The Big Picture - 'Dune' and James Bond Are Delayed. Here Are 10 Ways to Save the 2021 Oscars.

Episode Date: October 6, 2020

In this unprecedented year, the Oscars need a boost. Sean and Amanda have just the right ideas, including ways to improve the ceremony, rule changes to enliven the ballot, and a new way to unveil the winners (0:30). Then, Sean is joined by filmmaker Alex Ross Perry ('Her Smell,' 'Listen Up Philip') to talk about how independent filmmakers are responding to the COVID-19 shutdown, what the future of indie cinema could look like, and what he's been watching in quarantine (57:35). Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Guest: Alex Ross Perry Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm Sean Fennessy. I'm Amanda Dobbins. And this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about the Academy Awards. Today on the show, we're going to fix the Oscars with 10 specific solutions chosen by yours truly. And then my pal Alex Ross-Perry, the director of fantastic films like Listen Up, Philip and Her Smell, joins the show to talk about his life as a writer and director of movies during quarantine, among other things. Okay, Amanda, let's talk about what's happening in the movie world. I had this big idea to discuss the Oscars because things in movie world have been

evolving, devolving. I'm not sure how to describe what's going on right now. But one thing that we do know now is that No Time to Die is not coming out in 2020. How do you feel about that? I feel personally sad because listeners will know that I love James Bond movies and I was really looking forward to this. And in a lot of ways, also, this was the very first movie to be postponed because of the pandemic all the way back in, I believe, March. And so that it's getting pushed again kind of has this sort of like, here we go again feel to it, which is a bit of a bummer. It seems completely inevitable.

And in that sense, I, you know, I'm glad that people are making, I guess, decisions about public safety, even though I don't think public safety is animating this decision at all. I think it is about money. And also just on it, like a real personal note, I just think November is going to be a shit show. And I would like no time to die to be able to exist outside of that and to get some love of its own. So in that sense, I'm okay with it. I think that's a reasonable response.

It seems like the safe move. It seems like the financially prudent move by Barbara Broccoli and the Broccoli family to move this movie to next year. There's been a chain reaction already. This did feel kind of like the death knell of the 2020 movie going season. There's still a bunch of movies that are on the schedule for now. There's Soul, the Pixar movie. There's Free Guy, which is the Ryan Reynolds is stuck in a video game movie that I know you're eagerly anticipating. There's a Coming to America sequel. There's Your Beloved Death on the Nile. There's Dune. There's Wonder Woman 1984. There's a handful of big mainstream releases. I don't think most of those are going to come out this year. And I don't know when that's going to change. I'm sure that there will

be some studios that will want to push through. We know that Warner Brothers already pushed through a tenant. So maybe they will decide to do the same with Dune and Wonder Woman 1984. But obviously, No Time to Die is a major, major tentpole. It is the signature film franchise of the last 60 years. And so it endures. And the way that it endures is they keep rebuilding it to make it successful. And this being what seems like the final Daniel Craig film, they want to make a lot of money with this one. They want to go out with a bang. And so they've moved it. But obviously, the minute that this happened, theater chain news started to come through. The Regal theater chain, the second largest in the US and in the UK, announced that as

of this Thursday, they're going to be closing their theaters again. So you can't even see a movie in a Regal theater if you want to, which leaves AMC standing as the largest theater chain still around and obviously many independently operating chains. But obviously they're doing this because they don't want to pay employees because they're not getting the kind of revenue that they want from movies right now. And I don't know, it was a weekend of doom scrolling in many ways, but it was also a weekend of joy scrolling.

If you were a movie fan, it was much more about doom scrolling. And I don't know, I see all this news. I saw an interview with John Fithian, the head of NATO, the National Association of Theater Owners this morning in Variety. And I was like, I don't, you know, I understand that when you're a lobbyist, you're paid to protect the theater going experience. But you can't seriously be encouraging people to go to movie theaters right now, even if there have not been any COVID-19 cases directly linked to movie theaters yet. I think everything that happened in American politics over the last four or five days right now, even if there have not been any COVID-19 cases directly linked to movie theaters

yet. I think everything that happened in American politics over the last four or five days would make you think like, hey, let's just reset. Let's just like, let's get our mindset back to where we were, say, in April when we were like, let's not do anything and let's just be safe until we have to go out into the world again. But I don't know. How do you feel about the way that the story is unfolding?

Not great. You know, you made an way that the story is unfolding? Not great. You know, you made an important point, which is that a lot of people are going to lose their jobs. And that is a real shame. And not even a shame. Like, that's a disgrace. And that's a failure of a lot of people. And a lot of people are going to be hard hit as a result of this. And our thoughts are with them.

And we're also going to lose a lot of movie theaters, which we didn't really have them, especially you and I, because we live in the city of Los Angeles. But this does seem like a confirmation that the paradigm is shifting and that theaters will not reopen in the way that they used to. And that is a loss for people who like to go to the movies. And that's a loss for the theater experience. And that's a loss for the kinds of movies that are seen in theaters and the kinds of movies that might be made because they could get a theater release instead of a streaming release or the kinds of movies that are released in theaters and then support the other kinds of movies, right? So it's, I mean, it's a messy chain reaction. I think everybody behaved as poorly as possible in terms of taking

responsibility and, you know, messaging things about public safety or, you know, truth. I think it was interesting, the number of people who decided to just blame Governor Cuomo in New York for being inflexible, which is, if you're going to blame a politician right now, let me just go ahead and tell you that's not the one to blame, the person who is doing his job to prioritize public safety. Also, logistically speaking, as a business person, if you want public support going forward, I would not align myself with the person who is ignoring public safety and also you know, also got coronavirus, whatever, as opposed to the people who are trying to do their jobs. Because the theaters are already just they're on the losing side of this.

They were on the losing side of this before COVID-19. OK, like the industry and technology and personal habits were changing. And so to go down, just blaming your own customers and blaming the customer experience, I don't know, doesn't really seem like great PR. I agree. I mean, I think what's going to happen now is you're going to see that trend that you're talking about, that technological and lifestyle trend of staying at home only be more and more amplified over the next three, four, six, nine, 12 months. Who knows how long it's going to be before movie theaters can open again in full force in this country. And so we're starting to see more and more titles kind of creep into the home movie going

experience. A couple of days, we're getting Hubie Halloween. You fired up for that. Adam Sandler, Netflix, it's all happening. Let's go. The trailer made me laugh. It looks funny. It looks funny.

I don't know if I'll watch the whole thing, but I really chuckled at the three minutes. It will definitely have a good vibe. It may turn out to be like two hours and four minutes, which is not what you want necessarily. But if it's one of those crisp, you know, Billy Madison-esque Adam Sandler comedies where he's doing that voice, I'm down. So we're going to get that movie. That's obviously, tons of people are going to watch that

movie. I count just like 60 or so movies that are on the calendar right now across the streaming services, across PVOD. And there are a handful that are still slated to be, you know, released theatrically that we've already mentioned. We talked about Borat 2. That's coming out later this month. We already know about Sofia Coppola's On the Rocks on October 23rd, which we'll be celebrating here on The Big Picture. Very excited about that. I've now seen three installments of Steve McQueen's Small Act series, thanks to the New York Film Festival. Probably the best thing I've seen this year. Probably the most prescient

and incredibly well-made and thoughtful and kind of striking piece of filmmaking I've seen this year. That stuff starts to come to Amazon on November 20th. And we found out last week, The Witches, which is a new Robert Zemeckis movie, an adaptation of the Roald Dahl novel starring Anne Hathaway,

is just dropping on HBO Max in 20 days, which is bizarre. This is like a $100 million movie that is exclusively coming to HBO Max. I don't want to overstate things, but this is kind of a big deal that a movie like this is just going to show up on a streaming service in three weeks. Right, right. But they announced it on Friday, October 2nd, I believe, which is a date that will live on in infamy.

So no one cared. No one cared. And frankly, they're releasing it in October. I don't know how many people are going to care about this streaming movie in October. I'm excited. I loved The Witches, the book, growing up. Me too. I love Roald Dahl. Yeah. We also learned a couple weeks ago, which we we didn't discuss the Greenland, which was this STX kind of apocalyptic thriller starring Gerard Butler, which I think is probably exciting news for Chris Ryan and Shea Serrano, um, is coming to PVOD instead of going into theaters.

And then we'll also be very quickly coming to HBO max in an exclusive deal. They paid extra for that. We also learned the totally under control Alex Gibney's shot in quarantine COVID-19 documentary comes to Hulu on October 20th. Also learned that Totally Under Control, Alex Gibney's shot-in-quarantine COVID-19 documentary, comes to Hulu on October 20th. Then there's a whole other bunch of streaming titles. There's Brun, which is Anish Choginty's new movie he made searching a couple of years ago. That's going to Hulu.

Sound of Metal, which is this festival film from last year starring Riz Ahmed about a drummer who goes deaf. That's coming to Amazon. We already know about all these Netflix titles that we've been talking about. We saw a trailer for A24's Minari, a movie that you and I both loved out of Sundance. I don't know when that movie is coming out. That is the movie that kind of got me thinking

about what we're going to do here on the show today, though, because that's a movie that I know A24 wants to put in theaters that I know they want a lot of people to be able to see. It's probably a pretty hard movie to sell on a streaming service if you're A24, right? Because you have an output deal with Apple, but this movie isn't part of the Apple deal as far as I understand it. Apple doesn't have nearly as many subscribers as say Netflix or Amazon. So if you've got this movie, it's been done for a long time.

You know it's like your awards tentpole if you're A24. And by the way, this movie stars Steven Yeun. It's about a Korean family in, I believe, in the 1980s in the US who buy a plot of land and attempt to build a farm. That's a very simplistic way of describing the film. And, you know, what do you do with it? How do you create an Oscar campaign for a movie like Minari? And I don't know if you effectively can do it this year in the way that you would have been able to do it in the past, not just because you can't be in person, but buzz building,

I feel like is so hard right now. And we're trying to participate in the buzz building machine a little bit. We talked about Nomadland on this show. We'll talk about other films that come out over time and say like, oh, what are its chances? How will it compete? But theoretically, the Oscars would have been if they had not moved the date, they would be about four and a half months from now, which seems crazy.

Now we know now that they're going to be happening on April 25th instead, maybe, maybe. But it doesn't feel like we're headed towards an Oscar season at all. It doesn't, I have no idea how it will manifest given that people, at least out in Los Angeles, I don't think you're going to want to be glad handing and touching each other.

They're obviously not going to screenings because these theaters are not going to be open. So we set out to change things, to make some new rules. Some of them I think should stick permanently and some of them could just be for this season. But before we get into what we decided to do, do you feel like we're headed towards award season? Do you think, I mean, does this just not matter at all?

Is that the problem? Is this just an utterly meaningless venture? Well, it's always an utterly meaningless adventure in that it isn't a made up awards show where fancy people sit in a room and hand each other trophies that they voted on that aren't even like the trophies that we want to give out most of the time. That's the other thing is we spend half of this podcast being like, here's why the Oscars got it wrong. But also we still are obsessed with it and talk about it eight months a year. And you know, that's, that's a lovely community that we've built here. Thank you all for being a part of it. So, no, it doesn't

matter. I think also right now it doesn't matter. And I promise to keep this an election-free zone as much as we can. But, you know, nobody's talking about anything until November 3rd. And probably if you read some things well after November 3rd, I think that is just going to absolutely suck up all the air. So in a way, that's a positive for the Oscars in terms of the date delay. Right. Because we can talk about it now and we're going to talk about some rules and we have talked about some movies we really like but I don't really think it starts until January even people paying attention and even then you know this has been a year of like who can predict anything that said I think there is like a little bit of an opportunity for the Oscars in this sense to like grab back some of the attention.

And, you know, normally the Oscars are trying to get a piece of things that are like already very successful pop culturally. You and I talk so much about like, you know, do the ratings go up when really popular movies are released? And should there be a best popular Oscar? And like, what can we do to stack this with movie stars? And like, should The Rock host? By the way, yes, The Rock should host. But like, you know, how can the Oscars get a bigger piece of mainstream attention? And they're just not going to this year because of where the movies are and because of how the world is.

And so I think the Oscars actually like can be a boost for movies because the Oscars are still the brand name recognizable thing. And like, I hope that they can figure out, and maybe some of our suggestions will help figure out a way to like use this space and whatever name awareness the Oscars have left to actually like make people care about movies for a bit because God knows the movie industry needs some help right now. Yeah. And I think this is a real opportunity to experiment. It may be too late for them to actually make any of these changes. And frankly, they may look at some of the changes we're suggesting and think, fuck off, podcasters. We don't need your notes. By the way, valid?

Valid. Of course. Yeah, do whatever you want. You've been running Ampus for a century. It seems like it's going fine. Generally speaking, I do think, though, that when you have a year like this where I don't want to say that the films are less good or less important, but they're certainly less noisy than they have been in the past.

I've already mentioned a couple of times that like at this time last year, we already had Parasite. We already had Joker. We already had Jojo Rabbit. We already had Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Like all these movies had already come out. They were all like July, August, October, September movies. And we also had a pretty clear sense of what was coming down the pike. There was no reason to believe that any of these movies would be delayed. Right now, so many of the things that we expected were going to be competing this year, movies like The French Dispatch or West Side Story are obviously not going to be competing, or at least it seems that they're not going to be competing. So you have this grab bag,

and what might come out of it is, I think, more kind of mainstream blockbuster-y movies that we got a chance to see earlier in the year, have a chance to qualify. And then more specifically, a lot more independent, smaller films. Now, on the one hand, I think it's an amazing opportunity for these films to get recognized,

these smaller films that perhaps make more sense in a streaming environment or just easier to, there's a lower overhead, so it's easier to share them with audiences at this time. But also, I do think that that kind of threatens the Oscars in a way. Now, that's a terrible thing to say, because I don't want smaller films to equate lower ratings necessarily, but I do think that in some cases they do. Not always, and that doesn't mean that the films aren't worth celebrating, that the reason for the Oscars to exist is not to have ratings, but it is kind of to have money and to drive revenue and attention to the movie industry.

All of these things are sort of interconnected. And so it's this fascinating moment where, I don't know if compromise is the right word, but they're going to have to get creative about what movies get involved in these ceremonies. And I don't know, I think we have some decent ideas to account for that. To me, what I want to do is always gamify. I always think gamifying this stuff makes it more fun,

draws more interest. You can listen to podcasts on the Ringer Podcast Network. That's one of my thumbprints. I'm trying to get people interested in the outcome of episodes of podcasts. The same way I think people should get interested

in the outcome of the Academy Awards, even if it's wrong or foolish or utterly meaningless, as you rightly point out. So do you want to start pitching some ideas? Yeah, let's do it. You want to go first? Do you want me to go first? I think my first idea is actually very relevant to everything that we were just discussing. Okay. Because it will kind of help set the terms for this Oscar season. So my idea is Oscar shortlist for every single category. We already do Oscar shortlist for, or by we,

I mean the Academy, not me. I'm not involved though. I should be, but there are shortlists for best documentary, best international feature film, best score, best original song, the short films. And the shortlist, if you don't live by this on a day-to-day basis like we do, is at a certain time, even before the nominations are announced, the shortlists are announced. And I think they're voted on by subcommittees within the Academy. And it's like, OK, here are the 20 films that will be eligible for Best International Feature Film.

Or here are the 15 films that will be eligible for Best Documentary. And the nominations are then voted on from that shortlist. to set some parameters and boundaries and categories that are not covered as frequently, whether it's either by podcasts like this that we try or by voters or by the general public. And guess what? That is every category this year because movies are all over the place. So I think if you in what, in January, in February, give it, give people a runway, say, okay, here are the, you could do 30, honestly honestly a short list of 30 best picture nominees you do 20 if that feels like too much homework um but make them available and say okay this is what you need to have seen that like to to care about the oscars and you could

gamify it a little bit like in a way you could also make it like like a playoff system but let people know what they need to watch because it is just all culture. You're kind of floating out in the world, just trying to grab onto something right now. We're so fragmented, but I think that's especially true of movies. We haven't, as you said, had anything that noisy. So make a little noise, give people time and then make them available for the love of God, make all the shortlist movies available on streaming, like help people see them and give them something to invest in. I guess if you're involved in gamifying, I'm involved, I'm invested in, in narrative. So let's narrativize it.

Let's, let's name the players. I think it's a great idea and it's related to an idea that I have. So I'm going to move up one of my ideas to kind of to be paired with this one. So one, obviously, for folks like you and I, the shortlist is a big deal, because then it gives us a chance to start researching what foreign language films we haven't had a chance to see, what documentaries we haven't had a chance to see. We get kind of a sense of how these smaller groups, you know, how the documentary body is voting this year and what does that mean for the kinds of films that connected there's always some surprises there

but what i want to do and what my suggestion was going to be was going to be strictly for the acting categories but maybe we can make it for every category is this year i want to expand the nominees to 10 so maybe what we should do is actually we should expand all the nominee pools to 15 and make the shortlists the nominee pools. But then to bring this gamifying quality to things, over a period of time, we eliminate one nominee. So let's say we get 15 nominees on the shortlist for best documentary or best supporting actress or best director. And we know that all of these people are essentially being quote unquote honored. That their films have been recognized as being considered contenders for Academy Awards. But starting on, if the Oscars are on April 25th, let's say we go cut down one a week across 10 weeks.

Which means we can go back to March, February. We can go back to late January and then one a week we lose another contender. But so are there five remaining on the night of the ceremony? Okay. Now you can convince me that what we should do is we should eliminate one person until we have a showdown between two people on the final night of the Oscars. Like Miss America style? The problem with that idea is that no one would then show up to the Oscars ever again. You wouldn't even be able to get people on Zoom if they had been eliminated three weeks prior and they were the number five nominee. So I think you have to retain at least five nominees for the night of the ceremony.

What do you think? Yes, I agree with that. And I think we're going to need to talk a lot more about the ceremony, both this year and in general, because I think the ceremony itself is very important. As you said, at some point, it's not about ratings. And I am on record as believing that the ratings are just going to go down

because this is the world that we live in now, especially like live TV. But, um, it still is, it's a show. You gotta put on a show and a, an event that people care about and a narrative that they're investing in so that they want to know who wins or else they're just not going to pay attention. Um, and the show is really tricky this year. So I I'm'm i do think you need five because that's you need a you need some suspense or else why would you watch yeah i agree okay so we're gonna have basically pro forma shortlist for every category 15 nominees in every category and then over time they will be eliminated and they will be revealed to the audiences how they'll be in what order they were eliminated.

Right. Is that how we're going to do it? Essentially, like this is the number 15 vote getter. This is number 14 vote. Sure. Sure. For every category. But best picture.

And we have a different system for for best picture, which I want to say is that one's really important. OK, that's a biggie. OK, so that's the first two. What's what's your next? My next one is about my next one is about the show. And this That's a biggie. Okay. So that's the first two. What's your next rule change? My next one is about the show. And this is not a rule change. I've made myself producer of the Oscars.

Congratulations to me. You will be getting my bill, ABC and the Academy. Honestly, a terrible idea. No one has ever been like, in the history of the Oscars, no one has ever said, that person absolutely crushed the Oscars as producer. That was the best produced Oscars of all time.

No one says that. Everyone always complains no matter what happens. That is very true. But I am used to people complaining because I work with you. And also, I am just here doing my best to try to save movies, Sean. Okay, we're all pitching in. All right. On behalf of movies, I say thank you.

You're so welcome. Okay, so i have several show related suggestions and they are all inspired by having uh recently watched the emmys sean did you get to watch the 2020 emmys i watched parts of it i did not watch the whole thing although i'm i actually want to go back and watch it now so i can understand the mechanics so i i dvr'd it let's be honest this is you know i respect you. I'm not going to pretend like I watched it live, but I did DVR it and I watched most of it. I fast forwarded through the sixth and the seventh Schitt's Creek wins, which is another thing, you know, I didn't do this rule,

but I did consider being like, should we limit the number of films either nominated or winning to like six or eight or something so that you can't have a full sweep because there is a concern in like maybe a softer year, which I think 2020 is going to be not because of the quality of the movies, but just because there aren't as many movies release where you can see everyone just being like, okay, well, I guess I'm just going to vote for Mink 15 times, or I'm just going to vote for the Aaron Sorkin movie 15 times. With all respect to Schitt's Creek, a movie I have, I'm sorry. With all respect to Schitt's Creek, a television show I have not seen,

it did seem a little bit like people were like, okay, sure. And they just clicked every single box. And I think that's- Succession as well, right? Succession also just kind of ran away with it. Yeah. And I think that's great for the show well, right? Succession also just kind of ran away with it. Yeah, and I think that's great for the show and the people who worked very hard on it.

And I'm not even saying that they weren't deserving, but it was like pretty boring. But otherwise, anyway, ultimately, I think all movies should be celebrated. And so I didn't propose that rule change. But going back to the Emmys, I thought the Emmys were pretty good. I got to be honest, really, really tricky, difficult situation because they were not going to have a ceremony

with a bunch of people in a room and they announced that pretty early. And so they did a very complicated distance Zoom ceremony with some in socially distanced in-person bits. Jimmy Kimmel hosted, and I believe he was like alone in the Staples Center. And there were some presenters who came in at distance, but it was all, the numbers were low and they were very transparent about following protocols. And then they had people in hazmat suits delivering Emmys to the winners. But first of all, technologically, they just like pulled it off. They had tons of people on Zoom and it never cut out, which like all credit to the producers.

That's really hard. And I do also think there was like a really lovely homespun quality to it. You know, it was like it was fun to see people, how people decided to, to watch and be on their zoom. Some people were with their families. Some people were in their pajamas. Some people were in ball gowns. Um, it worked really well. And it was very clear that the best parts were when you got like still a real moment of a person on zoom, as opposed to a pre-produced segment. So this is really long. I'm sorry. I just did a whole soliloquy about the Emmys. Thanks for going with me. So my takeaway from that was that

the parts where people still get to be themselves are a very important part of an award ceremony, and you still want to figure those out. And I don't know whether the Oscars will try to do some sort of like drive in distance thing or do it on zoom. I think they obviously have to maintain social distance and follow protocols. Um, and I, and I trust that they will, they seem to be taking this pretty seriously, but I thought the softer parts that could use improvement were the kind of pre-taped stuff. And there's also a history at the Oscars of pre-taping some things. They're called montages. I typically hate them. And I have like campaigned long and hard for no montage Oscars. And in 2020, I have to put that aside. And I have to, I have to say that the Oscars not only need to

embrace the montage, but they need to make them freaking great. They need to start doing it right now. They have the best directors in the world, literally in their Academy, and they need to hire these people and they need to give them money. You didn't put budget limits on these new rules. So I didn't follow a budget, Sean, just so you know, uh, won't surprise you, but they need to just let people right now and start give me like, honestly, it should probably be in total, like 90 minutes of pre-taped tremendous cinematic. Like here is the power of movies and it really should be an advertisement for movies. Like one idea I had is that maybe you hire a different director to present each category. And instead of the acting reel, it's three minutes from Spike Lee on what best supporting

actor means. And then you get three minutes from Greta Gerwig on best screenplay and keep going. I don't know. Those people have better things to do, but invest in the montages and make them... I'm a pro montage, one year only. That's my suggestion. The montages are among my favorite parts of the Oscars, so of course I'm on board with this. If you're saying we should hire David Fincher, expert commercial and music video director, to make the montages? Yes, I think we should consider letting the people who know how to really do that work at the highest level do it in order to help us better understand movies and why movies are important. I think that if we could use the tools of the best filmmakers around and also, you know, appeal to their sense of desperation and hope around them, the medium. Yeah, I think that's what you have to do.

And I think the other thing is just the other part of this rule is that it can't be a mega live event. There will be the live aspect of it, but you just can't do a three hour fully live event as you have done in years past. It's not going to work. And it's not going to be the right sales pitch for movies like sell movies, do beautiful things on screen. I have a couple of pitches here that are going to be contrapuntal to that.

But my next rule is I actually don't think that the ceremony should happen in April. And I don't think that the cutoff date should be February 21st. Because I don't think that in February, we're going to have a clearer sense of A, going to the movie theater or be whether we've gotten like enough quote-unquote good movies to qualify for the Oscars for example breaking news on the big picture right now I just saw that Dune was pushed back to 2021 which means it was I mean obviously so as we as we were just saying all of those movies that are about to come out in December are probably not going to come out.

They're probably going to get pushed all the way to the end of next year. And so because of that, what are we really even doing by moving the ceremony a couple of months? What space did we ultimately create? Maybe a few weeks in January, I saw that One Night in Miami or Gina King's movie that we've talked about a couple of times on the show is opening January 15th. Okay, maybe you could tell me January 15th could be pushed to the qualifying date, but there's not going to be any significantly great film that comes out in February now that it should change the landscape of the Oscars.

And I'm only being particular about this for one reason, which is I don't want there to be like an off schedule Oscars the next year. So what happens if, let's say, you know, fingers crossed, prayer emoji hands going heavy. We have a vaccine June of 2021. That would be magnificent. I would be delighted. Then we start to feel a movie theater culture come back. And then we have basically a nine month Oscar period instead of a 12 month Oscar period. Or do we then make the 2022 Oscars also in April?

Does it set us off its axis? One of the things I like about the Oscars, unlike say the Emmys or even the Grammys to some extent, is the cutoffs, the timeframe. This is a, it's a January to December experience. I'm a very organized and obsessive person. I love the idea of the calendar year being the movie year, being the way that we chart progress here. And so obviously this is a minor concern, generally speaking, but I do think it has an impact on the future of the Oscars. And so if they're looking to preserve this tradition, obviously this is a year in which things are happening that are totally out of people's control, but just moving things a couple of months, I think is meaningless. I don't think it's, I don't think it matters.

And what I would prefer to see is the movies that actually get to be released this year, compete this year in a, in a, in a kind of, in a question of fairness. I just want to say, you know, we're cutting it off December 31st. Good luck. If you're willing to put the movie out, cool. So I just want to say, I agree with you about the Emmy's eligibility window and the Grammy's eligibility window. Like I've covered culture like 15 years. I have no idea what the Grammy's eligibility window is like fix it. Okay. I, I kind of think that there should just be the Emmy's should move to the first three months of the year and there should be like a true award season across all the things. And every, you know, a rising tide lifts all boats.

That said, you are just like way too excited on these last two months. I love you so much. And you got to let go, man. Like you just you got to let go. We're not getting it back. We're like March and April and May. We're absolutely just insane. And by the way, we're not out of the woods yet and there is no

planning for anything. And I don't really, I don't disagree with you about the fact that the April instead of February is meaningless, but I think I do worry about all the movies that actually did kind of plan their schedule and plan their releases around the new date or just, you know, a lot of movies that got lost in the shuffle in March and April and May because things were like unbelievably uncertain and we didn't even have this kind of new like Pax Romana about how we were releasing movies and that PVOD was okay and all of this stuff so I just I like needling you, but I also, I wouldn't want anything to suffer as a result of them once again, arbitrarily changing the rules, which the Oscars tend to do. Okay.

So I really, I just, I just, I just want to be on a schedule. I just want to be on a reasonable schedule. That's all I'm saying. Okay. There's a lot of good movies already. We could have the Oscars today it'd be fine there's been some good films you know like um Trolls World Tour that was good uh Scoob was not good I never saw Scoob I agree with you I think if we were making the decision

today I would support you and being like just have it in February let's go but you know that's 2020 has taught us Sean that we can't make long-term decisions like that, that we have to be flexible. We just have to learn to be flexible. God, I hate that. Okay. Let's go back to the show. What's the next change you want to make? No song performances. Get out of here. It's gone. Okay. Do you remember last year that was just like, they had the grammys again at the oscars for a second time it was just singing it was suddenly like the thing is this ceremony is about music and not movies like i what but also hated it if you're assuming some sort of social distance in the same way that i was like you know i really want people to focus on pre-taped

montage you know beautiful montages. So I think that will work. Let me tell you what doesn't work is watching someone sitting in a, like a room emptily, like singing a song to you. I can't think of anything worse. I really can't. I can't think of anything that would make me more uncomfortable. Do not do this to us. I have, I have no, uh, no concerns about this. Just get rid of the song performances. They're a waste of time. They're primarily not about the films. I don't even really care about these categories historically.

I don't think they do a very good job of picking. What I actually would prefer is something that more effectively recognizes the scores of the films. Yeah. Because the scores matter more. And you can do something creatively, visually, that accompanies the scores matter more and you can do something creatively visually that accompanies the scores that could be exciting and I just think they mean more to the to the heart of the award show and to the heart of movies in a lot of ways and they don't do that instead they just have someone come out and sing like a really mediocre pop song they played at the end of over a title

sequence I 1000% agree with this and I thought about being like just get rid of best original song which I personally believe that they just get rid of best original song, which I personally believe that they should get rid of best original song because the songs have nothing to do with the movies ever. It's like, you know, once every three years you get a star is born where one, this song is actually like relevant to the narrative of the movie,

but otherwise it's just tacked on at the end. They're not good, but this year I'm going to let them try to get some pop stars as a part of the experience because you need as many celebrities as possible. I'm on board with this. My next rule, I think, should just be a permanent change. I think that this needs to happen now. I think it's obvious based on the way that the industry is moving and that's something

that you and I have been discussing for years at this point is all streaming titles should qualify regardless of whether they were planned to be released theatrically or not. I think you could say now that there is a kind of moral imperative to make this change because forcing a movie to go into movie theaters at a time like this is obviously impossible. And the Academy is allowed for a kind of vague definition around if a movie was planning to go into theaters, if they could show somehow some proof that a movie was planning to go into theaters, if they could show somehow some proof that a movie was planning to go into theaters, but instead went straight to a streaming service, that it will qualify. But something that was destined for streaming from the very beginning will still not qualify this year. There are probably some loopholes to work

around that. But just generally speaking, there are now so many streaming services with massive budgets. Some of those budgets far exceed the budgets of some of what we would define as mainstream studios. Netflix is spending way more money on their original films than Paramount is spending on their films or Lionsgate is spending on their films. So just all streaming movies, period, qualify for the Oscars. It doesn't matter. We can make this change. The existential threat to movie theaters already happened. It's here. So we can get over it. I love Steven Spielberg. I know he's fighting the good fight. I know Christopher Nolan is fighting the good fight. I know Greta Gerwig is fighting the good fight. All these folks who wrote a letter to Congress

saying that movie theaters need to be bailed out because they're a very holy space where we congregate and magic happens before our eyes and we share it together. It's all true. I'll advocate for the very same thing. But for these purposes, let's just be realistic. We don't have to put extraction into one movie theater so that it can qualify for Netflix at the Oscars for a category that I'm going to suggest they do in the future later in this episode. It's fine. Just let it qualify. That's the rant over. I 1000% agree with this. I would just like to add my support on a couple of notes.

Number one, I agree with you about that letter and I also support the letter, but it's not about the sanctity of the theater experience. It's about the many, many people that the theater chains employ. And they have not been looked that the theater chains employ and they have not been looked out for by their employers and they have not been looked out for by Congress. So I support that letter. I also just think that this particular rule is indicative of a way that

the Academy and the movie industry at large just like refuses to acknowledge reality and is now paying the consequences of of ignoring the fact that most people just watch movies at home like technology has changed behavior has changed the world has changed like it's not working to just pretend that it's not happening and force people to do something on your own terms you've lost that battle so embrace what movies we have left and the fact also that the streaming services actually democratize the viewing experience and allow more people to see your product and go from there. Okay. We're on the same page there. We've got two more left. Can you do your next rule though? Because I have an addendum to...

Your next one is related to the last rule, and I have an addendum to both that I would like to add. Yes, I'm happy to do it. So this one is more controversial. And I would say I'm only 50% in on this, but it could set off a chain reaction that we can never go back from. Nevertheless, I'm going to pitch it here. This is a safe space for us to try new ideas. I think all TV miniseries should qualify for all major categories this year. I think we could make the case that perhaps up to 10 hours of content could be a cutoff time. When O.J. Made in America won Best Documentary, there was a lot of controversy about whether an eight-hour film that essentially aired on television should qualify. And so the Oscars changed their rules. And I think that was a

mistake, particularly for something like O.J. Made in America. But I think there have been a number of things this year, some of which may be considered Oscar-worthy, some of which may not be, but which should compete this year because of the dearth of additional competitors. So what would that include? That would include The Last Dance. That would include The Third Day, currently airing on HBO. That would include The Plot Against America, the David Simon adaptation of the Philip Roth series.

That would include Tiger King. That would include The Comey Rule. There are a bunch of other things that have come out this year that are just movies. I mean, all of those things I just named are seven-hour movies or three-hour movies or five-hour movies. They're designed to be movies. I mean, all of those things I just named are seven hour movies or three hour movies or five hour movies. They're designed to be movies and they're mostly released like movies. They're mostly released in bundles in one shot or over two nights to let people watch them in full. And if they're not released that way, that is ultimately how most people watch them. That's how I'm watching the third day. I'm waiting until the whole series goes up so I can watch the whole thing in one shot.

So I don't know if this is the kind of thing that should be a permanent change. The idea was spurred by the fact that this year, for the first time, the Independent Spirit Awards are going to be acknowledging both film and television at their ceremony. And that makes them more like the Golden Globes. But I don't think anybody takes the Golden Globes seriously. People do take the Spirit Awards seriously. And they are voted on by a much more sophisticated group of voters by many accounts. I think the Oscars could be going in this direction. I think they should probably just get out in front of it.

Because they're missing a number of titles to be able to recognize this year because of what's going on with COVID. And there's a chance to try something new. And frankly, to draw some attention to the ceremony by breaking ritual and doing something new. What do you think? So I agree with this. And one of the rules that I was going to suggest until you already put it in the doc

when you sent it to me was, I was just going to say, I was just going to be very specific. I was going to say, make the last dance eligible for like, just make that one thing eligible for an Oscar. And you will have captured like the movie watching experience of like most of America. And you will be bringing a ton of viewers and interest.

So I am, I'm game for this. The other one that it's just, you know, we'll talk more about this Steve McQueen series that you mentioned, but the fact that that is, that will be airing on television and in the UK. And so I believe thus is not eligible for an Oscar.

That's crazy. That's just like that. That somehow these things have switched. And there are a few movies we're going to talk about that are eligible for Oscars that are definitely TV. And this is definitely cinema and is going to be competing at the Emmys. So we're in a wacky zone because it's 2020. But here's my addendum. You have to pick Oscar or Emmy. You can't be nominated for both. And that's on the, I guess you can decide what you're going to submit to,

but you cannot submit to both. You can't be nominated for both. I think that'll clear up a lot of the confusion. I think that's a great addendum to this. Thank you. Okay. Okay. You're up next. Cool.

I made up a new segment for the Oscars and my role is executive producer, compensation, a TK. Wait, you got elevated to executive producer? First, you were just producer. You got promoted mid-pod. Wow, 2020. What a world. It's going terribly for everyone else,

but I'm just getting promoted every hour. My rate just went up too. Shameful cronyism as far as I'm concerned. Okay. So the segment that I came up with is called the This Is Where I Keep My Oscar segment. And it's a segment where people who have won Oscars show you where they keep them in their homes. Um, like I said, the best part of the Emmys was the best part of the Emmys was kind of the personal touch. And

you know, it's a little bit like we haven't all, we haven't spoken to anyone as a community or like a world in many months. And so you're just like, Oh, a person. But it was also very fun to see them in their homes. And the quote, like where I keep my Oscar thing is like a great bit that shows up in profiles over time. And like some people get very creative with them and some people like don't care. But I think that that number, it would be funny. It is achievable social distance wise. And it will also give you a little bit of that celebrity flash that you need because what you're losing um from the oscars not being in person all in like one big auditorium is that feeling of like is that star power and that's what the oscars still have or you know had five years ago and are like clinging desperately to that pretty much no other room has. So you need to find a way to inject that star power.

And I just really feel that seeing where Renee Zellweger keeps her Oscar in like Topanga Canyon would be worth my time. Who's your number one? I want to know where you keep your Oscar contender. I should have known that you were gonna ask me this and I don't have an answer off the top of my head Soderbergh don't you want to know what Soderbergh's doing with them uh I showed her to think frankly I know, but wouldn't that be fun? That's a good one. Yeah, I'm curious about that.

And who's yours? I mean, I want to know somebody who shouldn't have an Oscar. Someone who absurdly... I mean, who is the most ridiculous winner of all time? I'm kind of stumped I know I immediately just started thinking of like Oscar speeches that I remember and so Marion Cotillard it is true that there are angels in this city um it's like the first thing that came to my head but she probably is just like a very chic French person who's just like yeah

it's on that cabinet I don't really care about it isn't it cute that the Americans gave me this um maybe the guys who got a... Didn't somebody get an Oscar for Suicide Squad? You know, where does that guy keep his Oscar? Poor guy.

I'm sure he's a great craftsman. I don't want to denigrate him at all. But that's just... That's not ideal. Okay. Just a couple more picks here. So you've got your final pick and I've got my final pick.

You want me to go first or you want to go first? You go first or you want to go first? You go first. Okay. I think we need to continue to experiment, like I said earlier, by adding new categories. I think we need five new categories here this year. There's no downside to adding these categories.

Now, we've talked about some of these things in the past. Best done. It's a no-brainer. It's time. It's been time for 10 years. Just add Best Stunt. There are probably not as many films that would have great stunt coordination this year because of the dearth of sort of big tentpole films coming out.

Nevertheless, there would still be plenty. We've talked about, you know, Extraction and Bad Boys for Life and movies like that. There have been a handful this year that would certainly qualify. Second new one is Best Voice voice performance if you want to acknowledge where acting is going there was a lot of talk about this during the lord of the rings films the planet of the apes films about whether or not andy circus would be recognized for his motion

capture work but i think motion capture is too limiting. So I think we need something that essentially fuses motion capture and voice performance as the newest form of acting, because we know we're only going to get more and more movies that are like this. And it is a different skill than the kind of traditional acting skill that we see. So I want to see something that attempts to address that concern. Next one, obvious breakthrough performer, someone who has not had a role with more than five minutes of screen time before that just bursts onto the scene that you can't take your eyes off of.

Relatedly, best first film, again, a no-brainer. Somebody, a debut filmmaker, somebody who had never made a feature-length film before who arrives on the scene and creates something magnificent. Lady Bird would have qualified for an award like this who says no.

And then finally, I think they should try to do the popular Oscar this year. Now, I hated the idea of the popular Oscar when they first announced it a couple of years ago. I thought it was very badly

thought through. I thought the reason to do it was completely unclear other than incredibly craven reasons. But the truth is, is that they need those craven reasons this year to create a sense of urgency

and necessity around this ceremony. So I haven't totally baked through what popular Oscar even means here, but I think they need to find a way to kind of manifest a second lane of recognition, something that acknowledges that really, there are now two Hollywoods officially. And those two Hollywoods are

tentpole theatrical filmmaking, which is really the only theatrical filmmaking left. And frankly, Hollywood fucked up over the last 20 years by only serving movies that reach teenage boys that can make a minimum of $300 million to be successful.

That was a mistake. That was a crass and craven effort on the part of the Wall Streetification of Hollywood over the last four decades. It's unfortunate that we got here, but we are here. And so most of the movies that go into movie theaters fulfill those qualities. And then there is kind of everything else.

There's streaming movies, there's independent cinema, there's the handful of studios that are still making the kind of mid-tier dramas that we like on this show. And I think something that acknowledges that bifurcation in a coherent way, and maybe I'll spend some time brainstorming on what would be coherent for this, but I do think that they should at least give it a try this year. And if it's a failure, we can just say, this was the COVID-19 year, man. We tried some stuff. It didn't work. We're moving on.

The Oscars is always evolving. They're always adding new categories and taking them away. They're always changing the parameters of what is and is not Oscar worthy. So I say try it. That's my pitch. I have two follow-up questions on the best popular Oscar. And in general, I support, like, the add new categories that people care about is like a core big picture belief. Like we are, you know, I support this and I'm just skating right by voice

performer. Though I would say that my philosophy on that is I stand with Chris Ryan's 2012 movie draft. Shouldn't it just be eligible? You know, if it's a great performance, it's a great performance. But I have two questions about best popular Oscar. And, and I, and I thought about suggesting it as well, because you need something that gets people invested in a wide way. Um, would it be fan voted or, or, or popularly voted?

I think there should be a fan portion of voting. Okay. But not the final delineation. Okay. Um, cause I've seen what happens when only fans vote and it's not good. Right. It's really not good.

Yeah, it's really bad. Check, for example, the IMDB ratings for the greatest films of all time. Sure. Or the People's Choice Awards or, you know, many ringer brackets. Anyway, number two, is there a better term than best popular like is there something that is a little more specific and honestly like kind of less condescending than because that that in addition to the way it was announced which was crazy and also in addition to the the philosophical implication that something that is

a blockbuster can't also be great, which I really believe it can be as, you know, all my new letterbox followers will, will know what's up to all my friends. It's great to be with you. Um, it was very natural. You sounded very natural saying that. Great job. You're going to make a great governor of Georgia one day. Oh my God. Take that back. Why are you always doing this to me? Like, come on, man.

Just like, keep it out anyway. Just keep speaking to your constituents. Oh, Jesus Christ. But I just, best popular implies that the movies like don't qualify for the regular best picture, which they don't. But I don't know whether it's just like whether it's tying it to box office. Like, I don't know whether it's something whether it's tying it to genre more specifically. You said you were going to refine it and I would vote to refine it slightly more because that's the problem with best popular is just, it's just too amorphous.

Okay. Here's one refinement. Only films that feature Thanos will qualify. Okay. Well, great. Congratulations. That's all of them.

At this point, as I understand it. Big fan, big fan of that guy. Yeah. Okay. I accept. I accept. Yeah let let's mess around

let's try some things okay okay speaking of of trying some things what's your last suggestion all right this this was a suggestion a long time ago from a listener and that listener was right you gotta rank the best picture nominees which conveniently the ballot system already involves ranking them but uh rank, give us the ranked winners or the winners by ranking and announce them elimination style throughout the ceremony. So like what you suggested for the acting categories, but do it all on that night. You know, it's a little crass. It's a little embarrassing in a year when you had everybody in the same room,

it might be kind of awkward. And also you couldn't count on the number 10 film people just getting up and leaving 10 minutes in. But this year, it's over Zoom. So it doesn't matter. Just do it. Make it normal. And then when we're back in the same room,

it's what people will expect. How many of the Best Picture nominees, when they show all of them, do you think will not turn their camera on on Zoom because they're afraid to be shamed? That's the one thing is you have to keep your camera on. We needed to cite that when we were talking about that because the propensity for shame here is higher. Yes, that's true. I think there's a tricky thing where you're going to have to be thinking a lot about time zones.

The Emmys had a real problem where many of the people were in the UK and it was like four in the morning. So the crown just didn't show up. And I think also the crown knew that it was going to lose to succession, which is legit. But they just weren't there. So I don't know Zoom wise how you'll adjust for that. But I agree with you. You got to keep your camera on. And I think also for best picture, typically it's producers who accept best picture or nominated and accept best picture.

And as a producer myself now of the entire show, I really support them. But it's not always the producers that you want to see in relationship to a film. So we're going to have to have some qualifications of who gets to accept via Zoom. I'm down with that. If Bradley Cooper produced your movie, he has to be on camera. If a 78-year-old man that I've never heard of before produced your movie, doesn't have to be on camera.

Not important. Yeah. But we do it. You just have to gamify it. It will give people something to care about and to keep watching. And that's what you need. Amanda, we did it again.

We fixed the Oscars. We've been fixing the Oscars nonstop for two years. You're welcome. You're welcome to everybody listening. Still waiting for my check, but you're welcome. By the time we get to the end of this episode, which is very shortly, you will be known as the Grand Empress of the Oscars,

given the way that you've been rising up the Ascension ladder. Speaking of rising up the Ascension ladder, Amanda, later this week, we are having a very special kickoff to the month of Amanda. It's really amazing that it is the month of Amanda. I made a joke once and then it like actually became true over the course of the next three Friday episodes of this show we're going to be celebrating a different filmmaker writer director figure really that lives inside the

triangle of your heart yes and we're starting this off with one of our great living filmmakers. Who are we celebrating later this week? The one and only Nancy Meyers. That's right. 40 years after her first script credit on Private Benjamin, a film I watched last night. I have a lot of thoughts about that film. Likewise. We're going to be looking at the scope of her entire career,

her work with her then husband, Charles Shire, her work on her own as one of the premier comedy drama filmmakers of her time and a whole lot more. So it should be pretty exciting. Are you fired up for that? I really can't wait. This has also been without question the best big picture prep viewing experience that I've ever had. I'm having fun too. Some of these movies I'm very familiar with. Others I'm not familiar with at all. I'm seeing for the first time. So it's been a good experience for me the good news is I get to give you

homework on this show you get to write the outline for this episode for later this week great that's exciting so you can organize it however you like and I am at your

at your your beck and call wow I really am the empress you are truly the empress and now let's go to a an emperor of sorts let's go to Alex Ross Perry thanks Amanda truly the empress and now let's go to a uh an emperor of sorts let's go to alex ross perry thanks amanda really happy to be rejoined by our pal alex ross perry alex what's up man how are

you i'm good yeah you you've got a real revolving door now that we're still in this and your options to promote new movies are so limited that you're just coming back to whoever you like to talk to about movies. That's right. And you're on that list. This is the second time in quarantine I've seen you in this room, which is just bizarre, but things are going well um how how is your how is your life how is your life as a filmmaker going uh well i don't really have a life as a filmmaker at the moment um nor was i going to this year which remains one of the things i'm the most fortunate for and was fortunate about i was fortunate in april and i feel even more fortunate in October that had I talked to somebody at Sundance, which I did, I would have said, oh, this year, I'm not really working this year. I have two writing jobs, both of which I'm

essentially beginning now. That's just going to be what this year looks like. And now I feel more fortunate than ever that I had nothing planned. So there is no life as a filmmaker. I have no need or desire to learn how to work with the current protocols. Do you think you're going to have to confront that at some point? In your mind, were you planning on a 2021 film? I don't know. No, I wasn't. I had no plans. I mean, I felt very fortunate to have two very different and very cool writing jobs that basically started in November and December of last year. Do you think that that is more likely to be what your job is going forward? Well, it's the only job that... I mean, if you define a job as something you do for money,

it's the only job I have and have ever had. But I don't know. I don't know what happens. I don't know what people will need to learn. And I can't really imagine learning how to make something with restrictions that change all the time and with protocols that are different for a $5 million movie and for a $100 million movie. So I don't have any sense of how that's working. And I'm kind of thankful for that because it doesn't really make any sense to me. You've primarily worked in what I guess you could call like scare quotes, independent cinema. And I feel like it's going to be a lot harder over the course of the next couple of years to even make films like the ones that you made in part because of the protocols, but in part because I imagine like fundraising is a little bit more challenging than it was. Like, what are you hearing in that respect?

Well, you're absolutely right. I mean, nobody feels like anything makes any sense right now. I mean, the movies I've been able to put together very of get off the ground as a producer. The directorial debut of my cinematographer, Sean Price Williams, which he's mentioned a little bit in the press. He has this script that was written for him by the film critic, Nick Pinkerton. And me and our regular line producer are trying to get this movie made. Because we believe in it. And Sean is a director and there's a really clear sense of what this film

could be. It has a budget very comparable to her smell. And the response we're getting from people is on a financial side. We can't really address this right now. We don't really know how to talk about what movies we're spending money on next year. And we don't know how to take something that is risky and make it riskier by adding another $200,000 of precautionary budget spending. And actors can't commit to anything at all. We're learning because their schedules are thrown out the window. So everything I've ever made is very actor dependent. You always start with them and now everybody says,

every job I have, their dates are unsure unsure and then some of the tv actors their schedules went from six months to nine months and they don't know how much time they're going to have off in between some people say oh we might just do both the next two seasons back to back because the writers have had so much time. So the business people are lost and confused and cautious and the actors can't really plan on anything. So to answer your question, I have no idea how any movies like the kind I have made are going to get made in the next two years.

Do you think that there's going to be an erosion of that kind of a movie? I mean, I know there already was kind of an erosion of that kind of movie in some respects, but also I feel like the process has been really democratized over the last 10 years. The sort of the ease to get equipment or to work with more closely with people more quickly. Do you think that now just smaller films are going to start to vanish? It depends what you mean by small. Sub 10 million? Oh, absolutely.

But sub 1 million will probably not be as affected. Sub 10 million is exactly what I'm talking about. I just don't know. I'm not saying they'll vanish, but something will happen that in the next two years will sort of, I mean, the way I always look at this and I've been saying this for years is you

look at the sort of give or take couple of years on either side of the 2008 recession. And the fact that just prior to that, you started having $5,000 digital consumer video movies called Mumblecore that became viable festival films, but they were only saved from losing money because they cost $5,000 to make. And if you screened your movie at three colleges, you broke even. when the sort of recession happened and there was the previous ebb and flow of sub 10 million dollar movies what happened in 2000 you know give it a year or two 10 11 12 13 so on that kind of five years was the rise of movies that i was able to sort of come up making that were under or about a million,

but had the same caliber of actor that in 2006 could have been in like a $10 million movie. And that would have been the smallest indie they made. And then me and a lot of my peers kind of rebuilt a system from zero dollars on up and then when the industry needed that we made those movies for like five years and then a lot of people myself included those movies got bigger and bigger and now another reckoning has come where just speculating you might look at what i mean again these are impossible things to even predict or imagine but you might look at like sundance 2022 and see 50 movies that cost under 30 000 just because that next year will you know, we couldn't make a Her Smell right now or next year.

And we couldn't make a Listen Up, Fill Up. But my first two movies, micro-budget films made with about five people, we can make those next year. Because nobody, no one checks in on you. You can take five friends and go on a road trip and make a movie. Because there's no insurance and there make a movie because there's no insurance and there's no protocols and there's no nothing. And that was the only option for making a film 15 years ago or 13 years ago. And that might be the only option for making a film right now, which means much like me

and my friends, suddenly there might be a way for a lot of 22 and 23 and 24-year-olds to figure out what to do while people of my so-called generation, which you don't want to say about yourself when you're in your mid-30s, might be like filmmakers that were this age in 2009 when suddenly they just said like, oh, my independent films that cost $15 million dollars you can't make those anymore whereas now that would be like a blockbuster size budget for somebody but um it certainly seems like there's going to have to be some radical rebuilding which is very daunting to think about what that means do you think that there's an upside to mumblecore 2.0 is probably putting too fine a point on it but the idea of another wave of movies like that is that a good thing that will happen

in your estimation well yes in that it will give whoever is young now a chance to make something but you know the difference that i can't i mean it's not an analog because you can't because the analog doesn't work because all the reason that a lot of those movies not all of them but that movement of creation was in tandem with a technological shift that was very new and that shift is not here right now. So there can't be that same kind of a thing. But there will be something. It just won't be holding hands with a sort of rise of consumer video. But it's just so impossible to say. And also something that I know you talk a lot about now lately is in terms of investing in sub 10 million dollar movies you know the only reason an investor does that is the hope of going to one of four film festivals and selling the movie for more money but when the eventual

fate now has been proven of probably nine out of ten of those films. It's just that they go on to streaming. There is no financial upside to any of this because the hope of a producer, of an investor, for example, that you're somehow becoming a streaming film, that's just like a one-time transaction. That's not setting up a potential permanent trickle of revenue that will exist as long as the film is out there, which for investors just doesn't make any sense. But for streaming companies makes perfect sense. But when you come to them with a sort of risky, esoteric script, they don't want it. If you make it anyway, and then it plays at a festival and people like it, maybe they want it then. But that means that there's no real financial upside for people to give us money for it, which just means the whole thing just is like a pretzel. There's no real financial upside for people to give us money for it, which just means like

the whole thing just is like a, it's a pretzel. There's no way to even like talk about it without just losing the threat of what is happening. Yeah. I'm just trying to think about what I want to ask you next. I feel like I can go in nine different directions, but do you think just generally speaking, there will be fewer people who want to give independent filmmakers millions of dollars to make movies? Like, will there actually be fewer people who want to give independent filmmakers millions of dollars to make movies? Will there actually be fewer investors? Yeah, I have no doubt that there will be. There already are, I would imagine. I mean, I would imagine now as of October, there are fewer than there were in February. And come February of next year, March, when we're a

year celebrating the one-year anniversary of the pandemic. Celebrating? Sure. Whatever's left. But when that one-year mark rolls around, there will be fewer. There's already so few. And the risk-averse nature of investing can only become more tempestuous when just the volume of everything is decreased by so much. Because you can only even justify investing in something if you can dream of it becoming somewhat of a festival film. But if Toronto shows 50 movies instead of 200 and whatever the other things are, whatever fill in the blank equivalent of that remains to be seen what Sundance or anything will do. But if they show 50 movies instead of 200, people are going to say like, well, that is sort of proportionate to how many fewer films there are right now,

but it also makes your chances of potentially being something so much less that like i couldn't sell people on investing in a movie if i couldn't also sell them on the fact that it will be like a festival safe film which means that it is a film that will get seen at least initially in the right context by the right people. Because that's the only thing I can ever promise people, that and that we'll get good actors to be in it. And now I couldn't promise either of those things. I would have to say, we don't know what festivals will look like when the film is done. And most of the actors I would like to be in this are like shooting a movie and can't leave their bubble and then like have to be in the bubble

until the film is in post because they might be needed back for reshoots or something generally speaking do you think people are freaking out like are your friends freaking out about the future of this thing um a lot of them are crew people are i mean people that make their living working for you know working for a living on a living, getting up and going to their job every day on a film set because it's so nebulously uncertain. My freaking out is, it's very nice to sit home and do screenwriting for studios or whoever will pay you or pay me or pay one to do that. It's only a matter of time before they realize we really don't need to be doing this. There will be a point perhaps in six

months where they're like, we've developed 300 scripts in the last year and we've made two because we can't make any more. We should just pause all of that right now. So my fear is that that could easily come for myself and other people who've been able... Because they were saying in April, May, the only thing you can do right now is write, develop. There's so many opportunities right now. Everyone's just pausing production. The thing to focus on is writing and development. And now six months later, I can feel people starting to go, we should probably be pausing that as well.

Yeah, I'm not surprised to hear that. I thought that was a fascinating turn of events, you know, six or seven months ago when most of the writers that I knew were like, things are great because I can work and there's money and there's opportunity. But as this goes on and on, and the idea that production is so expensive,

and unless you're a Jurassic World film, it's going to be hard to go into production. It seems like at some point, someone's going to realize we should slow down. You know, I wanted to ask you, I've now seen two COVID-19 quarantine films. One of them I saw over the weekend, it was the Alex Gibney documentary about COVID-19,

which was shot in quarantine with all of these scientists. And the other one was Host, which was this shutter horror film. I don't know if you had a chance to see it. It was really good. Really good. I was wondering if you think because of what you were saying about kind of like the technological shifts that we found when digital came into play in filmmaking, is there a technological shift in terms of what even constitutes a movie? Is a Zoom movie more likely to manifest itself into what more movies look like

because of what we're going through at the moment? There's an argument to be made that that is true. I don't even know what this Gibney movie is but knowing host well and enjoying it thoroughly um there's an argument to be made that that is a somewhat analogous technological thing but that's that's less of a tool than say the canon 3 whatever it, like the tiny handheld SLR camera that people shot movies on. Like that wasn't, that didn't create a uniform kind of movie. I mean, it created a uniform image, but you could make a sort of stately locked off composed movie with it, or you could make a very sloppy handheld movie with it. Whereas what you're describing, unless there's some revelation that I can't conceive of because

I don't view technology that way, that could lead to a bunch of movies, but they are all sort of, by default, going to have to look and feel the same, which as a viewer does not really excite me. Having enjoyed Host and enjoying both of the unfriended films, this is a great format for exactly that kind of movie. But then anything else that, you know, and there have been other things like this that are these sort of, you know, I saw an advertisement, like some,

there's like some Hulu thing called Love in the Time of COVID or something. There's things like this that have, nobody wants to watch them. No one wants to be reminded of the reality right now. To me, it's clearly only valid as a tool for horror because that's fun, quick thrills.

You don't want to like the idea of solving the narrative issues of the moment using technology just feels like, why, why would I like sit down and turn on my TV for my viewing part of the day and look at a romantic comedy shot on Zoom? Yeah. I don't know. I mean, there's a part of me that thinks that if there is a generation of people that are younger than us that understand how to use this technology in a more sophisticated way than we do, then maybe there can be. Like what Host did,

and to some extent with that movie Searching did a few years ago, is show like you can at least narratively create a coherent story in this format. Unfriended did that too. But even in Host, like the camera moves, you know, it's not stationary like we are right now talking on Zoom. You're actually seeing like what's happening

and the frame is moving. And that struck me as somewhat new it was a little different and i'm like is there a world in which um we spend another 12 months in this circumstance and then we just see more storytelling like this i agree there i think there's gonna be like a sitcom on abc that is an entirely like zoom confessional sitcom which looks horrible and i don't want to watch something like that but i don't know i still i'm maybe i'm holding out too much hope for something that doesn't have a huge future. Yeah. I mean, it's impossible to even predict. But to me, what's more troubling is that it's really impossible to imagine being excited about any of this. I'm curious about all of it in the way that I was curious about snl at home episodes

which were incredibly admirable and clever and ultimately wholly unsuccessful as entertainment by and large i mean each one had two great things and in the way that some people can make a great comedy sketch with their computer but like it wasn't like, oh, there should be a show that's just this. This is great. It was more like, wow, I can't believe they're pulling this off. And that was kind of the response when people 12 years ago looked at 70-minute long movies with $3,000 budgets was like, I can't believe they're pulling this off. I just sat in a film festival theater and watched a movie that was made for $2,000. I can't believe they did that.

But as me and all my friends know, the long-term viability of that is zero. Immediately, you want to stop doing that as soon as you don't have to. Very few people, perhaps the only one, Joe Swanberg, the only exception would say, I always want to be able to make a $2,000 movie with my friends in a weekend. He still views that as a thrill. And that's actually kind of what's interesting about him doing it. But like, these are not things people want to build skills. And it just seems very, I cannot overstate how apocalyptic it seems to imagine from my own experience, trying to create any of the things I have learned how to make. Everything I've done personally as a director would not be possible this year or next year. And my approach to casting and the kind of actors who engage with small independent projects for not a lot of money seemingly has,

it has really dried up because of the unpredictability of it and the travel difficulties and just all of it. I mean, it's just, it's so logistically difficult. And the only thing I really want to see is like the new SVU season or like something that's like, you know, reactive in real time, but still dramatically consistent and entertaining.

Are you a big SVU guy? Huge. Really? Almost an episode a day. I mean, just for, you know, it's the,

it's the, it's like the smoothest tonic at the end of the day for still after years. Wow. I guess I'm not surprised by that. You know, it does make me think that that's one of the things that I always like about talking to you,

about reading when you write about film is, I think, I see us as a little simpatico in that you are obviously very interested in, you know, arthouse cinema and foreign films and films and extremity, which I love too. But also you have a, you're interested in mainstream movies. You go see mainstream movies and you have opinions about them and you like a

lot of them. And you saw tenant. I saw in a movie theater on Instagram. Yes. It's a good pivot from SVU. Thank you. Somehow into Tenet. Yeah, I did see Tenet. I will say, you know, talking about like the sort of appreciation

of mainstream things or your brief pause about how much I love SVU. The thing about it, and this can get into Nolan in a way if you want it to, is that I had never watched SVU until a couple of years ago. Something my wife held in very high regard and she would often be watching it. I just never engaged with

it until I did. And when I started watching it, what I realized was so wonderful about it and why it is something that I can basically watch an episode of three or four nights a week, 10-year-old episodes, is I just cannot believe what a breath of fresh air it is to watch TV that is so unpretentious. It is so amazing because I don't watch any other network television or what it could even vaguely be called network television. And to watch something that is just so meat and potatoes, unserious about, it does not take itself seriously as art. It is just, let's tell a good story and get in and out in 45 minutes. And that's just, to me, more than ever these days, just the most relaxing thing in the

world rather than investing in some long story that's confusing and is asking so much of the audience. And you have to wonder, is this going to go somewhere? Should I give up? Do I care what the resolution is? It's just the lack of pretension of it is its greatest asset. And hearing that they were back in production now on a new season that will apparently narratively engage with COVID is incredibly exciting to me. I'm more excited about that premiering than almost any other TV show I could think of right now.

Do you watch a lot of, you know, pretentious television otherwise? I mean, I've stopped. I've had to, I mean, you know, like any, I don't watch a lot of television. I'm very resistant to investing time in something that is being sold to me as worth watching but you know all television is pretentious because much like independent films the only

reason people would make it is to receive acclaim or awards like that's the only impetus behind making any of this stuff as i've learned myself with investments or actors or seeing what television gets made, you can pinpoint it. I mean, they don't make it because they believe that people need it. They make it because they want to be the winner of whatever that means.

They want to win the most awards or win the most money. And that clearly drives so to win the most awards or win the most money and that clearly drives so much of the decision making in the way that like to go back to your first question like her smell can only get made because people read the script and see who's attached and think this isn't a an indie awards contender waiting to happen for the lead actress. And the only reason we can make that movie for as much money as we did is because of the belief that this is a sure shot of awards glory for Elizabeth Moss in this role. And TV and independent movies all follow that same logic from $2 million indies up to oscar movies

they only make them because they want to win they don't make them because they love it or they love the vision of the filmmaker you're talking specifically about the essentially the financiers the companies the studios the networks like you're not you're not saying you made her smell no no i'm saying that's the only reason an artist quote unquote would ever get somebody to say yes to them is because they view it as a means to an end the end either being money awards acclaim or ideally both why do you think christopher nolan made tenet well he i mean he's one of you know 10 people that doesn't have to answer those questions except that you don't even have to wonder until spring of 2020, will we get some money if we give him $200 million?

You know, if you're Warner Brothers, we'll give him 200, we'll get 800 back. Maybe he'll be in the awards conversation. It's just a sure thing. So, you know, like the sort of purity of an artist like that at that level is, as is well known, you know, as scarce now as I think it's been in 50 years to be able to just at a level where you can walk into be it a studio or a small studio or a TV network and say, here's my idea. You know who I am. And people go, yeah. And I know what you're going to do. The answer is yes. The answer, you know, to most people, except for probably, I don't know, 20 creators is no right now to everything, to a movie, to a TV show.

Is it even 20 people? I mean, I feel like it's like- I think across film and TV, you could come up with 20. Yeah. I'm like, okay, so James Cameron, Quentin Tarantino, Christopher Nolan, who else gets to make whatever they want? There's not a lot of people. You know, like Damon Lindelof can walk into a TV network with a napkin and an idea written on it and they'll tell him yes, like, you know, there are people. And there's obviously, you know, the sort of like we the usual suspects of whoever your homegrown auteurs are, um, of which Nolan is obviously King,

but you know, you look at like even Paul Thomas Anderson making a movie right now that like the week it started shooting moved from one studio to another over some sort of budget concern, which probably had to do with adding money for COVID. I'm just guessing because of the timing seemed very dubious of saying the budget grew, so the studio had to let it go. Certainly, one could imagine that's why, but even that is not a straight yes, even though that's the sure thing because

take someone like that, for example, the release of a new film of his for you and me and most people that we would consider to be our people. I mean, that's the event of the season. And yet you cannot guarantee it's going to make money. Even someone that important as not Nolan, he's, you know, 50-50 track record in that he might make an ambitious inherent vice movie that nobody shows up for.

And that's going to make people nervous when he comes to them with a brilliant script and A-list stars and his handout, they might go, yeah, but this might only make a little bit of money. And your movie, even even like this is the weirdest thing is like they could say to him you know your movies don't really win oscars like so you know you're you're not like a sure thing and we're gonna have to spend tons of money marketing like

so we can't just say yes to you based on whatever know, if he came in with a tenant level idea that was that nonsensical, he would never get to make it. And that's amazing to me is, you know, like you look at somebody like that or whoever else, like Noah Baumbach right now, or, you know, like they can probably get whatever they want to get made financed, but probably only to the tune of like 30 or $40 million. Like they don't really previously defined parameters, right. For like previous kinds of films they had made, but if they wanted to make a hundred million dollar movie, probably they probably wouldn't be able to almost certainly not.

Um, but, and that scales down in that, like I could, um, you know, and I, I proven this time and time again,

I could get a $1 million movie financed and maybe even a $2 million movie finance, but I couldn't get a $10 million movie financed or 15 or 20. That's as out of reach for me as the Nolan level is for that echelon. And that's not going to get any better right now, especially in the sort of streaming migration where profit and success becomes much more invisible. It'll just be harder to quantify the ceiling of what an artist is capable of in terms of reaching an audience. And that's

kind of nerve wracking to me because that is so much a factor in how valid future ideas by somebody seem to be so does the absence of the necessity or transparency of box office in the future is that kind of in a perverse way a bad thing for filmmakers well i think it's both bad and good yeah it. It's bad because it's the only metric anybody has for knowing how much something clicked. It's good because if Her Smell came out this April instead of last April and didn't play in theaters, we could just pretend that it made a lot of money and could pretend that it's like one of the 10 most substantial indie releases of the year with all the same press and all the same reviews could just say like, Oh, it was a huge hit and no one can really debate that.

But it's just like, it's just boggles the mind, like how unaccountable these things are going to be and how urgently these things are needed when you're trying to make something, especially when you're trying to level up. It's just like people have to look at your track record. And I just don't know what any of this means right now. It's so chaotic, which is part of why I enjoy listening to what you're discussing or writing to you because you're engaging in an ongoing conversation about what is happening. How can any of this be? And it's just like the absurdity of what's happening right now cannot be overstated. I believe, unless I'm off on the date on this, because I saw reviews of it,

am I wrong that there is literally a new Sofia Coppola movie that is out now? It's out. It's out. It came out on Friday. Because I saw reviews of it, but I didn't know if that was because it played at the New York Film Festival or what.

I mean, Sofia is an Oscar-winning filmmaker. She has an Academy Award. And after winning one, was able to make a $40 million Marie Antoinette film. And if I hadn't... I mean, I don't even... Does this movie... Where is it? I don't understand.

Well, you're asking a good question, right? I think I just listened to a conversation with her and she said that she didn't even wasn't even really like following what theaters and how many theaters it was opening in and she was thinking more of the 10th the october 23rd release date on apple tv plus as the release date so right so it's not there yet right now it's not there yet it's somewhere in some it's in drive-ins like in la it's in... It's not there yet. It's somewhere in some... It's in Drive-Ins or whatever. Like in LA, it's in Drive-Ins, for example. Okay. You can see it.

But I mean, you're right. Like, you know, at the risk of overstating things, a new Sofia Coppola movie, at least in the realm of this podcast, is an event. It's one of the biggest events of the season. And we're gonna... She's one of the, you know, easily the top 15 most relevant working filmmakers today.

Without question. And how are we going to pause and appreciate this, even with no competition, to really distract from it? It's just like, I can't overstate how damaging that feels to the future. If one of the 15 most important name brand 90s, early aughts filmmakers can release a film with that little, you know, sort of heat around it, then like, and I don't know what it costs,

it seems less ambitious than perhaps The Beguiled or Marie Antoinette in that it's a contemporary film set in a city where she lives. But, you know, it looks like a costly, handsomely made film. And just like, how, how do you, how do you get inspired to create something and sell it to investors and actors when people who are that important have these releases that you like,

you know, that that release is like a breath away. Um, especially going back to your tenant curiosity like it seems like any attempt at the moment to create any other sort of release uh is not going to work for now before we go back to tenant i just wanted to ask you like had you have you considered in the last five years of transitioning to only trying to make features for streamers so that you would be kind of protected from the vagaries of things like box office and all that and just hope that you could bring the same kind of like critical appreciation to the format and then not be as bound by it well i mean i would if they wanted me to, but, you know, that's easier said than done.

I mean, the irony of that is, like, really of the so-called streamers, like, however many there seem to be at any given moment, in terms of considering them studios, there's really only Netflix. Like, the other ones are all sort of, like, in terms of considering them studios, there's really only Netflix. The other ones are all sort of like depository. They sort of catch things that fall from studios off-selling them,

like Apple getting a Tom Hanks movie or what have you. Netflix is the only studio, studio. And weirdly, they're just functioning exactly like whatever, like Touchstone in the 90s, where they make so much stuff that you can't even keep up with and then have five aces up their sleeve a year. And in the 90s, if Touchstone is making Rushmore, they don't need three more people making movies at that size.

They have that. So like Netflix has their, you know, they have their, their, their bomb back movies and they have their Irishman and whatever other sort of like huge thing that they, they don't need, they don't need to make 50 independent,

acclaimable films per year. They need, they need five and they have five. So they don't... I mean, why would they solicit more than that? They know that if they wanted to, they could have 300 filmmakers like myself making films for them. And they want 300 YA romantic comedies and five festival Fincher-type films that they can just sort of parcel out. So yeah, I mean, that's not necessarily viable because it kind of seems like the filmmakers who receive that, be it Fincher making a Netflix movie or The Irishman or Baumbach or whatever, it kind of seems like a reward for already being

successful. They don't seem to be in the business of propping up another generation to help them reach an audience. They're in the business of giving this other generation a home where there might not be one elsewhere. That's's interesting especially the one wrinkle that i noticed so far this season is they have been on a little bit of an acquisition spree for for indies a handful of indies because i think they've identified what you're talking about before which is like there is a um a performance in a movie that they feel strongly they could create a best actress campaign for and so they go out and they spend at a premium to buy that movie to then make it part of their awards collection and then they can put that movie in this in this cohort right you could i guess potentially hope

that you make a movie that fits that bill but that maybe won't ultimately you just won't know until you make it yeah i mean and you know if it's not going to fit that bill no one's going to give you money to make it yep you know there are obviously miracles that kind of slip through the cracks i think recently the devil all the time was kind of that sort of thing which obviously was made independently largely financed and picked up by netflix somewhere between shooting it and finishing it. But that seems to be kind of the exception, not the rule. And, you know, it was a movie, probably 15 named stars in it. So it's just sort of a no brainer how many different famous actors can be on the icon. Every time you boot up Netflix, it'll be someone different.

And to me, it was like a great movie that i was really excited by the sort of risks it took and in an alternate reality probably would have been like a big fall festival movie and instead you know i don't i don't know i mean it just seems like they're only i mean they only have so many of those. That's the thing. Yeah. I liked, I like Antonio's movies a lot. You did raise like a point that I've thought about before, which is,

I feel like Altman really would have thrived now because he would have been able to put together incredible ensembles, which would have been great for the, the little square on the screen. He could have flipped in new actors every time. Yeah, it's true. But yeah, I don't know i don't really know how safe it is to consider

um any sort of these these so-called streaming studios salvation um i heard someone else say this in some capacity recently i don't remember who or where. Sorry, I can't take credit for it, but I also can't give credit for it. But it goes without saying, these are tech companies, first and foremost. These are not entertainment companies. And whatever their goals are, it's not exclusively awards than acclaim. Somehow their goals are more ambitious than that. And you can't really trust that because, you know, like I think even, I mean, what is it? 2020? Like, you know, like the five-year journey of Amazon as a film company. There will be one of these books that you like

to talk about someday about the Amazon Studios 2014 to 2019, where it became this sort of salvation for two years. Every single thing they did failed spectacularly. And then they just like threw the baby out with the bath water. And we're like, we have to change everything about our strategy. No more nineties auteurs get to make movies here. There's no more Todd Salon's movie. There's no more like, you know, whoever else, there's no more, um, Whit Stillman, there's no more Jim Jarmusch, like all this stuff that we just tried to be this sort of

like... And even that, as I'm saying, none of my peers got to make one of those movies. That was just a reward for people that had had success in another decade. Well, the people that were running the studio were instrumental in helping the people make those movies in the 80s and the 90s. And so there was a sort of like a generational continuance in a way, but that wasn't financially viable. I mean, they made some curious choices, right? They tried to be a theatrical business as well as a streaming business, as opposed to Netflix just saying, you know what? It's important that we get people on this service. That's really all that matters. So if you want to watch The Irishman, sure, it's in 50 theaters in America,

but you got to go to your house and watch it and turn on your television. But, you know, they wanted to have Manchester by the Sea be a theatrical Oscar film and also kind of sort of on prime, you know? Right. But also remember, they didn't make that movie. They bought it. That's true. That's true. The things they made did not as well as the things they bought. Todd Haynes' Wonderstruck. No one saw that. I mean, Todd Haynes, again, like Sofia Coppola, one of the most important filmmakers of the last 25 years. Yes.

And followed up a movie that I do not think is his best film, but was perhaps his most acclaimed film and his most sort of mainstream adjacent film in terms of the acclaim that Carol got with a big expensive movie that he is one of my favorite filmmakers that I still have not seen. It's okay. It's not his best, but it's a really interesting film. And yeah, I must see it. I mean, I will, but you know, I did see like Last Flag Flying, you know, like. Sure. I mean, but another another guy too who comes from that

previous generation who got a chance to make that movie and not a lot of people saw that movie right so the question became not like who is the who is the todd haynes link later uh todd salon jim jeremish of today The question for them was, what do those guys want to make today? And then the company burned to the ground, essentially. Just everyone involved with those decisions lost their authority and they brought in new people to say, we need to be like a global entertainment brand.

And that to me is just proof that these sort of tech companies, if they come in with the best of intentions, you cannot count on that existing for very long. And if Netflix decides the only thing that really moves the needle is like kind of big budget films by already established directors, then like, yeah, it makes sense to make one Manc rather than five Devil All the Times. Yeah, I've long been curious to see if their decision-making as a studio changes if and when they win Best Picture. If that will seem like they've crossed some sort of, passed through the toll, and now they can go back to making more, I don't know, teen rom-coms. Or, you know, it's hard to say.

I don't think they could possibly make more of those. I mean, I've't know, teen rom-coms or, you know, it's hard to say. I don't think they could possibly make more of those. I mean, I've never watched a single one. It seems like they make 40 a year. There's a lot. There's a lot, but people must be watching them. I mean, it also seems, I mean, again, I don't know. This is something you seem to enjoy tracking more than most people, but like, it seems all but inevitable that they have to win best picture this year. And I don't even know for what, no, I mean, what is what is the competition there's no they will have 75 of the eligible films for for awards consideration this year i think they will probably have between 50 and 75 of the best picture nominees as well right like i again i don't know this for a fact i guess it remains to be seen what

people try to release in January and February and this new kind of undead Oscar season. But like, it seems all but inevitable that, you know, they have to because they'll be the only people competing. They'll be competing against themselves. This is what Amanda and I talked about earlier in this show is sort of like what they can and should do to kind of change and update this Oscar season. But I agree with you. And I also think that January and February window is a farce. I i mean it's not like we're going to be out of the woods with covet 19 in any meaningful way so the idea of creating energy around these movies is hard it's going to be hard for searchlight to create energy around a small chloe jowell movie

because nobody's going to the movie theater well that, that's exactly, I mean, that's to your question about how do numbers or box office matter. The extent to which those things matter for the end of the year heat is indescribable. An Oscar, even an Indy awards contender that does $3 million versus one that does $500,000, the $3 million one could be a dark horse for any awards. And the $500,000 one, which is a threshold I've never crossed, is just out. You're lucky if you get a token Spirit Awards nomination like Lizzie did for her smell, because it's just the heat isn't there for people having seen it and i'm curious without even

the possibility of that could this year be more democratic because there's no quantifiable way to say oh this movie really seems to be playing well it opened you know whatever november 1st and it's january and it's still chugging along it's all just going to be make-believe and the sort of like excitement that's created by money is gone maybe forever i hope it'll be it'll be a big test of whether people are actually watching the movies as well you know like a place like netflix which is very well situated to get movies in front of people have a huge advantage you know the the act of just turning netflix on is so much more accessible nobody knows what what the hell Peacock is. So if Universal decides to put a movie on Peacock,

I don't even know, is that going to be helpful? Do you have Peacock? Have you been using it for your SVU screenings? No, I don't. No, no Peacock. But you love SVU. You're part of the Dick Wolf universe. I remember when they launched Peacock,

I had a moment of fear thinking, is SVU going to leave Hulu? And I looked it up and it said that the contract was good through 2024. So I said, maybe I'll get Peacock then or whatever it's merged with. But yeah, I guess original law and order is on Peacock, but that's not where my heart is. Aside from the tenant screening, you haven't been to a movie theater? I've been to a drive-in a couple of times. How was your drive-in experience?

Oh, it's terrific. Yeah, it's really fun. But not one of these like modern, like the, you know, new drive-ins that show on the rocks or like the New York Film Festival drive-ins, which, you know, as we were discussing before we started recording, I'm in this, unfortunately, the entire of these New York Film Festival drive-ins, which, you know, as we were discussing

before we started recording, I'm in this, unfortunately, the entire of these New York drive-in festival screenings happened during a time where I was sort of changing cars. But I've been to a drive-in twice and I'm going again in a few weeks to one in the Poconos that shows 35 millimeter. Wow.

What are you seeing? I went in June for a zombie fest weekend. It's largely a genre drive-in. It's called the Mahoning drive-in. I went Labor Day weekend for Camp Blood, which was all slashers. And then we're going at the end of the month for a 50s The Thing thing carpenters the thing

double feature wow so it's this you know it's a terrific sort of haven of just absolute horror maniacs driving out to this field in the middle of the poconos and watching 35 millimeter prints of horror movies so that's been my drive-in experience the new york city drive-ins i have not been to i guess i now have a a new car so i could comfortably dip my toes into that but i let me assure you that the the bourgeois on the rocks la theaters are not really all that fancy they're all pretty basic they're not the drive-ins where it's playing yeah they're pretty grimy they're nice i mean they get the job done you know yeah i don't know how to even get that news or how to learn about

that or it just seems very complicated now to suddenly have to readjust my brain to going somewhere on time which i haven't done for seven months yeah that's how i know you and i have different jobs my life is spent in a google calendar all the time i have things to do but you know to say you know oh so it's sundown we have to do this and that i mean these it's it's very strange but um but yes tenant was and now seems like will be i mean that's it right there is no they just moved they would just push dune oh really i mean that seems unsurprising next june dune next to june i think december oh so a full year no maybe october yeah regardless it's not uh it's not coming anytime soon no i don't think anything else is going to come out this year personally i mean it's just you know when i went to see tenant in a theater that my

friends rented so it was just private it was the four of us you know we left saying we'll do this for wonder woman if we can we'll do this for dune certainly and um that experience is now gone you know i'm sure you've covered this or will but the sort of you know re-closing of theaters that seems to be in the news today i mean it can't be in as much as i'm saying you can't overstate the apocalyptic nature of trying to get an independent film under 10 million made right now, you know, you can't overstate how apocalyptic this theatrical news is. I mean, there's just no, I'm not a business person,

but I know how business works. And like, there's no way to imagine how this, how this works itself out. It's part of the reason why I wanted to talk to you. Cause I, I know you at least think about this stuff and have a perspective on it just having participated in putting movies in theaters.

And I sometimes think I sound like Chicken Little where I'm like, guys, this was already teetering on the brink. And now it being shut down for what's going to turn out to ultimately be nine months, 12 months. I mean, that's border, it's borderline unrecoverable. So it's, it's really challenging, but I don't want to be too pessimistic throughout the rest of this conversation. It's not pessimism. It's just, I'm just confused. Like, because it's so I've never thought about how much a theater in my neighborhood is reliant on state ordinances and corporate decision-making of distributors. And all we hear in the news is Regal or AMC or bankruptcy. But for me, it's like, how does BAM or the Alamo Drafthouse or Metrograph, how do they

not sell a ticket for 12 months and pay their utilities and pay their rent if they have it, or maybe they own the building? I mean, I don't understand how that is supposed to function. And a lot of these are theaters that could open without new movies. Like, Metrograph kind of shows new movies, but they could open tomorrow and just show 35 millimeter repertory prints until May when new movies start coming out and they'd be fine. I don't know if people would go, but they're a theater that can do that in a way that a regal with 10 screens cannot. So it's not pessimistic. It's just kind of shocking to witness the, the, the, as you say, the chicken little scrambling of like the so-called collapse of theatrical possibilities and obvious filmmakers,

even at the, at the top level, as we're discussing who see their films go straight to streaming. To me, it's like, like welcome to the bottom. Like this has been the way all my movies have been released. I've been lucky to have any theatrical presence of any films.

And now it's just kind of depressing to see my heroes have to have the same ignominious fate of my movies and just barely get released and then come out on streaming. Because I'm very used to that. And I've sort of just resigned myself to the fact that, you know, maybe the films play in theaters for three weeks and make a couple hundred thousand dollars. And now people that I always kind of look to to say, well, they'll always be, a Sofia Coppola movie will always be a big deal and, you know, this or that. It's like, maybe it won't. Maybe we'll all just be fighting for space at the bottom of the VOD charts.

This has been your ARP reality check the last 10 minutes. It's just, you know, only because it helps to have something to aspire to and be excited about. Even if you know that only 1 out of 10 relevant, independent releases gets the sort

of traction in theaters or in its initial release that you want it's good to know that you can always be a sick gambling addict which is what a filmmaker has to be and think maybe i'll be that one this time and if nobody's getting that, if people that, you know, happy to admit deserve it far more than me, aren't getting that, then I don't really know how to feel confident that you could even, you know, put down your, your, your chips at the roulette wheel and watch it spin anymore. And it's just really confusing because it makes you feel like what has happened. If, if, you know, if I can't even look to the heroes of the generation that really taught me

about movies to say like, man, you know, just what an exciting thing it must be to have that much freedom and that much, those many eyeballs, that many eyeballs on your work to just say like, one of my favorite filmmakers had a movie come out and I didn't even really know it came out. That's what people should say, but that's what people should say about my movies, not Sofia Coppola's movies. I mean, there are rungs below you too. I mean, that's the thing is like, I don't know how you rebuild this system. And maybe you're right that 22 and 23 year olds will be creative in the face of this, but I think it's going to be challenging. But before we go though,

I don't want to leave on it such a down note. I want to hear like what besides us. Not down, just searching. We're all... Okay. You're questing for the truth about the future. I just want something to feel is a realistic goal and i don't feel down because there isn't i just feel lost because i don't know

what it is yeah i mean my feeling about it is is that there probably needs to be what um publishing has had to lean on in the last 10 to 20 years too which is like a benefactor willing to spend the money on it and also willing to empower over long periods of time creative people and that's it and that's you know that's basically what it's been so far i mean that's how i've gotten to make a lot of films and from me up to higher levels but like what starting to again not be pessimistic but which is starting to terrify me is like when they push like french dispatch a year just to say like we will not we will not take anything less than what we deserve for this film what if that doesn't work like that's that's my question like speaking of the tenant debacle like what if they say like

french dispatch was supposed to come out whatever may of 2020 yeah now it's going to come out 2021 we're going to go to can again as we were supposed to do what if that just isn't there what if the infrastructure has disappeared and all that waiting was for nothing and it just it just makes me very nervous to look a year ahead and think like what if dune comes out this time next year which would be great feels like a great october film and there's just no but what if and what if regal's gone out of business get cracking on your get cracking on your svu spec scripts man i mean that's i would love that i mean i would even love to just, I often watch it and just think like,

God, it would be so fun to just watch them filming this. I mean, if you get a face shield and a mask, maybe you can go check out how they're doing it. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know if they're letting, I mean, even just, I just mean like to be out in the city one day and just see them filming,

just, you know, on the court steps. This is as much wisdom as you've shared the the biggest revelation is the svu news that's just that's huge man it's just it's just so comforting um tell me what you've been watching i had a couple of questions about this that i wanted to ask you um so is there i wanted to ask you specifically is there one filmmaker whose work you either went returned to or or have been boning up on that has like opened your eyes? During the last seven months? Yeah. I don't think I've really devoted myself to that mode of thinking.

I mean, I'll get kind of distracted. I can just kind of scroll through a database of what I've watched, but no, it hasn't been very like individual filmmaker dependent, largely because my wife and I just trade off who picks each night in order to always have it just be something

that each one of us doesn't really have any say in. Not because we're subjecting the other to things that we don't want, but it just helps keep things feel kind of, kind of moving. I will say, I mean, one thing that was kind of a fun revelation, two things I'll say, vaguely answer that. And they're both going back to our previous conversation, just criterion channel things. vaguely answer that and they're both going back to our previous conversation just Criterion Channel things

one was that they put up three by Robert Schoedmack and I it was a Phantom Lady Criss Cross and the Killers and I'd seen

the Killers I watched Phantom Lady thinking I hadn't seen it and then found it in my movie database so I guess I had but I got to experience it as though for the first time

and then Criss Cross to me is just instantly one of the all-time great noirs and i'd never seen it and has this one heist sequence in it with smoke and fog and people wearing masks and i was watching it right after tenant and i was just thinking i mean this has got to be one of the most important films to Nolan. And this sequence specifically, he has copied from a hundred times. And I've never heard this cited as one of his movies. And then this is such an opening the door to a bigger conversation. But after watching these three by Robert Shodemak, I wanted more by him.

Because, you know, kind of a great workhorse classic era filmmaker and we still have the netflix dvd delivery option for one disc at a time and are always on the lookout for films that are widely available on dvd but absent from any streaming option. And got a couple other Robert Shodemak movies from Netflix in the mail, including The Spiral Staircase, which was really great. Very twisted and strange and psychological and a nice Kino restored DVD, but it's not on Amazon. It's not on to rent for $2.99 or whatever. It's not on, you know, to rent for two 99 or whatever. It's not on criterion channel. So the showed Mac movies we watched were pretty exciting. A few others that we got in the mail too.

And, um, and then the, the, the Australian series on criterion was just kind of like one, one hit after another. And the, uh,

trying to look here for where it was the the the bruce beresford movies which you know it's like the guy who made driving miss daisy whatever who cares but then watching like four of his early films i i mean every one of them was kind of great and the you know someone who i had never really thought about as anything other than like some filmmaker who came to America and made

milquetoast movies I've only really seen Breaker Moran what are I never seen that that was new to me Money Movers

is just like a tight heist movie that's as simple and pulpy as they come and then the real the real highlight was this film called The Getting of Wisdom, which is this very odd, kind of quirky, but not in a bad way. It's like a coming of age movie that in a lot of cultures, this sort of boarding school period piece coming of age movie would be kind of cruel and sad. And instead it's just really weird and funny and lighthearted while also

being very sad and was just a total oddball movie. That was to me of like the 15 Australian films we watched on that series, easily one of the best. And yeah, it just made me wonder what else is in the, in the Beresford filmography that might be worth exploring. Did it get you to return to Driving Miss Daisy? Haven't gotten there yet. The one we will check out that we have a tape of

is a Tom Selleck movie called Her Alibi. Oh, I haven't seen that. Just some garbage 80s Tom Selleck romantic comedy but if you like tom selleck which we do and now i guess like bruce beresford this movie has something something for everybody uh probably won't i've never seen driving miss daisy and i imagine that statement will remain true for the rest of my life it's quite bad um okay those were great but those were great but right now it's just we're just into horror season which for me starts around september 20th um have you had a big discovery i want to do like a crazy horror recommendation episode at some point but what's been i know you've seen everything

i feel like i've seen everything because there has anything new come across your transom? Yeah. I mean, I try to, you know, in curating our horror month, which, you know, as I said, starts before October and generally ends around November 4th or 5th, you know, try to largely discover new movies or even new old movies. The one that I have to recommend the highest,

which is on shutter. So it's easy to access, which I heard of before. And a couple of years ago had been recommended and tried to track down at the time was predictably out of print on a 10 year old DVD and very expensive. It's called Fade to Black. Yes. 80s movie, right? 1980.

Yeah, exactly. 80. But shot clearly like 78, 79 79 i saw that they just added this so can you explain the premise it's really cool i have only i just watched it but because of what you just like recently because i saw i watched the shutter like four hour um documentary about 80s horror movies and they spend like a segment of time on this but it's a great movie for movie lovers it is an instant to me just an instant four-star movie um from the very beginning and you know it's as simple as can be it's you know like i said obviously shot in 78 79 los angeles on location and it's just some skinny dweeb who works in a film canister shipping warehouse which is a amazing location in this film and he loves movies and he lives with a deranged aunt who's in a wheelchair and his bedroom is this sort of you know memorabilia factory of

lobby cards and posters and he has a 16 millimeter projector at home because the film's being made in a sort of pre-video era and his sort of film obsession boils over. And then as he sort of feels the world oppressing him, he gets violent and, you know, it's, it's not like a slasher per se. It's more of like a depressing psychological character study of someone who

takes to killing in a very proto scream sort of way. But what's amazing about it other than, you know, just again, incredible period locations of a climax set atop the Chinese theater and this film shipping warehouse where the guy works improbably with mickey rourke playing a huge fan of casablanca um and he goes to a memorabilia store at one point just looks like one of those places you know in the valley who knows that just in the 70s and 80s just bought boxes of storage materials from old places and sold them to collectors. And it's just this great spot.

It's like a sort of democratic love of films because it clearly was made before history had decided which were the 10 greatest noirs ever made. So a lot of the movies he likes are incredibly esoteric and unimportant historically. But in 1979, would have been as valid as anything else. Because they were just old movies. It didn't matter that they weren't the Asphalt Jungle or Maltese Falcon, although I think there is a Maltese Falcon on the counter in the memorabilia shop or somewhere in the film. But it's just the movies he's obsessed with are very, very strange. It's such an interesting snapshot too of Dennis Christopher, who's the star.

It's the movie that he makes between Breaking Away and Chariots of Fire. So he becomes like this much more well-known figure and he just i mean it's kind of it's basically like a horror movie version of taxi driver in a lot of ways like the it's in the dna for sure yeah i mean just an outsider a guy who's treated terribly by society and and kind of pushes back but you know there's like a scene in like a hair salon it's just an amazing looking location. Kind of everywhere they go in the movie, you just can't believe how great it looks.

And it's such a low-key Los Angeles period piece. I mean, now it is. Obviously, it wasn't at the time. But that, to me, has been the highlight of the horror series we've done so far. And the other one that jumps out uh is a korean film that we just watched over the weekend called uh gonjiam haunted asylum i don't know it which you know i we had watched um the tale of two sisters which criterion had just put up um i was in the mood for more korean horror and this is a very recent korean horror film found footage uh in like set in a actual like in korea this asylum is known as

a famous haunted site so then they made a found footage movie purporting to be actually set inside like a real place. Um, and I still carry a torch for found footage. And if there's a new found footage movie, that seems great that I haven't seen. I just, I miss when there were a lot of them and finding a new one from another country, you know, it's like a diamond in the the rough like it might be as good as wreck and therefore you have to watch it because it could be incredible and this was not as incredible as wreck because that's the high watermark but it was really fun it's streaming on shutter on amazon or something can you can you say the title again uh g-o-n-j-i-a-m gonjiam haunted asylum and i'll give one more horror recommendation have you seen i know because you're a shutter a shutter fan have you seen the hell house llc

trilogy you know it's so funny you say that chris ryan on saturday night was like it's now time for you to watch this we've spent the last week watching it and it's incredible you liked it too yeah i mean it's a must watch this would to me these three films were the discovery of last october because the third one was coming out last year and i think a third of these i've never heard of it how can there be three of something must be good they're all on shutter watch the first one instantly one of the best found footage movies i've ever seen wow and does this amazing magic trick of it shows you the thing you want it shows you the end of the chaos first and then goes back and says we're going to show you how we did this as like a filmmaking trick and deconstructs this supposed real life catastrophe and you're like but i've already

seen it you already showed it to me and then the way they unpack it is even more amazing and then the second one is incredibly strong and the third one is as good of a third part of a horror trilogy as you need but the first one is the real is the real the real cream of the crop. And the actual location is 20 minutes away from this Poconos drive-in. So I got to visit the exterior of the actual Hell House. Wow. Okay. So two recommendations for Hell House LLC in three days means I have to watch it like tonight. Yeah. I mean, that's usually what pushes me over the top is I hear about something and I put it in the back of my brain and someone else recommends it. And I think, okay, now I must, but this is three 80 minute found footage movies. But the first one, especially, I mean, to me is as clever and

creative of a new approach to totally independent horror found footage filmmaking as I've seen in a while. You always bring good recommendations. It was good to talk to you, man. Yeah, great to talk. I hope this was somewhat informative. It was very informative. Compelling or interesting. No, I mean, you helped us understand at least like kind of what's at stake. I think for a lot of people who we don't always think about in the moviemaking world. I hope so. And as a sort of parting thought, all I can say is, and this is something you're doing a great job of, people have to keep caring right now or else there is nothing. I, you know, this is why I enjoy, you know, the podcasts I get to listen to where people talk about film and care about it and care about it as a current thing to talk about. No matter how few options there are, people still for the next year, let's say, or until next summer when they try to release movies again, the idea of talking about new releases and films and what's exciting and what's new on streaming even, people have to

keep doing that right now. It's going to be very hard. It's incredibly sad in a lot of ways, but it's just the only thing that is possible is absolutely not forgetting about how much fun it is to discover a great movie, even if you're discovering it at home by yourself and not at a festival or in a theater, because theaters are in terrible shape. Festivals are in terrible shape. Productions are in terrible shape, festivals are in terrible shape, productions are in terrible shape, but the sort of just casual appreciation, much like in Fade to Black, cannot be threatened, really. And that, to me, is the only thing that I feel like can't be taken away. And I hope that, you know, I'm in no danger of losing it,

and I hope that most people continue to find, you know, just thinking about movies as a valid thing to do. You've done that for me today. Thanks, man. It was very good to see you. I wish you luck with all your writing assignments and SVU watching. Yeah, thank you. you