The Big Picture - Movie Swap: 'Aliens' vs. 'Four Weddings and a Funeral' | The Big Picture

Episode Date: April 7, 2020

Hollywood has officially canceled summer movie season, so we're going back to old favorites and exposing each other to new experiences. For their latest movie swap, Sean chooses James Cameron's epic sci-fi actioner 'Aliens,' while Amanda selects Richard Curtis's aggressively charming rom-com 'Four Weddings and a Funeral.' Will they love the picks? Hate them? Will they come to understand each other more deeply as humans? Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Liz Kelley, and welcome to The Ringer Podcast Network. We hope The Ringer can provide you entertainment and companionship during this time. So as always, feel free to check out TheRinger.com, where we're still covering the latest in sports, pop culture, tech, and media, and The Ringer's YouTube channel can provide endless amounts of entertainment. You can find that at YouTube.com slash TheRinger. another movie swap on today's episode. Last year, you may recall, Amanda selected a movie for me to watch and I chose one for her. After trading into the Spider-Verse for Sense and Sensibility, we got a little bit closer to understanding one another this week. We have two deeper extremes and two movies that are even more important to the both of us. I chose James Cameron's sci-fi

masterpiece, Aliens. Amanda, what did you choose? I chose Four Weddings and a Funeral, directed by Mike Newell and written by Richard Curtis. So we will talk about both of these movies in depth and we'll have some questions for one another about why these movies are so important to us. But first, let's just talk very quickly about what the hell is going on in movie world. Obviously, coronavirus has impacted every strata and experience in our society. It has obviously infected the movie world in a pretty significant way. I think we should talk about all of the choices that were made last week in the movie industry, which is to say that there are no movies. There are going to be no movies in movie theaters for many months now, as we suspected, Amanda. We saw Disney pushed its entire schedule

into the fall and into 2021. What do you make of the fact that we don't have anything coming in the next three months? So I think that that this was inevitable we all knew that something like this uh would be happening and obviously for the safety of everyone who works on these movies and who works in movie theaters and who goes to see the movies it was necessary uh i was a little bummed i i knew that this would had to happen and it felt a little bit like they pushed a bunch of movies and they also canceled Wimbledon in the same week. And I was like, wow, you canceled summer. And I love summer.

So that was a bummer. Yeah, we're a couple of summer babies. Our birthdays are in July and August. And summer movie season is a massive event for me personally and has been since I was a preteen. And I can remember I mark time against summer movies in many ways. And, you know, summer movies have come to mean a lot of things over the last few years, obviously movies like the Marvel Universe. And there are a lot of animated and Pixar movies and a lot of action movies. Our beloved Top Gun Maverick

was moved to Christmas, which is just just just painful to imagine having to wait another nine months. I know our producer Bobby is weeping silently on the other line right now. You know, summer movie kind of seemed like a construct 25 years ago, and it has really seemed like a construct in the last five years. But even still, I'm kind of, I'm lamenting. Yeah, absolutely. I was going to say summer movies start in March now, or they did last year. So in that sense, it is a, um, a flexible definition and maybe we'll just have like a really,

really awesome December and we'll have our Oscar movies. And also we'll just like blast the top gun theme and run around, you know, theaters in public. Cause we can do that again. I, I guess I vow to do that. If it's safe,

I will go see the minion and I'll like sprint around in public to the can do that again. I guess I vow to do that if it's safe. I will go see the Minion and I'll like sprint around in public to the Top Gun theme song. But yeah, I think it's funny. I was thinking a little bit about summer movies and they obviously meant a lot to me as well. We talked a couple of weeks ago about how we both used to have birthday parties at the movies and Bobby hazed us because he's young and doesn't understand that that's a real thing. But Sean, I forgot that you and I actually had a joint birthday party at the movies

in the last five years. Yeah. Which is that we went to see Mission Impossible Fallout together with our spouses and Chris Ryan. A truly great day. I know. And I guess it is of, that's just to say that it is of special significance to you and me. We celebrate things with the movies, but it is also,

I think a big deal to a lot of people. They are the typical, like more bombastic movies, the movies that you want to see with a lot of people, the movies you want to see people cheering at. And in a way, I'm glad that we're not going to lose that. I think that I don't know that I would have had the same experience with Top Gun Maverick at home that I would in a theater, though I would have tried. But it does feel like a bit of a loss or like a pleasure deferred. How about that? I hope that that is actually how it turns out. There are obviously some industry ramifications around this as well. Just very

briefly, I feel like it's useful to understand because you mentioned there's this possibility that we get a bounty of new movies in November and December, assuming that the world gets back on its feet in a meaningful way. We hope that's the case. That is sort of true that we're going to get a lot of stuff in a very small contained period. But there is a kind of knock on effect that's going to be happening here that I don't think a lot of people are considering. And I've had people explain it to me over the last couple of weeks, too, which is to say that, you know, when COVID-19 struck, there were a lot of movies in production that were midstream that had to press pause, which means when we come back, those movies that were in midstream have to start again, which means all those movies that we know about that are coming in 2021 and 2022, and the way that the movie industry works now, it's all forecasting. It's all landing on a date and sitting on it three years in advance. So if you are, for example, an MCU fan, you saw that

Black Widow moved to November, Eternals moved to next winter, and then that had a rolling effect on every other movie that was planned. But there are some other complicated issues around that. Obviously, MCU is the most important ongoing film franchise in the world. So the actors and the directors and the writers and the special effects people and all the people who work on those movies will probably get to stay in quote unquote first position. They'll get to continue to make those movies on time because those movies mean so much to those companies. But if you're making a smaller movie and you've been planning to shoot it in November of 2020 and you had locked in some time

with, say, Chris Pratt, I don't you might not be able to make your movie now because Chris Pratt has to work on another Marvel movie in that space. And there's going to be this rolling effect on all of the things that people had hoped and planned for. And in some cases, those are going to be summer blockbusters that we're all excited about. But in other cases, they might be small films from people trying to make their first movie and they've somehow secured the talents of a high level star. And that stuff's going to get pushed along, too. And so there's a lot of invisible ramifications here that we're not going to know about necessarily until we get to the other side of this, assuming that we do. And it's frustrating. It almost is like a Marvel what-if comic. It's sort of like, what if the movie industry just had to stop for six months?

What would we miss? What would we gain? What would our new experiences be like? It's a frivolous concern, but that's okay. In a time like this, I think we need a little bit of frivolity. And it fascinates me just thinking about all the dominoes falling into place. What are you hearing or what is your sense about Oscar season at this point? It's a very good question. It obviously affects the way that we talk about it on this show in particular, because we've been having this ongoing dialogue about streaming movies and where streaming movies live in the Oscar conversation. Next week, there is a meeting of the Academy and the Board of Governors that is probably going to have a pretty significant

outcome on what the 2021 Oscar ceremony looks like, largely because they have to make a decision about suspending the eligibility rules that are in place for the Oscars, typically, which obviously include films needing to play in a movie theater to qualify for the Academy Awards. There are no movie theaters open right now. Now, under normal circumstances, you'd say, so be it. Movies can go to streaming services or they can go to iTunes and then they can qualify. But because of the complex nature of the Netflix and Amazon Prime political, I don't know what the right word is. This sort of like unspoken animosity amongst some members of the Academy towards those services.

It could be a contentious conversation. Obviously, health and safety is coming ahead of everything. But after that, if there are people who don't believe that Netflix should qualify for Academy Awards, we heard Steven Spielberg, you know, less than a year ago, talk about this exact issue, then it's going to be a challenging award season because a lot of movies are going to have to move. We saw a movie like The French Dispatch, which was supposed to come out in July, now get pushed to October, which even that could be optimistic. That's Wes Anderson's new movie,

and that's expected to be an Academy movie. What does that mean for the movie that was going to come out in October? Does something that was going to come out in October now move to next year? And if it does, what does that mean for the Oscar race? We don't know. Do you think that they should just suspend all Academy rules and let everything that runs first on streaming go forward in the race? Not yet. All I can do right now is be optimistic

because the other option is just really bleak and I can't live in that world all of the time. So my hope is that at some point in the second half of the year, all of these new release dates actually are going to come into effect. And the fact of the matter is most of the movies that actually get nominated for Oscars are released from September to December and do like a really, really perfunctory theater release in order to qualify for the Oscars and then are either rolled out, you know, throughout the year into the next year or just go straight to streaming, which is the case of Netflix. So I hope that we're in a place where that can still happen. Now, obviously, that affects a lot

of movies that can't get into that six months window. I don't know how you parcel things out, especially given the production halts that are going to be inevitable. And it's unfair to a lot of movies, but it does seem like if you just let any streaming movie become eligible for an Oscar, then you can't put the genie back in the bottle. And maybe we don't need to put the genie back in the bottle. And maybe we don't need to put the genie back in the bottle. I don't mean to espouse the views of Steven Spielberg on this one. And I think that how people see movies was already changing and it's going to continue to change. But it just it creates even more problems. And I'm just kind of hopeful that maybe we can get back to some semblance of how we watched movies. You said it, though. That's exactly right. It's a can't get the

toothpaste back in the tube situation where they're afraid that once they make this change, that it'll never be the same. And I think we were already headed towards a year in which when we were making our completely ridiculous Oscar predictions a week ago, we mentioned David Fincher's Mank and Spike Lee's The Five Bloods. Those are two of the most hotly tipped movies of the year. They're Netflix movies. Last year, when The Irishman was considered a major contender, it got this long qualifying run in theaters.

We didn't get any box office receipts, but Netflix knew they had to make this decision. They even bought the Egyptian theater, for example. They're going to reopen the Paris Theater in New York. They're doing this to participate in these rules. And if these rules go away, then our concerns are greater concerns about theaters in general might also be compromised there. Yes. And that's the thing. Let me clarify is that I don't think that the Academy is sort of persnickety rules about only movies that play in theaters or movies really applies here. But if Netflix doesn't have to make The Irishman or Mank available in theaters, then I think that we, the people who still enjoy going to theaters,

it's one more threat to the theater going experience in general. And, you know, it's tough times right now to be and this is, again, very, very low on the list of concerns. But I hope that we can figure out some sort of theater going experience once once it's safe to do so. I hope so, too, at least for the next 10 weeks. There's virtually nothing planned. There are three non streaming movies still on the schedule for the next 10 weeks. And I think that those are likely to be postponed very soon. Among them, The Green Knight from A24. There are a couple of focus features movies that are planned in May that I haven't seen move yet, but they probably will very shortly. The first movie that I think we're likely to see is Soul, which is planned for June 19th. Now, Soul is the second Pixar movie release

of the year. We talked about it a little bit in our Onward episode. I had heard over the last couple of weeks that there is a hope for a big Oscar push for Soul, that like maybe even a Best Picture push, given some of the talent behind this movie, this, you know, the team that made movies like Up and Inside Out. And so there is, you know, a lot of anticipation around this movie. I'll be curious to see if it makes June 19th. That feels very optimistic in the world that we live in. And I think that, you know, a lot of anticipation around this movie. I'll be curious to see if it makes June 19. That feels very optimistic in the world that we live in. And I think that, you know, you and I even when we were when we were hanging out socially over the weekend via Zoom, we were talking about the idea of like, when will anybody feel safe doing anything? Will we be comfortable going to a restaurant? Will be comfortable going to a baseball game? Will people be comfortable going

to take their kids to see Seoul on June 19th? It's confusing. I'm not sure. Yeah, it'll take some time and it'll also be a personal preference. After we hung out socially, my husband and I were cooking dinner and we wondered how long before we would specifically see you, Sean Fennessey, in public because you do take these things very seriously. So yeah, I really don't know the answers. I think if Soul moves, then you'll see another cascading effect. Then you'll see Christopher Nolan's movie Tenet move out of July. And then all of a sudden, it will be exactly what you said. We'll only have the September through December corridor for all of this stuff. And that will be, I mean, on the bright side, it'll be fun

for this show because we'll have a banger episode every single week. We'll get to do a Wes Anderson episode and a Christopher Nolan episode. And, you know, you'll get to talk about Venom 2, which I know you're very excited about. We'll have just hit after hit, which will be very exciting. Any other lingering thoughts on the state of the movie going industry despite this terrible crisis? I'm rooting for them. That's where I am. And again, it's uncertain. Movies are what I look forward to. And going to the movies are what I look forward to. So I'm hopeful that everyone can figure it out, not just for

the jobs of thousands and thousands of people who rely on this, but so that we all have something to talk about and share in every week because I do, I miss it. I miss it too. Speaking of having something to talk about and share in this week, let's go to the swap. my toe Okay, Amanda. So, I wanted you to see Aliens. Now, I re-watched Aliens myself yesterday and as I was re-watching

it, I was like, wow, this was an aggressive choice for Amanda to watch. It really was. More so than I imagined. How do we start talking about Aliens? Obviously, this is a sequel to the Ridley Scott original Alien, which is one of the most beloved horror sci-fi films ever made. Obviously, hugely influential movie.

James Cameron made the sequel about six years later. Cameron is, of course, a fascinating and hugely important person in movie history. Perhaps underrated in terms of his value because he's made so few films with a sort of long interval between those films. But those movies have really shaped what movies are from The Terminator to Terminator 2 to, of course, Titanic and Avatar, the forthcoming Avatar sequels. I tend to think Aliens is his best movie. And there are some reasons for that. I want to talk to you specifically about the James Cameron style, the storytelling style, the action style, what characters he likes, and what he wants to put on screen as an opening gambit on this conversation. So he got his start

with Roger Corman in the 70s. As so many great filmmakers did, he was given a very small amount of money. And he co-wrote and co-directed a movie called Piranha 2. Have you seen Piranha 2, Amanda? Believe it or not, I missed that one. Piranha 2, not bad. A decent sequel to Joe Dante's wonderful Piranha, which I would also recommend highly. But that was sort of like a starter kit. And people like Peter Bogdanovich, Martin Scorsese, many filmmakers over the years got a chance to use that starter kit. Cameron is one of the last great ones to use that same format. He makes The Terminator shortly after that.

And we see in The Terminator the sort of the Sarah Connor female hero that he becomes very fond of and uses over and over again in his films. And then we get to Aliens. So you want to give me your first impressions of aliens as a as a human being so it was interesting to kind of be watching the source code for a bunch of other things that i had seen if if that makes any sense i had never seen aliens though i had seen alien and i've seen basically other every other james cameron movie and i have also seen action movies and I've seen movies of the eighties. And so you kind of, you can start tracing the lines. And I thought that that was really fascinating. I, we picked this movie because I wanted you to pick something that illustrates action and

kind of, I often feel when I'm watching movies that I don't totally know how to watch an action sequence. And it was kind of the same exercise with Spider-Verse, which I realized that part of it was just kind of, I didn't know how to watch animation. My eyes didn't know where to go. There's a visual language to it that I'm not as versed in as I am in other types of movies, probably because I don't seek these movies out. And I thought this was really instructive. I'm not sure that this is the action that I respond to necessarily at the end of the day, but I have a lot of thoughts in the list of the action that I do respond to. And it was really illustrative and informative for me in terms of thinking about how action sequences are put together, because I can tell that this is like a master at work.

It is. That's an interesting pivot too, because you know, when Cameron made this movie, he was, he was young. He was 31 years old. He was working largely with the same British crew that worked with Ridley

Scott on the original alien, even though this production and this movie is utterly different. And the only thing it has in common really is Sigourney Weaver and this, this alien basically. And the crew was pretty distrustful and disrespectful towards Cameron and Cameron style. And many of them walked out on him and the production was very fraught and difficult.

And he really relied on his then partner, Galen heard who was a producer who was a very persuasive figure. If you look at Galen heard resume, you know, she's one of the most important women in the history of Hollywood. And, you know, this movie almost didn't turn out well. And we hear that about a lot of movies like this, with this kind of epic scale, with this kind of leap. And one of the most significant things about it, and this is an opportunity to talk about not just the filmmaking style,

but what action movie making is, is it's not a horror movie, really, even though it has a lot of horror elements. It's very much a war movie. And it's become a cliche almost to say that this is his combat film. This is James Cameron's going to Vietnam movie. But it's very closely patterned after a lot of films like this. And it's very closely patterned after a lot of sort of team up movies like The Dirty Dozen, where you meet a bunch of characters and you're rooting for them and most of them die at the end but the action in this movie is different from say a michael bay movie or you know even like a a 50s western because those movies are often about big open spaces and vistas and this movie is very claustrophobic and it is literally happening in a tunnel or in a above a an air vent or in very

confined closed spaces throughout the movie which gives it a kind of um i don't know it's like a mesmerizing feeling of being closed in on at all times which is it is a very distinct kind of action sequencing and blocking it's much harder to make movies like this than it is to make a movie with a wide open vista with a green screen. Let me tell you. Yeah. And I think what was interesting to me was just like they did all of this. He made every single set and shot and weird monster and it's all happening. It's really tactile in front of you, which is really hard. I recognize that and is really impressive if exhausting. Here's one thing I wanted to ask you. So I think it being claustrophobic and all happening together is correct. Do you enjoy that feeling? Oh, it's my favorite thing. It's my favorite thing.

What I want is to be absolutely mortified. And I want someone to wrap a noose around my heart and pull as tightly as possible. And often, I've said this before on this show, the effect that it has on me is laughter, is like joy. Now, I realize that that is perverse and that i have a lot of personal problems but i think that there is something about the ability to manipulate feeling that i find to be so powerful and it's really like the essence of movies in a lot of ways what you want and i'm sure we'll talk about this with four weddings and a funeral because

it's not it's not dissimilar ultimately the way that somebody kind of grabs your heart and holds it in place the way it wants to and i I feel like Aliens is like the signature science fiction action movie that does this for me. Yeah, I don't think it's rare. I think that a lot of people really enjoy this. Like they watch. It's just over the top. Insane, never ending, like guns blazing, everyone yelling. It just keeps going and going. And it's really intense. And people are like, yeah, like, give me more. They have your response. And I don't have that response, which is about me, not about the movie. I don't think I'm the only person who doesn't share that. But I kind of, I just want to understand it a little bit more. So you feel excited. Do you want to be a part of it?

Is that your response to it? This is a very good question. So I don't think my response is necessarily the same as a lot of mainstream movie-going audiences, or at least not the perception of what a movie-going audience wants out of a movie like this. It's not some macho, rah-rah,

yeah, let's kill all the aliens, I love a sick kill kind of attitude about it. To me, the tension and the anxiety and the fear is much more what drives my enjoyment. I'm more likely to laugh at something that feels absolutely horrible than I am to sort of, you know, in some sort of fascistic, faux patriotic, like pro-violence way, say like, fuck yeah, this is the way I want things to be in the world. It's not that kind of reaction. I don't have that feeling about it. I think that Cameron is actually a lot smarter than that in many ways. And if you look at his movies, they're all kind of, they're sort of borderline commentaries on those kinds of characters. You know, all the the marines who are who are killed by the aliens and aliens are buffoonish ridiculous over-the-top grunts and

that's very purposeful if you look at true lies it's a total parody of the kind of like macho man working for the cia archetype um he is i think he is bemused by people who use the tools of war for such destruction. And so foolishly, like the Marines in this movie don't know what to do. They don't know how to battle this enemy. They don't, they're not sensible. They don't work together. They don't listen to orders. They don't make the right strategy.

The only person in this movie who has any idea of what to do is Ripley, is Sigourney Weaver's character. And that's notable. You know, the purpose of this movie is it's not like a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie or it's not like, you know, a terrible Cinemax war film from the late 80s. There's something much more elevated and critical about the film. I think that's true. I do think that there is also a way to watch it that is just like the very obvious, literal,

it's things exploding and you're just being like, oh no, why are you doing this for two hours and 17 minutes? And there is like, there's a real art in that because it's very clear what's going to the stakes of this movie are and what's going to happen from like five seconds in. And you even know what's going to happen in each individual set piece, right?

Which is that until the very last one, the alien is going to kill somebody and probably some gross things are going to explode. But the fact that it manages to keep the tension and your interest and you being like, oh, no, oh, no, oh, no, even as some really obvious bombastic stuff is happening is a feat. I do really admire that. I did. You know, it's so interesting and you have it written down in contrast with the first movie, Alien, which and you note that it's just like a total genre flip. It's like a completely different movie. And I spent, I think, probably the first 45 minutes just being like, wait, this is a sequel to Alien. Like, I don't I don't understand because it is so literal and you can see the monsters and they're like, they spend a lot of time on the monsters. That's another thing I wanted to ask you. Talk to me about your connection

to monsters. No, I'm serious. Sure. Yeah. I mean, I think it's very primal. I think I can vividly recall going to the library in fourth and fifth grade. I spent a lot of time in the library as a kid. I was really, I bet I would beg my mom to take me to the library when I was in grade school. Um, cause I really love books and I really loved reading and I really loved disappearing into worlds, which is probably a reason why we're doing this right here. And I'm still talking about this sort of thing. And I don't, I, I probably couldn't effectively fully psychoanalyze myself about why I'm interested in this I was always interested in mythology I was always interested in the other I was always

interested in the kind of like intense cracked relationship between spirituality and the ethereal and ghosts and then when that collides with the sort of male adolescent instinct to look for things that are scary or exciting you just you find yourself reading a 500 page book or like hp lovecraft in sixth grade you know you look you look for things that are metaphysical and fascinating and feel like representations of what excites you or what scares you so i've always been interested in it i talked about it a little bit on the Monster Movie Hall of Fame episode that Naaman and I did earlier this year. I wouldn't say that I come to Aliens specifically for the monsters. Honestly, that is I think that obviously the xenomorph design and what H.R. Geiger did with those designs and then all the creature effects that Stan Winston did in this

movie are just amazing. And we'll never have a movie like this again that is so deeply practically made and so big on such a grand scale. As you said, they made so many things for this movie. The sets are so deep and weird and gross and kind of covered in this, you know, secreted resin, as they say in the movie. And there is this crepuscular, muscular, almost like exoskeletal feeling to everything it's almost feels like like flesh hanging off of bone all throughout the movie that is so specific

and deep but to me the movie is much more compelling because of the fear and because of Ripley like those are really the things that work the most for me I like monsters I love the monsters and aliens and an alien. And I think they're like so effectively gross that they give you what you need. They're just this movie is disgusting. And the first alien is disgusting in a way, too. I mean, obviously, the chestburster scene with the John Hurt character is maybe the most legendary gross out scene in movie history. So it's not that those things aren't effective and that I don't like them. I love them. They're essential to the story, but that isn't actually like what I come to

it for. And, but I think you're right. There are people for whom it is, it is the whole kit and caboodle. Well, I just asked about the monsters because again, they are, they are really like physically present in this movie in a way that they aren't even as much an alien even though there is that you know all-time disgusting scary scene and i i find the facehuggers to be like the grossest scariest like creepiest um but in alien it's an existential fear of the unknown and not being able to wrap your head around whatever which it will not surprise those of this podcast to learn resonates with me more than just the really like the giant dumb dumb super technically impressive monster that keeps like bursting out of every single space that exists and but i think i have never quite responded to monster movies as that's not my

ultimate definition of fear if that makes any sense so to me this was like actually slightly less scary even though I was very stressed out the whole time I don't mean to diminish like this was a very grueling filmmaking you know film watching experience for me I was just very like tensed and kind of annoyed when it got really loud because that's how I respond to stress. And it is certainly effective, but the fear to me is not as palpable once you can see the thing. That's interesting. And that's a really good point. It's obviously a trope in horror movies to wait and wait and wait to reveal something. Obviously, Alien very much takes a page out of the Jaws playbook of waiting until the

end of the film before you really get a look at the thing. And Aliens goes 10 steps further. It shows us dozens and dozens of these xenomorphs. I think the reason for that is pretty obvious. In addition to sequels just generally needing to be bigger and bolder than the film that came before it, and there is a case that this is maybe the second greatest sequel ever made after The God have to see the soldiers on the other side. And these, all these aliens are just soldiers. And many of them are dispatched with very quickly. A lot of them are killed in great succession with a hail of bullet fire. There are so many bullets fired in this movie. It feels like a record of some kind because there's so many weapons in this movie. And the design of the weapons meeting the design of the aliens is also this huge part of the kind

of collage of fear and intensity that surrounds everything. I'm not surprised to hear that this was a very stressful and difficult watch for you. As I mentioned, as I was revisiting, I was like, holy shit, this is a dark, tough, angry, weird, frustrating movie. Yeah, well, I mean, I think it's supposed to be frustrating, right? Like, that's why I was asking you, did you enjoy this? Because I think I had the reaction that i was supposed to have to this film it's just that i process that reaction of stress and aggression differently than you do i like you know it's like liking types of food i have

different tastes in in certain experiences of the movies than other people do. But I wanted to ask you, I want to talk a little bit about the actual action itself. So because this is like one of the all time great action movies, what in your mind is like the best action sequence in this movie? So I don't think this has the best sort of action sequencing, but it is the best scene in the movie, which is the first time that all the Marines get get into the nest and we see from many different vantage points because they're all wearing cameras and there is this main base with sigourney weaver and the leader of the mission are looking through the perspective of every single character and they are moving very slowly and very quietly into the heart of

this nest where all of the aliens are and they're trying they're they've been told that they can't fire their guns they can only use incinerators they can only use you know flamethrowers and it is the the pinnacle in many ways of what you were describing of the sort of not showing the thing but just feeling the dread but then and this doesn't always happen in these kinds of movies sometimes when jaws appears he eats a child and then he disappears and he's gone. You know, this sequence happens about halfway through the movie, and it is an all out assault. And it is the most hectic, noisy, whirling dervish of an action sequence. There are so many cuts, but not in a way that feels cheap. Like it is purposeful because you're moving from perspective to perspective to perspective

and seeing all of these soldiers get taken out essentially by these aliens. And they don't know what they're dealing with. They don't know really where they are or what they've gotten themselves into. And it really raises the magnitude of the sequence. Like that to me is the best moment in the movie. Now, there is another moment that. Wait, sorry. Can I tell you? Can I just tell an anecdote about this? So that is when I watched this movie with my husband. And that exact scene is when I got into a very small fight with my husband because he felt that I was not invested enough in that particular scene. Because at some point, it's just so chaotic.

And there are all the cuts. And it's just like, guns, guns, guns, more guns. And everything is just like very dark. And, you know, this was a really interesting visual experience for me because as we learned during Spider-Verse and I was thinking a lot about it, like I just, dark palettes, my brain turns off. And I, it, this has been like actually really heartening for me because I just always thought that I was kind of a visual dummy and I didn't really have any specific aesthetic visual taste or that I didn't really invest in movies in that way. I was more like writer driven and no, no, I really do. And it's if it's all just really dark and

claustrophobic, I it's just not my vibe and I find it hard to watch and hard to follow. So anyway, that scene at some point, I think I just didn't totally understand what was going on. And I think I instinctively reached for my phone and then my husband yelled at me and he was like, this is the best scene in the movie. You're not, you're not taking it seriously. And I told him not to tell me how to watch movies. Uh, but I think he was right a little bit that I, so I tried, I locked back in, but that was really revealing for me. Cause I was just, just, it became clear to me that there are certain types of action that I respond to and certain that I just don't know where

to look. Yeah. I mean, it's not an unusual style of scene in a war movie. It's the ambush. You know, the ambush is a tried and true approach. I'm not surprised at all to hear that this was not even not just visually as powerful or interesting to you, but that like you just don't really dig it. When I was watching the movie yesterday, I watched it when my wife sat on the other couch in our living room. And I also tried to get her attention a couple of times during the

movie to be like, check this out. And she literally said what you just said. She just said, this is way too dark for me. Not dark in terms of like the emotional or psychological effect. It was just the colors were too dark. And most of this movie takes place at night. Now, there are literal and obvious reasons for this. It seems like the planet on which this movie takes place does not have a sun of any kind. So it's dark all the time.

This planet that they're terraforming on. But also, it's just cheaper and easier to make shit look good in the dark. You know, we always talk, Chris and I always talk about this when we talk about action movies. Making action in the light, if you're not using CGI,

is a surefire way to make something look bad and cheap. And Cameron knows enough to know that keeping this dark, and space is dark as well, so it makes sense. You know, and I understand that there is like a visual tradition of it as well. And also, again, it's a it's personal preference. I thought it was, you know, not to make this like the Ellsworth Kelly podcast every six months. But, you know, after we we talked about that on Spider-Verse and Sense and Sensibility, because that's an artist we both like, but I thought it was very sweet. We both did our favorite Ellsworth Kelly paintings on Twitter, but we never really talked about them. But you and I had totally different schools of Ellsworth

Kelly that we really liked, and you liked all of the gradients. You liked the stuff with the black in it, and I just liked the primary school shit where it's just like, let me swim in some blue. But some of it just really is how you personally respond to things. So, you know, I get I mean, space is dark. I get that. I'm not an idiot. And I also get that there is a tradition of this and it looks very, very comic booky in a way and that that means a lot to people and that has its own achievement. It just I find it literally hard to follow.

I think that this movie in particular is meant to be and that's okay. I think that unlike a Bruce Lee movie where the choreography is so essential to the story or, you know, we talked about to share Mofune last week on the show and the way that those action sequences are staged. They're very different from something like this. And not all of James Cameron's action movies are confusing like this. You know, I think the action in Titanic is incredibly legible, which is one of the reasons why it's one of the biggest movies ever made. It's so clear what's happening when the ship is going down. And you're also terrified in a very specific way. And it feels very physical and

if not natural, like you can feel the crunching of the hull of the boat as it crashes into an iceberg. This is paranoia and psychosis and mania in the heart of a war. So it's meant to be flashing and confusing. And that is like a style unto itself. It's not bad filmmaking. It's just very purposeful. Now, your mileage may vary on whether or not that's effective for you. I totally understand that.

Can I ask you about guns? Sure. I abhor them. Sure. So do I. But guns in movies. Because this was the other thing that I realized is that the epic shootouts or suddenly, you know, Shea Serrano will talk at great length about these giant scenes, whether it's like the Matrix or whatever, being very exciting. And I was wondering if you could explain that excitement to me.

Well, as some listeners of the show know, my dad's a cop. I grew up in a house with guns. I fired guns. I have some relationship to guns i i don't like them i don't want them in the world candidly but i do think that they serve a very significant purpose when we talked about mufune we talked about the movie stray dog and in the movie stray dog mufune's character loses his gun he's a cop. And the loss of that gun is this huge metaphorical concept around the loss of his manhood. And I do think that the movie Aliens is trying to do a similar thing.

It's trying to show a kind of machismo in the male and female characters who wield these huge weapons and show that they seem and feel very powerful. But in fact, Ripley is really the only person who knows how to defeat the aliens. And she does it with guns sometimes. But when it comes down to the final showdown with the queen, she's using the power loader and she's using her wits. She's not using a weapon to fire on the alien. And that feels very purposeful. I don't think that the takeaway of this movie is guns are badass and you should buy one if that's your takeaway like you've misunderstood it it's not my takeaway either but i

do think at least 40 of the movie relies on you just wanting to watch people load up a shitload of ammo and unleash it and that is like and that's part of the excitement of some of the scenes. Now, granted, the climactic scene, which I fucking loved, by the way, is the power loader, the big robot guy. Yes. You can't see it right now, but I'm doing like the robot arms. You're doing more of a Kool-Aid man thing, actually. Well, but, you know, now I'm doing it. But I was really jazzed when the power loader showed up in the first you know 15 minutes of the movie and i being a

just a dumb idiot didn't understand that that was like checkoff's power loader and that it would come back at the end so i was psyched when it finally opened and i was like oh like a thing i can get behind because it's like you know it's funny and it's inventive and I like the callback. And then they finally kind of feel like they're equals. And it's also more like, I don't want to say hand-to-hand combat, but it's the two figures interacting. There is some sort of, if not personal, then like human-alien connection as opposed to just a bunch of a bunch of guns and things exploding so for some of it i was just like oh okay i like more mechanical things i like action scenes with more with more movement um i i don't know i like a little setup that's the other thing it's just kind of like now we've got these guns and now we're going to shoot them because that's what you do with guns i don't know the thing is that's intentional that's a that was a choice that the

filmmakers made to give you loud gunfire for an hour and 45 minutes before leading to this climactic sequence that doesn't feature the gunfire like that is it almost they sort of numb your senses until you get to that moment when the garage door comes up and you see her emerge in the power loader and then she delivers you know this truly iconic line let's hear that line right now get away from her you bitch and then they have what turns out to be basically godzilla versus king kong i mean that's what that fight is is it's two massive beasts punching each other in the face and trying to kill one another. And it is so primal. And so it's such a break from the punishing, loud experience that we've been having previously

in the film, which is part of why it's such a brilliant movie. You know, like that wasn't a mistake that they decided to end there. No, it's true, though. It does ask you to sit through 145 minutes of just the people gunning each other down. I went back and did you read Roger Ebert's review of just the the people gunning each other down i went back and did you read uh roger ebert's review of this by any chance i haven't i it's a very positive review as i recall though right well sort of it's it's how i felt which is he says essentially this is a total marvel and achievement and i felt really bad after watching it and i didn't want to talk

to people i was like okay and again any reaction means that a film is successful but it does ask you to sit through a lot of discomfort in order for that payoff and i understand you can't have the payoff without the discomfort but man it, it's a lot of ammo. You're not wrong. Let's talk quickly about some of the figures in this movie. Because one of the reasons I think it works is it's got a really great cast. So we mentioned Sigourney. We'll talk about Sigourney more in a minute.

I'm very interested in your Sigourney takes. I know there are some Sigourney films that are meaningful to you too. The Marines are obviously the biggest characters in the movie. Some of those Marines are comprised of what we'll call the James Cameron troop of actors. So that includes Bill Paxton, the late great Bill Paxton, giving one of my favorite performances ever in this movie, Game Over, Game Over Man. Um, Lance Henriksen, who plays essentially a synthetic android figure that is a callback to the Ian Holm character from from alien but more beneficent i would

say than his predecessor and michael bean who i don't know are you very familiar with michael bean i'm not so michael bean plays hicks in this movie the sort of ostensible hero slash love interest um michael bean is also the star of the Terminator and Michael Bean should have been the most successful actor of all time. I mean, he's in both of these movies. He's a very kind of traditionally handsome leading man, not a great actor, but he kind of gets market corrected by people like Bruce Willis, people who are a little bit more clever than him who can do their line readings a little bit more slyly.

But, um, I think he's absolutely perfect in this movie as like who you perceive to be the person who will defeat the mother alien but who ultimately is wounded and doesn't get a chance to do so um i love all of them i love you know the whole um the group of largely unknown actors the the the apones and the uh you know the sergeant and all of the like just like this movie is perfect at dotting the movie with faces that you won't forget even if you never know the actor's names and then uh we should talk about paul reiser um were you surprised to see paul reiser in this movie star of mad about you it was by the way i watched a lot of mad about you as a kid uh of course it was on the you know must see tv thursday night block same i was surprised to see paul reiser yes but but happy to blast from the past yeah and also in case you're wondering if there

are more ideas and messages in this movie this movie is anti-corporatist as so many of these movies that we talk about on this show are who is the worst person in the movie it's not the queen alien it's this fucking shithead bureaucrat from this company that sent people to this nest of death it's amazing he's very very funny and and smarmy and disgusting and persuasive in the movie and paul reiser had not acted very much before this movie and he's so perfectly cast i can't get over. He has some of the best line readings in the whole thing. Yeah, I have to say, I really don't understand why she went back. I mean, that was just my one thing for the first 30 minutes. I was like, ma'am, what are you doing?

How about no? How about no? And it's a testament to, like, this is so stupid, litigating the premises of action movies. Nobody wants to hear this from me. But I was concerned for her. stupid litigating the premises of action movies. Nobody wants to hear this from me. I, but I, I was concerned for her and maybe that says more about my relationship to her,

which we can talk more about. But I did think that he was very persuasive, but his argument of you need to come back and get rid of them was not persuasive. I wouldn't have worked on me. How about that? I think it's a legit nitpick. I don't think there was a good case for returning to the hellscape.

That just didn't seem like a good idea. I mean, she is obviously ultimately the only person who has the, I don't know, the spirit to defeat them. And she does again. But yeah, no, you won't see me returning to the site of my worst traumas. That's not a strategy I'm going to be deploying. Do you want to talk about Ripley

and Sigourney Weaver in general? Yeah, I do. I so I'm curious where this movie plays kind of in the midst of Ripley for you? I mean, it's the movie that like supercharges her in Alien. It's kind of shocking at the end when she's the one who outlasts everybody. Sigourney Weaver wasn't as well known at the time. You know, people like Tom Skerritt were in that movie who are very well known actors.

John Hurt, obviously a very well known actor. You might think like Yafet Kodo would be able to outlast the alien. You don't know who's going to be there at the end. In this movie, you know that sigourney is the central figure um and you know you could make the case that alien 3 and alien resurrection the two movies that follow this kind of fuck up the legacy of ripley especially alien resurrection which i would not recommend it is not good alien 3 notably is david fincher's directorial So this is a, this is a hallowed franchise in many ways for me, but you know, it just,

it makes her, I think along with John McClane and, and I guess the Terminator, the signature action heroes of the 1980s. I mean, there is probably nobody, you know, Sylvester Stallone made a lot of movies at this time and you get Steven Seagal and Jean-Claude Van Damme near the end of the,

near the end of the decade. But I mean, is there a a cooler more iconographic more fearsome figure than ellen ripley i mean you know she's she has depth she is she's fortunate enough to be unlike say sylvester stallone a great actor you know very rarely in these movies do you get somebody who can, who is classically trained and is so striking and physically imposing, let alone a woman, obviously. Her being a woman, you know, is a big part of the, it's a big part of the Cameron strategy. You know, Cameron likes to put women at the center of his stories to subvert expectations, and it pretty much works every time. If you rewatch Avatar, you will learn quickly that the movie is not really about the sam worthington character you know it's about the navi and and the female

character at the center of that story um so you know she's she's really important and and so we were fantastic she was nominated for best actress at the academy awards for her performance in this movie movies like this as you know from talking to me about it all the time never ever get recognized that's how big of a deal this movie was it was nominated for seven oscars movie movies like this as you know from talking to me about it all the time never ever get recognized that's how big of a deal this movie was it was nominated for seven oscars which and for an immensely violent harrowing disturbing movie that made roger ebert feel bad about the world after seeing it they still nominated for seven oscars that's just fascinating to me what do you think about well this to me was kind of this source code moment of understanding why Ripley

was such a big deal and obviously I'd seen Alien but I I'm loathe to say the word badass in the context of any woman or really just on a podcast or in life at this point but because it's become so overused and such a cliched and marketed out of existence. But this is clearly where it starts. And to see a female action hero like this and the way that she plays it also, which is she is really fearsome, but there also is vulnerability and fear. And she can make, Sigourney Weaver just has an expression of panic, but also resolve that her face just shapes a certain way. And it's really, really powerful.

And I think makes you invest in this character in a way that you would not invest in, you know, say the machismo overconfident guy who we normally expect to be, you running through and shooting people up i wanted to ask about the mom of it all yeah we didn't we haven't mentioned newt yet played by carrie hen the young girl in the center of the story obviously a child being used in these stories is tried and true and you know birth and rebirth is a is a paramount theme to this whole film series the chest bursting is a birth the face hugging is an insemination you know the the the idea of the sort of like the sexual and the physical and then the motherly obviously there is a mother alien there's a mama you know there's a queen bee at the center of this story and it's closely paralleling this story between ripley and newt and the caretaker.

And of course, Ripley's daughter, we learn early in the film, has died because she's been in a hypersleep for 57 years. So she doesn't get a chance to be that mother to her daughter. And so she finds a surrogate daughter. You know, this is pretty sophisticated stuff for an action movie. I got to say, like, it's really a cut above most action movies you're going to watch. It's sort of sophisticated and it's sort of really cheap like the just having a character named newt like the cute kid in the 80s action movie that you have to save is just the most obvious sentimental manipulative stuff and it is a little and also to the extent that at the end of the day the only the motivation for this iconic uh female character

is that she's mom and she's just got to save and it's and it's two moms battling in the one hand that is the one of the many experiences that is available to women this is a very like women can have it all movie but it is also it like you two can have a power loader and the daughter, but it's also like at the end of the day, it's, it's two moms and it's a little, I don't, I was a little retro to me.

I didn't, I didn't love it even though I thought knew it was very cute and I was very concerned for her wellbeing at all times. And when the doll was floating in the water, I was just like, fuck this. It works on me because I too can be manipulated by 80s movies.

But I wouldn't say this is the most nuanced aspect of the Ripley character. How about that? It's not, but I think, I honestly think the movie comes by it honestly. Like I don't think that, I think that Newt is a very manipulative figure that feels like a callback

to a lot of children in danger movies of the past and a lot of horror movies at that. But I think that they're, one, the movie is produced by a very powerful woman two i think there's a lot of intentionality around the idea of the only person who can solve these problems is a woman like the only person who can fix this now i don't think the idea is that the queen be alien is also the source of all the problems or that birthing is the source of all the problems you could probably have an an unkind reading of the movie that indicates that procreation is the woman's fault and then there's all kinds of anxiety that comes with that too but and man how about that crazy sequence where the mother alien

is giving birth is that not the most disgusting thing you've ever seen in your life it's just so fucking gross. I mean, I've tried to be like a grown up about this, but this movie is fucking disgusting. And you know what I don't like is fucking gross stuff. I realized I don't care about horror movies. I'm fine. It's not being scared. I just don't want to watch gross shit.

But they made it as gross as possible. Yeah. If you've never seen Aliens and you're still listening to this this movie is gross it's it's it's actually amazing how in 1986 they were able to make it this gross it's astonishing um but yeah i mean i think you make a fair point i'm generally pretty swayed by the the motherly aspect of the movie um and i think without it it's just another movie about a person trying to defeat a monster. There's no resonance to Ripley's journey if you don't have greater stakes. You don't have this desire to replace this loss in her life. So I don't know.

I'm into it. It's not the first thing I think of when I think of the movie, but I'm into it. Yeah. I'm into it. It's not the first thing I think of when I think of the movie, but I'm into it. Yeah, and I understand that all great action heroes have some sort of familial stakes baked into them, whether you're a dad or it's a father-son nonsense or whatever. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to dismiss half of the world's struggles to father-son nonsense, but there are recurring themes. I just wanted to point out that this kind of this historical female character is also ultimately defined primarily as a mom. So just something to think about as you're watching literally the grossest movie I've ever seen in my entire life. You're right.

Let's talk quickly about those Academy Awards that I mentioned. So it was nominated for Best Actress, Best Original Score, Best Sound, Best Film Editing, and Best Art Direction. It won a Special Effects Award, obviously. John Richardson, who supervised all the special effects in this film, which are just absolutely amazing. Obviously, Sigourney Weaver didn't win. But let's just talk quickly about the nominees that she was up against.

She was up against Kathleen Turner and Peggy Sue Got Married and peggy sue got married delightful film sort of a forgotten francis ford coppola gem sissy spacek and crimes in the heart i like crimes of the heart very much jane fonda in the morning after i've never seen it i'm not familiar with this movie at all got to get up on that in quarantine and then marley matlin won for children of a lesser god which was obviously a very big story at the time because Marlee Matlin had certain disabilities. And so she was having an unusual performance that you don't always see in films. And she's very good in Children of a Lesser God,

but the only movie that really matters historically here is Aliens. And as is so often the case, you look back on these awards and you're like, I don't know, Ripley is the only iconic character here. This is the only person that anybody is going to remember 50 years from now. It's the only movie that people are rewatching. It's an incredible physical performance as well as an emotional performance.

Think of how haunted she is at the beginning of the movie when she's having these nightmares over and over again. Think about how physically challenged she is by all of the sequences that she has to shoot with crazy James Cameron during the movie. Again, it's just once again, the Oscars are stupid. Why didn't why didn't Ellen Ripley win this award? I mean, that's always true, right? That the the iconic person that we remember never wins. But can you talk a little bit about kind of the immediate after effects of this movie and the influence? Because I can trace it, you know, 35 years out.

But yeah, I mean, it's a good question. There is obviously a wave of like smart sci-fi that follows this sort of like Robert Heinlein inspired stuff. A lot of Paul Verhoeven movies, you get Robocop. You know, a lot of these movies are informed by Blade Runner as well in terms of their style. But then you get The Running Man. James Cameron makes The Abyss a few years later and other sort of, youintellectualized, big-scale, very practical and special effects-driven film. This is before Full Metal Jacket, which feels very much in conversation with aliens. They seem

to be movies, one about the past and one about the future, but mostly about right now in both cases and about what people are facing when they go into warlike situations um it's a really interesting period of movies if you turn to the rewatchables right now you can listen to bill simmons and shay serrano and jason concepcion talk about total recall also a movie that has a lot in common with aliens in terms of its approach in terms of some of the raw humor and then these flashes of incredible violence and this vision of a dystopia and what corporations do to people and how they manipulate them and drive their lives and how technology distracts us from what's really going on in the world. I think that's the other thing about the guns in the movie that you see is those guns are essentially a distraction. You know,

they're something that make us think we can solve our problems, but can't. What's up with the giant ones that have like have a third leg sticking out like a tripod? What's up with the tripod guns? Do you know what I'm talking about? The most inefficient guns I've ever seen. That's all I have to say. There is a very famous gif of the two lead angry grunts. I think they're played by...

I think it's i think it's jeanette goldstein and uh who is the other who is the male actor in that sequence i can't remember his name the blonde guy where they're sort of like turning and pivoting and raising the gun and dropping the gun down to fire and raising it and dropping it down to fire you know it's just ballet it's just action movie ballet that's all it is like all of the tools are things meant to physically contort yourself around and they're obviously all designed for this movie they're amazing let me tell you that the the toys that the kids had from the aliens movies were amazing i mean there was these terrifying gothic physically imposing weird weapon driven things to i mean i

was four years old when this movie came out i I probably saw it when I was like eight. And imagine getting to buy the Queen Alien and just having a giant Queen Alien in your toy box. Crazy stuff. Yeah. I mean, this movie does feel a little bit like mega toys. And someone just like, what if I made every single toy? And that's both in terms of the actual, you know, all of the specially designed guns, but the filmmaking toys of just like, what if I made every single toy? And that's both in terms of the actual,

you know, all of the specially designed guns, but the filmmaking toys of just like, what can I do if I am let completely loose? And it's, it's quite something. To wrap up, I'm trying to figure out if this is the greatest action movie ever made. I'm not totally sure. I know, I know it's, I know it's not your area of expertise. You know, I think a lot of people love movies like Die Hard because of how involved in that. They love movies like The Matrix. You know, James Cameron makes Terminator 2 five or six years later. A lot of people point to that. People point to movies like The Raid or to The Bourne Identity or to Seven Samurai.

Or I don't know i don't know if it's the greatest ever made because it feels so sui generis to me it feels like it is its own thing there's no movie that can try to be like aliens and even though you might see a little bit of aliens in the matrix or in robocop or in bad boys it's not really there's nothing replicable about it which is why i wanted you to watch it which is why i think it's really important it is completely unto itself in its own weird universe and frankly it kind of ruined this franchise because it was so good and so much better than anybody expected it could be that it kind of i mean alien 3 is fascinating to watch and sounds like it was an

absolute nightmare to make and david fincher learned a lot and pivoted his career pretty aggressively after the failure of that movie. Alien Resurrection, I find borderline unwatchable. You know, Prometheus is a personal, is an object of obsession for me, even if I don't think it's good. Have you seen Prometheus? I saw Prometheus in theaters and I liked it. But I, again, it's more cerebral and weird. And I respond

to that. The last movie in the Aliens franchise is Alien Covenant, which is it matches Aliens in only one way, which is in how gross it is. It is really one of the most disgusting movies ever made. And Ridley Scott comes back to the franchise almost 40 years later to make a bad sequel that is gross, which, you know, we stand a king on the big picture. Let him do whatever he wants. So that's Aliens. Let's take to make sure you were listening to podcasts on Spotify.

Here's how you do it. First, search for your favorite podcast on Spotify's app. They have a library of over 750,000 podcasts at this point. So let's say you're searching for the Bill Simmons podcast, Rewatchables or Dave Chang Show or Binge Mode or The Ring or NFL Show. Once you find them, click on the follow button. That's how you subscribe. Then click on those letters near the top of the app that say podcasts. You can't miss it. All the podcasts

you're following will pop up separated by episodes, downloads, and shows. Wait, it gets better. On Spotify, you can adjust the speed of the pods to seven different speeds. 0.5 times is the slowest. I actually sound drunk at 0.5. Listen to this. Today's episode of the Bill Simmons Podcast on the Ringer Podcast Network. Yeah, you can get drunk, Bill. You can also do 0.8 times, 1.2 times, which is my favorite.

Everyone sounds like they had a good cup of coffee. You can do 1.5 times. You can do two times. And if you're completely insane, you can do three times. Here's what that sounds like. Why would you do that? I think that's how we communicate with aliens. Anyway, Spotify's app connects directly to many of the best automobiles in the world. It even has a car play feature. That's pretty cool. It's really, really good. Best of all, it's free. Download Spotify on any device and you are good to go. Look, I don't want to app shame you, but you should actually be embarrassed if you're not listening to podcasts on Spotify. And if you don't believe me, listen to Drunk Bill at 0.5 speed tell him drunk bill the bill simmons podcast listen on spotify okay amanda four weddings and a funeral give us the give us the big overview before i i interrogate

this film okay great so four weddings So Four Weddings and a Funeral is a very important romantic comedy that came out in 1994 and was nominated for a Best Picture Academy Award. And somehow you had never seen it. And even though you see every single movie and catalog it on your little letterbox and you host a show about movies and specifically a show about Oscars and Oscar history. So that is why I picked it. But it is also a pretty significant movie in terms of the rom-com and British film world and things that I'm interested in.

So this movie, in terms of British film, for a long time, it was kind of the highest grossing British film of its time. It made $245 million internationally on a budget of $4.4 million in 1994. So that's a lot of money. And this is a very small, I mean, it's like the opposite of Aliens. It's filmed in rooms without any action sequences with mostly unheard of actors and made just a ton of money, which is very unlikely. And I don't think that people really expected British movies or non-Merchant Ivory British movies to make that much money at the time. think that people really expected British movies or non-Merchant Ivory British movies

to make that much money at the time. And it kind of paved the way for a lot of smaller budget British movies that we all love to kind of be seen around the world and taken seriously. As I mentioned earlier, it's written by Richard Curtis. It's the second movie written by Richard Curtis, who you may know as the writer of Notting Hill, Bridget Jones Diary, Love Actually, which he also directed, the Bridget Jones sequel, which is really bad, but whatever. I still like it. War Horse, just for fun, for something different.

Sure. About Time, which he also directed, and most recently, Yesterday. And he's kind of, he is a big, obviously a big guy in British film at this point, in British romantic films, and kind of also in British comedy. He came up with Rowan Atkinson, as he would tell you that he kind of just served Rowan Atkinson's coattails for a while. And this was the movie that made him. This was the movie that introduced everyone to Richard Curtis and allowed him to make all of those romantic comedies, some of which, especially in the case of Notting Hill and

Love Actually, are, I think, probably better known or wider seen than Four Weddings. This is also the movie that gave us Hugh Grant, which is remarkable. Hugh Grant had been in movies. He was in Maurice. He was in Bitter Moon. He had a small part in The Remains of the Day, but this was like his breakthrough. And this is also the movie that kind of typecast him for the next 15 years. It takes him almost two decades to get out of it. After Four Weddings and Funeral, he does Sense and Sensibility, Mickey Blue Eyes, Nodding Hill, Bridget Jones Diary, Two Weeks Notice, About a Boy, Love Actually,

Bridget Jones, The Edge of Reason, American Dreams, Music and Lyrics, and Did You Hear About the Morgans? That's an edited resume, but those are just all of the romantic comedies that he does. And he is playing some version of himself, which is the nebbish, fumbling, but unbelievably handsome and charming British guy. And so Four Weddings brings you that. And all of this is from this movie that no one really expected to be a big deal until it premiered at Sundance in 1994 and became kind of an international sensation. So that's why it's important. I just also really love it. I think that it is extremely funny. I think in terms of what it does with a romantic comedy and that genre's conventions is really inventive and romantic. And I find comfort in watching it. So that's why I picked it. So let me start by asking you this.

Yeah. Why are you so into British stuff? I don't know. It's a great question. So I think there are a couple answers. Number one, and I was talking with my mother about this recently. I took a very formative kind of my first international trip. I was lucky enough to go to London and to England when I was about eight or nine, I would say. We had some family friends who had moved

for business to the Netherlands and we went to see them. And then we got to go to London and I was very impressionable and I was there. And I think it like really had a big effect on me. That's when I really got into the royal family. That was also kind of the peak Princess Diana moment. So as someone who's interested in celebrity, it was like right there for the taking. But I think part of it is just kind of timing and, you know, travel is effective. But I do think that I relate to some of the way that British people express themselves and their feelings. And it's interesting. I don't know whether this is chicken or egg. My husband was like, oh, that's a very formative movie for you in terms of your sensibility, talking about four weddings and a funeral. And I was oh interesting so did i just learn to be this way from the movies that i watched or are the movies reflecting something that is comforting and funny to me i genuinely i don't know so what does that

mean exactly what does it mean that this movie expresses feelings the way that you do or doesn't for that matter well or doesn't for that matter. Well, or doesn't. That's a big thing. This is a movie about people who are skeptical and maybe even a little embarrassed by big gestures and big feelings, and they don't always have the words. And even if they have the words or the feelings, they're suspicious of them and they'd rather make a joke of it. And it is about love and friendship and romance spilling out of them, even though they can't help themselves. And I relate to that. I guess I could at the risk of just asking why after every answer. Like, why? I don't know. You know, I guess it could at the risk of just asking why after every answer, like why?

I don't know. You know, I sometimes, I guess it is taste. Don't you find like certain really obvious things embarrassing. Like one thing I like about this movie, this movie, it's four weddings and a funeral.

Great script structure, right? It literally happens at, there are four weddings and one funeral and one extra scene in the middle because you know, you got to have some connected tissue tissue but very clever great job and as i think you have pointed out before wedding scenes and movies always a party so it's it's just the good stuff a plus but a nice thing about this movie is that all of the weddings are are played for laughs they They are ridiculous. They are obligations that you have to go to, and everything's a little silly, and they aren't where the actual fairy tale happens.

And I relate to that. And I find that a lot of the things, fairy tales are whack, in my opinion. And the traditional ending of a romantic comedy comedy and now you get married and live happily ever after is a lie, as we all know. And there is some comfort and escapism in investing in that stuff. But I am not comfortable with I think weddings are kind of goofy. I think, you know, a flash mob to propose to someone is horrifying. I think it's both like actually just uncool and embarrassing. And also, I don't trust that those are real emotions. That's about performance instead of feelings. I think it makes sense. I know a lot of these things about you already. I think it's useful to literalize them for the audience, though. Sure.

As I think about this movie, I think about my regional relationship to the English. And as an Irishman, I have some struggles with the English. Because I feel like there's like an inversion of feeling. The Irish are very boisterous and very loud and very celebratory, but they're also deeply repressed. They're not afraid to express themselves, but they struggle to express their true feelings. The English are very repressed and they don't know how to celebrate and they're very mannerly and they're very tight. But oftentimes, English art leads to these kind of emotional revelations.

You know, you get to the end of something and you realize what someone's feelings are. This movie is very, very much in that mold. Very much the final two, the funeral and the final wedding are these emotional convulsions in a way, which is fascinating from these characters. But I don't personally, though I like hugh grant and i think we'll talk about hugh grant a lot here i have no idea what's going on with hugh grant like his persona i just like i like i it's not that i dislike it i just i'm like how could a person be that way how could you how could you not get the words out when you're that smart is really right is

really where i struggle so an interesting thing about about this, Richard Curtis, who wrote the film and who is very upfront about the fact that it's just based on him and he was writing himself. And as a result, he did not want Hugh Grant because he felt that Hugh Grant was too handsome and he felt that it should be someone more fumbling like him. And he actually wanted Alan Rickman, but Alan Rickman didn't want it and so they cast Hugh Grant and Richard Curtis now admits that he was wrong but the you know the Hugh Grant thing is interesting because it is a character who is written to not be as handsome as Hugh Grant is he is fumbling and also just dissociative the this the sentences everywhere. But it's also often said because Hugh Grant does, let's see, Notting Hill, Bridget Jones, Bridget Jones, four more movies with Richard Curtis. And he is kind of like the bard of Richard Curtis. He's the only person who can do his sentences

correctly. And I think some of that is just like a dry sense of humor and the kind of buttoned up Englishness that you've got and then I think that you're picking up on and then I think some of it is just that you I mean you need someone that handsome in order to sell the stuff and it it does matter matter he has immense charm even as he can't say i love you and and and that dichotomy is kind of what makes it work what i had a hair on that guy too jesus christ yeah what a hair icon put him in the hall of fame um i guess the idea of like i i thought this was going to be more of a light comedy. And it's not exactly what I was expecting. Did you think it was funny? Very, very funny. I think certain characters are funnier than others.

I'll just say uncomplicatedly, I thought it was brilliant. I thought it was great. I really, really, really liked it. I was moved a couple of times. I was moved a couple of times. I was impressed. I think that there is certainly like some notions of English society that kind of make me want to break out in the hives, which is what keeps me away from a lot of these movies. And even though I've seen a lot of the more classical rom-coms that we talk about sometimes on this show that are so important to you the british stripe is so different and if this movie feels a little bit like a bridge to me between a lot of the movies that like hugh grant was in before this film like it feels like a bridge between remains of the day and um i had

a sleepless in seattle or something like you know what i mean like there is something fusing those two sensibilities together i mean they are posh people. It's super upper class, very white England in the 90s. And there are a lot of makings of about this movie. And they were really aware of that and kind of that that would have it. I think they were surprised that this movie was as successful as it was because it is about such like a niche, really upper class part of the UK. Now, I mentioned Princess Diana. This was happening at the same time as Princess Diana's kind of like global fame. And there is a fixation with those with British people, which you still see today. I mean, people love Downton Abbey and they still love the royals. And that is just those are huge

sources of fascination. So i it is it's borrowing from both worlds of both that kind of like the the aristocratic british stuff and the more just really kind of sentimental romantic comedy you noted the sort of post python rowan atkinson black adder era of british comedy and i guess you know Peter Sellers probably goes in there Dudley Moore and Peter Cook that whole like 60s 70s swinging London era of comedy and then into the absurd with Python and then this comes out and at first is I think is like gonna be too sweet for me I think it's gonna give me a cavity a little bit when I'm watching it and then you start to fall in love with the characters a little bit and then the rowan atkinson scene happens atkinson scene happens

which is just absolutely amazing which is like one of the best comedy scenes i've seen in a long time i like rowan atkinson he's like your mileage may vary on him i like him more when he talks than when he doesn't talk but um for all the mr bean fans out there but um and Mr. Bean also isn't he a Richard Curtis figure yeah Bean yes he is amazing um but the movie I think part of the reason why it succeeds is like it's a little bit bigger than its Englishness at times I feel like the funeral sequence the Rowan Atkinson sequence the the big I love you at the end of the film and then I think maybe the my favorite scene in the movie might be the one scene isn't at a wedding or a funeral when he and Andy McDowell go off on their little dalliance together. Right. And they have lunch and they count the number of people she slept with.

Amazing writing. Yeah. So just two things to note, which are possibly the Britishness of this and just also a lot of sex in this movie, which you never have in a romantic comedy, but the two people have sex pretty early on. And then there's just also a pretty hilarious accidental sex scene with Hugh Grant watching it for not, or trying not to watch from a closet. The first word in this movie is fuck. And I also,

the second word and the third word, I think for a while, there is the the climate the scene that starts it of hugh grant's character being very late to a wedding and he's just yelling at his friend scarlet fuck over and over again which again cursing this is r-rated you don't normally get an r-rated romantic comedy but yeah that that one lunch scene between Hugh Grant and Annie McDowell, you don't buy the romance without it. It is pretty special.

And then I find the speech where he goes to confront her and quotes David Cassidy when he was still with the Partridge family. It's probably top three all-time rom-com speeches for me. You know, and I find it, again, that's the classic, he doesn't know what to say. I find it very charming that he leans on a pop culture reference, which is, you know, something everyone at The Ringer would do. It's genuinely very funny that it's David Cassidy when he was still with the Partridge Family. Every time I hear that song, I think of that exact line. It's great writing because I remember it. And it immediately, he makes the little speech. She is polite about it. And then they make a joke.

They undercut it immediately. And she says, that was very lovely. And he was like, well, I spent a lot of time on it. I wanted to get it just right, which is obviously not the case. I have a lot of questions about Andy McDowell. But before we get into that, how actually influential do you think this movie is? Because it's this huge hit. And as you say, it's much bodier than many of the comedies that come before it. And it's much bodier, frankly, than most of them that come after it. And most of the movies that we talk about in the rom-com canon are not R-rated, and they don't feature a lot of sex scenes, and they don't feature the word

fuck many times. And it works so well as a contrast, as a storytelling contrast in this movie to make these people seem more real and more adrift, that they would just be having aimless sex, and that they would be late all the time and cursing and that you know that they wouldn't be talking about their jobs non-stop you know that's a notable thing to me in this movie you don't even know what anybody does for a living but like i i don't really feel its influence on a lot of these other movies well it's a little bit like aliens actually where it's a it's just this massive sealed off success in its own way and then it kind of it paves the way for a lot of other people you don't have nodding hill or love actually without four weddings and a funeral and you don't have the kind of international investment in i mean love

actually is a is a terrible movie that i have seen a hundred times and is like a part of the culture, both in the UK and in the US and I'm sure elsewhere. I mean, you know, we are to the point where they're making Hillary Clinton joke memes based off the poster board scene guy. Like that's, it's part of the firmament. So that is because of Four Weddings and a Funeral, though it's definitely Richard Curtis gets more mainstream and more sanitized and kind of treaclier with every movie. mostly modeled on your own life. And you used true aspects of your persona, the bodiness, the sex, that you would then try to replicate that. It's actually unusual. Most times when a movie like this is a huge breakout success, and this becomes, as you said, the biggest British film of all time at the time. And it's so lauded. For a movie to have this many, to basically mint a new movie star, to get nominated for Best Picture, to make $140 million at the box office, to emerge from a non-Hollywood

provenance. You think that there'd be an effort to replicate it a million times over. Love Actually is fine, but Love Actually is so treacly and it brings like all of the sweet, but none of the sour that this movie balances so well. I find it unusual. We're omitting an important middle step, which I actually think Notting Hill is a masterpiece. I don't think it's as good as this

because this is so specific and idiosyncratic. And it does have that just lightning in a bottle feeling of he wrote this magical movie and got the right cast. And it's the first time you saw Hugh Grant. And you never forget your first, et cetera. But Notting Hill is just, it is smart. It's an amazing premise. A regular guy falls in love with a movie star. They got Julia Roberts to play the movie star when she's the height of Julia Roberts-ness. It still is funny. It has those

elements of London, of Notting Hill itself, but is more accessible. I think it just opens it up a bit more, even though Notting Hill, the movie is still, again, just like a very white privileged part of London. But I guess because it's in London now, the blue door from Notting Hill is a tourist attraction and people go to see it. So Notting Hill is maybe the like it's I mean, it's the studio version of Four Weddings. And I think it really does work on that level. But, I mean, it's the studio version of Four Weddings. And I think it really does work on that level. But people have success and then they want to make bigger things. I don't totally fault Richard Curtis for that, except for War Horse.

Yeah, War Horse, better left unsaid. Should we talk about the weddings? Yeah. So I like weddings. I like going to weddings. I like being a part of weddings i i'm very irish in that respect um these are would you say the weddings are good in this movie i would love to go to them let me just go on record as saying i love being at a wedding

because i think there is something about a wedding that makes them great for movies, which is just all outside time and space stops. And everyone's like, we're here now at this wedding, and we're going to be a part of this ritual. And they're expected, you know, it's like a genre, really, there are beats, you know, what's going to happen, but everyone's going to put their own twist on it, and everyone's bought in. And then obviously, there are also pass steps and an open bar to my greatest passions. And then a wedding DJ, a third of my greatest passions. So I love weddings. What I resist is the, you know, the wedding industrial complex and also the investment

that a lot of people seem to put in a wedding as opposed to you know real life or a relationship or anything and this movie seems to have a similar perspective so it's it's lampooning them while also making them seem like you have to want to spend the time at the wedding at least in the context of the movie right yeah although it doesn't really seem like anybody who gets married in the movie or at any of these weddings is likely to like their marriage is likely to last or that they even seem terribly happy. I guess with the exception of the sex couple. Yeah. You know, this movie talks about like the different ways to be in a relationship and what marriage means to that and what it doesn't.

And is interrogating a lot of, in a lot of ways that idea of the marriage is the happy ending. And there's that speech between Hugh Grant's character and his friend Tom after the after the funeral. And Hugh Grant's like, do you really think that there's, you know, one person for you? And or will you ever find that person and Tom's like I don't know I always thought I just meet a nice girl hope she didn't hate the look of me and then we'd get married and like and be happy and some people do actually feel that way towards marriage and there is I don't we don't have to really get into theories of marriage right now but there is an argument that some of marriage is romance and some of marriage is a partnership and some of it is a working relationship. And, you know,

at the end of the day, what it means to you is a major part of this movie. I feel like, well, one of the weddings already doesn't last within the context of the movie. Yeah, we don't we the third wedding is is as you wrote here a tragedy um gosh it's hard to talk about the third wedding without talking about andy mcdowell so let's hold off until we get into into the mcdowell showdown um the first wedding is fun the first wedding feels very familiar to me that's a wedding i've been to many times uh the two people who are getting married seem very sweet and in love and um kind of like da daffy in a way like sort of like you're not invested in the relationship in any meaningful

way but you're like oh that's nice which it's like an easy wedding to be at because you could just get drunk and that's basically what everybody in the movie does right they all get drunk yeah and it's very fun and it leads to this meaningful encounter that Hugh Grant has. You've got a quote here. So, yeah. So, I really do like what they do in the first wedding in terms of making fun of weddings. All-time comment from Chris and Scott Thomas is Fiona about the bride. Her friend says she looks so beautiful and she responds scarlet you're blind she looks like a

meringue which i can't go to a wedding now without being like is the wedding dress meringue like or not it is it's it's so damning and so true and i think that the the bridal dress industry as a as a group of people should really take some time for self-reflection after this. But also the readings with the idiot being like, if I speak with the symbols or whatever, and then Gareth is like, good point. And the dumb people singing their song because you always have a girlfriend. Yeah. I mean, it's just really funny. And I also I love the rings. But the single best wedding that I've ever been to a couple of friends of ours got married a few years ago and it was just

like a backyard wedding. It was very low key and their dogs were going to be the ring bearers. And so they tied the rings around the dog's necks. You can guess what happened next, which is like in the time between they placed the rings on the dog's necks and the actual wedding ceremony, the dogs kind of decided to untie them. And so there was about 15 people and we did like on the hands and knees search through the yard for the rings, which everyone else was like, we need to find the rings. And I kept being like, this is just like a romantic comedy. And then ultimately we didn't find the rings and they got married with like borrowed plastic rings and they were very happy and I thought it was the loveliest thing I'd ever seen so I just I really attention to detail you know I appreciate it in a movie and in real life we mentioned already wedding number

two in the Rowan Atkinson and the holy spigot uh wedding two is also the the the observed sex scene right yes yes this is a really like almost vaudevillian prat falling sequence from hugh grant really good stuff it's really great i like when he's kind of turned he's positioned in a closet that's also a sink i don't't know what that is. I can't figure out what that is. That seems like some British shit to me. And he's just like holding his watch and like kind of slowly like incanting silently to himself, just like trying to get through it. It's very, very funny. And then his exit when he just like holds up the pencil and he's like, found it.

Yeah, it's good. That seemed like a fun wedding. The first two weddings seem fun the third wedding where you at on scotland i i it's mysterious and i do like even the the movie itself this is the one it is more medieval you know there's the tartan it's the chapel is lit with with candles they do a lot with what they have think, in terms of this addressing and the locations in this movie. But I don't really get it. But also, they seem pretty cool. I like the Scottish people.

They have their own culture and they're not really interested in other stuff. And they're just doing them. And I respect it. I've been to Scotland. Incredible place. Edinburgh, absolutely awesome town. I would go back in a heartbeat. Perfect collision of small city and extraordinary vistas.

And like there are a couple of shots in the movie, even just the big green hills and the fog descending in Scotland. Fucking love Scotland. However, older Scottish men, be careful. They could be a little tough as Andy McDowell's character learns here. Not the most pleasant people in the universe. So should we talk about the tragedy that interweaves with all of these things here? Or do you want to talk about the fourth wedding? I think you have to talk about the tragedy first because it really incites every

aspect of the fourth wedding and the end of the movie so my favorite character in the movie by far is the character that simon callow plays callow plays um he is hilarious and ridiculous and everybody has a friend like him but the guy who's a little bit older and a little bit brassier and a little bit unafraid to say what he really thinks about things. Um, he tragically dies in this movie and leaves his partner played by John Hanna, uh, alone. And,

um, the movie kind of takes a hard turn. You know, we know that Hugh Grant is already at this emotional fulcrum where he's just watched his, his, what he thinks is his true love get married to this scottish man kristin scott thomas's character has just declared her love for him in a like a

fascinating scene that like i kind of wish that was a movie unto itself those two talking to each other about their feelings um and then there's this death scene and we take what had previously been this like pretty airy floating clever rowan atkinson infused comedy and it it shifts pretty hard like it's a pretty bold move to make the movie so intense what like what do you think of when you think of all of that that collision of feeling so yeah the emotional heart of this movie is is a funeral and it's and it's four weddings and a funeral but i do find and in a lot of ways it is the the release and it is the event that causes all of these people to address their emotions and takes off of them um which you know unfortunately i think is a little true to to real life this idea that you lose something or that a tragedy is when you start to evaluate and

it can really kind of unlock some stuff that you didn't want to deal with. Um, the speech, uh, at the, at the funeral that John Hannah gives, he, he is introduced as, um, Gareth's special friend, I believe, and then gives a lovely eulogy that finishes with a recitation of Funeral Blues by W.H. Auden and is as heartbreaking a movie scene. I find it so affecting and upsetting every single time. It's astonishing. This is actually what I want to say. Stop all the clocks. Cut off the telephone.

Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone. Silence the pianos and with muffled drum bring out the coffin. Let the mourners come. Cynhyrchu'r drwm, dod o hyd i'r coffin. Cynhyrchu'r moynwyr i ddod. Cynhyrchu'r cyfeirio'r aeroplân yn moyn o hyd i'r llaw, yn sgribleu ar y sgai, y neges. Mae'n ddiwedd. Cynhyrchu'r bwysau gwaelod o'r llawau gwydnwyr cyhoeddus.

Cynhyrchu'r poliswyr traffic yn gosod gofnion goffin gwydnwyr. let traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves it was my north my south my east and west my working week my sunday rest it's an amazing movie moment you know you kind of wait wait to and as i as i'm like trying to find new movies to watch and what to do during this very complicated period, it's rare that you come upon a moment in a movie or like, wow, that, that, that, that crushed me, that crushed it. You know, that is really, it's throughout that together throughout the movie to that point. And but their relationship is implied rather than openly addressed. And it's not until that point that they can even they even address that relationship. And then, you know, I find it fitting that even the most emotional point of this movie is it's someone else's words. It's someone else speaking for you because you're, you're just trying, you're struggling to deal with the, the breadth of it, but it's,

yeah, it's, it's pretty, it's extraordinary. And then that sets off everything that happens, that conversation between Charles and Tom about what does a marriage mean and, um, what you're looking for in a partner and taking things more seriously and what that means for Charles. Unfortunately, he has to go through a couple situations before he gets to the end result that we're all rooting for in the movie. Is this the time to talk about Duckface?

Yeah. Where do I know Anna Chancellor from? She's been in a lot of things, so she'll always be Duckface to me. She was in The Hours. Did you watch The Hours? Oh, I did. I love that show.? She's been in a lot of things, so she'll always be duck face to me. She was in The Hours. Did you watch The Hours? Oh, I did. I love that show.

And she's great on it. And she actually gets to, you know, be in a position of power and making decisions for herself. But I think she is just a really scene-stealing, supporting performance by her. I honestly think the single funniest line in the whole movie is

when they're at the second wedding and she confronts Hugh Grant and is just a mess and is talking about how stupid she is. And she's like, I thought you two was a type of submarine. And he goes, in a way you were right. Their music has a very naval quality, which I like. I laugh out loud every time. And I've seen this movie a hundred times. So Duckface gets her moment and you go from the funeral scene to the fourth wedding invitation. Every wedding is introduced with an invitation, but you can't see who Charles is marrying. And there's a whole nice lead up with all the friends and the gag about him being late and a lot of alarm clocks

and they finally get there and they finally toast to duck face. And then there's this amazing moment of Anna Chancellor kind of putting on her floral crown as she's like putting on a battle helmet like I did it and I'm like ready to go to war.

And it's tremendous stuff. Unfortunately, it doesn't. And it's, it's, it's tremendous stuff. Um, unfortunately it doesn't totally work out for her. No, it's sad. She, she's very funny in that the flower crown heading into battle moment is very memorable.

It's a lasting image for me after watching the movie. Um, it's funny to think about this movie and this series of weddings in the aftermath of this same period, like exiting this period that Richard Curtis was in at the time and what inspired the movie. I also had a period of my life, like most people between the ages of 25 and 35, where I was just at anywhere from four to 10 weddings a year. And I came to resent it ultimately, especially after I moved to California, because it often

meant flying back to the East Coast for those weddings and it's a very expensive affair. And on the other hand, when I moved to California, I skipped a lot of weddings I wish I hadn't skipped. And I look back on that with a huge amount of regret. And I think about weddings very specifically. I say this to my wife all the time. Why am I working so hard

if not to be able to have these experiences? If I'm skipping these things, if I'm not willing to fly to Georgia or to Turkey or to other places or to Texas, I've skipped weddings in those three places in particular, they jumped to mind. And I should have gone and I should have been a part of those memories.

I should have had those experiences with my friends and I regret not doing it. And like this movie kind of brought that feeling back for me of like, I've moved past this personally. I don't have this time anymore. And of course, we'll go to weddings. Things will happen. We still have some unmarried friends. Sure, we'll get to go to a few more at some point in the next three to five decades. But there was something wistful about watching people having these experiences too, you know? Yeah. I mean, it is a friend movie as

much as it is a romance movie. And it is about these people are all at the same weddings, which I have a lot of questions about that. I mean, you don't need to include this in the movie and it's not the nitpick, but it is really interesting. They're just clearly a network of rich people that all get invited to the same weddings. And I'd love to know about the communication and kind of how the network is maintained and what's happening behind the scenes. I would watch like just eight spinoffs of this movie of following all the other characters. None of them would be the four weddings and a funeral show that is on Hulu, which I do not recommend. But yeah, so they're all together, but it is But it's about family and it is about the fun that you get into as a wedding with everybody else.

And weddings are as much about the guests as they are about the people. It's ultimately a party for everybody else before you go spend the rest of your life with one person. Is now the time to talk about Annie McDowell? I think we must. Okay. This is a really weird character. Yeah. And I find Andy McDowell to be a complicated actor to talk about because you have written down here, is Andy McDowell good in this movie? I could ask that question about every film. Now, she also happens to appear in some of my favorite movies of all time among them sex size and videotape and groundhog day both of which I

think are perfect movies I can't tell if she knows what she's doing now that may not matter it may not matter to her performance style but I can't tell if she is trying to be alluring or mystifying or emotionally absent. Like, I don't really get it. What is she doing? I don't know what she's doing. I think she's probably just being herself. In this case, I think it's a question of casting. Because they got Andy McDowell because they needed someone famous

to be in this movie because no one else had even heard of Hugh Grant and much less anybody else and there are some very funny behind the scenes promos that they filmed of like Andy McDowell and Hugh Grant you can watch them on YouTube but the one that Andy McDowell stars in the running gag is that she can't

remember Hugh Grant's name so so like she was really famous and she's in this movie because you need Americans to be like, oh, Andy McDowell. So that's all well and good. Does she make sense as a former Vogue editor who spends most of their, her time in like the upper crust British society and then marries an old Scottish guy? Like, no, she doesn't. And that's no disrespect to her. It's just like she's in a different movie and she her emotional register, like her presence is just on a different wavelength than everybody else in it. I don't think that that means that she's necessarily

bad in it. And I think that one scene we were talking about with Hugh Grant, they actually do have some chemistry. It's also notably like the most alive that Hugh Grant is like Hugh Grant's just kind of hitting on Annie McDowell and it's great. But does she make sense in the movie? I can't say it's the most sensical thing in the movie well it's funny just in going back and reading about it and learning that um people who saw the film especially british people just despised her character because she's so she's fucking with hugh grant so aggressively

and obviously they have this first encounter they have sex she leaves months go by she comes back they encounter each other again at a wedding and she's engaged and then they meet up again after that they have this incredible um well they have sex a second time i should say at that second wedding after her husband i don't gets on a train car i guess at night which is a sleeper yeah sleeper convenient um and then they meet up again at the antique store at which she's registered for her wedding. And then they have this evening or this afternoon together where she talks about all of her sexual conquests through the years.

What was the number? Is it 32? 33, I think. Hugh Grant was 32. 32 and lovely, that's right. And then she gets married, which is painful for him to watch. But then her marriage ends and she waits until his wedding to show up to let him know that she is not married anymore and that she is available. Which this is this is torture.

Like, this is she's doing. She's a chaos agent. Yeah, it's not responsible. And I just, I will say, especially in 2020, you watch the last scene and it's just, it's really possible to get an annulment and it's not that big a deal. And what you gotta do

is you just gotta go through with the wedding and then three days later, be like, I'm out. It's really, really possible and honestly causes people a lot less distress and also you don't get punched in a church that said this is a movie you know it's a great movie scene it gives us a great scene yeah um it's but no it's not great planning by her not responsible don't do this in real life real life. I'm confounded by Andy McDowell in general. Yeah.

She's also, she's one of my wife's favorite actresses, which I don't understand. She was like, she reminds me of a lot of people that I like. Yeah. I like her as well. I just,

I don't think that she, she's like the Sesame Street song. Like one of these things is not like the other in this movie, which is, which is okay. But this is this movie which is which is okay but this is a movie that is about a very very specific small uh exclusive group of people so it doesn't totally totally fit that that last line is it raining i hadn't noticed people are very angry about and it's like voted as one of the worst lines

in movies ever in UK cinema. It's fine. I don't know. I have never understood what people are mad about. It's a joke. Do people think that

she actually doesn't know that it's raining? I don't know. I don't understand the British at all. That's what keeps me away from movies like this even though I end up

watching them and liking them. Same with Sense and Sensibility. i watched it and i was like oh delightful very very strong adaptation do you think that this is a romantic movie i think it's more realistic in a way in its romanticism like it it really is the the woman and it doesn't have to be a woman it could be a man too but the person who you're meant to be with who kind of jerks you around for a year is such a real thing it's such a common feeling that people have in their relationships and a lot of like healthy and and ultimately good relationships come out of that kind of emotional difficulty and so i i think it's actually like more romantic in some ways than your typical rom-com um which

always feels like it's building to me to some sort of like operatic conclusion where they kiss for the first time as opposed to like, these people have fucked a couple of times, you know, one of them got married. The other one was about to get married. Like that's actually pretty close to what life can be like for a lot of people who end up together. So I like it in that respect, in the realistic romantic respect. Yeah, I agree. I mean, this is about how like the romance is in overcoming hurdles or small moments and not in the like the stupid big movie gestures. And I again, I find that both like realistic and also more affecting in a way. So I think it's so interesting that, you know, we chose these two movies that are about 10 years apart and they have almost

nothing in common. But one thing that they aside from saying a lot about you and I i personally but one thing they do have in common is they're both like huge oscar movies and and they're both movies that are not typically their ilk is not typically oscar movie so that's obviously probably part of the reason why we picked them because they're so damn good but i mean this movie was up for best picture in one of the all-time best picture classes i know i was gonna say i just really want to talk about this this class which was is the 1995 oscars and the nominees were forrest gump four weddings and a funeral pulp fiction quiz show and shawshank redemption bangers that all bangers that rules that's amazing awesome good job got it right yeah they did um except they gave it to forrest gump and not pulp fiction but that's another right sure yeah um and it was also your order could you do your order for me um sure i

think for me personally uh pulp fiction just like if we're picking oscar winners because i'm not you know we do we need to correct the academy sop Fiction. Number two for me is Four Weddings. Three, Shawshank. Four, Forrest Gump. Five, Quiz Show. Interesting. This feels like the kind of thing

that would change for me every day. Pulp is obviously number one. Sure. Four Weddings, having not seen it, I never would have been able to rank it,

but it's like, it's pretty damn good. It's really good. Definitely as good as Quiz Show, which I like a lot. Yeah. Shawshank, I can't really watch

shawshank anymore i've seen it too many times yeah but i mean you can't dismiss it just because you've like really connect with it it's an achievement i'm also forrest gump i've been forever changed because i had to watch bill um pantomime forrest gump uh orgasming on the rewatchables so it's hard for me to think about forrest gump anymore um it's also up for best original screenplay didn't win though no congratulations quinn tarantino that that went to quinn that was a good one um it's a damn good movie i it's probably the best richard curtis movie right absolutely yeah so there was a tv show adaptation of this which i did not partake in did you uh i watched the trailer and was like,

I, this is one, this is one of the rare things where I'm really protective of the original movie. And so I was kind of like, how dare you, which is, I think typically as a fan reaction is garbage.

And I try not to be possessive in that fan way, but I was like, what, what are we doing? No, thank you. And I believe Juliette Lemon watched it and enjoyed it. And my friend Stephanie also did watch it.

I can't say that either of them said it was good, but they watched it. I will not be participating in it. Nor will I. I have no interest. What did we learn about each other? Hmm. Well, you know that we have very specific tastes that manifest themselves in literally everything that we have very specific tastes that manifest themselves in literally everything that we do i think that i learned that i actually do have more of a visual

attachment to films than i would have thought and i think i learned that you can actually feel things at the movies so that's good for both of us yes I also learned that I don't have to hate the British I've always been on the Hugh Grant train but I'm very much on the Hugh Grant train now so I have to watch more Hugh Grant movies I remember liking nine months a lot as a kid where you at on nine months I haven't seen in a while but I'll revisit it I mean can just say also, if you're listening this far, Hugh Grant's Twitter feed, I just, I really, really recommend it. My guy has really, he has taken an interest in Brexit or post-Brexit life, as many UK citizens do.

And he is kind of my number one source for information on that topic. And then he tweets about where to watch tennis and how movie theaters are too loud. So it's the number one Twitter feed, in my opinion. This has been, as always, a useful and informative and emotional exercise. Amanda, thanks for giving yourself over to it. You'll be back later this week, along with 15 of our closest friends and filmmakers

for a special episode of The Big Picture. We're gathering and convening folks to celebrate a miracle in this quarantine time. I'm talking, of course, about the Criterion Channel. On its one-year anniversary, we're going to have some big recommendations from some of the best people in the world. So please stay tuned for that. And I hope everyone out there is staying safe. Thank you again, Amanda. Thanks to Bobby Wagner. See you guys soon.