The Big Picture - ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ Is Astounding

Episode Date: October 20, 2023

Sean and Amanda discuss Martin Scorsese’s three-and-a-half hour epic ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ and everything that it entails. They explore the adaptation of the David Grann book and how Scorsese and screenwriter Eric Roth shifted the perspective in the film (10:00), Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro’s repeated collaborations with Scorsese (23:00), the spellbinding performance of Lily Gladstone (48:00), the ways the film reflects on themes Scorsese has explored repeatedly (38:00), how it slots into the late Scorsese oeuvre (1:27:00), its chances at the Oscars (1:30:00), and more. Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Senior Producer: Bobby Wagner Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What would you do if you got scammed? Would you suffer in silence, or would you do something about it? Well, I got scammed once, and this is the story of what I did. I'm Justin Sales, the host of The Wedding Scammer, a true crime podcast from The Ringer. And for seven episodes, we're hunting a con man. A guy with a lot of aliases. A guy who's ruined a lot of weddings. And with the help of some friends, I just might be able to catch him.

Listen to The Wedding Scammer on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit superstore.ca to get started. I'm Sean Fennessy.

I'm Amanda Dobbins. And this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about Killers of the Flower Moon. Martin Scorsese's first film in 40 years, towering true crime epic, Killers of the Flower Moon Is now in wide release In movie theaters Today Amanda and I Will dig into one of the Most anticipated films

Of the decade Amanda Here we are How are you feeling? Excited We've been talking about this movie But not talking about it So we've been talking about it

For years You and I have both Seen it twice Twice Sean and I Went to the movies Yesterday Together

At 2.30pm To see Killers of the movies yesterday together at 2.30 p.m. to see Killers of the Flower Moon a second time at our local AMC. Because we both felt we needed to see it a second time before this conversation. And we left the theater together and talked around it, but we still have not actually discussed where we are and what we think of the movie. Well, before I describe we think of the movie well then i i before i described the details of the film the themes the intricacy the long journey to production yeah what did you think of killers of the flower moon i'm really glad we saw it a second time yeah it was the first time

listen martin scorsese is martin scorsese and i completely admire him and i would say that the word that i would use to describe my first viewing was overwhelming and intentionally and in a good way, but it was a lot. It is a three and a half hour film. It is adapted from the David Grand, true nonfiction book, but written with a lot of literary flair, which I hadn't read. So I had that added element of just kind of learning in real time. And then I read the book and we went to see it yesterday. Oh, I didn't know you'd read it. Okay. Interesting. I read it this week. So it's very fresh in my mind. That deepens this conversation.

Yeah. And well, you know, I try to do my homework. Anyway, after seeing it twice, I mean, I kind of think it's a masterpiece. Like I, you know, which is a ridiculous cliched thing to say about late period Martin Scorsese. But like, and it's also a funny, and I don't know whether the joke is on the movie or me, that I had to see it twice to get to that point, especially when that's seven hours of viewing. But yeah, it's a masterpiece. Yeah, so that's something I kind of wanted to explore. The first time I saw it, I loved it. And I felt like it was very clearly

in that second tier of Scorsese movie. And Martin Scorsese's second tier is basically the greatest tier for almost any other filmmaker, sort of like Kurosawa, John Ford. You know, he is in such a hallowed class of filmmaker that I was like, this reminds me a lot of Casino. It reminds me a lot of Silence.

It reminds me a lot of these like big epics that he pursues that are really hard to make conventionally entertaining, but that have really resonant themes and are really expansive. And then a lot of people in the aftermath of them are like,

that was a little too long. Like you hear that about a lot of Martin Scorsese's movies, these big epics that he pursues. The second time you see it, and I've also read the book, it's a little too long. Like you hear that about a lot of Martin Scorsese's movies, these big epic city pursuits. The second time you see it, and I've also read the book, it's a little easier to understand the intention. And then I think your mileage may vary on his decision to frame this story in a different way

than Grant framed the story. I want to push back on that a little bit, actually, just because I had not read the book, as I said, but I had heard everyone be like, yeah, I mean, it's like a book about the FBI. And I believe that the subtitle is like the Killers of the Flower Moon. I think it's the birth of the FBI. Yeah, it's in there, which is, you know, great marketing and great headline writing. And I understand that we have a contingent of dads who buy their history books, you know? And there is a lot of the FBI, but when I read the book, I was explaining something radically different.

The first part is entirely about Molly Burkhart. Like, there is a coda that I actually don't think is missing from the film, but the coda is entirely about David Grand researching or investigating crimes that the FBI did not investigate. Yes, there is the whole thing about Tom White, who is the main investigator. He becomes a strong, strong character in the book, though. Sure. You really follow him in long stretches. You know, and there is absolutely a history, like a chapter that is the New Yorker section about, like, here's who his dad was.

Right. that is the New Yorker section about like, here's who his dad was. I have to tell you, I skipped that, you know, when I was reading it because I was like, I don't care for this purpose. Well, I wonder and it doesn't, but, but that is just kind of like a standalone chapter.

And there is as much about their murders and the investigation. And I, and I felt about Molly and Molly Burkhart and Ernest Burkhart and their children in the book as there is about the FBI. Well, let's give listeners a little bit of context for this conversation. One, we're going to spoil the movie.

This is a story that you can learn about on Wikipedia. This is not... It's hard to spoil 100-year-old history. But if you don't want to know the details of the film and you haven't had a chance to see it, about on Wikipedia. This is not, it's hard to spoil hundred year old history, but there, you know, if you don't want to know the details of the film and you haven't had a chance to see it, we're going to go through it in pretty deep detail, I would say, especially because it's essential to understanding the themes and the choices that Scorsese and the team of people that made this movie made. So, you know, Scorsese, of course, is the director. This is also his first

screenwriting credit in a very long time. He has a co-screenwriting credit with Eric Roth, who wrote an initial draft of this movie and framed it differently. And I think used Grant's book as more of a clear framework for how to tell the story, which is to say, it probably would have been a series of divided narratives across a number of characters. And Tom White, probably the Bureau of Investigation agent played by Jesse Plemons in the film, would have been more centralized to the story because Leonardo DiCaprio was going to play that part. Right. My understanding is that it was framed more as a classic procedural. Yes, a whodunit.

Yeah. And so the film is very different from that. You know, Leo still is starring in it, but he has taken the role of Ernest Burkhart, Robert De Niro, Lily Gladstone, Jesse Plemons, Tantu Cardinal, John Lithgow, Brendan Fraser. It's a pretty exceptional ensemble cast as most Scorsese films are. This is the sixth time

that Scorsese and DiCaprio have worked together. It's the 10th time that De Niro and Scorsese have worked together. And it's the first time that I think since De Niro and Leo appeared on screen together since This Boy's Life in time that I think since De Niro and Leo appeared on screen together since This Boy's Life in 1993, they were in Marvin's room, but I don't know if they share a scene in Marvin's room. Can you remember that? I was trying to figure that out. I don't remember

that. And I'm going to be honest, I didn't revisit Marvin's room for this one. Wow. Well, sounds like you don't do your homework. It's shot by Rodrigo Prieto, as many of Scorsese's recent films have been, of course, edited by the great Thelma Schoonmaker. Music by the late, great Robbie Robertson, who is essential to this movie as well. This is an Apple movie. This is the biggest Apple original film yet, though they are not distributing the movie. The movie is being distributed by Paramount because they have the tools to get movies in movie theaters. And I was trying to figure out after we saw it whether or not this is the longest movie of the 21st century to be distributed widely. It's a three-hour and 26-minute movie, and it's in 3,800 screens. So it might not be,

but it's pretty darn close. I am live Googling Gettysburg, the movie, the 1993 film, four hours and 21 minutes. There's no theatrical release available. Box office mojo, get it together. We are living in a time where long movies are significantly more common, but those movies often have superheroes in them or are part of expanded universes or have teen wizards. This is a true crime story. It's an epic. It's closer to something you would see in 1975 or 1955 than something you would see in 2023. It's set's set in the 1920s it's about members of the osage nation native american tribe uh in oklahoma who are being murdered after oil is found on their land and the great wealth that comes to that land i think we'll talk in detail about the

way that that story is told but you know it's a story about um theft devastation, the original American sin, the other American sins. It's a big, juicy, gnarly, upsetting, exciting, riveting, romantic, devastating movie. It's a big, big feast of a movie. And you have to go in not only expecting that, but wanting that, I think. Because most movies are not this rich, and are not this long, and are not this... I would say the thing that I have been coming back to both times I've seen it, is there is a moral quandary at the middle of this movie. A big question that I still can't wrap my head around,

and I don't have an answer to, that in many ways powers the movie, that its ambiguity, that it's ambiguity or it's kind of like it's a lack of definition is what I like about it I do think that there are people who see this movie and they will see the relationship between Ernest and Molly which is really the the heartbeat the life of the movie the center the frame of the movie and they will say either I understand this clear contradiction and I accept it or I reject it and this is not how I want this story to be told. So I'm curious if that hit you in any way or if that rose to the surface.

Because both times now, that's exactly how I've been sitting in that idea the whole time I've been watching it. I think yes, in a slightly different way is how i responded to it the first time that i saw it and again i i went in knowing the very basic premise which is that there were these murders a hundred years ago um but but honestly not knowing the who aspect of it and you know beyond a large uh white american conspiracy and so there was a lot of information to take in and a lot of like moving pieces before i could focus on the themes so i remember leaving the first time and feeling like i wanted more about the the Molly Burkhardt character who's played by Lily Gladstone and I think a little bit of that is that I just wanted more Lily Gladstone who I think is absolutely astonishing um and is one of the few people where

she's in the frame with Leonardo DiCaprio and you just don't even look at Leonardo DiCaprio you look at her and she's commanding those scenes yeah that that is something that can't be taught um so you know part of it is just when I when I see a movie star I am I'm I'm drawn to that I think that also speaks to something that them that the movie is doing that had me drawn to her just you know throughout despite all the other imaginations and the and the things that it's focusing on and but i i was like i i don't i guess i don't totally understand her character or i felt like i wanted more or there was something and the second time i saw it i it actually is all there um and when you're not hung up on remembering who is who, I think that there is, it's maybe not all there, but there is enough there for you to start asking your own, asking the same questions from her perspective as well as Leo's. Yeah.

And who plays her husband, Ernest Burkhart. And so I agree that there are some people who are going to want her representation and the interpretation of her experience to be very different. And who am I to quibble with that in any way, shape, or form? People will read the story differently and bring different things to it.

I thought it was pretty profound. And I had not seen that kind of intimate experience betrayal violence like portrayed in that way before before so it may not be the perspective that everybody wants but it was um racing to see to see that and to see it in such a new way. I'll talk through the setup for the movie so listeners can better remember where this is, because I think that helps us understand this central idea, which I could probably spend a couple of hours talking about, honestly. And maybe it's worthy of that because it's so related to the filmmaking decision that Scorsese and the writer makes. So, you know, the film follows closely Ernest Burkhardt. You

know, the movie more or less opens from his point of view, exiting a train. He's a World War I veteran. He's returning to this town that his uncle, William K. Hale, is sort of like the unofficial mayor of. He's a spiritual leader. He's a ranch owner. He's got this deep relationship with the Osage, which is this, you know, nation that has been living on this land that has migrated from Missouri some years ago. And on this land, oil is discovered. Forcibly. Forcibly migrated, yes. And they move to Oklahoma. They settle in Oklahoma. Lo and behold, there's oil on that land. And then what we have in the early 20th century, in the early 20th century is this tribe of people who have been, you know, displaced that are now among the wealthiest people in the

nation. However, because this is happening in an emerging white America, there are all of these restrictions placed on their wealth. And they, while they have a lot of, I would say like material goods, their access to their money is significantly restricted and it's it's it's an incredible like culture clash where like the the culture had existed in one way and now it is entering the other way and so you see this story being told where these people who never knew never had to work with american currency before now have gobs and gobs of it right and the the white settlers are made to be made to seem in the first 20 minutes of the film or so, which is really a kind of like rollicking and almost convulsive classical Martin Scorsese movie. Loud music, hard cutting, exciting.

There's a very long tracking shot through Leo's arrival, which is, you know, gesturing to Copacabana and all that. You're seeing everything in this world that he is entering. Classic virtuosic Scorsese stuff. And you feel that when you're watching the beginning of the movie and you're like, oh, we're in a Martin Scorsese movie just in the West. Yeah. That of course is not at all what this movie is. In many ways, it is a kind of like a rejection of that kind of a movie, which I find to be a fascinating evolution for Scorsese. But once Ernest gets into this world, we see Hale, who is played by Robert De Niro. And in the book, Hale is not immediately identified as a unsavory character. The book kind of slow plays what's really going on in this story. One of the things I wanted to ask you is

he has this fateful first sit down with Ernest, the Hale character, in which he starts to explain the lay of the land, almost literally, about what happens here in Greyhorse, the community in the Osage Nation. And you're like, huh, well, this is a bad man. This is an operator. This is a schemer, maybe not a murderer, but this is a person who is at worst a politician. And that decision felt like such a radical departure to me from the book that I was reading, not knowing anything when I was reading the book, that it completely recontextualized the movie and the story for me. It completely eliminates the curiosity of what happened to these people. Of course, we knew white people killed them but did we know that their closest allies in the community killed them yeah I have said many times that I am like a

supremely stupid movie viewer I know I am like if I don't know what's going on I in some ways I see everything and in other things especially when it comes to plot like I wouldn't describe you that way I know nothing but like the twist always gets me you know and I'm just like oh he was there but he was also here I just I like kind of give over and and I'm not doing the let me search for all the not even the easter eggs but like let me let me predict I just kind of go with it as long as it's a good movie when it's a bad movie and you can see where it's gonna you know you know, come through, then you're like, okay, well, this person is going to wind up like this. And this person is only in this movie because they want to be evil, you know? Yeah.

I don't watch hoping to predict to know what's going to happen. billionth movie watching have such a strong attention to tone and character choice that I'm constantly evaluating why something has just happened when I'm watching a movie maybe that's a character flaw maybe it's not I don't really don't know but in this case I was like okay so this is a movie about the devils that destroyed these people and even though it does give the time to Molly who we soon meet because Hale effectively puts Ernest and Molly together, it is the movie about the representation of people who destroyed all of this, who took this away,

who took life away, who took wealth away, who took agency away, all of these deep and important things. And I think that that is the right choice for telling this story because this is the only way to make a movie out of this story. But I agree with what you said earlier,

which is like, I don't have to be, if somebody else feels differently, of course I respect that. Sure. But for me, the story clicked into place in a way that actually,

I think the film exceeds what the book does. I totally agree. The book is extraordinarily like well-told, kind of potboiler style and deeply informational. The film is thematically rich and emotionally confusing and upsetting in a way that I found the book not to be. The book is kind of infuriating

because you're like, how could this have happened when you're starting to get into the second third of the book? But the movie is a quagmire. And so this decision to frame it this way got me. It is, and it isn't, because as you said, it is kind of very, not very obvious, but it states his intention. This is a movie about evil.

And this is a movie about people doing absolutely unconscionable unimaginable things which they did and it is interrogating how that happens and maybe trying to interrogate why but not in an empathetic in an empathetic way. Like it is actually a movie about evil. Okay. So the thing about that, I agree with you. It is a movie about evil. But it's also a movie about a dumb guy who becomes like a tool of evil.

Right. Ernest is not, he is not really the agent of evil. He does awful things. He does unconscionable things. But he has been, he's manipulated. And the movie effectively opens with the arc of his manipulation. And so to see the movie through those eyes, but to not really spend any time with Hale,

to not get to know his psyche, to not get to know his motivation, to not get to know why he's doing the things that he's doing. Does he actually believe that what he's doing is for good? Is he actually deep down an insidious man? The movie doesn't spend any time on that. And so because of that, I don't think that it's a movie like just about, good is he actually deep down an insidious man the movie doesn't spend any time on that and so because of that i don't think that it's a movie like just about you know just the evil that men

do or whatever like it is about the way that the systems of evil work like it's not a whodunit for who killed the murders it's a whodunit for how this happens yes for like it's a whodunit of the conspiracy itself and i'm not sure i couldn't think of another movie that really did that i couldn't think of another movie that was like we're centering the bad guys right in doing so we're sure I mean maybe like bank heist movies do this kind of but you're you never feel like oh bank robbers are bad guys they're actually valorized I want to go back to the question that you asked me who um about that first scene and kind of the statement of Hale as the bad guy and the statement of Ernest as the person who is being manipulated. And you're right that it's very obvious very early on.

In that scene, the Hale character is talking about head rights, which are the granting of a certain amount of oil money, essentially, to members of those age tribe and he's explaining how that can be manipulated in order for the head rights to come to him basically and other white people and so that it that's just stated and so you're like oh okay so this is a this is a bad person but it you don't or i didn't immediately think okay and so this is setting up like a thing of murders even as you know probably like your your your brain that you were talking about sean is like this is how movies work and this is how things go together

there is something about the way that scorsese unfolds this mystery or how they did it and is also interrogating like how the question of like literally how could you do this how could any human being actually do something so awful um unfolds and I remember the moment in the movie where it clicked for me and I had this moment the first time being like oh it's he's doing it like oh he is actually doing it and you suspect and it's fascinating to go back and watch it a second time because they cut to De Niro at certain points and Leo has these reaction shots but there's no dialogue and all of the clues are there. But it was still very jolting to me about an hour in when he is visiting. He goes to recruit someone to blow up his sister and brother-in-law's home. And he just says it point blank, like very calmly. And I was like, wait a second what like you know and it's and it's that magic movie moment of things coming together and it's what you knew kind of and what you suspected and and what the movie is laying out for you the clues versus the confirmation of it actually happening

um which is still startling the first time and i think it's like a fascinating and was to me very effective. Both, I guess, movie wise, but also thematically in that sense of interrogating the disbelief and the unimaginable quality of this. And even if all signs are pointing towards it, which is a theme of some of the characters in the film. So this isn't the first time that Leonardo DiCaprio has played a less than brilliant, possibly disturbed, not good, nice person, especially in a Scorsese movie. In fact, in Scorsese movies,

in The Aviator, in Gangs of New York, it's literally called Gangs of New York. In The Wolf of Wall Street. In many of the films that he appears in, he's either damaged or maybe breaking bad. And this one is

a new stripe of that because he is being manipulated, but he is also, you know, he is still his own man. And so he is actively participating in all of these things. He's actually the engineer

of all of the acts, basically. You see him as the go-between between Hale and all these conspirators. And the thing that is so interesting about it is that they're all really dumb. Yeah. They're all portrayed as really not bright. And a lot of the decisions they make

to execute on these murders were meant to feel like one of the, like the tragedy on top of the tragedy is that there's something so ham-handed

about all of this and that this is before the Bureau of Investigation exists and so it shows like how much no one cares

and is paying attention and is willing to point out the fact that these heinous crimes are happening. That the complicity, like that is what the movie is about. It is about a cultural community complicity to murder people

and take their money. And obviously that's the story of America for the first 400 years of the nation, maybe up until this very moment. And so that's like the big idea of the movie, but there's something so jarring. And you can say this is in a lot of his movies. You could say this is true of Jake LaMotta. You could say this is true of Travis Bickle. You could say this is true of Henry Hill. These guys are kind of dim. Yeah. And they are wreaking havoc on the world. And like,

this is the big theme of the Martin Scorsese movies. Yeah. You know, like, and in some ways you can tell that he always has like an inch of identification with his characters.

He's not completely, you know, he is not rejecting their humanity outright. But he insists upon showing you like how the world turns bad. And the, the earnest character, the, I kind of want to talk about the Leo performance and what you think about it. Cause it's this, this trifecta of performances. It's, it's Lily Gladstone, Robert De Niro, and Leonardo DiCaprio. There's all these people supporting those performances, but the movie is this triangle and their relationship

to each other. Leo's never really done anything like this. The only thing I could think of that was sort of in this zone is What's Eating Gilbert Grape, which is a very mannered performance

that almost, you know, this film has prosthetics. He's got false teeth. He's using a very pronounced accent here. He's got a very silly haircut. He wears a frown

through the first hour and a half of this movie, very pointedly. Very unglamorous. And yet, in the movie, he's still characterized as a beautiful man. Yeah.

Interesting choice in the film to make him, you know, Leo is like in his late 40s and the character in the book is in his early 20s. He's just gotten out of World War I. I never,

I never bumped on that. I never thought about it once um i think it's one definitely one of the great leo performances but it's so funny because i think it's actually the third best performance in the movie and i'm i'm fascinated by his decision to even do this movie and be like i want to be that guy as a movie star who's done everything you could possibly do. And the story that they are telling about the rewrite is that Leo was originally slated to play FBI investigator Tom White in the more procedural version of the film. And he went to Scorsese and said,

I think there's something missing here and inspired the rewrite. And then was like, sure, I'll play's something missing here and inspired the rewrite and then was like, sure, I'll play Ernest, which is fascinating. I think it's a completely opposite performance, but I thought a lot of Wolf of Wall Street while doing it because that is a guy

who is too smart for his own good, but also doing a lot of really dumb shit. And the way that he's outsmarting everyone is similarly stupid and basically, and like gets caught eventually. Yes. It's the same thing. He's like, I'm going to get away with this forever. And you're like, you're the dumbest person on earth. You're going to get caught. Exactly. Why is he drawn to those people is an interesting thing to me. Why is he drawn to Howard Hughes?

You know, why is he drawn to the don't look up, you know. God, I forgot about the don't look up guy. Scientist, you know. Why is he drawn to these people with grand visions and a kind of intelligence, but an ultimately broken core, sullen core, sad core,

dumb core. It's an interesting archetype for a matinee idol. And maybe all of this is one long rejection of Jack from Titanic. It's often felt that way.

I do kind of think it is. And, you know, I think across the board this movie is in dialogue with what all of its artists and filmmakers have done before so i think you and i don't want to say it's like paying penance for all of it but it's exploring the other side of whether it's goodfellas or wolf of wall street or every de niro character ever

played um and i and that does seem conscious conscious that people are thinking that that these filmmakers are thinking okay we'll do this but what if we get everyone to react a completely different way to basically what is the same thing going on which is a group of white guys killing people in very brutal ways and getting away with stuff. And for whatever reason, audiences, and maybe even the filmmakers, have been cheering, if not cheering that on, and Square Stays is not cheering that on, but, you know, Goodfellas has, like,

a very different vibe, even though it is cruel, and that is also a personification of De Niro as evil. I think there's a romance to Goodfellas that does not exist here. Even though weirdly this is a romantic, more romantic movie in some ways.

Yes. There is a kind of emotional grandeur with the pop songs that he plays with the first hour and a half of Goodfellas which is this extraordinary

like entrance into the good life. There's not really any good life in this movie. There's wealth but there's no good life. In the first five minutes we're seeing some of the most brutal murders you'll ever see in a movie. A mother is killed in this movie. It's one of the most upsetting murders you'll

ever see in a movie. And that's all very intentional. It's like a big red flag that's like, this is not fun. There's nothing fun about this. This is an important story. It can be viscerally compelling. Like, that is what he does, right? He makes you feel, and that's why he continues to go back. And so I had the Thelma Schoonmaker cutting style, which they use, like, sometimes in this movie, but only really for the violent outbursts.

You know, they're not the, like, you know, hard push in zooms or, like, the whirling camera. Like, you get a little bit of that at the beginning of the movie. You get that embrace between Hale and Ernest at the beginning where the camera kind of spins around them as they hug and embrace. And he almost lures you into thinking that this is going to be one of those score-seizing movies. Yeah, absolutely. It's very conscious.

Even the Robbie Robertson score in the first hour is like, what if we were doing like Oklahoma Rolling Stones? Absolutely. And in a way that's like, here's an electric moment, but also don't, no, don't get too close. And whatever you want from this, this is going to be different. I was listening to the score last night on Spotify and the first three songs are propulsive, rhythmic, fast.

And then the final 15 songs are just these mournful, ominous, deep and scary songs that obviously are kind of you know robbie robertson has indigenous roots in canada and he understands that this music and kind of like blends what he did with the band with this sound like it's an amazing it's just it's kind of like weirdly like a culmination of their whole project together but you're right him like mimicking stones music, it's such a smart way to get us involved. It very quickly becomes clear that it's not the fun parts of Goodfellas. It's not even really the funny parts of Goodfellas. There are some funny moments, and I think Ernest's dimness is played for laughs, even all the way to the end of the movie, in a way that I find

pretty entertaining. Smart Jesse Plemons versus dumb Leo is a very good chemical mix on screen. You do, but you're standing. It's just really funny. Some good lines there. But, you know, the movie effectively, like once Molly is properly introduced, and she's introduced because when Ernest gets home,

he takes a job as kind of like a chauffeur which is what's something that a lot of white people do for the Osage in this town. And he starts picking up Molly and driving Molly around. Molly's already been

kind of set up by Hale as this interesting woman who maybe could represent something for this character. And they begin this very curious very restrained love affair

just riding around together. And I totally agree with what you said earlier, which is that once Lily Gladstone's on screen, the whole center of the movie moves to her. His interest in her makes us understand that she is the movie in many ways. That doesn't hold for the whole movie. And that's one of the few things that I think is a complicated part of it. I agree, though. We'll talk about it because some of some of it is just like factual and some of it is about what happens when you are making a movie about a person who is brutally victim yeah who's sick who's sick and and is the is the

victim of a lot of this violence so it's like, so she does have to disappear for a while, just like plot-wise, but you miss that energy. One thing that I found really kind of satisfying, delicious about this movie is there has been a promotional photo

for this movie for like years. For like three years there's been a photo of Lily Gladstone and Leonardo DiCaprio sitting together in a dining room

side by side with like blank to sad faces. Yeah. And that was the representation of this movie in the culture since 2020. Right. And has become a meme. Yeah. It is also like one of the two or three most important scenes in the movie.

And is wonderful. And plays so differently in the film rather than as a still. As a meme. Yeah. Yeah. I really like this a lot. It's sort of their first date after they've been kind of

being flirtatious together. And Lily Gladstone has very few lines of dialogue. She's largely reactive to him. She asks a couple of questions. She has a very sly, very amusingly judgmental way of interacting with Leonardo DiCaprio in a way very few...

I guess Margot Robbie kind of has this a bit too in Wolf of Wall Street but most actresses almost don't know how to play against his overwhelming charisma right and she's like controlling him yeah and this in a very interesting way you know she's offering him whiskey it starts to rain she's positioning him she's like you sit here don't talk don. Like, she is in command of him. And on the one hand, he's very cynically trying to align with her because he wants those head rights that you talked about. And on the other hand, he's like, I want to get into bed with this lady. She has really got something. At the beginning of the movie, we hear that he's like, I like all kinds of women, you

know, like, you know, white, red, blue. It doesn't matter to me. I like women and I like money. That's, those are earnest interests and so he's met the apotheosis of women and money in this character and that this is the moment to me when the movie like really starts to get interesting it becomes not just like a scorsese movie but it becomes a thing that like i guess maybe a little bit in the age of innocence you see this i i obviously thought a lot about it but just like the the complicated messy love affair that feels like like really raw and really dangerous and uh fascinating and like you you almost can't get inside of their love like that is that is like

the real complexity of what's going on well it's it's love and a power struggle at the exact same time and it's a power struggle between the two of them in you know just the basic what is the relationship between a man and a woman but then also they are standing in for the osage tribe and the white people who are trying to take all of their power but are also in the moment subservient to them. It is about literally like what's going to happen between Ernest and Molly and their money and power. And so, you know, I do think that power and love and like in a marriage or in a relationship, you're negotiating those things. We talked a lot about it on the fair play episode, but it's turned on its head from our expectations as like moviegoers and,

you know, white Americans of the 21st century in so many ways that it's just, it's fascinating. It's an incredibly rich text. I thought there was a really funny callback to Titanic when they're're making out in the car oh yeah that's good yeah yeah yeah and this movie also has it sort of has sex scenes you know there's a moment when they're to you know in bed together and they embrace and then they start having sex of course the with earnest and molly coming together that allows us to see more of molly's family and molly has three sisters and

a mother all of whom have these head rights and are part of the Osage Nation. And they all are intertwined with this white community. They have white husbands or their mother is kind of suspicious about all of their white husbands. We see the great Jason Isbell is married to Minnie at the beginning of the movie. I think this is Jason Isbell's first performance in a movie and he's amazing. It's like...

He's incredible. Kind of remarkable. So we see him in this film. You know, we see Byron, who is Ernest's brother, who has already been effectively living with and working with Hale when he shows up on the screen. And he is a increasingly sinister figure. He's kind of the signal that it's like things are really going

evil here because this is another person who's like, we have no nothing about their psyche whatsoever. He's played by Scott Shepard who's a great, great character actor

and he's very good in this movie. But as we start to learn more about Molly's family, we also start to learn more about this network of dumb criminals that are effectively

working for Hale and working for the Burkharts. And the movie turns. It moves away from a pure love story to a love story happening inside of this genocidal gangster movie, basically. That's effectively what's happening. And I do think that this...

I've read some criticism of the movie that this is like that loses people a little bit criticism of the movie that like this is like, that like loses people a little bit. Like the movie, like Scorsese makes a decision to make a movie that is a Scorsese movie

and not the right movie for this story and I actually had someone tell me, like tell me this at Telluride. They were telling me about the movie

and they were like, well, you just couldn't get away from making a gangster movie and so in a way when I sat down I was like expecting that. I didn't really feel that way.

I felt like, you know, they're so essential to each other that that didn't bother me. But I'm wondering if you felt like at a time, did he get too entranced by the things he knows how to do? I don't think so, but I enjoy the things that he knows how to do and I also felt that the way that he does the gangster story as we were talking about is such like a comment on the way that he's done it before and in conversation with and if not trying to correct then trying to explore a different side of and so i found i just i thought that the what he doesn't usually do which is though i mean though he does plenty but the addition of like the osage community and the recreation of that world and the time that you get to spend there like makes the gangster stuff and its consequences like well this sounds terrible to say like richer not richer i mean literally it deepens it yeah you there there is more to talk about

um but he is martin scorsese like i don't i he needs to make movies that are his you know and it's a movie about murders so you effectively have to show those things that's the thing is that the murders begin clearly minnie dies of a wasting illness anna her other sister who is this kind of vivacious blustery character who is you know kind of dominates the film for about 20 minutes is brutally murdered and her murder really sets off like the chain reaction of the story the the osage nation comes together uh and tries to determine how to best handle this. They want to use the tools of government. They want to use the outside world. They don't quite know how to fully trust the outside world. They conscript people from the community to attempt to go to Washington. Private investigators come to town to to investigate. They try to use their wealth, basically, to solve this cultural community problem.

And it really doesn't work at first. And so then you have this mass conspiracy happening, executed by all of these dumb people. Just absolute idiots. Exterminating people left and right, grabbing land rights. And the eye of that hurricane is Molly and Ernest's love affair becoming increasingly

kind of jaundiced because Molly has diabetes and they're starting to get married. There's a great wedding ceremony in the film. They have children. Molly's illness gets worse. Insulin is literally introduced into the universe at this time. And she gets access. She's told she gets access to this insulin by way of Hale, who has made it possible for her to get the medicine that she needs.

But then a movie that has kind of felt like a poison love affair from the beginning literally becomes this poison love affair, where she's being injected all the time at first by these brother doctors who are some of the biggest scoundrels in history. And then... And she does not trust them and does not trust the medicine

and says, no, you will be the, you, Ernest, will be the only person who gives it to me. I don't trust them. So she is evincing all of this fear and suspicion. And it's like the net is closing in, but it still doesn't close in close enough for the two of them.

Gladstone does something really interesting in this movie where it's an incredible performance of faces. And the movie opens with these kind of like newsreel silent cinema style frames. And she has kind of one of those faces, like a silent cinema face, where you're reading her suspicion, her intent, her love and passion. Like she doesn't have a lot of lines of dialogue in this movie. It's not a quote unquote showy performance. So when you listen to two people on a podcast,

talk about how amazing she is in a movie. It's not a quote-unquote showy performance. So when you listen to two people on a podcast talking about how amazing she is in a movie, it's a movie where she's really jockeying with, I don't know, the two biggest male movie actors of the last 50 years. True.

And doing so without saying a whole heck of a lot. And then even more so when she's ill, she has to communicate like a weariness and a suspicion without talking about it too much it is a big challenge and then the movie effectively becomes like about her having a crisis

while these crimes are being executed like a literal physical crisis like she's in bed for about an hour of the movie yeah and i agree with what you said which is that it like it has to be this way because i mean what happened earlier. It's just what happened. Yeah. And I think this is probably the place where people who don't respond in the same way that we do to this perspective shift might... Like, I get it because she's just in bed for an hour and it is her story. But dramatically, there's just, like, not a lot going on. And so to the point of whoever spoiled the movie for you at Telluride, like, Scorsese is doing what Scorsese does instead of telling the story of this woman. Or instead of focusing on the story of this woman who has been poisoned by her husband and is

just having just absolute delusions in bed and he cuts back to her a lot and there is this motif running through the movie of um the owl which is something that um just before molly's mother lizzie dies she sees an owl and we're taught that this in osage culture this means that you're about to die um and by the way just like a small scene when lizzie does die and there is they just show that beautiful moment of her going into the osage after being like the next world being led by her ancestors and she's so happy and that is like one of the most astonishing 30 seconds just absolutely breathtaking the second time we saw it i went to the bathroom um at a certain point because this is a very long film yeah and i i realized about 30 minutes later that i had missed that first image of the owl yeah landing on the windowsill when they're in

molly's family home and when the first time i saw that movie i was like that's one of the most that's one of the great startling moments in Scorsese history. That's an incredible image that he has created that is so disorienting but so meaningful and impactful

and then obviously pays off with, you know, the end of her life and then that moment with the ancestors. He's still got new tricks, you know,

like he's still got, that's Kundun and Casino in the same movie, you know? And that scene with the ancestors is to me kind of like the highest moment of scorsese trying to tell the osage story maybe not from their perspective but with their input and you just it's like it's so it's so moving um and and so clear so anyway there is one scene where molly also sees

the owl she is he cuts back to her and is trying to provide her experience it's just not the only thing that you see and you do see a lot of more like quote-unquote classically cinematic things like people murdering and being stupid plots and yeah yeah all of that stuff i mean so i thought this was really interesting and is also kind of at one of the core emotional conflicts of the movie after seeing the movie christopher coat who's an osage language consultant who worked on the movie said as an osage i really wanted this to be from the perspective of Molly and what her family experienced. But I think it would take an Osage to do that. Martin Scorsese not being Osage,

I think he did a great job representing our people. But this history is being told almost from the perspective of Ernest Burkhardt. And they kind of give him this conscience and kind of depict that there's love. But when someone conspires to murder your entire family, that's not love. That's not love.

That's just beyond abuse. Now this got picked up quite a bit after he made these comments. I think it's fascinating. Obviously, what he's saying is incredibly valid. It is that comment essentially like springboards us into the final third of the movie where the conspiracy starts to be revealed effectively.

The Bureau of Investigation is created. Jesse Plemons arrives in this community after all of these vicious murders and starts investigating. And Ernest starts to become more paranoid. Hale becomes increasingly paranoid. Their plots become increasingly convoluted. And characters in the film are like, you know, you're showing your hand too much, Hale. You know, you're overexposing yourself. Yeah, that's the guy who is also... In the KKK. Right. And also Molly's... Executor. Executor, right.

The person who decides how she can spend her money and also winds up on the jury. Correct. Which is just like a... Very cool community. Yeah, a perfect encapsulation of how this community is operating. This is a small, devious world.

Yeah. And it's really interesting because the question of what the movie gives to Ernest, I think will dictate how you feel. Because if you feel that Ernest is shown as a person, basically the question is, can a person have love for someone

and kill their family? And I think that the movie effectively does that. Like, I actually think that the movie conveys, and perhaps it's because Ernest is not that smart, and so he's not able to really reckon with, to divide these two things and make it clear that you can never have both. Because that's what Christopher Code is saying. He's saying you can't have both. There is no love in this extermination.

And to portray it feels wrong. That's more or less what he's saying. Yeah. Which is a fascinating dynamic because to me that and you know i'm a white person i so i have a different a totally different bias and privilege in this but it's so important to the movie because i thought that making earnest this conflicted demon is what makes it a great movie and a great martin scorsese yeah for to me the film is asking the question is that love

and can there be love which is different than saying that there is and i think the leo performance and also the lily gladstone performance because like are really a testament to it because on the flip side of earnest molly is like has a lot of clues and you can tell that she is suspecting and and maybe even has questions about earnest but doesn't want to face them because right she is looking past she identifies him as a coyote like in one of their first meetings and you, and it builds to the death of their child, which is absolutely heartbreaking. And then the, and Ernest's decision to then testimony and after his admission of. And he's just really torn up, but also seems to know what is coming. And working through their emotions and there is connection there and they clearly feel something for each other but to me that's the question of the movie like what did they feel what is a relationship between you know it's very dark very upsetting

but i there there is something is it love i i don't know it's the it's I mean this is the English student 101 thing but it's the ultimate metaphor for white settlers coming to America yeah it's like you know who loves America this is all the white people who are like I have you know American flags on their trucks and um patriotism as a as a concept and also inside of that is this deeply, unseemly, violent, greedy, awful history. It's built on this, you know, it's built on this graveyard,

basically, the whole country. And that's what the movie is about. That's why it's like a big, grand, important, deep film. And it's interesting that like, of course, Christopher Coate sees the film and he's, because there's really, has never really been a great American epic

made by an indigenous filmmaker who's had this kind of a budget that will be this widely seen. You know, like Reservation Dogs has become one of the most acclaimed shows of the last 10 years. That's one of the first mainstream, truly mainstream pieces of culture that Native Americans have had. That's one of the first mainstream, truly mainstream pieces of

culture that Native Americans have had. So his point of view is incredibly resonant. On the other hand, Martin Scorsese is like, I'm only telling the kind of story I know how to tell. And when I think about my point of view on the country, on masculinity, on spirituality, this is a convergence movie in the way that so many of these movies are convergence. Silence is a convergence movie. The Irishman is a convergence movie. These are movies that bring together all the themes

that he cares about. So it's really interesting and I think there's a rightness to people questioning it that I think also will help people even deeper understand it.

Absolutely. There's a, Alison Wilmore, who's one of my favorite critics, did a profile of Lily Gladstone in New York Magazine. It ran after Cannes, but it's relevant again now.

And Alison Wilmore asks Lily Gladstone about this. And I felt that Lily, there's another interesting part where Lily Gladstone was offered the role of Molly in the original version of the script. And what her take on that was, you know know it's an offer you don't say no to right but even she you know she had some reservations and when allison asks her about like stories about indigenous characters she says that's the double-edged sword you want to have more natives writing native stories you also want the masters to pay attention to what's going on american history is not history without native history now obviously lily gladstone participated in this film and is very proud of it so she's going to have a different perspective and i'm not saying one is more

valuable than the other um but you know it is merns grisezi is is making the version of this story that he can make um and that's not to say that other version of this story that he can make. And that's not to say that other versions of the story are not also valid and should be made. But I think, I don't know whether Martin Scorsese making the pure Molly, like 100% just Molly story would make sense. I don't think he would be capable. I don't think he would be able to conceive it. I don't think he would be capable. I don't think he would be able to conceive it. I don't think. But it's like he became aware of Lily Gladstone because he saw Kelly Reichardt's Certain Women.

That's a completely different kind of a movie. Lily Gladstone's character has a completely different kind of persona and idea in that movie. But he's participating in that and using that and talking about that movie in the press. He's doing the best he knows how to. He is the great citizen of international cinema. So i don't i don't think he is like necessarily to blame and i don't think that's what christopher code is saying obviously either it just i mean it's a larger question of like is

this does this movie have empathy for these characters and is do these people deserve empathy and you know it's valid it's really valid and it's part of the thorny aspect of it. It's a major Judeo-Christian idea that Martin Scorsese can't shake. It's like just because you've sinned doesn't mean you can't be forgiven. Right. That is something

that he keeps coming back to. I thought it was so interesting in your husband Zach's profile of Scorsese that he was like, I have been more faithful lately. I have been more in touch with God basically

than I had been because he spent 30 years, 50 years, making movies about the lapse in his faith. And the idea that as he approaches the end, he thinks about the world that way is so fascinating. The ending of the movie is something I've never seen before. I just... I want to work through it. So, you know, you mentioned that critical scene between Molly and Ernest at the end

after the trial has transpired and he has admitted on the witness stand about the entire conspiracy. And there's effectively a cutaway to a radio program. And we see the live performance of the radio program with an audience that is more or less the coda. Now, in most movies, especially historical dramas like this,

you just get title cards. Yeah. Maybe you get some real-life photos that show you what the people looked like. And they tell you, oh, this is when this person died and this is what they went on to do. And Scorsese reframes it

as this kind of tongue-in-cheek but also incredibly moving explanation and also the final act of the of these people's lives and the f it's the program in the sound guys making the, you know, various sounds and a, and a live orchestra playing kind of hammy music during moments of big reveals. And,

um, Jack, Jack White appearing in a Martin Scorsese. And it explains what happens to everyone so i mean just in terms of like basic storytelling is so creative and thematically like on point and vibrant and then um it tells the story of everyone else and it ends with molly and what happens to molly um who remarries and dies and they announce her obituary and i'm like getting emotional like literally just remembering it and um martin scorsese shows up on the screen um as marty basically yeah and um and reads her obituary

and then has one extra line which is like there was no mention of the murders. It is the best kind of fourth wall meta. I found it very moving and very much an acknowledgement

of what he is trying to do with this movie and his acknowledgement of his own role in it and how it is responding to his other films and his career. And it's amazing. It's pretty astonishing. Think about that idea of making manifest the FBI's decision to eventize with modern media their role in the solving of this case. While the FBI, of course, over the course of the next 50, 100 years, also systematically undermines movements, undermines, you know, people who are less privileged. You know, like the, the like snake eating its tail aspect of the story. Martin Scorsese locating the fact

that he's a person who puts violence on screen that is misinterpreted. You know, it's just a, it's just an amazing way to conclude a movie. I had never seen anything quite like this.

I felt the same way as you did with the final moment when he steps on screen. It also just feels like a dang new moment. Just feels like him saying like, I'm done. You know, like this. I felt the same way as you did with the final moment when he steps on screen. It also just feels like a denouement. It just feels like him saying like, I'm done. You know, like this was me trying to do my best to tell the story of myself and America in the last 50 years. I'm not saying it's going to be his last movie. He said it's not going to be his last movie. It certainly could be. And then the final image is not of him. It's of the Osage Nation shot overhead performing a ritual dance that includes a slow fade.

That is like the kind of slow fade that you would see in a Hollywood epic. And it's a very self-conscious but unshowy acknowledgement of everything that came before him, everything that came before us. Really just amazing stuff. I mean, it's very dumb to be like, you know who's good is Martin Scorsese. No, it's... The level of intention and execution that he brings to a movie like this, it's one of the reasons why I get so hokey

about how much his movies mean to me because he really makes me think. He really makes me consider what my life is, what this is all about. And I feel like we talk about this every time we talk about him, but it is amazing and feels like a gift

to be going through this last phase. I'm sorry to be morbid, but he talks a lot about it. Phase five of the Martin Scorsese era. Yeah, sure. But this late period re-examination of his own career and of movies

and of his life and everything that is so palpable in Wolf of Wall Street but especially Irishman and this film which I think are just absolutely like gut punch like as you said this is the end of maybe not like the actual end but I'm nearing the end and I'm I am looking at everything and trying to understand and trying to leave you know one last

great piece of work he does a few things in the movie that there are a lot of Martin Scorsese hallmarks that we've kind of talked through

certainly like the gangster tropes and the conflicted man and all you know we can highlight even more of those things but visually and i kind

of turned you at like at the beginning of the movie yeah it's like he's never done this before but it's a movie of really grand vistas it's movie has been described as a western it's not quite a western really that's not it's not if if hearing it's a western makes you less excited like me too don't worry it's not really that but it's it isn't aware of the all the Westerns that came before it. Yeah. And it has the kind of magnitude that a Ford or Hawks or George Stevens movie would have. You know, like I did think of Giant a few times while watching the movie, which is a movie about oil and families and betrayal.

You know, like that is a that's a big George. He thought Scorsese talks about Shane a lot. I don't hear him talk about giant a lot. I don't hear him talk about John a lot. I haven't heard him talk about it during this, this run, but that one stuck out in my mind, but Bedeker stuck out in my mind. And it is him doing an American version in some ways of what he did in

Kundun and silence and last temptation of Christ. These kind of like desolate landscapes, the kind of like haunting nature of spirituality. It's a real fusion movie. It's him kind of bringing together everything. I couldn't think of another movie that he had made that had all the archetypes of his films into it and taking place in an entirely new setting. So that in and of itself and in, you know, shot in two, three, five and like, it's just, it's sick. A friend of ours saw the movie and wrote me and was like, when are you guys going to do the Rodrigo Prieto episode

between Barbie and this? What a year for... What a year. I believe he's also shot a few Taylor Swift videos and may or may not be the DP on the forthcoming Taylor Swift directed feature film. So keep that in your mind. All right.

Yeah. Maybe we'll have Rodrigo on the show during Oscar season because he's having an amazing year. He's an amazing cinematographer. The other thing is, you know,

we didn't mention that one scene when Hale burns his ranch while Molly is going through this convulsive, almost hallucinogenic

period. Right. And Ernest is with her and he is having a kind of... Well, he gives himself some of the poison, which I missed

the first time around. Or if I... I don't know if I missed it, but there was just so much information coming at me at once that that is in starker relief the second time around.

And when he does it, it's almost as if the dumb man has become sentient, you know? Yeah. Like, he's realizing what he has actually done that his like his willful ignorance about what he's doing to his wife

and what he's letting hail do to him and his family is so powerful and then Scorsese creates this like really gothic abstract sequence that is very uncommon that you only really see in kind of like Last Temptation of Christ or Silence like he doesn't really bring those out in movies like goodfellas and that's another kind of final stripe of artistic i guess artistic reach that make is the kind of choice that makes a movie like this three and a half hours like if you were a cold-blooded studio executive you could be like you don't need that or you don't need this or you don't need this long silence where earnest is deciding whether or not to answer a question or letting the camera linger on Molly while she observes Ernest.

Like there was a way to- But that's the whole movie. I agree. But like you do need it. I completely agree. I mean, the other thing too is you don't need $250 million Jack Fisk production design. You don't like, it is like Heaven's Gate or, you know. Yes, you do.

I agree. I agree. Yes, you do. I agree. Every studio executive listening, you need to stop spending your $250 million on garbage VFX

and you need to spend it on Jack Fisk just building shit. You know? And if he doesn't know how to build it, he's going to read some old textbooks. Do you think we could get him to build a billiard room

for The Ringer, do you think? That's, sure. Pretty sick billiard room barbershop in this film. Yeah, and then he'll do the research. There was a great New York Times Magazine piece about him where David Grand says he visits the set and he noticed the scorekeeping mechanism that they use to keep billiard.

And he's like, I'd always wondered about that. And Jack did the research and found out this is how they would have kept score. Jack Fiske doesn't really work that much anymore. Who's production designed all of Terrence Malick's movies. He's married to Sissy Spacek, who's one of the great like artists of the last 50 years of movies.

This is his first time working with Scorsese. The world that they build is the other thing that is so breathtaking and astonishing and it starts with that that shot that you're talking about that tracking shot of him

walking through the train it's you know a working locomotive that comes back to you know Molly when she takes her trip to Washington and we say the farewell

from that scene that's like another incredibly powerful scene metaphorical scene and as I said like there's a really different kind of cutting style in this movie.

It's not that, like, the pace of a bullet, you know, smash cut zooms that there is like a little bit of that. There's one really interesting one where, and this is something that jumped out to me the second time seeing it, Hale is thinking about selling his cattle ranch and a man comes and it looks like it probably is a crane, but it looks like a drone camera almost flying over the cattle and into Hale's perspective. And we later learned that the man that he may be selling the ranch to is actually an FBI agent, which is one of those things that I didn't really catch the first time. But these FBI agents have all kind of implanted themselves in the community and then that's how they do their investigating, which is talked about

in much more detail in the book, but is more subtly rendered in the movie a sequence like that is shot differently than it than it would have been 30 years ago i think for martin scorsese yeah you just reminded me that um another thing that i think works so well about the decision to not focus on the fbi is that a major thrust of both the film and the book is that the FBI only solved like four, three or four of what are suspected to be. I think there's 25 confirmed murders. Yeah. There may have been like 150. Yeah. And the book, I think very beautifully and movingly like goes, speaks to current members of the tribe and and surviving family members and explores kind of just like what wasn't documented but you know the elision of the fbi in this movie is also

like a just they didn't do that much they did something but they didn't they didn't do that much and instead they created the fbi which uh we you know we know what those guys are up to complicated stuff yeah uh okay here's things that he always does that he did in this movie that I was glad. I like when directors like hit their, they hit their hallmarks. They're like, this is, you know, Paul Schrader is a guy. He's writing in a notebook. He's got a cocktail. He's trying to figure out what it all means. You know, got to see that in that movie, in this movie, sweeping long historical mega drama. No one makes these movies anymore. These are really hard films to pull off. You love some of them. The English Patient, one of your favorites. We didn't need to do that in this

podcast. Why? It's me and it's Alexander Payne, okay? He loves them too. He loves them. He wants them back. That's for a different podcast. Well, Scorsese can still do them. I liked what Manola wrote, Manola Dargis from The Times, in her review. She wrote that, Osage history emerges elliptically throughout the movie in different narrative forms, including in Hale's descriptions of the Osage via an illustrated book

during a tribal meeting and on a radio program, each a reminder that history belongs to those who tell it. It's a core idea of the movie. Yeah. And rather than him trying to force his way into the perspective of the Osage Nation,

he's letting us see how the white people told the story of the Osage Nation, which is effectively what he is doing. It's like a self-abnegating thing that is really interesting. Another, like, completely agonized love affair. Mm-hmm. Martin Scorsese's relationship to love is complicated. Yeah. His relationship to TikTok seems to be thriving. And his daughter.

Yes. Well, that's very touching. Very beautiful. Yeah. That is like a late in life. Yeah. Should those TikToks be available to be logged on Letterboxd? You know, Sophia Coppola and I can't comment on that.

She's going to be on in like a week. I know. That's fine. But like this is what I think people like don't understand. It's the beauty that she just didn't know you know it's like when

Gwyneth Paltrow was like I don't know what Marvel movie I was in at some like true power she's too busy shopping for teacups

is just no that was a gift from her friends which I would like to reiterate to you perused online you know no I don't think so

okay the true power is like not even having to know about it. Just being like, whatever. I'm not there yet, but maybe one day. Unfortunately, you know everything about Letterboxd. I know, thanks to you. And you know that it is a place for love.

This movie has a conflicted view of desperate criminals. That's a very common theme in these Parnassus-Ceci movies. Certainly, these are some of the most evil that he's ever portrayed. I think he is trying to render earnest love sincerely. And it is a broken love, but I think he is trying to.

I think that you're right, but I think that... He has no time for any of the other criminals. All the other criminals are venal demons. I think that he's trying to render the emotion seriously

and kind of question what love what love is. That's that you know that's kind of what I think. The other thing that is

in this movie that is in a lot of great Martin Scorsese movies is Robert De Niro being great at being Robert De Niro. Yeah. And it's been an interesting 21st century with Robert De Niro being great at being Robert De Niro. Yeah. And it's been an interesting 21st century with Robert De Niro.

You know, some highs, a lot of lows, a lot of paychecks. Of course, he's wonderful in The Irishman. In The Irishman, he has kind of an odd role. It's a very interior role, but he is the engine of the story. We follow him as he does things. I thought that he was incredible in this movie. I was like, you seem a little bit more skeptical. No, of course I think that he's great in it.

I don't think that he is asked to do quite as much as both Leo and Lily are, because there is less exploration of the character and there are fewer dimensions. And even the fact that, you know, Hale, like the fact that like two hours, two and a half hours into the movie where things are very, very grim and it is very obvious that this man is just

leading like a brutal conspiracy to murder people he opens like a dance studio the william hale like a ballet studio and like is posing outside with all the ballerinas and that to me is just played for laughs like that is one of like this is so evil that it's just, it's, like, funny. There's nothing to, there's no depth to it. Yeah, the movie needs a Satan. He is Satan. Yeah, exactly. So, it's just, and, you know, towards the, in that coda, it makes reference to the fact that, like, for the rest of his life, Hale was like, I'm, you know, a friend to these people and I love them the most.

And there's just some, this sort of delusional quality to it. But so he's just not having to play as much texture. There was one scene that really jumped out to me here where it's very, played very quiet. But at a certain point, Ernest and Molly reveal that Molly is pregnant with their third child. They're having dinner. Right. With uncle, with King Hale. And his reaction is extremely unnerved,

but very still. And also threatening. Yes. Yeah, that is, you're right. That is a very good point. And then he later has a conversation with Ernest, where he's like, you were with her while she's in this sickly state.

You made love to her. And it is like some of the most sinister common acting I've ever seen that the scene

the shot that opens that scene which is like up from a angle and it's like he and Leah are just reenacting

some sort of painting and they're just so still in this moment of just like it's a caravaggio yeah

it's terrible unbelievable I really I was really knocked out by him I mean I've seen almost every movies ever made I'm fascinated by him there just is something with him and

Scorsese where he knows he has to rise to the occasion you know he wears a matching frown with Ernest that the for the bulk of the movie he's doing things with his face the tone of his voice. He has,

he has a power. I think there is something amazing in the decision to, which is informed by the script, but still to play evil so benignly. Yeah. And because, I mean, we've seen De Niro go like a lot of different ways with it, but there is,

he's like a small old man in, you know, the little round glasses and a hat. Yeah, you just remind me a couple of other scenes. One when there is the meeting of the Osage Nation. And he offers to put up $1,000. Yeah. For the, to discover who the murderers are. That is incredibly upsetting. There's another sequence when Minnie is feeling very ill. And he is, I think it is at Molly and Ernest's wedding.

And he is walking towards her. And she's sitting down. And Jason Isbell's character is sitting beside her, Bill Smith. And she's suffering from the wasting sickness. And he is walking towards her like a Taurus. He's just an awful awful satanic figure. Like come to provide comfort, but actually awaiting her impending death.

I don't know, man. I know it's Robert De Niro. Yeah, no, it's Robert De Niro. He's got the goods. You know, I thought it was interesting that, you know, Brendan Fraser and John Lithgow are lawyers in this movie. They show up kind of in the last 30 minutes of the movie.

And they're kind of in a different movie. They're doing an old-timey lawyer thing. There's like this thundering, explanatory. The way that it is cut so that Brendan Fraser just erupts is amazing. It's really funny. It's really, really funny. And, you know, I do wonder whether...

Did they film anything before they did the full rewrite? I don't know. I don't think so. Okay, yeah. But, you know, you kind of wonder whether it's...

It feels like the old version of the movie. Sure, but it's still delightful. Yeah, no, I totally agree. Any other performances that jumped out to you? I guess I didn't mention her name, but I thought that Cara Jade Myers,

who plays Anna Brown, really jumps off the screen when you're watching her in the film. Absolutely. And there's a whole movie that could be about Anna and Anna's wildlife. What else? I don't want to get into Marty's legacy

and awards prospects yet. We'll close with that conversation. Is there anything else you want to cite? Any other don't want to get into Marty's legacy and awards prospects yet. We'll close with that conversation. Is there anything else you want to cite? Any other sequences you want to, you want to make? I guess the Masonic Hall spanking. Sure. I thought it was funny, strange. Um, another incredible Jack Fisk construction.

Yes. With the checkerboard and the. Yes. I, what? Getting pushed around like a pawn. Are you up on the Masons? Am I up on the Masons? Yeah, do you...

I'm not asking whether you're a Mason, but... This feels like a trap. Do you have a lot of knowledge about what's going on there? Not really. Is something happening? No, just historically, generally. No, it's a private club of people who are empowered in their communities. Did you watch The Gold?

I did not. The English television show that Chris Ryan loves. Yes. I watched four episodes of it, and then it was just a lot of talking. But I think they're Masons as well. I'm not really sure. I understand that it's the point of the Masons

that I don't know a lot about them. It's a secretive society. Sure. But I'm just saying, I would read a David Grant book about that. I know that the Stonecutters episode of The Simpsons is one of the greatest half-hours in television history. That is deeply inspired by The Masons. I also thought that the sequence that we saw in the trailer of the discovery of Anna's body after she's been killed is also in the kind of it's like the slowed down

Copacabana thing where it's like tracking shots capturing people's faces everyone observing Molly looking at Molly is pretty remarkable. There's like 10 or 12 sequences

in the movie where you're like wow. That being said it's really long. It's really long. And you'll feel it when you're watching it. It is not

I wouldn't say it's brisk because the movie purposefully kind of shifts gears to a much more, to a solemn, somber, and upsetting, frustrating kind of watch where you're like, how could this happen? How can they let this, you know, at a certain point when, even when Jesse Plemons' character arrives

and he just knocks on Ernest's door. And Ernest's like, well, can't talk to you right now. And he leaves. Or when he questions Hale for the first time while he's getting shaved. And he's just like, here's what I think happened.

And then he just walks away. And the Bureau of Investigation is deliberate. And it's kind of maddening because you're just like, you can't just arrest these buffoons. You can't just arrest Black buffoons you can't just arrest blackie thompson one of the dumbest characters in the movie but you know that's that's an important part of the story exactly and that and that's part of the film as well of just of illustrating

how obvious all of this horror was but also how no one was held responsible, which, you know, is also the story of America. But yeah, it recreates that experience where, you know, those feelings of just like, what the, like, how could you not do this? Really palpably. I was thinking while we watched it for the second time about how people will actually watch this who are not us, who don't go at 2.30 on a Thursday.

And I have to say, if you're listening this far and you haven't seen the movie yet, I mean, that big pick psycho yeah that's your choice i also hope you will see it but i'm imagining the people who are listening to this this weekend went to see the movie in theaters but then also a lot of people will wait until it's available on Apple TV Plus, and then they will probably watch it in installments. Probably. And I was really upset about that thought in the theater. I don't think people should do that.

I don't think people should do that either. I think they should be allowed to be. As you said, the first time you saw it, you were overwhelmed, and that actually is part of the point. It is purposeful. It is a lot of information. It's a lot of characters, and it's a lot of pieces to fit together,

and splitting them apart it's not episodic yeah it builds correct and it is meant to completely pulverize you over three and a half hours and i understand how that is maybe not listen i don't really like firing up three and a half hours worth of stuff at home on a saturday night you know i'm tired i get it that's why I hope everyone listening went to see this in the movie theaters. I mean...

But people won't. But do you think that breaking it up and watching it at home will affect how people receive it? I'm sorry to do this. I know that this is

the worst type of film podcasting. It's a huge part of the conversation about the film right now. I know, but it sucks. You know, for me, I don't care.

I will happily watch five-hour movies. It's a complete non-factor for me, it being this long. And I watched Silence yesterday and immediately went to sit down with you to watch Kills of the Flower Moon, and I was thrilled. That was six hours of Martin Scorsese movie, and it was meaningful. You're rare in that. I, on the other hand, like, cleared out my whole Thursday so that I was fresh for Kills of the Flower Moon. And I think that's very understandable and all people are going to be like

three and a half hours is really long. It is really long. Would you rather have nothing? Like what's the alternative here? No Martin Scorsese movie? Like that's the argument is what?

That you don't have time for it? Don't watch it. What do you want me to tell you? It's a complete non-argument. Why is this movie so long? It's like so do you not want a Martin Scorsese movie?

You can just skip it. There's no take here. Like, you're not a studio executive. You're willing to watch The Amazing Race 20 episodes every season. Yeah.

But you're not going to watch a movie about the history of America made by the greatest living filmmaker. Like, get fucked. What are we talking about? Obviously, I agree with you.

What I'm trying to do is emotionally steal ourselves for all the people who do like check it out and chuck but we're gonna have to engage with them this is what we've set ourself up for is a bunch of people being like i don't know i watched it at home it's a little listeners of this show yeah but we don't get to live in this bubble all the time you know so what are you gonna do when bill tells me it's too long i'm gonna be like i don't care i said i don't care

about the when he said that about the irishman i'm like so go watch a bad movie that is 82 minutes like i don't what's the point of that argument all right bobby but it's time what what do you think and was it too long you're really gonna make my first words on this episode be was it too long we said it was really long at the beginning what did you think what did i think? I thought it was an absolute stone cold masterpiece, especially on second view. I thought it was an unbelievable culmination of production design, costume design, performances, reserved performances from people who I'm not used to being reserved.

I think to Amanda's point about the first time seeing it and being overwhelmed by it, I was waiting for the moment where it became Martin Scorsese rock and roll. Like, not that I was expecting Rolling Stone's needle drops, because I think that would have been completely off tone and inappropriate. But I was waiting for the investigation to kick off. I was waiting for the FBI to show up. I was waiting for things to take me by surprise, the camera to whirl around and reveal somebody doing something unbelievable or expressive or over the top. And that just never came. And then when I saw it again, I was like,

oh, that's the point. The steady, the slow, the drumbeat, the mundanity of evil. And I thought, I mean, you guys mentioned the Robbie Robertson score, but the fact that it was just present almost the entire time, like this is a three and a half hour movie, much has been discussed about that. And there's pretty much like some drum or some bass or some guitar going for almost all of it. it really just like ratchets your attention because it's so uncomfortable to have that level of no pun intended silence on the screen in a theater full of people and one of those scenes

was the lizzie death which is one of the most affecting and emotional and beautiful scenes that i've seen in this century and i just thought it was really really really provoking about the concept of crime and evil and murder almost like how his other three films about organized crime this was like about disorganized crime about how you don't even have to bother because if the victim is

marginalized enough in society it doesn't really matter what you do to cover up your tracks because nobody's even going to come bother looking like the can you find the wolves in this picture? Yeah, you can. It's really actually very easy to find the wolves in this picture. That's like a children's book, basically. So I loved it.

I thought it was brilliant. I'm really excited to watch it a third time. Maybe that makes me a sicko, but I was just completely knocked on my ass by it. Yeah. I'm going to take Eileen. We're going to see it a third time for sure. I'll probably see this movie 10 times before I die.

Sure. But like, are you guys doing that this weekend? I think in two weeks. Oh, I think in two weeks. great. Okay.

Can I mention one other thing that I really appreciated about it? And it was made clear, most clear to me this time through the scene where she's going to Washington and they're walking to the train and all of the people are kind of looking at her and she's narrating

yes and she's speaking over top of it and it's it's meant to be sort of like the first time that you truly see

like from her perspective what it feels like to have all of these white people staring at her and it's an intrusion of earnest yes from the beginning of the film.

To defend her people as she's walking out of town and he was walking into town. And I just thought that that scene was so expertly crafted with the way that the smoke comes in and then it clears and then there's the different perspectives and the camera moves just ever so slightly left and ever so slightly right just to draw your eye to the different people who are staring through her and almost like waiting for her to draw your eye to the different people who are staring through her and almost like waiting for her to be weak enough to pounce on and she pushes through that and she goes to washington and she gets the fbi to come and investigate what's going on but that was just such a i mean it's not copacabana because it's not played for the the

good life like it's not afraid for the things that you're supposed to enjoy about it's not a thrill but it is so so like slow and kinetic at the same time yeah no really expert bobby i'm so glad you pointed it out because there is just also when it goes to her voiceover and you think of all of the famous you know voiceovers in Scorsese movies. And they're male. They're dudes just talking about their stuff. And it is jolting when it comes in in her voice and that Cameron Englund. You're like, oh, we're doing this,

but we're doing her and it's different. Goodfellas does this. There's a moment when Karen takes over the narration. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's the same trick and it's a great trick. It's a really smart move. And in particular, one of the things I liked about that scene,

you're so right to point it out, Bobby, is what she's saying in the narration when she's like, there is evil around my heart. And it's almost like we're empathizing with her. Like, of course, there's a feeling of anger and rage about what's happening,

but her feeling like conflicted by wanting to act on that, despite the fact that her sisters are being murdered shows that there is like a you know it's not just like a

dignity but there is like a like a gracefulness with the way that she thinks about the world that these other fucking animals don't

like they like her husband and her husband's family are like they don't think they have no conscience they don't think about

this like that this is not it this is not the end of my world this is not this wealth this everything that we have these cars these this jewelry like there are things beyond this we're not and and i thought that is kind of like reflected so nicely in the osage tribal council meeting where they say hey we've we've been forced out of our home twice we said we would never do this again we're gonna stay and we're gonna fight but we've had our ability to fight completely taken away from us by this modern society by western settlers by colonialism by capitalism by figures like ultimately de niro's character william hale so i that that scene in particular

to me was really the one that just like when i close my eyes like that's what i see from this movie it's just the different sets of eyes staring and then again after the it flips the script a little bit after earnest does testify or i guess before he testifies but when he was going to and then he comes into this like dark smoke-filled room and fraser's character is staring at him saying are you really going to do this are you really going to testify they tortured you they got all this out of you and it's every person of power in the town just sitting in the same room staring at him being like are you going to be the one to flip on us are you going to be the one to screw us over are

you going to stand with us so just the different like feeling like the prey from the perspective of the camera was really just i thought so reflective of who he wanted you to think is the villain who he wants you to think is the the devil as you put it a couple times in this pod sean can i say the names jacqueline west and julie o'keefe who did the the costumes with the help of a lot of Osage artists. I mean, they're just spectacular. Looks amazing. The only way in which you can take anything good from Ernest in this movie is that I might need a couple of those jackets.

Like at one point I was like, that's an interesting like button collar, like under the over shirt. Yeah, the green. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's it. I almost turned to you at that point. I was like, what is he wearing? But I was like, but that's interesting. So like a man's shawl?

What is that? But all of the like Osage costumes as well and the traditional, like the wedding is so beautiful. And the naming ceremony is also for the, you know, spectacular. Where does this fit in for Scorsese? Because we're now

I think there's a strong case to be made that this is the most accomplished final run for a filmmaker. I think Kurosawa is definitely in that conversation.

His final four films are amazing and are in conversation I think with these final Scorsese movies. Scorsese was actually in one of Kurtis Elba's final films.

But I couldn't think of many filmmakers who were working into their 70s and 80s who were able to metastasize and then evolve their mission in the way that Wolf of Wall Street, the fun, the brazenness, the energy that Wolf of Wall Street, the fun, the, the brazenness,

the, the energy of Wolf of Wall Street, the kind of solemnity, the probing nature, the sort of like punishing aspect of silence, the really mournful, almost like immortal quality of the Irishman. And then this just like absolute portrait of devastation,

you know, like those are kind of really like the big themes for his films and he's found a way to create them and these are all long movies they're incredibly immersive world building movies that are not iterative in any way um it's a it's a it's it's quite a thing i mean it's not it's hard to overstate yeah his importance his greatness like all is rare when someone, you know, I watched the Timothee Chalamet interview that he did with Scorsese. Did you happen to see that? I have seen clips. Okay. So in the conversation early on, I mean, Chalamet

has no idea what to say. He's like so nervous and in awe and it's very sweet. He's just like giddy, you know, he's very like aw shucks-y. And, but at the beginning, he's like, I'm sitting here with the greatest living filmmaker and Scorsese like doesn't blink. He doesn't like demure. He doesn't say like,

oh, go on. He just like accepts it. You know what I mean? Like he is just, this is who I am. It's all good. And not in an arrogant way.

Just in like a, I get told this every day and it's all good kind of a way. So, you know, of course I will always love Goodfellas more than I will love, you know, Silence or Killers of the Flower Moon. Yeah.

Is Killers of the Flower Moon a top 10 Scorsese movie? Probably not for me, but maybe. And these things always evolve. For you or in general? What's the difference? Okay. Well. Am I not the divining rod for film taste in the entire universe? Okay. Well. Am I not the divining rod for film taste in the entire universe?

Okay. I think it could be for me. Interesting. Yeah. You know, we'll see. Well, you know, given all my misgivings about our Hall of Fame, maybe our next act is to do individuated top 10 lists for Martin Scorsese movies. Then we'll really drive.

That'll drive interest. People love those lists, you know? Do they? They do. The other day you described this podcast as like having at some point rededicated itself to making lists and I died a little inside.

Even if it's factually accurate, I was just like, oh God. I can't tell a lie. I don't know what to say. What was a series of lists of films that people should watch to better understand themselves in the universe.

That's what I get from cinema. Okay. Speaking of understanding oneself, the Academy Awards. Oh, boy. Oh, boy. This is not a criticism of the film at all. In fact, it's actually probably a praise of the film. But I don't think this film has a chance to win very many Academy Awards.

I would agree with you. I think it is much too somber and what about being nominated i think it'll be nominated for quite a few okay so you think it'll be an irishman situation i do i think it will probably be very similar um i think leo and lily gladstone will both be nominated in actor and actress respectively i certainly hope so um i certainly think martin scorsese will be nominated because there is this understanding that he is near the end. He is hustling. He has done everything.

And he has done a magnificent job of being present during the SAG after strike to promote this movie. I think you can count on production design. You probably can count on costume. You probably can count on adapted screenplay. What about score? You probably, I think it could,

it could win score. Yeah. I think Oppenheimer presents a big challenge there. But I think it could win, especially given Robertson's passing. I think it could win editing. I think, you know,

Thelma Schoonmaker's not going to cut very many more movies. It has various... It's an interesting year because up until this point, Oppenheimer was going to dominate below the line. Right. And this movie throws a bit of a wrench into that. Because there are a lot of great craftspeople with long histories who are really well-liked in the Academy who worked on this movie. I just don't think it really has any chance to win Best Picture. I don't either, which is a shame.

It's like a very, very sad film. And long. A long, sad movie. And not incentivized in IMAX with, you know, Barbie stuff. Yeah, about complicit white devastation. Yeah. And not self-righteous. No.

No, I mean, I'm, you know, Andy Greenwald had this interesting jag on the watch this week about Lessons in Chemistry, a show I have not watched. Oh, I was just getting to that. I've read the book and I've seen the- Oh, interesting. Yeah, which I can't say I liked very much. Well, one point that he made- I finished it, but... In reviewing the show, and I can't speak for the book,

but he was saying that in the show, it was yet another example of well-intentioned people putting modern politics in period pieces to seem righteous. Like a black character who gets to achieve something great in 1961 in a professional environment in a way that it would be unlikely that that would be made possible because of the way that the culture and society is organized at the time.

Unfortunately, that's like the whole premise of the book. I mean, not the black character in specific. So I understand. That's like, you know, putting the something on the... Yes. I thought the way that Andy described it was eloquent. And usually when filmmakers or creative people are trying to do that, they're doing it for representational reasons.

They're doing it to kind of push a dialogue forward about what a world could be, the flaws of our societies. I understand why that happens all the time. This movie does not do that. This movie is like, this was an absolute act of brutal devastation that was enacted by these people and i'm going to show you who the people are who did it and there's no efforts to be like well but actually earnest was nice to dogs you know what i mean like it's not it's not that at all and and

conversely it's not valorizing the osage nation in in unnecessary ways it is only showing you as much of their perspective as you can get from this filmmaker and that's it. In fact, the helplessness with which they have in the first half of the movie

to solve this issue is actually the examination of the social problem. So it's just a very different, it's just not that like pop morality that you find

in a lot of contemporary storytelling. Every problem that it presents, yeah storytelling every problem that it presents yeah every problem that it presents is just unresolved yeah you know in society in the world in the film like there's no sense of triumph at any moment for any character in the story really even the triumph of molly moving on with her life is delivered as a coda by scorsese about how depressing this whole thing really was. And if you look at the Best Picture winners, like when was the last time

a movie that was this nihilistic won Best Picture? Is it No Country for Old Men? Yeah, probably. That's a great comparison. 15 years ago? Yeah.

So, it just doesn't really, in the modern way that we think of the Best Picture and conceive of it, it just doesn't really stand up to those movies.

In a year in which it was competing against a series of nihilistic masterpieces. But that being said, I do think that there's something interesting about it if it is number two or number three behind Oppenheimer.

Because Oppenheimer, you don't walk out feeling like you're going to sleep on a bed of roses. I mean, that is also, the final moments of that movie are about the hopelessness. Don't roll your eyes. JFK saves the day, though.

Don't you remember? But no, the conversation between Oppenheimer and Einstein. Yeah, sure, right. It's like, we already have. And then, like, zoom out. I'm sorry. You turning heel on Oppenheimer is, like, literally your worst take ever. It's in the conversation for worst take ever.

It's a good bit i like it as a bit um i just it's it's really you're we're having you're bringing this up on a podcast about killers of the flower moon and i'm just like i i i think that oppenheimer has a lot of achievements and the way that it presents history and its ideas about what we have inherited from these historical figures is just like, does not deserve to be in the same sentence as what Killers of the Flower Moon does. Interesting.

I think they're very different, but I think they're related. I really do. I think that they are related, but what I'm saying is that I think that one does them magnificently and the other just has Florence Pugh, you know,

writhing naked while doing, I don't think that that's fair at all, but okay. I feel like Christopher Nolan believes that there were great men in history, many great men in history doing their best. And Martin Scorsese is like, I'm honestly not sure. In retrospect,

I'm not sure there were any great men doing anything at any point. This is the nuance of Oppenheimer that I think is misunderstood. I really do. I really don't think the movie walks out of that. I don't think the makers of that film walk out of there thinking like,

this is a story of how Oppenheimer was awesome. That's not what the movie's about. I don't think so either. No, they don't either, but they do think he was the most important man in history and that

it just got away from him, but he had good intentions. I think, yeah, I think he thought that people were trying, you know? I think we walk out of Oppenheimer I think it's much more

nuanced than that much more nuanced than that I think the point is that he doesn't know what he thinks and that the magnitude of the ideas are too much and that it's a

he got caught in the cosmos of his own mind his brain was too big no it was too small that was the problem it was that no one should be responsible

for making those decisions that's an interesting thematic idea me sticking up for Christopher Nolan at this point is ridiculous it's a good movie

I just yeah this is different but if you put it in the context of the rest of Christopher Nolan's movies where it's like

Dunkirk great men doing great things you know he subscribes to the great man theory absolutely I'm not denying that

no I'm not denying that it No, I'm not denying that. And Scorsese's like, this is all fucking rotten. He's like, none of you men are doing anything good or bad. And I'm not saying I like Christopher Nolan's writing more than Martin Scorsese's films.

That's not the point that I'm trying to make. To be clear, you're saying that Christopher Nolan has surpassed Martin Scorsese. That's the takeaway. The thing is that they're interesting movies

because they have similarly dour, doom-like endings. Yes. And they're probably the top two contenders for Best Picture. And Bob is right. Movies like this don't usually win. But you're making the point that one of them is pop or poppier. I don't know if it actually...

It's not to me, but it is to the world. It's like... I mean, it's an Albert Einstein, like, meme, literally. You know, it's just like, oh, Albie, like, what did he say? What's the big secret? You're not wrong. So, like, I understand that that has broader appeal. And this is just like, well, well, fuck.

Yeah, that should have been the final. That should have been Scorsese's final line in the film. No, he has the perfect ending it's so yeah yeah uh is this gonna be your thing you're just gonna rage against oppenheimer for six months we got a long way to go we have we need bits like we need content you know what i'm saying and i just like i told you the minute like from minute one when you were like this is this is my favorite Christopher Nolan film that he's ever made. I was just like, you're such a clown. I cannot respond to you being like, Alden Ehrenreich's performance is like the pinnacle of truth.

That never happens. I have literally no idea what you're talking about. I'm not clowning the movie. I am clowning you. Just to mischaracterize my opinions of a great film is just wrong. Remember when you were like, Owen Gleiberman

wrote a wonderful piece about how the third hour of Oppenheimer is the most important part of Oppenheimer. You really behaved yourself for two hours here and now you're just slandering me with opinions I've never... these are recorded these podcasts

people can go back and listen to what I said and I never said it was a beautiful thing that Martin Scorsese gave us 90 minutes of everybody

just cooperating no barbs no kneecaps I uttered the word Oppenheimer and Amanda just her eyes melted it's okay

it's gonna be okay you're gonna make it you're gonna get to the end of this Oscar season why are you turning this around and suddenly patronizing me? Because you lost your nerve. I didn't lose my nerve.

You did. I found like my spark, you know? I was like, oh, here we go. Now I can finally unleash some taste. You got to pace yourself.

You don't think that I can keep this up? Yeah, I'm not worried about that at all. Okay. All right. This is why I get up in the morning. It's to find ways to needle you, you know?

I know. And you walked right into it. I did. Well, I mean, whatever. Like, if they both lose, and who's going to win in their stead? What happens when, like, the holdovers wins? Could happen. You never know.

What's running in third right now? Why am I drawing a blank? Because it's not Barbie. American Fiction? That would be a big... That would be surprising. I haven't seen it yet, but it won at Toronto.

It did. Poor Things is running... Poor Things. Poor Things and American Fiction are tied. Poor Things is actually running at number two and Killers is number three, I think. Are they going to release Poor Things? That's a really good question. I'm just asking. There's been some discussion American Fiction or Tide. Poor Things is actually running at number two and Killers is number three, I think. Are they going to release Poor Things?

That's a really good question. I'm just asking. There's been some discussion of if SAG doesn't get resolved, I would say before Thanksgiving. Yeah. Then things could get a little bit messy

in that specific respect. There was talk of pushing Deadpool 3, which is not supposed to come out until May. Right. And they've already completed like two-thirds of the

photography for that movie. So, I don't know. Anything's on the table watch this yeah I'm just curious more for Nolan oh my god let Nolan I know but at the

but that means no Emma Stone which is a real that's a tough one for you huge for Lily Gladstone yeah that would be really nice I think she could still win

okay I do think that the the acclaim for her out of this is even louder than I expected, which is a good thing. It's a very different kind of a performance. I was trying to think of what is the scene that you would see from her during the Academy Awards from this film when they show the best actress reel.

Right, because there's no one screaming at the top of their lungs, which is your favorite part of every single Academy Awards ceremony. Again, what is your problem? Seriously, what is your problem? I'm like, ah! And Sean's like, this is acting and television all at once. We got to wrap this one up, guys. Amanda needs a muffin or something.

She's completely off the rails. It's like when I have to keep it all in for like two hours. God forbid you made a sincere effort to talk about one film without going completely off the rails. But I thought I was being responsible. How did you attend class as a student? You were a good student. How'd you make it? Honestly, what's happening is that I held it together for 18 years and we're still paying it off.

That's literally what it is. I held it together for 18 years and we're still paying it off that's literally what it is I just I did my homework I listened I sat in the front row I raised my hand and now I just I'm seizing the opportunity sometimes when I'm having a quiet moment at home I just think of Zach I just think of what Zach's life is you know just love that guy. I hope he's doing well. I'm sure he's managing all of this, all this fun, all this unexpected behavior. See, he's doing fine

because I have this outlet, you know? Okay, well, I'm happy to provide it. Hey, Kills of the Flower Moon, absolutely wonderful.

I agree with your declaration that it is a masterpiece. Can there be a minor masterpiece? Yes, but I don't think this is a minor masterpiece. Interesting. Okay. I was trying your declaration that it is a masterpiece. Can there be a minor masterpiece? Yes, but I don't think this is a minor masterpiece. Interesting. Okay. I was trying to figure that out. I think some of what defines a minor masterpiece is scope and intention.

And this is epic. This is quite literally an epic. So I don't think it's minor. Okay. Next week, we have an exciting treat on the podcast we're doing oh yeah we're doing a we've actually already done a lawyer movie draft that was quite rollicking should we say who it's with or should we wait what do you think bobby i think um some nifty detectives on the internet have already exposed it so you might as well say

if people are listening this late. Yeah. Well, we're doing it with Griffin Newman and David Sims of the Blank Check podcast. And it was very fun and it was very long. And one of the more tense drafts we've had. Griffin in particular brought a lot of anxiety. He seemed nervous. Yeah.

Yeah, but David was the one that was throwing wrenches in your guys' whole triumvirate of not stepping on each other's movies, though. Yeah, that's true. And I thought we were fine. Was it tense? Between me and you? And Chris?

I guess, I mean, there are always moments where people make decisions. I've never had a moment of tension with Chris. Never in my life. Every day with you, I'm on a fucking tightrope. Not even when the Jets beat the Eagles? No, I was exultant. No, that was really weird. I went into the ADU in the fourth quarter

because I brought Knox in and Knox wanted to watch ball with the boys. Every morning now at 7.30 in the morning, he runs into the living room and yells, ball! And we have to be like, no, I'm sorry, ball isn't on until tonight. One of us.

One of us. I'm once again imploring the Philadelphia Phillies to release a Philly Fanatics costume for babies. Anyway, when I walked into the ADU, Zach was sitting in between Sean and Chris. And there were some barbecue chips and not a lot of noise being made otherwise. It was very quiet. And it was just like the crunching. And then Knox was like, I want to sit here. And everyone was like, Knox, are you really sure

that you know what you're inserting yourself into? He broke the tension well for us because it was a very tight game. But then with three minutes left, he was dropped off in the other room and he was not allowed to be witnessed to the end of the very tense. So you were tense with Chris.

You can't. Not really. You can't. Not really. You can. No, because Zach is more tense and Zach was more intense during the game. Yeah. I can be tense with Zach. Zach and I have a trust.

We can accept that we can be tense with each other. Sierra and I, it's just not possible. Well, why don't we have a trust? That's kind of the opposite of what I'm going for here. You know, I'm really. In my real life, I might trust you more than anybody but in this circumstance

not the case unfortunately especially with the Nolan slander Bob thanks for your work on this episode that's Bobby Wagner the producer of The Big Picture we will be back with a draft soon and then after that I don't even really know

what are we doing? what's after that? we're making up a new game oh a new game I told you that I was going to think about that and I haven't yet because I was focused on, a new game. I told you that I was going to think about that and I haven't yet because I was focused

on Killers of the Flower Moon. You have five full days to come up with a game. You don't have to come up with it. We'll work on it together. Okay, thank you. Thanks for listening to the pod. Look at that moment

of reconciliation. Love making the pod with you guys. Love Martin Scorsese. Thank you to him for making Killers of the Flower Moon. We'll see you next week.