The Big Picture - ‘Conclave’ Crackles, and Christopher Nolan’s Helicopter Movie Takes Off

Episode Date: November 1, 2024

Sean is joined by Chris Ryan to discuss the latest rumors about Christopher Nolan’s next film (1:00) and wishcast some lost IP remakes for current hot directors (7:00). Then, they discuss one of the most exciting movies at the box office right now, Edward Berger’s ‘Conclave,’ the papal conclave thriller starring Ralph Fiennes and Stanley Tucci (32:00). They discuss the performances of its leads, how refreshing it is to have a true thriller with twists at the theaters, and the effectiveness of the film’s final twist. Then, Sean is joined by Matt Tyrnauer, director of ‘Carville: Winning Is Everything, Stupid,’ a new documentary about political strategist James Carville (1:17:00). Host: Sean Fennessey Guests: Chris Ryan and Matt Tyrnauer Senior Producer: Bobby Wagner Video Producer: Jack Sanders Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's up, everybody? It's Austin Rivers here, and we are back for another season of Off Guard. Me and my guy, Pasha Agigi, are hitting your podcast feeds every Monday and Thursday, talking everything hoops. Austin is bringing that 11-year NBA veteran perspective and, of course, keeping you guys entertained throughout the season. Make sure you tap into Off Guard with Austin Rivers on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. And don't forget to follow everything we've got going on social media. The Off Guard Podcast, Ringer NBA, and of course, check us out on Ringer NBA's YouTube channel. We're getting better. 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.

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Conditions apply. Ends January 31st, 2025. Complete offer eligibility criteria by March 31st, 2025. Choose one of five eligible charities. Up to $500,000 in total contributions. I'm Sean Fennessey, and this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about popes. Later in this episode, I'll be talking with documentarian Matt Turnour about James Carville. Winning is everything, stupid.

Matt was on the show five years ago to talk about his sly, idea-packed documentaries. His new one is an interesting portrait of a complicated figure in our electoral politics. Stick around for our chat, though. That won't be the first time you hear about electoral politics on this episode because CR is here. He's been counting his Carrie Lake votes early. How are you feeling, Chris? White smoke. Today on the show, we are talking about Conclave, the new, I guess, papal Conclave selection drama mystery movie. It's a Pope thriller. A Pope thriller from Focus Features, a major Oscar contender this year, and frankly, one of the most crowd-pleasing movies of 2024. Before we do that, crowd pleasers. Yeah, man. You had a great idea for this. Thank you for

saving this for me. I specifically asked you not to do this earlier. I appreciate you coming up with this idea. You did mention to me originally on the show, maybe a week and a half ago, that Christopher Nolan, there were some rumors, some theories about what his next project was going to be. He'd signed up with Universal. We learned that Matt Damon and Tom Holland were going to be the stars of his next movie, which I think is coming in the summer of 2026. What is this movie? Is it a horror movie? Is it a sci-fi movie? Is it maybe an inspired by and or remake of the 1983 helicopter cop drama Blue Thunder? Yeah. It is in fact the latter. When I said that to you, you had that look on your face where you're like, it's cute cr says things

sometimes without checking them that is exactly what i thought yeah because every once in a while you cut you you dip in with a rumor and you got it and i'm just like hey freaks.org and i'm like what where did this come from you wish you wish it had a.org man these are deep deep discord cuts where i'm just like, I have a guy. But you were bang on about this one. I guess this hasn't been officially confirmed. Christopher Nolan has not said it. I am, in fact, working on a remake of a John Badham movie.

He should, though. He should do a press conference. Emergency press conference. I hadn't seen this movie in many years. Did you revisit it? I did, yeah. Okay. Let me just say, it's not the best movie I've ever seen.

That's what makes it such a great idea. Okay, so is it because you can immediately improve upon it? Yes. This is how adaptation is supposed to work. In the golden age of Hollywood, some of our favorite directors, Hitchcock, Hawks, all these people, they're like, let me take this candidly piece of shit and make it into Red River. Yeah.

You know what I mean? Like they made the greatest films of all time with very thin, pulpy, whatever material. If we're going to live in a world of perpetual reimagining of intellectual property, and these studios are like, the only things we're making is something that already exists in our library that we can like iterate off of

and that has some name recognition. Who better than Chris Nolan, who's like, I could literally make anything. I'm going to take this weird Roy Scheider movie with Daniel Stern from the early 80s about chopper cops, but I'm going to make probably a futuristic movie about the dangers of technology or whatever

he does and then it's gonna have time travel of course and a dead wife and I think it will make a billion dollars and I think it is a good sign for Hollywood to be like okay fine like we're running out of like ways to spin an officer and a gentleman which they're all like

Paramount's also trying to remake and stuff like that not necessary but okay. Not necessary and also beloved. Right. Beloved. Nobody wants, no one will top Richard Gere and Debra Winger. I can almost guarantee that. But they can top Roy Scheider and Daniel Stern with all due respect to those wonderful actors.

So I think that this is an amazing twist on IP. The interesting thing about it too is that Nolan has not been in the skies since Dunkirk. Oh, yeah, that's a good point. Arguably the best part of Dunkirk is the Tom Hardy pilot dogfighting sequences. Jack Loudon, yeah. And I assume that that is what appeals to him

is to a new form of cinema thrills. You know, that like going into a helicopter and rendering images from that space is genuinely exciting to him, a major challenge, something he's never really totally tackled before. But you frame this to me very wisely, which is that Blue Thunder is a movie that I probably didn't see until the 2000s, but that I saw all the time in video stores. And that box, very memorably with the helicopter on it, would call out to you and you'd be like what is that i'm not sure what that is maybe you pulled it off the shelf maybe you didn't

and there were dozens hundreds of movies like this if you spent a lot of time in video stores that were movies from the 1980s movies for me often that were made when i was like two or three years old but that you have like a sense memory of seeing them over and over and over some of them had like the tattered cover. Some of them were in the hard plastic case. But like, yeah, there's so many films from that era where I'm like, I have like a, exactly what you're saying, a sense memory of the cover of the movie more than I do the film itself.

So your idea was this, like what are the VHS classics that we would want to see our favorite contemporary auteurs put their arms around, force a studio to relinquish the IP, and let them remake it in their own imagination? Just an amazing idea. Thank you for bringing it to the table. So was there one that you had in mind off the bat? Is it the one at the top of your list? Where did this idea really come from other than just knowing that blue thunder was one of those classics it's it's this idea that if they're gonna make it so difficult for people to make original films now and if they're gonna be so restrictive about that then wouldn't it be cool if like this new wave or like our current

contemporary kind of like best directors in class generation started to get to like sift around in the deep, you know, Orion like video library and start messing around with like, well, what if we rebooted this or rebooted that? The challenge, as I'm sure Nolan is going to confront, now he's apparently, you know, he has obviously not commented on this, setting this film in the near future

or in a slightly futuristic sense. So we could get environmental collapse, Blade Runner, Chopper Cops. I have no idea like what he's thinking. But a lot of the movies that we're talking about here are going to be very capture that in a good way but also update it so mine you know i have a i have a bunch here that i i put together where i basically matched a filmmaker with a video from the vhs store on the corner of my block when i was a kid that movies that i've all seen since and some love and some think could be improved upon yeah um but i'm happy to i'm happy to go through a few. Yeah, let's go through a few. So you came up with six. I know, I was only supposed to be five, but I wanted to do the sixth one there.

Well, then why don't you start with your number six? Okay, so people my age, people our age probably remember the video, The Hitcher. It's this movie with Rucker Hauer and C. Thomas Howell about a hitchhiker who picks up, a guy who picks up a hitchhiker who turns out to be a serial killer and gets involved in this cat and mouse game with Rucker Hauer as the killer. And this just feels like Ty West written all over it.

I don't know what the current state of hitchhiking is in this country. It's a really good question. I can say that I am not participating in that. Let's go downstairs here down in the Arts District and just try to hitch for a while. in this country? It's a really good question. I can say that I am not participating in that gig economy. Let's go downstairs here down in the Arts District and just try to hitch for a while. Like how far outside

of like Los Angeles do you think you have to get to see a hitchhiker that you would feasibly pick up? I mean, I would never pick up a hitchhiker. Yeah. But I am well trained.

Alice, move over. I'm well trained in the art of serial killer movies. Yeah. You know, that memorable scene in Zodiac where, oh my God, what is the actress's name? Who has the baby in the backseat.

Oh, Ione Skye. Ione Skye, yeah. I mean, that's one of the most chilling sequences in that whole movie. I would never pick up a hitchhiker. I wonder if you could make this a period piece though. Yeah, you could do that. I mean, the reason why I thought of Ty West

is the video cover, the VHS cover, is I think it's C. Thomas Howell's eyes in the um rearview mirror and it's it's basically a Ty West shot um yeah and so you could either do this as a period piece about hitchhiking or if there is a current kind of like subculture of 2024 hitchhikers i would love to see him like mess around with that but he obviously already has a fluency with the aesthetic of like this era of filmmaking yeah it's a pure slasher to the hitchhiker it's or the hitcher it's really violent as i recall um very good recently issued on 4k by second sight so having a little moment the nature is right now it's a great call. Ty is exactly the sort of filmmaker

I'm thinking of who can kind of wrap their arms around something. And, you know, what you're talking about, this concept, is something that many executives in Hollywood

are doing right now. Like, they literally are going through the libraries at Paramount, at Warner's, at MGM, Orion, and saying, like,

what was a kind of cool movie that I remember that no one else remembers? And so, my number five is a version of that. Speaking of Blu-rays, this movie was issued on Blu-ray like a couple of years ago. It's called Little Darlings. And it's like sort of a sex comedy, sort of a coming of age drama.

It stars Christy McNichol and Tatum O'Neill, about two girls who are in essentially a race to lose their virginity. And it's simultaneously like a little sexy but also a little predatory but also weirdly sincere and affecting um very very early matt dylan performance in this movie directed by ron maxwell but um written by two women which is unusual for its time i think it was 1980 1980 okay This feels like fresh meat for Coralie Farsha. Not to put too far to point out. Yeah. I wonder what the director of The Substance and Revenge

could do with like a sex comedy more or less. I was trying to find like a good sex comedy that it would be worthy of remake. And the truth is that 90% of them, maybe 99% of them are just three guys who are horn dogs yeah are trying to break into the women's locker room like that's the plot of most sex comedies between 1980 and 1989 we could be here all day but one of the movies that i was thinking of was class uh with andrew mccarthy and jacqueline bassett and i and john c Cusack yeah Virginia Madsen yeah and I was

trying to think of like who would do a good prep school sex drama oh that's a good question and you know it's just such a like you just don't see

movies like that where sex is like the primary focus of the film so much anymore like it's rare you think because of the woke Gen Z generation

probably we're gonna get into that with Conclave my next one is I had considered assigning these filmmakers to my remake of Class. Okay.

But instead, I'm going to put Noah Baumbach and Greta Gerwig on the disastrous Tom Hanks Shelley Long comedy The Money Pit,

which I think is one of the reasons why I don't have a house still. Is because I saw this movie at a very formative age. Yeah. Is the other reason crypto? The other reason is because of my papal election chances.

I never know when I would have to go to the Vatican. Just in case you have to move to Rome, yeah. This is kind of a disastrous black comedy about a couple who sinks all of their money into a kind of almost haunted like black comedy about a couple who sinks all of their money into a kind of almost haunted lowercase h house like it's just constantly has things going wrong and it it goes a long way towards destroying their relationship it's a bit of war of the roses it has like a kind of acidic kind of look at at american consumerism and also like love and i

would just love to see Baumbach and Gerwig who are obviously like at least Greta Gerwig is like kind of shading a little bit towards the more affirmative, optimistic kind of now even fantasy

like genre filmmaking. Baumbach still has like a really dark heart, I think. He does. And it would be funny to see them collaborate on a film about a couple who lose all their money.

Yeah. I kind of Romana Clef about what it's like being together. Yes. It's a really good idea. I like that one a lot. Who would be your stars? That's a great question. Driver and Johansson back.

They could do it. I mean, two of the, you know, how were you feeling about Adam Driver, box office poison rumors going on? I don't really think about, I't really think about it at all, honestly. For some reason, I'm getting served a lot of girls clips on my Instagram. Interesting. And he's just bodying everyone. Is that because you've got Alison Williams as one of your tabs at all times? You've got her page open? Yeah, only from Get Out. Your dream girl, of course. That's a great pick. I like that one a lot this one is for you

i chose this one for you there is a movie that um i hadn't seen until i think covet is the first time i saw it but i saw this vhs box so many times in the video store the fred ward vehicle remo williams colon the adventure begins this is essentially like an action adventure movie directed by Guy Hamilton, who directed a bunch of Bond movies. It's his attempt to make like kind of an American spy thriller. And it's about a New York City cop

who wakes up one day and realizes he's no longer who he thought he was. And he's actually like a CIA spy who is meant to commit assassinations. Very strange movie of like mistaken identity and action excitement.

Hasn't aged that well. Joel Grey plays a Korean man in the film. Not ideal. A remnant of a different time. Your boy Wilford Brimley is in this movie.

How old does he look? I think he was 26 and he looks about 58. Yeah. But it's aley is in this movie. How old does he look? I think he was 26 and he looks about 58. But it's kind of a fun movie. It's shocking. It's kind of a 2B classic. Yeah, this was right next to Buckaroo Banzai in the VHS cover Olympics. Yes, also for the most words in the title Olympics.

I think, what if we just gave this to Nicholas Winding Refn and said, Ryan Gosling, you are Remo Williams and you you want to fuck your mom but first you have to fight this man in Thailand would we devote 8 episodes

or 16 episodes of that of this show to that I would want to wait for him to get back okay what do you got next okay I can burn through

a couple of these I was thinking about Lee Isaac Chung after Twisters and getting a little making a little bit more of a smaller

feature oh you want him to scale down yeah a little bit Minari 2 he has a really good feel for small towns I think he has a really good feel for young people

and so I would like him to remake my favorite BMX movie ever made Rad did you ever see this I have seen it yeah it's basically Karate Kid and Breaking Away but with freestyle on bike yeah bike races BMX bike races and free and freestyle riding um I just think this would

be sick it has incredible music if you haven't seen it this got restored to 4k recently Tim Simon's huge fan of this movie bought the 4K. What a planet we live on. It's crazy. While we still have it. And so this is a cable classic for sure. Yeah, this is a huge movie for me. Like I got me into BMX. I definitely face planted. And look at you now. Multiple X Games champion. So yeah, I would love to see, take a step down from the world of blockbusters to make this movie about a guy who rides BMX bikes. Do you think Lee Isaac Chung will do that scale back and do a drama after dipping his toe into the blockbuster world? I do wonder.

I mean, like I feel like he is a little bit of an inflection point. It would be great if he's the kind of filmmaker who could do both, you know what I mean? And make like kind of more personable dramas. But I would imagine, do you think that there's going to be twisters? Yeah.

With four Z's. Where they, where they kiss. That's a to be Twisters? Yeah. With four Zs? Yeah. Where they kiss? That's a tricky one. You were pro Twisters? Yeah. I thought it was fine. But I also like Twister more than you.

So I think I was a little bit. I was like, here's the differences. And that got in my head a little bit. I think that movie didn't do well overseas at all. It was a huge bomb. And it was this weird situation where universal released it in the states sold the rights to the international to warner brothers warner brothers having a tough time getting people to see movies in 2024 they didn't do well with

that one either some people say hey twisters not as much of a thing in non-us countries but uh it didn't didn't really play so i don't know if there's going to be another 200 million dollar twister movie. Right. Nevertheless, Lee Isaac Chung, I think he should make Joker 3. What do you think? Did you comment yet on Quentin Tarantino's comments on Joker 2? Well, let me tell you, I got a sneak preview of that one a few weeks ago. I know he listened to our episode about it, and he didn't agree.

He's a fan of the film. Can't say I totally understand what he's saying. Actually, on the Breddy Snell's podcast, quentin talked about it at length with roger avery i thought what roger had to say about the movie and he liked it was very interesting i thought his read of it was really really sharp um it actually made me think about the movie a little bit differently i thought quentin's read of it was very funny but he liked it for the reasons i didn't like it which is that the director said fuck you fuck you. Okay, my number three, another movie I just saw recently, but that I saw on video stores all the time,

and was like, what is this weird New Zealand film? It's called The Quiet Earth. Have you ever seen this? Jeff Murphy movie. It's essentially about, it's a common trope. It's like a what if you woke up

and the world was gone, and everyone that you knew was gone and you know like night of the comet is like this um obviously the omega man and the um i am legend and you know there's a number of movies that use this trope but this one has this kind of like chilling desert tone where the entire landscape is this sort of like abandoned, um, all sand and municipal buildings. And that's kind of all you're experiencing. The actor at the center of it is named actor at the center is named Bruno Lawrence.

He's amazing in this movie. I don't know if I've ever seen him in anything else, but it's basically like, uh, Dune. If everyone died. Cool. And I just feel like Denis Villeneuve could crush this because like

desolation is like one of his key themes. So I would love to see him take a crack at it. Do you think he's looking for another sand project? Um I don't know. I mean do you think he's looking for another cartel assassin project? No, not necessarily. No? Yeah. Could be. What is he doing next?

Well it sounds like three is coming. I guess that's true. Yeah, but he also, didn't he sign up to do a nuclear annihilation film based on a work of nonfiction? I think that he did. Oh, yeah. But maybe that'll be after the third Dune film. First, we get the Catherine Bigelow

nuclear annihilation film on Netflix. Yes. Well, the second part was disappointing, but heck of a cast in that film right now as well. I'm looking forward to that. What's next for you? My number three is a big picture favorite filmmaker Arkasha Stevenson

taking on this is hardly a like lost classic but it is a classic just the same The Lost Boys just bought this on 4k this is ready made for her I think that she would do a great job if she decided to keep it in the

Santa Cruz area. And this whole carnival, boardwalk atmosphere, teenage vampires who are preying on this town and these new kids who move into town and one gets recruited to join this vampire clique.

It's awesome. And I just think she would do such a great job with both the younger people who are in it and also the atmosphere. Great pick. Eagerly anticipating Arkasha's next movie. My number two is Three O'Clock High. Phil Jeannot comedy thriller

set in a high school that is a very loose but pointed remake of High Noon. That's a very funny movie. Actually, speaking of Roger Aver, he talked about it on our 1987 movie draft. I think he selected it, which was kind of a

modest hit at the time, but that illustrated cover of the guy hanging from a giant clock is like stuck in my head. When you said VHS classic, I thought of Three O'Clock High right away.

And it's a movie about stress and time slipping away so who better than the Safdie brothers to make this movie so yeah that's that pick who should be in that movie though who's a high school

oh uh well Gabriel LaBelle is now too old for that you think so because he's played Lord and Michaels he can't go back to high school that's always a complicated thing

when a kid breaks out of the kid roles yeah he kind of can't go back you're right You're right. You're right. We should do Brad Pitt instead. Benjamin Button

and Brad Pitt. Okay. What's next for you? Last two. I have The Legend of Billie Jean directed by Sean Baker. So this is a Have you seen Inora yet?

No. I haven't. But I've seen his other films. That would be amazing if he was like I'm following up my best picture winning triumph with a that would be amazing if he was like I'm following up my best picture winning triumph with a remake

of Billie Jean yeah I was like what could Sean Baker do and it's this movie with Helen and Christian Slater from the early 80s about these two kids in Corpus Christi

no relation yeah who one of them like they buy like a they're young working class kids

and they get like a scooter and a rich kid in town destroys the scooter like in a bullying act They buy their young working class kids and they get a scooter. And a rich kid in town destroys the scooter in a bullying act. And they basically take it out on him. They extract their money back and then have to go on the run and become folk heroes in Texas. And it's got a really viral fame aspect to it, which I kind of wonder whether or not he could capture really well.

He's obviously got a facility working with young people, but also understands like the kind of contemporary language of using your phone a lot. I'd now Sean Baker being like, look at this person went viral famous probably is a little bit low stakes after he wins likely an Oscar for a Nora or whatever. But yeah, but I mean, a Nora is like a pretty ultimately grounded movie and this is,

you know, it's Bonnie and Clyde, right? So there's always something fun about is Billy Jean in this film, a sex worker. Cause that would probably determine whether or not Sean Baker would be interested in making this film. I just checked some citizens.

Okay. My last one is, it's kind of a cheat. It's fine. It's exactly what you should be doing here. So, The People Under the Stairs is another movie that I

saw the VHS box for for a long time. I could never convince my parents to rent this movie. I always wanted to see it. It's a Wes Craven classic. Wes Craven is a huge inspiration for Jordan Peele.

This movie is a big inspiration for Jordan Peele. This movie is a big inspiration for Jordan Peele. This movie is, you know, very much a precursor to Get Out, very much a kind of allegorical horror thriller about racism and class and the way that, you know, our society is structured, all set around like a pair of older white people trying to kill a black family. I would love to see Peel remake it. The thing with the people under the stairs is it has a really strong reputation.

I personally don't think it's very good. It's never really worked for me. I haven't really loved it. Maybe I was a little too old when I saw it and it didn't live up to its reputation. But it's such a good concept and it's such a Peelian structure. That's what we're looking for here

is it's not necessarily like I want movies that these filmmakers can take and be like and in fact I would say Lost Boys is the worst one I picked in that regard

because it would be like something that I think a lot of people are like you need to have the shirtless guy playing saxophone in this movie. How can you not?

But most of these films like you could pretty much take the bones you could just take the concept you could take the setting you could take the vibe and you could do whatever you want with it which is kind of what it sounds like nolan's gonna do with i mean is he gonna call this movie blue thunder i doubt it but who knows maybe he will it sounds like it's more inspiration than remake okay okay what's your last one my last one is um Hotspot, which is a Dennis Hopper movie from 1990 that I thought was pornography. So I never rented until I was much older.

The good news is it is close to pornography in the best way. It's Don Johnson, Virginia Madsen, and Jennifer Conley. And Jennifer Conley and Virginia Madsen are essentially like Roger Clemens and Steve Avery. Like people's the catcher mitt was exploding. You know? And they are fantastic

in this movie. It's a noir set in Texas about a guy who comes to town and becomes like a car salesman and gets involved in a fucked up love triangle

and a bank robbery. So it's essentially like my idea of heaven and Jeremy Saulnier should direct it. It's great. I don't know how we can recreate Virginia Madsen and Jennifer Connelly in 1989 or whenever this movie came out.

Well, maybe we flip it. You know, maybe it's a woman comes to town and it's like a lordy and... Yeah, and Austin Butler. Yeah. Great. Love it. And who's the gal? Sidney Sweeney. We're done. Let's print Austin Butler. Yeah. Great. Love it. And who's the gal? Sidney Sweeney.

We're done. Let's print money. It's that simple. Bob, you into that movie? I guess so. Would I be able to work at The Ringer if I said no? Bobby's just thinking

about Clemens and Steve Avery. You got me caught up talking about Pedro and Clemens. I'm like, 86 Clemens. What's going on? Exploding mitts.

That's really what got your mind going. Yes, exactly. The mitt was exploding. That's what you said? Yeah. Yeah, we're going to come back to that. You're looking forward to the next Nolan movie, in other words. Over under a billion dollars at the box office.

I'll say under. Okay. Bold. Really bold. You know, a billion is hard to do. Didn't Oppenheimer make a billion dollars at the box office? I'll say under. Okay. Bold. Just because really bold. You know, a billion is hard to do. Didn't Oppenheimer make a billion? It did.

I think it was like 980 million. Maybe it went over with a re-release. They just have to set off a nuke in this blue thunder? Mm-hmm. 976 million worldwide. I was pretty close on that guess.

I thought it got over eventually. So, in his career, how many billion dollar movies do you think he has? Two. What are they? Dark Knight, Dark Knight Rises. That's, you bang, you nailed it. Now, those movies feature Batman.

So, you know, could be a challenge to get a helicopter movie over a billion. The choppers are flying over a cityscape. And just for a quick second, Batman is like. That's it. Bale comes back. Just be like. Yeah.

Well, this is the downside of pivoting the universal. They don't have the rights to Batman. For people who are just listening, I did Batman standing on a building throwing up deuces yes just be like yeah what if it was just bail like it wasn't batman but it was just christian bail mike barry big short and he was drumming where didn't that guy break bad uh yeah he's he's he's not an agreeable type these days okay what do you think is remember when he shorted water but that's how the film ends yeah Didn't that guy break bad? Yeah, he's not an agreeable type these days. Okay, that's great. What do you think is... Remember when he shorted water?

That's how the film ends. Yeah. It's like his next project, water. We still have water. That worked out okay. Right here, baby. That's right. That's a reusable glass.

Thanks for your service. This is not. What's the fourth highest grossing Christopher Nolan film? Inception. it is Inception yeah 825 million is Oppenheimer third Oppenheimer is third

yeah and what did Dunkirk do 509 million that's great it's a great example of how we still we still come out for films

so I didn't tell you this but I want to do top five World War II films for the Blitz episode. Can I just stay here? Yeah. Can I just stay in this seat?

Okay. Let's talk briefly about Woman of the Hour. Yeah. I don't know why this slipped past me. I saw this movie a long time ago. It has been number one or two on Netflix for quite a while now, a few weeks. It's done very, very well on the service. It's Anna Kendrick's directorial debut.

She also stars in the movie. And it is really in our sweet spot in many ways. It's a 70s LA set thriller about a serial killer that is sort of diced to show the perspective of multiple potential victims of this killer. It's based on a true story. The logline is essentially, what if a serial killer went on the dating game?

Yes. And that is something that actually happened in the 1970s. Anna Kendrick plays the woman who is sort of the contestant on the dating game who is interviewing the three men behind a locked door, and one of those three is the killer. But then we also see these other experiences that the killer is having throughout the frame of the movie.

What did you think of this movie? I was really impressed by it. It's pretty good. Yeah. I mean, there's like a separate conversation to have about how well I think Anna Kendrick has like sold this movie to people and, you know, her sort of press run where she's going on Call Her Daddy and stuff, but also talking about David Fincher. And it's been a really impressive she's she's

very prevalent right now yeah um i would not have guessed this would have been the kind of movie that you would make based on some of the work that she's done yeah and then it's a really savvy film that i think very wisely surfs the true crime mania that's happening yes she has appeared on like the crime junkie podcast she's like making the rounds in those spaces too. But also simultaneously, I think being very respectful of not exploiting the crimes and the victims of the crimes. I don't know. Are there any examples of people doing that in contemporary pop culture? I don't know what you mean.

Not at this point. Let's just go to the Menendez Brothers house right now. But I think this movie has a lot of ideas. Yeah. And that's the thing that kind of makes it rise above just its usual like kind of Ryan Murphy like gawking at crimes of the past stuff.

And, you know, there's some legitimate like did her Laura Mulvey homework like stuff in here about the male gaze and about like the like societal more is about how women communicate with each other wordlessly about danger it's really pretty

pretty awesome I mean there are some also deeply unpleasant moments with Daniel Lovato who plays the killer

who people may remember from Station Eleven I was just gonna say he's kind of typecast in a deeply unfortunate way right now but he's very good and Kendrick is like

it's pretty punishing like those scenes can be incredibly uncomfortable but I really liked it. What did you think? Yeah same. I thought it was

really slick and propulsive and confusing in the good way where the kind of the sharded structure kept me engaged and kind of trying to figure out

what was going to happen next. I think also the dating game structure of it is really effective. I think Tony Hale's really funny as the deeply smarmy, misogynistic host of the show. And Anna Kendrick has kind of consistently

been a very, very good actor who has taken on some commercial stuff that I haven't really liked that much or has slipped into the VOD strain or streaming movie strain a little bit over time but she's pretty impressive overall and i thought i didn't want too much time to go by without just citing that this is a really solid throw the kind of movie that we i'm kind of always complaining we don't have yeah and i think it played at tiff in 2023

and was acquired and took a long time to come to the service, but it's a solid movie. Yeah, and it's, I think, a really good example of Netflix taking on a movie that, frankly, probably would have had a hard time just going up against whatever's in theaters right now. Yes. Smile 2 would have trounced this movie. But this is a, like, bizarro world

where, like, Woman of the Hour is, like, the most popular movie in the world right now. So that's pretty cool. More people may have seen it than seen Smile 2, which is a fascinating outcome. And yeah, and it's not awards bait. It's not anything like that.

It's just a good, solid thriller with some strong ideas. Yeah, I hope she makes more movies. Sort of the other side of that coin is a movie like Conclave, which is also a very solid thriller that is a theatrical movie that looks on the surface to be very important. And it's based on a

novel, a novel I had not heard of, by Robert Harris. It's got a screenplay by Peter Straughn. It's directed by Edward Berger, whose last movie was All Quiet on the Western Front, the 2022 World War I drama. It's got the same composer as that film, Volker Bertelmann, who is

acclaimed for that three-toned score that he had in that film. And then the actors in this movie, Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci, John Lithgow, and Isabella Rossellini, among others who we'll be able to discuss, is as Tony and upscale as you can possibly get. This is a movie debuted at the Telluride Film Festival. That's where I first saw it. It's about a cardinal who is tasked with one of the world's most secretive and ancient events, participating in the selection of a new pope. Pope storytelling has been resonant for about 10 years now. It's been resonant for you for about 25? Sure.

In the process of preparing this new pope selection, a lot of intrigue unfurls in Vatican City and specifically at this conclave. And so, like I said, on the surface, this looks like a very, what could be a very staid, quiet drama about men with big ideas in a kind of like simmering agony.

And is that sort of? Yeah. But it is a lot of other things. So what did you think of Conclave? I was deeply entertained by this movie. Exactly what you were kind of alluding to, that this is the reliable, crowd-pleasing, I think,

in a weird way, drama that we don't really have in the theaters that much anymore. And strangely, I saw it last night in a packed movie theater in Guantanamo. Me too. I saw it on Monday night and it was packed. And people were hooting.

Hooting and hollering. There are great laugh lines in this movie. And applauded at the end. So it was very strange. It was almost like going to see The Firm in the 90s or something. And that's exactly what it is because even though the story is set in this world of the Roman Catholic Church and the way the power operates, it's just pulp. It's a super pulpy story. I think

it flatters a certain kind of coastal sensibility in some ways, which we can talk about, but it is just like purely entertaining through and through right so it's fascinating that it has been elevated to you know the high-minded awards race because if it were not popes if it were just i don't know even if it were just a senate race i think it would not seem as quote-unquote important but it would be just as slick just as fun just as ridiculous at times too that's the other thing is like there's a lot of scenery chewing in this movie there's a lot of speechifying um but movie. There's a lot of speechifying. But you also have it as this contrast with Berger's style,

which is so austere and painterly at times, but also is kind of grinding through this airport novel story. It's funny. There's a moment in this film where Fiennes' character is preparing the Vatican to be, for all the cardinals to be sequestered. So they're going to be cut off from the outside world. And he's worried that some Cardinals might be too claustrophobic because they're putting all this armor essentially on the windows so that nobody can listen in or somehow read lips or anything from what's happening in there.

And you could say the same thing might have been the case with the film. Because this movie is taking place in a dozen rooms, maybe, but all looking very the same. And what happens is Berger uses detail to provide scope. So he is very, very, very focused

on what's in people's desk drawers and the glasses that they use to read and all of the kind of costuming of the cardinals. And so you don't even notice that you haven't left these rather drab apartments. It's, you think of the Vatican and you think of all the history and all the art and the beautiful, you know, paintings and stuff like that.

But this is basically like 12 guys going to work and essentially 12 guys going to jury duty. It is very much a movie like a jury duty. I think there's more than 12 dudes, but you know what I mean, yeah. Yeah, I think it's 108 cardinals who come together to vote. But you're right that there is this reliance on

essentially insert shots, the way that the movie is cut, where you're constantly seeing, it reminded me a little bit of The Substance in this way, where this sort of like hyper focus on individual items. One of my favorite shots in the movie is this uh quiet moment as we're preparing for all the cardinals to arrive where we see this kind of pile of cigarettes out on the floor which you know the cardinals are well known for continuing to smoke yeah i guess zen hasn't hit the vatican yet

it's not you can do some evangelizing yourself if you'd like. That would be my platform. The movie reveals like all this great detail about this subterranean world that we don't know very much about that feels very mysterious, but is ultimately just like how any kind of

cliquey environment works where it's like there are the favorites, it is very partisan, people feel strongly about their ideas, they don't want to listen to other people.

They're easily identifiable into these incredibly recognizable categories of liberal, conservative. You will watch this, and if you've never set foot in a Catholic church, you'll recognize our political reality taking place in this election. So your relationship to the Holy See. Yeah. It's been reported that you once had a blog spot. Do you think people, anyone knows what that is? A blog spot? Yeah. Jack, do you know what a blog spot is? In the aughts. He doesn't, he has no, Jack has no idea. Jack, our video producer,

who is, what are you Jack? 24? 23. Jack is 23 and never heard of a blog spot. Bobby, you've heard of a blog spot not only have I heard of one I had several okay there you go that's important so blogs are just like this was like your self-published blogs that we used to have in the aughts

Sean had one I had many yes did you have many or did you just have one I had a few okay I had one

about the papal conclave to elect Joseph Ratzinger it was one post I was going to be tracking the election and it was a really quick election. So it was just like poof, white smoke and God's Rottweiler got elected immediately. So I just shut the blog down. The name of that blog spot was Conclave So Real, which was a riff on, was it Houston So Real? Matt Sanzala's Houston rap blog spot, which you were riffing on at the time.

Chris Ryan in like, was that 06 or 07? You were in a legendary form back then. And I remember you being so excited and I was like, I didn't know the Pope died. I knew you were picking a new Pope. I'm also not Catholic. I have like 38 questions, but just the one question here is that

you wanted to write this blog in support of him getting elected? No, it was just going to be my journalism. It was the Drudge Report for this papal council. It was going to be like Hoops hype, but for the Pope. Right, right. Okay.

And I was going to just like aggregate, you know, and like maybe just riff. But I never even got like another candidate. It was just like, it's going to be Ratzinger. And he fucking boatwalked it. It's really funny though too, because this movie goes to great pains to show us how agonizing this process can be.

And that there are complexities and scandals within these organizations. You've got these men who have been in these positions of power for a long time and how they abuse their power. You know, Ratzinger was a pretty, he had a controversial life. He had a lot of views that were like really aggressive at a time when the church needed a more progressive voice.

And the last couple of popes since him have been much more progressive. But the idea that he just like cakewalks through. Yes. You know, he just like Reagan in 84'd his way through. Yeah. Was very strange. Yeah. It was a shock to everyone

at Conclave Surreal. I had to lay a lot of people off. We had gotten a lot of seed investment. It was a tough time in media. You know, you really had to scale back. Has Substack reached out to you offering like $5 million

Barry Weist style to try to get the IP to revive it? To revive it. Let's do it as a pod. That's the problem with media these days. So, you're not Catholic. I's do it as a pod. That's a problem with media these days. So you're not Catholic.

I'm not. I am Catholic. Have you been to the Vatican? Yes. You have? Yeah. What'd you think? It was very beautiful.

Yeah. What do you think about the ideas in the Roman Catholic church? What do you think about the sort of the way that they see the world? Well, I can't speak to me. You can speak to that. Do you think that it's been formative to your personality i don't think the ideas have um definitely for my wife who was raised catholic i mean i think the way that the ideas are imported to you then shapes how you experience the world which is that if you transgress you feel a deep sense of shame and guilt and it's hard to express

those feelings and so you invariably are like kind of push everything down. That's one of the classic archetypes of Catholicism from the perspective of the devout. Yeah. I think for my wife, it's more of a rejection of a lot of it. Yeah. And that's the flip side of it is if you reject it, I rejected it, of course. Your wife went to Catholic school. I didn't go to Catholic school, but I spent a lot of time in church as a kid. And I think that this movie is very aware of our very uncomfortable relationship with the church our sense that the church is rife with scandal at all times that's part of the fun of it i think if you there have been movies like this you know just watch the um christopher reeve documentary superman about his life and um his you know tragic accident and his um journey to sort of make people

more aware of spinal injuries you know very touching film but it reminded me of a movie that he made in 1982 called monsignor about a corrupt cardinal which is a very similar kind of movie and also you know the godfather part three of course and international immobilare your beloved storyline, features this. Internationale Immobiliare. This fucking movie needed some international mobility. We have a version of that guy in this film.

I think everybody knows that the church has a history of corruption. And nevertheless, the movie is plotted so hilariously, like an Agatha Christie novel. Every 10 minutes, something new is revealed to us. Some bizarre transgression

or mysterious backdoor payment or someone has been imported from Africa to, you know, tell tales about another cardinal. That it's just kind of gripping the way like a good TV show is gripping. You know, where you're like, what's going to happen next?

There was something that happens about midway through this film. Do you want to do spoilers yet? I can talk about it more broadly. Let's talk about it more broadly and then we'll get into spoilers. It's actually not a twist. It is a subtle change in human behavior

that is incredibly recognizable and I identified a lot with it. I saw it. I did not see it coming, but it was like, oh, of course, because Stanley Tucci and Ralph Fiennes and John Lithgow are incredible actors and they can project a wide spectrum of human emotions while also maintaining a stable character. And I think that the thing I would say about this film is it never really insults the audience's intelligence, or at least not on a massive way. I mean, maybe some of the twists that happen within the election itself are a little beyond belief or whatever, but the actual human behavior is actually very adult.

And so there's one character who is pegged early on as a possible people pope and his whole thing is like i don't want it i don't want it i don't want it and then slowly but surely you see midway through the film that he's like of course i want it like i've nobody ever loved this Nobody is nobody who's ever become a cardinal hasn't thought about what their name is Pope would be part of the reason this

works so well as what you cited though that character. I don't think it's a spoiler to say because this takes place in the first 20 minutes of the movie is Stanley Tucci.

Yeah, Stanley Tucci early in the film is tapped as a potential Pope and he plays this Aldo Bellini in the novel. He's Italian in the he's American in the

film. He's just an American. I think they do a nice hunt for October job of just being like it doesn't matter what country yeah talk in your accents

Tucci is exceptional in this movie because of his ability to switch registers so quickly from very strident belief oriented person who is not in seek

of anything beyond his own values very quickly to what happens whenever you are proximate to power and the opportunity arises to take some of it.

How quickly, not just you will turn, but you will show so openly, so nakedly how much you want it. And the movie is obviously hinging on that across the board because during the papal conflict, this is not something I really understood at all.

Multiple people can be voted for. This isn't, this is not a bifurcated election between two men in the rounds that take place throughout this film three four five six seven eight men are getting votes lots of people vote for themselves for the first time yes yeah they just to throw their name out just yeah exactly just to kind of inspire a potential run towards something and you know you need two-thirds vote from the conclave to ascend to Pope. And so it's a series of voting and voting and voting.

You indicated the white smoke. When there's no Pope selected over the Vatican, you see black smoke, kind of gray smoke in Vatican City. When one is selected, you see white smoke.

The movie hinges on this. It is a bit like 12 Angry Men where you kind of show like a show of hands as to who thinks he's guilty versus not guilty, all done in kind of a secret a show of hands as to who thinks he's guilty versus not guilty, all done in kind of a secret vote.

It seems like everyone wants it though too. That's the other thing about this movie. We only learn about seven or eight men who are participating in this situation, but you kind of get the sense that anybody who's under the age of 75 would be interested in this job, which is fascinating because I guess if you're, it's sort of like any job where you're like,

I could be the CEO one day. And these guys are basically, I mean, it's essentially like a parliamentary election where you've got these voting blocks that are trying to entice other blocks into their coalition because it's like, well, you don't want it to be the other guy. So if you guys aren't going to win and my guy is second, let's make sure the guy who's first doesn't win by like collating all of this as a maybe centrist administration rather than a liberal or a conservative one. So all that stuff is really fascinating. And yeah, the ambition of these guys, and a lot of them are walking around being like, well, I'll just leave Rome. It's okay. I've come to the end of my road here. And it's

like, oh, but maybe I'll be secretary of state or or maybe I'll be this, or maybe I'll be that. So there's a lot of favor doing. There's a lot of intrigue. Berger makes an interesting decision to basically keep the vote whipping to two or three kind of beautifully staged scenes in a theater, it seems like. But you don't do a ton of...

There's not a ton of insight into how these people are changing other people's minds and that actually for me was cool because it gave the film an almost uh i mean spiritual or supernatural air of like how the movement of the votes seemed to like move from one guy to another and so there would be gossip but you wouldn't necessarily see everybody just decide well obviously this guy had a bad lunch so now he's out you know yeah i mean but not unlike our elections it reminded me a lot of 2020 and the democratic nominees and who it felt like things were tipping towards at various times and then all of a sudden this is like south carolina happens and this is what we're doing and it's over

and it's decided and the movie operates in the same way. The movie is a very, very heavy-handed metaphor, allegory for electoral politics

across the board. It's hilarious that it is being released in the last week of October and we are on the verge of what is, once again, I guess,

the most important election of our lifetimes. I think the movie is ultimately a success because it has Ralph Fiennes at the center of it. You know, we just did an episode on the Grand Budapest Hotel on the rewatchables, and we talked about his fascinating career and just like what a remarkable, pliable,

funny, devastating, hugely flexible actor he is. He does all of that in this movie. This movie, you know, Manolo Dargis had this great observation in her review of the movie which was that he is arguably the single best communicator

of a feeling with a very subtle gesture in his face. This is a big movie with a lot of big moments but he is this cardinal who is very close to the Pope but is in a bit of

a crisis of faith. But he's also been tasked with this huge job of wrangling this hundred plus group of very powerful, very pointed men. And he has like a really clear sense of what is the right way to go about doing things. And at times, actually, I think he may be wrong in the way that he approaches things and he breaks certain rules that you're not supposed to break. But his certitude and power in pursuing those things

is fascinating because the movie is dotted early on with a speech about how the biggest sin is certainty in the world. And yet, throughout this process, he kind of leans on his own certainty. He is the Poirot, the Miss Marple,

like the key kind of detective figure in the story while also being its clear moral conscience throughout. Fiennes is just great. Yeah, and his moments where I think that you could call it a crisis of faith are his moments of a crisis of ambition. It's when he starts to believe in his own... Chances.

Yeah, chances and maybe the divine kind of plan for him uh and it's it's it's like like tucci finds can play three different emotions in a scene he can be domineering he can be uh tearful he can be very funny there's a few take your hands off my lobby boy moments in this film, intentionally or not. And I was very surprised to hear people responding in the theater vocally to him commanding their emotions. It's kind of a wild crowd participation film. It is. But it is kind of becoming that. It reminds me a little bit more of

how you feel when you're watching a comedy or a horror movie where you want to kind of interact with the screen and i think it's because it's surprising that it's that kind of movie most people who are sitting down are expecting something much more rigorous yeah much more serious um and it's not i mean it's it's it's it's not schlocky but it is pulpy the pulpiest of the characters by far to me is Tedesco, who was played by Sergio Castellito. He's the Cardinal of Venice. He is the Cardinal of Venice,

and he is an extremely conservative figure. He is really the key opponent of whoever will be the progressive representative in this race, and a number of people fill that space during the course of the film. And I've never seen this man before, and he is absolutely cooking in this race and a number of people fill that space during the course of the film. And I've never seen this man before. And he is absolutely cooking in this movie. He is so funny, so forceful, so ridiculous, and yet so real. He so feels to me like an arch conservative politician

with his version of certitude, with his version of sectarianism, with his version of going back to the old way. He is a strict constructionist, and he's somebody who wants to bring the church back to where it should be in his mind. As long as you're allowed to vape in that version of the church, because he hits the pen so hard in this movie, and there's a couple of yes, serve moments

where he's just dazzling around in loafers and hitting his vape pen while he like puts parmesan on his gnocchi. It's just fucking incredible. He's like in an episode of RuPaul's Drag Race while also being a cardinal.

It's fascinating. He's really, really fun and funny in this movie. And I guess the other big performer that we should mention is Isabella Rossellini in this movie. When I was getting ready

to see the movie, a telly writer was like, Isabella Rossellini, Academy Award, it's coming. I think that's a little overstated relative to the amount of time she gets in the movie. It would have to be for basically one scene. One scene.

Because otherwise she is just like standing. Quietly scowling. Yeah. But the one scene is very good. I can't put you on the spot like this, but I want you to think about it. How many one-scene Oscars are there? Like where it's a supporting actor performance

and it's essentially based on the back of one great scene. I mean, there are two very memorable examples in supporting actresses with actresses who had less than 10 minutes of screen time. One is Judi Dench in Shakespeare in Love, which is often considered a career Oscar, though she does have a big speech, a kind of memorable sequence.

And then the other one is Beatrice Strait in Network, where she gives this one speech about, you know, commanding respect from her husband, who's played by William Holden. And that's one of the more powerful sequences in a movie full of powerful sequences. So like it happens. It does happen. I mean I called Anthony Hopkins

a fraud for his best actor win in Silence of the Lambs with like less than 30 minutes of screen time. He stole all that Miggs spotlight you know. Yeah. Where's Miggs as Oscar? I ask you now. So it's not out of the realm of possibility. She also has definitely less than 20 minutes of screen time in this movie

but she is a pivotal figure in the telling of the story. This is a very entertaining movie. A very silly movie. Did you see it and tell your eye thinking it was like

a best picture favorite and then it kind of fell short? No, it's the opposite. I think I expected something boring. I got something that's a lot of fun.

I still think it's a best picture favorite. I think that's much more a reflection of the slate this year and also just like the names attached to it because it's Fiennes because it's Edward Berger because it's a focus features movie

and all this stuff it kind of is like casting aside some of the goofiness of it I think we should talk about the ending of the movie though yeah sure there's a character that we haven't discussed yet that is

pretty critical so if you do not want to know the ending of Conclave you do not want to know any more about this story

we have not really spoiled very much to be honest through this entire conversation but it's pretty critical to talk about how the movie

will be received especially when it comes to more so awards rather than box office but let's go through it. Spoiler warning. So there is another cardinal

who's introduced early on in the film a cardinal that the other cardinals were not aware of and Dean Lawrence is not aware of either. He is the Cardinal of Kabul in Afghanistan. And he has served in Baghdad and the Congo.

Yes. And he has recently started a ministry in that space after being one of the chief missionaries in that space for a long time.

And the only person who had known that this man had been made a cardinal was the Pope who dies at the beginning of the film. And there's a lot of

aspects of the story that are only communicatedinal, was the Pope who dies at the beginning of the film. And there's a lot of aspects of the story that are only communicated by way of, the Pope told me this before he died. That's a big way that they kind of shield us from information throughout the telling of the story. So Carlos D's plays Vincent Cardinal Benitez. And Benitez is this critical figure because even though Ralph finds his character

as meant to be the moral center, Benitez is this kind of un even though Ralph finds his character is meant to be the moral center, Benitez is this kind of unwavering point of light. He is someone who represents purely the intentions of the church's ideology, not its history, not the sort of warfare that it's engaged in with the progressive left or other faiths and the way that they're intersecting in our world. Benitez is this person who has seen war, has seen true terror in the world, and he is steadfast in his beliefs in the power of faith.

Through circumstance, after cycling through John Lithgow's Tremblay, after cycling through Stanley Tucci's character Bellini, after cycling even through Ralph Fiennes' character Lawrence as potential popes in the progressive mold buttressing against Tedesco somehow after a bold speech that he delivers it's worth mentioning that there's a like b-plot to the film and is a I think a much bigger deal in Harris's novel where there has been terrorist activity in and around Rome, and it's understood that there is a, it's a concerted attack on Catholics,

and it's happening like in Europe, Europe-wide. Yes. So at one point, finds his character, votes for himself as Pope, and an explosion happens, and it shatters all these windows

and blows some of the frescoes off, and it's like this huge moment of almost like a lightning bolt coming down from heaven about this guy's hubris. And it leads to a huge confrontation between Tedesco and Benitez about which direction the church should turn in this conflict,

and Tedesco is like, this is a holy war. We need to batten down the hatches and become a fortress again and become soldiers again. And Benitez is like, we need to open up the doors and love everyone. It's like much more Christ-like kind of, and importantly Christ-like because he is very much a Christ figure. Absolutely. He is made, is almost shot to look as is very much a Christ figure. Absolutely. He is made, is almost shot

to look as though he holds the Christ pose. He has this kind of beatific, still calmness about him throughout the entire film. He's often dressed

in the clothes that he wore to the Vatican. Yes. He doesn't have the pomp and circumstance of all which are. He is like an angel figure.

And lo and behold, after this terrorist attack and after this speech of fine from tedesco and benitez's response they vote again and benitez wins in a stunning turn this man who we did not know existed in the catholic church until you know three days earlier has been named the pope uh brian f.o burn plays a monsignor, who is sort of like the attache to Dean Lawrence. And throughout the film, he has been going on, he's sort of the investigator.

He's kind of the Andre Brower in the primal fear of this movie. He keeps getting information. He goes out and he interviews people and he comes back and he gets info. He's getting some info on the activities of Cardinal Tremblay, Lithgow's character throughout the film. He's trying to get to the bottom of what the Pope was actually up to.

And the other thing that he's looking into is Benitez's past and his medical history. And after Benitez is elected, O'Byrne's character goes to Dean Lawrence and says like, hey, I didn't know this was going to happen. I never would have guessed that Benitez

would have been elected Pope and I wish I had talked to you this morning rather than this afternoon, because one of the things I learned is why he went to Switzerland to a clinic where he had an examination of some kind done. It didn't go through with a procedure. It didn't go through with a procedure. And this was all at the Pope's behest as he had been, you know, furthering this relationship with Benitez in the church, Dean Lawrence is told what it is, but we don't see him get told what it is.

And then the next sequence is Lawrence goes and confronts Benitez about what it is that he's learned from Ray, which is that Benitez's character is intersex. He has both male and female sexual organs. And, uh, he has a uterus. He has a uterus. He has a uterus. And this is like genuinely one of the weirdest reveals

I can remember in a pop film. And it is meant to really like confront your ideas of what is our willingness to open our minds. What can the church represent? How do you really live your values? And also can these church liberals walk the talk? Yes. Because they've been talking about,

we need to reach out. We need to be a church for everyone. We need to be permissive in the roles of women and gays in the church and really start modernizing this institution in the face of someone like Tedesco, who's like, I want to take us back to the Middle Ages. And Benitez is the lightning bolt, again, from heaven,

that's like, it's time to be about what you say you're about. Yes. And the movie to this point, particularly right up until Benitez's election, is what I was referring to earlier, was sort of like flattering the sensibilities of a certain kind of liberal, a certain kind of liberal moviegoer

who probably sees a lot of focus features films. You know, that it's just like, I'm a good Democrat and I vote blue down the line. I give money and I think, you know, fascism is on the rise in this country. And there's a certain kind of storytelling that I think really leans into that. Now, this challenge in the story is interesting.

I think it may be a step too far in our attempts to shock us with something that is just a sort of incidental biological truth about this character. And it is attempting to really be like, well, how liberal are you, sir? I don't want to say it was like a misstep, but it actually made me take the movie less seriously because it's so it's so silly in the in the face of the rest of the story i i people will read the movie differently i i it's been a while since my jaw dropped in a movie yeah because i really wasn't expecting this i thought that the twist was that benitez won and that the twist was that the pope always wanted benitez to win and he had basically orchestrated this because over the course of all the, the rounds of voting, Benitez very slowly,

but surely every single time his name is mentioned, he gets another vote. So it'll start at, he starts at like one and then it's three and then it's five and nine and then it's 13. And it's almost like this wave of God moving through these men finally to see like who's's who truly deserves this role and when he uh is elected he's he is the name he takes is innocent um i i didn't really

read it as like um confrontationally political i mean this is a 2016 novel. So yes, obviously, like in the culture war mix, but I imagine was written over the course of a few years before that. I more took it to be the sprinkling of spirituality that this movie probably

intentionally lacks because it's so procedural over the course of the film now it is essentially a dan brown twist where the womb is the grail and this chalice and this is the this man who has a a uterus is like been sent from heaven to save the church i don't know how much it stands up to like intellectual interrogation but I definitely was like holy shit yeah

I mean that's really kind of where I've had more time to think about it I had the same reaction as you the first time I saw it and so did everyone else

I think everyone that I saw it with was like whoa what a ride what a crazy way to end that movie which was otherwise very entertaining as well.

Second time I saw it, I was like, this feels kind of cheap. This kind of feels like a cheap way of shocking us without actually interrogating what had happened here. I think if the movie had maybe more directly clarified that we feel like the Pope is the one sort of driving the Benitez story, maybe that would have made sense. It's very, very hard to buy

that a cardinal who no one knows, with no experience, gives two speeches and all of a sudden is anointed the highest position in one of the oldest faiths in the world. It's just hard to buy. It's hard to believe.

And this is almost meant to like wrong foot us off of that. Don't think too much about how crazy this ending would be because we've got an even crazier ending for you. But do you think that possibly it's like, is it crazier than anything else? Is it any crazier than a hundred guys sitting in a room voting and burning their votes to decide who is the vessel of God on earth? It's a good question. Obviously, the historical practices of the Catholic Church are weird. And when you look at them closely in their practical execution,

it's hard to believe that millions have died because of the decisions that are made like this. And so you could say, sure, with that in mind, maybe this is more believable. But I thought it was like a turn of the dial too much for me. It doesn't mean that it's not, it's very entertaining. I don't know if it's actually like saying anything. Me neither.

I mean, I was like trying to read up a little bit, obviously just don't know much about the Catholic church in a real way. And, you know, there's a myth. It was believed for a while, but there's a myth of a female Pope in And, you know, there's a myth. It was believed for a while, but there's a myth of a female Pope in the 13th century, or like maybe it was written about in the 13th century, but it's from the 11th century, Pope Joan, who, you know, quietly ascended the ranks of the church without anyone noticing that she was a woman. That's been proven to be like fiction, but was like a,

was a mythology for a while. And I know that it's like Catholics and Protestants really get angry at each other on message boards about this. So I'm not trying to wade too deeply into it. Which message boards? But I do think, well, Google Pope Joan,

you'll find yourself in some weird places. I don't know. I just, for some reason I was like, nice one guys. I was just like, some reason I was like nice one guys I was just like I think I was like this really took

courage to do this that's true you could really have ended it with being like it turns out the real Pope was the guy

who's helped people you know and I think that is the message or that yeah I think there's something

like just a little Pollyanna about the whole, like, the meek shall inherit the earth aspect of the story at the end. It's a Sidney Pollack movie,

basically. I mean, like, it is, like, I mean, it's just like, just like a little too safe

because the truth is that the meek do not inherit the earth. I think, like, ultimately, like, you know,

the metaphor of, like, him saving the turtle at the end of the movie and putting the turtle out into the water and that being this kind of,

like, conclusive, like, we must treat each other gently and Tedesco is talking about a holy war and Benitez is like I've actually served

this I've ministered in Kabul and Baghdad so like you don't really know what you're talking about I think the movie is like unable to accept that both things

that actually they're not as in opposition to each other as they believe like just because you believe you must accept all people doesn't actually mean that the the war the world is war-torn and it doesn't actually mean that cynicism is unearned i think i like as a cynic i tend to find endings like this in movies that are ostensibly about big ideas to just be like pretty cheap um i don't mean like using an intersex character to tell a story that's not

really my point it's more just that they're like this holy and anointed person has come along and they are not exactly what you seem but they are exactly what you need yes um so i guess like the thing i would draw it back to is the the lawrence speech at the beginning of the conclave that he goes off book for and is like you you know, this idea of certainty and that's a lack of faith. And then he's just asked to put his faith in the hands of something

he doesn't understand, which I kind of like. Now, it comes out of nowhere and then the movie ends. It's not like this is like interrogated at all and Ray knows

and like, I don't know what like Conclave 2, like the fallout would be. Conclave to cool and dead wreck. I'd like to see that. Yeah. And what happens when, when Ray has the rabbit's foot,

you know, like, but is beneath his AI. Is that what we're meant to believe? He's too perfect. Oh, is he a Bill's chat GPT, Roger Ebert?

Um, do you think that that's a sin that he does that? That Bill does chat GPT? It's not ideal. I wouldn't ask for it. I'm not trying to lean on AI in our creative circumstances if we don't have to. Um, I know you're not an awards guy,

but just awards it out with me sure man i think there's a sense now that there are two maybe three major contenders in best picture right now and i find that list of three to be utterly fascinating this can change a lot glad eight or two is not out wicked is not out dune part two is taking a back seat the bigger commercial movies don't really seem to be competing in the same way that like top gun maverick wasn't really competing or avatar the way of water wasn't really competing so you've got an aura you've got the brutalist and i think you've got amelia perez those are the three movies now i know you haven't seen any of those movies so

i'm not asking you to comment on them specifically but all three of those movies are art house movies from hardline auteurs taking big risks on films that have maybe some of the bones in their log line of past oscar films but in the execution are unusual yes um and so then those movies being the front runners i think there's a feeling amongst some oscar watchers that Conclave has a real traditional spoiler potential. That it's a movie that everyone's going to be like, I like that movie. Maybe it wasn't my favorite movie. So give me an analog to what Conclave is. Is that Green Book?

Is that? Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, if Roma is the arty contender in the mold of an Enora, an unlikely film with a lot of craft and a lot of big ideas. Anora is more of a crowd pleaser than Roma is for sure, but Conclave is a movie that like, I haven't talked to a lot of people that hate it.

I don't know how you could watch Stanley Tucci and Ray Fiennes argue for two hours and be like that sucked. There are two sequences between them. One when Fiennes brings the materials that he's discovered to tucci and he tells him to burn it and that you realize that tucci has been a part of this yeah kind of

political consortium to gain power and then the second scene when that you mentioned when tucci realizes that he thinks it's dean who should be the pope he thinks it's finds his character and he asks him you know what name will you choose and finds it's just so remarkable in that scene when he's like john like he knows you know he And Fiennes is just so remarkable in that scene when he's like, John. Like, he knows. You know, he's been thinking about this. So, stuff like that's going to play really well with the Academy. Fiennes is definitely going to be nominated.

I think Best Actor is very competitive this year. He's won Supporting Actor, but never Actor, right? He's never won. He's only been nominated. He didn't win Supporting Actor for Schindler's. No, he was nominated for Schindler's, and it's the only time he's been nominated. I mean, he's excellent in this film and always excellent. Is there anybody else

that's kind of in the race with him for actor? Well, you've got Coleman Domingo and Sing Sing and Daniel Craig and Queer who I think are both

going to compete pretty aggressively. I don't, I think Queer is going to be, is a harder sell, but it could be like The Whale, you know, where like people don't

necessarily love the movie, but they love the performance. Wild, yeah. Yeah. So, I feel like picture an actor or sell, but it could be like The Whale, you know, where people don't necessarily love the movie, but they love the performance. So, I feel like Picture and Actor, it's definitely competitive in Actor. I don't think it's going to be competitive in Supporting Actor. I could be wrong about that. I haven't really wrapped my arms around that race.

Possibly. I don't know if he has enough of a fiery moment. He's very, very good in the movie. He's also beloved. Adaptive screenplayplay for sure. I think things like production design and costume design definitely competing because the movie looks so great.

And I don't know, the picture thing, I can't get it out of my head. It's 10 movies. I mean, I think Conclave will get in that 10. It's getting in for sure. I think it's a top five movie. I guess it probably depends on

if a bunch of people go see it. It did fine business. Do you think it would show up in your top 10 of the year, it's a top five movie I guess it probably depends on if a bunch of people go see it it did fine business do you think it would show up in your top 10 of the year at like your end of the year list no this is a real like three and a half out of five for me like I liked it it was fun I had a fun time once the deeper I look into it especially as a lapsed catholic the less interest that I am I'll also say I didn't see the trailer and didn't know anything about this movie going into it and I think that that was uh I mean I knew about it but I purposely didn't see the trailer and didn't know anything about this movie going into it. And I think that that was, I mean, I knew about it, but I purposely did not watch the trailer. I found, you know, I think the terrorist explosion is in the trailer.

I think there's like some stuff in there. You don't know what it is. No, but I think it's really exciting when that happens because I didn't know that that was an element in the film at all. Yeah, yeah. We didn't even mention the subplot about Adeyemi, the African cardinal and what is revealed about him too. That actor is also wonderful. I want to make sure i get his name right um but that's another sequence miss maddie yeah that's another sequence with fines where fines confronts him ultimately to tell him that he will not be pope that is just that both of those actors in that scene are so good there's still hope but he's like there is no hope yes that's an amazing sequence so it's the

movie's just kind of rippling with all these moments. Yeah. I think I was just a little bit more down on the ending having seen it a second time. I'll be very curious to see it. I haven't seen anybody who was like,

that ending ruled. It was just shocking. But I think that there are different reactions to the twist and the shock and what the movie is maybe trying to say. I liked the fact that it ended quickly after that,

perhaps a little abruptly, but it does not reckon with it. You know, like it kind of puts it out there and then it's like, you guys go to dinner and think about this now. It's not like here's how, Ralph Fiennes basically puts a turtle in the pond and looks up at the sky and smiles.

But then what do you think of it then? I guess is what I'm trying to get to. Like if you were having, we're having the dinner conversation right now. Like what does that choice mean other than to shock you? I don't know. I mean, godliness comes in all different packages, right? Like our concepts of like what the vessel for holiness is restrictive. Right.

And it should be accepted on all fronts because then it ultimately feels like a film that is very much like a faithful film. And faithful films also don't have a complicated history at the Academy Awards. They're very popular. God is dead in Hollywood. But they are very popular.

They are. Well, and I wonder if the movie will be read that way because I think conservative, God-fearing people who go see Lionsgate movies about, you know, Jesus Christ playing volleyball or whatever. Like, those people are not going to go see this movie. Right. And most of the people who are going to go see this movie, you know, in all likelihood are not devout. Maybe some are. Sure.

Some are. Yeah. But, you know, there's more heathens amongst the indie film crowd. I can't. I really couldn't even imagine if i was catholic like like practicing catholic if i would be offended by this film yeah i don't know if it's a i'm not i'm honestly not sure bob you're you're practicing catholic what do you think not quite practicing anymore and i haven't seen the film so what do you want

me to say i'll let you guys know does godliness come in all forms? Yeah, of course. God loves all of us equally. There you go. Yeah, Francisco Lindor, Michael Bay. Chase Utley. Well, there is a Satan after all. Any closing thoughts on Conclave? You enjoyed it.

Yeah, I mean, I really did. I don't think that it would be like a best film of the year for me or anything like that, but it was a throwback for me of like, man, I am glued to my seat. Like, I'm very, very, very curious about where this is going. And I think that you mentioned it, but the mechanics of it are no different than an action film. Something happens every 11 minutes where you're like, whoa, okay. Yeah.

Yeah. I agree. CR, thank you. Yeah, man. Thanks for your work thanks for admitting all of your carnal desires

from the film The Hotspot on this episode appreciate that as usual you brought the heat let's go now to my conversation

with Matt Turnauer What's in this McDonald's bag? The McValue Meal. For $5.79 plus tax, you can get your choice of junior chicken, McDouble, or chicken snack wrap, plus small fries and a small fountain drink. So pick up a McValue Meal today at participating McDonald's restaurants in Canada. Prices exclude delivery. Returning to the show, Matt Turnour. Matt, thanks for being here.

My pleasure. So Matt, I was looking at your filmography at this point, and I'm fascinated by how you decide on a subject. You always have these very clear figures. We talked on the show five years ago about your interest in hustlers, maybe your subterranean interest in hustlers. Maybe your subterranean interest in hustlers. But now you've profiled a lot of people historically. And I don't know if you have the pick of the litter or how an idea comes to you. In the case of James Carville, he's a very well-known

figure. How do you decide, this is who I want to spend the next 12 months, 18 months, two years of my life with? Well, last time we were talking about a literal hustler, Scotty Bowers. That's right. It's the subject of my film, Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood. And he was the male prostitute to the stars in the golden age who ran a brothel out of a gas station. So that was the more literal manifestation of what you've identified as my hustler obsession. But I'd also about the same time done a series about Ronald and Nancy Reagan, and we were talking about them as a pair of hustlers too.

So now we have another political figure, James Carville, who is an overt hustler. I mean, he calls himself a hack, and he revels in the term, and he sees politics as selling. And hucksterism is one of the keys to success in politics, and that he would like to talk about hucksterism. And indeed, in the film, he says that Democrats aren't huckster enough. Now, we live in a time of asymmetrical warfare in politics and on the political playing field. And of course, everyone now is probably triggered about Donald Trump, as I say these words, because obviously he is a huckster and a flim-flam man. And now I think by far the most successful out of anyone maybe in human history, which is just horrifying for me to talk about him in any sort of superlative way. However, I think Carville makes a good point that winning without losing your soul is the name of the game. And that's the case he makes for success in

politics and his type of progressive politics, which comes from a different root system of progressive political thinking and action. Now the progressive left is something a little different than it was when he was coming up. He's more in the Roosevelt tradition. But if you want to go back to Franklin Roosevelt, not to get too historical here, that was a real politic player who understood that bare-knuckle politicking and winning elections was the way to change things for the better and bring about progress. And that's where James Carville sits. So this is a roundabout way of answering the question, which is, I don't know. I mean, sometimes ideas come to me and I'll turn them over and I think that

this seems good and I'm interested in it and maybe I can get this thing going or I could pitch it or I could raise the money for it. Other times people come to me with ideas and this actually is one of those cases where I received a cold call from someone named Susan McHugh, who had been Harry Reid's chief of staff in the Senate. She was a mutual friend of Carville's and mine. And she said, what do you think about a film involving James Carville and who would be good for that? And I said, well, actually, I would do that. But this was two and a half years ago in a different frame of time really kind of early-ish biden administration

carville as a tv talking head most distinguished for his vocal opposition to identity politics that was interesting to me no one had really examined his legacy since the War Room on film. That was interesting. But then things evolved in a kind of extraordinary way. And we can talk about that. Do you think his sense of hucksterism made this an easy choice for him to do this, to participate in this? That this would be an opportunity to burnish his legend and to also convey his ultimate message? Yes. He's not shy. He's serious though. And I think what I saw once he attained

enormous success very quickly when he was 42, having been a pretty much a flop until his late 30s when he suddenly became a successful political consultant for governors generally and then with clinton he became the most famous political consultant ever. And then he became someone who was famous for being famous. But I think that he was ready for a retrospective. I was less interested in a retrospective. I was very interested when he started to insert himself into the political process in the 2024 race, which transformed my entire arc and my entire mission as a filmmaker in this mostly verite film. That had never really happened to me before. And that was

hair-raising, exciting, and a white-knuckle experience. What was the movie going to be? Because obviously the framework now becomes, Carville becomes kind of a voice in the wilderness in the early stages of talking about Biden's fit for the role to run again. And that becomes a centerpiece of your story. But if that hadn't happened, would it have just been a more retrospective, maybe less verite kind of a film? What would have been the shape of it? Well, I'd be lying if I said I really knew.

I thought he was interesting. I thought that he was a transformational figure. I thought he was very bright. I thought he was brave. I thought he was a truth teller. And I still think all of those things. At first, before he became the most famous political advisor ever, campaign advisor ever. So in 92, it was just the dawn of cable news

and the 24-hour news cycle. Now the news cycle is the nanosecond news cycle. So that's a very different world, and yet this figure is still with us. And the parties have transformed. as its former self and forces the Democratic Party to engage in a constant asymmetrical battle. And Trump may or may not be a cult of personality. The movement called MAGA may be with us for a while. So how does James Carville hold up and how does he comment on and how does his presence frame the seismic shift in our day-to-day political reality of how the games played that was enough for me then i mean the biography is fascinating we can talk about that more the late success i thought was interesting in an era when there is what i call zuckerberg syndrome

you know the wunderkinds who are billionaires before they're half a footstep out of harvard or stanford and he's a contrast to that as a late bloomer who found enduring fame in his early 40s. And then there was the marriage to Mary Matalin, which was the most famous marriage in the country, second to the Clintons in the 90s. But it was a bipartisan marriage, and it really captured the imagination and the attention of the American public in a way that I don't think people can quite comprehend now. They were cable 1.0.

They both went on to big careers in early cable TV. They were also on Meet the Press regularly with Tim Russert in the 90s, which was enormously influential in a way that nothing can be today with the demise of linear television and the state that TV news is in right now. So I'll be honest with you. I'm tremendously suspicious of James Carville and all political operators. I may have been conditioned to be suspicious. I think a lot of progressive people are suspicious for a variety of reasons. I still admire what he has done and what he's capable of doing. I think even what he accomplished in the last 12 months is kind of fascinating,

given the length of his career. Do you, do you like people in this world? Do you know a lot of people in this world? Were you suspicious of people in this world? You know, he's famous for cutting through the bullshit, but how do you cut through the bullshit of the bullshit? Well, it's interesting to me that you have an aversion to these types because I feel like we agree on a lot of things. Me too.

I think I see what you mean. Tell me if you mean this, that when you listen to interviews with politicians or people adjacent to them, often what they're saying is so prefigured and boilerplate-like and calculated, better word word that it's just not worth listening inauthentic and not useful yeah i agree with that i mean if i now of course listen to podcasts all the time driving around in la traffic and on my favorite political podcasts, when there's an elected official on them, I just don't listen. It's boring, yes.

Yeah. Because I can't bear it. And Carville's not like that, of course. So that makes him the exception. Yes, if I were confronted with doing something about someone that talked like that, I would probably want to avoid it. But that's a different species than he is. I mean, that makes him worth doing alone.

Because if you go back and look at the tape from the 92 election where he was out there speaking for Clinton. And he wasn't, by the way, the podium spokesman. That was D.D. Myers, who's a friend of mine, actually, and George Stephanopoulos, actually. So they were more the kind of get up on the podium and give the morning line type. James was this rogue operator, and this is partly to account for his explosive fame. You can see why the press at that time thought, my God, we thought there was nothing new under the sun, but we've never seen anything quite like this, certainly in the television era. There were probably people in the era of spittoons, you know, in the legislature when, you know, radio was just coming up that spoke as colorfully as carville with that

type of regional twang he's more like a politician in that way he's more like lonesome roads or huey long or one of those figures even though he's not actually a politician you know he's presenting straight shooting yes uh but he has the advantage of not being a politician so he can be more interesting than most politicians he's a strategist and his influence actually is not so much huey long but the brother of huey the much younger brother earl long who was governor of louisiana later and the subject of a book by A.J. Liebling called The Earl of Louisiana, which I really recommend. James told me to read it, and I learned a lot about James by reading this book. So that sort of southern Louisiana,

when at all costs, slightly demagogic, colorful hack persona is something that he studied because Earl Long was the governor when he was a kid and he was obsessed with politics and the Longs dominated the state. And if you look at the Earl Long newsreel footage, you can see why i mean there's a passage of earl long in the film where we do this kind of parade of colorful governors of louisiana which is almost defies belief i have to say one of them sings a song that he wrote which is you are my sunshine so governor jimmy davis is the uh at least owned the rights. Apparently, he stole them from someone.

But he was credited as the author of You Are My Sunshine. He used to sing it on television. And Earl Long gives a speech. And we take a little piece of it where he says, there are only two classes of first-class hospital treatment in this country. And that's for the paw-paw and the rich-rich. I mean, my God, he could be speaking today, but he gives it as a stem winder with an old-fashioned chrome microphone in front of him, and he's gesticulating in this mad way, and James was in love with that. James, it turns out, and you can see it in the film, which I don't think we've said the title I'd just

say it aloud because it's indicative you'll probably say it in the intro but it's it's Carville winning is everything stupid and winning is everything is the mantra really and stupid is the uh the coda because the economy is stupid is probably his most famous quotation. But this is a guy who turned out to be a great orator himself. And in the film, I found these old speeches he gave, which are right. I mean, he had the oratorical chops of a first-class politician. I would say that he's a better speaker in many ways than obama and clinton i know that's heretical to say but if you see him in the film he's a really talented orator as you also see in the film at the age of 79 now going on 80

later this month he's a great thinker he's a distiller of information and a boiler downer of that information into a cogent message that is understandable by a mass audience, which is really the trick of politics. And that's selling back to the beginning here or hustling and he wouldn't really shy away from that term and by the way he watched the scotty bowers movie and loved it and by the way they were both marines oh interesting so there are parallels uh can i offer one more parallel to scotty and james correct me if i'm wrong about this but i think that those are the only two films that you made about people who are still living let me think well valentino valentino yeah okay three but that is a little different so it's a lot different i'm trying to think if there's another one i mean there's one that hasn't come out yet about bennington

college oh i've seen that one actually the of the World, where the characters are still around. Yes. It's not so much a Verite film. In fact, it isn't at all. Yeah, so my first film was a Verite film, Valentino, The Last Emperor. And that is about the great fashion designer, Valentino Garavani, and his boyfriend, really spouse unofficially, Giancarlo Giamatti. And I spent a couple of years with them.

And that's where I first kind of explored filmmaking. And those were the types of characters I did journalism about. So I was very influenced by direct cinema and the Maisels and Frederick Weissman and D.A. Pennebaker and all the greats. And the type of writing I was doing for Vanity Fair at the time was very much torn from that technique. It was observational. So I thought that these long form pieces I did really were almost like paper cuts of cinema verite documentaries. And the Valentino movie was a sort of experiment to see if I could transform that type of observational journalistic

technique into a film. I think what you're asking about someone living versus an archival film is well what do you how do you approach it and how do you contain it and figure it out when you know you're chasing this live being that's doing stuff well you, I think the difference at least between Scotty and Valentino to some extent too is there's less archival. Like there is more of like a reconstitution of history when you're telling those stories as opposed to Carville. There's so much archival. There's so many appearances with Tim Russert and Mary. There's so many, you know, on the stump or in the scrums, you know, interviews that he's given over the years plus he's this still incredibly vibrant intelligent quick-witted figure that i feel like i feel like you almost

had like a bounty to deal with yes good point i mean if it didn't work out with james being a good verite character and marylin, who came very late. She showed up late, let's put it that way. She was hiding from me, to be more precise. What changed her mind? My persuasive skills, I suppose. My hustling. I'll tell you the story.

She wouldn't participate, which I knew would be a problem eventually, but you know, I had some time and then she kept not participating. We finally got Bill Clinton to participate, which was something that had to happen, my opinion. And then she showed up later than Bill Clinton. So I actually was going to ask you specifically about that, about how you have this incredible contrast of documentary interview styles where the Clinton interview is like a very classical, important man. You see him being seated. And then Mary is just like a raw nerve. You know, she's just so frank and so direct in a way that is unusual in these settings, which I love that contrast together. That's a nice observation.

Yes. So, well nice observation. Yes. So, well, Clinton's presidential. He's got Secret Service and AIDS and, you know, what we all should have, someone making sure there's no fluff on our, you know, the shoulder of our suit coat. And he deserves it. Mary, she is electric.

I mean, back to how it all kind of transpired, but then I think your question's more interesting to answer. I kind of went on a date with her that was set up where, okay, we'll meet at Cafe Milano in Georgetown, which is a power restaurant there, and we'll figure this out. Or maybe or maybe we won't. And we sat down and kind of connected instantly uh i chose a topic i don't know why it was uh gore vidal maybe because he's a public intellectual and you can go to bill buckley which i thought would be interesting to her vidal was a really good friend of mine i was his literary executor, so I knew a lot about him and I knew all about the Buckley-Vidal situation. And I just thought

that might be a way to find some common ground to talk about that wasn't the matter at hand. And that worked really well. She had read almost everything Vidal had written. So we had deep discussions about what's happening in Burr versus 1770s or 1876 versus Myra Breckenridge. And that was great. So I think I won her over. And then eventually we were able to kind of get together. And the first interview we did is what you referred to, a front porch interview that went on for six hours with no tripod, which was not nice for the DP. But I love stuff like that. My first film, we didn't use one tripod the entire film.

So for me, the verite idea is so beautiful where you have light equipment ideally for me and you don't really stand on formality and there's not a lot of fussing with cords and lights and boxes and trucks and things like that i really like to operate light and it's hard to do because DPs don't like it. And in any event, I got my way. A six-hour interview with no tripod, which looks great. I love the wobble.

And she's not even facing me. She's sort of looking away, and she's needle-pointing Frida Kahlo's head. And there's a goat nearby, and dogs are walking in and out. And I thought that was wonderful. It's such a neat metaphor, though, for this sort of like the buttoned up Clintonian presentation versus the people who are in the background of this experience. Who like we know a lot about and have been valorized over the years, but they're still living this way.

They live on a farm. She's sitting on the porch. They're wealthy, but they're regular in a way. And that's kind of calming to see it in that circumstance. Well, that's the beauty of cinema verite. I mean, you really can, if you get it, have the verite of it. And of course, nothing's real. I mean, everything's constructed and edited and intercut and time is bent in films and that's the beauty of it. But the awareness of

it and talking about it and the contrast and some intentional and some unintentional, of course. I hadn't really thought of the formality of Clinton versus the informality of Mary, but James is very throw-down, too. I mean, he slouches, he's leaning over in the chair, his glasses need cleaned, and he can't wear his headphones. And I mean, all of that, for me, was beautiful.

My single favorite moment with him in the film is him explaining his travel standards and going to costco to buy underwear and socks because it's cheaper than doing hotel laundry which is just like that's a magical detail you'd find in a great piece in vanity fair and so for it to drop right into the film i love that that's a almost like a keynesian economic calculation on his part, creative destruction or something like that. Yeah, those normal everyday moments that serve as kind of the sorbet course in films are very important, and I love finding them.

And oftentimes, you just let the camera run and you pick those up. We had a couple of them here. I'm a big fan of putting the camera in the car and sometimes not being there because the subjects can play to the director in a way that isn't useful after a certain time. So usually I'll put, not even the DP, I'll put the PA in the car just to keep the camera steady. And I always seem to get good stuff that way because they don't think it counts or something like that. So that was good.

We caught this thing that we only saw in the dailies because I wasn't in the car, which is a phone call where Mary didn't know that he was being recorded where she… The micro penis joke. Yeah, she opined. Well, not just… Republican micro penises. That's right.

Not even… More specific. More specific, Sean. It's a great moment. Yeah, so yet another film with penises in it for me. Another theme emerges, yeah. Anybody who wouldn't sit for this? Yeah, I mean, it wasn't kind of like violent no's.

Hillary Clinton, people such as Hillary Clinton have very difficult schedules. So you kind of have to choose your battles. And obviously Bill Clinton was going to be much more crucial to it. Clinton have very difficult schedules, so you kind of have to choose your battles. Yep. And obviously Bill Clinton was going to be much more crucial to it. I wanted to talk to AOC because she doesn't like James, it seems. I mean, I didn't, I heard, I think we heard that from a second party, but she then, I think she's spoken out against him a couple times where they've sparred

over cable. It's ironic because I think they're kindred spirits in many ways. You know, they're both tremendously gifted sloganeers and movement oriented people who know

that you kind of need to compel big crowds to get change made. And naturally, his kind of like anti-woke talking points that feature in the latter part of the film obviously frustrate her. But I see them as very much connected in the American political story.

Does that seem reasonable? Oh, yeah. I mean, I think that's part of the big point of the film, which is screw the argument when the election, I'm quoting Carville there. It's just, film, which is screw the argument when the election, I'm quoting Carville there. It's just, look, this is a coalition that is pretty important right now. There's a really, really, really scary election coming up. And to have the attitude that you're going to take your ball and go home or not show up and vote or vote for Jill Stein or something. And if you're from my, if you share my political view,

throw the democratic project into at least chaos, if not a tailspin is, um, is a terrifying prospect. And to be so siloed and balkanized is another term because of factional differences is destructive to the mission, which is winning, and in this case to save the Republic. It's always so weird to say something so sweeping like that, but it's true. That's Carville's argument. In terms of the techniques of both of them, yes, I agree. They're great messengers and they're incredibly talented political communicators. It's funny you brought up Gore, your old friend.

I did think of him while watching this movie, and I went back and I re-watched something I hadn't seen in a while, which is he did an hour-long talk with Cavett in the early 90s, sort of right on the brink of the Clinton moment. It's like maybe a year before that. And he also is just tremendously suspicious

at that time in history of the way that America has been packaged, you know, and is almost like a real doomsayer about what happened. And this is on the eve of Carville's kind of rise. And so I did wonder to myself, like, what would Gore think, not just of Carville and the film, but this election cycle, you know, You can't speak for him, obviously, but I don't know how much that resonates for you, just even kind of raising his specter on this. I thought of him a lot. In fact, there's a direct reference to him in the film because he reviewed Carville and Matlin's joint memoir. I saw the little image you grabbed, the archival. Where is it published? That's the cover of the new york times book review there you go so there's a lot of meaning in that

because they don't really run negative reviews on the cover of the new york times book reviews so it has to be a big book and they get big people to write about it so carvel and matlin in i think 93 when they write this blockbuster memoir that helped make them permanently famous, draw Gore Vidal as the critic. And I was surprised because I thought, well, this seems a little light for him because he was writing about William Dean Howells and Henry James all the time. And it really is own man. I mean, for him to draft on other people's celebrity for a meditation is, unless it's a takedown, that's not very Vidal. He gave it a rave review.

And he loved the real politic hackery and the down in the dirt strategizing and the brilliance of the two of them as public uh persona and he said this is something a little new and different and uh i i thought that was really interesting and it showed me that their fame wasn't flash-in-the-pan fame. It was fame that had a certain basis to it. And they would be the equivalent of, you know, trending social media influencer type people today. It's funny to think about. had a gravitas to it and they attracted really serious substantial attention because they're both they're both very bright it turns out i think their hat fields and mccoy's marriage in a way it was the source of their fame but I think it did bring their brand down to a level that was a little above Real Housewife level. But this was a little before the dawn of the reality television star. But I think they have a kind of tangential connection to that type of fame in people's minds. But, and this film I think proves this and dispels

the misconception, that they're extraordinarily bright and erudite people who were very serious about what they were doing. They were packaging it in a particular way. But the establishment, and the cohort of the really important people that kind of set the agenda for the conversation in this country, pre-social media, took them very seriously because they saw how bright they were. Yeah, I see them in league, and tell me if you disagree with this, with Siskel and Ebert and Sports Talk Radio, which sounds like a kind of low grade, but are actually voices that are very present in our lives on a daily basis and hugely influential and are ostensibly talking in sophisticated ways, but in very approachable style. And that's a very 90s kind of media creation, you know, late 80s, early 90s, and often these kind of like oppositional voices that we know

deep down they're close, but in order to make good copy, they have to be kind of disagreeing in public. You capture a couple of moments on Meet the Press where they're literally going at each other on the issues and then invariably going home together and our fascination with that but then there's something kind of sweet about fast-forwarding 33 years and seeing them hanging out like it like like an old couple you know but still disagreeing and airing old grievances which was a surprise to me which mary does she although she she does pull back you know like the iraq war is an issue that I think for a lot of people is kind of done and settled.

That was a big mistake, at least among a certain collection of people in this country. And we don't look back on that time fondly. And that's the only time in the film where she really pulls a punch, where she's basically like, whatever I have to say about this, I'm going to withhold that. What did you make of that? What you did, I think,

there's something in me that suspects that she would like to litigate at least her part in that and could do it or think she could do it and didn't want to do it. She says that's irrelevant, I think, after bringing it up herself. This isn't a critique of her. It's just I wondered myself what that was. What I was thinking of is the information that I didn't know, which is that when Clinton hired Carville, Madeline was the political director of the George H. W. Bush White House and was going to to be in the campaign. And James neglected to tell Mary, who was then his girlfriend, that he had taken the job. And she found out in a strange way where they were at dinner with friends and the friends congratulated him. And she then says to me in an interview that we cut in,

if he had slapped me across the face I would have been less surprised and she still feels it you can tell later on when she assails him and I think this was fresh I I just didn't no one's interviewed her for years she says that he didn't believe that she could go back into the White House in 2000 and didn't want her to because she couldn't do it all. She couldn't take care of the house and the kids, etc. And she then says, I didn't do anything when he slapped me across the face and did Clinton in the first place. You know, I'm not a kind of like sensationalist filmmaker. I don't really do. He said,

she said reality TVs type things and films. And this isn't that this is more, uh, interceding in a marriage in a way that filmmakers sometimes have to do because this is a film that has, uh, Verite and interview, portrait as a component part of a marriage and by the way since you're the best at finding themes in my work i've noticed one that i'll throw to you which is uh this i think is the fourth film where there's a marriage

a conventional marriage that i kind of end up getting in the middle of some of them the verite i mean you could argue that my film on jane jacobs and robert moses was a weird sort of i wouldn't say you can't say marriage but they were in opposition but there's a sort of uh i don't know, strange metaphysical spousal thing happening there. And Ronnie and Nancy is a great marriage, even in the archival ones. But Scotty is a bizarre marriage. I would argue Roy Cohn has a series of husbands over the years. Wouldn't you agree?

Oh, totally. I mean, Trump and Cohn are a kind of love story. Very much so. Absolutely. Very quickly, you mentioned Penny Baker, and you do feature some sequences from The War Room, which is such a signature political documentary, maybe the signature political documentary of the last 50 years.

How did you think about how to integrate that versus not? How to not be redundant to what that film accomplishes, how much to remind people of it and keep some balance? Because at least for somebody like me, it looms pretty large. Oh, yeah. It didn't really concern me too much. I like the film a lot. I saw it at Film Forum and loved it and remember loving it

and remember the day I saw it. It means a lot that I remember all that because you just don't usually unless it was an amazing experience. So that was a key film by directors who, Chris Agudas and D.A. Pennebaker, whom I admire a lot. It was just a different time in James' life and no one had really touched him and explored his world on camera since. So there was enough. I mean, that's a lot of time. I mean, this is 30-plus years. So that didn't concern me.

How to treat it in the cut, I like to think I'm paying homage to it. That film was about a very particular moment in time. It's important also because it inspired a lot of people to get interested in, if not involved in, politics, including the producer on the film, Susan McHugh, who introduced me to James, which was one of the premises of the film.

And James had said, God, I'd like this to inspire people to not hate politics as much. And I said to him way at the beginning, well, I don't do preachy, eat your peas films. So if it's going to do that, it's going to come out in the joy of the game, which probably the thing I'm most pleased about

in the whole enterprise is that I do think there is a verve to this film, and it's fun. And I don't think politics equals fun to a lot of people. I mean, politics is entertainment. I'll concede that. But I don't know how much joy we take in it these days. And I think James is very much a happy warrior, and I think that's an extraordinary thing,

which I think the war room had in common. So shows some key moments and we put it, we embed them in the film. And then I do it almost as you would embed a little piece of art archival in because we give the credit and the names of the directors. And it's seen there as an artifact and a moment in time and i'm happy about that i hope that the filmmakers are as well um james uh i think it does him justice i mean there's an immortal moment in

that film where james sort of gives a little speech to the war room, and Stephanopoulos is there, and people remember that, and deservedly so. Okay, a couple more. One, this is kind of maybe a downer, maybe not. I'm curious for your perspective on this. So last time we talked on the show, I think, was five years ago. And documentary was going through a very up moment. There was still a strong theatrical business. The streamers were sort of at the early stages

of being able to get a lot of kind of nonfiction in front of audiences. It was not quite as stratified as it is now. You know, having done some work in this space, like I see how much more difficult it is, how difficult it is to develop and sell, how difficult it is to get people to participate without basically owning the projects.

You've been doing this a long time now. I think the first one was 09. So how are you feeling about like the current state of documentary? Well, there are headwinds. There are always headwinds. I think pessimism breeds pessimism. So I don't like to be pessimistic. There are a lot more documentaries

still today than there ever were. Maybe for better, maybe for worse. I'm not sure. I mean, I'm interested in quality, and I think that that also has happened. I think that the means of production are less onerous. It's easier to break in because you can make a film on your iPhone, and I encourage people to do it, and I shoot things on the iPhone, and I wish I could do it more, to be honest with you. So in a way, I think there's a lot of really wonderful stuff that's happening. If the industry, the whole film industry, is racked with self-doubt and pessimism right now

and realignment so it's not shocking that documentaries would be included in that and um i've made more films in the past couple years than at one time than I've ever made before. And my love of it is ever more. I think part of that is to do with the fact that the audience for documentaries is bigger than it ever has been whether they're being served well by the people who finance and air these things or stream them is a kind of a different question because of this period of doubt and existential drama that's going on but in terms of creating for an audience, the cadence of hearing from people that documentaries are their favorite things to watch is ever increasing, actually.

And my theory about that is that the type of movie that was a serious 90-minute, 100-minute movie, let's say All the President's Men, something that would have won an Oscar and been lauded and go on to immortality almost doesn't get made anymore, right? And what's filled that void is the documentary, I believe. Say the same for long-form magazine journalism, which I used to do, which has fallen on hard times, at least in its old form. I think documentaries have filled that void as well. So I think there's a lot of bandwidth for documentary out there. But you could say the same thing about narrative film

having a kind of existential crisis right now too. So it's not just docs. And I think the audience is ever more interested in them and craving them more. Theaters and theatrical experiences is a different question. And that obviously is something that we couldn't control, which was COVID really knotted sideways. And I think that's an open question because I understand why anyone wouldn't want to go into a room with a bunch of people

with maybe not the best ventilation. Now we end every episode of the show by asking filmmakers what's the last great thing they've seen. What did you, did you bring, was it Green for Danger? Did we talk about that last time? Did we talk about 49th Parallel? What did we talk about? Green for for Danger? Did we talk about that last time? Did we talk about 49th Parallel? What did we talk about? Green for Danger is exactly what we talked about.

That's what I thought. I'm astonished you remember that. I barely remembered. That's amazing. I have a sad mousetrap brain. You really do. Do you remember, like Bret Easton Ellis, where you saw a film and what date? Sometimes.

I mean, when I heard you mention Film Forum for the War Room, it's a little harder now that I'm in a movie theater like four to five times a week. It gets a little more challenging, but that's the rigors of the business. But what about for you? Have you seen anything, I mean, in a theater or not, or at home that you've really liked? I saw this extraordinary creation on Peacock called Paul T. Goldman. Oh, okay. Yeah, I've seen this. Can you explain what it is? I'm not even sure I can.

It's confusing. I was really, I was baffled by it in the greatest way. It's hard to say. Is it a feature film wrapped in a behind-the-scenes documentary? Is it a merger of fact and fiction and the unascertainable? I just thought it was extraordinary. I never quite see anything like it. It has cousins, I think think in things like the comeback which is another thing i love and can watch over and over and over again where there's a mad it's meta on meta on meta it reminded me a little of a book that people are made to read in college

tristram shandy because it has a lot of meta layers to it i don't even know how to describe it there's a character who approached someone with his own story and tried to get it made into a film. And then it did get made into a film, but then it went very sideways. But they were shooting intentionally a documentary about the making of this doomed project. And the whole thing sort of unfolds in an unexpected way and it's intercut in a way that even I with my expert experience wasn't quite sure what was real and what was not and I just it's uncomfortable uh but I really thought it was amazing and to find it on Peacock and not many people have seen it you're the exception but I I just keep thinking about it so I just wanted to mention that it's a

great recommendation i think it came out maybe at the beginning of 23 and was a bit of a curio but i still don't know how much i was supposed to be laughing which is maybe a good thing yeah well it's uncomfortable it reminded me of when i was a kid and first saw David Letterman, and you didn't know whether Larry Bud Melman was something series actually, but to be disoriented, but not turned off by something is interesting. And it had to do with fiction and nonfiction and relative truth. And these themes I thought were amazing. And it has a lot of unlikable characters in it, which I love.

I mean, I love Robert Aldrich. We must have talked about this before because this is like an obscure film nerd thing. But Robert Aldrich, one of my favorite directors, and his films are filled with unhappy endings and unlikable characters. We did talk Kiss Me Deadly, I believe, last time you were here.

Yeah, Kiss Me Deadly. But I mean, Baby Jane and Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte and The Legend of Lila Claire and all these films that just have antiheroes and really miserable scenarios and miserable people. And I think they're brilliant. He's a good one. He toggles so fascinatingly between men's movies and women's pictures. And feels very comfortable in both phases. He's fascinating. Well, Howard Hawks could do that too.

That's true. That's true. They're maybe my two favorite directors. Well, Matt, good to see you. Congratulations on James Carville winning is everything stupid to get the entire title there for you. And thanks for coming on the show. It's a real pleasure.

Thank you, Matt Turnour. Thanks to CR, Chris Ryan. Thanks to Jack Sanders. And thanks to our producer, Bobby Wagner, for his work on today's episode. Next week on the show is Tuesday, Election Day. We have a very special draft. Please go vote. See you then.