, I think editing,
these are more like personal and creative parts of the process.
But when you're on set, whether it's 12 people or 200 people,
you're like collaborating with reality and you're kind of just the conductor.
You're kind of just like all you can control is the vibe
because everyone has their discrete job
to actually realize the thing.
Interesting.
Yeah, I was curious about the relationship
that you have to music too
because this is sort of like a subterranean music film.
There's so many musical artists in it.
I love Alex g as well the film almost feels like it transitions to a like a story about kind of becoming a hipster in some ways too you know where like music takes this like
really meaningful this is my hipster coming out story yeah but like i uh i'm curious like how you
thought about that how you thought about populating the cast with musicians
how you thought about
like how the music
interacted with the characters
I feel like my
Maddie
yeah there was like
an older girl
now we're both queer
obviously
and she
I would like go
hang out with her
in her room
and she would like be like
hey you gotta listen
to Belle and Sebastian
and then I would like
go on family vacation
with a Belle and Sebastian CD and just like hide from my family and listen to Belle and Sebastian. And then I would like go on family vacation with a Belle and Sebastian CD
and just like hide from my family
and listen to If You're Feeling Sinister
over and over again.
So I do think like music,
it's not in the film necessarily
because it's a film about television fandom,
but like music for me was like the other liberatory
or at least not liberatory,
like differentiating, you know, like I least not liberatory, like differentiating.
You know, like I was just like 13, 14 downloading like Nutri Milk Hotel
and like Bright Eyes albums and like pretty soon basically like trying to get out of my hometown
every weekend on the Metro North into the city to go to like, you know, like the North Six or whatever.
Yeah, sure.
These are very relatable things
that you're talking about.
Yes, for a very small part of the population.
Yeah, and that just to me
was like a way to differentiate myself
from like this kind of monocultural,
yes, suburban hellscape
that I was sort of reared in um i also think that like in terms of the genre
of the film like the film really is trying to sort of play at this like teen angst teen rebellion
kind of genre that you know like the the versions of it from my youth would be definitely like the
donnie darkos of the world.
But I think it goes back further than that.
Yeah, over the edge, the wild ones.
Yeah, exactly.
There's tons of them, yeah.
Totally.
Rock and roll high school.
Yeah.
And I do think there is like an intrinsic link between like a certain kind of like teen angst music and a teen angst film.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That makes sense.
Yeah.
I mean,
I'm thinking about it cause I had so much fun.
It was like also just like,
Oh,
I have a 24 money.
Like,
will they let me like curate a soundtrack of original songs by like artists?
I dig.
Uh,
and the answer was yes.
Um,
but you know,
it's like,
I feel like,
Oh my God,
I want to do that for every movie.
But then I'm kind of like, yeah, but like the next movie is like a slasher. It doesn't have
like as much, I think music has to be a little different in that one. Like I do think the
emphasis on music in this film and how the film is just like flooded with music. And there is
the soundtrack that I really think of as like a piece of art, both tied to the film and discreet from the film. Like I want, I like, I always knew that like this particular film and this genre of film was
like particularly conducive to music. Yeah. It's like even Dazed and Confused is well known for
its soundtrack. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. So related to that idea of mischief that you were
talking about and music, can you just talk about Fred Durst and Fred Durst being a part of this movie?
Thank you for framing that in terms of mischief. who sort of occupies like a space like fred durst occupies for me it's as much about like
the cultural context that you seeing fred durst in the movie brings as it is like fred durst's like
um you know like talent as an actor in the abstract um fred's a good actor um and a great
performer but i i knew that having fred durst in the soup of the movie was like a spice that only Fred Durst could give.
And that spice has to do with my love of Limp Bizkit at age 12 as like, you know, a kid in the suburbs with a Walkman.
That spice has to do with like the particular connotations of like Fred Durst glaring at you from across the room as an angry
dad that you know but it also has to do with like Woodstock 99 and the evolution of like white male
anger and um you know so I I don't want to like I don't want to just be like and here's my
dissertation on why Fred Durst is in the movie but like I think it is my belief that like like it it's almost like a post-structuralist
idea that like the movie and especially a movie like this one right which is so engaged with pop
culture like doesn't exist in a vacuum and so like the elements that i fill it with like all add up
to a perspective right i suspected that that was the intention and I guess I read
one more layer of that
which is that
there's an understanding
that
amongst people who care
about this sort of thing
that Fred Durst
who is a filmmaker
and like cares about movies
and likes movies
and so for him to pop up
in a movie like this
makes sense
despite his
otherwise
pop cultural reputation
that it helps inform
the movie and the character
and everything else
that you're describing.
He's got great taste.
Like our first conversation,
he was telling me stories
about like going,
like drinking with like
Harry Dean Stanton
and you brought up Paris, Texas
and like five minutes
of a Zoom call
and I was like, Fred.
It's pretty good.
I don't know, you know,
and I think that like,
you know, I guess this isn't him, but he cast in his movie.
What was that movie called?
The Fanatic?
Yeah, the Travolta movie, right?
The Travolta movie.
He cast, he metacast Devin Sawa.
Yeah, yeah.
Who, of course, will go down in the history books as Stan from Stan.
That's right.
And so he made a movie about Stans and cast Stan.
Clever guy.
I'm really just kind of participating in this tradition.
Can't say I'm a huge fan of the phonetic, but it's a good note.
It's an interesting watch.
Both of the films have what I would describe as a kind of like
ruminative, anxious tone.
Is that fair?
Yeah, I mean, and that's me.
Yeah.
So like that is not necessarily easily transferable into a work of art,
even if that's something that you feel.
Capturing tone is very hard.
It's very hard to talk about.
It's a weird question to ask, but I like to ask filmmakers
because there feels like a consistency in the approach that you're taking.
How do you go about trying to nail the energy of the movie?
It's like so much more primary to me than the things that maybe we think of as the priorities,
which are like plot, character, arc, those kinds of things. It's not to say that those things aren't crucial to like me making a movie that I'm happy with
but those things I think get built on top of tone
I think that like
I tend to start from a place of like
yeah like a weird mix of tone
because maybe there's like a title
or an image or um you know like like
with this movie especially like just like music that i was listening to at the time being like
what is a shoegaze movie um and so like i start from a place of tone because if the movie isn't
like or just like all of my favorite movies feel like they start from that place. Like the movies that I returned to a hundred times,
which are the kinds of movies that I want to make.
It feels like it's not that there is a disinterest necessarily in plot or
character or like the,
the rollercoaster ride of like narrative American cinema,
but that like,
that is sort of existing.
Yeah.
On top of just like being surrounded by something emotionally
and just vibe wise and so I think that like I have a lot of tools at my disposal as the artist to like
set that you know and that's tempo and that's like color and that's um pacing and that's like when there's humor or when there's
emotional grounding and when you're also then like pulling the rug out uh and like entering
uncanny dream space and and to me it's like structurally that conversation is central
and then once i feel like i've tightened those screws sufficiently to create
something, it like honestly is always, and I just went through this again with my new script, like
two years of that work. And then I really like, I tend to think of like narrative and character
in film, at least as like, like the question becomes like an occam's razor question it becomes like what is the clearest and simplest way to like create narrative structure on top of all of that
that will like elucidate all of those deeper things um so like for instance with this new
film and with tv glow it's like outlined and written six times with completely different character arcs characters plot um until i like
find a version of it where i'm like okay yeah no this this like works on that level but there's all
of this stuff underneath like in search of that thing that you're describing you will completely
junk like a shape of the story and i have to in fact because it's like it almost becomes this
like puzzle to like um it's like with the new movie like find and I'm only talking about that because it's what's fresh
in my mind the process it like took years to find the like actual character relationship and like
narrative arc that could talk about what I actually am interested in talking about that's
so interesting I'm you mentioned mentioned Lynch and Cronenberg
and being more drawn towards that sphere
of the film broke canon, I guess,
for lack of a better phrase.
Are those the movies that you're talking about
that you watch hundreds of times
that you're trying to create your own version
of that kind of thing?
What are those movies that you're like,
these are the ones that I constantly go to?
Yeah, I definitely
continually return
to, like, Crash
or Existence
or Mulholland Drive
or Lost Highway
and, like,
return to them structurally.
Like, I return to the way
that those movies, like,
dance across
the different, like, realms
that they exist within.
Like, I love in Lost Highway,
for instance, like,
yeah, how that movie just
gives over itself over to this like mobster 50s thing for you know 40 minutes before then like
becoming something completely different and it's like i think anything where like structure is
being challenged or structure is being derived from like a more subconscious realm,
but not in a way that feels random,
in a way that still feels like incredibly structurally rigorous.
Like I'm inspired by, I don't know,
like I think that like increasingly as I get older
and have sort of like dug my way through not just the film bro canon,
but like the film canon
I just find myself returning to like things
that feel like one movie I watch over and over
again is um
uh I'll just throw out a few
random ones like AI
I find myself watching over and over again
I find myself watching um
Gus Van Sant's Last Days
over and over again
Simon Lang films.
I think the thing that...
A lot of animation, actually.
I find myself more and more re-watching Miyazaki films,
or I just saw End of Evangelion in the theater
for the anniversary there,
and that's one that I just will watch every year.
Movies that are sojourns to dream worlds, you know?
Okay, so then forgive this crass follow-up
to a very thoughtful response about making unique art.
But there's like a commercial collision
with the impulse that comes from,
especially trying to make something
that is trying to break the expectation of narrative
structure like if you actually are drawn to that uh emotionally or creatively in a way like you're
almost guaranteeing that fewer people will like get it yeah in the in the short term like in the
movie going sense of the word you know do you know what i mean like i'm not trying to i certainly i
know okay do you care about that are you do you You know, do you know what I mean? Like, I'm not trying to... I certainly, I know what you mean. Okay.
Do you care about that?
Are you, do you think about it?
Do you have any anxiety about, like, the box office performance of your film?
I mean, it, to me, is my job.
Or, like, the only version of this job
that feels, like, worth the insane amount of energy
that I put into it.
It was hard at first.
Like I remember, I just like take my role as the artist really seriously.
Like I actually do.
And like people hate artists in this country right now.
People hate pretension.
Yeah.
Now that's, I think it's even more so the latter.
Yeah.
But yeah, but the two become synonymous, right?
If you talk about things in a certain way, yes.
And it's like anyone who's like actually like entertainment is not the goal, people are going to get angry at you.
This is kind of why I'm asking you this because I really admire that you're trying to do something like that.
And I think it's very cool. And I also think that I'm thinking very generationally through this conversation, but I think our
generation feels very trapped intellectually between the impulses of like safety and success
versus the desire to do something that feels kind of more freeing and more creative.
Maybe I'm just talking about my own autobiography here.
No, it was.
You know what I'm saying?
It was very like, I remember when we started sending world's fair out for feedback to strangers like a friend of a friend would watch it one of
the first people who watched it was just like this movie is incorrect because she does not go on a
killing spree you know like this movie is incorrect because like it doesn't go to the extreme that that that it like that
structurally it wants to right meaning like there's a checkoff's gun that's never paid
right why is this not hard candy basically yeah or like why is this not like videodrome like why
is she not like fully losing it and it goes crazy and and like and i can like bark at that person about like
yeah but we have this other guy who wants her to do those things and so in a way the movie becomes
this like meta talking about the narrative structure that you expect and like what is
underneath your desire for that and how does that relate to power and gender, et cetera, et cetera. Or I could just be like, cool, not for you.
And yeah, I describe, and I'm curious to see where TV glow ends up,
but like I wear my like Letterboxd 3.1 with pride, you know?
Because I think like a movie that I love, I don't know,
and there are plenty of Letterboxd 4.3s, like I the shawshank redemption you know right um i like you know it's like i get the joy of like like
hollywood nothing wrong with a normie classic yeah yeah and like yeah i get the comfort in that
but like i do think that i've like read my letterboxd enough to understand like the genres
of people and it's either like people take it personally yeah it's like why would you frustrate
me so you feel comfortable in the reaction kind of regardless then because of that because you
are aware of that intellectually and emotionally I think it's like i don't think i'm just doing it to troll like i don't think or like doing it because i have some
like inflated sense of ego about being a serious artist it's like the urge to talk about the things
that the films are trying to talk about comes from like a very deep and emotional place and
at least so far a place that like for me so clearly intersects
with my trans identity um that it almost feels like the point of the work is the way in which
it is challenging like these narrative structures that we live with and expect that feel like in this moment especially so boxed in by the needs of like a late
capitalist like ip clusterfuck and so male and so yeah just like western uh and like and I like those things too in some ways. I enjoy narrative catharsis
and I enjoy genre.
But when I think about what's worth three years of my life
and emotional state,
it's something that's like, yeah,
like warping or mutating those tropes
rather than just regurgitating them.
Do you feel like there's correlation then between what you think is, those tropes rather than just regurgitating them.
Do you feel like there's correlation then between what you think is the ideas of your art that you're trying to communicate by yourself about your experience, about how you see the
world, and also this confrontational, almost provocative sense of this may not be for you,
you know, that expectation?
I think it's only confrontational and provocative if like I'm
imagining like the kids on letterboxd when I'm conceiving of it um or if I'm imagining like
Harvey Weinstein or whoever you know like um like and I do like I'm not I'm not ignorant to the fact
that like when I write something that feels like it will naturally be a provocation thrown into the
commercial system that I am then going to be doing like I described it recently in a Q&A as like
angry sex between art and commerce it's like that's that's that's that's what we're doing
together like I'm not like ignorant of it and in fact, I know exactly what to expect at this point and I brace for it and I become a overprotective mom to the art, the vision that I'm trying to protect that I do need to protect as the artist because the system is built to satisfy the largest number of people in the most immediate way um but also like i think that hopefully i'm
thinking about all of that like 10 and 90 i'm thinking about like the feelings that it is
derived from and the way that like for instance a film like i saw the tv glow is trying to speak
like very honestly about a trans experience that like i've only ever seen
on screen depicted in a way that's like completely oversimplified and inauthentic to like complexity
and like ultimately like the film and and every choice in the film isn't just random or isn't
just like provocation for the sake of provocation it's trying to speak to a narrative structure or an emotional structure that um captures something
authentic do you think being as media literate and maybe semiotically informed as you are
protects you from some of the like pitfalls of getting into this phase of your
career or maybe makes you more vulnerable to that great question um i no longer worry and it's and
it's and it's a recent uh worry that has been satiated i no longer worry about being like seduced by the machine okay and what i mean by that is
like i just it's like oil and water i'm not looking to like sell out or like i'm not looking
to i'm so disgusted by it naturally that like i would not be happy somebody said to me recently
like yeah and some people just like want to buy their house in Beverly Hills.
And it's like, I'm not moving to Beverly Hills.
Like I would die.
Like I know what makes me happy.
Yeah.
And like part of that is identity, you know.
And if I feel like, if I ever find myself feeling like a middle-aged Hollywood shill, like I just won't be happy.
Right.
And I won't be pleasant to be around. There's a middle ground though, right?, like I just won't be happy and I won't
be pleasant to be around.
There's a middle ground though, right?
Like there is a, you can kind of like bleed in the other direction in ways that you don't
quite expect.
So I guess I'm kind of, I wouldn't expect you would buy like a big home with like Roman
pillars or, you know, like, but there is a kind of like, you find yourself losing yourself
in small ways when you start having a certain kind of success. person and like in the kinds of like bored roomy vibes and like award show spaces I'm never going
to feel completely comfortable in those spaces and in fact like as I've entered them more and more
having a real life to retreat to that has nothing to do with that has become like
way more urgent and essential and something that I've put more energy into, which I do think is like, I think so much of the danger
is like wanting to please the system.
And like, I'm not immune to that.
Like I feel invisible pressure
to like make commercial work
to please all of the forces around me.
But I do think that like,
that will never be the goal for me.
Or like, I'm no longer worried about that being the goal for me or like i'm no longer worried about that
being the goal for me because i just like i know that if it even starts to tilt in that direction
i start to not feel like myself and it becomes this like very core identity crisis that that
hits and so i think the thing i worry about a lot more is like pigeonholing myself creatively right you know um i i almost feel like um in the
middle of like a phase of my artistic career that i know will have like an explicit end point in that
like if if my my own internal creative process doesn't evolve and change in ways that feel like very unsafe to me,
I'll start to repeat myself
and I'll become like the parody of the good work
that I'm making right now.
I've heard you talk about the first three films
as like a trilogy.
And the third film is a slasher, you said?
No, so the next film is this slasher movie
that I read pretty recently that exists outside the trilogy.
Oh, okay.
The third part of the trilogy is giant.
I'd say it's like as big a jump as like World's Fair was to TV Glow from TV Glow to something else.
Wow.
I spent last year hiding upstate New York writing a novel.
The novel is called Public Access Afterworld.
It's the first of three novels that I plan to write
that are, it's essentially like my swing
at like something of the scope or size
of like Sandman or Buffy or yeah,
like it's a universe, it's world building,
it's mythos, it's all of those things.
And I wrote it's a universe. It's world building. It's mythos. It's all of those things. And I wrote it as a novel because I knew that I wouldn't have the power to like make it for the hundreds of millions of dollars that it would require.
Would you ever want that to be adapted though?
Oh yeah, I want to adapt it.
I want to explicitly, it's like that's the plan.
It's like get it all on the page in a way that's like exactly right. So that no one can take it away from me.
But then you'll have to wait 60 years for your Denis Villeneuve to than that. And I really don't know. It's like, it's so sprawling,
a work that like TV is the obvious place for it.
But then I'm also like, I don't, I love TV, obviously.
It's a movie about my love of TV,
but I almost like love it too much to make a bad TV show.
And it feels like all that you're really allowed to make right now
is a bad TV show. It sure does. Okay. Last question. We end every episode of this show by asking
filmmakers, what's the last great thing they've seen? What have you seen recently?
God, and I feel like press tour energy is so not conducive to like my antennas being up for great
work. It's like by nature, so narcissistic to be out there talking about
myself and my movie that like I miss so deeply like watching and being obsessed with other
give to someone else I know you mentioned end of an evangelion as something that you liked I don't
know if there's something in that mold like something you've seen in a theater what have
I seen lately that's really like changed my life like rocked me I do feel like I just watched
something where I was like oh my gosh that how is that not in my life that would rocked me. I do feel like I just watched something where I was like,
oh my gosh, how is that not in my life? That would be a better way to phrase the question.
What's the last thing that rocked you and changed your life? I'm not asking for that grade.
I have this group of friends that have kind of become my like little queer family upstate. And I'd say like five or six nights of the week we just like sit on the same couch and
watch a movie and get stoned and that's my life um and that's pretty good uh so I do feel like
I'm like constantly watching cool weird movies um I don't know there's if I'm being honest like
there's nothing jumping to mind that's just like oh my god that walloped me. Some rewatches that were somewhat revelatory recently.
RoboCop I just rewatched.
Have you seen RoboDoc yet?
Are you aware of this?
It's a four-hour making of RoboCop documentary
that is the most exhaustive but weirdly satisfying piece of nonfiction filmmaking I've seen.
RoboCop is so good.
Perfect.
It's so good.
It's so good.
It's like,
if that was what,
you know,
we were making on a narrative level,
like, sign me up.
I'm there.
I just rewatched Exotica,
which,
it just gets better
every time I rewatch that film.
It's like the saddest.
I like, like,
I like that particular,
like, showgirls adjacent,
like, sad and sexy.
Yes.
Just like, like,
yeah,
almost like, pathetic and sexy. Yes. Just like, like, yeah, almost like pathetic and sexy.
What else have I seen?
Oh,
I watched the Polanski film,
The Tenant.
Oh,
sure.
For the first time.
That's the one that he stars in?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's so weird.
It is.
Yeah.
Yeah.
He's like essentially like,
yeah,
it feels like whatever he's doing there,
casting himself in that role and putting himself through that
is some sadomasochistic kink thing.
The movie ends with him in a dress, jumping out the window.
He's a complicated person.
He's a complicated person, yeah.
Jane, this was fun.
Did you feel like we shot the shit?
We shot the shit, for sure.
You feel comfortable with that?
I think we shot the shit.
Congrats on I Saw That TV, Will.
Thank you.
I think it's really wonderful.
Thanks for coming on the show.
Thanks for having me.
Before we wrap up, a couple of quick programming notes.
One, of course, subscribe to YouTube.com slash...
At Ringer Movies.
At Ringer Movies.
Can you guys animate it so it says at ring or movies?
No, they can't do that.
They are way too busy right now.
They're just gesturing.
They're like, we have actual jobs and lives.
Please subscribe.
We're posting episodes here.
Like sparkles?
Breakouts.
We're also on that channel on Monday, May 13th,
going live at noon Pacific, 3 p.m. Eastern,
a live episode of The Rewatchables.
The film is Jerry Maguire.
Yeah.
Please tune in for that.
Thanks to Jane.
Thank you to Adam.
Thanks to Amanda.
Thanks, of course, to our producer, Bobby Wagner,
for his work on this episode.
Next week, we'll be back to discuss
the kingdom of the planet of the apes with Van Lathan,
and we're going to rank all 10 apes movies.
We will see you then.