The Big Picture - 'Hillbilly Elegy’ and the 10 Types of Oscar Bait You Meet in Hell

Episode Date: November 24, 2020

Ron Howard's adaptation of JD Vance's bestselling memoir hits Netflix this week—Sean and Amanda look at the film and the careers of stars Amy Adams and Glenn Close, including their chances at their first-ever Academy Award win (1:00). 'Hillbilly Elegy' also inspired a deep dive into the history of a tricky subcategory: Oscar Bait. What is it? When did it start? What movies count as Oscar Bait? Sean and Amanda break it all down (27:00). Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm Sean Fennessy. I'm Amanda Dobbins. And this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about Oscar bait. But first, there's a Thanksgiving turkey to contend with. That's right. Ron Howard's Hillbilly Elegy hits Netflix this week. Amanda and I will discuss this new film and where it fits in the lineage of one of our most scurrilous movie forms, Oscar bait. What is it?

It's all coming up on The Big Picture. Amanda, wonderful to see you on this Thanksgiving week. How are you doing? I'm so glad to see you too, Sean. Happy Thanksgiving or early Thanksgiving, such as it is this year and the year of our Lord 2020. So we're going to talk a little bit about Hillbilly Elegy to start this week's episode because it certainly inspired a realization that we are in Oscar bait time. And we're going to

start doing a few more Oscar show episodes of this show because the Oscars are close-ish. They're five plus months away. They're not close. They're just not close at all. They're not that close. Nevertheless, Hillbilly Elegy is a movie that has been tabbed on the Oscar predictors sheets for a long, long time. This is an adaptation of J.D. Vance's 2016 memoir,

a sort of a reflection of his time growing up in Ohio and a reflection on his family from Kentucky and how they raised him and what has happened to America over the last 50 or so years. And, you know, it's certainly a complicated book and a controversial book. You know, I had not read the book or even looked at it until I saw this movie. But to prepare for this episode, I dug into the book a little bit. And it's an interesting text. I would say it is not a book for me personally, not a book that I responded to. But the book and the film have a pretty significant difference. And that is that the book is a deeply political text.

And it is a sort of philosophical text in a way. It's an ethical and reflective text about what can happen to people in America and why America is the way that it is right now. The movie is a melodrama about a family. And that's more or less it. So tell me, you know, you're from the American South. I'm just a snotty Easterner. You know, you're not quite from Kentucky,

but what do you make of the hillbilly Elegy phenomenon before getting into the movie? I, yes, I am trying to be respectful here. So I wanted to read the full title of Hillbilly Elegy, the book, which is Hillbilly Elegy, a memoir of a family and a culture in crisis. My family is from a different culture than this particular family. And J.D. Vance is writing about his particular experiences. And it was a difficult childhood in a lot of ways. This is a story that touches on addiction and abuse and poverty. And it is also about a family and his personal experiences. And so to that extent, J.D. Vance has the story of his own life. There is also the sociological aspect. I did read parts of it.

Needless to say, I didn't particularly agree with the sociological conclusions, but that is life in America. I think what's interesting about this book is the popularity that it had. It was a big deal and it was on bestseller lists in 2016 when it was released and early 2017. And it did become kind of one of the, quote, key texts in this movement of, and I'm using so many air quotes here, liberals trying to understand the Trump voter and whether that pursuit is useful or whether this was the book to guide that pursuit, we can really put it aside. But again, it was in a political context, even for people who possibly didn't share

the conclusions of this book. And this movie does not want anything to do with any of that. And I think there are a few reasons why that we can talk about. But it's pretty fascinating because it was such a high-profile book and such a controversial book, I think, that to have the adaptation just totally strip that away is noticeable. And it also leaves the adaptation itself

in search of a purpose. And that was my other takeaway from this movie. Well, I have several, but one of them is that I don't really think that this movie knows what it's doing besides, as you mentioned in the intro, possibly trying to win some awards. Yes. So that's a fascinating venture because it's not typical that a story like this would seem like a ripe text for Oscar voters or just in general for a prestige film. There is a long history of Oscar

bait and we are going to talk about all of its permutations and what we think they are and what we agree about and what we don't agree about, about this kind of sub-genre of movie. But Hillbilly Elegy is a kind of a new wave of this sort of thing where there is a sort of, it's certainly IP, you know, there's a name brand attached to it and there is a sort of, it's certainly IP, you know, there's a name brand attached to it. And there is a natural conversational talking point, a set of talking points around the movie, because a lot of people know what it is. It was a bestseller, a top bestseller list for weeks. It sold many thousands of copies. And it is, like you said, it was sort of used as like a skeleton key to understanding a phase of American life. And there are other movies in the last,

I would say five years that fit this bill as well. But this is a kind of a newfangled version of it. Let's just talk about the movie because I think you and I both agree just generally speaking that this movie is not successful despite the fact that it was made by some of the most talented people in Hollywood and some people who certainly know how to make films that compete for awards. And so it's on and on paper, oh, this should be interesting. And then in execution, sheesh, this did not work out well. This is actually one of the worst reviewed movies of the year thus far, based on what I saw when the film first hit last month. So it comes from Ron Howard. And it's tough because we love Ron Howard. Adore Ron Howard. Number one Apollo 13 fan in this house. I would still like to go to space camp.

Make an adult space camp, please. Ron Howard was on this show earlier this year. He's a lovely man. He really lived up to his reputation as one of the most genuine and downright nicest people in Hollywood. Along with Apollo 13, he's made Oscar winning films like A Beautiful Mind. He He toggles usually between sort of hit making like the, you know, the Tom Hanks. What's the investigator's name from the Dan Brown novels? Oh, Robert Langdon. Yes. Robert Langdon films. The Da Vinci Code?

It's in the loop! It's in the loop. Two more prestige fare like films like Frost Nixon. And so he's not necessarily an unreasonable avatar for this movie. His family is from Oklahoma. He has talked about his personal relationship to the story and to understanding J.D. Vance's point of view and wanting to put the story on screen. And to do so, he has brought in two of the most celebrated actresses of their time. I would say, frankly, two actresses that have a lot.

Well, go ahead. celebrated actresses of their time. I would say, frankly, two actresses that have a lot. I mean, they are celebrated by the world at large and by critics and, crucially, have not been celebrated by the Academy Awards. Yes. And that's really the nexus point, I think, of this conversation. If this were just a Ron Howard movie and it starred two five-time Oscar winners, we might not be having this conversation in explicitly this way. But because this movie stars Amy Adams and Glenn Close, two actresses who have, I think, six and seven Oscar nominations respectively and are seeking their rightful win, we're here. We're talking about it. We're talking about Hillbillyology not as a movie. We got through that conversation in about three minutes and we're talking about it as We're talking about Hillbillyology not as a movie. We got through that conversation in about three minutes, and we're talking about it as Oscar bait, which is interesting.

So let's just spend a little time on Amy Adams and then a little time on Glenn Close. Amy Adams is 46 years old. I think you could make the case that she is the most talented slash critically acclaimed actress of her generation. What that means, this is an amorphous delineation. Nevertheless, she's great. I very rarely have seen Amy Adams in a movie and thought anything less than, wow, she's talented. That was fun to watch. She broke through in 2005 with a movie called Junebug. She was nominated for that performance.

And then from there, she basically goes on to a steady run of consistently celebrated movies. What's your Amy Adams take at this point in her career, Amanda? She is in two movies that I absolutely adore. Number one, Arrival, which whenever we talk about kind of the greatest movies or the most undersung movies of the past decade, Arrival just is tremendous. And I think her performance in that movie, which is different than some of the other performances and certainly my other favorite Amy that movie, which is different than some of the other performances. And certainly the, my other favorite Amy Adams movie in that it is, uh, quieter and she is, you're seeing a lot of what's going on behind the eyes. And she has to do a lot, not just in terms of uniting a

very complicated time-shifting plot, but in terms of like the emotional brunt the grief of that movie so i think she's extraordinary in that also a huge julia and julia fan because here we are and i contain multitudes and i mean that is just kind of like plucky not a really a rom-com but rom-com energy certainly nora efron rom-com energy heroin, just trying to make it all work and hating all of her fancy friends and trying to commune with Julia Child. So, um, she does a lot of things very well. And I would say that even in showier parts, like the fighter, which is another one um where she just yells a lot she she's very she is like a an actor without ever really crossing over into like actory if that makes any sense it does i think i think her flexibility her fungibility as an actor is the thing that recommends her most she can do enchanted

and she can do the fighter she can do nocturnal Animals and she can do American Hustle. You know, she can do Man of Steel and she can do Vice. You know, she really does have, she has the range, as they say. And it's interesting, right? She's the sort of person that I think the Academy tends to take for granted. You know, like she's always good. She is always sought after by great filmmakers. You mentioned Nora Ephron. We're talking about Ron Howard. I mean, Paul Thomas Anderson, David O. Russell, Mike Nichols, Tim Burton, Denis Villeneuve, Adam McKay, like great filmmakers want her in their movie because she holds it down for them in many ways. And she isn't, isn't always the lead, but she can be counted on whenever she's in a scene. Yeah. It's like a real pair of saved hands thing, but for an actor, which we don't often think

of it that way, but she is very reliable. Yes. And so she finds herself at this interesting point. She's certainly not old. She's kind of in the prime of her career. But there has been a feeling over the last few years, like, when is she going to win? Why hasn't she won? I feel like we've been having a conversation about this 20 years earlier about Saoirse Ronan of late where she has three or four nominations at this point. And we're like, man, about time that she wins. Amy Adams has been waiting 15 years. We'll see. I whether who what who is what I guess she is best actress in this formulation here. And she plays J.D. Vance's mother. And a lot of the film takes place in flashback of kind of the way that she raised her son, right? Yes. I would say that she is best actor or best actress, and Glenn Close

is supporting actress. The Glenn Close performance is a really classic late career supporting role that finally clinches the Oscar for someone, at least on paper. Yes. Interesting distinction there. Glenn Close plays Mamaw Vance, J.D. Vance's grandmother, and it is a complex role. Let's talk about Glenn Close. Glenn Close was the subject, the object of a lot of fun that we had in the early days of this podcast when we first started talking about the Oscars. There was a movie in 2018 called The Wife. Yeah. And by the way, when we do the rest of this podcast about Oscar bait, the wife jokes are going to come back. A lot of wife jokes. The Wife was a little

scene but celebrated movie about the wife of a very successful author who receives a literary prize in Europe. And the ways in which the wife may or may not have contributed to her great man husband's work over the years. Glenn Close, you know, terrific in this movie. Many people thought, hey, it's her time. She's been waiting a long time to win an Oscar. The Wife was made explicitly for the purpose of getting her that Oscar, and she didn't get it. And so now it feels in a way like Glenn Close has been reduced. And I don't mean this to disrespect her because I think she's an incredible performer and certainly a person

who has total agency in her life. But it feels like she has been reduced to taking on the role of ma'am avance and um i i it's tough what do you think of glenn close i enjoy her i would not say that i have the same relationship to her work that i do to amy adams just because of age and generational um knowledge and choices. It is also interesting now that Glenn Close has done The Wife and we had the whole Oscar joke conversation and you and I were responsible

for some of that and we take responsibility for it. But it is much harder to look at her choice to be in Hillbilly Elegy as anything other than like, okay, I'll try again. And an interesting thing about Amy Adams, who is also in this movie, and I would guess that

there was some calculation as well in order to win an Oscar, but she's been nominated many times. She is in a lot of prestige films. She's in a lot of films that are always in Oscar conversation, but this whole Amy Adams doesn't have an Oscar narrative has mostly been external and has mostly been Oscar watchers and people noticing the patterns and even people who care about the Oscars wanting that for her. And I can't think of any other role that is like purely, purely, obviously an Oscar play before now. And so it, it hasn't followed her in the same way. And I, and I think it's unfair to Glenn Close that I'm just kind of like, oh yeah, Glenn Close is just shopping for an Oscar now, but that is a little bit what I think. And, and we're going to talk about the fairness of all of this. And I think that that's disrespectful to Glenn Close, who's an incredibly talented actor. Can we talk a little bit about

what we've learned about Glenn Close this week? Yes, let's do that. Like you, I did not obviously grow up specifically obsessed with Glenn Close's work. I've seen most of the major roles that she's had over her career, but I just didn't know very much about her. I didn't take the time to learn very much about her. Lo and behold, she appeared on Marc Maron's WTF last week and gave an interview, a fascinating interview in which Marc Maron, as he frankly so often does, and especially has been doing since quarantine, has been getting people to open up over Zoom about their life and their life story. And I just did not know that Glenn Close grew up in what sounds like a cult. I mean,

she more or less identifies it as a cult. Glenn Close is 73 years old. She's been in the public eye for almost 40 years. Had no idea. Did you know this? No, I didn't until you emailed me being like, Hey, maybe check out this WTF episode. And then I listened to it. And once again, I just, it is amazing now that people are just doing full on therapy sessions in order to promote their movies. And I thought it was a really fascinating and openhearted and interesting, like no shots to therapy, which I have benefited from and love very much, but it is just an amazing shift where people are like, cool, let's just like talk about my childhood and my traumas and everything that, how that's shaped the rest of my life.

That in many ways is like a more honest conversation, but I was like, wow, Glenn Close, like we're just sharing via Zoom. It's, I mean, it's been a year, I guess. It has been a year. I think that there have obviously been two specific tracks of actordom. You know, on the one track, there is the level of kind of mysteriousness and the unknowability of certain performers, the changeling style of acting.

Daniel Day-Lewis is probably the person who is most often cited. He very rarely gives interviews. You know, he's completely method in his performance approach. And then there is the person that is like a movie star who is just more accessible, more available. You talked recently about the George Clooney profile that your husband wrote recently. George Clooney, I would say, is maybe not an open book, but he is very comfortable talking to the press, talking about his life. He's a wonderful, famous person in addition to being a wonderful actor.

I'd never really thought of Glenn Close as anything other than an actor. I've never really even seen her talking for more than five minutes outside of acting. Now, maybe that's on me. Maybe that reveals some of my biases of the media that I'm consuming. But it was so interesting to hear her talk

about her life and her pursuit. And most of it was kind of your classical, like I trained in the theater and I learned this at this college and it was very biographical. But as soon as you hear something about the motivations of a person or where they come from and her father, who was a doctor and who joined this sort of Christian organization that sort of revealed itself over time to be much very cult-like, it just gave me a new sense of who Glenn Close was and maybe even why she was doing certain things that she was doing in her career and the film

roles that she took. And does that give a new resonance or relevance to a movie like Fatal Attraction or Dangerous Liaisons or Albert Nobbs? I mean, these movies that she has been celebrated for, nominated for, it adds a layer of psychology, I think, to her as a notable person that is interesting. Whether it's for better or worse, I don't know. What do you think? I think it's probably for better. And everything that I'm about to say is going to sound really cynical. And I honestly don't mean it to be cynical because I thought that this particular interview was fascinating and revelatory and like and generous is a word that's overused but it was someone who was just kind of an open book and willing to talk

and you don't often get that even you know in interviews I think you mentioned the the George Clooney profile which I had nothing to do with um but that I thought was really great because George Clooney is just good at being George Clooney, right? And he just like, he knows what to say. And he has been a participant in his own narrative. And he has that kind of, that Debonair, Cary Grant personality that is as important as his success as like any of the work that he's done in TV or movies. And so it's slightly different, but the, the Glenn Close interview on paper, like we're going to talk more about Oscar campaigning in the next few months. And I think it's a new form of campaigning. And again, campaigning is cynical and mean because

it implies that what she said was disingenuous or she was only sharing it to get an award and I don't really think that I do not think that that is true at all um but the way that we evaluate people is always a bit around or the way we evaluate Oscar winners but maybe also people is what they share an award season and the package that they put together of here's why I should be your choice. And this is what, what we want to reward right now. And it's just really interesting to me that we're in this new phase of Oscar campaigning that is without campaign really. I mean, it is a campaign, but it is just so like unvarnished and, uh, and, and, and vulnerable and unlike, I mean, it's not glad handing at a party. And I think that's going to be really interesting to see throughout 2020 and 2021, because Oscar

season is going on forever of just how people decide to speak about their experiences and what we're awarding this year. It's very different than years past. Yeah. And Glenn Close is such an interesting example of that, right? So obviously she went through this cycle for the wife and there was an expectation that it was her time. She's such a fascinating version of it because when she first hit the screen in the early 80s, she was a genuine phenomenon. Her first three film roles garnered Academy Award nominations. That's just extraordinarily rare. She was very accomplished on the stage before that, but The World According to Garp, The Big Chill, and The Natural.

The Big Chill and The Natural in particular were huge hits were massively celebrated generational movies and she played huge roles in them and then she obviously fatal attraction becomes one of the biggest box office hits of the 80s dangerous liaisons a fascinating i think brilliant movie and then we just kind of take her for granted for 20 25 years and she's done everything under the sun in between that time. She was at the forefront of prestige television with damages. She's been on Broadway over the years. She's been in mainstream intellectual property movies. She's been in fascinating independent films.

She's taken a lot of chances. She's in Guardians of the Galaxy. And she's also in, I don't know, Nine Lives, the animated movie. You know what I mean? Like she's done like kind of everything. We just don't talk about her that much. And so maybe the way to talk about her is for her to talk about herself. And I think you're right that like this is a new form of campaigning.

I think that's a very astute observation that that kind of revelation especially when you're in the latter stages of your career um has power it has power and it has worked over time with some people who are veterans of this world and it has not worked over time too i i think of a we'll talk a little bit about kind of the late stage play that some actors and filmmakers make to kind of garner awards near the end of their careers. But I don't, I almost don't know what to think because I just, I don't think this is Glenn Close's best performance. An actor's best performance is very rarely awarded at the Oscars. I think if you look at what she does in Dangerous Liaisons or you look at what she does in The Big Chill, I mean, these are deep, complex, complicated,

fascinating, unforgettable roles. And this is a little parodic to me. You know, it just doesn't, it does not feel, she's certainly trying to imbue this person with humanity, but it feels like a noisy, kind of silly movie and not like one of the best actors of her generation showing up to claim her prize. You know what I mean?

Yeah. We'll talk more about this, but there is kind of an old Oscar saw of like the way you went an Oscar is you put on a lot of weight or you put on a lot of latex or you, you know, it's like a, it's like Halloween meets the holiday, not the movie meets the meets a movie and, and then you win an Oscar. And there is an element of that to both Amy Adams and Glenn Close's performances in Hillbilly Elegy. They look like themselves,

but they are wearing makeup and different hairstyles. And they are trying to do a specific culture, the aforementioned culture. And it feels noticeable. You can see the work. Yeah, it feels like hillbilly drag. I mean, one of the things that's also fascinating about Glenn Close

is in addition to the way that she grew up, she's from a Mayflower family in Connecticut. You know, she's from a very WASP-y family and she talks about that on this podcast. So on the one hand, you learn these revelations about her life and her career. And on the other hand,

you learn about where she's from. And so then when that person says, I'm going to play a grandmother from Backwoods, Kentucky, then the mind starts to think, well, this certainly seems like a stretch. Before that podcast with Glenn Close, I didn't know where she was from.

I didn't know what state she was born in. I didn't know when her family came to the United States. And now I do. And so that's one of the reasons why people like Daniel Day-Lewis keep as much information as they can close to the vest. So it's really damned if you do and damned if you don't. And so much of like Oscar history

is dotted with chance and missed opportunity. And we talk about it all the time on this show, on the rewatchables, the sort of like, how did this person not win in this year? This is unfathomable to me. But we've now seen, especially watching the races very closely over the last three years, you and I, a lot of it is campaign. A lot of it is timing. A lot of it is, is the country ready for this role? Is the country ready for this movie? How did the film do at the box office? There are all of these various factors that influence whether someone walks away with a statuette or not. I think now is probably a good time to talk about what Oscar bait is and its myriad forms. But before we do that, let's take a quick break. Amanda, we're talking about Oscar bait. What is Oscar bait? When I say that famous phrase, what do you think of?

I think of a very long war film that all of the men in my life of a certain age are going to be like, that has to win the Oscar, right? I also think of my dad who has a, God bless my dad, who has a tradition of walking out of every single movie we see around Christmas or like from Thanksgiving on that he likes and is like, that'll win the Oscar, right? Notable titles to which he has applied this question include Morning Glory, the undersung rom-com from, I believe, 2010 and Chris Rock's film Top Five, which we saw sitting in the front row. And my now husband sat right next to my dad during some, you know, some sex scenes, which are great. I really enjoyed top five, but I think that was a weird

experience for my husband to sit next to his future father-in-law. But dad loved it, wanted it to win best picture. So. Notable examples there. And I think that that reveals a lot about the complexities of this conversation, which is that neither of those movies won an Oscar. In fact, neither of those movies garnered an Oscar nomination. And I don't even know if those movies would qualify in the general definition of Oscar bait. They're 100% not Oscar bait, but I bring up the point to illustrate that Oscar bait is a relative term. And it is something that anyone can apply to anything of just, oh, that should win an Oscar. And so the entire conversation that we're about to have is very nebulous and relative and will involve differences of opinion and people yelling at each

other. That's right. I think that this will be, and I can feel the energy coursing through me as I get ready to talk about this. This will be the big tent definition of Oscar bait. This is not the small, small B. This is the big B. This is not just war films, not just delightful rom-coms, not just comedians doing lightly autobiographical portraits of their pain. This is everything under the sun. And there has been a lot of debate about what Oscar Bate is over the years. This is a term that goes way back in history. Just typically speaking, I think it can be softly defined as films often released late in the year that seem to be designed to draw the attention and appeal to the perceived biases of the voting members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Make a movie. Part of the gambit of the movie is to win an Oscar. Now, we can

dissect that in a million different ways, and I think that we will. I'm not saying, and I don't think either of us are saying, that these movies are made only to win Oscars. But, and it depends on who we're saying when we say they, but the idea of an Oscar being a part of the narrative of the film and subsequently the success of the film, I do think factors in more than people think in the execution of many films

that are made every year. Do you agree with the generalities I'm using here? Yeah, of course. Everybody needs to be a grown-up. This is a world of money and marketing, and Oscars are a platform in order to get attention. And we live in studio land. People think about them, talk about them, make decisions based on the way that they can use the Oscars in order to get their films to be seen. So Oscar bait. Well, this is interesting. Like Oscar bait itself exists.

And we agree that they are a part of the calculation for some people, maybe not for filmmakers, maybe not always for actors. Who is doing the calculation and why varies from thing to thing. But the calculation happens. Now, how you apply the term Oscar bait is, I think, where we're going to get into hazier territory. But yes, the Oscars play a role in how certain movies get made or else the Oscars would not exist. Exactly right. I think money and marketing are the key phrases that you use there which is that there are obviously two two wings of of movie making there are the people who make the movies

that is to say the director the writer the producers the crafts people and of course the actors and then there is the the corporations the studios the independent financiers, the publicists, the marketing teams, this vast wing of movie industry that knows, and this is probably less true now than it was 20 years ago, but it's still true, that knows that there are certain kinds of movies that have a chance to succeed at the box office in part because they have been celebrated as award worthy. The way you know this is that there are actors and directors who have clauses in their contracts that pay more if their movies receive nominations.

This is a well-understood fact about Hollywood. So the idea that this is an offensive term that was created by the media is false. It's just false. And the idea that the Oscars are just like a pure evaluation of art instead of a money-making endeavor themselves and a way for the industry to maintain its power and mindshare is just also, I would love it if the Oscars were just a pure judgment of art. That's never been true for a single year since they existed. Once again,

it's a made up awards show full of like people that you mostly haven't heard of voting on movies they often haven't seen for a show that needs to get a lot of awards in order to fund its like deserving and important historical objectives. Yes. Yeah, you've underscored something fascinating. I mean, there's no such thing, obviously, as an objective award show. There's no world in which you can say, these are the most worthy forms of art, despite our very strongly held opinions on this show. I don't think I would feel comfortable saying that this is the definitive truth about the best movies of 2020. I have my subjective opinion. The Academy has their collective subjective opinion, but it is a money-making operation. They do extraordinary things for charity. They do extraordinary things for film preservation and for recognizing the history of

the art form and telling that story. But it's a money-making endeavor just as it's a money-making endeavor for the people who make the movies and that are celebrated to win the awards. There are a lot of people, especially over the last 30 years, who have become expert at engineering campaigns to win these awards. But just doing a little research, I was fascinated to know just how far back this goes. The first time Oscar bait was used was in a piece in the New Republic in 1948, a review of John Ford's Ford Apache. The review ends with this sentence, postcards are supposed to be sent through the mail, flashed self-consciously on the screen. They look like Oscar bait. Now, 30 years later, a very significant film comes along. And

I would say a film that while it is, it's maybe to your definition of Oscar bait might not have been to mine, which is the deer hunter, the deer hunter, the famously downbeat Michael Cimino portrait of a group of friends living in, uh, I would say sort of outskirts, rural Pennsylvania, both before and after the Vietnam war and their experiences in the Vietnam war and what it, what it meant to their town, to their friendship, to their friendship, to their families, to their marriages. And it's an iconic film in Hollywood history, but it's a famously tough sit. It's a hard movie to watch. It's an elegant and long story, but it's got some brutal sequences in it. I just want to share that I saw The Deer Hunter in high school, like in English class. Just FYI, that's what they were showing us.

That's crazy. I know. It's amazing. Also, I went to a fairly conservative high school in Atlanta, Georgia, and they were like, here kids, here's how you can learn about, it wasn't like a film class. It was my senior year. It was something that was trying to like push the boundaries of a traditional education. But yeah, I mean, I remember sitting in, I have a sense memory of the desk and the room I was sitting in watching The Deer Hunter being like, what? So I think that's revelatory to what we're discussing here,

that over time, The Deer Hunter became the kind of movie you could show in a high school class. Because when it came out, and I'll read some of the history here because I think it's really notable. So studios have always tended to release some films that seemed intended for Oscar voters near the end of the year, but this strategy essentially starts in 78. So that year the deer hunter was shown only to limited audiences heavy with Oscar voters and critics for just long enough to be eligible. And then went into wide release after the nominations

were announced. It ultimately won best picture. And then obviously in later years, studios adopted this strategy. This is very smart. The Deer Hunter would be a tough word of mouth movie if it did not have along with it, the awards apparatus to tell people just how powerful and important this movie is. So there's this great story where after a disastrous test screening of The Deer Hunter, Universal turned to another producer, Alan Carr, to help figure out how to market this movie. And Carr realized that with such a grim subject matter and brutal depictions of war and torture, the only way viewers would seek the film out was if it had been nominated for Academy Awards. Alan Carr would go on to become a somewhat notorious figure actually in the history of the Academy Awards.

But this is fascinating to me that this is where this comes from, this idea of withholding a movie from audiences and building anticipation and campaign around a movie only to use the awards that it garners to get people excited. What do you think about just sort of like the arc of this trend and this phrase that we're talking about? It still is an effect, right? As you were describing the deer hunter process of waiting for the Academy Awards to boost it, I was thinking about the annual text message I received from two of my best friends, Katie and Becky, who you know, of, okay, so what Oscar movies do we actually need to see? And it always comes directly after the nominations. And they want the insider's track. They want to know what's worth their time

and what's not. And it's in part because they want to see great movies, but also because the Oscars confer some sort of relevance and they want to be in the know. They want to know what other people are talking about. And that's increasingly rare for any movie to have that kind of like cultural capital. But the Oscars still play that. And it really does make a difference in whether a movie gets seen. We see it in like box office stuff all the time. We're preparing for another movie draft and I'm sitting there whining about the blockbuster $100 million domestic minimum. But a real hack that Chris Ryan never seems to notice, and he'll never listen to this so he

won't know, is that all of the Oscar movies make it to $100 million because they're Oscar movies. And so then they're eligible as blockbuster, which is fascinating. It still works. Yes. I mean, that's not 100% true, but many times you're right that there is a kind of a post-Oscar ceremony shelf life in theaters for a lot of these films where they go on. I mean, Parasite didn't reach 100 million dollars in this country, but it just made an extraordinary amount of money for a movie from South Korea because it was in the conversation. It was in our conversation on this show, I would say, probably from May of 2019 all the way through February of 2020. That is powerful.

That is marketing. That is that mindshare that you're talking about. Now, Oscar bait is kind of a dirty phrase, And I want to give credit where it's due to Mark Harris, who I really think of as one of the true gurus of film history and the award season conversation. This is probably the number one thing I have always disagreed with Mark about in terms of his feelings about whether or not Oscar bait is a phrase that we should use or not. And I think his core contention is right, which is that in his view, Oscar Bate has become a way to describe solely a filmmaker or an actor's intentions,

and also has a kind of misogynistic definition around how certain kinds of films are feminized, and that those movies can be dismissed because of their sole identity as Oscar bait. I think of that as a very narrow definition. I think what we're trying to do here is kind of expand on what Oscar bait is. Because frankly, I think it is expansive. And you said it right at the top when I asked you what you thought of. You said, I think of a big long war film. Right. And I would like to note that when you put together this outline and you identified all of the different types of Oscar bait, number one on your list was a costume drama. And that like, which I'm reading as like an instinctual, that's the first thing that comes

to your mind. I agree and disagree with Mark Harris, who I also just, I've learned so much from Mark Harris. He has taught me a tremendous amount about this industry and about the Oscars. I think the feminization aspect of it, that resonates with me a little bit more, obviously. A little bit just because of who is having the conversations about Oscar bait and who gets to apply the term. And we know that this industry and criticism is traditionally quite white male dominated and their tastes have repercussions. I would also say that there are always going to be lazy bad actors with bad taste

in any conversation. So you just have to ignore the people who are wrong. Like you just do. And I think the should shouldn't use that term. I mean, should is in a cultural conversation as always where you get into some trouble, but I think the cat's out of the bag. It's this is, this is how the industry works. And I agree that it can be limiting of an artist's intentions. And I think you, if I can segue, you have written here that Oscar bait isn't always about bad movies, that Oscar bait can be good and that Oscar bait isn't necessarily a pejorative term. I disagree with that.

I think it is the way that it is used is, is always pejorative. It is, people use it as a way to talk about movies that haven't met the initial artistic test. And we like, we don't say that Parasite is Oscar bait, even though Parasite quite literally won the Oscar because Parasite was a fantastic film to us on its own merits. And I do think if you analyze the passage of use, the pattern of usage, people are like, eh, it's Oscar bait because it doesn't exist to me as a movie. I can understand if you're on the receiving end of that as a filmmaker, then that feels particularly rude because someone is a criticizing your work, but be saying your work didn't even have value to begin with. It was just put together in a way, um, that was craven. But I, I, so I get

that. I understand the sensitivity, but like also it's, you know, again, we're grownups. It's the real world. It happens. Well, I think that there is, this is actually a quite a nuanced conversation in my mind because I think people feel that when they hear the term Oscar bait, they think of it as definitional, that it is the thing that, that calcifies and clarifies what this movie is in the case of Hillbilly Elegy, I think that might be true.

I think this feels like a movie that when I take a step back and look at why it was made, I see it almost solely as Oscar bait. Obviously, Ron Howard has intentions to show the way that certain people live in the country that people on the coast don't think about.

I'm sure his intentions are pure there, but as an acting showcase, it feels like Oscar bait. But I think that there are movies that are Oscar bait that are not defined by that. And I think one of the distinctions that I make between Mark Harris's definition is that, you know, that this is a way to peacock your contempt for a movie. I don't even think Oscar bait has to be a negative term. I just think it can be it doesn't have to be it doesn't have to be a negative term. I just think it can be, it doesn't have to be, it doesn't have to have a value. It's just the fact that it is trying to draw the attention

of a group of people who can help make the movie more successful. Now, I think Martin Scorsese has made movies that are Oscar bait, not all of his movies. Many of his movies are actually defiant of Oscar bait. But if you look at Hugo and you look at the kind of story that he's trying to tell in Hugo and who he's trying to appeal to, that was a pure Oscar bait play in my mind. You couldn't get that much money to make that movie if it was not about Melie and the development of the history of film and filmmaking, because that is one of the categories that we're going to talk about when we break down films, when we break down the different kinds of films that fit in the Oscar bait. It's movies about Hollywood, the filmmaking, the grandeur of this art form. So to me, I don't see this solely as a negative thing. I think you could make the case that the

Coen brothers' true grit is Oscar bait because of the way that that movie is mounted. And again, those are both wonderful films. I like true grit more than Hugo, but it doesn't automatically mean to me that this movie should be dismissed or your contempt, you should peacock your contempt, as Mark said somewhat famously for Oscar watchers. That doesn't change the fact

that there are a lot of movies that are terrible that are Oscar bait. And I think that that is what we're reflecting on, right? We're thinking about all of the big misses, you know, the movies with the big campaigns, the big adaptations of famous books, the sort of the noisy, the transformations that you're talking about, the latex and the weight gain and the, in the, in the press narrative about

how someone it's their time and they are ready to win. That stuff feels a little bit uglier, but I, I see it as, as I said before, a bigger tent. Now, maybe I stand alone in that respect. I realized as you were talking, and this may be just to me, but I do think that there's an element of the term that is not about the movie itself, but about the voters and about the Oscars and about what gets rewarded and what people think gets rewarded and what people think about this weird body of Hollywood voters who are so susceptible to the war films and the latex and the, you know, this simplified feel-good versions of history and real, of everything, really, which is like a version of, um, of Oscar bait that existed 10 to 20 years ago. And I, so it's funny. I tend to think of if the movie completely fails,

um, then it is, it's like less Oscar bait to me somehow. And because it failed in what I imagined its intentions were, which were to win over the voters. But that may be just a result of our jobs and our gamesmanship and trying to define like what the Academy will do all the time and be like, is this Oscar bait or is this Oscar bait or is this what they're going to do this year? And sometimes we're right. And sometimes we're wrong. I think also it's just easier for me to be dismissive of voters in the Academy that it is of filmmakers who worked very hard. Yeah. I think that there is something about like how generous you are to both the movies and the voters themselves. If you spend a lot of time looking at a movie that you might have perceived as Oscar bait or heard someone like me and you describe as Oscar bait, but you actually focus on the text of the movie and think about the craft that went into the movie and the story that's being told,

and you open your heart to it a little bit. If I open my heart to Ron Howard reflecting on his grandparents and his family and where he comes from, it doesn't feel quite so pejorative. In the same way that if you meet an Oscar voter, and I've met Oscar voters, they're not all the dummies that you read the anonymous quotes from in The Hollywood Reporter two weeks before the Oscars happen.

You know, those are the worst case or most entertaining examples. Most people, they're trying their best to see as many Oscar movies as they can. It's not their full-time job to be an Oscar voter. It's something that they do as a sideline. You know, they're very proud to be in the Academy. They're trying to see, you know, the wonderful film from Italy that is hard to track down. You know, they're trying to sit down to watch eight straight hours of documentaries so they can honestly reflect on what the best documentary of the year is, but life happens. So it's like,

it's how generous do you want to be to these people? How generous do you want to be to these movies? I think you and I frankly vacillate wildly on when we were willing to be generous and when we're not and that's all right as podcast hosts we can do whatever we want i just think that this big tent topic is so interesting because it encapsulates so many different kinds of movies when i first started putting the outline together for the episode i wrote down that there are six types of oscar bait that you meet in hell. As I was doing the list, it expanded to 10. Yeah.

It's like there's 10 with like six subdivisions. You know, there's so this does. And frankly, ultimately, what can happen is that everything can kind of become Oscar bait. You know, like especially in moments when people are like, could Avengers Endgame possibly contend for best picture in a very weird movie year? Once you start saying things like that, and fools like me have said things like that, then everything is Oscar bait, and then it becomes meaningless, right?

But I do think that one thing that has happened over the last couple of years is it has started to evolve significantly. And there's two reasons for that. Obviously, the Academy has become much more diverse, and there are all sorts of new voters. So we've seen movies like Moonlight get recognized at the highest level, which was unusual when it happened and now seems more common in terms, quote, like, again, air quotes apply throughout. But the more traditional understanding of what an Oscar made, Moonlight winning over La La Land, which is the classic Hollywood, it's so special movie. And Parasite winning over 1917, the aforementioned war epic that all my friends on Twitter just really loved for its filmmaking craft. That's right. 2018, though, is a movie year that or an Oscars year that really sticks

out to me in a lot of ways, because that was the year that The Shape of Water won. And that was the year that Three Billboards was nominated for Best Picture and won some other some acting awards. And those are two movies that on paper, I don't think fit into these 10 types that we're going to talk about, but have come to become representative of a newfangled Oscar bait. The Shape of Water is obviously from Guillermo del Toro, much celebrated actor. It's a story about identity. It's a story about America, period piece. It's a story about the people who are cast aside. But it's also a monster movie um

and it's like a pretty weird monster movie unto itself and the success of that movie putting monsters into classical forms i think reveals that there's a lot of flexibility in this the shape of water is not really one of my favorite guillermo del toro movies honestly but it's interesting to see him kind of contort his point of view, his storytelling into a form that feels a little bit safer for Oscar. Three Billboards is a movie that has a lot in common with Hillbilly Elegy. I think Three Billboards is much better written, at least from a dialogue line-to-line perspective, and features an incredible Frances McDormand performance, but is a similar movie about representing whatever America is at a certain time and takes a lot of broad strokes.

I would say recklessly broad strokes in terms of portraying the evolving state of the country. I don't think that Oscar Bate used to be that. I don't think it used to be a kind of, it had a political aspect, but it was not trying to define the country and the way that the country has perhaps gone bad. Do you think that Oscar bait is changing? Yes. I just want to say, at what point, how many times will you have to give me the lecture about how Shape of Water was interesting because it brought monsters to the Oscars before I like dignify the fact that like Shape of Water was an interesting Oscar. Like it'll never happen. And in one way, the Shape of Water is a really, really classic Oscar win because, so that was for the films of

2017, which you and I have had this debate before, but 2017 to me was the best film year of the decade. I'm going to read some of the other Oscar nominees that year. And these are Oscar nominees. They made it. Get Out, Dunkirk, Lady Bird, Phantom Thread. Call Me By Your Name. Tremendous stuff. This was also the year of The Last Jedi.

If you want to get into, you know, Blockbuster, Oscar, whatever. Great film year. And we're here arguing about The shape of water versus three billboards. So like some things change and some things really stay the same in terms of the Oscars and recognizing like this, the center of, of true film innovation. I would just say that without the shape of water, Parasite does not win best picture. I would say that in that respect, in that respect, bringing that level of genre focus allowed for Bong Joon-ho, who also made a monster movie in The Host, that it did change things. Again, I said The Shape of Water, not one of my favorites. Nevertheless, I'm sorry to keep repeating my points.

Let's talk about these 10 types. Let's talk about the Oscar bait you meet in hell. Now, you mentioned that at the top of my list is costume dramas. I wrote that this is self-explanatory and frankly, no longer in vogue. The costume dramas are certainly not as important a strand of film genre as they were 20, 50, 75 years ago. And you don't see a lot of costume dramas nominated for Oscars these days. They're on TV. Watch season four of The Crown.

Just tremendous. Speaking of broken records, here I am. The Crown is like the best thing that's ever happened. And it is film quality, but for 40 episodes and running now. Shout out Peter Morgan.

So that's interesting. So that's an example of one that has kind of evolved and has evolved out. And some of these have evolved out and some of them have not. I just mentioned this new entrant. This is a portrait of the real America

kind of entrant like Hillbilly Elegy, like Three Billboards, I thought Promise Land, the Matt Damon, John Krasinski, Gus Van Zandt movie from a few years ago was attempting to be a version of this. Like this is how corporations infect small town people.

This is how small town people react. Stories like that. Let's talk about books and literary adaptations though, because you're a bigger reader than I am. Although not a huge reader of literary fiction. You have a strain of literary fiction that you like, but you're not, that's maybe not your automatic go-to reading material, right?

Wow. What's this weird slander in the middle of, I mean, are you still mad about shape of water? I haven't read grown up books too. I just like, just cause I don't want to tell you about all the fancy books that I've read. Excuse me.

Oh, sorry. What slander? What, what literary fiction are you reading right now? Feel free to talk about it. I just read the, the leave the world behind the room and alarm book that is being adapted by Sam Esmail, starring Denzel Washington and Julia Roberts.

I recommend it. So there, Sean. Fair enough. Do you think that that film is Oscar bait? I'm fascinated. I mean, yes. But or it could be. I'm really fascinated to see how Sam, our friend Sam handles it because it's tricky. It's beautifully

written and crafted, but much of it happens on the page, which is often a hurdle in adaptations. As indicated on one of the films that you listed in this outline, one of my favorite novels of all time, Atonement by Ian McEwan. And don't tell me i don't like literary fiction and and i just i said what do you spend the most of your time reading which i think is slightly different i'm sure i i read a lot as you said so i again i containitudes, but this is a, an, an adaptation, uh, our, our hero, Joe Wright, um, starring James McAvoy and Keira Knightley. And it's, you know, big and bold and definitely has some of the war elements, the, the famous tracking shot.

And, uh, it doesn't really work. And I think part of the reason it doesn't work is because the big reveal is such a textual, formal issue that it's just hard to convey in the same way. Yeah, we've seen a lot of versions of this, of celebrated books or books that have had huge audiences that great filmmakers have struggled to adapt. I think I might even like Atonement more than you, but I haven't read the book and I'm sure that that was a significant factor in my appreciation for that movie. But I think this was very common in the 80s and 90s, Memoirs of a Geisha and Beloved. And we saw last year, The Goldfinch, which was widely considered one of the best books of the 21st century, kind of a turgid adaptation that didn't really know what it wanted to be motherless brooklyn i thought was a fascinating attempt at redefining readapting something changing a story in order to make it make more sense from a famous book that doesn't totally fit together um

yeah i mean motherless brooklyn oh you were going to make an edward poker joke and i stepped right on it i didn't i didn't thank you for knowing me because um i knew that many other people had but i thought a lot about you and i just thought a lot about poker and tremendous stuff from edward wharton um the thing about motherless brooklyn is that it was an adaptation of the power broker and not motherless brooklyn and that's cool i thought that it was an adaptation of The Power Broker and not Motherless Brooklyn. And that's cool. I thought that those were the parts of that film that worked the most. But it was an interesting definition of adaptation to just shove a whole other book in. I completely agree.

I ultimately would have just preferred Edward Norton's Robert Moses movie. I think that would have been a fascinating film. Nevertheless, I think the literary adaptation is very tough. This is a very difficult, and in some ways Hillbilly Elegy is this, but it's more memoir. It's more sociological study. It's much more personal. And so I think people's relationship to that story is not the same as the relationship that they had to say, you know, the goldfinch where like it exists in your mind's eye and it can never be exactly what you want it to be after you've had an extraordinary reading experience. We know about all of that. Other adaptations that you might meet in hell, stage plays or musicals now this is an interesting one um i typically

don't love the musical adaptations that aspire to oscar glory uh les mis for example or chicago those are not my favorite musicals you never saw the movie no i never saw it no it's i don't recommend it well i avoided it because folks like you told me to avoid it yeah and les miserables just a tremendous musical just really important i feel like i did once edit like a 5 000 word piece about it written by rembrandt brown uh back in the grandland days but um i i still haven't seen it um okay it's not good uh these are not my favorite this is not my favorite kind now the stage play aspect is interesting um because there have been a handful over the years not as many as

i would have thought when i went to go back do some research but you know john patrick shanley's doubt and august wilson's fences were two that really jumped out to me as notable examples and those were those were award winners you know those were the films that it got great reviews and then now in in about a month we're going to get ma rainy's black bottom which is um another august wilson play starring uh viola davis and chadwick bozeman in in one of his final performances and this is and it's it's not not um quite august wilson yet just because it's a newer play but regina king's one night in miami is also adapted from a play that's right yeah so this is a this is a very um alive version of oscar bait and ma rainey's black bottom is a great example one night in miami to a lesser extent because i didn't know very much about that play which i think kemp powers wrote um but marie's

black bottom is a really good movie and um we're going to talk about it when the movie comes out on this show and we're i think we're going to probably spend a lot of time talking about chadwick boseman the late great chadwick boseman and his performance because frankly most people just seem to accept right now five months before the oscarsars, that he is earmarked for best actor. And there's nothing bad to me about that being Oscar bait. It's just a successful movie. And there's a difference there between Hillbilly Elegy, which is Oscar bait and not a successful movie.

So I feel like those are two notable modern day examples of, you know, not wanting to cast a movie aside just because it has pure intentions of drawing attention around performances. What else? So you mentioned war movies. I've organized this under a much bigger tent, which is a sort of the historical docudrama. Um,

you could make the case that there are, there should be, like biopics should be under this tent too, but I've separated them. When you think of historical docudrama, you think more of a war film or do you think more of a like the post or spotlight-esque true tale of journalism

or of extraordinary events? When you say historical docudrama Oscar bait, I just think of a Winston Churchill film. If Winston Churchill is in the film, then it is like peak Oscar bait, you know, and that goes from everything to Darkest Hour, which did win Gary Oldman an Oscar to the infamous King speech, which did in fact feature Winston Churchill in a bit role. But it's just kind of like if Winston Churchill shows up, probably going to be nominated for an Oscar. That's just the rules. Unless it's in The Crown, in which case he's not eligible. Exactly. That's true.

We've seen a bunch of these in recent years. Obviously, 1917 last year filled this role. Dunkirk, Hacksaw Ridge. If these movies are done well, and if they're staged effectively and released by a major filmmaker or a major studio if they're staged effectively and released by a major filmmaker or a major studio, they're almost certain to get Oscar attention. The real event and or journalism subcategory I find to be fascinating and has been quite popular of late. The Post and Spotlight and Sully and Captain Phillips and Sundry, other Tom Hanks films. Well, that's an interesting one. And we'll talk a bit more when we talk about actors, but I do think for certain actors of a certain generation that the actor's involvement

makes it Oscar bait. And I do think if it's a Tom Hanks film, then it rockets it to a certain level of, okay, this will probably be nominated for an Oscar. And I don't mean that Tom Hanks is a national treasure. Absolutely no disrespect, but I think we are a bit programmed for Tom Hanks, even though he himself has not been nominated for an Oscar very often in recent years. But you just take the film more seriously. And a reverse one, the Meryl Streep, you always have to talk about the Meryl Streep movie being Oscar made until in recent years, it inevitably is not. And she always gets nominated, but she doesn't always carry the film in the same way, which might reflect more on the gender breakdowns and preferences of

the Academy than the movies themselves. But it's, it's just, it's kind of automatic. You know, you cite something fascinating there. The distinction between Hanks and Meryl Streep. I think you could make the case, you know, either Hanks or Denzel are the most representative celebrated actors of their time. Meryl, of course, the most celebrated actress of her time. Tom Hanks did get nominated last year for Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, but has not been nominated for some really good work in the 2000s. Now, he also made Larry Crown and angels and demons and a bunch of other movies that are not very good and frankly i think those movies suffered

because people saw tom hanks above the title and they were like this movie must be good and then it gets held to the tom hanks standard and it doesn't work out as well um meryl streep by comparison doesn't it's not held against her when she's in a bad movie. In fact, she's in a lot of bad movies that she's been nominated for best actress or mediocre movies or negligible movies. You know, the Florence Foster Jenkins is of the world, the Iron Ladies of the world, the music of my hearts of the world, like either adequate or downright bad movies. And she, to your point, is consistently recognized. There's never a time

when she's not Oscar eligible, which is so fascinating. It is maybe a little bit of dearth of roles. It's a little bit, it's a lot dearth of imagination. But I say that with all respect to Meryl Streep,

who I don't, it's probably just, you know, trivia or whatever, but one of our great Oscar memes is of course, Meryl Streep at this point, you know, doing the yelling and the screenshot. And then it's like, but when you think of the Oscars now, you expect like Meryl Streep in the front row being like, Hey, and it does, you know, the, the two people who are regularly seated in the front row who winners are like overwhelmed to see are Oprah and Meryl Streep. So it's you need her at the Oscars at this point. You can't have them without Meryl Streep. She's a key figure. She's

a key figure of bait as well. Speaking of Meryl Streepep a category she has been recognized for is the biopic category there are many many permutations of this category and frankly most movies that are biopics are almost automatically Oscar bait this includes you know portraits of famous or important figures at critical junctures you mentioned Winston Churchill you know films like Jackie Milk the Imitation Game Lincoln the Queen these these happen all the time. They continue to happen, though they are evolving somewhat into television, as you said. The gifted person or entertainer subcategory, which of course has also been very, very popular of late. We saw Bohemian Rhapsody and Judy and Ford versus Ferrari and A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. Tons of movies like this. This is in the last five years

kind of how you secure an Oscar nomination is that you do a glorified impression of a famous person. Yes. And I think that part of that is related to recognizability slash IP. I think that it's an easier story to tell and an easier story to get made

than some of the other biopics forms we've seen over the years. The one that I think is frequently cited, though it does not happen as frequently now, is the sort of deceased, traumatized, or afflicted person. I think Rain Man or Scent of a Woman in the 80s and 90s, those were the kinds of movies that actors who had not been rewarded for their great work over the years finally got their prize by playing a blind man or by playing someone who suffered from some sort of disorder of some kind. We did have a beautiful mind at the early part of this century.

The Theory of Everything, still Alice, Dallas Buyers Club, there have been a couple of examples, but these movies are not as common as they used to be. And I movies. Are competing with television. And are competing amongst themselves. With like superhero projects. And larger issues. You know I think it is probably. Just a bit harder to get those films made. Because there isn't a built in audience in the same way.

That's definitely true. The last biopic category. Is an interesting one to me. This is a sort of the loathed. Or or mysterious figure and a film that seeks to complicate their legacy. Actors really like these parts. They really like the parts of the person that you're not supposed to like. Actors are famous for saying that, um, I don't play villains.

I play real people and I try to find the humanity in those people. Uh, and you know, so you've seen like J Edgar or the Iron Lady, which I mentioned, or Vice or W or the social network, Snowden, these people who have complex public personas who have may have participated in something that we view as a society to be egregious or dangerous or has not aged well, so to speak. This isn't my favorite category. The social network is kind of the exception that proves the rule for me on this category. Yeah, and with the exception of the social network

and then with American Sniper, which was very successful at the box office, if not critically acclaimed in the same way, not a particularly successful genre. These movies aren't, they range from, I do not recommend them at all to forgettable and to vice, which you and I thought were very interesting, but was certainly divisive. I think some of that is that sometimes movies just don't work out. And this is like a slightly harder formula to land. And I do think it is also a little bit indicative of kind of the

way we watch movies, quotes again, has changed. And I think that there is sort of a generational divide and people find it, people expect to like the people in their movies. And they always have in a way, and that honestly has always been the point of of of movies i think it's very difficult to make a movie about a person without lionizing them to some degree it's kind of it's again it's built in how we respond to movies but i do think that this room for slipperiness and nuance is um diminishing i agree with you it's a really interesting point around sort of what should or should not be on screen i found the debate around vice around even dedicating a movie to a person like that to be absurd. I genuinely think that showing bad people doing bad things

and the reasons why they do bad things is one of the most interesting things a movie can do, but it's harder and harder to make these movies. And you're right. It is a very, very narrow needle to thread when you're trying to pull it off. Conversely, to your point about making movies that people like, movies that have been very popular with the Academy over the years are white savior movies, movies about white people helping people who are not white to have a better life or a better opportunity. it's fascinating it's remarkable it's kind of sad it's very sad to think the green book won best picture very recently but it did and those sorts of movies still resonate with the academy and driving miss daisy obviously movies like that over the years have frequently been successful but if you see a movie like this where a black

character and a white character seem to be getting along despite unlikely circumstances and their tale is set at a time that is not the present day and the white person has more power and thus the ability to make the black person seem like more of an equal person in this perverted way you're probably an oscar movie and you're probably trying to bait audiences into loving your movie i think you and i both kind of hate these movies despite seeing the natural charm and the people who participate in them. And that's really one of the complexities, much like a lot of these biopics. I think you can be completely charmed by Viggo Mortensen and Mahershala Ali. You can be completely charmed by Jessica Tandy and Morgan Freeman in these movies. And then also look at the movie from 30,000 feet and go, oh man, what did they do? Why did they make this movie? It's so interesting that these movies continue. I wonder if we'll see another one in the next five years that has like

the Oscar imprimatur. I mean, Green Book worked. And it's so interesting because you and I both saw Green Book and like were pretty charmed by Viggo Mortensen and Mahershala Ali. Like they, they have chemistry despite our issues with the, the larger film film but we were also initially like oh oscar voters are gonna love this and i i'm not thrilled about being right about that and i again this is one of the ways in which i i hope oscar bait is changing uh like let's let's change it faster but um it i i do think that when something works hollywood tends to uh do it again one thing that doesn't usually work but i i do see as a category for attention is the one last shot mortality showcase sometimes it comes in the form of an actor i remember vividly peter o'toole's bid

to win for a movie called venus um and he was nominated and he did not win unfortunately i believe peter o'toole never won an oscar which is one more case for why the oscars are a bit silly um and even the irishman last year i saw very much you know people don't think of scorsese movies especially violent gangster scorsese movies as oscar bait but martin scorsese is an institution and his worldview and his storytelling has become synonymous with holly Hollywood over the last 30 years. And I saw The Irishman as pretty blatantly an attempt to draw plaudits, laurels, awards, et cetera, et cetera, because I don't think Netflix would have paid all that money for it if it didn't think it had a chance to do that. Well, I think that's the interesting distinction, right? I think it was definitely Netflix Oscar bait.

Why else is Netflix making that movie and paying all of that money? Because it wants the attention and plaudits that come with winning an Oscar for a Best Picture Oscar. And whether or not that's in the long run useful to Netflix is like a different conversation that I'm sure we'll have several months down the road. But do I think that Martin Scorsese was like, I must make The Irishman to win another Oscar? I don't know. I think he thought like, wouldn't that be nice? But it's more that The Irishman as that kind of late stage, looking back at my career, looking at mortality. By the way,

just an extremely moving film. I drove by the Chinese theater the other day where we went to the premiere of The Irishman. That was that last year at this time. Yes, I believe so. That feels like a lifetime ago, but was a very special experience. But that it fits into that Oscar bait narrative is what makes it Oscar bait. I don't know that Martin Scorsese is.

Maybe he is, but respect Marty. Martin Scorsese doesn't need an Oscar. I think, frankly, one of the very best moments of the Oscars earlier this year in February was when Bong Joon-ho dedicated one of his wins. He quoted Scorsese and Scorsese got a standing ovation from every single person in the, in the auditorium. So, you know, that wasn't a win.

He didn't win best director for the Irishman, but it was a win. I mean, it was, it was a, not that he needed it, but it was another confirmation that he is one of the greatest of all time.

You cited earlier Hollywood. It's the best. This is a very classical going back to singing in the rain, but also very contemporary and, and vibrant version of Oscar Bate. We just saw Once Upon a Time in Hollywood last year. We saw La La Land a few years ago. A Star is Born. Rules Don't Apply.

There's a bunch of versions of these kinds of movies. And they usually work. I, too, enjoy movies and movies about Hollywood. We've got another one coming up and it's why in, in bank. So that's right. That's right. Although boy,

well, that'll be an interesting one to break down. Yes. I'm not sure if that's a movie that is celebrating Hollywood. Let me just say. Sure. Though, like whether people can parse that is like part of the,

the joy of the bank exercise. You nailed it. That's a nice tease for next week when Mank Week begins. Amanda and I will be covering Mank, Citizen Kane, David Fincher's new film From All Angles. Please look forward to that. Final category is one I was kind of citing that I think is somewhat related to the biopic form, though these stories are often about people who are not real people uh some of the time as well which is the actor showcase to display his or her ability to pantomime a disability or

old age in latex or prosthetics i always think of i am sam the misbegotten sean penn film in this subcategory which is uh there's a sense of nobility but it also feels like a parody at the same time with a lot of these movies. I always think of Monster and Charlize Theron, which is just the most crystallized example of an astonishingly attractive person trying to make themselves conventionally unattractive for the purposes of winning an Oscar. Yeah, it's tried and true. And that did win Charlize Theron an Oscar. So shout out to her. Those are all the classical rubrics, I think. Have I forgotten anything?

Does that sum it all up? I think it does. I think it is also a good lesson in that anything really can be Oscar bait. If you try hard enough you can fit into one of these categories i mean the only thing that is the only type of movie that isn't on this list is like a a giant blockbuster and specifically a superhero movie um though it's been interesting as we were we were talking about the deer hunter and the movies that then go on to have a major box office presence because of the oscars if we had this conversation every year of

now do the oscars need a major box office winner in order to to be relevant so at some point you may actually have a spot and like you kind of secretly already do in the last few years there's one best picture spot reserved for like the the successful box office movie that we can all stomach yes i wonder if that will continue to be true with movie theaters reopen at any point in the near future i genuinely don't know what that looks like down the road um i'm looking forward to the Oscars, just generally speaking. I am too. I have, it feels very far away. That's kind of where I am with it.

And that's what's fascinating about this whole year is that it's, we're going to be talking about this for a long time and also talking around ourselves because whether the Oscar is going to be like, no idea. Yeah, I genuinely am struggling with whether or not we should focus on it less because I think that the audiences are just less engaged in the races than they were. And some of the races feel settled, which is kind of fascinating. I mean, I think you could safely predict about 80% of the big nominations right now, and we're a long ways away. Now, some things will change, but the public tide is not going to shift around support for a movie, even movies like Nomadland

and Mank that have not been released yet. But then most people are like, okay, well, this is a great movie and we're going to celebrate it and look forward to that in April. So the whole thing is just very strange this year. Before we wrap up, let me ask you, what is the most egregious example of Oscar bait in your mind? So I wanted to ask you a question before we do this, and I promise we'll end this podcast at some point. But to you, Sean Fantasy, is Oscar bait more or less egregious if it works? More. Me too. And so all of my examples are films that maybe don't even fit one of the traditional well

they do all fit the traditional rubric but that have become lore in part because everyone was like sure this seems like a great idea to give this an oscar i think crash in terms of its uh quote sociological exploration of America, unquote. God, I just need a gif of me doing air quotes. It's like the obvious example, right? But some other ones that stick out to me, Kate Winslet winning for the reader, that was a tough one. Yeah, so I think you just picked out two really interesting examples there, right?

Because Crash won in the same way that I think Hillbilly Elegy is attempting to compete as a portrait of our country, of our cities, of our relationships with people, of wealth, of the police, of all of these big thorny concepts. And in the telling, people took the bait. They got fish hooked by Crash in a big way. And I think we look back on that as one of the most absurd Oscar Best Picture winners of all time. But that was a movie that felt, from its design, maybe not necessarily to win awards, but to make people go like, wow, what a deep exploration of the human soul, of the American consciousness. The reader was, I believe it was an adaptation of a book, right? I believe so. And a pure awards play for its lead and marketed and engineered and campaigned for in a very discreet way,

which is like, this movie has to win awards. It doesn't even matter if you think this movie sucks. This movie has to win Kate Winslet an Oscar. And it did that. And that feels very different to me.

You know, like one of them is attempting to be important and the other is attempting to win. And there can be crossover there. But I think that those are two, kind of two of the most fascinating examples that are representative of the most fascinating examples that are representative

of the things that people think of when they're like, God, I hate awards movies. They're so annoying. Yes. Because neither of those is rewarding in any way, shape, or form.

And then we just had to, not only did they win awards, but you had to hear about them for three or four months. And it's like, I can't believe we talked so much about the reader. Well, I didn't,

but yes, people do. Sure. Right. Okay. Well, you know, I feel like we really captured the conversation around Oscar bait as well

as we can. Do you think we, we, we safely widened the scope of this, this subcategory? Oh, well, I hope so because if we didn't do it safely,

then, you know, I feel bad. Uh, then, you know, I feel bad. It'll be interesting to see what Oscar bait looks like in the next five months, because I really do think the extra time and the uncertainty of this particular season will shape what is rewarded and why. And it has been changing a little bit. So I think that's interesting to you and me. Hopefully it's interesting to the other people who have to listen to this podcast for five and a half months. Have to is a fascinating term there.

Only people who have to listen to it are Bobby Wagner. Speaking of, thank you to Bobby Wagner. Thanks, Amanda. Please tune in later this week. We have a pre-Thanksgiving treat. It's the 2014 movie draft. Chris Ryan is coming back, probably to get his ass

handed to him. Hope to see you then.