The Big Picture - Mega Mailbag: ‘She Said,’ Best Journalism Movies, and an Oscars Power Ranking

Episode Date: November 18, 2022

‘She Said,’ a new installment in the long history of journalism films, premieres this weekend. Bryan Curtis, the host of the 'Press Box' podcast, joins Sean and Amanda to dig into the film, break down its Oscar chances, and answer some of your media movie questions from the mailbag. Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Guests: Bryan Curtis Producer: Jade Whaley Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The time has come to get ready for the 2022 World Cup, and what better way to prepare than by revisiting the World Cup's most amazing goals? I'm Brian Phillips. I'm making a podcast about the history of the Men's World Cup, told through the stories of 22 iconic goals. The show's called 22 Goals. It's out now on the Ringer Podcast Network, and we're having so much fun.

Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit superstore.ca to get started. I'm Sean Fennessey. I'm Amanda Dobbins. And this is The Big Picture,

a conversation show about the media mattering. She said a new installment in the long history of journalism films premieres this weekend. So Brian Curtis, one of the hosts of the Pressbox podcast is here with us to dig into this new film. Take some of your questions from the mailbag. We'll talk about the Oscars, a whole bunch of other things. I was on the Pressbox earlier this week to talk about our favorite media movies. Now you're here with us, Brian. Hi. It's great to see you. The media matters. That's what I'm here to say.

It truly does. She said that also matters. That's a new film. I'm really glad that you both are here because you guys have read this book. Brian, you have some intimate knowledge of some of the participants of this story. It's, of course, one of the most, I think, meaningful media stories in a long, long time. It's, of course, the story of the two reporters at the New York Times, Jodi Kantor and Megan Toohey, who reported on the sexual assault allegations and ultimately conviction of Harvey Weinstein, who is a widely known and very successful Hollywood producer and studio owner for a long, long time. And this movie really tracks closely how the story was reported and then told.

So, she said, Amanda, I'll start with you. What did you think of the film? This was my most anticipated film of the year and had been from the beginning. And even when we did, I think, fall movies, I put it at number one for two reasons. One, I really like journalism movies and we'll talk more about that later in the podcast, but I like anything where it's two reporters who gotta like get the story, you know, and are they going to get it or not? That to me is thrilling. And I also did, as you noted, read this book and I thought it was a fantastic book. It is clearly in the model of All the President's Men, the book, and we'll talk about how that influences the film as well. But I found it to be a really incisive and invigorating just explanation of how investigative

journalism works. I thought it was like really interesting and instructive. It's not quite a how-to, and there is narrative tension in it. They really are trying to hold your attention throughout the story of the book, which I appreciate as a person who likes a story. But just in terms of how to report these stories, how they reported this story, how to think about this type of journalism, I found it compelling and really smart. And so I was curious to see how they would adapt it and also just like the material and think it deserves a wider audience. Brian, what'd you think? Book was one of the best books about journalism I've ever read. I just remember it came out and it was literally me and my wife passing it back and forth because we couldn't wait to see what happened next, even if we knew the answer

would happen next. So I was excited to see the movie too. I think the movie was pretty successful. It was not to me a great, great, great journalism movie, but I really enjoyed it and enjoyed watching it. And I thought it was interesting how they took this book that was very much in all the president's men style, tick tock of this whole thing and reduced that down to a movie. Yeah, so it's directed by Maria Schrader, adapted by Rebecca Lenkowitz. It stars Carrie Mulligan as Megan Toohey and Zoe Kazan as Jodie Cantor. And it's a fascinating document of sort of real-life recitation. There are a lot of real-life aspects that are blended into this movie in ways that I have not yet seen before, which is, of course, very notable because in

many ways, it's also not just a New York journalism story. It's a Hollywood story. It's a story about famous people and people that we know in the real world. And so, it's interesting that I thought the movie was really, really good on the thing you just cited, which is some of the practical aspects of doing this work. I don't know if it's note perfect in terms of showing how you do an investigative reported feature, but it's very hard to make a rendition of that that is interesting to watch. And some of that is great. I think there is a, I don't want to say it's a flaw, but an inherent struggle with the story, which is that we just do know where we're going the whole time. There's not a ton of surprise if you read the newspaper.

And so whether or not this is ultimately like a proper movie is something I wanted to ask you both about because the work that Megan and Jodi did obviously is tremendously important. And the performances in this film are good and the filmmaking is good. And I liked watching it. But is this a movie or is this something different? Respectfully, you also know where All the President's Men is going. That is true. And I think that this movie models itself a lot, has a lot of influence on All the President's Men and also exists somewhat in the shadow of All the President's Men, which is not really fair

because All the President's Men is like the greatest journalism movie and one of my favorite movies of all time. And I haven't listened yet to, is your episode of the Press Box out yet? It'll be out tomorrow, Thursday. So I haven't listened yet, but I have to assume that All the President's Men is like, no spoilers, but it's going to be up there because I know the two of you. It's number 78 on my list. Okay, well, anyway. So you're right that you know how it's going to end, but that doesn't necessarily disqualify it. I think for me, I guess I never really gave my verdict.

I really like this movie. I didn't think that it was perfect. And I think it just lags a little bit. They are so dedicated to not only showing you how journalism works, but also to making sure that they respect each of the sources who went on the record for this piece, which, and for this book, which is a commendable action. And one thing that I really like about the book is that it kind of gives you a new way to think about how this sort of journalism works. But it just, it takes a long time. It just takes a long time. So it's not that you know what the ending is. It's just that you know what the ending is.

And it also asks you to wait for it for like 45 minutes. Whereas in All the President's Men, you just get a bunch of newspaper stories like typed on a typewriter in like 30 seconds at the end. And it's like, nix it out, you know? Ta-da! Yeah, the deliberation in the film is very purposeful and I think helpful in showing that this is kind of grinding, dull, complicated work. But is that cinematic? I think is like a reasonable question to ask. What do you think, Brian? Well, step back and think of the Weinstein story.

A lot was known. The New Yorker, magazines like that had tried to get the story. So the trick of the Weinstein story was let us figure out how to get this into print. Get it past Harvey's bullying. Get it past threats of lawsuits. Get it past just the obvious trickiness and difficulty of reporting about sexual assault. I thought if this movie had a little bit of a weakness, it was not that it did not spell that out at the beginning of the movie. And say in some kind of scene, which they could have made up,

but a whiteboard scene, whatever it is, here are the elements that we need to get. Because if you have a journalistic movie, which is essentially a quest to try to get the story into print, tell the audience what it is they need to do. Because we're watching this movie and they're having these compelling encounters and gathering this evidence.

But even me, as somebody who pays attention to this stuff, was thinking, wait, what do they need to get this to press, which was the big thing to do with the Weinstein story. On the other hand, they do spend a lot of time in this film being like, she won't go on the record. She will go on the record. She won't go on the record. And there is a lot of expository dialogue, which you have to have because not everyone has any sort of journalism background. And again, part of this project that I enjoy is like teaching people about how this works. But because they have to simplify it, some of those stakes that Brian is talking about get sort of flattened into, will she say yes or will she, you know, does she want to stay off the record?

It has a little bit of a wire season five problem for folks like us in this room. And I wonder how your common moviegoer will feel about this. But there is a sequence in the film where Jodi Cantor has been sort of assigned pursuing stories around this kind of, you know, sexual misconduct in the workplace in Hollywood. And so she's starting to report around and she literally says to someone at a certain point, might have even been the Megan Tuohy character, I didn't realize there was so much sexual misconduct in Hollywood. Something to that effect. And I find it hard to believe that Jodi Kantor actually said that out loud. In fact, she's like a tremendously sophisticated and accomplished Hollywood reporter and editor.

But that is a device for the audience to understand the perspective of someone that is pursuing the story and also the environment and the landscape. And so there's like a complication in the storytelling there where sometimes when you handhold, it's very effective,

but you also get dinged for it kind of critically. And so I think for the most part, I thought they struck a very good balance of keeping us kind of wonks and know-it-alls satisfied or not too bored by the didacticism that you're citing while also helping people who maybe don't fully understand what even the concept of on the record or off the record means. Brian, you're the expert here. What would you think about that balance? Well, it was interesting. And again, I go back to this idea of do you need people to be on the record to put this story into print?

Right. Or is them telling you this on background and you can describe them in the pages of the New York Times? Again, that's an interesting, to me, and probably something the Times was thinking about in real time. It was a moving target to this day. Absolutely. And if you have people on the record or on background, then do you need documents from inside the Weinstein company, which they eventually get in a fairly thrilling sequence? Do you need evidence of confidentiality agreements? So what's the puzzle to put together here? Because that's what they're doing in this movie.

So again, I think it would have been interesting to kind of know at various points in the movie, how close are we to getting this? How much farther have we gotten than other close are we to getting this? How much farther have we gotten than other people who tried to get the story? When Brian and I talked about All the President's Men on the press box, we talked about the set of the newsroom and the way that it was designed and how beautifully cinematic it is and the way that Pakula kind of shoots those sequences when they're sort of like sitting around trying to figure out how to crack the story. This film uses a very different approach in that it actually shot in the New York Times building, which if you've seen page one, for example,

the documentary, or maybe some of the recent Hulu documentaries, you know what it looks like in there. So it's familiar, but it makes the movie real in a very fascinating way. But I'm not sure how effective I feel that that was. There are also other choices in the storytelling, some of which we may not want to spoil in terms of real life instances appearing in the film.

Right. What did you think about trying to realify the telling of this story? I loved the Times building access. There's not a lot of objectivity in it, but like the New York Times is obviously going to be a producer of this movie anyway, just because of the IP, if you will. So let's just go with it. It's a beautiful Renzo Piano building and it looks good, you know, and we're looking for cinematic elements in a movie. Like we might as well just all the nice light and the, you know, the cafeteria and the beautiful chairs. It's like the new Condé cafeteria is the New York Times cafeteria. It's very nice. But I did also, there is like one

shot of Carey Mulligan and Zoe Kazan striding through the newsroom. And I had like a physical reaction of excitement to that. I was like, oh, we did it. And if anything, I wanted more of like watching them, you know, like powerfully walk through various newsrooms being like, we need to get it to print or whatever, you know, all of the cliches. So that really worked for me and is, I think, an example of some of the, like, pretty deft ways that this movie turns what is basically a bunch of phone calls and some papers into a movie, because it really just was, like, calling people and then maybe having lunch and then calling some more people. That's it. That's what journalism is. Then, but then in this story, as we know from the book, these amazing personal encounters. Yes.

Which often involved, again, I don't know how much we want to reveal here, but flying across the world. Yes. To talk to people and sit down with them and look them in the eye and say, can we talk about this extraordinarily painful subject? I think it's worth focusing on that a little bit too because there are some, as I said, some real life people who participate. And then there are people who are rendered by actors who were significant in cracking the story. There's two sort of set piece moments. These are almost like the action scenes for this movie. One is a journey to visit a character played by Samantha Morton, in which Zoe Kazan's character has a sort of lunch with her. That is this revelatory moment.

And then there's a second that is a sort of a long tale about a woman who worked for Miramax many years ago is played by Jennifer Ely and then the sort of pursuit of her story. I had been forewarned that these were like the best things about the movie. And usually when someone says something like that to me, I go in and I'm usually a little harder on them. And I still walked away feeling like they were the best things in the movie. What did you think? Yeah, absolutely. The Samantha Morton scene in particular, because it has the benefit of going first. And it's pretty simple, just closes in on her giving an incredible monologue for four minutes, I think, just about her experience or the character's experience, how it made her feel, why she was deciding to do this. It hits all the notes of exposition. And even, Brian, to your point, there is some stuff about the documents woven in and why would you need these documents and where did they come from?

And I think she explains NDAs for a while, but it never feels like you're being fed your vegetables. It's completely compelling. And then Jennifer Ely is sort of the emotional other heart of the film. I mean, there are many of those, but she plays a woman who is recovering from breast cancer as she is making the decision to participate in the story. And she gets another scene. I guess it's in Cornwall, I want to say. And it does seem like they filmed at least by the seaside. On location. On location, which makes a big difference.

Again, thank you for leaving your rooms. And it's also really beautiful. So I think whoever said that was right. Those kind of performances do stand out. Absolutely agree. And what it does is it pops us out of this story of these hardworking and very heroic journalists, which of course we're grooving on

because we are journalists, and reminds us, oh, wow, here are the people that experienced these events. And that's totally different from the story of these two journalists, commendable as they are, trying to piece them together. There's this kind of complicated meta aspect of, in a Hollywood product, rendering people who have been hurt or traumatized by the machinery of Hollywood. You know, powerful men, of course, have been running Hollywood for well over 100 years, and in some cases, abusing the people who work in those spaces. And so I'm kind of fascinated by how this movie is going to be received and celebrated and touted. We can save that for a little bit of an Oscar conversation, but there is a queasiness, I think, that is involved here too,

or sort of like, what is the duty of a studio to make a movie about the publication that desperately tried to get people from this world to speak for years and years? Of course, the Harvey sort of awareness of misdeed, I think was well, well known for a long, long time, even though it was never put into as stark a terms as Jodie Cantor and Megan Tuohy did. And then, you know, Ronan Farrow, of course, did as well for The New Yorker. Did that strike you at all as you were watching, especially since you talk about, I mean, we talk about Hollywood nonstop on this show. Yeah, I was struck by the movie's choice to make this so New York bound,

like another consequence of shooting in the New York Times building. And then just like a lot of action shots of them on, you know, walking to and from the subway, taking very important phone calls, which like I think you at least pull over on the side of the sidewalk if you're going to answer your source, but whatever. We can get into, you know, nitpicking journalism later. But I thought it was very consciously New York bound as if to separate itself from Hollywood, because I assume that the people making this movie have been pretty self-conscious about everything that you just said or I would hope that they would be. Brian and I saw it together in Los Angeles. At a red carpet premiere.

At a red carpet premiere. I don't think it's a spoiler to say that at the end of the film, there are some title cards that say what happened to Harvey Weinstein, which you can read about in many newspapers, including the New York Times. And Brian, I don't know if you felt grossed out when an L.A. crowd just started actually applauding at the card about convictions. It felt weird. But I was like, nah, that's not the correct response in this room. Even though that's the right thing, you know, even that's what everyone, it just, it felt self-congratulatory and a little icky and I didn't love it. Same here. I just, I just felt it. It felt like two different worlds coming together, which is what you're talking about. This world of journalism and real things happening to real people in this world of the movies coming together in a very

strange way. What'd you guys make of the decision to keep Harvey off screen? And we hear a voice that represents Harvey over telephone calls. And there's this great kind of dynamic between Andre Brouwer playing Dean McKay, executive editor of the times and his longstanding kind of like quarrels with Harvey over various issues in the newspaper. And their interplay is frankly quite funny in a movie that doesn't have a lot of laughs, but he's not, we don't see him, you know, we don't, that's obviously a purposeful choice. What'd you, what'd you think about that choice? It's an interesting one. When we were attending, we're listening to the Q and A after the movie, they said they wanted, they did not want to center Harvey Weinstein in this movie at all.

There are some scenes in the book, of course, where Harvey Weinstein comes to the Times building and we just see him from behind. Those are very dramatic scenes in the book because here, after all this work, here is this person doing whatever he's doing. I don't even know if defending himself is exactly the right word to describe it. It was interesting when I was paging through the book today, I was reminded, oh, wow, Gwyneth Paltrow is a very, very important person in this investigation. She is off screen mostly in this movie, kind of hinted at. But yeah, they do use, they have a voice actor. I was honestly like, is this AI? Because I don't think it was Gwyneth Paltrow, but the voice wasn't credited.

But she's on the phone for one second doing a very pivotal scene from the book when during the investigation, Harvey Weinstein apparently showed up at her home in the Hamptons, I believe. And she was like hiding upstairs and calls Jodi Kantor like in an absolute panic. And so her voice is a voice that sounds very much like Gwyneth Paltrow's voice is very briefly in it. Absolutely. And that was, I think one of the power, one of the powerful parts of the book is you have all these people in Hollywood are like, you are onto something. I may not be ready to talk to you on the record right now, but I will talk to you. And in Gwyneth Paltrow's case, I will open my contacts to you and contact other people to see if they will talk to you. So it was interesting because that's like

a big, big difference between the book and the movie in this case. Yeah. So let's talk about the authenticity of the journalism. How real was this? I've worked on a handful of investigative stories in my career. Nothing, as I said to Brian earlier this week, of this magnitude. You've worked on some as well. Yeah, nothing of this magnitude. You've written some as well. Needless to say, nothing of this magnitude. But despite being two chuckleheads who talk into a microphone, we worked in journalism for a long, long time. And you, of course, are still a working journalist. Is this an accurate portrayal of what it's like to do this?

I think it got a lot of the notes correct. Sure. I mean, Sean and I were talking yesterday about how there's never any writing in a journalism movie. I'm so glad that you guys brought this up because one of the mailbag questions that we got was like, what's the most unrealistic part? And for me, it's just like, there's no writing or that everyone, like the draft is immediately written. No one's struggling. It just happens instantly. Nor is there even really any angst about the writing. Exactly. Correct. Which is the thing that I find most prevailing both for myself and any journalist I've ever worked with. Though there is an angst scene here where they're all reading the computer and they're about to push publish. Yes. And it's one of those moments

where it's like, we know we're right here, but everybody just read this one more time. Yeah. We've had a couple of those at the ringer. And honestly, it's kind of like that. Yeah, it is kind of like that. And it's pretty thrilling and scary and exciting

and sickening at the same time. And I think that they really did nail that in an exciting way. You know, setting aside, obviously, the sort of severity of the actual story itself. It's a lot of time and work goes into these kinds of stories. And I feel like it is very, very good

on nailing that aspect of it. I would have liked to have seen a lot more of Rebecca Corbett, who's played by Patricia Clarkson in this movie. She's a huge figure in the book. She's a huge figure in assembling these stories. If you read the book, Jodi and Megan would go do something

and then call her up and just download everything they say to her. I sort of wondered watching the movie if a lot of her role wound up somewhere on the cutting room floor because it feels very small. Totally. And she really just has to be like, we need documents, you know? But in the book, Rebecca Corbett is a fascinating figure. I think she has like a whole fulfilling life. Is it Baltimore?

Where is it? Somewhere else, she's a train commuter. And she kind of is a complete boss at the Times all week long. And I think works in a hotel or lives in a hotel and shepherded this project. Then like goes home and, you know, lives her other life on the weekends, which is just, I would like to be her when I grow up. Sounds amazing. Yeah.

And it just felt like they didn't have enough room for all of the personal lives of everyone in this. And I mean, that's the interesting balance of the movie, right? How much is it about Megan Twohy and Jodi Kantor and the breaking of the story? And how much is it about the women who went on the record? And I like that it makes room for the latter because so often these stories don't. But it does feel a little betwixt and between as a result. frank about showing what that can be like for a woman after giving birth and then kind of where they fit back into the workplace and returning to work and the kind of like necessity and vitality that people feel when they get back into the workplace. I've not seen that in a lot of movies,

especially not in movies where that isn't the point, you know, like it's just a fact, right? Yeah. And I really appreciated that. I don't know if that was an aspect of the book, but I thought that it helped me get invested in two characters who otherwise might've seemed a little bit like reporting automatons or it was just sort of like pursuit, pursuit, pursuit. And I got much more emotionally invested in their journey in part because I saw, especially Megan Toohey through that lens. And the movie, I think gets to be Carrie Mulligan's movie in a lot of ways because she gets that story, even though we see Jodie Cantor's characters, you and her family as well, the crux of the emotional weight, I think, leans in Carey Mulligan's character's direction at first. What did you guys make of that?

I agree with you. I really liked that they included it without explicitly being like, this is important to them because they're moms, you know, and they need to do this to protect their daughter's J.D.R. producer is just kind of like nodding and laughing at me moms, you know, and they need to, like, do this to protect their daughters. Jadar, producer, is just kind of, like, nodding and laughing at me. But you know what that messaging is. And you kind of roll your eyes, you know, regardless. So, you know, obviously, I am nine months postpartum myself. So I was very, I guess, like, quietly moved. You know, just, like, glad to see it up there.

And just to have it to be a fact and a reality of the way that they were doing their jobs. And it was just like another part of the reporting and like the process of breaking down the story was figuring out where your kid is going to go. So you can go to, you know, and like Jodi Cantor can go to London, but Megan Tui is still nursing or, you know, it has to be near the baby. So it's like the logistical aspect of it, which I love my child, but he is a logistical problem all of the time, you know, just like reporting is. So I thought that was really deft. And that was like another, I thought, pretty savvy way that the movie brought like reporting to life.

That's maybe like the least sexy part of reporting. It's not, you know, like Robert Redford shirtless, you know, with his gold chain, like blasting classical music and being like, I got it. But it has its place too. Yeah. Woodward and Bernstein, they never go to daycare, you know, and all the president's men. They don't. And, you know, since we've entered this era of no more print editions of newspapers where

the clock stops or magazine where the clock stops, journalism is just all clock stops. Journalism is just all the time. Yeah. And I thought the movie really conveyed that really, really well. That you don't, there's not an idea of, okay, I've written my story. Now time to go home and have family time, in which journalism will never intrude. My job will never yank me away. It did a great job of dispelling that myth to the extent it exists. Small things like the number of times that they rolled over to answer their phone in the middle of the night.

Yes. Or just, it's not like they were just sitting in the newsroom at their desk being like, wow, it's like 10 a.m. And so it's business hours. And now I will get this fancy person on the phone. It was lived in, which I really liked. May I raise one journalism authenticity point here? Yes. Of course.

There's some scenes where they are walking through the newsroom. The newsroom at the New York Times, like the newsrooms at every other journalistic institution, does not sound like Grand Central Station when you're going to catch a train. I understand it's exciting to have like a 50s,

wire machines. The exact opposite. Somehow they just turned up the volume and I was like, no, no, no, Newsrooms have not sounded like that for 15 plus years. But I feel like this is almost like a constructive note from the movies to newsrooms is that like we got to do better than everyone just sitting silently slacking each other from across the room. Like, let's bring it back. I'm in. I am. Wire machines beeping everything.

Let's go. I'm going the other way. I like to sit as quietly as possible. I don't want anyone to speak to me. I want to get as much work done as I can while I'm sitting in the office. Nevertheless, Brian, I'm so glad you're here because She Said is, of course, an Oscar contender. There's some great filmmaking in this movie, and it's produced by Plan B, we should say, which is Brad Pitt and D.D. Garner's production company, which has been very successful, historically, at the Oscars and takes on big, weighty stories like this. Normally, Amanda and I would just sit here and be like, so,

best picture? Best supporting actress? What do you think, my friend? You gotta put the voice work back in the can a little bit. No, I'm hearing quite the opposite. I actually, I think most of your voice work is really funny, but when you're doing me, I just don't do it with me around. I'll consider that note, but won't take it. Okay.

Brian, keep it up on the Oscars. You told me that you just wrote a piece 18 years ago about the best foreign language award, which is now the best international feature award. You still pay attention?

That was a sign by Jodi Kanner, Sunday Arts and Leisure, when she had taken over the job there. Are we talking about Oscar prospects of this movie of She Said in particular? Yeah, although I do want like some 30,000 feet, like does this fucking bullshit still matter? Oh, I can't wait. We're going to pull out the TV ratings of the Oscars versus like the Texas TCU game on Saturday night.

Oh, thank God you're here. Can we look at that? I will say about this movie, and I will say this is another something I would have liked to see a little more of. I didn't feel that they filled in the biographies of the two journalists quite enough for my taste. Just have a few more notes of here is where you are in your career at the New York Times. Here is what your particular ambition is as a journalist. Here's where you came from. Jodi, who I used to work with at Slate, who became Sunday Arts and Leisure Editor of the New York Times at age 27 after she wrote an email to a Times higher up and said, here's why your section could be better and here's why I could make it better. Me, the culture editor of Slate, and that starts her career and then reinvents herself as a reporter there at the

Times, becomes this top-level reporter. I just think, to me, I think for that, for those two actors to be considered, they would almost just have to have a little more, we'd have to know a little bit more about them individually. And I didn't quite think I got that in this movie. Yeah, I said to Brian afterwards, I did want a little more Woodward and Bernstein banter and connection between the two of them. And that's pretty much because, like, these are my versions of superheroes, you know i just like want to like watch like my pals like banter and then do amazing things i don't know either of these reporters unfortunately they're just pals in my head but you know this screenplay is not by william goldman like most aren't but you could feel that a little bit you could even feel that just the i agree the biographical detail and just the connection

between them and the sense of like the team like going to save the day, which is kind of what happens in other journalism movies and is perhaps why all the people at this table love journalism movies so much, you know, because the journalists can be the heroes. I think it's cool that the sources are the heroes in this movie, but it does, I do wonder if that makes you a little less Oscar inclined. It's not a lot of big speeches. Yeah. Which is not something you can usually say about a movie like this. But there is a history at Oscar, right, of taking a short, powerful scene and turning that into a supporting. So do we think Samantha Morton, Jennifer Ely?

It's so tricky because there's a little bit of category fraud in the mix here this year, insofar as I think the movie you could say from a screen time perspective is just as much Carey Mulligan's as it is Zoe Kazan's. But Zoe Kazan has been slotted in the best actress category, in which candidly she will not be competing because it's a very, very competitive category this year. And Carey Mulligan has been slotted in best supporting actress. So invariably, Carey Mulligan, who is quite famous and has been twice nominated already is likely to blot out someone like samantha morton who actually gives a performance not unlike

a former oscar winner in a media movie and network beatrice straight who's basically in two scenes in the film and famously won for the shortest screen time, I think, in Oscar history. You could have seen a narrative where that happened, but they've decided to slot, perhaps quite understandably, their well-known movie star into this slot in an attempt to win. Now, I don't know what her chances are at this point. It's a little early, but there are a lot of very well-known people who will be competing in bigger movies. Candidly, we just saw Angela Bassett in Black Panther, Wakanda Forever. It was a strong push for her now. Jamie Lee Curtis

is in everything, everywhere, all at once. There are a number of women who would be eligible for the film Women Talking, which comes out in early December,

all of whom give very good performances. So, this feels like the most likely place, even though I'm not quite sure Carey Mulligan gets to do the thing

that a person who wins Best Supporting Actress gets to do. But then again, this is the Oscars, and they don't really care about that. They care about rewarding people at the right time. So perhaps it is the right time for her. It's hard to say. She does get to scream at a guy in a bar. That's true. I enjoyed that scene. Yeah, I

did as well, and I think people started applauding in our theater. Yeah, that might have been another applause moment. Some foul language in that. I don't know how you put that on ABC. Okay. Oh my God, not the clips. Where are you on clips at the Oscars, Brian? Clips of the performance?

Or the movie, yeah. Yeah, I'm into it because I'm kind of behind. Okay. I'm that guy. So, all right. See, the common viewer. This is me. That's why I asked him.

He stands with me. And I just, you know, that's another hour of our life that we'll never get back sean what was i going to be doing with it anyway amanda and i mentioned that at the red carpet premiere we were at dean mckay the noted former executive editor of the new york times got to be the oscar buzz generating q a host at the end of the movie yep that was kind of a weird fit i was i was thrilled actually because you don't always get a Dean Baquet-level individual at these Q&As. No, you don't. You do sometimes get a Sean-level person, which is always disappointing for everyone in the audience. I get it every other day, you know? He looked a little uncomfortable doing it, I'll be honest. How'd he

do? Yeah, how'd he do? Four or five questions. I liked the questions. You know, it was a large group, which Sean, as you know from experience, can be hard to corral. And there was also some apparently very dramatic, like, mic feedback happening for them. Oh my gosh, yes. So they all seemed quite flustered. And it was kind of curtailed. It was. It was. I'll just say this before we move on.

I cannot tell you how surreal it is to see a movie, and I wrote a note to Jodi to this effect this week, at the Chinese theater in Hollywood with a red carpet about somebody I used to work with. That is the most crazy and amazing feeling I have ever had at the movies. It's a great test run for the Amanda Dobbins story, which is no doubt coming to theaters at some point in the next 20 years. I'll feel exactly the same way when I see that movie. Okay, great. You can do the Q&A for that one, Sean. Oh, that's so kind of you. Wait till you see my fee.

Anything else about the Oscars around this? Or do you want to do a mailbag? Do you want to talk about adapted screenplay? I feel like it has a pretty good chance, honestly, just because it's a very odd year for that category. A lot of the films have not yet been released that are competing. Among them, Glass Onion, Knives Out out story which you and i saw this week living which is a sundance film that is an adaptation of ikiru the kurosawa movie brian you have no idea what we're talking about right now women talking which is a miriam taves novel that was adapted i suppose the whale which was a play is in contention you know

apparently top gun maverick's eligible for this category because it's a sequel. Oh, wow. Based on the characters from Top Gun. Okay. Interesting. So if there's a Top Gun wave, Top Gun defeating She Said, that kind

of tells you everything you need to know about the Oscars and about Hollywood. But there might be a better script? It's certainly

possible. I don't know. The Knives Out thing here seems wild to me. I was not a fan of the first movie. Oh, really?

I thought that hilarious Vanity Affairs story when they were giving an update on Star Wars and said, by the way, Rian Johnson is busy with the Knives Out universe, too busy to make a Star Wars movie, was one of the funniest quotes I have read in a magazine piece in a long time. I'm not sure if that's accurate, but it is a $400 million acquisition that Netflix made. And the premiere that we went to, which was quite lovely, the Academy Academy Museum certainly felt like a $400 million franchise affair. It was a real red carpet. It was a real scene. We'll save our thoughts for when we make an episode about that. Yeah. I'm just going to say I didn't like the first one. I thought it was too mannered and

weird. I think you're kind of on an island on that one, but it's good to have your own island. Yeah. Nothing against anybody. Okay. Speaking of islands, in fact, Knives Out 2 takes place on an island. It does. In Greece. Okay.

Can't wait. You want to get in the mailbag? Sure. Jade, you're here with us. Jade, you ready to fire away? So our first question is from Felipe. What are key elements needed for journalistic cinema to get it right, but that are often disregarded or neglected? Brian, I feel like this is a good one for you.

Key elements for journalistic cinema. Hmm. Well, there's the pen dance list that, you know, are you really not taking notes while you're talking to that key source? I think that all the, get out your notebook, get out your recorder, let's go, let's get this all down. I think a quest, you know, understanding what the journalist is trying to do. What I like about journalistic cinema is the whole team of people around them. Newspapers, magazines, websites are cool because they're collections of different people that have vastly different talents.

And that's why newsrooms are such great places to go. I was also telling Sean yesterday, I love editors in movies. Michael Keaton has been a good editor in multiple movies. I agree. You're kind of sucking up, but I agree. No, no. And I actually told Sean this. I was like, Michael Keaton's a good editor because he can focus in on you and he's looking at you, but he also looks really distracted at the same time. Like he's actually thinking of three or four other things while you're pitching him this exotic trip to wherever you are. Yeah.

So those are my elements. He's so good in Spotlight. That's your guy. Yeah, he's so handsome in Spotlight also. Husband number three? Yeah. Thank you so much for keeping the correct count. What do you think is overlooked in these movies?

Because we've seen, the three of us collectively, we've probably seen all of them. So what don't they do or get right? We've talked about the writing. Yeah, that one is very rare. A related thing that I'll always think about in The Post, the Steven Spielberg's story about how The Washington Post published the Pentagon Papers second, was that they finished the piece finally,

and then they sent it off to the copy desk for display, which means like the headline and all the other stuff. And how jealous I was that that is how the display process worked and the editor, they didn't have to write it. But so I guess the copy editing process, the display, all the putting the front page together, all those sorts of things, the amount of time spent on photo captions, none of that's like interesting or cinematic, but we do spend a lot of time on it. And it is a little bit, it's all of the people who are involved in it, to Brian's point. Sean mentioned fact-checking, which is an almost famous.

It's kind of a funny thing to throw in there once in a while. You get a lot of lawyers, though. You do, but fact-checking is such a specific aspect. Not frequently in newspapers. Newspapers don't typically use fact-checkers in quite the same way, but magazines certainly do. And in Almost Famous, there's those great scenes where William Miller is being queried about his reportage. But what you said about display is really interesting to me. I don't know if I've ever talked about this, but when I used to work at GQ, my favorite time of the month, every month, was the titles meeting. This was this great convention that Jim

Nelson, the former editor of GQ, put together where he effectively brought all the creative people in the company into a room. And we went through the budget and looked at every story. And we just pitched headlines and display copy. And so, you know, it was like 30 Ivy-educated people just punning for three hours. That makes it sound not as fun as they've always sounded to me. They weren't all puns. Many puns. Yeah, sure.

But the stories I've always heard about them was then at some point, someone finally lands on the actual headline. It's a great moment. They get it, and then everyone erupts in cheers. Yes. It's a touchdown. The funniest thing about that would then everyone like erupts in cheers, you know, like it's a touchdown. The funniest thing about that would often be when you felt like you had reached that moment and then you'd see the pages laid out the next day and they did not have that title. And in fact,

someone, maybe even Jim himself had rewritten that title. I don't know if that's a cinematic scene in a movie. I don't know if making a magazine period is cinematic, but I loved those experiences of being a part of making a magazine. Same for, even for photo captions seems silly, but some magazines were stellar at photo captions. You know, Spin Magazine once upon a time was great at captions. So I don't know if I need to see that in a film, but I do feel like those little kind of quirks of making the sausage are not often rendered mostly because the people who make those movies just don't have any experience with them or they it's often writers who move into Hollywood to start working and writers are not usually participating in that particular aspect of making journalism.

The best movie on this on process is almost Shattered Glass I think because Steve has this whole monologue at the beginning where here's what happens to a magazine story you do this you send it to the editor you get get it back, you do this. And it's learning about that is actually really cool. If we made a movie about making honey, right, or whatever it is, there would be this whole part of the movie that would let, let's tell people how you do this. Yeah, they made it.

It's called Angie's Gold. It's starring Peter Fonda. I think that's what I'm weirdly remembering here, but please continue. Jade, what's next? From Reed. Have advancements in technology in recent decades made journalism more or less interesting to portray on screen? I brought this up with you the other day. I'll bring it on to Amanda. Old newsrooms in the 70s with that fuzzy photography look better to me or look more

journalistic somehow than crisply rendered digital photography newsrooms of today? 1,000%, but that's true of all life. Yeah, but that's also just movies from the 70s look better and older movies look better than all of your iPhone stuff. But it's true that journalists in particular were not made for HD. None of us really were, but yeah. Speak for HD. None of us really were, but yeah. Speak for yourself. Just, you know, it's tough out here. I both appreciated and also died inside that the New York Times' CMS, which stands for Content Management System, received so much play at the end of this movie. Anyone who's ever worked online just wants to take a vacation now so in that sense it sucks because it's just screens but i don't know i realized that i never saw snowden which i heard

was a very bad movie but that's all just documents right how do they like i can't imagine that that is more exciting but i think brian pointed out about, she said that's very effective, which is that, you know, Megan Toohey fields a phone call at 11.45 PM while in bed with her husband. And that that is, that was always true of journalism, but it's even more true now because you can publish it any time of the day. And in fact, you should, if you are working effectively, especially in a field like this with a specialty like this. So that part of it, I think is actually more cinematic because there is this sense that like anything could happen at any moment and it's always surprising. The flip side is being online is so boring and it's not cool to look at. And also people who are online a lot, like myself, just not cool, not interesting, like not dynamic at all. And they talk like they're online in real life.

And that is like lacking a kind of dynamism that you need to create strong story or create strong characters. So I do think that journalists also fall prey to this because they're online a lot. Yeah. Can we get the microfiche scenes back in journalism movies? We were a proud country. We had microfiche scenes and they were there to roll around. Aha! There's the clip I need. I love to flip through microfiche in the library. That was a great, man, we lost something there. The late night library scenes were very good.

Okay, what's next? The file cabinets, yeah. From Andrew, what is the most egregious example of bad journalism ever out on film? My nominee here is Absence of Malice with Sally Field. This is one of the most interesting journalism movies on paper because it's Sally Field. It's Paul Newman. I instantly believe Sally Field is a really good reporter at a Miami daily newspaper. And then she starts doing like the weirdest and most unethical things in the world that the screenplay has required her to do. And I'm just watching it

going, just secretly taping Paul Newman with a recorder in her lapel. She's taking these journalistic shortcuts that don't make any sense. She's allowing herself to get hoodwinked by him at the end of the movie. Oops, spoiler. That is bad journalism. And it actually ruined that whole movie for me. In Never Been Kissed, Drew Barrymore. Don't. I knew you were going to. Drew Barrymore is a 30-something reporter who goes undercover at her own high school, her old high school, to try to be cool again and then winds up dating the teacher who at some point

finds out that she is an adult and not a student, but like not as soon as you would need that to happen for it to be legal, I think. So that's a tough one. I got, I got one that I think is even better in the film. Die hard. William Atherton is a reporter who inadvertently exposes the identity of John McClane's wife to people who took over Nakatomi Plaza. That's bad. And then that makes John McClane and his wife even bigger targets in the film.

That's unethical. Don't do that. It's a bad mistake. Fortunately, the McLeans were safe. They survived. Fortunately, you're the only one who remembered. But also, there's a reason why that's notable. In the film Die Hard 2, Okay, great. Mrs. McLean

finds herself on a plane with William Atherton's character and she gets her just revenge whilst on that plane while he's trying to report a story. So, you know, on the wash. Wow. What a payoff. That's called arc. They nailed that arc. Okay. What's next? Next question is from Max. As with everything in society, a lot of early journalism movies present a pretty sanitized version of journalism. What do you think were the first movies to present a more realistic view of the journalism profession? So I actually disagree with this question.

I think if we think of the old journalism movies, we imagine rousing, we got them, roll the presses, baby. The crooks have been put in jail. If you watch them, they are often written by journalists who know their profession really well, and they scuff up journalists really wonderfully. I mean, Citizen Kane is about him manipulating the press. Right. That was my answer. Yeah. So I think it's kind of always been there. The journalism movie that we've lost in recent times, I think, is more like the front page or

His Girl Friday style screwball rom-com. Those have kind of shifted in some ways more to sort of stories about TV or TV productions or, you know, sometimes advertising agencies or kind of like maybe even digital publishing outfits at this point. I wonder why. They did it in the 90s. Meg Ryan's character in Sleepless in Seattle is a journalist, I believe. not you know in how to lose a guy in 10 days kate hudson works in a women's magazine and you know is assigned the matthew mcconaughey stunt for like her magazine there are a lot of rom-com examples almost all of them the female reporter ends up sleeping with the person that she's doing a story on which is not a trope that we love even though i really like all of those romantic comedies anyway. So it lasted for a while, but I think it's more than that that genre died. And so they moved to, you know,

The Morning Show or whatever. Is there a turning point? You know, when we did our list, you cited 76 as the kind of cutoff for the list that we were making in part because that's the year of all the president's men. Did things get realer sooner? Realer in terms of more realistic? Yeah. I think they've always been fairly realistic. I really do. I mean, I think if we grade, if we do the sabermetric calculation that old Hollywood gussied up everything a little bit, made everything a little bit different. I mean, to me, they've always been pretty real. Again, go back and watch Foreign Correspondent, the great Alfred Hitchcock movie. The whole beginning of that movie is somebody making like 15 foreign correspondent jokes in a row.

How terrible they are. And I just want like a cityside murder reporter to send over there because they actually know what news is. They're not sending me press releases from London. Like that's real. That's journalism. Okay. What's next? From Nancy, what is your favorite journalism movie from the 80s or 90s?

So this tramples a little bit on what we talked about, but Amanda, what are your faves? Pelican Brief, baby. Okay, so... I will bring this up on every single podcast until you take it seriously. Pelican Brief is the orphaned stepchild of the Alan Pakula paranoanoia Trilogy of the 1970s. Sure, but it's a 90s movie, so it fits the parameters of the question. How many Grisham novels are about journalists? I don't think many.

Not many. Yeah, this is it. Why do you think that is? Obviously, he was a lawyer in real life. Well, he had the whole lawyer bit going. Right, so totally, sure. Can you write 70 novels about a lawyer? I mean, that's a lot of lawyers.

Yes, apparently you can. He's so successful. My goodness. What must that be like? It's amazing. I just saw him speak this year and he's like, you know, I wake up,

I don't get up early. Sleep in. I get out to my writing cabin in Virginia and I write till about midday and then I just take the rest of the day off. That's so nice. And I have a novel done at the end of every single year. That's psychotic. One of my smaller unrealistic things in journalism movies was going to be Greg Grantham

as portrayed by Denzel Washington's writing cabin in the Pelican Brief, but now I understand where it came from. Congratulations to John Grisham. Can we tee up Amanda on The Devil Wears Prada? Yeah, sure. Did it make the list? It made my top 20. Is that okay? No, no. Okay, so here we go. The case for The Devil Wears Prada. Is that a good journalism movie? You know what? That is the second time in this month. That's the same voice they used for Barbie, and you just need to put your big boy pants on and take good things seriously. You need to put your big boy pants on and talk about Barbie and the Devil Wears Prada. Yes.

It's a media movie. And Brian was talking about the context of media movies. But it's actually one of the great movies about how magazines work. And specifically an era of Condé Nast that was just before the era when Sean and I worked there. I hoped that it would be like it. And Mackenzie had come to town by the time I made it. Mackenzie had come to town. the time I made it. But- Mackenzie had come to town.

Now that's a movie I would watch. Yes, I guess so. Yeah. Steamrolling all of the employment organizations in this country. It does a lot of the how-to of everything from like, you know, the book and the putting the display and the photos and the photo shoots

and all of the aspects of putting a magazine together that, you know, maybe snooty people like Sean don't consider as journalism, but that's actually what sells anything. And there's a great scene in the movie where Anne Hathaway is struggling. Exactly. And Stanley Tucci, who's fantastic and wonderful, comes to her and says, no, no, you're struggling because you don't take what we do here seriously. Exactly.

And this is serious business in this world. And it is also about the cult of personality style of running these magazines or newsrooms that still basically does exist, but was certainly pervasive for a very long time in magazines and in a lot of... I don't remember if, because I just told that GQ story, which is sort of in league, obviously, under the same banner. I haven't seen Devil Wears Prada probably in five or six years. But I don't remember it being very clear about the actual production of the magazine. I feel like Anna's taste and the kind of domineering construction of the season is very understood.

But I don't remember anything about like, here's what a page looks like in the magazine. There's a whole book that they lay out. Emily Blunt does it in very condescending tones. There are jokes about like I heard that like Miranda killed fall jackets and is pulling or I guess she's pulling autumn jackets up and like stories being killed and stories being moved and the run through, which is how they decide what pieces. They even mention advertisers, which is like sort of the unspoken but very true thing in fashion magazines where you got to feature pieces by the people who are advertising which that's a whole other separate podcast that you know if you ever want to do brian i'd love to talk about but yeah it's a slightly different thing it's not watergate it's vogue but it's very good about it and very good about you know the anne hathaway character wants to be a writer And this is the only place that she can get a job.

And she's doing it for a year before she can go somewhere else. And meanwhile, she's like giving her clips to some New York magazine writer. And like, it has a bit more of that world in a way that I thought was, I mean, certainly fairytale-like, but well-observed. She kills, Miranda, that is, kills a Jeffrey Toobin story, by the way, in the movie. It was kind of a funny moment in retrospect. Yes. Yeah. Kind of amazing.

To me, it felt like getting a fax from the early 2000s and looking at this world where it was like, oh my gosh, you are battling and struggling to get this job where you will be yelled at and dehumanized and treated kind of like garbage for a long time. And that is very much of that time because these people have the superpowers inside the magazine world.

It was fascinating on that level. Two other movies that we didn't get a chance to talk about yesterday but that are in that similar sort of 90s zone that are at the time... That was probably 2006, just so.

Well, the question was about the 80s and 90s. But it's bleeding into the 2000s. I know. I just want to give people the appropriate information since they can't get it elsewhere. Is this about how old you are? What's going on here? I did.

I just wanted to... I didn't work in the 90s either. I didn't know this one here, by the way. I was still at college. I wanted to mention Natural Born Killers and To Die For, which are two movies that were like largely written and conceived as satires that are very over the top and are more about the idea of fame and exposure than they are about journalism per se.

But that I think the stories that particularly the Robert Downey Jr. character in Natural Born Killers and the sort of precursor to TMZ that that film really features and the lengths that a desperate, ridiculous, fame-hungry journalist would go to quote-unquote get the story, a.k.a. spend time with serial killers, and to die for about a similarly murderous, ambitious person who desperately wants to elevate out of the seat of weatherwoman into serious news anchor. ambitious person who desperately wants to elevate out of the seat of weather woman into serious news anchor, you know, both. I don't know if they're great movies, but they are

really smart, like much smarter than I realized at the time about where a lot of our culture was going. And I guess they're not pure journalism stories, but they're definitely media movies. I thought about this whole idea of news anchor doing something else, not like this movie when Carrie Lake was running for governor of Arizona. She just went down to defeat. And part of her whole sell was I have this quality of somebody who's really good on television and I can talk and I can do this no matter what I believe. It's so funny you mentioned that because I just thought of her as almost this movie character who's going from local news to almost narrowly missing out on this huge job.

Yeah, I mean, that is the story of Mike Pence as well, right? I mean, Mike Pence was a radio talk show host for a long, long time. And I would not describe him as a charismatic person, but I think many people felt like he was a strong communicator because he sat in front of a microphone for hours every day just sharing his thoughts and talking to callers and whether that is translated or not your mileage may vary but that is an interesting archetype too the sort of like the converted or the elevated journalist i think it's also an aspect of this in wag the dog too like the media manipulation and the like as a

tool to power there are a lot of stories about this we tend to focus a little bit more probably because of our providence on the reporter who got the story yeah and is exciting or it makes us feel good but there's obviously a lot of cynicism and especially the 90s movies about this subject brand did you re-watch the paper for your podcast i didn't okay my memory of the paper is a great idea yeah anybody who works in the tabloids who worked in the tabloids loves that movie right

that's their movie but that like 900 things happen in two hours I think that's true I didn't revisit it and I was hoping you had because I have that fond memories

I didn't work at a tabloid and a great cast yes by the way and also Keaton again it feels like it should be remade somehow or turned into

I guess into a series is what we do now with that kind of movie. Yeah, but I'd watch all of the episodes. For sure. Let's do a couple more. Jade, what's next? This one's from Orly. Are there any journalism movies where you think the central story would actually be better served without the journalistic framing device?

Or any regular true story movies that would be better as a journalism movie? Ooh, that's an interesting question. It's something that crossed my mind with She Said. Now, She Said is interesting because, obviously, it's two female reporters, a female assigning editor, and women, of course, are centered in the story in terms of people who are participating and sharing their stories. Harvey looms very large, and that decision to remove centered in the story in terms of people who are participating and sharing their stories. Harvey looms very large in that decision to remove him from the story is obviously centering the women. Marie Schrader, who directed the movie, has talked often about how she really wanted to center women in the film. I did wonder if there was a way to center the women and create

basically a longer arc than rather than it be the TikTok of publishing a piece, a feature that is effectively about how men abuse power in this industry over time, that maybe that's more of a series than it is a movie itself. But it dawned on me, obviously the film would not exist without the reporting and the book that Toohey and Cantor wrote. But it's kind of an interesting thought exercise if you go through, especially all of the films that have been made based on true stories, if you just pulled the journalist POV out of them entirely and tried to reframe them. I don't know. Are there any in recent times that you think would be interesting examples of that? I don't have one that comes to mind, but journalists are useful when these movies because they're the way into the audience, right?

They're the person who is realizing everything, who is learning everything. They're the stand-in for the audience. We were comparing journalists to detective movies. It's the same way. You're solving the puzzle and putting it together, and you're moving at the same pace the audience is. And I think that's why people often write them as movie heroes. Yeah, I think that's useful, especially for investigative stories. I tend to not like the journalist framing device when it really is like a pretty literal framing device of like this person wrote a story that it was usually a magazine story. And then the adaptation is the person like interviewing someone else.

And then it goes into the real story. Is this like the New York Magazine series that's on television now about the woman who impersonated? Inventing Anna. Do they do that as well? Jessica Pressler wrote that story. She was also a character in Hustlers,

which was an adaptation of her fantastic story. I believe she's played by Julia Stiles in that movie, which Jessica Pressler was a wonderful journalist and I'm really happy for her that she's being played by these people. They also did it in the Tom Hanks, Mr. Rogers movie. They did. And obviously, I know that that profile was a pretty special one where Tom, you know, the author did develop like a real relationship with Mr. Rogers. And so he becomes a character

in a piece. And like that one works more for me because that wound up being a part of the story. It's as much about Tom Junot as it is ultimately about Mr. Rogers. Yes, exactly. But the thing where you just got to pick who the story is about, you know? And I think that if my note about She Said is that it was torn between the journalists and the sources, and I understand why. And I think that's what's what's cool about honestly the work that they did that started me too and also the book itself but i kind of either want to watch a movie about journalists solving a you know doing a procedural or i want to watch the movie about like the famous person and the story itself what about interview with the vampire we wouldn't have the story of de pont du lac that's true christian slater's character yeah wow okay i mean think about that all right that's real journalism when a vampire comes to you and

he's like i've got a story to tell what are you gonna say if a vampire came to you and he was like yo am Amanda I really appreciated all the work you've done at the ringer I've got a tale for you what would you say? I need to go home sorry

I don't think you would allow that to happen well that's shouldn't this be a podcast? what are my safety protocols when a vampire shows up? I don't know we might have to contact

HR here at Spotify do we have like a vampire policy? you ever been approached by a supernatural up. I don't know. We might have to contact HR here at Spotify. Do we have like a vampire policy? You've ever been approached by a supernatural being? I haven't. No. That's too bad. Unless you count sports announcers. Okay. Let's do one more. Speaking of sports, from Chris, why don't we see more or any sports journalism movies? And which reallife story would you want to see as a movie? This is a fascinating question. Because of any place, sports is, you know, here is our every person walking into the locker room

amidst the big athletes and stuff. I was thinking of, Sean, you'll have like five of these on the top of your head, but Humphrey Bogart and The Heart of the Fall, and he was a sports writer. The Odd Couple, sports writer character. That terrible George Clooney-directed movie about football, Leatherheads, had Rick Riley and a bunch of sports writers in it. Paper Lion. Paper Lion.

My Best Friend's Wedding. He's a sports writer. I had forgotten that detail. It's a good question, though, because it feels like there should be, if we can't be too self-aggrandizing here Cobb that's one there's the sports writer who's the sports writer

in Cobb Robert Wohl plays the sports writer who's spending time with Ty Cobb and telling his tale okay he's Al Stump

I think right Al Stump that's right I I don't know why this is you know Dan Jenkins'

novels were adapted into films. And yet not his stories for the most part, at least not with Dan as a character. Although you would imagine that he would have been an amazing movie character, right? For sure. I mean, maybe the listeners of this show don't know Dan Jenkins. You obviously know quite a bit about him. Yeah, sports illustrated writer from the glory days of magazines and drinking a lot of booze after you turn your magazine in, smoking a lot of cigarettes and

knowing the athletes at an intimate level. I wonder if you'd have to just backdate it a little bit because now it's so far away, right? And the reporting is not what it was. But if you pushed it back a few decades where you're seeing the athletes at 21 or at to shores or whatever it is after the ball game if that could work as a story maybe well i feel like most of those kind of classic sports illustrated stories just are are then fodder for like really great biopics you know you don't really need the journalism because they're about the athletes

and these like incredible you know feats and triumph over circumstances etc so you know but i sure i would watch a sports illustrated in the 70s movie or the 80s whatever i like this idea here we go so there was a recent installment of the netflix series untold that focused on the mantiteoo story called The Girlfriend Who Didn't Exist. And half of that story is about the journalists at Deadspin who broke that story and the sort of process by which they broke it. And I think I personally largely knew the details of that,

but I think for many people, it was pretty revelatory about how some of that information filtered out into the world. And then the second half of the film was largely about what had happened, how Mantaiteo had effectively been catfished and then sort of the catfisher's point of view on the story.

I didn't love it, candidly, for a variety of reasons. I thought the framing of various participants was very odd, but it was a documentary that I thought, this is a movie of some kind. There's a way it needed to have like a superstructure built around it to make that story legible. But we do still get stories like this that you could see being narrativized. It just requires a lot of skill. Like this is in sports, but it's close. The sort of GameStop meme stock story. We've seen like many iterations now of documentary. Apparently there is a film

in production right now about this story, but you kind of need a journalist as the entry point because otherwise you get thrust into a world that necessitates lots of exposition. And as you said, even in She Said, the sort of editor character is constantly asking questions of her journalists to just like guide the audience along in the process of reporting a story. Is there anything else like in the culture right now that you feel like could fit

this kind of a story? I was going to ask you guys this. Working journalist right now who they could make a movie about? Well, to me, it's Michael Lewis. I mean, I don't know if he's considered a working- A movie about Michael Lewis?

Yeah, I think there's kind of like a Secret Life of Walter Mitty style movie to be made about him where it's like, how did this guy end up at the heart of seven of the 12 most important things that have happened in this country in the last 20 years? And kind of like dotting episodically through this, like kind of helicoptering into these worlds and having these fascinating experiences. It's a little bit more of like a kind of a 60s style Peter Sellers movie more so than it is like a wrenching drama. But, I mean, he did it again.

He did it again with FTX. I mean, it's amazing. That he has just this extraordinary radar, this nose that I think is really what every journalist wants to have. Is how do I get ahead of the curve and tell the story of the most meaningful thing in the culture before anybody else can? That's a huge part of being a journalist. And he just does it over and over again. There are a lot of complicated opinions about Maggie Haberman.

I was going to say Maggie Haberman. Wouldn't you watch the shit out of that? I don't know whether we would like the movie or whether we would like, whether anyone would like the lessons from the movie. But yeah, if you did it, if you did it well, it's a fascinating relationship. And I don't know if you could do it

because you wouldn't know on the record who she was talking to, like all that's sort of buried. You'd almost have to know some of the names to make it really, you know, cinch in. Of course, Trump calls her enough times that it would just happen. Yeah.

But to me, her career is the stuff of drama in some form. And the decisions that she makes and just kind of like what we know and how history has unfolded because he likes to call her, you know, it's crazy. Well, I'm sorry to share this news with you guys, but this broke just yesterday, courtesy of the Ankler. It says, What do Trump books have in common with Carrie Lake and Dr. Oz in Hollywood? Nobody wants them. Our sister publication, The Optionist, has learned that the hottest Trump book out there, Maggie Haberman's Confidence Man, was quietly optioned by Apple months ahead of its publication.

But recently, the streamer decided not to pick up the project. So this film will likely not happen. But it's different. A book about Trump, which she wrote, versus a story about her in Trump world and reporting on Trump world. Isn't that part of what the book is about? I've not read the book,

but is it entirely lacking her personal experience in POV? I have not read it either. Okay. But it's not like she said to my understanding, which is about the journalists writing about the thing. Believe it or not, I have not read Peggy Heberman's most recent book. I think that just about does it for us. Is there anything else you guys want to say about media movies?

She said, this conversation we've had, the Oscars. I don't know. I want more of them. I think I share that opinion with you two. Let's keep making these. Okay. Here's a question for you. Journalists are not trusted anymore.

Less so than ever. In part because of our previous presidential administration popped off yeah jmo is the long gestating side project of me and chris ryan in which we talk about the day's news sort of a press box competitor but that wouldn't necessarily be being published and brian just gasped is it hard to make a journalist a hero in a movie in 2022? You're looking at me so sinisterly. That's just like a bad faith question. No, it's not for you. You're not invited to JM. No, I know what you're saying, but let's not give those people the space to be like, I don't believe in journalists, so we can't make them trustworthy in a movie.

My old boss, Jack Schaefer, always points out that while the ratings for journalists have plunged in recent years, so has the ratings for the military and church and just about every other institution in American life. So we're going to run out of stuff to make movies about if we're just doing movies about things people approve of and opinion polls.

Yeah. Sorry. You wanted us, you wanted some self-hatred? Is that what you were looking for? It just sounds like we need more movies about podcasters.

Honestly, I think that's where we netted here. Never make a movie about a podcaster. There have already been so many this year. Guys, this was great.

Thank you so much, Brian. Thank you, Amanda. Thank you, of course. Jade Whaley, thank you for being here. First time on The Big Picture. Thanks for all your help. Next week on the podcast,

Sam Esmail returns to the show for a very special episode in which he teaches Amanda and I how to direct a movie among, frankly, many other things we discussed. We'll see you then. Thank you.