The Big Picture - It’s ‘Saturday Night’! Plus: The Top Five Backstage Movies and ‘Piece by Piece.’

Episode Date: October 11, 2024

Sean is joined by Chris Ryan to break down ‘Saturday Night,’ Jason Reitman’s quasi-historical exploration of the beginnings of 'Saturday Night Live' (10:00). They discuss the disbelief that needs to be suspended, as well as the more or less knockout cast, before launching into their top five “backstage” movies and discussion of why it’s so interesting to pull back the curtain in cinema (44:00). Then, Sean is joined by New York Times pop critic and ‘Popcast’ host Jon Caramanica to review ‘Piece by Piece,’ the Pharrell Williams biopic told through Lego animation (1:07:00). They discuss the format, the content, the interviews, and how effectively it does or doesn’t capture the totemic career of Williams and his lasting impact on pop music. Host: Sean Fennessey Guests: Chris Ryan and Jon Caramanica Senior Producer: Bobby Wagner Video Producer: Jack Sanders Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Look, it's not that confusing. I'm Rob Harvilla, host of the podcast 60 Songs That Explain the 90s, except we did 120 songs. And now we're back with the 2000s. I refuse to say aughts. 2000 to 2009. The Strokes, Rihanna, J-Lo, Kanye, sure. And now the show is called 60 Songs That Explain the 90s, colon the 2000s.

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Live from New York, I'm Sean Fennessy, and this is The Big Picture. Today on the show, we'll be breaking down two fascinating new releases about two of my favorite pop culture fascinations, and I'll be doing so with two of my oldest friends in the world. What a time to be alive. Is Francisco Lindor one of them? He won't be here, but he's always in my heart. First, Chris, an exciting announcement to share. The Big Picture is teaming up with DreamWorks Animation for a special screening of their breathtaking new film, The Wild Robot, followed by a conversation between me and writer-director Chris Sanders. It's happening on Sunday, October 20th at my beloved Vidiot's in Los Angeles. It's a 1 p.m. screening followed by the conversation with Chris and a reception afterwards. If you're in LA and you want to join us for the event,

a very limited number of seats are available at bit.ly slash bigpick1020. Again, that's bit.ly slash bigpick1020. Hurry space is limited. Again, Screening of the Wild Robot at Vidiot's on Sunday, October 20th. Registration is limited. Check in now. Hope to see you there. You going to be there? Any robots at the reception, that would get me there.

Well, I'm going to look into that, you know, because maybe that's something that could be interesting to my daughter, Alice. I could do the robot at the reception. Intriguing. Well, we've seen recently Amanda do her Transformers interpretation. So maybe you could bring your wild robot one. Later in this episode, Chris, I mentioned my old friends. There's you, of course. And then there's our guy, John Caramonica, making, I think, his big picture debut. We did a podcast with him once out in LA, but I don't know that he's, you know, you're the keeper of the big picture.

Yeah, I don't think he's ever been on the show before. John is the pop critic at the New York Times and a brilliant thinker about music and culture, host of PopCast. We'll be talking about

Piece by Piece, which is Morgan Neville's new Lego animated Pharrell Williams bio doc of sorts. I saw it back at Telluride. John has known and been covering Pharrell Williams bio doc of sorts. I saw it back at Telluride. John has known and been covering Pharrell Williams for I think more than 25 years,

which is remarkable to think about. I talked a little bit with John about some personal experiences that he and I had with Pharrell. Great chat. Hope you'll stick around for it. Chris, you're here for a couple of reasons. One, you were promised a red October,

but you've been bowled over by the blue and orange wave. We did it. We did it. How long have you been holding that in? The entire fucking week. Just living on Twitter. He's not talking to me. We barely even acknowledge that this series is going on.

People are like, I hope you guys are okay. I hope you guys are okay. We haven't even discussed this series is going on. People are like, I hope you guys are okay. I hope you guys are okay. We haven't even discussed this. We haven't. I said congratulations to Jack. Jack's dressed like fucking Mr. Met over here. Bobby's here.

Sean's got his Mets hat on. I was going to wear my Philly shit today, but I was like, you know what? Let's let them have their moment. And let me tell you something. Enjoy it. I am.

Because it disappears quickly, my friend. In this new era of variance and chaos, I guess we just play March Madness for the MLB playoffs and we don't reward regular season excellence. You know where I stand on this. Two years ago, when your team made an incredible run to the World Series, an unlikely run coming from the wildcard spot, I very grouchily said, this new system is bullshit. And this is not how this is supposed to work.

And I'll tell you what, I stand by my strong point of view on that, but I'm happy to reap the benefits just as you did once upon a time. I'm just elated about the Mets. Honestly, I said this to you earlier this week, I would have been more than content with a five-game series loss because this team was not supposed to do this. I'm in a big state of zen with baseball. This has been the best I've ever felt about watching the sport in my life.

There have been teams that have gone further than this Mets team is right now. But this is... And Bobby and I were texting about this late at night last night. We've just never had in our lives a dude like Lindor. I was on a JetBlue airplane, no free ads, but that's where I was last night during the game and was really pretty jazzed to the idea of watching this contest.

And they did not have Fox Sports on the DirecTV on JetBlue, so I just watched the Royals and the Yankees do battle and got texts from our buddy Zach Barron who just said, Lindor just hit a grand slam, and I said, on to the Sixers. It's been a tough year for you and the New York teams. They've had your number. They have.

It's weird because it's like obviously you're involved. All the Nova guys are on the Knicks now. There's a lot of competing loyalties. I'm not going to rub it in. I promise. I appreciate that. I am more happy about the Mets than I am anything about the Phillies. I'm not going to rub it in. I promise. I appreciate that. I am more happy about the Mets

than I am anything about the Phillies. And I'll be honest, I said this to all my Philly friends. I said this to my college roommate who's a Philly guy.

I was terrified of the Phillies the entire series. Every time one through five was coming up, I was just, I was shitting my pants. So,

great ball club, played amazing defense. Even Trey Turner, you were like, oh God, what happens if you... I mean, I know what Trey Turner is capable of, even if he... I mean, I know what Trey Turner is capable of,

even if he never did it in this series. No, but Bryce and Castellanos in particular, just to this moment, I'm terrified of them. And I respect them and I respect the Phillies. Say that again? I respect the Phillies. It's a great team that we defeated. I have some differing thoughts about some of the fans, but we're not going to get into that now.

Can I just ask you, so based on this logic of like, it was bullshit two years ago, but now it's okay. That's not what I said. Would you be okay if I became Biden's Q shaman on January 6th and refused to relinquish the White House? Is Biden a Phillies guy or an O's guy? I think he's a Phillies guy. He is a Phillies guy.

Well, that explains it. You should have known. Your number was up. Old guys tend to die hard. R.I.P. On to new things. Well, first an old thing. Complete unknown.

The new film from James Mangold, which is coming out on Christmas Day, about the life of Bob Dylan in the mid-60s. We saw a second trailer. There was a teaser earlier this year. Amanda teased me about the teaser because I had some concerns. I had some emotional anxiety. I love Bob Dylan, as you know.

I'm well-read and well-researched and well-listened to on Dylan. Yeah, especially this era, I imagine. Yes, at this stage of my life, all eras, but this one is the signature era, really. The most legendary in his career. And I was wildly underwhelmed by this trailer. I heard you and Andy talking about it a little bit on The Watch this week.

Andy came in even hotter than I did on the first teaser. And he said he was doubling down. I think, conversely, my feelings about this trailer might mean that this movie is going to be a big hit. Did that cross your mind? Well, I mean, I think that they were definitely marketing it as Bohemian Rhapsody. Right. Which people want. Yeah, I think a lot of people are going to go see this movie.

Like my mother is like, is there a Bob Dylan movie coming out on Christmas? I'd like to see that. She goes to the movies once a year. What about like 32-year-olds? Do they want that? It's been a long time since I've been in touch with that person. Is the Deadpool and Wolverine contingent

interested in A Complete Unknown? Good question. I bet it would depend on what the sort of buzz is around it. Like if it was critically acclaimed. I still would just like to say I don't think James Mangold makes very bad movies ever.

Like, I think it's gonna be competent and probably have some cool moments. 100%. We need to just acknowledge the best part about the trailer. I bet will be the best part of the movie is Boyd Holbrook as Johnny Cash. My only thing

about that is he does not have the voice. No. He looks cool as shit in the trailer. There's no doubt about it. And him going black with his hair, it works. In fact, I didn't recognize him.

He looks so iconic in a very unique way. Johnny Cash's voice is essential to the whole thing. I think if we're talking about voices, we're missing the sort of main issue here. I know, I know. Chalamet.

It's not, it's not, it feels like a parody inside of another movie. Do you know what it kind of reminded me of? The trailer reminded me most of is the Star is Born trailer. And I feel like that's like the juice that they're trying to get where it's like even the light modernization of the Dylan songs

with the beat in the background and stuff like that. I'm like, oh, they're trying to make this a little bit more of a contemporary thing. So I don't think Dylanologists should go to this expecting to see a dead accurate, which actually this probably leads into our main conversation today pretty well. I thought about this. But don't go to this expecting to have

all of your research, all of your obsessions come to life. Go to this for an entertaining movie with a good soundtrack. There had been some rumors that there was a test screening of this movie and that the results were very bad and that the people who saw it

were concerned that this was too much of a love story, too focused on the Elle Fanning and Timothee Chalamet characters' relationship in the movie and the way that, you know, Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez kind of intersects with them. That weirdly to me sounds a lot more interesting than all of the hullabaloo about whether or not he's going electric,

which of course we know he did in fact go electric and authored some of the most exciting songs of the 1960s in doing so. So that's actually kind of scary that they were like, ah, the market research says we need this movie to make $114 million, but for it to suck. Yeah. I'm concerned.

I'm concerned. I will hold my opinion officially until I see the movie. Speaking of not so true to life stories. Yeah. We're talking about Saturday Night. Saturday Night is the new film, the 10th film by director Jason Reitman. It's written by Reitman

and Gil Kennan. It's a movie that's well known at this point. We've teased it on this show. We've teased it on, I teased it on Bill Simmons' podcast. It's an all in one night,

in fact, all in real time tracking of the first night of the first episode of Saturday Night Live on October 11th, 1975. The film is now being released almost 50 years, 49 years later. Yeah. And what did you think of Saturday Night? I thought that it was closer to Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip than it was Saturday Night Live in terms of its spirit.

But I have a soft spot for studio 60 on the sunset strip so that did not bother me uh i found myself like fairly entertained and then the second i was like oh yeah that was like about like saturday night live and real people and like events that probably can be kind of fact-checked in the oral histories and in all the sort of memorabilia that have come out of that show i was like i don't really understand like maybe the overall purpose other than marking this this uh 50 years of this incredible institution but yeah like i thought it was like a pretty good time at the movies in and and pretty easily forgettable but also like really i was quite entertained yeah i think i've been thinking about my experience with this movie.

I land some pretty similar to you. When I saw it, I had a lot of fun with it. I saw it in a festival atmosphere at its world premiere in Telluride with a lot of people who were excited for something fun because it had been a very heavy festival to that point. So I think that the reaction was a little outsized. Maybe even my reaction was outsized. But I've been thinking about this movie in a very particular framework which is like this is a vacuum

movie which is when you're sitting in the movie theater you're like this is cool and then you walk out of the movie and you're like why why why did they make that yeah what is that for and for whom is it for and And not that it's not commercial because it's very commercial. Not that it's not attempting to reveal something a little bit deeper, maybe, about the creative process of making that show or any kind of show.

It's just not very sticky. It's just, it's a good ride. Yeah. And part of the reason for that is the way that the movie is made, which is that it is cut very intensely. It's shot in this kind of tracking style with a roving camera that's moving all over the

place. It has an energy and it has this great ticking soundtrack score by John Batiste that kind of keeps you engaged for the entire runtime. That's like vaguely G.E. Smith Saturday Night Live band, but like a little jazzier and it's got a little bit of, you know, Bernard Herrmann 70s New York to it. It's really, it's actually a huge character in the movie. You know, you and I have not really talked about

Saturday Night Live together too much because you've had like ebbs and flows in the arc of your life with television. Yeah. Like sometimes you're really in, obviously you've been hosting a TV pod for many years now, but what is your relationship with SNL? It's pretty strong in so much as like,

I think you probably are always, like Bill always says, your favorite movies are always going to be the ones that you saw when you were 13. Your favorite Saturday Night Live cast is probably the one when you're in 6th, 7th, 8th grade and first starting to get jokes a little bit more. So I was sort of raised by the Dana Carvey, Phil Hartman, Kevin Nealon era. You know, in the last, I guess, maybe 10, 15 years, I've probably experienced Saturday Night Live the way most people have, which is like clips the next day. And kind of, I watched this movie with fascination because I thought a lot of the sensibility

of like the story that it was telling was similar to the sensibility that goes into the what's a what's a headline that we can turn into a sketch uh sensibility of the contemporary show the current show uh but didn't quite capture the reckless avant-garde underground energy that maybe the show had when it first came on. I was watching a couple of the episodes from the first season last night, and the late Chris Christopherson, just recently passed away, hosted the seventh or eighth episode.

And he's doing the monologue, and he's like, yeah, we're really excited to be here with these lunatics, basically. He's like, I think that there was this acknowledgement that there was weird shit happening late night on saturdays on nbc but this movie it i don't know did you feel like it doesn't get that across no it doesn't get that across i think it is telling you that that is

the case the movie is insisting that these are extremely unlikely figures on late night television, on late night network television. And we know that because SNL has been so canonized. And if you watch old SNL episodes, it is strange. As they're kind of finding their footing and realizing how much current events versus how much of the Second City Canadian comedy, like fusion of the National Lampoon stuff,

like all of that stuff kind of blending together it becomes this fine grained balance between weird original sketch writing and current events comedy. In the early stages of the show it is mostly based on a much more anarchic comic style. Yeah.

While trying to fit inside what the censors would allow on the network. The movie just tells you that a lot. It doesn't really show you that a lot. In part because we don't actually see the production of the show in this episode. It's all about the 90 minutes before the show.

I think I'm ultimately willing to forgive it that. If the movie can't accurately represent, because we know how hard that is. You cited Studio 60, and this movie has very clearly a Sorkinian energy. It is constantly speechifying about the importance and the tension around something, which if it's written well, and I think at times this movie is written well, and at other times it's a little clumsy.

But when it's written well, you can get really locked in. I love all the moments where there's like production chaos happening. I think when the movie slows down, it struggles a little bit. So what's like an example of it slowing down? The ice skating rink scene with Belushi and Gilda Radner and Lorne Michaels. Where it's like everybody is having this moment of like incredible self-awareness and perception.

And I know why it's supposed to be a tender moving moment. And I'm sure for people who are like deeply invested in those three as like cultural figures like maybe there's some resonance there but like I was I was I was actually like this is taking me so far out of like what would be the there it's the fourth quarter of getting this show up and these people are having like this reflective moment but that that's an example of something where I think that they kind of like gear shifted into something that didn't work. Yeah, the film largely follows Lorne Michaels, who's played by Gabriel LaBelle in the movie, and it largely stays within the confines of 8-H, the studio where SNL is shot and has been shot

for 50 years. Anytime it leaves the studio, the movie comes to a grinding halt. And I understand why Reitman does that because I think he's like, this can't just be a bullet race. If you make a bullet race, people are going to get exhausted and they're going to walk out. But he does dim the energy pretty significantly. You know, the movie for the most part follows something

that we understand about the show. If you've watched, say, James Franco's documentary about one week in the making of Saturday Night Live or any of the myriad podcast interviews. Like if you listen to Dana Carvey and David Spade show, they have many, many former SNL participants and hosts on the show to talk about the excruciating process. You know, like Seth Meyers is great at talking about this. Bill Hader is great at talking about this. Fred Armisen.

Like if you listen to just pod interviews with those guys, they're amazing at explicating the anxiety of the SNL experience. This movie tries to pull it all together so it's the crunch of getting sketches down to fit into the runtime it's managing the host and putting them in a position to succeed in this case it's george carlin on the night of navigating the fragile egos of the cast members we know that particularly the 75 cast is a complex mishmash and pretty inspired collection of people i would say the show is as that's as good a group as you ever could have imagined trying to launch a show like that and the movie is attempt to like i guess represent the specialness

of those 10 or 11 people in the first season is fascinating and then there's also this kind of fending off the network story yeah which is a crucial part of the tension of telling the story of Saturday night, but might be the most apocryphal part of the movie. Does that bother you that there's like a pure invention behind something that we know was successful? It didn't bother me while I was watching the film because I didn't go back. I didn't read about what happened on that first night. I was very interested to see what did they add, what did they change, and Reitman's talked about how he did as many interviews

as he possibly could with people who were still alive who worked on that show that night. I understand dramatically why it's important for it to feel like everybody is against them and that this is actually a loophole that they're exploiting in Johnny Carson's contract to try and do something punk rock, but that NBC secretly hopes it fails. But I sometimes don't understand with some of these films that are ripped from the headlines, like kind of Wikipedia movies.

Often people are attracted to the truth. So why make it Hollywood? Why create like a fake Darth Vader in Willem Dafoe's character, who is in fact, he's maybe the best performance in the film, but his character was a much more interesting figure within the realm of Saturday Night Live.

Yeah, so he plays Dave Tebbett, who was sort of the head of talent at NBC at the time, who in the film is really like the heavy. He's the guy who, when he's introduced, he is the glad hander of Carson. He manages all the big time shows. And he doesn't really seem to know very much about Saturday Night Live when he shows up on the night of the production. And he very quickly sees that this is a production in chaos. And so he moves very quickly

from good luck to suspicious to outright enemy. I'm going to replace you with like a taped Johnny Carson tonight. And according to the reporting at the time,

he was a full-blown ally to the show at all times. If you're Dave Tebbitt's relatives, you'd be like, why did you vilify my father or my grandfather in this movie? It's kind of a strange choice. I think it's because the movie has no juice without an enemy. I think there's not enough there

in the framework of the story to justify making a breakneck 100-minute movie if you don't have someone saying, I'm not going to let you make this. And there's not a lot of logic around one of the core ideas of the movie, which is that, so Dick Ebersole is played by Cooper Hoffman,

both Seymour Hoffman's son. I thought he was very good in this movie. I really like him as a screen presence. And Dick Ebersole is this kind of like young swashbuckling network executive. And he's somebody who is really good with talent and identifying properties, but also is really good with talent and identifying properties, but also is really good with kind of talking to the bank.

You know what I mean? Like the upper level management at the network. And so he's caught in between these two things. And what he needs to do is kind of motivate Lorne Michaels to execute so that the show comes alive. Complex story because at a certain point, Dick Ebersole eventually takes over SNL after Lorne Michaels takes a leave of absence for a few years. Ebersole, at a certain point in a great speech in the movie, in a stairwell between Michaels and Ebersole,

tells him that the network wants him to fail. This is illogical. This is something that makes no sense. And the movie is threaded on this idea. So if you get hung up on this idea, and if you let yourself get caught up in that part of the story, I don't think the movie's going to work for you at all. If you let it go,

and at the time when I saw it, I let it go, you'll buy into the excitement of the film a lot more. Because let's just think about NBC in 1975. In what universe does it make sense to take a chance on a late night show on a Saturday night full of unknowns? They're all like they're all like under contract except for Belushi. This is like a big thing is like Belushi refuses to sign his contract until the very last second.

You know, this is this is their gambit to like try and reach a younger audience. Like there is a constant refrain of people asking Lorne Michaels to define what the show is, to say what it is, to say what it is. And he keeps kind of deflecting until he gives this very like sorkiny, like this show is about a night out in New York city, meeting a girl outside of a bodega,

getting like your face ripped off by like a bar, you know, it's like, it's like a very moving thing but the idea that um lorne michaels would have been able to mount a show on a network that also had the tonight show and was reaching 50 to 100 million people at any given moment without ever having to like say what it was or like explain what he was doing or any of this stuff is kind of it's kind of absurd yeah yeah i mean i think that the there are certain things that you can be like

i understand why you did this to make this slightly more dramatic but what i couldn't help think about when i was watching this movie was the film's constant broadening aperture we have to have more moments for this character, this character, this character, this character, so that you have basically 12 to 13 people who are more or less getting equal shares of the pie

with the exception of Lauren who gets most of it. Yeah, but all the cast members all get their four-minute moment. Absolutely. I wonder what... And I hate doing this because I hate being like,

what you should have done has done this but i couldn't help but like when i was watching i was like man ebersole and michaels is such an interesting relationship if there's somebody if there's there's very few people have done more in television than lauren michaels and dick ebersole is one of them that's true right like this idea that one of them is trying to be the agent of the hipster underground youth culture. And the other wants to be a part of that, but is too square, but also sees the chessboard. Like a relationship like that, like a tension there, that's interesting to me. But you have to like constantly be moving and saying like, is this guy going to finish

the brickwork in time? Did Saturday Night Live not have unfinished brickwork? I know. And I get why it's an interesting visual metaphor for what it's like to mount that show. But yeah, there was something

a little bit too, like the net was cast too wide on this thing. Yeah, I think it's because mounting any episode of SNL is incredibly difficult. And so you don't need to gild the lily on it

in the first place i think also probably would have been it would have benefited the film a little bit more if some of the road blocks were actually more physical like the moment when the lighting rig falls down and you're like that seems really problematic for a tv show that's about to launch like that actually could be a massive issue as opposed to this kind of philosophical idea of one generation fighting the other this movie comes at an interesting time. So I saw another movie at Telluride called September 5,

which is all about the hostage crisis at the Munich Olympics. And the movie is told from the perspective of the ABC sports crew that was managing the coverage of the Olympics. And so one of the key characters in that film is played by Peter Sarsgaard, is Rune Arledge.

He's a legendary ABC executive who created monday night football created 2020 created world news tonight and so you got this movie fall movie winter where great network executives are at the center of their movie storytelling these are not the best characters in the universe like obviously they're brilliant in this very discreet way i I kind of have one of these jobs at a much, much lower level here at The Ringer. It's a hard job, and it's like a job of luck and a job of chance. But these are not firefighters. You know what I mean? Like, this is not Pete Mitchell here. These guys, like, they sit in offices.

They say yay or nay to things. They try to corral talented people. I think if you think, it's a movie really, if you think too hard about this movie, it's going to fall apart in your mind. But if you let yourself enjoy it, and I kind of want to talk through

some of what is enjoyable about the movie. Yeah, sure. Then I think you'll enjoy it a lot more. In particular, I think this was a really, really hard thing to pull off with this cast. And I feel like they did a great job

finding people, getting those people not to overplay any of the figures, getting them to kind of do signatures. Even the people who are trying very hard,

the characters that they represent are try-hards. And so it fits and it makes sense. Out of curiosity, who were some of the standouts in the cast for you? I really liked Corey Michael Smith as

Chevy Chase, but Chevy Chase is also my favorite SNL person from that era. So I can't tell where one stops and one starts. I thought Chase did a good job. No one looks exactly like Chevy Chase, but if you do an A-B test of

the Wolverine sketch and Chase walking out and then saying, live from New York, it's Saturday night, he pretty much does exactly every mannerism. And he had some of that charm

of the, like, I tripped over my penis stuff. Like, I don't know if Chevy Chase did Weekend Update as a last-second call-up from the bullpen. I don't believe that's the case. I don't think that was the case.

But I thought he was really charming. And I really liked Dylan O'Brien as Dan Aykroyd, who I think did... He didn't do like, I'm doing Dan Aykroyd. He did... Here's like kind of the essence of what Dan Aykroyd meant to people in 1975, maybe. I think he plays him probably a little cooler than Ackroyd seems. I think if you read the James Andrew Miller and Tom Shale's book,

it is conveyed that Dan Ackroyd was a lot cooler than many of the characters he played and also what his kind of reputation is as a public person now. I agree with you about Corey Michael Smith in particular because that's a hard part to play. Chevy Chase is not only a huge movie star, but a very singular kind of figure.'s huge he's got he had a patter like a performance style that was new and like smart alecky um I'm handsomer than you thing there's not a ton of I

guess you could go back to you know Abbott and Costello or go back to um you know Jack Benny or Steve Allen or voices like that who maybe kind of fit some of the mold of what Chase is riffing on it was like a crazy combination that was like

not hit upon before I think and Corey Michael Smith is like asked to do a couple things he's not just the smart machine that Chevy was

like he has a very amusing moment opposite Milton Berle who's attempting to pick up his girlfriend played by J.K. Simmons not playing his girlfriend his pick up his girlfriend, played by J.K. Simmons. He's not playing his girlfriend. His girlfriend's played by Kaya Gerber.

J.K. Simmons is playing Milton Berle. I agree with you about Dylan O'Brien, though, which is that I think he's giving basically the best performance. He's not, there's no mimicry involved in what he's doing. He's trying to capture an energy, and he doesn't look like Dan Aykroyd. Right. So he has more to accomplish there.

He really jumped out to me. From the people who we already know. The thing that I think powers this movie and maybe should have been a bigger deal in the movie and maybe should have even been its own movie to your point about Ebersole and Lorne Michaels is Lorne Michaels and Rosie Schuster. Rosie Schuster is played by Rachel Sennett in the movie.

She's having a brat fall, I guess. She's having a brat fall, I guess. She's having a brat 2024. She is portraying a woman who was Lorne Michaels' wife, who is a writer on the show, producer on the show, one of the architects of the SNL style and voice, and also, at least this portrayed in the movie,

a talent whisperer, somebody who kind of got everybody... Got Belushi to calm down. To do the work. Chooses like, oh, stay on this for two more beats. Like the work that they do together in the show, on the show, in the movie, is the most interesting work that gets done.

It's like, how long do you hold on something when it becomes not funny, but then becomes funny again? Like, what do you do? How do you get Belushi to sign his contract? How do you get this person to accept the fact that their sketch is going to be cut, but not throw a fit about it? And all these different things.

And I thought that was like, you could look at that and be like, this is kind of a Sorkin woman character who's just like unflappable, but in total service of her male counterpart. But I actually, I mean, I thought they had a lot of chemistry and I thought it was

probably also like my favorite part of the movie was that. Yeah, I think if the movie starts with them like in an apartment together, is it a more interesting movie

as opposed to just let's try to get everyone their four minutes? Right. The getting of the four minutes thing, I think for the most part works. Like,

I think about Lamorne Morris as Garrett Morris. Like, there could be a whole Garrett Morris movie you know like he's so compelling and Garrett Morris is such an interesting figure and they they overstate I think a lot of the Garrett Morris stuff by having him explicate who he is to people he's clearly known for many months yeah where he's like I you know I sing opera and I graduated from the graduate from Yale or Juilliard yeah he's having this very personal crisis where he's like whyard I can't remember he's having this very personal crisis

where he's like why am I here like this person's in sketch comedy this person's a comedian this person's done this kind of work before I'm a theater actor

I've done opera you know like I don't understand what I'm doing here it he Lamar Morris is just charming

so it's fine but it does like some of those like kind of that, that moment and, and some of the Gilda stuff. I was just like, and Gilda Radner's played by Ella Hunt,

who is a deep, deep horizon heads. We'll remember from horizon, the bathing English woman, the bathing English woman who is inexplicably going west with her brother? I believe her husband. Her husband? Yeah.

Her very dainty husband. Who's like sketching a lot. Yeah. But she plays Gilda Radner. I respectfully did not think that that casting worked. It's hard to say because she gets very little to do. She's the most iconic member who gets short shrift, I would say, from the core cast. There's just not a lot for Gilda to do i just watched the remembering gene wilder documentary that's on

netflix right now um and even in that documentary i was like can we get just like a little bit more gilda radner um she's a person who her best known work is on saturday night live there's just something a little bit more uh sat not sassy it's more kind of relatable about Gilda Radner's performances on Saturday Night Live than I feel like this person was more like, gosh, I just love thinking about how when we're going to think about this in the future, you know? And if you watch the first episode of SNL, which this movie is based on, I think the fourth or fifth sketch is this courtroom sketch

where it's, Chevy Chase is the defense attorney. Garrett Morris is the prosecutor. And he's defending a guy who said something to a woman. It's like a harassment thing to Jane Curtin. And she won't say what it was because it's too upsetting.

So she writes it down. And the whole joke is, and a lot of these Saturday Night Live sketches had like essentially one joke. The whole joke is she writes it down. Everybody reacts to what is said.

They're passing it through the jury box. Belushi, Ackroyd both react. And then they give it to Gilda Radner who's been asleep. And she wakes up and reads it

and looks at Belushi and is like, I'm into it let's do this and it's such a funny moment but it's like quintessentially her yeah and I don't feel like that ever got captured in the movie yeah I agree with you that might be a function of the way that the movie is written it might be a function of the fact that Gilda though a complex person like maybe just didn't cause any trouble that night you know so there was nothing to write into it there is an interesting exchange between

Kim Matula, who plays Jane Curtin, and Lamorne Morris, Garrett Morris, where she's kind of talking about, she's a stand-in for what it means

to be a woman trying to do this work and what Jane Curtin kind of represents to the SNL cast, which is like a very strong, smart,

beautiful woman at a time when there's just not a lot of them in comedy on network television. And it's often the sort of like, the punchline of a scene is the other people making fun of her being straight. Yes, exactly.

The straight man. I liked Kim Mottula, another actor that I would, I just would have liked to have seen more. I could have, I could have watched more of a Jane Curtin movie. You know what I mean? I would have been comfortable with that.

What did you think of Nicholas Braun and his dual role as Andy Kauf kaufman and jim henson uh fine and i guess also representative of the two poles of entertainment that they were trying to bring to life like the childlike romanticism and also the deeply strange, uh, like underground surreal comedy. I, I never occurred to me that Jim Henson and Andy Kaufman looked alike and that Nicholas Braun would play both of them one day. But I thought I didn't bother me.

I think that the insert of the Andy Kaufman doing a rehearsal of mighty mouse as the thing that kind of like saves the show and brings everybody back to like to work. That doesn't seem true. I don't know if it's true. I mean, that is a routine that I believe he'd been doing at that time before the performance. So maybe it was a recognition from some people that it's like, oh yeah, we got Andy Kaufman here. I love all the like, where's Andy? Andy went to go look for the bathroom five hours ago. Like this movie is probably at its best when it's Gabriel LaBelle

running around, doing walk and talks, talking to Finn Wolfhard, talking to Rachel Sennett, talking to the cast, talking to Cooper Hoffman. He is three for three now? Like LaBelle.

Oh, LaBelle. Oh, LaBelle. Yeah, well yeah well i mean we've talked like nine times about snack shack this year which is the other movie that he stars in and of course the fableman's he's amazing in that movie uh yeah he has the juice i think this is a little bit of a tricky spot for him because i think he's just somewhere between five and ten years too young for this part and he's doing his best but like lamorne moore is the lower lip you know like uh rachel senate is you know approaching 30 if she's not 30 already like everybody just feels older and i know that that's part of the idea here and he's mostly up

to the task but every once in a while he's like opposite willem dafoe and i'm like okay it's kind of tough in a situation like this. But I definitely liked him. He didn't bother me at all in the movie. I did want to cite quickly Tommy Dewey as Michael O'Donoghue.

If you've read Live from New York, the book that I mentioned earlier, Michael O'Donoghue has roughly 30 of the 40 best lines in the movie and he is this

acid burn comic writer who is the chief writer on the show and somebody who just acid burn comic writer who is the chief writer on the show and somebody who just caused chaos and was constantly saying things that would burn your eyelashes off and he gets to do that in this movie this actor gets to portray i think like a pretty it was the real version i thought this movie was absolutely so i i think that the the sort of most interesting conversation topic to come out of this film is Reitman's decision to make a movie that explicitly is about this rebellious group of people using all these new forms or all these emerging ways of doing comedy. And Reitman chooses to make a pretty vanilla movie about it and make it in the most sort of like, it's basically a sports movie.

Yeah, the gang gets together and they pull it off. Yeah, there's a halftime speech. There's basically a sports movie the gang gets together and they pull it off there's a halftime speech, there's like a great Hail Mary there's like all of that stuff is there the moments where, and I get why you probably can't do totally unvarnished like

for more and more is doing cocaine and being very angry about his usage on the show or Dan Aykroyd not understanding human behavior because of his like he's talked about being neurodivergent all this stuff

that's like would make a much more complicated film that would be hard to go racing through the halls to do that's a movie

I want to see but that's okay I know Jason Reitman is not capable of that Tommy Dewey is the part where you're like

oh man it would have been fucking sick if they just did the writer's room with Tracy Letts and Tommy Dewey is it bad that we're like you guys should have done it this way or is it i think it's a function of knowing too much about the subject matter i heard you

um and andy on the show this week talking about the season finale of slow horses and then what was the other series you talked about the franchise the franchise with the new armando annucci tv show and i was waiting and waiting waiting, listening to you guys to talk about it for someone to make the Wire season five joke. Yeah. And Andy eventually did make the joke, which is at the end. You can count on him.

But it was, it's true. When I watched the franchise, I felt the same way. I was like, I know too much about what it's like to make a superhero movie. I thought you made this brilliant point that if it was just the making of The Flash as satirized by Armando Iannucci,

it would have been really great. And not to rehash a pod you just made. Sure. But it's relevant to this subject matter too. And it's relevant to piece by piece. So that's why I'm pairing these two movies together and just, you know, including because they're coming out on the same day. But when you know a lot about a subject

and you bring a lot to it, it's complicated to get to that place when you're watching a movie where you feel like you're kind of rising above the subject matter. You're just like, you're inside of the story. At times in Saturday Night, I was inside of the story. As soon as I got outside of the movie, I was no longer outside of the story.

The Tommy Dewey stuff is great. Michael O'Donoghue is very funny. Shout out to Tracy Letts, who has one scene as Herb Sargent and just like knocks it out of the park. Yeah. It's super entertaining. The movie is like a series of that. You know, Matthew Rhys gets a couple of shots up

as George Carlin I did not know he was going to be in the movie he's very good so when I was watching the movie I was like

wait a minute is that yeah and then I'm like leaning closer and closer as we go through the film I thought J.K. Simmons played Milton Berle

very broad but appropriately so it was effective yeah I thought and the I don't know if this is real too but when lauren goes into the other studio and milton burl is doing like a song and dance routine on

rumpus room or what romper room or whatever it is and lauren's kind of seeing like this is everything we're trying to tear down even if that's not a true moment or like a fiction a historically accurate moment i thought that was really effective. Yeah. I agree with you. Um, I'm a, I'm a soft positive on Saturday night.

You won't, you won't have a bad time. Yeah. You won't have a bad time. Do you have any anxiety about venerating, uh, this boomer culture? Uh,

I mean, we're, it's like, it is just now coming for us. We've just come from the pavement. We just watched the pavement documentary. So like, It is just now coming for us. We've just come from the Pavement premiere at the Airsoft Festival. So maybe we shouldn't be too harsh on our elders at this stage of our life.

Yeah. I mean, I think that we'll experience this a lot over the next 15, 20 years. You know what I mean? When's the Grantland movie coming out? Please don't wish that into existence. Who would you want to play you in the Grantland movie? You were mid-late 30s? Yeah you gotta play yourself dude everybody else is cast as hollywood actors

boy holbrook but as johnny cash but as me it's like the same accent same hair same everything uh yeah that's interesting because i want it to be edward norton as pete seeker as me i think that would be a good fit. You tramped all the way here. That movie could be an absolute car crash. It really could be. I think I'll see it three times, honestly. So backstage movies, you said it. This movie is at its best.

Gabriel LaBelle is racing around the studio trying to figure out what the hell is going on. And this is a tried and true formula for movies. It's very rarely told in this real-time format, which is one of the great accomplishments of Saturday Night. But I really like backstage movies. We're kind of kicking around like what would be the best thing to talk about around this movie. You'd think like maybe Saturday Night Live movies would have been something that would have made sense. But Saturday Night really has nothing to do with that. It has nothing to do with A Night at the

Roxbury or Wayne's World. So you pushed on backstage movies which I think is a good call. What makes a good backstage movie? I think it captures the idea of putting on a show that like almost the same way that like when you're playing a sport at its best when

you're watching professional sports. There's a moment that reminds you of like why you fall in love with the thing in the first place. I think these behind the scenes backstage making of films that we're talking about at their best capture the like, whether it's Bob Fosse or somebody in a Christopher Guest movie, they're all trying to kind of do the same thing. You know what I mean? Like they're all like, we're trying to put something together in a community and make something happen and put something into the world. And I think that's become pretty codified about how you depict these things.

As you noted, there's a lot of tedious meetings that happen. And I'm sure a lot of the stuff that seems like, are they going to get this light up in time? It's like, no, they've actually drilled it, probably had a backup backup light probably had other lights in other rooms that they went and got like everybody showed up at work at like three o'clock yeah nobody they don't fucking like go to like oh you know 10 29 and they're like i we don't have half the script locked you know like yeah that part was like funny but like i think that these movies that we're talking about either satirize or romanticize the idea of a group of people coming together to make something artistic. It's an interesting time for this too. I noted here that Sing Sing, which is a new film that

came out earlier this year and also Drive My Car from a few years ago are two really interesting examples of backstage in theater productions. And there's a long history of movies about backstage and theater productions just going through it's like you know stage fright and noises off and there's a long history of movies like this but most of the movies that we picked aren't most musicals from like the golden era like about making musicals

absolutely but I think everything we picked is about the production of movies or television I had one that's not or I have two that's not I think everything we picked is about the production of movies or television. I had one that's not. Or I have two that's not. Oh, that's true. Yeah, my number ones are actually like... That's funny because I think of your number one as like the ultimate movie.

Yeah, I know. I know, it's so cinematic. Okay, well, why don't you start? What's your number five? I did The Player, which features a minimal amount of actual filmmaking. But to your point about where the real work gets done is at the 12.30 phone call that somebody expresses power

in a subtle, passive-aggressive way. The player is Robert Altman's portrait of 90s movie culture. Stars Tim Robbins as the executive who's being drawn into a murder mystery but is really this absolutely black-hearted satire of like the creative bankruptcy of films. And now going back to that,

it's like you had no idea how right you were, Bob Altman, as we put Timothee Chalamet in a hot love triangle. The stuff that is the most sort of like how the sausage is made that I love in this movie is the Richard E. Grant screenwriter character and dean stockwell is the sort of producer agent figure who's constantly pitching tim robbins's character on the movie because that is the stuff of like yeah that's the backstage this is like how movies get made is oh you showed up at um you know spago at 9 p.m on a wednesday who's sitting there and then this guy comes over and he sits with you and he

tells you i have an idea yeah yeah that stuff i sitting there? And then this guy comes over and he sits with you and he tells you, I have an idea. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That stuff I think is great. And then Tim Robbins says, does it have a heart though? Exactly. Exactly. Great pick.

My number five, sort of like the player of the 1960s, Le Mipri, which is also known as Contempt here in America, which is probably

best remembered for a very sexy performance from Brigitte Bardot, but it was really just like a movie about the making of a movie and a movie about the machinations of movie making um it stars Michelle Piccoli and Jack Palance yeah as a writer and a producer on a big film that is being directed by Fritz Lang the real Fritz Lang cast in the movie this is one of the um you know most

iconic Jean-Luc Godard movies ever made. It's very early in his career. It's kind of like his first grown-up movie. This is kind of a mainstream attempt, too, by him, I think, relatively speaking. And very self-reflexive and metatextual about the work and his fascinations with the history of Hollywood and European cinema

and the way that those two things intersect and using Palance as this American producer type. He's trying to like force his will on the making of this movie. Beautiful movie to look at. Kind of elliptical in its storytelling. Like it's as much about the romance as it is about the production of the film.

But a real movie that like kind of scratches your brain about how directors are more conscious of the way that their work works than you maybe understand when you're 13. But if when you're 18, you're like, oh, okay. So everything before was just metaphor for the experience. And now they're just telling us what the experience is like and letting it exist as the text.

Really wonderful movie. A must for all cinephiles. Just as a footnote, there's a Chicago band, legendary indie rock band called Silkworm. One of my favorite songs by them is about the making of contempt it's called it's called contempt amazing yeah um okay what's your number four uh the stuntman uh peter o'toole maybe the only thing that rivals lawrence

of arabia for me is is peter o'toole's performance in the stuntman as he plays a manipulative director who picks up a basically like an escaped convict uh while making a an action movie and turns this convict into a stuntman it's a lot about the movie magic and the sleight of hand that goes into making uh big set piece driven films but it's um at an era where a lot of this stuff was so practical that it involved a lot of danger a lot of risk, a lot of professionalism had to go into it. And it's kind of a, I would imagine, probably very of its time dated film now to some people, but kind of a magical ride.

Do you like this one? I really like it. Richard Rush directed it. Richard Rush, who has a great run in the 70s and then is more or less never heard from again. Steve Railsback, my guy, is great. Honestly, Railsback does Stuntman, and then I don less never heard from again Steve Railsback yeah guy I honestly Railsback does stuntman and then like I don't

know that I've saw Steve Railsback until in the line of fire he made a lot of going for my badge okay he made a lot of um Brian Housey stuff in the aftermath but he's great in this

movie too yeah I really like the stuntman that's a good pick my number five is paired pretty tightly with my number four. Okay. Which is, do you remember this movie, Living in Oblivion? The Tom DeCillo independent movie?

No, that's the previous Tom DeCillo film. Johnny Dangerously or? No, Johnny Suede. Johnny Suede, right. This is, I think his follow-up is Living in Oblivion, which is about the making of a low-budget independent movie in New York City, directed by a low-budget filmmaker in New York City.

It stars Steve Buscemi as the titular director. That famous black-and-white checkerboard image of confusion and disorientation. Catherine Keener, Dermot Mulroney. This is, like, heavy Sundance wave. DeSillo, like like never totally got. He was like a Jarmusch adjacent guy. Like did he work on a Jarmusch movie?

He was his cinematographer all the way through Stranger Than Paradise. And then he went on to direct Johnny Suede in 91, Living in Oblivion, Box of Moonlight, The Real Blonde. And then kind of fell off the map a little bit. But it's a really clever, semi-surreal comedy about just how fucking hard it is to make a movie. Yeah, that's good. So that's number four. I haven't seen that in a while.

I have to go back to that. All right, what's your number three? Day for Night, which is Truffaut's version of the making of a movie. Like 10 years later. Yeah, basically. And it's a very good example of the differences between the two sort of godfathers

of French New Wave, Truffaut and Godard. So this is I think closer to like a Spielberg movie than it is like a French New Wave movie. It is fucking delightful. It's beautiful, yeah. This is a beautiful movie about the making of a movie. It's got all the crises.

It's got all the panic. It's got all the problems. The complicated actors and the managing of egos and stuff like that but it's just kind of like truffo's love letter to what goes on behind the scenes uh it's rare that i think people are able to equally appreciate the end product the stuff that's on screen and think really thoughtfully about that but also have just an amazing understanding of like everything that goes into making that stuff and Truffaut was one of the foremost critics in in film history but to see him also like

make a movie that's about like what the grip and the gaffer are doing is really cool great pick that'd be a great double feature with contempt as well my number three is Tristram Shandy a cock and bull story you seen this it you seen this? It's Winterbottom? It's Michael Winterbottom. Steve Coogan? Steve Coogan. This is the precursor to the Trip series of films, the TV series, because it also stars Rob Brydon. And it is about the making of an adaptation of the 18th century novel, Tristram Shandy,

which is a very complex metafictional novel that I tried to read once and I could not get through. But it is very stream of consciousness, also very self-reflexive, which is way ahead of its time for like the 1760s when it was written. But obviously Steve Coogan's brand of comedy is very metatextual, as is Rob Brydon's and Michael Winterbottom,

one of the most adventurous filmmakers of the 20th and 21st century, always kind of moving in and out of genre, in and out of tone. Sometimes makes incredibly intense films. Sometimes makes high comedy. Farces, yeah. This movie's kind of a combination of both.

Gillian Anderson and Keely Hawes are also in this movie. If you haven't seen this, this is really, really fun. I gotta check this out. I feel like he was making like two movies a year there for a while. He was. This one kind of slipped by me. But you're a trip head. And Coogan and Bryden are wonderful together.

And this is like a good, just to be saying that I was like, I won't bury another bad. Right. The ultimate YouTube payhole is just Bryden and Coogan doing impressions in the trips series. I, I love this movie cause it's a really good example of how adaptation is

impossible. You know, which is something that you hear over and over again. We just criticize Saturday night for being like a little bit too much time on this. I love this movie because it's a really good example of how adaptation is impossible. Yeah. You know, which is something that you hear over and over again. We just criticize Saturday Night for being like, a little bit too much time on this, not enough time on this,

or why did, this didn't really happen at this time. It's because there's no way to make a movie without compression, without reimagination, without recontextualization. So Tristram Shandy

is a great example of that. My number two is Broadcast News. I hadn't even thought of this, but it's a great call. It's like, is it technically, like, is it just like a romantic comedy that happens to take place at a television network news show? Yes, but the stuff of behind the scenes, a lot of the stuff about how journalists,

specifically William Hurt's character, manipulate certain things to further his own career. And, you know, one of the great, like, rom-com performances from Holly Hunter, James L. Brooks spends so much time on his subject matter where he'll spend five years just kind of meeting everybody he can and talking to everybody he can about a topic. He really has it, like, that guy, when I think about it,

James L. Brooks, like has has kind of the sickest career ever because for his work and his films he gets to just work at his own pace and everybody's just like

great new James Earl Brooks movie that's awesome well that was true all the way up until How Do You Know and then it kind of went a little bit downhill and now he's at work

on Ellen McKay his forthcoming new movie I will say this movie I think fits the framework perfectly because particularly the sequence where Albert

Brooks has to fall in for William Hurt yeah that is that is back true backstage when we're seeing the control room when we're seeing him sweating and we're getting everyone's

reaction I think it's perfect yeah James L Brooks yeah you know helped write and produce on Mary Tyler Moore and Taxi and The Simpsons. The Simpsons, Guap. Yeah.

You know, he's done well. He's done well for himself. God bless him. My number two is Tropic Thunder. Yeah. From Coogan to Coogan. I just rewatched this the other day. It was on cable.

It's pretty fucking funny. It's hilarious. It's hilarious. I was talking about it actually in the car over the weekend with my dad and my stepmom. I forgot about Nolte in this movie. Oh, God.

Yeah. He's incredible. Is he like the advisor? He's got the looks. Yeah. Everyone is amazing. You know, my dad and I were saying, like, this movie would not be made

in the way that it was made with the choice that the Robert Downey Jr. character makes to go in blackface for the character he's portraying. On the other hand, the movie is aware of that at the time. Yeah, of course it is.

At the time, it's completely satirizing buffoonish actors who would do such a thing. This movie is really funny and also really smart about getting lost inside the making of something.

It's very, very conscious of its apocalypse now. And what is the documentary that we were just talking about? Hearts of Darkness. Hearts of Darkness. And the way that those two things intersect. The way that this movie

satirizes them so well. Directed by Ben Stiller. Yeah. Is it his best movie? Could be. Is this a cable guy? Cable guy. Secret Life of Walter Mitty. 52 Hours of Severance that will be completed in 2039.

Dan Amora, which is very good. And then all those Knicks tweets, which I love. I love every single one of his Knicks tweets. I was wondering where you were at with Cruz in this movie. Is it like... I think it works. I think it was really funny at the time because of what a curveball it was. It's been a little over-memed, and so maybe it doesn't hit the way that it used to.

Do you want him to come... If they do Tropic Thunder 2, should we bring him back? Yeah, if he'll play. You know who's incredible in this movie is McConaughey. Oh yeah that's right. McConaughey as the agent is money. Tropic Thunder is really funny. That's my number two. Okay I split my number one into two. This is a move I usually try to pull so I was happy somebody else did it. Well I did it this is in honor of Sean and I just got back from New York where we played. We did a, we played, we did a rewatchables live on 45th Street. Yeah, we did. We hit Broadway.

I was like, I didn't really think about it until like I walked in there and I was like, this is pretty fucking cool. Looking out onto the, into the audience before anyone had sat down, I was like, wow, I've been in this theater, in this audience to see live performances before. This is astonishing. And it was different than Webster Hall when we did that. It was different. When I walked out on stage before the rewatchables though,

I couldn't, I immediately thought of that great shot in All That Jazz directed by Bob Fosse, where it's like the sort of pullback shot where you see the entire chorus line and Fosse's just kind of squatting, smoking, yeah, in that first montage. All That Jazz is one of my favorite movies. It's about the mounting of this show

that Bob Fosse's stand-in, played by Roy Scheider, is directing while he's also going through multiple romantic and personal health crises. And it's all the ugly parts that they hide from you by the time it gets on stage um all the like the broken hearts and all the like bruises and all the scratches so i really god i fucking love this movie uh and uh just as like kind of a sidecar film to recommend to people if they haven't seen it. It's on Criterion Channel.

It's Company, which is the Frederick Wiseman documentary about the recording of the cast album of Company. I think it's D.A. Pennebaker. D.A. Pennebaker, sorry. It's the D.A. Pennebaker documentary about the recording of the cast album of Stephen Sondheim's Company. Which might sound kind of dull. but man, this is about as good of a thing you could make out of that material because it's funny watching Saturday Night and Lorne is still cranking it out at 80. There's a lot of figures who probably had a lot of control or at least say over how they were represented

in this film. And you want to see something in Varnished about the making of something that was truly a historic pop culture thing with company. It's like Sondheim smoking,

just being miserable about the way a woman is singing a syllable. Yeah, Elaine Stritch. It's really a wonderful experience. It's a great document. Very memorably parodied on Documentary Now by Mulaney.

Does Mulaney play Sondheim in that? I can't remember who he portrays. I think he plays the producer. Okay. But yeah, original cast album, colon company, is great. It's short. Yeah, it's like 65 minutes.

Something like that. My number one is Singing in the Rain, which is, of course short. Yeah, it's like an hour. It's like 65 minutes or something like that. My number one is Singing in the Rain, which is, of course, one of my favorite movies of all time. One of Amanda Dobbins'

favorite movies of all time. One of Knox's favorite movies of all time. One of Knox's favorite, one of her son's favorite movies of all time. Until I show him Land of Bad.

Singing in the Rain, of course, like the ultimate making of a stage show and a movie about the transition from silent cinema to talkies

and also about the transition from one cinema to talkies and also about the transition from one kind of stardom to another kind of stardom there's a lot in this movie about how movies are are green lit and then how they're made and so um i felt like this was a fitting homage to the anxiety that saturday night is attempting to invoke because even though this is a wonderful love story with iconic dance numbers there's a lot of tension in the story of Singing in the Rain and you know

what's going to happen to Lena Lamont and you know the entire I can't remember the name of the movie studio it's like Republic Pictures or something like that

but Singing in the Rain is an all-time classic. How are you feeling about this? About what? This list these lists that we've made? You could do a lot worse

than to watch all these movies. These are good movies. Yeah. What do you think is going to, what's going to happen with Saturday? Like not, I guess like financially,

it's kind of trickled out. Warmly received what kind of medium box office is my guess. Kind of like the last few non-Ghostbusters Reitmans, right? Yeah, I mean,

quickly talk to me about this because Reitman, like I said, it's his 10th movie. He came out of the shoot pretty hot and heavy. Thank you for smoking. Very well received.

I think it was a Sundance film. It did very well. Juno, of course, a mega hit. Academy Award nominations up in the air. Another hit, more nominations. And then we go Young Adult, Labor Day, Men, Women, and Children, Tully, The Front Runner.

Five consecutive movies, ostensibly for adults, ostensibly in modes of maturity none of whom really like hit hit i am personally a big fan of labor day and tully that's not a consensus opinion i don't i would say that my favorites of his are the diablo cody trilogy is is is juno young adult and tully and And Tully is one of my wife's favorite movies from the last few years. So it holds a special place.

But I have to ask you, where are you at with Adam Neiman's public campaign? This is the worst filmmaker. Does it ever get in your head when someone is very clearly like, this guy is bad, and you're like, this is the worst filmmaker. Like, does it ever get in your head when someone is like very clearly like, this guy is bad and you're like, maybe he is like. Well, I mean, Adam has obviously leaned fully into the bit. Yeah. As a bitmeister, I respect it.

I will never take that away from him. I think it's preposterous to say that he is the worst filmmaker. He's not. If you watch Saturday Night, he's more than competent. In fact, at times, he's very effective. I think that sometimes

the meaning of his movie gets away from him. And, like, The Front Runner is an incredibly well-made movie with a very interesting Hugh Jackman performance at the center

that could also be this kind of self-reflexive performance about his stardom. When you get to the end of that movie, it's impossible to know what why it was even made like what are the takeaways yeah like invasiveness in public life is bad or is it how i felt about men women and children right um which is like online is bad yeah but we can fix it

by being like real with each other yeah up in the air is the same thing it's like the only solution to life is a nuclear family like Like, a lot of the conclusions at the end of his movies I find very strange. You know, Juno, which is the movie I like, I don't think this is the intention of Juno, but there are a lot of people

who have taken away from that that they're like, abortion is bad. Yeah. And I think that the muddled moralities and structural dynamics of his movies really hold him back. And the Ghostbusters movies,

I don't like. I don't think they're... He just directed the first one and somebody... Did Gil Kenan do the second? Gil Kenan did the second and that's his partner. He produced and wrote it with him.

So, you know, they were partners on both of those movies. Those movies are just wildly sentimental. And the Ghostbusters movies are not sentimental. And so I don't really understand that. And there are more movies

about how like the family unit really matters. I guess actually now that I think about it, his treatment of Ghostbusters movies are not sentimental. And so I don't really understand that. And there are more movies about how like the family unit really matters. I guess Ghostbusters is not about the family unit. His treatment of Ghostbusters is not dissimilar from his treatment of Saturday Night Live. Yeah. You know, the gang gets together and they overcome the big bad. And, you know, those are traditional story structures. I get it.

But I also think that like, God, I see 800 movies a year, Chris. Like Saturday Night is like definitely in the top 100 of the movies I saw. He's not the worst filmmaker alive. I think he represents or kind of outmoded like a baby thing where people are just like, Oh, this guy got every opportunity because of his dad. That is true.

You know, the same is true for lots of people that I really like who are really gifted. Yeah. Like Clay Thompson. Well, I mean, he was a dead eye shooter for many years. Like who did he sign with?

Mavericks. Oh, interesting. Who's your pick for NBA Finals? Like Cody Clemens? Pinch hitter for the Philadelphia Phillies? He got a single, didn't he? I think he had a double. He had a double.

Yeah. Did he get a double in game one? And he's like 30, right? Yeah, he was like in the minors for a really long time. I think he might have been like a converted former pitcher. And what was up with Wade Watson?

He was like fucking Crash Davis. They were trotting him out there. Wade Weston. Weston. Wade Weston, also a 30- converted former pitcher. He was like fucking Crash Davis. They were trotting him out there. Wade Weston. Weston. Wade Weston, also a 30-year-old rookie. No, no, no. Weston Wilson is his name.

Weston Wilson. Wade Wilson? Deadpool? You're just mixing it all up. This is all the Sean shit. Wait, who's Wade Weston? The guy who played instead of Boehm.

No, Weston Willis. He got it right. Yeah. Where are you at on Alec Boehm? Sayonara bring in Alex Bregman. I don't really so like

can the Phillies just spend however much money they want? I saw a lot of first of all I was served a lot of Phillies fan tweets in my algorithm.

To your For You channel? Just like grown men screaming at the top of their lungs and many of them said that they would like to say goodbye to Alec Boehm they would like to bring in Alex Bregman and they also are in the top of their lungs. And many of them said that they would like to say goodbye to Alec Boehm. They would like to bring in

Alex Bregman. And they also are in the Juan Soto race. That they will be attempting to sign Juan Soto. Now, Dombrowski, this is what he does. He reels in the big fish.

And then bankrupts the franchise. And then leaves. John Middleton has already said there are no financial restrictions on the team in 2025. Well, okay.

Would you happily welcome washed Alex Bregman and not washed Juan Soto? The funny thing about it is that the Dodgers are doing this, but everybody here is so much more chilled that if the Dodgers just keep coming up short, you know, because they only won the COVID year, right? That's right.

So if the Dodgers keep coming up short, LA people are just going to be like, whatever, it's 72 degrees outside. In Philadelphia, they'll lose their fucking minds. You know, like there were grown men and women walking up and down the streets of Philadelphia in like full Bryce Harper uniforms, carrying Miller lights, being like crying. So I don't really know if spending $500 million on Alex Bregman and Juan Soto, if they lose, I don't know what's going to happen. It's hard to say. It's hard to say

because it's getting worse. It's like it's World Series, it's NLCS, it's NLDS. So you think they would overcorrect. Yeah, but maybe what they should do is just win like 83 games, get in by the skin of their teeth and blow someone's doors off.

I just don't believe in that. That's only happening on the NL. We have like four years of sample size. One is post COVID. Like I just make a good team. This is a baseball pod host, Bobby. I'm not interested in that. All I said earlier was

I don't feel like it's fair to do. We have to keep the season at 162 games because of like history. But then we can turn it into the fucking NHL playoffs when we get to October.

Every playoff series should be at least seven games. This is so obvious. At least seven games. Just play the best of 15. I do agree with that. I do agree with that. That being said,

the series came down to the Phillies bullpen not coming through. That was all it was. I'm aware. And that happens to every team all the time. No shame.

You guys are good. You're going to be good next year. Right? Yeah. This was a good pod. Thank you, Chris. Was it a good pod? Good.

Yeah, I think so. It's not over yet because we're going to my friend john karamonica your friend as well to talk about peace by i can't wait to listen John Karamonick is here. Oh! Famous pop critic from the New York Times, famous podcaster of pop cast fame. Like and subscribe. One of my oldest adult friends. When you say oldest, you mean...

We have been friends the longest period of time. Not of age. I mean that too, if you want it to be true. You are the oldest person who has ever appeared on this podcast it's you and william friedkin yikes john you're here um because for a variety of reasons one it's just so nice to be with you it's so nice to see you it's a blood like genuinely a blessing it is a blessing it is a blessing we should do this weekly um i i thought of you while i was watching the movie that we're going to discuss today because we were working together some 18 years ago when the man who was the subject of this movie. Has it been that long?

I think so, right? 06? Was it 06 when we started working together at Vibe Magazine? I feel like I want to do Pharrell yoga to just think about having been in the game. I don't think you have his pliability. No. I know I don't. I sure don't.

Real podcast viewers know. I do not. Did you stretch before this recording? Yeah. You did? Yeah, looking at the Statue of Liberty. We are recording in New York City in four world trade here. That's correct.

And Pharrell is not from New York, so that's not really appropriate. But we're talking about Piece by Piece, which is the new Lego animated documentary about the life and music of Pharrell Williams. It's directed by Morgan Neville. About. Yes.

Well, we'll talk about what it is actually about, if anything at all. Yes. Morgan Neville, a director I really like. He's been a multiple-time guest on this podcast. He's made many, many music documentaries over the years. He hasn't made one in a very long time, and my suspicion is, though I did not ask him this, that he was getting bored with them. he's made many many music documentaries over the years he hasn't made one in a very long time and

my suspicion is though i did not ask him this that he was getting bored with them and so when he was approached to do this movie i think he wanted to do something different and it sounds like for all wanted to do something different too so we get a music documentary that in some ways is very different and in other ways is not very different from what we've come to expect this certainly a glut of music documentaries in the world you You have written about, consumed, tried to understand this wave over the last 15 years in movies. And also, the reason I really thought of you is because you have covered Pharrell very closely and gotten to know Pharrell over the years. I was just telling you before we started recording that in my mind, burned into my mind, is this memory.

Good reference. That's right. In my mind burned into my mind is this memory good reference uh that's right in my mind hey thank you uh is this moment when we were working together vibe magazine in 07 and we went to a listening session which is something you used to do when you were an editor at music magazines yes and the artist would host you and play the music for you yes and if you were a music editor as you were you would evaluate the album think about how to cover the album better understand the narrative that the artist was trying to share so if you're going to do a feature story a big think on it and when we showed up to this studio to listen to seeing sounds the nerdy album i think the third nerdy album seminal uh it's what i like the first one is no i know i'm

um sorry pharrell greeted you so warmly. He was like, can you reenact what you just did before we started recording? He was like, my man. Like, he was so, and he gave you a huge hug. Say the name, though. He said, John Caramonica. And he was elated. He was thrilled to see you.

And I, you know, we had been friends for a few years at that point. But, you know, sometimes you forget. You had done a lot of work. You really are outside. Really outside. You were at least at that time. I remain outside. I remain outside.

It's actually being in here is what's uncharacteristic for me. It's claustrophobic. Yeah. So anyway, I was like, John knows, has covered Pharrell more closely than maybe anybody who's been covering music in the last 30 years. And up until, you know, last year in Paris for Louis Vuitton, for really his first story, first true story, after he took the Louis Vuitton gig. And I truly, on God, did not remember this thing that you just described, although it seems totally plausible. But I started covering Pharrell, let's call it 99-2000, I remember. I used to work in a magazine called Trace, which was like a British vibe-esque magazine. And we did like a two-page spread on the Neptunes.

And I had done an interview with the Neptunes at that time, Pharrell and Chad Hugo. And then I moved back to New York. I think I'd done that maybe over the phone. And then I came back to New York. I think I'd done that maybe over the phone. And then I came back to New York and I went to Virginia and I did maybe one of the first NERD Neptune stories for a magazine called Revolver, which no longer exists. I remember it well. Barely existed when it was there. But I went to Virginia Beach and spent a decent amount of time in Virginia Beach in in and around Pharrell and Chad, and wrote about it extensively.

Obviously, I wrote about the first N.E.R.D. record, seeing sounds, apparently. I was heavy at the listening party. Like, who knew? I've written about N.E.R.D. subsequent to that. We did a couple things at the Times over the years, and then when the Louis Vuitton thing happened, there was an opportunity to kind of put someone in front of him

who he had some familiarity with. And that was good. We spent a couple days in Paris. Pusha was there. Nigo was there. Like the whole crew was very, I think what was funny for me is I'm basically looking at the same people who I was looking at 20 years

prior you know but they've leveled up in fascinating ways this movie i think is another representation of the ways in which pharrell has sort of like slithered his way to the top interesting verb of culture um interesting verb well i i i'm not sure if there is a music producer who I uncomplicatedly loved more than Pharrell during that 25-year period. Incredible era. Just one of the great pop song synthesis of that time. He's obviously become wildly famous because of Happy and the Daft Punk collaboration. And there's a few things that elevated him, you know, starting with Britney and Gwen Stefani. So he's widely known.

But as a rap fan, and I want to talk about like viewing this movie as a rap fan too because it's an intrinsic part of it. He was somebody I really, really responded to really early on. And he kind of attached himself to a couple of artists where they attached themselves to him who I already loved or was interested in. And so he's a critical figure in the story of american music in the last 30 plus years and now he's obviously working at louis vuitton and kind of persists in the culture for sure though musically i'm not sure if he means the same thing he i think i feel like he has a it almost feels like a spectral presence almost universally adored and you see the long tail of certain gestures still kind of like popping up but i don't i don't consider him a contemporary

hit maker but there is an undeniable thing that happens anytime he devotes a lot of energy to a project and often i mean he's done one-offs here and there. There's like actually, I think The Weeknd and Playboi Carti put out a song last week that's produced by P. But, you know, he'll put a lot of energy into a specific project. And what it does is it not only activates a new feeling, but it reactivates, certainly for people of our advanced age, reactivates an old feeling as well. Yeah, and I think he has, like, a couple of sonic signatures

that you know you're listening to one of his records, sign it at ten times. So, let me ask you, like, what did you think of this movie? The thing about Pharrell, for all the sort of warmth and intimacy that you're identifying in his music,

there's always been an implicit wall about Pharrell the person. And I thought, this guy, so clever. I'm going to make people devote five years of their time to making a movie about me that doesn't show anything, that doesn't tell any stories that haven't been told, maybe tiny, tiny bit, but essentially doesn't ruffle the narrative, doesn't even require me to be on camera. I mean, this is a guy who, you know, you say Pharrell greeted me warmly in 2007.

Obviously, I've seen him a bunch of times over the years. When we went to do the photo shoot for the story last year, I felt like I was the person who was charged with trying to get him to take his sunglasses off. And he wouldn't even take his sunglasses off. Interesting. And I was like, like, it's me. Yeah, we're doing a photo shoot. Yeah, and also, like, it's me like we're doing a photo shoot yeah and also like it's me like it's cool like new york times me we're good and

and that's how he's moving through the world and that's how he strategically remained both of popular culture but not as widespread of a figure right and i think especially after the oprah moment after happy there's this kind of like peak of vulnerability and intimacy and after that he absolutely buttoned back up the doors down yeah and so to have a movie that's about you and about your many high points and occasional low point made in legos and you literally do not even have to show up and be on camera, felt like a little bit of a, I got you guys.

Or it's just a wild Freudian gesture that maybe, I don't know, I'd love to know how much self-knowledge there was about this. I find this movie to be really interesting, not just because it scratched an intense nostalgic itch for me at certain times that made it impossible for me to not enjoy,

but the minute i put applied any critical thinking to it i kind of hated it um i kind of i was really frustrated by it it's in sharp contrast i think to the steve martin documentary that neville did early this year i don't know if you saw that um but it is the exact opposite it's a four-hour sprawling examination of martin's career the rise and and then specifically the stand-up years closely mirroring his memoir. And then a second half that is all about his film career and his later stages of life and his marriage

and having a child and therapy and his relationship to his father. And it is a deep, deep, deep movie as celebrity memoirs go. Sounds fascinating. It was real. I mean, you know, I'm sure that there were many things that were held back and it is a deep, deep, deep movie as celebrity memoirs go. Sounds fascinating. It was real. I mean, you know, I'm sure that there were many things that were held back, and it's complicated to get, but he really did give Neville a lot more than you typically get

in one of these films, and that's one of his great skills. So then to follow it with this movie, which is so guarded. And also, frankly, I mean, I want to talk a little bit about the Neville character in the film. He appears in the movie. And I think he appears for a couple reasons. I mean, I'm sure everybody thought this is like a great meta gesture of like, let's put the execution of the interviews in the film and represent the filmmaker and so on.

And something I don't think he's ever done in any of his other movies, which a lot of documentarians will do that as a style, but I don't think he's ever done that. But it seemed to serve a couple purposes to me. One, it's an invitation to, I think, older white folks. It's an invitation to be like, you're represented in this film. Like, you're curious. Here's a curious older white guy who's asking questions. Right.

So I think there's that. But I also wonder, and maybe if you do talk to Morgan Neville about this maybe you'll be able to pry this out of him but I was like on some level Morgan Neville is expressing his frustrations with the limitations of access by depicting himself as a person who's like bumbling in the face of trying to ask uh revealing questions and get information out of all these figures not just Pharrell but Jay and Snoop and all these other people. It's an interesting insight. Like, I wonder, it's hard to know. You mentioned the five years.

This has been a very long process of this movie, and I think that it has taken on a number of iterations. I'd love to know when that quote-unquote master interview in which Neville appears and we get a lot of the key Pharrell soundbites, like, did that come late in the process? Was that a structure that was built to paper over some of the limitations of what had otherwise been captured? Was it like a note that someone gave that like, hey, this is going to be kind of a turnoff if you just have like Nori and Pusha in the first 20 minutes of this movie?

That all seems plausible to me. I think unfortunately what it comes down to is while there's a lot of fun through the narrative of a little bit of the rise i feel like i learned a little bit about the virginia years or at least like how he imagines the virginia years and then just had fun with the classical like here's how i made a hit song stuff as soon as you get beyond as soon as you get to gwen stefani the movie just flatlines there's nothing after because there's nothing whatever the negative aspect of his life is he's so unspecific and it feels so minimal he's like i didn't have a hit for two and a half years it's like prior to that you'd had roughly

100 hits like you don't have to have any more hits it's going to be okay but aside from that there's not a lot of revelation no about personal struggle and also to your point about the the sort of the the advertised chasm between like the great years and then the other great years with this low, I have no way of knowing how low that low was, but it's like, we're talking, like you say, maybe it's two to four years. And what happened after those two to four years, happy, get lucky. Like you have one stratospheric hit after the other, you have the Vivian Westwood hat, which then makes you a sort of like mimetic figure in popular culture. All of those things happen. And I'm like, I'm not saying

that you didn't go through it. Like it's totally plausible, but I have no visibility into what that actually is. And I certainly don't think that depicting that as like a bunch of sad Legos is really the way that I'm ever going to learn anything or feel empathy for it. I want to talk about that. Um, when I was explaining this movie, I saw it at Telluride in September. And when I was explaining it to Amanda,

she was like, why is this a Lego movie? Like seriously, like, is this necessary for this to be a Lego movie? And I will say one justification for it and maybe one useful rationale for it. To see Legos with braids.

No, I enjoyed that. It's really more to see, I would say, the slightly like woo-woo Carl Sagan, Aquarius underwater, this sort of imagination

of Pharrell and his visualizations relative to his experiences. Because his experiences, while glamorous, are still relatively mundane visually, but if you set them

against the stars or you set them against the stars or you set them against the sea which are like recurring themes in his music i get it like i think it's a cool stroke it's not utilized deeply enough to justify itself and so then invariably what you get is just into camera interviews with famous people recreated as lego one i have an important question have you ever seen you ever seen a Lego movie in your life? No. Okay. Why?

Why? Why not? I'm in my 40s. You know, the original Lego movie was a bit of a cultural phenomenon. I'm aware. Was I supposed to go to a movie theater and see that? I don't know. Maybe I should have invited you.

I think I was still in New York when that came out. Was I? I truly, you know me well enough to know I don't watch loads of movies, certainly not in the cinema. I'm trying to imagine you alone watching the Lego movie at a movie theater. I mean, I do, when I watch movies for work,

which I do, I watched the Jungkook documentary recently, drove out to Sheepshead Bay, hit the UA Sheepshead Bay, like my old childhood movie theater, Dolo, me and like of army like we had a great time that's great was it a good film uh it was a film okay sort of it was it was on how about this it was on film okay are we sure no okay it might have been digital that's true that's actually true no it was it was on screen so you didn't see the lego? I didn't see any Lego movie. You didn't see the Lego Batman movie?

No. Ninjago? You didn't see that one? Okay. You could be making up. Lego movie part two? Literally, these could be fake as far as I know. So you haven't seen a Lego movie before. You understood the animation style.

Like, you know my daughter, Alice, like she's straight up watching the three-minute YouTube videos that are like Lego animations for princesses. That sounds great. It goes so hard in our house. Honestly, I would be more likely to watch that than to go to the cinema. I have had to watch many of them. The Lego movies were previously Warner Brothers properties.

And they are now universal. Universal retains the right to making Lego animated movies. It doesn't mean that they have any of the rights to any of the characters or worlds that were built in the Warner Brothers movies. So my question is like, this is their first project with Lego at Universal. This is kind of a weird one. And when did that deal happen? Within the last five years. years and so basically they put they sort of are do you think they were trying to identify potential subject matter within the universal system writ large it feels very much like a corporate synergies thing where like the record label and the animation studio and the movie

studio and the high-powered management of the artist yeah or having a useful email exchange about what are new ways we can work together? I mean, I was thinking obviously a lot about music rights and music clearances and how I didn't know the thing you're telling me, but that makes sense that there's no universe in which this happens if the Lego rights people and the music rights people aren't dancing with each other. So having never seen a Lego movie, what'd you think of that animation style i think what i took away from it is the subversions of it much more than the maybe i'm cynical in the sense that i expected it to be beautiful i expected it to be vivid all of those things didn't shock me um what i think pharrell is doing is saying i'm gonna find ways to tweak i'm gonna find ways to invert i'm gonna find ways to invert i'm gonna find ways to have legos with gold teeth uh that to me is what jumped out at me i i guess i wasn't shocked at how almost elegant it was in moments i thought it was very visually elegant but

to your point earlier we're watching it not just as film fans, but as music fans, as hip-hop heads. What they're doing in this movie is, I think, maybe more speaking to that side of us and being like, every 90 seconds or every two minutes, we're going to hit you with something that you're like, oh, I can't believe they did that in Lego. And then by the time you come down off that, they're hitting you again. And that happened to me multiple times. I found that stuff irresistible. Of course. I thought it was just genuinely great. It also links what, I mean, look, I'm in middle age, but I truly believe that my relationship to fandom is still childlike.

And it really created opportunities for me to revert truly to that version of myself. I'm watching something made from toys about the music that is among the most important music made in my lifetime that I feel passionately about that's driven my professional and creative lives in a lot of ways. And all of that at a gut base level of childlike awe. Right. That's to me, that works. Did it work as a movie? Did it work as narrative?

Does it matter if it works as movie or narrative? Well, that's a good question to ask, I think, because I think I will return to this movie just because I want to see that stretch again of Nori through Snoop. Yeah. And I think one of the very clever, kind of modest, but very smart innovations of the Lego animation

and of even just creating a visualization of hip-hop making is what the beat looks like as a Lego object. And that every beat is different in its own way. And it has different colors and different shape and just a different valence and the way that each beat looks and the way that a beat like what a song construction means to Pharrell and how he cherishes yeah you know the synthesis of melody and drums and his style and just having something that visually represents that I thought was just such a perfect idea. And those sections I don't think work as much.

And especially when you get later into the film, into the second act where he's sort of struggling with figuring out what is and is not a compelling piece of music. That was all the way up until that point, I was very into the movie. I was very like, I was having a lot of fun with it and I felt like it was a true music movie. It kind of goes back into celebrity memoir territory as we get near the final third of

it. But that's also the stuff that Pharrell is the least interested in actually delving into. It's not only the least interesting visually, it's the least interesting to him. He's on the other side. Like this is one thing that stuck out to me last year when I was interviewing folks around Pharrell about the LV thing. So I talked to Tyler, the creator, who, am I wrong? Did Tyler do the voice of the seventh grade teacher in this?

That sounds right. Like, I heard it. I was like, that's Tyler. Yeah, okay. And Tyler was explaining. Pharrell, of course, is Tyler's hero. Yes. And Tyler was explaining how Pharrell told him that he got the LV job.

And they're on like a FaceTime. And Pharrell just kind of does this. He's kind of like. Hits him with the hands, which if you've watched Pharrell in space, you know, prayer hands, 10 years of prayer hands at this point, right? That's all that he wants to give you for the last 10 years. So it's not surprising that they're struggling with that time period where Pharrell has like

cloaked himself and figuring out, well, how do we make a vivid movie about the most cloaked period of your life? I think they would have struggled with that stretch if it was a conventional documentary.

Well, that's what I was going to ask you is, can this movie work if it's not animated in Lego? Is it better? No. I mean, it's too Spartan. No, there's what I was going to ask you is, can this movie work if it's not animated in Lego? Is it better? No. I mean, it's too Spartan. No, there's not enough happening. Yeah.

I mean, I feel like for every one piece of information, you have 90 seconds of elaborate animation. I was taking notes at the end during the credit roll of how many different animation companies were involved in this. It's like one in India, one here, one here, like, you know, like five different animation companies or something. All those people worked very hard.

I don't think the people who were telling the story worked that hard at all. Candidly. Um, and so, no, I feel like they just had major restrictions. That was my impression of that. There were certain things that they were just not allowed to broach.

Like subject matter was like what, like, well, for example, like there's a lot of hay made... Like drug dealing? Uh, not specifically that. I think, like, maybe more specifically,

there's a lot of hay made of the fact that Helen, Pharrell's wife, speaks for the first time in this documentary. She hasn't given an interview before. She's obviously a big part of his life now. But, like, what does she say? Like, what did she reveal to us? I, you know, I think it's like it's

mildly intriguing though they're kind of meet cute when Pharrell's in the midst of like clearly cavorting with a lot of women at that time in his life but that's unexplored outside you were both

outside and then that's kind of dispensed with and then she's just the mom to his kids I think you know there's a lot made of the death of his grandmother as this kind of spiritual revelation, but like his relationship to the church more broadly

and his upbringing versus like the incredible like glamour and, you know, consumptive culture that he lives inside of, that's relatively unexplored. Like there's a lot of big ideas that are interesting about Pharrell and how he's this like constant idiosyncratic contradiction of popular music that, you know, the movie's just not interested in looking at. Also, I was thinking a lot about Morgan Neville as the interlocutor. And, okay, journalistically, I know you'll understand what I'm about to say. Let's say you're doing a profile of a main person like Pharrell and then you're getting secondaries from all these other people.

On your best day, maybe you'll extract five great quotes from a secondary interview. But sometimes you'll go into the secondary interview and be like, I just need them to say the one thing. There's a lot of, I just need them to say the one thing in all the other guests. Yes. It's certainly in Jay-Z I found him to be highly perfunctory. And we know that Jay-Z can be... Actually, you know what?

When I was watching the movie for the first time, I turned to the person I was watching it with when Jay showed up in the film. And I was like, Jay-Z never does this. He never does secondaries

in documentary features. Does he do secondaries in magazine stories? He never talks for anything anymore. So getting him itself is a coup. You have to be as powerful as Pharrell to make something like this happen. But then what he is willing to contribute is, as you say, like fairly banal and it's like pulling teeth for him to say anything.

There is one funny thing where he says Pharrell has, does he say not a drop of street in him or not a drip of street in him? I don't know. I feel like I thought he said drip, but I typed drop in my notes, but I was like, I'm pretty sure he said drip. Anyway, he did say that, which is a great little like Jay-Z micro bar. But I felt with all those secondaries and even with Nori. I mean, Nori is like, you know, it's full of life and full of color and full of a dynamic force, especially contemporary Nori. Contemporary Nori is probably as close to super thug era nori nori as you know yeah it's a great time to tap back in with him um and even him it's like

three three four lines he was i mean he's really there to kind of push the story along more than to share his essence you know and he is just a person who, I mean, look, when I was watching a Focus Features distributed documentary about a famous musician and Super Thug is playing, I was like, I can't be mad. I understand. This is so cool.

Maybe this is just a sign of my age. I know, that's what I'm saying. Are we falling into that thing? Yeah, this is all the eagles. Like, we're falling into boomerism thing where we're just like...

But that's why what I'm trying to do is resist calling this good while also admitting I had fun. And there, I think we can have both in this particular circumstance. That's a hundred percent accurate. I don't, maybe I'm too jaded at this point. Like good barely matters to me anymore. And it's not that I don't wish to see good things. It's that I, I know most things are not good. I accept that most things are not good. Well, that's not the spirit that I like to bring to this show. No, no, no.

But that's... But I'm telling you I agree it's not good. Subscribe to Popcast is all I'm saying. If you want to be a hater. If you want the darks to come to death row. To me, I feel like when I engage with a new, fresh cultural product, whatever it is, television show, film, music, I'm feeling it on a couple levels. I'm thinking about it, obviously, quality-wise, but I'm also indexing it immediately.

I'm immediately trying to understand where it fits in the kind of neural net of popular culture. And oftentimes, I'm primarily being asked to contextualize something. To me, thumbs up or thumbs down is not always the essence. It might be way more interesting for me to be like, it actually sits here on the map, and you may not know that it sits there. You may not totally understand why it sits there. That I can often find more fruitful.

Do you want to take big swings and say it's great or it's terrible sometimes? Of course. But to me, a lot of things live in this territory that we're describing with this film, which is, did I have fun? Yes. Would I watch it again? On a plane, maybe? Yeah. Or maybe on a boring Friday night at the house.

But I know enough about art to know that this is not that. Yeah. I, I, I think I want to recognize it because in general, I'm sure I learned in part from working with you, that exact approach, which is contextual is much more important than yay or nay,

but we are now at a point in our lives, our, our, our cultural consumption lives where the things that were relevant when we were kids or early 20s are now going into the meat grinder of nostalgia culture. And we're going to be continuously confronted by this. And also the way that nostalgia culture inherently limits narratives. One of the things that I think we try to do journalistically, certainly in our younger years and to this day, I feel like I'm trying to create or help to carve out historical narratives in real time. Because I want to create a record to go back to that tells things as they truly happened. And when a movie like this comes

around i'm not saying the movie's wrong like i'm not saying that they got it wrong or they they screwed up or they missed a hit or it's just a keyhole through it's all it is right and i you know i live through a much more textured version of that and nostalgia has a way of weakening our hold on actual truth and i didn't experience that in like a wave of Bruce Springsteen movies or Eagles, because I don't care about that stuff. But like for this, as much as I enjoy it and I'm grateful that the music that I care about and

have advocated for so tirelessly, like has landed on the plane of like, it could be made into a Lego movie, but it worries me that we're gonna miss a lot in the big picture i didn't prepare sorry that's that's that's okay that's that's something you can do on this show honestly yes yes truly um well when i say i'm sean fantasy and this is the big picture it does happen all right um right one thing i did want to ask you about is there's obviously been a long history of hip-hop documentaries,

most of which are sort of contemporaneous to the times. They're sort of capturing a tour or an artist. Backstage. Yes, right. And there have been even some scripted films that are kind of like representing hip-hop culture as it's unfolding in real time, or at least attempting to represent it. Yeah, yeah. folding in real time or at least attempting to represent yeah there's not been a lot of films that capture artists who have this sort of like 10 20 30 year career in this retrospective style

yeah um i worked on one about dmx yep um but even that was really more of a verite follow yeah the final stages of his life um at a challenging moment not at the very challenging moment um you know fade to Black is often cited, Jay-Z's farewell concert as sort of the making of the Black album and sort of a look back at his career,

but not really that. Essentially what I'm saying is we're getting closer and closer, I think, to The Last Dance or The Beatles' Get Back for rap. There are going to be,

there should be a Jay-Z and Nas twin together documentary series. That's just a good idea for a documentary. We would happily work on that project. Um, obviously there, the one thing that has changed in the last 10 years is that artists are seeking more control over the way that their stories are told. Yeah, you talk about Nas, Nas and his relationship with Mass Appeal and so on and so forth. Um, and you know, there, there is an Illmatic documentary that is an interesting film,

but Nas is very much controlling that film and the way that it was rolled out into the world. But there hasn't been a lot of that. And I'm... I don't know.

I guess I'm kind of curious about what you think that is. About an individual figure, you mean. Over the course of time. And there's a lot of them for Elton John and Tina Turner

and Bruce Springsteen, as you say. Okay. But I, okay. If I had to guess, and again, you understand the workings of the film business better than I do,

but if I had to guess that era from the seventies, you have musicians who really, for the first time in all of cultural history are being said, you're not just a musician. You're, you're a zeitgeisty central cultural figure. Why don't we pair you with a zeitgeisty cultural filmmaker, a DA Panabaker or whatever? Go make some art, you crazy kids.

Have them bring the cameras on the road. Just get nasty with it. Can you imagine that happening in this highly corporatized environment and era that we live in now? I just don't see that happening logistically. And especially to add in the thing that you just said, which is that artists, especially post-social media saturation of the 2010s, are so invested in how their stories are told. They think that they are the only person capable of telling a story. So imagine going in as a filmmaker and be like, you're great.

Everything is phenomenal. Put yourself in my hands. Everything you do to tell people about yourself. I love it. Great. Forget all that though. I got this and it's, I'm in charge.

Imagine that those conversations aren't going to go anywhere. This is like you watch the Billie Eilish documentary. I did. The Billie Eilish documentary to, is like a great example of something that's advertised extremely intimate, but ultimately fully serves a Billie Eilish narrative. And that's totally fine. It's like, Billie Eilish is allowed to craft a narrative. It's not a problem. But to hire someone who's like a pro documentary filmmaker.

In that case, she did. She hired R.J. Cutler, who's an incredibly accomplished, in fact, is an acolyte, a scion of D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Edgidus. So that's an example of the way that things have changed. I think R.J. is super talented,

but he is ultimately in thrall to the estate of Billie Eilish on a project. And I don't know. Did you speak to R.J. Cutler about that one? I don't know what that individual's interior monologue was about having to get signed off on by Billy's parents or whatever. I don't know.

Sounds challenging. Yeah, I'm not sure even I, journalistically, would want to be a part of constantly being like, is the story I'm telling about this person the exact version of the story they wish to tell about themselves? That's the thing, though. That's why documentaries are not journalism. Sure. And to mistake the two, I think, is a problem. But I think I'm looking for some sort of middle ground with this stuff.

Like, I was thinking recently about, like, LL Cool J. LL Cool J from 1983 through 1992. Yeah. That's one of the most fascinating cultural explosions ever. He was as, I think, culture shifting as anybody who was around at that time and set a new template

for popular music. Yep. Genuinely cool. Genuinely talented. Yep. Part of a scene that was profound. Yep.

But also, like, slightly just, like, slightly just outside. Like, in it, obviously heavy,

but also because of the way that he was received in the pop side. Like, had started to have access to things that a lot of people in the rest of the scene did not have and he has made a lot out of that and i think maybe isn't remembered or understood in the way that he could be or should be and it's been it was it's been it was chronicled at the time and there are a lot of great um books that feature like the stories of ll and def jam at that time yeah but

like that's a very cool documentary that if our generation or the generation above us were actually calling the shots or had a little bit more it's like something you would you would expect to see pushed forward let me let me ask this question because think about this take it outside of film for a second okay let's think about touring like right now a rapper with one big album or like five interesting internet hits can sell out a 10,000 cap tour. LL's era, you were fighting. LL had hit after hit after hit. He couldn't get insurance to buy, you know, you had Fresh Fest, you had other couple, you know, you had Run DMC and the Beastie Boys.

It's not that no one was touring, but. He wasn't selling out Madison Square Garden. The demand was there, but the corporate, the way that the corporations of the era, I mean, I hate to be so knee jerk about corporate influence, but that's a good example. Hip hop wasn't totally fully understood at that time. It wasn't understood. And so the systems that were in place to make sure that the Eagles could play

five nights at the garden or whatever, we were looking at LL and saying, eh. So they sort of cramped his career. Are the systems that are in place for documentaries or for production companies, are they similarly cramped? Were they five to ten years ago to make an LL film? I don't know. I honestly don't know the answer to that. I mean, I think a lot of the time these decisions are driven

by the artist's willingness to participate. Of course. And then are the production companies who want to make these movies interested in these figures? You know,

do they matter to them? I note it because I do wonder, I don't think Piece by Piece is going to be a massive hit, but I do wonder if there will be like

a little bit of a waterfall effect here across a generation of musical stars. You know, there has been, there was like a Wu-Tang waterfall effect here across a generation of musical stars. You know, there has been, there was like a Wu-Tang series, you know, Wu-Tang documentary series. That's more in the spirit of what I'm talking about. I'm surprised there's not more of that. That to me is fascinating because again, when you think about,

take it away from stars for a second and think of scenes. Obviously scenes are very different right now in hip-hop and in most popular music, but think of scenes. Think of Virginia as a scene. Like, even one of the things I loved most about this movie was the Teddy Riley moment in Virginia, which is weirdly downplayed a little bit in, like, normal Pharrell...

Storytelling. ...hate geography type stuff. But, like, the idea that Virginia Beach before Teddy Riley, sleepy, a backwater, there's nothing here. We got a few kids who play instruments. Then Teddy Riley shows up and all of a sudden Rump Shakers happening, right? Like that's fascinating. That can be very well narrative.

That would be beautiful in a scripted environment. I feel like we talked about it probably when we were working together. But when you also incorporate Jodeci and Timbaland and Missy Elliott and and you bring in like that entire era of music that unto itself as a series, but, but honestly, maybe not commercial enough to justify its existence. But I don't know. But again, it's like, I don't know, because if people of our age aren't wanting to watch films about that stuff, what are they like music wise? Like, what are they wanting to watch films about Interpol? Well, I mean, that is starting to happen as well. You know, that is something that I think you'll see a big Strokes doc before you see a big

LL doc, which is. I'll likely have a stroke at the Strokes doc before I see a big LL. Is there anything else you want to say about piece by piece? Yes, there is. There are a couple of little fashion gestures that I thought were worth talking about. Okay. When they visualize Jay-Z, he's wearing the OS Orchard Street t-shirt, which was like this kind of plague on downtown

in the mid-2000s. And I was really, really struck. He did live on Orchard Street for the record. He did. That's true. It was a plague. This shirt was a plague. I remember it.

And I was so weirdly touched that they put Jay-Z in that shirt. Why? I don't, maybe was he an investor? I don't know. It's tough to say, but when I saw that, I had like kind of like body chills. Yeah, yeah. There was also, wasn't there a low, Pharrell,

someone was wearing like a low-end theory themed shirt. I believe so. Like with the squiggly. I think it's Tribe's influence. Yeah, like squiggly lines. And also, obviously this has been happening for five years. Pharrell's only been working for Louis Vuitton for a year, a year and change. In the last scene, the kind of last routine dancer.

The music performance, yeah. He's wearing the damouflage, Damier print, green. And I was like, oh, they must have just hot swapped that in. Yeah, I suspect that's true i think morgan said that they had like just finished the film when they showed it in september another thing given how much heat pharrell took for the robin thick song i was actually surprised that they used it i was very surprised that's another example of something that i would have liked to have seen in the film i really understand it's a legal matter and also very embarrassing.

But boy, it's interesting. You know, it is one of the most interesting things that will happen to him. And a fascinating, like you and I talked about this when it was happening. What does it mean to be original in the form of songwriting and how complex that case was? Wouldn't you love to see Pharrell talk about that? Yes. Wouldn't you love to see even, frankly, Robin Thicke talk about it? Where was Robin Thicke?

That's my question. Where is he? Where is he right now?? That's my question. Where is he? Where is he right now? That is unknowable. That is unknowable. Okay. Also, I literally cannot believe they put cream in this film. Q-R-E-A-M.

Google it, kids. Was it a peach liqueur? I'm not a drinker. But you were present. I certainly had a bottle on my desk. That's what I was going to say. It's definitely Vibera. I actually, the screening, after the screening,

what's the first thing I did when I went home? I went home to look for merch on the internet, and I could not find any. I'm sure somewhere in storage I have some cream. You were hoping to rock a cream tea. I honestly would happily do that. They did. But I was surprised about, again, the subversion of like we have Legos that curse.

We have Legos who have gold teeth. We have Legos who smoke weed, sort of. Yeah. We have Legos that talk about alcohol. You've seen all these Lego movies, whatever all those words you said are. Literally, I don't know. I think i said the words lego and batman together great is that confusing to you yes okay is batman getting slizzed in in that film yes drinking cream through the entire film phenomenal uh no this is a transgression

relative to the previous lego movie experience and what like such a gentle one you know what did you think what did you think about do you think that that was like 100 meetings with legal to make sure that that's okay is the film pg-13 i think it's pg-13 so i suspect that there are certain things also marijuana i mean come on this is like practically legal like you know across the country like it's just not this a pro weed podcast did they really have to have like meetings with legal about weed being in the pharrell movie is this a pro weed podcast it isn't not okay it certainly isn't not. Okay. It certainly isn't anti. Last thing I want to say.

Let's call my dad. You want to call my dad? I do want to call your dad, actually. Hang on. I have to fact check you. The film is PG. PG? Yeah.

Well, then. And another piece of fact, cream is available in strawberry and peach now. Oh, wow. Oh, it's still available? They leveled up. I don't know. I'm on some website called GoToLiquorStore.

Is that your Spotify cafe? The internet is doing really well these days. Is that not on tap? We really should have drank cream for this. You could have popped your cherry. I would have. And the last thing I want to say is additional voice family. Oh, we're so happy to hear him alive and well.

God bless. Genuinely great. Hit me on my beeper um also chad hugo was in this film you know pharrell and chad have unfortunately fallen out over the years there's been a lot of there's been a little bit of legal back and forth there's also been some personal back and forth but pharrell said in the hollywood reporter interview that he did uh that that is chad's voice voicing chad's part now i was like ai chad like i don't like i think he would need to be get clearance for you it would have to be signed off on either way yeah but um there has been there has been rumblings for decades about the

chad and pharrell complexity of their relationship. They are two very, very different people with hugely different priority sets with also very, very different experiences with fame. Right. And I thought the movie was very respectful to that about Chad. You know, there's definitely... I was once upon a time one of those guys who was like, Chad is the secret sauce

and there is no hits. Yeah, of course. And of course, Pharrell has kind of transcended that and he has gone on to do things that prove that that is not the case but god damn like the first N.E.R.D. album

that's a magic creation to me that's just something I love unconditionally and both versions of it yeah the originally recorded version and the re-recorded and my

suspicion is is that they are in a constant state of falling in and out and that they were in an in time and he agreed to participate and then it fell out and then they were in an in time and he agreed to participate and then it fell out and then we are where we are you signed the papers that's but that's just the guess i don't really know what's going on there the last question is were you

disappointed to not see lee harvey in this film boy uh you know if you think about it he really pre-saves like everything i know like he kind of invented i know like mgk yeah you know what i mean like absolutely there is no yeah asher roth there's no and there's also like no jelly roll it's 100 yeah there's no shout out my boy definitely no post malone yeah like there's so many dudes gliding on lee harvey's wave so thank you to Lee Harvey. A true icon. A child of white trash. Is he alive? Don't know. I hope he's not dead. I hope he's not dead.

Was he from Virginia? Don't know. Okay. Well, shout outs to him. Shout out to him. DM us. DM us.

I actually would love to, I would love to hear from him. You should do it. It's like a rare person I would actually, most people I would not love to hear from. Can you get Lee Harvey on A1 of the Times? Full profile.

Big test. Where's he been? Not know. John, any final thoughts? First of all, all my thoughts are final thoughts. You know, at the end of this episode, we usually ask filmmakers, what's the last great thing they've seen?

You're not a filmmaker. Podcast on YouTube. What are you talking seen? You're not a filmmaker. Podcast on YouTube. What are you talking about? You're a content creator. Have you seen any good movies? No. Joke me down the episode. I mean, I've seen plenty of other things that are great.

Well, tell me one thing you've seen that is great that is not a movie. That means like something I've seen seen. I don't know what that means but i will tell you that like for example i always say damien chazelle said he saw the roman coliseum you know like in person and was like that's my answer good for him so like you could do that you could be like i saw the lobby of the spotify building that's not gonna work work. Okay. I think what I would say. You watch a lot of television? Boy, do I. Yeah. Yeah.

Oh, okay. Okay. Okay. I mean, it's a little bit of a cheat, but I think it's important. Okay. Homicide Life on the Street recently put back on streaming. I mean, not back on streaming.

It was never on streaming. For the first time in full. Hulu, right? Peacock. Oh, Peacock. Peacock. I obviously have the homicide life on the street complete dvd sets as do i um incredibly one of the big brown brick yeah one of the first things

i ever bought on ebay many many many many years ago um i i can't believe i'm saying this in public i forgot how much of my personality is like directly attributable to frank pembleton yes this is the character that andre brower played on the show i am okay so tremendously disagreeable but brilliant homicide detective i'm agreeable for the record but i watch so my girlfriend was away for a week recently and i was like i'm gonna get so much work done and i did watching every every episode of homicide like i watched all of the first five seasons and i when i tell you i received chills because i i'm watching it and i'm like is this how i learned to be a person? Imprinted on you. In such a powerful way.

And also, obviously, with the kind of searchingness of Bayless at the same time. Yes. Like both the intersectionalist character. I had almost forgotten, to go back to our earlier conversation, I had almost forgotten my capacity to be moved at that level by something I saw on television. And I watched, I probably have what season left. I i probably like five and a half five and a half six seasons i wept multiple times it's funny you bring that up because chris and andy on the watch had a an extended conversation

when it hit streaming about that show's power and i think just how influential it was on us maybe not in my personality, but like in terms of storytelling, in terms of where TV was going. Did so many things that... Became common. Yeah, that became ripped off that had never been done before.

And it was on network television one year after the Super Bowl. Like very weird circumstance, but that's a great show and a great recommendation. You answered the question. Thank you so much, John. Like and subscribe Popcast. NYTimes.com NYTimes Thank you so much, John. Like and subscribe.

Popcast. NYTimes.com. NYTimes.com. Slash popcast. Like and subscribe for more gems like this. I appreciate you. Thank you so much. Come to death row. Please don't come to death row.

Stay here in the big picture. Thank you to John. Thank you to CR. Thanks to Jack Sanders. Thanks to our producer Bobby Wagner for his work on today's episode. Thank you to Francisco Lindor. That's right. For saving me. I really appreciate his work. Thanks to Nat Hackett, you know. It takes a big man to take a demotion. Well, reportedly he was told that he could leave the franchise. it you know well he's out of the it takes a big man to take a demotion well reportedly

he was told that he could leave the franchise and still get paid and he opted to stay I want you to do that to me so bad so is he like the office space guy who's like he's getting coffee yeah making copies yeah see you later Nat Hackett you suck is that what he goes by on the show So is he like the office space guy who's like there? He's getting coffee. Yeah, making copies. Yeah.

See you later, Nat Hackett. You suck. Is that what he goes by if I was Nathan, Nathaniel, or Nate? Does he go by Nat? I think it was Bill Simmons who coined Nat Hackett. Oh, okay.

Thank you to him for that. Next week on the show, I'll be sharing my favorite movies from the New York Film Festival. There were a few. Bob saw some too. We'll talk about them. Ish.

We're trying the new Mono Studio. Oh my God. So how do you feel about that? I can't wait to see this. Me down the barrel into camp. For 40 minutes. Well, no, because then Brian Curtis is going to come on

and we're going to talk about The Apprentice. Okay, good. The new Donald Trump biopic written by Gabriel Sherman, directed by Ali Abassi. Will you see that movie? Sure. Sure.

I'm interested in Trump's origins. You are? Yeah. He's an undercovered figure. As another real estate mogul in Queens, Chris Ryan is interested in the Trump story. I'll be working on my script for the Steve Cohen film,

which is currently rounding into its third act. Wasn't that just dumb money? Didn't that just happen? I think that was a slanted portrayal. And they were doing hard. Of a gifted man. Yeah. Thanks for listening to the show.

We'll see you next week.