The Big Picture - ‘Challengers’ Is Sexy, Sweaty, and Undeniable

Episode Date: April 26, 2024

Sean and Amanda gather to discuss the 2024 film perfectly situated at the center of their respective tastes: ‘Challengers.’ They discuss the thrilling trio of actors at its center, underrated director Luca Guadagnino, its pulsing score, and its thrilling ending (1:00). Then, Sean interviews Justin Kuritzkes, the writer of the movie, about writing this script on spec, the balance of power dynamics among the characters, why he chose to set it in the world of tennis, and more (1:35:00). Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Guest: Justin Kuritzkes Senior Producer: Bobby Wagner Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey there, humanoids. It's the Masked Man, David Shoemaker. It's a new era in professional wrestling, and that means a new era here at the Ringer Wrestling Show. Kaz here. Every Monday and Thursday, hang out with me and my guy Shoes on the Masked Man Show. And Ben Cruz here. Come kick it with me, Cal, and Brian on Tuesdays for Ringer Wrestling Worldwide, where we hit on the most interesting headlines and even react to some of Masked Man's and even your hottest takes. Don't tap out. Tap in to the Ringer Wrestling Show feed now on Spotify

or wherever you get your podcasts. Worldwide. Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit Superstore.ca to get started. I'm Sean Fennessey.

I'm Amanda Dobbins. And this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about challengers. Later in this episode, I'll be joined by Justin Kuritskis, the screenwriter behind the exciting new film, Challengers. Its script is one of many wonderful things about challengers, and Justin is an interesting fellow. He's published a novel, staged several plays.

It's perhaps best known for his YouTube viral sensation, The Potion Seller, one of Amanda's favorite viral videos. He's also married to Celine Song, the writer-director behind Past Lives. I hope you'll stick around for our chat after this. But first, of course, we're going to talk about Challengers, which has been, since before your journeys to Italy,

one of our most anticipated movies of the 2020s. It got pushed. It got pushed. It's finally here. This, Barbie, June 2. Oppenheimer? Sure. That was anticipated.

Yeah, I guess Barbenheimer, Dune 2. And Challengers is here now. Yeah. We fucking did it, man. We did it. We made it through the wilderness. We made it through Q1. Yep, yep.

We made it through the end of last year. Is this like our most agreed upon movie of this year so far? I think it's our center. I think this is our center. The meeting point of interest. We both really liked Dune II. So that, I mean, Dune II was wonderful, but this is our quirky fave.

Here's what this movie has. It has romance. It has sports. It has drama. It has sex. It has Zendaya, Josh O'Connor, and Mike Feist. It has Luca Guadagnino behind the camera.

It has Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross on the score. Just absolutely going for it. Going for it. A magical musical score that we'll talk about in depth. This has a lot of things that we basically cry about on this show every week that don't exist anymore. And it is a full-blown movie star movie that is original,

that is entirely reliant upon the artistry of the filmmakers and the stardom of its movie stars. And it's a fucking home run. Or what's the tennis term? How do we explain how masterfully, is it 6-0, 6-0? Yeah, it's a bagel. Yeah, it's a double bagel or a triple bagel if this is a Grand Slam situation. Is it the Australian Open? Is it Wimbledon? It's a year-long Grand Slam. Oh. Like a season Grand Slam. It's four out of four. Yeah.

Is it that good? Well, he wanted tennis, you know, metaphors, and that's what I'm going for. It's really good. Okay, so it's not just the U.S. Open. I guess U.S. Open, I mean, it is set leading up to the U.S. Open, and it is very American, so it is the U.S. Open, I mean, it is set leading up to the U.S. Open, and it is very American. So it is the U.S. Open of the four.

But sure, you could say, like, not dropping a set at the U.S. Open. Okay. Maybe it's that. So if you're watching or listening to this show, and you're thinking to yourself, why are these two adults talking so crazily about one small movie starring a bunch of 25-year-olds? I'll explain what the movie is. Okay. I think I'll start with the female lead, Tashi.

Would you say this is Tashi's movie? Yes. So Tashi is a tennis player turned coach. She's transformed her husband, played by Mike Feist, into a somewhat impressive, but also maybe somewhat flagging professional tennis player. He's won a couple Grand Slams. He's never fully established a reign, you know, on the circuit. To me, he's like a less charismatic Andy Roddick

is where I would place him in the tennis firmament. I agree. He seems like a very clear inspiration for his character. She's pushing him to continue to go forward in his career. He's clearly starting to lose interest. He's in his early 30s, thinking about retirement, thinking about his family life. He's made a lot of money on the tour, clearly. But she wants him to join a challenger event, which is, what is a challenger event?

So within the tennis world, there is the professional ATP and then the women's tour. And they have events throughout the year leading to the Grand Slams, which are the four, the Australian Open, the French Open, Wimbledon, and the U.S. Open, which is what people are like mostly familiar with. And then there are a bunch of smaller events where kind of journeyman tennis players can play to try to get points and qualify and be able to play on the larger tour and to qualify also for for the grand slams which is where the money is made so mike vice character art is struggling at this stage of his career he's he's got some injury struggles he's not quite the player he was three or four years ago. So Tashi, his wife coach, is encouraging him to play in one of these events in New Rochelle.

Lo and behold, someone else is arriving at this event in New Rochelle, a tennis player portrayed by Josh O'Connor, who we quickly learn is a person from both of their pasts. He's a man named Patrick Zweig, who is one of these journeyman tennis players that you're describing, who's about to play in this challenger event. And the film very quickly becomes a kind of journey through time, back and forth, back and forth from roughly 2006 through 2019. And there's an aggressive amount of time hopping in this movie. It moves. It moves very quickly. And because of the pace, the way that the film is cut the way that it's shot the way that it's scored it feels like you are sliding up and down a scale of experience for these three characters and the way that they intersect so you loved challengers yeah is

challengers a five-star movie to you i don't know it might be a a four and a half. Okay. 4.8? Or a four star. I think the style of movie making is exhilarating. And as you said, lots of cuts, lots of energy, lots of, pun intended, like, ponging back and forth as a tennis ball. The metaphor is very literal, which is exciting. But sometimes you're like, okay okay what's going on here um and i think as an experience and and film as like visceral creation of all sorts of things it's a it's amazing five stars you might have a couple questions about the plot you might have a couple questions about like what's going on or what you know what just happened um it is it is just peak vibes it and and and a lot of vibes that we don't often see in movies unless you're watching a luca

guadagnino movie i mean luca is my guy you know sofia is my girl but then luca is just absolutely no maybe no one understands me more than luca wow That's bold. All the things you want to see. Like thighs. The Cincinnati Applebees. Like house music. You know, just like I will catalog the number of like rich girl Easter eggs that they give to Tashi's character that are so funny. And so just meant to make people like me laugh. Not that I can afford any of them, but I was like, oh, that's the Augustinus Bader body cream.

Thank you so much for giving an insert shot on the cream. They don't show the label. I don't think they had the sponsorship, but they did want you to know, and it's recognizable to anyone who knows what that is. So yeah, he speaks to me. He speaks to me too. I think that's one of the reasons why he's a meeting point for us. I think it would be interesting to him. I would never have imagined that he would make a movie like this, that has this kind of energy.

I think when people hear Luca's name, they think of Call Me By Your Name. It's probably his best celebrated film, an Oscar winning film. But that is a languid, sensual romance about two young men. Sure. This is... I mean, this is in its own way. I guess it's not languid, but there is yearning and there is plenty of sensuality. Absolutely.

And there are two young men who are learning about themselves as they learn about Tosche. It has some hallmarks of his work, but also structurally, it's a little bit different. And especially physically, like the energy of the movie is very, very different. Very exciting. The movie's really being sold, I would say, on Zendaya, Zendaya's presence. This is the big test for Zendaya, the movie star. She was reportedly paid $10 million for this movie. Good for her. She is, of course, a former child star. She's the star of Euphoria. She's the star of films in the Spider-Man franchise. Even though she has been successful in those projects and of course the Dune series of films, she's never carried a movie

like this before. I don't know. I'm not sure that I would say that she is, she's the center of the movie, but not the whole movie. And so it's an unusual kind of test because this movie really relies on Josh O'Connor, I would say, to keep its energy high. Let's start with Zendaya though. What did you think of her and how do you feel like she because this movie really relies on josh o'connor i would say to keep its energy high let's start with zendaya though what did you think of her and how do you feel like she carries this movie i'm a i'm a huge fan she has a difficult task of having to play both a young a teenage tennis player she's a juniors champion um and then she's in college because you really do follow from about 2006, 8 to present day. And so at first or in the flashbacks, she's playing roles that we associate with Zendaya, whether it's Euphoria or, you know, in Dune, she's younger. But she is a young and a young looking person and has graduated from Disney, but still, you know, has the whiff of it.

And then in the present day, she's playing someone who's supposed to be closer to my age, which is, I accept. I say thank you. We all need a confidence boost from time to time. But, you know, it is, it's a stretch. Her haircut is doing a lot of work. Her haircut, her Chanel espadrilles yeah her you know her mini panther cartier watch which i think is actually just her watch but um cartier is a is a significant aspect of this film i would say there's a there's a lot of it that's true and watches are big in the in the tennis world and also in luca movies i was

recognizing i mean the amount of time that tilda Swinton spends taking off and putting on her watch and I am love and again the the close-ups of that it means something to him so I that's a big task I think that she does it um incredibly well for the young stuff incredibly for the the older portions especially towards the end she gets a couple climactic scenes where she really gets to bring it and also where her character transitions from this person of reserve and and fascination and sort of the it's a love triangle movie and she's the third point that no one can quite figure out and so she has to be withdrawn a bit and then you finally get some of her character's motivations or or thoughts she she gets to explode a little and she's really good at it we will necessarily have to spoil the movie to talk about for example the few times when she gets

to climax in this movie and it's not quite in the settings you might imagine but yeah there's really only one thing on Tashi's mind there's really only one thing on Tashi's mind. There's really only one thing that she cares about. She is, and part of what is interesting about this movie is that often it is a male character who gets the characteristic that defines her, which is a kind of aggressive ambition and a driven attitude towards getting the thing,

the world and life that she sees as success. And the way to get there is through this kind of perfect union of tennis, this perfect social psychological experience between two people on a court. Now I don't play tennis really. I've played a few times, but I'm not really a tennis fan. You're a big fan. I'm a huge fan. My resolution for next year is to actually start taking tennis lessons. I really want to do it. At least so that I can play against my husband and then have not a version of Challengers. But there will be some psychological warfare happening on the court. Who's the third? I mean, I really, really, really can't wait to talk about the love triangle, real life part of this.

But we will save it okay but before we get into mike feist and joshua connor is this a good and accurate tennis movie in some ways it's great and it's written with like a lot of knowledge of like tennis culture from the fact that i mentioned the cincinnati applebee's which is featured prominently in the movie and is like a tennis institution the cinc The Cincinnati open is one of the big events before the U S open and sort of like a, um, a signal of, of, of who's up and who's down and who you can expect to do well at the open. And the Applebee's is the only place that's open late enough for all the players. So there was a great times piece, like a decade ago about the Cincinnati Applebee's is like the center of this tournament. So that's open late enough for all the players. So there was a great Times piece like a decade ago about the Cincinnati Applebee's

as like the center of this tournament. So that's great. That demonstrates like a working knowledge. There is also in the premise of the movie, the understanding that a women's junior champion who goes to Stanford, and then I guess spoilers, but this is part of the plot,

has a career ending injury, would still somehow be famous enough to command like a multi-million dollar auto endorsement with like billboards in Tribeca, which strains belief a little bit. In other sports, you could see a circumstance in which this is the case. I couldn't think of a comp of tennis. It's with her husband. Yeah.

And it's sort of like, you know, but even Anna Kournikova won some tournaments as a professional, not in juniors, before she married Enrique Iglesias and had an amazing life.

Did they appear in advertisements together? Maybe they did. Okay. You know, I haven't been keeping up on that. Or I guess Andy Roddick and Mandy Moore, but Mandy Moore, do you remember that? I do remember. Yeah. And when he did win the US Open, he ran up the stands and that was like Mandy Moore's first career. And threw himself into her arms? Yeah. Wow. It's great YouTubing. You should check that out. But even there, like Manny Moore's not a retired tennis star. She's a Disney pop star. So when I spoke to Justin Kuritskis, the screenwriter of the movie,

he said that clearly part of the inspiration for Tashi's energy, and even I get the impression sort of like her sense of fame and the way that we see her was in part inspired by Roger Federer's wife. Is her name Mirka? Yeah. Who frequently, especially when he was at the height of his greatness, was seen in a box looking angsty. Mirka's always there. Mirka famously like will yell at other players.

She and Stan Wawrinka, another Swiss player, really got into it one time and she was cursing him out. Like, Mirka's awesome. And my husband recently interviewed Roger Federer, who's, Roger Federer is like our household hero.

And there was a great quote that Roger gave that was like, Mirka loves cars and watches. So that's what she's interested in. I mean, there's a little bit of that going on with this character. That is true, but Mirka loves cars and watches. So that's what she's interested to. And you're like, okay, sure. I mean, there's a little bit of that going on with this character, you know? That is true, but Mirka is not in any of the 4,000 advertisements

that Roger Federer does for his various things. It's just Roger being goofy in his sunglasses. It's a slightly exaggerated world of tennis. So I would say no shots to tennis in general, but I would say tennis does not quite occupy the same level of, I don't know, intrigue and celebrity

as it did 20 years ago. It's not quite the same. No, that's true. When Serena was at the height of her powers, when Federer was at the height of his powers, you know,

when Rafa Nadal was entering the scene, when you still had figures like Roddick, U.S. players, there was still a lot of interest in. And Sampras before that.

And yeah, no, there was obviously, and also, culture was more organized around, you know, monolithic things. And so people would pay attention to Wimbledon for two weeks. I thought even the, there's an opening scene where Mike Feist and Zendaya, Art and Tashi are watching ESPN and there's like a talking head segment about how Art did, I think, at the Cincinnati Open and what his chances were at the US. And I was like, ESPN is not giving any time

to this. Scott Van Pelt is not discussing that. Yeah, that doesn't come up on SportsCenter these days. It might be like in between matches of the Cincinnati Open, but even that you can't really get on ESPN anymore. You get the slams and that's it. Yeah, another moment that Karitskas cited as an inspiration point for the movie was that famous moment in the match between Serena Williams

and Naomi Osaka. And that is an occasion in which something like that would appear on SportsCenter. You know, where Serena became very angered by something that happened during their match.

That's a grabbable moment with a very famous player. So the movie wants to... It wants to be in that world. Like the movie wants to be in that world. Like it wants to be in the world where tennis occupies these people. So do I. You know, I mean, that's the other thing. And for two hours when you watch this movie, you can be in that world.

And it's so exciting. We're almost to tennis season again. You know, it's a year-round sport. But for me, it starts with the French Open. And just the feeling of watching tennis at 10 a.m. on a weekday instead of doing your job because it's summer. I'm in a completely different place. It's just, it's NFL draft weekend. This is really all I care about aside from seeing challengers for a third time. I need the Philadelphia Sixers season to just be over. I just. I need that too. I know that you do, but like,

I cannot live like this. On, was it Monday night with the just absolutely disastrous loss it was tuesday and it was one of the best days of my life yeah okay whenever it was my husband was out of the home thing no it was monday night you're right sorry so my son didn't have to see it uh and i was like i i want him to stay out of the house because i don't want the energy but he stayed out for long enough that i was like has he gotten in a fight you know like I going to get a call and have to go down to a police station? And I just, I can't live in this in between anymore. I need the Sixers to be over. I need it to be Challenger season. I need it to be tennis season. I need us to be going insane about Novak Djokovic winning because I hate him. Yeah. I just do. Do you remember five or seven years ago

when I would tease you about Djokovic as the greatest of all time? Yeah, do you? Not really caring. Yeah, do you still feel that way? I mean, I never felt that way, but it was very fun to give you shit about it. And I mean, he continues to dominate the sport.

What can you say? Sort of. It's like he's waiting. Okay. Do you think that, because I don't think that Art Donaldson or Patrick Zweig vague these two players they're not federer they're not nadal they're not jokovic they are you know joshua connor's

character patrick is significantly lower down the chain but you get the impression that he has the talent like these two guys the frame of the story is that they're two lifelong friends they met basically at boarding school when they were teenagers and they've grown up together they play doubles together juniors we see them in a very exciting scene early in the film you know going shot for shot and winning a cup and they have this very kind of modern sexual relationship where they are there's some there's a sexual energy between them there's a kind of fluidity though are they aware of it right there but there there is looks like a physical connection and they're they're drawn to each other and and in the way that throughout

the movie tennis it's just like is a one-to-one stand-in for sex most of the time. You don't actually see a ton of actual sex. Hardly any. Especially compared to any other Luca Guadagnino movie. Yeah, which I think is very purposeful. Yeah, but you see a lot of tennis. Yes. But I think what you see is the physical representation of the magnetism between them.

Yeah, and their closeness. You know, like, when they win that doubles tournament, I think Patrick jumps into Art's arms. Right. And they're hugging, which is an image

we'll see later in the film. Sure. You know, when they are just giving each other shit, they're kind of touching each other a lot. Yeah. You know, they have that kind of,

like, roughhousing guy's energy that also has a sexual undercurrent that is just so important to the movie because the movie is um you know as luca guadagnino told the screenwriter like a love triangle where all the sides touch right you know and there is something kind of exciting about trying to figure out who's drawing who towards who at any given time as the movie plays out we see this amazing thing where Tosche sort of uses their connection against each other in some ways

to determine how she's going to seek power in many ways. But let's talk about O'Connor and Mike Feist because... My guys. You know, we just talked about Josh O'Connor recently because he's starring in the film La Chimera. I was not really super familiar with him before that,

but he really popped in that movie. Did you ever make it to those seasons of The Crown? In the last seven days. I blocked out from the last time we talked about this, whether you watched it or not. No, I finished season two, and I won't be picking it back up. It's your loss.

I have too many other television shows like X-Men 97 to continue watching, which I'm greatly enjoying. I'd just like to say for the record. Josh O'Connor in this movie is incredible. He is astounding. I loved him in this movie. I love the Patrick character. Electric.

He is a fucking dirtbag. And really incredibly different from almost every character he's played. Just like a sweaty American doofus. But not a doofus. Very savvy, just as you said. Just kind of a dirtbag. Yeah, an unshaven, uncleansed fuckboy. That's literally what he's playing.

And he is sexually fluid. And he is trying to take advantage of people at all times. The camera is so close on his face so many times in this movie. Luca is clearly obsessed with Josh O'Connor. And Josh O'Connor, you can feel him leaning into the lens in the movie. Because he's really having a lot of fun with this character. He has kind of the Brad Pitt part in some ways. And so far as like, he's just kind of always eating something he just always has something in his mouth and there are a lot of obvious phallic

illusions going on with the character but he's just like you know a lot of lucas movies are about consumption and people who like eat and they it is another very um recurring and obvious metaphor for desire yes and and hunger and appetite and and the different ways that that can be expressed. The purple shorts are really important. They just are. So all of the costumes in this movie are done by Jonathan Anderson, who is the designer of Loewe and also his own line, but he and Josh O'Connor are buds. So, and Josh O'Connor is always at the Louis V shows and I think is pretty much exclusively dressed by him or frequently dressed by him.

He was wearing it at the premiere where I saw the film. And so there's a real understanding and an appreciation also of what Josh O'Connor can wear and how it's used in the movie. And again, just like the sheer amount of thigh, which is like not a male body part that you see that often, just, you know, given trends and how most men like to dress. This is something you want. You want more male thigh in your life.

I'm saying it's powerful. Okay. Do you know, like you notice it? Who's the thigh that you'd like to see? Well, I mean paul meskel is like really trying to make that work a lot he does like that but i'm just saying like these you know the euro boys the boys from across the pond they understand they're a little more comfortable yeah and what a time for ireland and it it really does work and it's also like the camera also and

luca guadagnino also understands the power of it. And you said, you know, he's like an unwashed sleaze pot, but also in an incredibly appealing way. Like that is, that's a pro. Yeah. In the values of the movie. He's very confident and charming. I mean, also the movie goes out of its way to be like, you've got a big dick. Like that comes up like multiple times in the movie.

There's some very clear insinuations about like basically the two modes of masculinity in the movie. And Art and Patrick represent those two modes. But O'Connor is just like very up for this part. Not every actor can pull off this part. Because he's handsome, but not like classically handsome. You know, he has big features. And he has to be a little bit gross and a little bit appealing at the same time. And it is also, they obviously have doubles,

but they are all like playing tennis. They're very physical. Yes. Like their bodies are on display, obviously with the shorts, but also just in terms of moving around. And that's not typically, I mean, you know. No, you gotta be able to do that work.

Sure, but he typically does like, you know, Shakespeare and walking slowly to look for I mean, you know. No, you gotta be able to do that work. Sure, but he typically does like, you know, Shakespeare and walking slowly to look for an Etruscan artifact, you know, like really slowly. Like you can't rush the divine across. So, and they both talked about

how like they went to boot camp and they all did like tennis training and then unit rehearsals. And there was one, like some sort of machine that measured their ab strength and Zendaya, one of the three of them. And then they were all like, oh no, what do we do to keep up with Zendaya? But that's demanding and very different from the typical. It's a huge part of the movie.

And if you don't buy them as athletes, then it doesn't work. And a very specific kind of athlete, somebody a few weeks ago had asked me after I'd seen the movie, is the movie actually as sexy as people are saying it is? And I was like, it is if you like skinny people, you know, this is a movie of skinny people. Um, maybe no one more skinny than Mike Feist. He's a, he's a skinny boy. Yeah. I mean, that's also, that's true of tennis a little bit. Totally. I think they're well cast. They look like the kind of person. You don't see a lot of guys who are like 6'6", 280 playing professional tennis. That's not really an archetype.

But I think Feist is a really interesting one. He burst onto the scene. We've never really seen him before in Spielberg's West Side Story remake a few years back. He is on fire in that movie. He is like the thing that jumps off the screen. And he hasn't really done anything since then. He is on fire in that movie. He is like the thing that jumps off the screen. And he hasn't really done anything since then. He appears in the movie The Bike Riders, which was meant to come out last year. That's exciting.

And he has an important part in that movie. And I thought he was pretty good, but a very different kind of energy from what we saw in West Side Story or this movie. In this movie, he's kind of the naif. He's like the innocent one. He's the one who doesn't quite have the leg up literally that patrick has he becomes a kind of a pawn of tashi's world by the end of the film but i thought he was very very good in this too and like bringing a certain kind of like um a beta energy until he doesn't have to anymore yeah well he also still does bring the palpable connection with art.

Yes. With Josh O'Connor as well as with Tashi and can like differentiate the types of relationship between those two people, which is nuanced work and you could just like be a wallflower and be pining for both of them but he sees different things from them and is able to communicate all of that yeah and he seems also there's an interesting period in the film where patrick and and tashi are together they're in college and he's trying to worm his way in between them. And he's trying to garner Tashi's affection. Patrick and Tashi are together, but Tashi and Art go to Stanford together. Exactly.

So they spend time together. They're friends. They eat together, but he is undercutting him to her while they're having a meal. And then Patrick comes to visit him and he is undercutting her to him. And he's playing a little game. It's the only time when he's really playing a little game in the movie yeah and he

gets exactly what he wants and he's very effective at just being the devil for like eight minutes and the other two are really the devils for the remainder of the time yeah the chaos agents are Patrick and Tashi but the one moment and he is the person who gets to be the the crowbar in the story who kind of breaks the story open because if he doesn't do the thing that he does in that period of the movie right we don't see Tosche and and art and their life together so I don't want to undersell him as only being like the soft boy who's you know attracted to her and attracted to him like he does have a little bit he has agency in the movie that is powerful and feist really like

sells you in that moment because you've i'm sure you've encountered i don't know if you've encountered a guy like that specifically trying to break you up with another guy but that is a thing that happens in the world yeah the person who is watching and waiting and it's more watching than waiting actually just and when things come together, they're ready. He knows how to strike. Yeah. There's really not many other performances in this movie. There's a very funny performance from a line judge.

Oh, yeah. Who is Zendaya's personal assistant. Yes. He's very good. Yeah. There's also... Also, another tennis fact check that I don't care at all about but I don't feel that line judges at Challengers events

are dressed as beautifully as he is as the line judge yeah well he's also very well manicured his hair is wonderful

yeah yeah yeah there's also the woman that we encounter at the beginning of the Challenger event who is a part of the past

in the story but just a very it's a very short list of characters there's a woman that Patrick goes on a Tinder date with, which is a very, very funny sequence.

But for a movie that has this scale, for a movie that is a $50 million movie, reportedly, that's the budget, which is very expensive for a movie like this,

to only really have three characters is, I couldn't think of a lot of comparisons. It's not common for something that is this big and this powerful

that feels this big and this powerful to no buddy else that we spend our time with honestly that gets to know they have no depth well you are spending time with a lot of different versions of these characters and i think it it's smart to scale it if you're going to do as much time jumping and and like backstabbing and alliance shifting as you do throughout like it's enough to try to keep up with the three of them do you think it is confusing at all how much of the time hopping is going down in the movie no there's only one moment where i got lost i don't even think i was lost but there were a couple times where i was like I need a better explanation for what's going on and and then eventually like the time hopping did get there so maybe I wanted it to get there

a bit faster or maybe I thought it was you know not totally well paced but I wasn't confused if anything I was like by the 14th title card being like here's exactly what time this I was like calm down I'm paying attention. You know, like whatever studio executive at Amazon was just like, we need another one. I do think that was what was going on. I know, but I just want everyone at Amazon to know that like, I'm focusing. There are a couple of moments in the film and we're entering into spoiler territory as we start to dig into specific scenes more deeply.

But there was a moment when we go to Cincinnati and we have this critical meal between Tashi and art where I was like, where, what's up? When, what year is this? And then there's another moment in Atlanta where Patrick and Tashi have an encounter where I was like,

what year is this? And these are, those are moments that are not in the core timelines of the movie. There's like a core timeline, as you said, this sort of like 2006, 2008, and then 2019. Those are sort of the core timelines of the movie. There's like a core timeline, as you said, that's sort of like 2006, 2008, and then 2019. Those are sort of the main moments of the film. Those other two moments feel like they're happening.

They're just floating in space. Yeah, it's like, was that 2013? Was it 2016? You know, like there are mile markers throughout the movie, but it's unusual for something like this to skip ahead and then go back and skip ahead and go back. Right, and the trick is that this is a movie about professional tennis players, so they are always on the road. And it is set in a series of hotels and Applebee's and restaurants

and other places. So there aren't any kind of outside everyone and is it flux all of the time, which is, I think, a feature for the most part. And then another aspect of what is so strange and interesting about these three people but for the flashbacks that aren't granted in time you're kind of like wait where am i and it's like are we in new rochelle is this atlanta i thought that much of new rochelle actually was atlanta but that's okay that may have been the case that's okay i also just forgot to say that like this civil war scene that was like, in New York or wherever that opening thing, that, like, that was Atlanta. And I was like, I know what block that is. You mean from the film Civil War?

Yes. There's not a Civil War sequence in the film Challenger. So it is a kind of Civil War. Yeah, it is. It is. It's a different kind of Civil War. So you want to get that on the record? Should we have Bobby cut that note you just made into the Civil War episode?

They didn't even bother changing the Auburn Avenue sign. I was like, I, that's Atlanta. But that's okay. That's all right. This was apparently Atlanta too. Did you just want the Statue of Liberty in the middle of that scene? What should they have done? They got to make these movies on a budget, Amanda. I think everybody in Atlanta is very happy for the contributions to the local economy, but also it's all starting to look the same. The funniest version of that is Baby Driver where I'm like, why are they robbing these banks in Atlanta? Why is this movie set in Atlanta?

It's in Atlanta because that's where they had to shoot the movie. Anyway, I think it's not really that confusing ultimately if you're just paying attention the way you would to a normal film, but it's unusual in part because of how fast the film is moving. So when you're sliding back and forth through time

and you're getting constantly hit with these needle drops of energy you know it kind of it kind of feels like you're just i tell you what i've never used cocaine but it kind of has that like i just did a line feeling every time the music drops yeah and well i mean the score is not half the movie it's a huge part of its success completely completely completely, completely changes it. Yes. Could you imagine with just a more traditional, like, James Newton Howard orchestra playing, like, elegant, thumping drums, you know, instead of this, you know, Berghain in 2007. Like, it is fucking house music throughout the film from Reznor, who, of course, like, knows how to to make music like that but has never really quite made music like this like he's obviously made a kind of industrial

dance music before but not like this and the movie is so in love with the score that it is literally dropping score over dialogue scenes and you almost can't make out what the characters are saying to each other which is in some ways like the point of the movie because the the score is so aligned with the this is just this is pure energy like we are just gonna make you feel like you are you know an insane young person confused where the tennis ends and the sex begins and also what you want in life and whether it's to win or to fuck or to both. In Tashi's case, they are the same. Yeah, exactly. And it just, it keeps going.

It's so exciting. I do think it helps, it sets the pace, but also makes the pace of the movie and that cutting and the back and forth just make a lot more sense. Because at some point you're just like, whatever, I'm just going. Like, I'm just dancing. There's like a sequence,

I think it's when Art and Tashi are in bed together where the music is going. And I'm like, I don't care what they're saying. It's like not important. Is that the one before her college tennis match? I think it's later in the movie, near the end. Oh no, Art is Art. The names of Art and Patrick.

Yeah, I love them. I love them, but I think it was Nate Jones of Vulture who published a piece today being like, they should be switched. Oh. You know, and that like Art has more Art vibes and Patrick has more Patrick vibes. And that lodged itself enough in my head that now I have a hard time remembering who is Art and who is Patrick. I think that might be Patrick Slander. Like all dudes named Patrick. Well, that's your Irish king again.

That's what I'm saying. Yeah. I gotta defend my guy. I don't know a lot of arts. Yeah, I mean, the Reznor music is pretty incredible.

There are also some important needle drops in this movie. This is, there's shades of salt burn here. This is a movie that allows pretty much the entirety

of Nellie's Hot in Here to play at a party. It's amazing. I mean, I was thrilled at the needle drop. Explain to Gen Z what it was like when Hot in Here to play at a party. It's amazing. I mean, I was thrilled at the needle drop. Explain to Gen Z what it was like when Hot in Here dropped. Explain how it changed America.

I have just like an incredibly vivid sense memory of a, I must have been high school age-wise, but I was still, I had not gone to college yet, And some terrible dance in our cafeteria. And like Hot In Here is going. And all the teachers are like trying to, pun intended, bring down the temperature of the dancing, you know? But it's like at some point. They couldn't stop you. You can't stop Hot In Here.

When we had to make a list like for our wedding DJ of songs we wanted to hear. I literally, the thing I wrote was just like i would like to hear hot in here and then like really any other nelly that you can fit into to the playlist that didn't really happen and he just played like philly rap the entire time but that's okay extremely important even in 2006 and it is also it that's true it did it had a long lifespan it's a 2002 song, but it did... You would hear that in an event like the one they were at. So I guess it would have been my senior year of high school when we lost it to Nelly. So it comes on.

It's at the party. It's in a flashback mode. So they're teenagers. And Zendaya is like perfectly teenagered out in like a blue chiffon dress and she gets you know a classic guadagnino dance for a long period of time to a pop song i think she actually just she changed all her social media profile pics to a picture of her from this scene yeah like dance because she knows well think about it suspiria dance obviously army hammer call me by your name dance like this is something he obviously ray finds a bigger splash this is something he goes back to over

and over again bodies in motion um and as a way of signaling like this there's a lot going on with this person that under the surface that is is about to create some issues and she is she's the magnet in that scene because the two guys are at the party and they're watching her and we're seeing through their POV. It's through their eyes what she looks like in this moment. And she is the prize.

She is like the cup. And they are really just two dumb teenagers also. Like the shots of the two of them together just like with jaws open are very funny. Josh O'Connor's character holding a Coke bottle, like mouthing a Coke bottle while watching her dance. Just hilarious stuff. Mike Feist is wearing the backwards hat throughout that.

That's like the, this it's young Mike Feist when his hat is on backwards, which is very funny. That's the other way, you know, where you are is just look at the guy's hair, look at her hair. That's how you know where in time we are.

But also they just let the Nelly, like the entire song place. Yeah. I mean, that's powerful. Yeah. I'm glad for everyone though, because it just kept going.

And I was just like, I was, I was hooting and hollering throughout this whole movie. I'm like dancing to the score when this was going, when, you know,

all of the. The other one that I clocked that I was, was a real time capsule moment is in the college cafeteria when mike feist and uh zendaya are having lunch together lily allen smile is playing and i was like wow that is definitely what would be playing in that room at that time and i but i i do after i saw this i went and was listening to that album. It's a great album. As I honestly do once every three, four months. So it's a great album.

Is she still married to David Harbour? I believe so. I hope they're happy. I think they're doing well. Good. She seems to say something once every nine months where everybody's like, shut up, Lily Allen. Well, she has a podcast now, like we all do. You know, the mighty have fallen.

Or have we risen? Think about it that way. I went to a party last night. I was out on the town. And I still haven't figured out like I have a podcast like what do you say

when what do you do I say I'm a great arbiter of culture I'm the dean I can't say it I don't know the sentence I always say I work at Spotify

if someone asks I never be like I'm the host of a successful movie podcast perhaps you'd like to listen to it in your earbuds at 1.3 speed but then suddenly people are trying to talk to you about whatever is going on at Spotify.

I am up on Sabrina Carpenter now, as well as Chapel Rowan. So I could, at this moment, have those conversations. Meaning like what songs are popping? That's what people want to ask you? Yeah, I don't know. Nobody asked me about that. Okay, what do they ask you? They're just like, why doesn't this work the way that I want it to?

I don't know. I'm not an engineer. I do get, when I finally get the podcast out, people are like, how do I find podcasts? And I'm like, that's the great question at the center of our industry. Some would say that that's terrifying that someone would say that. I say that means there's a lot of room to move above our head. The ceiling is high. We've not yet tapped into the core base.

And then do you get out your phone and just pull out, pull up the big picture for them? It depends. Remember how I followed the big picture the other day? Yeah, that was incredibly annoying. Just for the first time in the history of this podcast that you've been doing for seven years. Well, I don't listen to it when I'm on it. I did listen to the horror episode. That was good.

Thanks. Thanks. But you're listening on Apple. No, no. No, I listen on Spotify. Okay, okay. So you just pull it up. You just search for it every time. No, I mean, it feeds it. It's learned anyway. No, no. No, I listen on Spotify. Okay, okay. So you just pull it up. You just search for it

every time. No, I mean, it feeds it. It's learned anyway. Okay, okay. Yeah, so I don't need to follow it, but I did follow it because I support

what we do here. Thank you very much. Do you think Zendaya's listening to this episode? I really hope not. In the same way that you want to be friends with Kirsten Dunst,

do you want to be friends with Zendaya? She's younger than me, and so... You want to mother her? No, I think I would would just i would feel uncool all the time if she wanted to be like you know another like a hip 26 year old friend who keeps me updated on things or i she 26 that gen z friend okay i obviously would accept that i think she's

very cool the the press tour between the three of them has been really interesting because they all are a little bit shyer than you would think they would be based on this movie or based on being, you know, actors. And in Zendaya's case, like an international star. She's a very wry personality. She's really funny. Incredibly talented. I'm a huge fan. It's not that I don't want to be friends with her. I think Zendaya rules.

I just don't really feel cool enough. And, you know, sometimes I'm also like I don't want to meet my heroes. Well, okay. So this is something that happened at the premiere of the film in Los Angeles that I went to a couple of weeks ago, which was quite interesting. It was at a theater in westwood packed house people just like salivating for this movie desperate for this movie in part because of her she was there she everyone was there you know luca justin trent resner the whole the whole amy pascal produced this movie like it's a very this is a powerful hollywood package that has come together here

but she spoke last of course course, as the star. And she said, she seemed a little nervous. And she said, you know, I really hope you enjoy this. I love making this movie. Please don't judge the characters too harshly. Yeah. Which I thought was fascinating. She also. Maybe an entree into this discussion. her Instagram post, which I think is a very wise and incisive understanding of her generation

and how they watch movies. Exactly. Exactly. She seemed to be protecting herself, not from us. Because for me, I was like, yeah, be a demon. This is awesome. This is actually how people are. I love how this movie portrays this kind of ambition,

but she also has an empire to protect, really. I mean, she could potentially be a, I don't know about a Julia Roberts type, but she could be like a massive worldwide star for 30 years. That's in play for someone like her because she's very talented and she's clearly very smart. So her being concerned about that is fascinating because this is a movie about people who do things that are in some cases unseemly and in some cases unforgivable and it's

all about this connectivity amongst these three people and what they do to each other and how they hurt each other or help each other and sometimes those two things are the same right and i find it very fascinating i'm curious like what your perspective is on Toshi, the character, because as I say, a lot of actresses don't get the chance to do a part like this, especially not in a big movie. So like,

what do you think is motivating her? What do you think is at the bottom of this character? And do you think actually Zendaya will get crushed on social media or whatever for the part that she's taking on here? If the children don't understand, then the children have their whole lives ahead of them to get outside and live and learn and hopefully make mistakes with other really hot people. You should be forced to do human resource reviews with Gen Z kids.

Just like idle 16 year olds who are just being very sensitive. I'd just be like, wake up, go outside. Here's something called caffeine. It's the energy that you most, you struggle with. I just don't understand it. And it's honestly, it's sort of unfair to tag it to Gen Z. It's actually young millennials. I see you, Bobby.

What's up, Bobby? It's your people. Wake up, start, you know, talking at a normal speed and listening to music with energy. What? How did I get dubbed as the person who doesn't talk at a normal speed and listen to music? Because you have distanced yourself from Gen Z for so long that now I hold you responsible for Jack Antonoff's shitty beats on the Tortured Poets department. Wow.

Wow. I could not be less responsible for jack antonoff zendaya and trent resner understand we want to have fun why can't you i do not answer for the crimes of one jack antonoff i never have and i never will that's not my guy trent resner is going to be 59 years old this year i just want to put that out there yeah but he's back yeah you're not gen x but those of us who begrudgingly respect them are also i just i just learned that jack antonoff uh and i share a birthday however he is 40 years old so is he 40 gotta say feels like it's maybe you guys are responsible for that that one backfired on you. I don't claim him. I never have.

I never. I have always just been like, could we go outside and have some fun? You know? And that has been true for his music and for everything else.

So I suppose there will be some children who don't understand. That's okay. Did you relate to Tashi at all? Who'd you relate to the most? I think that's a really fun Rorschach. Probably Tashi.ashi yeah even though

i'm not um generationally anything yeah let alone generationally athletically and talented charismatic visionary i don't mean in that way yeah more in your mentality of life because this is like three very specific approaches to life sure let it come to me let me go after it let me try to break it those are the three ways that they think about it. And it's, I mean, it is also a little bit of, here are these two dummies, you know, who I'm sort of drawn to and who both seem to have something that I would really like, but for a number of reasons, sociological and luck of the knee twist, I can't quite have. And so I will subsume my fury and try to pit everyone against each other to win. That does sound familiar.

That's funny. Yeah, I'm definitely not a Patrick. As fun as it would be to be a patrick no you're not i feel like i'm more of a tashi honestly yeah i think i think i most understand her and i think that's like a neat trick of the movie is that even though patrick and art are like foregrounded to an extent it's it's her movie and so you are drawn to her perspective and it's not just because she's a woman that i'm drawn to her i'm just kind of like oh okay this is she seems to be also the she understands what's going on the most of the three well i feel like an important part of the movie and there are like a series of themes i think it'll be fun to talk

through and how these like ideas sync up with what I think Kuritsukas is most interested in and why he wrote the movie this way. But class and money is a big part of this world, but almost never enunciated. It's clear from the story that Tashi is middle class, maybe lower middle class, even in seeing her parents early in the film and then seeing her mother and the way that her mother stays involved in the caretaking of her child.

That she needs success in a way that the other two characters don't need to, or at least wants it. Wants to break out of, you know, basically like a public school lifestyle where she's been told like it's good to go to stanford to make something of yourself like she has a bigger picture in mind because she hasn't been pampered in the way that these two boys have and these two guys are boarding school kids probably rich we know at least patrick is rich because of this critical confrontation between tashi and patrick in that alleyway where she says to him like you know this slum in it act I'm not buying it you could just go back to your parents and be fine why are you trying to what are you trying to prove by playing in these challenger events and continuing to fail so and you know it's not a mistake that her character is biracial too you know like that there is a class consciousness

in that too in terms of who gets to loaf around and who gets to not live up to the expectations or even their own potential greatness. Like the critical dynamic between art and Patrick is, is that art is like, I try, like I actually do care. I'm not blowing up my life nonstop. When they have their critical confrontation in the sauna, you see Mike, what does he say? He says, I win. like that's what differentiates me and you is i win all the time right and you don't and maybe he we don't really know as much about art and his background as we do about patch we hear a little bit more about patrick but kind of who needs this and who doesn't is a big part of this story and who lets sex or ego get in the way of success

is also critical and then who uses sex and ego to further their agenda is also a fascinating part of the story. So I just loved that as like a, you know, a very clear subtext of the story that's been told. Yes. And it's both in the, in what they say to each other and then how they are presented. I mean, it is, it's no accident that Tashi's adult character is the Chanel Espadrilles, the Cartier watch. They stay at the new Rochelle Ritz-Carlton, which doesn't exist.

Seems lovely. Well, I Googled it. It does. But she says that when they talk about why they're staying there, she's like, well, our daughter really likes hotels, which is a great great detail passing detail in a lot of ways both of like you know the the transitional nature of of hotels and that there's no real sticking like that point yeah i think all three

of these characters are never settled but then also also just like the basic, you know, we have a six-year-old daughter who really likes room service a lot. Yeah. My read on that too is also Tashi likes hotels. Yeah, sure. As someone who didn't grow up probably going to the Ritz-Carlton, she is still entranced by this experience. But there is like a real understanding and built in, not just just character but like production design and development of of how these people understand their class and what they are aspiring towards and like once they've gotten something how they're using it um that rings very true there's also a very obvious

corollary as we've said between sex and tennis here in fact Tashi's character gets to explain when she feels basically like most safe most satisfied in the world early on when they have that first meeting after the party the boys kind of pull her aside and they bring her to go sit by the beach and they smoke cigarettes and they hang out and talk and Tashi's monologue about the match that she had had earlier in the day with a funny character who she beats in that match but who we do see later on in the film do you remember seeing this character later on the film going on to have a very successful professional career she's like on tv it's really a nice little easter egg in the movie but she explains how you know this girl who she clearly dominated um in tennis match, but there's one moment where they've had this

incredible volley back and forth. And she's like, that's when we were playing tennis. Like it was just me and her alone in the world. And it was like, she was talking about a great night of sex. Like that is how she sees contentment. And the way both the tennis itself is filmed and then her her reaction to finally winning the point is like those are the orgasms in the movie not like any actual sexual acts there's no penetration in this movie even though there's so much sex in this movie and that's the closest you get to it which the come on that she says at the at the end of that match we hear later in the film and it's like a critical phrase that means something very clear.

Um, so I just love the idea that there is kind of a sex scene between Patrick and Tashi in the dorm room where they're like, right out to have sex and then things go awry. Right. Which I thought was also really interesting cause she's very much in control in that. Yeah. And she, and when things go bad, it's in part because she's very much in control in that yeah yeah and

she and when things go bad it's in part because she's just like absolutely not she just like turns it off exactly yeah and some of it is like their their bodies are doing one thing and then they're they're talking about match preparation and also she's basically calling him a loser and she's just like why can't you like try I don't understand why you don't want this. Like why? But in like talking the, the terms of, of their attraction, like a reveal to not be matched.

And she's like, oh, I'm not going to get like what I want from this. And she's just like, bye, but I gotta go. I gotta go meditate. I've wondered about that though,

because obviously the events that happened immediately before that are those two conversations between Art and Tashi and Art and Patrick. And he has seeded something that has allowed her to recognize that Patrick just has more loser energy than she wants in her life. Yeah. And do you think that she wants a puppet don't do you think that she wants a puppet or do you think that she wants a strong guy who's like i fucking got this because it eventually becomes a puppeteering situation but is that what she wanted at that time i don't think she

totally knows at that point um i think she's probably as we all would be repulsed by at some point, like the total loserness, like she wants a backbone. She, she wants like literally the back, she wants this, the partner, you know, to someone who will hit the thing back so you can get to that volley that she describes. And so if, you know, once she senses the loser and like, and the whole thing about he doesn't even try, like it's's there but he's not even trying really seems to be a recurring theme and the like major offending thing for her because she is someone who still wants like what she wants is sort of a moving target but his general apathy

doesn't like can't match the energy that she's looking for yeah they're both immoral but in opposite directions yeah he's like i want to kind of loaf around and have fun and right fuck people and wander the earth and she's like i want to win and i want a really nice bracelet yeah and they're both kind of gross in some ways but they're both kind of fun you know they're both exciting to spend time with and art comes somewhere in the middle of that that conversation between art and and patrick in the in the cafeteria is maybe my favorite scene in the movie um and it dovetails with something else that i love in the movie which is we indicated like food and the role that food play and food brands play in the movie is really really fascinating so you know in

this movie we see um coca-cola we see budweiser we see taco bell we see applebee's dunkin donuts we see dunkin donuts we see all of these gatorade we see all of these critical brands basically to an athletic lifestyle and a youth lifestyle. And an American lifestyle as well. Very much so. And that is kind of also corresponding with this idea of consumption and sex that is a big theme of all of Luca's movies. And the scene between Patrick and Art, they both have churros. Yeah.

I mean, that's the scene. That's the image of the movie. It's so funny. And it's almost shot, it feels almost like a fisheye lens where, you know, Josh O'Connor is just chomping on this churro as he is taught, as he's getting almost aroused by the idea of recognizing that his friend is trying to cut him out so that he can be with Zendaya. And he's got this like impish devilish grin on his face,

chomping away, chomping away. At one point he just takes his friend's churro and starts eating that churro. Doesn't he just take it, lean over and take a bite of it? Yeah. Yeah. Which is even better.

So good. I mean, you know, it's the most obvious metaphor of all time, but it's so funny about that, that it's just kind of like, we're going to do this. Like let's,

let's actually do it. Yeah. His voracious. And there's a knowingness to the way that it's all done yeah it's very very fun everything he sees he just wants to eat he just wants to take from everybody which is really really fun the dunkin donuts uh egg sandwich on the woman's table beautifully photographed and the way that the camera just pins down but it is also that's a great example of like it was not the dunkin rep who was on set being like this is how we got to frame this egg sandwich it that was no that was luca and his

you know and his team being like here is the american beauty of this egg sandwich that i would love to eat right now actually the film is shot by uh sayambu mudkey prom and that's the that's uh pitch pong Pichupong Versicles you know it's the guy who shot Uncle Boonmi and the idea of like him over the course of 10 years

shooting those movies and now filming like Dunkin Donuts egg sandwiches is really just fun to think about it's a beautiful looking movie

I think it is a there's a couple things that start to happen in the film that I've never really seen before I was curious what you thought in the final match which we kind of ping back and forth throughout the film we're kind of right this critical final showdown at this challenger event

between patrick and art which is also this kind of concluding metaphor yeah and zendaya is seated right at the net and there are a lot of shots leading up to the final shot of just of various points but the camera's focused on zendaya and she's just looking one way or looking the other way or sometimes she's looking straight ahead and then the crowd behind her is very strange yeah and looking the other thing yeah which is all like very effective if if if a little obvious but then for the final point, they just let it fly. And then like you're following the ball

and everyone's like jumping through the air. And you know, it's like half Nike commercial, half like, exhilarating. And I thought really exciting. What'd you think of, cause there's two different POV shots I've never seen before. There's a POV shot from the ball's perspective.

Yeah. And then one from the racket's perspective too. And there are these critical moments because there is a symbol that one of the character makes when he is preparing to serve. That becomes kind of the rosebud of this movie. Sure. And that's actually maybe a triple metaphor there. But he, I loved seeing the action taking place from that perspective multiple times. Yeah, it was exciting.

And also in a film where I thought the tennis was like photographed well and was believable and was propulsive. But if not traditional, at least familiar. And then the score just starts going and you're you're everywhere you like you are seeing the ball and being the ball all at once uh and and it was very exciting and i think does contribute to like the energy of that final zendaya reveal which is like not reveal even but well let's let's let's talk about the ending because it's it's an important part of the movie if you don't want the movie spoiled for you right now, you should turn it off. I apologize to our producer who has not yet seen the film.

This is a heartbreaking moment for him. Bob, take your headphones off. I mean, you know, it's not like Who Killed Kennedy or something. It is, though. It's a sick ending. It's a sick ending. Most endings suck. Like, as someone who sees 300 new movies a year.

They do. They all suck. And this is a great ending. But it's, you know, we're not like solving. You guys are referring to the part where the Guardians of the Galaxy descend down on the tennis court. Yeah.

Yeah. Set to the strains of Slow Ride. Yeah. And they saved Zendaya. They took her off into space. It was a really great moment. Chris Pratt looked so cool. Oh my God.

I would be so angry. This is hazardous of a job. I'm used to this. Did you see that Chris Pratt like raised it architecturally significant? I did. At home. Okay. I can used to this. Did you see that Chris Pratt raised it architecturally significant at home? Okay. I can't say. He brought it up.

Okay. I can't say I enjoyed that story. Okay. I didn't either. Love mid-century modern. You know, protect mid-century modern. Yeah. That's all I can say.

That was... As an aspiring Tosche, let me tell you. You ever worn Aspatrolls? No. Not really my energy. I don't like a... Like a... Like a thin, flat shoe. Right. I really my energy i don't like a like a like a thin flat shoe right i mean you also don't like any any scenario where an espadrille would be in a would be appropriate i'm a huge fan of socks really one of my greatest hottest takes is we

don't need socks but i've kind of gone the other way in the last five years i don't sometimes we need them but i don't like them and one of the main reasons I moved to California was to never have to wear socks and tights again. And the tights was mostly true. Tights? Yeah. I don't remember in New York you had to wear, if you were trying to wear a skirt or anything. I mean, some people do wear. I can't even imagine you in tights. You've definitely seen me in tights. It's never clocked in like in new york in the winter i mean you just had to socks i still have to wear here sometimes but i'm really not a fan anytime i i speak about an object of consumption you just your mind just wanders away away from the

podcast topic this is a movie about consumption and objects okay it's okay? It's very fair. It's very fair. Let's talk about the ending. Here's what happens. There's this critical back and forth in the final. There's kind of a match point moment. And as the final, I guess it's really across the final set, the final couple of games of the set. Right. The second set.

The third set. The third set. Yeah. We have this flashback where it is revealed that after Tashi and Patrick have had a complicated conversation about their future where Patrick or excuse me Tashi and Art have had a complicated conversation see you're doing it too yes I'm doing it too um they're getting confused about whether or not he's going to retire and how she feels about that. She decides to finally agree to Patrick's advances, so to speak. Earlier in the film, he's asked her to be his coach.

Right. She's disgusted by that and also maybe something else. But she does take his number and she puts his number in her pocket. And by now we've seen that there has been a moment like this that's happened once before. That somewhere along the line, while Tashi was coaching and presumably married to or at least dating, Art, that she had a one-night stand with Patrick.

No, I don't think that they're together yet. When he uses the tennis sign for the first time. What do you mean? Like the racket thing, right? I think it's like the first, they're still young. And it's like the first time that Patrick has gone out with Tashi. No, I'm talking about the meeting in Atlanta when she's in the hotel lobby. Oh, I thought you were setting up the racket signal.

No, no, no. I mean, I can't explain that. But one of the trickier flashbacks of the movie is this flashback to a moment in atlanta where tashi is feeling very low right and she's sitting alone in a hotel lobby and patrick literally walks past the window and he comes in and they're seen canoodling right and then art comes downstairs and is interrupted to sign an autograph and when he sees them together and then he signs the autograph and he turns around and they're gone. And the implication is clear.

They have gone off to go be together. And Art is sort of heartbroken, but we don't really spend much time with him to see his reaction. Right, right, right, right, right. And so it's clear that like there is just, there is an energy. Yeah. That is undeniable between Patrick and Tashi that recurs. And so when we get to this challenger event, it is recurring again.

Patrick's very excited to see her. He's trying to lure her back into his web. Right. She can't deny her animal attraction to him. But she knows that it's wrong. She knows he's a piece of shit. She's constantly fighting it. I mean, she's disgusted with him also

because he's just like on a Tinder date at the new Rochelle Ritz trying to find a place to stay for the night. He smells. But also he's kind of hot to her. There's no denying that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so eventually after the series of encounters in New Rochelle

and this conversation with Art in their bedroom, she breaks down and she just is like, I need to go and see him. And she goes down to see him with seemingly two intentions. The first intention is to ask Patrick to throw the match so that Art will win the match, regain his confidence at this challenger event, and then head into the U.S. Open

with the upside of potentially... It seemed to indicate that he would, like, get the career slam or something, you know, that it would be a moment where he could go out on top, you know, that he could feel good about his career. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't remember whether it would be the career slam but something like that he never won the u.s open before basically so send him into the open excitedly and then the second thing is that

you know she's still clearly attracted to him and we get this meeting in his beater rav4 which is missing its spare tire wonderful little character detail there where they're fighting and they're driving around and there's been this windstorm happening in New Rochelle for the last couple of days. And so there's, I've never seen so much garbage in a nice town like New Rochelle in my life, but it's flying all over the place. And so it's, it's in an, it's, it's kind of an action movie sequence really, where she's raced out of this hotel room. She's gotten into this car, they're driving around. They're kind of arguing and fighting with each other. They're kind of bargaining. And finally, she's just like, I've had it.

She gets out of the car. She runs away. And then he gets out of the car and he yells back at her. And she returns to the car. And then their animal magnetism leads to them having sex. And him agreeing, we think, to throw the match. Right. In exchange for this sexual congress sexual congress are you 85

yeah um i'm just trying to find new ways to say have sex you don't you don't but you don't you don't see it like you cut to them and they're making out and then you cut to them like canoodling in the back of the rav4 which seems very small for very uncomfortable yeah yeah yeah yeah no seats down we'll save that for the top five car sex episodes which we'll do probably in 2027 um and you know the the movie has been cutting back and forth in this between this final match the entire time and then we arrive at kind of the critical stage where they both have a set they're both trying to win i think it's six six in the third set yeah they're in a tie break um which i just made me nauseous you know it's very intense it's just intense to watch anybody in a match like that let alone a movie where you've got like tie breaks and especially if you're a roger federer fan you just like really you never

want to be in a tie break situation but it was effective the tension is high it works very well and there is this motion that art's character has where every time he's lining up to serve he centers the ball in the that kind of critical crucifix frame of the tennis racket, that hole in the center. Yeah, the triangle. It's not a triangle in these rackets, though. It's like a four-sided unusual shape. Anyway, and that is just his indication that he's getting ready to throw the ball.

But earlier in the film, we've learned that this is a way that Patrick has been able to communicate to him without talking that he had in fact done the deed with Tashi earlier in the movie when they were teenagers. And during this very tense back and forth where the house music is playing, the ball, we're seeing the motion from the ball's perspective. Everybody is sweating,

waiting for this moment, hard in their throat. Yeah. Patrick once again puts the ball in that position to indicate to his friend. Fairly lewd gesture. Yes. That he has fucked his wife.

Yeah. And Mike Fife's character goes into a rage. Yeah. He allows an ace. And then, what is he? He basically lets the game settle into a tiebreak? No, no, no. I think they're like deuce.

Deuce. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway, they're down to the wire. These are important points. And we get this final serve and volley where they're going back and forth and back and forth. And the ball is getting closer and closer to the net. And they're moving closer and closer towards each other forth and the ball is getting closer and closer to the net and they're moving closer and closer towards each other. And the music is throbbing.

Yeah. And we have no idea what's going to happen. Tashi looks like her soul is dying in real time because she knows something is wrong with Art that Patrick has indicated something and that Art is way off of his, off kilter. And the ball keeps getting closer and closer and they're pinging and, you know,

those soft shots back and forth at each other, which we've seen earlier in the movie, Patrick is expert at. And we're back and forth and back and forth, back and forth, closer and closer and closer to the net. And then finally, as the music crescendos, as the excitement crescendos, the two bodies, the two men jump into the air

for an open ball. Yeah. And they collide and they hug each other in midair. They're like both doing volleys. Yes. And they...

They're racket smash and they hug. Well, they hug, they're like thrown together. But is it an embrace? Right. But it's... I mean, that's the question.

Tashi's character looking on moves, quickly shifts from horror to joy. And we hear the same, come on! Yeah. That we heard earlier in the movie. Yeah, the victorious come on. And she feels like she's just seen the thing that she wants to see, which is that magical union of two people playing beautiful tennis against each other. And then the movie ends.

Yeah. So read it for me. Like, what is the ending of that movie? union of two people playing beautiful tennis against each other and then the movie ends yeah so read it for me like what is what is the ending of that movie um who belongs with who i think they ultimately belong the the the two boys have more of like a love connection than either does with Tashi but they also she sees that they can spur each other to greatness that that the one is the other's like you know foil or brings out the best which to her is like the real turn on right because she's like finally seeing these like two bozos like actually do like what they need to do and also she created it right like so she can't play tennis anymore but she's like i've got this thing and like finally like this is this is as close as i can get

to winning to this this is my version of winning and so that's what she's really psyched about i like it how it ends there because you know that anything that happens after that is a mess. Like nothing is going to go well, but it is this perfect experience. I mean, I don't know like what the, what the ruling is there.

Like I saw it landed on art side. So I wonder, did Patrick win? Oh, okay. And then qualify for the U S. Yeah. But I like once there's's physical contact over the net,

I don't really know what's going on in terms of... There must be some sort of... I see it now. Challengers 2 colon fuckboy open. It's just Patrick riding through, cresting to the most exciting 32-year-old's US Open victory of all time. I thought it was just tremendous.

The second time I saw the movie, I was like, this still hits. It's so good. It is very, very fun. And it is a movie that, it's an ending that doesn't take itself too seriously, which a movie like this needs. You know what I mean?

Like it is metaphorical and we can analyze it, but it's just like a full-bodied, like stand up and go like, yeah, yes, yes. Movies, God, I love movies movies when a movie is going for it i love that which is like the the movie is really just trying to also get you physically involved in the movie throughout whether it's through the music whether it is through creating like

the food the sexual tension like it is it is a very it's like a thrill ride, like an amusement park ride, but in movie form, which is what Luca's great at. So we love it. Yeah. We're elder millennials. Important to get elder in front there. Yeah. But the elders who can respond to the high energy.

Right. Yeah. Still got enough juice in my bones. We're awake. I stood up when the film ended and it was fine. Yep. I don't know when I got the reputation of

being the sleepy one. I feel like I used to embody the... I think you gotta stand up for your people, you know? You gotta intervene. You gotta tash it up a

little bit. And by doing that, I have to malign Taylor Swift and Jack Antonoff? You think that that is the advice? Yes.

Do you like that album? No, I don't. Yeah. Okay. Wake up. You know? Just everybody wake up. This is me not having an opinion.

Wake up. Wake up. I feel as though we should have this conversation offline, Amanda. I feel like I should just have a hat that says wake up. You know? Well, it sounds like a merch opportunity. I think I'll be very curious to see if all of your Gen Z children of the movie,

I think that they will. Older audiences, on the one hand, it does feel a bit like, you know, Bull Durham has a very similar framework to this movie. You know what I mean?

Like, there are movies. But Bull Durham has, like, a lot more saxophone. Yes. Which is just like, it's the 80s version of it.

The energy is different. The energy is very different. But the structure is similar. Like, the 80s version the energy is different the energy is very but the structure is similar like it recalls a certain kind of movie and there are plenty of love triangle movies you can you know call back to there's clearly a hitchcock thing going on there's a lot of hitchcock in all of luca's movies there's a there's even like a merchant ivory like element to this in terms of like class and people coming from different worlds and how they connect like there is there are a lot of um familiar frameworks but not really anything quite like this movie and so i'm so interested to know how a movie like this is received like do you think it will be a big hit no i believe it's tracking at 15 million i mean a big hit for a movie of this kind, maybe. Maybe people will keep going back.

Maybe. I think the truly young kids are excited about it or the film kids. The four-year-olds are pumped. Six-year-olds, they are dying to see this. I wonder whether my son would like this soundtrack. I need them to get this score on Spotify. I think it will happen on Friday, which is when the film is released. Okay. Well, that's very exciting. I got to say, though, you kind of want to see the movie with the score in it first

before you listen to the soundtrack. That is really true. Don't. Because I had, even though, again, my husband wrote an entire profile about Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross pegged to this movie,

I had forgotten that they did the score until I showed up at the movie and it started going. And I was like, oh shit. Do you, so many people are saying that this is Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross's best score since The Social Network. Yeah, I believe you said that after you saw the film. So anyone else? You gave it away. I'm trying to set up a moment here on the pod. Is there anyone that you like more you can you remember girl with a dragon tattoo pretty underrated um it's a good

one gone girls pretty good i mean they're all good soul i think soul is very good just stop stop stop hating on animation soul made me cry i'm not like above that but it's it's not how i'm spending my time what about their work in bird box did you think that was good i don't think i ever saw bird box honestly because everybody else did you know and so i was like i guess i'd like you guys have taken care of that one i will go live my life the mank score is incredible but it's score is good it is iterative of something you've heard before i guess this is too but not quite in the way you expect

I mean this is inseparable from the movie in a way that social network is the same but completely

exciting and again high energy they're awake over under 70 million dollars this movie will

generate at the box office domestic or international domestic um let's say it overperforms this weekend and it does 22 million i'm i say that because this movie is also playing in imax it's playing on 300 imax screens now this is something obviously a lot of movies are doing we are going to see it on you do you want to preview that episode that we're doing um yes we well i'll try to explain it and then you can fill in the blanks. Okay.

We, inspired by Sean's trip to Las Vegas, forgot where that was for a second, and his belief in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice and the new formats that cinemas are bringing to the world, we are going on a, what's the best way to put it? A movie watching tour of Los Angeles. Sure, but like a deluxe movie watching tour. We're doing only. PLFs. Yeah, but again, I didn't want to be Beetlejuice Beetlejuice about it.

Premium screens. Fancy stuff. Fancy stuff. There are a lot of different ways to watch movies now. Challengers being an IMAX is an interesting thing because one, IMAX is obviously of different ways to watch movies now i'm at challengers being in imax is an interesting thing because one imax is obviously an incredible way to see movies we just saw dune 2 in imax and we're like you have to see it in imax if you can because it's the best way to see the movie there are also a lot of other ways to see those movies i don't want

to give away what all of them are but um we're gonna do them for four movies we've already seen we'll watch them a second time in a different format. I'm seeing one for the first time. And one for the first time. Oh, yes, you are seeing one for the first time, one I've already seen. But I think it's actually helpful to see movies a second time in these formats to see how they compare to your typical movie going experience. I don't have that kind of babysitting arranged for the evenings. Well, I'm filling in for you in that respect. But this movie playing on 300 IMAX screens could be beneficial to the box office. It's also really i haven't i've yet to see it in imax so i'm excited

to see it in that format i actually you know i forgot to say i saw challengers like a year ago so i only just saw it for a second time like a week ago and uh the other thing about it was is that it worked just as like it hit just as hard the second time second time so that's very exciting too i don't i don't want to belabor this. And I know I promised I would stop talking about Venice. But can you imagine if this had been my opening night Venice experience? It would have been very fun. What was your opening night Venice experience?

I skipped it because it was an Italian. It might have been, it was not Io Capitano, but it was some other Italian movie. And I didn't, I arrived opening day, you know. The irony of you rejecting Italy. The first movie I saw there was Ferrari. So eat shit. But it would have been great. The way I saw it was great.

I know a lot of like civilians, people who aren't there opening weekend for everything who are excited about this movie i think the awareness is high do you think it's more of a fall movie or a march movie or a spring movie i mean that's a interesting question this is like spring into summer and it's a fun like may june movie to get a lot of people to go to much like it's um its counterpart past lives but also not like it at all we got we have to talk about it can we talk about it you want to save that conversation well yeah i do i think it intertwines with um i don't think it will do 70 million at the box office but i'm curious about how it does internationally and how some of these the stuff

plays is tennis an international sport it is you know it is you know and i think i think obviously an international filmmaker if it doesn't do 70 million at the box office i think it'll be seen at home you know you know i don't i don't think it will fall into the streaming abyss of of whatever i mean it's got the chance to have a very similar salt burn effect to where it was it's going to go on amazon prime at some point yeah and when if it doesn't do that well at the box office it's going to go on Amazon Prime at some point. Yeah. And if it doesn't do that well at the box office, it's going to show up on Prime and everybody's going to be like, my queen mother Zendaya is here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that this connects with past lives

because I'm curious what you think of like the awards chances of a movie like this are. I have absolutely no idea. I don't either. Like it's really, because... It's going to end up being one of my favorite movies of the year. Mine too.

And, you know, we have seen in the last few years especially that earlier in the year does not necessarily preclude film from Oscars chances. Whether it's Everything Everywhere, whether it's Past Lives. I mean, Oppenheimer was July. Oppenheimer and Barbie were both July. And I think there's a lot of awareness. It's one of these things where I think it's like maybe a little too fun for oscars voters like you know and i'm sorry once again to be slandering them but i think like guadagnino has been pretty overlooked relatively at the oscars well he's been on this

five-year journey since making call me by Your Name, which did win Best Adapted Screenplay. Sure. Where he's been making basically body horror movies. You know, he made a Suspiria remake and he made Bones and All. And those are films that are never going to get Academy attention. But it's like, you know, I rewatched A Bigger Splash. Ralph Fiennes was not nominated. It's crazy.

He should have 14 Oscars for that performance alone. It's crazy. Like, are you kidding? That movie rocks. I think I Am Love was nominated at International performance alone. It's crazy. Are you kidding? That movie rocks. I think I Am Love was nominated to International Feature. It was. But it's not like...

He's not a darling. Yeah. But there's been this sense that he, like, his moment should be arriving soon. I wonder what would have happened if this were released in September as it was originally intended. Right.

Would he have gotten the kind of love? It's also interesting to think about that with respect to Zendaya, that Dune Part 2 and this film were moved. Dune Part 2 coming out before it instead of after it, which is what I think was going to happen with Challengers. I think Challengers was going to come out first. It was.

And then Dune Part 2. So now that could benefit her and this film in a way. Sort of, though I think maybe the plan the other way around was Challengers comes out and then she promotes Dune for three months and isn't everybody's. That's true.

And, you know, it is very often the box office star gets nominated for the movie that fewer people have seen because the Oscars, you know,

don't want to dip their toes in that. I think if the year continues to seem as soft from a like high-end premium movie perspective and also the trend continues of international filmmakers getting respect from the Oscars, I could see a Best Picture nomination.

I don't see like a win or anything like that. I mean, it is not so different from past lives insofar as it's a artfully made love triangle. It's the same movie, but it's really... So different. With the definition of the artfulness. And even what the movies are using a love triangle to explore. Past Lives is fate and identity.

And this is fucking, you know? Sex and fate and identity. And this is fucking, you know, um, which to me is equally deserving, but the Oscars don't always feel that way. So yeah, I'm fascinated. I hope so.

Let's have fun, you know, wake up and have fun. That is, that's my lesson to the bigger a hit is the more likely I think it is that it gets recognized yeah you could very easily see

score oh totally you could see editing after that I'm a little shaky on everything okay Zendaya's performance is very one note in a good way

like it is very like a character with a with a shield up right for 90% of the movie right so that's not a criticism of her but it's just like what she's being asked to play right Like a character with a shield up for 90% of the movie. Right. So that's not a criticism of her, but it's just like what she's being asked to play is narrow.

I think it would be good for them. And I think she's deserving, but it's not totally what they tend to go for. On the other hand, she's been working very hard for it. Maybe she'll continue to push it. What does she have next? I don't even know. I don't know either. Another, you know,

Dune 3, another Spider-Man. I think she does have another Spider-Man movie, but apparently they're taking their time with that and Dune 3 we know is nowhere soon. I mean, I guess

she probably had a hold for Euphoria and was only recently released. You know? Yeah, I don't think she has another film lined up. Which is kind kind of fascinating so she'll have plenty of time to promote it um it is remarkable that justin karitskis wrote this movie effectively at the same time on spec and got it made got it bought by a super powered producer and got it made

attached with the most exciting young movie star attached to it. Yes. At the same time that his wife, Celine Song, who is also a playwright like he was. Right. They'd both been, you know, with no disrespect, more or less staging shows into a relative obscurity compared to where they are now. Right. And then she gets her story that is clearly very autobiographical.

Right. story that is clearly very autobiographical right into like the prime prestige position of a24 sundance premiere ravishing praise out of it and then actually comes through with some pretty significant academy recognition that doesn't usually come from movies like that right they're both about movies they're both movies that are about a couple and a mysterious figure from their past romantic figure from their past re-enters at a critical stage in their relationship and emotional lives right and and the the husband is characterized a certain way in both there's a husband they're the the wife is characterized a certain way but the it's kind of enchanting but difficult to penetrate yes um and how much you identify or root with her

really depends on who's writing yeah so where's this this third guy's movie and that's i mean we need that movie that's everyone it's like find the third guy. We got to figure out where's Haesung's movie. You know, where's Patrick's film? It's really... What if he was like the Martin Scorsese of his generation too? You never know. You don't know. I mean, you do a little bit because Martin Scorsese started working early.

And it does seem like guy number three isn't like the most motivated. Yeah. A little bit of a wanderer i mean that's the other thing it's the third guy you're like what's this guy's deal yeah where's the third guy are you suggesting that maybe guy number three should wake up amanda there we go bobby that's right yeah log on let us know your thoughts you know one of my favorite uh rage against machine songs is called wake up so maybe that should be your. Like every episode you come out to the strains of Wake Up. That sounds great.

You know, that's what they play for Neo at the end of The Matrix. Oh, yeah. There you go. Great tune. Okay. Where's the third guy? Where is he? He's hiding in the shadows somewhere.

And they're still married. Yeah, they seem to be doing very well. Justin was extremely complimentary of his wife. I mean, you'd have to be. Yeah. I'd like going both ways, but it's still pretty amazing. Art is fast. Like art, the making of art, not art as character is fascinating.

Art for man is not as fascinating. Yeah. It's a little bit more angular, a little bit more straight ahead. Shout out to people though. It's like, this is what I have been asking for is like people being emotionally messy in their movies in public so i respect i really really like it they have put up a very smart wall around it publicly yeah you have but it is very fun to speculate and i'm honestly despite you know me

not getting to see challengers and the in the prime situation it's probably good for both movies that they aren't in the same year uh like you know because that would i mean we couldn't have helped ourselves you know but they can they can just now well but that would become the narrative for for both it could have hindered past lives success for sure with challengers it's just such a zesty fun chewy movie like the best luca movies are that it's a zesty, fun, chewy movie like the best Luca movies are. It's a fun little postscript to the beautiful story of past lives. Have you been made aware of the Spider-Man to tennis movie pipeline? Sure. I mean, Kiki, obviously, I know Wimbledon.

And then Emma Stone was in a very bad Billie Jean King movie. Battle of the Sexes. Respectfully. And now Zendaya and Challengers. I'm for it. So if you play Spider-Man's boyfriend in a movie

or maybe boyfriend in the future, you will be the star of a tennis movie. So this is like a general you and not me, Amanda Dobbins. Do you want to be Spider-Man's boyfriend

is a question I've been waiting a decade to ask you. really sad middle-aged Spider-Man? Like, what happens to him once he's not a teenage wonder? Does the Venom preserve him for life? The Venom? As, like, a teenager? Or, like, the spider thing, you know? Oh, the spider Venom. Yeah. Not the character Venom, my best friend.

Right. Not him, but, yeah. Venom is him. Yeah. I think it keeps him quite young and strong for a long stretch of time. I don't know if he'll ever be celebrating his 40th birthday. I guess Tobey Maguire in No Way Home. That's right.

Aged Spider-Man. Right. I want to make you a t-shirt. It's in the same font and structure of the I told you t-shirt that Zendaya wears in this movie. And later Joshua Connor wears in the movie. But it says, I'm Spider-Man's girlfriend would you wear it sure okay i think i will have that made uh in the in the big picture font okay oh great yeah that would be good i'm that sounds exciting what does it have to be green i probably wouldn't wear it if it were green you the font can be green i'll make you a green one

that says i'm green goblin's girlfriend okay i don't know who green goblin is anymore willem dafoe in the first spider-man films yeah yeah wonderful character wonderful actor willem dafoe what else anything else you want to say about challenges before we wrap go see it go have fun yeah i think i mean have fun that's what i have to say let's all have fun it's either going to be a hit or a cult classic and there's no in between. I'm okay with cult classic. Okay. All right.

Do you think it will crack your top five of the year? It could. I mean, it's number one for now, for sure.

All right. Ahead of imaginary. And I don't know. What else is coming? I don't know. It's a bit of a mixed bag this year. Yeah. Next week, we'll talk about The Fall Guy.

That'll be fun. That's a fun movie. I'm excited. I don't think it will quite get above The Head of Challengers. Is it your favorite Luca movie? I don't know. That's hard. Like I said, he's just really, really speaking to me.

And I did rewatch a lot of his movies. I mean, I know that you said that A Bigger Splash was your favorite movie of that year. It is. But like, what are we doing as a society that that is not the most celebrated movie of all time? It's so great in so many ways. It's so good. Yeah. It's just, it's kind of everything I want from a movie.

Actually, it's everything you want from a movie too. Exactly. That's what I'm saying. It's a European locale. It's completely 70s pilled. Every actor is beautiful and on a thousand. People are just taking their clothes off left and right. All the time. It's also just like total Hitchcock in the last 40 minutes.

There's deceitfulness and death, but also sex and food. And so many fucking 70s rock songs that I love. And the greatest dancing of all time. It's an absolute jam. Um, you know, I am love is the movie that clearly introduced him to an American audience. Beautiful,

interesting movie. Wonderful. Yeah. Um, have you ever been to Milan? Never. I would like to go to Milan. Okay.

You haven't been. No. Um, but it is, you know, that is like where that like the true the rich and fashionable Italians live and work you know I know I know um but I mean I once again I'm very curious also one of the great houses a bigger splash is my favorite this is probably

number two then call me by your name I definitely like this more than call me by your name I'm a fan of but I'm not in the cult I do really love call me by your name despite recent relatively recent revelations set aside the personal lives of the filmmakers um so this and call me by these and call me by your name are so opposite while still being very carnal and food and they're they're talking to each other yeah no they're definitely talking to each other. But it's like two sides of the coin. So it's hard for me to pick between them. He loves when a guy comes out of nowhere and just changes everything.

Yeah, and then there's like a goblet of chocolate mousse on an outside table. I think about that goblet of chocolate mousse all the time. That's another thing where if you got it out right now, I'd start crying. Would you be comfortable eating on camera while making an episode of the show? I mean, depends on the food. That's another thing where if you got it out right now, I'd start crying. Would you be comfortable eating on camera while making an episode of the show? I mean, depends on the food.

Chocolate mousse. Yeah. Okay. That's fine. Just shoveling it into your head. I mean, you monologue for a while.

That's true. That's true. Something for me to do with my hands. All of my exploring the themes of the film. I also just like, I know that you

don't share my interest in like, you know, tableware, but those goblets are really beautiful. Okay. And that's, well,

you know, and you don't normally get handed a goblet of chocolate mousse. Once every like 28 minutes on the show, you say something that's very Trumpy. Okay. Sounds good. Well, this has been fun.

This is a great, great movie. I don't think that Trump eats chocolate mousse. No, but he's like like You don't have an interest In tableware Why don't you have An interest in tableware Many people are saying

Tableware is going to Power this economy He does not Have an interest He and I don't share A similar interest It's all gold That's his aesthetic

Yeah that's not my aesthetic Okay alright What's your More copper Yeah that's it How'd you know This has been fun This is a great movie I really hope people Go to see it Yeah me too We We'll talk about it more copper? Yeah, that's it. How'd you know? This has been fun.

This is a great movie. I really hope people go to see it. Yeah, me too. We'll talk about it more. We will dig into it more over the course of the year and even as soon as next week. But first, let's go to my conversation

with Justin Karitskis. very happy to be joined by justin karitskas the screenwriter of challengers justin you're not just a screenwriter you're a novelist a playwright a youtube phenomenon a number of other things in this world was screenwriting something that you always wanted to do? Yeah, movies were really my first love. I sort of got deep into being a fan of movies before I got deep into anything else. Then somewhere around my late teens, I fell in love with theater and decided I was going to be a playwright and really did that for most of my 20s and before I started writing novels. But coming back to movies felt like a bit of a homecoming for me. What were those early movies that got you excited about movies?

Well, a lot of them were... I mean, I grew up in the 90s and 2000s so it was a lot of i remember even like 2007 i was in high school and it was like no country for old men children of men there will be blood those were all out in the same year in theaters and that that felt normal then you know three movies like that in theaters that were like doing well you know they were like box office hits um that that was that were like doing well, you know, that were like box office hits. That, that was, that was the world I, I grew up in. So movies like that, but, you know, and then I was, I had a big love of Kubrick. That was probably the first director who's where I started to understand where, or where I started to care about a filmography,

you know, and sort of seeing a director's voice over multiple movies. I had read that you wrote Challengers on spec. Is that true? Yes, it is. How many screenplays had you written prior to writing this film? This is kind of the first one. I mean, I had tried writing a few, but this is really the first one I ever felt good about showing anybody. So yeah, I think of it as my first screenplay. So people hear OnSpec

and they think that they know what the industry is like and what that means. But what was your specific experience? Was it an experiment or something that you thought would get you representation? Or was it a desire to just have this movie be made and fight tooth and nail to make it so no i mean i had i had been a playwright and a novelist and so i had representation

for those things you know um but i didn't have a film rep at the time that i wrote the script um and i really had no reason to think that anybody was going to make the movie i was just doing it because i had this idea and it presented itself to me as something that could only be a movie. And I just wrote it for me. I wrote it because it was a movie that I wanted to watch. And that was really it. I thought maybe it would help me get a job writing movies. You can't have an expectation when you're writing something on spec and when it's your first screenplay that it's going to get made. You're just really trying to write it because that's the only way that you're going to be able to see this movie that you're thinking about. When you were thinking of the idea, what came first, the world of tennis

or the relationship dynamic that is at the center of the film? Well, kind of both at the same time, because the film was inspired by originally this moment of watching the US Open in 2018. And there was this final between Serena Williams and Naomi Osaka. And Serena Williams got this call from the umpire where he said she received coaching from the sidelines. That immediately struck me as very cinematic, that you're alone on the tennis court. There's this one other person who cares as much about what happens to you as you do, but you can't talk to them. I started to think immediately, well, what if you really needed to talk about

something? What if it was something that was beyond tennis? What if it was about what was going on with you personally? And what if the person across the net was involved in that somehow? So that all sort of came at once. The specifics of what was happening in that dynamic took some time to mull over and think about. But tennis and a relationship that had three points was all there in the initial inspiration. I'm not a tennis expert, but I'm a fan. And the film feels pretty authentic to tennis. But I heard that you were not really a massive fan of the sport before this idea struck you. Is that true? I hadn't been. And then I had the idea and parallel to starting to think about the movie, I started to become a legitimate, obsessive tennis fan. And I was watching really everything I could get my hands on.

And to the point where I almost didn't want to write the movie because I thought it would pollute my tennis fandom. I just kind of wanted to enjoy watching tennis and not make it about work. But because I was watching so much tennis and because I had this sort of insatiable appetite for it, because I found it so dramatic pound for pound, you know, it was like every moment of it was so seeped in drama and it was better than anything I was watching at the movies or anything I was seeing on my computer. And so I really started thinking, what could I write that would be as good as this, you know, and what would make watching tennis even better. And that was really where the impulse came from. And because I was, you know, watching everything, I started watching these low-level tournaments, like the Challenger Tour. And once I saw those, it clicked for me that that should be where this movie is set.

I hadn't seen a tennis movie that was set there. And that that could show a side of professional sports that I hadn't seen in movies before. Even beyond that second tier of tennis play, there are details like the Cincinnati Applebees that are so specific to the world. I'm curious if you could tell me a little bit about kind of researching and try to build out a realistic version of what this relationship experience could be for these characters. Well, you do a lot of research to get, you know, the first version of the script out because you need that detail in order for, even if somebody doesn't know that those details are legit, the fact that those details are there makes the thing feel legit. You know, so you try to do as much of that as you can before anybody else is involved in the process. We were really fortunate on this movie to have,

you know, people who are the best in their field in production design and props and, you know, costume design and all of that. And they bring all of their research to it. So for example, the Applebee's thing, that was not in my original script. but one of our researchers said, um, you know, in Cincinnati, everybody famously goes to this Applebee's and when we heard that we were perfect. Yeah, right. That's exactly, yes. They are going to go to that Applebee's.

Um, or another example of that is that I had, uh, in the original script, there is playing the Winston-Salem Open in the first sort of flashback to the past. And we had Brad Gilbert, our tennis consultant, tell us that if the schedule wouldn't work out, Winston-Salem is too close to the U.S. Open. So Art wouldn't be playing that. He would be playing the Atlanta Open. And so we switched it to the Atlanta Open. so art wouldn't be playing that he would be playing the atlanta open right and so and so we switched it to the atlanta open and then once we realized it was the atlanta open our props guys said well you know there's all this like uh peach memorabilia at the atlanta open because atlanta is for peaches and that would be an amazing callback to lucas work so let's put some peaches

in there stuff like that was happening constantly because we had people who were so good at what they do around the film. Go back for a second before we get into the production of the movie. You know, Luca obviously is one of the most celebrated filmmakers

right now, but it's also Zendaya, Amy Pascal, Trent Reznor. It is a weird bingo card of the best of the best in their jobs right now but it's also zendaya amy pascal trent resner like it is a weird bingo card of the best of the best in their jobs right now um i'm sure you just feel like wow what an incredible good fortune but like can you maybe walk me through the process of watching each new person come into the movie or how something like this comes together to create a moment that maybe is attempting to recreate that 2007 style like damn this is a good movie that is commercial feeling that Challengers has. Well, it all really started with me deciding to work with Amy Pascal and Rachel O'Connor.

I had sent the script to a bunch of producers and was meeting them and ultimately decided to work with Amy and Rachel. And so much of that was that they, they could, they could sort of see what the, what the vision of what this movie could become was, you know, they, they saw what,

what I wanted. And they, they wanted the same thing, which was for it to be a big movie for adults, you know? I think one of Amy's first thoughts and one of the first conversations we had was that we should send it to zendaya um who's obviously you know when you write a character like tashi because i wrote it on spec i didn't i wasn't thinking of anybody in

particular because you have no there's no reason for me to believe that it would ever get in the hands of somebody like zendaya but once you have that character it's hard to think of anybody else who could possibly play the part so amy sent it to her because they had this relationship of making all the spider-man movies and um then she really responded to it and we met and it was clear to me immediately that she not only understood the character and uh you know really got who she was but that she could see a way in for herself and that was really exciting and then yeah every step of the way it was just person after person who's uh like a dream person you would want to work with who ended up being on this movie. I mean, so many of that, so many of our department heads, so many of like the people who are involved in all the different technical aspects of making the movie, that's how you get a master cinematographer like Sayambu Muktibram.

That's how you get props guys like Matt Marks and Mike Drury or Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross or Jonathan Anderson doing the costumes. That's all because of relationships that Luca has built up over his insane career. I'm really, you know, I owe it all. I owe all of that to, that's all him. That's all, people are showing up to make the movie because of him. And I'm just incredibly grateful that it's happening for

my script, you know. That's a very modest of you. But there are a couple of moments in the film that are incredibly memorable theatrical dialogue exchanges between characters, you know, Tashi and Josh's character in the alleyway or Art and Josh's character in the sauna. But then there are a lot of the movie is built on a kind of unspoken tension, a lot of faraway glances, a lot of cutting away to characters' eyes. As a writer, how much of that are you telegraphing or writing into the script to communicate what is unsaid amongst these characters too? Well, a lot of it, because you have to, again, make somebody see the movie on

the page. And because so much of the movie is about these people having a conversation through action you know and having a conversation through uh uh through tennis um and even in the non-tennis scenes having a conversation with their eyes you have to write some of that um because if you don't you're not going to communicate how the drama is operating you know but course, a lot of that is being amplified and, uh, uh, made sharper by the people you're collaborating with, um,

who all are bringing a lot of their, of themselves and their vision to it. The movie has a really unusual tone. It's incredibly kinetic and emotional and propulsive, but not self-serious. And it's not kinetic and emotional and propulsive but not self-serious and it's not a comedy but it is funny in a unique way and i was wondering especially given your work as a playwright and novelist if you could talk about nailing tone on the page especially when you're writing for a different audience of artisans and producers and trying to get them to understand the themes and feeling that you

want the movie to have? Well, I never really think about tone as something that I'm aiming for. I think tone comes out of the emotional reality of characters. And so as long as what's happening feels organic to the characters that you've gotten people acquainted with, they'll kind of go along with you in wherever the tone goes. Because if they feel like that makes sense for that character, then that's its own explanation. You don't have to have conversations about why is the scene funny when it should be sad or something. Because you're talking on a different level. You're talking about... Instead, you can have a conversation like,

of course Tashi would do that. Or of course Beltran would say that. You know what I mean? It's a little less like... I don't think of tone from a top-down perspective. I think of it really from inside of the characters. So you mentioned the Serenaena and naomi osaka match as the inspiration point but kind of inverting and moving a character into that coach

role that might look like the characters who inspired it and you know obviously tashi has experience as a um as a tennis player too in the story i think it's like a fascinating choice and i don't how early on did it come to spin that back into two men facing off against each other and then you know how did you think about the way to build out those characters was it always two men and one woman was it ever two women and one man like was there any kind of you know um shaping of that story yeah no it was always it was always two men and one woman but I think the choice to make Tashi the coach was something I realized early on as I was thinking about her. That would explain why she was watching the match with so much at stake, with so much intensity. After I started getting really into tennis, I was watching all the Grand Slams, and I saw Wimbledon in 2019 with Djokovic and Federer. And, you know, Wimbledon is

especially sort of like theatrical in its presentation. It kind of feels like going and watching Shakespeare at the Globe or something. And they keep cutting to the players' boxes. And in Federer's box, his wife, Mirka Federer, who was a former player, looked so stressed out. Because it was this very tense match. I think they were tied for Grand Slams at that point, Federer and Djokovic. And they kept cutting to Mirka in the stands. And she had her head in her hands and was pulling her hair out and just looked so in pain. And I was watching her and thinking, what are you so stressed out about?

Like, you guys have all the money in the world, you know, like you've won. You've accomplished more in this sport than anybody in history has. Like, what is at stake for you? And I think thinking about her as somebody who had a career and gave it up because of an injury and then became his sort of manager and, you know, so much a part of the life of his tennis, that struck me as a really fascinating way in and a really fascinating place to put a character. Your novel focuses on the inner life, for lack of a better word, of a pop star. This film is also about people very much in the limelight. What appeals

to you about characters like that? Well, I think there's something about outward presentation and then a behind-the- scenes truth that's interesting to me because that feels like an exaggeration of something that we all go through you know we all have a sort of public facing version of our lives and uh then a private version of our lives and i think that's that's true's true of dentists and accountants and cashiers. And that's true of everybody. Everybody has that, but it's especially pronounced

with people who are famous and people who are performing. I think athletes are performers to some extent. So that's probably part of what's interesting about it to me is that it just feels had your own version of performative fame. And I looked at the Potion Seller video on YouTube yesterday and like half of the comments were, damn, this guy wrote a movie for Zendaya. Ain't life crazy? And so I'm kind of wondering what that's been like too as a kind of creative person,

clearly kind of grew up with the internet in some ways and has experienced different levels of public exposure. And now you're at this place where this is a very Tony classical version of success. You're on this beautiful, exciting movie with movie stars and a great filmmaker, but you've also had this thing where millions of people have seen not just your work, but your face and commented on it at length. What is that like to have these old and new world experiences of, of exposure? Well, it was interesting with those videos. Um, you know, I really love those videos and, and, um, they're,

I think of them very fondly. Like they're, they're, they're real. Uh, they're not like a, uh, an incidental part of my creative life. I think of them as like like just as significant as anything. And I started making them in college when I was writing the play that would eventually become the first play I put on in New York. And then I was still making them as I had like just moved to New York and was working off Broadway as a playwright and, you know, was working like three odd jobs to make ends meet and really struggling to get my work seen in theater. And there was something about the idea that, like,

I would work for months or years very seriously on these plays that if I was lucky, a couple hundred people or maybe a thousand people would see, you know, that would be a massive success in theater. And then meanwhile, these things I was making in five minutes and putting online were getting viewed by millions of people. And there was something about that that really freed me up because it made it so that I would not take any of it so seriously. It sort of put it all in perspective. And it served this function of being this thing that was going to be on the internet forever that was kind of embarrassing if you're not keyed into the vibe of it, if you're not on board with it and i've had many instances of

people i meet in other corners of my life who find out about the videos and are sort of bewildered by them um and there's a there's of course a immediate moment of that where i'm like a little mortified but then i'm then i find myself being really appreciative of it because it makes it, it makes it really hard for me to buy into any version of myself that somebody might want me to buy into. I really respect that you're keeping them up and you see them as a part of a continuum because a lot of artists will just, just kill and delete stuff like that. Yeah.

Yeah. I really respect that. I'm also more and more filmmakers and writers that I'm talking to on the show just have are, are born of YouTube too. And I think that that's too, that it takes so many moving parts and such a confluence of energy and capital and everything to get a play on its feet or to get a movie made. But a YouTube video that you shoot on your laptop in your room is like, you're the star and the studio and the theater all at once. And I think I've noticed that too, that a lot of people who are working in film or TV today have something like that in their past. This is somewhat related, but your partner, Celine Song, had an amazingly successful year

in film last year. It's been noted that the love triangle slash person from the past re-emerging story structure is somewhat similar to the one in Challengers, even though they're vastly different films. Do you guys see your work in conversation with each other? Are you talking to each other about when you're shaping the stories and thinking about how they might intersect at all? Well, we talk about our work. I mean, we're usually the first people who are reading each other's work and we are each other's harshest critics. And so, of course, that's a part of our lives. Beyond that, not really. We try to keep our creative lives pretty separate so that we can be there for each other in a supportive way you know um but uh it's not lost on us that there's there's two guys and

one one woman in both of the films i think beyond that the movies are pretty different they are they are and i also wouldn't i mean listen i don't i don't want to speak for celine or or define or contextualize her movie in any way because it's her movie and it's her it's her work um i'm not sure it's accurate to call that movie a love triangle movie you know whereas i think with challengers it really is a love triangle movie but in in a way that is even more uncommon like it is a hypercharged three-way connected they're all touching exactly yes

very very very much people who are in a shape together right did you learn anything just watching her go through that now that you are in this phase of like having to present and discuss and being celebrated but also being criticized and kind of what that means at this level through that now that you are in this phase of like having to present and discuss and being celebrated but also being criticized and kind of what that means at this level no i mean she she

handled all of that with so much you know grace and intelligence and which was not surprising to me as somebody who's known her and loved her for many many years um but uh yeah no i i'm learning from her every day so that's that's its own um yeah i don't i don't know that i felt myself learning particularly more during that moment in our lives than i have in any other moment in our lives that's a lovely answer um you know i know that you have written another film that lu is directing. Is your intention to primarily focus on screenwriting at this point? You mean as opposed to other mediums or other... YouTube videos, novels, recorded albums? Yeah, no, it's been, I've been having a lot of fun and I've been getting a lot of fulfillment from writing screenplays. So that's what I've been doing for the you know since challengers um

and i hope to keep doing that is there like a scope or scale of story that you are interested in telling like you know i don't imagine you're going to write a marvel movie anytime soon but i'm curious like is there certain things that you want to try to do that maybe you're not you're not seeing in the world right now or that you'd like to try to try your hand out well it's interesting because you scope or scale it's you often don't know what the scope or scale of something is even when you've written it you know like this movie i sort of made this very conscious decision to set it at this low level of tournament and i there's a there was a version of it that felt a lot smaller, you know? And then now this feels like a quite big movie, which has a lot to do with who came to make it. So no, I don't usually think about scope or scale

as a thing that gets me excited about a project. It's always characters, you know, or a situation that gets me excited. Think of yourself as more of characters, you know, or a situation that gets me excited. Think of yourself as more of an art, a Patrick or a Tashi. There's parts of me in all of them. And I don't think I'm really like any of them. I think I'm probably, I obviously structurally have much more in common with the two guys than I do with Tashi. You know you know um the circumstances of my life are more uh similar to the circumstances of those guys um tashi is tremendously nuanced though

unusually so for movies like this i'm really happy to hear that yeah um yeah she's she was really fun to write and um you know and then to see zendaya make her a real person is was pretty pretty spectacular justin we end every episode of the show by asking filmmakers what's the last great thing they've seen you seen anything good uh i'm seeing good stuff all the time i'm trying to think what the last great movie I just watched. I just rewatched Safe, Todd Haynes' Safe. Amazing movie. What did you respond to in seeing it? So, so good.

I had forgotten how striking some of the images are, like in the, I don't even know what you'd call it at the end the sort of sanitary yeah yeah well the dome that room is so terrifying crazy the mirror at the end is just brutal yeah actually that's that's a yeah when you're when you and you i think it's the first time you get inside the dome right is that last shot or that last scene um and the whole time you're seeing that dome and going, what is in there? And it almost feels like, yeah, it's so surreal. The ending of that movie.

It's a great recommendation. Challengers is fantastic. Justin, congratulations. Thanks for doing the show. Thank you so, so much. This was really fun.

Thanks to Justin Karitskis. of course to Amanda and our producer Bobby Wagner thanks to Jack Sanders thanks to Alea Zanaris next week we'll be back with a big one it's actually been 18 months since we've done this we had previously done it three times each time with a year apart and now it's been 18 months

your internal clock is incredible. Even on the horror episode, you announced to Chris, you were like, we do this on a biannual schedule when the moon is full. And I was like, what are you talking about? These are facts. These are facts. It's this invisible organization that keeps the people coming back. It's not invisible and I do appreciate your organization but like you do also just say things on the podcast that are known only to you. People want to feel as though there's a plan. There is a plan. I respect the plan. The plan

is operating and in this plan we will rank the 35 under 35 movie stars and let me tell you many of the names that we've talked about in the past. They graduated. They're off the list. Yeah. They're fucking gone. These 33-year-olds, they're 36 now. Yeah. So they're off the list.

So we got some new names to add. Yeah. Well, it's true. Comes for you all. And, you know, this will be the last one we do in which one of us is in our 30s. That's true. I was eligible the first time. Were you?

Well. Did you make it? There was some question about whether 35-year-olds were eligible. Oh, they were not. And they weren't. And so, but that's when this started. Right. And now the sun is setting. All the way back then, you and Harry Dean Stanton were still eligible. You both moved out of the eligibility window, which is tough for you guys. Yeah. But yeah, I'm looking forward to it. We have not bandied about a single name yet. So we have a lot of work to do in the next few days. But please tune in.

I wish I'd thought about that before I started making my weekend schedule. Yeah, because you have to watch all of the films of like Timothee Chalamet now. But like it's a lot of work. It's like a lot of data entry. This is actually one of the hardest. And you like texted being like,

hey, should we take our kids on a fun adventure? And I'm like, well, I can't go to Disneyland now because I gotta like write in how old Timothee Chalamet is. Well, the great work continues. See you next week.