The Big Picture - ‘Babylon,’ ‘White Noise,’ and 10 Oscars Contenders to Stream Now

Episode Date: December 30, 2022

Sean and Amanda double dip into two maximal extravaganzas from two of our most exciting auteurs. First up: Damien Chazelle’s Silent Era Hollywood bacchanalia ‘Babylon’ and then their top 5 movies about Hollywood (1:00). Then, they discuss Noah Baumbach’s adaptation of Don DeLillo’s novel, ‘White Noise’ (1:14:00). Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Producer: Bobby Wagner Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, media consumers. I'm Brian Curtis. And I'm David Shoemaker. We're the hosts of The Ringer's Press Box podcast. Twice a week, we have a free-flowing conversation where two old, old friends talk about media and sports and a little politics. Plus interviews with guests like John Krakauer

and Jamel Hill. Funny stuff like the overworked Twitter joke of the week. Join us every Monday and Friday on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. I think that's right. Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points.

Visit Superstore.ca to get started. I'm Sean Fennessey. I'm Amanda Dobbins. And this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about Hollywood forever. We're double dipping in today's episode with two maximal extravaganzas from two of our most exciting auteurs. First up, Damien Chazelle's silent era Hollywood bacchanalia, Babylon, and then a discussion of Noah Baumbach's adaptation of Don DeLillo's novel, White Noise. First, we're going to provide a little service to the listener.

It's not yet the new year. We're still in 2022. That's true. I've got people in the street flagging me down, Amanda. And they're just like, Sean, what do I watch? And where do I watch it? When was the last time that you were in a street where anyone could access you?

What do you mean by that? Because I'm in my car? Yeah, or just because you're a person, you know, you're in your room with your DVDs. They're Blu-rays, but all right, keep going. I'm sorry, I forgot. I'm so sorry, Tim Simons, you're Blu-rays. And no one can enter the bubble.

No, that's wrong. I'm a man of the people. I'm a man of walking. I like to be outside. I like to speak to my neighbors. I've become much more neighborly. This is really like the Howard Hughes era of the year for you, you know?

Where it's just like everyone leaves and you just have a dwindling list of things you haven't seen. And you're just like up till 3 a.m. going crazy and making your list. How's your list coming? How's your Tumblr list coming? Is it still on Tumblr? 301 films at this point when we are recording that I have worked through that are 2022 releases. Okay. I'm probably going to cross 600 films for the year, which is less

than the 800 films I watched the year before. So that is, you watched with some intention. Some intention. More intention. Yes. What's your resolution for 2023?

More films. Really? Maybe. Okay. Why not? Let's go, but we have to go back. Well, my child is developing.

She's in a great spot. Yeah, she is in a great spot. Thank you. So I feel it's more navigable than it was. Okay, so you're like, that's all done. No, no. She's set. I don't need to worry about it.

I will not abandon my child. But I resolve to watch more films. I love films. The listeners of the show love films. Let's tell them where they can watch more films. I love films. The listeners of the show love films. Let's tell them where they can watch some films. Now, Babylon, which we're talking about today. This entire podcast is going to be me just trying to throw you off course even more than usual. And you steering back.

Like, that was really elegant. Thank you. And it's just like, keep holding the wheel. Keep it tighter and tighter, you know, because. I demand control. I know that about you and i respond to that by being like and another thing that i watched on instagram last night is if not for me do this for chris ryan because it was chris ryan sitting in the chair right next to you and he said you know what you guys need to do you're so good at this you need to one day i'll break you yes we need to tell people what Yes, we need to tell people what's streaming. You need to tell people

what's streaming. It's the end of the year. You're going to be talking about the Oscars for the next three months. God for fucking bid. And nobody knows where to watch anything anymore.

That makes me want to lie down and die. It's okay. It's going to be okay. I don't like the Oscars this year. I had a really good attitude and then it just turned around really quickly.

I don't know. The Academy likes Avatar the Way of Water way too much. You need to leave that attitude in 2022 and come into 2023 like an eagle. You need to soar

through this awards race. If the Academy would embrace Top Gun Maverick and or Tar and we could have the awards season that we deserve.

It's plausible. We're just talking about Elvis, man. Elvis is streaming. Elvis is streaming. Look at me. I can segue too. You can do it too.

I'm so proud of you. Elvis is streaming on HBO Max. Should I do you can do it too I'm so proud of you Elvis is streaming on HBO Max should I do this entire segment in the TikTok voice yeah yes

Elvis an exciting new film from Baz Luhrmann he's up to his old tricks again this film moves very fast and shows the life of Elvis Presley check it out

now on HBO Max see you at the movies or on HBO Max okay no more of that also on HBO Max The Banshe more of that. Also on HBO Max The Banshees of Indischarne. A film that we did like

and that I think actually is competing pretty hard. We'll probably come back early next year and do another Power Rankings but Banshees especially since it has

become has been streaming a little bit more warmth towards it. We've seen this happen in recent years as these movies come home that their profiles raise.

Banshees didn't do that great in movie theaters but could have a nice little shelf life. Yeah, that's because its audience is waiting to watch it at home or on their Academy site. That's exactly right. Other films. The Woman King, Gina Prince-Bythewood's new film, is available on VOD right now. It's a Sony movie, and so that means it's going to eventually go to Netflix. I'm very curious to see when Netflix and Sony agree to put this movie on the service because it could have the same effect that I think Banshees is having right now, where if it's on that home screen, you know it's going to go to number one the minute it hits Netflix. Yeah. And I wonder if that pushes Viola Davis ahead. I wonder if that

pushes this movie into the consciousness. I think it'd be a lot of fun if this movie made the best picture race. I'm rooting for it. I do too. And it does seem like it's, the awareness is growing. People are seeing it at home. It's been popping up on lists, like end of year lists, which is great. This is a really, a great movie. This is just like a movies, movies.

And I do think it will play well at home. Agreed. If you are still looking for something to watch with your family, like if you did Glass Onion already, I think this is a really great option. Yep. You like Braveheart, you like Glass of the Mohicans, you like movies like that. So, has it already been decided?

Like, do Netflix and Sony, when they make this agreement, is there like a, do they have their own window, or is there flexibility? Could they be negotiating right now? I don't know. I assume there's flexibility based on box office performance. Okay. So, like, The Invitation is a horror movie

that came out before The Woman King but not too far before. And I believe that's going to be available on Christmas. So January maybe for The Woman King?

In the meantime, for $19.99 you can get it on VOD. It'll probably be available to rent very soon as well for an even cheaper price. Similar to The Fablemans. Yeah.

The Fablemans is also available on VOD. This is Steven Spielberg's new film. Still kind of sort of the front runner for best picture. I'm not. I don't think it is anymore. What do you think is?

I don't. A film we'll get to? A film we'll get to, but I just, I don't think that the juice is coming for Fablemans. What does that mean? The juice? I don't know. Like OJ Simpson? I don't know.

The action is the juice. I don't know. I just like came in my head. I'm tired, man. I? I don't know. The action is the juice. I don't know. I just like came in my head. I'm tired, man. Okay. I just, it doesn't, I kept thinking, I don't know. People will see it. People will see it.

It's amazing. Like, I guess the world has turned on Steven Spielberg. No, that's not what happened. Like, I don't know what to say. I haven't. He made a very unusual film about his adolescence. Yeah. That does not have some of the saleable aspects of many of his big top entertainments.

I love this movie. This was in your top five. It was. It's very good. People should watch it. It is two hours and 40 minutes. That's also a potential issue. Oh, God.

Okay. But you could watch it in chapters. I would not recommend anyone ever do that with anything. That's my take. Okay. Watch your films as films, as they are intended. Well, you're not meeting people where they are. That's exactly right.

Also streaming just recently is After Sun, which is the A24 drama about a young father and his young daughter on a vacation starring Paul Mascow and Frankie Correo. A beautiful movie. you would like more evidence that Sean and I are psychopaths. Dial up this movie, have an emotional response, and then listen to Adam Neiman speaking really beautifully about it on our Best of 2022 list. Agreed. Black Panther, Wakanda Forever. I don't know when this is coming. Now, it will probably go to Disney Plus and VOD simultaneously. I like how we started this with a,

let us tell you exactly where to watch movies, and we immediately transitioned to, I just, I don't know when this will be let us tell you exactly where to watch movies and we immediately transitioned to I just I don't know when this will be available. This is the only one I don't know. Okay.

I also don't think it's competing for an Academy Award. Yeah. It has slowed down significantly at the box office and so that means it could go to D plus soon.

I don't really know. We shall see. Moving on. Triangle of Sadness. This is on VOD right now. Picking up Steam. Yeah. You have you're starting to sense some best picture potential here. International voting body.

Pondor winner. feels very simplified to us because it's an english language language movie and it's not about american elites but it has sort of an argument that we are i guess feel familiar with interesting pairing with uh knives out too yes and i think that international audiences seem to just think it's funny to laugh at, like American idiots. And there are a lot of international voters in the Academy. That movie is also going to be on Hulu soon. It's a neon film. And all the neon films go to Hulu. Similarly could get a boost from that.

A trio of films that are on VOD right now, but will be on Peacock pretty soon. She Said, which certainly feels like it has been abandoned in the race. Tar, magnificent movie. It's an amazing movie. Plays really well at home.

I watched it at home. I think it's our number two movie of the year, both of us. Yes. And Armageddon Time, a movie that we still have not discussed in depth

on this podcast, despite our admiration for it and for James Gray. I think it's going to be on Peacock soon as well because it's Focus. All right. Nope is currently on Peacock. It is. My husband watched it on Peacock.

Couldn't Nope get in Best Picture? I don't know. I really don't know. I guess I have shared my feelings on this film, which is I just thought it was beautiful to look at, and I did not connect with it. That is probably on me. I understand it's had a real critical groundswell i understand that then the discourse and like

idiot course kind of came for it in a way that i think is really stupid and don't endorse even though again i have i like i don't know i just i just don't get it um but i don't know whether the academy is that frequently influenced by like critical. I don't think so. It did make the AFI list, which I thought was interesting. Okay. That is not necessarily a bellwether, but it's interesting. It's a notable body acknowledging it.

And I think we got to the end of the year and a lot of critics realized, wow, actually, when I look back on everything I saw. Right. There wasn't a whole lot that was able to match what Peele was up to. I did an informal poll on Thanksgiving when I was trying to make my list. And a lot of people I know in the world were like, oh, yeah, I really enjoyed Nope. So I don't think that it's just like critics on an island advocating for something. And I would never say that about a Jordan Peele movie. He obviously has like a tremendous ability to understand what audiences will respond to

and to entertain them. So it could. It feels like a little bit too late, I think, to get that off the ground. I think you're right. I think you're right.

That hurts, but I think you're right. A few more that are currently streaming. Actually, a whole bunch more. Yeah. Two that are on Paramount+. Okay.

Everything, everywhere, all at once. Definitely the front is this in the driver's seat it might be interesting secretly yeah well but i think it's in the well but i think it's in the driver's seat right now and then it's too early it's a long road yeah we got almost three months to go and then top gun maverick yes december 30th arrives on paramount plus it's being they're advertising the hell out of the streaming premiere of this film, which debuted in May. Yeah. The Fablemans debuted in the beginning of November, and it came to VOD three and a half weeks later. Right.

Top Gun Maverick debuted over Memorial Day weekend, and it took almost seven months for it to come to streaming. Remarkable. It's here. Definitely going to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture. Don't jinx it to come to streaming. Remarkable. It's here. Definitely going to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture. Don't jinx it. Okay, sorry. I got so nervous now that people are like

out here just over their skis being like, Avatar, Way of Water, the best, you know, most important movie since whatever. And it's going to take the blockbuster spot from Top Gun. I'm really nervous about that. And I, like, I don't know what I'll do. As of today, I think they're both getting in.

Okay. I mean, I hope so. I think so. I don't know. If it's not nominated, and if Top Gun Maverick is not nominated and Avatar Way of Water is, and it's like 6.30 in the morning and we're podcasting,

that's going to be really dark. Never forget that Jim is him. I know. I know. I know. I didn't. Listen, I was there. I invested. I believed.

I opened my heart. I have watched the video of him giving autograph seekers the finger like 40 times. That's like my ethos in life. But, you know, that movie, we were mixed on it. We were mixed. We were. There's a whole bunch of movies on Netflix right now

okay here they are Glass Onion and Ives on Mystery Bardo yes RRR yes

trying desperately to also make a late bid that would be really fun that would be fun All Quiet on the Western Front which we have not discussed on this show maybe if we talk a little bit

more in depth about the international feature race in the winter we can get into that film and guillermo dottaro spinocchio uh two more streamers emancipation the will smith vehicle is on apple tv plus and decision to leave is on movie for all you movie subscribers you can also rent that movie on vod that's the park chan wook film then there's a category of films still in theaters. Avatar the Way of Water, which you just mentioned. Living just opened this week. This is Oliver Hermanis' adaptation of Ikiru, the Kurosawa film, which is adapted by Kazuo Ishiguro, the great novelist.

The Whale. Yes. Still in theaters. Not a film I like, but that's okay. EO. Yeah, you love this movie. Yersey Skolomowsky's beautiful portrait of a donkey. A lot of donkeys in movies in 2022.

What do you make of that? I don't make anything of it. Commentary about how we are all burdened with a great struggle. As I said the last time that we talked about EO, there's just like a lot of animal content in my own life at the baby level what's Knox's number one animal I think a cow because what how yeah because whatever I see he loves old McDonald and I always start with a cow and we always do moo moo so I think he responds to that the most I gotta tell you I get really into the animal sounds yeah is this because you showed is this because you showed Knox the Kelly Reichert film when he was just one month old?

Yes. Can you check this one out, Knox? And First Knox. That's the sequel to First Kel. That's beautiful. He's not the first Knox, actually. He's the second Knox. Well, some might argue the third, but anyway.

All right, let's move on from EO. Okay. Empire of Light. Yeah, I'm glad to see that this is going to be on HBO Max soon because maybe I'll see it. Oh, God, you haven't seen it yet. I haven't seen it yet. Well, considering that it has not performed well at the box office

and it's just a miss for Sam Mendes, I actually thought that it would play with the Academy voter. I said that coming out of Telluride. You texted me, this is a travesty and it'll probably win Best Picture. I remember those text messages. I remember talking to some lovely older patrons at the Telluride Film Festival

and they were quite moved by it. Yeah. And I felt it was very ham-fisted in how it tried to tell three different very complicated stories at the same time and didn't succeed doing so. I think the world agreed.

It hasn't gotten good reviews and people haven't gone to see it. Yeah. But you never know. You never know with the Academy Awards. That's true. Sam Mendes has been very, very successful with the Academy.

And, you know, he just most recently made 1917 and that film got quite a few nominations. So we shall see. Another movie in theaters, Babylon. Sure is. Shall we discuss Babylon? Let's do it.

Like, I didn't do it off stretches. Babylon is the new film written and directed by Damien Chazelle. It was one of our most exciting filmmakers. This is the man who made and directed by Damien Chazelle who was one of our most exciting filmmakers. This is the man who made Whiplash, La La Land, First Man. Babylon chronicles the rise and fall

of multiple characters during Hollywood's transition from silent to sound films in the late 1920s. This film makes me feel alive. Does it? Yes. So you walked out feeling alive? Yes. Okay.

That's one reaction. It's the right reaction. Okay. This film is very long. It is explosive and overwhelming. And I understand that for some, it exhausts the senses, which I think is its intent.

But to me, what I think is its intent. But to me, what I want from my filmmakers is the challenge to keep up, the I dare you quality of this movie, the I'm going to do everything I can to explode your feelings, I just think is magical. I just love it. I'm just completely blown away by directors

who are willing to take a chance like this. We can talk about its flaws and its challenges. Well, I was going to say, is it exploding your feelings or exploding your senses? I think it's both for me. Now, I will say there's a reason for me, which is that I am obsessed with movies. And Damien Chazelle is obsessed with movies.

Yes. And, you know, we are going to have to ultimately spoil this film to talk about it in full. We will wait to spoil the way that it is like the ultimate manifestation or maybe not manifestation. Maybe there's another word for it about movies. Because for a long stretch of the film, it's very tightly focused on this world of 1920s cinema and the people who occupy it. But it ultimately becomes something much bigger or tries to become something much bigger about what movies mean to us and um i i emotionally

related to that i i i think it's extravagant and absurd yes but in a way that i really enjoy it it's a it's a swing it's a it's a movie in general that is just a major swing it's a provocation and i've like a visceral pretty involving film even if you're resistant it does sweep you away and it and it is just like big filmmaking it is you want to see what i can do it is a camera and a guy with all of his toys and his tricks and and he's going for it so i it is a assault your senses and it is enveloping i don't know whether it i felt things because i don't know whether it's emotional component is as developed or whether the emotional component that is developed is something that made me feel alive or made me feel, to quote the second half of this podcast, that all plots move deathward and that it is just a, it's sort of a last cry and something, it's not invigorating.

It's not, it's not even exhilarating because there is this anguish and this like extraness to it that feels um desperate and I agree yeah I think that's well put and so I so I guess it just it making me feel alive is like an interesting reaction to it because it made me like experience a lot of things, but it feels, as you have said, like, you know, his attempt to make the last movie ever made. I think one of my takeaways, and we're basically already talking about

the conclusion of the film before even talking about any of the details of the story, but like the feeling that I had at the end of it was something that I feel about movies, which is you can't take this away from me. No matter what you do, I will always have the feeling of seeing singing in the rain for the first time yeah and that i will always have the

feeling of seeing even i don't know fucking avatar the way of water where half the movie i was like i'm not sure if this is working and then we get to a moment in the movie where i'm like ah i can't believe he did this and that is really really really powerful to me. And you're right. I think anguish and desperation are clearly components of the story because this is a true rise and fall tale. Like it is the ultimate descent into kind of madness and like a hellacious experience. And like, this is the cost of turning your life over to this fickle, expensive, ridiculous art form. You know, that that is what he's trying to say. Yeah.

The people who are at the forefront of developing the technology and the storytelling that then shaped American culture for 100 years. And as it arrives at a moment, and as we've been chronicling in detail for the last five years, as it is at a death's door, you know, the way that we see movies now and the way that they, what part they play in our lives is kind of ending or at least downshifting significantly but that to get to this place these people were destroyed you know they were all they were all kind of destroyed the movie is not

a pure docudrama it's these are for the most part we're not talking about real people but the one-to-one comps to real-life people are very evident. Maybe we should talk about them a little bit. Yeah, let's talk about the text of the movie, and then I want to talk about the subtext. Okay. So the text. It effectively focuses on four key characters. This film is very

fortunate to have Margot Robbie and Brad Pitt, two major movie stars without whom this movie would not have been made, because it is a lavish, expensive, reported at $80 million budget, though perhaps more than that, period piece. So Margot Robbie plays

a woman named Nellie LaRoy, who is very clearly modeled on Clara Bow, the great silent screen star of the 1920s, who was this sort of Brooklyn-born wild child. She was in a film called It,

which was what spawned the It Girl as a sensation and a concept in Hollywood. This is an extraordinarily everything performance for Margot Robbie, who has been asked to go to 11 in every single sequence. Brad Pitt stars as Jack Conrad. He is also an actor and a kind of actor-director. He's modeled on John Gilbert, I think, for the most

part. You can see a lot of Clark Gable. You can see a lot of Douglas Fairbanks in his performance. Diego Calva is effectively the lead of the film. He plays Manny Torres. He's a Mexican immigrant who is working for sort of like a gopher for a movie studio

producer and who very slowly through the film kind of rises through the ranks of production, ultimately to become a kind of production chief at a movie studio. And Yovana Depo plays Sidney Palmer, who is a jazz musician, he's a trumpeter, who we see as he begins his,

as a sort of for hire musician, and then it's kind of handpicked to emerge as a kind of movie star musician like in the sort of a little bit of duke ellington a little bit of louis armstrong you know there were these films in the 30s in particular that featured like jazz musicians at the center of them like black and tan or cabin in the sky and he's very clearly modeled on those figures and so the movie features in snapshot all four of them i would not say that their time is evenly dispersed no um giovanna depo in particular i think it's a little bit of short shrift in this

film right you could see his character being his own movie unto itself he gets the least amount of screen time out of this quartet uh it's interesting that calva has is asked to shoulder much of the perspective of the movie given that margot robbie and brad pitt are the most famous members of the perspective of the movie, given that Margot Robbie and Brad Pitt are the most famous members of the cast. Let's start with Calva. What'd you think of him? Incredibly handsome and great presence, even though he's not given a lot to do. He's asked to, he's the perspective and he's the audience's way in. And he's also tasked with being the person who just loves movies you know and and all he wants is to be on a set and he'll do anything and he's communicating some of that and it's not totally clear whether that's supposed to be earnest or whether that you're supposed to understand that that's I mean I think it's earnest for him but are you supposed to invest in that

drama are you supposed to know that like okay he wants this thing that's, like, going to be bad for him, and, like, this is not going to end well? It's like he's going to be turned, you know, to the dark side? I think that's right. I think that's the purpose. I think so, but they don't give him a lot of time to totally let that develop. It's a little unclear what is guiding his ambition beyond wanting to be in this world. But that being said, that's true of a lot of people that come to Hollywood or that think about coming to Hollywood.

They couldn't necessarily literalize why they want to be in this crazy world. But then, you know, there's a very important sequence fairly early in the film where there's sort of a simultaneous film production happening. There's one film starring the Margot Robbie character and then there's one film starring the Brad Pitt character. And the mania in this open field in Los Angeles is exhilarating.ating. You know, like

you can just see why people get hooked on this like a drug and that's really the kind of addiction to movies is I think a lot of what this movie is about. And so I like him as this sort of like blank page that gets scribbled upon throughout the whole film. You know, he comes in with like not a lot of clarity

of personality other than just wanting to be in it and he does really get, he gets turned. He gets thrown into some extraordinarily bad situations in part because of his own bad thinking yeah you can't really talk about with him about him without talking about the margot robbie character because they're linked um so thoroughly and also so early in the film he in addition to being in love with movies is suddenly in love with the margot robbie character and so is he in love with nelly is he in love with the idea of movies and fame and um and and what she represents both in hollywood but just kind of like in the in their career trajectories in life it's or even how we all relate to movie stars you know there's something about just like she has a line that she repeats throughout,

which is like, you either are a star or you aren't. You're like, you're, you know, kind of born with it. And he responds to her the way that we respond to a Margot Robbie or a Brad Pitt on the screen. And so their fates are linked throughout the course of the movie. Like on the one hand, that's a like very recognizable dynamic to me and on the

other hand it doesn't totally get developed i i would say it just kind of like instantly happens um over a mound of cocaine yes which which on the one hand is is true to i think what happens over a mound of cocaine usually but also yeah a lot of people with wild ideas that yeah in the light of day are often bad yeah exactly but but also in some ways the movie like doesn't really ever reach the light of day it I mean this is a cocaine movie for sure for sure so I guess we should also note that it is kind of wildly anachronistic yeah the language that is used in the film the sort sort of mannerisms, the performance, particularly of Margot Robbie's character, I found is sort of, is so, is almost like extraterrestrial.

You know, it's not even contemporary. It's happening on another wavelength. I really liked that choice. I thought it was, I appreciate that it was not attempting to be like the artist, for example, where it was like, this is period accurate. Like, I don't think that that would have been too much fun. And so I like that chazelle was sort of like let's just break conventions and not worry necessarily about all of the accuracy of the moment and try to do something that is a little bit more explosive i do think that you know the comparisons are very obvious here it's very scorsese paul thomas anderson yeah that like hyper kinetic like stick the needle in my arm feeling that you get when watching some of their films, particularly they're like Wolf of Wall Street and Boogie Nights are the films that I've seen this compared to the most. I think that's accurate where it just feels like you're on a, you know, you're on the train track and the brakes don't work and you're going downhill the whole time, like for three hours. It feels that way. Um, I do think that that will exhaust some, the Brad Pitt character is interesting. He is essential to the lesson of the film,

but not essential to the story of the film. I think you actually could, for the most part, have cut his character out of this movie, and the framework of the movie still works. You lose a kind of melancholy that the movie feels it needs, whereas Margot Robbie's characters and Diego Calva's characters

are desperate and moving at a million miles an hour. The Jack Conrad character is sort of like, you can feel him decelerating in real time. He's somebody who is already at the mountaintop

when the film begins. And if he is, say, Douglas Fairbanks, for example, we know that very slowly but surely his star kind of wanes. And he no longer is at the absolute center. He's not the sun anymore. He's barely even a star. I will say, I thought Brad Pitt was a little bit miscast in this movie. I don't know how you felt about his performance.

I always like the meta aspect to castings and it is playing with that a little bit and i but i agree with you for the first two acts which is like 40 hours he is he's doing meta brad pitt with like a touch of aldo reins, you know, uh, and just as kind of like, they're almost playing to the camera and a tuxedo being like, yes, hello, I'm, you know, I'm Brad Pitt. And isn't it funny that we're doing this? And then the, like, it's a pretty hard turn into like really emotional, um, and pretty Frank and like earnest stuff. And the closest the movie comes to being like here are the themes of the movie um and on the one hand i was like i found that jarring and i

was like what's going on and on the other hand i thought that that was when pitt like really he didn't come alive because it's such a sad performance but it's sort of like to it's like the george clooney in the in ticket to paradise at the bar scene where it's like the George Clooney in the, in Ticket to Paradise at the bar scene where it's like, Oh, you're trying now. Yeah. And it's like, Oh,

I remember that you're one of the great actors and you're bringing pathos and you're selling some stuff that like really almost no one else could sell. And like, it's still frankly a tonally like doesn't quite fit with this piece and like is unearned except for the fact that you're Brad Pitt and, and you've earned it. So I thought that he was great in the last third. And even his last scene is sort of obvious, but really affecting.

Yeah, I think it's really effective. I found myself wishing it was one or the other. Yeah. I think I had a harder time accepting the second half. Yes. Because the first half was so, felt tongue in cheek. Yeah.

Well, so does the whole movie. Yeah. I mean, Margot Robbie's doing like, you know, manic sexy dream girl for the whole movie. She,

she is. And, and she's fantastic at that. I mean, she's like a real, she is a force. She is a presence. She is like the 35 under 35 number one

for a reason i wish like people would let her do some other stuff even scorsese and wolf of wall street like lets her i mean she is like the you know sex bomb of all sex bombs but is also like going toe-to-toe with leo there's some like weird drama stuff along with the accent and the extraness and this is all like fighting a snake you know yeah that's clearly what

Chazelle was after right he wanted her to be like a pipe bomb in every scene right I think the thing is is that the film itself

Calva isn't giving the same kind of performance but he's pretty twitched up the whole movie too Pitt Pitt is the only character really and maybe Jean Smart who we haven't mentioned,

who plays a kind of gossip columnist slash guide to the stars, who's very closely modeled on a few real life people as well, particularly Eleanor Glynn. Yeah. Those are the only two characters that have that kind of dash of melancholy that comes near the end of the film. Well, also Legion Lee, we should say, as Lady Feijian,

who is the other half of Brad Pitt's final scene. Right. Spoiler alert, I guess, but... She makes an appearance later in the film. She's kind of loosely based on Anna May Wong, who's a real-life Chinese-American actress who was in a lot of films in the 20s, particularly Shanghai Express.

She does have a bit of melancholy, but hers is a kind of more reserved story. Also about an immigrant family. I think that's a big part of this movie is that everybody who comes to Hollywood comes from somewhere else. You know, whether that be China or Mexico or New Jersey, in the case of Nellie LaRoy. And that it's this series of kind of expats who have banded together to make something crazy.

The Pitt thing is interesting. I can't think of somebody who would be better. I thought of like Hugh Jackman, Colin Firth. There's like a handful of actors who are kind of in that age range. They're not quite as dashing as Brad Pitt, and you need that a little bit. But I don't know.

Something about his performance style. I kept seeing the guy from Bullet Train where there's like every Brad Pitt part is a little too winky now. All his comedic stuff is veering into that. Yeah. I agree. I wish it wasn't there.

I wish it was a little bit stiffer, but that's neither here nor there. And the film is kind of neatly chopped into three clear hours. You know, it's a three-act piece. The first hour, which is dominated by this party,

this orgy, this, and, you know, to your point about Chazelle's being in love with his ability to move the camera. Yeah.

it is him pulling out every stop. You know, it is. It was so annoying. It was so annoying. I was so, because this is all like the before, like, title sequence. It was so annoying. It was so annoying. I was so, because this is all, like, the before, like, title sequence. Like, the party goes forever.

And then it finally just says, like, Babylon. And. It was not annoying. It was amazing. But, okay, continue. I. So, like, a long-held opinion of mine is that watching people do drugs is boring. Okay.

And especially, like like people on cocaine. It's just like, you know, I'm not moralizing here. As long as you can be like responsible and healthy, like go with God. Just so I'm clear, you're pro-cocaine. I just like, it's not that I'm against doing drugs. I'd like people to be healthy and, you know.

Where do you stand on smoking cigarettes? That's not healthy. If Knox comes home in 13 years and says, I want to smoke cigarettes. i don't want him to but also that was one of chris's greatest hottest takes of all time so that's on airplanes now did you know that that's on airplanes yes they're like the hottest take the hottest take is but they have like a selection of hottest takes on airplanes there are four of them and one of them is the smoking hottest take which is available on airplanes good episode um anyway i just i don't

like watching people do the consequences of people doing drugs which again it sounds like i'm moralizing or like what happens after people do drugs is is fascinating and you know part of life's rich text but the thing where it's just like people doing cocaine and then being fucking annoying like i don't care it's boring i just don't care and this was so like coked out with anything and and show offy and just like the camera is over here and then it's over there and then like here are some depraved things i'm like omg you know i'm just like this isn't cool i don't think it's cool i'm not amused i'm not sure how to how to how to volley back here yeah no i'm sorry'm sorry, but that was just me.

Other people, I think you liked it, but I'm not the only person who was sort of irritated by the access, right? Here's the thing. You and I are a couple of squares. We've had some fun in our day. Don't pretend like you're fucking cool and that you were living on Avenue C and shooting heroin and hanging out with punk rockers. You were never that person. No. You're from the suburbs of Atlanta. You went to a great school. You've been very successful in your adult life. You're now a mother.

You're a great mom. You're a great wife. You're a great colleague. Yeah, why was that number three by the way? Why did I have to be defined as a wife

and mother first? You're a solid to decent colleague. That's why I came third. Okay. I just... No, but... Okay, I'm saying this for a reason. And I, of course, am also a colleague. Okay. That's why I came third. Okay. I just. No, but. Okay.

I'm saying this for a reason. And I, of course, am also a square. Yeah. You keep spreadsheets. I live in fear a lot of the time. I want to stay within the lines. I'm trying to be, you know, a good boy. Here's what I would posit.

What I'm just saying to you is that, like, it's not that cool. Can I finish my point? Yeah. But okay. Damon Chazelle is like us. I know. He's a high achiever achiever yeah he's seen all the movies he loves jazz music but he's a person who even though he lives an incredibly creative life i just mean from a personality perspective oh he's like a little dweeby no i know and but i can feel that anxiety and like what i would say to you is like

my god you got an oscar you know like you're you actually just embrace it. You'll be cooler if you're comfortable. And this is so uncomfortable. This is so and the desperation is part of it. And it's also that's the thing memorializing. I want in. I want in the club like a strivers and like a whole world. I get it.

I do totally get it. But that doesn't mean that the experience is any irritating. I didn't feel that way. I didn't feel that way. I'll tell you any irritating. Even if it's the point. I didn't feel that way. Well, that's okay. I'll tell you why I think it's effective for the film.

We need to be shotgunned into the story. If we just do like if we like see Margot Robbie in New Jersey and then we see her rise and how she decides to get on a bus one day

and she's going to leave it all behind. We've seen that movie and it's boring. What we need is a person who like Clara Bow just like exploded onto the scene one day.

And if the take is it was powered by like drugs and wild ambition I think all the better. I think whether or not like you enjoy watching people on screen

pretend like they're high on drugs. I accept that. I'm not saying that to me that's not the totality of that sequence though. I'm not saying that

it was ineffective. I'm just saying that I personally was irritated by it. And I'm not the only person. A lot, though. I'm not saying that it was ineffective. I'm just saying that I personally was irritated by it. And I'm not the only person. A lot of people find, oh, that, I mean, that part was funny. You know, and then gross, but, like, that's fine. Yeah. I thought it worked.

I spent a lot of time, because they tell you at the very beginning that they're in Bel-Air in 1923, I believe. And then it's just, like, there's, like, nothing, you know? It's sort of, like, some farmland and then it's just like there's like nothing you know it's sort of like some farmland and then one house at the top of the hill but i like spend an outsized amount of time being like okay so topographically like those hills are back there so we've got to be somewhat near like benedict you know i was like trying to figure it out and that wasn't a useful uh part of the point is obvious right it's, this was undeveloped. I know. This was not anything. I know. This was a farm town

before it was Hollywood and now it's Hollywood and all of its surrounding neighborhoods. In that first hour, we also, you know, we see this orgiastic opening party. We see them doing drugs. We see Manny and Nellie meet.

We see them kind of concoct this plan to pursue stardom. We see Jack arrive at the party late. We see him basically get divorced. Oh my God. Like in real time to Olivia Wilde.

In Italian with Olivia Wilde who's just like shot in profile in the dark and then like disappears. Very, very funny. It felt like a weird winking nod to Don't Worry Darling.

It did, yeah. And at this party because of a series of events Nellie is essentially discovered and because she is dancing ravishingly and becomes the kind of focus

of the party and she's cast in a movie she's told that she can basically show up to the set the next day so she gets

two hours of sleep living in this dingy ass apartment and she heads over to the set and when she arrives once again just the logistics

of that getting home from Bel Air sleeping for two hours then getting you know yeah how did she she stole a car it's i mean it's it's like a jerry mcguire situation you can't get to that yeah just gotta really go with it yeah um but she does arrive at the set the next day that's kind of cross-cut with as i said the sequence where jack's film is being made by an eric von stroheim type german director played by spike jones having a lot of fun with that part. Has the team shaving up this year?

Conversely, Diego Calva's character has gone home with Jack Conrad that previous night and sort of helped him back to his home. Beautiful house. Yeah, amazing house. Incredible house. It looks like... The pool, the gardens.

Oh my gosh. The kid stays in the picture. Yeah. Oh, Robert Evans.bert evans thank you it looks like robert evans's house beautiful with the you know the the spanish tile all over the place and he becomes kind of like his de facto assistant aide-de-camp as he goes to the set the next day and so we see how both manny and nelly have been jet streamed right into the hollywood lifestyle right away nelly in particular has this kind of walk on part where she plays like a

floozy in a bar in a movie and you can see instantaneously that she just has it. And this to me is where the, where Chazelle is like come alive. The making of making of movie stuff that he does in this movie is amazing. That 45 minutes or 30 minutes or whatever is electric. It's so good. I was so happy.

It's invigorating. And it like it's, and it's ridiculous and it's over the top and it has that manic quality. And Manny is dispatched to like go back to LA proper to get a camera. And there was like negotiating with the sign up, you know, lots of, it's very funny,

a very vivid, there's a whole, there's like a strike or a threatened, like extra strike. And so then Manny's like a strike or a threatened like extra strike and so then Manny's like sent to stand down all of these extras

in the 1920s and it's really it's really good and also like the scale of it and everything is done like practically

I think yeah it's amazing it's great A plus old school movie making yeah so good I don't think you need to be obsessed with how movies are made to enjoy it either.

You know, it's kind of like an adventure sequence in the middle of the movie. And it works really well. And likewise, Nellie becoming a star, that whole sequence too is eye popping. But so what's so interesting about that sequence is like it is like very funny and self-referential and you know making fun of everything from like labor practices to to spike joe to directors to you know brad pitt's character winds up just like completely drunk and like vomiting while you know it's like it is cynical sort of and knowing and all over the place but also like controlled and like really funny but there is like an earnest love of what's happening that like connects and like pours through and i think you're right that

you don't have to be nerds like we are and like damon giselle is to like be invigorated by that movie but there's something where it's like the the way more cynical and really like embittered parts of the movie feel not false, but I mean, they're fascinating to me. But that scene like feels like the most honest or aligned or just kind of like this is this is like really you. This is coming from from from like your creative source and from his own personal experience too you know like the charge that he clearly gets from designing and executing on these big filmic ideas that he has as a director and like look at the films that he's made now he's made a space opera about like alienation he's made a grand scale hollywood musical like he is a person who also thinks in these kind of majestic images and so he's obviously switched on by that and then you know a little bit later in the film you know, a little bit later

in the film, you know, Nellie's career very quickly takes off. She becomes a star. It's a lot of fun. Manny begins to kind of work more regularly in the film business and then sound is introduced. Right. And that seems also so great. This is, I think the, just maybe my favorite scene in a movie this year. I had so much fun with this part of the movie. So, you know, it becomes clear that Nellie's going to have to work in sound and that Hollywood is going to have to work in sound. And so the studio that she's working for and the director who kind of discovers her is played by Olivia Hamilton, Damien Chazelle's wife. They have to all figure out how to make a sound picture together. And this was actually represented recently in the second Downton

Abbey movie. I don't know if you remember this. But the role that the sound engineer played in the making of early talkies was really outsized. Yes. And so there's almost this like, it's almost like a battle sequence watching them try to capture one scene with sound in which Nellie reads dialogue, enters, hits her mark and reads dialogue.

It's less than 30 seconds, but it is edited the way that like Raging Bull is edited it is like on a dime and it is so funny and PJ Byrne people may recognize

from The Wolf of Wall Street he's very funny in that movie very similar kind of character in this movie he plays the first assistant director and he is melting down

as this sequence in which they're trying to capture this very short scene needs to be retaken over and over and over again. Margot Robbie, unbelievable in this scene. I don't know who the fellow is who's playing the sound engineer,

but he's blowing his top nonstop. I fucking love this part. It was so good. But that also, like, even that scene that is, like, vicious and knowing and, you know, as you said, like, almost, like, going to battle and then ends in this moment of, like, absurd camaraderie, you know as you said like almost like going to battle and then ends in this moment of

like absurd camaraderie you know and exhilaration and then even like the reveal at the end of it is sort of just like deadpan humor and there is something there's still affection for like what's going on here and the movie turns and it, it like, but I, all I want to do is talk about how it turns and like what I think is going on and like Damien Giselle's head. But those are the moments when it is alive, which when he's still like connected to something about the process of

making movies and hasn't like given up on it. What's in this McDonald's bag? The McValue meal. For $5.79 plus tax, you can get your choice of junior chicken, McDouble, or chicken snack wrap,

plus small fries and a small fountain drink. So pick up a McValue meal today at participating McDonald's restaurants in Canada. Prices exclude delivery. So let's talk about the second and third acts.

If you don't want to learn anything more, we basically only talked about the first hour of the film at this point. If you don't want to learn anything more, we basically only talked about the first hour of the film at this point. If you don't want to hear anything more, haven't seen the movie yet, whatever, I would just skip ahead 15 minutes because we're just going to focus on the descent.

Yeah. And then the true descent. Yeah. The decline begins in the second hour. Now, Sidney Palmer, Giovanna Deppo's character, does actually essentially get handpicked by Manny to become a movie star. Manny is working in a kind of like elevated production role at one of the

studios. Uh, he asks Sydney, his opinion of, uh, one of the films that's being shot is sort of like, right. It's a musical review.

And the song that they're singing is singing in the rain, much like in gold diggers of 1933 or the footlight parade or all these movies that have these big, lavish, uh, musical numbers that feature all of the movie stars from the studio. Sidney observes

what they're doing and he makes a comment to Manny and Manny's brain gets moving and he realizes Sidney should be a star himself. And so, you know, he begins his ascent

out of for hire musical work into a new kind of, a new kind of experience in Hollywood. Manny starts to climb the ranks in the studio and gets bigger and bigger jobs um jack his career starts to decline he makes a couple of movies that very quickly becomes clear his star is not as strong as it once was he's struggling with the shift to sound a bit as well he's not as gifted an actor in that space. It starts to become clear that Singing in the Rain is just really a looming shadow over this entire film.

Yeah. And that the arc of the characters, the Lena Lamont character in Singing in the Rain is clearly very influential here. And Nellie is really getting out of control. She's abusing drugs and alcohol like crazy. She's gotten very famous. She somehow managed to maintain her star status

despite the shift from Silent to the Talkies. But we see two sequences in particular that are similarly bravura. There is literally a snake fight in the desert in which they're at a pool party, kind of all of the relevant characters in the film, which they're at a pool party, kind of all the relevant characters in the film, and Nellie hopped up on drugs

and also thrown into a sense of doubt because of a conversation she overhears while she's in the bathroom that sends her kind of spinning out. And she declares that her father is going to battle

a snake in the desert. Right. And of course her father does not do that. Her father played by Eric Roberts. Pretty funny performance by Eric Roberts. Yeah a snake in the desert. Right. And of course her father does not do that. Her father played by Eric Roberts. Pretty funny performance by Eric Roberts. Yeah, also very funny casting. Yes, exactly.

He can't fight the snake, and so she decides to fight the snake. Right. Things go badly. Things go crazy. Again, your mileage may vary on how much you like stuff like this. The image of Margot Robbie screaming,

like, I want to see someone fight a motherfucking snake you know like elite and i i really liked this part because i was like okay whatever you're doing here is matching the idea and the energy for once like this is actually some sort of nightmare hilarious dissociating sequence and it's really funny it felt like if adam and kate tried to make an ernst lubitsch movie yeah you know like it's really funny. It felt like if Adam McKay tried to make an Ernst Lubitsch movie. Yeah. You know, like it's not, I don't know if it like works, but I really appreciate that they're trying to, that he tried to do something like this. Yeah.

Similarly, there's a scene a little bit later where she attends in an attempt to rehab her image of Beverly Hills Society gathering. Yeah. This one worked less for me. Again, I appreciated the boldness. It is very disgusting. But at this party, she attempts to sort of shift her elocution to seem more reserved and more demure. And ultimately, she realizes that it's all for naught and that these people don't respect her.

And then she just, like, gets disgusting. Yeah, I just sort of don't think it transcends its references, which are at this point in the movie, like you really feel the singing in the rain influence. And also the Wolf of Wall Street. And there are just like very clear scenes that I was thinking about from both those movies as I was watching it. And I was like, okay, like I get it. To me, it started to get into, you know, at the risk of being a little highfalutin, like Bunuel and Fellini and the kind of like outsized, oversized, ridiculous, even like Monty Python, the kind of like vomitous, like ridiculously indulgent thing that they would do in those comedies. It's honestly not the vomiting as much as everything before it.

Like, how many, you know, Pygmalion-esque things have I watched? And how many, like, satirizations of that have I watched in my life? Like, a lot. It is archetypal in some ways. Her character and her character's kind of descent. And then in the third hour, like, the utter collapse is on. Nellie gets in some extraordinary gambling debts. That's another one of her vices.

And she becomes indebted to a gangster who we don't see until near to the end of the film. She goes to Manny to help her out because he's really the only person she has left to turn to. We'll get into what happens to them very shortly. Sidney, who hasn't had the shortest amount of time in the spotlight, essentially becomes completely disillusioned from Hollywood

when he's asked to wear blackface in a film. Actually, he's asked by Manny to wear blackface in a film in a heartbreaking sequence that made me feel like I wish this was its own movie. Yes. Because I want to know more about that character. And then he sort of retires out of the space and then returns to where he started,

which is playing music for black crowds in smaller audiences. And Jack's free fall is real. There's a sequence where he sits down and has a long conversation with Eleanor, the Jean Smart character, and she explains to him what's what and how stars don't last forever, you know, and what he's given us will last forever, but his life will not be the same as it was five years previous, 10 years previous. What'd you, what'd you think of that scene? It's a big emotional set piece in the movie.

Well, on the one hand, it stood out to me because nothing else in the movie is being this director, even this emotional. And so it kind of comes out of left field i can't remember is this before or after the scene where jack brad pitt gets the news that his his longtime partner has killed himself i believe it's immediate it's shortly after that right because he makes a film without his friend yeah and that film is a bomb right right right his, right. His friend is played by Lucas Haas. Right. And so Brad Pitt gets the news in the earlier scene and gives also, I think, an incredible performance, but he's suddenly asked on a dime to process this information. And the way that he does this, which I think is true to life,

is he just lashes out at his wife, who's played by Katherine Waterston. God bless her um thankless part and just yells like I just want you to know this really mattered like this what I do mattered and he's you know clearly dissociating and working through other things but he also like is giving the thesis statement you know he's like saying the title of the movie in the movie but really just like that so he's asked movies are important yeah he's asked to do this twice um and well in the second in the second conversation he's really being lectured too right but he's you know communicating like the only real depth of feeling in the movie and for me at least that was the only time that emotions were involved were in those two scenes

unless you're talking about the emotions Your mileage may vary on the finale then. Of the filmmaker, which is a different thing that we can talk about. Well, it's the only time when an emotion isn't extravagant. It's quieter. Yeah. And more considered. Right. Right.

So I was like, this isn't really what you're doing. Or if you were trying to do this, like you weren't landing the plane some other places. But as I said before, like I think Pitt does land the plane, both of those places. Yeah. I, I, yeah. I like the second half Pitt performance

and not the first half. That's, that's really, that's kind of my big note on the movie is I needed either more or less Sydney and I needed a slightly different tonality from Brad Pitt. And then of course there's the the Manny and Nellie culmination so Manny agrees to help Nellie out of her debt he concocts a plan with the Count played by the comedian Rory Scovell in a very very funny performance the Count is kind of a drug dealer kind of like a costumer set

dresser uh in the movies. Kind of a gadfly hangabout character. And he says that he can get the $80,000 that Nellie owes the gangster James McKay. So he gets the money. And they go to meet James McKay at his estate in Beverly Hills. And who do we find occupying this estate but

Tobey Maguire. And he looks dreadful. He's had all of the blood drain from his face. He's on quite a bit of is it laudanum

or morphine or I don't know what it is. Ether. Thank you. He's on ether and is indulging and he really wants to get in the movies

and so he's very pleased to be in the company of Diego Calva's character a movie producer. And they give him the money, and it turns out that the money is not real money. It's counterfeit money. But Tobey Maguire's character doesn't realize this at first,

and he wants to show his new friends, who have paid off their debt, a good time. And so they go to a cave outside of Beverly Hills, and they begin a literal descent into hell. And they go through the various rings, and on each level is a bigger and bigger freak show. There is burlesque dancing, sex acts, literal freak show figures out of the Todd Browning film. Violence, depravity.

And I thought it was just amazing. I thought it was just scary and weird and silly. And I could sense Chazelle having so much fun doing something like this. When we talked about it, you said you thought it paid off really well. What was the joke that you thought paid off really well? The Tobey Maguire of it all just keeps going and going and he commits to it. And it's really funny that it's Spider-Man just looking like he's dead like carrying you through the ranks of movie hell. And I

there is something so like palpably over the top about all of the you know the various layers and as you said you can tell that Chazelle's really into it. I didn't find it scary I found but there was something intentional about it that, that like worked for me, even though

historically I'm averse to carny themed, uh, entertainment. Uh, but you know, it had like, I got the point. I got the point. I was like, okay, I got it. It was almost like this town is powered by Satanism, you know like which is a long-held joke right yeah yeah like the real sectors of power are controlled by demons um i love that sequence uh it ends with manny narrowly escaping along with the count and eventually mckay's people do come for him um and he again manages to narrowly escape with nelly and it seems like they're going to be able to flee to mexico together and they're going to have this incredible you know hollywood ending in some ways where they get to focus on their life and get married um and then she vanishes on him

she bails on him and then she it's like she was a dream the whole time it's like she was never there and she vanishes from the scene. She vanishes from Hollywood. And we find out that she's died shortly thereafter, after living this wild child lifestyle. And then the film pretty, you know, cuts pretty hard. Mm-hmm. To 10 years later.

Mm-hmm. And Manny's back in LA and he's visiting. And he's there with his wife and his son. And they're visiting the Paramount lot, which has been done up to be the name of the studio. I can't recall the name of the studio they use in the movie. And he's just observing as a citizen, as somebody who doesn't work there anymore.

And it turns out he's got a camera shop in New York City. And he's thinking back on his experience and makes conversation with a guard outside of the studio and then his wife and son decide they're going to go back to the hotel and Manny starts

sauntering around Los Angeles and he stumbles upon a movie theater. They're playing Singing in the Rain. Yeah. He buys a ticket,

sits down, starts watching Singing in the Rain. And the camera starts moving off of Manny's face and it starts moving all around the movie theater. And it shows everybody watching Singing in the Rain, all their reactions to it. Probably not unlike the reactions you and I had when we first saw it.

One of the signature movies on this podcast. One of the greatest movies ever made. And Manny is enthralled. And then we get this kind of cathartic explosion of images. We start seeing... Well, first we see the plot of Singing in the Rain and we see a lot of scenes from Singing in the Rain intercut with the scenes from Babylon

that are very clearly and directly alluding to Singing in the Rain. So you see Jack's first talkie which he's like doing i love you i love you i love you almost like the gene kelly characters um and the lena lamont character or lena lamont in their first talkie when they like can't get it done you know and there's what else is there i mean there are so many direct recreations. Oh, the party scene and the all I do think of you. And then cut interspersed with Margot Robbie on the bar, having rain stuff even because that is the transition from silent film to talkies and then also aware of chazelle's affection for singing in the rain and um kind of the tribute he tried to make to singing in the rain two movies ago with la la land

and so you're like okay okay, like I got it, but maybe other people didn't and we're making this explicit and it's like going on for a while. And then instead of playing you singing in the rain clips, they just start playing you other movie clips? Well, okay.

So the film is acknowledging its massive influence and the debt that Chazelle owes to that film. It's also literally an image of Manny watching his life flash before his eyes. So when he watches the movie, he feels this profound nostalgia and melancholy about who he was and what he experienced firsthand. And then you get this kind of psychotronic experience where you're like, I don't know if it's in Manny's head or if it is an externalization

of Damien Chazelle's feelings about what cinema has meant to him or a kind of acknowledgement of a closing of a loop or like a don't let this, don't lose this because it matters so much to us. But like you said,

now like dozens of films start flashing before our eyes. And we see like 50s American cinema. We see the French New Wave. We see the new Hollywood films. We see, you know, Spielberg in the 80s. We see The Matrix. We see quite humorously Avatar.

Avatar, which is when I started screaming. Yeah. We see Jake Sully's character flying on the pterodactyl and avatar and then we are seeing blended into that this these sequences of the colors of and of in the film stock and the emulsification process and it's like this visualization of both the technology and the human feeling and the literal visual and oral necessity of filmmaking, like how it's this just big scientific

and emotional collision that leads to, and also like these humans that we've been following, like these are the people who make the movies and they're the people who are responsible for these feelings that the Matrix or Close Encounters can generate in our hearts and our minds. It's like a very big, bold,

semi-abstract, intellectual, slash, big, hard-on-its-sleeve ending moment that's meant to, I think the point is just like,

movies! They are so good! Is it? Well, or, and I think it's both, but or, is it, movies were so good

and we fucked it, and, I regret all of this. Why can't we have it back? Yeah. Or, how did it get to this place? and we fucked it. And. I regret all of this. Why can't we have it back? Yeah. Or why did it, how did it get to this place? Or, you know, it's like, he has described it as a poison pen letter to Hollywood. Now, I don't think it's a poison pen letter to movies.

I think the, I think the reflection on movies is utterly sincere. Well, I want to talk about the La La Land stuff. Okay. Because there is palpable to me, at least, and I'm a person who about the La La Land stuff. Okay. Because there is palpable to me, at least, and I'm a person who really enjoyed La La Land. And I just did. I liked it a lot. I thought Moonlight was better. I'm glad Moonlight won the Oscar. I really like singing in the rain. I like old Hollywood movies. It came out the year that I moved to Los Angeles. And so I saw it in the Cinerama Joan, and I was just kind of like looking up, you know, like a Spielberg kid being like, yeah, movies. And so I've seen it a few times, like if it's

on an airplane, like I'll, you know, click it or whatever it's on HBO. Um, so it was like very palpable to me how conscious the conscious the movie was of not just singing in the rain, but La La Land. And even like the score itself is like a direct like musical callback to the la la land score and and you know and it was done with justin hurwitz who is his frequent collaborator and also did a lot land score so sometimes the score of abalone is amazing yeah amazing um but it i was just like am i watching a movie about like how much he now hates la la land the movie I think I said that on the pod. You did.

But it's really true. But there is something so kind of regretful and even spiteful about... I wonder. I want to ask him about that. I mean, I do as well. And maybe I'm reading in a lot of my own feelings or,, you know, God forbid, the discourse's feelings about it. of golden age Hollywood that tempered or flavored how I responded to the last third

of the movie, which was just kind of like a big, like, well, all this, you know, is gone

and screw all of it. Well, I think he is, I was not a big fan of La La Land. I've talked about it a few times. I thought it was like

very blandly iterative, even though the filmmaking is expert of just a lot of things I had seen was like very blandly iterative even though the filmmaking is expert of just a lot of things I had seen before. You know, he has talked about right,

the MGM musicals and then more specifically the 50s Technicolor musicals, the Stanley Donnan movies, stuff like that plus the Jacques Demy 60s French musicals like the Umbrellas of Cherbourg

where like those are the primary influences, right? Right. And to me, the best of those movies are the films that either have the best song and dance sequences orbourg, where like those are the primary influences, right? Right. And to me, the best of those movies are the films that either have the best song and dance sequences or the best scripts.

Singing in the Rain is one that has both. I just didn't think that that story really resonated with me very deeply, even though I admired what he made. The movies of his that resonated with me are all the other movies now, the other three movies, which are slightly embittered

and alienated stories. Right. You know, obviously whiplash is deeply alienated and first man is yeah it's really about like a loss of connection and no matter how far no matter how close it's hard to relate to the world and this movie too is another movie where it's like try as you might we're all kind of doomed you know like it has that feeling of of inescapable destruction and and travesty and i think that's what he is and i always feel like lala land it was like he put on a jacket that didn't totally fit well but the ending of all in the coda which is i think

kind of what makes the movie for me both sort of like virtuosic filmmaking and references to all of the movies of yore but is also about loss and not quite getting you know or getting what you wanted but it not being what you thought it would be and it's like and it's like sort of heartbreaking and it's also like quite specifically a coda that ties up the movie much like this is sort of like attacked on coda that ties up the movie so even again i was like oh this is such an interesting first man is the same thing yeah that is true

the moment between Claire Foy and Ryan Gosling at the end of the movie that movie is so good all three of those movies could have ended with big noisy spectacle moments and they didn't

yeah even though La La Land is also like it's a big noisy spectacle that is also sort of like a rejection of

the dream it's a quieting of the outsized experience of a lot of the film. I just don't know what to, I hope you asked Damien Chazelle. I'm just like, how you doing, buddy? Like what's going on? I love it.

I like that he puts it all out there. I mean, you know, I think there's been a lot of talk about how this film might struggle to do well at the box office and how, you know it's this is somebody writing the what he believes to be the last movie or you know i i don't think he actually intends any of those things i think he would love for this movie to be hugely successful

it is three hours and 10 minutes so that's a challenge yeah um i hope it can be successful but if it isn't i think it's fine it's like it's so ripe i'm trying to i almost feel like i'm ahead of the curve where it's just like this will be reclaimed in 10 years, no question. Movies that are divisive like this are always reclaimed as great strokes of daring

at a minimum. And the filmmaking is so bravura at times that it's hard to deny. You actually used the word undeniable with James Cameron. There's an aspect

of this movie too where it's just like he's just got, he's just got a gear that most filmmakers just don't have. That's true. And so just got a gear that most filmmakers just don't have and so it's it's really exciting that he made it i don't really care if it doesn't perform at the box office to me this is different than some of the other stuff because this is a guy who is like i earned

my blank check you know like i i deserve a chance to make this movie i really loved it i've only seen it once i can't wait to see it again i got a seat in the again. I don't know when I'm going to do that, but I will. I don't know. What else? What else should we say about this film? It is the film where I needed the ending to actually end so I could text you and also Bobby, who had seen it before me, and just be like, oh my God, I can't believe that was the ending. I can't believe you didn't spoil it for me, which I'm really glad that you didn't, but also, like, it was hilarious. It's hilarious. I can't believe that that is how it happened. I was applauding to myself. Do you think he means it to be funny? I think he knows that, like, I think he's a sincere guy. I don't know him at

all. But I think he gets that there's humor in this kind of absurdity. Because, I mean, the movie more or less opens with an elephant shitting on someone's head. I mean, it's that kind of movie. He gets the joke. And that, of course, is the opening metaphor of the film. It's like, this is what it's like to work in Hollywood. It feels like an elephant is shitting on your head 24-7. Right.

And now here's a clip from Avatar. Like, I don't even know what to say. Wags, what did you think of Babylon? I loved it. Frankly, you said to me, you like when someone goes for it, so you're going to love this movie. like I don't even know what to say Wags what did you think of Babylon? I loved it I frankly you said to me you like when someone goes for it so you're gonna love this movie

and that was the only thing that you told me before I went and saw this and I just thought I mean first things first like it is increasingly rare

to have so much going on on screen that is still so coherent like even if it is exhaustive to your eyes and your senses it's not like you're lost like it's not garbage it's not visual garbage you're visual garbage it's not so much happening that you can't tell

what's what's going on and so and i never felt like i was bored either three hours and eight minutes right but it didn't really feel like three hours and eight minutes to me by the end of it not take a catnap during this one the second thing is that what i want in a movie is like you know like in late 90s and early 2000s movies where they were just starting to put like computers into movies and they were always like the motherboard is blown out you know like there's always some guy with glasses being like and the motherboard is fried like that's what I want to feel like when I come out of a movie and whether that's with sad emotions or you know spectacular emotions or anything like that like i just want to feel like

my emotions were tested and blown out and then i sort of like build my opinion on the movie when i put them back together and i found myself doing that after this movie a lot and then i think the third thing is that the final scene to me like the montage of all of the different movies coming together like i felt like that was chazelle saying no matter all of this shit that you just watched for the last three hours and six minutes like the movies that came out of it to me were worth it and no matter what you went through to get that i still believe that the movies were worth it even if hollywood is a totally fucked up place and that's a thing that i can relate to like in the rest of my life you both think it's a sincere ending. Yeah. Yeah, I think it is. Do you guys also think

the end of Mad Men was sincere? Remind me on the end of Mad Men. Remember when it's like he's at Esalen and he's like meditating and then they cut to... Well, I did think

it was sincere, but I thought it was like a perfect evocation of Draper, which is that like Draper uses sincerity and art to transmogrify

it into commercialism. Right. He used a spiritual moment. Right. But are you supposed to find that hopeful or like incredibly cynical? Bit of both. Okay. Which is part of the same way that I love Chazelle's movies.

I loved Mad Men because it was a deeply embittered person making what he felt like was, was emotionally true. And I feel, I'm like, I feel that way. I feel very, very very very cynical about all experiences in life but i also am like kind of a softy and yeah there's like that's hard to pull off i am too but i if this isn't if the ending of it isn't like any way a sincere like opening of the heart like i i don't want to be rude but like lol i don't know opening of the heart. Like, I don't want to be rude, but like, lol. I don't think it was a sincere opening of the heart.

I think it was like that. I think it was. Oh my God. Like, sure, but it's just like a man just being like, I opened my heart to you

and it's like the pterodactyl from Avatar. But it's not just that though. I know. I think it's going to get slammed because he lingers on Avatar longer than anything else. But it's everything.

Like, I think Bobby put it perfectly. Like, I think it's everything. It's like you got all of this because of what these people did. I don't think it was a sincere opening of the heart. I think it was like a cynical opening of the heart. Okay.

If we have no conscious consumption, we might as well consume things that are good. And I think that that's what he's saying about movies. I feel comfortable with that, Bobby. I'm with you. That's a good interpretation. And here's how you know a movie is good. It inspires a conversation like this.

That's how you know that. Is it flawed? Of course it's flawed. It's a three hour and 10 minute extravaganza. I love flawed things though. Things should be flawed. I know, there's so much better. I agree.

I agree. Babylon is fantastic. I hope people go and check it out. I hope they listen to this conversation. Let's take a quick break. Then we're going to talk a bit about white noise. From the death of cinema to the death of the American dream. Let's talk about white noise.

I forgot that I'm supposed to throw you off your segues on this podcast because I was just so invigorated by Babylon. Cinema. Yeah. Total cinema, baby. Okay. White Noise.

Is that movie total cinema? I'm not sure. So written and directed by Noel Baumbach, an adaptation of DeLillo's 1985 masterpiece. I've said before, at certain times,

my favorite novel of all time what else is in the running you don't really read novels this shouldn't be this hard I haven't well that's the thing is I read them a lot in my teens and 20s okay um well I love love love Bram Stoker's Dracula okay one of my favorite books all right um well I loved the corrections more than life itself when it came out sure yeah um which is maybe now kind of a lame thing to feel. I think Franzen's coming back around again. Release the bomb back pilot of The Corrections. I love Revolutionary Road.

Okay, wow. The Richard Yates novel. I'm sure there's some Hemingway sprinkled in there that I really appreciated. The Sun Also Rises, I think, was probably my favorite of his novels. Is it? Yeah, I think so. Oh, great. I'm not an old man in the sea person. I'm not sure. There's a lot of books. I just, I haven't read a work of fiction in probably five years. That's really sad. Isn't that crazy? Really? Not at all? I don't think so. Wow. I love fiction. I do skim things if they're going to be adapted and I'll start to look at what the tone of the narrative is. What do you mean gross?

Read a book. I do read a lot of nonfiction. I know. Okay, whatever. You like Don DeLillo's White Noise? Yeah, because I read it at the perfect time. Yeah, as did every man of your generation and demographic. Between the ages of 18 and 25.

Sure. I too believe the world is a lie and commercialism is destroying us. Sure, yeah. And the family unit is complicated and flawed and Reagan killed everything. And it's all a surreal nightmare. We've all been chemically poisoned, right?

I was as susceptible to that as anybody, not just men. Women, all races, ages, genders. And so, you know, I bring a lot to this story as do many people who are going to watch it I think it's been interesting how the take has been

I've seen it go in two directions for people who've seen the movie, when you and I saw it together I think we were like, I'm glad he tried it was pretty cool to see him evoke some of the images and ideas in that book and I did like it. And then there have been other people who I think have a big relationship to the book are like, how dare he bungle this?

Because it's risky. It's bold. You know, it's a book that exists in the mind in a lot of ways. The airborne toxic event, especially this kind of critical event that happens, you know, in the first hundred pages of the book is something that is best imagined instead of seen. But I would say that particularly the first two thirds of the book, I thought he nailed. Like I thought he got really close. Yeah, I was going to say the airborne toxic event and seeing that literalized is not what holds this movie back.

And in fact, it's pretty exhilarating. And it's cool to see that Bombeck can do this. And he's doing, as many have observed, like a very cool thing of like an homage, like a very literal homage to 80s Spielberg action movies that itself are of a piece with the themes of the book and also the time, the setting of the book. And also just like a cool thing to watch no bomb back do and makes the movie come alive in a way and it's like another thing that i you know we haven't really seen him try that before no it's a very big step for him um a little bit of context so the film stars adam driver as professor jack gladney who is the world's leading expert in Hitler studies, uh, which is sort of a deep joke. If you know anything about academia and Greta Gerwig, uh, bomb X partner plays the bet, uh, Gladney, who is his partner. Um, and then his kids are

essentially the other stars of the film. Rafi Cassidy is Denise, um, in particular, and then Don Cheadle appears in the film, Jodi Smith Turner, or excuse me, Jodi Turner Smith. Lars Edinger appears in the film. It's a story about the Gladney family living their blended family existence until this extraordinary accident happens

in which a tractor trailer collides with a train and sets off a kind of biochemical nightmare in a small town in Ohio and how the family unit is tested how society is tested in the face of that and how these people come together and what it the experience reveals about everyone's personal psyche and personal space. So the first phase of the film is very much about just setting up who this family is and who Gladney is in particular as an educator, as an academic, and what place he holds and how it's kind of a campus satire. The second hour is a kind of desperate portrayal of society coming apart at the seams that does feature, as you said, a lot of those Spielbergian aspects.

And then the third hour, I think, is where the flaws click in. Or I should say the third act, not the third hour. This movie is gracefully only two hours and ten minutes. The third, the final third of the book is the most surreal and the most intimate. Yeah. third of the book is the most surreal and the most intimate yeah and very i remember hearing that he was going to do this i was like i don't know how you're going to pull that off it's very the the whole film itself is very ripped from the pages there are huge swaths of dialogue that are directly from the text which they honestly do like a pretty credible job of recreating not just the text but like the comedic timing within what is like

a very literary on-the-page form of dialogue. It's not how people speak in real life. It's a very halting, over-enunciated, intellectualized manner of speaking,

particularly between Babette and Jack. But they're both very smart people and so you sort of believe, especially someone like Jack who's so self-regarding and constantly speechifying to people, that he would talk smart people. And so you sort of believe, especially someone like Jack was so self-regarding and constantly speechifying people that he would talk this way. And so you just have to accept. And I think Driver is pretty good at representing that,

that kind of a person in the world. We've all, we, we know professors like that's my father-in-law is a professor. He has a very particular way of speaking and he's a great communicator in part because all the time he communicates. The third act to me ultimately does not work and holds me back from being like, this is a great achievement. It's not really his fault because he's sticking really close to the text. I just don't know if the text should be a movie. I feel this way about a lot of DeLillo's work. Yeah. I mean, it was just so funny to listen to you explain what White Noise is about and set up the plot and the textual references. And it's like, that is all true. And that's what happens.

But to just take out the plot of a movie, which is so funny in the context of this, whatever, great wordplay or something, but it just doesn't, it just strips away all of what the book is actually about, which is the atmosphere and the writing and the way that these small, recognizable pieces of plot or character or proper nouns that you can put your arm around, whether it's the campus or the professor or the mom or the dad or the family or the commercial or the supermarket. as symbols and vessels for, and really how in our everyday lives they, like, come to fill or, like, bear the weight of, like, all our existential fears and issues. Yeah. But that's just, like, all wrapped up

in, like, a little mule foy of writing. And to just be like, well, so they are all talking to each other in the kitchen and then like a train runs into a something. And, you know, it just like doesn't, it's like, yeah, that all happens, but like no one cares. It's not the essence of the book.

Yeah. The essence of the book is more like, by the 1980s, our lives are so packaged. You know, there's a sequence where Bebet, I think, is holding a frozen vegetable, bird's eye frozen vegetables, package of peas or corn nibblets. And like that little package is like a metaphor for everything, right? It's like here is ostensibly nutrition, something that will, you know, make you, you know, that like the family gathers around, we buy collectively that is like the you know the harvest of our labor but it's like full of chemicals and been frozen and preserved right and it's toxic kind of everything in our life is the supermarket is full of toxic materials even though it makes us feel better and the book

is a massive satire of the kind of packaging of the American experience and also the kind of paranoia that exists underneath it. This sort of like the fear of death, the fear of dishonor, the fear of like, are those who say they love me actually loyal to me and do they care for me? You know, these are big, weighty,

as you say, literary concepts that it's hard to convey on screen without seeming like you're being pretentious. And for the most part, i thought he got it i just that third act is just so hyper surreal it's like a literalization of some of the themes there's an intense conversation between jack and babette that i thought was very affecting but then everything that happens after that i kind of didn't need to see yeah uh you know and to actually see it literalizes it in a way that undercuts it's like what it's doing in the book even though like you know as like a spoiler alert i guess at the end of the book it is just like a nun talking to someone and you know so on the one hand that's not at all hard to

dramatize but the like you know the ineffable emotional weight of it is somehow like it is a nun straight talking you know but like you are waiting for that to cut through and all of like the haze and the symbolism of the book and a film you're just like it's another person talking and I love the message in that speech which is like

the spiritual world is dead right like that's like that's such a profound way for that book to sort of wrap up but to the point

that you're making the first two like sessions of the movie are very cinematic he finds a way to turn the campus comedy into this, particularly this sort of dueling debate.

About Hitler and Elvis. About Hitler and Elvis that is like amazing filming. And Driver and Cheadle are out of this world. That's the moment in the movie where I'm like, oh, is Adam Driver finally going to win an Oscar? It's so funny. Eileen said the same thing. Literally the scene ended and we watched it together this weekend.

She was like, so best actor? Yeah, but that scene is really so invigorating. And you're like, the scene ended and we watched it together this weekend. She was like, so best actor? Yeah, but that scene is really so invigorating and you're like, oh my God, you did it. Like you figured out how to do this

and it does manage to capture some of the energy and it is like using literally the camera and movement and all of that stuff

to communicate what DeLillo's doing in writing but it just can't do it all the way through. Yeah, when we get to the kind of, you know,

the Spielbergian second sequence of the film, like, again, that's very cinematic. It's very, he really is, he's in his bag. You know, like he's really doing some things that you've never seen. Like certainly Marriage Story. I actually went back and for the first time I watched his disowned second film, which is called Highball, which somehow MVD released on Blu-ray. And so I just snapped it up.

I was like, I've never seen this. Great. I'm a bomb at completist. I know he hates this movie and is not proud of it and tried to have it destroyed. But clearly somebody held the rights to it and was able to release it. And it's, I mean, it's mumblecore before mumblecore. It all takes place basically in one apartment. It's a series of three different parties. And it has all these odd parts like Justine Bateman and Ray Dawn Chung and Ally Sheedy are in it.

And a lot of actors you've never seen before are in it. It's a very small independent production. And I was looking at this movie and then re-watching the Airborne Toxic Event sequence. And I was like, I just can't believe this is the same filmmaker. Like, is this the widest chasm someone has gone in terms of like the scope of their filmmaking for something that actually was commercially released? It's remarkable. Um,

it doesn't change the fact though, that I think he's at his absolute best when he's the author of his own material, when he's putting his particular worldview into it, when it's the squid and the whale, when it's marriage story, when it's Meyer with stories, you know, when it's the squid and the whale, when it's marriage story, when it's Meyerowitz stories, you know, when it's Mistress America

or Margot at the wedding. Like, he is similarly embittered as the Lilo is, but his caustic sense of humor is not surreal. It's very practical. Yeah. And I think he struggled a little bit with the surreality of the text. I said this

to you as we were walking out and it's such an obvious comparison that i feel a little stupid but like this is to bomb back what inherent vice is to pta which is again adapting someone else's material instead of writing it yourself and it's like a very specific like totemic novel idiosyncratic semi-reclusive author exactly allows them to do a lot of new things and it's sort of like a like an i see you you know type thing to the audience of like we you know we both connect to this thing and like what can we explore with it i think it's cool that he did it i think it's really cool that netflix paid for it i will they pay for these sorts of things going forward? Who knows?

That was going to be my kind of concluding comment was we talked about this with Bardo last week with Adam Neiman and I feel similarly like these two movies are linked

because they are massive, expensive swings from widely celebrated filmmakers making passion projects in different directions. Bardo is this kind of autobiographical story.

White Noise, in a way, is a kind of like adaptation as autobiography. In some ways, you can tell that a lot of the ideas are really meaningful. The other thing, too, is that, of course, seen in 2022, White Noise is an amazing COVID allegory. You don't need that for it to work, but it does feel that way, especially when things go haywire in Ohio. I don't think we'll ever see a movie like this from Netflix again.

And in fact, I don't know what the audience is for this movie beyond folks like us. Yeah. Even though it stars Adam Driver and Greta Gerwig, who are pretty well-known quantities at this point. Such an odd artifact of our times. What do you think if you were... How would you respond

or how would a person respond if they were just served this on Netflix and were like oh Adam Driver at Greg you know

or Greta Gerwig in a movie I don't know anything about White Noise or Don DeLillo I think I would get so I watched it

with Eileen like I said and I think that they probably would have a pretty similar reaction if they were interested in bomb back stuff. Right. Which is that the first two thirds of the movie, you're like, oh, interesting.

This is like an elevated execution of his thing. And then I think they would end the movie and they would just feel like it ran out of gas and it was kind of confusing. Right. And what did it really resolve? Right. You know. This is weird. Why are they being weird like this in a motel?

Except. Except the closing sequence which is kicks ass which is a kind of a musical number set inside of a supermarket where a lot of the film kind of is sort of located around. Right. Set to an truly excellent LCD sound system song. Yeah just like a really vintage

you know. Take me back to 06. Yeah. Like this is these are what jams are made of. But that was sort of really vintage, you know. Take me back to 06. Yeah. Like, this is, these are what jams are made of. But that was sort of damning in a way. It was just like, oh, like, great, here we go.

You know, you're playing the hits from my 20s and you're playing, like, the hits of a novel that I responded to in my 20s. Like, sure.

Cross my mind. Yeah. Andre 3000 is, like, dancing. Like, he's really great in that sequence, i i will say i was seated next to a gentleman who had like i don't think knew who andre 3000 was but was like very enamored with that part of the musical sequence so maybe it does play even if you

don't know yeah uh it goes out on a high note after kind of confusing yeah it's last 35 40 minutes um it's like a soft recommend for me i think it is a little hard it is a little hard to like if you've listened this far in this podcast like yeah watch it in the 93rd minute um yeah no i think this podcast in general i've been i've been exclaiming about how excited i was about this for years now um i don't know what else any any other thoughts on White Noise? I'm glad they did it. I agree that it doesn't seem like at all

we won't get movies like this in the same way. And, you know, I would like Bombak's next movie to be like pure Bombak again, uncut Bombak, you know? Yeah, good thing you've got Barbie coming up because that's his next screenplay credit. Oh, I forgot about that. Well, but that's also, that's uncut credit. Like, and just sign

me the fuck up uh that's gonna do it for us total cinema for 2022 from white noise to barbie the total cinema baby of yeah the movie experience um how'd you feel about 2022 uh as a movies or life life a plus a plus yeah great yeah but i've it was extremely rewarding and i feel very grateful okay movies mixed bag gonna be real honest okay what about for the big picture um i had a great time i loved listening to you guys let me just say kudos to you and bobby on the first half of from, you know, one fan to my favorite podcast. Spotify wrapped did teach me that Big Picture was my favorite podcast. I was really confused. Truly amazing.

I don't listen to this. And then I remember it all those months just pushing a stroller. You guys did great work. Loved it. I loved being back, being a part of it. You know. Thank God you're back is all I can say. This year, I got a baby and I got Top Gun Maverick.

So I can't complain. A mom twice. Yeah. It's amazing. Beautiful stuff. I had a great time as well. Like I said, I'm really glad you're back. Thank you.

Thanks to Bobby for his work on this episode and all of our episodes. Bobby! Wow, did you have a good year? I had a great year. Although I'm looking forward to 2023. Seeing Oppenheimer and and barbie on the same day yeah do not call do not text yeah on that day okay unfortunately you're gonna be working a lot so we might have to text you um just like with us but you know i tweeted this but i'm gonna go in

full costume three-piece suit i'm gonna carry around the nuclear football yeah yeah yeah it's really good you know a little top. That's what I want you guys to get me for Christmas. The Oppenheimer outfit. I don't know. No. Our man is wearing a top hat in the movie.

Yeah. No top hats for me in 2023. I will be seeing Oppenheimer and Barbie. I'll be seeing all of the movies. In fact, when we come back, we're going to talk about

our most anticipated movies of 2023. There's a lot of really good stuff coming. I want to thank the listeners of this podcast. Yes. Big year for them. Tom Cruise saw them see me.

Mm-hmm. And then they responded in kind when they saw Tom Cruise say, see you at the movies. And they said, he stole this from you. And so to them, I want to say thank you. And I love you. And I see you. They're beautiful and incredibly weird.

And it takes one to know one. So we love you all. It's been an amazing year. Thanks, everyone. See you in 2023. Thank you.