The Big Picture - Garbage Crime Returns! The Post-‘Heat’ Movie Awards and ‘Crime 101’ With Bart Layton!

Episode Date: February 20, 2026

Sean is joined by Chris Ryan to talk garbage crime and the litany of films that have been influenced by the likes of 'Heat'. They also discuss the life and career of Robert Duvall and his major influence in post-1960s Hollywood. They also talk about the bidding war for Warner Bros. Later, Sean is joined by filmmaker Bart Layton, director of 'Crime 101,' to discuss his influences and inspirations for the film. HOST: Sean Fennessey GUESTS: Chris Ryan and Bart Layton PRODUCERS: Jack Sanders and Steve Ahlman Production Support: Lucas Cavanagh Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm Sean Fennacy, and this is the big picture, a conversation show about crime. Garbage Crime. Today on the show, CR is here. Hi. What's up? How are you? I'm doing great, man. It's good to see you. It's good to see you, too. The crime kids are back. We're going to talk about garbage crime because there's literally a movie out right now called Crime 101. You might think it's a guidebook for how to do crime. That's not what it is. It's about my least favorite road in Los Angeles. We will talk about that movie very shortly. Later in this episode, I will have a conversation with Bart Leighton. He's the writer-director. of this movie. It's been eight years since Bart was on the show since his last movie, which is called American Animals, also a kind of heist thriller. And I've been wondering what the hell he's been up to since then. So he came back. He talked about adapting the Don Winslow

novella that his film is based on. He also talked about how his background in true crime producing and directing informed a lot of the real stuff in this movie, which is really interesting. So if you like Crime 101 and you like Crime Movie Sticker on that conversation, we also have a lot of movie world news, which we will talk about right after this. This episode of The Big Picture is presented by State Farm. You know those friends who show up for whatever you're into? The ones will debate which superhero universe is better or binge true crime documentaries with you at three in the morning.

Those friends are gold. State Farm is like that, helping you figure out the coverage that actually fits. Car, home, life, whatever you need, they've got your back. And if you want a hand, a local agent is just a tap away on their award-winning app. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Okay. See our... Some programming notes to begin our conversation.

Jason Concepcion is back on the, on the Ringer podcast network. I could not be happier. It's great news. He and Tyler Parker are hosting a new show called Wait a Second. The first episode of that is now available where you get your podcast. Bill Simmons, Conspiracy Bill Simmons is the first guest. I'm very excited about this show. Of course, we love Jason, a ringer OG.

This show, is this on JMO's corner? We'll find out. I am going on the second episode. Wow. And I'm very excited. Don't get fired. you know. Will you be exploring Dave Dombrowski's comments about Bryce Harper's elite status and the follow-up

to that conversation? We're talking about other powerful men. I see. Okay. Like such as. Jeffrey Epstein. Really? Yeah.

Oh, wow. Digging into those files. Your voice got a little high there. I'm curious to hear about what you find. Yeah. Was your name in the document? No, it wasn't. Did you search for yours?

No. Did you search for yours? You should. So JMO is going to be okay. Problem with my name. It's pretty common. The words, Chris Ryan, are pretty common.

I think there were some hits for Ryan, but like it wasn't me. Uh-huh. You seem really nervous right now. Are you okay? Is it just because... So when's the last time me and you sat down for one of these?

Just me and you. Oh, it's been a while. Like we did one about Predator Badlands, but you were in England at the time. But we were cooking on that. Even the ocean couldn't stop us. We were. One of the lowest rated episodes of the year.

Was it really? Oh. But I think it's because it's actually related to our Crime 101 conversation, and I'm going to circle back with you about that very idea. That was a great pod. This will be even better. I do have one more programming note. March 13th at the South by Southwest film and TV festival.

I will be hosting a live episode of The Big Picture. It's a conversation with Steven Spielberg. And I would know him from... It's a filmmaker of some renown, a young up-and-comer. Okay. He's amassing some credits, and he has a new film coming in June called Discibel. closure day. We will talk a bit about that movie in our conversation. And hopefully his entire career, which of course is incredibly meaningful to both of us. When you say live big picture,

do you mean you're going to be throwing headlines at him? You're going to be like, Steve, the peekie blinders trailer dropped, and your thoughts are what? I feel like he could flow in that state if we wanted to go there, but I think the conversation will probably be located mostly in movies. Scorsese and Spielberg, that's the podcast that I would garnish all my wages for. The two of them, it's the the two, the ego and the id, the two sides of all filmmaking. To have them talk, just like no notes,

do you guys just start rapping about movies? Maybe Marty should just replace me for this event. I would honestly be fine with that. If you wanted to do that, that's not going to be possible, though. So yeah, come see us. If you can't come see us in Texas, then you'll be able to listen to the show

right here on the big picture. So that'll be exciting. Pivoting to another icon, a late icon, Robert Duval, I haven't done an episode since Duval passed away, five years old earlier this week. And I know that you and Bill spoke a bit about him on Bill's show. I had some things I wanted to share.

I do think Bill framed the conversation interestingly around, has any actor been a part of more significant works in the period in which they're best known? So in the 70s, Duval kind of emerges out of 60s, New York, into the new Hollywood. And you just go down the list of movies that he appeared in, essentially in part because he was like a day player for Francis Ford Coppola. But Godfather's one and two. Apocalypse now. The conversation.

All for Coppola. Plus you've got MASH, THX 1138, network, invasion of the body snatchers, and then lesser known stuff, but still big movies, Tender Mercies, the killer elite, true confessions, the outfit, the Great Northfield Minnesota Raid, Joe Kidd, the Eagle has landed.

All in the 1970s. He also, during that time played Jesse James, Dr. Watson, boo Radley, Joseph Pulitzer, and then later in his career, General Robert E. Lee. Duval is America. He is America in terms of American actors. Even more so, I think, than Brando, even more so than, you know, the silent stars of the 1920s and 30s.

I didn't realize this at the time, but reading about him, Vincent Canby, the New York, long-time New York Times critic, once called him the American Olivier, which I find to be interesting. And I'm not sure that I thought of them in the same way until I heard that way of setting him up. What do you think about that? You know, I wonder whether that's an element of he could be. anyone but was always himself. And I don't really know as much, I don't really

know anything about filmmaking, but I like to read more about the technique and artistry that goes into choosing lenses and how you're lighting and what your camera moves mean for the emotional content of a script. I think I understand that a little bit more than acting as a mystery to me, but I did find it

interesting reading after his passing about the Meisner technique that Duval practiced and that Duval was like sort of an accolite of that school of acting and the description of it which is essentially remaining very present emotionally in a moment rather than being like here is the everything that happened to Kilgore leading up to the point where he says Charlie don't surf like the psychological backstory is not as important as like kind of being there in the moment and what a present actor you know when you go back and if

you think about that you watch some scenes from his performances I was even just watching some paper stuff where he's like talking to Keaton about Keaton taking a job at the New York Sentinel, which is like The Times. And he's just so fantastic the way he moves, the way he's like looking, always padding it for his cigarette box. And he just will do stuff that is memorable without being showy. Yeah. And just what an amazing life and career. Yeah, very physical actor, a hand gesturing actor. Yeah. It's interesting you mentioned Meisner because one of the other most famous practitioners of the Meisner approach, who studied under Meisner, it was Diane Keaton,

who just passed away. Similarly present actor, an actor who you always felt like whatever they were saying had just come to them at that time, not that they were reading lines in any way. And his body of work is just crazy. He did eventually win an Academy Award for Tender Merce, season 83. You know, my take in terms of our Oscar snubs,

which we did earlier this week on the show, is that he should have won for Apocalypse now in 79. over Melvin Douglas, who won his second for being there for a very similar role for the first film that he won for. But there's a whole range of experiences like that. But, you know, Tom Hagan, Gus McCray, of course, from Lonesome Dove, one of your favorites. Unbelievable. You can make the case that's his signature part. Yeah, and also considering what a huge novel that was and what a huge novel it remains,

it's incredible that it's hard to read that book now without seeing him. It's not unlike what happened with No Country for me where once you've seen the film when you are reading those pages you're just seeing Brolin and Bardem and Tommy Lee now that I've watched Lonesome Dove several times whenever I go back and page through Lonesome Dove the novel you're just like that's he encapsulates this character

like I just see his face. That's so interesting. I mean he was very comfortable in a lot of different kinds of things. He was comfortable in a Western, comfortable in a contemporary crime film, comfortable in science fiction, comfortable in farce. He could do character stuff. Like, he really was, even though he, I think he has a kind of craggy American South, broad identity.

He's from California. Yeah. And, you know, a guy who is like a little bit more of a conservative libertarian figure also in the world of Hollywood, too. So, but that was not, like, held against him or, like, clearly identified with his character as a figure in the, in the profession. So really unusual guy who also played Stalin and a Nazi colonel in his career. Like, just a huge, huge career, tons of movies to discover if you haven't. done the deep dive, and we will do the deep dive. I think in the spring with Tracy Letts, he'll come on and we'll do a proper Hall of Fame for him.

There are a lot of Duval movies I just haven't seen. Yeah. So I'm ready to dig. I just looked at The Eagle has landed for the first time a couple of days ago. Really interesting movie. Have you seen that? The Eagles Landed? Yeah.

So in that movie, it's a largely British cast about a German operation to kidnap Winston Churchill. Yes. All of the English actors are using their English accents, even though they're playing Germans. Robert Duvall is using a German accent. Yeah, it's got a little bit of Chernobyl where it's like there are two or three people doing Russian accented English, but everybody else is just doing English.

Yes. Yeah, stage English. Yeah, very strange. We also lost Tom Noon. Kelso, Francis Dollar Hyde from Manhunter, beloved character actor, icon of the ringer, honestly. Yes. One of the most important character actor

to The Ringer. I did wonder whether or not he was aware of his importance to us before his past. I don't get that impression based on his general manner. You never know. Yeah.

To me, also the Ripper from Last Action Hero. I'll never forget him. Kane from Robocop 2. In our youth, I think he was a very present figure in movies. And then even more recently,

Anomalisa, he famously was everyone else, except for the two lead characters did all those voices in that film. You probably never saw Anomelisa. I did. Yeah. Wow.

Animation. I remember I saw it. Yeah, I saw it in the theater for screening, I think. You know what he's really fucking scary in? House of the Devil? Oh, fuck. I forgot about that.

The entire movie where he has a babysitter comes over, and it's his home where he's babysitting, where she's babysitting. That's right. And yeah, he's effective in that. I remember he's in damages for like three seasons, quality FX show that's sort of forgotten, but now with Rose Burns Oscar nomination,

maybe more people rediscovering it. He was Frankenstein and the Monster Squad. Big career. Big career. And he directed what happened was, which is a film you made with Karen Silas and is one of like the great, is that late 90s or? I think it's like 94.

94 mid-90s indie films. And if you have a chance to check that out, he's phenomenal. Great movie. And in a lot of ways is like a very, like, emblematic her signature work. Yeah, that you can find it on Radiance. They put out a great edition of that movie. I'm going to miss both of these actors as faces. I think I've been noticing as I've been watching TV and movies this year,

just how rare it. it is to come across people who actually look like real people anymore, because I think people start acting very young, we're able to take care of ourselves. If you're going into something where you're on camera, you're probably worried about your skin and your hair and your teeth and all this stuff. And I kind of miss guys who look like Duval and Tom Noonan. They just made bald guys? Well, I mean, there's part of it as that, but it's part of it is just like their eyes or like the way that they're wrinkled or the way that they're, they walk. And it's not overly trained. It's not overly sanded down, and any movie that they're in becomes, it feels a little bit more real

because they're in it. Like, watching Duval slick back the side parts of his balding hair and network. That's very good, Frank. It's a big-ted hit. Yeah, I know what you mean. I was reading a bit about Noonan, and that he was a basketball player, and he said that playing basketball made him more comfortable performing because he had been in environments where big crowds were looking at him. and that he was not trained to be, you know, he didn't become a professional actor until he was a little bit older in his 20s. And I think that also allowed him to develop

a little bit more of that ordinary oddness that you're describing. You know, he seemed like kind of a strange cat in an interesting way. And yeah, we don't make them quite that way. And in Manhunter, a guy who has a cat, so that's cool. Among other proclivities, yes. So yeah, we'll miss both of those actors a lot.

Let's talk about Paramount. Okay. So Paramount's takeover bid was rejected in favor of Netflix's some months ago. You and I both talked about this many times on our podcasts. I would say, and I insinuated this a couple of times when we talked about it, amongst the people that I know who know shit, they were always like, don't give up on Paramount. This is very much still a possibility that Paramount is going to strong arm their way into acquiring Warner Brothers. and Netflix has gone through all the paces.

Ted Sarando's testified before Congress. Paramount's still keeping up the fight. They're in the middle of this seven-day window right now where they can essentially raise their bid and show why this is a better deal overall for their WB shareholders. And they have identified a cohort of activist investor shareholders within the Warner Brothers umbrella that are open to this. Yes, yes.

And I think with the idea that they're dissatisfied by the potentiality of the Netflix sale and also the idea that, you know, the Netflix sale is for $83 billion. The Paramount bid is for $108 billion. Where that money is coming from and how it's collected has been a subject of much debate. I'm not an expert on that, so I won't try to get into it. But as I have started rereading more stories about this, I just want to say that this doesn't have to happen. And it's going to happen almost certainly. but I think it's important for people to understand that the kind of cynicism of finality that is going on around this conversation I find very depressing. And for whatever reason, over its 100-year history, Warner Brothers has been the centerpiece in the hot potato of media asset.

So every time something, every time there's a changing of the guard technologically economically in America, this is a company that gets passed off. Warner family obviously started Warner Brothers. They held the company for 30 plus years. And then they sold it to a company called Seven Arts in the 1960s, which was run in part by famous movie producer Ray Stark. And Seven Arts was like, we're going to make more movies. They were sort of like how we would think of like legendary or New Regency or Skydance. That's the kind of business that they were.

Being movies with the potential for like box office success? Yes, but also that they were a production company that also did film financing. Okay. And that they were like, what we do is we, um, You know, we backstop, Lolita, West Side Story, whatever happened to Baby Jane. They made a ton of hammer horror films. They were just getting money into movies all the time, and they tried to buy the company. And it didn't work, and they couldn't run it, and they couldn't successfully manage it.

And so they sold it to this holding company, Kinney National Company, which then eventually became Warner Communications. And they held it all the way until Time Inc bought it in 1990. And that obviously was a fiasco. in 2018 AT&T buys it that's a fiasco in 2022 Discovery buys it and they buy it

to sell it there's an AOL merger somewhere that was the time ink Time ink AOL trying to like make all that stuff

fit together and all of those instances none of them were for the good of movies except for the seven arts one that was one

where they were like what we want to do is make more and better movies everything else was like this is asset management and it's okay

to understand that that's how the business works, but when you look at the history of Warner Brothers, which is such an important movie studio to the thing that we love, and you think about all the filmmakers who did some of their best work there. This is the movie studio of Humphrey Bogart's great works. It's Clint Eastwood.

It's Stanley Kubrick. It's Christopher Nolan for the first two-thirds of his career. I find the only way we're talking about this, the only reason we're talking about the studio and its legacy as this, you know, hot potato, to be the most depressing thing in the world. And there being no good outcome and everyone accepting that there's no good outcome,

I don't know what to do with the feeling that I have about it. And we can pretend like this is fantasy football or, you know, we're like report, you call Bond on the rewatchables, like a trade deadline scenario where we're waiting to find out who the next bond is. I think for individual movies and franchises, that's fun. But for something this big, I don't know.

I just, something. feels really lost here culturally and like I'm hosting a movie pod, you know? But I just kind of got to get out of my system. We're coming off of a year too where Warner Brothers kind of showed the way forward for the kinds of movies that we want to talk about which are

you know, director focused, director driven, but with mass wide appeal and could say something about the world we live in. Yep. And they're on a heater and we don't want to see that end regardless of what company winds up owning it. I think there's a

lot of like political ramifications that come out of, you know, whichever way this goes, I too feel like the things that I have read suggest that Paramount thinks they're getting it. Like they're behaving as if once this part happens, it's just going to get waived through by the federal government. Yeah, and that may well be true. And I think from a media perspective, it's kind of a nightmare. It's a disastrous possibility that four of the most significant news powers in broadcasting would all be aligned under one company and then also be potentially at the heels of the president. I don't think that's a good outcome at all.

The Netflix issue, Amanda and I talked about at length in terms of what that acquisition means. Ted Sarandos has been working very hard, including on the town this week. Talking about PVOD. Yes. Communicating all of the ways in which he will maintain the structures that have obviously been so successful for Warner Brothers film. in the last 18 months, I reserve the right to be skeptical about all of those things, especially over time.

But you never know. Also, I reserve the right for, like, there to be a different federal government at some point. And the one thing that's interesting about this that I don't understand is, you know, there's this week of essentially, like, new negotiations between Paramount and Warner. And I don't really understand the timeline after that. I know that there's a huge fee that Warner would have to pay Netflix

if the deal falls apart at this point, Paramount has said it would pay that for Warner Brothers. I'm sure there's going to be a ton of other lawsuits. I think it's $2.5 billion. Yeah. There would be a ton of other lawsuits going around anyway about this. But I don't know whether or not like midterms affects this or whether or not a lame-dunk Trump administration, if that does come to pass, affects this. You know, whether or not the idea that a new, a different administration being in power

would maybe affect like the likelihood of this happening or affect the tenor of the way Paramount is talking about things behind the scenes. I have no idea. I don't know either. I pitched this around to a couple of people this week. The exact framework that you suggested, which is like, Trump will be out of office in whatever, two and a half years in theory. And particularly if there's a shift in terms of the House, the Senate, the mood of the country over the course of that

next two and a half years politically, would that change the posture of the Ellison family? entirely, in terms of what their media strategy in terms of owning these properties is. We don't know. We don't know. Some people don't trust that it would. Some people do.

Some people think it won't matter. Like our political atmosphere will not infect our media in quite the same way. You know, easy for me to say, I guess. If you look at the sort of tenor of a lot of major, say, social media corporations, corporations in general

in 2020, 2021 versus the way that they behave now, they go where the way blows. I tend to feel that way, but I'm not sure if that's enough to feel. My point is, is that I keep saying this sucks. I wish this wasn't happening. I just wish this wasn't happening. And Warner Brothers is very obviously, before it was debt loaded for all of these mergers and acquisitions over the years, is a solvent business. It's very clear that what they're doing makes a lot of sense. We're kind of in a, we're in a bit of an HBO re-apex right now. You know, they're like,

they're on their fifth consecutive show. Like, they've turned industry season four into a hit. That's an amazing thing that kind of only that network can still do. Yes. When you load that on top of, you know, all the Abdi and Deluca era WB movies have been doing. And they did it all over again with Weathering Heights, you know, a movie I didn't really care for, but like, no doubt worked and made $100 million in five days. That's pretty amazing for, you know, a 250-year-old novel adaptation. So I'm just disappointed.

And I, this is, this will be my last sour note before we talk about crime in the movies, because that's a joyful thing for us. But I've just been watching this news happen and listening to podcasts and reading news articles and thinking like the collective acceptance of this story is deeply frustrating.

Do you chalk that up to there being just way more stakeholders who have something invested in the idea of transactional business like this happening than there are people who are like, I really just want the best possible movies and TV shows

to get made by these companies or, I don't know, is it like endemic of like the fact that like these studios are part of portfolios for highly diversified corporations now? And this kind of stuff is where modern corporations eventually wind up is like to be, they either get eaten or eat. It's a very big question and probably worthy of like a years long seminar study. Sure. But in general, I think it speaks to the fact that those who seek to acquire. industries that are built on the backs of artists and artwork, very rarely are in the best service of those people and that they are like commodifiers. And that makes a lot of sense.

Yeah. You know, we work at Spotify. This show is licensed by Netflix. I'm aware of all of the inherent hypocrisy of this conversation. But I hold a lot of what movies can do to the culture very dear. And it's like, last year was an interesting version of like, it's actually still strong. Yeah. It actually still matters and is still powerful. And so anything that feels like potentially stripping that away, I find dispiriting. But if this were, you know, if this were the press box, we would talk about it in a different way. Sure. And I think Brian and David and Joel will talk about it differently when this comes to pass.

But many people said to me when Discovery came in on Warner Brothers that it was like bought to sell. Yes. Bought to sell sucks. Well, I think probably that once the dreams of John Malone that they would have. essentially a fully integrated telecom business, broadband business with things being pumped through the broadband into people's telephones. Once that kind of fell apart and the idea that we would all

just have an AT&T phone and just be sitting there watching Game of Thrones, which was like three years solid of like, isn't this amazing? Isn't this what we've always dreamed of? And then like I think a bunch of different industries kind of blew that out of the water. Now it's like that this is the only endpoint for these guys. It's like they don't do it because they love movies

and they just want to have... I mean, I think that was the dream of Zazzlaw. I was like maybe this guy just wants to sit at Robert Evans's house and rub shoulders with people, but... The ironic thing is, as much shit as he took for the first two and a half years of his administration, the people that he hired did what they were supposed to do. Like, it worked, so why sell?

That's the thing I... You know why. I know why. There's a huge payout coming for everyone who is materially involved at the highest level for that. I get it. I'm not overlooking that. but you can just kind of continue to be an icon of Hollywood if you continue to empower executives and filmmakers

and TV showrunners who do this stuff well. Anyway, as the majority shareholder of the big picture, I'll keep your thoughts in mind. And as I know you're a creator, I'm not trying to make money off your back, but... Who's the worst person you could sell this show to? Chase Sutley. For $1.

Do you think that Chase would cancel it immediately or keep it going in perpetuity but just force me to watch Philly's World Series DVDs. I think what he would do is make you watch Philadelphia Phillies World Series parade videos

while sliding into you high. Man, I saw Ruben Tahada just got hired somewhere and I fell for him. You know who that is, right? I do know who he's a man who chased attempted to murder. It was a baseball play.

Okay, yeah. This episode is brought to you by Volkswagen. There is such a thing as becoming too comfortable in your day to do. but our favorite films with stories that make us change the way we think that weren't made by people content to just sit back and watch the world pass by. This is your sign that you shouldn't either.

From us, from VW and the other drivers out there, grab the wheel. Do what you love, even if it means taking the road less traveled. Learn more at VW.com. Let's talk about crime. Yeah. I don't remember the last time we talked about garbage crime. It's been a long time. We have done many iterations on our garbage episodes for those of you who have not heard them before.

Did we do something after Rebel Ridge? Was there, that was garbage revenge? Perhaps we did. So that's last year, right? That's early last year. And the crime was the OG. Crime was the first time that we talked about this. And maybe we've done one other crime episode as well.

But we actually have a movie called Crime 101. This movie is the essence of what we were describing in so many ways. So this new film, as I mentioned, written and directed by Bart Leighton, based on a novella by Don Winslow. you know, an extremely successful crime writer in his own right. It stars Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Barry Keoghan, Monica Barbaro,

Corey Hawkins, Jennifer Jason Lee, Nick Nulte, and Hallie Berry. That is quite a cast. It's quite mind-blowing when, you know, Jennifer Jason Lee is showing up for one scene, essentially. Yes, I spoke with Bart about that, and he explained how that happened. The premise is thus,

a master thief and an insurance broker joined forces for a big heist while a determined detective pursues them to prevent the multi-million dollar crime. So what did you think of Crime 101? I really enjoyed myself and enjoyed watching it. It was instructive because this is a lot, Los Angeles crime saga in the same way. He is very self-styled as one to think about the conclusions of both films. And without drawing too giant of like a, without painting too wide of abroad,

how films have changed and how Los Angeles have changed in the ensuing decades. This is a movie that's very much about wellness and healing and is about

a bunch of characters going through very Los Angeles versions of trying to get better in their lives. They're doing yoga. They're drinking smoothies. They're listening

to meditation apps. They're trying to unpack their childhood trauma and find love. And so even though there is elements of like broken people trying to put themselves back together in heat,

I think it ultimately ends with staring into the abyss while Moby plays and realizing that you're just going to die alone. Yes. Yeah, Heat is a samurai movie, right? And Crime 101 is... It's goopier. It's goopier. There's something more...

It's also playing by certain rules that I don't think really reveal themselves until the end, because when you're watching it, you're like, oh, this is a gritty... This is shot in L.A. There's some really cool shit happening. there's some great chases, there's some great set pieces. But then about midway, three quarters full through, you're like, oh, this guy's Batman,

he doesn't hurt any. Like, he only puts guys in headlocks. He doesn't really hurt them. You know what I mean? Yeah, and there are villains who do the hurting. Yeah. We can see the good versus evil. The movie is also, I think that's right on and the idea that like two key characters

meeting at a yoga class is fascinating and very wise. And it's very smart about the city right now. The other way in which is pretty smart about the city right now, now, I think, is that it's definitely a class-conscious movie. That's like, here's what downtown looks like. Here's where unhoused people are. Here's what it's like doing business under a bridge. And also, here's what it's like on the beach.

Here's what's like in Beverly Hills. Character says, why would you live anywhere but the beach if you were going to live here? Yeah. So there's a lot of attention paid to that. And look, there's just not a lot of movies that are shot here anymore. Forget about the state, the city of Los Angeles. Are there 10 movies a year that are shot here where you're seeing this much of the city on film? I couldn't believe I didn't see this movie get filmed.

There's the fender bender in this movie takes place in Atwater Village. Monica Barbaro and Chris Hemsworth's first date is right on the corner of Sunset in Echo Park. It's in the hood. It's in the hood. It's really, it really is. Yeah, it's exciting to see that. Hemsworth is an interesting cat. Yeah.

He gets a lot of flack for not being able to carry movies in which he's not Thor. He's done some really cool stuff over the years. He's also done some stuff that hasn't worked. I think stuff like rush, extraction, those are cool movies. And there are movies that sit on his shoulders. In the heart of the sea. I knew you're going to say in the heart of the sea.

Isn't that part of the sea is dope originally? Yes. It was the black sea and in the heart of the sea? Jude Law movie on a submarine was black sea. And then in the heart of the sea is the Herman Melville hanging out. Okay. So a little bit of like a red flag on that one for you for why you like that movie. but you know he's also been a part of some movies that have not worked in this way

this is a tricky part for him it's very Neil McCauley in a lot of ways except it gives you backstory it gives you a little bit of history the other thing is that Hemsworth is doing something in his performance where it's like is it that he's just affected by his upbringing and the challenges that he has a kid is he like neurodivergent in some way like he has a lot of ticks kind of physical actions he struggles with eye contact. He kind of like turns away. He's very finicky in some ways. It's like a, it's not quite a showy performance, but he's trying to tell the audience. Like, this is not yo jimbo. You know what I mean? This is not the most trained, calm, easy living. He's not the

man with no name. He's the foster child with with scars. So what do you think about him? I didn't mind it. I don't know how I feel about him in. I'm going to turn down some of my inherent charm. Obviously, if you see Thor, you just can see that this guy has a kind of classic movie star charm that I don't think. I think he probably seems unsettled about because he often chooses to do much more black hats. A really good example of like monosyllabic. It's just me, lone gunman out on my own. Yeah, McQueen.

I took it more to be a guy who is. never quite playing himself. He's always living in a pre-furnished apartment that he moves quite frequently to. He, in the opening shot of him, is him trying to rid himself of all evidence of DNA, which is, you know, quite on the nose, but also very effective. So he's like getting all his hair follicles and dead sin's skin cells off. That's like a guy who's never really one thing. And I thought, as I was watching this movie in the same way, maybe when some people, People watch Heat where they're like, if you just cut this plot line,

this movie would be two hours and I'd watch it once a week. I felt the same way about Crime 101 where I was like, you could do that too, but I don't know what you'd cut. I don't know what you'd cut that would take away from some of the,

honestly, like really evident charms, even if it plays certain notes that are very familiar. Well, it's kind of an ornate structure of characters interweaving, and the whole movie needs to kind of have a convergence where all of them are kind of, you know, they find each other at the end,

and their plot lines cohere. So it would be very hard to remove one because you do need a detective in search of the criminal. You do need essentially this elevated accomplice in the Halle Berry character. You do need this antagonist figure in Barry Keogan. The movie does kind of like dispense with Nick Nolte

who just kind of like disappears from the movie one third of the way through. I think at a certain point it becomes clear that there's like too much load to bear on the story in general. Ruffalo, fascinating that he's still doing parts like this. Well, he's just doing it

simultaneously with task. And he's been doing this for 20 years. I mean, collateral in the cut. Like, he's always playing cops. He's always playing these characters. And maybe he just feels super comfortable in this world. He's fine in this.

He adds a layer of credibility to any story like this. Likewise for Hallie Berry, who's just like stands in for every hot woman who got hired for their looks and then was forced to use their looks in the workplace all the way up until

that no longer became convenient for their bosses. Yeah. And then so she is like kind of discarded for a younger model. And then that leads to her seeking a kind of revenge. She plays a character who does private insurance for incredibly rich clients who need their artwork or their events or their belongings to have like a certain layer of of insurance. Would you say that Tate Donovan's character is the one that you related to the most in the film?

I'm trying to think of who I related to most in the movie. It's probably Barry Keoghan. Yeah, Barry Keoggan plays another thief in more of a live wire, a loose cannon, also in contact with the fence played by Nick Nolte, who was this sort of, and it was interesting to hear Bart talk about fences that he has met and the relationships that they build with their young thieves

and they kind of seek out these foster kids who don't have father figures, and then they bring them into their world, and then they encourage them to potentially do jobs to create this kind of Fagan-Oliver relationship, which is, I thought was really interesting. The movie doesn't psychologize that stuff that much, but if you

take a minute to think about it, I think it's really effective. But Kuygen is just like, he's just playing wing grow. He's playing wingro and he's playing wingro if he was in good time. Right. Like he's got the blonde hair. He's got the affectation a little bit of like, I get to be on a motocross bike, the entire movie.

So I wear windbreakers and a black helmet everywhere. Yes. And he is a very necessary bit of energy in this movie. Agree. Where he is the one who feels like I don't know where this scene is going when he's on screen. Where everybody else, you're like, let me guess.

Mark Ruffalo has got a problem with his ex-wife, but he's going to eventually through meditation and yoga and finding Halliberry, like, loses beard and become much more self-satisfied. Barry Keoghung is in, like, laws of gravity in the 90s. Like, he's running around. You can tell there's a scene in a gross. store where Chris Hemsworth has chased Barry Keoggan across downtown Los Angeles. Barry Keoggan gets into a car accident with his motorcycle when he winds up in the back of a convenience store, rather on the floor of a liquor store where he's just like concussed and

rolling around and is just like it feels more like surveillance footage than it does like a movie with Chris Hemsworth in it. He's like doing things to Hemsworth where I feel like it's even throwing Hemsworth off because he's just like, I'm not gay. I'm not gay, I'm not gay. Yeah, I do, I do. And Hemsworth is just like, all right, mate, you can go over here. Yeah, I think it's a testimony to him as an actor.

And, you know, he was in Leighton's previous film American Animals. So that might have been one of the first times I ever saw him. And I was thinking about this recently with the Beatles movies, where he's playing Ringo. And he's not Ringo. He looks like Ringo in that photo. Sure. But his energy is Keith Moon. He's a maniac.

He's always a maniac. Even when he's sweet in Vangu's a man and Sharon. He's, or John, yes, there's definitely something kind of punk chaotic about him. I agree that he helps the movie's energy stay high because at times it can flag because you have so many kind of taciturn and wounded characters. And a lot of times I can like bring things down. But I enjoyed him. I did feel a little bit like somebody should just shoot this guy in the face in the 43rd minute of the movie. Yes, there's a couple of moments where you're just like, why does he keep giving, why does Chris Hemsworth's character,

Mike Davis, which I don't know if it was purposely named after one of the great chroniclers of Los Angeles. Yes, recently passed away, author of City of Courts. He just keeps being like, I've got my on you. You know? Was he doing an Aussie accent from Los Angeles?

It was really funny when that character is like, born and bred him, mate. Yeah, boy heights. Yeah. The tamales have there, mate. We did get Halliberry and Mark Ruffalo. We got some Americans in there. I think

So I think the movie is pretty cool. I think especially the opening heist with the jewel thievery is so specific and unusual and so tense and well made and then the car chases are so good and seeing it in the city that we just,

we did used to literally get three of these a year and we really do not anymore. So I really feel like we have to celebrate stuff like this. That being said, this almost feels like a movie that they had to like beg to get it into theaters and they did and it got like kind of

a medium response in theaters and it's going to be like one of the biggest streaming movies of the year. I think when it goes to Amazon it's going to be fucking enormous. Yeah, because as a two and a half hour and change movie, it is I hate saying that people can do this but it is kind of like you can watch it over

two nights if you wanted to. It's not the end of the world. It's funny. The entire premise of us being here today is to talk about garbage heat and movies influenced by heat. But the more that I was thinking about Crime 101, it was almost like garbage shortcuts. The Don Winslow text is slightly more like these

disparate lives in Los Angeles to intersect in places, but the LA underworld and sucking normal type people into it and everything like that. And there is like an element in the beginning of the movie where it's a different kind of filmmaking experience where you're like, here's Hallie Berry on the freeway, but then it goes across the lanes to see Mark

Ruffalo going that way. And it's like, this idea that perhaps it's a little bit more curious about everyday LA life before it gets entirely diamond heisty. It was an interesting alternative reality for this movie, but ultimately down to Nick Nolte is essentially the John Voight character. As you said, the Barry Keogun character is essentially Wayne Groh. Neil McCauley is the Chris Hemsworth character. I haven't mentioned Monica Barbaro,

who is very much playing EDI. Monica Barbaro coming off an Oscar nomination, I think her first part, I just want to say she has the juice. She's excellent in this movie. That's like easily the most thinly written part in the movie. She's like four scenes and she's incredible and all of them. Yes.

She's just so watchable. You're so invested in her as a person. Yeah. Which is actually quite different from the archetypal characters that are in the movie throughout, even though she's less well written. It's interesting. I'm really excited to see what she does in the future. This is, I don't even know.

I don't know what technique she studies. But if you want an example of kind of what we were talking about, present, Duval, watch her in the Fenderberg. scene where she's like just doing this kind of a weirdly written scene because it's like Chris Hemsworth gets out of a car. He's like, you want to get a dinner? Paul Hogan gets out of a car. Yeah. That's not a knife, Monica.

She just does like five things. You're like, oh, like while they're having the most banal conversation. Yeah. She's interesting. She's engaged. Yeah, I agree. I really like her. Okay, before we get into our proper state of garbage crime and post-heat award. Let's power rank the freeways in Los Angeles. Okay.

You said 101 is your least favorite. Least favorite? The 101.110 interchange in downtown Los Angeles, where you're coming down off of the 101, downtown of Los Angeles is on your left. You're doing 60, in Sean's case, probably faster. And nine lanes are merging, and people are trying to get far right and far left

to get to the 110 at the same time, is always just to like say a big prayer, close your eyes, blast shield down, and just let the force take you. So you're saying you don't look when you're changing lanes? I just hate that merch. You know what I mean?

It's just like, I just think that we could have done better as a community. I agree. When you look back at a film like LA Confidential, you see that the designs of these roadways, we did not imagine that the population of this city would triple or quadruple over time. When you're reading like Joan Didian essays from the 70s

and she's like, I was on like the Hollywood Hills and I just put her down all over to Santa Monica in 20 minutes. I was like, what the fuck? When's the last time you just plop down on your chaise lounge and read some Joan Didion? Just curious.

It's probably been a couple years, but she's a big author for me. You'll just tuck in every once in a while. You know, slouching towards Bethlehem. Just slouch. I am curious. I'm a big fan of her novels. Thanks for asking.

Play it as at least, et cetera. Democracy. I'm not judging the woman. She's one of the greats. I heard some slander on jam session about her. Please settle down. Unsubscribe. Unbelievable.

I would, so the best highway by far, by far in Los Angeles is the two. Of course it is. The two is elite. That's only built for Cuban links. That's right. That's where the heads, you and me, we go out, you can get close to 90 up there. I wouldn't do that, but yeah. I mean, you could.

You could. Barry Jogan could. Put rap music on and drive into a mountain. It is the best road. That's the best road. We're never on the 405. Everyone who has to be on the 405 wants to drive into the ocean

at the end of the day, and I understand that. We're fortunate that we've been eastiders the entirety of our time here. Is there a tunnel coming? I heard there's like they're thinking about building a tunnel that would like... That's extremely ominous to what? I heard there was some like big project

where they were going to alleviate some of the traffic on the 405. Did you hear that from the judge from who framed Roger Rabbit? Who told you this? The judge from Blumery and Dolby. Wow. So the evil judges in the history of film and books I'm not a big fan of the grapevine. I'm not a big fan of the five.

Okay. Yeah, the five, no. Five scary. 134 I have some time for. Yeah. You know, wrong time of day. You get trapped up there. You know, one of the things I really have a problem with on the 134, and even on the 101, if you're going really far north outside of the L.A.

Is, God, that son will fuck you up. Yeah. Like, it gets in your eyes and you're just like, I have no idea what's going to happen next. I'm listening to Chris Long, my eyes close. What's going on with you and Chris Long? I just think he makes the best podcast in America. Honestly, it's like four hours long. They go through every game.

It's a football podcast called Greenlight. Our listeners, no. All right, don't talk down. Don't talk down to the listeners. Do you think all the people were like, I was promised Dob mob? What's going on? Well, they turned it off as soon as they saw your face.

The Domob is dead today. PCH. I think overrated. Overrated. Yeah. As a driving experience, I think it's overrated. I think what they promised us, that feeling you're supposed to get, of letting the engine rip on the open road and having the Pacific right there.

I've very rarely experienced that. Can I tell you what's underrated? 105. It's pretty good. 105 on the way out to LAX. Sure. Going by USC. Yeah.

Get a little fast track going? You have a fast track? I don't even have fast track. I'm just like, charge me later. You just pop in that lane. Yeah. You're one of those guys. It's not even one of those guys.

They take your picture. They send you a bill. Well, as we know, they're always taking your picture. Yeah. Yeah. You really are a Keogun in that way. It's just getting any lane. You get an HOV all by yourself?

No, I wait for my, if I, I only do HOV if I have a passenger. I don't, I don't follow that. Yeah. Okay. Are you worried that Gavin Newsom is listening to this podcast? What are you so worried about? Any other thoughts on highways and roadways? Do you have a favorite non-Lost Angeles?

highway, the one that you've always treasured? Well, certainly no highways on Long Island, all of which should be destroyed immediately. You guys should just take boats. The Northern State and Southern State Parkways delete them. The Long Island Expressway, delete it. Hey, does the party in Eyes Wide Shut

happen in Long Island? I believe so. Yeah, I think that's the insinuations like the Hamptons. It's got a long, long ride out to that house. You've been reshutting recently. I did. I reshut. For personal purposes, not for work at all. Just a prep for weight. a second, yeah.

Just to you head of your material. Prep for the end of this podcast. Were you in eyes wide shut? Were you, did you appear in a mask? No,

I would have been too young. Would you? I think, you were originally cast. Oh, 99. I would have been 22. I would have been fine. You were originally cast

in the Lili Sobieski part, as I recall. And Kubberg last minute swapped you out. You would have been really good in that. Oh, man. That movie's fucking incredible. Were you like a really

sweet-faced kid? I could try and find a picture if you want as like a little kid. You can post that to see our heads. You don't need to show me that. All right. Well, then you're fucking asking. I don't know.

Were you always like a grouch empire? Yeah, I was. No, I was the same Braddy know it all that you know today. Ellen Love. Thank you. I appreciate that. Garbage crime.

Yep. So it's funny that we're talking. I just mentioned Long Island. There is another movie that is out this weekend that a man and I will talk in more depth about on Monday, which is called How to Make a Killing. which is a soft remake of Kind Hearts and Cornets,

the Alec Guinness movie starring Glenn Powell. And that is also kind of a garbage card movie. Was it formerly known as Huntington? So, I'll tell you, do you know why it is? Did I tell you this? I mean, because of Long Island? So the film is about a man who is, should be the heir to a very wealthy family fortune,

but his mother has been excommunicated from a family. And so he has to go live in New Jersey. his family and these billionaires live in Huntington, Huntington Long Island, my hometown. So much of the movie is oriented around the idea of getting to Huntington. I do want to just state for the record, I don't think there are any billionaires living in Huntington, and there certainly were not when I was growing up. It is the Err middle class town, Hamlet. Is John Patton coming on your show to talk about this?

He's not, no. I read he's from South Carolina. I would love to hear a bit about how he landed on that. Now, just north to the Gold Coast, Cold Spring Harbor, sure. Yeah. Maybe some. Where's Steve Kohn live? Well, he lives in space.

I think he's got a colony on Mars that he's been building out full of Juan Soto's that will be sent back down to Earth to dominate the National League East this year. But, yeah, Huntington, the movie was originally called that because of my hometown. I kind of enjoyed how to make a killing, I think because my expectations were low, but we'll get more into that. But so that movie came out. We've already talked about the RIP, which is pure garbage crime. I mean, straight up, a perfect example. It's garbage crime.

I don't know if I would call it garbage heat specifically. You know what it is? It's garbage cops. And that's a different kind of thing. And, you know, I was just having a conversation with a prominent filmmaker who really enjoyed the RIP. And he was like, name me three better cop movies in the last 10 years. And I was like, you know, they don't really make those anymore. I was like, end of watch, Wind River?

Like, it's a pretty short list. Do you call Dennis Steve's a cop movie? I don't. I mean, I guess it is, but it's more Big Knicks movie. So, Dead of Thieves is obviously, before Crime 101, the chief exemplar of garbage heat. This is a movie that in almost every aspect of it from the cop and robber who have begrudging respect for each other or not, but especially they still have a relationship to using the urban landscape as its battlefield, to having high and very technically. precise, well-researched crimes committed by like the

robbers themselves. So I came up with like a list of about 40 movies that have happened since heat. I think you could argue that there are different eras for these. Personally, I would say garbage heat starts in 2008 with the Dark Night.

So this is the first time that I remember filmmakers really, really, really referencing Heat when as soon as the press started for the movies. And obviously Dark Night features that incredible opening heist, which is very much like one out of heat, I think a lot of the way that Nolan shoots architecture and characters against cityscapes is very much influenced by Michael Mann. But that was when I first remembered like, oh, heat's become a huge text for a new generation

of filmmakers. Do you have another example of that? That came earlier? That's like, what, 13, 12 years, 13 years after the heat came out. That movie is so influential in so many different directions, the Dark Night. I think that that makes a lot of sense. There's no doubt that man is a huge influence, I think to this day on Nolan. Even just in the general tone of seriousness

that both men take to their films where you're sort of like, you were watching ancient and essential rituals between professionals. That's like a big part of both of their ethics, I think. So yeah, I don't know if I can think of another movie that comes before that that really changes anything. Now, there are plenty of imitators

that come in the wake of heat. including Michael Mann, imitating himself at times. But I think you're right that that kicks off a new era. So what does that era portent? I think Mann's place,

because when he came out, it was right after Last, the Mohicans. And for my generation of viewers, I think man was kind of a lone swordsman. Like, he didn't feel part of a generation of filmmakers. He had emerged out of television. He emerged also out of, like, fine art school and like you know like he had almost like a more of a ridley scott esk trajectory than

he did maybe scorsesey spielberg etc and then after heat becomes kind of a juggernaut in terms of like being a huge crime film he goes on and he makes a bunch of things that are ostensibly oscarbate with the exception of collateral but like ali like uh the insider things like that and the crime aspect of um of heat is sort of left to image to kind of build up over the years. I think that there are some movies here that I listed that could very well, you know, say we own the night, James Gray.

James Gray has a lot of different influences, but this is a film where it's very much like you've got these two guys on opposite sides of the law with an emotional connection with each other. Is Duvalin we own the night? See the dad? There you know.

Bring it all together. Yes. But that's a good example of a film where I would not necessarily call it garbage. And I'd be very curious to know whether James Gray was like I had heat in mind that was a big big thing for me or if he's like...

I don't know. I've never talked to him about Michael Mann. I mean, I know for those films, that film in the yards, there was certainly a lot of Coppola as a big influence. And then I think, I think it's fair to assume that there's like some Jerry Schatzberg in there, you know, like Scarecrow movie, like that stuff like that also feels very resonant. But like he's into the character of New York. I don't know if he's like a cop movie head as much. You know, French connection.

obviously hugely influential on all these movies too. Is it an upcoming film? Also like a crime film? It is. I don't think it's a cop movie. I think it's a crime movie. Yeah, but it's about two brothers. But yeah, that's a really good one. We own the night, and I guess that does precede the Dark Night. You know, you've got the town here in 2010. I think that there's kind of a pop sensibility that that movie has that also has been pretty resonant. And I think where you see garbage crime resonating the most is not really in movies like Crime 101 or even in movies like The Rip, which went straight to streaming, but in a lot of, like, straight to VOD movies.

Yeah. And there are a lot of movies that's like Gerard Butler, Samuel Jackson, and Mila Jovovovich holding a gun on the poster. And it's like, you know, state of calm. Yes. And you're like, what is this? Where did this come from? Was this movie made in 14 days? These are, like, Red Box movies where, like, they get Aaron Eckhart.

Yes. You know, to play a Serbian terrorist or something. And it's like he kidnaps a tow truck driver who has the keys to an armored car. And it's one crazy day with the Serbs. Yeah. So I find that the town is very influential on those movies. And the town obviously a big heat is the central text. That's very honest about that.

I think a couple of others that I wanted to shout out were more recent ones. A trio of movies dragged across concrete, which is a Craig Zaller movie from a few years ago with Mel Gibson and Vince Vaughn, which is really one of the more unique crime movies maybe as I've ever seen. Zaller is, he also directed Ryan and Soul Black 99, is it great. And has a new film that he's apparently finally starting production on The Bookie and the Bruiser with D.O. James and Vince Vaughn soon. Very, very, very, very unique writer and director.

Oh, Bone Tomahawk is obviously the one he's maybe best known for. Yep. And this one is kind of, half Don Siegel, John Frankenheimer, 70s, hard-boiled crime fiction. And then almost like an odd... I don't even know how to describe the comic sensibility of this movie,

but there is like a very visual sense of humor that usually involves incredibly gory violence. And dark irony. And it says it's pretty unique to it, but the use of... the use of like this incredibly epic tapestry to tell a story about the underworld I thought was very influenced by

by heat even if not necessarily explicitly visually is this a good time for crime movies well I think that a lot of our favorite performers are very interested in being in crime movies I think it's always going to be a really attractive genre because

I think everybody grows up watching these kinds of movies and, you know, Austin Butler and when he gets to this level of his career, what does he want to do? He wants to fucking do close gun training and kiss Joey Kravitz and run across the street. You know what I mean? Like, that's what we want to do.

Yeah. So I think that you're always going to see an interest when it comes from actors. I don't know whether or not something like Crime 101 is like a viable studio proposition. I mean, I assume the $90 million dollar price tag for this movie is one of those like inflated because everybody got paid their entire fee for the entirety of like of the lifetime of the movie the way Netflix kind of works.

I think it, I think that's my gut tells me that that's a factor. I don't know if they got paid their entire back end, but there was this expectation that the back end would not be as strong on the box office. And so the fact that it is going to be a big streaming movie probably very soon was built into the framework. But the other thing to consider is that they shot in Los Angeles. Yeah. And shooting in California is so expensive.

And when you read stories about a movie like this or about one battle after another's budget, those movies shot in California. Most movies don't. Most movies shoot in fucking Bulgaria. And they do that so they can have the budget. One battle is shooting up in Northern California in towns where they basically have the run of it. This is fucking shutting down Sunset Boulevard like multiple times. Yes.

Which is in 2026 incredibly difficult. You mentioned caught stealing in Austin Butler. And last year had this wave of movies that I thought were really interesting where a lot of garbage crime stuff, maybe not all heat-led stuff, but in that realm, like no other choice, caught stealing,

Shane Blacks play dirty, Roof Man, Den of Thieves, Pantera, havoc, highest to lowest, all pretty garbage-crimey and like all kind of nodding

to their 70s and 80s influences in a big way, all driven by a tours. And weirdly, we are missing a class of filmmaker that is like Don Siegel, you know,

like I love, like almost all the directors who made the movies that I just mentioned, even if I didn't love all of those movies. But it's almost like those filmmakers need to take a step down class-wise to get a movie made, and they're then leaning into the past to get this stuff made. So it feels like a very transitional moment in how and when we get these movies. To your point about Crime 101's budget and thinking about how it's how it even got off the ground. I mean this half as a joke, but more filmmakers should be.

be more like Guy Ritchie and direct more movies and take more bites at the apple. I don't really quite understand how Guy Ritchie gets two movies a year financed at this point because I don't really think he's had a very significant box office hit in a while. Like, you know, he has successes. He did The Gentleman and the Gentleman became a Netflix series. He did, I think, what was the Jake Gyllenhaal war movie? The Vow. that was the covenant. The covenant. He obviously did ambulance, which we thought I have here as...

Michael Bade did ambulance. Oh, sorry. He obviously did Wrath of Man, which I have here is garbage heat. But what he does is he's just like, I like making these movies and I'm going to make one every nine months. So he has two movies this year. Yeah. And he has a third coming maybe at the end of this year or 2027. And I think you're right.

And he really... That's really more of a Don Siegel kind of air. Yeah. Or it's just like you're just kind of always working. And some movies are classics in other movies. You just forget about it. He did make a movie last year. Do you remember what it was called?

Is this the one with Alan Richson, the mystery of extraordinary? No? No. That was the Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare. That was in 2024. Last year he made a movie called Fountain of Youth. Oh, right with Natalie Portman.

And John Krasinski, written by James Vanderbilt, the man who rode Zodiac. Did you see this? I did. It's abhorrent. It's fake national treasure. It's terrible. And, you know, sometimes you miss.

Yeah. Sometimes you miss. Not a garbage crime movie. Nevertheless, there is something going on. Like Gus Van Zand made Dead Man's Wire, which is like a clear dog day afternoon homage that just came out earlier this year. There's a movie coming out this year called How to Rob a Bank. What do you think that's going to be?

The Adventures of Cliff Booth is going to be a crime movie. It's very clear from the trailer that that's got more of like a nitty-gritty guys swinging hammer. and firing guns at people kind of energy to it. So something's happening. For sure. I think that this genre is probably and not a dissimilar place from horror where there is a market for

quote unquote elevated crime and elevated horror. A lot of that going through A24. A lot of it about trauma, a lot of it about like, you know, often set in pretty remote places. I would say that crime, when it's on like the Jeremy Sondon, end of things is

borderline awards worthy but then there is like kind of this huge gap between Rebel Ridge and to your point, like the movies that seem to populate airline movie galleries and we're just like, wait what? Anthony Hopkins

did six of these, you know, like... Yeah, I watched a really interesting one last night that I had checked in with you about. Just sort of a garbage crime, sort of a political thriller called Sovereign. Yeah, the Nick Offerman movie.

Which stars Nick Offerman as a kind of a resettler of the American idea and someone who wants to really operate outside of systems and, you know, very kind of like Jan 6-Coded, I would say, and his kind of collision course with a cop played by Dennis Quaid, who was in pursuit of him. And he's starting to build up this sort of like cult-like

faction. It reminded me a little bit of the order from 2024, the Jude Law Nicholas Holt movie about a white power faction and the FBI. And there are also, I think it's an opportunity to, on a very small budget, create, like, interesting character parts. Like, Nick Offerman is excellent in that movie. And Nick Holt is excellent in that movie. Now, those are showy parts about crazy zealots. But there's, like, you can get away with something on a

smaller scale, too, with these kinds of movies that you can't, franchise movies can't support this kind of work. So another film about zealots that made me, I'm thinking of, because you're talking about Sovereign is Standoff at Sparrow Creek, which is this, Henry Dunham film starring James Badgedale that was made in like 2018 that I'm a huge, huge fan of about, there's a shooting happens

that a policeman, like a cop gets killed in a, I think it's Michigan. And then a militia gathers, six members of a militia gather in a warehouse to figure out which one of them did it, or is the mole? It's like basically a mole hunt. And he is now,

Henry Dunham is finally directing a new film that's coming out, I believe this year called Enemies with Austin Butler and Jeremy Allen White. And that sounds very garbage crime, garbage. Sounds very heathish. Yeah. He is so tough, man, because

it's a perfect object, right? And we don't have a lot of movies like that. And I... I'll never forget asking Joanna Hogg, what's the last great thing you've seen? And she said, heat. And I was like, really? That was your answer. That's awesome. That was your answer. But, like, I think that it, it moves beyond the realm of, like, guy T&T cinema, you know? Like, it is a very, it is, it is kind of a spiritual movie.

It is. And kind of, like, intellectually rigorous in its way. Yeah. But it is kind of getting into that, like, Casablanca singing in the rain zone of, like, the Godfather. Like, we all agree. Yeah. this is an American classic. And that's, it's unusual for something like that to happen so late. It's survived its own critique.

Its critiques have now become parts of its charm. So like the Natalie Portman subplot has now almost become like camp. And people are like, no, no, no, you don't get it. Without Lauren, this doesn't happen. Yeah. Yeah, it's an interesting aspect of it. Okay, so you have compiled some awards. Oh, yeah, because, you know, we just did a Bill Pod the other week

where we gave Heat Awards to the NBA. season. So I thought what I would do is... Does the Nix get any awards in that episode? The Nix have not been talked about very much. What's going on with that? Do you think? I don't know. I think they're just kind of like boringly okay, but I know that there's been some controversies with Carl, with Kat and like Mike Brown not getting cats back and dudes don't like Mike Brown. What's up with that? Are you guys okay?

They're really not at their best when he's on the floor. With cat. Yeah. And we all know it. We all team Landry Shamit. We want him to get more time. It looks great out there. It just seems like... We got Alvarado now? Weirdly, it's not your year. You know? Many people are saying this, but, you know, they said it last year,

and we were one fucked up Tyrese Halliburton shot from going to the NBA finals. So, you know, that's okay. I came up with some Heat Awards for garbage heat movies. You did. So first, this is just because we were rolling with Heat Awards. So I thought this would be fun. The Venice Boulevard Award for Best Opening Heist Set Piece. Now, this goes to all the movies that are not Heat that I feel like Heat influenced.

Okay. I haven't looked at any of these. Okay. The obvious one here is the bank robbery that opens the town. very, very self-consciously, I think pulling tonally from the Venice Boulevard heist that starts heat

with the truck and the arm of car. The couple of regular fellows award for best duo from opposite sides of the law. I go Clive Owen and Denzel Washington from inside man.

Whether you consider that heat, garbage heat, I don't know, but that interaction of like cop who does what he does best, robber who does what he does best, But then there are also forces outside of them that are a common enemy, in this case, Nazis. And like these guys, their interactions are very memorable in the film.

One of the great, you know, kind of cop and robber. Can I complicate this award a little bit? I think there's a new nominee in this award. Hit me. A little different from what you're describing, but related, which is perfidia Beverly Hills and Colonel Stephen Jay Lockjaw. Yeah. Perfidia Beverly Hills, of course, who is pursued in the end.

aftermath of a bank heist. Of course. And someone who needs something from her and she needs something from him. And that is like the animating incident of that entire movie. It's a great wrinkle. We don't think of one battle as a as a heat-esque film. It's an LA heist movie. It is. The Randy Newman I Love L.A. Award for Best Use of Los Angeles in a crime

saga since heat. I am going ambulance, Michael Bay. Yes. That's the only other movie besides Crime 101 where I'm like, how the fuck do they do this? Well, if you, if somebody's about to write in, and be like, they actually shot that in downtown Santa Fe. Like, I don't want to know. It doesn't look like it.

I don't think so. It never looks like it, honestly. This is Jake Gyllenhaal and Yaya Abdul Mateen driving across L.A. in an ambulance stolen after a bank heist goes wrong. And cops are chasing them. The media is following them. Drones are flying around them. It's just incredible car chase work.

And I don't know necessarily that it had some of the same geographical accuracy. as crime 101 say, but it feels very exciting to travel across Los Angeles at that velocity. It's a modern masterpiece. The Bon Voyage motherfucker award

for heat in a different city. What do you think is the best example of like a garbage heat movie taking place in another city? Is it just, I don't want to give town too many awards here. Logan Lucky?

Yeah, brother. You know? On the racetrack? Is that in Charlotte? Yeah. Yeah. That's good one. Yeah.

Let's go with that. Okay. Okay. The seven years in Folsom in the hole for three award for painstakingly researched heat ripoff. This easily goes to the high school football ball knowledge and den of thieves. Do you think den of thieves aired by pivoting to pure crime and no longer being a cops and robbers movie? I personally feel like it aired by going too fast and furious.

I understood the desire to go international. And I think that there was some interesting aspects to that movie. but it became too much like about honestly, Den of Thieves Pantera feels a lot like the ending of Crime 101 where it's just like you and I we're not so different.

Yeah. Like let's get, make sure everybody's happy at the end of this. I need you holding hands at LAX staring into oblivion. Have you ever robbed a bank? No.

Okay. But you do not get to watch my fucking television award for Heat on the small screen. I know it's the big picture. I thought I would just shout out a couple TV shows that drew heavily from heat.

Interesting. Task, obviously. Yeah, I haven't seen it. This past year, 0-00. Yeah, great show. Stefano Salima's incredible globetrotting cocaine epic. Task 0-00,

true detective season two set in Los Angeles about the criminal Vince Vaughn, cop Colin Farrell, their relationship and run-down bars. I re-watched this show this season recently.

I heard you were doing that, yeah. And did you feel as moved by the spirit as you were many years ago? Miles better than I remember it and it would be like a pretty excellent show in this year. If we were...

Season two, you mean? Yeah, if it came out in 2026, I'd be like, that's fucking great television. Okay. Too old to die young? Elite. Nicholas Wending Refins. This is more Lynch than it is man,

but there's a lot of man in it, and there's a lot of L.A. in it. And there's a lot of Miles Teller spitting in it. I forgot about the spitting. Slightly deranged. It's just important to know that Miles Teller did a 10-hour Nicholas Winning Refin. sci-fi cop epic

that Amazon was like for sure put it out? You know, you know, Raffin's back. You know he's going to be at Cannes for her private hell. What do you think Amanda would be mad if I was just like at Cannes front row leading the standing ovation?

No, I don't. They should be thrilled. And the last one is Tokyo Vice, which Michael Mann also directed the pilot of two seasons on HBO about the contemporary Japanese or relatively contemporary Japanese Underworld. Did that come back for a second season?

It did. How was that? It was good. It was quite good. Third season? It didn't come back for a third season. Was Elgort in the second season? Yes. Okay. Yeah. He plays Adelstein, Jake Alstein. Who is that? The journalist. He wrote the book that Tokyo Vice is based on. Sorry.

And that's it. That's all I got. I thought you had a final award here, number seven. Oh, the anyone wants some pie wingrow award for character from a heat ripoff that could hang in heat. what he got here this is tough because it's like Wayne Gross is such an

indelible character but I was going to throw it's actually like contemporary with heat so it doesn't really work but Mads Mikkelson from Pusher speaking of a Nicholas Winning Redmond

Yes he could fit I'd love to see him just join up with the crew We need Mads in another crime movie What's he up to? I think he's about to embark on He was just in Brian Fuller's directorial debut

Dust Bunny Did you check that one out? No. You know what I did check out recently? Friday of the 13th, the final chapter. I was watching that again. Is that six? What number is that?

Four. Yeah. What happens in four? Corey Feldman? It starts at the hospital. Jason's dad starts out, it's Corey Feldman. Corby me for Corey Feldman. Yeah.

Okay. And Crispin Glover. That one's great. I like that one. That might be my favorite one, I think. I have a real negative feeling towards like six, seven, eight, though. So I always get a little bit tripped up after four. I like which ones I actually like and don't like.

Because like new blood is new... Well, takes Manhattan, I hate. It goes to hell I hate. Those are two. I just kidding. What about Fray versus Jason? It's fine. To me, it's not either of those movies because it's so camp.

But there's things about it that are okay. Jason in space, terrible. Jason X. I was basically going through these long-running horror franchises to get into fighting shape for Scream 7. So that's the next time you're going to be back on the show.

Our friend Tim Simons is in it. You think he's ghostface? I don't know anything about what Tim does in this film, but I think if he's not, it's a waste of Tim Simons. It's so, so tricky with the height. Because if Tim, like, if Tim walked in here right now as ghostface, I would know it's him. But, like, you say that about Mikey Madison.

Yeah, there's a lot of short people in the world. A lot of short people in that movie. Tim is a tall man. I don't give him a complex. No, he's a beautiful man. He's actually, he's in his, speaking of, he's re-a-re-a-pre-e. I mean, he's go, whatever he's doing is amazing.

VW also, you know, I think of those VW ads. He's crushing on that. You guys are V-W buddies, Eskimo buddies for VW. Yeah, okay, I'm really excited about Scream 7. I really needed to be good. Oh, there's a couple other things I wanted to bounce off you. Scream is just like all these movies, too, by the way, where I'm just like,

Scream 5 and 6 are now masterpieces in my head, even though when I saw them, I was like, pretty cool. And now I'm like, I love those movies. Yes. So that's just more than. And I like Scream 4, which you don't. You're the only guy who does. A couple other things I wanted to bounce off you.

Yeah. The Duder directed Surratt. Oliver Lachet. Was he beautiful? Was he like a beautiful man? Are you asking because of the reaction that I had to him? Yeah. Well, it was twofold, and thank you for asking.

We did discuss it a little bit in the episode. You know, he's 6.7. No. He is. He's 6'7. He has hair down past his shoulders. he looks like he's sort of like

when you see Trey McBride out there catching passes for the Cardinals where you're just like who's gonna stop this guy? Like he's just a force. Tyler Murray. Truly. But as soon as they put Jacoby Bresset in there,

they were fine. So he's got a physical bearing that is undeniable, right? Where you're just like, this man could pick me up and carry me home. But also, he's so fucking sincere about his work.

So in a way that is like, I found, I found overwhelming because I'm such a irony poisoned, cynical motherfucker. And the reason I asked Oliver to come on the show is a friend of a friend emailed me.

I was like, I just took a meeting with Oliver Lachey. And he was just fascinating. And I just wanted to see what it would be like to see you guys talk to each other. And I'm really glad that we did. I still don't even know if I like Sarat. That's okay.

Have you seen it? I don't think you have to only interview directors where you're like, that's a five-star banger. That's true. I only want to talk to people whose movies I like. I don't want to talk to a person and pretend I liked their movie or something. I never do that.

I have that problem too where sometimes I'm a little overly effusive. I'm talking to somebody where I'm like, you know. But I don't want to invite somebody on who I'm like, eh, but his movie had some things in it. And he was kind of excited to engage about like, he was like, well, what didn't work? And why did you feel that way? Interesting. This is a different kind of, it's very European, you know, and we don't have as many Europeans on the show. Do you think you're bringing that same adversarial tone to your conversation with Spielberg?

it's going to be an interesting challenge to not full-blown genuflect for an hour to not Chris Farley it, yeah, so I got to get my thoughts in order beforehand. But I'm looking forward to it. I've spent my life preparing to speak with Steven Spielberg, so I'm looking forward to that. I hope that all of our conversations have trained you for it.

You've taught me more than you'll ever know. Is there anything else you wanted to hit on? You had said you had a few things. No, I think I'm good. I just try to think, because you don't really watching any shows. I was going to just take it up. No, Night of the Seven Kingdoms.

Yeah, but you're not up on industry, which is kind of tragic. I'm two and a half episodes behind, unfortunately, for me. Night of the Seven Kingdoms, as I said, on the rewatchables, I'm really enjoying it. You weren't as into five. I thought five was phenomenal. I was super into five.

Andy wasn't into five. I thought you said it wasn't there best. I didn't think that the flashback was necessary at all. I didn't need his origin story of being a kid in Flea Bottom. Do you have any trauma? Yeah, but like it doesn't. how I perform on this podcast. What is it, would you say?

My trauma? When I was younger, I feel like I was really in the throes of like an amazing baseball career. I'll tell you this, this God's honest truth. And my, so I'm playing baseball for this travel baseball team. They'll go on to win the city championship. A bunch of kids had gone to camp earlier in the summer. And the idea was like, you know, at some point they're going to come back. and they'll also join the team.

Yep. But like, to me, I put it in the work, you know what I mean? I was handling pitchers. I was batting like as high as third. I was really hot for a while in that season. What was your launch angle,

you know, like what exit Velo? This was back in the day where we manufactured runs. We didn't just go swinging for the fences. How were you as a base runner? Able. I wouldn't say I was a stolen, an SB threat,

but I would make you pay if you weren't paying attention. Got it. Okay. Or of a trickster. If some kid was like, picking boogers on the mound, I was gone. Vince Coleman.

Anyway, maybe not who you want to compare yourself to. One of the assistant coaches on our team was a dad of a kid who went to camp. And when his kid came back, he was quickly inserted into my starting position. And that has followed me around ever since, because I wonder whether or not I could have been JT. Real Mudo. If that hadn't happened.

So you were Wally Pipped by a Nepo. Yeah. Man, that's savage. Now, they may go back and be like, Chris, in fact, was two for 30. you know, and we felt like we need to make a change. I don't remember they didn't give us, we didn't play for box scores, we played her for wins, you know?

Do you ever feel like Andy just lets you lay out like you just did on the show? Yeah. Maybe I have a different responsibility on that show. What is it? To host, to keep things moving, to bring interesting items to the show and bring any interesting facts I might find

while looking on the internet. Do you think Little League Corner is a corner we should build here on the show for you? So you can explore different elements. We get a thumbs up, thumbs down? Yeah. Okay, great little league corner. That was the first installment sponsored by Volkswagen.

It could be a decades-long saga too, because what if I then start coaching Amanda's children? Well, that will be happening, you think, right? Yeah. I believe T-ball starts for that young man very soon. And I don't let Zach assistant coach because I'm like, we can't do to them what was done to me. I don't think I realize how this resonated inside you.

And I want to say thank you for sharing. It kind of feels like the end of crime 101, where we kind of come to a closure. Exactly. Maybe this movie knew more about us than I think it did. You know, maybe it had more to tell us. You're the goat. Thank you.

Let's go to my conversation with Bart Layton. Back on the show, after eight years, Bart Layton is here. Hi, Bart. Hey, man, has it been eight years? Yeah, what have I been doing? That is literally my question. So you were here for American Animals.

And also a heist movie. You're back with a heist movie. Mm-hmm. What was, going on in the eight years? Well, so I also run a production company in the UK and we do, I guess the day job is a lot of docs, you know, we do a lot of feature docs and so I sort of do a lot of shepherding of that. And also, I think with the movie thing, I think because we've had this company and that's sort of But, you know, the bread and butter, I think with the movies, like, I have to find something that is so all-consuming and so, like, I have to do this.

And then that takes a while, I guess I tend to, you know, and I know, as the writer, I'm not a, I kind of have this thing of shaking a script until nothing comes loose. And so that takes a while. So it took a while to write this and rewrite it and rewrite it again. and then when you get your cast things have a slightly different feel to it and you know and so there's another pass to be done so it was a yeah it was a labor of love in a way and then which is all an excuse for basically just being a bit slack and taking too long off in between but is your intention to be kind of working at this pace or do you want to make a lot of movies I'm curious about that because it's been three features over the long period of

time, but you have this full-time day job. Yeah, I think, I think now, and you know, the company has grown and now there are people who are bigger and smarter than I am who can do it. And so I think I'll step back and I think, you know, the dream, I suppose, was always to make movies and especially for the theatre. And now that has sort of come to fresh. And, you know, via a long career in documentary making and then making that transition which has been exhilarating and terrifying. I think now I will, I'll step up the pace a little bit. And also like you, having little kids, you know, when you go to make a movie and especially in the States, you come back, like when I came back from American animals, been away for six months and

they've changed and you're like, so I felt like I wasn't willing to do that again and just miss that big, important chunk of. It's funny to say that I was at the DGA's on Saturday, and two different nominees there said that they were so grateful to their partners because they had little kids who were sick at home. And they were just like, doing this job, you just are away all the time. And it's not something you think about when you're a movie fan, right? You're just like, where's your next movie? Where's your next movie?

And actually, weirdly, you sort of almost don't want them to be there. If the kids had relocated to LA, well, I would have almost been. to split in the focus. You actually just want to do the job. It's so, and if you're the writer as well, you never get a day off. And then half the time you're coming in from a night shoot when they're just waking up. So actually, it's better just to say, I'll see you in a few months. But then, you know, you've got to be prepared that you might miss like something mega,

like their first words or their first steps or something. And that you can never get back. Right, right. Yeah. So what was it about that? So did someone hand you the Don Winslow story? How did it come across your path? Yeah.

My agent sent it and was like, I think this has your name on it. And I think there was a bit of a kind of bidding war going on. And I felt like I wasn't likely to be a big enough name probably. But I read it. And I remember kind of getting two thirds the way through and sort of thinking, wow, this is actually kind of brilliant. And I really hope it has a great sort of third act and it did and it had this great twist. And I thought, okay, this could be, if handled right, one of those sort of movies that I remember completely falling in love with as a young person or as a kid.

You know, those movies you went to see maybe with your dad or whatever and they felt incredibly memorable in the 80s or 90s. And they were grown up. but, you know, and they were sophisticated, but they were incredibly compelling. And I just thought if I was ever going to get to make a kind of a movie of scale, you know, a Hollywood movie with real movie stars, it would want to be one of the kinds of movies that I would want to go and see and that I felt was slightly, not disappearing, but that we were just getting fewer and fewer of those. And I remember them from, you know, being at university and going to see like true romance

or collateral or out of sight or one of that. And they just felt like such a treat. And yet they were smart as well. So, yeah, I think that was the thing of thinking maybe if I do a decent job of the screenplay, it could have something of that quality to it. Well, you mentioned you were concerned because there was a bidding where like, so how do you stand out? How do you become the person that they say, okay, it'll be yours?

I may have got this wrong, but I think by some crazy coincidence, Don Winslow got invited to another writer friend's house who does these sort of like surprise screenings of random films and he screened American animals. And it was just, and it was either Don or his manager anyway. One of them was completely blown away by it. And that was the funny thing about that film even though I think I probably would have liked more people to see it at the time. I'm in the cinema. It did have this kind of interesting life, especially among actors and others. And so there was a lot of, I guess, enthusiasm around it. So it was always easy to kind of pick up. And I think that was just like they saw that there was something a little maybe different about it and thought, oh, let's let him have a crack at it.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I remember when we talked about it eight years ago, I was like, there's something a little different about this movie. There's something special about this movie. And I've been waiting for you to make another movie. to be honest with you. So technically the three, I see the three movies as all kind of heist movies, like I said. And, you know, the imposter too has that feeling of stolen identity, stolen life, stolen conceit.

So what's like, what's going on under the surface? Like, why is that something that you are drawn to over and over? It depends how deep you want to go. I grew up with a mother who was a theater director who made very fringe theater. And she was a, she was a, single mom and I shared her with the theatre and she made these really out there very beautiful, very artful productions. But there wasn't a big audience for it. And I think I had this sense

of, you know, like how do you find a way to do something which is a genuinely kind of commercial proposition? And then if you can do that successfully, you might be able to start to smuggle in the ideas that you're interested in talking about. And I think, you know, American Animals is really, you know, I think that's the great thing about a heist film as a structure. You get to start with a question that everyone knows, you know, they're going to wait till the third act to find out the answer to, right? So you've got this inbuilt kind of what's going to happen next. And I think for me, whether it's because of, you know, my childhood's sitting in the back of, you know, endless rehearsals in freezing cold London basements. and then an audience not showing up,

and then thinking, you know, I would love to have that same creative license, but maybe find more of a kind of roller coaster framework to then start to think about, you know, these other things. And, you know, American animals are really about lost young men who'd been promised a so-called special life that we all feel is divine right, and yet, of course, it isn't,

especially in a culture which is telling you that if you're not a somebody, you're a nobody. And that I thought was the thing that that kind of heist movie could actually really delve into, you know, and it was about privilege and it was about, you know, I remember talking to you at the time. And, you know, the reason I made that and included the real kids in it was because,

you know, their major problem was that they didn't have a problem in life but needed one to be interesting. And I think with this, I saw a similar way of having a framework, which was going to be like you'll get all the things, well, hopefully you agree, you get all the things you want from a really fun night out of the cinema. You get, you know, it's a, you know, there's action in it. There's some really tense set piece. And it's a constant sort of build of suspense and all of the things that hopefully you want.

but also I think I thought you know maybe there's an opportunity to talk about you know the LA that culture of status anxiety and if you let that be the kind of if you let that pressure dictate the decisions you make in your life you might find yourself a place where you've given up everything to have that kind of status and all of the kind of trappings of success and then you realize maybe it's not working for me. And that, that, so the characters are all at that kind of crisis point. One of the things that really jumps out is that every character in the film is kind of consumed by class in some way, like mostly aspirationally, except for Monica Barbaro's character who's kind of like, this doesn't matter. Why is this so important? And I find that to be a fascinating

thing to do, especially in a heist movie, obviously, which is just all about the acquisition of wealth. But the Mike character is a curious, curious guy. And it's like, I would say it's mostly unexplained what is going on with Mike, whether there is, like, he is afflicted by something. Obviously, he has a past that is somewhat troubled and he had some struggles as a young kid.

But I'm curious, like, what you and Chris Hems were talked about to kind of, because you can see Chris is making some choices, but not overplaying it. You know, not like, there's not a lot of, explaining what is going on. So I'm curious about that. Yeah, I mean, because I guess I come from docs, my first sort of port of call was to try and find real people

who are representative of all of the different characters in the movie. So believe it or not, you can't. There are real jewel thieves out there. And the successful ones are roaming around and the unsuccessful ones are in prison. And you can talk to them and you can write to them. And when we began that research process, a lot of the same things came up, which was a history of foster care, some domestic violence, the absence of fathers and the absence of kind of adults who were caring. And so Chris and I started looking at a lot of that research.

And then we looked a lot of there's a brilliant website app called Soft White Underbubes. belly, you might know it, which is a lot of testimonies from people who've been through those sorts of homes and experiences. So we never, like at one point, you know, I think Chris was like, do we need a scene? Don't we need a scene? Don't we need a scene? If you don't understand what I've been, you know, and I felt like there has to be a more economical way of doing that.

And what you see in Chris's performance, I think, is a guy who is not your kind of, he's not the James Bond of Jewelthy. He's a guy who's come from trouble and is vulnerable and is not confident in every situation. And so a lot of that was done with workshopping some of those testimonies and trying to base all of the character. And, you know, Ruffalo's character, all of that came from interviews I'd done with real LAPD officers. Nick Nolte's character, we went deep into the fences who have this kind of fatherly influence over all of the, They're kind of like Fagan kind of Oliver Twist characters. So all of that was very real and based in, you know, a ton of research, which we did.

And I thought much, I think one of the things that maybe has happened in recent times is maybe audiences aren't given quite as much respect as, you know, and they're sort of spoon fed all of this backstory, which is going to generate, you know, empathy. And I think I wanted to do that in a much more subtle way where you'll get it from his posture, from some of the behavior rather than a big soliloquy, you know. Yeah, I really appreciated that. It's something that I genuinely hate in most modern movies. It's not as often in a crime film. You find in a lot of horror films these days where there's a lot of kind of explication of past woe that then communicate. So anyway, that aspect of it is really nice.

So but having made all these heist movies, like do you, is there like a secret now? that you think you need to make one successful, like something that has to occur? I sort of feel like I'm more in the kind of, I don't know if it's like an anti-heist, but I sort of feel like they're, you know, with this, I suppose, I really wanted to keep one foot in the real world.

And I think, you know, when you have big movie stars and you have big resources, it's really tempting to go into whether it's an action sequence or whether it's just a plot thing, that suddenly you're, as an audience, you're kind of like, oh, right, okay, I'm now in a movie. So I'm not really playing along and you have less skin in the game.

Whereas I felt like, and I would always say to all of the actors, you know, and even when we were planning some of the, you know, the big kind of stumpy sequences, let's just keep this back, bring it back to what would really happen and what would this really feel like. And I think the, essentially the benefit of that is you, as an audience, feel way more connected in to the characters and you feel like you're right in it rather than kind of on the outside watching. And even some of those great 70s movies, which I adore and which were probably influences for this, you know, whether it's French connection or, you know, some of the Billy Frequent things. You know, often that final wrapping up is a kind of shootout.

an industrial space and then you're in a slightly kind of like, oh, I'm now just watching this all get tied up. And again, I wanted it to be much more about a kind of intensity of suspense and emotion than action, if that makes sense. It does. There's a real meticulous, though, to that first sequence where I've not seen a robbery like that and it seems very real. And I don't know how much of that comes from Don's story, which I haven't read and, you know, how you construct that, but the level of the strategy of the character is fascinating and then the way that you kind of show it to us. So it's rare to see something new like that. Maybe you can talk through that sequence a little bit for us. Sure, yeah. No, no, that's none of that is in the,

is in the short story. And funnily enough, it's really fun when you just start kind of, I guess, internally spitballing ideas of like how would this work and what would be the cleverest, most meticulous way of doing this, but again, not getting into kind of movie territory where it's unrealistic or whatever. But what was interesting is, like, I would write all of this stuff, you know, and like, so for example, like, he has an identical car to the courier. And what he's going to do is he's going to intercept the courier. He's going to put the courier in the trunk of his car, and it's an identical car,

and he's going to turn up. basically as the, he's actually the follow car for the courier. So he's, you know, and he's going to show up and to all intents and purposes, it's exactly the same car that they're expecting. He's replaced the career and all this. So I would come up with all this stuff, which kind of sounded slick and movieish, but then I would be like, do a reality check. Then I would go to some of the guys down in like these really high-end jewelers in LA. I won't mention exact names. The stories they would of the hold-ups that they had been victims of, really and truly. Like one guy said they were sending, this is a real story, he was sending a package,

I think, to Saudi Arabia worth tens of millions through FedEx. And the FedEx guys turned up a bit early. So they let them into the holding area. They did the IDs. Then they let them into the showroom. And then the FedEx guys pulled the guns out and, like, hijacked the whole place, took everything. and went and then the real FedEx guys turned up 20 minutes later. That's not something I made up.

That stuff is really happening. So there was a lot where I would be generating all of these quite slick kind of, you know, pretty fun robberies. And then I would go and have a chat with someone and they'd come up with something true that was kind of almost like more outlandish. It's fascinating. I think it's also a really good character development because you're like, well, this guy clearly has been studying this for a long time. Like, there's a level of detail in this plan that is rare. A lot of movies, as you say, start with shootouts. You know, they start with, you know, a grab and go, basically.

And this is a totally different kind of a character. Totally. And, you know, and again, not naming names, but one of the guys who I based Chris's character on, who's currently serving time, he used to raid mansions. And he would do an insane amount of research on the movements of the inhabitants. and he would look at their Instagram, he knew where they were going, what they were up to, and all the rest of it. And he would be, he would stake it out and all the rest. So, you know, it was about a very meticulous guy who's got a kind of code of conduct, but also, like, he's also not infallible.

You know, he's a little more like you and I if we were going to go and rob a bank or steal jewels. Maybe more like you and not like me. So you keep saying like you find these people. I know you're a documentary and you've done a lot of true crime work over the years, but what do you mean you find these people? Like, where do you find them? How do you get in touch with them? Well, like, for example, you know, if you're a doc researcher, you'll go, you'll look at,

I mean, it doesn't have to be limited to L.A., but I kind of wanted a Californian angle on it, and you'll look for news stories or court records of people who've been sentenced for theft of jewels or for literally holding up a courier between an airport and a, a destination and then you'll find their names and then you'll find out what they got sentenced to and then you can find out where they ended up serving their sentence and then you can send them a letter and most of them have a bit of time on their hands and do they often want to speak to you? Almost always yeah. That's so interesting. How do you clarify whether or not you feel like someone is telling you the truth in those circumstances? I guess it very much depends on whether

you're using it, whether you're making a documentary or whether you're making a fiction. And you know And if it's a doc, you have to do your due diligence, obviously. But with this, because really what I was looking for is the kind of foundations for a character, or just to have, you know, when you're writing, it generates, like, great material or inspiration. You don't have to kind of go, literally, you know, most criminals you talk to are going to give you a sob story as to why they ended up. But what I did find is there was kind of commonality, you know, there were the same, you know, there was a, repetition of some, you know, the fact that many of these guys had been in foster homes and hadn't had a kind of proper adult supervision. And the fences, like the Nick Nolte character,

they often sort of fill that void a little bit. They come in, you know, these kids have come in with a Rolex watch. The fence says, oh, okay, this is good. And then if they're very switched on, the fence will tell the kid or the young man, hey, listen, here's a job. you can do. And so this relationship begins, starts out really small. And even the fences actually often have legitimate careers at the same time or have worked in the jewelry industry for a while. And Nick Nolte wanted to go deep. I mean, he really wanted all of the material that I got. That's a good segue to the, I hope you don't take this as an insult. This is like an overqualified cast for a movie like this. You know what I mean? It is like a very, lots of Oscar nominees. And I,

Whenever you hear about something like that happening, it's usually like all the stars are like, I wish there were more movies like this, and I want to be in movies like this, and why it was in Hollywood make movies like this? I know that's something you've been talking about even around this film, but why did Nick Nolte and Hallie and Chris and Mark and all these people want to be a part of it? I honestly think that it's a bit of what you said. I think there was a sense that maybe those, that everyone remembers and loves those kinds of movies, and they were sort of sexy, and they were. were compelling and maybe they're not making as many or maybe they're not making them for the cinema. And it was that weird thing of like, I don't think I expected when I sent the script out that it would be like everyone we sent it to as like a first choice would say, yeah, I mean, in fact, you know, with Chris, he kind of got it, you know, he read it and then I got a call saying he's read it and he is dying to chat. Would you meet him? And I was like, of course.

Because I wanted someone who had, who, you know, had a kind of iconic movie star quality, but I also wanted a version of Chris that we'd never seen before, which was going to be really demanding of him. So, yeah,

I think it was like a, I think it was a lot to do with that combination of people reading it, feeling like, oh, when was the last one of these? Mm-hmm. And also, I guess that they'd seen American animals,

and the imposter and they loved them. And so that was helpful. And, you know, like with Nick, it isn't a big role. And same with Jennifer, Jason Lee. But I guess if you don't ask, you don't get, right? So you sort of think, well, who would be the absolute perfect person if you could have anyone? And then the worst that's going to happen is they'll say, not for me.

And like, amazingly, everyone's like, yeah, let's go. I mean, obviously, it just always elevates the material when there's someone who, So special like that. So you're not from Los Angeles, and you're making an L.A. crime film. There is a long lineage of wonderful L.A. crime films. Not all of the filmmakers are from L.A. You mentioned Billy Freakin earlier.

He, of course, made to live and die in L.A. He's from Chicago. But that's like, that is an amazing representation of that city at that time. I wasn't born here, but I've been here almost 15 years now, so I feel very attuned to L.A. I think he really did a good job of capturing what this place is like

but you don't live here. I don't know how often you're here. How do you do that well? Oh, well, thanks for that. I guess, like, I'm a menace with like prep. I think because honestly, I felt quite out of my depth, you know, like I'd bitten off a lot when it became a, you know, you're writing in a vacuum and then suddenly it becomes this big movie

and I've done a couple of docs in the American animals. And so I do just a relentless amount of, prep and I go like I just scouted and scouted. And I also felt like, you know, if you spend time, you know, if you're scouting with people from L.A. and you, you know, you understand how the city works for them and what are the corners that maybe haven't been photographed before and getting that sense, you know, because as you said, a lot of it is about class and it's about the social strata, the rich, you know, there is a gaping and increasing chasm between, you know, the impoverished and the ultra wealthy. And also there's a kind of topographical divide in terms of where

they actually... Yeah. You're more elevated if you have more power and money. And you're more elevated and you're also more isolated. And that's the crazy thing. And I also realize, you know, like you talk about that opening sequence. It starts off in downtown LA at an immigrant family's jewelry store and that is a real jewelry store owned by a real Iranian family. And it In the 45 minutes or however long it takes for a diamond to be sourced from there and arrive at the very fancy jeweler in Calabasas. That diamond will have increased in value by, I don't even want to say how much because you can be damn sure that the Kardashians aren't going downtown to that store to buy that

diamond. So that story, I was like, how do I tell that story in a really compelling way? And again, it's come back to this thing of like the smuggling in of all of this stuff. at the same time, finding all of those places that hopefully, if you're from LA, you recognize and you see that there's, like, truth in those spaces. And I was pretty like, you know, there were conversations about, can we do it? And, you know, we could have made the movie twice in Australia for the money, you know. But that was a deal breaker for me.

I was like, there's just no way. And also coming from docs, it's very hard. You know, like I don't, all of the cast stuff, none of that is blue screen. even the car chases, which are really like we went as kind of close to the danger line as you can go, all of that is in camera, you know. Yeah, it really, it improves it. Seeing the entryways to the highways that I am on every day makes the movie feel more authentic and more real. So I guess when you're working at this scale now, how do you know you're getting what you need,

since you have not done a movie that has these kinds of insane car chases and a major metropolis? You know, I remember saying my producer who I brought onto this, who also is like a British, like she's done the best of the British indie film, you know, which is, you know, Shane Meadows, Andrea Arnold, you know, so we both were like, and I was, when I was freaking out going, oh man, like I'm way out of my comfort zone. And she was like, listen, it's the same work. Ultimately, you might have hundreds more people and more toys, but it's the same work.

It's actors in a room, and you know how to get that performance. And if you hire this kind of cast, it makes it easier. And then with the, like, car chase stuff, you know, as long as you've got a really clear point of view, you know, as long as your objective is, like, you know, and that could be as simple as what would this. really feel like. If I wasn't James Bond and I was driving a car at 80 miles an hour through L.O. chasing a motorbike and all the rest of it, what would that feel? And then you start to think,

all right, how do I do this? So we built technology that would allow us to put a kind of proxy handheld camera in a car with Chris Hemsworth when he's really driving that fast and very narrowly missing oncoming precision drivers. You know, so but there's always a. temptation you're in a meeting where someone says, oh, what if the motorbike wheelies over like three lanes of traffic and goes, you know, and at that point you go, that would be very cool, but that's a different movie. That's John Wick or something, which I love as well. Super fun. And also, you know, you can do things with cameras can go in and out of fake windscreens, which you replace and do these amazing, you know, and I was like, we're not doing that.

We're doing something that is more visceral. So I think as long as you have a pretty clear sort of, you know, and everything comes down to like character, you know. And I think that was something that someone like Billy Freakin was incredibly good at, you know, like if you want to know how Popeye Doyle is going to drive, you know, that's going to dictate the whole language of that car chase, you know, or whatever it is. So one of the reasons why there aren't as many movies like this is because it's not, it's harder to sell a movie like that. So, like, how do you think about movie like this goes out in the world? You went through it with American Animals. You were like, I wish more people saw it, but then it catches a word of mouth over time. Yeah.

Are you, like, box office nervous? Are you excited? A little bit. I mean, I'm both, you know, I'm kind of pinching myself to even be, you know, I'm driving around the Lair, there's billboards, there's buses with the poster on, you know, I really hope. Like, I made it because I wanted to see this kind of thing in the theater. You know, we did a junkie in L.A.

New York and loads of journalists came in and when they were like, thank you for bringing this back. Yeah. And that's the best you can hear. I don't know, like, I really hope that there's still, people are still going to want to go to the cinema for this kind of thing. Because it's sort of some of the most fun you have, you know. I mean, you remember, like, you know, heat is a different thing. And, you know, I certainly felt like, you're making things. It casts a long shadow.

You don't want to be influenced by it. You don't want to be emulating it. You just want to do your own thing. Yeah. But of course, you know, like, I don't know. Like, I remember going and seeing that in the cinema. I'm thinking, wow, you don't get to have much more fun in the cinema than this. And I just wondered where they had gone.

So, yeah, I'm nervous, but I'm also like just the fact that we got here that the studio have been as supportive and as in love with it as they've been to give it a big, release and all of that, you know, expensive marketing and stuff. But, you know, there's no guarantees. So in a way, I feel like take the win, you know, the fact that we're here, the fact we had was crazy. You got to make something. Yeah. Yeah. So did you start working on the next thing? Well, you said it's not going to be eight years. So what are you, what are you doing? There's a couple of things which are just, yeah, there's a, there's a couple of things which are exciting and is a kind of like not, not quite at liberty to talk about them. But

Yeah, it definitely won't be eight years. Okay. We end every episode of the show by asking filmmakers, what's the last great thing they have seen? I don't remember what you told me eight years ago. I should have looked that up. Oh, wow. Oh, man.

I've been, because of the kids getting to a certain age, I've been going back and trying to introduce them to things. So the last great thing, literally the last great thing we saw was the graduate. I played that for them. Interesting. Was that because they're getting ready to go to? college? Yeah, one of them. Yeah, but also just like, I don't know why that's not on more people's top 10 of all time list. It is such an extraordinary thing. And then I played them before that

dog day afternoon, which is like, for me, such an influential thing. But yeah, so the graduate, the last, but do you mean like the last thing that's been? No, those are both good. I'm curious what the kids thought of them, though. The, yeah, the kids were completely, completely smitten with the graduate. I mean, like, the middle one who's 15 was like, that's straight in at my greatest top film of all time. It's crazy. I mean, it's 60 years old now.

And it still feels very modern. Is it 60s? Late 60s. Yeah, it's like 67, 68, yeah. Yeah, it's still, and, you know, the pace of it is kind of phenomenal. And, yeah, you know, like I say, I think maybe in recent times, we've got a little bit kind of like this tendency, you know, in terms of like maybe the Hollywood stuff, maybe a little bit more of a tendency to prioritize kind of action intensity

over emotional intensity. I still think if you look at those movies that had took the time to really get you into caring about it, you know, your overall experience was much bigger. And I also think the cinema is just this thing that you can't replicate because you watch things. Like, for example, poor things was really interesting. I remember everyone I spoke to who saw poor things in the cinema was like, it's a knockout. And a lot of people I spoke to who watched it on a screen or at home were really like middling about it or even didn't finish it. And I think there is this, people forget, you know. Yeah, I mean, this is a whole other rabbit

hole, but I've been thinking about this a lot because I watch so many movies and I love to only go to screenings in theaters because you are held captive. Like you are literally a prisoner to what is happening. And there's so many demands on our attention in a way that even just sitting in your house, which used to be a nice thing, you'd turn on your TV and watch a movie. Now that feels harder than it ever has been. So I hear what you're saying and it's great that your movie is going into movies. What was the last great thing you saw?

I watched Live and Die in L.A. to prepare for this conversation. Just to get my head up my head on straight about crime movies in L.A. and everything. You know, I got after American Hounds, I've got some. You probably need to wrap up, but I got summoned to lunch with Billy Friedkin. Tell me about it, yeah. Well, I obviously, like, you know, he's a legend and he was a hero, and I went up to his place, which was literally like, if you said, right, like, if you said to your art department, build me like the mansion of a,

because he was married to Sherry Lansing, yes, yes. He was obviously, you know, phenomenal. And he has, like, the Roman columns and everything, right? You know, shagall, but like a mishmash of every taste and every kind of like, and gold stuff everywhere. It was wild. And obviously what I wanted to come out of the lunch was that he thought I was like, you know, that we were best friends. So I was a bit like, I don't know. But also I just gave, I just had a barrage of questions.

And I was asking him obviously about how they did, you know. And this was way before I had plans to shoot a car chasing night. You know, but how did you do that? because it looked so dangerous. And the truth was that back then, they didn't have the kind of health and safety like... Oh, yeah. It was just dangerous.

It was just dangerous. Yeah, they just crossed in front of that train. Flipping miracle that people didn't get, you know, in both that and French connection. Yes. So it wasn't very useful in terms of like coming out with like secret to how you do. Because it was like, well, you basically just nearly, you know,

kill people and hope you get away with it. Well, you know, it's funny you say that. I was reading about it after. And he said, and I don't know how this compares to you doing something like this, you know, it's 40 years later too. So the rules have changed so much. But he shut down the 7-10 for two consecutive Saturdays and Sundays to do that, you know, the reverse car chase sequence. And then he had the cars going in the wrong direction in the film just because he wanted to confuse the audience. So it was like, you know, it's like an eight, they're driving like it's in England in L.A. in the movie, which you don't even really clock until someone tells you that. And then you're like, so. you can't shut down the 710 for two full days in Los Angeles in 2026. I mean, you know, this is, you know, crime 101 and it's all about, you know, this string of robberies on the 101 freeway. And we were doing this big sequence on the 101 and at the last minute, like, what is it

called? What's the big, you know, L.A. Police, you know, that deals with all of that. Anyway, they were like, no, the last minute, no, you're not going to do that. So then we had to basically shut down like. blocks and blocks and blocks of, I think it was Lancashire Boulevard or whatever. Yeah. But when you lock that up, you're not just locking up the junctions.

You're looking up because if someone comes out of their apartment to walk a dog and you're blazing through in the way that we were. So it war and also you're lighting it and we're lighting for miles and we're getting all of the shops to keep their lights on and all of the scale. And the scale of it is mega. And it's also wildly exhilarating. But we're doing it. And I'm sure those poor people who live on there,

it wouldn't not thank you for it. Anyway, it was worth it. Thanks, Bart. Good to see you. Oh, great to see you, mate. Thanks for having me back. Thank you to Bart Leighton. Thank you to CR.

Thanks to our producer, Jack Sanders. Thanks to Steve Allman for filling in on this episode. Thanks to Lucas Kavanaugh for production support. Next week, we're circling back to sinners, including a dive into the film. Have you revisited sinners recently? No, but I was planning through this weekend with my wife who has not seen it. I would encourage people,

to do that in part because I had an amazing conversation with Autumn Durald Arquapaw, the cinematographer of the film. And she was super cool and super nerdy about how she does what she does. Is that part of the podcast? Part of the podcast. So we will see you then.