The Big Picture - ‘Sinners’ Is for the Sickos, the Cinephiles and You, with Ryan Coogler!

Episode Date: April 17, 2025

Sean and Amanda are joined by Van Lathan to unpack Ryan Coogler’s highly anticipated vampire horror film, ‘Sinners.’ They applaud the film for its originality and authenticity, debate whether or not this is Michael B. Jordan’s best performance of his career, and unpack one of the film’s most controversial and daring scenes by hypothesizing about whether its boldness will be well received (2:28). Then, Sean is joined by Ryan Coogler to explain why he felt like he needed to make this movie, the importance of shooting on film, and the advice Christopher Nolan gave him for shooting on IMAX film cameras (1:12:03). Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Guests: Ryan Coogler and Van Lathan Producer: Jack Sanders Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the brand new Zach Lowe show. That's right. I'm back to have the same in-depth NBA conversations you're used to. We're going to talk about the games, the X's and O's, the drama, the playoffs are coming up. And now you get to see every episode in full on video on Spotify and on my own YouTube channel. Episodes drop every Monday and Thursday with a collection of guests you're gonna love so make sure you follow and subscribe to the brand new Zach Lowe show on Spotify or wherever you watch or listen to your podcast. Let's go! The all-new all-electric Can-Am Pulse motorcycle is your cheat code for the

city. Light, agile, and stylish for all you smart commuters. Find your pulse today. Learn more at canammotorcycles.com. I'm Sean Fennessy. I'm Amanda Fennessy. I'm Amanda Dobbins. And this is the Bay Picture, a conversation show about sinners. Later in this episode, I'll be joined by Ryan Coogler, the writer-director of Sinners.

His fifth feature film and first wholly original story. It's a sexy, violent, complex, entertaining vampire horror movie. It's also a story about twin brothers and our duality as men. It's an erotic deep south musical. And it's an exploration of the American blues. It's a lot of movie. It also looks and sounds phenomenal. If you want to know how and why he did it,

stick around for my conversation with Ryan. I met Ryan in 2017. Never had him on the show before. He's been at the top of my wish list for many, many years. I hope you'll stick around for our conversation. Seated now with us is Van Lathan. What's up, Van? What's going on, guys? How you doing?

The duality of men before me. Yes. The smokestack twins, right? Who's who is really the question here. That's very true. Who is going to turn and who is not going to turn. Interesting question. So, Van, it's been a minute since you've been on the show.

Little bit. When was the last time? What you been up to? I can't remember what we did last. I don't remember. We had a very fun conversation about Joker folie a deux. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that might have been the last time I was on.

And Amanda was on leave at that time. So you guys haven't been together in forever. That was six months. Yeah, because that was Sy's first. I mean, Sy hasn't seen that movie, but that was his movie weekend. So. You should show him Joker too.

See what he thinks. Yeah, he'd be excited. Kind of made for the mentality of a sex muggle. I never watched it because I listened to your podcast, which I very much enjoyed, but it didn't really even seem like you guys cared about it or liked it. So no one cared about it. It's almost as if the movie never happened. It's a weird phenomenon.

It is a very strange thing. It is notably the same movie studio that is releasing Sinners. Joker fully adieu. Huge bomb. Sinners, a movie of incredible importance to Warner Brothers this year. As I said, written and directed by Coogler, stars as most of his films star, Michael B. Jordan, of course, Hailey Steinfeld, Miles Caton, newcomer, Jack O'Connell, Wonmi Masaku, Jamie Lawson, Omar Miller, Lee Jung Lee, and Delroy Lindo, stacked cast for this movie. He also has reassembled the Black Panther department heads murder team, just some of the best in the business, production designer Hannah Beechler, cinematography by Autumn Derald Archpaugh, Michael P. Schaver, his editor,

and Ludwig Göransson, the composer, who is now, I think, has just kind of grabbed the belt. And we don't need to necessarily start the full conversation around music, but the music of this movie is way more crucial than I ever would have expected based on the marketing. And essential to the movie. I mean, it is a movie about music. I mean, literally in the plot, there are blues musicians and a blues club and then other musicians who show up. They certainly do.

And also the themes and ideas of the movie. So I think you can talk about the music. We definitely will, we'll go in depth because it's not just Goranson who's making music in this movie. There's all kinds of different genres and different cultural traditions that are portrayed in the movie. But let's start very simply. Van, I'll ask you what did you think of the movie

Sinners? I thought it was phenomenal. I really enjoyed it. I had talked to you about it because you had seen it before me. I went to the LA screening I think was the last week before last. A complete cultural experience, and look, I'm not saying that the movie is perfect, right? But what I'm saying is parts of the movie are effective because they aren't perfect. And they're not, to me, trying to be perfect as much as they are trying to be deeply authentic.

And as we talk about originality lacking in Hollywood now with some of the IP stuff, I think people are saying originality, but they're actually meaning authenticity. They want a story from a filmmaker that feels like they have to tell a story. And you know when you're watching a movie that someone feels like they have to tell a story. And you know when you're watching a movie that someone feels like they have to tell a story because they take great care and tell it in great detail.

And not always like you would want them to tell it, but always the way they do. And when you come away from centers, you go like, this guy has something to say. And he packages it in something that is very watchable, sexy, but it's not easy, right? He's got something to say. So I was actually blown away,

not just by the execution of it, but by how daring the movie was and how it elevated a lot of the performers in it. It's as good as Mike has ever been. The music is fantastic. I haven't seen music used in a film like this in a while. So my expectations were high and the movie still managed to exceed them. What do you think Amanda? I completely agree with Van, but I think because I saw it third of this group and my expectations were very high for it as a movie of ideas and a movie of, and you know, Sean, you said

to me at some point, and I hope it's not a spoiler, you were like, this is a movie about the blues. And I don't think people know that. And I really admire Kugler's work as well. And I know him as someone who can create like big, broad studio movies with a lot of, you know, with ideas and themes and things to say inside of them. So I was expecting all of that. And the movie totally delivers on that.

It is also just like a straight up fun vampire movie. You know, like it is. And it really, and so I almost went in it. And I say that in a complimentary way as well. I think Coogler does just, he finds the perfect balance between genre, not even like a balance between. He managed to do like full genre movie

and full like movie movie, like ideas movie, we're serious people, like all in one. You can have it all if you're Ryan Coogler. So I really, really liked it, but as we're talking about it for other people, I just don't wanna undersell the fact that like, they just, the vampires like go for it. And you know, and he sets up like a whole world as Van said, and characters and stakes. And then and it's and it is

really, I had this moment because I was so immersed in these in this world that he builds in like 30s Mississippi. And then I realized, oh, I see now we're all assembled here. And now like the vampires are like, just going to go for it. And, and, and I, I, again, I was like, wow, I didn't even realize what you were doing and how deftly you were putting together this framework that I like, that I do recognize, but like, there it is. And here we go.

So that's cool. And we like, I really enjoyed it. And also like we need movies like this. So, you know, the world does. Yeah, I fully agree. Over the years, I've had a lot of conversations with people. Bill is somebody who asks us about this from time to time. Sort of like, who is the next generation of people that are going to make the kinds of

movies that we want to go see? And the list was always very short, but it was the same handful of names. It was Damien Chazelle, it was Greta Gerwig, it was Barry Jenkins, it was the Safdies, it was Ari Aster, it was Denis Villeneuve. It was like, it was a pretty short list. Coogler was always on the list for me. I like all of his movies with some serious reservations

about Wakanda Forever, which we talked about on the show some years ago. So interesting to me that this is the film that he has chosen to do after Wakanda Forever, because we talked about on the show some years ago. So interesting to me that this is the film that he has chosen to do after Wakanda Forever because it feels like a real palate cleanser for that movie, which is not to say that it's a rejection of Wakanda Forever, it's not, but it is so outside of any of the mythological framework

that he has lived in as a writer and director for the last seven or eight years, you can really feel him flexing his muscles. He's very loyal to vampire stories in the movie, but everything else in the movie, I've never seen a vampire movie like this. The setting, the time period, the characterization is all a new take on a hundred year old story type in movies. and it's phenomenal. It's like, it's, this is basically exactly what I'm begging for. This reminds me of like, um, when Nope hit, when Oppenheimer hit, like there's a handful of movies over the last few years where I was just like, this is what I'm

looking for. Somebody with a really strong take with an incredible visual sensibility who knows how to direct actors, who understands the way the music has a relationship to drama and also just wants to have fun. Like this movie's really fun. And it's, you know, there's lots of homage to From Dusk Till Dawn and The Thing, and movies that we love that some people who love

vampire movies might see this movie and be like, this is like a From Dusk Till Dawn ripoff, but this is like in the lineage of what these kinds of movies do. That movie's 30 years ago. But it is also like, like, an old old school Hollywood musical, like for half of it. And there are like musical set pieces. So, you know, I, I, the musical nerd was like, Oh, look at that. Oh, look at that.

This is so exciting. I mean, there's, there is something for everyone in including, you know, stakes to the heart. So, you know, I enjoy movies like this. I really enjoy it from Dusseldon. I love it. It's a fave of mine. One of the most re-watchable movies ever, right? And I really enjoy, for as campy and kooky as it is,

Tales from the Crypt, Demon Knight, right? Which are two movies where you have people, a ragtag bunch of people, trapped inside of a building with a horde of vampires waiting outside. The most interesting thing about those movies are the vampires themselves are very interesting, right? You have an all time Billy Zane performance in

Demon Knight. Demon Knight. You guys, I'm telling you. Who your guy, Billy? Billy Z? Rocking, okay. And then you have so much about From Dusk Till Dawn that is rememberable. Sama Hayek, Tarantino, Clooney's, the whole deal. But it's always kind of about why are those guys in those situations and how they rise, those characters rise to heroism.

JD Pinkett Smith in the case of from Demon Knight. Now, this movie gives you all of these different elements of a very complicated and untold culture, which is the culture of the Mississippi Delta, right? The music of it, the look of it. A lot of people are gonna watch the movie and go, huh, there are two Asian American, they're grocers that exist down there. Is that real?

It is, and it's a very interesting piece of it. And then when you get to the vampires, they take over. Now you're full on in a vampire movie. And the backdrop of all of the characters just feeds the reasons why everybody makes a decision. It gives you a lot, but it doesn't waste anything. Because every single thing that it gives you, where if it's cultural, if it's about the blues,

you're thinking they're just packing a bunch of stuff in there to make their movie hit with people who want to see more representation on screen. No, it all matters. It all has something to do with the story. I think that specificity and authenticity that you were talking about is there. It feels like it is researched and accurate.

Also, it's a vampire movie. And it's a very classical style of film writing and filmmaking. This is a three-act movie. The first 40 minutes of the movie are entirely setting the scene, letting us understand this world, letting us understand these twin brothers, Smoke and Stack, who they are. They've just come back

from Chicago. They are originally from Clarksdale, Mississippi. They're coming home to open this club and we're learning about what Clarksdale is like this time. We meet these grocers. We see this young cousin of theirs who's a preacher's son, who is an aspiring musician who wants to help them open this club. We see the woman who Stack had been in love with when he left. We see a woman who Preacher Boy will soon fall in love with. At the train station, we meet an old blues musician, clearly modeled after like a Sonny Boy Williamson type. Like there's just a lot of detail and specificity that goes into the first 40 minutes of this movie. A lot of times when you watch a movie like this, that has that formulaic

structure, the first 40 minutes are boring because it just feels like set up. This movie does the great thing that a lot of genre movies do, which is that you don't know anything about the vampire stuff for the first 40 minutes. And in fact, as I was watching it, even though I'd seen the trailer, I forgot it was going to be a vampire movie. I wasn't like, when's a vampire going to come around? Cause I was trying to figure out what they were doing with the story.

And then 40 minutes in, Jack O'Connell arrives and the film's energy shifts. And I mean, he's just fantastic in this movie and we can talk about him. I mean, all the performances are great, but I love what they did with him in particular. And then the next 40 minutes becomes this escalation into that musical that you were talking about Amanda and

Then you get to that end of the second act when something awful happens and then the final 40 minutes is about survival This is a very very classic thing. This is what happening in movies for a very long time It's not going to be surprising the way the movie is shaped But how it feels is always so alive and And so there's a sense of humor about it. There's like a real sexiness to it that I find is so unusual in modern movies now, especially modern movies from quote unquote important filmmakers, like characters are going down on each other.

There's explicit conversation about how to have sex in the movie. You know, there's like literally, you know, turns in the storytelling around a sex scene that felt you know kind of like the stuff that we are always like why isn't it like 1997 anymore? People also have actual chemistry. You're watching people on screen that look like they actually want to fuck each other. You know what I mean? And it's a part of the actual story. Even getting down to the way that Jack O'Connell, who is just like really scary and awesome. Like we're talking about the expression of the blues in here.

This movie made me look up Irish jig dancing and songs and whatnot. Cause they look like they were having fun too out there. Going nuts. I was like, do I want to, which party do I want to be in when they were out there as vampires getting it out there? And he's dancing around, I'm like, yo, that looks like that's pretty...

To me, that's a, that is the, you know, for obvious bias reasons, my favorite example of why Cooler is so great is that the scenes where you see Jack O'Connell, who plays an Irish vampire, is singing and dancing and exploring the Irish folk tradition are so good, is because they're just very entertaining. They're fun to watch. And they're this sort of...

It's sort of a sequel to an earlier musical sequence. It's sort of the other side of that coin and sort of the light and the darkness, like in any vampire story. But you know, the Irish folk tradition and American black blues is like, they're two musical forms that are totally related to each other.

They're interconnected. They're both born of impoverished people who have to use culture to find a way to reckon with their fates. And to tell their stories. And to express themselves in the face of really difficult things. I asked Coogler about this. He noted, for example, that his first name is Ryan,

which is an Irish name, and that he in fact is like, this was very much on his mind when he was making the movie. But that's like a heady idea that if you care about that sort of thing and you're into musicology and you're into the origins of American music, which this movie is just filled with, it's a lot of fun. If you don't care about that stuff, it's just Jack O'Connell going off dancing and it's super fun. And I should say, I guess that we're going to spoil this movie as we have the conversation throughout because I feel like it's kind of

necessary to give it its proper due. So if you haven't seen the movie yet and you don't want to hear any more about what we're discussing, go see the movie. On the biggest screen possible. It is. If you can see it in IMAX, you should see it. It was shot on film. Coogler is taking great pains to talk about how and why he shot this movie with IMAX cameras in 65 millimeter format. You can see it on 70 millimeters in some places.

I got a chance to see it in that way. It was very much worth it on a big screen. Let's talk about the movie itself specifically. You said this is the best you think Michael B. Jordan has been in a movie period, you think? Yeah. So he's got a tall task because he is playing dual roles, similar but different brothers, very Cain and Abel framed, I think here.

There's like the sort of more aggressive leader type. You talking about Cain and Abel from the Bible or Cain and Abel from No Limit Records? It's Gangstafied. You ever heard that record? You know that I have. Gangsta 5. I was more of a Stoke the Shocker guy personally. Oh yeah! That's what I'm talking about. Thank you. But I was referring to the Bible, but if you want to talk No Limit, we could do that too. Mia X, I was a fan. Oh shit, shout out to Mia X, the baddest mama Mia. Were you a big No Limit fan back in the day? I missed that one. Were you a fan of the Tank?

You know, you put the helmet on. You're like Mr. Servant. You're fucking with Mr. Servant. You like him? What did you think of Michael B. Jordan? What do you think about him in general? I had a similar thought to Van that I don't know if it's his best ever, but there was a revelation to me in this movie, in which I do think he's quite good.

And I don't always think that that's the case. I realized that I think that Michael B is a great, um, facial and like expression actor. He's a movie star. He's a, well, he's a, but, but he can use, he can give you visually what you need. He's Steve McQueen. Well, but like dialogue. But that's what I'm saying. Yes, OK.

Like he doesn't need to talk to sell it. That's not the only definition of movie star is what I'm saying. You're right. But he's best suited, yes. His powers are visual expression. And you know, like in Black Panther, he's doing what I would call like an all caps

acting style, which is kind of where like a lot of dialogue can go. So this movie uses what he does well, and even uses there are two of him. So you're looking for the visual, like the tiny tells of each character, which are in expressions, you know, like mannerism, physicality, and he can do that. expressions, you know, like mannerism, physicality, and he can do that. And so I thought it used him really well. And obviously, like, he has presence. He is a movie star. He fills the screen. And when there are two of them, whatever they did digitally, good job. Cause it, then you just have two Michael B. Jordans.

So I thought it was great. I grew a fan. So the reason why I liked it so much is because obviously once again, Coogler's intentional with this, right? He's never done a movie without Mike. Yep. Mike's in every movie. So he knows him very intimately. Once again, this proves the reason why great directors

go back to their guys so many times. They have frequent collaborations because they think in terms of character, of course first, but they also think in terms of the strengths of the people that they know that can embody these characters. And so when you have Smoke and Stack, one brother that's more of a fast talking type

of wink and a nod brother, and this other guy that is very grounded and solemn and dedicated to protection, and a little bit rougher around the edges, you have two parts of Mike's personality. You have Michael B. Jordan that we know as the, you know, really polished movie star. And then you also have a guy who is a very serious

Craftsman a very serious artist and somebody who cares and puts a lot into roles Gets beefed up for roles really works at it. So a lot of anime He took that very seriously and so He talks about it, he does. I don't mean that in like, he took that very seriously. And so, Coogler knows that. And so he gives you the two differing forms of who Mike is, and he gets to fall into both of them and essentially make one character. And so when I watched it, I thought it was the perfect usage of him. That's why, and it sounds so nuts to me, And it sounds so nuts to me, even when I say it. It's almost like the movie to me where he arrived. To where I'm like, oh, this now is proof of concept for as much work as he's been putting

in. This is proof of concept of actually where he is going to go as one of the biggest, maybe the biggest star of his generation. You know? But, um, and it's, it all comes together and it works because it was such an intentional choice to have this guy play these two characters and the world that was built around him. I think part of it is just that Michael B is just a grown up now. We've been living with him since The Wire since he was a teenager and

He's 38 years old now. I'm not sure how old the smokestack twins are supposed to be but these are guys who served in World War one who were in Chicago during the Great Depression and were Presumably bootleggers working for Al Capone and quote working for Al Capone. We don't know if that's actually true yeah, but the film frames them as These guys who've lived and they're coming home after having lived, you know, particularly Smoke has lost a son and in part has left Clarksdale because he's lost a son Yeah, I guess he's married or with when we miss Aku's character Annie and that has like forced him to flee stack on the other hand Who's like you're right the more sort of like enterprising hustler type, has also left and he's left behind a woman, Mary, played by Hailey Steinfeld, who was the daughter of the woman who helped raise them after they lost their father.

A lot of this information is communicated like really well. It doesn't feel exposition-y. It feels very natural to the storytelling because you've got these, this reunion framework of all these characters who haven't seen each other in a long time. So the things that they say to each other feel like they need to be communicated. It's very good writing in this movie that like makes, I think, the performance of somebody like Michael B, who to me sometimes can be limited as a performer, but as I always like him in Ryan's movies because he understands like where he excels.

He can do hardened alpha leader type. He can do like slick, cool guy if he wants. He can do guy who's got like, is almost obsessed with his own ideas. I feel like both Adonis and Killmonger are like kind of consumed by their own idea of the world. And Smoke is the same way. Smoke is like, we have to do this. We have to make this project. The project, I was wondering how you guys felt about this in the movie, because the movie presents it as in two ways. Are they starting Club Juke because it's a Get Rich Quick scheme? Are they starting it because it's like a way to give back to the community and plant

roots? Is it both? Is it neither? What is the purpose of them buying this killing floor from this KKK leader and trying to build up this place. Good question. You want me to take it? Yeah. There's absolutely no reason for them to come back to Mississippi. That's key in understanding. Well, unless they are on the run because they stole everything. They stole the Italian wine and they stole the Irish beer. So they played both sides and now they got to get out outta town. Los Angeles, New York, all of that.

When you are electing to come back to Mississippi, they talk a little bit about it in the movie, you're reinserting yourself to being at the bottom of the social order, which they found out was kinda the same in Chicago, but they're choosing familiarity to come back down to Mississippi and to reinsert themselves into the life that they left

for some reason, right? He talks about the fact that he went to a different town of freed slaves and he understood what it was like there. He's been to Chicago, been all around the world, but they come back there. The club is them setting down roots. For whatever reason, they've seen all the other evils of the world, the evils of the war,

the evils of a certain liberalized metropolitan brand of American racism, the evil of black freedmen in a town that didn't accept them, and they're choosing the devil they know. And so they're gonna be there for a while. And what actually they realize is that there's a completely different devil that they have never met before. This is the not so subterranean idea of the movie

that I love and that I think has played really well. Jack O'Connell is a vampire, presumably hundreds of years old. He's from Ireland, he somehow made it to America, and he is attempting to grow his flock. He's killing people in an attempt to escape the Choctaw Indians that are, you know, trailing him throughout Mississippi. Could he use more of them? I agree. And I got the impression Cooler was very interested in them too, and maybe just didn't build the movie out around that.

Maybe it's sinners too. Anyhow, O'Connell's character, you're gonna laugh at me, but you're not, reminded me a little bit of Thanos because there is a little bit of are we sure he's wrong about is a little bit of, are we sure he's wrong about this character in this movie? Because the whole movie is about temptation and the other side, the allure of living

on the other side of the law, the allure of living in another city that is different from yours, the allure of another race, the allure of another kind of music, another kind of culture, is the grass greener if you go over here, is the grass greener in vampiric immortality. And the movie makes a really strong case for vampiric immortality all the way up until

the post-credit sequence, which is extremely alluring. They look like they're having a good time. They can't go outside during the day, but they look like they're chilling. But you're also placing the movie in the context of the Black Church, Gospel, faith and spirituality. There's an underpinning of Christianity that runs through some of Kugler's films. There's a lot of messianic imagery in all of his movies. This is deep stuff using a vampire story to tell it. And I came out of the movie a second time, loved seeing it a second time, and he worked

even better, feeling like this vampire, he's got some points. He's got some points. Well, the title of the movie Sinners, right? And it seems to be litigated with every character, like how much sin is enough for you. Like how much sin are you willing to completely become a vampire to be beautiful forever? But there was even still mortality with the vampire

because I swore that they were gonna kill Preacher Boy, but then they go, nah, I told him I will let him live. And I am, I still love my brother. I'm a vampire, but I still love my brother enough to like keep his promise. I'm like, oh, maybe he's not that bad, you know? Cause he's kind of more, cause he's, that's Stack, right?

That's Smoltz. That's Stack, yeah, you know, because he's kind of more, because he's, that's Stack, right? That's Smokes. That's Stack, yeah, who lives, yeah. That's Stack. So he's kind of more Stack as a vampire than he even was as a human being, because he's carefree, it didn't seem like he thought things out. Well, now he doesn't have much to worry about, right?

Besides the son, and maybe if there's some kind of Abraham Van Helsing in his universe somewhere, maybe that guy, the Choctaw Indians are gonna come back. Um, but preacher boy falls in love with Perlene. She's cheating on her husband like our What the one of the guys in the movie Darryl Lindo's character who's does the most heroic thing in the movie is a drunk? right a violent and all of those things. So when you start litigating everybody's morality

in the movie, it kind of comes back to a central idea of like, what's your version of worse? Like, what's your version of bad? And the two, the twins, the Michael B. Jordan characters also ultimately like, their ends carry that out as well. Of like, what would you pick? Who are the real sinners? Like, what is the real sin?

Like, which, what is the devil you know? What is the lesser of the two evils? You know, like, and some of it is exploring, I guess, you know, probably the different two sides of each of us. Which way would you go? Because the twin is one person divided. And the movie, we're fully spoiling it, right? So one person becomes a vampire,

one twin becomes a vampire, and the other person is dead, but also gets to be reunited with his wife and child. Yeah. Incredible scene. Incredible scene. And he falls to the ground and shoots up the KKK leader and he sees the vision of Annie. Yeah. And that's also, you know, that's another thing where it's like you've finished the

movie, like the climactic nighttime scene is the, you know, the humans against the vampires at night. But then it's like, oh wait, there are other daytime vampires, right? That come back. And so we have to like one person, you know, you get your nighttime vampire shoot out and there's a twin, there's a duel for everything. But so his actual death is not played at all like a death.

It is played, I mean, he dies, but- It's a release. It's a release. It's happy, I mean, he dies, but it's a release. It's a release. He gets salvation. He gets salvation. It's happier life. So in like, in both cases, the Jack O'Connell character is right. And it's like, well, this is definitely better than your, than your current life. And then the movie portrays the other option, which is just dying, as like definitely better than your current life. Which is sort of, I mean, you know, the thesis of the movie is basically that just like staying, the participation in the everyday is actually the, is the worst case outcome.

Well, there's one other, there's's one other critical element of this that kind of splits the difference between this duality idea. The movie set in Clarksdale in 1932. In 1932, Robert Johnson, famed blues musician, goes to Clarksdale. It's the last year before he decides to become a traveling musician, go down to the crossroads, meet the devil, be granted his incredible musical powers, and then basically change music. Change American music, change all music. Ralph Macchio.

Change Ralph Macchio and Walter Hill's incredible film Crossroads, which is a film about a white kid from Long Island who, quote unquote, meets Robert Johnson and is touched by the blues gods. You guys never saw that movie. That movie's good. Crossroads is very good. Thank you for acknowledging it. Right. It would be a great movie to watch in a double feature with Sinners. Right.

Anyhow, the point is, obviously this is not a mistake that this movie is set in that year. This is not a mistake that Robert Johnson, who bears a passing resemblance to Preacher Boy, who then becomes, we find out later, basically Buddy Guy, who moves to Chicago, one of the innovators of Chicago electric blues. All of these kind of intersections, I think think are showing you that like you kind of need to confront evil before you can transcend and become something bigger and better and that maybe you can become Buddy Guy or maybe you can become preacher boy or maybe you can become Robert Johnson but that you need the dark to have the light doesn't mean the dark goes away but it means

that you can kind of confront it and go forward. I think that's ultimately the dark to have the light. It doesn't mean the dark goes away, but it means that you can kind of confront it and go forward. I think that's ultimately the big takeaway of the movie. Yeah, I mean, that's the very brief. By the way, no one told me there was a post-credit sequence. So you missed it. Yeah, I didn't know. Oh, my God.

Listen, it's not a Marvel movie. It's very fun. Okay. I was trying to respect Ryan Coogler. Okay. He's freed from Marvel. No, but this is, I'm glad this happened to you. Oh, thanks. I'm glad this happened to you. Oh, thanks.

I'm glad this happened to you because this happened to you because of your rebuke of the Marvel movies. Oh, okay, is that what it is? Yeah, yeah. And since you rebuked them, you missed a great part of the movie. It is very cool. Yeah, yeah. I just, I didn't... I thought it was going to be really silly and honest, so here's what happened.

Someone told you to stay? Literally, I was told to stay. But throughout the credits though, they're showing you him playing. They cut to Buddy Guy. Yeah. Which is meant to be Preacher Boy, he's got the scar on his face that he gets at the end of the film. I mean I got that, I saw that. Playing at Pearlene's.

That's right, at Pearlene's. And then I was like, cool. Like, you know, good movie. I'm gonna drive home now. Pearlene also by the way, a Sunhouse song. So that's where that character's name comes from. In the post-credit sequence, Stack and Mary show up in 1992 in the back bar of a club where Preacher Boy has just played, where Sammy has just played. And he's now in his late 80s. And incredible Coogee sweater and like hardcore 1992 hip-hop outfit. She got the big door knockers on.

Yeah, door knockers. They look like they've just walked off the set of In Living Color. They look amazing. Incredible, but they also, they haven't aged because they're vampires. They're vampires, yeah. Yeah, well, you know. Yes, they're vampires. Listen, I'm here with you. I'm learning and we're learning and growing together. It's a funny thing though. Not that Marvel invented the post credit sequence or whatever.

It had been done before. But I like the idea of Coogler taking a little piece of that and putting it in this movie because in this he basically, Stax sits down next to Sammy and he asks him, you know, he tells him that my brother told me that he would let me live if I didn't fuck with you, if I let you live. But you're now at the end, you've lived a good life. Would you want to turn and be a vampire? that my brother told me that he would let me live if I didn't fuck with you, if I let you live. But you're now at the end, you've lived a good life.

Would you want to turn and be a vampire? You can keep playing music forever, you can make some money, you can live the life you want to live and be celebrated. And he says, you know what, I'm good. No thank you. And then Stack sort of reflects for a minute and says, you know, I like what you're doing here but I miss the real. Like I miss, and then we flashback to Sammy as a young kid playing the acoustic guitar

and that slide guitar in the car when he has this great moment of revenue when he's singing traveling. And Buddy Guy breaks out the acoustic guitar and he just plays for them. And very amusing, Hailey Steinfeld just being like, oh damn, I do love the blues kind of moment from her. Really appreciate her white girl efforts for all of us.

She's not as wise as we thought, apparently. At least not according to this film. According to her, she said that she was, you didn't see this? No. She's descended from? I think in the whatever descent that they use in the film is what?

Is accurate. She said that she got some black and Filipino. Well, God bless, that's great. In this film, she's one eighth and Filipino. God bless, that's great. In this film she's one eighth? Yeah. Okay. Her father's mother was black? Her mother's father?

Her mother's father was black. Was half black. Was half black, yeah. Yeah. I'm just looking at the quotes and according to Wikipedia that's also what she's citing in real life. That's dope. She has a tremendous amount of swag

and I wish her all the best. Yeah, not to be like the white girl being like... You like it. She was very good. I didn't know she had that. I... Some lines in there, we was like, hey, Haley, you know, stirring up feelings. Turn it down a little bit. Yeah, no, no, no.

I'll turn it up. Yeah, no, I was fucking with you. She's given some of the raciest dialogue in the movie. Yeah, she's going for it. And like, this, this, all growed it up. The post-credit sequence is fun. It is fun. Well,, she's going for it. And like, this all growed it up. The post-credit sequence is fun. It is fun. Well, I'm sorry I missed it. You know what, you know.

It's fun and it also kind of like, it's meaningful too because when they're listening to him play, they start to reflect a little bit. They've lived for a long time. They're never gonna get any older. Never see the sun. They're never gonna see the sun. He says, this is the last time I saw the sun,

they're not ever gonna be human again, but they, you wonder with vampires, do you miss your humanity? So when they're sitting there talking, they offer him, you know, eternity. He says no, and then they reflect a little bit about how they were once what he is. And then they leave without massacring the whole bar,

which I thought that they maybe might do. And so they're out of there. So it was kind of a way to let us know that the central tenets of the story still exists, even though the characters don't anymore. And just to go back to that, I think the term sinners, cause you know, we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. I think the term sinners just means this movie is just about people.

Because unlike Marvel movies, good doesn't win in the end, evil doesn't lose, life just goes on. Every character has a different sort of fate that they meet. There's the forever fate, there's the fate of the human, there's the fate of death. Every character shows a tremendous amount of frailty, but it doesn't button itself up in a way where you think everything's gonna be okay. It doesn't button itself up in a way

where you think everything's gonna be terrible. We live in a really complicated world with a lot of complicated people who if you put them in an extraordinary situation might do some things that are heroic or some things that are monumentally stupid. But they're like just people living through this thing. Even Preacher Boy's backstory with his dad

and how his dad views religion. You would have thought that Preacher Boy would have been like, I've seen the devil, so let me run to the church. Not what he does. I've seen the devil. I'm not going to be here forever. Let me go live out my days in the way that is the most meaningful to me. Let me do the thing that they're telling me not to do. He still rejects God, basically, after he's seen Satan, because he chooses himself. Very, very interesting choices all around. Interesting movie from that perspective to me.

Let's talk a little bit more about Preacher Boy, because he's portrayed by Miles Cain, who I'd never seen before, who is phenomenal. Here's what I wrote down. He looks like a young Derek Luke and has the voice of a young Shine Poe. Oh, wow. Shout out to Shine. President of Belize. It's a huge, huge episode for 90s rap so far. He's very, very good in this movie.

He has a tricky role because he's opposite some very experienced, heavyweight movie stars. You know, he's opposite Kugler twice. He's opposite Hailey Steinfeld. He's opposite Delroy Lindo. Like, he's really confronted by some... And he's like the framework of the movie and also sort of like the audience stand in. Exactly. He's kind of our surrogate. First character we see. Yes. And his music and his desire to make music and his struggles with God and struggles with the church is the center of the story. Now, he is the agent of change in what I'll describe as what will be the most controversial scene

in the movie, which is a scene that I love, but I think will be a big talking point coming out of this. This is so funny because, so the day I went to see it, before I went, you guys were talking about this and you were not using like, you know, specific nouns. You were speaking in abstract, but you were clearly signaling to each other about some big scene and really controversial. Van asked me, what did you think of that scene?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then you guys were talking about it and you said you really bought into it and Van you were like, some people were not going for it. I liked it, but some people that left the screening were like, it was too much. Yeah, so I spent the whole screening being like, okay, so when is the really fucked up thing gonna happen?

Oh, you thought it was gonna be a fucked up thing? That's the way that you guys were describing it. I was in there, all right, like, what's the scene? What's the scene? And it didn't occur to me until the very end of the movie that that was the scene. It's more so that it is an audacious moment in the movie. Yeah, absolutely.

Now, obviously this is a movie that has vampires and supernatural elements, so audacity and storytelling is kind of a given. But what is portrayed in this one scene that we're talking about, which is the centerpiece of the second act, is Preacher Boy gets on stage to finally play his music at Club Juke,

and he starts playing the blues, and it very quickly transforms into this very acrobatic camera moving through the club as the people are dancing. And as they are dancing, we are basically seeing the evolution of music both hundred years ago in both Africa and China and, you know, performance style and musical style and also into the future, into funk and into hip hop and everything in between. And it is... Twerking too.

Twerking. There's Bay Area stuff in there for sure. Like you can hear all the different textures of music that he's playing with. It's a crazy sound mixing in that sequence. But it is, for lack of a better word, weird. You know, it's completely out of the context of the narrative of the movie. It is almost like a psychotronic, like hallucinogenic kind of feeling. Now, if you love music and you're interested into the history of music, as I at least was once upon a time, I'm like, this is fucking awesome.

This is so cool. And the phrase that he used to me was using the power of cinema language. Like, you can only do this in a movie. You can only say, here's how all of these things, not just African and black music, but Chinese music and American rock and roll and all these other things are all related to each other. They're part of a lineage, a cultural lineage, a sonic lineage, and people

having a good time and getting something off of their chest with music is a fundamental human experience. I loved it. I got, I felt like I got it immediately. But it is a bold choice. I did have a moment when it concluded of being like, did I miss something narratively? Because it is at a point in the movie where you're still doing a lot of exposition.

And so I was like, okay, I mean, listen, I love a dream ballet. And that's what it was to me. Like, it's a very recognizable part of a, like a Hollywood musical and expression of like the joy of cinema color music movement. Like I, like I was totally into it. but then I was like, my only hesitation was, do I not understand everything that's going on? Because, but I, Amanda, am also- Has this transcended into another world or something? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, know, pun, not intended, but like intended, you know? And I know like my vampire stuff. Like I know, somehow I knew, how do I know

that they have to be invited in? I don't know that. It assumes that you know. It assumes that you know. That's critical to the story. It assumes that you know. And I did know that, but I couldn't tell you where I learned that.

So I think that I was always trying to make sure that I had all of my war and the basic framework of the movie set down. And for one moment I was like, okay, is the shack really on fire or is it not? But then I just got back into it and I was rocking and it was okay. And I thought it was really cool.

Well, this is the thing. I loved it, loved it. To her point, I was wondering, and the one thing that I do feel like the movie doesn't really explain is we're told that Preacher Boy's music is so special that it can thin out dimensions or bring people from another place or whatever,

and this is why the head vampire is so interested in him. It's a siren song to this vampire, yes. That will bring him back to his ancestors. Right. That's underplayed, first of all. That idea. That detail, yeah. That detail is underplayed. That scene, I thought, was going to connect us to that.

It's demonstrating that, but not in a way that is more meaningful than what the scene does visually. The scene doing that visually shows us the power of music, right? It shows us the connectivity across different eras of culture and humanity through sound. Like a sonic prayer session throughout the years.

Awesome, it was great. But for about five minutes after, maybe even 10, I was wondering, well, does Preacher Boy have special powers? Like, did that really happen? Did that happen for us? Or did that happen there? Is Preacher Boy gonna be able to play the guitar

and then two dudes from Oakland gonna come out with AK-47s and kill all the vampires, you know what I mean? It's an interesting idea, yeah. I was wondering if- Yeah, sure, yeah, I didn't think of it that way, but sure, yeah. If Preacher Boy had the ability to, King Kade from Nightmare on Elm Street,

remember King, no, no, it wasn't King Kade, it was Alice, she could call other people into her dreams, and that was her dream power. You guys, I'm sorry, I apologize, but like. I just remembered that I had a dream last night that I was supposed to interview Anne Hathaway, and I didn't bring my tape recorder, and it was really stressful, sorry,

and I meant to tell you about it, continue. Why was I not there? I don't know, isn't that really, it's like, it's really thinking of like, calling people into your dreams, okay. So, you know, she would be like, she'd be, King K, Joey! And then they would show up in her dream and help her fight Freddy.

Yeah. So I was like, can he do that? And so, but after I was like, oh, they was just getting their shit off. I was like, okay. You know what I thought, I'll tell you what I, how I read it specifically and why it doesn't do that. And I'm glad it didn't do that even though it is still a vampire movie. I, this is expressed in the post-credit sequence

that Amanda missed, but when you're sitting close to someone that has a talent, especially a musical talent, and they start showing you their musical talent up close, it feels supernatural. It's nuts. It's like, especially me as someone who does not have any musical talent, when someone plays the guitar in front of me, or even when someone's DJing

in front of me, that's a great example. I'm like, what is this fucking warlock doing? Yeah, you know the sense of time the sense of rhythm the sense of connectivity across music Like there is something about it that it seemed clear to me The cougar was like preacher boy has something that like one out of every 20 million people have I see and those people in that scene are the people that have that. Yes, exactly. They are manifestations of the past and the future.

You see the, you know, Parliament Funkadelic-style guitarist. Like, that's something, you know, Bootsy Collins had it. Something like that. And I like that idea. And that idea is made manifest at the end because we see that he had a 70-year-long career as a beloved and celebrated musician. So he actually was the real deal.

It would have been interesting if it went like one tick further into the, this is all connected to the story. But I think just instead the sort of like siren song to the devil made sense to me. I don't think it needs to though. Ultimately, I'm with Sean that it like, it's just a, it's a cool thing that I really liked. And I also think that the... A thing I really like about the movie is that for all its,

you know, dream music sequences and characterization and specificity, it does all that within a recognizable three act framework and uses enough stuff that you do know. So it doesn't matter if you and I were confused for five minutes because then the rest of the story is built there and we can just latch back on and we know where it's going.

And it uses that to its advantage to just then be able to do wild, cool stuff. The movie was able to elicit your surrender, which it's like, what did George Clooney say that time? George Clooney says, you sit down and you make a deal with the movie and the minute that the movie breaks the deal, you're like, I'm out. You know what I mean? What you're saying on the screen is true and whatever. By that point, the movie had, you'd have already surrendered to the movie. 100%. So to me, I was going to be in no matter what. I'm very interested in movies like this.

I'm very interested in music and the history of music. But there's a great moment at the end of the first act, after Jack O'Connell's character has sort of invaded this family's home. By the way, Lola Kirk in that scene. I love Lola Kirk. She's wonderful. She has a great scream at the end of that scene. But as soon as that scene happens, and right before Club Juke opens, and we cut to that, there's like a doom metal musical cue, and we get a hard shot of a full moon.

And it's the most like, you're in a fucking vampire movie moment. You didn't know you were in a vampire movie until now, but you are. And I was looking at the official Sinners playlist on Spotify for this movie, and it's a lot of what you might expect. It's a lot of Delta Blues, you know, it's a lot of Sun House and Sonny Boy Williamson, and you hear Pick A Poor Robin Clean, which is sung in the song.

And then there's like some Zach Brian in there, and then there's some The Dubliners and some Irish folk music. And then there's a little stretch where it goes, Allison Chain's Soundgarden Metallica. Yeah. In the official playlist. And then all the way at the end there's a young Dolph song.

Right. And I'm like, this is why Coogler is the best, that he sees these intersections of, in vampire movies, there is a fucking metal aspect to these movies that you kind of have to represent to really fulfill it. It's not overdoing it. There was no guy playing metal in the blues club, but it is a quality of these movies,

and he gets it. He's willing to put it on screen. It's time for race eyes. Okay, oh. Ha ha ha ha. Okay, race eyes. Hi. Okay.

Is this a character or just a tool that you have? So it's, I'm looking, it's me using, Okay, Rae Sighs. Hi. Okay. Is this a character or just a tool that you have? So it's, I'm looking, it's me using, looking at things through the lens of Rae, so it's time for Rae Sighs. If you guys are watching, you see the Rae Sighs are coming up. Ryan Clu was able to do something

that's really, really fascinating to me. He's able to portray black characters as people. That sounds stupid, I know it does. When I say black characters, I mean fundamentally and very deeply black characters. He's able to play them as people, as people that are in a story. It's hard to do.

It's hard to do because there's so much that sometimes black creatives and artists want to express and so much of it has to do with our condition, the uniqueness of it, and the specificity of the black experience in America, right? This movie has all of that. But as we're watching it, we're watching them as people and not as black people. They are black people. I am a black person. My mother is a black person. My father is a black person. I am insanely proud. Wouldn't have it any other way. Love my culture so much. Like worship my ancestors, right?

But sometimes I just do stuff and then stuff just happens to me. And sometimes it doesn't have very much to do with anything other than me being Van, right? Now me being Van is incredibly informed by where I'm from, by the sacrifices of the people that came before me. And if you guys don't know that by now, by listening to me, you haven't been listening to me. However, there is something beautiful about being able to tell a story that is this distinctly black and is also broad because it taps into

themes that are so unifying as human beings that you forget that you're in the Mississippi Delta. You forget that you're in these different places. You're watching the story about people. And there's so many black performers and they say it in weird crude ways sometimes, like I don't wanna be in a black movie. Then we go, we don't wanna hear you say that. We don't wanna hear, I don't want to be in a black movie. Then we go, we don't want to hear you say that.

We don't want to hear you say you don't want to be in a black movie. Or I don't want to play a black character. I just want to play a character. We know what you mean, but it's grating to hear because so much of our power is in our identity. But he's able to do it. And in this movie, he does it.

It's a very distinctly black film about black culture with black music that i don't feel like one person will be alienated from i also don't think it will be described as a black movie um even though 90 percent of its cast is black i think it's the same reason that whether it's martin scorsese and italian american identity and the mafia and faith versus violence or Celine Siamma and being a woman of a woman from France and interested in queer stories or Juan Carwai and being Asian and looking at the idea of like yearning versus natural Sean Baker being somebody who's interested in people that are very different from him yeah it's basically just any good filmmaker that has really core ideas like Coog Kugler's already done this.

In Black Panther, it's a story about nationalism versus isolationism. It's a tension in the diaspora. Right. In Creed, it's about male identity, vulnerability, it's about finding purpose. In this movie, it's about faith versus making your own luck. It's about the duality that we're talking about. But also, these are all fun movies to watch. You know, like, you need to have had the exact same experience of the people.

You better understand the experience of the people by enjoying the movie. So, I mean, I think it's interesting because he is... He is pretty clearly the most commercially successful Black filmmaker ever. Like, there's really, he's like so far ahead because of the success of Creed and Black Panther, he is, there's never really been anyone like him in American movies. And those movies do not shy away from race.

At all, they're about it. But they're not about it at the same time. Like there are so many things in Creed that are just like, this is what it's like feeling stuck at this stage of your life. This is what it's like having a complicated relationship with your father and his legacy. This is what it's like feeling stuck at this stage of your life. This is what it's like having a complicated relationship with your father and his legacy. This is what it's like, not knowing how to be a dad

in Creed 3, like there's all this stuff in these movies. It's just human stuff. So I really like that. I really liked that he's like, also it's a vampire movie with a doom metal music cue and there's some Irish dancing in it. And it is both those things. And that is like, you know, Black Panther is about

like diaspora and nationalism. And it is also like a superhero is like, you know, Black Panther is about like diaspora and nationalism. And it is also like a superhero movie where, you know, they had like all battle at the end, right? And the other people come up. There's a magical medal. Yeah, exactly. Like it has. Yeah, I remember, you know. Yeah. You love vibranium. What was what's the one in the new? Thank you so much. Yeah.

They found that in the Celestial. Okay, and that one's, you know, more like that's... That's an unbreakable metal that Wolverine has binded to his skeleton. Oh, that's right, because Chris leaned over to me and said, that's what Wolverine's claws are made of. Yeah. And soon his skeleton. But it's like, it's not even that he's like,

he doesn't have to pick and choose between the two of them. What, the claws? No, it's just, yeah. When you say it out loud, it's hysterical. A little silly. Yeah. It's a little silly. I get mocked for leaving before the credits begin.

No, no, no, it's not your fault. I get mocked for saying it out loud, oh, when I hear it. Just in general, the fact that we have devoted a lot of our time and effort. We started doing it, we started this when we were nine. Yeah. It's core lore. But when you say it outside, it's funny.

Yeah. When you say it, it feels different. OK. Which is not an insult to you. It's, in fact, a compliment to you. Right. Thank you so much. Anyway, despite Vibranium, or Vibranium,

which I guess is cooler than Adamantium, like I liked that movie, but, and it was both. It was pure superhero and also like pure ideas. Same with Creed. Like that is a movie that just like made me weep because it hit that music, you know, cue right as he like hits someone in the, you know, it is, it is like pure... Sports movie. Sports genre, pleasure,

and also big ideas. And I really, Kugler has a unique gift to not, to make them one thing, as you're saying, Van. Like it's really, it's awesome. It's just interesting that he wrote this movie. And it's interesting that this is a movie that he wrote and came up with and it's completely out of his head. It's just interesting that this isn't some, like, somebody else's take on it. Because he was very smart to do something in his career, in my opinion.

So, Proof of El Station comes out. Great movie. Proof of concept that this guy's a good director. Creed is kind of a cheat code. It's a cheat code because it's- He gets to leverage some of the coolest lore in movie history. Movie history, right? Then Black Panther, the movie is better than anybody could have imagined that it was going to be in the hands of Ryan Coogler and we were like, wow, this guy can really handle this. But at this point, he's,'re seeing he's doing something we're

from we're familiar with. Right. And comes back with Wakanda Forever. Next divisive movie, I loved it. But divisive movie. Then by the time we get to this one, this is totally out of his brain. Right. And it's so specific. It's it's it's specifically blues and horror and all of this stuff, and he came up with it. What I'm trying to say is that like, I wouldn't have thought that his first original film would have been this.

I wouldn't have thought that it would have been this. I wouldn't have thought that it would have been something that the degree of difficulty is so high on. Mm-hmm. Well, I think he's obviously really, really in love with genre. If you've read any of the interviews that he's given on this round, he's talked a lot about John Carpenter and Robert Rodriguez and a lot of classical horror that he really likes. So it's it's great to hear that as somebody who's kind of obsessed with that stuff. But I'm not terribly surprised because he's so clearly understood the mechanics of superhero storytelling and of sports movies. That's one of the reasons why those movies are in the kind of upper echelon

Especially this century of those kinds of movies It is a big challenge. I think there's an important part of this story That is outside of the text but related to the text which is that it's been reported quite a bit that he negotiated After he wrote this script. He sent it to the studios and he said, highest bidder, you know, whoever will pay me the most money for this movie. And in the negotiation, he was able to leverage that after 25 years, the copyright of the film returns to his ownership, which is incredibly unusual.

We know that this is something Quentin Tarantino did for Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Very few filmmakers in the history of studio filmmaking have been able to get this. Now, he's been a little bit circumspect in the press as to why he wanted that, but I'll just make a conclusive leap that a movie about blues, which is an art form that was adopted, transformed, stolen in America,

and turned into white profit, making a movie that is essentially about the origins of that and the way that that is like there is a temptation and there is like a desire to transgress but that transgression can be a beautiful art and then owning that after making that movie, I'm sure is very metaphorically and financially rewarding for him. You know, he has said that he's not going to be asking for this on future movies, that this is a one-shot deal. We'll see if that's true. I remember last year, I was at CinemaCon and talking to people about this, which was around the time when that news broke, that Warner Bros. had agreed to give him the copyright back after 25 years.

And they were like, yeah, yeah, not a big deal, one-off deal, one-off deal. If I was somebody like Coogler, and there are not a lot of them, but if I was a young filmmaker who had a lot of promise, I would push for this every time. This will break movie studios. Yeah. Yeah. But it is the next step in artistic ownership in this kind of way. And it can only happen in an original story.

It can't be based on a classic novel. It can't be based on a superhero preexisting IP. You can't own that. Somebody else owns that. This is his thing. He invented it and people liked the script so much and they saw so much promise in this movie that went from probably being like a $50 million movie to like a 90 or $100 million movie

with a reversion of copyright. So it's a huge gamble for Warner Brothers that leads me to my question, which is like, do you guys think this movie is going to be a big hit? Do you think people are going to go see it? I don't think it's going to be a Minecraft movie, I'm sorry to say. Minecraft movie. Did you see that yet? I have not.

I'm surprised to hear that. But I saw people going nuts about it. Yeah. Including this guy. I wouldn't say I went nuts about it, but I did see it in a movie theater with people who were going nuts. I saw my good friend Diallo Riddle. Shout out to Diallo.

Oh yeah. Yeah, Diallo. So I saw Diallo when everybody was at CityWalk to see Sinners, and I thought that Diallo was there to see Sinners, and he goes, now I'm here with my kids seeing the Minecraft movie, and I just laughed, because everybody's seeing it. It's interesting. Everybody who I know is going to see this movie. Everyone's talking about it. People are very excited. I am a nerd enough to follow tracking. Like I'm hand wringing over the tracking for Thunderbolts. We need one, guys. And so... We're gonna find out.

We need one. Ten days, we're gonna find out. You going in Burbank? Yeah, no, no, no. I'm going to The Grove. Yeah, yeah. Sad for you. That's sad. Just come sit next to me. The Burbank is a little bit of a height, guys. Not for me. So, but R-rated vampire movie still has, you have to set expectations in terms of what it is. Let me zag on your point, because I think that that is the conventional historical point of view. Alright.

Horror is one of the most underrated in terms of tracking. Yeah. And as you know better than anybody, black audiences are always underrated when it comes to movies like this. We going to see Sinners. Yes. This is the same thing that happened with Black Panther where everybody was like, this should be a double for Marvel and it's now one of the biggest and most important Marvel movies of all time. Yeah.

So, I don't know want I choose to be optimistic and I To me a number give me a number give me a number first week because I was I think it's tracking like 40 I can't it's no fucking way, but it's gonna make more money. It is I think it's gonna make like 52 million Okay, 52 million is a win. I think so. Okay. Okay. Now, now this is an original story. Let me say why I'm asking. It's because we think with Marvel brain a lot of times when we think about this. So we're thinking, does sinners get to 600 million dollars? The sinners, you know what I mean? But for this we're

talking about a nine. I can't get that. That would be, I mean if that happens, phenomenal. Like that's amazing. Right. Um, so I guess when we say are people gonna see it, I guess I'm trying to set a standard to what would be a win. Long term on the box office? A box office for the movie. 90 million dollar budget. Then you gotta think about the marketing.

Like what's a win? The movie people. 150? Really? I think 150 would be a huge win. Okay. Like overall, domestic. I don't know what international is the one thing that historically is

Black stories don't travel that well. It's just a fact. Yeah, internationally It's been a big thing when you talk about How you get a hit? Overseas it's the inversion of the underestimating the black audiences in America overseas. They one of the reasons why? These movies are not marketed in the same way internationally is they feel like it's going to underperform. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So total, god, I don't, it's hard to say. I feel like it can do 50, which I think is a win for an original horror movie in the middle of April. I think that's a, would be a great success. You could make the case that a movie like this shouldn't cost 90 million. That's what some people will say. I don't really care. It's not your money. It's not going to be a great success, you could make the case that a movie like this shouldn't cost 90 million. That's what some people will say.

I don't really care. Yeah, it's not your money. It's not gonna be our money. One of the reasons why it would be great if it got into that $200 million range is not only would there be financial success, I think he's also getting first dollar gross, which is like Tom Cruise territory.

Like he's in rare territory in terms of negotiating. Not only great for Kugler and his team, it's great for movies like this getting greenlit, it's great for movies like this getting greenlit. It's great for movies like this being possible. Y'all need this bet. Badly. It's like so, so, like we are desperate. It's really important.

Like, it really. Right. That's why I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, ideas, rich text, whatever. This is a vampire movie. Like, please go see this movie in theaters so they were like, we can all keep talking about shit like this. The other thing is we've had these like all these hand-wringing conversations about Warner Brothers over the last couple of years and everybody's demonizing David Zaslav, recently featured in New York Magazine in a long profile this week. Mike DeLuca who runs Warner Brothers like

Works with good filmmakers and lets them make cool movies like this is a cool movie Yeah, you know one battle left another sounds like it's gonna be a cool movie like he takes risks with original stories That's his whole thing. He's been doing it since New Line. I I don't want him to get fired people want Mike to be a fire don't love movies That's fucking crazy if you like studio movies the people who talk about tracking and I know everything don't love movie I'm the sort of person who actually looks at tracking and cares about box office performance, but cares about the quality of the movie first. So to me the premise of the show is the interconnected nature of is your movie good and how well did it do so we can get another one? So this to me is such a perfect test case for that big question.

I would implore people to go see it. I like what you said at the very top of the conversation though. This is not a perfect movie. Genre movies by their very nature are complicated. They're hard to make them make sense. We've been rapturous for an hour while discussing the movie. You're probably going to see it and take a quibble with some things. Can I ask a question related to this? Okay, so all the vampires that are, you know, outside for sunset and thus are lit on fire at the end of the movie,

but they come back. The fire doesn't kill them? you know, outside for sunset and thus are lit on fire at the end of the movie. But they come back, the fire doesn't kill them? No, none of them come back. Oh, those are, so, oh, I thought that Haley's sign club was in that. Only two survived. They ran away. They ran away.

They survived. Oh, okay, all right, thank you. I was wondering if they were hiding in the club. They might've been. And then even when Smoke gets killed at the end, they're still hiding in the club, but they can't come outside and help him. They can't, they're watching them.

Yeah, they ran. They were able to get away. All right. They're in love. So, but yeah, that's end lust. It's beautiful. And that's great. That's beautiful.

Interracial. Well, I mean, yes and no. Yes and no. I would watch like, their Twilight, you know? I guess we like to call it Twilight. There is definitely a sequel that they could do if this movie is a massive success, which I would watch like their Twilight, you know? I guess we like close Twilight. There is definitely a sequel that they could do if this movie is a massive success, which I would watch. I would watch it.

I think a sequel set in contemporary times would be dope. What if it was 1970s like Shaft style blaxploitation movie with vampires? That would be amazing too. The only thing is I want now to, I don't know how you orient the sequel, if it's around them, are they the heroes? Same thing about the other movie. Good question.

You know what I mean? Yeah, we know they survive too. We know they survive. Oh, I see. Yeah, so it can't be a Bonnie and Clyde type thing. Right, right. Well, present day would be the way to do it then. Or immediately after the events in the post-credit sequence that I skipped.

And then you could play the post-credit sequence at the beginning so I could see it. I thought about you guys when I watched... I like to see Buddy Guy play. I was like, fuck. It was cool. It was cool. I thought about you guys when I watched this movie recently as we talk about original films. Did you guys talk about Companion on here? We did. We sure did. We really liked it. We responded to your text. Did you? Yeah. It's? We did. We sure did. We really liked it. We responded to your text. Did you?

Yeah. Yeah, I liked it. It's a great movie. Also Warner Brothers. So here's the thing. When I saw Companion, I thought about myself 1992. I thought about myself 1992 watching a movie that I love and will watch five six seven eight nine wishing you had a sex robot the whole thing there were movies like that back there were yeah so but the movie to me which has an awesome script which has a

good villain turn from Jack Quaid he's great yeah yeah I felt like it came and went and people didn't really support it. We did talk about it a couple times. I had Drew Hancock, the director, writer, director on the show. Super, super smart, nice guy. One January movie, so not a lot of fuss made over it. I think they also moved it to streaming very quickly. I imagine it did pretty well on streaming or on PVOD I should say, but it did okay business I just I use this as an example of like movies are fucked up now because that movie should be in movie theaters for two months Yeah, and it wasn't it was out of movie theaters real quick It just just to me all the bones of a good movie and I just wonder as much as we talk about this

Am I gonna go on my old man yells at cloud slash the moon thing? Do you guys just like good movies? Because it's a movie with a very inventive script that gives you a surprise every 10 minutes. Great performances, cool people to look at. Very funny. Very funny. Clever, like the, you know, and uses the, builds, follows its own rules very well and like with a lot of fun. Right. And I just wonder, and we'll see,

is our good movies enough anymore? No. You guys say no. I'm holding my thought. This year is important for that. It's finally maybe turning a little bit, but it's been like a tough year. You know, I mean, it's just been a, you know?

This cuts both ways, This cuts both ways. Because if Thunderbolts, Superman and Fantastic Four underperform, then what? Well, then that's then the question is, are movies enough anymore? Well, we can save that existentialist conversation for a future episode. Ben, you're the best. We can hear you on Higher Learning, Higher Learning, Midnight Boys, Midnight Boys, The Rewatchables, What else? You're going to come on Jam Sessions soon.

Jam Sessions. You were on Press Box recently with Joel. That was a lot of fun. I think maybe I brought too much heat. But no, I'm extremely thrilled. How come I haven't been invited on Higher Learning? Really? You could be. You know what? Let me tell you why we need to.

So we had Omar Miller from the centers on Higher Learning today. Today. Today. No kidding. He'll be out tomorrow. You know, he's great in 8 Mile. He's great in 8 Mile. White representation, thank you.

I'm the licky in that movie. He's actually very good in this movie. Very good. He's really in? Eight Mile. He's great in. White representation, thank you. I'm the lickin' lickin' lickin' lickin' lickin' lickin'. He's actually very good in this movie. Very good. He's really good in this movie. He's important, he's a key role. We have to do something for Rachel. What we need is the big picture, because I've been saying that the-

She doesn't watch movies. She doesn't watch movies. I know this about her. We did top five black vampires on higher learning. He said Blade and then he was astonished because Rachel has never seen Blade. That's really sad. And so you guys need to help her by making a list of essential movies. She hates The Princess Bride.

She hates it. Just essential movies ever? Well essential movies for her to watch. I'll give you the year of her birth. And then what movies? Are there any movies she does like? That would be helpful. Princess Bride is a no.

She doesn't like Princess Bride. She doesn't like fun. She doesn't like movies that are perfect. Which the Princess Bride is. In every single way except for the fact that they ain't got no black people in it. We'll allow it. So that's what you can do. You guys, we can bring you guys on and we can have a

conversation with Rachel about the movies that she has to see. We'll do the big picks, essential Rachel movies. Okay. Man, racial movies. You're not gonna bring me on to talk about Trump? We could. We could do all of that. Okay The poll is noting that yeah the police. Yeah, I got a lot of thoughts about the police. I got inside information. There you go Man, thank you very much. Amanda. Thank you. Let's now go to my conversation with Ryan Coogler For the first time on the big picture the great Ryan Coogler, very happy and honored

to have him here. Ryan, I want to start with this. After two Black Panther films and Creed, was it important for you to make an original story at this stage of your career with Sinners? Yeah, yeah. I would say absolutely, man., it was more like at this stage of my life. Like, I work with a lot of my friends and I could feel us all kind of like transitioning into like a different mode. You know, everybody's life is changing around me. Like people who didn't have kids, man,

are having kids now and they big and they getting ready to start school and they joining baseball teams and taking piano lessons and people buying minivans and shit. So, we got companies now and we no longer like the youngest people in the room when we walk into it. And I realized I had been making movies for 12 years now that had been going into international cinemas and I still hadn't done anything that was like all me. And that scared me, bro. I had a conversation recently with Michael Fleming where I talked about that.

But what scared me more was realizing that pretty soon, I wasn't gonna be able to pick up the phone and call everybody while I went out to a movie with and get them to fully commit, just because the direction that they lives was going. You know what I mean? People were starting to get offers to direct movies in different type of full-time positions.

You know what I'm saying? Like my picture editor, Michael Sharver, who's cut all my stuff, his son, like I mentioned, man, joining a baseball team and getting serious about it. And it was starting to become so complicated that I kind of panicked a little bit. Realized I had this really cool story I wanted to tell

and realized Louvville was free and had Zanzi, my producer, and my wife call around and check on Hannah and Bickler and my production designer, Ruth Carter, costume designer, Autumn Archipel, sent a tie-off, we called in and checked on them to see what they were scheduling, what they're like, and I checked in with Mike B and realized, man, we might have an opportunity to go. You know, so we went. We went like a bat out of the hill, bro. I used to return kicks.

I kick off when I played football. That was one of the things I was really good at. I remember sometimes I would think I saw something something, you know, like in the, in the, in the, in the way it's like, sometimes somebody would slip. You know what I mean? There's a hole, a hole opened up. Yeah, yeah. It's not, it's not there yet, but I think it might be there, you know what I mean?

And then, and then you just gotta go, you know, you know what I mean? Run like it's, run like it's gonna, run like it's gonna open up. And that was what this, that was what this process was, man. Like, and I'll pick just the right time where everybody can kind of run with me. You know, I don't think it'll happen like this again, to be honest. It's so interesting to hear you say that

because I know you're a very modest person, but a lot of those people are getting a lot of big looks, in part because of the work that you guys all did together on these movies over the years. So I have to assume they still have a kind of loyalty to you and want to come together to make something when you're like, I have an idea. Yeah, but the thing is, bro, is like, as much as they order me, I order them first and foremost. But the other piece is like, when it comes to people's kids, bro, in their lives, like,

it doesn't matter. I have a four year old, I hear you. Yeah, it don't matter What our history you know, you know I'm saying like like and it's the same for me, you know I got a couple kids now and like if I gotta choose between them anybody else Like you know the answer is them, you know, you know, you know, I mean and like like that was what I was I was watching Like I was watching like the kind of people we were gonna to be for the next 20, 30 years. It was solidifying, bro. You know what I'm saying? And look, Faces is one of my closest friends, Louis V. He's also a Chris Nolan guy. He's also a Jon Favreau's guy now. You know

what I'm saying? And if I catch him at the wrong time, he's not going to have any time for me. You know what I'm saying? That's just the reality. You know, like in, you know, when I, when I, when I, and I had a gap, bro, where I needed a commitment from him, very different from any other time I called him before. I needed him to be an executive producer on this. I needed him to move his family to Louisiana. You know, I needed his wife to work on this. You know what I'm saying? I needed his all in a way that he could probably never give it again.

You know, like, you know. And bless these folks, man. Once they understood the urgency of what I was trying to do, everybody showed up for me, man. And then at that point, you look up in New Louisiana, man, and everybody's kids is down there. Then you realize, oh, man, I can't let these people down. It's an amazing, amazing thing that you I can't let these people down. It's an amazing, amazing thing that you're able to assemble these people.

We met a long time ago around Black Panther and we had a conversation and one of the stories that you told me at that time was that before you were starting on Black Panther, you had a conversation with Francis Ford Coppola. He told you to check out Brigadoon. I remember you telling me that. And I was wondering if you had any version of that. If you went to anyone, if you linked up with anybody who told you to look at something,

or if you just looked at something for yourself before you started making a movie like Sinners. I looked at something for myself, bro. I looked at Don't Look Now, which is a movie that I've been hearing about and I owned it. You know what I mean? I bought it a long time ago. It was actually something like really,

it was Olly clawing at me. You know how it is, bro, you buy a movie and it's like, I'm going to get to this at some point. You know what I'm saying? I do. I was watching some YouTube video, it came up and I said,

man, look at this thing. I watched it right before. I didn't really, I was so green, bro, and I did the first Panther that I consulted with a lot of people, man. I consulted with Chris and Emily. Francis was the big one. He had this history of taking on larger than life things and coming on the other side with them feeling original and bespoke. That was what I was trying to figure out. Then throwing myself into the gun.

Coming out with someone on the other side that still felt like me. He gave me some incredible advice when it came to that. His number one piece of advice was to bring my family with me. I followed that since that initial conversation. We've had several since. But for this one, man, I talked to Chris and Emma about the format. When Laura's format became something that we were discussing and thinking about, because they had just navigated both camera packages we ended up using. We used different lenses for them on our System 65 package.

We used the Ultra Panavision 276 lens. You've seen the film, I imagine. Yep. What did he tell you? What did he share with you about working in those formats? Yeah, yeah, man. He basically told me not to be scared, you know, and don't let anybody bow down to the camera on set.

You know, he ain't know that it's an intimidating piece of equipment, you know, and that because he uses a lot of handheld camera work in his history and I know cameras you can't hand hold. The sync sound cameras, you can hand hold the high speak that will. All right, so I'm a nerd out. This is the place, the high speak that will, all right, so I'm gonna nerd out. This is the place, do it. The catch of the IMAX camera package is that it is technically not a sync sound camera.

I think the new version that he has on Odyssey is, but the one that they shot Oppenheimer with is the same one they shot Dunkirk with is the same one they shot the last two dark nights with, you know, these cameras are massive cameras that are ripping cellulite through the gate 15 perfs per picture at 24 pictures per second, right? Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr you know that cameras gonna be all over the dialogue it is automatically uh gonna be adr you know what i'm saying the 5 perf 65 millimeter camera package the system 65 has two sync sound camera bodies sync sound so now these these sound like action in this rolling you don't hear anything you know what i'm saying that should put your ear all the way up to the blend now all of that soundproofing, because that camera is doing a lot of work

ripping that 65 millimeter Kodak celluloid through the gate at just five per second. So it's a little less mechanics happening there, but still very violent, still very loud. But all of that soundproofing is heavy. It's insanely heavy. So it becomes a 100 pound camera system with zero ergonomics. So it is impossible to hand hold the sync sound version of that camera, you understand? And Chris comes from the school that I also come from the school of whatever works for the scene. So you'll see some of those movies. you know, he's hand holding that camera a lot.

You know what I mean? And when you decide to shoot system 65, and you want to sync sound camera happening, you're not hand holding that. Right. And you ain't steady camming either. You know what I mean? You just need a setup. It's just too heavy.

You got you are on sticks, you're on a crane. Yeah. Or the camera on the ground. You know what I mean? And so he was acknowledging that. Now there's another version of this camera that is the high speed system 65 camera. Now this is especially the same camera

without the soundproofing. Okay, so now this camera is about 60 pounds. That camera can be handheld. That camera can be put on a steady camera. But now your dialogue with that camera, ADR immediately. You know what I mean? Because it's almost as loud as, maybe if not louder, than the IMAX camera. You know what I mean?

I actually had a question about this for you because I talked to Hoita Van Hoitema about Oppenheimer and carrying that thing around and what that was like for the actors and the intimacy that... how intimacy is hard. And like this movie in particular that you made is very sexy, very sensual, very up close, you know? Like, it's very physical. Like, don't look, hearing you say don't look now is not surprising when you see the movie.

But when you got this giant piece of machinery up in someone's face, when you're trying to do a scene like that, like, is that hard for the actors? Was it different for you than what you've done in the past? So Chris's advice to me was to use like a super red camera. He said, you was like, you would normally use your camera. You know, and he told me straight up,

he was like, man, you'll see scenes, I got that camera right at the beginning, it's killing his face, you know? And yeah, but we got close with that thing, man. Like that was a part of what the movie had to be. It had to be the sexiest movie I ever made. We knew we were going to get intimate with these cameras, man. To be honest with you, everybody brings their A game with that, when you're shooting film

in general. I've missed it since I did Fruitville. Like digital, to be honest, man, it's hard for people to take a series. You know what I mean? Like, because you just take, people just take it for granted, bro. You know what I'm saying? You got to go out your way to how folks really respect when the camera's rolling. You know what I mean?

Because you got that, you know, your DP is generally in the dead tent. And everybody's got these high-def monitors everywhere, man. You know what I'm saying? It's, you know, when you bust out that film camera, bro, and you hear it rolling, and you know, man, you on the clock for real. And if you don't get it right, you're going to miss it. You're going to have to reload. You know what I mean? Everybody's right there.

You know what I mean? Everybody's right there. You know what I mean? And the focus that you get, man, the attention that goes. People hold their breath, bro. And it's the same thing when it's close to the actors. You know what I'm saying? It feels like you're doing something timeless, especially with these cameras, bro. They look old, you know what I mean? Like the reality of it, man, I had never seen a lens that looked like that on a television lens. I've been in a lot of movies, bro, busting that thing out and knowing, okay, man, that's

how I've been her on this thing. You know what I'm saying? It's like, you know, it does something to you. I'm interested in kind of like the inversion of the intimate stuff too. I have to ask you about, there's a sequence in the middle of the movie, the sort of musical centerpiece of the movie, which I thought was like one of the boldest,

coolest things I've seen in a studio movie in forever. And I was like, this is just so outside of the pocket of what this movie was and it's taking it to a totally different place. But it's also like very acrobatic in the filmmaking and you're taking like big visual risks with it. taking it to a totally different place, but it's also like very acrobatic in the filmmaking and you're taking like big visual risks with it. And I was trying to figure out how you actually did it

and why doing something that is that sort of like fantastical and historical inside of this movie was something that you wanted to do. Yeah, man, that's a great question. You know, I believe in, look, like when I do my job, bro, I got certain responsibilities. It's an expectation of me as a writer-director to be fluent in film language. What are the points where I must do the thing that can only happen in this movie? In communication and through film language.

You know what I'm saying? If you're making a good movie, you get a few moments like that. You know, the great movie's a choc-full-o. You know what I mean? Like things that can only happen in this, in a movie number one, and in this movie number two.

You know what I mean? And while I was writing the screenplay, it was after I had done the research about this music that my uncle was obsessed with and realizing that this music changed the world. But these people who are living this reality had no idea that this music that they live for, just for Saturday nights, you know what I'm saying, we had a type of outsize global impact that an art form can have. Maybe the most impactful American art form. And for this time, it was just theirs.

You know what I mean? But they also had the luck of being born black and to start their adulthood was gonna be experienced in the 30s. You know what I mean? They wouldn't know anything other than sharecropping, Jim Crow, you know what I'm saying? Backbreakingly racist laws, backbreakingly racist economy. You know what I mean?

And they would live for the hope that maybe their descendants would have it better. And I'm realizing in this movie, I'm about to have these characters encounter cosmically horrific vampiric violence. So like that's coming from them in this movie. And I have to buttress that with something cosmically beautiful, you know what I mean? And it's something that's true

that can only be communicated through film language. You know what I'm saying? And's something that's true, that can only be communicated through film language. You know what I'm saying? And that was how we came up with that. That was how we came up with that, we realized that the movie needed that scene. I love that choice. That part is incredible to me. One theme I wanted to ask you about in your movie

is that I feel like recurs a lot, is this moment when two disparate cultures confront each other and are forced to understand each other. So you got the Jabari and T'Challa, you got, you know, Sly and Adonis, you know, you got people coming from different walks of life. Like, you know, you got the Talakhan and you got the Wakandans. You got, there's always a sort of like confrontation. In this movie, you've got black American blues and Irish folk music and this like, and obviously vampires and humans, right?

These two different cultures that are kind of like forced to meet each other. I was hoping you'd just kind of talk about like why you tend to synchronize the movies that way and what's interesting about it in this one. I mean, I never thought about it as a student as you just described it, E.S. Shawn. Like that's actually incredible, bro.

But look, man, like I'm a black man from all over California. My grandmothers are probably going to second wave of the great migration. I got an Irish first name, bro. Not only do I have an Irish first name, but my baby brother has an Irish first name. His name is Keeney. And I'm from the Bay Area, which I think with the exception of like Long Beach or something is like the most diverse place in the country and one of the most diverse places on the planet.

You know what I mean? So every day I've been, you know, every day of my life I've been encountering cultures that are different from mine and negotiating that and having family members that married in other cultures and cultures that married in their mind. That's my reality. But that's also the reality of the Delta Blues. It's a lot of literature written about the fact that Charlie Patten was likely part Choctaw. Everybody knows, man, Irish people were around and were influencing that music. You know, and, you know, and, you know, the banjo comes from

Africa, but now it's most associated with Appalachian people, you know what I mean? And those people of Irish descent there, it's so ironic when you look at the history of those people, it's a ton of crossover, you know what I mean? Like the dichotomy of living in a place of extreme agricultural abundance, but starving as a result of a backbreaking colonial and capitalist system that's not your own. Having your way of life outlawed, your way of worship demonized, the way that you dance demonized, you know what I'm saying?

All of these things. And it was exciting for me to have a character who presents as a 30-year-old Appalachian, but was really a century-old Irish vampire who's finding himself in 1932 Carstow, Mississippi. Who does he want to hang out with? Who does he identify with? These are questions I ask myself. That made a lot of sense. What music is he going to be attracted to? At the time, I was listening to a lot of music, man, like a lot of Delta Blue music, but also just like a lot of black music from different areas. And I was getting obsessed with this Marvin Gaye song, bro. Which a lot of people consider like the sexiest song ever written by a man, you know. And the lyrics are, I want you, but I want you to want me too. Which is like so powerful and sexy. And

I was thinking of, you know, I knew I needed that from my being. You know what I mean? It's this idea of, you know, I'm strong enough to take, you know, but that's not satisfying to me. You know, I need to convince you to want to take it. You know what I mean? And that felt synonymous with the vampire. It felt synonymous with blues music. You know what I'm saying? Like it just made sense.

You know, bro, when we brought Jack on board, you know, his late father was an Irish immigrant to the UK. And he just up the ante, like so far with his own personal truth. Like I'm dealing with the love and the grief of my uncle. He brought the love and the grief of his father. And when we shot that scene, the counterpart to that other scene you talking about, the rocky road, the Dublin scene, man. Bro, we shot that scene, the counterpart to that other scene you're talking about, you know, the rocky road, the Dublin scene, man.

Bro, we shot that scene, man. And he pulled me close and he whispered in my ear and said, man, it's my father's birthday. And I just became a baller. You know, everything. But it was something else that I worked on this movie. Like, I'll be crazy to try to repeat. You know what I'm saying? I just love, yeah, I loved how you twin those two things. It was really, it's just like amazingly

effective and you know, Sean Fantasy you might imagine is Irish. So I saw a little of myself. Oh yeah. One thing I need to ask you about is you're one of the few filmmakers that I've talked to on this show who's under 40 years old, who's directed five features that have been released in movie theaters. That is becoming a rarer thing. And I know theatrical is really important to you. How are you feeling about movie theaters, the movie going experience, where it's at right now?

Because there's been a lot of talk this year. Look, man, it's just a subject matter. I can't talk about what I'll become an emotion, bro. Look, man, when I was researching this movie, I found out that my grandmother, who's 96 years old, I found out what her first date with my grandfather was. Took her to the movies. Took her to the movies and he tried to make out with her in the movie. And she told him, she told him we can do that after. I'm trying to watch this. You know what the movie was? What was the movie? She couldn't remember. But she remembered the conversation she had with this. You know what the movie was? What was the movie? She couldn't remember it. But she remembered the conversation she had with him.

You know what I mean? And me and Zinzi, who's my producer on this, most important person in my life, our first day was to the movies. We went to go see Bring It On. Oh, nice. My pet, Reid. Yeah. Starting to have you like, and Kristen Dunst.

Yeah. Like, look, bro, for for me it's everything, man. My favorite cinema in LA has been closed since the pandemic. Man, Arc Light Hollywood. So painful, sucks here. Yeah, man, like I wouldn't be doing this if it wasn't for the experience of watching these movies. At a time when it was pre-social media, man,

when you couldn't get a movie squirreled before you fired somebody from Sunday. And every time I set the camera up, bro, I'm thinking about the feelings that that great filmmaker gave me in my 40-year-old years and now. I love you. I think, to quote a friend of mine,

Miriam Bacobzal, who I went to school with, it's a giant empathy machine, you know what I'm saying? I think it's best experienced with strangers in the dark where you can't judge each other, you know what I'm saying? Even though it's getting incredibly expensive, but I'm making an IMAX film, man. This thing is gonna be on every PLF imaginable,

you know what I mean? And like the cost, bro, coupled with inflation of taking a date to the movies, man. You know what I'm saying? By the time you get your parking in your babysitter, you know what I mean? Like I know it's substantial, but it still is such a democratized form of entertainment,

man. You know what I mean? Like it was always the thing for the people form of entertainment, man. You know what I mean? Like it was always the thing for the people, for the working man, you know what I'm saying? To go have a nice night out, to travel somewhere and experience something. You know, I'll fight tooth and nail to keep that around. You know what I'm saying?

Like, I don't know what I would do without it, to be honest with you. And I always assure myself, fortunate that my movies have come out in theaters. It's really got nothing to do with me. It's just the timing, bro. Like, had Fruitville been made a calendar year later, you know, we might be having a different conversation, you know, straight up. And I think about these things, man. I'm really glad that you're still putting movies in movie theaters and making them for them. Ryan, we end every episode of this show by asking filmmakers what's the last great thing they have seen? Have you seen anything that's moved you recently?

It's a great question, bro. I've been incredibly busy. Could be new or old. It doesn't have to be a new thing. Yeah. No, no, no. It was one of these days. Yes. So fun. It was one of these days, man. Sharita Singleton, I'm proud of that, bro. Obviously, I know her father, rest in peace. But I was blown away by it. What did you like? I liked that it felt like Friday, which is a movie that I love, but it felt so feminine. I love Kiki. I was blown away by her performance and Shazer's

performance. I was blown away by her film making, bro. I love how it's celebrated, the resourcefulness of black women. You know what I'm saying? One of my favorite scenes is when you realize her mom has a story in the jungles. You know what I'm saying? People come at you. I love you, man. It felt very in conversation with our scene with Henny.

I love the cinematography. I love the humor. Like, you know, it just made me feel alive, bro. It's a great pick. One of my favorites of the year. Ryan Coogler, I appreciate you, man. Thank you so much for the time. Thank you, Sean.

Thanks for having me. Thank you to Ryan Coogler. Thanks to Van. Thanks to Amanda. Thanks to Jack Sanders for his work on this episode. Next week, we have our next 25 for 25 entry. It will not reveal what it is. Do you want to guess, Van?

25 for 25. 25 best movies of the century. I know, people have been really telling me, they've been peppering me, tell Sean to do this movie, tell Sean to do this movie, tell Sean to do this movie. I can't think of it. I'm involved too Oh

What did they tell you that we should do oh so many different guess guess guess what we're doing Yeah, somebody told me that I should do ghost dog To do ghost dog. I don't know if I could get them Amanda on board with ghost dog. Um Next movie a moonlight It's not me like yeah See you then