The Big Picture - Best Picture Power Rankings and a ‘Poor Things’ Deep Dive. Plus: Julianne Moore and Todd Haynes!

Episode Date: January 11, 2024

Sean and Amanda react to a mixed bag of movie and awards nominations news (1:00), before digging into one of the year’s biggest movies not yet discussed on the show: Yorgos Lanthimos’s Emma Stone vehicle ‘Poor Things’ (15:00). They close by refreshing their Best Picture power rankings (:00). Finally, Sean is joined by Julianne Moore and Todd Haynes to discuss ‘May December’—the performances at the movie’s heart, the reception of its satire, rendering the recent past, and more (1:50:00). Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Guests: Julianne Moore and Todd Haynes Senior Producer: Bobby Wagner Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Did Don Draper really buy the world a Coke? Did Tony Soprano really die? Or just order more onion rings? Were those guys really in hell the whole time, or was that just the audience? The finales of our favorite shows can make us argue, make us cry, and make us crazy. From Spotify and The Ringer, I'm Andy Greenwald,

and this is Stick the Landing, a new podcast where we'll be telling the story of modern TV backwards, one fade out at a time. Each episode, a guest and I will choose a celebrated series from history, from the 70s to the streaming era and beyond, and do a deep dive on its very last episode. Was it all a dream? Did it turn into a nightmare? And most importantly, what can we learn about tomorrow's new shows from the way yesterday's ended? TV is a journey. I hope you'll enjoy this podcast about the destination. Starting January 17th, find Stick the Landing on Wednesdays on the Prestige TV feed, on Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Sean Fennessy. I'm Amanda Dobbins. And this is The Big Picture,

a conversation show about poor things. Later in this episode, I'll be joined by Julianne Moore and Todd Haynes, the star and director of one of my favorite films of 2023, May, December. Absolute pleasure to talk to them. I'm jealous of this one. Todd is a four-time guest on this show.

This is Julianne Moore's first appearance. They both, they brought it. They were really fun and smart, as you expect them to be. Has Julianne Moore been on a lot of podcasts? I honestly don't know, but she was freaking good, man. I mean, she should be on more, I feel like.

She's Julianne Moore. Yeah, very charming, very smart. I thought she had good answers for an actor. You know what I mean when I say that? This was another thing. I didn't want to ask Julia Roberts this directly, but has Julia Roberts been on a lot of podcasts? I do feel like we are breaking the space

with legendary actresses over 50. Well, I agree with you. Thank you. I've been making an effort, honestly. We've had Julia Louis-Dreyfus this year or in the last year, I should say. Well, she has her own really good podcast. Yes, and you could tell when we spoke because she was ready to take over.

It's not really their traditional media space. You know, like Julia Roberts is now on the cover of British Vogue, but also she did The Big Picture. Yes. And I don't see them on other podcasts. I would say we are as important as British Vogue in the world of fashion. As we're sitting here dressed exactly the same. Yeah. Two bros wearing. Just dressed the same. What are we wearing? Shackets, you know, some shackets on a chilly January, February. There's nothing sweater-like about your lovely

lightweight jackets. Okay. And I like both of them. Sean, I believe you bought this one with me in Sweden. That's right. Bobby, do you want to share the um oh is that is that a dickies it is dickies i like it okay i'm i'm wearing new car heart pants today that um i learned about from sofia coppola if you guys want to believe yeah well sofia coppola and then my friend lauren sherman a puck and then and then me um should we start every episode describing what we're wearing i am going to share some people are saying more video please actually we're just going to're wearing? I am going to share some behind-the-scenes footage. People are saying more video, please. Actually, we're just going to do an audio for them. I'm going to share a clip because Sean and

Bobby are sitting across from me, both in studio today. What a delight. Bob, it's great to have you here on the West Coast. Nice to see you, Bob. Thank you for being here. And you guys look really cute. Thank you. Thank you so much. I don't have a good transition on that one. We planned it this morning. This was what we spent the entire morning doing. Every morning I wake up and I send a photo of my outfit to Bobby,

even though he's in New York, and I say, what do you think about this one? And he says, that's exactly what I would wear. Let's do it. Okay. That's cute. I like that. All right.

Now that we know what we're wearing, let's talk about movies. There's a film we need to discuss today. We're going to have a long conversation about Yorgos Lanthimos' Poor Things. Finally. So all of you can stop tweeting. Please stop tweeting at us about that. It's probably the biggest movie of 2023 that we have not yet dedicated an episode to.

Because most people still can't see it. It's still only in 800 theaters. I do think it is expanding more over the next couple of weeks. More people should check it out. We obviously both really like the movie. We'll get into it shortly. A lot has happened, though, in the world of movies

since we recorded on Sunday after the Golden Globe. So a few things to sort through. One of the first things that happened was we got word roughly four days after our most anticipated movies episode that my number one most anticipated movie of 2024 has been undated. It's Mickey 17, Bong Joon-ho's film, which was supposed to come out at the end of March. now is going to come out. When do you think? When do you think it will come out? Closer to an awards season and or a festival. So do you think that's what's going on? So here's the thing.

So Mickey 17 is being released by Warner Brothers. Obviously, as soon as we got this news, everyone was just like, David Zaslav, fuck off. And let me, you know, from the bottom of my heart, join that chorus generally. A couple things here. Like, March also always seemed like a slightly weird time for a Bong Joon-ho, Robert Pattinson, like, mega movie. I agree. And Warner Brothers also delayed Dune 2 until march 2024 so i honestly think like

just the moment that they pushed dune 2 to march 2024 we probably should have put on our thinking caps and been like okay they're probably not going to do dune 2 and mickey 17 yes in the same month just from like marketing resources what have you now there's still the possibility of a ton of corporate fuckery and that would really suck and once again just like release mickey 17 but if they're delaying it to debut it it can say which we know david zazlov loves yep he uh and or if they're doing it for the fall push, there obviously was a strike also production, you know, who knows? I think it's like we want to be careful here. Like everybody's on watch, you know?

Yes, yes. But we don't need to have like a, it doesn't have to be full crisis yet. Everyone can make the right decisions still. I'm trying to keep the lid on this one in that way for all of the reasons that you just cited. There are a variety of reasonable explanations for why this has happened, but there's suspicion because there have been a few movies that have been completely mothballed by Warner Brothers in the Bong Joon-ho case, you know, let's be honest, Parasite introduced him to a huge new audience, but he makes really unusual genre movies. His movies are quite strange. So because of that,

I think there's a little bit of concern that there's a feeling that this movie might be too weird. I don't really know. I don't know very much about the movie itself. I just really would like to see it as soon as possible. If it's going to Cannes, great. If it's going to October so it can compete at the Academy Awards, that's great. I'd just like to see it. Also, I was just going to say, this delay does also allow Robert Pattinson to take some parental leave, which is very exciting for him. I did not even know. Did you know that he

and Sugi Wilderhouse are having a baby? Oh, I think I did know that, yeah. Yeah, which is great. That's nice. Yeah, sure. That's very exciting. I'm happy for that. And it seems like soonish, so maybe he'll get a little time. That's great. Are you working. That's very exciting. I'm happy for that. And it seems like soon-ish. So maybe he'll get a little time. That's great. Are you working as the doula for their family? Or what are you going to do? I think I would be great at that, honestly. Do you?

Yeah. Okay. I have experience. I welcome it. Yeah. Even though we won't be seeing Mickey 17 anytime soon, hopefully we will be seeing a new movie from Paul Thomas Anderson. Look at you.

I'm just trying to stay on the train tracks. And I am trying to derail you at all times. It is the ethic of this show. And I'm trying to derail you at all times. It is the ethic of this show. And I'm trying to take care of everyone when we crash. Thank you. Thank you. That's what I'm here for. You have the medical kit and you're going to build us back up.

So Bobby could be the doula. Well, I think we've always known that. Do you know what a doula does, Bobby? Not really. Okay. In the equation of Bob as the doula, he is taking care of two babies or mom and dad um well the parents and the doula really is supposed to be there for the the mom yes um so mom and dad i was making a joke about oh about the environment of this yeah yeah who's are we mom and dad or are we babies um well that's really

tbd you know which of the three stars cast in paul th Paul Thomas Anderson's next movie would be most likely to be the doula? Bringing it right back. Thank you. The train tracks. Sean Penn. And that would be a, that's a movie I'd like to see. Paul Thomas Anderson

is making a new film for Warner Brothers. He's in that film, will appear. Long, long, long rumored collaboration between Leonardo DiCaprio and PTA.

PTA wanted Leo for Boogie Nights. He's been wanting Leo in a movie. In fact, me and Bill Simmons spoke to Paul Thomas Anderson years ago on the campaign trail for Phantom Thread about Leo getting in one of his movies. Finally, he's in one, along with Regina Hall,

which has been long rumored, which is just wonderful news. Which absolutely rules. Huge fans of Regina Hall on this show, and Sean Penn. Thoughts and prayers with Kevin Costner still. Yes. Sean Penn's also in the movie. He was in Licorice Pizza. Did fine work

as a William Holden-esque stand-in in that movie. Here's what we know about the movie. Contemporary set. This is the first time he's made a movie set in modern times

since Punch Drunk Love, which is over 20 years ago. The movie in the writing about the film has been described as his most commercial yet. I've heard this movie has a pretty big budget. Warner Brothers would say that.

Well, they kind of have to say it. You know, the notable thing here is that Michael DeLuca, the executive, who is kind of the co-chair of the films division at Warner Brothers, used to run New Line Films and gave PTA his big break with Boogie Nights. He is the executive who empowered him to make that movie

and is well known for taking chances on wild young filmmakers. So in theory, that studio run by that person, empowering PTA to take on a bigger project set in contemporary times with the biggest movie star on the planet. I mean, music to my ears. This is incredibly exciting. The one thing that is interesting about this is that for the close PTA watchers,

it has been long rumored that his next film is going to be an adaptation of Thomas Pynchon's Vineland. So Vineland is not set in contemporary times. It's set in the 1980s. And it's a very unusual book with a lot of outlandish, almost like science fiction elements. So updating Vineland to modern

times, perhaps a story a bit about the Reagan era to reflect what? The Trump era? There was also a rumor about four or five months ago that this was going to be a more political film. That would be surprising for PTA, who's not really open about those kinds of ideas, usually, in his films. They're much more psychological, internal, emotional about guys breaking down. That's what he does. You know, I wonder why I relate to that. So, I'm really curious about this. I'm excited.

You're really curious about a Paul Thomas Anderson movie? I don't know why I'm being sarcastic. This sounds fantastic. I'm psyched. Even more so than the usual, like, Paul Thomas Anderson's making a movie about Scientology. Paul Thomas Anderson's making a movie about a couturier in London at this time. Like, this one in particular, we've never really seen anything like this from him before.

So I'm excited. I learned this news from my husband who came into my workspace the minute that it was announced as I was at my computer trying to actually get things done for our family. And he was just like, hey, PTA, making a movie.

Leah's in it. And I was like, uh-huh, uh-huh. And he's like, Regina Hall, too. And just kept talking. And I was literally like, get out of my, I'm working. Leave. I will talk to you about PTA plenty in the coming months. I think a little bit of psychological insight into this show is that sometimes some of your,

what I'll describe as general hostility towards me is because you're getting a lot of it at home as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I understand. I accept. Yeah. But nevertheless,

a new PTA movie is a holiday on this podcast. So we will probably closely track the production and releases of this movie. So the other thing that's going on is that Academy voting

is starting today on January 11th. Because of that, a lot of the guilds got their nominations out early in the aftermath of the Golden Globes and a lot of the Critics Awards. So we've now seen actually three large bodies with their nominations. I'm not sure if you clocked the Annie nominations this morning. I did. And in fact, I heard from my close friends and advisors at the Blank Check that our pick for animated film is leading the pack. Leading the pack? Yeah. What is our pick for animated film?

Nimona? Oh, yes. Right. Your team's pick. Of Annie Ward's. Yeah. Our team's pick. Yes. Nine nominations for Nimona. Sure. The Netflix film that you have not seen and will never see. No, I am going to see it. Will you?

Yeah. Also, I forgot to tell you guys, I saw Boy in the Heron. What? Wow. What? I do my job. Burying the lead. I saw Boy in the Heron. What?

In a theater? I do my job. Yeah. Oh my God. In a theater. What'd you think? I liked the grannies a lot. Okay. Yeah.

Wow. You should start watching more Miyazaki then, because that's a recurring motif. And yeah, it was beautiful to look at. What'd you think of the heron's teeth? Those were gross. Yeah. But beautiful to look at. I don't know.

I get it, but also it's not for me. But I love you guys. Is it the first one you've seen? I think so. It's probably the worst one to start with. I agree. Okay. Yeah. It's probably the worst one to start with. I agree. Okay. Yeah.

It's a, it's a, well, I think, I think I may have said this on the show when we talked about it, Bob, but, uh, I think if you watch like two or three beforehand and then watch it, you'll see that there's like a synthesis going on. You keep moving the goalposts for me, you know, I try it. You're discovering great art anew. I don't know. I'm seeing it. Okay.

Okay. Well, that's too bad. Well, that's a wonderful film. That is the leader in the clubhouse for the Academy Award. I thought the Annie's were kind of interesting because one thing happened that's never happened before in the history of that body, which is that both the Disney Animation Studios film

and the Pixar film missed out on Best Feature. Wish and Elemental were not nominated for an Annie this year. I think the nominees, I'm just going off the top of my head here, are Nimona, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, The Boy and the Heron, Suzume, and what was the fifth one? I'm opening it right now. Spider-Man Across the Spider-Verse. Of course, Across the Spider-Verse.

So obviously- Scene three out of five. Pretty good. Pretty good for you. Is that an all-time high? I honestly don't remember the Annie nominees of any past year. I usually see most of them by the time the Oscars roll around. You seeing Ninja Turtles was sick.

That was great. I also went by myself. I have to go by myself to all of these. In the future, we'll go to one together. Okay. And then you can see my joy. We saw Spider-Verse together. Yeah, and that was nice.

You were really, really happy. That was a great day. You know, these nominations are interesting because, you know, it's obviously been a very troubled year for Disney 2023. And this is one small little reflection of some of the challenges, some of the creative challenges, some of the corporate challenges that they're facing. I would be really surprised if Elemental was not nominated at the Academy Awards because Pixar's brand is so strong with the Academy. But if it misses in the animation community, that's going to be kind of a,

kind of an earthquake moment for like, what are they doing? And do they need to rip it up and start again? I will say that Wish is going strong in my household. The soundtrack is on like every day. And I'm watching my daughter develop a relationship with kind of like, you know, an imaginary friend that is Asha,

the protagonist from Wish, where she's like, I'm going to go sit and have breakfast with Asha. Oh, that's so cute. Which is like an amazing thing that I'm witnessing happening. And you know, for some kids, it's with Cinderella. And for some kids, it's with, you know,

the characters from Moana or Frozen. For Knox, it's Snoopy. Snoopy too, very powerful. Yeah, Snoopy likes to dance to the neck cracker in our house. And he, yeah. The Snoopy. The Snoopy doll.

From Maestro. Yeah, from Netflix. Let me thank you so much, Netflix, for that. Again, that Snoopy really The Snoopy doll. From Maestro. Yeah, from Netflix. Let me thank you so much, Netflix, for that. Again, that Snoopy really just animated our lives. I did actually try to teach Knox to say vestibule this morning, but he just like stared at me. That's a lot of syllables. I know.

And I actually, I was like, can you say who left Snoopy in the vestibule? And he was just like, and then he hit the Nutcracker book button again. Yes. Anyway, thank you, Netflix. You really made Knox's life. Give it six months.

Knox will be there. Who left Snoopy in the vestibule? Okay. In addition to the Annies, we saw the DGAs, which I would say were pretty chalky. Maybe with one exception. We can talk about Maestro. The nominees for the DGA were Greta Gerwig for Barbie,

Yorgos Lanthimos for Poor Things, Christopher Nolan for Oppenheimer, Alexander Payne for The Holdovers, and the great Morton Scorsese for killers of the flower moon yeah so i think this is pretty close to where we're going and this is a pretty uncontroversial list but historically this being the director's guild of america usually one nominee ends up getting swapped out here for an international filmmaker right i think the speculation speculation is that this feels like a spot for Jonathan Glazer, maybe a spot for Justine Trieu,

maybe a spot for Celine Song. It's hard to tell if this is going to be it, but notably missing from This Is Who. Bradley Cooper. Yeah. So do you think Bradley Cooper is not competing anymore

for Best Director? Probably not, which I know is really tough for him. it's just it does seem like things are going downhill fast for for maestro and it's awards chances and i feel terrible you feel terrible for him yeah i just think that this is continues to be one of the most fascinating psychological experiments that we've ever witnessed on the main stage. Chris was in here earlier giving me updates on the latest Bradley Cooper crying on a video with a major director, in this case, Guillermo del Toro. Important that he learned crane technique from Guillermo del Toro. Sure, yeah. And it's just-

Executed magnificently in the On the Town sequence in Maestro. Yeah, it was wonderful. Thank God for Guillermo del Toro. It's amazing. Meanwhile, he's buying a farm near Gigi Hadid in Pennsylvania. He's out still serving cheesecake. I don't understand. Near Gigi Hadid? She also owns a farm in Pennsylvania?

Yes, she does. Yeah, for many years now. And that's where she spent the pandemic. What? Yeah. A farm in Pennsylvania? Yeah. In like Amish country?

I don't know the exact location they should they should remake Witness together oh my god um it's yeah it's tough also the Eagles just that's just a disaster everything on Monday everything I I will not uh because I will have to be in charge of childcare while my husband has a breakdown in public. You're teaching Knox to say vestibule. I tried to broker me joining the Philly Bros to watch the game on Monday with Eileen yesterday. Didn't go well. She did not think that was a good idea. We're going to go out to dinner if you guys want to come. No, not me.

Not with the Philly Bros. You and Knox. Maybe you guys go out to dinner with Eileen and Alice and then I'll join the Philly Bros as emotional support. I'm rooting for them this year. I have their back. Okay, let's talk about SAG. This is the biggest of the nominations from the guilds that we've seen. I want to talk about specifically the nominations

and also what SAG is now a little bit with you, because I feel like it's changed a little bit, and maybe not for the best, but we can talk through that. So, big misses we can talk about here. One, Past Lives, Anatomy of a F One, past lives, anatomy of a fall, Priscilla, the iron claw, and the zone of interest, which just so happened to be five films from the super boutique studios, one from Neon and four from A24,

not represented at all here, which I think signals that for all of these films, that they're in a tough spot. Anatomy of a fall, I think, is in the best spot of these films right now, in part because of its Globes wins and the critical acclaim that it's received.

But, you know, these are critic films. These are not films that actors love as much, clearly, which I find interesting. Some of them are international as well,

and that's also a factor when you've got an American guild body voting. Though people have asked, for example, one of the big snubs is Sondra Holler, not being recognized here.

She is a SAG member, as I understand it. She just is also, obviously, a European actress. You can be a recognized here she is a SAG member as I understand it she just is also obviously a European actress you can be a European actor and have a SAG card of course but she was quote unquote doubly snubbed because she was not nominated for Anatomy of Fall and she was also not nominated for the Zone of Interest

and notably Penelope Cruz was nominated in her spot now Penelope Cruz is in Ferrari which is an Italian based film made by Michael Mann the most American of directors so but you know Penelope Cruz is also she's a more well-known international actress yeah but giving an English language performance sure um the Penelope Cruz nomination to me was actually the most exciting it was one I was not expecting it's one that been, I think she's been largely overlooked

throughout this award season thus far. I said it on the show and we talked about it. I think she's amazing in that movie. She's really good. Movie does not work without her. I completely agree. It's a part that is usually really bad in movies like that. You like hate that woman or you're frustrated with her.

It's underwritten. I think she plays it beautifully. She's obviously a tremendous actress. I would be happy if she was represented at the Oscars there. She's obviously one of the greats. She's obviously a tremendous actress. I would be happy if she was represented at the Oscars there. She's obviously one of the greats. She's won before. Aside from that, there were some head scratchers, I would say. Especially, you know, we've got Julianne Moore and Todd Haynes on the pod today. We recorded this before the SAG came out, but Charles Melton, not nominated. In fact, Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore, not nominated. Can I posit a

theory? Yeah. This movie that is very mean about actors. Yeah. I mean, this has been the immediate in fact Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore not nominated can I posit a theory yeah this movie that is very mean about actors yeah I mean this has been the like the immediate conventional wisdom from everyone and it's true do you think it's a funny joke but do you think it's real I I do think there's some truth to it in that I bet a lot of actors watched this and didn't get it or didn't get the appeal of it um and I don't mean that they're like too simple to understand it. That's not what I'm saying, but it's probably harder to connect to what this movie is indicting. If you do it every day and maybe you're not offended,

but maybe you're just like, what is, what is this movie? Like, I don't, I think so. I think it has been a head scratcher for, for a lot of people.

I actually talked about specifically some of the satirization of actors with, with Julianne and Todd. But it's notable because it's still considered a Best Picture contender. You talked about the Melton wave on Sunday when we talked about the Globes and how maybe that's

kind of dying out a little bit. Nevertheless, that's a really good movie that is not representative. Can I tell you what is not dying out? Is Charles Melton showing up to awards, ceremonies,

and parties looking unreal. Handsome fellow. Handsome fellow. Also, the stylist has it on lock. You know, I mean, he's... He's really just like a lot of Clark Gable. Like, he's a classical old school movie star. Really, really handsome guy who knows how to pose for the camera.

Totally. So that's been exciting to see. I think he's going to be a big deal for a long time so i'm not too worried about his awards prospects um i kind of feel like the golden globe nominations might have been better than the sag nominations is that crazy they have more categories so they there's more to play with you know there's musical and comedy so you get get double the nominees in the major categories so this is just we should have more categories we should give out more awards i'm generally for that i just think it's weird when you're like you know what leonardo dicaprio no thank you what happened there i don't

know that one's really weird though i mean historically it took him forever to win an oscar i don't other actors it's he's always get it he has like among the most nominated. He wasn't nominated for Titanic. That is true. That is true. But he has, as I mentioned to you the other night, he has 14 Golden Globe nominations. Like he is one of the more recognized actors of his time. I super don't get that. It's very confusing.

I also thought Mark Ruffalo, who we will talk about a bit at length when we get into poor things, being snubbed is also bizarre. Another case where I'm like, a supporting performance that is critical to the movie that it is supporting. Well, it's also very weird that Willem Dafoe, who's also wonderful in Poor Things, was nominated and Ruffalo wasn't. And I would argue Willem Dafoe, who is always great,

is doing something similar to what we've seen him do before. Yeah. Whereas Ruffalo is doing something I'm not sure I've ever seen him do, like a broadly comic period piece performance whereas willem dafoe is playing like a craggy monstrous confused you know like but like the lighthouse meets shadow of the vampire like that's what that

that character is anyway we'll get into that movie very shortly no greta lee and no sandra holler as we mentioned in best actress which is really a shame no andrew scott for all the strangers which i'm still I'm still rooting for. I still would like to see happen. It's still, not everyone has seen it. It's not completely, it's not a wide release yet.

It's not. It's moving. He has also just been out on the award circuit, seemingly having a wonderful time, just like in the best way. He was like in every photo from the W performance issue party.

Oh, yeah. Like literally just like, and then, oh, look, it's Andrew Scott again, having an amazing time, looking great. He's wonderful in that movie, which I hope people get a chance to see. So if all of those people missed, that means a few people we weren't expecting made it. I think the big winner of these nominations for SAG was American Fiction,

which didn't win any awards at the Golden Globes, was basically unheard from, and got three nominations from SAG, including Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, and Best Ensemble. Best Supporting Actor was a surprise, seeing Sterling K. Brown, one of your favorite performances of 2023. But he is wonderful, so that's just like a nice thing. I completely agree. My thoughts on this are I would prefer to see Dafoe go out,

Ruffalo stay in, and Sterling K. Brown also get recognized because he's so funny. They're actually very similar to the role that they play in the movies that they're in, Sterling and Ruffalo. They're comic relief, but they're also a critical emotional turning point for the lead character. They force a realization upon the character. We mentioned Penelope Cruz already. The other thing is that The Color Purple was nominated in Ensemble. I would say 10 years ago, if you looked at this, you'd say, this probably means it's competing for Best Picture. There's now usually a movie that, like Babylon was nominated for Best Ensemble last year

and had basically no chance to get recognized in the big awards at the Academy, which is, of course, a crime. And the Academy should all be imprisoned. We're looking into it. We're still pursuing all of our legal options. I have already spent north of $12 million on legal fees trying to get the Academy buried under the jail. But we're working on it.

Bob and I are working on it. I'm on the run from the IRS because I won't pay my taxes. I'm putting all of my money towards this campaign. This is dangerous when the two of you are sitting so close to each other in matching jackets. Babylon time is so strong today. It just gets stronger every single second. Every day. Every single day.

It's so beautiful. I love everybody for it. Remember when Eddie Redmayne was nominated for The Good Nurse? I do. I don't even know what that movie is. Remember when you, that was one of the ones where you had like a full breakdown for no reason

about how bad it was. And both Sam Esmail and I were like, well, I don't know. Like I wanted to know what happened. Yeah. I don't know. I just thought it was terrible. Yeah. I do think that the four front runners are undisturbed here after SAG.

Yeah. Killian Murphy, Lily Gladstone, Robert Downey Jr. and Davon Joy Randolph. I would agree. The only thing I was thinking about, and maybe I was thinking about this because we're about to do a whole thing on poor things is that um last year at the golden globes kate blanchett won in drama michelle yo won in comedy and then michelle yo won at the sag awards and that was when it turned and we were like oh this is gonna is going to be Michelle Yeoh. So if Emma Stone wins at the SAG Awards.

Believe it. Believe it's happening. That could be a real thing. I think Emma Stone is wonderful in this. And I'll be pretty bummed out if she wins over Lily Gladstone. But, you know. Oh, it's certainly possible. It's possible.

Yeah. And I think that's how it would happen. I wonder if that is. What do you think is the closest race right now of those four acting categories? I think Best Actor is probably a little closer than we think.

Okay. It's probably Killian but like You mean Killian and Giamatti? Giamatti is there. Yeah. And I think

Dave Android Randolph is a lock. Feels like it. I RDJ I like it. RDJ, I get it. That is probably happening. But there's been so much other category changes in there.

I'm not totally sure. You never know. The other thing to keep in mind is that there's always a few things that happen that we don't see coming or that develop very late. The biggest one, of course, last year was Andrea Risborough. But let's not forget judd hirsch brian tyree henry in the past right these these performances that were nominated that i would i did would have never predicted um or it would have been seventh eighth ninth on my board so i would really like that to be the entire cast of all of us strangers that'd be exciting yeah that'd be exciting um that movie needs a it needs a groundswell i think for that to happen. But you never know.

People might get behind it. We're going to do it next week, right? Next week, we're going to talk about All of Us Strangers. I think that's pretty much it on SAG. You know, this is a weird body. Who's going to do the I am an actor this year? Who do you got? You could see Giamatti doing this.

Definitely. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. An actor with a long career. And that would be very smart awards-wise. That's a good idea. By the way, the— That's the Jamie Lee Curtis playbook.

The Bulking Pod Executive Committee is aware of Paul Giamatti's actions after the Golden Globes. Going to In-N-Out, eating two burgers, no fries. Can I give a note? Globe on the table, brother. Can I give a note? Yes, please. It was honestly a little obvious. Yeah.

You know? Don't care. I'm a sap. The twist with the Bulking— It was campaigning. Yeah, it was honestly a little obvious yeah you know like i don't care the twist on the the twist it was campaigning yeah it was campaigning like the in and out is such like a common thing at this point like he's really working which i respect but i did like the twist of the of the two burgers no fries so the in and out fries are not are not worth he's just he's familiar with the game you know he knows what to do Can we, Bobby, I started this with you on a text chain, but I want to make this public. I want to put it on the agenda for the auction. Can we talk about protein plates at Sweet Green and general

bulking nutrition strategy? Sean is in hell. I have a lot of questions. Sean is at the bottom layer of hell right now. You guys can talk about this anytime, but on the precious recording of an auction episode, which is coming to the listeners in five days, you want to spend time on protein dates? There's actually plenty of time while we're doing the psychological warfare. That's true. That's true.

Bobby can come prepared to compactly communicate this information. Okay, great. That's what he does. I'll read a bulleted list. It's just like, are vegetables out? You know? Maybe. No, not for me. You know, fiber is important. Right, exactly. But I'm just like, what are we doing here? It's just protein and grains. Like, what don't you need vegetables to be healthy? I guess. Okay. I don't know what to say. Okay. We're going

to talk about poor things. Sean's never eaten a vegetable in his life. No, that's not true. That's actually, but you're a very- I'm a vegetable consumer. No, you're not. You're very particular about them. What do you mean? I made a beautiful broccoli salad over New Year, broccolini salad over New Year's that you just straight up didn't touch. I don't eat broccoli or broccolini. Yeah.

Almost everything else I think I consume in the world of vegetables. Is there anything else you know that I don't enjoy? No, but I think you would have liked that salad. There's something textural about broccoli. But you eat cauliflower. I followed up. I love cauliflower. So this does not add up.

Broccoli to me, it's like I've put like an alien plant in my mouth. It's like I went to Mars and I discovered a new creature. And they were like, you should eat this. It's good for you. When was the last time that you tasted broccoli? Oh, fairly recently because Alice loves broccoli. Yeah. So you're trying it because it might have just been like the way it was being cooked was not. I get what you're saying here. People have been trying to get me to eat broccoli for 41 years. Like it ain't happening.

Like we're good. It's a wrap. Like I don't need to, I eat a lot of healthy food actually. I love healthy food. You kind of remind me a little bit of the Emma Stone character in Poor Things. You know, like you've matured in some respects and other things are still lagging behind. You refuse to eat broccoli. Bobby, incredible segues. The power on that side of the table has been really, really beautiful.

It's much easier in person. Yeah. Okay, let's talk about Poor Things. So, Poor Things is, I think, the eighth feature film directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, who is, I think,

considered one of the European masters. A Greek filmmaker who's kind of moved to England and America to work with English-speaking actors. This is his first movie in five years since The Favorite, which was his most commercial yet, widely lauded by the Academy. This is the movie that Emma Stone won for, right?

Am I correct? Or is it La La Land? I always get that mistranslated. She won for La La Land, but Olivia Colman. Olivia Colman, thank you. Defeated Glenn Close in a bit of a surprise. RIP the wife. This is a bit of a reunion

with his dream team, obviously Robbie Ryan coming back to shoot the film. It is, how would you describe this movie? Would you say it is a fantasy? Would you say it is an allegory?

Would you say it's a, you know, Emma Stone notably identified it as a rom-com on the Golden Globes telecast what what kind of a movie is this to you it's sort of a fairy tale almost like a but as you noted here like a weird steampunk steampunk Victorian fairy tale yeah yeah it's a fable right it's a fable with a lot of things you're not used to seeing in fables. With sex and absurdity and a bit of violence. And it's a quote-unquote crazy movie.

That's how it has been described. People are like, well, this is the craziest movie of the year. Which I'm not entirely sure it's that. I think in some ways it's more conventional than it's being described as. But it is very audacious in its design. And in some respects, its story. it's also very indebted to like the history of movies like it is and the history of like a creature storytelling um this could have been a guillermo del toro movie honestly based on the way that the story unfolds but

you've got this critical collaboration between yorgos lanthimos and emma stone who now this is their second feature we know they're doing a. They've also already done a short film. This is like a Scorsese-De Niro thing that is happening. She clearly has latched on to something with him. He's latched on to something with her. They found each other at a good time. What did you think of Poor Things? I liked it a lot. I really, so I saw it at Venice. I'm sorry. I think this is probably the last time I'll say that sentence. So you're all- Oh, I don't know. I'm sorry. I think this is probably the last time I'll say that sentence. So you're all... I don't know. We'll see. Well, for this year. Anyway. Should I play taps like this is the last final time Amanda saw a movie at Venice? But so I saw it. I wasn't there

for like the very first wave of the festival screening. Like I wasn't there for the first screening. And it debuted pretty much simultaneously at Veniceice and atelier ride where you were i think you saw it there as well and emma stone was famously like an attendance atelier ride like as a civilian her with my own eyes watching movies but so there was this kind of like big immediate oh my gosh poor things it's like the movie of the year and you know and it was about six weeks after the Barbie wave. And there are some really obvious comparisons to be made here. Just in terms of this, suppose you could say whether it's a feminist coming of age story or just like a girl creature who's got to learn some things about the world. A wacky sex comedy starring Frankenstein. Right.

And so I would say that the initial critical reaction was just like, wow, poor things. This is like the best thing that's ever happened. And so, I went in like 24 hours after that

and with like a lot of anticipation and a little bit of skepticism because once you say Frankenstein, I'm like, all right.

Would you say that you were a Yorgos Lanthimos, setting aside the favorite, which I know you loved. Yeah. Would you say you were a Yorgos Lanthimos, setting aside the favorite, which I know you loved. Yeah. Would you say you were a Yorgos Lanthimos fan? Yes. I really also, I love the lobster.

Okay. I mean, I love the lobster. You like his tone and his storytelling. Yes. And I also tend to like the things that he is interested in. I mean, like the lobster is his version of a romantic comedy, right? Like the favorite is his version of Mean Girls. Like dog the favorite is his version of mean girls like dog oh well it is like dog dog tooth is like his version of like the you know coming of age like family story now like that's like a very

fucked up version of it but it's his dazed and confused yeah he is like making he's interested in genre like genres that i'm interested in and this, to the extent that it was compared as a monster film, I was like, well, that's, you know, not as much my cup of tea as a romantic comedy or mean girls. So,

so I was like, I both had like major expectations going into this and a little bit of skepticism. And I walked out being like, this is, I mean, that's just flat out great. Like it is,

it is just so well-made. The Emma Stone performance is lights out. She so so good and obviously like you sean in particular have talked about how she's like one of the great movie stars but she's like unbelievable here like the physical comedy like the emotional like the journey that she goes on and what she communicates the the way that her face looks on the screen. And there are a lot of close-ups in this movie. Really, more so than in many other Lanthimos films. But you understand why because of the way that her face just holds the camera.

So she's amazing. Production design and specifically the costumes in this movie are unreal i'm also a fan of tony mcnamara so i i thought it was like very very funny um i just it's kind of undeniable like it is just very good and it's not that crazy i mean i guess it's crazy but it's more just amusing well it features and you know as go through this conversation, we will spoil it a bit. I don't know if, but in particular, the thing that is quote unquote crazy about it is, it is one of the more daring performances of sex in a movie by a movie star who is as well-known and accomplished as Emma Stone. It's very, very unusual for an American movie star to be in like 14 sex scenes in a movie. Right. And as nude as she is in the film

and as pointed as the film is about the act and meaning of sex. That is a huge part. And the kind of like epiphanic realizations that come from her sexuality. It's just not something we see in American movies. We talked about it in the Fair Play episode last year. In particular, it's gotten more small-c conservative

in the last 10 years. So that aspect of it is quote-unquote crazy. Everything else in the movie feels like Yorgos Lanthimos with a budget to me. It's a very particular tone that he attaches himself to. His sense of humor, I like a lot. And I thought the movie was very, very funny. I would not, you know, you put at the bottom of our outline. Thank you for charting the outline.

That was very helpful. I had some time. My in-laws are in town. It was really amazing. I just had 45 minutes. That's wonderful. And I got a manicure and then I did this outline. It means the world.

I can't wait. Thank you to Rich and Jane. Immediately after the Oscars, you'll be doing this full time. So I'm very happy about that. You asked sort of like, what is your power ranking of the films? I'm still little like this is not my favorite Yorgos Lanthimos I mean and that's that's why I put this there and I saw it again yesterday as did you um because we hadn't seen it since the summer in five months yeah and it's like incredibly good and I would say lags a little bit the second time around it does and and again some of it is just your taste may vary and I'd rather have Olivia Colman and Rachel Weisz and Emma Stone

yelling at each other with Nicholas Holden Joel Allen like being confused rather than like a bunch of dudes and and Emma Stone even though she's transcendent and it's like really really funny so it's just that's just a preference thing yeah I think some ofent and it's like really, really funny. So it's just, that's just a preference thing. Yeah. I think some of it is, is it's clearly a movie with a point and a point of view. And because of that, once you have the point of view has been communicated to you the first time you watch it, you're like, okay, I got it. Yeah. Like I got it. Yeah. In a weird way. I was like, there are too many sex scenes in this movie. The second time I watched it. It's also really surprising the first time, you know, it's not like, like we said, it's not like crazy.

Like, oh, I mean, I guess there is a little bit of like, oh my gosh, I can't believe they did that. But even in the sex scenes, they are in that typical Yorgos Lanthimos way. Like, many of them are sort of deadpan. Yes. Or absurdist. Or comic. Yeah. And there is, they're not presented with with that American Puritan scandalization, even though everyone else, it's Victorian, so everyone else is scandalized.

And part of the point is that Emma Stone's character, Bella, is just like, well, this seems great. Can we do more furious jumping? Which is just really funny. And she doesn't know that you're not supposed to masturbate. She doesn't know that you're not supposed to talk about these things. She's like, this is great. But so it's all presented in a way that is not what you expect, which is interesting the first time. And then the second time you're like in on the joke and you're like, oh, okay.

Like, that's good. Yes. There is an I get it quality to watching it a second time. The first hour to me is a revelatory movie. Yeah. I think like brilliantly staged, very funny. You're kind of craning your neck to figure out where they're going with this thing the first time you see it. The other thing that I really like about this movie is that it's like a wonderful first act about parenting.

You know, the Godwin character that Willem Dafoe plays, who is a kind of mad scientist who is interested in revivification and cadavers and human combination. He's kind of an Island of Dr. Moreau kind of figure who's like fusing two different kinds of creatures.

He is essentially dad and God for Bella, the Emma Stone character. One of the best recurring bits. I laughed every time she calls him God. It's so funny.

It's just a very, very clever way to make the point of the movie, which is that, you know, man, old men, they are the godlike figures of our world. They are the people in control. They are the people who dictate sexual mores, who dictate our philosophies, who dictate our social way of living. So that's obviously, that's like the critical idea

in the Yorba Santa most movies, which is that every movie he makes, he is asking you and makes you ask yourself, why are things this way? Why do we do things this way? In Dogtooth, it's largely like verbal. It's what words do we use and how do we use them

and how does that dictate the way that we go through society or don't go through society in that case. And also is what our dad telling us the right thing. Exactly. And this movie is very much kind of, it's't go through society in that case. And also is what our dad telling us the right thing. Exactly. And this movie is very much kind of, it's not just in conversation

with that movie, it's like the secrets of that movie in some ways because the Godwin character who has, and now we'll kind of get into some spoiler territory here for this story,

has saved the Bella character who is not actually Bella. She's a different woman who has thrown herself off of a bridge. And while she's done so, we learn that she was pregnant. And in his attempts

to revive her, he performs, I guess, a surgery in which he removes the child from her body and removes the brain from the child

and also removes Bella's brain and then replaces Bella's brain with the child's brain it's a few surgeries a few surgeries multiple surgeries yeah now um all in a day's work yeah this is the part of the podcast where you realize that this movie is not real and is an absurdist fantasy and so people who are reviewing this movie and are like i found this offensive this right that is an insane take because this is obviously a ridiculous movie and a ridiculous conceit

and we are in the land of creatures and ridiculousness. So I find the outrage about the movie, whether you like it or not, to be super weird and dumb. I'm not even aware of the outrage. There is a sector of the internet. Are they mad because it's like,

why did you do that to the mom or the baby? Well, I think that there's, I think one strain of it, and there are probably many strains, but the one strain I've seen is the idea of a baby, a child, having a kind of sexuality. That is the thing that is upsetting to people. Come on. Which is weird because obviously what happens is that we see Bella when she receives the baby's brain, God starts raising her. And he's raising her

in the best way he knows how, which is to say not very well. But Emma Stone's performance as a zero-year-old, as a one-year-old, as a two-year-old, as a three-year-old. It was very familiar.

It's very accurate. I know. It's alarmingly accurate. And you know what's really amazing is so like the first time I saw it, Knox was like 18 months and now he's almost two. And I was like, wow, we've really charted the development here over six months I had the exact

same feeling watching it last night I it's so funny how close it is to the things that little you know the babies do yeah Emma Stone is a mother now of course uh does your boss not the most of kids I don't even know I think he does the way that she's doing it it's like almost like an acting class like a seminar you know like you would do when you're in like learning how to act in the theaters. But the fact that they're able to like render it as entertaining, funny, you can sit in a movie theater and watch this and not the most boring, droning, like I'm watching videotaped actor classes is kind of unbelievable. I mean, it's a testament to Emma Stone's charisma and personality and comedic timing. She's able to make it interesting

while also doing this thought experiment. But I think the world that is created around her makes it seem not like that hokey, like, be a tree, be a tiger, that thing that you're talking about that you see in acting school.

Because of the set design and the way the film is shot, you know, you very wisely identified that there are some visual ticks that Anthimos really really relies on the fisheye lens camera the like absurd angles at which he shoots characters that i think also helps you get invested in this in a way that another filmmaker making a movie and having an actor make that choice just might not work very well might seem stupid um but it really is like watching a two-year-old yeah um she sells it i think that's one of the reasons why it's one of the performances is that she's

so believable as a two-year-old uh which is not easy to pull off but anyway god is sort of raising her the best way he knows how he takes on an assistant played by rami yusuf and in a very very funny performance as a kind of wonderful yeah so good. For those of you who have not seen Rami, wonderful TV show that he was the star of. And we start to see the coming of age starts basically once Rami arrives, which is that Rami has fallen in love with this five-year-old child in the body of Emma Stone.

Yeah. And then everyone starts falling in love with Bella. That becomes part of the parable about women moving through the world and the way that they encounter men who only want one thing from them. And shortly after Rami's character enters the house, God starts drawing up a plan for Rami's character to marry Bella. And in doing so, they encounter a lawyer named Duncan Wedderburn, who's played by Mark Ruffalo. And that man-

One of the great names. All the names are so good. They're so good. A lot of alliteration as well. When Mark Ruffalo comes into the movie, the movie starts to transform a bit. It goes from this story about a baby girl learning how to live through the world to,

you know, I guess it's adolescence is really what the movie starts to become about which like how do you see because ruffalo obviously also falls in love with her and then whisks her away to lisbon where he can have his way with her essentially and she's learning about the world not just sex though specifically sex and the movie does a great thing the first section is all shot in black and white and then they you know there's a lisbon title card and cut to the furious jumping aka them having like very acrobatic sex and it's in color yes and it's like the movie turns to color once she knows about sex i Great. I mean, it's really, really good and very funny. But she's also learning about everything from the weird tarts that they eat to, you know,

she wanders around Lisbon. She sneaks out while he's napping in this immaculate outfit. The clothes in this movie are out of control. They're good the costumes are by holly waddington and this one in particular she's wearing yellow silk shorts that are maybe supposed to be underwear in the victorian getup but anyway she's wearing them as shorts and these white heeled uh ankle boots and then whatever like shoulder you know, Brandon Flowers thing that she's doing because that's sort of the silhouette of the movie, you know? Pad tassels. Lots of shoulders, lots of bolero type, but like feathered. Anyway, I was just like, this is the coolest thing that I've ever seen.

She looks so good. When she gets out into the world in Lisbon, she encounters polite society. And she's not well-suited to polite society because she has not been raised with manners. She has all kinds of malapropisms or social awkwardness in her interactions. It's a very funny sequence where she goes out to dinner with Duncan and two of his friends.

And she speaks off the cuff and then is told to only say three things. What are the three things she's only allowed to say? Delightful. Oh, delighted. How marvelous. And how do they get this pastry so flaky? So crisp.

So crisp, yeah. Which is really funny. Which leads to some great comic moments. That scene also has the best line. The line that makes me laugh the hardest in the movie where she just suddenly yells, there's a baby wailing, and she yells,

I must go punch that baby. And then gets up, and I just that baby and then like gets up and i just we've all been there you know we've all been there um you know lisbon is this critical moment where she is kind of realizing that sex is the number one thing that she wants she's sort of thinking about sex the way that a lot of young people think about sex which is why can't i just do this all the time that's what i want this is how i want to spend it's also like it animates the world like really for most of our lives but certainly at that period of your life like everything that everyone is doing when you get right down to it is like how can i have sex with who i want to have sex exactly or at a minimum so it is like a social drawing people in yeah but also it's because it's something she's been exposed to at a very early age. And it's been, I don't know if it's been

normalized for her, but she doesn't feel shame, which is a big part of it. She's not raised in an environment where you're not supposed to do that. Although the housekeeper does shame her at one point when she tries to help her masturbate, which is a really funny moment in the first half of the movie. But as she goes through Lisbon, she slowly starts to realize

maybe Duncan is not all he's cracked up to be. It seems like as the fissure is starting, he knows he needs to take her away from the big city as she's discovering alcohol, as she's discovering other men, as she's discovering tattoos, as she's discovering all of these things. He knows he needs to get her out of there, so he takes her on a ship, and they take a journey to Alexandria. And the movie does slow down pretty significantly for me here. This part doesn't work for me. This is the part where I got lost as well. I liked the old lady Martha. Yeah.

Who has not had sex in 30 years. And Bella is really upset about that. I think it was 20. Okay. But still a long time. Okay. Do you know that specifically because you were the person that she had sex with 20 years ago? Martha and I have never met, but she seems like a lovely woman.

She's interested not what's between her legs, but what's between her ears. Yes. You know, which I can respect. Right. As a man of letters. And she gives Bella some books. She does. She is a critical figure in these coming of age stories.

She is the fount of knowledge. She is. And also a character played by Gerard Carmichael, who is another fount of knowledge. They're kind of paired against each other. They're companions on this journey, but one is an optimist who looks forward to the growth of the world, and the other is a cynic who does not believe in really anything and sees no progress happening in the universe.

I think Gerard Carmichael is one of the funniest stand-up comedians in America. He is not a good actor. This is a bad performance. I think Gerard Carmichael is one of the funniest stand-up comedians in America. He's not a good actor. This is a bad performance. I completely agree. I was going to say miscast or just like does not fit in the Tony McNamara mold. And, you know, that's the other thing we haven't talked about. The McNamara dialogue is very specific. And Emma Stone in particular has like an evolution of language that is incredibly

funny but also really difficult so but these aren't like these are not conversational sentences and the tone of the movie and the way that everybody else is delivering them there is like a certain rhythm that everyone else seems to have facility with and Gerard Carmichael is just in it he's in a different movie he is he's just a theatricality that he doesn't do as well. He's very like low level, deadpan, even keeled, same speed. That's his comic style. Everybody else is kind of like bouncing up and down like a roller coaster

in a way and he's just kind of like I don't know, not quite meeting the highs or the lows of it. He's just splitting the middle. I completely agree. I think Ruffalo especially is so outsized in this movie and so offended at every moment that there's a register that Carmichael is not hitting. Now, you could make the case that that's appropriate for his character, who is this kind of dissolute guy who's like, of course, everything sucks. It's terrible.

She teaches him cynicism. Or he teaches her cynicism. Right, because he takes her off the ship to Alexandria and, like, there are dead babies. Yes. I mean, that part was also a little functional you know like like i understood i was like okay this is how you have to move the plot and the revelation but like what okay what are we doing up until this moment bella has really only seen a kind of elevated class of society she's only been able to furiously jump her way through Lisbon to eat well, to dance hilariously in a ballroom.

And my wife, when I was watching the movie last night, was just like howling during the dancing sequence. It's so funny. Also another Lanthimos trademark as well. They always get freaky. So up until this point, she hasn't seen she doesn't understand the idea of wealth or being poor she doesn't understand

that there is such thing as like this kind of pain in life and so you need that in the movie but I agree like this is a big 30

35 minute portion of the movie that is is a little stuck in neutral for me for an otherwise a movie that is otherwise kind of

furiously jumping its way through the story. Right. And so if I am not like five-star masterpiece about this, it's largely because of this moment in the film. Yeah. It's also on a ship

and this is where the production design gets the most... CGI? Yeah. I was trying to think of a more polite way to say it. My wife said when we were watching, she was like, this doesn't look good. Yeah. I was trying to think of a more polite way to say it. My wife said it when we were watching. She was like,

this doesn't look good. Yeah. I know what they, I like what they did. I liked what they accomplished. But it is very different from the very physical world that has been created

in the cities when they're traveling through London or through Lisbon or otherwise. Eventually, Bella feels pain and sadness for the people who have less than her,

and so she gives away all of her money unwittingly to, I guess, two men who work on the ship, thinking that they would give that. The dock, specifically? The dock. Because they're not on the ship. Got it. Two men on the dock.

So they take the money away from the ship. That's Duncan's money, by the way, not her money. And Duncan is very upset, and they're booted from the ship. It's a very funny moment where Duncan is trying to and they're booted from the ship. It's a very funny moment where Duncan is trying to show outrage towards Bella and to the people who work on the ship

and he gets punched in the stomach in one of the funniest sequences in the movie. And he just goes down. I love Mark Ruffalo in this movie. They eventually are left at the next stop on the ship's journey and that is in Paris. So actually it's Marseille.

I'm sorry. Oh, Marseille. The only time I need to well actually you is when we're doing like your Mediterranean locations. Okay. I don't know anything about those things. Well, they say Marseille and then you're right that like cut to there in Paris. And I did have some questions about how they got from Marseille to Paris with the funding. Interesting. But there's not like a boat that goes to Paris in that way from the Mediterranean. Do you think we should revisit that Matt Damon film about Amanda Knox that is about Marseille?

Do you know Marseille is like where all the cool kids are living now? Like all the art kids? The cool kids? Yeah. Marseille is a pretty rough and tumble town. Yes, but there is also like a Virgin Inc. Interesting. International art scene there.

Will you be relocating? No, I don't think i'm cool enough for that you know fair enough um nevertheless they travel from marseille to paris and uh bella and duncan need money and bella encounters a a mistress a woman who is running a brothel a madam excuse me it's interesting you know that and i don't it says a lot um a woman who is running a brothel a madam excuse me it's interesting you know that and i don't it says a lot um a madam who's running a brothel and she's quickly employed and because she has this kind of um unaffected relationship to sexuality she's like absolutely it seems like a way to make money and then we get this long series of sex sequences in which she is

you know encountering various johns and having different types of sex right and like kind of questioning the internal assumptions and workings of the brothel as they relate to sexual sexuality and enjoyment but like in a very practical um almost scientific way and and this is the part where she's like i think this will be interesting you know and i will you know learn empirically part where she's like, I think this will be interesting, you know, and I will, you know,

learn empirically. And she's using like some of the Willem Dafoe characters' language. And it's almost a scientific undertaking. That's the other thing to note about the movie

is as we are moving towards the final act of the film, her brain is developing faster and faster. And so she's getting older and smarter. And so what we once saw as a two- old or a nine year old or a 15 year

old is suddenly becoming a 26 year old. And by the end of the film, maybe even older than that. And it's an interesting journey because she's asking questions of characters in real time that you have just been in your, in your common life, you accept and no longer, if you don't know something as you get older, a lot of people, especially people with big egos, maybe such as myself,

are afraid to ask questions. They're afraid to like, and question like the common understanding of the way that life works. And one of the great things about this character is that she's always comfortable saying, why would this be this way? And it's particularly funny between her and, is it Catherine Hunter? Catherine Hunter, the madam who we last saw in Tragedy of Macbeth as the witches. Right. Who's an incredible performer and is very funny in this movie as well. And the way that Catherine Hunter has answers at her fingertips for the questions about why this is the way that it is.

And what, for example, there's a very funny moment where there's a man who Bella clearly does not want to have sex with. And she wonders why the brothel works this way, where a man would want to have sex with a woman who clearly doesn't want to have sex with him. And Catherine Hunter says, some men like it that way. It's one of those things where, where like in some cases that is true and in some cases that's something your boss tells you so that you'll do what you want them to do and it's a very small little moment that I think like really crystallizes a big point of the movie and the way that we accept the way that things are in our world um soon Duncan Wedderburn learns that Bella has been having sex for money he becomes outraged.

Um, I can't believe Mark Ruffalo was just in the MCU for like 10 years and wasn't doing stuff like this. But when he loses his shit on her, it's such a funny scene in the movie. And we see that he's been completely broken. And we also see that he is a buffoonish weakened man. You know, a guy who's really insecure, who can't imagine the thought of a woman that he has slept with sleeping with someone else or sleeping with someone else for money god forbid that is like the most heinous act he can imagine

throws the eclair that she's given him it's really funny also like the most phallic of pastries yes true um bella then goes on a series of of sexual acts i would say this sequence runs a little long for me too it does as well but, but I mean, some great jokes, including she's having sex with like a very young and seemingly like conventionally attractive individual. And she says like,

you've been given a gift as he leaves. And then you see that he's wearing like a priest collar. I was like, that's funny. Great moment. What do you think about the sequence with a man

who brings his sons to observe the sex acts? That was really, really intense. Though, so I was thinking about a story that I knew about this happening in real life. There's this lady who was like Princess Margaret's best friend for whatever. And she wrote a memoir. And she talked about how when she got married, like in the 50s, her husband took her to a brothel to like learn how to have sex. And they're just like sitting there watching two people have sex.

And I was like, well, I guess this isn't like totally implausible. Right. I guess, I guess you're right. It's certainly something that could have happened. It's more, it's just unusual to watch it happen featuring Emma Stone. Sure. That is the weirdness of it. But it's also so funny because she keeps wanting to like have suggestions and corrections.

You know, she's like, no, no, no. I like, but is trying to do this over here, a little light choking that sometimes can help completion. Yeah.

Um, some very, very funny jokes in this, in this sequence of the movie. But, um, as the film is going along and as Bella is going along her journey, we see that God is,

um, God, not, not, not God himself, but God, God, when her,

uh, her father figure, the Dr. Frankenstein of this film, is falling in ill health, even by his standards. We should say that Willem Dafoe plays a kind of burping crag monster in this movie. His face has been deeply scarred. We learned that his father has operated on him, has used him as a kind of crash test dummy for some of his experiments. We learned that his gastrointestinal system is deeply distressed. He has a... That's the best part.

He's like, my gastric juices were removed to discover, like, you know, for an important experiment. It turns out we need them. A lot of good lines. His burp bubble is an incredible psych gag. Also, and then when Toddler Emma Stone starts clapping, like just like our kids clap, you know? Yeah, yeah.

It's really good. So he really is getting quite sick and dying. He sends her a letter and she receives a letter and she realizes she needs to return home to see her father. And when she returns home also she's becoming socialist she has i forgot with her socialist friend and they are and lover and they head off to a meeting a while duncan is screaming at them about how they're whores and she says we are our own means of production which is really again i just i want

to give this movie credit for being really clever huge Huge moment for me. A film for Bobby. Huge moment for 2024's favorite character, leftist Amanda. Yes! Log on. Amazing. Loved it. I absolutely thought of Bobby when she said that. So she returns back to London and she also is having this realization that something is not right. She's identified a scar on her body.

Actually, her lover and socialist friend has asked about the baby scar and it's and it's just kind of like where is your baby i also have a baby scar and a baby you know and bella's like i don't have a baby i don't know what you're talking about yeah this is an incredibly bold physical performance from emma's known in a number of ways but the way that she puts her body on display in this movie is so unusual and so interesting and obviously elemental to the movie the movie does not it requires this to make especially this part of the story makes sense but um really amazing and then so she goes back to london and and she confronts god about who she is and what's happened to her and it sends her into a kind of a tailspin she starts thinking about who she is and what's happened to her and what agency she

has or does not have and she's conflicted by this sense of appreciation for being saved and raised but also this rage and fury at not being able to be the person that she was meant to be or not be or that her mother decided in the realm of her brain that she would not be. And so it's like a complicated idea of existence and who is responsible for our life, whether it's us. Agency is really the dominant word of this movie. Right. Who has agency over their own life and in society. And then very quickly, a character comes into the frame. Well, I will say, like, that is like a complex psychological idea that kind of gets resolved pretty quickly.

She just says, I am really angry, but I have found being alive so interesting that, like, I will forgive you, but I'm still mad. And then she goes on a walk with the Rami character and it proposes again because they've been engaged the whole time. We forgot to mention that. It doesn't really matter. And she says, like, I really enjoy this practical love that we have. And so she's clearly come to some sort of like different understanding. But it's like. I love that moment on their walk when he asks her how much she was charging for sex.

And she says 30 francs. And he says, that seems much too low. Life guy alert. Yeah, it's a great moment. Yeah, it's very charming. So anyway, he says yes. They're going to get married. They are at the altar.

And then a classic interruption. You know, does anyone object to this marriage in the form of Chris for Abbott? Off the top rope my guy unreal I have had mixed feelings about Christopher Abbott's film choices and performances in movies up till now this guy smashes this he is so he turns out to be the bella character's mother's and also the body's ex-husband yes and so he recognizes her as i believe her name is victoria technically the husband right they were never divorced yeah right he's the husband and duncan has uh put bella's picture in the papers anyway duncan has found the husband.

He exposed the story, yeah. Right, and exposed it and brings him to the wedding. And they make it there in time. And Bella says to herself, oh, no, I actually think this would be interesting. I'm curious about my other life. And decides to go with her estranged husband, shall we say. Or the estranged husband of her mother. They have a dinner together.

Yeah. And the dinner is, it's kind of like the, you know, when you're hammering a nail and there's one last, you need to just finish the job. Like the head is poking out a little bit. It's the final hammer and the nail to the point of the movie, which is like, this character is actually the problem. This is why the world is the movie, which is like, this character is actually the problem. This is why the world is the way that it is. Is that most people

who are decorated generals or leaders or just men in charge are fucking assholes. Like, this guy is an asshole. And he reveals himself to be an asshole and a controlling person and a person who wants to dominate no matter what. And Bella, who is not his wife, because she and a person who wants to dominate no matter what and bella who is not his wife

because she is a person who has had different experiences in a different brain but is her in her physical form just rejects the idea of him full stop she rejects his his morality she rejects his sense of what is right and what the world how operate. And, you know, she wins. Like, how does she win? What does she do? He has a gun and he's pointing it at everyone whenever he doesn't get exactly what he wants. And so he points it at her.

And does she charge him? She's just like, sure, I'll go for it. And he gets scared and shoots himself in the toe. And then she gets the gun and then she takes him back to the house and the the rami character is like if we help him he doesn't seem like the kind of man who will just like go away and she's like i i agree but we can't leave him bleeding so then she performs the same brain transplant that was performed on her, but with the brain of a, is it a sheep or a goat? I'm going to be honest.

I think it's a goat. All right. A goat. Well, you know. And so then. This comes up often in my home with my little daughter. It's very confusing. And also ducks and geese.

I'm not like immediately sure, but that's okay. You got to see the film migration. I'll clear it up for you. Okay. I probably won't. But anyway, Christopher Abbott gets a goat brain. And then. Happily ever after.

Happily ever after. And the final scene is like, and then I believe Godwin dies. Passes on. But in like a happy way. And he leaves his, you know, weird. His menagerie. To Bella.

So the final scene is Bella happily reading with her socialist lover and friend, also lounging in a chair. It's not clear to me whether she ever marries Max, AKA the Rami character. It's unclear. But he's there in a loving, supportive role. She's living in a polyamorous experience.

We forgot to mention Margaret Qualley. Yeah. Who is there as like their second experiment. Yes. Bella 2.0. And she's pretty funny. Or negative 2.0

based on the experience she's having. Yeah, she's very funny, but she doesn't really have the same certainly verbal development that Emma. Was it you or someone else who said to me that we know that Emma Stone is the chosen one because of Margaret Qualley's performance in this movie who I really love and I'm a big supporter

of but she just quite can't quite pull off the baby thing yeah it was it was not me to be fair she's being asked to do a different thing sort of she's not actually supposed to ever she doesn't realize she's being asked to pale in comparison to the Malacharis. Yes, yes. That's right. But anyway, by the end of the movie, she's there at whatever stage she's in, and she's happy. And there's a pug that's also a chicken. And some other... You're just looking straight up thinking of things that you saw in the movie at this point. Can I add a critical detail from the dinner scene? Well, I didn't get to the kicker.

Okay. And then there's Christopher Abbott on all fours uh chewing the shrubbery like the like the goat that he is yes and and they live happily ever after there's a moment in the dinner scene where they're talking back and forth and bella is trying to ascertain things about her previous life or her body's previous life and the christopher abbott character is treating the servers like shit. And he's talking about how he's worried that they're going to revolt against him. And that's why he keeps this gun

and he waves it around to intimidate people. And he says something to her about, don't you want to do our favorite thing? And he humiliates one of the servers by making them spill soup all over themselves or some sort of drink all over themselves. I can't remember which. And she realizes that she was a bad themselves. I can't remember which. And she realizes

that she was a bad person. Complicit in that. Yeah. I actually thought that this was like one final catapult at the end of the movie or one final springboard

at the end of the movie, rather, where the McNamara script is giving us the idea that like, oh, what can we change about ourselves? Second chances. I was a bad person.

I had a baby's brain put into me. What can I pass along to a future version of myself that I can was a bad person i had a baby's brain put into me what can i pass along to a future version of myself that i can become a better person because this past life that i lived it was clearly so screwed up that i tried to kill myself and i'm discovering why i tried to do that and the things that i need to do to strip that part of out of me and i thought that that was like the it it was very effectively rendered in a short amount of time with the Christopher Abbott character

because he is so evil and performing it so arch that like I thought that the end wrapped up so much more neatly than I was expecting in that middle period on the ship where I was like, okay, we're kind of losing the thread here

and we're like talking about the same themes that we were talking about in the first hour more effectively. So it does raise an important question for me about what the movie is about um because i like that idea i think that's a very optimistic way of reading the movie that it is a movie about second chances and changing the way that you see the world and i and i appreciate that and i respect it i would not describe lanthimos as a terribly optimistic filmmaker um i do think this is the most like heartful movie he's made.

You may recall the ending of The Lobster, which is like the most like tragic, intense, like we are all fucked movie. I've seen it a long time. So I've been trying to turn over in my mind and I don't have an opinion about this specifically, but is this a movie

about what Bob is talking about in some ways, which is sort of a movie about empowerment, about empowering yourself and having a sense of realization about the way that you can make change for yourself and in the world, whether that's to be more open-minded about sexuality, whether that's to be more openly socialist or communist, whether that's to be just more decent towards your fellow person. Or is it a movie about empowerment in the aftermath of exploitation, which is a very different thing, a very different idea.

Yeah. Which is that it is only after having gone through a kind of trauma or having recognized a kind of evil that then you can be empowered, which is an interesting movie, especially in the last five years, like an interesting idea for a movie in the last five or 10 years in our society.

Right. I don't know if you thought about it in this way, but it struck me the second time watching it well it's kind of interesting because both of those readings are predicated and and maybe are supposed to interpret it this way but are predicated on the idea that it's the same person before and after as opposed to bella being like a different person um which and and maybe i'm too hung up on some of the biology and it is like an incredibly fantastical you know and maybe this is also where the mom card comes in but i'm like oh interesting so you're like trapped in your mother's body but you're rejecting your mother's entire life which is also fascinating

i mean like but like that definitely speaks to me if you showed this movie to sigmund freud he would his brain would melt out totally and that is like also great point only like the mother isn't even mentioned like non-character which is fine like i this is not like a justice for mommy blogs podcast but um i like, do think that. As Gen Z mommy, this must be so complicated for you. No, no. But I think that's fascinating. But, and interesting.

But so I was always watching it with that separation between the two. And she even says a couple times, like, this was this other person. Like, that was this other person's life. And this isn't me. And I'm, like like a different person. Now that's like that might honestly be like some sort of semantic thing. And I think like the larger point is about. To me it's less about a second chance or what comes before as what if you are completely a blank slate and don't understand societal expectations

or don't you know are are not beholden to anything other than almost like the child you like the the child blank slate in you there's there's another layer to this that i think is really interesting um you know you mentioned frankenstein you've given me a prompt in the outline for Frankenstein. Do you want to read the prompt? I don't know where it is. What does it say? It says, bracket, Sean explains the importance of Frankenstein. I'm not sure if Frankenstein is important, but it's obviously the critical influence in the movie or one of the critical influences it's like it's 200 years roughly since frankenstein the novel and it's 100 years roughly since the movies um particularly the first the frankenstein and bride of frankenstein are like huge influences on this movie you know from the

obvious like watching the bolts in the glass case fly into emma stone's head which allows her to be revived to the science of bringing someone back or bringing something back to life. Frankenstein is like a cautionary tale. Frankenstein is not a film or an idea about revelation and second chances. The end of Bride of Frankenstein is Frankenstein realizing the impossibility of love for him as a monster and essentially like the the laboratory the place where he lives along with his brought quote-unquote bride being destroyed and burned alive like it is a very bleak tale about the dangers of science and the way trying

to control the natural world i think in our society now you think it's like kind of a conservative kind of a film, the way that we tend to use science to evolve. There's a lot of other ideas in Frankenstein, but this movie in many ways

is the opposite. I mean, this movie is about redemption and about emotionality and feeling closer to people that you care about. And so,

it's interesting to use that framework of that story to completely invert its meaning, you know? I think it's really effective in that way, but it's a pretty ghoulish way of getting there, you know what I mean? Usually in a story like that, it's told differently. Yeah, I don't know that I would necessarily say that I'm taking, like, she gets a second chance optimistic read on it. And I'm really interested in your, like, delineation between the original character and the Bella character

and what it says about like I hate to use this phrase like generational trauma that you take from your parents and she is literally living it through their own bodies that's like a really over discussed concept in culture nowadays but rendered interestingly in a movie which is hard to do

but more so that like in my mind at the end of this movie what what McNamara and Lanthimos are saying is that the only way to get out of the other side of this kaleidoscope of exploitation that she experiences whether it was um the the original Victoria character physically that her body is probably still withholding within or the Bella character in being exploited as a scientific experimentation by someone that she still has a lot of love for the only way to get through all of that is to um and maybe this is more in the lanthimos tone like have resignation about it just like be a little bit defeatist about

the whole thing the the experience that has happened to you and to accept it and move on well i worry i i i think that amanda is right that that is a bit of a plot convenience rather than a point you know that like if the ultimate takeaway from this movie is you have to accept that stuff sucked to be happy that's kind of a weird message is it not yeah i'm stuck on i didn't realize until bob Bobby was just speaking. I mean, I did realize, but I didn't put together that the mom's name was Victoria, which is, you know, like the literal stand in for Victoria. Like, well, Victoria the Queen, but like an entire era of repression and. The limits of womanhood. Well, limits of womanhood, the limits of self-expression like fear shame like illness and so to me i'm reading

it i read this more as like the the same not the most social commentary of it is you know maybe the weirdos are the people who have it figured out the best and i guess there is hope in that but there is also like there are a bunch of weirdos all living together with, you know, their pig chicken and the guy who has been like rebranded as a goat. Yeah. Because that's like the only way to find peace in this world. Amazing commune metaphor at the end. But, you know, like I do, Sean, to your larger question, I do read this as like certainly the most optimistic or deeply felt of his movies, which I thought was really interesting. It's just it doesn't, it's weird and a lot of bad things happen.

But the core of it is like very, very different. Yeah, it's Bella's exuberance is the driving force of the movie. Almost like warm hearted, which is like interesting. Yeah. I think it is actually a little bit of a saccharine note for a movie to end on that has so many of these elements. And I think part of it is just that there's a weight of influence with everything you've seen from Lanthimos before. Where like at the end of it, I was like, okay, maybe he's just in a happier place in his life. You know, it kind of feels that way. We should say, I didn't mention that this is actually based on a novel

by Alasdair Gray, the Scottish author. And he took quite a few liberties apparently with the story. I have not read that, the Gray story. But, I think that

Lanthimos and Stone recognizing a kind of creative kinship has done something very interesting to Lanthimos's work the favorite is mean girls i think that's super smart reading of that movie but there's also a kind of like

in in those characters a desperation to be happy um and i think that but they don't they don't get there and they and it's really and it seems like really futile. And the last shot of that film is devastating. I mean, it's just like incredibly sad if you don't recall, I guess, spoiler for the favorite, but it's like all of the rabbits who are meant to be the stand in for the children that the Olivia Colman character couldn't or lost. Right. So it's just like that there is, that's about, it's about power. It's about how women can be even meaner than

men um but it's ultimately well she said it folks well i mean they can we're very powerful um but then also just about the impossibility of connection or other people to anyone like that's a very lonely movie particularly in the face of i think the thing that he is kind of consumed by which is the sort of rules and regulations of life whether it be life at the court of a queen or just life in this society in which you have to be you can be turned into another animal in an effort to extend your lifespan or what have you and find true love um i think like it's kind of hard to know where this fits in for me, black hole that I am.

Like, I love the movies that are like the desolation movies. Like I love the killing of a sacred deer. I think that's an amazing film. I mean, that's also his horror movie. Like that's, you know, so of course that speaks to you. And it's like, I think it's very cool that he's just kind of like, he did a horror movie. He did a rom-com. He did a monster movie.

He did it, you know, like that. Sounds like Kinds of Kindness, his next film film which is coming out this year is his anthology that is his like multi-character which i think is a cop-out as you know but um well well let's watch the film you know um you know alps is kind of his ghost story dog tooth as you said is kind of his like coming of age family drama uh in way high school sort of the lobster is his romantic tragedy I think maybe it's like

maybe I don't know that's anytime you can poke your eyes out for love you gotta do it but you know

but then they'll be together will they well but doesn't isn't that the that famous moment at the end

where she's not there and I'm like oh he's alone oh well I guess so that's we're all alone yeah like to me it's so interesting this movie and I'm I will chew on alone oh well i guess so that's we're all alone that's like to me

it's so interesting this movie and and i'm i'm i will chew on what you said about bobby because i don't think i've really fully landed on how what i think the ultimate point of view is of poor things in that respect um but he's he is like a kubrickian we are all alone kind of filmmaker at least has been up until this point um and we're going to live alone, we're going to die alone, and we're stuck in this cage of expectation. So I'm curious to see what the next couple of things are like and whether or not this signals some sort of transformation or evolution or however you want to see it from him.

I would say it's like probably my fourth favorite. I mean, my third favorite of his. Dogtooth was a very exciting discovery for me. That one hit like a bomb, and I love Sacred Deer, and I love the lobster. of his dog tooth was a very exciting discovery for me yeah that was a very that hit that one hit like a bomb and i love sacred deer and i love the lobster it's probably between the favorite and poor things for next for me favorite is without a question my favorite lol uh see what i did there and then i think the lobster and then either poor things or Dogtooth. Okay. We've not mentioned Alps, Kanetta, and My Best Friend.

I've never seen My Best Friend. It was made in 2001. I don't even know if you can see it. Kanetta is very good. It's gotten kind of recirculated in the last few years. I think it was on the Criterion channel for a spell. Alps is also very good. I guess he's just now fully like an American-British filmmaker.

It just seems like he's not going to be doing anything in Greek anytime soon, which is perfectly fine. Let's use this as an opportunity to talk about awards and do some quick power rankings, okay? Because this movie is very well liked, in some cases adored. Emma Stone. It's getting a lot of what's the last great thing you watched answers. We've gotten it a couple times.

A couple times this week. Oh, interesting. Well, that's also because it's still people are still seeing it. It's out. thing you watched answer we've gotten it a couple times a couple times okay oh interesting so well that's also because it's still people are seeing it it's out yeah yeah no that's very true but still this is a movie that premiered at festivals four months ago was released over a month ago in new york and la we talked about the holdovers poor things oppenheimer triangle that i think is kind of dominating the best picture race i think everything you you said about Emma Stone is right about her role in the Best Actress race. I do think Ruffalo and Dafoe will be nominated for Supporting Actor.

I could be wrong, but I just have a gut feeling. You can expect screenplay. You can expect production design. You can expect costumes. You can expect hair and makeup. All of those categories, you're going to find more things. Her sideburns,

I spent a lot of time thinking about. Did you see that she accidentally dyed her hair black for this? That she was trying to do something different and she made a mistake

and Yorgos was like, it's perfect. Yeah, I also like the back triangle of the, I mean, I assume that's the wig, but you know how it's like a reverse triangle, her hair when it's down her back?

Yes. Which is meant to represent what? I don't know. The Illuminati, probably. No, no, no. The female form, I think. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, but so what's interesting is that in the Da Vinci Code, the down triangle is the male form, and then the woman is the Holy Grail open.

You can understand. We know about this because of the Weezer song Pink Triangle. And then it's why, you know, when it's spoiler alert for the Da Vinci Code, it's in the Louvre. But it's, you know, inside the Louvre, there's the pyramid that's like coming down. And then there's a smaller one. The Da Vinci Code would go where in the Tom Hanks Hall of Fame? You guys are missing out. Does the character that Tom Hanks plays in the Da Vinci Code exist in the Poor Things universe?

Robert Langdon? Yes. Is it like 200 years later? Yeah, yeah. Well, it's more like, it's like 100 years later. Is Bella Dr. Robert Langdon's great-grandmother? Yes or no? That would be great.

Okay. Let's rank these movies. Okay. So I'll just give us the ranking that we collaborated on on December 7th. Sort of. We collaborated, and then at the end,

you threw in something that, at the time, I was like, I think this is wrong, and I... Amanda did voice her protest. Correct. You did. And then at the end, you threw in something that at the time I was like, I think this is wrong. And I. Amanda did voice for protest. You did. Yeah. Can we not collaborate?

Can we not give to each other? It's not collaboration when you just change things without my approval at the end. And you're just like, I'm doing this. And then. I had your approval. We sat across from each other. No, that did not. You could have walked out in protest and said, this is my last episode.

I just saved that for the important stance. You know? Well, Jason Manzoukas is right around the corner ready to fill in the minute that you leave. So I would like to thank him

for his efforts. On December 7th, and again, we do this once a month and we've held to that since September. I feel very good about that. We do, like,

this is also, these are rules that you make up in the middle of the night. And they help. They give us structure. I'm very good about that. These are rules that you make up in the middle of the night. And they help. They give us structure. I'm very proud of our rules. December 7th. It's not like you don't tell anyone else about them.

Of course I do. I share a document that is full of information. But where is it written? Show me where it's written down that we do this once a month. Show me. It's written in the annals of time because I've said this to you on the podcast before. But that's not written down. Carved into Stonehenge, actually.

Yes. There's AI iterating on me saying that right now. And you say stuff that you've been saying to yourself into a microphone. I'm like Bella Baxter. I'm just experiencing the world on my own time. Okay, let's do it. On December 7th, we said the top 10 was In Order from 10 to 1. The Color Purple Maestro, May December, Past Lives, Poor Things, American Fiction, Barbie, 7th we said the top 10 was in order from 10 to 1 the color purple maestro may december past lives

poor things american fiction barbie killers of the flower moon the holdovers and oppenheimer at number one i how did we land on poor things at six there was it just because it hadn't come out yet yeah it was coming out that day yeah okay so we were like in the lag a little bit okay so it's january 11th we're going to do a new 10. Okay. I think, of course, you're right that The Color Purple is now in a very difficult position because it had a huge opening and then it has fallen significantly in the box office. Listen, no shots to The Color Purple.

It's more that there are other films we didn't put on this list, particularly international films, that I just, I think, have more of a chance. Do you think we'll be removing one or two films from this list right now? Two. Two. Okay. Did you get my approval for that? No, this is called collaborating.

How do you feel about that? Sean, let me teach you about collaboration. How many do you think we'll be removing? See, returning the question, this would be key. If you did it more often, perhaps we would collaborate more. I don't care that much about you. I know that. I can tell.

I think two is right. I think what the two are, we may disagree about. The film that, to me, is missing right now from this list is Anatomy of a Fall. And the film that very obviously should come off as the color purple, based on kind of how critics awards guild awards you know sag ensemble notwithstanding um the fact that the film has just not been the box office sensation that it seemed like it could have been coming out of christmas so that's off anatomy of a fall to me is in i want to see either the nine or the ten spot. I would agree. Probably nine. Nine.

Is May, December still on the list? I don't know. I'm willing to talk with you about it. I mean, it obviously had a ton of heat coming off the critics, coming off you loving it, coming off being on Netflix and everyone having an opinion because everyone being able to see it.

It does seem like it's waning a little bit. Obviously, Charles Melton, red carpet notwithstanding, was not nominated for a SAG, you know, did not. So that wave is coming off a little bit. I will say, and I forgot to mention this during the SAG discussion, the actors used to be a dominant part of the voting body, and they are significantly less so as time goes by and new people and new kinds of participants in Hollywood and in the film industry join the Academy. And particularly international voters.

So one thing, is May, December available everywhere? Because I very specifically remember that Netflix acquired North American rights. I don't know the answer to that. So that, because that could matter. It could. In terms of people being able to see it. Well, if you're in the Academy, you can view it on the Academy screen or portal.

I mean, that's true, but do they? I hope so. Okay. I know that I do. I look at, I revisit films on the guild that I'm a member of. I look at the films there and they do a good job of populating the films there.

So I hope they do. I mean, what's even the point of being in the Academy if you don't want to watch the movies and vote? We ask this every year. Yeah. I know that there are

a lot of people who don't, but I think there are a lot of people who do. Okay. So May, December, I think is actually among the more widely seen movies in this slate.

Like, May, December is way more widely seen, in my opinion, than The Zone of Interest. I would argue than Anatomy of a Fall. I would argue then Anatomy of a Fall. I would argue then even Past Lives. I think more people have seen May, December.

I mean, May, December has big movie stars in it. Yeah. May, December is Natalie Portman in it. It was on Netflix. It was on Netflix. But it's also, and Todd Haynes is an acclaimed filmmaker. I mean, this is a person who has been doing this for 30 years, making movies that people love.

I like the movie a lot i'm not you know casting aspersions i'm just like where is it in the it's a it's a really good question i think it's you might be right that there is an international body that doesn't get it or that isn't seeing it so it's and i and i don't know if it's as buzzy among the international set as it is among all of the people. I would argue, though, that this movie is in a better position than Past Lives right now.

I mean, the SAG thing for Past Lives is really tough. No nominations. What's up with... What's going on with My Best Friends at A24? I think they weirdly had too many good movies.

Yeah. I think that can happen sometimes. I think if they had released Iron Claw in November, that's a movie that, I think Zac Efron would be competing. I genuinely think that. I think that's a good story

for them to tell. I think that people like that movie. It's a hit. It's very commercial. I don't know. I think they had too many good movies. I think it's part of the reason why people are like,

when can I see Zone of Interest? Because they're trying to not crowd each other's movies out. Even a movie like Bo is Afraid which is very divisive and weird that could have been an awards movie if they dropped it in

October in some certain respects like certainly in like makeup and hairstyling or costume design Joaquin was there at the Golden Globes

sitting at that table those nominations were good until he lost and then he left did you notice that i didn't but it makes sense at the very end the whole table cleared out except for jared leto yeah jared leto stuck it out yeah guy jared leto yeah my guy you're absolutely really really academy

award winner jared leto yeah okay um um kubrick does not died without an oscar jared leto he's got one thank god can you believe it had a rewatchable yet uh he has we did the shining oh you did yeah oh i didn't remember that uh it was a very good episode as i recall um who was on it me chris and bill oh nice uh i would i would do every single cougar i know i just i was asking because it comes up all the time that you've only done only done one kubrick yeah oh no two eyes wide shut oh that's right you did do that I guess I've been listening to some back catalog before you did those, and you were really angry that you're doing whatever. I'll be doing the solo rewatchables of Killer's Kiss,

followed by Fear and Desire solo rewatchables. So here's the thing about past lives. Your heart's in the way on this one. They're also working really hard. Sure. Celine Song and Greta Lee are out there and Greta Lee is probably winning

award season from a styling perspective No one knows who that is. Greta Lee. Yeah. She's the star of past lives. If you're listening I'm a huge fan.

long into this podcast and you don't know who Greta Lee is. Well, I don't mean the listeners of this podcast. Important character on the morning show. represents the American audience.

Yes. I like that idea. Yes. Don't you think a lot of people know Sweet Birthday Baby? That's who that is. Yeah. They liked that show. Yeah.

I don't think they even know it's the same person. It's such a different performance. I mean, she transforms in past lives to give a performance I've never seen her give. So here's one thing that I need to happen. Greta Lee, as best I can tell from Instagram, I have no insider knowledge here, is a good friend of Alison Roman. I need Alison Roman to give the campaign that Instagram boost. She's been doing a little bit of it. Let's really see what we can do here.

I don't think Alison Roman will be the decider in the race for best actress at the Academy Awards. She could at least help with the nomination you know let's andrea rise bro this a little uh okay this sounds like an exciting second career for you when you leave and manzoukas comes in so we can we can iterate on that um let's do the list okay you what is it number 10 we agree on anatomy of a fall at nine yeah so you can have you can have your way with this because i had my way last time with this We agree on Anatomy of a Fall at Nine. Yeah. So... You can have your way with this because I had my way last time with that.

Well, I mean, I'll talk it out with you. It could be May, December. It could be Zone of Interest. Like, where are you with Zone of Interest right now? I think it's a borderline masterpiece that like 180 people have seen. Yeah, I didn't ask for your critical review. I was...

Let me finish talking. We both think that it's a masterpiece. Why are you trying to claim it for yourself? I'm making a point that people haven't seen it. I agree. I think for it to take that spot,

it needs to be more widely seen. It's also a tough sit. It's a very dark film with a very scary, it's a very scary experience. In Los Angeles, it's playing at the Vista

on film. I actually would really like to see it. I'm kind of waiting to see it a second time to go see it in that experience. Chris and Phoebe might. I heard. I heard that they, I think they found it chilling.

Yeah. Which it is. And on the one hand, I think the subject matter is obviously incredibly important and artfully rendered. On the other hand, I think it's a,

it's an art piece. And those kinds of films don't always do well. So, it's a little hard to say right now. I don't feel strongly that it has to be 10. I think May, December is much more widely seen and more divisive. But it being seen means that there are more people who probably really like it.

And that's the thing with preferential balloting. You have to love the movie. So where do you think Zone of Interest is in the international race? It's going to win international. You think it will? I do. Okay. Wow.

I think. It's not competing against Anatomy of a Fall. So do you think then that that helps or hurts, best picture? Or do you think people will say like, okay, we've done Zone of Interest? The latter. Okay. That's what I think. All right.

That doesn't, now look. Do you think it's sort of like a Cold War thing where it'll win international, Glazer will get in and director, and- It is absolutely possible.

And it won't, because Cold War did not get a Best Picture nomination, right? It did not get a Best Picture nomination. And it's sort of like a chilly international,

I mean, different situation. We saw this with Another Round, where it got a screenplay nomination, but it didn't get in to Best Picture. Okay, then we can do May, December at 10 anatomy will fall at nine past lives at eight

um well i think maestro is at seven i don't think it's gonna fall out i i don't either but if it falls out yeah gonna be crazy on the the morning of January 23rd because that is when the Oscar nominations are announced. I've had eight people in the last three days ask me when are the Oscar nominations announced. That is what my identity is in the world now, is a guy who knows that. You did it. I did it. You did it. I did it.

Well, did I? I need to have a Bella Baxter, what's next for me moment. Remember when the Oscar nominations were announced the day before my due date yeah those sick do you know this story mommy no so it was literally the day before my due date and um and my doctor this is incredible that i don't i haven't told you this story um my wonderful ob was starting to talk to me about getting induced because Knox turned out to be quite large and like health considerations, whatever. And I was very open to that. So we were literally scheduling the date to be induced.

And my doctor was like, well, what about next Monday? And you'd come in Monday night. And I said, can we do Tuesday night? And my doctor's like, why? And I said, well, because the Oscar nominations are being announced on Tuesday morning. And if he's not here, you know, at least I'd like to do my job. And my doctor was like, we can do Tuesday night. But he's like, I just want to make sure that, is there someone who can do the podcast if the baby comes before?

And I was like, yeah, it's the most insane I've ever been. Sure enough, the baby comes before and i was like i did i was like yeah it's the most insane i've ever been sure enough the baby did not come i did the nominations pods and then i went to the hospital that afternoon thank god i'll tell you what yeah one final pod yeah whatever performed enmity we experienced on this show that is why you will always be the co-host of this show because you actually asked your ob that question you rescheduled the birth of your child, your child whom I love. Yeah. You delayed one day on his life. I did.

To talk about the Oscars with me. I did. Very powerful stuff. True insanity. That is like being pregnant is the most insane thing that can ever happen to you. And that's what happens. It was really, really worth it because what was nominated that year? Who cares? It doesn't matter. Your beloved Nightmare Alley was. That was nice. It was really, really worth it because what was nominated that year? Who cares?

It doesn't matter. Your beloved Nightmare Alley was. That was nice. That was the number 10 spot. Yeah. And it's been all downhill for Brad since then. If Maestro isn't nominated for Best Picture, well, one, should we be coming into the office and filming our reactions to the Oscars? And two, do you feel comfortable doing that at like 7 o'clock in the morning?

No. Not unless like you pay for like a thousand dollar facial to like get all of the, well, you got. In what world am I personally paying for your facial?

You gotta hit that approve, you know? And you gotta manage, you gotta manage up in terms of all the other approvals because I am not at a phase in my life

where I can go on camera at 7 a.m without some like lymphatic massage you know i don't know and let me be clear i don't know about lymphatic massage john like you aren't really either yeah you put it up there also with like shoulder holds i don't know about i don't care though like if my crippling body and aging like i'm good with it i'm open about it like Like I'm falling apart. Me not knowing about holding weights. Of course I don't know. I'm dying. Of course I don't understand these things. Anybody who thinks I'm an idiot for not, of course I'm an idiot.

I've completely seeded my life to films and a two-year-old. What are we talking about here? I'm so glad it took this long for it to come up. Otherwise it would have derailed the whole great conversation that we had about poor things. The best of the many reactions of you just getting owned for that was the guy who was like, Sean has clearly

never gone to 9.30 a.m. sculpting core class with his wife. And like that, you have not. And I'm out there every day.

Who thought that I was going to that class? Is there a single person on earth? Bobby and I care about our health, you know? Of course I care about my health. We care about functional movement.

Yes, we do. I'm not against it. Actually, I don't know whether your routine does enough, but that's something that we can discuss during the auction with the protein plan.

Wonderful, excellent. Here's something I can promise you forever. I will never comment on either of your bodies. I don't think that that's appropriate. So I have no idea

how this became a subject on this show. I feel like as a manager and leader at Spotify and also as your friend, I'm just not going to do that. I just started with a movie related question for you. And ultimately, I was commenting on your wildly outsized ego and self-confidence as opposed to your body. But it has nothing to do with ego. It's just complete ignorance. Like, I have no idea.

Great, I was commenting on that too. But that is completely fair game. But people were like, this guy, he's so full of himself. It's like, I don't go to any weightlifting classes. I don't lift weights other than the 15-pound barbells that are in my home theater that I lift whilst watching Vim Vendor's movies. That's good stuff. Yeah, that's great.

That's my lifestyle. You got to find what works for you, I guess. And can't you see how it's working? Yeah. Look at how trim I am at the ripe old age of 41. I'm completely, I'm doing well. Except for your shoulders, which are the size of bowling balls and can hold three-pound weights out for 90 minutes. Well, one day we will see.

When that day comes, I don't know. Maybe when Abbott Elementary comes back. Okay, what's number six? We're going to hold Maestro at seven, but with a massive asterisk. So, that would then put American Fiction at six. Yes, which

I think is right. Barbie at five. Killers at four. Now here's the big question. Yeah, so do you want to do Poor Things? I think you're right about Killers at four. Yeah. Previously it had been at two and three over the last few months.

Which, you know, was just us living in a nice world of imagination. Leo not in SAG is a blow to Killers of the Flower Moon. It's okay. It's a masterpiece. We know that. I agree. Okay.

Do you want to do, where are you on holdovers versus poor things? I don't know. I feel like they're both. I really don't. I think they're 2A and 2B. Okay. We can do that. Do you agree?

Yeah. Well, which is A and which is B? Which do you like more? I know what you like more. To me, they're the same. To me, they're, in so many ways, they're the same. Yeah. Because they are both, I thought about this a lot.

People seemed annoyed about our conversation about the holdovers because we were not praiseworthy enough about it. Yeah, that's fine. Which I think is fair. I think we were a little bit looking too hard for the thing that wasn't there in the movie than the thing that was there. But let me just say...

People are allowed to have their reaction. Absolutely. But let me just say that I feel almost exactly the same about those movies. They're both 8 out of 10s for me. Insofar as the execution on everything is great. The writing is great. The performances are great. The direction is great.

What has come before from the filmmaker set me up for a certain kind of expectation and a certain kind of interest. Like I have a certain kind of interest in pain in Lantimus as filmmakers. And these movies felt like shifts that I didn't vibe with as much, ultimately. I think that that is a very measured and intellectual way of saying that you didn't respond to them as much as other people did. And that's fine. And people can, I know many people who have texted me being like, well, the holdovers,

I loved it. And that's wonderful. I liked it a lot. That's, you know. But you preferred Poor Things. You guys make your own podcast. I think so. Yeah.

I think just because. But again, that's like in the same way that I preferred. Barbie Oppenheimer. No. Though that, yes. Past Lives to Transformers Rise of the Beast. What is the name of the favorite to Poor Things? Sorry, this is my long podcast.

Just personal preference, like things that you were interested in, and I was just like dazzled at the costumes, and I find Tony McNamara's writing and just the things that they're making jokes about made me laugh more than The Holdovers did. Also, The Holdovers is secretly quite sad. So, you know, it's just what you like to go see. They're both very good. They're tied right now, you think?

Are they tied for second place? I guess technically tied for third place because you can't tie for second place. I guess they're tied for third place. I mean, it's two, like, very different but significant voting blocks, right? The Holdovers is just a very classical movie that feels like it was made in the 70s and speaks to that nostalgia factor for a lot of voters. Poor Things is obviously extremely technically and visually accomplished and i think probably speaks more to the younger or newer members of the academy it is very old versus young and oppenheimer is the great tiebreaker because it does both it's kind of everything to everybody right i just also kind

of think that preferential wise most people will put Oppenheimer one and then one of those other the two or do you think a lot of people will do I have been thinking about this because of preferential I think people will say Oppenheimer is going to do well I'm comfortable putting it at two or three it's been dominating all the way down and then but what I really love is the holdovers moved me or you know sure but the zone of interest is the most important movie sure but that's that's still dividing the number one spot and if Oppenheimer is at number two for is the holdovers moved me? Or, you know, the zone of interest is the most important movie of the year or whatever. Sure, but that's still dividing the number one spot.

And if Oppenheimer is at number two for most people, then does it really matter? It won't. It won't, ultimately. Because there's going to be very few people who are like

Oppenheimer at 10. Yeah. There is an acknowledgement of its greatness. Hold on, let me look at our list. What's our list? Our meaning of the 10 movies we think will be nominated?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Would I do that? There's no way you think Maestro is better than Oppenheimer. Yeah, that's true. There's no way. No, you're right. There's just not. You're right.

You are correct. What about American Fiction? Write down the time and date that I said that. You should be forced like I forced myself to rank 100 films at the end of every year. You're right that I would put it above american fiction and do you prefer anatomy of a fall maybe even you don't look as much yeah you definitely liked albanheimer more than may december i really and i liked all of these movies the problem that's the thing the problem with albanheimer is just the third hour for me I don't I like I don't know what happened and also Emily Blunt

like being an Oscar favorite you know who agrees with you about that is Joe Coy oh great yeah he definitely feels it was too long

third hour didn't work that's not he never said the third hour didn't work he only said it was too long which is how you know that he's amateur hour because the real joke

was in like what the hell was Rami Malek doing with the clipboard okay well as you hear from our chortles that is a great joke thank god you weren't there to write for joe coy that night um i don't think oppenheimer is going to be number nine or ten on many boards so i think

i think it's not even on mine it's eight and maybe even no it's eight but it's no it's got to be seven what else is do you like the holdovers more than Oppenheimer? Oh, no, no, no. The holdovers. Yeah, yeah, yeah. American Fiction. Yeah, you're right. Maestro.

You're right. And May December. Yeah, no, you're right. So it's a number six on yours. Okay. Yeah, that's pretty good. Maybe honestly I'd put it up before Poor Things, personally. Oppenheimer.

So that's interesting. So if even you. Yeah. Noted Oppenheimer declaimer. No, I would say questioner, you know? Yeah. Noted stick in the mud. I'm just here asking questions about a clipboard. Yeah. Thank God there's someone to do it. Thank you. Did we bring them in? When you leave the big picture, will you go to Ben Shapiro's podcast network yes or no it's very rude i listen where will you go i delayed the birth of my child for this podcast we are infinitely grateful you can

never get rid of me okay well i'll speak with daniel like about that but first can you clear the facial uh yes i will approve your facial and then you will be separated um let's go to my conversation with julian Moore and Todd Haynes. We have a returning champion, Todd Haynes, here on the podcast. And for the first time, the magical Julianne Moore. Thank you both for being here.

I love May, December so much. I'm so glad you're here. This is your fifth collaboration. I was wondering, do you remember your first meeting, the first time you two met and what you talked about? Oh my God. Yes. We do remember it. It was my audition. It was my audition for Safe. And it was, yes, very, very memorable for me because i so badly wanted this part i i loved i loved the script so much and i'd never seen anything like it and i was really determined to get it but i'm very very nervous um and we didn't really i i don't think we had a lot of conversation in the room right no yeah very professional i was told she won't read or her agent kept she's not gonna read she's not gonna read and I don't think we had a lot of conversation in the room, right? No. Very professional.

I was told she won't read. Or her agent kept saying, she's not going to read. She's not going to read. And Julianne immediately was like, would you like me to read for you? And I was like, oh, yeah, that would be amazing. And I read three scenes. There were three scenes. And at the end of the first one, Tom was like, okay, would you read another? I was like, okay.

And then I read the second one. He said, okay, would you read another? I was like, okay. And then I read the second one. He said, okay, would you read another? I was like, okay. And then the third one, I read it and said, okay. I said, okay. And then we went, bye. That was it. Seriously.

And then Christine was in the room. And when she left, we were just like, holy shit. And we did film it. But there was some malfunction with the camera. With the autofocus, never found Julianne, which is such a sort of statement on the character of Carol White, who can't find herself in the story. And we were so excited to show people,

because we were trying to close the financing on the movie, and say, I think we just figured this out. Lindsay Law from American Playhouse, I believe, who was really such a champion of it. And we showed this blurred out tape with Julianne's unbelievable. But you heard that voice, that voice established itself on the tape and um but yeah it was one of the most remarkable experiences of my whole filmmaking career for sure but i'm telling you that screenplay was so clear it was so it was it was really evident to me who that character was in the way that in the todd's precision of of dialogue and I um I was

able to make these these choices with her because it seemed like it was on the page to me it was very very exciting to read I was I was um I introduced uh the prize for Sammy Birch uh recently at the New York Film Critics Circle. And I said, and I believe this, because I said I have also written screenplays, but I think all screenplays, even when I myself have filled them with visual references and information,

that they're kind of written in the dark, and they kind of need to be in the dark. It's sort of like the dream work that we do in our dreams. And it's not until you turn the camera on to the subject that that script transfers from something that is virtual and co-ed to something that will be what the film is. And so Julianne's ability to embody this concept that I sort of saw, but it was not clear yet and safe. It fulfilled something completely, obviously.

It completed and made that film possible to even work in any way was in that performance. And it was just, uh, so it was one of those moments where you find this counterpart, you know, this creative counterpart in your, in your dreams. You know, I just rewatched it the other day to prepare for this conversation and I was like just hammered by it all over again, such a, such a masterpiece. And it's, it's related to something I wanted to ask you both about May, December two, which

is, you know, you mentioned finding that voice Todd, and I assume you had to find a voice for Gracie as well, Julianne. Like what is that process like for you when you discover whether it's like a physical representation or just the tone of a character? Like, can you talk about that specifically for this character and in this film? Yeah, sure. I mean, I think that's one of the most exciting parts of our work you know that we get to do that where we are like todd was saying it's sort of like actors or interpreters you know we take that we we have an experience with a with a piece of writing and you think okay looking at your script which is your document what what are you know, everything a human being does is a signifier, you know, says to the world, like how we, how we are, how we want to be seen,

or, or unconsciously how we are seen. But, you know, so you have to consider all those things. And certainly vocally, you know, with Carol White, that my decision was based on the fact that this is a woman who was not attached to her own body. So her voice wasn't even on her vocal cords. With Gracie, you know, here's somebody who has committed this great transgression, really, really huge. But I think in order to live with herself and she needs to tell the story

that it's a great love story, that she was rescued by a prince and she's a princess. And so, you know, she has to kind of elevate this boy to a man and she remains sort of forever the innocent forever a child so I started thinking about a physical way to to to manifest that that idea of being a child and so talk to Todd about you know maybe doing a lisp which is of course you know you're something we usually associate with children and um and it felt like I mean I remember when I called Todd we were talking about it's like oh i'm kind of messing

around with this idea and it felt exciting too because then natalie would have something concrete to work with we needed to establish physical characteristics that now they could come in and start to become crazy physically so that also was also a clue for that as well. Todd, I've been describing the last few films as your for hire era, which may seem like I'm denigrating you, but what is it like making films now that are not originating with you? Is it changing the way you've made films?

Are you thinking differently about directing since they're not, for the most part, screenplays you're writing? I't know that I mean I can't say that it has demarcated as a whole a whole different way of working it's more that every film kind of requires its own strategies comes from a whole different set of preparatory preparations and and research and and um and influences and and some of them are very very specific like the bob billings script we had a a plethora of of incredibly specific histories to draw from and and and music to draw from and work to draw from and a cult very specific and intense culture to uh you know transform into a film interpretation of this

artist and similarly the velvet goldmine film but uh but every one is is so different because safe was an original story and far from heaven was the original story but it derives so much from other movies as well so other movies whether i'm writing the script or not um because look these to me they're all um they're all different kinds of discourses they're about different kinds of languages they're languages that we all speak some of them we're more fluent in than others as audiences or we don't realize that we're as fluent in these languages as we are until we see them but we but unless you you bring that language to the audience they don't involve themselves in the film and you or that you leave spaces for them to fill in the words you leave

words out you leave part of the language out and then they have to fill it in and this this script that sammy's offered that to such a remarkable degree and it's things that i've i think i've done or tried to do in my own writing on films as well um A lot of your films feature this kind of like mixed media feeling that you're describing where there's a lot, all of these influences are seemingly under the surface and then sometimes on the surface. And that's also true of this movie.

So Julianne, having worked with Todd so many times, do you personally try to excavate all of those things when you're in one of these films? Do you go back and listen to the Dylan record or do you watch Douglas Sirk films when you're preparing? What do you do when you're getting involved in one of these films? Do you go back and listen to the Dylan record or, you know, do you watch Douglas Sirk films when you're preparing? Like, what do you do when you're getting involved in one of these projects? Well, I love what Todd just said about not, maybe not knowing that we speak these languages, you know, because I think one of the things that happens when Todd is working in, well, when he's working in a genre, you know, like we're working

on Far From Heaven, what was interesting, like actually in terms of the speech and that, there was certainly a way of articulating and there's a tone to the speech that was sort of something that we've been cultured in, right? Because we've watched all these movies on TV and you don't even know until you tell us all the page. I'm like, oh, it's going to sound like this. It's going to sound like all those movies i watched after school but also todd is a tremendous communicator um to everybody who's involved in the production you know so he'll have he'll send a list of movies and he'll he'll send the music that he's thinking of and he'll um show you his storyboards and so there's you're never you're never lost you know you you always know as an actor where you're fitting in and where you fit in with everybody else.

And he has such a strong production team around him too. So you're working with all of these artists who are communicating with Todd and kind of accessing his tone. So we're all in there. So yeah, we do. We look at the references. I think it's clear from him he always communicates

what he wants to us and um it's a it's really wonderful wonderful way of work and one thing i always say about todd is that he does a tremendous amount of work for you what's so what's so interesting tell me if this is how how you see it because i feel like julianne makes use of all of that stuff she almost does it like instantly like it's imbued into her the references the films that i'm thinking of the histories and stories but then there's a place where i i think you just you don't she does not stay enslaved to it she doesn't say stay um captive to it there's a place where you seem to just meet and take it in and then it's in you right and then you're on your own in the way that it comes out of her you know and different actors work in so many different ways yeah but i've seen that with you and i feel like i know it's all there

but we're not like referencing it on on the set we're not sitting there going oh remember what you know it it's already moved into something else yeah i feel like todd's references and i'll give you as an actor this kind of incredible scaffolding you know and and because you have that scaffolding because i have it i feel so free you know, and because you have that scaffolding, because I have it, I feel so free, you know, I'm like, oh, I know, I know how he's framing this, I know how the music is going to be, I know what your, what your color references are, and so that, and then within that, I can do whatever I want, because he's, he defines so much. And we've been, we've been sharing these conversations about the color and how it's going to affect the wig color for for kathy whitaker the wig color for gracie the clothes

coloring that great the palette of gracie's clothes and and and and her makeup and how that reflects the environment and the set and the house that she lives in and all these things are already that's the stuff that has to happen way way in advance because it just simply takes the time to prepare a lot of create the waves and particularly in specifics but that's already there so all that the sort of all the swatches and color references and all the location photos and so forth. And I had a great Q&A with Kit with April the other day, who was our costume designer on May, December. And she just does so much.

She had a great time working with Julianne and developing all of these ideas and then providing ample choices and options. We had so little time, but it made it so then Julianne knew exactly where to go within the choices that she offered her in terms of clothes. So I think this is in part a product of the film being available on Netflix, but I have recommended the movie to a lot of people. And I feel like this is maybe as many people as I've ever seen a Todd Haynes movie. And so then that leads to like a fascinating series of reactions to the movie. And the thing I hear most often is, is it okay for me to laugh? You know, am I supposed to laugh? And so, you know, Todd, I may have asked you about

this in the past, but I'm very interested in tone and figuring out like what the tone is of the movie that you're going for and working with your actors to make sure they're hitting the right tone. And, and then I am curious a little bit about how you feel about how that tone is then received in the aftermath, but specifically when you're making the movie, what are you saying about like what kind of a movie this is, or is this a laugh line, or is this a moment of, of great melodrama and of great melodrama, and we're trying to play it in this way? Does he get that specific when you're in the process of making the movie? I would refrain from saying that we sort of codify certain lines as laugh lines and perform

them with that intent or with that expectation. The humor in the writing was so embedded in a kind of commentary about who these people are and a kind of keenness about the layers in which they built around themselves as protective devices and ways that you can't really penetrate who they are. And so we know to be suspicious. And I think there's also great sort of tragic tension in the lives that we see these characters persisting in and that there's anxiety in that. And I think there's also places where we all see little teeny bits of ourselves

doing variations of the same and the way we survive our lives and have narratives about who we are and what our relationships are about. And I think those are invariable places that need to break. And laughter is one place that that happens, but you never know how vocalized or present that's going to literally be in the belly of the viewer watching it you know like um and and the tone but but of course the music and there were things that i decided to do from the outset that set up very very strong ideas and triggers for a viewer to say, wait a minute, it's on you.

You have a role to play here to navigate this. And it might be fun. Yes. I was going to say, I think some of the laughter in this film is pleasurable. It's the pleasure that you receive when you watch interesting behavior on screen

or live or anything. You see something and you start to laugh and you're like, oh my God. It's like people are, people are communicating

something to one another and it's heightened and it's exciting and it's emotional and you sort of get this pleasure and you laugh out of that.

Yeah. But I think it's funny because I do think that question that you're asking, Sean, that people have come to, like, should I laugh, is dancing around these people

who don't see themselves. So you almost feel like you don't know whether to laugh because, you know, am I seeing something there? I mean, obviously, we're seeing all these things they're not seeing.

And that creates a kind of divide between the subjects of the film and ourselves. And this is particularly true, obviously, with Natalie's character, Elizabeth, and Julie's character, Gracie. Something very different is happening with the role of Joe. The film does tonally kind of, you know, it evolves or devolves however you imagine the arc of the story. And it does become a very sad story at times. And, you know, you talked about working with Julianne on Safe. And that was really your first, I guess, like, you know, above the fold role, right? Your first starring role.

And the same is true for Charles. And there's so much weight on him in the second half of the film as an actor. I'm kind of wondering like how you all talked about that and worked with him on that because it's such a huge responsibility surrounded by these, you know, incredibly gifted actors. And Todd, you've made so many films.

And yet, if he doesn't work, the movie doesn't work. You know what I mean? If he can't rise to that final 30 minutes of the movie it doesn't play so i'm kind of curious about what those conversations with him are like what it's like to put him in a position like that to kind of take over the movie i'm not i don't know if you shot the film chronologically i assume not but i'm curious about the discussions around it you know shifting to become a big really his movie in some ways in the final third i just said said, if you don't, if you don't, if you, if you fuck this up, man, and it made him, it works, you know, and he got really scared. And, oh man, I mean, look, it started, it started in Charles.

It started in his remarkable intuitions and instincts as an actor, as a man, as a guy, as a Korean-American kid who could identify with aspects of Joe from his own life. but he was hardly just some like, just some into collection of intuitions that, that, that he needed me and Julie and Natalie to, to sort of coax into that performance. Charles is a, is a, is a stellar actor and a technical actor and understand there's incredible comic timing and he shot right.

And there are these shots that where he is he that expose everything yeah there's no hiding place in these long takes and so you're watching him and julianne and natalie know how to navigate that that that kind of pressure of being in a in a single shot for as long as they do and you were absolutely riveted to everything they're doing and not doing in the shot. But that really was a phenomenal thing to watch unfold tenderly and gently in Charles' instincts. And I think there was a tremendous amount of love and support on that set among actors, among crew people. And I think it made for a very safe and encouraging space for everybody to do as best as they could. In the film, Julianne, we see Elizabeth doing this kind of research study of Gracie,

which is something we hear about in the culture of Hollywood and filmmaking, that actors will go to a place and learn, you know, they'll learn how to become a cobbler or something like that. Is that something that you like to do despite the fact that it's somewhat satirized here in the film? I love it. It's my favorite thing, honestly. I mean, and I did it in this movie because, you know, Gracie's a home baker. And so the production office arranged for me to meet someone in Savannah who's also a home baker. And she took me through step by step how she makes a cake and how she boxes it and how she sends it out.

I learned how to do that so I could do it in the scene so Natalie could watch me do it so she could do it in the movie that she is pretending to make later. So it was all this crazy kind of meta stuff. stuff but honestly i'm continually um touched by people's generosity and sharing information and their lives um with us because i think you know we're i'm always genuinely interested i'm like show me how you arrange these flowers and what do you like to do and how you know um and they'll say like this is what we do and put this here and you know you just you as an actor you want to get it right you want to get it right with people who are watching who actually do this you don't want to cut those corners um and it's a way i think it's also as a human being to learn something i mean you learn something new it's interesting it's fun it's um um yeah i love it i mean i think that yes yes we deeply satirize the process in in this movie and i and i and i hopefully hopefully you know uh we are in real life not quite so vampiric when we observe you

should have seen julianne stopping joan baez she played that character and i'm not there i'm kidding um i was going to use that word though, vampiric. Do you ever worry about seeming or being vampiric when you are putting yourself in those circumstances? I always try to assure people that I'm there to represent them in the best way possible. I'm like, please, you know, I want to learn what you do so that I can represent it properly. And I'm always very aware of

boundaries, what people will be comfortable with. And, and so, yeah, it's a concern because you don't want to abuse the privilege that you have of watching someone do, you know, someone teaching you something. So I honestly look at it as like a teacher-student kind of relationship. It's like when you go and learn something, that you are there as a student. And so you're not there to kind of like consume something. You're really there to learn something. I'm very interested in recent period pieces,

films that are about the recent past. And this movie is set in 2015, and I'm trying to locate why that is. So why was that important in the script? And how did you think about manifesting something that was fairly recent? You know, it was quite simple from my standpoint. It wasn't overthought or over, it didn't have a great deal of signification it was really just simply that it was set in the present tense on the page of the script and i just wanted to remove it from the our recent sort of intensely partisan trump trump era because i i did think especially setting the movie in savannah georgia i feel like I didn't want the questions about the political

landscape to really intervene. There was enough going on in this story. So I just didn't want that to be where people might have gone in surmising this family and this culture. That's really interesting because I don't know if the movie has necessarily been politicized, but I do think that the sort of, I was curious for you both and hearing from people having seen the movie about intention versus interpretation in a movie like this and whether or not people are getting out of the movie, what you were hoping they were getting and whether that even matters to you at this stage of your careers, given all that you've done. I, I'm always, I mean, I think that's the thing that

Todd does so wonderfully in this movie is that he, you know, he asks the audience to, to think for themselves, to, to make decisions about these characters and to be, I think more rigorous, um, in their, in their thoughts about them than, you know, I mean, often, you know, in a film that we, we, you, the truth is revealed, right? At the end of the movie, you're like, well, this is what happened. And these are the movie you're like well this is what happened and these are the results and and this movie we don't you we don't know what the truth is because it keeps shifting according to who's in charge of the narrative um and it leaves i always feel like that this movie leaves you like on an inhale rather than the next inhale so people walk away

and they're like well what do you think happened what do you think happens next and what and that's for me that's the most exciting kind of film to watch that's what i i i want to be i want to it's kind of exhilarating right when you're when you're left something to discuss and i and i'm i think we are all genuinely surprised and pleased that audiences are are kind of in taking that taking that invitation in this film you know the film starts with sort of moral, all these moral questions about this crime that occurred 20 some years in the past, even though this couple has lived as consenting adults

for most of their lives in a marriage and raised a family. And all of that, you have to sort of you know you struggle with those that knowledge against the original transgressions that occurred but i love that the film ultimately becomes a film of the questions because the whole film is about storytelling and you are asking questions yourself all the way through watching it. And ultimately, it becomes a question about the morality of storytelling itself. Even beyond telling a specific living person's story, I think it's about the sort of transgressions embedded in narrativity. And that it's never a clean process and we are in we are in bed we are subjugated we are we are we are it's not the word we're we're um we're insinuated into

the narrative process and it often is serving these other ends social norms and conventions and the way stories resolve and give you the happy ending and close the narrative down. This movie doesn't close the narrative down. And so I love that it raises all of these kinds of questions to the end. I feel like in most of your films, Todd, at the end, you can ask yourself, so what if this was real? Like, what is the moral truth of this experience for these people? Which is something that I love.

Maybe Dark Waters is the only one where it's a little bit more clear to me what is real in some respects. But I think a popular conversation right now is the rightness of portraying real people. Like you've made films about real people, Julianne. You've portrayed real people in your work. That kind of like ethical quagmire of that.

Or maybe it's not a quagmire, but it seems to be being discussed as a quagmire now. And I wonder how you think about that. Because some people that you've made films about, they become kind of myth in our culture. And then you interpret that myth sometimes in a movie just to make a movie work you have to elide certain details about a person's life or evolve things so that it fits the narrative of the story but i wonder like i wonder if you guys think about whether or not our perception of that is changing as time goes by or if that's just total bullshit and artists should have the ability to interpret as they see fit. So the,

the one time I played a real person, I played Sarah Palin in game change. So what's, what's interesting is that I'm, I am playing a real person, but the, the document that I'm basing my character on is taken from a book called game change. That was,

that was reportage of that election. So there are, once again, back to what Todd is talking about, about layers of storytelling and narrative. I am not Sarah Palin. I'm never going to be Sarah Palin. I'm never going to have the experience of being that person. I'm an actor who is going to create a facsimile of that real person within the narrative that somebody else wrote about their experience of that election so there are so many layers of storytelling there that um i our experience of it is not real right it's it's the experience of narrative so i mean i don't I think that that's why even with acting, when people talk about understanding what it's like because they've studied something or they've

been in that situation, we don't. We don't. We're constructing a narrative based on something that happened. And maybe it happened historically, maybe maybe it didn't maybe it's historical fiction um you know it's like it's not the truth the truth is only what happened to that person in that life and above and beyond all of that all the rest of it is storytelling and the truth is maybe the closest in the experience of the audience and the viewer and their emotional how they fill in emotionally and make it through for themselves they're connected to their own lives you know the films i've made that are about real people i've used sort of recourses of of the most sort of artificial languages or multiple languages or conflicting stories with multiple parts in the

story or a kind of sense of a full artifice in the velvet goldmine story um whereas far from heaven is not based on a true story and the mode is highly artificial in the melodramatic domestic dramas that are inspired by the 1950s but the emotional experiences of these characters are incredibly real and they resonate in spite of it not because of that interface of artifice that gives you the freedom to kind of make it real for yourself and to identify because they're just stories melodramas are just stories about domestic life so they're the most apparent experiences that we all have marriages and families and infidelity and love and relationships these are these are real things and they're part of our real experiences. And so, but melodrama is given this language

of being the most sort of extreme and overstated and compressed, artificial kind of language. And I just, I'm always, I will forever be fascinated by the interplay between what feels absolutely authentic in that and what is completely and lovingly artificial in the way it's presented.

Those are wonderful answers. We're closing the book on that big question of that quagmire. We end every episode of this show by asking filmmakers, what is the last great thing that they have seen? Have either of you seen anything great lately? Oh my God um past lives what a beautiful movie my gosh so great what i mean it's like a poem it's so so beautiful i absolutely loved everything about it i love the performances i love the direction i mean it was just oh gorgeous it was gorgeous. I saw poor things. I saw past lives in

the summer, but I just saw poor things last summer, but I just saw poor things recently. And man, I loved it. I thought it was just remarkable. So many ways it was really doing something I, you know, whatever I could go on and on and the actors alone blew my mind and Mark, I've never seen Mark Ruffalo do something like that

and blew me away. I think it's been a really amazing year for movies. Honestly, there's so many great performances and so many great films.

It's been a joy to watch. I'm still catching up but it's so true. Those are great recommendations. I just think you guys are great. I hope you make

more movies together. Thanks for doing this thanks thanks for having us thanks so much thank you to julianne moore and todd haynes thanks to amanda thanks to our producer bobby wagner for his work on this episode. Next week, CR will join us for the first movie auction of 2024. We'll see you then.