The Big Picture - Are We Headed for a 2020 Oscars Disaster? Plus: How Disney Runs the Movie World, and Jesse Eisenberg and Riley Stearns on 'The Art of Self-Defense' I Discussion

Episode Date: July 9, 2019

We take an early survey of the alleged frontrunners in the 2020 Oscars—a slim list of movies that are already getting negative buzz—before discussing the live-action remake trend that Disney is employing in its latest effort to dominate the financial landscapes of moviemaking (1:00). Then, Jesse Eisenberg and Riley Stearns join the podcast (previously recorded at SXSW) to discuss their partnership in making ‘The Art of Self-Defense’ (54:17). Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Guests: Jesse Eisenberg and Riley Stearns Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's episode of The Big Picture is brought to you by Wolverine The Lost Trail. Marvel just released season two of their award-winning scripted podcast, Wolverine The Lost Trail, for free. And if you are like me and are a fan of Marvel and of Wolverine, you may want to check this show out. The season picks up where season one left off. Wolverine is headed to New Orleans in search of redemption. As he follows a trail of clues through the bayou,

he encounters biker gangs, a mutant called Gambit, who some of you may be familiar with, and a world full of dark wonders. The podcast star is Richard Armitage, who you may recall from The Hobbit or Hannibal or Castlevania. So listen to Wolverine the Lost Trail for free on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or your favorite podcast app. I'm Sean Fennessey.

And I'm Amanda Dobbins. And this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about your friendly neighborhood. Webslinger, I'm joined by my favorite webslinger. What's up, Amanda Dobbins? We're talking about a myriad of topics today. We love the movies. But you surprised me. I walked into the studio and you said, I saw Spider-Man this weekend.

Yeah, I did. I try to see things. I try to be informed, believe it or not. I love it. You But you surprised me. I walked into the studio and you said, I saw Spider-Man this weekend. Yeah, I did. I try to see things. I try to be informed, believe it or not. I love it. You love to see it. You love to see Spider-Man. I also was not going to see Midsommar because of previously established reasons. Though you and Chris Ryan did tell me the plot of Midsommar. And so now I know what happens.

I understood all the jokes. I have the memory of Chris Ryan being like, it's not a cult. It's a pagan farming community, which is like a real thing that happened. So I get it. And now I've also seen Spider-Man. Midsommar had a, I would say, a mild opening this weekend. Spider-Man Far From Home had a massive opening this weekend. In fact, outpaced projections, which is something that we don't see that often from Marvel movies,

especially the sort of second-tier Marvel movies, the non-Endgame category. What did you make of the Spider-Man movie? Well, a lovely movie for children or for teenagers. I mean, it is... Teenagers, I think, is appropriate. It's teenagers. It's a cute teen summer trip movie. And I found those parts of it actually very charming.

Tom Holland, adorable. I know I've said it before. Wow, what a winner. I thought Zendaya was great. The Gyllenhaal performance was like peak Gyllenhaal. I appreciated something for the parents, you know, that's what the Gyllenhaal performance is. But I was like, oh, this is, they've isolated these movies down to their target audience. And it was just like really for, I think your sister and for people who look forward to these movies.

And I think it works on that level. Does it work on like a movie level? Not really. I didn't understand half of those action sequences. Yeah, it's not the most elegantly designed set piece movie of all time. I think it does have a couple of cool things. You know, Mysterio, the villain in the movie, is a great commentary on movies because he's basically a special effects artist and he's a director.

You know, the bit I was waiting to share with you was just that I think Gyllenhaal's doing Fincher the whole time. Yeah, amazing. But it does have a lot of the kind of like fun, gleeful, high school John Hughes-y, angsty stuff going really well. I spoke to my sister over the weekend and she had just returned from a trip to Italy. Wow. She went with my father and my stepmother and my other sister

and she texted me as soon as she got home and she's all caps. I saw Spider-Man far from home. It is so good. And I wrote back, that's cool.

How was Italy? And she said, it was good. No caps. So, and she was upset that her trip overlapped with the release date of Spider-Man Far From Home because she wanted to be there on opening night

and she missed it on opening night. But nevertheless, she had a great time. You know, there's going to be a long time before there's another Marvel movie. Yeah. And I know that that doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things, but as I think about what this show is going to be and the conversations that we're going to have.

And, you know, later in the show, we're going to talk about a couple of things. We're going to talk about this year's Oscar race, the last 10 years of the Oscar race. There's just this general state of prestige movies versus what movies people actually want to go see and watch or watch from their homes. And then later on in the conversation, I'll have an interview with Riley Stearns and Jesse Eisenberg, the writer and director and star of The Art of Self-Defense, which is a conversation we recorded in March at South By. But the Marvel thing, if it is the center of the universe and then there is no Marvel movie for nine months, what happens to movies? It was interesting to watch this movie try to reckon with that. And, you know, especially the beginning, which I thought the PowerPoint sequence or whatever it was to I Will Always Love You of all the Dead Avengers. It was very cute. But this movie is kind of trying to wrestle with the future of corporate Marvel.

There is that sub theme in it and and that's a lot of weight to put on a teen movie about just having fun in Europe and kissing the girl you like I thought that was a weird tension I guess probably most audiences don't notice that I like didn't care about the drones so I was thinking about that a lot but there is clearly anxiety within the universe of trying to figure out what happens next. And some of that in terms of Spider-Man trying to figure out life without Tony Stark, I got it character-wise. And some of it was like a lot of projection. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. They may, I'm sure they know where they're going. I don't know if we know where all of this is going. You know, there's a chance. I heard superhero fatigue more than any other time after this movie, even though this movie did really well.

I think the reviews, people were sort of like, so is this just what movies are now? This is just what we have to do now? I like it. I like John Watts as the director. I agree with you on Tom Holland. They really just found the right Superman. Excuse me, the right Spider-Man. That's a Freudian slip there.

But I don't know that the absence of those movies, do you think that Marvel movies are teaching people patience in a way that nothing else can in 2019? Because we have to wait nine months now for what I presume is going to be a Black Widow movie, probably two years for another Spider-Man movie, even though it's got this like slingshot double end credit sequence ending

where you're like, oh man, something actually important happened. I want to see what's going to happen next. See you in 2021. No, I don't think it's patience because I think it's teaching people a mode of consumption. And when they can't apply it to a Marvel movie,

they go apply it to some other thing, whether it's Game of Thrones or, you know, I mean, in some ways, Star Wars also taught people that before this. But there is a mode of I just need to know everything and be consumed in this universe and read all the extra stuff. And I think Hollywood has figured out how to serve that audience. Marvel being the highest profile and greatest money making example. But there's a lot of other stuff.

I mean, Stranger Things was out this weekend. and I guess a lot of people just went, okay, well, I've seen Spider-Man, and I have nothing else to do, so now I will just watch eight hours of this show. Although, did they? I don't really know. I didn't see a lot of Stranger Things chatter. It's an amazing question. I mean, we'll never really know.

We'll never know. But just that idea of, I think it teaches people to expect more. Maybe it's not patience, but like knowing that there's going to be a next thing that they have to consume, which is kind of like Pavlovian and really dark when you think about it. But I don't think it's, I wouldn't call it patience. I would just call it like an intense response that just gets applied elsewhere. Yeah. And Disney in general has created this daisy chain effect with almost everything that they make.

So obviously the Marvel movies are part of this continuous universe that is going to make movies forever and ever. Star Wars, it seems like between television shows and movies, we're going to have those forever and ever. And the thing that they're doing now that they're exploiting sometimes effectively, sometimes not, is the live-action remake. What a segue.

Thank you. So later this week, you and I have a date to The Lion King. Yes, we do. That will be an exciting experience. Hopefully, if you enjoyed our episode

about Aladdin, you will enjoy our episode next week, breaking down all things Lion King. It's really amazing how we're spending our summer together.

It's just truly bizarre. You know, there's a part of me that wants Lion King to be great. There's another part of me that looked at the runtime as 118 minutes. The original runtime for the original Lion King was 88 minutes.

I'm trying to figure out where the other 30 minutes of story are coming from in that movie. Not sure that they exist. It was a similar feeling in Aladdin, which I think was two hours and 10 minutes. I don't know why those movies need to be so long. Nevertheless, Lion King's coming real soon.

But last week, we got a couple of pieces of information. First, we got news that Halle Bailey was going to be portraying the Little Mermaid in the new live action Little Mermaid. Ariel. Yes, her name is Ariel. Excuse me. Is Little Mermaid canon for you? Is this an important Disney film? I've definitely seen it a lot. Yeah. Okay. That was because that's the first one. I believe Little Mermaid is 89. So we had. I think it's Beauty and the Beast, right? No, I think. Is it Little Mermaid? Yeah, because I got that wrong. But apparently Mermaid is 89 and Beauty and the Beast is 91. So like the new Disney Golden Age starts with the Little Mermaid. I think so. Okay. Yeah. And definitely had it on VHS. Part of your world, extremely important. Just I know all the words to that.

Did you fancy yourself an Ariel? No. I mean, I think even at like seven, you know that the politics of The Little Mermaid are fucked up. Can't say I've revisited it in the last 25 years. It's not good. Okay. I think Ursula had sort of like a dark, but alluring power to me even then. She was impressive.

But the songs are pretty good. She was really the Babadook before the Babadook. Yeah, sure. Gay icon Ursula. Yes. I do recall that quite clearly. And I remember enjoying Sebastian, the crab. That was cool.

He was good. Under the Sea, that was a jam. It's great stuff. That was a bop, right? Yes. I can't say I'm like fired up for Little Mermaid movie, but the casting was notable because, of course, it was another sign of colorblind casting coming from Disney. You know, Ariel is a redhead white mermaid. In the drawing, at least.

In the drawing, at least. And this is, is Little Mermaid Hans Christian Andersen? Yes. So, you know, there was some outrage, I guess. I can never tell if the outrage is just bot-driven or if they're just extremely angry conservative thinkers who want their Ariel to stay a white mermaid. But some people were upset because Halle Bailey, who is, of course, one half of Chloe and Halle, who is an R&B singer, YouTube star, who was sort of discovered and launched by Beyonce after they covered Beyonce for years, I guess is a surprising choice. But also, I feel like we're past this. Yes.

Like, doesn't this feel like not a conversation point, the colorblind casting thing? To you and me, yes. And I agree that you can't really parse on Twitter what is bot or just – there are always five to ten to a hundred like true idiots on the internet and they do like to a thousand to like two thousand you know because on the internet everybody gets their say whatever so you can never tell like when idiocy is being elevated like Fox News style or whether it's just whether there is like a movement of people it's probably a little bit of both I mean I think that there are probably like idiot racist people who are mad about this, but I agree that it doesn't feel, it just feels like we gave it a lot of attention.

Yeah, I agree. I mean, the nuts and bolts of the movie feel far more anodyne. If you look at, you know, I think it's fun that Awkwafina and Jacob Tremblay are voices in the movie of characters. I'm sure this will be fine. Lin-Manuel Miranda is writing some new songs for it. And it seems like it's going to be directed by Rob Marshall, who of course directed Mary Poppins Returns, a movie that I don't think either one of us really thought ultimately worked very well. The problem with these movies, and I'm sure we'll talk about this again with The Lion King, is like the originals are great.

And kids still like them. And it's completely transparent what the purpose of these movies is more so than any other kind of movie, which is make money. Just make money. It's not an artistic challenge. It's not a thoughtful re-imagining.

I think you could make the case that with movies like Aladdin and now this movie, the idea of foregrounding people of color in some of the major roles is powerful and is meaningful. But I don't think that that's the idea of foregrounding people of color in some of the major roles is powerful and is meaningful. But I don't think that that's the purpose of the movies. No, the purpose is to make money and to get as many different audiences as possible.

I think what's been really interesting, you and I had a whole existential conversation of like, what is the point of Aladdin and do kids like this? And then our colleague, Jason Gallagher, took his five-year-old son or six, if Isaac is six, I'm very sorry, took Isaac Gallagher to see Aladdin. And Isaac was just like, this is dope. I loved it. You can read Isaac's exit survey on The Ringer. It was great. A child was just like, I enjoyed this. I had a nice time at the movies.

So I think they are trying to get children. And I think kids maybe do like these movies more than we do, which is great. Be a child like have your interests and then they are just cash cows for nostalgia and we should talk about the Mulan trailer and the Mulan trailer debuted during the U.S. women's national team championship game it was the it was the final that's why I don't remember it because I was like I was barely awake no I got up and I watched the whole thing, but I was really not alert until the second half. Neither was our team.

But that's okay. We won. We won. Yeah. Go USA. Or at least the women's team. The trailer came out and then there were immediately people on our staff being like, where's the talking dragon? And I was like, what is going on?

It's nine in the morning. So can I confess to you, I've never seen Mulan. I saw it in theaters, but it is a little past my prime Disney as well. So I don't remember the talking dragon. Yeah, that's basically the breaking point for me for I go to Disney movies. And I remember seeing the Lion King in theaters three or four times at my local theater. And I guess, is that 93? 94.

94, so I'm 11 probably when that came out mulan is what 95 96 you know so i'm just i'm kind of i discovered you know girls and and and sports and you know that that was just a different that was a turning point mulan is 98 oh okay yeah that's i clearly was exactly i was on to other things at that point so i haven't seen that movie i will say just based on the trailer i I thought it looked pretty good. And it's very difficult to do period pieces like that. It's very difficult with the sensitivities around telling stories like that. Historically, Hollywood has been very bad at it.

Nikki Caro is the filmmaker. There have been very few female filmmakers who've been able to tackle Disney stories like this on a grand scale. It's a great cast. I was excited. It never occurred to me to be curious about a dragon. That is one of the challenges of these live-action remakes, and I think it is one of the things that made Aladdin just seem a little bit stupid,

was that the genie was just very genie. Sure. And I'm not a child, so I was like, this seems very silly. But, to your point, a lot of children, and a lot of children overseas really loved it, too. Aladdin's made a lot of money internationally. Yeah. And I feel like both The Little Mermaid and Mulan are going to translate well all over the world.

I think that's true. And then I also think there are going to be a lot of adults who go see these movies because they have some childhood connection to them and you want to go see it. And then you may be mad about it. Like, I'm sure there will be a lot of people our age mad online about every single one of these movies but that doesn't matter they're still Disney still is going to get their money and kids are still going to like it so I think the live action thing it was clarifying to me when you see kids being really excited about it and then then you also see people our age or, you know, a micro generation younger being like, this is not what I remember about my childhood. And they need to do this, this and this to meet my expectations. And I was like, oh, it's like the new quadrants. I get it. I don't want to put you too far on the spot, but is there a Disney live action adaptation you would want to see? Because the cupboard is getting a little bit bare we're kind of doing all of them i mean i was there for little mermaid which they're doing

and i saw beauty and the beast in theaters that was a very important one i went by myself to see beauty and the beast which on like in the afternoon which was a dark moment for me and then i realized i remembered every single word to the songs. One of the saddest stories I've ever heard. Well, no one else would go see it with me. It's like a John Cheever short story. I tried to be an informed consumer. And then, and you know, at times had a nice time. It was fun when they were doing the opening bell song in the French countryside. And I was like, oh, it's kind of always what I imagined. And I was singing along, whatever. They're doing Lion King.

They did Aladdin. What am I missing? I mean, they've done Cinderella. Oh, yeah. With Lily James. Yeah. I mean, there's a handful of the classics that haven't been done. Obviously, earlier this year, we got Dumbo.

We haven't gotten Pinocchio yet, which is a long rumored thing. Pinocchio, of course, exists outside of Disney as well. Right. Probably anybody could adapt that. But Pinocchio is – have you seen the animated Pinocchio, the original? Yes, but I think it weirded me out as a kid. It's so fucked up. Yeah.

It's pretty evil. I really like it, but I feel like it would terrify children if you showed it to them now, especially the donkey boys. Remember that stuff? No. Okay, it's very exciting. I think I just blocked it out. Okay. But that is sort of vintage golden age stuff.

And then there's some newer stuff. And I feel like one of the challenges of these movies is going to be Mulan is probably the last true blue classic from that time. Because in that time you have Tarzan, which I think while I know you stand for the soundtrack and a great many other Phil Collins fans do. Thank you. I don't think it's considered a Disney classic. Emperor's New Groove certainly has its fans,

my wife among them, but that's not a class. I don't think we're getting the live action Emperor's New Groove. And Hercules was up there. Remember Hercules? Yeah, the younger ringer generation loves Hercules. Yeah, and Lilo and Stitch, Lilo and Stitch. Oh, I liked Lilo and Stitch. Very sad. Was it no it's really real it's like base it's basically et but but

disney yeah and set in hawaii and i think or similar that sounds right yeah i really don't know i precursor to moana um i feel like maybe the only major and we're getting lady in the translator this year too which i think is going directly to Disney Plus I think Bambi is probably the most classic you can't make Bambi well I think the Lion King is going to test the limits there oh yeah but the Lion King

is like Lion King has Elton John music it has it has some comedic relief you know? Here's what Bambi has. Thumper. Oh, Thumper. Thumper was G. Remember Thumper?

That's too traumatic. Like, basically as a kid, you knew you couldn't watch Bambi. It was too upsetting. They're gonna have to keep doing this for the next 10 years. They've set expectations, so there's a lot of IP, you know? Sword in the Stone, we're getting the 101 Dalmatians prequel, Cruella starring Emma Stone. I can't believe you've gone this long without talking

about Robin Hood, Disney Robin Hood. It's my favorite Disney movie. I know. I know. Maybe we'll talk more about that when we do The Lion King. We'll get into some Disney arcana. I've seen it many times. I mean, we've already gone down the rabbit hole so much because this is what movies are. Movies are Spider-Man and they are The Lion King and they are maybe Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. And the reason that I wanted to talk about Oscars this week with you is I think that The Lion King and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood are the first two movies that have come along this year that we could credibly call maybe Oscar movies. And I find that weird because I don't think either of them are front runners by any means. And that means we'll

probably get through seven months and ultimately likely eight months of the year without a single true blue Oscar movie. And I sent a kind of concern troll, fake anxiety note to you and our producer, Bobby, that was like, are we on track for the worst Oscar year ever? This is a super off year. There's been a lot of speculation about what the movies are going to be. There's been some festival movies. So I want to talk about two things with you. Let's first just talk about 2020. Okay. This coming race that we're going to have.

Great. Things that you're interested in. Things that you think are locked, sight unseen. And then let's just talk about what makes a good Oscar year. Because we had a bit of a contentious back and forth about what it means to have a good Oscar year. That's what we do. That's the nature of this thing. So this year, I'm looking at an IndieWire

projection from May and some of the titles make a lot of sense to me and some of them don't. We mentioned Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Pain and Glory is a new Pedro Almodovar film

that was well received at Cannes, though by no means like his crowning achievement. Yes. I think it sounds like Antonio Banderas is going to be a best actor contender from that film. Then The Farewell, which is a great movie from A24. I spoke to Lulu Wang, the writer and director of the movie,

that'll appear on the show next week. I'm not sure that that's a best picture candidate. A Hidden Life is a Terrence Malick movie. Yes. About World War II. I could see a campaign that was bought by Fox Searchlight, which of course is very good at the Oscars, and building a whole It's Time for Malick campaign. I think that's what's coming. Right.

And then The Report, which is Amazon's CIA docudrama written and directed by Scott Burns, which you and I have heard some not so positive responses to. Mixed. Mixed. Mixed. Is the generous way. I think it was publicly well-received at Sundance and purchased for a tidy sum. Amazon is going through a bit of a convulsion in its movie department with the struggles of late night

and the significant overpay and over-marketing of that film, a film we talked about on this show. Those are the frontrunners on this list? I don't know. How can these be the front runners? This is confusing. Okay. This is, and I don't, like, I think we talked about this ahead of time, and I just don't

think a world in which, but that, with all respect to the great filmmakers, Terrence Malick and Pedro Almodovar, like, having both of those in a front runner, fam, you're living in a different Oscar world and a different country. And maybe we would all like to live there, but I don't think that's the case. What's interesting to me, they have a list of frontrunners and then a list of a lot of contenders. I don't think a single one of these movies has been publicly released yet. Like, you know, The Report was a Sundance and there have been some festival stuff, but this is a list of 20 movies from A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, which is the Mr. Rogers biopic starring Tom Hanks.

Cats, which is hilarious. Can't wait to make fun of that movie. The Goldfinch, The Irishman, Little Women, Greta Gerwig's adaptation, Untitled, No Bomb Back. I really can't wait for Gerwig versus Bomb Back this year, by the way. We'll talk about that. The Woman in the Window. I mean, there are a lot of movies and not a single one

has been released. And it is pretty notable that this is July and we just haven't. We haven't seen anything. And a lot of these movies, based on what I've heard, have middling to bad buzz.

Now, I don't want to smirch anything that I haven't seen, but seriously, of the 15 or so movies on this contenders list, many of them seem actively not good.

Now, you could make the case that that really doesn't matter at the Oscars, that there were often quite a few films that you would describe as not good that get nominated for Best Picture. And a lot of it is the campaign and a lot of it is the sort of political sense of the world. And who knows where we'll be when it comes to that. We're going to be deep in the midst of political campaigning, presidential races, Iowa, debate season. All that stuff is going to suffuse a lot of this Oscar race too. So I'm not sure that Ford versus Ferrari, like that's going to represent a very specific American engineering and individualism and a sort of a muscular affectation that I think some voters will really respond to.

I'm very much looking forward to that movie. Sure. But I worry about the hardcore jingoism that may come side by side with it. On the other hand, a movie like Harriet, which is about a biopic of Harriet Tubman, directed by Cassie Lemons, you know, that's like historical classic Oscar fare. Yes. It's a story about an important person in our history whose name we know but whose story

we have never really seen on screen in the way that we want to see it. And it'll have a big, you know, moving performance by Cynthia Erivo

in the middle of it. So, like, on paper, Harriet makes all the sense in the world. Ford versus Ferrari makes all the sense in the world. Goldfinch.

Big, fancy, literary adaptation from the guy who brought you Brooklyn. You know, that sounds good. Are these movies going to be good? They seem like they were made in a different decade. Well, I mean, they seem like Oscar movies. And those aren't actually the ones that—

that's not what concerns me because in the second half of the year, basically starting in September, you start hearing about all of the pedigreed Oscar movies. We don't have—there are no studio big budget movies so far in the year. There's no Quiet Place. There's no Get Out. There's no Dark Knight.

There's no, not the Dark, I understand, please don't at me about Dark Knight being snubbed. I know. But, you know, there's nothing mainstream in the conversation. It's only the, I think the whispers about us.

Because we're going to get to the end of the year and we're going to realize there weren't that many great movies and then people will be like, actually us, that was an achievement, Lupita, et cetera,

et cetera. But you're right, there has not been a, I mean, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, which is a show, excuse me, which is a film

that I think we will cover exhaustively on this show and at The Ringer, especially because July is a goddamn dead zone. Also because we're excited. I'm very excited. So am I.

Very, very excited. I rewatched Inglourious Bastards last night, and I was like, bang on. Oh my God. What an awesome movie. My favorite Tarantino, but anyway. Just such a fun, fascinating, weird, exhilarating movie that is two and a half hours.

It feels like 10 minutes. Anyhow, that is the first one for real, for real, that I think could do what you're describing. You know, be a big fancy studio movie with a sexy marketing campaign, movie stars, exciting performances, a little bit of history, a little bit of violence, a little bit of sex. But that people who don't regularly follow the movies know what it – recognize the name of it. Exactly. And that's the thing. There's just not a lot of brand recognition on this list, which sounds like a terrible corporate thing. But, you know, I learned last year, which I think was

an exciting Oscar year, at least until the end. It was interesting. How about that? And you and I spent so much time yelling about it. And I would talk to some of my best friends and they were like, oh, A Star is Born. Should I see that? You know, it is so, it is increasingly insular and most of the movies on this list, most of the Oscar favorites right now are kind of insular for movie people by movie people type movies. Yeah, and we desperately want movie culture to break through.

It's good for, it's not just good for what we're doing here, it's good in general because we want movies to be a dominant form of popular entertainment. We think that they bring something valuable to the world. And I think that they also, I don't really believe in the fact that movies can kind of change American culture per se, but I think that they set the guidelines for

where things can go or should go creatively because movies are the most expensive thing, barring video games that we have that actually people see and are influenced by and think about and analyze and make us use our brains. Like the Great American Novel, that chapter's closed. It's too bad, yeah. People are reading, but they're just not reading in the same way. And it's harder to have a J.D. Salinger in 2019. It's not necessarily harder to have Ryan Coogler. So we desperately want that. And then last week, there was an interesting story that came out about a movie that I think we both liked called Triple Frontier.

Loved it. And I think this is interwoven in the Oscar story that we're telling, which is that the headline is Triple Frontier Leads Netflix to Cut Back on Huge Spending for Films Report. Now, this is a report that comes from the site The Information, and that is a subscription technology website that is very well regarded and has broken a couple of big stories over the years. And it was aggregated a little bit after the fact. I think the story broke on July 1st, but I don't think most people caught wind of it until the 3rd or the 4th. And it essentially talks about J.C. Shandor's movie starring Ben Affleck about a bunch of

special forces guys who repel themselves into South America in an effort to steal from a drug lord. And it's a real classic 1987 guy's guy action movie. Has movie stars, has incredible music needle drops. Has incredible hot dad fashion. Tons of handsome dudes wearing chambray t-shirts, some good facial hair. Yeah. Some terrific nicknames. Ridiculous quotes. Some great quotes. I think you and I and the folks we saw always got a huge kick out of it. It's true. I think people who went to go see it expecting a great film and you know J.C. Shandor you know he made that Robert Redford Lost at Sea film. He made Margin Call. He's a very very most

violent year one of my favorite movies the last 10 years very very talented guy who's gotten some awards buzz over the years Triple Frontier is not an awards movie it was never going to be an awards movie and it sounds like based on this report and it's hard to say maybe not as many people watched it either as Netflix told us watched it or as they wanted to watch it so Ted Sarandos did issue a statement after this broke saying, quote, we're incredibly proud of Triple Frontier, one of our most popular original films. 63 million member households have now watched the movie

since it launched in March, and we look forward to working on more projects with this talented cast, producers, and writer-director J.C. Shandor. Who knows what's true and not true in that special stew? I think the idea that this movie not being successful does not necessarily correlate to me to Netflix not doing expensive movies. Well, there are a lot of different things going on here. There are. And let's break them down because I think a lot of this conversation and the reports have conflated a lot of them. The reported budget for Triple Frontier,

a movie you and I had a great time watching and produced content around. We were the only people, but that's fine. I recommend it. Seek out Andrew Guadalajara's work. Anyway, the reported budget was $115 million. That movie did not need to be $115 million. That movie at $80 million,

that's an insane amount of money to spend on that movie, which I'm glad they made, enjoyed watching, and would watch again. So some of this is just that they're, and I believe actually the original information report is that they talked about this in the example of movies that we are spending too much money on, which is different than movies that we are spending money on or movies that we would make or movies that Right. make you a dedicated user and then start raising the price. Whereas it seems like their Hollywood strategy was, we'll pay you guys just tons of money until we get most of the Hollywood creators working for us. And then you scale back the budgets.

It's definitely true in some respects. Triple Frontier was kind of a cursed property for years and years. The script had been going around forever. It was originally a Catherine Bigelow, Mark Boll thing. There had been a series of different actors who were going to appear. I think Will Smith was going to appear in this movie at some point. Affleck had been attached to it for many years off and on. Shandor ultimately

came in. I think it was going to be made at Paramount. Then Paramount cut it when they had a change of regime. Then Netflix picked it up. Netflix has done this a lot in the last five years. They've picked up these orphan projects in an effort to grab big star attention and spotlight a particular kind of movie that we feel like we don't get enough of. Triple Frontier is kind of the always

be my maybe of the, you know, Predator, Rambo style American movie. And what its success is, is hard to say. Like $115 million may seem like too much money for a movie like this. But one of the reasons it cost $115 million is because they had to do reshoots and they were shooting in South America. And that is extremely expensive. Lots of movie stars' time. Lots of movie star accommodations that come with those things. In addition to that, if the movie made $300 million at the box office, we wouldn't say that was too much money. Because who would care?

I have no idea what it costs to make Spider-Man Far From Home. I don't care. It's not interesting to me. It's only interesting to us in general. and I mean us like the public at large, if it bombs, quote unquote. Right. But what is a Netflix bomb? Is it something we don't know the answer to?

And we're not going to know the answer to. Now, I have some bad news. The last 10 minutes of our lives were a complete waste of time and a complete waste of time of our listeners. And there's a reason for that because some news has just come across our desk. We've just finished this beautiful segment about Netflix's strategy. We went deep inside their machine and we told you what is actually happening at the company and the movies that they make. And it appears we were wrong.

Yes. Because it appears that they have decided to buy yet another major studio cast off. In this case, it is Red Notice, a movie that Universal has been developing with The Rock and Rawson Marshall Thurber, who is the director behind the film Central Intelligence and Skyscraper. Have you seen those two movies? I haven't.

I saw the trailer for Skyscraper. Yes, they're perfectly fine entertainments. That deal was cut, I believe, in 2018. The Wall Street Journal reporter Ben Fritz had a really fascinating story. He got a look at the term sheet for this film and the amount of money that Dwayne Johnson, The Rock, was getting for this movie reportedly is quite interesting. It's $21 million in a salary and 30% of the profits. And Ross and Marshall Thurber, who I would say is not a brand name director, though has been successful, stood to make 12 plus million dollars on this movie.

Universal has decided no mas. They don't want it. Netflix, White Knight and Shining Armor is swooping in to save it and bankroll what looks like a 125 million dollar plus movie and put it on their streaming service. We just had this big conversation about Triple Frontier. Yeah. Do we not know what we're talking about? Or does Netflix not necessarily know what it's doing? Well, I have some questions, but I was going to float this theory.

I was just going to ask you, do you think that this is in any way related to a recent news cycle where Netflix was rumored to be cutting back on its spending? Well, that was my first thought as well. recent news cycle where Netflix was rumored to be cutting back on its spending. Well, that was my first thought as well. Perhaps this is a knee-jerk reaction to a bit of negative press. We read Ted Sarandos' official statement on the matter regarding Triple Frontier. Maybe doubling down for an extra $150 million and a shiny movie star is the way to counteract some of that press. I mean, I think that $150 million to them in the scheme of things is nothing. And he might be feeling a little frisky today. That's all I'm saying.

I love it. If that's the way things are working, maybe we should start writing erroneous reports about what Netflix is doing. How do I get Netflix to give Paul Thomas Anderson $300 million? I think just yell about how they would never do it a lot. Yes, I'll challenge it.

I challenge you now, Netflix. But can I ask you a couple questions? So because of the deal that you just mentioned where The Rock and Ross and Marshall Thurber are getting a part of profits, what does that mean when it's on Netflix? It means that Netflix has to buy out all that potential future participation.

Okay. So if you want to loosely project how much money that would be, let's say a movie like this internationally, if it's a big success, makes $500 million. So that means that's $150 million in profit for The Rock. Does that mean that The Rock just caught $150 million check from Netflix? It's possible.

It's probably not likely. It's probably closer to sub $100 million. Yeah, it seems like if Universal is selling it off in this manner that you're not going to get a $500 million evaluation. Well, let's take a look at Skyscraper. Okay. I mean, Skyscraper is not exactly the same kind of film. But because Ross and Marshall Thurber, I guess, pitched this movie a few years ago. And it was a very high concept, I guess, cat and mouse chase kind of movie. And we should say that the other stars of this movie are Gail

Goddard and Ryan Reynolds. So Ryan Reynolds, Gail Goddard, and The Rock is pretty much as shiny as a movie comes in 2020. So Skyscraper internationally worldwide made $300 million. Okay. 30% of $300 million is $90 million. dollars wow if that level of participation happened for the rock that's that's pretty great now this is just gross it's not profit it's you know so we're forecasting a lot of numbers what did the rock really make on sky scraper 40 million 50 million something like that probably um but net, because they're worldwide and because there is no syndication, there's no home box office, none of that stuff is in play. They have to buy everything. They're buying you out fully. They're like the mafia. Right. So I guess this is just a lot of immediate cash for

The Rock. I guess so. And Ross and Marshall Thurber, I suppose, and The Rock's production company. Good for them. Do you think it says anything other than the reactionary tendencies of Netflix? Well, I think that it's no coincidence that it's The Rock at the center of this movie. And Netflix has done well. I was thinking a lot about Bird Box. And Netflix does well with stupid movies starring people that you like. And this is probably a stupid movie starring three people that people really like. I mean, you can package it right

next to the Fast and Furious movies, you know, like Netflix will just it will go from one of those straight into this movie. And that's just for The Rock. Then you also have Gal Gadot, who I love and who is obviously Wonder Woman and is bringing in all of the DC fans. And then you have Ryan Reynolds, who is the patron saint of all 14-year-old boys, as I understand it, thanks to Deadpool. So I think that's what they're banking on here, is that those people still have brand association and that people will click on it if they see one of the three people in the tiny little box. Seems like a really good bet. One thing that it doesn't have, and the reason that I suspect Universal is walking away from it, it doesn't have any brand identity besides movie stardom. It doesn't say Fast and Furious presents

colon Red Notice. Right. It's just Red Notice. Right. That's harder than ever to sell at a global scale. Yes. And so here we go, Netflix in to save the day. Can I just say, I think in my work, I think there's a real difference between going to a movie theater to see The Rock and something that you've never heard of before versus like click and play on Netflix. And you're like, oh, The Rock, I like him. I just watched this other movie. It seems like the right zone for them at this amount of money. I don't know. That kind of just seems like Ted Sarandos being petty, but I kind of enjoy that. We eagerly await the forthcoming tweet from the Netflix account about the 758 million people who watched Red Notice in its opening weekend in 2020. Now, Netflix is still a business and it cares deeply about its profits, but it's also shown us that it really cares about Oscars.

There's two big Netflix movies that have been positioned to me as the Oscar movies this year. The first one, of course, is The Irishman. This is Martin Scorsese's de-aging festival starring Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, and Al Pacino. I'm obviously very excited about this movie. Sure. I think you're excited about it. Yeah, of course. Okay. I'm not a Phil Stein, you know? I want to see what this is. It's an event regardless.

Yeah. That movie is rumored to cost $150 million, more than Triple Frontier. And I would guess it's probably even more than that if they're sharing the 150 number with us. Right. The other movie is the untitled Noah Baumbach movie, which I have been told is going to get a big push. This movie has been in production and post-production for over two years. Noah Baumbach recently made a film with Netflix called Demire with Stories. And that was a good film. Episodic about a small family in New York. And it was a little bit of a 70s Oscar movie.

It never quite got the attention that it deserved. I'm a huge fan. I'm a huge fan of Baumbach in general. You are as well. I am, yes. And that's a different kind of play for a streamer, you know, a content company to make in the Oscar business. It's really hard and expensive to get the Irishman to the place you want it to from an Oscar perspective.

Because, you know, Scorsese's done this like a hundred times. Remember Hugo? Hugo was a hundred million dollar Martin Scorsese movie that they desperately wanted to win Oscars, and it didn't. And it's a great achievement but it floated away. Gangs of New York. A movie I love quite a bit. But that movie was not an Oscar

dominant film. It was in the race and the Weinsteins pushed it hard and they campaigned like hell. But it was The Departed which ultimately got

Scorsese across the line here and you only get one of those every 10, 20, 30 years. So The Irishman is a big gamble. The Boundback movie I, is a slightly smaller gamble. Maybe significantly smaller for them.

And I don't know if the success or failure of Triple Frontier dictates what kind of Oscar movies Netflix will make. Because I feel like they are the loudest player in this thing that we're going to be doing for the next seven months, basically, starting in September, where we just talk about Oscar movies all the time. Yeah. I mean, they're kind of playing for different things, right? It was not my impression that Triple Frontier was ever supposed to be an Oscar movie, in part because they released it in March, in part because of, you know, and also when Netflix wants to release an Oscar movie, they'll let you know. We saw how much money they spent on Roma and how much money they will probably spend pushing these two movies because it is really important to them. So it seems to me like they're fighting a war on several fronts right now.

And these do seem like different fronts. That you take gambles on things and some movies are good and some movies are bad and some movies have smoother cycles and some are disasters and then some get watched a lot and some don't. I feel like the triple frontier stuff affects more of the always be my maybe fun movies to watch at home. Things that we want to watch and want to turn on more than the prestige, just because we would have thought it was a no-brainer. I think you and I thought, sitting watching Triple Frontier, like, oh my god, people are going to go nuts for this. And it seems like people, if they turn it on, turn it off halfway through, there wasn't a lot of discussion about it. And again, we don't know because Netflix doesn't release these numbers, but I certainly feel like I know more people who consumed Always Be My Maybe, Always Be My Maybe, it's hard to say, than

Triple Frontier. It certainly has had a longer, like a longer tail, I suppose. So to me, it's more that they'll stop trying to make like the watchable home movies, like really good. They'll stop spending a premium on craft and like the big actors you won't get as larger paychecks. Some of the production values, the things that we've already kind of noticed for they, because they turn out so many movies and some of them are, they kind of look more like sitcoms than they do like movies. And the script didn't get that like 18th polish. And it doesn't matter because you're supposed to be doing something else on your phone and it's supposed to be consumable and memeable and is really a different product than a movie movie.

But I think maybe they'll stop making as many movie movies for home consumption. It'll be either you're Oscar worthy or and we're giving you an Oscar push or it's just for fun. That is such an interesting evolution of moviemaking in general. Because the reason that we got these big kind of muscular action movies is because they were the Marvel movies of their day. They were event movies, you know. And there were certainly plenty of them in the 60s and 70s. And they were a little less reputable.

And then The Wild Bunch comes along. And then you get this whole series of 70s exploitation films. And in the 80s, you get the kind of diehard breed. And that becomes really the center of American movie going culture you have your ETs and you have your diehards those are the two kinds of movies and sometimes those movies come together and you get Jurassic Park I feel like maybe that means that a whole category of a kind of film then just goes away and that film probably only came about because the box office demanded it it was was not the sole inspiration

of someone to write Die Hard. They were like, we're going to write Die Hard because it sounds like a fun premise to get people in a movie theater. And it's just so interesting to imagine a movie like Triple Frontier never existing again, because that might be the case. Because a major studio that is not a streaming service is probably not making Triple Frontier anymore. Yes, but that's probably just because they either can't afford it or people aren't going to go see it. Yeah, I think you're right. And it's just it just seems it's so interesting to me. It's just clearly what people not what people want to watch at home.

People on Netflix just want to watch The Office again and again. That's really what they want to do. They want a comfort, low stakes. And the idea that what is watchable on our home screens is now informing the future of all movies being made is like so, that makes so much sense when you say it, but it is really wild when you think about it in terms of entire genres just dying out. It is the driving force of my interest in the business right now. I mean, it is like the uniting theory that I am fascinated by, which is we got a certain kind of movie for the last 25 years.

And now we just don't get that movie anymore for very specific functional reasons. Well, but that's what happens all the time. Like, that's what happened to romantic comedies. Totally. And that people just decided that it wasn't worth going to a movie theater to see a romantic comedy. And then, God bless Netflix, it turns out people that will watch them sort of at home. Now, I don't think that they're as good as the excellent romantic comedies that were released in theaters in the 90s and early 2000s.

But, you know, it's a cycle. Everything does change. And it's happened before, and it doesn't mean necessarily that the movies are done forever. But I do think people are finally adapting to the way that we watch movies sort of anyway I agree and it'll be curious I'll be curious to see how long Netflix continues to pursue the idea of the awards movie especially if they get one soon if they get a best picture soon which is something they've been in pursuit of and obviously Roma was wonderful and it's just fantastic that they bankrolled that whole campaign and then they put that movie in theaters and that millions of people could see it around the world as soon as it was made.

Great, great film. Didn't win. Green Book won because that's what the Oscars do. And I don't, I'm trying to figure out like what an Oscar movie is going to be going forward. Because when we were discussing this last week, I was saying, well, I think, you know, Moonlight versus La La Land was a great Oscars year. That felt like it had a clear narrative, two new voices, both of whom we thought these guys are going to be around for a long time. Very excited to see their films.

Two films that do different things. One is this very personal kind of festival-driven, sincere origin tale about love and vulnerability and masculinity, and that's Moonlight and then La La Land is glitzy story about Hollywood bootstraps up artistic independence and all of those that's also a classic Hollywood theme if that to me felt like a coherent Oscars year and then it turned out to be a great Oscars because we had this extremely strange final result. Yes. But I think that's only when it became great to the larger public because I loved both of those movies.

I think Moonlight was deserving and it is fantastic that it won. But that's like you and me sitting here being movie nerds. Most people had not seen either. La La Land did make money over the course of the award season and afterwards, but it's not like The Dark Knight. It's not like a big studio recognizable movie was released. Most people were not involved in our dueling narratives about what the future of Hollywood was, nor do they care. People just want to see a movie that they recognize kind of be in the conversation. You've said that a million times yourself.

Absolutely. And I think it was only when this meme happened accidentally in the middle of, at the very end of the ceremony that people became aware of either movie. And so to me, I think... I wonder if that hurt the Oscars in any way, though. Because the audience dropped like 7 million people the following year. The audience had dropped steadily over the previous five years, but a huge drop. It was literally the shape of water.

I know. Which like no one cares about. Have you thought about the shape of water since it won? Well, I'll give you a counterpoint. And I know that every year is different because technology is changing very quickly. And I think this is relevant to kind of what we're saying. If we look at the last 10 years of Oscar movies. Yeah.

The year before the La La Land Moonlight Showdown, the best picture I think was basically a foregone conclusion. I think it was just always Spotlight. And so in the race that year was Spotlight, The Big Short, Bridge of Spies, Brooklyn, Mad Max, Fury Road, The Martian, The Revenant, and Room. Now I guess The Revenant maybe was a contender. Yeah, I thought we thought that The Revenant was going to win and then Spotlight did and everyone was like, hey, Spotlight. I was pretty sure Spotlight was going to win. You know what's a great movie? Spotlight.

It's good. The thing that's different about this year is that if you look at that lineup of movies, The Revenant, The Martian, Mad Max, Fury Road, The Big Short, and Spotlight were huge hits. And they were not franchise-y hits.

They were, Mad Max, of course, was, but was operating on like a whole other plane of, is this the best movie of the decade kind of existence? All these other movies are kind of classical, like docudramas or high concept comedies or, you know, these really classical man survival tales.

They felt that this year, I would not have described it as a great year, but looking back on it it has a lot for everybody there's a lot of different kinds of movies that people like and that doesn't necessarily mean it's a great oscars year somehow like the the sort of like oh spotlight and inaritu one like i don't think we'll look back on that one and be like that was the year we solved movies yeah but it's who's looking back. And I don't mean to get as essential with you. We set history right here on this show. I mean, but

that's the thing. I think we do have to grapple with in the same way we have to grapple with like which movies are interesting to you and me versus like what actually succeeds in the world and how the industry is being reshaped by it. The Oscars, the same thing, like for you and me, it was very fun when Get Out and Lady Bird and Phantom Thread were all nominated. And I spent a lot of time telling you this the other day. And you were like, yeah, but no one cared because it was just The Shape of Water and Three Billboards. And that was also the first year after the Weinstein scandal and Me Too. So it was just a really dark thing and no one really wanted to watch it. And it wasn't that fun. So the things that we think are interesting being represented versus what people actually want to pay attention to are different.

And I think we think it's more fun when it's things that we want to pay attention to. But maybe it's, quote, better for the Oscars if it's things that a larger group of people want to pay attention to. You know, I believe in that. It's tricky because Get Out threaded the needle and La La Land and a lot of ways threaded the needle. That was a huge, big, noisy hit. Both of those movies were,

certainly La La Land was a front runner and Get Out was in contention though, definitely a dark horse. This year though, just to go back to that list, I don't know if I see a single movie that is close to on par with your the martian or i don't i maybe once upon a time in hollywood has that kind of performance where you've got movie stars in the middle of it and you've got this kind of high concept story and it's very

glossy and it's very fun and rollicking but maybe but it once upon a time in hollywood is more of the la la land like isn't hollywood special is more of the La La Land, like, isn't Hollywood special versus, I mean, The Martian was just like Matt Damon doing a science project and being charming. And it's based on a sci-fi book. You know, it's like, that is a much larger audience, I think, than, oh, it's another movie about,

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is for the people who already love Hollywood and love the Oscars and who are nostalgic about the old days or whatever. Or not nostalgic, or even willing to question it. I haven't seen this movie yet, so I have no idea. But I just think I understand that it may be crowd-pleasing, but The Martian was crowd-pleasing in a much broader way. What about Cats?

We're not talking about Cats. I refuse. If Cats is nominated for an Oscar, for like one, I'm sure it will be nominated for some costumes and special effects ones. So if Cats is nominated for one major Oscar, it might, so I don't want to promise anything extraordinary,

but I'll be very angry. Sight unseen. Yeah. It will be nominated for Best Picture. You've got to be kidding me. Tom Hooper. Tom, I don't like to be rude about specific

directors on this podcast, but no. I'm not saying I'm a fan. I'm just saying if you look at the pedigree and you look at the people that are in it and you look at all of the weight they're putting into this film. Now, based on the preview that I saw, I thought it was just a straight up joke. I thought it was an active documentary now style parody what I watched. Okay. But it's not. It's a big, important, major studio release

with a big budget and some kind of unearthed IP that they're going to have to push out in the world. And you've got music and you've got costumes and you've got Taylor Swift. Yeah, but like they tried this with The Greatest Showman.

Yeah, that movie made a shitload of money and then won Oscars. Well, I know, but it did. Was it nominated for Best Picture? No, but like they tried this with The Greatest Showman. Yeah, that movie made a shitload of money and then won Oscars. Well, I know, but was it nominated for Best Picture? No, but it did win Best Song. Okay, well, sure. Cats might win Best Song, although is it eligible? Because it's not original. I'm sure they'll write a new one by Taylor Swift.

Yeah. I think it might make a lot of money, though, by the way, Taylor Swift doesn't make money anymore. So it's— Just because she doesn't sell, you mean? Yeah, she doesn't sell. Or because Scooter Braun owns her masters? Well, a little bit of both. But she is not even like the powerhouse, especially getting people to a movie about cats.

I really think that that's overestimating her appeal at this particular moment. I think it'll make money. I understand all of that. I don't know. And I understand that the Oscars are stupid, but they have been veering away from, I mean, we all talked a lot about Mary Poppins returns and that being like a serious thing that needed to, with a pedigree and all of these important people that was to be nominated, it really did not make it into the major categories,

not even poor Emily Blunt. It's a great point. So, you know, it could happen. I would prefer not to have to talk about cats for nine months. I mean, maybe it would be fun, but... Aren't we all ready for the Quentin Tarantino, Terrence Malick, Pedro Almodovar, Lulu Wong, Tom Hooper Best Director race? Who's in? Who says no? Please respect Greta Gerwig. Don't forget about Gerwig Bombach okay that's the major narrative

no one will care but us but that's incredible let's have it let's do it everybody that seems like a good place to wrap up pitting uh creative spouses against one another leading into the Oscar race which is something that we're going to be talking about for the next I don't know nine months are you excited to do so yeah I like the like the Oscars. Yeah, I do too. I do too. Amanda, thanks so much. Please stick around now for my interview with Riley Stearns and Jesse Eisenberg about the movie The Art of Self-Defense. Really delighted to be joined by Riley Stearns and Jesse Eisenberg for The Art of Self-Defense. What's up, guys? Hey, thanks for having us. I need to know right away, like, Riley, where did this movie come from for you?

I guess the original idea came from wanting, I do jujitsu as kind of a hobby, and I wanted to make something that I, about something I liked and was interested in, and then as I was working on the script, I started realizing that I had all these themes that I wanted to explore,

and I just wanted to kind of take a look at what I was afraid of. And in a weird way, I was afraid of my lack of masculinity or perceived masculinity and what it meant. Like society was telling me I was supposed to be a certain way and other men. And I just wanted to kind of explore that. And doing it through the world of karate didn't totally make sense, but I felt like it could work. And Jesse, what was appealing to you about the script when you got it? It's absolutely brilliant. I mean, they just released like a one and a half minute teaser, which I think probably, which is unusual for a teaser, kind of captures the unusual tone.

Riley's dialogue is brilliant. He was able to create this story that is unbelievably funny, but at the same time, a very insightful common commentary on kind of like ideas about masculinity and kind of the absurdities that, you know, the absurdity of the, the, you know,

the aspiration of masculinity and, and, and how we think of it. It's just, he did an unbelievable job. So physically, I don't think many people would think that you were a karate expert. What kind of went into preparing for this and what did you bring to it? Obviously, jujitsu is also different from karate, so you're not exactly training your cast to perform either. We do have jujitsu in the movie though, and I was technically the jujitsu expert, which is funny to me,

but yeah, we, it was predominantly karate and, and our stunt coordinator, Mindy Kelly is an expert in multiple martial arts. And she worked with the cast pretty extensively. But the great thing about the way that the film was kind of set up is that he's a white belt and only gets his yellow belt in the film.

So it's only a three month, maybe four month span of time in, in, in the context of the film that he's actually supposed to be learning karate. So he doesn't have to be great, but, uh, that said, we wanted some things to, to feel a certain way and, and it is a little stylized. So he's better probably than, than you would assume somebody to be at that level, at that level. But, um, but yeah, I don't know what your experience. And some of the other actors just coincidentally did it. I mean, uh, they,

they, you know, Riley cast the movie in an unusual way where, uh, we had some, uh, actors who were, you know,

70% actor, but 30%, um, you know, good at, at, uh, martial arts.

And then, uh, and then there's one of the most amazing stunt guys, uh, Steve Turata is like, uh, actually mostly, you know,

one of the best martial artists, uh, Turata is actually mostly one of the best martial artists, but also is a good actor. So they were kind of cleverly casting it. Alessandro Nivolo, who plays the other main character in the movie, also happens to be athletic and good at it. Very good shape, which came off of an action film that shot in South Africa where he was just

already jacked and ready to go. So we were able to utilize different methods for different people, which was really fun and interesting. He struck me as a, as a, as a real martial artist in the film. He's very credible. He has zero experience. You guys had a unique chemistry. I thought in the film, how did you, uh, did you talk much while you were making the movie or did you keep some distance to, uh, keep the animosity, the intensity going? Wait, we talked, I mean, the nature of the movie, the way it was filmed,

probably like a lot of the movies you're covering here was like, you know, in 20 something days, you know, very short schedule. So 90% of the interactions you're having with people are being filmed because there's very little downtime. And the dialogue, we were both just in shock. We would do a scene and we're just in shock about how good the scenes are.

Not because we didn't expect them to be good, but just by virtue of just so rarely having an opportunity to do such well-written, such funny scenes with actually wonderful characters who are consistently odd. So it's not like they're occasionally quirky. Just the consistency of the tone is just so remarkable. And so I can't credit us for the chemistry.

I can credit Riley's characterizations, which are just perfect. But I can credit them too. Riley, before we started, I said that the tone is really, it is unique. And you've nailed something specific that's kind of difficult to describe. How do you get every actor to be hitting the same wavelength? Because Jesse, if you read it and you're like, oh, I see there's something unique here. I read a lot of scripts. But how does every actor find the same wavelength? Because Jesse, if you read it and you're like, oh, I see there's something unique here. I read a lot of scripts. But how does every actor find the same level? Well, we did talk before shooting. But the main thing I think we all kind of,

that I gave everybody was everything's very literal. You mean what you say. You're not going to sugarcoat anything. It's exactly how you're feeling. Black or white, no gray. And I think that helped as an overall note for everybody just to have that in their mind. And if something's funny, don't play it as a joke. Play it very earnestly and seriously, and that's where the comedy is going to come in. Right. And how'd you go about building out the rest of the cast? I mean, Jesse already kind of touched on it. Some of our side characters like Steve and Philip, they already had some martial

arts experience or sunkornator experience. So that was, if they can act and they can do the stunts, it was kind of a no-brainer for us. But then David Zellner's an actor, or sorry, a director who I admire immensely, he and his brother. And he also happens to act in a lot of his work. So I was a huge fan of him, especially in Kumiko Treasure Hunter and his performance in that he also happens to act in a lot of his work. So I was a huge fan of him, especially in Kimiko Treasure Hunter and his performance in that. It's just so beautiful and really liked the idea of him playing Henry in the film. So we were able to bring him on board and Imogen was a no-brainer too. She and I are at the same agency and when they put us in touch, her work in Green Room is so fantastic and I was one way then and I've been a fan of hers ever

since. So everything just kind of fell in line. It really worked out in the perfect kind of way. Was there anything difficult about this kind of action shooting? Because it's not the same as, you know, a car blows up or there's a green screen CGI moment. You know, there's like a physicality to this movie. I mean, you've not done a lot of action, obviously, Riley. I don't even know if you've been, guess maybe in a in a superhero movie or something but what was it like to have that kind of like hand-to-hand experience while making a film this was the first movie i

ever did and i think probably i could speak for a lot of the actors who have done a lot of movies um who and were on this set that i think we had a sense of like the purpose of every single shot and i've never had that feeling before on a a movie where we understood the story so well and the tone so well by the time we were filming that we knew the purpose of every shot. And so the action all seemed to kind of be very clear of what the story was. There's some action, you know, especially towards like, you know, the ending and everything we did, we knew exactly what the purpose was. It didn't seem like I'm doing a Zombieland sequel now. And just by virtue of the size of it, they do a million shots and then we'll cut it together. Whereas this movie, we knew the three shots that were required to tell this particular story at this moment.

It's a timeline thing. You don't have a lot of time. We're a 25-day shoot. We're a very small movie still. And we're trying to get a lot in. There's motorcycle stunts, there's dogs, there's fights, everything in between. And there would be days where you have to do a fight that's going to start in the morning and it's going to end at lunch. And you have to be on to another scene at the second part of the day. You're not going to make your day and you just have to get it. And so my cinematographer, Michael Reagan, was definitely pivotal in getting a lot of that. We went ahead just out of the virtue of what we had to do in this short span of

time, he went handheld on a lot of the fight scenes. And so a lot of that's his eye with my notes and we've worked together. This is our second feature together, but we've made a few shorts together too. And I feel like it shows because we have this kind of secondhand that allows us to get some things that you might be afraid of at the start of the day. But by the end of the day, you're like, how do we do that? Did you guys watch any martial arts films before you started making this? Not necessarily. I think that I have a good understanding of what makes up a pretty typical martial arts film. And I was a huge fan of like Jean-Claude Van Damme films and Bruce Lee things when I was younger.

But as an adult, it's not necessarily a genre that I've been drawn to. I think the biggest thing is I wanted the first part of the film to kind of set up the surprise of where the second part of the film goes. So the beginning of the film is definitely a little bit more structured, like a traditional sports film. He's bettering himself, you're building to some kind of change in the character. And halfway through the film, I wanted the audience to have the rug pulled out from under them and them to be totally confused about where the rest of the movie is going to go, but along for the ride at the same time. So it's kind of the first part of the movie is the traditional film that you would expect. And then the second part is something

completely different. And I really just don't, I don't like to be too influenced by other filmmakers. I try to find influences at least in terms of spirit and tone, but as far as storytelling goes, I just want to tell the story I want to tell. Jesse, is this a genre that you have a relationship to, the kind of movies that Riley's talking about? You mean the intonally speaking, that kind of thing? Just more like Jean-Claude Van Damme movies or Bruce Lee movies? No, I mean, I think what was really great about this is that I think we were trying to subvert thematically, but not subvert cinematically. So what I mean by that is trying to subvert the idea of the aspirations for masculinity, subvert that idea, because the movie turns out to be, like Riley said, kind of pull the rug out from under you of what you're expecting and hoping for this character. And the first half of the movie, you're kind of hoping that he succeeds and comes to defend himself. And then you realize that that's not the goal or that's not what you want for him.

But I don't think it kind of, it doesn't subvert like the martial arts genre. It's not like winking to the audience, like who know that genre. And it's not like stylistically trying to kind of, you know, mimic it as a joke um i mean i think that's why the movie works well is because it doesn't like it's funny but it doesn't seem to make fun of the characters that everybody takes their own emotion seriously even though the way they're speaking is is quite odd this this week i've been asking filmmakers what's an ideal double feature for your film uh what would you question what would you like to what would you want to watch with your movie um wow what would i want to watch you've made two movies so it's a no-brainer you

can do your own film that's kind of a cheat okay so the cheat answer really would be faults because i i actually found it fascinating uh getting the dailies uh in the beginning of making this movie and and it had been i shot faults in 2013 so it had been a while since I had been behind the camera. And all of a sudden seeing these shots from this new movie, it felt like a Riley Stearns film, which is weird because I didn't think that I had a style and that might not make sense, but I just hadn't, I had made a few things. And so finally seeing that kind of coming together and everything, it was really fascinating to me to be like, oh, this is feeling like me.

So I would say false or I think tonally you could throw something along the lines of a Fargo or just movies that I love, Fargo or Punch Drunk Love, like things like that that are their own thing. And maybe not going super literal with what would be the exact kind of like copy of a double feature, but something that maybe inspired the type of worlds that I like to build. Maybe, yeah, maybe those. Is there a Jesse Eisenberg movie that you would want to watch with this as well? I mean, I so rarely find movies like this where it's really, really funny, but without kind of being comic, you know, explicitly comic. I did another movie in 2005 that I felt as passionate about the tone, which was called The Living Wake, which is like an unusual movie. And it's a little broader, but similarly kind of like so odd and specific in tone.

And as an actor, you just feel like, God, this is just like a gift to be able to work on this. Like there's nothing that feels pretentious or wrong or inaccurate about what you're doing. It all feels like you're in this consistent world. And it's just, you just feel so lucky to be there. But those are kind of few and far between because most comedies are trying to like kind of signal that they're comic. And so you have the added responsibility to signal to the audience in some way that it's safely comedic and and you could laugh at this, and we're laughing at ourselves. And Riley wasn't interested in that. It makes the movie possibly less broadly accessible, but as an actor, I would say it's more fulfilling. Yeah, it had me on my toes, which I liked. I end every episode of the show

by asking filmmakers, what's the last great thing they've seen? So what is the last great thing that you guys have seen? I've not seen a lot lately leading up to South by Southwest. I did just see Climax and there were some elements of that movie that I was really blown away with. Still think that Enter the Void is my favorite of his, but Climax was pretty entertaining. That's a great one. Jesse, anything you've seen recently that you like? I stopped watching movies that have, I don't know, some kind of paranoia. So I saw like a Hawks Spurs game the other night in Atlanta. That's a film unto itself. Yeah.

Came down to the wire and we were all kind of concerned right up until the end and then the home team lost. It's a perfectly ringer answer. Riley, Jesse, thank you for doing this. Thank you so much. Nice to meet you. Thanks as always to my pal Amanda Dobbins and thank you to Jesse Eisenberg and Riley Stearns for coming on the show. Please tune in later this week

where I'll have a conversation with the director Michael Dowse about the new action comedy Stuber and maybe having my pal David Shoemaker in to talk about Dave Bautista, perhaps our new Jim Carrey. See you then.