The Big Picture - Life After the Slap: A Post-Oscars Mailbag

Episode Date: March 29, 2022

It’s been a couple of days since one of the most shocking moments in Oscars history. Sean reflects on the Will Smith–Chris Rock incident, what the future holds for Smith, and how the Academy could respond (1:00). Then, it’s a post-Oscars mailbag extravaganza (10:30). Finally, Sean is joined by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert to discuss their extraordinary new movie, ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’ (55:00). Host: Sean Fennessey Guests: Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert Producer: Bobby Wagner Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Derek Thompson. Does the news feel overwhelming to you these days? There's a pandemic, then there's inflation, and also this crypto thing. It's way too much to keep track of. That's why my podcast, Plain English, breaks down the news twice a week. Short, sweet, and surprising,

it's everything you need to know with key insights you won't forget. Listen to Plain English Free on Spotify. $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit superstore.ca to get started. I'm Sean Fennessey, and this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about life after the slap. It's been 36 hours since a truly shocking moment at the Academy Awards, so we're diving into a mailbag to answer your questions about how we're feeling after a very strange awards show. Later in today's episode, I have a conversation with Daniel Kwan and Daniel

Scheinert, also known as the directing duo Daniels. Their new movie, Everything Everywhere All at Once, is simply one of the best movies I've seen, not just in 2022, but in many years. It is awesome. It stars Michelle Yeoh as Evelyn Wang, a Chinese-American woman who exists across multiple universes. I know that sounds crazy. Stick with me. It also stars Kiwi Kwan, who you may remember from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, or the Goonies, along with Stephanie Sue, James Hong, Jamie Lee Curtis. This is a breathtaking collision of Hong Kong martial arts cinema, absurdist Terry Gilliam sci-fi, The Matrix, Looney Tunes, Vim Vendors. It's a family drama. There's so much going on in this movie. It's a total blast. It's only playing in three

cities in America right now, but it is opening wide on April 8th. The interview is spoiler free. I hope you will stick around for that chat. I promise you we will talk about this movie more in depth when more people have a chance to see it. First, let's talk about the Oscars a little bit though. It's been a couple of days. That, of course, was a totally bizarre scene. The smack has been analyzed, dissected, overwhelmingly discussed. I can't believe how many people were interested in this single moment, if not the entire award show. A couple of things have happened since Sunday night. First of all, the Academy announced that it will convene a meeting of the governors to discuss what to do in reaction to the incident. They have a few options here. I don't really know if any of them are good options. There's been some discussion about the possibility of suspending Will Smith from the Academy, which means he can not participate in Academy events. He can't be eligible for Oscars, among a number of other things. It also, I think, would make him something of a pariah in the industry. And I'll talk about that a little bit more as we get later in the episode.

But seemingly in reaction to news of this convening of a panel, Will Smith did, in fact, apologize. He apologized to Chris Rock for striking him at the Oscars. He apologized to the folks that he worked with on the film King Richard. He apologized to the Academy. He effectively apologized to the world at large for getting violent on stage on the biggest night in Hollywood. And it was a good apology. It seemed to be a deeply managed apology. I think there was a lot of anxiety about what Will Smith had to say on stage when he accepted his Best Actor Oscar, especially the way that he seemed to contort and manipulate Richard Williams's story into one that justified what he had just done at the Oscars I know that I it didn't really sit right with me

either I'm not sure that I was angry about it necessarily but it felt like someone working hard in real time to justify something that most people saw and thought damn that, that is crazy. Why did you do that, dude? So it's a fascinating test case of real-time morals and ethics. How this shakes out, I'm not really sure. One thing we don't know is whether Will Smith and Chris Rock have had a chance to speak yet. I have heard that they have not, but I can't confirm that. What Chris Rock will do is something of great fascination to me, somebody who has always poured his real life into his art. And there's expectation that he'll find a way to communicate about this very soon. Will Smith is probably going to be in damage control mode for a while. I think people also saw Will partying at the Vanity Fair get together after the Oscar,

saw him dancing to his own songs and thought, that's a little tacky. That seems a little bit missing the moment, not totally understanding or reading the room there. But nevertheless, he had one best actor. He wanted to celebrate with his family and friends. So he did so. Where do we go from here? I don't know. Is this like a profoundly embarrassing occasion for the Academy Awards? I don't know how you blame the Academy Awards. What the Academy should have done in the immediate aftermath is also a pretty challenging question. You know, someone asked us in the mailbag, if Will wasn't a nominee, do you think the Oscars would have escorted him out immediately? And if so, should he have been able to stay for the ceremony just

because he was a nominee? And if he wasn't expected to win, what then? All good questions, questions that are impossible to answer, but it does raise the question of who is in charge at the Oscars. I thought Matt Bellany had a great conversation about this with Lucas Shaw on his show, The Town, earlier this week. You know, the producer of the Oscars

is Will Packer this year. He's a movie producer. He's best known for movies like Girl Trip. He's not a live TV producer. He's also not a member of law enforcement. He's also not really in charge of the Oscars. He's in charge of the Oscars telecast, but he's not a representative from the Academy.

So whose call would it have been, for example, to storm the stage and to drag Will Smith off of it on live television and to boot him from the Dolby Theater. That would have taken a significant amount of authority and a lot of certitude that you were in the right in doing that. So I'm not sure that that's really an option in this case. Obviously, it also would have been tremendously embarrassing

and it would have ground the telecast to a complete halt if they had done that. So I don't think that that was the right move necessarily. I don't necessarily know why the producers could not compel Will Smith to go backstage to help him mold his reaction to the night's events. We saw a lot of photos of Will conferring with his publicist and conferring with Denzel Washington and Tyler Perry that did lead to that fascinating moment in which Will quoted something that Denzel said to him while they were sitting together and

talking after the slap. But you'd imagine that you'd want to get a chance to talk to Will to help guide him to a way to communicate about what had just happened and not make people feel even more queasy in the aftermath of everything. I don't really know. On Sunday night, if you listen to this show, you heard me completely bewildered by what had just happened and straining to have an opinion about anything because this is such an unprecedented event. I still think there is something kind of funny about it, even though I think that there is something deeply sad about it as well. It obviously was a manifestation of somebody who was having a really raw moment at the end of a long

cycle of personal exposure, not just in the award cycle, but in writing and releasing a memoir and in having his marriage dissected publicly for years and just being in the pressure cooker of an environment. That said, Will Smith's been the butt of tens of thousands of jokes, as has his family. He's living a very public life out loud. So what he did is just still confounding to me. Anyway, let's pivot out of that because there's just not that much to say at the moment. I'm sure more will happen in the near future, but we shall see. The show itself had 15.3 million viewers. On this show, I predicted 16 million. Not bad. I did go over, but pretty close estimation. I had a feeling there was going to be a bump because of the inclusion of

movies like Dune that a lot of people are invested in. And also because we had hosts this year, we had certainly a lot of pomp and circumstance. We had talk of songs from Encanto being performed. There's a huge audience for that film. I wasn't stunned. 15.3 million was characterized in the press yesterday as a 50% bump from the dismal ratings from 2021. That's not the right way to position this.

15.3 million viewers is still really, really bad for a show like this. That is still in the neighborhood of 60% off or 70% off where it was many years ago. And so the show is not really coming back in the way that someone like I had hoped. And I've been growing a little bit disenchanted with my own bit about trying to save this show

or get people excited about the show because I know that I basically have wasted my life doing so. That was never going to happen. with my own bit about trying to save this show or get people excited about the show. Because I know that I basically have wasted my life doing so. That was never going to happen. The movie industry has completely changed. Streaming has upended things. Broadcast television does not matter as much as it does. The Academy does not matter as much as it does. Movies don't matter as much as it used to. And so the Oscars is now more on par with, I don't know, maybe the Masters, something like that. You know, an important event that people really look forward to that has a core audience. And maybe it's accumulating younger viewers along the way, but not at the same rate that it was. It's not as nationally debated or obsessed over unless something like the Will Smith event happens.

The thing is, is that there's no way to guarantee something like that can happen again. Now, should Will Smith and Chris Rock reunite and introduce the Oscars next year? If the producers can get them to do that, they should, because that's something that people will automatically tune into. Is that a little bit gross to capitalize on it? Maybe, maybe not. I'm not really sure. I think if it can be done in good fun and everybody is on board with it and nobody is being forced into it, that's a way to maybe take advantage of this once in a lifetime generation, whatever moment. But 15.3 million viewers is, while not utterly disastrous, I think confirmation of where we felt a lot of this was going. And now that we are not out of the pandemic, but in a different phase of the pandemic and movie theaters are back open and kind of thriving.

You know, the performance of The Lost City over the weekend, which made over $32 million, is a really good sign. The Lost City is an original movie headlined by two big movie stars, Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum. It is not necessarily really an original movie because it's basically just romancing the stone, but that's neither here nor there. It's an original story. And a lot of women showed up to see it. And a lot of people showed up to see the Batman. A lot of people showed up to see Dog. A lot of people are showing up to see movies in movie theaters, which I think really bodes well.

It bodes well for the industry. It theoretically bodes well for the Oscars, though I would say we're now in a confusing state of understanding who's seen any movie at any given time. Probably bodes well for this show. I love going to the movies and I love talking about movies that I saw in a confusing state of understanding who's seen any movie at any given time. Probably bodes well for this show. I love going to the movies and I love talking about movies that I saw in a movie theater and encouraging people to check them out. We got a great reaction to the Sean and Bobby pod recommending movies from 2022.

So we'll definitely run that back. Maybe every quarter we'll pick out 10 movies that I really liked that you have to track down. Anyway, let's get into the mailbag. Speaking of Bobby, Quacks, what's up? Welcome back. You were not around on Sunday night. No, I was not. Just living my life.

Hopped back online. Got to see the discourse. Got to see a totally normal one unfolding before my very eyes on Twitter. Share your controversial take. You believe that Will should have kept going, right? He should have continued to slap Chris Rock seven, eight more times i'm just gonna say no comment i'm just gonna read these these well thought out questions from the big picture listeners whom i love very much about netflix a lot of people want to know about netflix sean yeah are you surprised well

i tweeted something i guess somewhat provocative and i think that that may have inspired some of these questions so let's let's dig into it uh rob, is the anti-Netflix bias real or are we just reaching? Yeah, the thing I tweeted was that in the past three years, three big Oscar plays have come across. The Irishman, which had 10 nominations. Mank, which had 10 nominations. And The Power of the Dog this year, which had 12 nominations. Those movies are sick.

I love all three of those movies. As you know, bank was my number one movie of 2020. I think the Irishman was like my third favorite movie of 2019. Um, I, that comment was not a dismissal of any of those movies. I also like a lot of other movies.

They've made marriage story Roma. Um, I have appreciated that they have done the thing where they have give a blank check to a celebrated O tour. The power of the dog was the, their version of that this year. That was the movie that they have done the thing where they give a blank check to a celebrated auteur. The Power of the Dog was their version of that this year. That was the movie that they put a lot of their chips on, along with Don't Look Up. And they said, go out and win us Best Picture. We've been trying to get Best Picture for five years, lock it down. It seems like their strategy is, I don't know that it's flawed necessarily. I just think that if it's not a bias,

it's a stigma around Netflix as the original sinner, as the company that introduced this new streaming atmosphere, and also as a company that buys out the time of a lot of talent. And so if you work at another studio or a production company, or if you're an actor that has not had the opportunity to do something because somebody else was working on something for Netflix at the time, I've heard many, many stories throughout the industry of people being on hold for six months because they have a Netflix series coming, and then that date getting pushed back, and then that disallowing from a movie getting made. So the kind of bigness of Netflix and the fact that they were really first to market in so many ways, I do think that people get hung up on that. Now, whether the power of the dog should suffer because of that or Martin Scorsese's The Irishman, that's kind of strange. I mean, there's no way to really know. We're never going to pull the 10,000 members of the Academy to determine if there is a genuine bias. We just watched Apple TV Plus win an Academy Award. So it's not a pure streaming bias. It's

something different than that. I don't know. I mean, someone here also asked, does Netflix just run bad campaigns? I mean, honestly, they obviously run incredible campaigns because they keep getting all these nominations. So the team that works there is amazing at what they do. I mean, they get so much publicity for films the power of the dog would have been an arthouse movie they made that made less than 10 million dollars if it was not on netflix yeah and they know they're doing everything they're sending out like the roma photo books like they're doing all that stuff for sure yeah they're they you know the people that work there are great um i think there is definitely a take

that they might be peaking too early because they're accumulating these huge number of nominations and they're not able to get follow through on the execution. That does dovetail with something that I've been thinking about a lot in the last couple of days though, which is CODA would not have won if the Oscars took place on February 2nd. And that's not a diss of CODA. It's just clarifying around the nature of campaigns and how films grow over time. And if the Oscars got out in front of some of the precursors, or if it forced them to move their dates up earlier, I think it would have really changed this race significantly. Obviously, things really turned when people saw the cast of CODA on

screen at the sag awards i don't mean like all of america i mean voters i think a lot of voters were tuned into the sag they saw the the cast and best ensemble they saw troy kotzer on stage they saw marley and matlin presenting they saw representation for that movie and it either reminded them to watch it or reminded them to check it out again and think about how much they really liked it and there was no going back from that. But that happened like a few weeks ago. You know, we're at the end of March here. We've been doing this for seven months. So, you know, Netflix, I think the power of the dog had been the favorite effectively from

September all the way through the last week of February. And that's when things started to change. I don't, it's not a campaign's issue i will say coda had a flawless campaign their strategy was incredible sending sending the cast of the white house on the tuesday before the oscars that's some real like puppet strings kind of magic you know like that that is a almost like worryingly manipulative move that they pulled off very very well troy kotzer's like thumbs up from the screening room at the white house that's that i don't know i'm good job i guess i don't i don't even know how to feel about this stuff um a will asked if the oscars was first in the award season run how would that have changed results would campaigning have just shifted back or would the lack of momentum you

know have skewed away from movies like Coda or other late surging movies? I mean, if they had done what I was just suggesting, you still would have more than likely gotten the SAG awards on January 18th, but you wouldn't have gotten this longer stretch of time for the campaign to build and build and build in between those two moments. So by compressing the time periods, so let's say you have 14 days between SAG and the Academy Awards, I think it would have been harder for coda to build up that momentum which then would have led to the movie that most people assumed that was going to win and assume was going they were going to vote for most years

we're seeing now that even with 10 nominees like that that binary that two film race is emerging you know seen it a bunch of in recent years, Moonlight and La La Land. Nomadland last year was an exception to that, where I felt like there was not really anything battling against Nomadland. It was the favorite all the way down. But a two horse race is always going to emerge. It seems like the... I'll be fascinated to see if there's any kind of backlash to two streamers being the leaders in that conversation. I do really, really think the Oscars should move up their schedule. I feel like the weekend after the Super Bowl would be ideal. Actually, for me personally, ideal would be the Pro Bowl weekend, the weekend before the Super Bowl.

That wouldn't have been possible this year because the Super Bowl was in Los Angeles. But that Pro Bowl weekend... Just do it right on the field, man. Halftime ceremony Oscars I don't think fix the fix the telecast length problem they couldn't get enough people to show up to fill up so far that's I think

that's real I mean how many people could they get to actually show up to the Oscars plus the Oscars has to be intimate has to be small but but what do you think of what what if why can't the Oscars go first

basically if they are the biggest awards show, why do they have to wait until all the other guilds hand out their awards? They don't have to. I think the common thinking in the past was that the precursors helped to build anticipation and they helped to create a sense of

monumental event around the conclusion of this season. You know, that this was the nba finals in some ways the problem is it's not just the golden globes now it's not just the sag awards now it's not just the independent spirit awards it's not just the critics choice awards or the awareness of the wga awards and the dga awards and the baftas and the any animation awards and the asc cinematographers awards and the usc scrip the ASC Cinematographers Awards and the USC Scripters. I could keep going.

I know all of these award shows because I track all of them and not just me, but now like regular folks who don't host podcasts about movies are like, who won the USC Scripter Award this year for adapted screenplay? Like there's an economy around this stuff that didn't exist 10 years ago that has created levels of awareness that makes people more exhausted more quickly. So your suggestion is an interesting one. What if they just dropped this award show on January 14th? Would 20 million people watch it? I don't know. There would be more surprise. The fact that I'm able to predict 21 of 23 awards and honestly should have been able to

predict 22 of 23 awards because I just didn't want to believe the coda could win yeah that's that's bad i'm not a genius i know some people in the academy i have conversations with people but like i'm not the best at this i'm not scott feinberg spending all my time talking to people who do this work it's because there's so much information that has accumulated over that time that the betting markets are so responsive to what's been happening with all that information oscars markets are so responsive to what's been happening with all that information. Oscars got money balled. Yeah, it's too easy. It's too easy to know where these things are going. So the Troy Kotzer moment that happened on Sunday night, which was wonderful. That was a great TV moment. It was a great moment for the Oscars. He's a great

actor. It was slightly dimmed because everyone knew it was going to happen. So they got to figure out something to add some unknown. And the unknown can't come from the hosts or the presenters. People don't give a shit about that. That's not going to work. Unless they're getting Dwayne Johnson, Zendaya, and Tom Holland to host the Oscars next year, people are not going to really worry about that. They need to find a way to strip out some of the confusion around the awards. I still think that they probably need to find a way to recognize

movies that people like. The more movies that people like, the more they tune in and then if they don't do that then we're forced to watch Zack Snyder's Justice League enter the Speed Force

on my Oscars telecast which just like Another thing that I just didn't understand when I got back on. One of those things that you just you're not fluent in the language of the meme from three hours ago so you don't even bother trying. But Bobby, which just like... Another thing that I just didn't understand when I got back on. One of those things that you just,

you're not fluent in the language of the meme from three hours ago, so you don't even bother trying. But Bobby, you and I and Chris and Amanda watch Zack Snyder's Justice League together on a live podcast. So you know what it's like to enter the Speed Force. You've done it. You've done it in real time.

And I felt it and felt great. Scott asked, can you imagine a future where there is any meaningful change to awards campaigning? Because of this exact thing that we're talking about. A lot of the acting races

have felt pretty sealed up the last few years, well before the Oscars. I don't know how they can change it. I'm for changing it, but... Campaign finance reform for the Oscars? Yeah. Was it McCain-Feingold?

Is that the bill? I don't know what they can do. It's a huge industry now. It's an industry unto itself, the campaign business. I think that there are... It's honestly more exciting when there are smaller companies that are winning. For someone like me, at least. I think for the public at large, no one cares about that.

But Neon and Tom Quinn and what they did for Parasite was amazing. I think the way that they found an audience for that movie, the way that they were able to tell the story of that movie, the way that they were able to basically platform Bong Joon-ho as a generational filmmaker, I don't know if that can happen again. There are not a lot of director Bongs out there, but that was authentically cool and felt like a great

manifestation of this same anxiety that we were just talking about. So it can produce good results, but the acting races are disappointing. The Oscars in the past has been a place where you might find a surprising Best Supporting Actress win or Best Actor win. It feels like that has really been drained out of the ceremony. And unless they move it up and unless they remove a lot of the precursors,

I'm not really sure how they can change it because you can't tell people stop having parties for your movie. You can't say no more you know beautiful photo books that most people don't care about but if you are looking to build a mantle might look nice on it you know i i what is there what would you do how would you change it it's a good question because they've expanded obviously expanded the academy dramatically and that led to for a couple years people not really knowing exactly what that expansion

population was going to vote for and so there was a lot of conversation around oh the academy demographics have changed so much does that mean that different types of movies are going to win and now it feels like whatever momentum they created by doing that has been completely lost so is the answer to complete to continue to expand the Academy more and more and more? Or is the answer for just people to stop paying as close attention so that they don't know

that everything is going to be wrapped up? Are we part of the problem? You make a really good point though, which is something that we've discussed a little bit here and there, which is the intention of expanding Best Picture to 10 nominees was to include the Dark Knights of the World. world and obviously i don't know if it's fair to say that that has backfired because i think a movie like drive my car getting nominated is awesome i i do

think that the way that the the the body redefined itself led to an outcome that they didn't they ultimately don't want and i don't think they feel great about the fact that art house and streamer movies are what is dominating this category instead of the last duel. You know, it's like if the last duel is nominated, for example, you get Ben and Matt at the ceremony, you get Ridley Scott tribute,

you get Jodie Comer, who was also the star of free guy, huge box office hit. And you get to tell a story about her as one of the most exciting young stars. You get Jodie Comer, who was also the star of free guy, huge box office hit. And you get to tell a story about her as one of the most exciting young stars. Have you seen that film? Uh, free guy.

Yep. Yep. Yep. Free guy. I fucking lost at the Oscars. You see that visual effects of dune boom. Um, and so without movies like that,

which I think is what the, the Academy is banking on the movies that were in like seventh place in 2012 getting into the mix there would have helped but for the most part they were not able to get that and also you know obviously movies don't feel as special if they're premiering on netflix and things like that but um i don't think they can change campaigning so i think we're stuck we gotta listen uh we gotta listen to a question from casey 10 plus years later do you think the expansion expansion of the best picture category to include more nominees has been a success or do you think it has devalued a bit best picture nomination?

I think it has been a success and I don't think it has devalued the nominations, but I think it's only in terms of like artistic merit and exposure. I don't think it's in terms of ratings. So if we're equating success with ratings, I don't think it has meaningfully helped. I do think that it is. It's done great work for great filmmakers. ratings so if we're equating success with ratings i don't think it has meaningfully helped um i do think that it is it's done great work for great filmmakers and if the academy is in part meant to

preserve and champion the work of movie artists you know uh reisuke hamaguchi was nominated for four oscars on sunday that's that never would have happened 10 years ago so something like that happening is is really extraordinary and it has not come at the expense of the Steven Spielbergs of the world, or it has not come at the expense of the Jane Campions of the world or the Paul Thomas Andersons. So that part of it has worked. It has made the Oscars more interesting in terms of what kind of films are represented. It's just made it smaller, honestly, which I never would have guessed. If you would have told me in 2009 when they made that decision, what's this going to mean for honestly which I never would have guessed if you would have told me in 2009 when they made that decision what's what's this

going to mean for the show I would have been like you're probably gonna see some more comic book movies and more animated movies get nominated there hasn't been an animated movie nominated since Toy Story 3 I think so

that's that's pretty wild you know animated movies represent like 15% of the whole movie industry right now and most people see them, most adults see them because most people have kids. So I don't know. It just didn't go in the direction that everyone thought it was going to go. Whether it's a failure, it's not a failure. It's just a different kind of success. I think two things can be true at once with the expanding

to 10. There are movies that now get exposure that they would have never gotten by getting a best picture nomination but i also think at the same time you know six through ten usually have no chance because of what we're talking about they have they have no chance from the time that they're like the licorice pizza nomination which maybe wouldn't have happened if it was only a field of five that that's why that film is not even part of the conversation even though it was nominated for best picture you know but so i think i don't know if someone asked us this but somebody asked me this at some point in the last couple of days there's a strong case to be made that coda was not in the top five vote getters for for the nominees and it did manage to pull itself up now i think that that that that's very rare. I don't think many movies are capable of making a change like that.

The Licorice Pizzas and the Drive My Cars of the World, which are deeply idiosyncratic, were not streaming when they were nominated. In one case, the film is in a foreign language. You could make the case that Paul Thomas Anderson's films are also in a foreign language of a sort. Those movies, you're right, are never going to be able to leap

from like number eight to number one. But the CODAs of the world feel good movies. Even Parasite too. Parasite. And I wonder what the... This is the kind of data that a couple of saber dorks like you and I

would love to see is what was the voting... It's been moneyballed without the public war calculations. Yes, that's the voting it's been moneyballed without the public war calculations yes that's right that's right and who is the matt and the mike trout of this industry i need to know and so like if they had told us like what order the movies were in this year just like i've always been wanting them to kind of eliminate the movies in real time on the telecast to show us what the votes were like i think that there would be one there probably would be too much kind of statistical analysis going into this

show, even more so than exists, but it would create fascinating questions in real time about how people's opinions change and how opinions shift from the guilds. You know, like I mentioned this about the director's branch, that there was something interesting about Sean hater and denis villeneuve not being recognized for best director denis in particular because dune won six below the line thing about the film was acknowledged

other than that yeah who do you think hired made all those choices yeah who do you think like managed this production like it's it's actually kind of it's like borderline offensive that he wasn't nominated honestly anyway um if you ask me who should have come out of Like, it's actually kind of, it's like borderline offensive that he wasn't nominated, honestly. But anyway, if you ask me who should have come out of that five, it's Kenneth Branagh. No disrespect to Kenneth Branagh,

but Belfast is not the achievement that Dune is, in my opinion. Anyhow, but because of that, I think what you saw was the director's branch votes on the directors who get into that category.

And then when the whole world votes on best director, they think about the movies that they really like. And they really liked Dune and they really liked coda and that's why those two movies won nine awards and the people who made most of the key decisions on those movies were not nominated and so the way that the the award show itself is organized it shows like a shift in in real time from nomination to wins i don't know how you solve this necessarily, though. I don't know if there's a way to fix it. I don't know either. Let's tie the bow on Netflix. Andrew

asked the final Netflix question. Does their losing track record lead them to stop investing in quote unquote Oscar movies? I don't think so. I don't think so. And I don't think it's just because they really want to win Best Picture quote unquote or Ted Sarandos really wants to win best picture it's not really about that um i'm sure that motivates some people that work there and there's some it started there for sure but i think there's there's still an amazing halo effect to saying we gave martin scorsese 130 million dollars to make The Irishman. We gave Jane Campion $40 million to make a Western in New Zealand. We're giving Noah Baumbach

TK. I don't know what the budget of that movie is. Let's say for the sake of conversation, it's $40 million to adapt White Noise. Very few studios are doing that right now. Maybe Apple will start doing it more. They're obviously doing it with Killers of the Flower Moon. They're making the F1 movie with Brad Pitt,

which you and I are very fired up for. Let's go. So we may see more streamers do that. Maybe with Amazon Prime's acquisition of MGM, we'll see more big tent movies like that from that studio as consolidation begins around Hollywood again. But Netflix is still in a league of its own in terms of empowering great movie artists to kind of make the movie that they've always wanted to make.

And that's a story that they can tell in the business. The minute that they just become the is it cake place or the floor is lava place, they're going to seem like the newfangled like Discovery Channel or, you know, like Animal Planet or whatever. You know what I mean? Like it's not, it's just not going to seem like a very special Hollywood industry business. And Sarandos, who still, you know,

largely oversees the content in that company, is a movie dude. He's a video store guy. He's a person who really cares about movie art. And so I don't expect them to slow it down in the short term in the long term if the stigma concretizes and people are like netflix is not allowed to win this award and we will push it every year maybe that was saying that though like why does this keep happening because we interview a ton of directors on the show you talk to a ton of

directors many of them make movies for Netflix, and they usually speak glowingly about the experience because of what you're describing, because Netflix gives them the budget that they want that has dried up at other traditional movie studios. And so who is mad that Netflix has done that? Is it just you think that it's the down the line folks that are like not voting for it? Because or do you think that it's the down the line folks that are like not voting for it? Or do you think that even though Netflix rolls out their movies into theaters, they're not doing enough to support the theatrical business? Here's the truth. I don't think that there is an inherent Netflix bias. I think there is certainly people have feelings about the company as they have feelings about all big companies, right? The tricky thing is Roma, The Irishman, Mank, and The Power of the Dog in places that are not

podcasts like this are not beloved. In fact, they're not even really liked by a lot of people. People thought The Irishman was too long, boring, and repetitive from stories that Scorsese had told before. People thought Mank was a Citizen Kane jerk-off fest people thought the power of the dog was too slow you heard Bill Simmons called the power of the nap people thought Roma was it did hear that was and then I forgot about it and then I heard Joanna Robinson remind me about it power that was really funny I don't know you know I just I can't take that away from Bill that was hilarious uh I I don't think that anybody loved any of those. I shouldn't say anybody.

I don't think enough people love those movies the way that they love something like Coda, as sentimental and manipulative as it is. And so until they find a way to bridge the gap between great artists and quote-unquote likable material, they're just not going to win that award. But, you know, maybe that's a good thing. You know what won Best Picture?

Fucking Green Book. And Driving Miss Daisy. And a number of other movies. The Greatest Show on Earth won Best Picture. You know what I mean? A lot of crap movies have won Best Picture. Or okay movies. Mediocre movies.

And that doesn't diminish the greatness of The Irishman. I've seen The Irishman four times. It's fucking amazing. It's one of the deepest films I've ever seen about mortality. Did you have to take some PTO to watch that movie four times? You know me.

I just stay up till 3 a.m. So, you know, all of this whining about whether, and trust me, I'm as guilty of it as anybody, but whining about, you know, why won't Netflix win their Oscar? What does the industry hold against them?

It's a cumulative thing. It's not just any one thing. Okay, let's move on. Justin asks, which win are we most upset with five years from now? And which award are we happiest with five years from now?

I think part of the problem with the show last night was that there were not any objectionable wins. And so I think anybody, I think we'd be hard pressed to see anybody be angry about any of the results. I thought Ariana DeBose was undeniably incredible in West Side Story.

Troy Kotzer, I thought, gave a very warm and good performance in CODA. I think, unless Will Smith turns into a figure of ill repute in the industry, I don't think anybody's going to say Will Smith not only didn't earn his Oscar for King Richard, but didn't have an amazing career as an ambassador to Hollywood and an actor. The Chastain Award, everybody has kind of agreed that The Eyes of Tammy Faye is not a very good movie. It's funny, we devoted an episode to that movie on this show back in, I think, September when it first came out and when we made the decision i was like this movie feels like kind of too small and too mediocre to spend a lot of time on but we did it anyway we did like an actor transformation

conversation amanda and i and it turns out to have been a little bit prescient in a way that i was not prescient about the win for codaoda because once again what we talked about on that episode is how the Academy loves these kinds of performances where people transform into real-life figures and that turned out to be

more true than I ever would have guessed and I there's a lot of admiration for Chastain everybody listens to the show knows that I love her I hope that this just means she's gonna

go back to making really good movies and not making franchise entertainment and I hope she doesn't make any more TV she also made a TV show last year I just wanted to make great films and use her power and influence to make great films so i know this was one that she was really passionate about just wasn't very good

that's so it's probably chastain or it's coda and we'll we'll see five years from now i i likened it more to the artist on sunday as a movie that like i think people will kind of just forget about a little bit and won't really point to as representative of anything really other than a strong campaign and warm feelings towards it at the time but we shall see I mean is anybody gonna be fighting about like best the best sound winner from the 94th Academy Awards I don't think so what even one Dune right yeah one yeah Dune killer killer sound that's my that was my take loud loudest it was loudest loudest oscar that's how you you produce this show is you just crank it turn it up as loud as possible crank it to a level i don't even have to turn chris up he's it's already up he starts at height what um

is there one for you that you think people will regret no i think it's probably i don't think people will regret it but i don't think that people will feel as passionately about CODA. The case that most people carved out and the case that Joanna very intelligently carved out last week was which of the five through ten Best Picture nominees will put CODA second. And that just feels like a dispassionate case to return to five years from now. And so I think that that will probably be the one that maybe looks wonkiest in comparison to the other nine nominees. But I don't think that there will be any offensive ones that people will look back and say, this is among the biggest travesties, like the 94 Oscars or anything like that. Yeah, I agree with you you know we got a lot of people asking that i did not put in the mailbag here but we did get a lot of people asking do you think that they should single out like a best imitation category so that we can remove the jessica chastain's of the world from the best acting category and i didn't put it in here because it's sort of like a whole spiral

of a conversation because it it would definitely be executed slily. But I wonder what you think about that, given that you think that Chastain might be the one that people look back on five years from now. It's an interesting question. They definitely would not use the word imitation. Maybe transformation. I think that you can't do it, right? Because the whole point of those performances

is that you're taking a part of yourself and using it to become someone else or to channel someone else. But you're not actually being that person, right? Yeah. It's interpolation, which is part of acting. Yeah. And I think that kind of reduces down the craft of acting in a way that actors would find offensive you know daniel day lewis he he communicated he translated what he believed abraham lincoln to be like in that moment based on tony kushner's vision of that moment in history he didn't imitate abraham lincoln i don't even know

we barely there are recordings of abraham lincoln but we don't know how he walked you know we don't have video of him so i don't think they would do something that extreme now whether they should find a way to kind of recognize movies that are based on real life events in a more discreet way i think it's kind of interesting i do think that the show needs to redefine and build up some new categories over time and i i don't know i've said that many many times i don't know how they're going to do it but they should probably seriously consider it at the next vote to kind of generate a new level of anticipation for the show next year. If you're going to spend the political,

my opinion on this is that if you're going to spend the political capital to add new categories into something like best first feature, best breakthrough performance that you've outlined multiple, even Amanda have outlined multiple times on this show would be a much more thing to spend your political capital on. Because I think people can make the choice as to whether or not the transformation was worthwhile you know like there are bad transformations or there are direct you know imitations that aren't really transformative and are not compelling on screen and many of those are not awarded you know being the Ricardos did not sweep the Oscars this year. It certainly did not. Thank God. I think all of these awards are subjective,

but that one in particular would be hard to note. And also the public's interaction with it. I mean, how many people under the age of 30 really know who Tammy Faye Baker is? Most don't.

And so how do you even say, like, how do you even get invested in that award? It's like, oh, she nailed it. So then what it would necessitate is actually like more campaigning and more side-by-side footage of the real person and the actor.

And then you'd find people trying harder to just be more accurate to what the person represented instead of finding something deeper. It would make for worse movies, for sure. Exactly. And then what would you do with something like The Master? Like, is that, that's such, that's on the fence.

You know, that's such a gray area. I know. And that, well, we do have Chris's podcast appearances to compare to The Master. So that, that benefits, I think, CR and the film. So we'll see. We also have Chris's appearances to compare to The Invisible Man. Chauncey asked, of tonight's winners, who gets another Oscar first? Oh, that's a good one I'm

racking my brain here I don't think any of I guess there's a case that like 30 years from now Chastain could have a second acting Oscar not unusual for um a person of her stature of her accomplishment to kind of get one and when she moves into like the second half of her career and is doing more supporting work or something like that. Save fans are probably Hans. I was just going to say that. I feel like Hans Zimmer is, there's a good chance in the next 10 years he gets a third, right?

Yeah. He can get it for Dune again. Yeah. I'm not expecting another Billie Eilish Oscar anytime soon. I don't think Campion will be awarded again. It took her 30 years to get back to the show. What about the Oscar for Flash entering the Speed Force?

That's a good point. Flash going to get another one? There's a Flash film coming out next year. Re-enter the Speed Force Oscar? Yeah, maybe Ariana DeBose. Her career is kind of interesting, right? She's like a Broadway creature, you know, song and dance woman.

There's not necessarily as many opportunities for those movies, but I think she really emerged as someone that people got excited about. She's going to get a lot of opportunity in the coming years. So I guess there's a chance for her too.

What else we got? The Goal Father asks, if Dune 2 is as good or better than Dune, does it sweep the Oscars, including Best Director and Best Picture in 2023 or 2024, whenever it comes out? I think it would be, I think it's going to be out at the end of next comes out i think it would be i think it's

going to be out at the end of next year and so it would be at the 2024 oscars or at least that's the plan who knows the first film was a very difficult production and so part two might be as well uh coming in the desert not easy yeah i mean all indications from sunday night were that if it's as good that it will it could run the table i don't think on acting performances and you know films like that don't usually win a lot of acting performances you know the titanics and the lord of the rings and the films like that that when they are recognized as you know huge event like ben hur for example like they'll win best picture they'll likely win best director they'll probably win between four and seven below the line categories maybe they'll

win score as well and dune would just do it in two parts like they would just do all the below the line categories that this year's and then just the top two because they won't win all the below the line categories the next time through not all of them but some of them they probably will like would it shock you if they won visual effects again you know because they're like if you look at the visual effects and free guy or even spider-man No Way Home versus Dune, like it's not even the same business. Like it's not even the same art form, what they're doing. Like Dune is making an effort to like make something seem real that is fantastical. Those films are not really doing that. So I think that there is some recognition for that kind of thing. There's a lot going for

Dune, obviously, like the addition of new new characters like zendaya playing a bigger role in the film she's literally one of the five biggest under 30 stars we have um florence pew joining the cast i think is a huge thing too she's also in that kind of conversation she's been recognized by the academy before chalamet obviously was shown out on sunday night you know is that what she would wear to the Oscars? Consider you a sort of style icon of the ringer. Listeners can't see this, but I'm actually wearing that right now. I have my boob tape on. It's got the jacket affixed to my pectorals.

No, I think the thing is that the second half of the Dune story, in my opinion, is less interesting than the first half. And so it's possible that this movie is just not as good. It's a lot of it. It takes place in the desert. It's a little bit more of like a slow, like a story about like royalty and a kind of rise to monarchy.

And also like a much more, it's more spiritual in an actualized way, if that makes any sense. I don't want to give away if people don't know what happens in Dune. But if you watch the David Lynch film, film for example the second half of the movie is like incoherent you know like it's really where it goes off the rails so it's going to be a very big challenge but then again denny did an amazing job interpreting the first part so i wouldn't underestimate it as the it's it's definitely the odds on favor today for 2024 you know that actually i did want to cite a couple of 2023 or 2022 movies that I feel like will be

in the conversation for 2023. I meant to mention this like the two early Oscars is like an episode that maybe if Amanda was back we might consider doing but until she gets back

I just I feel like we should just mention I mentioned killers of the flower moon already the Scorsese movie. It's exciting. He'll be back. Can't wait.

That's December Babylon the Damien chazelle movie which is a movie about hollywood in the 1940s that is from a studio will be released in theaters and it's probably going to be there brad pitt margot robbie toby mcguire consider that she said i think the maria schrader movie that is based on the non-fiction book by jodie cantor and megan tooey um that is based on the nonfiction book by Jodi Cantor and Megan Toohey. That is very much about the Weinstein investigation for the New York times. The Fableman's Spielberg back.

This is the first based on a personal autobiographical story from Spielberg with a script by Tony Kushner starring Seth Rogen and Michelle Williams as his parents. That's going to be a present women talking. I think is up there. The new Sarah Polly movie. She hasn't to be a present. Women Talking, I think, is up there. The new Sarah Polley movie. She hasn't directed a scripted film in many, many years. Yorgos Lanthimos has a new movie called Poor Things. I mentioned White Noise from Bomback.

Martin McDonough has a new movie called The Banshees of Innersharon. He, of course, wrote and directed Three Billboards. David O. Russell has a movie this year. There's a lot of heavyweight Oscar-y contenders. Now, most of those movies don't often live up to what we think they're going to be. See again, The Last Duel. But I don't know. It could be a good year.

It could be a really good year. So we'll see. We got more questions? Maybe one or two more questions? Yeah. So many people asked, how can the Oscars fix the In memoriam like 12 people asked this question sean uh people are mad about the in memoriam don't have people dance in front of it that's my first note no no more dancing in front of the images i don't know is it really that broken it's like just show us images of people that passed who we love

that's all you got to do right i, we don't need to power rank these things to draw interest. You know what I mean? I honestly don't think there's as much of a problem as people seem to think there is. It's weird that this has become a convention of award shows, but it has, and it's here to stay as far as I can tell. B for Benedetta asks,

why aren't the Oscars the biggest day for movie trailers? You know, I don't have all the information on this but I think that there are some rules around what can be shown during the telecast because you didn't see I don't think we saw any movie commercials right we saw a lot of TV commercials which I find to be utterly confusing

to be seeing commercials for Moon Night and the Girl from Plain View and you like to watch things watch this exactly it's like would you like to see the real-time death of the industry we're celebrating tonight? Check out Moon Knight. So I don't really... I think that

they have to change those rules. I think that they need to allow other studios to buy time so that they can present their films. They obviously should be premiering visuals for their movies on this night because you are not you're not going to have another night in which more serious movie fans are tuning in than an oscar night i feel like was it last year when they used the academy awards to show like a preview of west

side story it was like a very brief like coming soon you know just a teaser a teaser of a teaser it was like 15 seconds I thought right yeah and I like that long shadow shot right right right and that was because I believe because it was a Disney product and the show was airing on ABC and I don't know if you're ABC do you want to sell time to Amazon to counter program all of your content? I'm not really sure. Should they do it? It's a no brainer. It's something they should have been doing years ago because the whole

industry benefits from getting people excited about Top Gun Maverick and getting people excited about fucking Dr. Strange and all the other movies that are coming out this year that are really important to the business. So they should. One more. Okay. It's only fitting that we close with a pta question yeah you are you nate asks will pta ever get the love he deserves or should i just kill my hopes now my recommendation

is always kill your hopes and then you can always bring them back you know they're never fully dead keep your hopes zombies i i i have i've thought about this quite a bit, as you might imagine. On the one hand... Do you have a whole spreadsheet about this, or is this part of a different spreadsheet? Oh, boy. I really have a reputation, don't I? So on Friday night,

Elaine May was recognized at the Governor's Ball. And she was given the honorary Oscar for her work in the world of film. She is the writer and director of some great movies, Mikey and Nikki and a new leaf. And she's collaborated with Mike Nichols many, many times. She's written a lot of screenplays over the years. She's,

you know, was one of the few women directors in that field in the 1970s in America who made honest to good, great movies. And she's an Academy Award nominated. She has two Oscar nominations, one for Heaven Can Wait for the screenplay and one for Primary Colors. She never won an Oscar, even though she was understood to be one of the smartest, funniest, coolest people in the business for years and years. I kind of feel like this could be PTA's fate. He's 80 years old. He's been making original movies, getting released in movie theaters for 60 years, and he's never won an Oscar despite making some of the best movies of his time. And then they're like, let's have a big night and celebrate you, but we won't give you a real Oscar. We'll give you an honorary Oscar. This happens to many of

the greats. He has been getting recognized consistently for the last few films, which is a good sign, but there was consensus in January that Licorice Pizza was winning original screenplay, and then it just vanished. That consensus just wilted in the face of i guess belfast which again like i i liked belfast perfectly fine but belfast screenplay is better what um if you wanted to make the case the worst person in the world should have won that night okay i i would i i could accept that um but i don't know belfast over licorice music dog. That sucks. Is it cooler if he doesn't win one now? Yes and no. I mean,

like a lot of my favorite filmmakers have won that award. Amanda and I have talked about this so many times. Like this is the award that Sophia won for Lost in Translation. This is the award that Tarantino has won twice. You know, this is the award that Spike Jones wins

or that Wes Anderson wins. You know, this is where these people thrive. These really creative artists working inside this big machine and so him continuing to get recognized and his movies continue to get recognized as best picture nominees now i think i think three of his movies have been nominated for best picture maybe four um he's in the he's in the club you's there. Like people, they worship him. But for some reason, he can't get over the finish line.

And maybe you're right. Maybe it's a badge of honor. I don't know. What do you think? I think at this point, now that he's been nominated so many times for so many of the main categories,

it just feels sillier. Like, I think that there would be more of a kind of rebel spirit to it if he had not even got those nominations. But because he has, it's like,

now those movies are in direct contrast with the movies that actually won. And something like script is even more absurd. You know, the thing about it is,

I think if he, if we had inverted the order of his two most recent films, if Phantom Thread had come out this year, Oh my God. he would have won.

He would have maybe even won best director because the field was different. What won for script that year? I don't know. Let's take a look. Fun fact. Phantom Thread

not nominated for best screenplay. Extremely tough. Best original screenplay that year included The Winner Get Out The Big Sick Lady Bird The Shape of Water and Three The Big Sick, Lady Bird,

The Shape of Water, and Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing, Missouri. Phantom 3rd was nominated for six Oscars, but not screenplay. That's kind of weird. Yeah, because that's a banger of a screenplay. Sure is. Incredible story.

Nominated for Best Picture, nominated for Best Director, Best Actor nomination, Best Supporting Actress nomination, score. And a more Oscar-ary feel to it too than even licorice pizza even to the screenplay yeah period piece uh daniel day lewis at the center of it movie stars licorice pizza didn't have any recognizable names at the center of the movie i mean the thing is is like that movie was a vibe movie it was a hangout movie. It was episodic. So people felt like the accomplishment of that screenplay maybe was not as big as, you know, a sprawling boogie nights or a kind of tightly controlled phantom thread.

So like I said, if you had flipped those two, maybe he would have gotten a win this year, but he didn't. We'll see what he does next. My gut is he's going to go back to something big for the next one. If I'm predicting his next two movies, something big and grand for the next one if you if i'm predicting his next two movies something big and grand for the next one to kind of use the the accumulated power to set something on a grand stage and then after that pure comedy he's going to do like a true blue like slapstick comedy that's those are my predictions they could be way off who knows he's unpredictable i'm pre-ordering my tickets now you know well i forget it we're in

for life let's let's let's go let's go to two more geniuses let's go to my conversation now with uh with daniel kwan and daniel shiner so we can talk about everything everywhere all at once We'll be right back. is Mayberry at participating restaurants in Canada. It's time for Tim's. Very happy to be joined by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheiner, also known as Daniels. I'm going to tell you right now, I was blown away by everything, everywhere, all at once. Congratulations. Thanks for doing the show. Oh my god, thank you. Thank you. Very excited to be

here. This is, yeah, our producers love this podcast and so they were like, this is the first thing they texted like, oh my god, you guys are going to be on the big picture so uh we're very excited to be talking to you i'm excited to ask you about this movie actually so shiner we talked a few years ago around the death of dick long and you explained this movie to me and i thought you were pranking me i thought i thought it was a joke yeah and it wasn't a joke i love, we have a lot of joke movie pitches and then sometimes we'd make them. You made this one.

Yeah. Well, we'll save that for the end of this episode. Yeah. We'll leave you with a couple of pitches. Are they actually going to make that one? Yeah. For real.

So I'm curious, let's go back to after Swiss Army Man. Did Hollywood, Hollywood come calling you guys to take on your, the franchise entertainments and the big movies or did you always want to stay on the path of making these original stories that you guys to take on the franchise entertainments and the big movies? Or did you always want to stay on the path of making these original stories that you want to tell? We were just reflecting on this this morning that before Hollywood called, journalists asked us if they were calling.

And I think it planted this seed in our brain of like, what would we do? Like what? And, and this became like our version of, you know, a Marvel movie. Cause what would happen early on in our careers was we be going to all these general meetings and people would ask us what we're interested in making.

And this is, you know, this is Hollywood with a couple capital H. And so we would pitch our, our earnest ideas, just like the most bizarre things that we were excited to H. And so we would pitch our earnest ideas, just like the most bizarre things that we were excited to make. And everyone would laugh, everyone would be like, that's very interesting. And then we'd never hear from them again. But actually, what do you want

to make? Yeah, exactly. And proper IP we have. And it was actually kind of frustrating. And so we, you know, this, this question of like, okay, if we were to actually make something within this system and whatever, within the confines of like a blockbuster or a crowd pleaser, what would that look like? And it slowly evolved into this film because we realized if we were stuck in that box, especially at our status, you know, you don't have much power when you're an indie film director. And we know that. And we knew we would not our our work would not thrive in that environment and so we realized we had to come up with our own pipeline our own way towards this kind of film um and it took a lot of time um and thank god our producers were all very patient and i'm very proud of the film because i think we balanced something really interesting the the spectacle of a blockbuster but with the heart of an indie film um in another interview i called it like the impossible burger you know they were trying to figure out how to

make vegan food taste like uh beef and i'm like that's what we were it took us so long because we were engineering uh fake let's call it the Beyond Sausage of movies. That's my favorite fake meat. It's really good. Yeah, Beyond Sausage is insane. It's unsettling. It's magic. I've never tried it, but if it's like the movie, I'm into it.

You know, I had never seen Possibilia until last night, this 2014 short film that you guys made. I was going to ask you about the multiverse and your interest in the concept of a multiverse. I was wondering if it started with that, with that short. Which came first, Possibilia or Interesting Ball?

They were right around each other. Yeah. And then. Cause we, we did another short film that also kind of plays with infinity. It's almost the polar opposite called Interesting Ball, but I feel like those two things were refractions of the same idea or the same feeling um that produced this movie everything everywhere and then like growing up we loved uh like extra trippy

anime and like extra silly sci-fi like uh douglas adams um and stuff yeah and so uh i think that stew made it so that a lot of our ideas would kind of like dip into this philosophical but funny stuff you know and they also think because we are such maximalist artists um we realized that the multiverse was going to be a really fertile playground for us to play in where we could truly expand ourselves as our as directors and as writers to our furthest lengths and also I knew that we would be able to do it like no one else was going to try to do it like I think that was the big thing we were playing with like we knew time travel movies had been overdone and there's so many different ways to do that and I could see it coming down

the pipeline that multiverse movies were going to be big but I also knew that most people would be too big to risk actually diving into what the multiverse is truly about and I think both of us were so excited about saying I'm going to look at the multiverse. I'm going to bring an audience with us. And we're going to truly stare down infinity and see what that does to narrative. So yeah, we were excited. One of the things that I love about the movie is it feels like it is subsuming all of the things that have influenced it. You know, like 80s sci-fi and like you say, Vonnegut, Wong Kar Wai, horror movies, The Matrix, Jodorowsky, all this stuff feels like it's inside of the movie, but it's not homage.

And it's not winking. It's like, it's making an effort to tell a true and earnest story that just from the lens, it seems like from the lens of people who just like that stuff. And that feels like a little different than a lot of movies that are so sort of referential these days is that something that you guys were conscious about did you say like we don't want to do something that feels like something that's come before i don't yeah i don't know we accidentally did that like there was a moment late in the process where i was like oh do we actually want to reference you know these things or no i think there's one in particular that bumped me but we actually we referenced the matrix directly in an older draft which was like and i was like much but then we like looked we're

like oh wait we've already accidentally put in 10 other jokes this movie is like i don't just we just accidentally wrote something that's woven in with all the pop culture that even jokes it is it's the dna of it actually i i think what happened is like um when we think about when we think about movies now we don't think about it's not in a vacuum you think about the the wealth of of cinema history you know and all of us are so savvy when it comes to media and stories and and and um mass media specifically that uh to be alive and to not be thinking about those things whenever you're walking around your life doesn't feel truthful and so to us the most most truthful version of this movie is this hyperlink version hypertext version where it's not referencing it it's fully taking its context

and bringing it into it so that you can have a a more fully realized expression um you know it's like what david foster wallace did with uh with uh text i feel like we need to have something like that within the film world that actually fully embraces the context of the audience because they are they like i said everyone who's going into this movie has already seen millions of movies and that is going to affect the way that they look at the movie so we might as well embrace it there was i remember there was a moment when we were writing it where i realized that if there's an infinite number of universes uh just an ever-expanding infinity uh then every single movie ever made is a true story.

They all exist somewhere out there. And being like, whoa. I want to ask you about that, actually. I have a lot of questions about the writing of the movie, particularly because, you know, it's just an incredible feat of editing, this movie, and you've got so many images in the movie. And I'm wondering, did you write every image?

Or how did you, essentially, when you presented to the actors this concept and said you're going to see hundreds of multiversal variations of your character, in the script, would it say, here's this one, here's this one, here's this one, here's this one? How did you make that text? Yeah early drafts we said everything and there was about 240 pages and

so we started finding things out and uh then we started to learn to list off the ones that were important and then you know to our to our amazing crew say like these are the things that matter everything else surprise us yeah we're to try to sneak some more in. Let us know if you have any ideas, but also don't spend too much time or money. Exactly. Spend as little research as possible, but try to,

we're going to, we're trying to fill our bucket to infinity. So let's get there. And so people would bring, bring whatever they had in their garage or they would walk by a yard sale or they would just be like, I'm really passionate about this. Can we put this in there?

And so the way you make a movie like this is actually to rather than rather than controlling everything and making sure everything is exactly how you wanted it. You have to we have to leave a lot of room for our collaborators to fill it in with their own passion and almost like direct their own their own scenes, you know, like certain shots are like this shot's only in there because our production designers obsessed with this or, you know, like i think about the the hot dog universe the that the art design and the set decoration of that space is so uh funny and beautiful it's all hot dog colors it's like pink and brown and like really well rendered and we're like don't spend any time on that we don't have time just like make it as basic as possible but our crew our art

director kelsey ephraim was like or sorry crew our art director kelsey ephraim was like or sorry not set decorator kelsey ephraim was like i'm just i want to i love this universe and i want to put my heart into it so i'm going to it was her pet project yeah exactly anytime she had extra time she was like oh i'm gonna look up some more hot dog furniture that's so that's really funny because i wanted to ask you both like this is such a big story in terms of scale and they're like I said there's so many images that you're making for the movie was there ever a time when it felt like you'd maybe bit off more than you could chew or that it got too big for you when you were making it every day I think I think every project we we truly care about we we take off we

you know it's a little bit more than we can handle. And I think that's what we are looking for when we're looking for a new project. Especially as a duo, it's kind of helpful sometimes to be like, Oh, I need him. Like I cannot do this alone. Tag team you're in. It's literally impossible for me to do this by myself. Yeah. And I think we want to grow from every project. We want to learn. We want to, we basically, we write movies that we know we cannot do now, but we hope we can grow into.

And this film is, like, literally had no idea that it would be possible to kind of thread the needle, the tonal needle of this movie. And so much of it happened because our incredible crew also trusted us. They knew that we were all kind of jumping off an airplane and learning how to build the, what do you call it, parachute along the way, you know. So yeah, every day we were like, I don't know how we're going to do this, but we're going to try.

There were a few days where everything went according to plan. It was a pretty manageable, normal movie, but not. Yeah. I actually wanted to ask you both how you direct together. I'm so interested in directing duos. And are you, is one of you better with actors?

Is one of you better with, you know, visualization is, do you, do you actually tag team? Like you said, Daniel, do you say like,

okay, you're, it's your turn to now work on the heavy lifting of this day. Um, a lot of times, uh, it's, Daniel, do you say like, okay, it's your turn to now work on the heavy lifting of this day? A lot of times it changes on every project and every day, but we kind of have a shorthand where we know certain things we can't decide without the other person definitely present. So an actor will ask a question and we'll be like, I don't know yet. Like, give me one moment, you know, like let's, let's hash this out. And then other times, um, enthusiasm just wins the day. And it's kind of like, Oh, I care the most about this. I'm going to spearhead it. And you're my wingman. Um,

yeah. So like, it's really really it's really lovely to have that as a director because when you have to care about everything i think you that's when that's when the process gets really stressful and that's when you start to pass that stress off onto other people and it becomes really detrimental to the collaboration of everyone and so the fact that like you know shiner is he comes from the theater world. He used to, he was an actor in college. So he's very passionate about actors and casting and specifically how casting is done. And so he takes the lead on a lot of that stuff. Whereas like I,

I came, I come from like photography and animation. And so I'm, I love to just sit down and shot list and draw out things and just make sure everything is going to work and sing in the most interesting way. And then we compare notes and it becomes, you know, then we merge everything. But being able to just focus on one thing we truly love is such a gift as a filmmaker. Yeah, I was just thinking about like, and then like working with actors, it definitely is just constantly changing. And I feel like,

uh, a lot of times you talk to actors the way a writer would like Kwan really understands where the characters have come from. And if the actor wants like backstory or details or to get as nitty gritty as possible like Kwan's a lot better at that and then if and then I used to be an actor and want to want to be an actor and I think I'm good at like giving them a sandbox to play in or helping like be like don't worry about that just focus on this like here's some very succinct like direction, you know? And that kind of directing is when I jump in, you know?

Yeah. He's very good at creating a good environment. I'll be like, damn, you're saying too much. They don't need to know all that. You are also an, I mean, you're in this, you're in this movie. You've been in some movies. No, my twin brother. Sorry. Sorry. A cameo. I just want to say that cameo that he's in,

for anyone who hasn't seen it, it was probably, I won't spoil it, but it was probably Michelle's favorite moment of the movie. It's very funny. We cast me during the movie again. And I think the thing that really tipped us over was just like us realizing how much fun michelle would have um spanking me you know make her work so hard shiner when you

were telling me about the movie a few years ago the only thing that seemed real about the pitch was michelle yo as the person who was involved and you used her name and obviously that was really exciting to hear obviously she's a an icon in many ways but also maybe this is a moment when everyone's going to be like oh yeah she's an icon so why her why was she the right person for all of the evelyns yeah um i mean we're just fans uh and um and then we accidentally wrote a role that like especially if you're looking for like bankable stars who can do action because we didn't want to you know use shaky camera

or point away from the lead actor during the fight scenes who can speak Chinese and English is a very small list and we were like oh my god if she says no or if it turns out she's you know wrong for the part or like we're bad we don't we can't collaborate with her like this whole movie falls apart um and do comedy too i mean she can do comedy which is like totally maybe the hardest thing to do out of all those things which you

get a taste of michelle doing that early on in her career especially with jackie chan stuff like there was physical humor there but like she has not done much of that lately there hasn't been much of an opportunity for her to do that so um even like even though we knew she had it in her we were we were actually really blown away by how funny she was like there's so many moments in this movie where like she's legitimately funny and i think people are going to be really surprised and i think other filmmakers are going to start looking at her differently and thinking and seeing her as like someone who can play anything honestly she can play everything she's proven it this is this is her acting role her actor's real you know she doesn't like to sing that's the one. But she's great at lip syncing.

Can you tell me about Kiwi Kwan as well? Who I think people have not seen in front of a camera for a long time and is basically still perfect at doing his thing. It's kind of remarkable. Who knew? Oh my God. It's pretty wild. Where did the idea to cast him in this come from? Did he get it right away? Was there any anxiety about going back and doing something like this yeah it's so funny uh we

we struggled with casting almost every role because every role required like three or four different um characters which meant like 10 different boxes every character had every actor had to check off and so a lot of like chinese actors we love uh that we we kind of like start brainstorming like what if it's this person what if it's that person um but like a lot of especially action stars are like alpha men like they're real macho and the part wasn't that um and so we were like it was hard to the person for this yeah we we did some auditions here and there. It was hard to shake that from bonafide stars. And so one day I was scrolling through the internet and I saw a picture of Short Round, just like a little gif of Short Round.

And I was like, what is Short Round up to? What is Data up to? I grew up on the Goonies and I did the math. I was like, he might be the right age and so we started doing some research found out that he you know was part of the stunt team for x-men brian singer's x-men he was um he was a black belt in taekwondo he went to china to and did some soap opera stuff over there so like we're like this guy might be perfect um but i don't know if he's still acting and so or where in the world he lives yeah exactly and then it uh turned out like there was like it was miraculous good timing he'd just gotten excited about getting back into acting uh

a few weeks before came and auditioned and uh when he walked in i thought maybe he was doing like a bit like like coming to the audition in character as Waymond, you know, because he was so happy and hyper and sweet. Yeah. He walked into a room and immediately just starts complimenting you. Hi guys. Hi. Nice to meet you.

And like, and we were like, this is wild. Didn't he do some Taekwondo in the audition? Like he was like, yeah, yeah, I know some, and he did a punch and a kick. Yeah. He did a sharp kick. Yeah. Yeah. We, we loved him right away.

Um, and then, uh, unfortunately we didn't, uh, tell, we didn't tell him he had the part for like a month or two. And, uh, because we were just shuffling like a lot of stuff like yeah trying to get the movie put together and and we didn't want to reach out unless we knew the movie was happening so so he thought he he thought he didn't have the part um and uh and when we told him uh he was uh extremely excited um I mean yeah him and his wife cried when they got the part and it's, yeah, it's hard to oversell how, how important this role was for him to him and how much it meant to him because it does really embody his spirit in a way that surprised us.

And also it just proves to the world how much of a treasure he was even back then. And to have him back in this movie, I think people are going to be psyched. It's, it's, it's a fantastic role. It's kind of hard to picture the movie without him now in this movie, I think people are going to be psyched. It's, it's, it's a fantastic role. It's kind of hard to picture the movie without him now.

You know, I'm like, is there another person who could have done the thing that he does, you know, on both of sort of like the sensitive aspect of that role and also the physical aspect of that role too, is just like, but it's very similar to Michelle,

obviously, but we just haven't seen him in forever. So it's, it's pretty wild that you guys pulled that off. It's one of my favorite things about casting a live action movie is that then it's less pressure on me. starts to change and suddenly like i'm there like the movie starts to rewrite itself around the these cast members um to the point now where i'm like uh yeah i can't imagine anyone in it other than him like how did i don't even remember what it was like writing it you know like it's just key yeah that's so interesting the the mother-daughter relationship is one of the more

complex that really i've ever seen in a movie like this and very like very modern very contemporary um but also very like deep and traditional in a way too why is that really at the center of the story there's a lot of reasons but one joke one uh because you want to joke right now right yes please my sincere question is that uh we make very weird movies and uh over the years showing those movies to our moms has been very funny and just a real adventure yeah all right mom here's what i'm up to like you gotta learn how here's another window into my brain. And that kind of inspired the relationship of joy and Evelyn, you know,

like, like joy blossoms as the movie goes on into like this psychedelic multiversal crazy character. And like that care. So like Joe boo kind of represents our oomph and what it's like to like show your mom a music video where where someone humps things until they explode you know and then like i feel like the more expanded metaphor that anyone of our generation can relate with is the fact that this film the in this film

the multiverse becomes a really interesting metaphor for the internet and the fact that our parents grew up without it and we did and how much of a chasm that that created between our generations that feels i know every generation deals with with with that gap um but for some reason this one just feels massive in a way that like it's hard to explain and so this movie was our one of our ways to kind of process that and say like it's messy out there. And it's really hard to connect and see through all that noise. But we wanted to be a sympathetic portrait of both sides.

You know, from my mother's side, how hard it is to relate with me as an immigrant, as a boomer, for so many different reasons. As someone who put me through college and now has to watch my health music video. That's gotta be hard. Yeah. And so it was really important to us that this film captured the most important things that were small and the most important things

that were massive and cosmic and important things that were massive and cosmic and find a way to reconcile them in the same film. And so to us, like, I love that we were able to create a small nuanced relationship between these two people that wasn't washed out by the noise, that wasn't washed out by the action and the, and the humor and all these things, because that's almost the thesis of the film is saying like, despite all the noise, despite all this big, loud stuff,

this, this quiet stuff is the most important part. And if we can make that shine through, even though we have everything else happening, every genre, every emotion happening, that was, that was going to be a triumph.

And that was going to be what the movie needed. Otherwise, the movie wasn't going to work. So we worked a really long time on making that nuanced relationship special. I'm a fairly cynical person. And so there's something very appealing about the everything bagel and the vast, agglomerated nothingness of life. And there was a part of me that as I was watching the movie,

I was like, actually, this is the answer. And obviously the film is very hopeful, it feels like at the end. But I was hoping you could kind of talk about that idea and like how you visualize that and the fact that it is kind of like this psychedelic thing, but also weirdly a kind of practical thing about how you can just kind of go into an abyss

and just settle there for a while. Like, where did that come from? Yeah. yeah i mean a very early germ of the entire film was um if we were going to do a multiverse movie i didn't want to go to just a couple and and then gloss over just how existential the idea of infinite universes is. Um, and, and so then we started writing an impossible screenplay about an infinite number of, uh, movies,

um, in the same movie. Uh, and, and eventually we kind of needed a symbol to represent nihilism, nihilism, you know, it was like,

okay, we can't like just flash between universes there's gotta be something to hold on to and and specifically something that wasn't going to make you roll your eyes um but you know like when you talk about nothing matters it's such an eye-rolly thing because everyone is talking about it now but it's also like you can't talk about it either because it feels so uh cringy uh as they say or cringe as they say um but if it's a joke and then the eye roll was our was on purpose so yeah we know what we're doing initially there was just a joke where like uh the villain would be like like oh over there's the everything bagel i put everything on it um

and then throw away but it was like a joke we whenever we pitched it to people they'd be like that's very funny and then it we were like oh that's valuable to have a thing to look at. And I think it's really important for... And I like bagels a lot. Yeah, we eat a lot of everything. Bagels are incredible. I think it's important right now. We're in a weird time where everything has meaning attached to it.

And there's so much meaning attached to everything. And we have to somehow make sense of it and like i've once read that there's two responses to the current meaning crisis we have one is you dig your heels in and you become even more dogmatic with what you believe to kind of protect yourself and shield yourself from the meaning onslaught and then there's the other instruction which i think a lot of younger people are going towards which is this feeling of nihilism you know the world is ending and I have nothing. I literally cannot do anything because there is a million things happening all at once and who's going to care about what I do or say?

And so it was actually really important for us to grapple with nihilism on a personal level because we don't know how to process it yet. And so the movie starts and we have a main character who believes everything matters and you see her fall apart because she's trying to hold on to every thread. And then the movie introduces this villain who says, I have something for you. Nothing matters, which becomes really scary for our main character who does not want to hear it. And then the movie goes on a massive, wild journey. That's like basically a fun roller coaster ride about nihilism and that ultimately ends in a

really beautiful place where it says nothing matters but maybe that is beautiful because now we can do we can make anything we want matter you know we get to choose what we get to choose what matters and in the case of this film the thing that matters are the people around us and i think if we can find a way to um you know just process that idea in different through different lenses through different stories you know not just our story but I think a lot of people need to be tackling this problem to give you know the young people and ourselves all of us it doesn't matter if you're young or old we're all grappling with it but to give us an answer to how to exist today yeah like i um i think i'm pretty cynical as well uh and and so like

exploring that was kind of scary and fun and therapeutic and uh yeah and then brought us to the point where we kind of felt like oh wow there's some value in in cynicism like and and nihilism and like I'm not crazy to feel those thoughts and in fact those thoughts can actually make you a kinder nicer person because if like if if nothing matters then might as well be a nice person like that and the and the whole concept really speaks to me so thank you um so we end every episode of the show by asking filmmakers what's the last great thing they have seen i get the impression you guys watch a lot do you watch a lot no like it kind of depends i just had a kid

he watches his son uh watch youtube videos about train light how old is your kid he's only three so you know he's three okay yeah so he's he's just understanding he's just beginning to understand the world so i'm watching a lot of things to help him do that um rather than movies but i'm trying to think about last thing i will i also want to caveat neither of us are cinephiles. We love films, but I consider myself more like I love games. I love comic books. I love anime. I love poetry. I think so much, a lot of our biggest inspirations, even though film is like the literal inspiration, there's just so much that like, you know, we love PTA, but we also love YouTube. So it's like, that's kind of what this movie is.

And so don't ask us any cinephile questions. We're going to embarrass ourselves. I just asked you one. You got to give me something. Okay, favorite thing. Oh, just something good I saw recently. Yeah, anything. I mean, it could be something on YouTube, honestly.

At South by, I went to a live show presented by the three busy Debras, which are these three comedians who have a show on Adult Swim and they're just these like nightmare suburban housewives who do kind of like like anti-comedy bits and it was so thrilling it was real fun and they had like a cast of people come out and do standup sets. And there was one in particular that blew my mind. It was so good. The guy's name was Ike something.

I gotta look it up. But he, he like plays a teacher on the show and he just came out and just like stood perfectly still and started slowly telling these extremely linguistically complicated jokes. And it was almost like he didn't even acknowledge they were funny and it killed the audience like you slowly got on his wavelength and it was just the funniest uh he was like he did some bit where he's like he's like uh and i

just want to tell you right off the bat i'll be using the word too in all three of the ways that the word can be used and then and then and a minute later you realized he'd done it and like he got a spontaneous applause because there was like oh in that one yeah anyway that's very that was the best thing i've seen that's that's a great answer i would say um pen 15 um the last season season 2.5 i love it when I watch TV fully become itself, you know, fully mature into what is the truest form of that world. You know, like I think season two of Fleabag was that for Phoebe Waller-Ridges. is incredible because it is doing all of its silly things that it does with like the fact that they're playing middle school versions of themselves while just hitting the hardest most personal things that you could hit when talking about middle school and there's one episode in

particular where Maya you know one of the actresses and creators actually directed an episode completely about her mom. And I remember watching the movie, the TV show, actually not realizing that her mom actually plays her mom in the show. Right. So I watched the whole thing and I was so moved the entire time because of how, how beautiful of a love letter it was to her parents or to her, you know, as, as, as someone who is now a parent themselves i was like this is incredibly moving and then i found out that she was directing her home her own mom the entire time and i was like this like transcends tv or narrative this is like performance art yeah therapy yeah it's like therapy it's like it's like one of the new forms

of of filmmaking that i'm really interested in is like this where you use these big productions to process yeah your life and trauma and relationships hoping that other people will be able to relate with as well it's such a beautiful thing so anyways 1015's

latest season amazing that's great his name is Ike Ufomadu. Okay. Yeah. I'll seek him out and three busy Debra's as well. Guys, listen,

it's very rare that I see a movie and I'm like, this movie will be with me for a long time. And I really love it. And I really, really love everything, everywhere, all at once. So seriously,

congratulations. And thanks for chatting. Thank you. Thank you to Daniels. Thank you to the listeners of this show for

all your great questions. Thanks and welcome back to Bobby Wagner for his work on this episode. Tune in later

this week to The Big Picture. We're going to be talking about another cinematic achievement. I'm talking, of course,

about Morbius starring Jared Leto. And then we're going to be talking about vampire movies, which I love. See you then.