The Big Picture - Are Movie Theaters Screwed?

Episode Date: August 4, 2020

The AMC theater chain cut a deal with Universal last week, ending a months-long standoff over the future of film distribution. What does the deal mean for the moviegoing experience? Will more chains and more studios join in? Will we see more movies at home? Amanda and Sean break it all down (1:06), along with news about the star of Paul Thomas Anderson's new film, the state of film festivals in 2020, and the new Seth Rogen HBO Max comedy 'An American Pickle' (32:55). Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm Sean Fennessey. I'm Amanda Dobbins. And this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about movies. There is a lot of news about movies in the world right now, but not so many movies. It is officially August, which means three things. One, it is hot as hell outside. My Lord. Two, it's Amanda's birthday.

Happy birthday, Amanda. Oh, thank you, Sean. Three, it's Amanda's birthday. Happy birthday, Amanda. Oh, thank you, Sean. Three, it's a very bad time for movies. And this year, of course, it's unusually bad thanks to COVID-19. So Amanda, we have a lot to talk about on today's episode, a lot about the state of the movie business and more specifically about where you didn't spend your birthday, which is in a movie theater because movie theaters are not open and it sort of feels like movie theaters are screwed. We're going to talk a little bit about some of the decisions that AMC made last week and the ramifications of that, and maybe some of the financial decisions that AMC made earlier

today and what that means for the future of movies. It's a very complicated time. Can you help us understand just a little bit of what transpired last week between AMC and Universal Studios? Yes. So we got the ultimate resolution of the great Trolls World Tour fight of 2020, which is that after much public negotiating and wild statements made on both sides, AMC Theaters and Universal came to an agreement. And Universal movies now will be shown in AMC Theaters with a new theatrical window of 17 days, which is notably shorter than the previous window that all studios and movies operated under in the United States. Yeah, that window used to be in the neighborhood of between two and three months.

And that meant films had to play in theaters for nearly a quarter of the year and sometimes more than that before you could find them at home. And that's changing. I sort of, you know, it's clearly changing for the purposes of Universal movies. No other studio has come to this agreement. And Universal has only come to this agreement with one theater chain, AMC. So this is not a cataclysmic event, but it certainly seems precedential. It certainly seems as if it's something that is going to send shockwaves throughout the

industry for the future. And, you know, obviously, we spent so much time on this show talking about the slow atrophying of the theatrical experience. This feels as significant a story as has happened in that respect. I was just doing some napkin math last night about box office receipts. And so over the past 10 years, the annual domestic box office has averaged about $11 billion in the United States. And right now it sits at about $1.8 billion with just about two plus months of true box office. So these are really desperate times for movie theaters. And so AMC, I'm trying to understand what specifically is motivating AMC's whiplash decision making. Because as you said, Adam Aaron, who is the CEO of AMC, had some very strong words for Universal's decision about Trolls World Tour about four or five months ago.

And now they've made nice. And in fact, it sort of feels like AMC took a hit here in this negotiation. What do you think is animating their decision-making? Deep financial desperation. Just absolute, total, what else can we do to keep the lights on? Which I am not a, I do not have an MBA, okay? And I'm not an economist, but there has, a lot has been written, you know, in Deadline and in the Wall Street Journal and the trades about the extremely precarious financial situation of AMC in particular. And obviously all of this is heightened by the fact that movie theaters have not been open for months now. And they don't have a business model because of COVID-19. But I think,

you know, COVID-19 has really exacerbated what was a tricky situation for all movie theaters, but especially it seems AMC just because of how its business is structured. And you mentioned today there was some news about AMC's restructuring in order to reallocate some of its debt. But it just all seems under the guise of we have to keep the lights on because we do not have cash on hand and movie theaters aren't open and we don't know when they're going to be able to be open most places. And if we don't have cash coming in, then our business no longer exists. So AMC, even it seems within the realm of the theater chains who are all obviously impacted

by COVID-19 seems to be really motivated to figure out any income stream that it can right now. That's at least my reading. I don't know what you think. No, I think that's exactly right. And I think it's notable that in this deal with Universal, in addition to clearing new cash flow from that debt restructuring that you mentioned, AMC is going to get money from Universal when it takes its films to PVOD after that 17-day window. And that's a highly unusual arrangement for streaming revenue to filter back into a theatrical, I don't know, what would you call it? A tithing basket? I'm not sure. Like, what does that meaningfully, you know, what does that represent to AMC's business? I don't,

I'm not sure I understand. I think it's undeniable that streaming is the future of how people will be watching things, whether it takes 10 years or a hundred years, almost everybody will be watching everything on streaming at some point. But the fact that AMC is getting an injection of cash in two different ways, you know, it makes sense. I understand it. You know, those percentages are still a little bit unclear about how much money they'll specifically be getting from that. And we should probably talk a little bit about what specifically this means for Universal movies and then maybe all movies if other studios decide to make deals like this with the other chains. Because I don't think that this specifically means that Fast and Furious 9 will be available

in your home for a $20 rental after two and a half weeks. There's going to be some negotiating about which films immediately move on because Fast and Furious 9 is able to generate additional revenue in movie theaters and frankly more 9 is able to generate additional revenue in movie theaters and frankly more revenue than it can generate at home for weeks, months, extended periods of time. I think this is more specifically affecting a different kind of movie. It's not the mega tentpole blockbuster, which was already running movie theaters. To me, what it affects is certainly dramas, probably comedies, and to some extent, horror movies. And those are still categories. Those are still genres that Universal focuses on, puts out into movie theaters. So I think what this does is it only

just stratifies things even further than they already were. Would you agree with that? Sort of, though I do wonder whether there is maybe a silver lining in that if studios who are making comedies and horror films and dramas know that if the theater run isn't really working, they can pull a movie back sooner onto streaming and make some money sooner for a mid-budget or smaller budget movie, which are the movies that are not being made right now because they aren't theater guarantees, then maybe you do get a little more room in the mid space just because there is some sort of, you know, risk cushioning for the studios as well. I don't trust anyone to make any sort of decisions in favor of art and movies that I like.

So that seems unlikely. But you could see a world where that's possible just because it opens up that we can try it here and we can try it there. And we have a bit more flexibility than we did. I think the movies that Universal has released this year is fairly instructive to how this might work. So here's the full list of releases that they've put out in the world. Doolittle, which we talked about at length on the show, a preposterous movie. The Turning, which was a very little seen horror film. The Photograph, which we talked about on this show as well. The Invisible Man, The Hunt,

Trolls World Tour, The King of Staten Island, and You Should Have Left, the horror movie starring Kevin Bacon. I think all of those movies, even in a movie theater centric experience, if we are able to get to some normalcy, all these movies would be at home within 17 days anyway, don't you think? Maybe with the exception of The King of Staten Island, though I'm not so sure. What about The Invisible Man? Well, horror films tend to open fairly big and then die pretty quickly, box office-wise. So it's a bit hard to say. I mean, The Invisible Man,

I don't know if it was a phenomenon. It was a very successful movie. But by its third or fourth week, what was it really doing at the box office? Was it driving more than a couple million dollars? And at that point, would there be enough of a fervor for people to then want to buy it and rent it? Sure. Though its last couple of weeks did also coincide with

the first wave of lockdown and COVID-19. So I think that that's a tough example. The other example that I wonder about is actually, and I know there was a lot of great success with Trolls World Tour. And I still can't say it. It's the rural journal juror to me um and you know i love making jokes about it thank you so much but world tour yeah but um that it was the experiment is i do and that it was released when it did and that parents were desperate definitely fueled some of the yay it's on pvod and and it does seem like movies for kids are still drive a lot of the theater box office because you need somewhere to take your your children and i i wonder whether universal would be willing to give up that long tail potential theatrical um earnings in a in a world where you can go to theaters.

I mean, I don't know. So you've raised an interesting thought that I have about this whole experience. Obviously, a lot of parents are really struggling through the COVID-19 crisis. It's incredibly difficult, especially for those whose children will not be going back to school in the fall. We know some friends. We have some colleagues who are experiencing this. It's very challenging right now for them.

But those parents are learning about how to cope with a different style and a different level of parenting right now. And because of that, they're changing the way that they raise their children in a significant way. And I think that there is some correlation between that and even just the movie-going experience, not to reduce everything down to movie-going, but I feel like there is going to be like new learned patterns for people over time here. And, you know, the onslaught of Disney Plus and Peacock, in addition to HBO Max and Netflix and Amazon and Hulu and all of these services,

I wonder if people are just slowly being trained out of, I have to take my kids somewhere, so it might as well be the movie theater. I could be wrong about this. I don't have any children, so I don't want to... I'm just thinking more broadly about the essential social experience of moviegoing, if it is being drained from us. I mean, yes, it is. And also it has been like well before COVID-19.

And I think another factor to talk, especially when talking about families and parents taking their kids is that going to the movies is extremely expensive because you're paying for the ticket, you're paying for the concessions, you multiply that by four or five versus what, $11.99 or $12.99 a month for most of the streaming services. And also kids love to watch things over

and over and over again. So you do the numbers. I'm not going to make anyone be witness to me doing math, but you save a lot of money at home. So I think that is absolutely true. I was just talking about in terms of what studios decide to do and how they make these available. And I wonder whether kids is one of the last, along with like Tentpoles and Furious Nine of being like, well, you have to come to the theaters, but then it'll be a big family experience. Sort of like amusement parks are at this point, which a lot of kids still really love going

to those, but it's a treat. And then ultimately a way for studios to make a ton of money off said treat. Yeah. You've, you've cited the amusement park analogy, which I think we first heard from our beloved Martin Scorsese a few months ago when he was talking about comic book movies. And I'm not, I'm not sure if I buy that. I'm not sure if I buy it. Cause if you look at the movies that are successful right now, I know in a couple of weeks, one of the only kind of mainstream major movies that is coming out is called The One and Only Ivan, which is a Disney Plus movie about a gorilla starring Bryan Cranston. And I feel like the at-home experience for kids watching movies, there's no gradation there. There's no real difference experientially between

whether you see it at home or see it in a movie theater. So you might be right. I don't know. I'm very curious to see if more quickly than we think, a lot of these patterns, these habits just change fully. The other thing that will be pretty significant to this is whether or not other theater chains actually follow suit. Are they incentivized to do so? Because we don't necessarily know the state of their financial holdings the way that we do with AMC, which has been trading at a very low stock price and has been in a massive amount of debt for a pretty extended period of time. When the news was announced last week, Regal Cinemas is owned by Cineworld. Their CEO, Mookie Gridinger, said, while we don't know the full details and we are always analyzing any move in the industry, we will analyze it. People need to be aware that the

first big movie from Universal is coming only in six months, so there's no pressure here. But we clearly see this as a wrong move at the wrong time. Clearly, we are not changing our policy with regard to showing only movies that are respecting the theatrical window. You know, that doesn't sound like we have a massive sea change in front of us. It sounds like we had a desperate company make a deal that it desperately needed to make. What do you think? If you had to put a timeframe on it, when a windowing deal happens across all theater chains, when would you say? What year? Across all theater chains. So everyone agrees together. That's really hard because I can't see any of them working in tandem at this point. It seems like every business for their self at this point.

But I don't know. Next year? It would probably have to be after a vaccine or something. Do you think that they would agree jointly before there was an understanding of people being able to go back to movie theaters and being able to plan? I honestly do not know. I do not know what to expect here because obviously we don't know the economic standing of a lot of these companies. But more specifically, it just doesn't feel like movie theaters are opening anytime soon.

And now if we look at the calendar, certainly there are some things on the books for September, but I don't really expect those movies to happen either. Maybe October, maybe, but we're not going to have a vaccine by then. And so we're basically looking at, you know, whether herd immunity has worked in certain areas in the country, you know, sort of accidental herd immunity, not a strategic herd immunity. And I don't know, I mean, the numbers just keep going up and up and up. So, you know, movie theaters are, they're just, they're a business like every other business. You know, I saw, for example, that my beloved Rosario's Pizza closed over the weekend. I lived below Rosario's Pizza in New York,

or I lived above it rather, for three years, three of the best years of my life. And Rosario's was an institution. It was in New York for decades and people loved it. And it was, you know, one of the most crowded spots in the Lower East Side during boom times of the Lower East Side in the 2000s of any space in that whole neighborhood. And that business is gone. Like it's over. They closed up that pizzeria and it's probably not coming back. Movie theaters are essentially operating in the same way. Some of them are publicly traded companies. Some of them are massive businesses, but functionally they're not able to bring in any revenue right now. And so if this continues and extends for months and months, and it certainly seems like it's going to, at some point, these

companies are going to have to make decisions like the one that AMC made that is going to jeopardize their long-term ability to do the work that they wanted to do. I was surprised just by the 17-day number. I thought at least they would have started at like 40 days or 30 days or something that split the difference between 70 and 17, but I don't, it doesn't have any leverage. They have literally no leverage. And the thing is, is they had no leverage before COVID-19. And, you know, I don't want to diminish the dire situation that these companies and particularly the people who work for these companies and who work in the theaters have been in as a result of COVID-19. And I think, you I think they've been failed by their employers

and failed by the government. And it's really intense. I don't want to diminish that. But before that, these companies were already just on a path to total obsolescence, and they didn't have anything to work with. What was AMC going to bring to Universal? Universal doesn't need... I mean, they do because that's how the theater business is how you make a ton of money on blockbusters. And streaming does not bring the same amount of profits on a $100 million or $200 million movie.

But just the business model was broken. It was. It broke a long time ago. And all of these companies had managed to float by and negotiate bit by bit and do what they do. But at the end of the day, it was a higher price point and a higher barrier of entry to a product that they didn't make or have control over. Like, what are we doing here? That's ultimately, at some point it is just going to break. And I'm like, I feel bad about that because I really love movies and I love going to movie theaters and I have not yet bought my surround sound bar. So everything here still sucks. But like, but I'm, I, again, I don't have an MBA, but it just doesn't add up. Yeah. It's a very challenging situation. It's kind of hard to see

a world in which it resolves and returns to even close to the state that it was at previously. And as I think about what we're going to be doing, what we're going to be talking about on this show in the fall, you know, obviously we've mentioned that there's a new david fincher movie and a new aaron sorkin movie i just got a note about antonio campos is the devil all the time which is coming to netflix in september later in this episode we're going to talk about a movie in american pickle um which came straight which is coming straight to hbo max later this week uh we there were some leaked photos of my new most anticipated movie of the year,

Rebecca, which is a remake of the Hitchcock film directed by Ben Wheatley, which will star Armie Hammer and Lily James. And who else? Who is playing the chambermaid? Oh, Kristen Scott Thomas. So very excited. My queen.

Yes, your gal from Four Weddings and a Funeral. Really looking forward to that movie. And just for me personally, my consciousness has shifted to what to anticipate and where I will be watching it, which is at home. And this is an incredible boon for Netflix and for HBO Max and for other services that have movies in the chamber for this very strange period in time. And I look at Universal's release calendar and what they're planning to put out in the world this year, and there's only a handful of films, the first of which is Candyman, which is supposed to come to movie theaters on October 16th. This is Nia DaCosta's remake of the 1990s film Reimagining probably produced by Jordan

Peel. That movie is obviously coming out in October because it's well-timed to, to Halloween. It had been pushed from the spring when it was originally meant to come out. I, I don't, do you, I'd love to go to the movie.

I'd love to go to a scary movie or on Halloween. That's a, that's also a right of, of joy for me, but a right of fall, I suppose. But I, I,

I, do you think we're going to be, you're, I know you're not going to be in the movie theater for But I, do you think we're going to be, you're, I know you're not going to be in the movie theater for that, but do you think we're going to be in the movie theater for that? Listen, we can't have Halloween. And like, we just like Halloween as a concept canceled. And it's easy for me to say, because I've always hated Halloween. I don't do costumes. I, you know, I did like the candy as a child, but we can't have our children going trick-or-treating. That doesn't really seem ultimately publicly responsible. Everyone who lives for an adult Halloween costume party can't be trusted right now. And so-

It's a very dangerous thing. Yeah. So if we can't have Halloween, then no, I don't really think that we can have the Halloween movie theaters either. Though, you know, I don't know. It's interesting being in Los Angeles and watching this. And as we've talked about before, it's really interesting trying to plan for a movie podcast when you live in one of the only places that it seems pretty clear we won't be going to the movie theaters. But it maybe is going to happen elsewhere. And I don't know how to feel about that. And it's wrapped up in some larger feelings about how the just we're just going to open stuff seems to be happening. And I'm bewildered by it, but maybe it will exist in

places in October. I don't know. The thing I'm not sure I can wrap my head around, because I think you're absolutely right. There are some cities and states and towns that are doing better than California, certainly, or some other hotspot states at the moment. And there are some places that I'm sure are looking forward to a more, a phase five, phase six, even reopening this fall. That's not implausible to me at all. The question is, does it make sense for the studios to put a movie into say 1200 theaters as opposed to the 3000 it was planning on?

You know, that's been a big part of the tenant conversation, which is a word we have not used yet in this podcast. I'm sorry to have brought it up. We brought it up 3,000 times in the last five months. But I think that there's a lot of calculus going on in that respect where the studios have to determine whether or not they want to try to get something out into the world and then clear as much cash from that product before bringing it to PVOD at some point down the line or to their streaming service. It's a little unclear. Maybe for Candyman, a film that probably doesn't have a huge budget, and maybe if things are significantly improved two months from now, maybe it does make

sense for that movie to be in a movie theater. I think I'm still having a hard time wrapping my head around that being the case because of our personal circumstances. And I want to be as thoughtful about that as I can, but I don't know. I still, I still have doubts. I still, I still can't see it. You know, we saw what happened in, was it, was it May when Texas tried to reopen and they opened movie theaters and nobody went and then they had to shut down Texas four weeks later. You know, there's no, there's no sense that we have a handle on this. And so it's, it's going to be a pretty challenging issue. Um, as far as the rest of the universal slate this year, you know, they've already moved a bunch of stuff to next year. So you're looking at the crude's too. You're looking at a news of the world, which is a big Oscar contender this year, a Tom Hanks film

directed by Paul Greengrass. And certainly Universal would like to make as much money from those movies as possible. But Croods 2 is basically just Trolls World Tour. It's a known property for children that I'm sure is a highly budgeted movie, but also has a built-in marketing campaign. Because I think you can watch the Croods on the streaming service right now. Last I checked, it was on Netflix. Sure, that's true. But they kept Croods too and they moved my beloved minions until 2021 because they clearly see a difference in the value proposition there and you know i believe that minions the rise of grew to pay proper respect to its full title um you are you are the queen of grew yeah i just Minions. I don't even know what they do really, but I love them.

It was, I believe, originally delayed because of trouble finishing the film and post-production because of COVID-19 lockdowns. But I think it was then moved again to 2021 in order to hopefully be able to benefit from a full theatrical release. So clearly they see like the Despicable Me franchise as having a certain value. And with all respect to Croods 2,

which I don't know the plot of, possibly having a different value. I believe the Croods is about a Neanderthal family. And I believe the last time it was mentioned on this podcast was the Roger Deakins episode when you guys mocked me for mentioning that Roger Deakins provided his advisory help. Oh, did he do that? Rango and Croods 2?

Yeah. Wow. Okay. And How to Train Your Dragon, you know. I was thinking about that podcast the other night, just because remember when Chris just yelled that Roger Deakins doesn't have to watch the Bucs so he can like watch animation? And my husband was watching the Bucs last night. And just anytime the Bucs are playing, I'm just like, does he have to watch the Bucs last night and just anytime the Bucs are playing, I'm just like, does he have to watch the Bucs? Anyway. Very tough loss for the Bucs.

What a fascinating weekend for the Bucs and Roger Deakins. Roger Deakins and his partner, James Deakins, are making a podcast right now and they had Joel Cohen on the podcast. And I don't know if Joel Cohen has ever done a podcast short of Terry Gross. Fascinating conversation for those of you who are interested in Deakins and the Coen brothers, it was this fabulous stuff. Um, so, so movies are fucked. That's what you're saying. We're all screwed except for, except for grew, grew is going to be okay. I hope grew is going to be okay. I still don't,

again, not really sure who he is yet. How about movies as we know them are fucked. It's just going to be really different. It's going to be just wild different and it already is pretty different. And I still like movies more than TV shows. So I'm rooting for them. But yeah, it's not going to be the same as when we got to go see movies for our birthdays in the summer, you know, in like 1995 or whatever. It's 2020, man. Look around. You know what I've been thinking about? Last year on my birthday, really one of the best birthdays ever. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood was released on my birthday. I remember. We went to dinner at Musso and Frank. That was beautiful. And then I jumped on a plane

and flew to Sweden and just hung out in Sweden for a week and a half. It was just an incredible time. You know what I got this year on my birthday? A fucking Taylor Swift album. Just absolutely brutal. It was two days before your birthday, just for the record. You got a Mets meltdown for your actual birthday. That's right, I did get a Mets meltdown.

Just 2020, terrible in serious and terrible and significant ways. And also in all of the most meaningless and frivolous ways. Just a garbage year all around. Yeah, I'm sorry about that. That Boney Bear song on the Taylor Swift album is really good. I don't know if you've listened to it. It really rules. I've never heard it and I never will hear it. So that's just how life goes at this stage. Let's take a quick break before we get to the rest of the show. Today's episode of The Big Picture is brought to you by Blue Moon. Don't you think some once in a blue moon moments should happen more than once in a blue moon? For example, I was celebrating Amanda Dobbins' birthday with her over the weekend and enjoying a blue moon.

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are out with friends or just enjoying a night in, reach for a Blue Moon. It's the beer you can enjoy every day. You can know Blue Moon delivered by going to get.bluemoonbeer.com and finding delivery options near you. Blue Moon, reach for the moon. Celebrate responsibly. Blue Moon Brewing Company, Golden, Colorado Ale. We have some breaking news on the big picture, the breakingest of news that I can recall in recent memory. And that is, Amanda, we got some insight into who might be the star of Paul Thomas Anderson's new untitled 1970s San Fernando

Valley coming of age drama. And that person is who, Amanda? It's Bradley Cooper. Bradley Cooper. What the fuck? Fuck yes. This is great news. I'm delighted to hear this. Listeners of this show will know that we have just an unbelievable passion for the sincerity and the work of Bradley Cooper and certainly of Paul Thomas Anderson as well. What do you think this holy union may bring us? I just, I have no idea. I'm thinking about the depths that Bradley Cooper likes to go to in a film anyway, sharing himself.

And then I'm thinking about what Paul Thomas Anderson is going to put him through. I admire both these men. I hope everyone is safe and mentally healthy. And also, please do a behind-the-scenes documentary on this one. I just got to see it. I got to see the outtakes, please. So based on what we've heard about this movie, my understanding of it was that it was a sort of dazed and confused-esque high school story. And we haven't seen any of the younger actors who would be cast in this. And that may have even been erroneous information. But in that event, it makes me think maybe Bradley Cooper plays like a handsome aging gym teacher type. What do you think? Yeah, I think that we should

definitely understand we'll star in as in Bradley Cooper will be in this movie and because he's Bradley Cooper he's a star but yes as supporting going for it 70s type role where he either gives advice or is a cautionary tale and you got to just imagine that the styling will be quite, quite something. So Bradley Cooper, just for the record, is making this film and then is directing his second feature, which is an untitled biopic about Leonard Bernstein, which is just an extraordinary leap from A Star is Born to Paul Thomas Anderson to Leonard Bernstein. I feel like Cooper is making me think about where like the pantheon, the hierarchy of movie stars, of people in Hollywood who I'm most interested in.

And this just makes, this puts him even higher on the list for me than maybe he's ever been before. Which I think is the point. Bradley Cooper is definitely a person who became famous because of The Hangover and like has been looking for validation the point. Bradley Cooper is definitely a person who became famous because of The Hangover and has been looking for validation and talks about his admiration for old Hollywood and Clint Eastwood

and really, really wants to be taken seriously. And listen, he did it with A Star Is Born. I am very pro A Star Is Born. I thought that he did not get enough credit. And we were the only two people who really thought that. As the listeners, let us know every day. We know that you're tired of hearing about A Star Is Born. But he definitely seems to be seeking out prestige projects. And seeking out that kind of, I want to be associated with the great Hollywood leading man. At a time when Hollywood leading man doesn't really exist anymore as a concept. Yeah, his chess moves have been really brilliant in that respect. And I was recently watching,

speaking of Clint Eastwood, the Inside the Actor's Studio episode with Clint Eastwood a few months ago because Clint just turned 90. And I was writing something about Clint and kind of researching him and looking back. And in the audience, looking on admiringly is a young Bradley Cooper studying Clint's moves. And you see him doing the same with Al Pacino and Gene Hackman and all the other people who appeared on that show over the years. And he studied the playbook. And he is now executing the playbook to perfection.

Yeah. But also, you know that that ambition is still there, which is just it's right on the surface for PTA to just be PTA with, which is delicious. And again, why I would like to request a videographer on set and in the trailer at all times throughout the making of this movie. Thank you very much. I agree with you. We've seen him do this with Tom Cruise. We've seen him do it with Adam Sandler.

So I'm absolutely delighted that he's bringing the PTA experience to the Bradley Cooper psyche or maybe vice versa. So stay tuned. I'm sure we'll only talk about this movie every single episode until it is officially released. And then every single episode henceforth. Movies are never going to be the same again, nor does it seem like film festivals are ever going to be the same again. We got some interesting film festival news this morning. The Telluride Film Festival decided to announce what would have been the slate of films that they were going to show on September 4th

when the festival was supposed to take place before it was canceled in July. And then we also started to get some news about the New York Film Festival, which will be world premiering a few titles. I still don't totally understand how the New York Film Festival is happening, but let's just talk a little bit about what's going on with film festivals right now. So last year at Telluride, they debuted the world premiere of Uncut Gems and Ford versus Ferrari

and Judy and First Cow. And they had the North American premiere of Marriage Story. This was a bountiful slate. There was lots to see. It was a very exciting time. This year, the slate was not as strong. There were some interesting films. There were some very relevant Oscar-worthy conversational picks there. I think Frances Lee's Ammonite, which many people have been talking about, a new movie starring Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan. We're looking for that. How many Oscar nominations does Saoirse have at this point? 12? 16? No, I think it's four, and this will be her fifth, which just seems like a lot. I just want to say when we made our really irresponsible Oscar predictions for this year and like having

seen nothing, I was like, I think Saoirse Ronan will win for this movie that I haven't seen. So at least I think I did. I meant to, if I didn't, you know, please like revise history. Uh, this is a movie that, you know, neon has the rights to it. I don't know if we're going to get it at home or not, or if they're waiting for a window, potentially January or February when things hopefully are looking up in the country to put it into movie theaters. I, again, this is the kind of movie that I'm not totally sure how to make it work in a movie theater at this stage because people are more likely to wait for something that is non-eventized. The same is true for a handful of other films that are showing, that we're going to be showing at Telluride. Florian Zeller's The

Father, which I saw at Sundance starring Anthony Hopkins. I would be stunned if Anthony Hopkins were not nominated at some award shows for his performance in this movie about a man who is struggling with dementia. And Chloe Zhao's Nomadland, which is a movie that's been on the calendar for a long time. Chloe Zhao, of course, her next film is an MCU movie, but she's an independent filmmaker who is going to be celebrated at Telluride, actually, along with Kate Winslet and Anthony Hopkins. There were going to be these sort of memorial tributes to their work thus far. Last year, there was one for Adam Driver,

for example. And Nomadland's an interesting thing. It's coming to us from Focus Features, and it stars Frances McDormand. And Telluride has decided that even though they're not holding the festival, they're still doing a drive-in premiere for the movie on September 11th with Zhao and Frances McDormand. So they're going to be there showing the movie to the residents of Telluride. Okay, in Telluride. I believe so. That's my understanding, which is interesting. And it was interesting to try to figure out what Telluride was trying to do for this festival.

Because, you know, we've speculated about what a film festival could or should be in a place like Telluride or really anywhere else. New York Film Festival is a little different because, you know, it's a massive gridlocked city, but, you know, Telluride is a very small town. There are a lot of outdoor areas where you could potentially put outdoor venues, and it does sound like they were looking to put more outdoor venues into play before ultimately deciding to cancel the festival. So no disrespect to Ammonite or The Father or Nomadland, but this is a, you know, a slighter slate than what we would have expected. And I think that's going to be true for everything. You know, we saw The French Dispatch has been undated completely, Wes Anderson's movie. That's the kind of movie

that would play at a festival like this. That's the kind of movie that was going to play at Cannes. So losing all of those titles, I think, also creates this kind of, I don't know, this kind of curve effect, this downward sloping curve around what is an Oscar movie and what Oscar movies are like. I don't know. What do you make of the fact that the slates were going to be so so slight it did feel like a lot of uh movies were just pulled and people were saying we're going to wait till next year and we can have a more traditional um festival experience which you know i understand and i understand if you're like you know netflix and you have mank or you have the french dispatch and you you want it to have um the biggest possible audience

that it can. And these do feel a little put together, a little smaller and compromised, I guess. But, you know, the beauty of a festival is it's not, in my opinion, actually being there and schmoozing with people, but getting to see things and getting to see work that you would not normally know about. And it is that act of discovery. And you go to see the big name recognizable films, and then you wander into something else that becomes like a breakout film festival hit. And it's harder for those breakouts to happen if people are not paying as much attention because the festival itself feels a bit smaller. And so on the flip side, I guess there is more attention. And as you pointed out,

we don't have anything to do. You almost had a nervous breakdown on Friday because there aren't that many movies in August. And so maybe I'm wrong. And maybe this does fill the vacuum and some, some smaller films and filmmakers really do, do get a chance. We'll see, you know, it's,

I mean, we can look at it as an experiment. Like maybe we can try something new, I guess. And, and glass half full, I suppose. Why am I always the glass half full person?

I'm surprised. I don't know. I feel like that's not your natural disposition. I'm, I'm just trying to give a chance to all the people who are debuting a film right now, because that's heartbreaking if you've been waiting your whole life and working on something in films takes so long and festivals really are where new filmmakers get a chance. So I don't know. I would like to give them that chance. I'm going to try. I completely agree with you. And of

course, you're 100% right and the the value of film festivals is discovery finding new voices the opportunity to see something you were not expecting not just the the sort of eventized major premieres but the major premieres are kind of what keeps a lot of these festivals high-powered and keeps them conversational for a show like ours you know I I think it's going to be an interesting thing to try to negotiate the value of these slates and kind of what they mean relatively. You know, we talked about the asterisk season

on last week's mailbag episode. And I think this just sort of underscores that specifically how this is going to be a slightly different year. You know, one more piece of evidence to that point is the New York Film Festival's first world premiere announcement was for Steve McQueen's Lover's Rock, which it's very exciting

that there's a new project from Steve McQueen. We last saw Widows from him in 2017, I believe. And the thing about Lover's Rock is it's an episode of a TV miniseries called Small Axe, which is going to be coming to BBC One and Amazon Prime Video. And while I'm thrilled to see Small Axe, I'm really excited about it. The New York Film Festival, I believe, opened last year with The Irishman. And this year is opening with a TV episode.

It will be a brilliant TV episode. I think the episode features Letitia Wright and John Boyega. But, you know, there's something deflating about that in a perverse way. Yeah. I had the same reaction with all respect to Steve McQueen, who I loved. And once again, we did not talk enough about widows as a society. So that's where I stand. But it just does feel like confirmation that everything

is scaled back this year. Everything is a little bit different. And in light of the first half of our conversation, it's really interesting to think about all of these studios and distributors who are holding back their movies for the return of a theater experience that is in no way guaranteed in the way that we had it a couple years ago. So I'm kind of wondering when that starts to break and people start having to make individual decisions because you can hold on to a movie for two years, but is there a guarantee that you're going to get the major festival or the major theatrical release in the way that you want it in the future? I don't know. I think those same financial ramifications we talked about for movie theaters and studios

also apply to festivals here too. I was reading the piece in the Hollywood Reporter about Telluride and what they had planned to do. And there were some interesting tidbits that had been coursing through my mind as I was figuring out what I was going to do with Telluride next year. So I'll just, this was mentioned in the story. Unlike most other film festivals, Telluride has minimal branding and sponsorship opportunities and is unusually dependent on income from its pass holders and donors. When Telluride canceled in July, the festival offered pass holders refunds, but most opted to roll their passes over to next year, Hunsinger says.

Julie Hunsinger is the festival executive director. She said, quote, it means we have the income for this year, but we won't next year. So I'll probably need to do some kind of clever and targeted fundraising to make up for a deficit next year. Hopefully people will understand. We just put away money and save for a rainy day. And this is the rainy day. I personally rolled over my past the next year. Hopefully I'll be able to go next year. Um, but this puts, uh, it puts a film festival in a precarious situation. Telluride is a very, um, celebrated and long running festival that exists in a very wealthy community. So my gut is it will be okay, but for film festivals

to be asking for donations at such a difficult time in history is challenging. You know, it's really hard to see how that is the thing that rises to the level of donation when so many people are out of work, so many people are struggling, so many health concerns in the world. And I don't know, you know, Film Festival's kind of, it's not last on the list, but it's not near the top. Yeah, I agree. And it also kind of seems like the first thing that could be reimagined. I mean, if you are just looking from a pure COVID-19 concern,

a film festival is pretty much worst case in terms of transmission and risks. And it is also pretty inefficient. And I find them personally extraordinarily stressful because it's just like a lot of people. And I don't do well with that. So you have to wonder whether at some point the logistical and practical realities kick in permanently of what it looks like because we do have other ways of distributing films and getting a lot of people to see films. I think for you and I, we'll hopefully get a chance to see what at least some of that future looks like at the Toronto International Film Festival, which is still happening in the second week of September. And I think most, at least most present industry people who are participating in

that film festival are going to be doing so digitally. They're going to be watching movies at home. You and I will be watching movies at home from the slate. Typically, they show about 200 films at TIFF. This year, it sounds like the slate will be closer to 50, but there are some notable titles that were announced last week at TIFF too. And there's some good stuff, some crossover here with some of the Telluride films that were just talked about and some other new films that nobody has seen before. I think Halle Berry's directorial debut is there. Regina King's directorial debut is going to be there. I think a film called Concrete Cowboy is going to be there. I think Ammonite is also on that list.

So there are, you and I hopefully are going to get a chance to see some of these movies and then hopefully we'll get a sense of when the world's going to see them. Yes. And also, Sean, we might actually be able to see more. I was thinking as you were talking, like, will Sean try to watch all 50 movies and like you're good. You'll definitely get closer than I will because you don't sleep. Um, but that would not have been the case at,

uh, at real life Toronto. And, you know, going to a film festival is often talking about the movies that you couldn't get into and you didn't get to see, but everyone else loved. So in that sense,

you, there might actually be more exposure for these films, which is good. It's a great point. I was thinking about this even with regard to Sundance. You and I were at Sundance earlier this year. We saw a ton of movies. I think I saw north of 25 movies, and I still missed Palm Springs. I still missed Kajillionaire, which we saw last week as officially coming to VOD. This is Marina Digital Eye's new movie in September. That's another movie that I'm like, this movie is coming at home. Like this is a new way of experiencing movies like this. I'm very much looking forward to this movie and I don't have to go to a movie theater to see it. So I'm learning a new way of

movie going in a way, but, um, you know, Sundance is impossible to conquer. Tiff is impossible to conquer. Telluride is impossible to conquer. And so, yeah, I think you're right. I think, will I get through all 50? I don't know. I think I'm on pace for in the neighborhood of 800 movies this year. I was going to guess 600, but 800 sounds right. Can I just, can I do a quick personal story about this? Of course. This weekend, you were very kind and celebrated my birthday and your wife was there as well.

And she and I were talking. I don't know if she told you this. And she was like, so what's this week on our viewing list? Because last week she had been on the Oliver Stone journey and she was like, I got to say it was not my favorite selection. Like, what can we do next week? Poor Eileen is just like living and dying by the insane experiments that we do for this project she's uh she's been a great sport through all of it and there have been some that she's loved you know she loved the at sea movies that was a great time for her that was very fun you know courtroom

dramas maybe less so um we'll see about you know probably a probably a good time to preview an episode later this week. We're going to do top five apocalypse movies, perhaps well-timed to the state of affairs and maybe well-timed to Amy Simons' new movie, She Dies Tomorrow 2. But I think apocalyptic feeling has been on our mind for a while. I'm not sure how excited Eileen will be about apocalypse movies, probably more so than Oliver Stone. She seemed more excited, I think. She started naming some. So, you know, you've got like a good working list already in the home. That's great. That just means more peace for me. Film festivals, we'll have to wait and see what happens. I'm sure we'll be covering it. We'll certainly be covering TIFF when it starts to go down here on the show later this year.

I thought we should just send a very quick note out. Rest in peace, Wilford Brimley. Truly one of the greats. Absolutely phenomenal actor and pitch man for Quaker Oats and for diabetes. An actor who has looked 65 years old for 40 consecutive years. Very talented person, obviously.

A star of Cocoon, a star of The Thing, a star of The Firm, listeners of The Rewatchables will remember Chris Ryan's iconic impression of Wilford Brimley's line about heartache delivered to Mitch McBeer. Just a great actor and a person that no one ever saw in a movie and thought, why is he here? Just always made him, always made every movie he was in better. So rest in peace to Wilford Brimley. Amanda, let's close out the show by just having a quick chat about a new movie that I mentioned earlier in this conversation. It's coming straight to a streaming service like so many other movies right now. It's called An American Pickle.

You might have heard us talking about it in advertising on this show. And it's one of the few new mainstream releases of August 2020. And it stars Seth Rogen, and it's a high concept comedy. Before we started, our fill-in producer, Steve Allman, suggested we call this episode The Big Pickle. Just a little bit of consensus branding there. What'd you think of an American Pickle without spoiling too much about this picker-esque tale? I thought it was pretty charming. I have some questions about the kind of third act detour it takes, but Seth Rogen makes me laugh. My kind of comedy.

And I thought this was like a slightly more mature and like wistful version of Seth Rogen's comedy. And I actually like did laugh out loud. I thought there's a very lovely prologue about his character because Seth Rogen plays two characters. That's an important thing to know. And he did it pretty convincingly. I didn't spend a lot of time thinking like, oh, wow, that's Seth Rogen twice. I just kind of bought into the two characters after a while, which is, I think, in a lot of ways, an achievement. That's what you want. And anyway, there's a prologue

with the older character who... Should I... I can do the premise? Yeah, let's do the premise. Okay, so it starts with Herschel Greenbaum, who is a character who emigrates to America in the 1920s and then works in a pickle factory.

And he falls into a vat of pickle brine and then is brined for 100 years. And he wakes up and is the same age that he was when he fell into the pickle vat. And they cleverly explain the science away. And then he is introduced to his great grandson, also played by Seth Rogen. And then it becomes a drama of, you know,

kind of fish out of water and family and all sorts of stuff. And it's, you know, there are things that work and things that don't work as well. But I thought that the prologue where the Herschel Greenbaum, before he falls into the vat of pickles, and it kind of like an eastern european up sort of and it was starring sarah snook as his his uh early 1900s wife that's shiv from succession if you don't know and i was like

very moved by that and thought it was funny and and and then then I thought the rest was pretty cute. There is a weird kind of Donald Trumpian cancel culture element to it. That I wondered when they wrote this. Yeah. I don't want to spoil too much of the movie. Because people won't get a chance to see it until later this week. But it's a very interesting story that kind of bounces from genre and theme pretty quickly. It's obviously like a kind of absurd high concept comedy about a man being brined for 100 years, which is ridiculous on its basis. I should say

this is based on a 2013 short story by Simon Rich called Sellout. And, you know, the movie is very much about love and tradition and faith. It's a very Jewish film. There's quite a bit of kind of Jewish theology in the movie. And it talks a lot about kind of where people come from and how they come to live their lives because of where they come from. And in some ways, the movie is also weirdly about Donald Trump and about social media and about how people can distort and refract themselves via social media, which is not a turn that I expected either. I agree. It's a bit of a, it's a hard left turn into the third act, but I ultimately thought it was successful. It had me

like on my, on my heels for a minute concerned that it was going in a direction I didn't want it to go, but I did actually like where they took it in the end. Yeah, there is one scene that recreates Charlie Rose, but with a non-Charlie Rose character that I was giggling. Like, I just couldn't stop laughing during that. So that part was very funny. It reminded me like a little bit of being there, the Hal Ashby movie, just in terms of the character itself and then how people respond to the character. And then again, it goes a bit into 2020, which again, just based on when they finished the film and when it was supposed to be

released. And now when it is being released, it does seem to be speaking to this certain aspects of this current moment. It feels like timely, but you know, it absolutely does. I, I think I was more taken with the just the great

grandfather son yelling at each other, sentimental aspects of it, which is always the case. I'm a sentimental person at heart. Yeah. And you mentioned Seth Rogen. I mean, Seth Rogen is not quite at the center of movie culture in the way that he was seven or eight years ago. And, you know, I was thinking about this as the end, as we plan for apocalypse movies, you know, really one of my favorite movies of the last 10 years. I think that's a great movie and has somehow become kind of underrated or underseen. I don't feel like it's in the conversation with some of the best of those, obviously a very outlandish movie, similarly high concept to American Pickle. But, you know, back then it felt like Seth Rogen was in a new movie every eight

months. And now, you know, the last five years, we've only had a handful. Last year, we talked a lot about Longshot, a movie that you and I both really liked a lot. But before that, the last movie that he was really the star of, the protagonist of, was Neighbors 2, which I think was 2016. So he hasn't been quite as visible. He's been doing a lot of stuff behind the scenes, producing shows like Preacher and doing a lot more writing. And he has a production company with his partner, Evan Goldberg and Point Grey, and they produce a lot of cool movies. They had a big hit last year with Good Boys. But Seth Rogen movie star is like a movie star I kind of miss. I was happy to have him back. And it's really two for the price of one in this movie.

That's true. And I think he's good as both of them. I think it is also, you know, when he was like movie star, movie star, and in a movie all the time, he was playing a much younger version of Seth Rogen, just in terms of the style of humor and the issues that he was speaking to. It was, you know, of that Apatowian, um, young guy, gross out, arrested development type behavior. And I like that this is actually pitched. This is age appropriate. He's grown up too. I agree.

So where would you put him in the one actor plays at least two parts in a movie pantheon? Is this a first wing, first ballot entry? Is he at the top of the food chain? What are some of your favorites of this genre? So number one for me will always be Lindsay Lohan in The Parent Trap, which I have to tell you is I think the greatest Lindsay Lohan performance, even better than Mean Girls. I just, she's doing two. You can really see like all of the promise and the charisma and the movie starness. And also I saw this movie when I was like 12 or 13. So, and it's directed by Nancy Meyers. So it's up there for me personally, but I know, I don't

think it's first ballot just because in a lot of ways the character it's a subtle version of this and ultimately I find that I find it more memorable when it's like you know really over the top like Mike Myers in in Austin Powers where you're like oh wait that's that guy and that other guy again I was 10 and it took me a while to realize that this person was playing two people. So maybe that's it. It's just the eye of the beholder. Are you like young and stupid enough to be amazed by the fact that it's one person playing two different roles? Uh, yeah, I guess at this stage of my life, I'm not, but I did find myself looking at the differences in the performance for Seth, which is pretty different from what you're describing with Mike Myers or for Eddie Murphy and coming to America or The Nutty Professor, where you're like,

every person is clearly Eddie Murphy and that's okay. There's no wonderment here in terms of shading the performances. I guess the best one, the most iconic one is probably Peter Sellers and Dr. Strangelove playing three different parts. That feels like the absolute height. And there have been your boy Armie Hammer in the social network playing the Winklevii. That was memorable. Nick Cage in Adaptation, a movie I'm sure we'll be talking about even more as we get closer to the release of a Charlie Kaufman movie. I noticed that not a lot of women get the opportunity to do this. You know, you mentioned Lindsay and that's a very memorable one. And of course, Hayley Mills, you know, 35 years before that in the original Parent Trap.

But I couldn't think of too many more examples of women getting the chance to play two parts in the same movie. Sean, they barely let women play one part in a movie. They're not going to give her two. They're not going to make it about her. Like, come on. It's, you know, this, you understand how the numbers work. I'm very sorry. Uh, you're right going to make it about her. Like, come on. You know this. You understand how the numbers work. I'm very sorry. You're right. I should have known better. An American

Pickle. I would recommend it. I think, Amanda, you would recommend it as well. Pretty fun movie on HBO Max. Yeah. And very home watchable. So that's it for The Big Picture today. As I mentioned earlier, tune in later this week where Amanda and I will be talking about A Different Shade of Apocalypse our top five apocalypse movies and thank you for listening as always be safe and wear a mask you