The Big Picture - Golden Globes Nominations Snubs and Surprises | The Oscars Show

Episode Date: December 9, 2019

The Golden Globe nominations are here, and they're as dumb as ever. But will they matter come Oscars time? Amanda and Sean break down all the nominees and who was left out in the cold (1:08). Then they discuss the Academy Awards chances of Netflix's 'Marriage Story' and 'The Irishman' now that both films have debuted on the service (50:02). Finally, Sean is joined by Oscar-winning documentarian Alex Gibney to talk about his new film, 'Citizen K' (62:30). Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Guests: Alex Gibney Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Liz Kelley, and welcome to the Ringer Podcast Network. Throughout the month of December, the Ringer staff will be releasing their year-end reviews covering the best and worst of 2019 in sports, TV, movies, music, and more. This week, we're getting started with Shea Serrano and Rob Harvilla on the best albums of the year, and Alison Herman and Chris Ryan break down the best TV shows. We'll have tons more in the coming weeks, so make sure to check it out on TheRinger.com. I'm Sean Fennessey. I'm Amanda Dobbins. And this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about the complete and utter lack of respect I have for myself after waking up at 5 a.m. to watch the Golden Globe nominations.

Later in the show, I'll have an interview with Alex Gibney, the documentarian behind the Oscar-winning Taxi to the Dark Side, Going Clear, The Inventor, and many more. His latest is a movie called Citizen K. It's a tale about Russia, wealth, and the dissident-defying Vladimir Putin.

But Amanda, first we must go to the awards race. This is a problem in the big picture. Do you know what I mean? A lot is happening to the awards race. This is a problem in the big picture. Do you know what I mean? A lot is happening in the awards race. In the past week, we've heard from the National Board of Review. We've heard from the New York Film Critics Circle. We've heard from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, the International Documentary Association,

the American Film Institute, and the Critics' Choice Awards. And now we have heard from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. We're here to discuss the Golden Globe nominations this morning. First impressions, how are you feeling? These chuckleheads. It's, what are we, it's early. It's earlier than we normally podcast.

I woke up early to just a list of stupid and boring opinions. That's the problem. It's that there are enough choices that were expected that you're like, okay, there are enough mistakes that you're really annoyed. There are also some trends that are just unfun and kind of boring and upsetting. And then it's predictable enough that you can't be like outraged, but why do we give these people this power? Why are you and I here really early on a Monday morning talking about the Hollywood Foreign Press Association? Truly why? I don't want to get ahead of myself, but the thought I had as I walked

across the lot this morning was, how do we upend the Globes as the number two award ceremony? How do we remove it and install something new? And maybe it should be the SAG Awards. Maybe it should be the New York Film Critics Circle. Maybe it should be one of these bodies that just gets to make these choices. But the HFPA, routinely, I look at the list, and this is like not a bad list as HFPA stuff goes,

but it's so boring and it's so uninteresting and the stuff, it's so predictable. It is a bad list. It's a fine list, but all of the things that are surprising about it, and we're going to go category by category, but the surprising choices that they made are bad. They're bad. And they're pernicious and they are indicative of larger problems in Hollywood and also just bad taste and lack of curiosity and intellect. Like, I'm going to call the Hollywood Foreign Press Association stupid like 45 times on this podcast, but they are. I'm sorry. Spend a little less time in parties and a little more time like reading a book. I don't know. Yeah. This organization, we have talked about it many

times since we've started doing this show, is the most likely to sort of be quote unquote bought and sold. They are the most likely to be impressed by meeting the right person. They're the most likely to be overwhelmed by a cool event or by maybe some schwag. There's not a lot of credibility here. What they have managed to do over the years is put on a good TV show. You know, the Golden Globes is a very valuable property to NBC. And I like watching the Golden Globes. I tend to think that there is an air in the telecast that is useful. I wish the Oscars had some of the Globes' energy, but not the Globes' nominees.

I typically agree with you about the watchability of the Golden Globes, except through reading through this list this morning, I then remembered that Ricky Gervais is hosting the Golden Globes this year. Yeah, on the one hand, I get that. Ricky Gervais gets less cool as the days go by. Once upon a time, Ricky Gervais was considered like a hugely influential and hilarious person.

It's funny how his reputation has changed. The one thing that he does have that the Oscars has never had is he is mean. He's got an edge. And sometimes it's not as funny as you want it to be. But there's an intensity to the show, a lot of drunk people, a lot of sideways comments,

and a lot of awards that seem like they don't matter very much relative to the other awards that we talk about on this show. And still, we confer this authority on it for some reason. I mean, we're as responsible for anybody doing this show early in the morning on a Monday. It's true. It was remarkable as you were reading the list of the other awards that have been announced this week and then that we're spending all our time on the Hollywood Foreign Press picks instead of

the National Board of Review. I don't even know who those people are, but the New York film critics, the L.A. film critics, you know, I wonder if there's a way to put those together. If you know, and we do have the Critics' Choice Awards, which is still a little... It gets closest. Closest, but a little opaque. Yes. It would be fun if all of the actual film watchers and critics joined up. Also, I can't believe I'm about to say this.

What if we put like film Twitter in the mix? What if instead of Best Popular Oscar, which is a terrible idea that I hope never happens, you replace the Golden Globes with some sort of popular-ish award ceremony where actual people who watch, but not everybody. I'm not really sure.

You'd have to prove that you watch a lot of things. So the Critics' Choice Awards, I think, does a little bit of this work. Because while the body is a little bit opaque and we're not sure who's voting, they have a lot of awards that I wish were in these award shows. They have a Breakthrough Award. They have a Best Action or Adventure Movie Award. They have a Best Science Fiction movie award. They have a best science fiction movie award. You just like that one because that's where Endgame got nominated.

Yeah, that was dope. Okay. By the way, just the most brutal snub, Thanos. No, it's not. I am inevitable. It's far too early for this. What are all of these bodies doing? No, you have to be the smart person on this podcast, okay? Just this one, only today. Just this one. I think that the Critics' Choice Awards has a good idea of how to do some of those things that you're talking about, about kind of popularizing some of the award show and just making it a little bit more fun. And if you're going to have a frivolous award show, I think that's cool.

I think when the MTV Movie Awards mattered more in the culture, that was a good thing. It was a good balance to have something that was a little bit more lighthearted. And it would be a nice counterpoint to the Oscars instead of seeming more bellwethery. Now, we talked last week when we did our predictions.

Let me just say, our predictions are not very good. I don't feel great about our predictions. But when we talked about them, we did say that over the last couple of years in particular, even if the HFPA is significantly different from the Academy,

we do get a sense of where things are going. And so we're going to have to talk about each category with an expectation of some influence on the Oscars. Yeah. Should we just start? Let's just start. Let's top line a couple of key sort of winners, losers, snubs. I think the big losers of the morning are Little Women, which only got two nominations,

which is not bad, but is not what you want if you want to be a big time candidate in this race. The Farewell, two nominations. Now, in any other universe, The Farewell getting two Golden Globe nominations and doing the box office it did and everything else would be extraordinary. Here, it's not great. No. No Lulu Wong at all.

No screenplay, no director. Bombshell, two nominations. It's not ideal for getting into the Best Picture race. No. And I felt pretty strongly that that was going to get nominated for Best Drama, and it did not. I did, No. And I felt pretty strongly that that was going to get nominated for Best Drama, and it did not. I did too.

I have an update on that. I've since seen another movie that has changed my entire perspective on Bombshell, but keep going on this list. Did you watch Endgame? Yeah, that was it. Okay.

Hustlers won nomination for J-Lo, which was expected, but nothing else is not great. Cats won nomination. Yeah. This seems to me like Cats is dead. Thank God. It's dead, at least in the awards race.

I just, can I stop you right now? Because you read four films, the first four films. And I just wanted to ask you, Sean, off the top of your head, what do those four movies have in common? They are Little Women, The Farewell, Bombshell, and Hustlers. They're films that are led by women. Three of them are written by women and directed by women. Really? You know, The Globes has a bit of a woman problem historically. We'll get to that a little bit later in the show.

Other films not succeeding here. Richard Jewell, just won nomination for Kathy Bates. Little surprised by this. I was as well, though. I don't think that this is a Globes movie. Right. And just, I think it's a little too Eastwood American, which I think will be to its benefit in both box office and in the Oscars going forward. We'll talk more about Richard Jewell, but it just seems a little closed off for the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. I think that's insightful.

Just Mercy, zero nominations. This may toll the end of the Just Mercy campaign a solid three weeks before the movie even comes out. Just Mercy, not a bad movie, but it just, it didn't make it in here. Waves, zero nominations. I think this also ends the Waves conversation completely. Also a loser today is the big picture. We did not predict one of the nine key categories

completely correctly, which is truly not what you want when you are hosting a podcast about awards. How can you truly get into the mind of a voting body like the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. I would argue that if we had correctly predicted all of the nominations for the Golden Globes, we should be fired because then we are in the minds of people who have no sense or movie taste. Mindhunter season three, colon, the big picture. Big snubs. The biggest snub by far here is Robert De Niro not being nominated for best actor for The Irishman. Did we talk about this at all?

No. We didn't? You want to give the context for this story? Oh, I meant in our Golden Globes predictions. We predicted that he would be nominated. We did. But we didn't even discuss like you could see a world in which they were like, no, thank you,

because he didn't go glad handing. I really thought that I said that, but maybe that's just like 5 a.m. Amanda talking. On a telecast, I think it was seven or eight years ago, De Niro openly mocked the Hollywood foreign press. And there is a feeling that he's not welcome there. And so he's not nominated here, despite the fact that The Irishman is one of the most honored films at this award show. And it certainly feels like it is in full-blown frontrunner status at the moment. I have some thoughts about that as well, but we'll save it. We'll get there.

Other snubs. Noah Baumbach and Greta Gerwig, the beloved king and queen of the indie film scene, neither of which were recognized for Best Director. Be very curious to see if that is the case come Oscar time. Little Women, we mentioned, not getting Best Drama. Just tough. The big homies, Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe. Yeah, that's hilarious in retrospect that we thought that the Golden Globes were going to go with the merch bros on the Lighthouse journey.

Innocence Lost. That's how I feel about this. That's nice. You know, we wanted to live in a nicer world. The Golden Globes were going to go with the merch bros on the lighthouse journey. Innocence lost. That's how I feel about this. That's nice. You know, we wanted to live in a nicer world. The number one movie that people got at me at about our top five movies of the year podcast was The Lighthouse. People were like, you are a coward for not discussing The Lighthouse. Keep shining to all of you. There you go.

I love The Lighthouse. It feels like it's not even of time. It's not one of the top five all of you. There you go. I love The Lighthouse. You know, it feels like it's not even of time. It's not one of the top five movies of 2019. It's one of the top five organisms in the history of evolution. Sure. I think it's one of the top five movies of a dedicated community of film goers and Twitter users. And I think it's great that you all found each other and you found your film and your actors. And that's great.

Keep shining. Twas-y. Okay. All right. Okay. I just created a category here called Meh, which doesn't really describe accurately how I feel about it. But Marriage Story got six nominations, which seems great, but No Best Director seems a little ominous to me. Okay. Because the Golden Globes take directing and filmmaking seriously and can be an arbiter

of what is craft and what is not? Well, it means a boost for Sam Mendes going into the opening of 1917. And it's notable off the back of Marriage Story hitting Netflix this weekend. And maybe we'll get a little bit into the conversation about what Marriage Story did in the conversation this weekend. Uncut Gems, it's just simply not a Golden Globes movie. There was also, after we recorded last week, the movie was moved out of the musical comedy category for qualification and into the drama category, essentially completely neutralizing Adam Sandler's chances, the film's chances. So there's no uncut gems here. If you are interested in uncut gems, I advise you to stay tuned to The Ringer because we will be covering it aggressively in the weeks to come.

Big winners. What do you think about the lineup I've got here of big winners? Do you agree with these? You have Joker with four nominations, Knives Out with three nominations, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood with five nominations, Parasite with three nominations. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood with five nominations. Parasite with three nominations, including screenplay. And it's important to note that Parasite was not eligible for either for drama or musical comedy because of the Hollywood Foreign Press's weird rules.

And Dolomite is my name with two nominations. So Joker is the one that jumped out to me. For obvious reasons. Yeah. Todd Phillips nominated for Best Director. Which we did predict. We did predict that. I don't know how we predicted that and still got Best Director so wrong, but we did. Well, the one note that we applied was that the Hollywood Foreign Press Association does not think through things.

And here we are. Here we are. Obviously, Joaquin Phoenix is nominated there. The film is nominated for Best Drama and Score. Knives Out. We had a sense that Ana de Armas was going to get recognized here. We did not predict Daniel Craig. Yeah, that's some classic.

We'd love to have James Bond at our awards ceremony. And frankly, I'm okay with it same it's probably it's the expense of someone we like which is always a bummer but I don't know as soon as Adam Sandler moved out of this category it made total sense for Daniel Craig to move into it because they needed more star power um the Knives Out best picture campaign will be interesting because I'm not sure if Lionsgate knew this was happening and I somehow found a line a Knives Out screener in my mailbox over the weekend, which indicates maybe they have, I don't know, rethought things.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, obviously, just seems like it's kind of rolling along. I saw Kyle Buchanan over the weekend note something that I thought was worth discussing at some point, which is could Once Upon a Time be the stars born of this season, in part because there's a feeling like maybe Brad and Leo are not going to go out of their way to shake a lot of hands. Nevertheless, Brad and Leo were nominated here. Quentin Tarantino obviously nominated director, screenplay, and best picture. Parasite 3, the screenplay thing is big.

I think that movie getting a screenplay nomination indicates that there are big things in front of it. People are taking it seriously. And Dolomite Is My Name, that's just more of a win for Netflix in my mind. That's like a campaigning win. Yes. And we'll be very curious to see if Eddie Murphy makes it to the best actor race. You know, as you mentioned at the top of the show, man, I just thought a lot of this stuff was just really boring.

And there's a part of me that if we're going to devote all this time to this show, I wish there was a little more anarchy in these nominations. I actually would have felt better just doing this podcast if there were like 14 nominations for cats. That would have been hilarious to me. But we're not getting anything that interesting. Let's go through these category by category and sort of identify some surprises and some snubs. So we'll trade off. Best foreign language. You want to read the nominees? Yes. They are The Farewell, Pain and Glory, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Parasite, and Les Miserables. I don't find this terribly surprising. I do think Portrait of a Lady on Fire getting in there is a nice thing. The movie opened on a few screens over the weekend and did really good box

office and is really one of the best reviewed films of the year. We've hardly talked about it on this show, but since it was not chosen by France as the nominee or best international feature at the Oscars, there was a feeling like it was moving out of this conversation. So it gets some love here. I think Atlantic's is probably the big film that snubbed the Netflix, Maddie Deox Netflix film. I just want to say, I guess it's nice to see The Farewell here. The Farewell is a movie I like. It seems preposterous to me that it can't just be in comedy or... I think it would have run in comedy and not drama.

And I would also just point out that we'll talk about the AFI list later in the podcast, but The Farewell was in one of the... It was in the AFI top 10. And Lulu Wang pointed out that it meant a lot for The Farewell to be one of the, it was in the AFI top 10 and Lulu Wang pointed out that it meant a lot for The Farewell to be on the list of American films. You know, it matters

how we talk about these things. It's a good point. I don't know what the rules are here. I suspect that the Hollywood foreign press has some sort of arcane legislation around this. You know, The Farewell is in part a Chinese production because it was filmed in China.

So there's a certain level of admittance you need to get to make a film there. And obviously much of the film is in Chinese. So that's a factor. I was thinking of Inglourious Bastards about this over the weekend because a lot of Inglourious Bastards is not in English. That's true. And I don't know.

And some of that production was British. So I don't know. What makes something an American production versus an international production? Right. And obviously this has also been a hot button issue in the actual Oscar Best International Feature campaign, which still has certain language restrictions. It is tricky to sort out. Yeah. I don't know.

I think Farewell should have been in comedy. That's just me. And the Farewell is not competing in Best International Feature, right? I don't know. I think Farewell should have been in comedy. That's just me. And the Farewell is not competing in Best International Feature, right? I don't believe so. So presumably Atlantic slides into this spot here. Maybe there are a few others. I watched a great movie called Invisible Life over the weekend. It's Brazil's entry that I would highly recommend to people when they get a chance to see it.

Best Motion Picture Animated. We'll move through this quickly. I found this to be quite a banal list of nominees. Frozen 2. How to Train Your Dragon in the Hidden World, Missing Link, Toy Story 4, The Lion King. That's three Disney nominations for those of you counting at home. This is just not the best year for this category.

This is actually maybe one of the worst years for this category that I can recall in a while. I have no opinion except to say that I Lost My Body seems to be the number one critics pick. Like every single critics association just keeps talking about I Lost My Body. Yeah, we haven't talked about I Lost My Body. I saw it a long time ago. It's Netflix's film.

I believe it's a French film. It's very good. It's very strange, though. And its oddity, I suspect, is limiting the HFPA's willingness to acknowledge it. Also, Missing Link being here, which is a UA Leica production, it has had a very aggressive

campaign. Very aggressive. I have received a great many items from them. A lot of schwag from the Missing Link campaign, which is a perfectly nice movie that you can watch on Hulu if you'd like right now, but this one feels a little bit exposed when we get down to the race. Also, The Lion King won't be competing in animated, I don't believe, at the Oscars. So. Good for them. Okay. Yeah. Best original song. This is just a

lot of famous people. Yeah. You want to read the nominees? Beautiful Ghosts from Cats. Okay. I'm Gonna Love Me Again from Rocketman. Into the Unknown, Frozen 2. Spirit, The Lion King. Stand Up, Harriet. So you've got Elton John, Beyonce. Do we know whether it's Idina Menzel who's nominated for Into the Unknown or is that Panic at the Disco? It's Idina Menzel. Okay, well, I don't know what kind of world we're living in at this point.

Beautiful Ghosts is, I believe, the Taylor Swift song. Yeah. And Stand Up is the Cynthia Erivo song, I believe, at the end of Harriet. Is that correct? Where's Jessie Buckley? I don't know. I finally caught up with Wild Rose. Oh, what'd you think?

She's delightful. Great. And that song is really lovely. It's great. Yeah. Shame on the HFPA. That'll be the eighth time we say that on this podcast. Best original score, Alexander Desplat, Little Women.

Hildur Gwondatyr, Joker. Randy Newman, Marriage Story. That's my dad. Thomas Newman, 1917. Daniel Pemberton, Motherless Brooklyn. Let me tell you the first thing I did after these nominations were announced. I put on the score to Motherless Brooklyn and I was like, oh, this is real good. This is a weird nomination. It's a bit of a random nomination. I wonder if there was a lot of lobbying for this nomination, but it's a great score that kind of

captures mid-century New York jazz. Just pleased to see it. A couple of things pretty aggressively snubbed here. Michael Giacchino's Jojo Rabbit score. Giacchino, one of the most beloved and honored composers working in Hollywood right now. Michael Abel's Us score, I think, is really one of the more interesting and acclaimed of the year. No John Williams for Rise of Skywalker. In fact, no Star Wars at all here. Was it screened in time? I doubt it, but who knows?

I'm just, yeah. It has not screened for any of us schnooks. Can I just say, upon re-watching Marriage Story, this seems banal to be like, wow, the Randy Newman score is amazing, but that movie is not that movie without the Randy Newman score. It's outstanding. Totally agree. And the first time I saw it, I didn't feel it as much as the second time.

It stands out. Yes, yes. And so, you know, we'll see what happens there. Randy Newman has won for Best Original Song but has never won for Best Original Score.

He's obviously, you know, this is the guy who wrote the score to The Natural. This is one of the great composers, not just songwriters of our time and is one of my idols. Best Screenplay and Motion Picture. Noah Baumbach for Marriage Story.

Bong Joon-ho and Han Jin-won for Parasite. Anthony McCartan, The Two Popes. Quentin Tarantino, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. And Stephen Zalian for The Irishman. So maybe we, a slight oversight in terms of our winners. I think The Two Popes was a big winner here too. Yes. And this is the first time we're saying the words The Two Popes on this show.

Everybody said after Telluride that The Two popes was going to come through and dominate. And then they didn't get any love at all from all of those critics' bodies we talked about. And then here it is. But now it's starting. We did pick this. And I believe I picked it. Yes. This is a very golden globe.

It was your first pick. Yeah. It's so classic. It does have international appeal because it's set, obviously, in the Vatican. And there's some Argentina flashbacks and two very, very beloved actors in Jonathan Price and Anthony Hopkins. It is feel good. It is accessible. And it just seems like Golden Globes candy. I agree with you. I wouldn't even be stunned if it won this category.

It seems most likely that Baumbach would win here, but him not getting a director nomination. There's a feeling right now, I think in the Oscar race, that something like this might happen. Irishman might win best picture, Quentin Tarantino might win best director, and Noah Baumbach might win best screenplay. And that is how they would find a way to acknowledge the three frontrunners. I could see that. The Globes is different. They're honoring different stuff. I give them a lot of credit for nominating Parasite. I didn't think they were even going to nominate Bong for director. And so this is not a bad category. The films that leaves out obviously is Little Women, which I think is actually a feat

of screenplay writing in a lot of ways. Yes. Because as adaptations go, it's a very unusual adaptation as you have made me understand in the last month. And we'll talk more about that. Again, does the Hollywood Foreign Press Association read books? Which, you know, to be fair, has any man in my life read this book either? No. So it's okay. But I don't think that they cared about the intricate adaptation process of Little Women. I agree with you.

Jojo Rabbit also not nominated in this category. Starting to feel like Jojo Rabbit's fading away. Yeah. Which, that's okay. Fine by me. Best actor in a supporting role in any motion picture, Tom Hanks, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, Anthony Hopkins, The Two Popes, Al Pacino, The Irishman, Joe Pesci, The Irishman, Brad Pitt, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. This is what I would call the chalkiest category here. We tried to get cute and suggest Sterling K. Brown in Waves

when we made our predictions and that, of course, did not happen and Joe Pesci was nominated. He also won a bunch of Critics Awards over the weekend and Joe Pesci rules

in The Irishman, so this is fine by me. I just want to say that this category was, this is what I picked for my Oscar predictions in October. Oh.

Congratulations to you. Thanks. I don't feel very proud about it considering who's the nominating body, but yeah. These are good performances. I like all of them. This would be fine. congratulations to you thanks i don't feel very proud about it considering who's the nominating body but yeah these are good performances i like all of them this would be fine that's probably the last time we'll say that okay best actress in a supporting role in any motion picture kathy bates for richard jewell annette benning for the report laura

dern marriage story jennifer lopez hustlers margot Robbie Bombshell I feel like I'm getting really good at reading these and they should hire me to do one of these I do feel like I'm in like the awards presentation you know at five in the morning when they're reading the nominations and I'm available I was awake and watching that it was very funny to watch Tim Allen

read the nominees in this category just you know a brief rant. And I've seen a lot of other awards journalists and prognosticators ranting about this recently. But you know what? I'm going to save it. Oh, good. I'm going to save it. For Hark.

Okay. I love and respect all of the women in this category. And it makes me really mad. Because you wanted Zhao Xusheng? Yeah, and Florence Pugh. Here we go. So I think there are three people in here who we consider a lock for the Oscars, and we picked them in our Globes predictions. Laura Dern for Marriage Story, Jennifer Lopez for Hustlers, Margot Robbie for Bombshell.

I think these are three great performances. It seems like Laura Dern is just going to win the Oscars. It certainly does. We just don't need to really talk about it. But we can have a little fun with the two other nominations, you know? And it's a little bit of who do you want to see at the Oscars? And who do you want to get to talk about for a couple months? Love Annette Bening. Annette Bening has never won an Oscar. She absolutely deserves an Oscar.

She's not going to win it this year. So why are we spending any time on this nothing burger performance in the report? She's just wearing a wig. Okay. The coffee kicked in. I just. Why? I don't disagree with you. Okay. I don't feel as strongly about Zhao Xusheng as a lot of other people do. I do feel strongly about Florence Pugh in all things, in all walks of life. I feel strongly about both of them. I loved both of those performances. Zhao Shushan is when The Farewell really came alive for me.

And Florence Pugh is one of the great actors of her generation. And she's amazing in Little Women and does amazing things with the character of Amy. No spoilers. Not that any of you will know what I'm talking about, but I... And then the Kathy Bates-Richard Jewell thing is... You have this down as a surprise.

I don't know if this is a surprise. I guess... We didn't even have it on our list when we did our predictions. Now, that's obviously my fault because I made the long list. But one thing that happened is that she started to get recognized by a lot of bodies in the last week or so. And in fact, she won a couple of critics awards. And so she is now firmly in this

race. And she's really good. I mean, I think that that movie is really working best when Sam Rockwell, Kathy Bates, and Paul Walter Hauser are in a room together and talking. That is, those are kind of three high-level people. And most people don't know Paul Walter Hauser, but Rockwell obviously is just a genius actor and Kathy Bates is a genius actor. And so I think it's a little bit of a recognition. And also, it's just very, it's a very supporting actress-y.

Yeah. You know what I mean? like just in the sort of cliche terms it's like a woman who has got this emotional devastation in support of a man like that that is who really you know shades of like beatrice straight and network like she doesn't have a ton to do but when she gets to do it she does it in a big way. Yeah. I don't know. I'm not like mad about this. I just I'm a little mad. Okay.

I support your anger. I'm just I'm annoyed. I'm irritated. That's all. Why are you looking at me like that? Best actor in a motion picture musical or comedy

Daniel Craig Knives Out Roman Griffin Davis Jojo Rabbit Leonardo DiCaprio Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Taron Egerton, Rocketman, and Eddie Murphy, Dolomite is my name.

We've already noted the Uncut Gems category change. I find it hilarious that Leonardo DiCaprio was nominated for Best Musical or Comedy, even though he is very, very funny in this movie. People seemed annoyed that I did not highlight Leo in this Best Performances piece I wrote I did not highlight Leo in this best performances piece I wrote on the site. Leo's great. How many times

can I talk about how much I like Leo in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood? I do feel like we did it for three months. Which might ultimately be the deciding factor with Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is that we did all of our gushing for three months when there was nothing else going on. I've watched it a bunch,

like three or four times in the last five or six weeks. It's really good. It's really good. Whether it gets taken for granted or not will be interesting. This category is weird. Yes. Only Leo is going to be nominated for Best Actor at the Oscars. You think Eddie Murphy?

I have had Eddie Murphy on my This Seems Very Possible for a while. I think Dolomite getting nominated for comedy, Best Picture kind of helps, and obviously just kind of the Netflix sweep of it all, which we're seeing their campaigns are working, and he could float on that. Again, we still have Eddie Murphy hosting SNL to come. Eddie Murphy is really famous, and people really like having him around.

Yeah, I think they like this movie too. I think there's this general goodwill for the movie. I don't know. It's just, it's really going to be, it's going to be Eddie Murphy or Antonio Banderas. Like that's going to be the choice. And I guess with Sandler at number seven, that's kind of how it feels right now to me. Let's do best actor in a motion picture

because it's related to this conversation we're having. Christian Bale for Ford vs. Ferrari, Antonio Banderas, Pain and Glory, Adam Driver, Marriage Story,

Joaquin Phoenix, Joker, and Jonathan Pryce, The Two Popes. We mentioned that Bob De Niro, Bobby D, got the big snub. Yeah.

Tough look for our guy. Bale. To snub De Niro because he doesn't play by the HFPA rules and then reward Bale is very funny how many how many parties

did Bale go to how many rings did he kiss zero zero of course zero yeah I guess

it's interesting that For Verse Friday was not nominated in Best Picture and I think that's just that Ford vs. Ferrari was not nominated in Best Picture. And I think that's just because it is a bit more of a crowded drama field. It always is. Ford vs. Ferrari is a pretty Golden Globes-y movie. It's that it's traditional, crowd-pleasing, two movie stars, old-fashioned.

So you have to figure at some point they just wanted to honor something. I agree. I think Ford vs. Ferrari specifically is a victim of Netflix's complete overtaking of the awards conversation.

Having four movies get nominated in musical or comedy or best drama is, that's a big deal. Yeah. You know,

even the major studios are not doing that. They haven't been doing it for years. So that is exactly the kind of movie that is getting nudged out. And 1917 nudged in. I was going to say, I think it's also a little bit that 1917 replaced, is the serious dad movie of choice this Oscar season

with Richard Jewell rising. How do you feel about Jonathan Pryce right now? To win or to be nominated? Just to be nominated. I mean, he does seem on the bubble to me. I'm very curious to see how Two Popes fares in the next couple of months and whether it is taken as seriously by the Oscars as it was by the Golden Globes. It's not a super noisy movie,

even though it does have Jonathan Pryce and Anthony Hopkins. And again, the actors are the largest voting body in the Oscars, and people really like voting for guys of a certain or women of a certain age who have not gotten their due. To me, it's still TBD. He's certainly campaigning. Yeah, I mean, we've seen now two weekends in a row, The Irishman premiering on Netflix and there being a big conversation around it. And then we saw this weekend, Marriage Story, and there being a big conversation around it. We'll get to that. The Two Popes premieres on Netflix on December 20th, just in time for the holidays. The Two Popes is really good for old people. I've heard many people say,

I wish my mom or I wish my dad could have seen this movie. A lot of old people in the Academy. I don't know if they've seen The Two Popes yet. Maybe those who are not excited enough to go to screenings haven't seen it. So maybe the conversation gets even louder and people like Price get shotgunned even deeper into the conversation. It'll be interesting to see i mean eddie murphy adam sandler jonathan price christian bale you know these people are all fighting for one spot basically which is makes makes this probably the most intriguing race to me other than best picture so best actress in a motion picture drama cynthia erivo harriet scarlett johansson marriage story sarsha ronan little women charlie star Bombshell, Renee Zellweger, Judy. A couple of things.

Rewatched Bombshell. Charlize is unreal. Yeah. The voice, even more so than the face, it's crazy. I watched a YouTube clip of Megyn Kelly after the movie, and I was like, this is unbelievable. Whether that makes it a great performance is kind of debatable, but it is a fucking crazy transformation. That first 20 minutes when she's just kind of giving you the tour of Fox News and doing the Lea Villain, you're just like, what is happening? It's disorienting.

It really is. She seems like a lock for this race. We obviously know Renee Zellweger is a lock, and Scarlett Johansson almost certainly is a lock. So you got two open spots, and in here you get Saoirse Ronan. I think even though the movie was not recognized in a big way at this awards probably indicates that she's headed towards best actor. So much like best actor, we're going to have one spot. And Mark Harris wrote about this a couple of months ago, but this has been sort of identified as the kind of quote unquote minority spot, which is unfortunate and is indicative of a lot of the problems with the voting at the Oscars. But, you know, Awkwafina has been relegated to musical comedy here, but she is a part of this conversation as well. At the Globes, we've got Cynthia Erivo.

And the big snubs are Lupita Nyong'o for Us and Alfre Woodard for Clemency. I'm not surprised Alfre Woodard did not get a look here. Yeah, it doesn't seem like a lot of people have seen it yet. It's kind of last minute. Lupita won a lot of critics awards and is very much back in the conversation. And I think we discussed last week that we thought she might be in the mix for this. Turned out, no. Yeah. You know, if you drive around Los Angeles, you may find a lot of bus stops and on a lot of billboards, you'll see Lupita Nyong'o's face and her character from Us because Universal has decided that they really want to push

her campaign to run here. So this is kind of a blow for her to not get nominated. I don't know. You know, as far as like who is the most deserving, this isn't the award show

to settle that. Anyhow, I prefer Lupita Nyong'o to Cynthia Erivo and Harriet, which is a movie that, you know, is fine, but really it is like just not very interesting to me.

I do as well. I have not heard from Renee Zellweger or Judy in like two months. This occurred to me too. You think she's just storing it up because she's going to, you know, she has a hard six weeks in front of her? I guess so. And I think, I believe that she's being honored at like the Palm Springs or I think she has some things lined up to be back in view in january and i guess doesn't

really need to do that much as evidenced by the fact that she was nominated um by the way how is judy not a musical or comedy i really don't know yeah okay once again category fraud right is runs rampant here at the golden globes uh but but that's interesting i if she is this year's Glenn Close in The Wife, then, which was just kind of like predetermined from August, right? Like this person will be nominated and will win Best Actress. Glenn Close was more in our face. The Wife was not in our face, but Glenn Close was at this point. I think she might get Olivia Colman by Scarlett.

You think so? I think it's possible. Renee Zellweger already has an Oscar. Yeah, that's true. Like, why do we have to give Renee Zellweger an Oscar for a movie that is okay that no one saw? I think more people did see it. Not more than Marriage Story, that's for sure I mean that's true I just kind of Marriage Story is not Scarlett Johansson's movie it's not it's not it's a good performance though

I know she's problematic now and nobody's allowed to like Scarlett Johansson anymore no that's not it I just kind of don't think that it is so

the Adam Driver performance is what you walk away from with that yeah I feel it's funny over the weekend there was this feel that it's funny over the weekend there was this sense that driver had reclaimed the lead and best actor and we'll get

to that yeah but now i feel like that has flipped again but anyway uh best actress in a motion picture musical or comedy take it away aquafina for the farewell anna darmas for times out kate blanchett where'd You Go, Bernadette? Beanie Feldstein for Booksmart. And my girl Emma Thompson for Late Night. I thought you did a nice job predicting this category. Thanks. This is the one where we were just like, what the hell is happening? And threw our arms up and we got closest, which is all you got to say about the Golden Globes. It's crazy. I mean, we didn't predict Kate Blanchett, though we did suggest it could happen.

Yeah. Constance Wu did not get in here, which I don't think is even really a snub. Yeah. You know, my thing on Where'd You Go, Bernadette? And I said it when the movie

came out. I was like, this movie's not bad. Is it bad? I don't think it does. It doesn't work. Does that mean it's bad? I don't know.

How are... No, it's a movie with Cate Blanchett and Billy Crudup. You know, it's pretty good. movie with Cate Blanchett and Billy Crudup. You know, it's pretty good. Listen, Crudup train right here. Crudup is my

performance of 2019. Just the art of being Billy Crudup. I thought you were all over Beanie, which was smart. Thank you. Who do you think

will win here? Awkwafina? It could be, though. You know, you could see them. I just, I think, like, Beanie on stage b is is such like a nice cheerful golden globes moment she's not famous though well whatever anna de armas though she might be very famous soon that wouldn't be shocking to see them be like it's time for this

in this hundred million dollar murder mystery one month before the new Bond movie comes out. Yeah, that's true. Watch it beat Kate Bunchett. You never know. Crazier things. Best director, motion picture. Interesting category for a nerd like me. Bong Joon-ho, Parasite, Sam Mendes, 1917, Todd Phillips, Joker,

Martin Scorsese, The Irishman, Quentin Tarantino, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Lot of snubs. No Greta Gerwig yeah no Noah Baumbach no Taika Waititi this could definitely be the Oscar nominations for this category

it could it could I just I think it's colossally stupid if it is. But the oddsmakers had Phillips running eighth in this category for the Globes and he got in.

I don't know what I have to say on that that I haven't already said. I do not think that the Golden Globes is like the best discerner here. So it's not surprising to me that they went for this. It's a really showy director example without maybe having substance. But they clearly really like Joker. So good for them. We may need to devote more conversation to Joker at some point. That's fine.

Okay. Just it's we got to prepare for the like the Green Book style. This movie might win thing. It's like, it is in play. It's totally in play. Again, when we did the predictions, I put Joker on my best picture. Like I see it coming

because it is the classic example of something that is not as smart as people think it is. And people out here just being like, wow, what an amazing achievement. And it's the Emperor's Clothes. But that is like classic, classic Oscar fare. It's totally possible. Gut reaction. Who do you think will win this category?

I honestly have no idea. They could do Joker. That would be very stupid. It seems If I had to guess, they would do Scorsese here. And otherwise, the Irishman maybe doesn't take on that many Golden Globes. That would be my guess. So Tarantino has been nominated as Best Director four times with the Golden Globes and never won. He's got two screenplay wins. But I think what they'll do is they'll just give Best Motion Picture, Musical, or Comedy to Once Upon a Time. It's true. Good segue.

Yeah. Let's go to Best Motion Picture, Musical, or Comedy. Okay. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Jojo Rabbit, Knives Out, Rocketman, and Dolomite Is My Name. Snubs. Cats. You are the only person who thinks it was Snubs. I haven't seen it.

Nor have I. I don't know. Maybe it's amazing. Do you think so? What if it's just like Casablanca, but with cats? No, no. He's looking at you, kid. Meow!

It can't be that. Number one, Casablanca with cats is no longer Casablanca. What if it's Chinatown with cats? It's going to be a lot of irate citizens when they find out that they're paying for water that they're not going to get. Oh, that's all taken care of. Again, once you have like creepy tiny cats with like Taylor Swift and James Corden's face on them, You can't be any of the great works of art. It's too upsetting. Raiders of the Lost Ark, but cats.

Okay. Belak's staff is too long. They're digging in the wrong place. Can I just say it's not the fact that it's animals substituting for people i'm sure somewhere on the internet there's like a great animated version of like casablanca just like by cats you know and it's like we'll always have like paris meow and then like i'm sure that exists it's not so it's not an anti-cat the animal take from me it's have you seen the motherfucking cats they put in cats? Why are they doing this?

I don't know. I really hope cats ends with Thanos snapping his finger. That would be dope. I wouldn't care. Okay, so Once Upon a Time is going to win this category. Booksmart, I guess, also got snubbed, but not really. No. This is the last category we're gonna talk about.

You ready? Yeah, here I am. Best Motion Picture Drama. The nominees are The Irishman, Marriage Story, 1917, Joker, The Two Popes. Here are the movies that did not get nominated for Best Drama. Little Women, Bombshell, Ford vs. Ferrari, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. Yeah. Hmm.

I would guess that all five of these movies are getting Best Picture nominations. I think so as well at this point. What do you think would be the most globesy outcome in this race? Aye, aye, aye. So I kind of, I don't think that Joker will do it in this category. You do. You're making a face. I don't know. I don't know.

I kind of see them doing like a weird 1917 thing. I can also see marriage story happening. Too small, I think. Well, maybe, but it's like about a divorce and it's about a marriage. Who among us is not married or divorced? Well, many of them.

And I read all of their opinions on Twitter this weekend. I understand you can't relate. You don't care. But I do think it is like kind of more broadly applicable and accessible than maybe we give it credit for. And you can just kind of see a lot of people being like, oh, yeah, that one.

But I guess. After running this organization down for close to 35 minutes, the fact that you just open your mind up to the idea of them rewarding marriage stories. I know. As soon as we said that, I remembered that they picked Bohemian Rhapsody and Green Book last year. Okay. Yeah. Even if you don't like Marriage Story, which if you don't like it, I get it. I'm not going to try to convince anybody to like it. You can't deny that it's just an incredibly sophisticated, nuanced, very well-written written kind of quiet movie right which except when adam driver's yelling um that's not the kind of thing that they usually go for here that's true they might go for 1917 or joker or or you know even the two popes but i don't know i just don't see it

um you know stay tuned if you want to hear more about the golden globes i don't know. I just don't see it. You know, stay tuned if you want to hear more about the Golden Globes. I don't know if you and I will be talking about it up until we need to predict the outcome of it. The awards ceremony is on January 5th. We'll be here for you talking about the awards. We'll do some predictions ahead of time. Aside from that, I don't know. I guess we'll talk a little bit more about 1917 when everybody has a chance to see it. And the same for Two Popes and the same for some other movies that they didn't nominate.

Yeah, we got it. We got to have some more in-depth conversations about Little Women and Bombshell, too, despite the fact that they did not do as well here. Wait, so what do you think will if you had to pick one that will win? I'm picking Joker. OK, I think you're right. The energy that I felt this morning was just like oh right this

yeah this movie made a billion dollars yeah and and even if it's not taken seriously by the Oscars which I think it will be

but even if it's not this is the place where it usually does well and can't you already envision this this the heavy sigh

that we emit yes I've been making it for two months okay yes all right i can well maybe you've just influenced me so greatly that i'm overwhelmed uh before we escape the golden globes let's go to uh a very special segment called hark hark frightened hark am Frighten! Hark! Amanda, the Golden Globes needs to stop this fucking bullshit where we have to wake up at 5 a.m. to see the nominations. Yes. This needs to end.

This started because this country was driven by morning news shows once upon a time in America. Yeah. And I know that the morning show is important to you, but morning news shows, the Today Show, Good Morning America, these shows don't hold the same place in the American consciousness that they once did. And the only reason that Tim Allen and Dakota Fanning were up early this morning reading the names of movie stars was so that people on those morning shows could talk about these nominations. If we set this at 8 a.m. PDT, it'd be fine. If we set it at 11 a.m. PDT, it'd be fine. If we set it at 7 p.m. and made a primetime special out of it, it would do beautifully.

What do you think? I don't agree with the 7 p.m. PDT. I think, yeah, morning shows don't matter except for the morning show the golden globe nominated morning show morning show baby everything that we just said about the golden globes we could have just like not said and just been like they also nominated the morning show for best uh i think even best drama i like for best drama guys i i love the show but no um i don't know that morning shows matter matter but i do think in terms of news cycle they want to do it in the morning so they get both east coast and west coast i think the emmys now do 8 a.m pdt 11 a.m within five years all award shows will move

to 8 a.m and that seems that seems moreane because, again, I think the early stuff was both morning shows and to give people time to get reactions for newspapers the next day and all that stuff. And, you know, we kind of live in an instant economy right now. I think at 7 p.m. at night, like, I have a life. I don't need to be looking at the Golden Globes nominations at night and nor does anyone else. So you need it when people are bored because who really cares that much except for the people nominated and you and me. I have to tell you, I do not have a life. So 7 p.m. sounds good to me. This has been Hark. Amanda, let's go to Stock Up, Stock Down. Okay. If it goes bust, you can make 10 to 1, even 20 to 1 return. And it's already slowly going bust. We talked a little bit about these awards bodies doing their thing over the weekend.

I'm kind of interested. We're not going to run through every award. That would be way too much to talk about. If you're interested, I suspect you seek them out on the various sites that cover this stuff. But my takeaway over the weekend before the Globes was that The Irishman is way up. Okay. And both the New York Film Critics Circle and the National Board of Review gave this best film. It's obviously been nominated up and down with the exception of Robert De Niro at the Globes. A lot of people watched it.

The It's Too Long first wave of conversation happened. Now that that's over with, we got a little bit of information from Nielsen. I'm going to read that information to you. This comes from The Verge. Nielsen reports that nearly 13.2 million viewers with a reach of over 17.1 million unique U.S. viewers watched The Irishman within the first five days of its release. That's better than El Camino, the Breaking Bad movie that debuted to 11 million views, but didn't do as well as the meme-fueled Bird Box, which saw 26 million views within the same time frame.

I noticed over the weekend you shared a couple of pieces that Alyssa Bresnak wrote for The Ringer about Netflix's ability to drive conversation around a movie release. What do you make of, you know, the critics' groups' wins and also this huge interest in the movie, theoretically, according to Nielsen? Right. So, Bird Box did not win any Oscars. Was not in the Oscar conversation. What a shame.

And with all respect to El Camino, the Breaking Bad movie, I am not sure that it's going to be a part of the Oscar conversation. Didn't make the Golden Globes. No. It was right there until the Golden Globes nominations. Yeah. I'm just kidding. I have a lot of respect for the people who made Breaking Bad.

I didn't really get El Camino. Yeah. So I think that I don't know that that's to say the popularity doesn't necessarily equate with Oscars, which we have known for a long time. And it's often to our chagrin that things that people have actually seen don't get considered for Oscars. So it's obviously a bit different with something like The Irishman, which is also critically acclaimed. I am getting real Roma vibes from Irishman right now because Roma was in the same place last year, which is the critics were just like, oh my gosh, it won every single award, won in a challenging, amazing, accomplished, you

know, of cinema, et cetera. And then a lot of people were like, I didn't really get through it at home. And there is a real divide between the people who are trying to do this seriously and the people who just watch movies. It's a great, great way of describing it. We've never said it that way, but that is the thing. There are a lot of people in the Academy who are cineasts who would fit in perfectly on film Twitter. But then there are a lot of people who are just like, I just like to watch movies.

Yeah. And sometimes I work on movies. Right. And there is a difference. There's a real difference. And I think the other thing is like, it's both, I'm getting Roma vibes. And I think we expected Irishman to have both some Roma vibes,

but also to bring in some of the green book. I'm an older guy and I just like watching my friends at the movies. And that group has thus far proved a little resistant to the Irishman. The Irishman needs a scene where Joe Pesci folds an entire pizza in half in bed and eats it. That's all that we need to get the Irishman across the line. Yeah. It may be peaking early. It's a little hard to say. I haven't even listed this here, but let's just talk very quickly

about the reception of Marriage Story, which I feel like is in concert with The Irishman. A lot of bad takes, I thought. This reminded me a little bit of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, where I was like, guys, take yourself out of it a little bit. Try to take yourself out.

Now, we put ourselves into it. And we tried to be very sensitive about the movie when we talked about it on the show but i felt like a lot of a lot of people put their put their feet right into the shoes of everybody who made the movie and that sometimes gets a little messy yeah it takes are always bad especially it's great that so many people can see these movies and i think a lot of people remarked that it's just like insane, but, and, and ultimately great that the Irishman, which is a three and a half hour, like very serious, accomplished movie by Martin Scorsese just instantly is available to so many people and

becomes like in discussion and mean by so many people. Same thing for marriage story to a degree. I can't remember anyone caring about a Noah Baumbach film this much in my entire life. I would guess by a factor of 10, this is the most people that have ever seen one of his movies. So that's cool. As soon as that happens, everyone is just kind of like, here's what this means to me. You and me included. And there's a glut of those opinions. So I don't know.

You got to take the discourse as it is. I will say, in addition to all of this super personal oversharing, there was just a little bit of a, I don't want to say backlash, but I saw certain people kind of in the film Twitter being like, are we sure this is good, that good? Yes. And that to me was like,

ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, this is our best picture winner. Because as soon as certain people start being like, huh, the established thing that we've all agreed on that has great craft is like not quite highbrow enough or not quite accomplished enough or is not as serious as some other shit that i watched because i'm an expert i'm like oh this is the one historically this is the kind of movie that does well yeah it

is very manageable movie. It is artistic but it doesn't tell you it's artistic. Right. It's artistry is much more subtle and it's got two

super charismatic people. And really like six super charismatic people if you include Laura Dern and Ray Liotta and Alan Alda and Merritt Weaver

and like there's a lot of things to recommend about it and also this is this is like a little uncouth but but I'm just going to say it. I feel like anybody that's ever been cheated on is like, fuck this movie. Oh, interesting.

And I don't know if that's going to be a good thing or a bad thing. Okay. I can't tell. Okay. I may be over-reading Twitter. tweeting, Twitter? Yeah, anyone who feels like the third party in a two-party situation is certainly having a reaction to it. I think that's fair. And I guess that's your right. I was thinking, I was going to suggest a hark, which is just like, I'm really not interested in unmarried people's opinion of this movie. I just don't care.

And, you know, I'm not interested in anyone under the ageried people's opinion of this movie. I just like don't care. And, you know, I'm not interested in anyone under the age of 25's opinion on this movie. Like, I'm sure you're living a full and happy life. And I hope that you never have to have an opinion on this movie because your marriage is perfect. But like, no thanks. I think if you as a kid have had big exposure to divorce, it's a little different. I guess so. But the kid doesn't matter in this movie. No, but when you are. My't matter in this movie no but when

you are my rewatch of this movie my takeaway was that kid sucks which like he's been traumatized by the destruction of his parents marriage and i think it's realistic it's like you know you're fighting over a kid who's just like i don't want to be here i wish like i don't want to be a part of your problems i just want to play with my Legos. And I think that's really true. And it's definitely what it must feel like for parents. But I don't care about that kid. I don't think this is a representation of divorced kids' rights. That's all I'm saying.

Usually in movies like this, the kid is like the secret weapon. And I feel like this kid is completely overlooked. Julia Butters from Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is just dunking on this kid in the young kid race. Right behind her is Noah Jupe from Honey Boy. Those two are like, they're running like

a two-man game, just fast-breaking on this poor kid whose name I don't even know from Marriage Story. It's just a real shame. Just a tough beat. It's not a shame.

I think that's the point of the movie, and that's good. Julia Butters should be nominated for Best Actress. That's my take. Okay. She's incredible.

I would give it Supporting Actor for sure. Okay. Wait, wait. Can I just want to say one more thing about Marriage, right? Because we just started just talking about internet conversation and how internet conversation affects the Oscars. And I think thus far, and this could really change because the way that we watch movies and talk about movies is certainly changing in a rapid pace. A year makes a rapid pace. A year

makes a big difference. But thus far, it doesn't mean shit. Like the online conversation and film Twitter and memes have meant nothing to the Oscars. And it was funny because my reaction to all of this conversation was that the only thing that does matter for online discourse is like being whatever the internet thinks, the Oscars will do the opposite. And that was my reaction to Marriage Story. I was like, oh, you guys are kind of having mixed feelings. That means that this is going to be the one.

Just like the 2020 election. Stockdown, Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. I think this movie is cooked with the exception of Tom Hanks. Yeah. It seems like it's doing okay business and people seem to like it okay. It's on a number of your own critics list. Yeah. I like it.

I really like the Tom Hanks performance. Yeah. It might be the last time we actually have a conversation about the movie. So if there's anything else you'd like to say. I really like the Tom Hanks performance. Stockdown Ford versus Ferrari. We already really discussed this. I mean, it didn't even make the AFI list, which is not a good sign.

Yeah. That's really where a movie like that wants to be. As I said, we won't go through all of those lists, but the AFI list is worth discussing just a little bit here at the end of this conversation. So AFI, which is the only one of these groups that voted that features members of the Academy, which is important. So, you know, the New York Film Critics Circle and the LA Critics and NBR and the Critics' Choice, none of those people are in the Academy.

The AFI, which is a bit of a mysterious organization, features journalists and does feature people who work in the industry and vote for the Oscars. Here are the 10 films they chose. 1917, The Farewell of the Irishman, Jojo Rabbit, Joker, Knives Out, Little Women, Marriage Story, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and Richard Jewell. Yeah. Interesting list. It kind of feels like Knives Out took Ford vs. Ferrari's spot this year. It's like the Thanksgiving family movie. It certainly does. You get one crowd pleaser. And I loved Knives Out and I'm thrilled by that.

So, great job everybody, I guess. Knives Out Best Picture nomination would be wild. What probably is going to happen here is that we get

nine nominees for Best Picture and Knives Out isn't on the list. Yeah. But these, if not these nine, you could swap

Richard Jewell for the two popes. You know, you could, maybe there's a Crazy Dolomite is my name thing that happens. But this is as close as I've seen to what it's going to be. 1917, The Irishman, Jojo Rabbit, Joker, Little Women, Marriage Story, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Those seven feel pretty firm to me.

Would you agree? Yes. If you had to choose two more right now that are going into the race, what would you choose? I'm going to put Richard Jewell on the list. I think we should wait until more people have seen it, but it has been kind of the late swell, both in critics lists. It has real American sniper vibes to me. And I think also that that means as soon as I saw Richard Jewell, I was like, oh, bombshell is done because it has all of the political and timely elements. But. Yeah. It's well, I don't know, it's complicated, but I think more people are going to have an easier time attaching themselves to it and kind of like the virtue signaling that goes with Richard Jewell versus Bombshell.

Also, I mean, you know, Richard Jewell is about a man and Bombshell is about three female Fox News anchors. So people are going to align themselves with it. So that leaves me one more. I forgot to mention Parasite, which was not named by AFI because it's not an American production. So that would leave Farewell out. That would leave Ford versus Ferrari out. That would leave A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood out. That all sounds right to me.

You think those are all going to be sitting out? Yeah, I think those are going to be sitting out. And I think... And no bombshell. And no bombshell. And I think... So I would add Parasite and Richard Jewell to the seven that you named. Interesting times.

Yeah. Amanda, we're going to be talking a lot more about this in the future. Appreciate you waking up early on this Monday. Now let's go to my conversation with the documentarian, Alex Gibney. What an honor to be joined by Alex Gibney. Alex, thanks for being here. Thanks, Sean. Alex, I need to have you explain your film a little bit.

I know that that is painful when you're on the trail, but Citizen K is a fascinating movie, but it's complex, and I think it actually isn't as clearly understood as some of the other films that you've made, say, about Frank Sinatra or Julian Assange. Who is Mikhail Khodorovsky? Khodorovsky? Khodorkovsky.

Khodorkovsky. I've been practicing. I've been practicing. Khodorkovsky? Khodorkovsky? Khodorkovsky. Khodorkovsky. I've been practicing. I've been practicing. Khodorkovsky. It's kind of a soft K. Mikhail Khodorkovsky was at one point Russia's richest man. That would have been in the early 2000s. He was a guy who was a sort of young communist youth in the late 80s,

and then the tumult with Gorbachev and Yeltsin. And he ends up being a pretty good entrepreneur in this period when Russia dramatically turned to sort of Wild West capitalism. He starts with selling black market blue jeans and computers and then starts a bank. And then he does very, very, very well in ways we'll get into. And then as Russia's richest man, he ends up going toe-to-toe with Vladimir Putin in 2003. They have very different visions for the country. And Khodorkovsky calls out Putin in a public forum, a nationally televised event on corruption, accuses Putin of corruption.

And then a few months later, he's in prison, sent to Siberian Gulag. He spends 10 years in prison and during that period transforms from oligarch to public dissident, kind of a man of prisoner of conscience. Putin, under pressure, releases him in 2013. And now he's an oligarch in exile campaigning against the Putin regime and trying to foment democracy from without. So he's a character almost out of a Russian novel in a lot of ways, a figure of incredible conflict and, you know, searching through the world of how he feels about things and what he is pursuing. How does he come into your life? How do you come across him? Well, you know, in the wake of the 2016 election, I was looking to do something about Russia. But I want to do something about Russia as in what do we know about how Russia really works?

You know, I do films about power and abuses of power. So how does power work in Russia? And it was in that context that I was introduced to Khodorkovsky by two producers, John Batzik and P.J. Van Sandvik. And they had been tracking his story because it was such a great way of showing Russia in this kind of 90s to the present. And I agreed. I just thought it was an incredible story. So I met with Otakovsky. We sort of sized each other up and he agreed to participate. And was he excited to tell his story?

Because, you know, he's a dissident and he seems like a person who's very aware of his own public persona in your film. But was he that way when you first encountered him? To say that it would not be true to say he was excited to tell his story. As he told me one time, he refers to that kind of as a certain kind of torture. But he is interested in having his say about the way Russia is today and how it could change. So within that context, I think he was willing to sit still for telling his story. And then over time, and I interviewed him at great length. I interviewed him for a total of eight days, four before I went to Russia and four after. I think he became a bit more comfortable in telling his story.

So aside from those interviews, I think Russia feels like a steel cage to the American conscience. You know, we don't know how to get inside. So what are the challenges of visiting the country, filming there, telling your story from that vantage point as well as his? I mean, honestly, you know, I had a fair amount of freedom when I went to Russia. I used a Russian crew. We flew pretty low below the radar, but I got a journalist visa to go in where we watched maybe, you know, certainly our computers and cell phones, which were burners, computers and cell phones were also fused with malware, had to be wiped when we got back.

But, you know, I didn't feel, we didn't have minders with us the whole time. You know, I felt pretty free to go where I needed to and wanted to. Occasionally we'd run into officialdom. We were not allowed to film on certain bridges. But it was kind of, it was inefficiently applied, the authoritarian system. It was not North Korea. So Khodorkovsky is a bit of a wily figure, it feels like. And I'm wondering how you can verify the things that he's saying because, you know, he's amassed this immense fortune. He's done seemingly some unseemly things.

Yeah. So when you have a figure like that at the center of your story, how do you confirm that what you're getting is the real deal? Well, that's always a trick, you know, in a lot of the films I've done. And that was the purpose in a way of doing four interviews before I went to Russia and four interviews after. And obviously I talked to a lot of other people about Khodakovsky. Some people had spent a good bit of time. I've read a lot of other people about Khodorkovsky. Some people had spent a good bit of time. I've read a lot about him. And it was instructive also to kind of get a sense of how he is perceived in Russia, which was very different than I think he wants to be perceived.

How is that? He's reviled, largely speaking. I mean, there's a small group of intellectuals who I think are impressed by him. But, you know, particularly when we went to this town in Siberia, which had been the site of a big focus of his oil company, a town called Nevtyugansk. It's kind of like oil town. He's universally reviled there.

And that was interesting to see. What about the archival? Some of the best stuff in the film is this show trial that he endures over time. And it's just like a ludicrous examination of how he compiled his worth and the claims that they make against. Well, yeah, they claimed he stole all of his own oil. So – and that was after they put him in jail the first time for not having paid taxes on selling his oil. So, you know, which one is it? And it was fun. I mean there was a lot of good archive.

And hearing Hotakovsky tell that story, which he clearly relished, was interesting because in the first trial, they played it straight. Like this is a real trial and we're going to – you know, this is a court and we're going to do our best to prove our innocence and so forth and so on. Then they realized the fix was in. By the time they got to the second trial, they realized this is a joke. So they played it as high comedy and they just had fun with it. I mean, and this was a trial where they would prove conspiracy by entering as evidence the company phone book. All these people were in touch with each other. Yes, it was the company phone book.

You know, so they had a lot of fun. And I think by that time, particularly that second trial, is where popular opinion turned toward Hotikovsky. You know, he's reviled now, this is after years of putin's propaganda back then in the second trial which was uh you know around 2009 10 um he came out of that you know as a kind of heroic figure who is frontally battling and making fun of a system that was out of joseph kafka yeah he has a kind of devilish grin on his face throughout a lot of that. He has a kind of sly smile. And sometimes that smile's got a lot of steel in it.

Sometimes there's a lot of dark comedy. That's the other thing about Russia. Russia's got a great tradition of dark comedy. Nikolai Gogol, you know, particularly a favorite of mine, that book Dead Souls. You know, Khodorkovsky sees the world, I think, in dark comedy. But sometimes that smile, there's a little bit of menace there, too. So the film essentially acts in a lot of ways like a pocket history of Russia's false democracy. And that seems like a hard story to tell.

And you've got, what, two hours, two hours and ten minutes to tell it. Was it difficult to sort of arrange, to sort of create the outline to where Khodorkovsky's story fits into this larger international narrative? It was. It sure was. And as my editor, Mikey Palmer, will tell you, you know, we thought we had it nailed at the haiku-like four-hour version. You know, so getting it down to two hours was a challenge. But I think the key thing for us was if you follow Khodorkovsky's story and then his clash with Putin, which means to some extent following Putin's story, that gives you some sense of guidance. And along the way, there were certain themes that we picked up on where we would depart from both stories like the role of the media in Russia. That was one that we liked a lot.

And, but largely speaking, by sticking to Khodorkovsky's story and his conflict with Putin, that gave us a spine to tell Russia's story in this, you know, from the 90s to today. The Citizen K title seems like an obvious homage. Is that something that you guys were literalizing when you were making the movie and saying like,

oh, he is a Hearst-like figure in some ways? He is a Hearst-like figure in some ways. There's kind of a double meaning even to the Citizen K title. Part of it is the character K in the Kafka novels. But yeah, it seemed like a fun pun. And there's a lot of genre elements to this story and that's what we had kind of fun with. Part of it is kind of like a fun pun. And there's a lot of genre elements to this story. And that's what we had kind of fun with. Part of it is kind of like a gangster film. Part of it's like a Western,

Once Upon a Time in the East. And that's certainly how we played with the music, too. The music is a real character in the film on purpose, because we wanted this to be pulpy. It felt like a very pulpy era. And so we wanted to invest in that. How do productions like this unfold for you now? Because you're so prolific. You're essentially on a two film a year pace, which is staggering, especially when something like this. It's like, that's how they come out. But each film takes anywhere from like two to five years to do. So it's like, but I do work on more than one at a time. Tell me about that.

I want to know what it's like to be juggling multiple deep stories. It's not easy. There are certain advantages when you get to the editing room because it can be advantageous. If you have an editor whose head is only in that story. And it's useful to have a director who can move in and out of the cutting room. I go away, I come back, I look at the structure. Certain things may seem apparent to me that may not seem apparent to the editor, though the editors are usually wiser than I am. So that can be a kind of an advantage. It's harder at certain moments when you really have to dig deep into a topic and you've been, say, cutting another movie. And now you have to

really focus on the history of Russia and Khodorkovsky. And it's usually a period where I have to, you know, if I'm going to do the Khodorkovsky interview, I have to not think about anything else for a week and just dive deep, do those interviews. And then I come up for air and then I can go off and do something else. Likewise, when I'm, you know, shooting in a place like Russia, I've got to be focused on that. It's during the editing period where things are easier to, what's a good phrase for it? Multitask. Yeah, I assume that's something you'll have to do frequently.

Yeah, yeah. You know, it started for me really by accident because I was doing Gonzo, a doc I did about Hunter S. Thompson, and we were having trouble with some rights. And so we were having to kind of put it on hold. It wasn't moving as fast as we wanted. And so it happened that I started to work on Gonzo and Taxi to the Dark Side at the same time. That actually proved hugely useful in that case because Taxi to the Dark Side was so dark. It was affecting me psychically.

So it was a huge boon to be able to walk into another cutting room where I could get some laughs. And I realized that there were certain benefits to going back and forth between the two. So it ended up being something I started to do. Do you, when you're arranging these projects, are you looking to have a kind of a lightness and a darkness? Because your two films this year, The Inventor and this film, are both fairly dark. And they're both fairly about what ambition can do to a person in some ways. Well, I'm invested in dark comedy.

They both have a few laughs. For sure. But I seem to, that seems to be the direction I'm headed. There are not a lot of puppy films in my future, I'm afraid. Why so prolific? Why are you moving so quickly and making so many films? I'm fascinated. Like I said, I don't think I move that quickly, but I am interested in a lot of different things.

And truth is, I think that there were a lot of years where I didn't get anything done. I couldn't get arrested. And I'm kind of making up for lost time. Is it because you're thinking about legacy or just these are things you've always wanted to do? I'm not thinking about legacy. It's really, there are stories. There are a lot of stories that are interesting and I'm interested in telling. And it's hard to say, well, I'm just not going to touch that one until I'm finished with this one. I realized, well, actually, that story is pretty interesting too. Maybe I'll dig in and find a way to see if I can balance the two. I'm hungry for good stories.

You've hit a lot of big figures in history and i'm wondering if there's a white whale that you've tried to wrap your arms around that you haven't been able to get um i don't know um it's not like there's been the the one person i've been interested to talk to you know that i did do a film called casino jack in the united States of Money. I like that movie. About Jack Abramoff. I always wanted to find a lobbyist who would be willing to tell tales and name names to really talk about how messed up our system has become because of money and the way that lobbyists write our laws, the way that lobbyists skew perceptions, the way that the system of money in politics has really corrupted us all. But to do that right, everybody can wave their hands and say,

isn't it terrible? Isn't it terrible? To really understand how it works, you have to be inside. And I've never been able to find somebody who is willing to say, yeah, this is how it worked. And I'll give you some examples of when I represented, I don't know, Coca-Cola or whatever. That's one I've been interested in but haven't found. Have you used that approach in the past as sort of like almost like a casting call mentality where you say, I need to find the avatar for the know, I was originally approached, and I don't usually do it that way, but I was originally approached on Taxi to the Dark Side. Somebody said, you know, I'd be interested in raising money for you to do a film about torture.

Well, torture is a dark topic. It's a topic most people don't even want to hear about. But I knew that if I was going to tell that story, I had to find a way into it. And then I stumbled on this story written by Tim Golden, a New York Times reporter, former New York Times reporter, about Dillowar, the taxi driver. And that, you know, opened it up because then I could do the story as kind of a murder mystery. What happened to Dillowar? The state of documentary filmmaking is at a continuous boom. It's been five, six, seven years. A lot of the success of your films, I think, is a huge contributing factor to that. Do you see an arc to that boom or do you just think we're – Alan Greenspan and everybody told us about the real estate and stock market. It's just going to keep going up forever. All the rules of gravity.

So sure, I'm sure there'll be a dip at some point. But right now, it's magical. And I think it's magical because we all, and I say we all, meaning documentarians, we all threw out the rule book and reinvented the documentary in a way that engaged these fascinating, larger-than-life stories, true stories that were riveting but were willing to tell them in a way that was fun, that was engaging, that was different. So that kind of formal experimentation at the same time that audiences learned that they could get interested in stories with real people, it didn't always have to be actors, I think has contributed to this enormous boom. How much do you think about your work as entrepreneurial as well as artistic or creative or journalistic? Because you have all these different places to put the things that you make now. And are you strategic about saying, I think this would do well on Netflix?

I think this would do well on HBO. Look, I think the market now, and that's something that really has changed. The market now is great for docs. And so I'm not sure you think of it quite that way. And in a way, I think the present moment is better for it. Because I can remember, you know, in the 90s, it was a terrible time where cable television had this kind of branding element where every channel was a brand and you had to make documentaries in the style of that brand. It was awful. It crushed all the creativity out.

And it was also kind of the last death knell of commercial television, where you were renting viewers on behalf of corporate sponsors. Now people pay for content directly. And so they have to be great stories. And those networks are competing for the great stories. Well, that's a good place to be in. We were talking before we started recording about your voice and how your voice is now, it's certainly familiar to me as a watcher of your films. And even though the, maybe the company's brands, the distributor's brands are not as strong, I feel like your brand, your films,

there's a, there's a kind of familiarity. We come to a point in the film where we hear your voice and you're interrogating the subject or you're helping us understand where we are. Are you very conscious of kind of building that in each film and saying, like, I want the films to all feel like this, like of a piece? Well, I'm conscious of its style. I'm conscious of the film stylistically. And we choose, you know, between the cinematographer and the editors, we choose a style for a film depending on what that is. You know, like I said, Taxi to the Dark Side was a murder mystery. I thought of Enron as a kind of a heist film.

So the style is very consciously reckoned with, not always at the beginning. Sometimes we start with something and then we will move to something later. But by the time we get to the end, we boiled the roux. We've got a pretty flavorful, you know, mix. So that's true. The voice thing, you know, that happened by accident. I never intended or imagined that it would be a good idea for me to narrate my own films. And I don't narrate them all. Like a lot of the music ones don't have narration. But a lot of the, all the investigative ones seem to have my voice in them. And it started on Taxi to the Dark Side.

You know, my first film, big film, Enron, was narrated by Peter Coyote, a magnificent narrator with a beautiful voice. And I was approaching him on Taxi. And then what happened was that we decided to include some footage of my dad, which I shot just before he died. And that made it very emotional but also very personal for me. And somehow the idea of having a third party as good a voice as Peter was, read narration that I wrote. Didn't seem as honest. So I rewrote the narration slightly more in my voice. And I started to narrate not because I wanted to push myself as a narrator, just the opposite. My editor was horrified initially. But because it just felt more honest. That is my voice. And why, if you're making a film, why isn't it interesting to include your actual voice?

Some people say, well, I never want my voice in. Well, maybe. But I found it to be, one, sometimes efficient in terms of covering a lot of ground quickly, particularly for complicated stories. But also sometimes it seems appropriate to express an opinion even while you allow opinions that you disagree with in the film itself. So that idea of just being honest. I'm the filmmaker, so it's my voice. That was it. Did it make the writing easier?

Is that something that you struggle with at all? Yeah, I do struggle with the writing style is sometimes different from uh film to film depending on what i want to accomplish and kind of what the voice is so it can sometimes be harder writing in the first person um you don't want to intrude too much but you also and you you kind of want to write it in a way that fits the mission of the film as well. What about the narrative fiction work that you've done? You know, you've directed some episodic television. How much of that is a part of your future?

How much do you want to be doing of that in the future? I want to do more of it. And I started out as a fiction film editor and I love that. I got frustrated as an editor because sometimes if you because sometimes if you've got a bad picture, you really – unlike in a documentary where you can fix anything in the cutting room, in a fiction film, it's much harder to fix things in the cutting room. If the script is no good, if the director hasn't shot well, it's almost impossible to fix it. But I'm really interested in that terrain. And I had a ball, you know, both helping to invent and directing the first episode of Looming Tower.

That was great. And I did a little guest stint on Billions. That was fun. And I believe this coming year, I think I'm going to do a feature that I've been working on for a long time, about, you know, seven, eight years. And I think it's finally coming to a place where we're ready to roll. Can you say anything about that? No.

Of course. I'd have to kill you then. What do you look for then in a story like that? Are there themes? Are there ideas? Is it similar to the kind of documentaries that you're looking for? Yeah. Are there themes? Are there ideas? Is it similar to the kind of documentaries that you're looking for? thinks he's achieved victory very quickly and then realizes actually that it's just, you know, beginning. It's broadly put, the story is about no good deed goes unpunished.

That also sounds very Russian. Do you have to use different muscles when you're doing the episodic TV stuff or this feature film than when you're doing the documentary work? I think so, though I think the, you know, one of the things I learned, one of my best experiences in terms of learning about filmmaking was being a producer on Martin Scorsese's series The Blues. Seeing all those different directors solve problems in different ways really gave me a sense of how to go at something. But I do think that what was also intriguing about that process was it was the mixture

of documentary with fiction filmmakers by and large. And I think going back and forth is tremendously useful. You have a great sense of bullshit detecting as a documentarian. And then when working with actors, that's useful for that. But because as a documentarian, you're there to observe what's going on in front of you, you tend to be in a position of pulling more than pushing with the actors. And I think actors generally speaking like that. They're bringing something to the table. You don't want to – you want to be generous about that because they're exploring these characters and you want to be there and have your camera in the right place for when they discover something great. It's funny you bring up Scorsese.

I wanted to ask you about Rolling Thunder Review. Did you get a chance to see that? I did. What did you make of the fiction, non-fiction look I got it it was playful for me it wasn't you know once you kind of figure out what's happening then it wasn't as interesting in some ways as because every time a interview subject comes up it's like oh this is this playful thing that he's doing about this mythical story. I got it.

It's the magic. And that's what Dylan was trying to capture on tour. I was much more interested in the stuff, you know, that Dylan was making up. You know, whether it be those exchanges with Baez, which were both real and not real at the same time. All the Ronaldo and Clara stuff. Right. The Ronaldo and Clara stuff. And, the Ronaldo and Clara stuff. And then, of course, the performances in that tour were just unbelievable.

Where he could just sit on Dylan's face and it was just riveting. Yeah, I'm so interested what great documentarians think of that movie because it seems to be an homage. Look, I get it. I don't mind the idea of playing with fiction and – I mean with reality and fiction and being playful in that way. And I've experimented in that way in a couple of films like Client 9 or Zero Days, for example, where I use actors.

But for me, it was amusing, but I was more interested in that film and the documentary stuff. Alex, we end every episode of the show by asking filmmakers what's the last great thing they've seen. Have you seen anything you've loved recently? For Sama. Yeah, so please talk about that. We haven't spoken about it very much on this show.

What did you connect with? It's so raw and yet so tender. I mean, this is a first-time filmmaker who got some help in the editing from another filmmaker. But her ability to use the camera as this device for saying what happened, she felt that what she was undergoing was so horrible that she simply had to document it for the purpose of maybe preserving it so that everybody would know at some time in the future. But at the same time, while all this horror is happening around her in Syria, I should say, she has a child.

And the child is about the future. And it's about hope. So out of despair comes hope. And this ability to reckon with what's going on around you and to see it honestly. And there are moments of such terrible despair and such extraordinary hope. You know, it's a very moving film. I thought Citizen K was also very moving, Alex. Thanks for doing this.

Thank you. Thanks again to Alex Gibney. And thanks, of course, to Amanda Dobbins. Please stay tuned to The Big Picture later this week. We'll be having a conversation about a couple of new movies hitting theaters. They include Richard Jewell and Bombshell. And I'll also have an interview with the star of Richard Jewell, Paul Walter Hauser, who is an absolutely hilarious fellow.

So please stick around for that.