The Big Picture - Hollywood Is at War with Itself. Plus: The Inaugural “You Blew It!” Movie Awards.

Episode Date: December 15, 2020

The fallout from Warner Bros.' HBO Max announcement is still rippling through Hollywood. Sean and Amanda talk about the responses from Christopher Nolan, Denis Villeneuve, producers at other studios, agencies, and fans. Then, they use the announcement of a glut of new film and TV projects at Disney to talk about the future of streaming, the projects they're excited about, and more (0:45). Finally, Sean and Amanda look back on a year of takes and pick the movies and the opinions they got wrong. They blew it! (39:22) 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 the war going on in Hollywood. On today's show, Amanda and I will unpack the fallout of Warner Brothers' decision to move its movie slate to HBO Max, the overwhelming slate of new projects Disney announced last week, and finally, Amanda and I will do some re-evaluating of our own takes in the first ever edition of the You Blew It Awards. It's all coming up on The Big Picture.

Amanda, it's been a long time, and by a long time, I mean about nine days, since you and I had a chance to yell at each other about whatever's going on in Hollywood, and so much is happening. We did an emergency episode about a week and a half ago about this big decision that Warner Brothers made for HBO Max. Since then, there has been some reaction. You knew right away when this happened that a fight was nearly upon us, and the fight

is here. How are you feeling about the fight? Oh, this is great content and tremendously ugly. And I don't think anyone looks good. I have a lot of notes for everybody involved. Yes. So in the immediate aftermath, we saw Jason Kyler, who is the CEO of Warner Media, doing a bit of a press tour, going around talking about the decision that they made to move their slate of, I think it's about 16 films to the HBO Max platform, as well as to movie theaters for 30 days all of next year. And I think Kyler, they made this very radical choice and is in a very complicated position in terms of having to describe it. Obviously, the AT&T ownership of Warner Media is the single biggest factor here in the decision

making. And he has tried his best to clarify that this is for fans, that this is, you know, obviously related to the pandemic and COVID-19, and they are using this opportunity to do something a little bit different than expected. But the big backlash has come obviously from the talent and those who control the money of the talent because the talent was not given a heads up

before this decision was made. And that seems to be what's driving people's ire primarily. First, we saw Christopher Nolan. What'd you think of Christopher Nolan's handful of reactions to all of this so far? I think it's important to take all of them into account and in a timeline as well. I thought the first one was a lot of fun to read and to text. You know, we haven't talked about this on a podcast, but you and I have been exchanging a lot of opinions and I have with some other friends as well.

Highly entertaining. Just tremendously strategically silly, I thought. And I think there's the first, the worst streaming service one, Great Burn, was then preceded a few days later by the maybe more thoughtful or nuanced or the I'm positioning from artist rights to what's going on to the below the line workers in the film industry. And I think that Christopher Nolan's publicist either got on the phone in between those two statements

and or someone else pointed out that perhaps he might want to reposition some of his public tantruming basically there's there's been a lot of tantruming and to make it more palatable and possibly to have just to not look like a total silly person who precipitated a lot of this by pushing with Warner Brothers to release Tenet in theaters, which then bombed domestically, which certainly factored into the decision

of Warner Brothers deciding to release everything simultaneously on streaming and in theaters. Yeah, this is such a complicated thing to talk about because there's this urge to point fingers to understand how we got here. And so many people are affected by this. The people who work at Warner Brothers are affected by this. The people who work at HBO Max are affected by this. The people who work at the highest levels of filmmaking and the people who work below the line on films, the people who work in movie theaters, the people who own movie

theaters, the people who consume movies in movie theaters, the people who subscribe to streaming services. This touches a broad constitution of people in the world of movies and television. And so whose fault is it is the first thing that you think about when it's something that offends the sensibility, whether that sensibility is, is this the end of movie theaters? Is this the dawn of a new era of streaming? What does it mean for relationships inside the industry? I don't feel personally like I have a skeleton key to understanding everything that was done here. I do agree with you, generally speaking, that the push to open Tenet this summer, when it was clear that America was not ready to go back to movies, was a mistake. And it obviously triggered the decision-making of the people at the top of Warner Media. And Christopher Nolan is,

it's certainly his right to be offended, angered, bothered by this, and also clearly kind of mourning, I think in a lot of ways, the state of the art that he has devoted his life to. I think it's amusing that while he is essentially promoting the homecoming or the forthcoming video release,

POV release of his movie, that he's complaining about it because most people are going to see his movie in their homes. And we're going to talk more about Tenet later this week, a movie that you and I both liked. And I'm looking forward to seeing again and talking about more and kind of understanding what he was after in that movie because of the chance to see it over and over again. Even as we've talked about movies over the last few weeks that have come out this past year, a lot of them I've been able to return to because of these streaming services. So it's not all bad in the making here, but there is some tantruming, as you say. We've seen a few other people kind of point out that this is not a good thing. Denis Villeneuve, whose Dune is supposed to come out

next October, published an editorial in Variety that essentially completely decried this decision. And I thought in many ways, got even closer to that state of the art, the morning of the theater goings experience than Christopher Nolan's. Now, where they're coming from there and how much of this is motivated by a sadness about what happened, how much is motivated by money, how much is motivated by just the betrayal of trust is a complex stew. I'm not totally sure how to evaluate that. What did you think of Villeneuve's reaction? The way you put it was useful, which is not a good thing, but for whom and why? And it really varies depending on who is writing the op-ed in the trade publication of choice. I think it's important to say just personally, philosophically,

I don't like it when people throw tantrums in public. I don't. I judge it as weakness. I think it's kind of the last strategy. And so when I'm looking at Nolan, when I'm looking at Denis Villeneuve, I'm kind of like, you guys definitely did get screwed over a bit by the year. It seems certainly that you will have lawyers that are going over some of the contractual guarantees. And I don't know whether you'll win those because I think the pandemic and the force majeure clause have really upended a lot of it. But I'm sure you'll try.

I think that probably in the case of Denis Villeneuve and backend, it's definitely not what he was expecting. And so there's a financial aspect of it. And you're not going to catch me on the side of being like, well, I think the giant telecom company should just get to keep its money.

And the director I admire shouldn't. But that's about money. And then I think there's also a lot of ego in here. There's a lot of we weren't told. And again, I sympathize with the individual over the giant telecom company. I would not say that the cell phone company is a great like talent management situation. But this is how giant corporations work. I think many people, including directors, uh, have suffered at some point or other because of a giant corporation making a decision and not, uh, making it on the basis of individuals or on the basis of art, but making it on the basis of stock prices and bottom lines.

And it's never fun. I like to me, all of those things are more honest than I made this for art and my art is being diminished. And I hate being in that position because I, in general, hate the separation of that art can only be art independent of commerce. And I think that you and I really believe that there is true art in making something that is commercial and that a lot of people want to see and that those things can live together. And I'm really only opposed to it when someone is decrying commercialization under the guise of art, because quite frankly, Denis Villeneuve, it's not like AT&T just brought Warner Brothers yesterday. This is all

isn't news like you've been working for like a giant studio and we have decades of studios being studios and being owned by conglomerates and being reorganized so I I think you made some choices and I think it went really well and I let's take another example Patty Jenkins Patty Jenkins directed Wonder Woman 1984 which was the first it was released. It would be streaming simultaneously and released in theaters. And I think we learned after that announcement that Warner Brothers did have the courtesy of going to both Patty Jenkins and Gal Gadot and renegotiating. And I think the figure that they were given is upwards of $10 million and each to replace or some of their backend. And then it was announced in the Disney Plus announcement, which we're going to talk about more, that Patty Jenkins would be directing a Star Wars movie.

So here's what happened. Patty Jenkins got some news she didn't want. She secured the bag and then was like, screw you. I will go to the other company and make things the way that I want to. I just respect that so much more. There's no way to know that that is definitely what happened. Totally. It's possible that that happened.

And it's possible that the minute that Patty Jenkins, over the summer, got a whiff of the idea of Wonder Woman moving to a streaming service. You're right. She could have just picked up the phone and called Alan Horn and said, hey, I want to make a movie with you guys. And that's a good point, though, because that is potentially, not necessarily, but potentially and maybe probably what Christopher Nolan and Denis Villeneuve may now go do. There was a lot of speculation over the weekend that Chris Nolan is going to go to Universal to make his next movie. Well, he probably has to because Warner Brothers, his latest movie, bombed. It didn't make his movie back. And he probably has to because Warner Brothers, his latest movie bombed. It didn't make his movie back. Like, was he going to be making a ton of movie? I don't

think he was going to be able to make movies with Warner Brothers in the same way that he wanted to anyway, because of the release of Tenet. But continue. It's possible. I honestly don't know the answer to that either, because I don't know how valued he was internally. And there's some interesting timing today. There was a new feature story in The Hollywood Reporter about Jeff Robinoff. Jeff Robinoff, to me, is a fascinating kind of casualty of what the movie business over the last 10 years. Robinoff is not a kind of intellectual filmmaker. He ran the movie division of Warner Brothers for a period of time. And prior to that was an agent.

And he's a person who reportedly very well understood both the business and the art of the work. And is a person who was, is many ways credited with bringing Christopher Nolan to Warner Brothers, with bringing Ben Affleck, the director to Warner Brothers with shepherding the Wachowski's careers, the Hughes brothers careers. He was a person who was really good at identifying talent and protecting them inside of this system. And he got pushed out in 2013

in favor of Kevin Tsujihara, who has since exited Warner Brothers because of a scandal. And Kevin Tsujihara previously was a home video executive. And in that time, obviously the movie industry at large has radically shifted, but a person like Robinov, there may not be room for. And there certainly doesn't seem to be room for someone like that at Warner Brothers right now. And it's complicated because you want to see the Christopher Nolans of the world thrive. You want to see the Patty Jenkinses, the Denis Villeneuve's, the people who have strong visions, even if they're working in intellectual property, are at least able to put their thumbprint on these big, noisy movies. And if those people start getting pushed out or just take their business to Universal or Disney, it just means that there are fewer studios that are making great material. So it's possible that there's a pretty radical echoing effect on this decision.

However, I just want to say, ultimately, I think most of this is about money. I think a lot of the posturing is about money. I think this is about people positioning themselves to say, you've done me wrong and you need to make good on this. So if we hear that Christopher Nolan is signing a new deal with Warner Brothers where he's going to get X kind of personal and professional freedom, I wouldn't be stunned. I would be surprised, but not stunned. What do you think? Well, I think there's no going back from the worst streaming service. I think Nolan is like a very specific case of just kind of burning the bridges in public as part of posturing as a little bit to preserve his own career. Because, you know, the flip side of the

strategic don't throw a tantrum in public is um when you have no other leverage left which I think at least these 16 or 17 directors do not really uh then you just you make a scene because that at least gets people's attention and you hopefully get some people to your side and listen even as we're talking about this I I feel I don't want any impression that I'm on the side of the cell phone company. You know, it's a cell phone company. I feel no personal attachment to it. I have to pay the money.

And I really wish that most of these things were public utilities instead. But it's a PR war. And I think he probably, I would be surprised. Everyone else, you directed me to an interview that Jason Blum gave over the weekend that I think is really worthwhile. It's with the business, the KCRW radio show. And he, one of the many points that he made was that I think the 16 or 17 people who had their contract or had their movies pushed to streaming without notice and like weren't treated well and the talent management was bad and maybe they don't feel like they got their contractual due they probably won't be back at

Warner Brothers but he was like I think everybody else who wants business like if they can get the contract that they want they will go to Warner Brothers because there aren't that many buyers yeah that I would highly recommend that interview for everybody out there, in part because Blum, who is obviously a very, I think, future-seeing kind of producer and executive, was just talking very real about what the bottom line of the business is and what matters and what doesn't. Blum has started to transition a lot of his business into television, and you can imagine why. Television, in many ways, is the future of a lot of this work. But while still also producing movies, we've seen other people go on the record about this.

Judd Apatow had some comments about this. We saw Richard Lovett of CIA, who almost never talks, come out and make a statement about what a horrific act this was. And there's a reason that he came out. He's protecting his clients and his interests. And that's really what so much of this is about is protecting the interests of people who made deals in a pre-pandemic time,

trying to grapple with where we are. The person who has spoken the most sense to me, both to me personally and in the wider world is Steven Soderbergh. He seems to be the person who understands as usual that Warner Brothers, it wasn't a tough spot. Next year, you could say, for better or worse, whether their slate was good or not,

whether they were poised to make any money on the collection of films that they had, but that on a lot of these movies, not all of them, but a lot of them, there is a shelf life. There is a shelf life on a movie like Wonder Woman 1984 because there is all of this. There is a shelf life on a movie like Wonder Woman 1984, because there is all of this long-term development in place to tell these serialized stories in these big universes that these studios have come to rely on. And so at some point, these movies,

in the face of the pandemic or not, need to find a way to get out into the public space. The problem is, and this is the big question I have for you, not just for Warner Brothers, but in general, can the genie ever go back in the bottle? That's the thing that everybody keeps talking about. Soderbergh says that the only way to make a billion dollars on a movie is to put that movie in theaters. We've never, we have not seen another way to do it. But once you let audiences have these movies in this fashion on Christmas Day, for example, when everybody used to go to the movie theater and now wants to stay home with their families,

can you ever compel them to come back in droves to the theaters? Not in the same way. Of course not. Which I think the other important thing to point out about Steven Soderbergh, an artist and a strategist who we both admire, is that he has a streaming deal with HBO Max and, you know, looked into the future and was like, OK, well, the best way that I can make my capital A art, the Deborah Eisenberg short story featuring three women over the age of 70 is on a streaming service. And that because of how this industry is aligned. So I don't think that theaters are going away. I don't. I think that they are the only way to make a billion dollars as you and Steven Soderbergh

and many others have pointed out. And all of these companies like money as do all of these directors. And I do think that it's become fashionable to say like, oh, people are craving like a communal experience and they'll want to go back. And that's really overblown. But again, I think it'll be kind of like amusement parks. It's a treat. It's a thing you go to. How many and where you go to the theater and how frequently you go to the theater, I think, will change even more than it had already been changing for the last five years. Which, by the way, was dramatically because it's, again, not like streaming services are new.

You know, I don't think we've said Netflix yet in this podcast, which is hilarious, but this Netflix has been here for a long time shaking up a lot of this stuff. And obviously, if you change the nature of the theatrical financial business, which just you have to after the pandemic, I mean, just look at the state of AMC. I mean, that's just become its own like everyday content machine of just being like, how little money does AMC have now? But once you change that model, you've changed the model. As Christopher Nolan, to his credit, points out of how these things are made, how they're financed, and what kinds of movies are made and where. So it is a completely seismic shift. I don't mean to underestimate that. And I am anxious as a person who covers movies. If I were a person who made movies, I would be unbelievably anxious. But I think that that can be separate from some people throwing a tantrum in public about their back end and their respect. I love to go to the Arclight on Sunset Boulevard when a big, noisy blockbuster is coming out and see it with a thousand people. That's one of my favorite things to do. You and I have done it together many times over the years in Los Angeles. I have no ill will towards AMC or Regal or any of these other exhibition companies. I care about is the smaller repertory theaters, the smaller businesses, the people who really

care about showing movies on big screens. You know, I was doing some research and thinking about the Eagle Theater, which is a theater that is supposed to open at some point soon, not far from where you and I live in Eagle Rock, which is going to be a theater that is owned and operated by the Vidiot's Foundation, which is one of the best long-time rental spaces for movies in LA. And we don't have a lot of repertory theaters on the east side of Los Angeles. Obviously, Quentin's, the New Beverly is famous, and there's the Arrow, and there's the Cinematheque. There are a handful of them here in LA, but increasingly few. And if the theater going experience dies out, these places are going to suffer. And I, I want

the Eagle theater to exist. I want to be able to go there frequently and see old films, maybe see new films, see special events, see conversations with artists that I care about. And so when people get a little bit wet eyed and emotional and kind of like weirdly religious about this, it's because they, they do really care. And I, I think I'm having a hard time separating the Chris Nolan really cares about

this. And I think he does. And I think he does care about the below the line people. And I think he does care about the sanctity of the art, but also the ego collision is onoubtable. So I think sorting our way through that has been really hard. It's really hard to talk about this and not just say something that is intractably wrong. So I'm trying to be careful, but I'm thinking about like, I just want to go to the Eagle. Like that's really where a lot of my heart lies.

And anything that any decision that is made at a corporate level and any war that is happening in a public space actually threatens the long term viability of that. And it just bums me out. Yeah, it's sad. I do feel like I've been the Cassandra of this podcast and it's been like Netflix exists. Wake up, dummies. And I very much enjoy Netflix and many of the films that it provides this year and, and also it's TV shows. Uh, but I, I would like the Eagle to exist too, especially cause I think it's really near my house. Um, and I would like to be able to go to the theaters. I miss it

as well. Um, I just don't think that our connection to movie theaters has anything to do with any of the decisions that have been made in the last year or really any of the conversations that have been having, even frankly, with Christopher Nolan. I think what about all of the below the line people in this industry is a much stronger rhetorical position and also honestly a much truer position, then my art can only be seen on like a giant screen. I agree with you. Let's use this as an opportunity to talk about more art that will be seen primarily on a small screen. Last Thursday, in a marathon session, a presentation to investors, though frankly really felt more like a presentation to media who would interpret it for investors, Disney rolled out an obscene content plan. A truly

orgiastic and absurd collection of things that they're going to be making in the next handful of years. And they announced that they have 86 million subscribers on Disney+, which is something that they accomplished in just about 12 months, which is astounding.

And I want to kind of name as many of these things as I possibly can. I watched most of this presentation like a psychopath. You checked in here and there. What was your experience with the Disney investor call? Thanks so much for asking. I didn't actually watch. I am somehow on a mailing list where I was just sent photographs of Bob Chapek and Robert Iger. Like that was it. It was just photo Bob Chapek and then a second email photo Bob Iger, which, you know, shout out to photo editors who have a very hard job and that's clearly who it was for. I'm not one of them, but I didn't get any of the material information.

I just have these nice photos of some corporate guys. And I just followed the RSS feed, but you and I had a funny moment where we both had to step away from the internet for 20 minutes for meetings or podcasts or whatever. We don't actually look at the internet while we're podcasting. We're trying to be here present with all of you. And so we both came back and logged onto Slack and at the exact same moment, sent the exact same Slack to each other, which was like, I went into a meeting and then they announced like 80 Star Wars shows. And we've like both

made that joke to each other at the same time, but it was bewildering to go away for five minutes and just be like, oh, okay, so now this is all anyone's going to be watching for the next five years. It's interesting because the presentation was very similar to the Warner Brothers news in that the primary focus was on everything going to the streaming platform, including the, as you say, the 10 Star Wars series that were announced, the 10 MCU series that were announced, the many Pixar series that were announced. I mean, we're watching one Star Wars show right now, The Mandalorian.

You've heard me talk about it on the show. We, we meaning me. But I know that your husband is on board because he hollered at me about it. But there's one. It's wonderful. I love it. I'm so grateful to have it every Friday.

The idea of keeping up though with 10 is a little bit daunting to me. So the overload is a fascinating thing to unpack. But more specifically, there was some talk about theatrical in this presentation. It was there is a Black Panther 2 that is happening. They're not recasting the late Chadwick Boseman as T'Challa, but Ryan Coogler is going forward with this film. There's a new Ant-Man movie.

The big kind of capper announcement was that Marvel is finally doing a Fantastic Four movie under the supervision of Kevin Feige that's going to be directed by John Watts, who's been making the most recent Spider-Man movies. So there were some theatrical announcements, but mostly it was streaming.

And that includes Soul, which we talked about going to Disney Plus on Christmas. That includes Raya and the Last Dragon coming exclusively to the Premiere Plus experience that they did for Hulu in March. And then all these shows. And I kind of feel like The Mandalorian took the place of every blockbuster movie we were supposed to see this year. I'm sure that the viewership numbers are really high. It's been completely eventized. There's a whole content economy around every episode. We are contributing to that as much as anybody at The Ringer. The kind of the debating, the suggesting,

the theorizing, the, the, just the general like wonder that I think that show creates for a lot of people, myself included. It feels like it has slid deftly into that space. And I've been thinking about this a lot because I'm really anticipating

Wanda vision. I realized I sound like a fucking tool when I talk about this stuff. I'm sorry. I'm like, I'm doing my best to kind of balance. I have a theory about all of this, actually, that we can relate, actually, even if I and I might watch WandaVision because, as you noted, my husband is continuing our Disney Plus subscription to watch Mando. By the way, I know what's up with Baby Yoda. I'm very concerned about him, even though I do not watch the show. He's in great peril. What's Moff Gideon going to do? This is some scary shit. I don't know. I hope he's okay. I do too. It seems like WandaVision is

going to be good. And WandaVision is the TV version of a show or of a movie that I would ask you to come see with me and that we could talk about on the podcast. It's basically the same thing. It's in the same universe. It's telling the same serialized story. It's basically the same thing. It's in the same universe. It's telling the same serialized story. It's basically the same stakes. We learned that WandaVision is going to tie in directly with Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness and the next Spider-Man movie. And you kind of have to participate in all of this stuff if you want to be current on all these stories. You don't have to, you know, write a blog post about every episode, but you kind of have to keep an eye on the decisions that they're making. And so like, I want to cover WandaVision on this show. I want to cut like the same way that I keep yelling at you about Mandalorian. Cause I didn't get a chance to see a big noisy event movie, which is a part of the,

the alchemical mix of the big picture. And if you go down the list of all of these shows, I mean, Ironheart, Armor Wars, Moon Knight, She-Hulk all of these shows, I mean, Ironheart, Armor Wars, Moon Knight, She-Hulk, Ms. Marvel, Andor, you know, Ahsoka, the Noah Hawley alien TV series, all of this shit that I'm probably going to watch like a good 70 to 80% of. This is why, this is when my what happened to movies light flashes aggressively in my brain because I know that this is the future.

Like even more so than Netflix getting into the awards race or Warner Brothers moving these mid-tier Denzel Washington crime movies to HBO Max. That's not what's happening. What's happening is this. What's happening is WandaVision will be the most blogged about thing in January of 2021 in the culture space. And I'm getting more comfortable with it

is what I'm trying to say. What is your theory? So, and this has a little bit more to do, you know, with Star Wars and what happens to movies than the MCU stuff, which seems like pretty specific. And honestly, it just seems like they're getting back to how like the comics of it all and how comic stories are told and what it's like to. I mean, I never read comics, as you know, but there would be lots. There's a quality, not a quality. I mean, there is a quality, but there's a quantity aspect to it.

And then there are like big events every once in a while, but you're kind of following things along and it can accommodate multiple storylines. And we're going to restart this, you know, which like that makes sense. It's nice when a content finds its way back to its home, you know? You're right. I think you're right. It does. It's starting to represent more like what it's like to be a comic book reader.

So, and like, I think that's great because there are tons of comic book readers and it's wonderful to have things that you like. I really mean that sincerely, which is going to lead into my theory. I've been thinking a lot about the Jane Austen universe. Okay. Because like being a Jane Austen fan and a relationship to like, quote, Jane Austen content is kind of like the closest I can come to relating really to a Star Wars fan. And it's a pretty similar setup. Okay. So Jane Austen wrote six novels. That's it. She wrote six novels and then she

was done. And for 300 years now, 200, 200 years now, people have just been making content based on those six novels. And by the way, they have like three storylines among them. Okay. It's like a woman who like has some qualms about society and should she get married or should she not? And then she does. And then there's some great observation, but we've just been churning stuff out forever. Okay. And you know, adaptations to be sure in TV shows, but also there's like a modern version of Pride and Prejudice, the book for like every single scenario. There's one set in like Ohio. There's one set in modern day Pakistan.

They do these every year. I read all of them, like every single one. They're not that good. It's actually some of them are, some of them are very good and some of them are not that good. It's actually, some of them are, some of them are very good and some of them are not that good. And they don't diminish my enjoyment for the really big ticket thing. And the, like either the original source material or remake of the big ticket item, I can differentiate between kind of spinoffs inside things and like a world I want to be in. And like, then we can all come together for the major event.

And the major event in this case can still be a movie and it can still be the original Star Wars, or it can be whatever version of Rey or whoever is the next Rey, you know, that they want to make. And then if you want to watch the 18 or 45 or 3000 spinoffs, which many of the fans have already been doing on their own, you can do that. It seems great. I wouldn't worry too much about it. I think what you're saying is that all modern entertainment from the last 300 years is functionally the same. There's only a handful of stories that can be told. There's only a handful of ways that can be told it. But what every form of artistic entertainment demands is consistent engagement, is that you have to come back and return to it, right? So this Disney announcement

is that manifest as widely as can possibly be. This is how do we get you to hook an IV drip of Disney Plus content into your veins for the next five years. This is how. This is how we create new generations of Star Wars and Marvel fans. This is how we get people to remember what Big Hero 6 was because we're doing a Big Hero 6 TV show. This is how we get people to watch Zootopia on Disney Plus. We'll do a Zootopia TV show. There were some movies that were announced that I think are specifically what you're talking about, like the big ticket Jane Austen remake. In our case, is that Patty Jenkins Rogue Squadron movie that you mentioned? It is Encanto, the animated Lin-Manuel Miranda Disney movie that was announced. It's James Mangold's Indiana Jones movie. It's Taika Waititi's Star Wars movie. These are movies that I'm excited

about. I'm excited to see. It's impossible to know whether they're going to be good. Reinventions, reboots, reimaginings, relaunches of things like this are about a 50-50 ratio of quality, I would say, historically. So you just don't know what you're going to get. But it's nice to have them to look forward to. And it's nice that I think Disney retained a kind of goodwill around an announcement like this by not offending anyone's sensibilities, not radically changing anything that they're doing. I think we had to assume after the success of The Mandalorian,

there would be quite a few more Star Wars TV shows. So that wasn't shocking. I think it was just the altogether volume that blew my wig back. So tell me, after hearing me name all of these things, what is the one thing that you were most excited about that came out of the Disney announcement? Sister Act 3, which you did not even talk about. They're making another Sister Act with Whoopi! Is that good? It's wonderful. Sister Act and Sister Act 2, one of the great unheralded sequels, in my opinion, were very important to Childhood Amanda.

Love them. I learned a lot about music from them. I learned like many of the classic oldies songs from the, you know, God covers that they do in Sister Act and Sister Act 2. And then you hear the real song on the radio and I was like, wait a second, those aren't the words. So I'm excited about Sister Act 3. And then I'm excited about Chris Evans

trying to have to explain who Buzz Lightyear the person is. This is the single best thing that happened that whole day this is let's i'll try to provide some context here um there was a handful of new pixar movies that were announced luca turning red and a movie called light year light year is the origin story of buzz lightyear who in the toy story movie is a toy but chris evans in a tweet, helpfully pointed out what? And just, this is the actual wording of the tweet from Chris Evans. He replied to his own tweet with the trailer. And just to be clear, this isn't Buzz Lightyear the toy.

This is the origin story of the human Buzz Lightyear that the toy is based on. I just thank you. Thank you to Disney+. Thank you to Bob Chapek and Bob Iger,. I just thank you. Thank you to Disney Plus. Thank you to Bob Javik and Bob Iger, who I have photos of. Thank you to Buzz Lightyear, the human and the toy. Thank you to Chris Evans

for continuing to be a movie star puppy dog. I don't know what that means, but it's tremendous. I was on a Zoom call with my nephew Jack Jack, this weekend. He's very young, not even three years old. And he loves Buzz Lightyear. He dresses like Buzz Lightyear all the time.

He can always be seen with a Buzz toy in his hand. He's obsessed with Toy Story. And I found myself a 38-year-old man trying to explain, in my own words, Chris Evans' tweet to my nephew. And I thought I was going to lose my mind. We are so through the looking glass that we've shattered the glass like 100 times over. This is a lady from Shanghai kind of experience here in terms of the amount of mirrors upon

mirrors of our content that we're making. And honestly, I'm fine with it. Like, it's okay. Like Chris Evans can do a Buzz Lightyear movie. Great. I'll watch the shit out of it. It's fine. Yeah. Why is this bad? It's great. It's great. It's great. I think Disney's persistent ability to reduce grown people to children is something that has been analyzed for decades. You know, this was, this was a part of Walt Disney's gambit was to kind of use these classical mythological stories to tap into an undying sense of youth and childhood. Um, they're now at this place though, where with all of this iterative content, I feel like I'm reflecting on a childhood that someone else had a lot of the time. You know, like so much of their stuff is...

You are. How old were you when Toy Story came out? I was 13 years old. Okay. So that's kind of on the edge. It was on the edge. I mean, I talked about this on the Toy Story rewatchables. I loved that movie and I think that movie coming along probably kept me on the chain for animated movies through my adult life because it kind of reached at a time when I should have been outgrowing it.

But there was something kind of intellectually powerful and the style of it and the whole story behind its making that could kind of appeal to a teenager. But I digress. I mean, they've got me 25 years later still interested in their corporate investor announcements around their new Twistory IP. So I don't know. Everything is just so weird, Amanda. I don't know how to tangle with what content is supposed to be these days. I don't think anybody does. I think that's why everyone is just making Buzz Lightyear jokes and having public meltdowns about, you know, streaming services. It's just everyone is like sharing their feelings on Maine all the time

because it makes no sense. I feel like should The Ringer do one of these investor calls? You know, should we come out and just like talk about what we're doing on the big picture in 2021? And, you know, how we're going to do like the big, big picture. And it's like an origin story of young Amanda and who she was in 1995. And, you know, the human that Amanda Dobbins is based on, you know, not the toy Amanda, not the podcaster Amanda, the real person. Sure. Let's do it. And then I just request

that there are different photo emails sent out ahead of time so that photo editors have what they need. Okay. I guess we'll be talking about movies and TV shows and intellectual property and the war for the future of Hollywood for the next several years. Yes, absolutely. We should also say we're definitely talking about it later this week when we talk about tenant, which is being seen at home with none other than Chris Ryan.

Congratulations to these CR heads. He's coming back. And I'm going to watch tenant again and try to understand what happened. Um, and not skip an entire hour of the movie this time. In my recollection, you know what the, you know what the big upside of watching it this week is going to be

watching it with closed caption. Oh yeah. That is smart. That's going to be huge because that was the number one thing that was challenging about it. Is it, let me just go ahead. Oh, yeah. That is smart. That's going to be huge because that was the number one thing that was challenging about it. Is it? Let me just go ahead. Anyone, no spoilers here.

Anyone who hasn't seen Tenet yet, if you want to do, you know, closed captioning is very helpful, but if you can watch it without closed captioning, I would suggest going once without. Not because, I just think at some point you got to let it wash over

you. And I don't know whether the specifics help. Okay. So anybody out there listening that wants to participate in the episode later this week, watch Tenet twice in your home, once without closed captions, a second time with closed captions, and then get ready for Chris Ryan's point of view on this movie. Let's take a quick break and then let's hand out some You Blew It awards. You blew it! Okay, Amanda, we're back. Here's what happened. A close friend of ours

emailed us a link to an episode of the Siskel and Ebert show one of the greatest things that's ever happened in the history of movie culture in this episode which I believe was circa 1989 circa 1990 they essentially used the opportunity of the show a kind of year

end show to chastise and accost one another for their bad takes. It is essentially a re-evaluation show from previous episodes in which they cited opinions they had about movies over the years and how they got things wrong. show the last few years have have i think sought to be friendlier to each other while still keeping a kind of animosity as a core part of the conversation but i thought so i thought it would be interesting to kind of look back at what we agreed on didn't agree on and where we thought we blew it and not just how you blew it with your bad takes or how i blew it with my bad takes but how with some self-reflection, maybe some things that we personally got wrong or we didn't see correctly the first time.

And then there's a third category, which I think is always kind of, it's kind of mean, but it's kind of fun to point out, which is just like, how did the filmmakers get something wrong? Like a piece of material that just should have worked for either one of us and look at why it didn't work and maybe what we can learn from it. So do you feel comfortable with the idea of re-evaluating your own takes? No, this was the hardest part for me. I knew you were going to say that. Of course, I'm never wrong.

And I definitely, as you know, as listeners know, as anyone in my life knows, I don't revisit. I don't look back right it's the decisions made and i'm i'm done um that's sick that's a major tension point in this household anyway that was why i wanted to do this is because this is a psychological exercise true yeah i will say i did find this and this is the thousandth time we'll say this on this podcast but this was a weird year to do it um because I think I could think of a lot of examples in past years of things I wanted to just excoriate you for and things that I really did evolve in over time and I think without spoiling our list it's interesting pretty much all our examples are uh pre-March and pre-April. And there is a real

shift in how I at least was responding to films after the pandemic and just like gratefulness to be seeing them. And so, you know, I'm sure I'm the most negative person in a lot of people's lives, but I was like, I have less to pick from negativity wise than usual this year. I had the exact same thought as you, that clearly something changed here where a sense of gratitude for new things clearly infected my point of view whenever we got a new film. And maybe that led to some great inflation along the way for certain films. And I apologize for that. There's really nothing we can do about that.

I think there were a handful of movies this year that made me just so joyous and relieved to have a movie because a good movie at home on a screen is about equal to a mediocre movie in a movie theater for me. Right. So the, the, the, the levels shifted a little bit. Nevertheless, I think it's valuable. I'll go first for the movie that I got wrong, okay? Mm-hmm. I thought the next movie we're going to talk about

was worse than okay. And I'm prepared for the blowback around this conversation. And it became clear to me over the weekend that there was going to be blowback.

You're not going to get it for me, but of course there's going to be blowback because there's blowback about every single one of these types of movies. And by these types of movies,

I mean superhero movies. You're right. So the name of this movie, or the names, as it were, is Birds of Prey and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn, which was then subsequently,

after the movie bombed at the box office in its opening weekend, changed via SEO to Harley Quinn colon Birds of Prey. It's a bad sign. It is, though I will never criticize anyone for doing SEO movie naming because you got to do what you got to do to get yourself in front of audiences. I also, by the way, to all the boys I've loved before, P.S. I still love you.

I don't, that's too many words. Just one more thing. We just, we need to be simpler and better about name-made movies. There was an easy solution there, which was T.W.O. The Boys I've Loved Before. Okay, great. Come on. Sure, but then you have to say T.W.O. The Boys I've Loved Before every single time you're talking about it. Nah, you can do whatever you want.

All right. They did follow your Ford vs. Ferrari rule on Harley Quinn colon Birds of Prey. And I don't like this movie. On its own terms, I think it actually has the same problem that a lot of DC movies have, which is it's kind of ugly to look at. It's like colorful in quotation marks, but mostly just brown. The pacing I thought was very bad. I didn't really understand what a lot of the characters wanted in the movie.

And it employs all those same things that we criticize Sonic for, which is this weird time skipping, this weird, as your husband said, podcast brain execution of storytelling. And I was just frankly very bored in a similar way to the way that I was bored during Cats, where I was like, I get what you're going for. I know this is air quotes outrageous. It's really just not well done. And I can see the seams all throughout the movie. And it's clearly a movie that started out as one movie. And then they went in and did a bunch of reshoots. And that doesn't change that some people

are kind of giving funny performances or how exciting it is to see someone like Harley Quinn at the center of the frame, as opposed to Aquaman or Superman or Batman or anybody else in this universe. I just thought that the movie was boring and noisy and not fun. You blow it!

Now, you and I both did not like Birds of Prey, Kathy Yen's Margot Robbie, Harley Quinn film. Here's some context for when I saw this movie. One, I was just enormously sick for like two weeks at the end of January and in early February. If you heard me and you heard my voice, you might have heard the fact that my voice had a tractor run through its vocal cords and I was just brutally ill. And so every day was just kind of painful and just kind of sucked. This was also a movie that I went to go see two days before the Oscars, which, you know,

considering I was not nominated, I had a surprising amount of stress around a lot of preparation, a lot of work that's done. There's a lot of stuff that's done on the day to day on our show. There's stuff that I was I was interviewing people who are nominated all the time. And there's all this kind of organization and balance that goes into that period of time. And I think I also had a pretty two things about Birds of Prey. I was expecting something that was similar to David Ayer's Suicide Squad, which is a movie I did not like. And that's where the Harley Quinn character was introduced. And I think I wanted the movie to be different than what it was. I don't know what I wanted it

to be, but that's a very dangerous thing. And happens a lot these days it happens to me all the time i'm as guilty of it as anybody else um but i think i wanted it to be some weirdly maybe less transgressive than it was and looking back on it it's a pretty like nasty and violent and intense movie and it's an interesting movie to look back on i re-watched it last night and I found some of its aggression and its intensity and its very askew sense of humor to be much more effective. I wonder how I would have felt about this movie if I had seen it at a time when I was not quite so angry and not quite so stressed out. And also Margot Robbie and Ewan McGregor and Mary Elizabeth Winstead and a lot of what we see there's no stillness there's no plasticity if that's a thing there it's it's just like a gopher broke movie and when it works it really works now i think i was also slightly influenced and and forgive me for valorizing this movie now that i've heard that a man had more of a part in making it. That's awful. And I don't want to be misconstrued in that way. But the information that Chad

Stahelski essentially choreographed many of the fights, he's the director of the John Wick films that he came in and he has a company that essentially works with film productions and essentially designs and helps execute fight sequences and battle sequences and the physical work that goes into making movies like this. Rewatching those sequences, I was like, these are pretty amazing. You know, the kind of the carousel fight sequence at the end of the movie. There's a battle sequence with a bat where Margot Robbie wields a bat and beats up a bunch of bad guys. That is just really high level action filmmaking.

And as you know, I love high level action filmmaking. It's as you know i love high level action filmmaking it's one of the reasons i love tenet it's like i think it's his christopher nolan's best action and so i i kind of opened my heart to this movie birds of prey i liked it i don't know i don't remember everything that i said about this movie i know i didn't really like it and i know that i the harley quinn character was just very confusing to me. I'm not steeped in the comics and then it's like trying to be feminist, but is it not like, how is it playing with the girl power stuff? I just, I couldn't get on that level. I remember that. And I think,

I do think some of that is just because it's, I'm not the intended audience like opposite. And I think part of it is that maybe it doesn't really work in the way that I would want it to. But beyond that, I just remember it just being like a capital and not for me movie, which is different than failing. Right, right. I think the other thing that happened for me with it is I started to watch Justin Halpern's Harley Quinn TV show on HBO Max, which I had not seen before. I think the first season was only available on the DC streaming service, but then it got ported over onto HBO Max when that service launched. And that show has a lot in common creatively, that character, the character on the animated show with the Margot Robbie version and with the animated

version of the character we see at the beginning of the movie and i think i had i got a little bit more on the wavelength of the character anyhow this is a lot of time spent on birds of prey but i just i just was surprised by how much i liked it the second time around and um serves me right for being a fucking asshole i have a movie from a similar time period and of the year which is like february march i think it was one of the last movies i saw in theaters and it's also a movie that it just should have been i should have liked it i don't i betrayed myself uh speaking of jane austen it is emma the movie um the adaptation directed by autumn de wilde screenplay by eleanor catten the novelist but i just could not get clueless out of my head while watching this version.

Well, I think a little bit about this is that this movie is definitely trying to, I wrote in our spreadsheet, it's like the quote, cool Emma, like the cool mom. And it is, you know, it is, I guess, period specific. I mean, it is set in the Jane Austen times, but it is also stylized and trying to be more modern or updated. It has a it has a modern sensibility to it and is kind of making jokes and winking at a lot of what it is doing within the movie. And I think it's hard then to not compare it with Clueless or to compare it with other similar kind of updated adaptations because it's not stayed.

It clearly has something to say about the type of movie that it is and the genre that it is and kind of what Jane Austen still applies. And so once you're doing that and once you're kind of making jokes and trying to poke fun or be meta about your subject, then you necessarily think of other texts that have possibly done that more fully.

Yeah, it's funny. I mean, I obviously was not aware of Emma when I watched it. You blew it! So first of all, just in terms of predicting the rest of the year, this movie stars Anya Taylor Joy and with a supporting performance by Josh O'Connor, who you may know as Prince Charles on the Crown and who my friend recently described as the British Adam Driver. And I think that that's really apt. Listen, I'm just I'm Googling Josh O'Connor and keeping watch on him. He's really important. So from a from a basic talent perspective and predicting how the year would go, I think that I was ungrateful. And then I thought that this was like a beautiful movie and visually

beautiful. I love those bright colors, just like every other woman in her 30s. And a good Jane Austen adaptation. I was just talking about this. I don't know why I was so salty. I think that I was just in a... February was a weird year too. We didn't know what was going to happen with the pandemic, but things were adrift and I can't explain it. I let myself down and I let everybody in this film down and I thought it was quite delightful upon rewatch. I remember liking it, but it being one of the first films

in which I kind of had to slap myself about zoning out about watching a movie at home because this was one of the first movies that Universal chose to move from theaters direct to PVOD. And I think that's how, I'm almost certain that's how I watched it. I didn't see it in a movie theater. I had missed the screenings.

And I think I just was zoning out when I was watching it. And then I don't think that's great, but I think that a lot of people in the second or third week of March were going through some trials and tribulations, some psychological confusion because of the world we found ourselves in.

And this movie was a victim of that. I have not returned to it since. Maybe I should. I really recommend it. And this movie was a victim of that. I have not returned to it since. Maybe I should. I really recommend it. And I think especially, I did see it in theaters, but in terms of quality at home viewing, I mean, please make more movies look like this for our streaming services and for things we watch at home. It's beautiful.

Can I talk to you about the phrase, you blew it? Sure. I think I've told you this before. I may have even talked about it on this podcast before, but I'm just going to again this is very important to me there's a movie called Copland it's a James Mangold movie he made it in the late 90s with it for Miramax and the big story of this movie was that Sylvester Stallone was taking on a dramatic part there have been many times over the years in which Sylvester Stallone returns to serious cinema has been used as a PR campaign to get people interested in the movie. But one of the other things about the movie is it has one of the all time incredible casts.

It features Robert De Niro. It features Robert Patrick. It features Harvey Keitel. It features Ray Liotta, Peter Berg, Janine Garofalo, Michael Rappaport, Annabelle Siora, Edie Falco. It's a great classic 90s independent drama. It's about a small town

where a bunch of police officers live and the kind of gang style mentality that this community creates and the way that they run the other towns where other police officers live. Robert De Niro plays an internal affairs officer,

and Sylvester Stallone plays the sheriff of this town that is full of cops. He's also half-deaf and one-eared. My favorite parts of the movie are the scenes in which Sylvester Stallone tries to talk to Robert De Niro, and Robert De Niro treats him like a fucking moron. There's one scene in particular in which Sylvester Stallone tries to get Robert De Niro's help after previously dismissing him. And De Niro gives one of the all-time great kiss-off speeches

in the history of movies. Listen, Sheriff, I'm really sorry to have awoken you from your slumber, but it's over. Hands are tied now. You shut me down.

No, no, listen to me. You're IA. That's why I came to you. You can do whatever you want. Remember you came to me and said, you want to be a cop? I'm being a cop now. I'm here. I'm asking you for some help. He does it. He utters this famous phrase, which is, I gave you a chance and you blew it! And my brother and I, when we were growing up,

would say that to each other at every turn. On the basketball court, you blew it! While playing video games, you blew it! While yelling about who gets to be in control

of the stereo, you blew it! You blew it! You blew it! This was the phrase of my youth. You blew it! So I'm really grateful

to be able to bring this to you and to the listeners of my youth. You blew it! So I'm really grateful to be able to bring this to you and to the listeners of this show today because we both blew it on movies this year. I'm going to let you go first. Okay, you want to take this up a level? Yeah, let's go. Okay, so in this category, we have each chosen a film that the other person screwed up.

And I went for content. I went for the most entertaining thing possible. Quite frankly, I think Sean screws up all the time. But in this particular case, I have chosen Miss Americana. What else did you see? Sean, I saw Miss Americana. Yes, I did. Explain to people what that is. Miss Americana is a Netflix documentary about Taylor Swift, who is a figure of great fascination to me and in a different way,

a figure of great fascination to Sean Fennessey. It's probably like our original disagreement. Yeah, it might be. Yeah. I'm not a Taylor Swift fan. No, you're not. And I have to say, I was a very big Taylor Swift fan for a very long time. And she had lost me a bit in the last couple years.

I think some of the public feuding and the public strategy wore on me, as it did on many people. And what's interesting about this documentary is that it does engage directly with that time. So it's directed by Lana Wilson, and it is done with the cooperation of Taylor Swift. And some might say the producing notes of Taylor Swift. And it is a hagiography. I saw it with our friend Noah Malali. And Noah is not quite the Taylor Swift aficionado that, say, I am. And it was fascinating to watch him react to it because it was really

the Taylor Swift experience in 90 minutes in both the good and the bad. I think that there are some extraordinary moments of access in both in terms of her talking about herself and, you know, she's an intelligent person. She may not always deploy that intelligence strategically in terms of publicity or her career, I guess. But I think she is very smart and it's interesting to hear her talk about those things. And, you know, but at the same time, you're wondering how much of this is her knowing that she's speaking for a camera and kind of planting the next phase of her messaging, which has always been an interesting part of Taylor Swift to me. I think that watching her write songs is

fascinating. I think she's a very talented songwriter and they do have some moments in the studio of it just watching the inspiration actually happen, which as someone who enjoys her music, I enjoyed. There is also just so much lip service and there is 30 minutes about Taylor Swift getting a political conscience in like 2018, which, ma'am, we were a little late, even, you know, even though she's young and it documents the process of her figuring that out. So I think it is, it's not perfect, but I think it is a really apt summary of the Taylor Swift experience. And I think you, Sean Fennessey, will be enraged by it. And I had a great time and I was like, you know who I might be back

on? Taylor Swift. So it worked. You blow it. The Taylor Swift documentary directed by Lana Wilson. And I would guess unofficially, though, I don't know this by Taylor Swift herself. And which premiered at Sundance and then was on Netflix. And I just want Sean to fight me about Taylor Swift because he is a 10-year anti-Swift person in public. And I'm going to say there were some years where I think that was the correct position. And I don't know whether this year is the right year for that.

It's interesting now looking back at the Taylor Swift year of 2020, even though frankly, I still haven't finished listening to evermore. Have you listened to either of the Taylor Swift albums, Sean fantasy? Have not. Um, can I make the case for the movie? Of course. Absolutely. Which is definitely made, um, with Taylor Swift's, uh, input and is certainly managed. And I don't, it is not like a journalism documentary of someone being like caught unawares or unrevealing. It is selectively revealing. It is part of a long public strategy management by Taylor Swift.

I think we often use all of those things I said negatively. And I think some of the time, the way that Taylor Swift has managed her career has been really negative. But I think this is like a fascinating examination of that strategy and is also just kind of a real turning point in the way that she turns her career around. And now she had the most successful album of the year in 2020 and released a second one. And to kind of get to see all of that in action to me is very fascinating, even if I know that it's not authentic.

I mean, it's a documentary about how pop stardom works. And I think that that is very cool. Is it though? Is that what it is? Okay, there you go. All right, go ahead. So it's a documersial, right? It's not's not a docu sure yeah it's a commercial for an artist which is okay every artist is entitled to that many music documentaries are like that these days many documentaries in general

are are bought and paid for the people who are responsible for making the other thing that the documentary is about i don't necessarily begrudge taylor swift for that and i want to be careful because like taylor swift fandom since i first started saying i don't like begrudge Taylor Swift for that. And I want to be careful because Taylor Swift fandom, since I first started saying I don't like what Taylor Swift is up to, has evolved. And I think a lot of that was activated by the hostility that Kanye West introduced into the conversation around her. I think obviously her being a young woman in a position of power in an industry in which there are not enough women in power is a big factor.

I will keep this completely pure around my perception of her persona sale, which is what I think she has been after for years and years. Is it a deeper concern with how people think of her than what she makes and the collision of those two things? And this was the pinnacle of that. This was an attempt in a kind of low and confused moment of personal and artistic distress to garner sympathy. And I'm not interested. I'm just not interested. I,

I find it kind of distasteful, honestly, for someone with as much power and influence and opportunity as somebody like Taylor Swift to have spent that much time and effort on selling that story. You know, I think the movie is like, okay,

I don't want to do, you know, degrade Lana Wilson is like, okay, I don't want to, you know, degrade Lana Wilson or anybody who works hard on it. There are a couple of genuinely interesting moments where she kind of shows herself in a way that maybe she doesn't even realize she's showing herself.

You know, you pointed out to me when we first saw it, that moment when she gets the news about the Grammys is fascinating and insightful, but I think maybe not for the ways in which Taylor Swift thinks it's insightful. Maybe I'm just projecting there, but the Grammys is fascinating and insightful, but I think maybe not for the ways in which Taylor Swift thinks it's insightful. Maybe I'm just projecting there, but the Grammys are silly and they don't mean

anything and no one remembers them. And the idea of being wounded artistically because you were not recognized by the Grammys is absurd. And it kind of speaks to what I'm talking about here, which is like, this is a person who's a little too concerned with bullshit. Sure. I would argue that every pop star is concerned with bullshit in one way or another. Sure. And the emphasis on your, well, a lot of them do now, actually. And the emphasis on presentation as opposed to content has frankly been part of the pop star narrative for as long as there have been pop stars. And I think like a lot of failed pop stars don't actually understand that.

It's not authentic. It's managed. Everything that she does is managed. for as long as there have been pop stars. And I think like a lot of failed pop stars don't actually understand that. Um, I, it's not authentic. It's managed. Everything that she does is managed. I think that there is, um, a calculation to her music and to her public life that a lot of people don't connect with.

And I completely understand that. I actually do think that this is a bit more revealing, um, in terms of how that calculation comes together um that you just you don't get a look at um possibly because I think most pop stars are not as successful as it and that's the other interesting thing right this like this worked her she was persona non grata and reputation. The last album was a disaster. I have never listened to. Actually, I did listen to it in full once.

And the political aspects, which are super managed, and I really don't want to get into that because it's a whole celebrity and politics thing, which I feel very complicatedly about. But she's completely turned it around. And I think the general consensus on her at the end of 2020 as opposed to when this documentary released has completely shifted. And that's interesting too. Even if it is a commercial, like it worked. People fell for it.

Yeah, sure. So did the Morning in America commercial. I mean, you know, all this stuff is, the hyper-management I think is what kind of has always bugged me. I think as a movie, it was just not for me and also frankly I'll be honest here I'm exposed because this was the first movie that I watched in bed after I got back from Sundance when I was deadly ill and it was like a

toxin it was like a neurotoxin in my system when I saw it. I felt like I got significantly more sick as the movie went on. And so I had a very negative reaction to it. And you know me, I don't really run that hot when it comes to movies. I think it's really hard to make a movie, and I think it's really hard to make anything. And I think I don't want to be mean-spirited about what people worked hard on, and I don't want to be mean-spirited about Taylor Swift.

I just think she's a phony. Okay. That was less fun than what I wanted it to be, but that's okay. Well, I'm sorry. You know me, I'm not hateful. That's absolutely not true, but keep going. You definitely got a movie wrong. And I, I want you, I don't know if I want you to revisit the movie. You don't have to reckon with this in real time, but, um, you know,

I'm thinking of ending things as a movie that kind of fell by the wayside as we've started to do our year end conversation. And I've been trying to figure out why that is. Cause when I saw it, I was very hot on it and I thought it was fascinating. I was a huge fan of the novel by Ian Reed. And I really loved a Charlie Kaufman had done to kind of dissemble the novel and put it back together.

And the novel I think is a pretty strong representation of a certain kind of psychosis. It's a very male psychosis, but it's a psychosis in a lot of ways. And I thought we had an interesting conversation with Amy Nicholson when the movie came out. And you used the not for me designation, which is something that you have developed over the years to describe when you don't like something without burning it to the ground, which I respect and I understand. Not all art is for all people.

You are free to make those delineations as you so choose. You know that Jesse Plemons' character just keeps cutting her off. And her determination to be sour and to hide her negative parts from him made her feel really real. You know, her determination to sulk. You know, I think that's such a human quality. To be like, I'd rather be alone in my misery than communicate with you. I mean, my knee-jerk reaction is no.

She's not a real character. And it like rubs me a little bit the wrong way. Frankly, the way a lot of the female characters in Charlie Kaufman movies do. And, you know, as Amy referenced, the Kate Winslet eternal sunshine of this... Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind yeah got it um i mean that's classic manic pixie dream girl right there so and and and i

think there is a kind of a literal again i'm sorry to just like to be the really like boring text based killjoy in this conversation i mean i guess be true to thine self, but in this movie. That's what Kaufman would want from you. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, Amy, for your support in me being really boring. But the character herself is ultimately revealed to just be repeating text and ideas of other people. She is like a dream girl of references and ideas and created. And that's intentional and thought out itself. So I don't want to imply that there's not interest in the female character or intentionality or thought.

But I think like every other character, she's ultimately like a projection and this is ultimately told from the perspective of like the the male sad male who is really into david foster wallace and like keeps seeing like the three mean girls from the the fake dairy queen and you know the and you had you have to think about the way the rest of the women are used in this movie. It's ultimately centered on him. That doesn't mean that it's not an interesting performance or that there's not an interesting element to the... I don't want to say character because that's the thing. I don't think it's a character.

I think it's like a projection. Yeah, it's a challenging thing to unpack. Obviously, consciousness. You blow it! I think that there is a kind of baseline quality. There's a baseline greatness that somebody like Hoffman pretty much almost unanimously reaches. And I thought that the things that bugged you about the movie, and I use bug on purpose, were kind of superficial. You know, I thought like the maggots and the kind of the, you know,

the point of view through the eyes of a female character and some of the things that frustrated you, I think were kind of part of the point. They were like, that indicated to me that it was effective on you and not that they were purposeful choices that elicited reaction, which I think is what the filmmaker was after

and I think should be celebrated. So I think you blew it when it comes to thinking thinking of ending things yeah I was trying to be polite and I'm going to continue to try to be polite I think you know I it is true that some of those things were meant to irritate me and let me assure you that irritated me I'm still irritated okay and I think it is really unfair to judge a movie, um, to entirely dismiss movie because of personal preferences, which listen, I have very strong personal preferences. Okay. So I do think it's important to take them into account. I also think it's unfair to dismiss a movie based on kind of the intentions or the artistic philosophy, just because I like, even if it irritates me as well, which this does a

little bit. I just kind of a metaphysical like provocation. I just, I don't, you know, I don't really care. That's not, I didn't spend my time doing that in college and I don't spend my time doing that day to day. And it's not the kind of provocation that works on me except to be like, I'm annoyed. I will say that I do think that there's a difference between a cool idea and successful execution. And I, I hugely admire Charlie Kaufman. Charlie Kaufman is 3000 times smarter than me, 80,000 times more productive than me and knows a lot about making movies. And I like, honestly don't know what happened at the end of this movie and or I kind of do but he was like an old man but he was in the play but he was like I don't know and I think that there is something to be said for actually carrying things off in a way where people do connect with it emotionally, even if it doesn't want you.

And even if you aren't like totally on the metaphysical journey and that didn't happen for me. And I think sometimes in experimental movies, like doing an experiment is cool, but like in science, you only hear about the experiments that work. So that's, that's kind of where I am with it, but I don't

want to disrespect Charlie Kaufman. Who's one of the greats. And I love, I love the cast and it's cool that you had some time with yourself. Like, I don't know, asking some questions. I just like, why do I have to be a part of that? I have to be a part of that all the time in so many different ways. Like go be weird on your your own it's cool that you had some time with yourself asking some questions i just like what do you want from me in 2020 i tried the number of mean texts i didn't send you while watching that movie was a gift unto itself i didn't blow that okay so and i was nice to Amy Nicholson, who I think is lovely and who like really did expose to me the other side of it. We experienced that film very

differently. That is like the beauty of cinema. But, but no thanks. It's tough. You hate to see it when you, when you admire the works of Charlie Kaufman, you hate to imagine the incredibly mean and unnecessary text messages you might've received from one of Charlie Kaufman. You hate to imagine the incredibly mean and unnecessary text messages you might have received from one of your closest friends. What an experience. Okay, let's turn our attentions on to people who are not each other. There were some bad movies this year.

I would say actually not as many as I would have thought, maybe in part because a lot of those bad movies got bumped to 2021. And I think that the streaming movie experience tends to flatten everything and so nothing seems awful but many things seem kind of inoffensively bland there were a couple of real bad ones though i think we both picked a couple of real bad ones and and also crucially the way that you described this category to me when you made it up, when you explained it or made it up last week, was that it made sense on paper or like everything should have worked and just something went wrong.

They did blow it. And I think both of these fit that category. Yeah. And expectations are a tricky thing. I think so many of the episodes that we do are about like, what's coming soon? What are we getting fired up about to talk about? What is this going to mean for movies? On paper, The Last Thing He Wanted is kind of a me and you Mad Libs for a movie. It's a film directed by Dee Rees, who's a young and really exciting filmmaker.

It's based on a book called The Last Thing He Wanted by Joan Didion, who is one of my favorite writers. I think one of your favorite writers as well. Yeah, of course. We were live in 2020. We were live in 2020. And under the age of 50. Extraordinary cast in this movie,

including Ben Affleck, who's a personal favorite of both of ours, and Anne Hathaway, who was like really one of my favorite actresses. And I will watch her do anything, even in things as absurd and terrible as The Witches. Not to mention, you know, folks like Toby Jones and Willem Dafoe and Rosie Perez, like a great collection of actors. It's a it's a crime thriller. It's a political espionage movie. It's a journalism movie. It's a political espionage movie. It's a journalism movie.

It's a movie about a hidden affair. It's got sex. It's got violence and shootouts. It's got beautiful locales. It's the total package. It's everything I want in a modern

why don't they make these anymore kind of movies. And this movie is bad it's really not good we both saw it at Sundance I think we had heard by the time we got there that it wasn't going to be great but I was dismayed by how not good it was

and I don't take pleasure in saying that I wish it was better and I'm sure that the people who made it wish it was better because it really it came and went like no other movie this year I mean there were no conversations about this movie despite the the pedigree of the people involved but yeah they they blew it on the last thing he wanted yeah a real shame a real we turned to each other within 10 minutes of the movie just being like what's happening and I think like a pretty rare everyone involved either ignored it or even kind of acknowledged, you know, this is not how we planned it. It didn't turn out the way we wanted, like pretty immediately, which it's very hard for anyone in Hollywood to actually admit that.

Yeah. Yeah. I think I'll be curious to see what, if any, kind of blowback there is to doing something like this. Like, does it will it affect DeReece's career? I hope not. I think she has a chance to make a lot of really great movies. You know, will the,

will it affect Netflix's willingness to make these kind of down the middle spy thriller romance movies? I don't know. We'll see. But yeah, the last thing you wanted didn't work. What's your pick? Mine is a similar movie that just really did not work,

even though I'm just going to read, I will read the first two sentences, first three sentences of the Wikipedia page for Irresistible. Irresistible is a 2020 American political comedy film written and directed by Jon Stewart. It stars Steve Carell, Chris Cooper, Mackenzie Davis, Topher Grace, Natasha Lyonne, and Rose Byrne. The film follows a Democratic strategist who tries to help a local candidate win an election in a small right-wing town.

Okay, so in election year, Jon Stewart makes a political comedy starring amazing actors about money and politics. And, like, that should be amazing and this movie just made no sense and we were both like what is this why is anyone in this this movie would not have been very great in 2006 from which it seems to have borrowed its politics. And it wasn't funny. All true. You know, I listened to Dee Dee Garner, who is one of the, who runs Plan B, Brad Pitt's production company,

on the Roger Deakins podcast, or the Deakins podcast this weekend. And she has been responsible for many great movies over the years. Recently, Moonlight, Last Black Man in San Francisco, The Forthcoming Minari, you know, 12 Years a Slave, Moonlight, Last Black Man in San Francisco, The Forthcoming Minari, 12 Years a Slave, Selma, The Big Short. Plan B is really good. They make really good movies. And she cited in this podcast, when asked about how they make decisions and how they get involved in projects, she unprompted said, Jon Stewart came to us and said he really wanted to make this project and

we just had to get on board and i kind of felt bad when she said that because i was like do you not realize that like you should not even say this movie's name when you're talking about your work like it's really not good and people don't like it and it it's shot it's shocking because given the same thing given the pedigree of the people involved, given the general idea. But again, making movies is hard. You know, Jon Stewart is an exceptional comedian and social commentator and great TV host. Directing is a different job. You know, making something, especially writing and directing and being in charge of all that stuff is, it ain't easy, man.

You know, like when we praise, when we did our best movies about politics episode a few months ago not even like as a month ago can't can't underestimate how hard it is to make a movie about that space because real life is usually more ridiculous than whatever you can put on screen and I kind of just I mean this election was way more ridiculous than anything we saw in irresistible

yes I mean that satire is always hard but it's basically impossible to satire anything now and the satire almost feels like quaint in a way that's uncomfortable yeah yeah it's too bad um in other years it might have been a more aggressive you blew it awards but i i'm i'm glad that we did this i mean i i would encourage anybody who has not seen siskel and ebert going toe-to-toe on this to check it out because they're just fucking brutal to each other you know but they're like quietly brutal they they are not I remember them being more animated about other things but when they're

just sitting there confronting each other it's like they it's like in in therapy when you're supposed to like prepare the letter ahead of time to read to someone so you say exactly what you're supposed to say but maybe it's not as cruel as it like would be unprompted. And they're just kind of reading these really cruel things just very calmly. Like you got field of dreams wrong. And thus, I don't know whether you have a heart. That's that's it's high levels of odage.

It's like the fact of the matter, Jean, is that you didn't understand blue velvet because you are a complete fool and a buffoon and you don't gather the artistry that David Lynch was after. Do you think that, like, could you even do a podcast like that in 2020? Could you have a kind of dynamic like that where you're just absolutely vicious to one another? That's a great question. I mean, I just think that's what cable news is every day so probably the answer is yes i mean people just like yell at each other and be like you should you know

die because i don't know you didn't like mank or whatever i mean also twitter i guess that's the other thing i did for one brief second think about just like prank doing like i blew it on mank just to see what your face did for the two seconds but uh i didn't blow it on mank i really liked mank i didn't blow it on anything i like mank too the mank disc well it kind of feels like it came and went right i mean that's what happens now is these movies come along they get one week in the sun and then they're gone um you know great make anecdote though a good friend of mine uh who you know said she got a text message from her mother who's like not very online out of nowhere and she's like i'd like to

recommend a movie to you it's called mank i recommend reading this article first to brush up on the characters so what was the article i don't know she didn't send it to me was it raising cane was it was it no i think it was like blog. It wasn't like you need to watch Citizen Cain first or read Raising Cain. It was just like, maybe if you read this blog spot about who, like everyone, it was really good, really good stuff. So, you know, the discourse lives on in an offline, in a different way, but it's positive. Yeah. I feel, I feel grateful to have participated in that discourse in the way that people are catching up with Mank and are just like really mad at how I, I oversold the movie. You know, people are just like, you suck. You said this was going to be good. You told me Citizen Kane is good. How could you? And I don't really know what to do with that. You know, like I'm doing my best i really like mank it's good i agree i also just if people are yelling at you about how citizen kane is bad oh god they trusted you i just so many people being like i couldn't get through it i fell asleep you guys need to like i don't know what to say they're just living in a different world than we are

it's a real shame um we're gonna be living in a different world later this week. CR's world. We're letting CR go forward and backward in time, watching Tenet together, which I'm just really excited about. So please stick around. Amanda, thanks for baring your soul and trying to eradicate mine here on The Big Picture. Thanks to Bobby Wagner, and we'll see you guys later this week.