The Big Picture - Best Picture Power Rankings and the Oscars Take Purge. Plus: ‘jeen-yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy’

Episode Date: February 28, 2022

Award season is (finally) in full swing. Joanna Robinson joins Sean to break down the SAG Awards, the state of Best Picture (1:00), and to let Sean get some takes off his chest (34:30). Then, directing duo Coodie & Chike join Sean to talk about ‘jeen-yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy,’ Netflix’s new three-part documentary film series tracking the rise of Kanye West (1:02:00). Host: Sean Fennessey Guests: Joanna Robinson, Coodie & Chike Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Bennifer is back. Brad and Jen are friends again. And Paris Hilton is somehow still making headlines. Sound familiar? In the early 2000s, gossip publications were everywhere, powered by tipsters, paparazzi, and publicists. They gave us a window into the lives of the rich and famous, and in the process, helped form a generation's ideas about sex, beauty, race, and power. On this series, I'm going to tell you the story of a decade of American life through the trash we love to consume.

From Spotify and the Ringer Podcast Network, I'm Claire Malone, and this is Just Like Us, the tabloids that change America. Listen on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Sean Fennessey, and this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about awards season. Later in today's show, I'll have a conversation with Kuti and Chike, the filmmaking duo behind Genius, a Kanye trilogy. That's Netflix's new three-part documentary film series tracking the rise and whatever he's at now of Kanye West.

Genius is literally 20 years in the making, and the final chapter premieres on Wednesday. So I hope you'll check out that conversation. But first, joining me today and for the duration of this award season to talk about the SAG Awards, the State of the Best Picture race, and my new partner in Take Purging. It's Joanna Robinson. Hi, Joanna. Hi, Sean.

I'm so excited to be here. I love this very chaotic time of award season. It's my favorite. So that award season, it feels like weirdly officially started last night at the SAG Awards. This is an unusual calendar experience that we're having because no Golden Globes this year, or we did have them, but they were on Twitter and we mostly ignored them. No Critics' Choice Awards, which were expected to fill in the blanks on the absent Golden Globe Awards. And the Critics' Awards don't really have the same televisual excitement.

So the SAGs oddly feel like our first award show of the award season. Does that track to you? Absolutely. I mean, I think, and beyond that, what's so wild about the season is that not only do we not have the globes as a uh even like a virtual globes uh as feeling like an anchor for the season but and i think you and amanda have talked about this like we're also missing a lot of that like on the boots on the ground festival buzz or in-person event screening buzz i mean they're still happening here and there. I know you were at Telluride last year, but with like a virtual Toronto and a virtual, all these other things, that narrative feels so loose. It felt similarly loose last year, and it feels like it's slightly

trying to gel back into shape this year. But without that component of the globe, something that I don't really miss, but something that makes all of this feel much less certain which I think is really fun actually so yeah and I think the chaos was sown a little bit last night at SAG so let's talk about the winners and kind of what the impact is of the winners quickly before we start getting into what this means for the bigger best picture race and then maybe we'll get some feelings out about where the award season stands. So, you know, there are, of course, four acting awards. And then there's the ensemble prize. And then buttressing those awards right in the center of those things is all of the TV awards.

I found the telecast very strange last night that they opened with two film awards. And then we had 98 minutes of TV awards, which I care about a lot less personally. And then the final three film awards. I guess that's in an attempt to draw in as many people at the beginning and the end of the show. Anyhow, they opened the show, I thought, very wisely with Best Supporting Actor. And for some people, this was a surprise. For me, a little bit less so because there was a sense of real momentum going in his direction. But Troy Kotzer from CODA won Best Supporting Actor. You're nodding at me. You saw this one coming as well. You've been tweeting about the wave, the momentum is in his direction. Yeah, the Troy surge. I'm such a

fan of it. I love him. And I think part of it, and this is part of what's, you and I talked a little bit before this, before the SAG Awards about what the SAG Awards could do to either like cement or destabilize a narrative. And something that the Missing the Globes does is the Globes is always like a really interesting time for someone comes out with like a slam bang speech. People get excited. They're like, oh, I want to see that person up there again giving another speech. Brad Pitt had these like incredible comedy writers working for him his entire run. And every time he got up there, there were just, like, new zingers and they were all great. You know, so someone gives, like, and that doesn't, that's not always the case.

Like, Glenn Close really thought she did it one year with Golden Globes and then, again, did not get her much to serve Oscar. So sad. So we've been missing that. So sad. so just like lively and overwhelmed and they're you know like videos that his wife took of him falling out of his chair when he got nominated stuff like that so all of that is just a narrative that people want to be a part of and you want it you want to see it and i think you know that was evident last night and i i would put all my money on people wanting to see him get up there again on oscar night so i think that's right i feel like people have pointed out that Cody Smith McPhee, who I think was the erstwhile frontrunner in this category, who is still a very young actor. Troy Kotzer has been a working actor for a long, long time. He pointed that out in his speech last

night. I've been a member of SAG since 2001. Being grizzled is kind of the essence of that part and that performance. Historically, in male acting categories, both SAG and Oscar likes to reward more seasoned performers. That's pretty tried and true. On the female side, you tend to see ingenues getting rewarded. We are going to talk about an ingenue very shortly here. But to me, it feels like he has fully grabbed the reins on this award and isn't really going to be giving them up for the next month, which is nice because it seems like this is probably the only place where CODA is going to

end up being recognized at the Academy Awards, if I had to guess, although we can talk about that and whether there is a bigger surge going on for CODA. But I love Troy Kotzer's performance. I think you and I both really like that movie and would recommend anybody who hasn't had a chance to see it to check it out now. I'm encouraging my wife to give it another try because she like me only watched it before we had a child but she didn't watch it the second time so i'm like maybe your heart will open to it more and it won't seem like sundance sentimentality to you um let's talk about uh what i thought was the most my least favorite speech of of of the weekend which was ariana dubose who won for best supporting actress um ariana dubose is very very uh stagey and very very rehearsed and um her win was widely expected i think she's phenomenal in west side story you and i talked about uh that her performance on the

pod that we did about the film that film is streaming i believe on disney plus in just a couple of days so for all of all of the-wringing about people not going to the movie theater to see it, check it out. It's phenomenal. I think you and I probably would have preferred Mike Feist or maybe even Rachel Zegler getting some looks for this film as well. But Ariana DeBose is like a freight train

who can't be stopped. I wonder, I don't think it's really going to affect it because I didn't really see anybody having too many negative thoughts about her speechifying. But it just feels like something very, very stage managed about her entire execution. It's not really taking away from her performance. These are two different things. But I do think you're right that there can be subtle influence on that.

Do you think that how she spoke or what she said has any ramifications on her final month of awards campaigning? I don't only because she's been the front, like with Troy and Cody, both of whom gave great performances. It felt like a neck and neck kind of thing at this point. And Troy pulled ahead with what happened last night. And I think with, um, and I hate to talk about performances as a horse race, but that's the, those are, these are the realities. That's what we're doing. And, um, but with Ariana Deriana both she's been the front runner for a little while i don't see and then she won and so then that just feels like her path is paved for her would i have liked to have seen her wild out with her speech um last night a bit more absolutely i would have but i mean maybe maybe she's saving that for a huge oscar moment um and uh and i hope that that's the case, but I mean, it's not like everyone,

you know, it's not like they all have to burst into tears or whatever, but it's, you know, but she's so, she is quite young and this is such a big moment for her. And, you know, you want to see that a little bit more. So no, I'm not, I'm not feeling critical of, of her response, but it was more muted than I expected. And, but no, I don't think it's going to hurt. I think this is a lock.

And how fun for the same role to win two young actresses their Oscars. That in itself is such a good story. That is really fascinating. So the real shock, the genuine shock, the I'm so shocked I have to text Sean moment, came with Jessica Chastain's win for Best Actress for her role in The Eyes of Tammy Faye, which I will admit I didn't see coming.

I did see coming the complete chaos of Best Actress. This is a very odd category. It was an odd category. It's SAG. A handful of people who were nominated here were not represented in the Academy Award nominations. So there was a real sense of confusion. There has not really been a front runner. I guess you could describe Nicole Kidman as a soft front runner the last few weeks,

but her loss here seems indicative of the fact that the ground is really unsettled right now. What was your reaction to Chastain's win? mean i wasn't shocked shocked because really anything can happen at the sag awards and has happened in the past um i think that if nicole kim had one again like like we're saying with with i feel like three out of four of these categories are locked and then this is the category that feels like the wild card at this point and that's exciting and i remember listening to you and amanda talk i don't know, a couple months ago. And Amanda was saying, like, I can't just do the Kristen Stewart Spencer conversation for, you know, three more months or whatever. And so Amanda got her wish and the entire category has been upended.

And I would actually be kind of delighted if it circled all the way back to Kristen Stewart and Spencer because that's a performance that I really love. I think that's in play, Joanna. Yeah. Anything's on the table is the point. And Jessica Chastain herself was like, I did not...

I love that when a person genuinely seems like, are you sure? Me? She seems surprised, for sure. So, yeah. Does that... So that means I have less of an idea than ever before about what's going on in this category and again that's really fun so a lot of hubbub going

around that there's a penelope cruz opening here um and that because more people are starting to see parallel mothers now because it is more widely available than it previously was academy members are catching up on it because it does not have a huge wide release. And because that race is so unsettled that there's an opportunity, I don't really know what the gambling odds are for that at the moment. Maybe we'll talk about that in a future episode.

But that's an interesting one because she obviously was not nominated for SAG. You and I were talking last night about this interesting thing that is developing where, and this came up in the Numlock Awards newsletter that Walt Hickey writes, that the actors represent a smaller number of voters than they ever have. They've effectively lost their majority over the last few years as new members have been added.

But one thing to keep in mind there is that performers like Penelope Cruz are in a position to succeed because the body is much more international. And so we're increasingly seeing, we saw last night even, you know, SAG awarding Squid Game, I found to be a fascinating decision too. You know, echoing some of the choices they made around Parasite a couple of years ago. In general, it feels like these voting bodies are more and more comfortable with performers performing in foreign languages. And that is obviously one phenomenal thing i think just world cinema world tv all that stuff that kind of goes without saying at this point which is really cool but it does radically change i think some of this horse race aspect that we do

with some of these things where penelope cruz who has previously won for performance in english could very well win for performance in spanish and if you know working with al motivar who she's worked with so many times before so So that would be cool too. It's just, we have no way to track that because she wasn't even there, nor was Kristen Stewart at the SAG Awards. So it's a pretty wonky category at the moment. I think that the international impact can't be understated.

The huge influx of international voters into the Academy. And we can still do math and calculus around this like looking at the various guild awards and stuff like that i think all of that award season math uh is still in play it's just the equation has changed and so i think people at walt hickey's um newsletter was so illuminating and thank you you sent that to me last night so good and walt does great work in general but i think that um this idea this common refrain of oh the musty dusty old white men of the academy won't vote for this I think that feels almost officially off the table at this point I agree it's kind of dead and and that's exciting because

that was always just sort of like this sigh of resignation for as long as I've been covering awards uh which is several years now that's been a sort of sigh of resignation of like well but, but the Academy won't go for this exciting choice. But like, you know, even as you say, a couple of years ago with Parasite, we were like, oh, it's exciting. You know, and I think we've seen, we've been seeing it build up with like Jordan Peele winning a screenplay award or Taika, you know, like all these, all these sort of interesting, fun, poppy choices that have been coming up at the Academy that I think is only good news for its future. But, but I mean, the best after category, I don't know. And then like, I don't know if there's anything between now and then, I mean, BAFTA is, is a thing, but like, I don't

know if there's much between now and awards night that will solidify this for us. And it's such a big category that this is exactly what we want uh as as longtime academy oscar lovers it feels like it used to be this way before we used to figure out before we knew what the formula was before there were so many precursor awards my memory at least is going into oscar night being like i have i have no idea what's gonna happen yeah i'll i want to say it was i want to say joan plowright was nominated for uh best supporting actress the or marissa tomei won and i remember being on my couch i must have been nine or ten years old and i remember looking closely at the little box that joan plowright was in when

she lost to marissa tomei and just feeling like both kind of heartened because i had seen my cousin vinny but also sad for this older woman who missed out on her shot to have Oscar glory. And at that time, that was like authentically shocking and thrilling because of everything that you're saying where you're like, oh my God, I can't believe this woman won this award. Now it does feel a little bit more prefab in many respects. So it's fun to have a category like this. And as you say, BAFTA is coming, but not a single woman who's nominated for a BAFTA is nominated for an Academy Award. So, you know, it's a black box right now. And that's another thing about these changing equations.

BAFTA has done much, much more strenuous work in response to, you know, lack of diversity criticism. So they've got a lot of more structures in place that changes the makeup of their nomination category. So when they use, you know, it was just like a couple of years ago that they seemed like they were almost completely in lockstep with the Oscars. And now,

you know, wild cards everywhere. So still, they refuse to nominate Denzel Washington. And for that, they will not be forgiven. Okay. Let's go to the obvious one.

But I think one that everyone was really happy to see, which was Will Smith winning for best actor. Washington and for that they will not be forgiven um okay let's go to the the obvious one but I think one that everyone was really happy to see which was Will Smith winning for best actor I would say this confirms his solidifying his likely win at the Oscars in March he gave a great speech which was really all he had to do I thought it was very heartfelt I thought it was um seemed very sincere thought it was funny um he gave a lot of credit to Venus and Serena Williams, which was wise. He gave a ton of credit to his co-stars, which was awesome to see his co-stars also presented with him earlier in

the show. I don't, you know, Will Smith, what can you say? Like people love the guy. Like it kind of doesn't matter that he's made mostly bad movies for the last 10 years.

Everybody loves Will Smith. And that's really all it boils down to. Yeah. And he's gotten, you know, he's gotten close in the past with Ali. And, uh, and I think that, yeah, people just want, they want this for him. Right. And, uh, and he really wants it. He's very thirsty for it, but there's nothing wrong with that. I mean, like Brad Pitt was thirsty for it

the year that he won, you know, it's just like, this is the thing that happens where you're just like, listen, I've done a lot. I would like that statue on my shelf as well um and i think that you know you point out venus i think it's so smart do you remember the year that alice and jannie won for itania i remember tanya harding being paraded around at like all these events and it was like this sort of this happens sometimes with these various biopics where you like you parade around the real person you're like this is my date i think it's very wise for him to be like, Venus is here with me. It's smart.

Everybody respects Venus Williams, understandably. Everyone is happy to see Venus there. And he's like, Venus is here with me. And yeah, so again, that's Will Smith doing his own award season calculus. I mean, there's a reason why these very, very, very expensive award season consultants are hired by the studios and by the actors. It's all strategy. So you see the strategy there, but Will Smith is also so charming that it doesn't, you know, I didn't get

cynical about it. I was just sort of like, okay, I'll, I'll, you know, I'll check that box off for you, sir. But like very charming while you're doing it. So I'm excited. Yeah. So Will Smith's going to win an Oscar. There's always one acting award that I think audiences and especially people like us who care so much about the show really look forward to. Like even if you've seen him give a speech for the last six months, I just want to see what he has to say at the Academy Awards. I want to see him get a standing ovation. I want everybody to be excited for him.

So we have that to look forward to, if nothing else. Now, the last meaningful award on the film side was at first blush to me surprising. And now that I think about it is perhaps not so surprising. And that was for Best Ensemble, which can be an unusually difficult to predict category because it takes some strange paths, and it does not have an equation similar to it at the Academy Awards. But Coda won. And Coda winning, I thought, was a very joyful moment on the show. I thought Marlee Matlin gave a really excited and funny speech. The cast seemed completely elated. I think that's actually a very underrated kind of ensemble cast performance.

You know, Eugenio Derbez in that film and amelia jones of course the star you know marley and troy i can't remember the name of the actor who plays their her brother but he also is quite good in the film um so it's a it is a really really great ensemble performance and so inevitably when a film like this wins this award everyone says coda best picture could it happen in the same way that we said Hidden Figures? Best Picture? Black Panther? I knew you were going to bring up Hidden Figures.

I knew that was coming. Yeah, okay. But then again, Parasite did win Best Ensemble. And, you know, so it's tricky because I think that this year is very similar to last year insofar as I believe Nomadland was not nominated for Best Ensemble in the same way that The Power of the Dog is not nominated for Best Ensemble this year, despite the fact that these films are the clear frontrunners in the race. Nomadland, I think the case was a little bit stronger there because that was very much Frances McDormand's movie, and she was at the center of the frame

for almost the entirety of the film. The Power of the Dog is an ensemble piece. It does have five or six core performances that I think could have been nominated, but they chose to recognize them more individually. So I'll ask you this. I assume you're with me on The Power of the Dog

being the clear frontrunner to this point. Can CODA, which is an Apple TV Plus film starring effectively zero famous people, give or take a Marlee Matlin and a Eugenio Derbez actually win best picture. I don't,

I don't want to sound like, uh, I'm just, you know, following where the wind is going. Um, but Coda is a sentimental favorite for me. And I tend to get really excited when sentimental favorites,

uh, I mean, that's, that's a dust statement. Of course everyone does, but you know, when it's, I mean, that's a dust statement. Of course, everyone does. But, you know, when it's a moonlight year or it's a parasite year or something like that, I get so much more invested in the race.

Power of the Dog is, this is something that you raised a couple of weeks ago, I think on the show. And so I feel safer with this take that I was worried was be a little too unpopular, which is like Power of the Dog feels like a film that a lot of people admire, but not a lot of people love.

And I think people are really excited to give Jane Campion an Oscar. And I think she will definitely win the Oscar. But I think it's similar to Nomadland where I don't feel like a lot of people loved that movie, but they admired it and they were excited to award an Oscar to Chloe Zhao. So like, I'm wondering if they'll remember what it felt like last year, the Nomadland Oscar, which, which,

you know, felt odd for mostly COVID reasons, but you know, a number of other things, if they'll remember what that felt like, which was sort of, uh, it happened, you know, I like Nomadland fine versus the Parasite year, which felt like so jubilant. And so I feel like, especially since Marley gave such an incredible speech and, um, my friend, uh, Cal Buchanan, who, you know, does awards coverage for the New York times was making this point that when, when Parasite won that SAG Ensemble Award I think everyone in the room felt like oh how good does this feel to give these people this award and we feel like we're doing good as an academy as a voting body to give these people award and I feel like CODA will give people

that same family in a way that like Belffast certainly is also in the same bucket i think is power of the dog and that people kind of admire it but don't really love love love it west side story of course is is on like a little surge right now we could talk about some things that happened over the weekend with that on social media but i think it's a little late for west side the west side story surge um so i'm i'm putting my like sentimental chips on the table and i'm gonna say coda i see your skeptical face but like that's where i am you know you you make a great point which is that there is something of you know i think for this is unkind but a little do-gooder-y about some of the intentions of the academy at times. And the idea of rewarding such a sincere and handmade movie,

you know, a movie, you know, effectively starring primarily deaf actors that spotlights a kind of story that you don't usually see very often. That is just a very sincere movie. I think people might like the idea of that. Historically though, the story of Best Picture is the story of we admire it, but don't love it. Most of the time, the film that wins is a film that is beautifully mounted and feels important. But no one is like, God, that's my favorite movie now in the 1970s there are exceptions because of the number of extraordinarily good films that were being made especially in america at that time but i mean

let's just look at the last 10 years okay yes 2010 the king speech admired not loved right 2011 the artist admired not loved 2012 argo you know i think people like argo but do they like it more than the town i don't think so i think that they admired Ben Affleck's arc, the trajectory of his career. That's a confusing year. We need Amanda here to parse that year, honestly. 2013, 12 Years a Slave. I think a brilliant film, but kind of more in the admired and not loved category. 2014, Birdman.

Very much in the admired, not loved category. 2015, Spotlight. You know, very satisfying film, but not one that a lot of people are returning to over and over again 2016 moonlight is an exception i think that was an authentically loved movie i think there were a number of low i think i think la la land was also a loved movie there were a handful of loved movies that year 2017 the shape of water i think admired not loved 2018 green book still wrapping my head around that one what a tough year yeah i guess loved by some uh 2019 parasite absolutely fits the bill there that was a movie that everyone loved and felt like was absolutely worthy of the prize i think when you

and then nomadland and then we discuss i think when you paint that decade-long look back i think i think your your argument holds up but i think if you keep it more concentrated to this newer academy that we've been talking about, it feels like an every other year sort of thing. If you put Moonlight and Parasite in the same category and then Green Book and Nomadland. And through all of those, I would say do-goodery is such a good way to describe it. But this idea that like what the Academy or what any of these voting bodies want to feel is what we do is important. I think Jean Smart said something, you know, to that effect in her speech.

And it's the old game of Thrones finale thing of like, what's more important than story. Right. And so I think they want to feel like the, you know, the, the work that we do is important and valuable and you can, you can get that feeling off of Nomadland.

And the people who voted for Green Book certainly thought that's what they were doing with Green Book, do you know? And I think Power of the Dog doesn't really have that. I don't know if we're spoiling Power of the Dog this many months into the award season conversation. Don't spoil it because actually you and I are going to deep dive on the movie. People have been asking me about this for months and frankly, that's reasonable considering we've deep dived into Venom 2

in the last 12 months. So it's probably a good question. Why haven't we deep dived into the front runner for Best Picture? But in two weeks, I think on the show, on March 14th, we'll have an episode that is entirely devoted to the Power of the dog, me and you talking about it. I will just say that there's an element to the story and we're not going to spoil it,

that there's an element to that story that someone might argue feels urgent and compelling in a sort of social conversation, but not in the same way that it would have maybe even just a few years ago. So, you know, I don't know. I think this is a conversation I'm really excited to keep having with you, but I think it's possible that there's going to be a sentimental surge here for CODA. Okay, so I'm going to put you to the same test that I put Amanda through a couple of times

over the last couple of months, which is I need you to power rank all 10 nominees for Best Picture for me. So I've got the list in front of you. 10 to 1, based on the results that we saw last night what are you thinking i just want to say really quickly though um and and maybe this is going to disqualify me from being on this podcast but um i had left one of the films off my list i hadn't seen it uh until this last week when I heard you and Amanda talk about that. You actually really liked it as Nightmare Alley.

And I watched it and I and I actually really liked it. I don't know what it was about the marketing that put me off it entirely. But I really enjoyed it. Join the cult. Let's go. The Nightmare Alley cult. It's very, very good. I wish there was honestly more of an audience so that I could spend two hours talking about that movie.

But I don't think enough people have seen it yet to sustain that. Maybe down the road. Maybe if I hear from enough of the nightmare heads that they want to, they want to deep dive into that film. Okay. So is that your number 10 then? Well, can I start with one?

I think that's easier. Yeah, of course. Okay. I should have done this in advance and I didn't. Okay. Number one, I'm going to say Kodo just because it's about my own argument that I

just made. Number two, number two two power of the dog number three belfast um number four um just based on what we were we've talked about i would like to see some more representation for it elsewhere but uh i'm gonna put drive my car there just because of the international component that we've been talking about uh you made you've made an excellent case for don't look up over the last couple of weeks. So I'll put don't look up number five. West side story, I'm putting number six, but I'm actually looking to see that surge once it starts streaming. Then I'm going to do, because I love you and admire you. Licorice pizza is going to go next. Then I'm going to put,

I'm going to put Dune, which used to be so much higher on my list, but we're going to, we're going to talk about that. What happened to the Dune surge? And then King Richard and the Nightmare Alley. But I really did. I really did enjoy Nightmare Alley,

honestly. So it's very good. It does feel like it came in at number 10 and will probably stay at number 10 over the course of the next few weeks. But this is interesting what you've done because you make a very strong case for Coda. I still don't think Coda can win,

but if it does win, I think that would be very exciting in some ways. Drive My Car is coming to HBO Max on March 2nd as well. So March 2nd is a big day. Many people can see West Side Story and Drive My Car in a mega five and a half hour double bill of film watching.

I encourage everyone to do that if they haven't had a chance to see those movies. Yeah. I think this is close to right. Now, I think there's a world in which Don't Look Up finishes like ninth because it is so divisive. And the reason that the CODA case is so strong, I think to your point is

this is ranked choice voting. And I have not met anyone who's watched CODA who said that movie sucked. No one has said that to me about CODA. They've certainly said it about Don't Look Up. They've certainly said it about Nightmare Alley. Some have said it about Licorice Pizza. That has been a very divisive movie. Some people have even said King Richard is too by the numbers. You know, that it is too formulaic to be worthy of this award. Some people have said Belfast is a Roma carbon copy. And so it's not worthy of this conversation. Some people have said the power of the dog is really boring.

And I didn't want to wait until the end to find out what was really going to happen. Some people have said West Side Story is a bland remake of a film that we saw 60 years ago. I'm not saying I said any of these things, but the cases are very strong. The case against Driving My Car is very clear. Either I haven't seen it, which is true for most people, or it's a three-hour Japanese film. And so for many viewers, it will be impenetrable, candidly. Coda doesn't have that. Coda is a down-the-middle, 105-minute movie that features beautiful singing and a family learning to love each other even

more deeply so that's not that complicated yeah and i mean i think that um i mean i know that you guys have talked about this over the last years a few years but ranked voting is such an interesting math game uh and and yeah you have to think of it as like what's the thing that people are the least likely to vote against and so you know again coda coda supremacy here um so interesting it would be wouldn't that be wouldn't that be exciting though i mean jane campion's gonna get i get her much deserved oscar the thing the thing we should mention is that obviously power of the dog is nominated in so many categories for so many awards award nominations we didn't necessarily see see coming for like i love jesse plummins but did i see a jesse plummins nomination coming no so you know there there's a lot a lot a lot of respect

if not um you know fervent love for this film and and the and the players in it so i'll just say this is probably the lowest moment that The Power of the Dog has had thus far because last night, Cody Smith-McPhee did not win. And then at the USC Scripter Awards on Saturday, that film also failed to win for adapted screenplay.

Actually, The Lost Daughter won, which I thought was a brilliant adaptation for Maggie Gyllenhaal. So that being said, I think it's going to be fine. I still think it's in the driver's seat. I still think it's going to be power of the dog all the way down. Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing

is ultimately in the eye of the beholder. Let's move on to this take purge. I want to explain this to you a little bit. So just rock with me here, okay? On the Ringer Fantasy Football podcast, they have engineered, I think, a brilliant concept in podcasting. And I want to give them a big shout out.

It's one of my favorite shows on our network. But they essentially invented the idea of expurgating takes that you maybe believe in, maybe don't believe in, but things that are on your mind or that you're working through and workshopping, and you know as well as anyone as an ace podcaster that you are, you constantly kind of have to figure out something somewhat new to say about something that you've been discussing over long periods of time. You've done it. You did hundreds of

episodes of lost coverage. You traversed the world of Westeros for covering Game of Thrones many, many years. Award season is very similar because it's so goddamn long. And so I want to share some feelings with you. And this was inspired by the news that we got last week that I have not yet podcasted about at all, which is that the Academy made a decision in conjunction with ABC to not air eight categories live during the telecast. So the Academy Awards is actually going to start officially at 7 p.m. this year instead of 8 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, and they will begin handing out awards, but they will not be airing those

awards live. They will be filming them and then cutting them together during the broadcast, and then showing the wins and acceptance speeches in edited packages throughout the telecast once it begins. This was a very controversial decision. It was extremely controversial three years ago when they tried to do this. It was roundly rejected. I think it's fair to say that anybody who actually cares about the Oscars doesn't think this is a good idea, particularly because of some of the categories that were chosen. But it riled up a lot of feelings

and a lot of people, myself included. It got me thinking even more deeply about what this telecast means, why the award shows are important to me. You know, I have kind of like thrown in the towel on trying to make the show more popular personally, but I felt very strongly that this was not the way to make it more popular.

And so I want to get some things off my chest. What do you make of not just this take perch that we're going to have, but this decision to reduce the screen time, I guess, of film editing, makeup, hairstyling, original score, production design, sound, documentary short, animated short, and live action short. So you asked me a couple months ago to come help you do this when Amanda was out. And since I've done award season podcasting before, and I was so excited that you asked me like a couple months ago to come help you do this when Amanda was out. And since I've done award season podcasting before, and I was so excited that you asked me to do this, never more excited than when this happened last week. And I got so mad and I was so grateful that I'd have a platform to get mad on. And I like urgently slacked you basically like, don do this without me I need I need to yell about this um I feel of all the decisions and there's a lot of bad decisions that the uh that the academy has made over the years to try to curry favor we can talk about we're going to talk about the

twitter poll and what's the status of that right now uh in a little bit uh That's sort of like, uh, uh, anyway. Um, but this makes me so angry. I wrote a piece about it a couple of years ago when they tried to do this the first time I wrote a piece about it for many fair, where I interviewed a couple like cinematographer, because at that point it was cinematography,

the sound categories, um, and a couple of others that they were planning to do during the commercial breaks. A little different, but similar, sort of shunting them out of the main broadcast. And I tried to talk to a breadth of people, but too many people were afraid to go on the record in the way that someone will say they'll talk to you and then they get, I don't know, a call in the dead of night and then they back out of the interview. So they were afraid to talk about it on the record because you don't want to offend the Academy because you don't want to ruin your chances. But there were a few people who did

talk to me on record one, um, uh, because as in his own word, he was too old and too European to care about like what the Academy thought. And then the other, um, because he had too many Oscars already and he was just sort of like, well, I'm fine, you know. So I had a few people talking on the record. And resoundingly, it was just this hurt. And we've seen it already from these categories here. Like the sound branch has given some interviews, I think, to THR and Variety sort of about their potential plan boycott. And we should say this isn't like a

done, done, done deal yet because this decision was reversed a couple years ago. So it's possible that they will still reverse it. The Sound Branch is talking about boycotting. The Sound Branch said, and this is the part that feels really tough, is that only

when was it, like two years ago? When were the sound categories consolidated into one this is the first year that they'll be awarding yeah so they you know you used to have two sound awards they agreed to have it consolidate down to one and in that agreement according to interviews that they've given the academy said you know and we'll certainly not shut you out of the main broadcast this is the deal that they made okay well we'll certainly not shut you out of the main broadcast. This is the deal that they made. Okay. Well, we'll take one Oscars out of two, but we're, we're not going to be treated like second-class citizens on this broadcast. And that's exactly what's happening. And I, and I think that, um, to your point about the popular, uh, the thing that you and Amanda

have been talking about for many months is this idea of like, should they have nominated Spider-Man No Way Home? Yes. Yes. I think they should have. Should they, should they center Dune, another popular populist film? Yes. Then why are you putting all the categories that Dune is certainly going to win in, in this, you know, like it, you know, the, the year that Mad Max swept the technicals, it still felt like Mad Max had a huge presence at the Oscars because you kept seeing these these like lovely weatherbeaten Australians go up there and win, you know. And for Dune, they're they're they have the run of these categories, potentially not the shorts, but some of these other ones, you know, and and Hans Zimmer potentially winning his first Oscar ever is in the original score category. And this is a similar to the year that they were considering to do this with cinematography.

That was going to be Roger. That's that was Roger Deakins year. And so it's just like, why would you put this legacy, you know, part of the industry into this second class sort of citizen spot? I just have two more points to make and then I'll get off my soapbox. Number one is that every year at the, at the vanity fair Oscar party, which is clogged with every

celebrity you could possibly think of. One of my favorite parts is the fact that like these technical, these quote unquote below the line people, they also get to come in because their Oscar is their ticket. So they're not famous, but they get to be there. I mean, the oscar is cooler than being in the vanity fair party but it's part of it and you just they're just so excited and you get to see them they're like clutching their awards and they're so thrilled and they'll still get to do that you know this year but like um and then the other thing is in the in that piece that i wrote you know they were bringing up these points of like, okay, if you, if they were, if they pre-tape these wins, the audience isn't going to be filled in. The A-listers are going to be out on the red carpet. So you're, you're, you're getting your win in a, in a nearly empty theater.

Cause like all the stars who sit down in front are going to be out on the red carpet, giving their interviews, right? This is similar to the plan to give them out during the commercial breaks because of commercial breaks, the bottom tier of the theater empties out as everyone goes to the bathroom. So it's also just sort of like, so you don't feel like you really won. The solution, a solution to this is so simple, which is just let every single nominated person sit close to the stage. But they don't want to do that for their shot. They want to pack it with the A-listers up front. And so they put the poor technical folks at the back of the theater. So they do that long walk down the

theater, put all the nominees up front. It's fine. Okay, that's me done off my soapbox. What do you think? Here's the thing. I don't care how long the show is. I never have cared. I've said it for years on the show. If the Oscars are five hours, phenomenal. I watch three-hour sporting events every day. Every day. I watched the Nick Sixers game yesterday. The Sixers took like 75 free throws. It was like a two-hour and 45-minute basketball game

in the middle of a Sunday. People complaining about not having enough time don't care about the Oscars. If you don't care about the Oscars, don't watch it. That's fine. It's not that big of a Sunday. People complaining about not having enough time don't care about the Oscars. If you don't care about the Oscars, don't watch it. That's fine. It's not that big of a deal. The real trickiness of making a decision like this and offending the people who are participating in the show and are meant to be recognized by the show is anything that you put in the show that is not awards is now raised to this incredible level of scrutiny. Now, when Amy Schumer does a bit in the first hour that sucks,

and I'm not saying that there will be one, but in all likelihood there will be because it's an award show and they have a lot of bits that suck typically, people are going to be like, we had to sacrifice seeing Hans Zimmer walk down the aisle and have this triumphant moment of exultation for this? For this crap? Or for this bad montage?

Or for this, for this crap or for this bad montage or for this silly thing. So in that respect, it's obviously not a great producerial choice. There's an understanding that a lot of this is pressure coming from ABC and that that's kind of where I want to take some of this conversation, which is sort of like, what is really the long term future of the show and how should how should how should they be navigating it? Because, you know, a few weeks ago when the nominations were announced, I was like, man, based on these nominations, I think this is going to be the lowest rated Oscars of all time. I've sort of softened on that stance. I think there's a pretty good chance that it's up from where it

was last year, which was at an all-time low, just because there is a pretty big awareness. I think of Dune, there is a pretty big awareness of Don't Look Up. Everybody was excited about Will Smith and King Richard. There are some things that are going to draw the audience to the telecast. Not a ton of people, but they will draw some people. And now that I've kind of thrown in the towel on

should they have nominated Movie X to draw more viewers, I want to go in like the exact opposite direction. I'm kind of like, fuck everybody if you don't like this show. Like now, now I just want to,

I just want to drill as deeply into this as possible. So that includes adding more categories, which I've talked about. I think the show should be like twice as long. And I honestly think what they should be doing, and this is what this really drew out of me, they should actually explain to people what the people who are winning these awards actually do.

The movies get one chance a year to show you how a movie gets made. Now, I'm not saying you need a 45-minute documentary on the elegance of the greatest production designers in the world, but give us more than five seconds of a photo of someone sketching a costume. That's the most we get when we watch the Oscars. Give me one minute of Hans Zimmer explaining how he invented instruments to create the score for Dune, which is something he did and something he will talk about on this podcast later this month. But Hans Zimmer is legitimately a genius at making music for films. He's the second most famous film composer alive right now after John Williams. If he's going to win an Oscar,

show us why he's winning the Oscar. It's not just listening to the music or watching the film. There's a lot of work that goes into this stuff. The same goes for the people who work in sound. The same goes for the people who work in cinematography, as you said, in editing. Editing is the most mysterious craft in filmmaking. There are many films, as we know, that have been saved by editing over the years that are effectively inoperable without a great editor help us better understand those things that actually should be one of the missions of the show and now if this is a huge international body with 10 000 voting members and films like drive

my car get nominated let's drill deeper into the people who really care about this shit that's my first i have to get this off my chest feeling no i mean i completely agree with you and i'm so excited for your hon summer interview and then that that Dune score, barring a movie, I think actually you and I are allowed to talk about today. But anyway, barring a score that you and I recently heard, like that's the best film score I've heard in so long is that Dune score. I was blown away by it. And I do think that opportunity to celebrate, like honestly celebrate the movies. This is why for years, especially since ABC is trying to cling to a television watching landscape that doesn't exist anymore. People never watch anything in the same numbers that they used to watch.

So chasing those old ratings, like they're just not coming back. And so why not make the Oscars more like the Tonys, which is just sort of like, we're here and this is who we are, you know, or more like the globes, which, you know,

the globes is, was rotten at its core, but it was at least like a fun boozy night with celebrities. Like that's, that's really fun too, you know? But I, I think that idea of like a multi-hour celebration of the movies,

there's nothing wrong with that or, but put more showmanship in it is what I would say because I don't need it to be more popular necessarily, but I need, okay, do you have a favorite, like a favorite Oscars ceremony? Like your favorite one. That's a really good question. I'd probably need to think about it.

I mean, you know, 95, which was celebrating 94 is very memorable to me growing up. In part because when Forrest Gump won, I was like, fuck this. You know, like, I was mad. That's how I was when Titanic won. I've since come around, but I was an LA Confidential. I was like a kid who thought LA Confidential was cooler than Titanic. We would have been great friends as teenagers.

We would have been like such snobby, bratty EW readers. Okay. I'd have to think about that. That's a good future podcast conversation. Why don't you give me one of your big takes then?

My answer to that what's my favorite Oscar ceremony, it's not even a question for me. It's not even close. It's the year that Hugh Jackman hosted

and it doesn't really have much to do with who won. The show was written by Dan Harmon I believe who won an Emmy for writing that show and Hugh Jackman just had a few bits sprinkled through the monologue incredible musical monologue um but a few bits sprinkled throughout that were just sort of like they were just putting on a show and other people have tried you know neil patrick harris tried etc but i think that idea of like showmanship and in your nominees or in your luminaries that you currently have i mean there are other good examples like i think justin timberlake opening the show with his nominated song a couple years

ago i think that was a really fun showmanship moment. And I think there's just things you can do to make the show feel like I can't miss this if I love the movies or I can't miss this even if I love a certain celebrity. I think Amanda was advocating like she wants to see Tom Holland dance at the Oscars. I also want to see Tom Holland dance at the Oscars. I want to see Zendaya dance at the Oscars.

I want to see, you know, there's a lot of talent here. Let Andrew, I mean, this is another thing that might get me kicked off your podcast, but the Tick, Tick, Boom narrative is about to change on this podcast because I'm a big Tick, Tick, Boom fan. This is now a safe podcast for me to say that I liked Tick, Tick, Boom, which I tried to say the first time we recorded an episode. Particularly was reminded of it when I saw the clip of garfield performing on the sags last night that song in particular i was like this is where i was like oh wow garfield is very good at this anyhow yeah you have this is a safe space for you

now garfield like you know and and let him sing about let garfield sing give us a lot of musical moments because like i know i'm a musical fan and maybe people might think well not everyone's a musical fan that's true but if you look at what happened to Encanto, which is a film that debuted and was sort of okay, and then its music caught on in such a viral way that it became this huge cultural shift, similar to Tick, Tick, Boom. I think Andrew Garfield's star was already on the rise before he appeared in another big movie last year because the the tick tick boom viral musical moments were going around and i think people really respond to that so memeology viral musical moments tom holland dancing to rihanna memeology i think embrace it

don't run away from it and you know don't give me like with much love and respect to bruce valanche don't give me a valanche bit you know give me give me like, give me something that like TikTok can jump on. Give me like the thing that I want to talk about of a West Side Story that happened over the weekend is that someone tweeted out, you know, the long one or that happens to the school dance and West Side Story was like, look at this incredible shot. That tweet went viral. Tons of people who discounted this movie as not worth watching or a bland remake, as you sort of said earlier, not your opinion, but maybe other people's opinion, were like, holy hell, do I want to see it? I feel like that tweet did more for the marketing than everything else that Disney tried to do to market that movie, where you have Guillermo

del Toro weighing in on a lengthy tweet thread about what a master Steven Spielberg is and that might seem like not the most shocking revelation but when West Side Story felt like it came and went and didn't impact and now all of a sudden a viral tweet has gotten a ton of people interested and then it's about to hit streaming

I mean that's the new reality that we live in that's the thing that Netflix has figured out how to weaponize beautifully with their Twitter presence. So yeah, embrace the memes. That's what I say to the Oscars. I like that take. The West Side Story thing is so fascinating to me too, because that isn't even my favorite one or in the movie. I think it's the most impressive one. So like when people watch the movie, they're going to see the opening sequence of the film is just as jaw dropping as that, that thread that was shared over the weekend. And there's, there is a lot to celebrate. I agree

with you that the challenges is like making a TV show more like the internet is often very transparent and ugly and people can see right through it. So you really need producers and writers, you know, to your point about Dan Harmon, who really understand those mediums and how to blend them. Community is one of the only shows that has really effectively blended those mediums. There are not a lot of examples of that,

but I think it's also true that a lot of the people who are hardcore and passionate about the award show are very online, you know? They're very online. They're celebrating oners in West Side Side Story and that that is the base. And so like a lot of the things that I want to say here are about basically like, let's just let's just play to the base now.

You know, like the same way that this show, I have a couple of feelings about it. Like, not only should I think should the telecast be much longer of the actual award show, but like, I don't recall who said this and I'm sorry if I'm taking, if I'm borrowing someone's concept, but this show should be treated like the Super Bowl. Like it should start early in the day and it should, your friends should come over early to start watching it and you should get all your snacks out.

This isn't just like the viewing party for two and a half hours. Like you should barbecue for lunch, get a huge swath of pulled pork and, and, and grilled chicken and, and, and ribs and everything that you want to eat and then keep the TV rolling all day. And you should be able to see stars all day. You should be able to see film packages all day. And I don't mean these like overmanaged, like glossy productions about the magic of cinema. Like it should be much more freewheeling. It should be much funnier.

It should be produced as aggressively as the show itself is produced. You know, the same people who are bringing this to the table, and this is the point that many people have made recently, which is that they should be hiring the producer and the host of the show 10, 11 months in advance. They should not be waiting so long

because you can't get Ryan Reynolds and The Rock and all of these people that they have said that they want to get to host because those people are busy making movies. They don't have time to prepare to be Oscars hosts. So this should be, understandably, the biggest event of the year for the movie industry. And it should be treated as such. It should be planned from basically the day the season ends, the day that the show ends, get rolling on the 2023 Oscars. It needs it. It needs it now more than ever.

So I just I think I'm thinking simultaneously of expanding the show while accepting that the audience will shrink. Do you think that leads to the ultimate death of the show? Because I used to think that and now I don't think that so much. No, it's just going to be something different and that's that's the thing that i just want everyone to let let the past die kill it if you must like let it go right it's gone let's make the oscars let's stop sweating i mean exactly what you said like it can be really embarrassing to watch someone try to like, I don't, I'm not advocating for like the famous Tik Tokers to go up there. Uh, that's not what I'm saying, but I'm saying like, when you think these things through, when you put a Twitter poll out there, when you put these like

populist voting things out there and you see Johnny Depp stands or the Camilla Cabello Cinderella contingent or the Justice League surge, you know, you're like, well, you didn't think that through. And this is like, this is presented by someone who doesn't understand how the internet works. You didn't understand what was going to happen. You were trying to honor Spider-Man and look what happened. You got, you got bit by the fact that you don't understand how the internet works. And so hire some younger people who understand how the internet works, if that's what you want. But also know that according to the internet is not going to get you those rating numbers

that you wanted. But I think what you and Amanda and I all want is not necessarily for the same number of eyeballs to be tuning in, but for that cultural relevancy to remain. So I don't need everyone to be simultaneously watching, but for that cultural relevancy to remain. So I don't need everyone to be simultaneously watching it the way that they watched the Euphoria finale, though I wish they would, but I need them to be talking about it and not just say, I'm sorry, who won an Oscar last year other than, you know, I know Glenn Close like twerked, but what else happened? You know, and it's like, I want it all to feel sticky in a way that it used to.

And I think that there are ways to make it feel stickier without making it feel like exactly what it was before. So it might seem contradictory to say I'm okay with it being smaller, but I want it to be stickier. But I don't think that's the case because we don't watch things all at once anymore. But things can have a long tail because of the way that we consume things. So that raises one more point that I'm not sure I totally believe, but I want to throw it out there, which is, should the Oscars be on ABC? Should it be on broadcast television? Does that make

sense right now? Because part of the problem here is when a jerk like me gets on a podcast and is like, the Oscars needs to be more relevant. It needs to nominate Spider-Man. It needs to have 40 million viewers, just like it did in 1997. Everybody, I think, reasonably is like, dude, you're stuck in the past. That's not the way that this works.

Look at the trends. And Amanda has been mocking me for years about this. Look at the trends of broadcast television viewership. It is down, down, down, down, down. And unless you play for the Kansas City Chiefs, no one is watching you on a regular basis with that 50 million capacity. But a lot of people are on the internet all day long. And the Oscars and movie-going culture is online now, for better and for worse. Should this show be on Twitter? Should it be on Twitch? Should it be on, I'm loathe to say Facebook, but Facebook. Should it be on Twitch? Should it be on,

I'm loathe to say Facebook, but Facebook. Should it be on, should it be on a platform all its own? Should the Academy build something where once a year you have to pay $1.99 so that you can watch this show? Now that inevitably would shrink the show significantly,

but it would create new kinds of revenue. It would modernize things. This would be a hugely radical decision and the Academy is locked into a six-year deal with ABC to continue. But ABC seems pretty unhappy with the Oscars and the way that the Oscars are going. And they're trying to get them to change it.

And maybe the leadership of ABC is different a year from now and maybe they want to make a radical decision. If the Oscars was open, if it was an open platform experience, would that be good or bad for the show in your opinion? I think it would be. I think it would be good. I think it should be not just should we just do it on Twitter.

I think it should be everywhere. The way that like the debates are, the presidential debates are, you know what I mean? Like a public trust. Yeah. Where we can all figure out a way to access it how does that work with commercials and sponsorship and like the massive amount of money it takes to put on something like this i i don't know not our problem but also like i just don't think the academy is is as broke as all that you know what i mean they just built a massive monument to themselves in

this in the museum you know what i mean like i i don't think i don't think they need to go begging so i i do i think the sag awards are really interesting because i know a lot of people don't necessarily have tnt or tbs where the sag awards uh were airing last night but the sag twitter account put up announced every winner and then put up the speech almost immediately after so if you wanted to just follow along with the show on the SAG Twitter account, you got without the bits, you got basically the whole show, you know? And so I think accessibility can only benefit, again, that stickiness, that cultural relevancy that we want for the Oscars because we love movies. And we've been insufferable jerks about it our entire lives. And we want other people to love movies.

I know. I know. So big changes are coming. I'll let you go very shortly. The thing is, Don Hudson is going to step down as the CEO at the end of this cycle. David Rubin's tenure is coming closer to an end as the president of the Academy. There's going to be brand new leadership. There'll be a governor's vote soon.

And once again, the Academy is going to end up looking different because the decisions of those folks leads where they're going. You know, Don Hudson gets to walk away and say, I got the museum built. I helped radically change the voting body. But I also oversaw the most severe ratings drop in history by far. And so it's a very complicated tenure there.

But they need someone who's extremely internet savvy, who understands the direction of movie culture right now, which is, I think, an increasingly open-minded group of viewers, but also a shrinking contingent of Oscar carers, for lack of a better phrase.

And so how do you reflect that? How do you meaningfully get people excited about this show long-term? And how do you experiment in a way that doesn't offend the people who truly care about this? Because the news from earlier this this week or from last week rather, it just pissed people off. Like you just don't, you know this from making stuff every single day. You just don't want to piss people off when you're making something. You know, you can be controversial.

You can share an opinion that people might disagree with, but don't make them mad. Like when you make them mad, then they want to reject you. They're not going to come back. And they're in a fight for people who aren't going to come back. And so it's a critical moment. I appreciate you purging a couple of these feelings i feel like honestly we can get it even crazier next time we do this let's do it let's do it i'm excited i'm

so excited to talk about awards all season with you uh you're also going to talk about the batman with me later this week which i'm very excited about so if you like listening to joanna please tune in on thursday night me joanna, and Sierra will be talking about the Batman. Joanna, see you soon. See ya. Let's go to my conversation with Kuti and Chike. And I just want to foreground that conversation by saying, if you have been reading my work since the early 2000s,

if you know that I come from a background of music criticism and music journalism, you know that the central figure of a lot of the writing and work that I've done over that time has been Kanye West. He's somebody who I've interviewed several times, who I've spent a ton of time thinking about. When I was in college, my friend Ryan Domble, who is currently at Pitchfork, and I reviewed every single song that Kanye had ever been associated with on a site that we built ourselves. The roots of my work working in digital media are really in Kanye and my devotion to Kanye. So also if you've been reading my work over the last few years, it's been a little bit tough to continue to root for him and continue to be as invested in

his story. Cootie and Chique, these filmmakers behind Genius, are in a similar situation. They have really been with him for a really long time and been tracking him for a really long time. This film is such a fascinating document of especially those first two episodes, seeing that rise and that resilience that Kanye had, which I always so admired. And this idea that no one could tell him that he wasn't right about what he was pursuing, that his point of view, his musical style, his rapping ability, his vision of the greater creative world. People were telling him that he was wrong all the time. And he was saying, I'm not wrong. I know this is going to hit. And he was right. He really did break through. He really is, I think,

the most impactful musical artist of the 21st century, if not necessarily the most successful. So this film is really worth your time. I think they've made a very unique documentary document. So I hope you'll check that out and please enjoy my conversation with Kuti and Chike. Kuti and Chike are here. I've been watching their work for a long time but i did not know that this was in the works until very recently they're the filmmakers behind genius a kanye trilogy a three-part mega documentary about the professional life and the personal life of kanye westfellows what's up how are you man how about yourself thank you for being here i'm doing well

so listen i have have some personal experience with Kanye. I covered his career quite a bit, especially in the 2000s. Cootie, I want to start with you. You began filming even before I was aware of Kanye. Tell me when you first conceived of spending this much time with him and shooting him all this time, what did you think this project was going to be? Was it always going to be a documentary? Was it going going to be a tv show what did you think all this footage was going to amount to back when you first started filming oh man the plan was uh for a documentary for like a hoop dream style documentary um that was the the goal when i started filming because i just i remember watching the um the film and i'm like how did steve, the director, stick with these guys for so long?

And, you know, and just to follow that journey. And plus, I'm from Chicago and that's a West Side Chicago story that just inspired me so much. I had a TV show called Channel Zero that I was doing, but I was the host of it. And the, the, uh, my co-partner, Danny, Danny swords stopped wanting to like go as much. Cause I just fell in love with the response. We were getting no public access that I'm like, teach me how to use your camera. So when he showed me how to use it and I seen hoop dreams and seeing Kanye, I'm like, Ooh, I'm gonna do a hoop dreams on Kanye. So it was always a plan to do a documentary, but I seen it ending with him winning Grammys. Yeah.

So why did it not end? Because he did win Grammys. So why did it not? What happened? Well, he and just recently I found out, you know, even though he told me he was when I when we was offered a deal after the Grammys and him blowing up. And I was like, man, we got, you know, we got a deal on the table to do the documentary.

It's 2005, six. And he was like, he's not ready for the world to see him in that light. You know what I'm saying? He said he's acting and I'm like, oh, okay.

And, but then recently at the premiere, he said that, you know, if that would have came out, then he would have been embarrassed, but he, well,

how important it is now for that to be seen. So, yeah. So, for both of you guys, I'm curious for your first impressions of Kanye the first time you came across him. Cootie, I think I have a decent sense based on the film.

But Chiquita, I don't know about you. I don't know when you first met him, how you came into the mix. What did you think when you first met Kanye? I thought it was brilliant. And I thought the first time I met him, the first song I heard was Jesus Walks. And this was at MTV.

And I thought like, man, this person, this message and what he was saying and just the energy around him. You know, I wasn't around during, obviously when Martin Luther King was protesting and fighting for just equality, but Kanye had, it felt like that might be the same type of intense energy that was felt by those that were getting on board with Martin Luther King. And I just felt like there was a potential of him to have that in a different way, you know what I'm saying?

But still have the same power and messages that could get people to rally behind. And Kuti, what about you? I mean, you were younger. You were both on the come up at that time. How did you feel when you met him? Could you have foreseen who this person is now? I mean, really like genuinely a global icon. Yeah. I mean, we always say, don't let your imagination get in the way of God's manifestation. So I couldn't imagine what he is now at that moment, but I did see him being large, large,

like Grammy winning, super, super huge artists. You know, that's, that was my, my first thought, thought with him.

And he, and he turned out, you know, to do more than that. We can even imagine. So my favorite moments from the film are the more intimate ones in the studio, I think. And so I'm curious for both of your perspectives on some of this stuff.

But the one that jumped out to me was watching him rhyme his verse from the bounce to Jay-Z and seeing in real time, Jay simultaneously, it looks like he's recognizing the talent, but also like a little suspicious or dubious. You know, it's like these feelings are colliding that he's having. When you guys are in the space, you know, Cootie, if you're filming a moment like that, or you guys are looking back at footage, do you know right away, well, this has to go in? I mean,

how many of those moments did you have where you were like, we have to make sure that people see this happening? Oh, yeah. Well, you know, of course, while it was happening, you never know, you know, what's going to happen next. But after finishing, like leaving out the studio, I'm like, oh, yeah, this is going to be amazing. Plus, it's Jay-Z in the shot. But it's so many moments like that where I was, you know, I just seen where it was going to land.

All the special moments, I knew like the Scott phase, I'm like, perfect. All the retainers, you know, I'm like, oh, it's a running bit, you know, because I was a comedian so I'm like, oh, it's a dope running bit. I'm like, you know, keep catching these retainers and God just kept giving me what I needed for that, you know, so.

And there's different moments within those scenes too, like within that Jay-Z scene, like if you just dig a little bit deeper, like there's a moment you recognize, the moment Kanye recognizes that Jay recognizes him. You know what I'm saying? And it's like, it's subtle things like that, that speak volumes, you know what I mean?

So. Was it hard to get somebody like Jay or like Face to be on camera for this? I mean, what was it like when you were in those situations? I mean, really, it was actually, Jay had a camera in there as well.

Uh, somebody was filming, filming him. So, you know, at that moment, everybody pretty much would love a camera to, to document.

I think we kind of, not even kind of, I know that me and Kike started it. Cause nobody, when we was going in Def Jam had cameras, you know, on them, you know, then after they seen how we was moving it seemed like everybody had a camera after that you know now everybody have our phones cameras so you can't even watch a concert without everybody

like got their camera phones i'm like okay y'all enjoy the moment what's going on but but that was me back back it's your fault man it's your fault I started that were there any moments where you wanted to be able to film but they shut it down or somebody wouldn't let something happen and then you observed something happening without the camera rolling and you're like damn I wish we could have had this yeah I mean it was definitely but really

I was so relentless with the camera that they had told me not to even when he got the chain of, I wasn't supposed to be filming. And I said, they're going to kick me out. You know, I went off stage. I just like not knowing what was going to happen. I know he was going to get the chain, you know. So it was more moments that I like just like had the camera rolling, you know.

So but I'm trying to think it was any like specific moments. Like somebody told me definitely with Channel Zero when I was doing channel zero I remember Spike Lee told us they wouldn't give us an interview other than that when I was moving with Ye it was like pretty open open call people wouldn't really wasn't tripping it's pretty crazy it's pretty crazy that he was willing to be filmed in the in the oral surgeon's office too I'm I'm I'm curious what those conversations were like where you were like i want to did you say i want to follow you to this did he visualize that this was going to be a part of telling his story what like why were you there i mean really we was

kicking it too you know what i mean i was like there as a as a brother friend supporting them but i had the camera so it was just i think everybody we just got so used to me just being there with the camera you know and i and he's putting his magic with the camera i'm doing massive we just both being creative i think we was loving that creative energy that was going on so it wasn't like he was like come to the dentist i'll be like man i'm about to go to the dentist all right man let me call d-ray or somebody to take us to the dentist's office you know things like that so it was you know we just moving like on a flow, flow of life. As he's getting more famous, as we get into 2005, 2006, 2007, is the work that you guys are doing getting harder?

What is changing? How is it different from when you're there in 2002 or 03? I mean, of course, the fame, you know, so many people gravitating towards him and, you know, he want to work with different people and they want to, you know, like people want to put their people on. So it was a lot of that going on, which kind of put me and Chike into the back burner. But, you know, at the same time, I did create a great partnership with Chike. You know, we started Cootie and Chike, the directing team, and we went on to do Pitbull video and a bunch of videos and then Benji. So it was like we were still moving. So it wasn't too, like, disappointing.

You know, I understand life's moving separate directions, but Mama West would always keep me around. And when she made her transition, that was like, you know, that was pretty much me and kai went our separate ways at that moment but then came back together with calm and brought us back together 2014 and i'm kind of giving a lot uh the third movie away a little bit because because you got to realize the documentary that this documentary is about making a documentary you know the whole doc but then too is about you know letting people know that

you everybody has a genius in them that's why we named the genius not the kayes of genius or i'm a genius or cheeky genius or j ivy no everybody has a genius and this is the blueprint to discovering your genius and moving it and no matter what obstacles get in your way you can get through all of that so this is really what this movie is about. Chike, tell me about your role a little bit. So we know the cooties behind the camera. We know he's got this original connection with Kanye. He's got trust.

He's got a friendship. What do you bring to the table? You were working at MTV. You were helping them cut together that first video. But beyond that, what is your partnership about? Well, I went to Savannah College of Art Design and finished motion graphics. My background's in art. So I went to Savannah College of Art Design and finished motion graphics. My background's in art. So I went to MTV to package shows.

I was packaging all the different shows that they have at MTV. So that's when Cootie called me about the through the wire. So from that moment, our partnership was more like he had a matter of fact, it's a total 360 moment because this footage, it's the same footage, the same documentary that launched our careers as directors together. And then when he called me on that, it's the same foot. It's the same documentary that launched our careers as directors together. And then when he called me on that, it's the same thing. He's like, I got this footage, you know, but I just how do we put this together? Like, how do we package this together visually? And so, you know, both of us, Kuti and I as a partnership, we both have our strengths. You know, for me, it's more on the art directing side. Like I'm more about how we're visually telling the story, how we're packaging.

That's where I come from. What colors, sound, all the different elements to accentuate the emotion of this film. Cootie's amazing in stories, timing, his beats. I mean, he was a professional comedian, so he knows how to hit certain things at certain times and what's going to resonate with the masses. You know what I mean?

And so we just kind of combine those two things together. and i think our style is just totally like a hybrid of both of our strengths tell me about the style a little bit because the film does feel like an extension of through the wire the way that it looks the film stock the way that it's treated the way that the movie is cut together you know what was the thinking there why did you guys want the movie to look the way that it does i mean well first i think most of the things that we do is inspired by like channel zero you know as far as like the great gritty the rawness you know um and then you you know the footage is the footage you know we shot a lot of eight millimeters so there's no like stock footage everything we shot everything is in the movie besides like the archive footage that's in 3.

You know, and that everything was shot by us, and it just got that rawness to it, like Channel Zero. And everything is intentional. Everything you see, even to the way we handled this

stylized screen of taking the 4x3 footage, but then it's slightly things seeping over the corners. Even when we shoot eight millimeter, when we did Jesus Walks, it was intentional because we understand the nostalgicness of eight millimeter and how people resonate with that. And how that if you shot a famous icon in eight millimeter, it has a way of bringing them back to a relatable place you know i mean so um everything is very conscious with this even when it's raw that's intentional um and then we try to bring a level of like high art to the raw and it's just almost like this juxtaposition of like taking like vogue and street and bringing them together so that everybody can see like you know these elements kind of play around each other. So it's all, all a dance.

Yeah. It feels like it's, it's in conversation with even Kanye's art art too, because the high and the low, you know, even the conscious decision of the direction we go with the sound design and why we bring live footage and citizen chances scored, but the score is very, you know, how do you score something against the greatest musician, one of the greatest producers in the world but you kind of go extremely left so we went in this more orchestral sort of you know um kind of droney sound because we didn't want to compete against

this you know high level hip-hop hardcore the best producer in the world you know what i mean so yeah i feel like um there have been very few kinds of musician documentaries that you can compare this one to because there are a lot of musician documentaries nowadays, but most of them don't have this archival. This is basically this verite from 20 years. I mean, people pointed out like some of the Dylan film from the 60s or the Altamont Rolling Stones film, but like there's not a lot to compare this to. Did you guys have a conversation about what are some comparison points? You mentioned Hoop Dreams, Cootie. Were there other movies that were inspirations for this?

No, I just say Hoop Dreams was a major inspiration because it's what inspired the whole journey. But as far as any other movie, no, we like to be original in how we tell stories. We don't look at many things like, okay, we need to do it like this. You know, we want to do it different. I think that's what Through the Wire was. The video was something that in hip hop was not done and it was totally different with.

And if you do something different, if you're in a room where everybody got on black and you walk in a room with pink, you're the one that's going to be looked at. And let you have some talent with that pink outfit is over. You know, so that's that's how we look at everything we do. I think it definitely, if anything, the influence we come from just what are our subconscious, what are our subconscious influences? You know, Cootie's very soulful. If you listen and ask him what his influences are, he's going to take you back to like very classic old cinema films that are very soulful if you ask me i'm going to take you to like you know i was my passion was music videos so like i was always trying i'm going to take you to chris cunningham i'm going to take you to very musical things documentaries like dark days with dj shadow doing the music so like all that i think some subconsciously influences our stylistic decisions

yeah tell me about um the early 2010s so you're not you're not present really in his life and not filming him at that time you guys are not as in touch you talk about this in in part three you know in 2011 in 2012 what are you thinking is gonna happen with this footage and all this work that you guys have done over this period of time are you like is going to happen with this footage and all this work that you guys have done over this period of time? Are you like, I guess this will never see the light of day, or I'll just keep my powder dry until I'm told I can share this with the world? Put me in that mind state. I mean, I'm real spiritual and manchique, so I had 100% faith at some point this footage would be seen. And that, and that's that's that's

pretty much it. We say everything happens in God's time, you know, when happened. So in 2014, when comic reconnected us, we were thinking about putting it out at that point with Ye and, you know, people got in between that. And I see I know he's on on stage, you stage, you know, having a mental or whatever it was on stage and had to go to the hospital doing the St. Pablo tour, which I felt like he was crying out for help when we were about to put that together for the first time. I mean, during that time. So, you know, and we didn't bother us neither. We're like, OK, we're going to keep moving.

We did Muhammad Ali, a People's Champion, won a NAACP Image Award after that moment. No. So we just keep keep moving. But the faith that we have in God and Christ that alone got to this point. And now it was Simon is the perfect time. And it's going to really resonate to these to these, you know, dreamers out there. And I think the biggest lesson to it was, was us like, especially Cootie was the fact that like, again, everything we do is in God's time. We were okay if it never came up. Like, we're fine. Like, you know what I mean? We weren't sitting around waiting.

I wasn't, but you can say that. I'm talking about like, I mean, like you was, well, I remember when he was doing this deal, he was okay with like, it took another 20 years, you know what I'm saying? In 20 years, you would be 70 years old in 20 years. So, you know what I'm saying? But it's still going to come out. I knew it. I'm just saying that to say like our entire career wasn't built on the fact

that this came out or not. That wasn't like the benchmark of like our success you know i mean i think it's just all in god's time and it's amazing that he's able to put this out at this perfect time at the height of everything that's going on with with kanye kanye and like i said it was just cootie had enough patience to to always walk away from it had to be the right timing and the right you know the intent everything's all the intent had to be correct on all sides and our parties fall yeah i actually want to hear about that a little bit because I'll be honest with you guys, watching part three, it was really heartbreaking for me as somebody who is really invested in him

as an artist and has really closely followed his career. And I feel like I care about him as a person. And it's hard to see some of those moments in the third act. And I guess it made me wonder, why is now the right time for the film to come out? Because it seems like maybe Kanye is still kind of unsettled and he, he's kind of always in transition, you know, there's never like a concluding moment with him. So how come we're seeing it in 2022?

I think everything happened for a reason, you know? And if it wasn't supposed to happen, it wouldn't happen, you know, so do we know the exact reason why, you know, why it's happening right now? The three movies are Vision, Purpose, and Awakening.

So, for whatever reason, at this moment, these films need to be seen, and Kanye needs to see them. He's seen one. You know, that was the first and he and he was like oh i get it then when you see two purpose he gonna see that with us moving in our purpose and then when you see three that's awakening we don't know what would happen but it's just like we just put it all out and we just told the truth it was you know we didn't

told the truth and so you won gonna see certain moments that be it's uncomfortable you know even like losing his losing uh donda west mama west you know that's that's real uncomfortable but i told kai when he watched i wanted him to watch all three together but he already watched one perfect with all of us in the room when he watched two i know we're gonna all be in the room and three we definitely have to be in a room with him when he watched three. You know, because that's the one that's going to be a lot of crying, a lot of hugging, some laughing. But, you know, that's when we're going to have to really all be there, you know, like we were. And there's a lot of teachable moments.

Like this film is bigger than an individual. It's bigger than Kanye. It's bigger than, it doesn't matter what side you sit on with him. You know, there's stuff, whether you're a hero or a villain, there's stuff to be learned from both sides. You know what I'm saying? And so that's the importance of this doc is like we're using these two as vessels in their journey to offer these teachable moments to people to understand how to move in their passion. You know, I mean, a lot of us are stifled by fear. And this is the first step to overcoming that fear and overcoming that fear, the determination and what it takes and the power and faith you have to have to us and the higher power in God to move you through that. You know what I mean?

It seems like Kanye is always so interested in the idea of control and even was expressing that before he got a chance to see part one. So tell me, like, what was it like watching part one with him? How did he react? Can you describe that experience? Well, he was a little stern when he came in. They said, everybody, we were downstairs. We saved the seats for people that haven't seen the film. We watched a million rough cuts. We're like, okay, let these people enjoy the film.

And then when he got there, he said he was a little stern. He said he just was loosening up every second. And next thing you know, his hood was falling. They said his hood was just coming off like second by second but it was amazing how my little sister was sitting right next to him and my daughter sitting they sat on right next to my sister and what happened is usher and kp was sitting there and they turned around on my daughter and my sister was like yo yo, y'all can get these seats. So they sent them in the front and took their seats. And then Kay sat next to my sister, who got an amazing spirit and soul, and my daughter as well.

And I think he felt all of that. I think it was just perfect. And then after it was done, you know, he gave me something he hadn't given me besides in the Grammy party, you know, my props for, you know, for just being there for him all of these years and believing in him and not ever giving up on him always, no matter what he do, I'm right there, no matter what. So that was special right there to me. Cootie, I wanted to ask you just a little bit about the humility that you have to have in the movie. There is that moment when you're interviewing him when he's in the pastel purple and he's giving you shit and he's had a little to drink.

And then later there's that conversation about Hype Williams that you guys are having that is like, I was like, this kind of hurts. This is his man and it feels like he's pushing him to the side or he's giving him shit publicly like what was it like to see yourself on screen in moments like that i mean you know i remember when right after we shot that and you know because that was really for channel zero so i'm like daddy no don't show the other part just show the part where he giving me love but but but you know you have to you have to like i mean i'm i'm a humble guy you know, you have to, like, I mean, I'm a humble guy. You know what I mean? Me and Chike, we humble. We check our eagles at the moment of an eagle trying to get in on us.

So, you know, that right there was perfect. I wish there was even more things that we can show like that. But, you know, it's real life. You know what I'm saying? And it was amazing how we even found that, that footage of Kaye talking about, we was looking for something for that moment. And then, you know, we, we thank God, right. Jesus direct. So all of a sudden Byron, I assist the editor, like, look at this.

I'm like, Oh, Oh my God. Oh yeah. You know, we put it in and, and that's exactly what happened. He used two directors for Jesus walk. And then we had to go back to Chicago and film. So yeah you know we put it in and and that's exactly what happened he used two directors for jesus walk and then we had to go back to chicago and film so you know it's a teachable moment as well like chica says a bunch of those uh moments but it was yeah special chica how much footage was there actually at the end of the day that you guys are going through man it's like over 330 hours wow 330 dv tapes Those are all an hour apiece, but then that's just the DV tapes. There's footage that we still haven't

really even gone through that's digitized. So there's probably gems that are there that are amazing. Have you guys considered the idea of a part four or a part five? The story is obviously not finished. He's still making music. He's still doing his thing.

Yeah. I mean, well, Kanye has a whole lot of footage after i started stop filming them you know throughout his whole career was a guy named toby and nico um been filming them on these other part of the journey but yeah it's definitely going to be i believe a definitive doc on kanye at some point as well but we do it would be nice to do a perspective type of doc, you know, Drake wanted to narrate this doc, so we could have him do his perspective on the footage, that's what I offered

both him and Kanye, like, let's do that, but you never know, you know, right now we're just going to focus on you know, this, and focus on an Ernie Barnes documentary that we're about to do, and this movie that we're about, that we've been writing that we're going to do. So we're like, okay, let's focus on that. And then whatever else happened, it just happened. I did want to ask one last thing about Kanye having spent all this time with him and looking

at all this footage. The handful of times I've talked to him, you know, he's very gifted at the rant. You know, he knows how to speak unbroken thoughts for minutes and minutes. And movie is not really like that you know the movie doesn't really feature that person that we're used to seeing in the media who is seemingly is ranting you know he's much more reserved more tiring at times hanging out with his friends calm did you feel like at a certain point he basically stopped performing for you and was just comfortable and why if that was the case why was that the case well one i think it's important for people to understand cootie like he he has a certain gift as a filmmaker and i think this is the reason why even if you see another a lot of our docs like there's a certain space that he creates as a person that comes with no judgment right so when you when he embraces you and and you're holding um a conversation with him it's almost like you're

talking to a therapist like there's a thing about it that you just feel comfortable. And then that permeates through the lens. So his lens becomes this lens of empathy. So I think just... And that's something you see consistently through the film is like Kanye, there's a certain... Cootie's able to capture another side of Kanye all the time at his highest, at his lowest.

You know what I mean? But that has something to do with our filmmaking that just has everything to do with just cootie as an individual you know what i mean and then it's like two of you take like an actor who you see on tv or in movies and you sit down at the dinner table and talk to him it'd be totally different from what you see on tv you know to two different people just like we were kids you know in the house is a certain way a certain way in the house we go outside with our guys we you know we talk differently we do things different so i believe it's like that with with yay you know so fellas i end every episode of

this show by asking filmmakers what's the last great thing that they have seen? Have you guys seen anything recently that you really liked? The last great thing that I've seen? Yes, Doc. And it's great just because the story, but it's the doc on Oscar Michelle, who is on HBO now that I'm like, was really inspired by watching, you know, and knowing he's from Illinois, Chicago, I was like, oh,

perfect, and he got, you know, just you know, changed the narrative of black cinema, and I just thought that that was amazing. I just saw that, so I'll say that. That's a really good pick. I I say the tragedy, Macbeth. It was it was visually amazing.

Amazing. I didn't understand half of it as far as the story, but visually it was. I tried to pretend and try to pretend like I was super smart, but I can't. I was lost in the story. But visually it was, it was a work of art. Those are great picks. Fellas, congratulations on genius. Really appreciate you doing the show today. Thank you so much. For sure.

Appreciate it. Thanks to Kuti and Chike. Thank you to Joanna Robinson. And thank you to our producer, Bobby Wagner, for his work on today's episode. Stay tuned to The Big Picture later this week because as I said, Joanna will be back. CR will be here.

We will be covering the most anticipated movie of 2022 so far. That movie is The Batman. We'll see you then.