The Big Picture - So … ‘Tenet’? Plus: Top Five Movies About Making Movies

Episode Date: June 30, 2020

It’s happening again: Christopher Nolan’s ‘Tenet’ has been moved once more, stoking new debate about the future of movie theaters. Sean and Amanda talk about when, if ever, they’ll be back in a theater. They also discuss the weekend’s new VOD and streaming releases and the life and work of the late Joel Schumacher (0:52). Then, Sean and Amanda (finally) share their top five movies about making movies (33:32). Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm Sean Fennessy. I'm Amanda Dobbins. And this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about how Hollywood sees itself. That's right. We are finally sharing our top five movies about making movies lists. But first, we've been gone for a week. And in that time, a lot has happened in our little tiny world of cinema, like, oh, say, the biggest movie of the year moving once again.

That's right. Tenet has moved off of July 31st and is now opening, allegedly, on August 12th. Amanda, I can't imagine you were surprised to hear this news. No, I was not. It was about time. And frankly, I just think that there's a big asterisk around this. It's like opening on August 12th for now. Do I think that it will open on August 12th?

No, I do not. Yeah, I don't either. And we find ourselves in this very strange game. We've talked about this a couple of times on this show already. And it is bizarrely turned into the movie story of 2020, which is when can we go back into movie theaters? And when Warner Brothers moved the release date of Tenet from July 17th to July 31st, I thought to myself, that doesn't really seem like enough time to solve a global pandemic.

And in that time, the numbers have gotten worse and things in America have gotten scarier. And we saw something very specific happen, which is that in many of the states where things began to quote unquote open up, numbers began to skyrocket. In some of those states, movie theaters even opened up. And I think you and I both agree that movie theaters are potentially a very dangerous incubator for COVID-19, which is not really what you want when you're going to the movies. What you want when you're going to the movies is safety, privacy, fun, and a movie. And I can't help but feel like it's going to be a very long time.

Not just a couple more weeks, not just, oh, you know, August 12th to August 31st, or, you know, Mulan has moved to August 21st. So, you know, things will be back to normal in six weeks. It just sort of feels like we're on this imaginary timeline. And don't you just think that in three weeks. It just sort of feels like we're on this imaginary timeline. And don't you just think that in three weeks, we're going to just do another episode where we talk about this again? I do.

And I find myself in a pretty puzzling and dispiriting situation of hoping that we'll be in that case. And I want to be very clear as we talk about this. It's like, I really miss movies and I miss movie theaters and I miss and I understand the financial ramifications, especially for the people who work at movie theaters and the people's livelihood depend on this industry. And it is a real loss. And we have not figured out solutions for that. And that's a real concern to me. But I also think that I have a lot of concerns about how this has been handled generally in the world and we don't have to get into politics. But it think, is being responsible and keeps pushing it down the road and has not yet opened theaters. And the theaters are following Warner Brothers' leads pretty begrudgingly in a lot of situations. We can talk about the AMC masked debacle or we cannot.

But I hope that we don't get to a place where these major corporations are asking audiences to put themselves at risk for their bottom line, which is in a way how capitalism works, I understand. But that to me, I can't wrap my head around that as an ethical situation. And so I find myself being in the situation of loving movies and hating watching movies at home and wanting to go to movie theaters and caring about this industry and understanding that if the theaters don't open, that also affects production and that there's just a ripple effect of years of years of art that we care about and also employment. But hoping that the theaters don't open just because I don't think I can justify the risk reward of it. The handful of people that I know well who work inside of studios have been unusually

lock and key about this issue with me. So a handful of folks that I talk to, typically they'll say like, oh, well, actually the production on this movie was a disaster or this is definitely going to be moving. You know, the sort of the general rumor mongering that is unreportable in this space, but that, you know, just kind of gives you a sense of how things are going on this particular issue. Everyone that I've spoken to, if I've said like,

is this movie really coming out on July 31st or is this actually going to happen on August 12th? Like I'm just trying to plan for the show and our coverage and you know, what should we do here? It's been a very flat, just sort of like, yes, that is our plan.

And I don't know if there is a sense of it's, it's not conspiracy, but just a sense of being buttoned up in a corporate fashion so as not to reveal the machinations. Because I feel like the conversations that must be happening inside these companies, whether you're talking about AMC or whether you're talking about Warner Brothers or any of the other studios that want to put movies into theaters, I mean, there just must be so much anxiety. I was looking through the list of open spaces in California yesterday after Gavin Newsom, our governor, issued another order to close the bars in seven counties through the state. And a lot of things are open. And movie theaters are one of the few things that are actually not open in the state of California

right now because of the risk that comes with going into a space like that. So, I mean, what do you think the conversation is internally in the movie industry right now because of the risk that comes with going into a space like that. So the, I mean, what do you think is, what do you think the conversation is internally in the movie industry right now? I'm sure there's a lot of panic on many different levels because the movie industry, like you and I, and seemingly like most of the officials in America, political and scientific also, which is again, a conversation we don't have to get into. They don't know anything like, and, and some of that is because no one was prepared for this. And some of that is just because this is unknowable to an extent. We don't understand everything.

And the movie industry in particular, especially on a big budget scale, works 6 and 12 and 18 and 24 months in advance. And that's just not possible here. And so I think there is probably a lot of panic in terms of people just not knowing how to make decisions because they're not used to, you can't turn these giant ships around that quickly or you can, but it involves a loss of money certainly and planning. And I am sure that causes anxiety for them. And it's just not clear what to do. You can't make the long-term plans for marketing and releasing and production

that this industry requires. I want to share with you a personal anecdote. Obviously, we only had one show last week. I had to go home for a personal matter. So I traveled. I traveled across the country last week, which means I got on an airplane. And I've shared on this show in the past my germophobia and my general anxiety around the conference of germs. And at no time more than now has that been radiating off of my body. And yet I went home and I traveled. And when I flew, which is a contained space in which people are sitting very closely together, I sat stock still and only touched things that I had wiped down with a Lysol wipe for six consecutive hours.

And it honestly was not that bad. So I'm not advocating for the opening of movie theaters because all of my other human interactions when I was in New York at home were insane to me. No one was, people weren't wearing masks. They were touching each other. Like, it was all crazy. But the plane, weirdly, was the safest feeling experience that I had. Does that sound nuts to you? No, I have a couple thoughts. Number one being that you sitting completely still for six hours and only touching surfaces

that have been Lysoled is like you every day. And it's just like not any different for Sean Fennessey. I don't think that that is insane. And I'm sure in many ways the plane flight, because it is regulated and there are systems in effect that people actually at this point, we're four months in, have had a lot of time to iron out. And also, before COVID-19, there were other infectious diseases that could be communicated in small spaces. So it's my understanding that airplanes in particular had to develop technology and ventilation technology to deal with some of this. So that makes sense to me. I think the other aspect of it is that

you were traveling for a reason and there was no other way for you to do what you needed to do, which was important. And there is a riskward element to everything that we're doing here. And some of that comes to personal ethics and justification, so I can only speak for myself here. But to me, there is a difference in, I mean, certainly like hospitals and grocery stores and essential services, you can't replace those. But even I think there is a difference in what someone gets out of going to school and how replaceable school is to young children versus remote learning and kind of the technology versus the experience and what's lost and what's gained. And there are going to be a lot of debates about that and many other issues and restaurants and other gathering places,

you know, churches certainly. But movies uniquely seem to me to be a situation where the risk is just not worth the reward because we have a replacement. We have a replacement. Everyone can watch movies at home. There is no, there's just, and it's not as good. I am sorry that I have been saying this for two years. It's not as fun.

I like haven't seen a good movie in 2020. I mean, I have, but I think I saw them all in theaters. And we're going to do an episode later this week. And I was really scraping the barrel, honestly, in putting together my list. I actually haven't finished it yet as a recording. This is like a behind-the-scenes big picture situation because I don't know what to pick because watching movies at home sucks. But I just don't think that you can justify endangering the lives of people. And then you also think about it. We don't have to get too much into outbreak and epidemiology here, but it's not

just endangering the people in the movie theater itself, right? It's not just like if everyone who goes to a movie theater decides, okay, well, I'm fine with it, then everybody else who goes will be fine with it. It's just not how this works. It spreads. So I just, I can't justify it. I personally can't justify it. Yeah, I hear you. I mean, I think you have put your finger on something that is certainly not a way that we had considered movie going before, which is as this ethical dilemma, you know, as something that indicates maybe even how you feel about society or notions of freedom or personal health. Usually this is an escape for people or a quest to discover something new and really rarely nothing more than that. So, you know, and I tend to agree with you about watching movies at home.

It's a nice segue to just a very brief chat about a few movies that we got over the weekend, which, you know, all of which I think are not great. And it's a chicken or the egg thing. It's like, are we only getting the not great movies because they're not great? So it's okay to send those at home and studios or streaming services feel they have to cut their losses. Or is it because when you have lost that theater experience, and I just feel like you and I are going to be talking about this for the next two years, like when between now and vaccine is what this conversation is going to be in many ways on this show, which is unfortunate, but I do think there's something to it. So there were three new releases, essentially big new releases over the weekend. The first was Irresistible, which is Jon Stewart's, let's generously call it a political satire,

which went straight to premium VOD. The second was a movie called Eurovision Song Contest, The Story of Fire Saga, which came to Netflix. The third was a movie called My Spy, which was produced and expected to be released by STX and theaters, but was pushed back several times and was ultimately released by Amazon Prime. All three of these movies are from ostensibly big or at least known figures. You've got Jon Stewart with a movie starring Steve Carell and Rose Byrne and Chris Cooper and a bunch of other people. Eurovision Song Contest is a Will Ferrell comedy. It's a big-time, sort of big, high-concept Will Ferrell comedy.

My Spy stars Dave Bautista, who is, you know, a rising movie star. All three of these movies are not great, in my opinion. I know that there's a strong Eurovision Song Contest fan club growing out there. I didn't dislike it. I just thought it was okay. Did you get a chance to watch Eurovision Song Contest fan club growing out there. I didn't dislike it. I just thought it was okay. Did you get a chance to watch Eurovision? I did. And my response to it was that I just am not interested in Eurovision enough in order to be invested in this movie. I think if you are a person who watches American Idol, as I know Sean did, and the Eurovision Song Contest, and I guess likes people singing.

I mean, we run up against that a lot. I find singing pretty awkward a majority of the time. And this is the Eurovision Song Contest is really leaning into that. So I did not find it to be my type of funny or like my type of diversion, even though I, you know, I like Will Ferrell. I like Rachel McAdams. I certainly all the locations were very beautiful. Um, lots of nice drone shots of, um, scenery that I haven't seen and, you know, have no access to, but yeah, it was just, it, I think it's, if it found its audience, that's great. I was not its audience.

Yeah, I guess I wasn't either. And it reminded me of the version of the Will Ferrell comedies that I'm not as fond of. It was a little bit like, it was more in the Blades of Glory semi-pro class of Will Ferrell movies, which was just to say that it seemed like they started with the setting before having an idea for a movie. And that's, you know, sometimes you can get a great movie out of that. But in this case, I thought it was okay. And I was trying to wrap my head a little bit around some of the kind of critical discourse slash fan discourse around the movie over the weekend, because I saw the movie over a month ago and I was like, okay, this is fine. And this feels in

many ways like what we call routinely a Netflix movie. And maybe people are just more desperate than they were before. Maybe the bar is moving somehow on what is an acceptable or enjoyable movie during quarantine. What do you make of that? It felt a little bit like a bridge between what we consider to be a typical netflix movie and kind of the old broad studio comedies of a decade ago right it is like a a specific setting that is then parodied at length with you know big movie stars will ferrell rachel mcadams um it you can tell that they spent a little bit more money on it. It just, it felt actually slightly more considered even if ultimately it didn't add up to as much as I was hoping for.

And again, I think it just like didn't add up that much to me because I will never watch a Eurovision YouTube clip if you send it to me. Just don't send it to me. I won't click play. It's just, it's not my thing. Okay. I know what to send to you now.

It's good to know. Let's just, it's not my thing. Okay. I know what to send to you now. It's good to know. Let's talk briefly about Irresistible. So Jon Stewart has been doing the rounds quite frequently. He's done a lot of interviews over the last few weeks. You know, Stewart, obviously former host of The Daily Show and a longtime comedian and someone that people look to as a beacon for a kind of neoliberalism, a seer of cynicism and somebody who can point to what's going on in the world and say, here's what's wrong with it. And I think some of the interviews he's given have been interesting. He gave a long one to

New York Times Magazine. He has spoken to the Pod Save America guys. I've heard him talk a handful of times already. And in every interview, he seems to at least have some sense of the tumult in the world right now. Seems to have some sense of looking at less sort of systems and institutions. He seems more interested in the abstract notions of how America works at this stage. And then you watch Irresistible. And my reaction was like, was this movie made in 1986? Like it was one of the most like antiquated, like too soft, not funny, not cutting comedies about this space, this political world, which essentially all takes place, I believe, in a small county in Wisconsin, where a farmer plans to run for local office. And in doing so, he gets identified by basically a Democratic strategist who comes to this small town and identifies this man who's going to run

for mayor as the future of the Democratic Party. And then a kind of war ensues between the power brokers and the Republican and Democratic Party. I think that there are a couple of war ensues between the power brokers and the Republican and democratic party. I, I think that there are like a couple of things about this movie that were fine or funny. I think Roseburn going forward is something that I'm always into, but in general, I could not believe John Stewart made this. I,

what was your reaction to it? I mean, same. My reaction was that this was a movie made about the 2016 election, but the movie itself was made in 2006. And with 2006 thinking and political views, which obviously is when Jon Stewart was presiding over The Daily Show. And it's fascination with party politics and specifically the Democratic Party, which, listen, I mean, I'm sorry to be veering so close to politics throughout this episode,

but let me just say I'm fine with skewering the Democratic Party while also just thinking that it's so beside the point. This entire movie felt so beside the point of the world that we are living in and even how we communicate it. And in a lot of ways, it felt... Remember when Jon Stewart went, I believe it was on Crossfire, and just yelled about CNN and Crossfire for a while? And that was 15 years ago. And I just watched the movie version of it. And it worked a lot better when it was just a media clip to me. Yeah. I think we have to get the money out of politics is a meaningful pursuit, but that just does not feel like the vanguard of conversation right now. It just doesn't feel like the path to compelling thought around what's going on in America. And on the one hand, I kind of feel bad for Stewart because I think he comes by a lot of this stuff, honestly, but he's not a natural filmmaker. And I think if you're going to be a political satirist and working in movies, your work has to look ahead. You have to be 10 to 20 years ahead of the curve. You have to make a face in the crowd. You have to make Dr. Strangelove. You have to make network. You have to understand. And if you're especially if you're focused on sort of the intersection between media and narrative and money and politics, you can't

be behind. And as you said, like this just feels very behind and it doesn't mean that he has to make a movie about black lives matter. I don't think Jon Stewart should do that. It does mean that if you're going to crane your neck at this sort of thing artistically during the time of Donald Trump, there needs to be more foresight. It just really just felt like a look back. Yeah, I agree. And I think particularly if you're Jon Stewart, you need to evolve. I mean, we are of the generation that learned about political skepticism and satire from Jon Stewart. I remember when The Daily Show was essential watching, even for me,

a person who does not watch comedy or late night, because that was just the prism through which a lot of people learned to understand the Bush administration and party politics and money in politics, which again is an important issue, as noted by Steven Soderbergh at the end of The Laromat but speaking of films

that you know explore things in uh slightly different ways but it was a little dispiriting specifically to see john stewart who i think of as like a great political mind or, you know, not even political, but sociological, like a mouthpiece and a critic of our generation and particularly the media to just kind of be stuck in the past. And because that is someone that I did look to as a leader, which maybe has its own issues and, you know, you can't rely on anyone to be thinking for you forever. But something about this being from Jon Stewart, I was like, huh, really? That's all you got? Yeah, I read a number of reviews of this film and there was one word that came up over and over and over again in these reviews, and that word was toothless. And I find that to be fascinating because Stewart was the opposite

of that on The Daily Show. I think the reason that The Daily Show became appointment viewing for a certain kind of person during that time was because it felt like that was the one place where you would get something that resembled unvarnished thought draped in comedy. And that doesn't mean that Jon Stewart was Noam Chomsky, but it does mean that he was presenting something that was not what was on CNN or was not what was in the pages of the New York Times. I mean, this is also during a time, sort of a post 9-11 moment in the media when things between, I would say, 2002 and 2008 were very complicated by the Bush presidency. And he reacted in an intense way, in a defiant way to what the status quo was.

And this just feels like, I don't even know if it's the status quo. It's the status no, Amanda. Wow. Wow. You got there. Can I add one more thing? So the three things, pieces of culture that I consumed this weekend besides rewatching for the segment we're about to do were We're Irresistible, Eurovision,

and Jessica Simpson's memoir, Open Book. Why? Because it was finally available at the library. I'm a big user of the Libby app, as you know, and I was able to check it out, but it was only a seven-day checkout because it's very in demand, so I had to read it immediately. Stayed up way too late last night reading it. Anyway, I was just going to say of the three things that I read in terms of basic storytelling, character development, but also sociological commentary, both on the first decade of this century, the aughts and the current moment, and also the music industry, Open Book was far and away the leader for me. Shout out to Jessica Simpson.

Incredible. That says all you need to know. Speaking of 2005, that really is, you were locked in a moment. Exactly. You know, I watched a lot of movies over the weekend, many of which are very old, and I'm enjoying, I'm having kind of like a late 80s, early 90s personal revival, or getting to things that I saw when I wasn't really paying close enough attention to them, and I'm enjoying. I'm having kind of like a late 80s, early 90s personal revival or getting to things that I saw when I wasn't really paying close enough attention to them.

And I'm enjoying that. I did also start to rewatch the Doctor Sleep director's cut, which was released on HBO Max. And it dawned on me that this is sort of what HBO Max should be for. That, you know, when Doctor Sleep came out, I believe last October, we had our pal Gilbert Cruz on the show to talk about it. He's a Stephen King fanatic and expert. And that movie was about two hours and 20 minutes. And it was, I would say, about 40% successful. But I liked that 40%. The three-hour version thus far, I'm not finished with it, is better. And maybe once again, like weirdly this should have been a TV show, which I hate to say that out loud on the big picture,

but it just felt like this story was a little bit bigger and wider than what it aspired to be on the screen. So what is in it that was not in the original? Is it more like soul-sucking fairy dust, Rebecca Ferguson with the top hat is just wear a top hat she wears a top hat um yes that that character is wonderful Rebecca Ferguson is wonderful in this movie Rebecca Ferguson is wonderful much like my reaction to why isn't the king of Staten Island about Marissa Tomei and Bill Burr my take on um on

Dr. Sleep is why isn't this movie just about Rose the hat? Why isn't this movie just about Rebecca Ferguson and her band of crazy, you know, energy vampires. Um, that just would have been a great movie. And why, I don't know why we need Danny Torrance. I didn't,

I didn't, I don't need Ewan McGregor in the movie. Um, there's more of everything. It's thus far. Everything is just sort of amplified and stretched out. But to me, like that is a great example of what streaming viewing could or should be.

Give me the longer version of a streaming viewing could or should be. Give me the longer version of a movie that I'm interested in. You can only find it in this one place. The new release films, I think we're just struggling with. My Spy is not really made for me. I'm not going to be overly critical of it, but it's not for me. Eurovision, I thought was just okay. Irresistible, I thought at times was kind of shameful.

And I can't tell if I would have felt differently if I would have had a big box of Mike and Ikes and a nice cocktail in a movie theater watching those movies. Maybe I would have been softened by them. It's something that I'm trying to evaluate, my relationship to how I watch movies and what they mean to me when seen in a certain venue. And I imagine that we'll be having it a lot more in the next few weeks. We didn't get a chance to talk about Joel Schumacher, who passed away last Monday at 80 years old. Schumacher is, I would say he was a controversial artist in Hollywood over the course of his very long career. At times brilliant, at times amusing, at times gauche and absurd. And, you know, I want to ask you when you think of his movies, what do you think of? But he really had like 12 stages of movie making. So for you personally, when you hear Schumacher, what do you think of?

Batman and Robin. Yeah. I mean, that's the problem with his reputation. I know that's the thing. I was going to say, I was 12 years old. I vividly remember seeing it in theaters. I mean, that's the problem with his reputation. I know that's the thing. I was going to say, I was 12 years old. I vividly remember seeing it in theaters. I think it came out either the same weekend or within a couple of weeks of my best friend's wedding. And that was just a very formative time for young Amanda at the movie theater. And Alicia Silverstone is in Batman and Robin. So that was important to me as someone who had seen Clueless. And that's Chris O'Donnell as Robin, right? Just some great 90s deep cuts that no one else cares about.

But I think my superhero relationship was definitely formed in a lot of ways by Batman and Robin. Possibly the first superhero movie I ever saw. So maybe that explains everything that has happened on this podcast for the last two years. That's a skeleton key I wish I had two years ago when we first started talking through some of this stuff. Because I think that mine might have been the original Tim Burton Batman, which would also explain some of my interests in that genre of movie. Schumacher is an interesting dude. He started out his career as a costume designer and production designer. He worked and was very close with Halston, the legendary fashion designer. He had a kind of keen sense of over-the-top texture in his movies, I would say. He was

really about artifice and making things seem bigger and bolder than they would be in real life. And in that way, he was very much like made to be a movie director, especially a movie director in the 1980s and 90s when that was sort of the style of the day. As a costumes designer,

he worked on a couple of classic movies. He made those very famous handmade seeming science fiction outfits from Sleeper. He worked on The couple of classic movies. He made those very famous handmade seeming science fiction outfits from Sleeper. He worked on The Last of Sheila, a movie we've talked about a couple of times on this show. He worked on some Paul Mazursky movies.

He worked on Play It As It Lays, the Joan Didion adaptation. He had a career as a screenwriter. He wrote a bunch of very notable, very diverse multicultural films from the 1970s. He wrote The Wiz, which Sidney Lumet directed, starring Michael Jackson. He wrote Car Wash, the famous ensemble comedy. He wrote Sparkle, a beloved movie that I was made aware of by all of the people I worked with at Vibe who were

absolutely obsessed with it. And I had never heard of it until that day about an aspiring young singer in the music industry. And then as a director, he made a bunch of movies that we've talked about before on the show, not just Batman and Robin. To say that he is the director of Batman and Robin, it's probably, I think he would wear it with pride because he was a famously, you know, he was a gossip and he was proud of the kind of absurdity of his work. But, you know, you and i are both on board with a time to kill we've talked about that he made two my two favorite john grisham movies aside from the firm a time to kill on the client um and he also was there really at the the height of the brat pack you know st elmo's fire and the lost boys and flatliners that trio of movies is even just being a few years older than you,

those movies were big in my life. They were on TV all the time. The Lost Boys in particular is something that I don't think I knew about until I, honestly, I think I learned about it from Gilbert Cruz, speaking of, but I understand that it is kind of like a ridiculous late 80s touchpoint for a lot of people and and has that sense of like being a little extra and being so absurd that you just kind of get swept away with it that i think i don't see joel schumacher as the director of batman and robin as a um as a negative statement i think i'm probably the only person in the world who feels that way, but I was young and there I was.

I had a time at the movies. He tended to do really well, I think, with pulpy material and with kind of like beach read adaptations. He made a lot of other kinds of movies over time. A lot of people have been pointing towards Falling Down. Have you ever had a chance to see that movie? I have not. So Falling Down is this Michael Douglas piece from the early 90s that I believe was made in the aftermath of the riots in Los Angeles after the beating of Rodney King.

I think I've got my timeline right there. And it's a story about a white guy who essentially snaps and roams through the streets of Los Angeles in pursuit of a kind of version of justice. Michael Douglas plays him as this sort of horn-rimmed glasses-wearing, buzz-cut, aggro white man.

You can imagine the problematic nature of this movie, not just in 2020, but at the time when it was released. On the one hand, I think it's like this amazing

portrait of a person losing their mind, trying to like ape a post-taxi driver vision of the world. And on the other hand, it's like completely tone deaf about the composition of Los Angeles, about who makes the city move, about who deserves power and who has been served injustice. And Schumacher was like, he could, he had bad taste. And I mean that in a good way. Like, I mean that as a compliment. And sometimes that bad taste led him down unfortunate roads, but he was always a very provocative maker of mainstream entertainment. And I think that that's

one thing that is a little bit lost in Hollywood right now. I don't think every movie should be falling down. In fact, most movies should never be falling down, but Tigerland and phone booth and Veronica Guerin, these movies that he made, always with movie stars, always a very sort of glamorous version of a dark and dingy, darkest timeline, were interesting. They were compelling. He had a handle on what Hollywood was for a long time. And for that, I think he's an interesting figure historically. He certainly has a very specific visual style and tone. You understand that you're in one of his movies, and it carries through a lot of different genres and over several decades. He had a, if not a perfect life, certainly a great career.

And, uh, it's too bad there won't be any more Joel Schumacher movies. So let's take a, let's take a quick break before we, we go to our list. Okay. I'm so excited to introduce the Bukhari Sellers podcast in partnership with The Ringer. We're tackling the issues of the day through interviews with high profile guests and conversations with a rotating panel of the country's best and leading thinkers, influencers and writers.

You know, I'm not only an attorney and a former elected official. Sometimes you see me on CNN, and I'm a new author of a New York Times bestselling book, My Vanishing Country. But now we're introducing the Bukhari Sellers podcast, and we're going to cover everything from the 2020 election to sports and culture to the larger movement for racial equality in the United States. We're going to have some of your favorite quarterbacks, some of your favorite politicians, some of your favorite athletes,

writers, singers, actors, actresses. The Bacari Sellers podcast will debut on Monday, June 29th. Listen free on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, we're back. We're finally going to talk about movies, about making movies. Why did we even come up with this in the first place? Where did this idea for this episode, which we have stalled three weeks on, come from? I think because it is a particular genre that you and I both enjoy. And also because we have both been listening to the new season of You Must Remember This.

And you had Karina Longworth on the episode last week. And I thought that was great. I really sincerely recommend that season if you have not listened to it yet. But it is about how movies are made. And this is a really nerdy podcast. And we are really nerdy people who are interested in that particular genre. Yeah. So we'll set some ground rules. Movies about making movies, I think, is a broad topic that could include a lot of different kinds of things that could be, for example, a biopic about an actor or a documentary behind the scenes sort of thing. We're not really going to be

focusing on those things. Our ground rules are much more specifically about making a movie within a movie. So, you know, no Hearts of Darkness is going to be on our list. No Burden of Dreams or Lost in La Mancha. You know, Robert Downey Jr.'s Chaplin is not here. We're focusing on the making of something. And that could be at any stage. That could be at the idea conception stage. It could be at the production stage. It could be at the post-production stage.

It's just got to be about making something. So do you think we've eliminated too many good movies by being so narrow in our thinking? No, it's good to have boundaries in life as in podcasts. That's just some free advice from me to you. I think we both, I certainly stretched on a couple, but I think within the bounds, I, all of my selections do fit within our ground rules, which is important. And it gives us something to bump up against. You need tension in a podcast as well, as in a movie. Do you feel like you learned a lot about the making of movies from watching movies like this?

Yes. I feel like it's pretty much the basis of my understanding of how all of these things come together. And, you know, one of my selections that I basically have the movie memorized, but there are very specific elements where the movie is my source. I do also think that seeing these movies got me more interested in finding out more about how movies are made and getting into the kind of the actual the source texts or the more reported um behind the scenes look at things but I certainly needed like the Hollywood gloss to be interested in the process you know it's interesting because typically I'm pretty anti-process. I don't, I find the whole, it's just all about the craft and here is my journey kind of artists lament to be like pretty tiresome and often deployed as an excuse or a way to make up for the fact that the finished product isn't quite there.

But what I like about these movies is that they are both about the process and about a process that I'm interested in, but also the finished product itself is there. It's not covering up the holes in the story of the movies. I think all of these movies work as movies. Yeah, I think all of them, at least the ones that we've picked too are very subjective. You know, they're not methodological. You know, they don't say like, here's how you start to storyboard a sequence. Like they're much more about the kind of emotional traumas or ethical dilemmas of people

who happen to be in this industry. You know, the same way that Westerns are frequently about sheriffs and bandits and the problems that they have between them. And movies about movie makers are very much just, it's just a vessel. And it's interesting too, because this is like a sub-genre

that is still very active in the world right now. Just last year, we had one of the movies that's gonna appear on your list that we won't talk about yet. And we had Dolomite Is My Name and we had Pain and Glory from Almodovar. And people want to know. I mean, those are three of the most acclaimed movies of the year.

People still are interested in the glamour and the struggle and the fascinations of the people who make this stuff. Yeah. One of the kind of criticisms that movies like this are often tagged with, and, you know, it becomes an Oscar talking point, or it was until at least about five years ago, this idea of like Hollywood loves movies about itself. And these are all just self-justifications for Hollywood to still exist. And that's true. Like that is true. These are all advertisements not just for you know movies and and screenwriting and kind of all of the different aspects that go into making a movie and that movies are important but specifically for Hollywood you you have a couple outside of the Hollywood system but I all of my selections are like Hollywood and they are ultimately about the myth-making quality of

Hollywood and a view of the world that has been very successful. And I have been under this way of my entire life. But I think ultimately that sometimes the best way to, I guess, justify or propagate that myth-making is to examine it. And they ultimately, with kind of one exception, though, we'll talk about it, are all still propaganda for Hollywood. But it works on me. It just does. I mean, I wouldn't be here doing this podcast without it. Yeah. I mean, the same is true for me. I mean, my list is mostly, almost entirely Hollywood with one sort of vague, rare exception. And I thought seriously about putting the classic new wave in European cinema that was obsessed with the construction of movies and the sort of dissection of movies. And I rewatched Contempt to prepare for this,

Jean-Luc Godard's film. I rewatched Day for Night, Francois Truffaut's film about the making of a movie. I thought a lot about Eight and a Half, which is one of my favorite movies ever made, which is this portrait of a director in crisis reflecting on his life. And I love those movies, but that isn't really what I was thinking of when I was thinking of this list and this project. I think I was thinking of Hollywood, really. And that certainly betrays our biases. We are Americans. We are obsessed with Hollywood in a way. I think that that is probably a big criticism of this podcast is that we are a bit in thrall to some of the myth-making, but we are who we are. Yeah. And in a lot of ways, these movies also help instruct

how you watch movies and, and what you learn and what you respond to. And people do watch movies differently. And I, like, I have never hidden the fact that I, you know, I did not go to film school and I am the, the person who just really liked Batman and Robin when she was 12, because I was 12 and I didn't know better. Like, I don't know what to say for you. I approached them as populous entertainment. I, in fact, was sold on the Hollywood myth, and I know that it is a myth, and that in a lot of ways it does get in the way of art.

But we'll talk about this in one of the movies as well, but art is art versus art is entertainment. And can entertainment be art? And is entertainment the highest form of art? To me, in a lot of ways, it is, while I have respect for art for art's sake as well. But that's my experience. And that's how I come to these movies. And with the full knowledge also that the movies have definitely warped my brain to

think that way. Yeah. And there have been, there have been hundreds of movies about this subject and there are a lot more and we can do our, our sort of our, our bonus are also rands at the end of the episode quickly. But, um, let's jump into our top fives. Uh, normally you start, but I'm going to start this time. How do you feel about that?

I think that's great. Cause I think my my my kicker is the real kicker so i was gonna say then you'll get the last word um my number five is called the bad and beautiful picture like this what do they pay for to get the pants scared off them and what scares the human race more than any other single thing? The dark. Of course. Why? Because the dark has a life of its own. So this is a movie that I haven't seen in a long time. I was very excited to revisit it. And it is alarmingly, alarmingly accurate to the moment.

It was made in 1952. It was directed by Vincent Minnelli, who is probably best known for his musicals and his certainly more sort of glamorous old Hollywood style films. This is a really immorality play. And it's a film that focuses on not the director, not the screenwriter or the actor,

but really the producer. Kirk Douglas is the star of the movie and he plays a kind of toxic hero. And the construction of this movie is so smart and so simple. Three people who had previously worked with this Kirk Douglas figure are reconvened. They're at the top of their game. One of them is a screenwriter. One of them is a filmmaker. One of them is an actress. And they have been called back by a colleague of Kirk Douglas's who wants to make his big comeback. And they get an opportunity to sort of talk through their individual experiences with Douglas's character, who was cruel and manipulative and savvy and successful

and had extraordinary insight into what the value of these three people was in the Hollywood system. I remember when Harvey Weinstein was finally taken down after many years, a lot of people pointed to The Bad and the Beautiful and this Kirk Douglas character. And this movie is very nuanced, especially for its time, about what is and what is not acceptable in the process of creating art? And how much can you be bullied? How much can you be manipulated? How much can,

what are you willing to sacrifice to make something that you care about? And I don't think it's a movie that necessarily has answers, but it raises a lot of questions. And if it valorizes Kirk Douglas' character a little bit too much, that's probably a product of the times.

But it's amazingly shot. It's incredibly smart. It's the kind of movie that when you see it, you can learn a lot about the way that it seems like film production works in the 1930s, 40s, and 50s. In fact, with Adam Neiman, I talked about Val Lewton, the very famous film producer, when we were doing a horror episode. And there's a scene in The Bad and the Beautiful, which I had forgot, that basically just explains how Val Lewton came up with how to make movies scary, which is that rather than show the monster, just show the shadow. And in this movie, you see this Kirk Douglas character working with this director and kind of explicating what Val Lewton's ideas were about how to make great, scary movies.

And that's pretty rare. You know, it's pretty rare to see like that kind of nuts and bolts thing that is true to Hollywood history, but also creates, it just has a lot of moral complexity. So The Bad and the Beautiful, that is my pick. That's a great pick. In a lot of ways, the nuts and bolts and how things work is a great setup to my number five pick, which is Notting Hill. I arrived outside. They thrust this thing into my hand. I didn't know. It's my fault. I thought this would all be over by now. work is a great setup to my number five pick, which is Notting Hill.

I arrived outside. They thrust this thing into my hand. I didn't know. It's my fault. I thought this would all be over by now. I just wanted to sort of apologize for the kissing thing. I seriously don't know what came over me. And I just wanted to make sure that you were fine about it.

And when I alluded to movies that are pushing the boundaries of this, I anticipated some pushback on Notting Hill. But I would like to note that there are not one but three movies in are pushing the boundaries of this. I anticipated some pushback on Notting Hill, but I would like to note that there are not one, but three movies in production in the course of Notting Hill. Okay. There is the carnivorous eating robot space movie, which is what's, it's in post-production. The famous horse and hound junket is covering the space robot movie, by the way, one of the best portrayals of a press junket that you will see on TV in movies. There is this submarine movie that the Julia Roberts character is filming, and she runs lines for. And there is also the Henry James film that she makes at the end because someone who means a lot to her suggested it. And you actually do go on set for the Henry James film that she makes at the end because someone who means a lot to her suggested it. And you actually do go on set for the Henry James film. But obviously,

this is a movie about a regular guy falling in love with a movie star played by Julia Roberts. The regular guy is played by Hugh Grant, who is not a regular. And it's written by Richard Curtis and is it is a romantic comedy and it is both like a very very sentimental view of movie stars and also I think like a pretty unflattering portrait of a 90s movie star there is a lot of meta commentary I Julia Roberts is great playing a version of herself. And she explains a lot of how movie stars work. There is the whole exchange about the nudity clause in movies and Mel Gibson's bottom. And you know,

that you may show like the top of the butt, but not the butt crack. And you know, that Mel Gibson, you know, does his own ass work as I believe the actual phrase using. So, you know,

and, and that's where I learned about nudity clauses, which is a real thing that like contracts and it's about how movie stars, you know, than than any other movie and is a pretty savvy exploration of kind of like how we the audience relate to movie stars it's a pretty one-sided relationship even in the movie Hugh Grant just gets yelled at by Julia Roberts for two hours and then she gives one speech and gives him a Chagall painting and they live happily ever after. Spoiler alert. Yeah, well, but don't model your real life relationships on this. But if you're looking to kind of understand what it is about a movie star that keeps people in thrall and allows them to behave pretty badly, which

Julia Roberts does, as does Alec Baldwin as her American boyfriend, is pretty accurate and interesting and depicts a lot of the power that particularly in the late nineties movie stars had. I think like there are a lot of great movies about fame. And this to me is a great movie about actual like movie stars and how they work and how we watch them. It's a great pick. It's also got one of the best meet cutes. I think in the history of rom-coms the

bookstore sequence is so good and so clever and kind of tells you everything you need to know about both characters so early on i'm such a big such a big fan of that this is a good movie this is a movie that if you were not the co-host of this podcast i probably would feel like i could talk about but since this is like, that movie is in your, that's gotta be in your Hall of Fame, right? Oh, absolutely. Yeah, everything I just did, I did 100% from memory. It was like all of the quotes.

I didn't make notes for that. Sorry if I got something wrong, but I've seen it a lot of times. Cut! All right, that's a cut. My number four is also in my Hall of Fame. It's a movie called Who Framed Roger Rabbit? It came out in 1988.

It's directed by Robert Zemeckis. This is Roger. He keeps blowing his lines. Roger. What's this? A tweeting bird. A tweeting bird. Roger, read this.

Look what it says. It says, Rabbit gets clunked. Rabbit sees stars. If you listen to the Back to the Future episode of the Rewatchables, you may have heard Bill Simmons very casually dismiss this movie as not having aged well because of the animation.

Let me tell you right here, that is wrong. That is a bad take, and this movie is a masterpiece. I've rewatched it again recently. It's a very silly and kind of fascinating idea that essentially implies that animated characters are real and they live in the real world and they participate in the production of hollywood movies the movie actually opens with an extended cartoon sequence that then

very quickly dissolves and it is revealed that is the production of a cartoon and that the cartoon is not drawn, but in fact produced and shot by real people. And this is obviously like a truly absurd premise and ridiculous kind of movie that I think in many ways invents the this is for kids, but secretly for adults style movie. I believe it's Rage at PG, but it's got some pretty intense sequences of cartoon violence

and it's got some heavy sexuality with Jessica Rabbit. I think she is the cartoon lady who changed the lives of many a young boy. But more specifically, I think it's an interesting pairing with Notting Hill because it's really a movie not so much about the making of movies, but about the scandals that the making of movies can produce. And it's a really smart about looking at the way that the media covers certain things, looking at the way that, um, iconography can explain and explore, uh,

where a person's career can go. And it's weird to talk about the movie in such highfalutin terms, because it is in many ways, an animated movie about a crazy rabbit, but, um, it's, it's fairly deep and thoughtful about the way that people can be exposed.

And I don't know that it necessarily taught me anything meaningful about the way that movies are made, because as we all know, Roger Rabbit is a cartoon, but nevertheless, like it, it, it shows that like everything is kind of artifice.

Like, you know, the way that a person is portrayed on stage is artifice. The way that a person performs in front of the camera is artifice. There's very little that is real. And there's a lot underneath that is dark. And that's kind of where the movie ends up going. But at the risk of doing a college exegesis on Who Framed Roger Rabbit, I think it's a great portrait of a very similar time in movies

that The Bad and the Beautiful looks at. So if you haven't seen it in a while, I would recommend returning to it. You a Roger Rabbit person? I feel like you're not a Roger Rabbit person. No, I definitely remember seeing it at a young age. I think probably I was too young

to fully get all of the actual commentary. I mean, Jessica Rabbit, I know what she looks like. I remember that. But I think you're right that it works on several levels, and I probably just missed the larger level. I think it does also work as cartoon propaganda, but that's nice.

It worked on you, and now you have a whole genre of films that you love. And that's what we want. The only thing that... My only quibble with the movie, which is incredible and, you know, has this dope Bob Hoskins performance and it's really funny is, um, why is there no question mark at the end of the title? I don't, I never understood that. It's just not grammatically correct. No, because I mean, it could be

grammatically correct if it's an answer and not a question. Well, wouldn't that just be a fragment, like comma? It'd be like Steve Stevenson, comma, who framed Roger Rabbit. I guess so. I mean, it makes a lot of sense in terms of internet headline conventions right now. So it's fine. Just all about the internet with you, Amanda. I just, sorry that I'm just reacting to the world that we live in.

God forbid. Also, I don't really need too much punctuation in movie titles. People get a little too cute with it and that it can go very bad very quickly. You know, hard disagree. I love punctuation in a movie title. What's, what's your number four? My number four. I feel very strongly that this is my number four, though I think

it's kind of an unusual pick for me. It's adaptation. Nothing happens in the world? Are you out of your fucking mind? People are murdered every day. There's genocide, war, corruption, every fucking day somewhere in the world somebody sacrifices his life to save somebody corruption, every fucking day, somewhere in the world, somebody sacrifices his life to save somebody else. Every fucking day, someone somewhere takes a conscious decision to destroy someone else. And obviously, yeah, directed by Spike Jonze and written by Charlie Kaufman. And there is danger in putting adaptation on this list because if adaptation is not written by Charlie

Kaufman and directed by Spike Jonze it's a like it's a nightmare if anyone else tries to do this it's a complete self-indulgent nightmare and I talked a little bit about like how I can't I'm not a fan of process and I just like really really can't stand it specifically when writers don't know what else to do so they just like write about their problems like don't do this don't do this because it will not turn out well and movies just use this as a crutch but I it's expertly done I think that um this screenwriting you know it's obviously it's about a screenwriter who is hired to adapt a book written by Susan Orlean, the New Yorker writer about called The Orchid Thief. And the screenwriter played by Nicolas Cage has some issues. He has writer's block.

He's not able to adapt to the script. And so it becomes like a really deeply meta layered process, a movie about the process of writing a script and about adaptation. And Charlie Kaufman makes himself his own character. And then other ridiculous things happen. Meryl Streep plays the New York writer, Susan Orlean. And it does manage to take the process of writer's block and turn it into a meditation about literally adaptation and ambition and what people are looking for. And it brings that out not just in the screenwriter character, but in all of the characters, which is, I think, what justifies it, in my opinion. It also has the single greatest screenwriting advice or just life advice ever given by Brian Cox. I just, the two-minute speech that he gives about not wasting time, if we could just play it,

because it's the only thing I think about, not just when watching movies, really, truly in life. It's transcendent. If you can't find that stuff in life, then you, my friend, don't know crap about life. And why the fuck are you wasting my two precious hours with your movie? I don't have any use for it. I don't have any bloody use for it. Yeah, Cox is basically playing Robert McKee, the writer of Story, the famous screenwriting guru.

This is well before Succession. It's an amazing sequence, amazing pick. Can't believe I didn't pick it myself. Definitely one of my favorite movies of the last 25 years. And a brilliant story that might scare you away from the idea of trying to write a movie because Kaufman going inside his own head and almost creating a double for himself is just extraordinary stuff. And it's an amazing segue

to my number three, which is also a screenwriter's movie, which I'll just talk about very briefly because I've talked about it many times on the show before, but it's Barton Fink. It's the Coen brothers story of a, um, a playwright who iswright who is sent out to California to work in the movies and to write a wrestling picture for Wallace Beery and the complete anarchy and dissolution that comes with that pursuit. And it's just a truly harrowing tale of not taking a job that you know you don't want. But I thought no one cared about this picture. You thought? Where the hell did you get that from, you thought? Listen, I don't know what the hell you said to Lipnick, but the son of a bitch likes you. You understand that thing? He likes you? He's taken an interest.

Never make Lipnick like you. Never! I don't understand. Death? He likes you! He's taken an interest. What the hell did you say to Never! I don't understand. Death? He likes you! He's taken an interest. What the hell did you say to him? I didn't say anything. Well, he's taken an interest.

There are moments in life when you are faced with opportunity that seems too good to be true. And when those things come along, examine them closely and do not pursue them because they will drive you mad and potentially end up in the loss of your own life and barton fink is a crazy cautionary tale it's a really

funny and smart movie that's also about the same period of time i keep focusing on these movies that are about the 30s and 40s in hollywood i promise we'll get out of that period very shortly but obviously john taturo gives incredible performance john goodman gives an incredible performance it's um it's really a turning point, I think, for the Coen brothers in terms of mastering their craft and becoming major auteurs. I believe this movie played in Cannes and won a prize. And it's just a brilliant off-the-rails film. What's your number three, Amanda? My number three is a film that you and I have both talked about at great length on this podcast, on other podcasts, in our personal lives. It's a little film called

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood by Quentin Tarantino. That was a triple alliterative improv. Don't hear those two. Okay. We're all good. Don't need to go again. No, we're done. That was fantastic. Okay, moving on. We're in the bordello. Next set up. That was the best acting I've ever seen in my whole life. Thank you. I very briefly thought about putting Inglourious Bastards on this list

because number one, I just love that movie. And I also think that's about European filmmaking, but it's also about the making of propaganda and how film can be propaganda and what it can be propaganda for, which is something we were talking about earlier. But then I was like, I can't put Inglourious Bastards on the list and not have Once Upon a Time in Hollywood on a list about making movies in Hollywood. I was like, that's just stupid. So I did Once Upon a Time. I think that this is a wonderful movie still. I rewatched part of it last night. It's like honestly maybe the most sentimental of all the movies on my list, which is pretty funny. You know, it's not totally what you expect from

Tarantino, I guess, but that's all, that was kind of the revelation of this movie in general. And I find that it's theme about, you know, the almost famous people and the also rants and, and giving a second chance and a dose of that Hollywood dream to the people who didn't quite get it in real life to be like maybe the most Hollywood thing of all. And I'm moved by it every time. It's also very funny. Yeah. You picked up on something that hadn't really occurred to me, but that is true for almost every movie on our list and almost every movie that is in the runner's up positions on my list, at least, which is that these movies, the ones that work best, I think are often frequently satirical,

acidic, cynical. They're made by people who have been burned and frustrated by what happens inside their workplace. Just as I think if you and I were to say, write something about the state of journalism, perhaps it would be somewhat cynical. Perhaps it would be somewhat, look a bit askew at the world that we have been experiencing. And it's just an inevitable part of, you very rarely see people at a very young age make a movie about making movies. It's always, you know, Quentin waited until his ninth film to make a movie about this. You know, adaptation comes after Spike had made a few movies. Notting Hill is well into Julia Roberts's run of celebrity. So there's something kind of fascinating about taking a long look at something that you've spent a lot of time on and concluding that this this place is full of

villainy and crooks and bad actors and dishonesty yeah i mean it's a great setup to our number two which we should talk about um you and i picked the same number two and we did it independently and both put it at number two independently, which is, you know, pretty cute. Our number two is The Player. Well, is political scary? Political doesn't scare me. Radical political scares me. Political political scares me. Politely politically radical, but it's funny. It's a funny political thing.

It's a funny, it's a thriller too. It's a thriller. And it's all. It's a funny political thing. It's a funny thing. It's a thriller, too. It's a thriller. And it's all at once. So, what's the story? Well, I want Bruce Willis. I think I can talk to him. It's a story about a senator, a bad guy senator at first.

He's traveling around the country on the country's dime, you know, like that Sununu guy used to. I see. So, it's sort of a cynical political thriller comedy. Yeah, but it's got a harp in the right spot. And anyway, he has an accident. An accident? Yeah yeah and he becomes clairvoyant like oh i see yeah so it's kind of a psychic political thriller comedy with a heart with a heart and i think go on go on i'm listening this is the only like truly negative and vicious movie on my list um and we'll talk about that with number

one and i thought what you were just saying about how so many of these movies are like self-conscious and and self-hating to a degree and they are pointing out people's frustrations and they're like almost a venting mechanism for people to talk about their thwarted hopes and dreams. I mean, you know, put a bunch of artists in a room and let them talk about themselves and it's inevitably what you get. But most movies still, when bitching about Hollywood, are kind of upholding Hollywood. They still want to be a part of it. And the commentary and the anger and the frustration is fueled from at least part from a sense of longing. And this the player is both very much of the Hollywood studio moment of its time and also just like has real contempt for it. And it's I think it's like extremely vicious. And as we all

know, I like vicious things. If you're going to go for it, go for it. Yeah. Let's set it up just a little bit. So it's obviously, this is Robert Altman's big comeback after a fairly quiet 1980s in which he, you know, began to toil a bit, make it, you know, directing theater, adapting plays, making films that not a lot of people were seeing. this kind of re-announced him, I think, to Hollywood. And he did so by just shitting all over Hollywood in no small part, thanks to Michael Tolkien, who, you know, wrote this screenplay, which is just a diamond, just an absolutely beautiful piece of work. Unlike a lot of the other movies that we've been talking about, which have been about making movies through the eyes of an actor or screenwriter or filmmaker,

or even a producer, this is through the eyes of an executive. And the executive is frequently villainized in this movie. Tim Robbins plays a man named Griffin Mill, incredible name, who basically finds himself in a Humphrey Bogart-esque noir movie when he kills a screenwriter who has pitched him a story. Accidentally, maybe not accidentally, it's unclear. But that death then spirals him into this mysterious story of doubt and success and what people will do to get ahead in Hollywood. And it's very funny. It's very rude. It is absolutely a time capsule of 1992 Hollywood of the way that the studio system worked, of the way that ideas were pitched. There's such great commentary even very early on when you see three different pitch sessions that Griffin sits in on. The first one is with Buck Henry, the great screenwriter and actor and director who

passed away this year, actually pitching The Graduate 2. He of course wrote the original script for The Graduate and the pitch is like, it might be the funniest thing in the movie. It's just incredible. And then there are a series of other pitches. We see Joan Tewksbury who wrote a couple of Altman films, including Nashville. She's pitching a film. We see another film about political intrigue. And in those sequences early on in the movie, you can see the absolute contempt that Altman has and Tolkien has for the studio moviemaking system. And all of that surrounds this fairly rote kind of mystery story about a

successful guy trying to elude capture. But all of the Hollywood stuff is so precise, so cutting, so funny. It's really, it's like one of my favorite movies ever made. Yeah, it's unbelievably knowing. And, you know, every little detail from all the pitch scenes to the studio lot and the parking and the car dance that is still, honestly, a little bit of Hollywood today. The water bottles, the lunches, the contracts, the notes meetings, it is expert and note perfect. And it also just has like every movie star of 1992 in it.

I'd like, I think it's like over 60 cameos, which is like amazing. And it's kind of the ultimate example of like, maybe not being within the system, but just like having a total mastery of the thing that you are skewering and then just absolutely like plunging the knife in because you have all of the knowledge. It's really brutal. It's great. I love it. I would recommend it to anybody who gives a damn about movies because it's a perfect times capsule and it's got one of the all-time great endings.

Also, I had forgotten when I revisited that it features one of the best Richard E. Grant performances ever as this screenwriter who has the most iconic pitch. The satire of the self-serious screenwriter is so, so good. And Tolkien comes by it honestly because he's a brilliant guy. He's written some brilliant films and brilliant novels. But he's also, he's skewering parts of himself with that too. I'll give you my number one. My number one's a little movie

called Boogie Nights. This is the best work we've ever done. Ever heard of it? It's a real film, Jack. It feels good. You made it fly. No.

This is a film. I want them to remember me by. One of the greatest stories about filmmaking ever made. And let me tell you something right now. Pornography is filmmaking. And I will not be told otherwise. Whether it should be taken as seriously, certainly up for debate. Obviously, this is Paul Thomas Anderson's second feature film.

Seen through the eyes of Unlike Notting Hill, which is about a seasoned movie star. This is about the rise to fame of a naif. And Dirk Diggler, who is brilliantly portrayed as a complete intellectual cipher by Mark Wahlberg and features one of the all-time great ensemble casts. Speaking of Robert Altman, this is a movie hugely influenced by Robert Altman, a movie that travels across an entire decade that looks very closely at people who are obsessed with making something, one of the hallmarks of a lot of Altman's films. It's just electrifying to this day, 23 years later, certainly in the pantheon of my favorite things I've ever seen. I saw it at

just the right age. I was 15 years old when this movie came out, not just because I was excited about the idea of a mainstream movie talking about porn, but specifically because that obsessive quality about building something together, I think, is really powerful in this movie, and also how easily that thing that you try to build can blow up. So Boogie Nights, just it's one for the ages. It's a great pick. Speaking of other little scene movies that have never been talked about, my number one. No shame. It's fucking Boogie Nights, man.

You know, sometimes you need to be obvious. My number one is Singing in the Rain. Now, Lena, look. Here's the mic right here in the bush. Yeah. Now you talk towards it. The sound goes through the cable to the box. A man records it on a big record in wax.

But you have to talk into the mic first. In the bush. I'll try it again. Perhaps you've heard of it. Perhaps you've seen it a million times and it brings you joy if somehow you don't know what Singing in the Rain is it is a 1952 musical directed by Gene Kelly

and Stanley Donnan starring Gene Kelly Donald O'Connor and Debbie Reynolds and it is the greatest movie musical ever made pretty much no one disagrees with that right I mean I'm sure people do i don't really want to hear from you if you do but uh common wisdom one of the greatest movie musicals ever made i

would say it goes tom hooper's lame is number one then singing in the rain too yeah um and sure whatever and then one of one of the great classic hollywood. And this to me is, in addition to just being a joy and a movie that I watch whenever I feel sad. Last night, I was kind of doing my homework for this movie. And Singing in the Rain is available on HBO Max as a part of the TCM collection, I believe. And I was like, you know what? I'll just watch 20 minutes just to make sure, just like refresh it. And then, you know, I stayed up watching the entire thing

like far too late because it is such an injection of joy. But it is also a great example of, in terms of being a movies about making movies, a great example of having your cake and eating it too, because it's a, it's, I wouldn't say it's quite cynical, but it is a movie. It's set in the twenties and it is about the transition of Hollywood from silent films to talking movies. And it is really about like the first musical ever made. And it is knowing and makes fun of the studio system and the studio machinery and movie stars.

There is just an all-time performance by Jean Hagen as Lena Lamont, who is the silent film star who has a terrible voice. And no one wants to hear her talk. Which, you know, is still resonant 100 years later for many Hollywood actresses, but also they make fun of it and they make fun of how the entire industry is thrown into disarray because of this transition and who stays and who doesn't. You know, that scene when they're trying to save the movie, which I believe was called the Dueling Cavalier and then becomes the Dancing Cavalier. And they're like, okay, we need a plot. Okay, we need like a, you know, it's just, it's pretty funny. And for being 1952 still has a lot to say about kind of like the haphazardness of how movies get made while also having just like some of the greatest pure movie magic

I've ever seen in terms of the dance numbers. I mean, you just, you can't top Good Morning or Moses Supposes or obviously Singing in the Rain, completely iconic imagery, while also being a commentary about how movies are made. A plus stuff. I agree. An undeniable movie, definitely the portal to old Hollywood for me. I think for some people it's A Wonderful Life or Casablanca or maybe Gone with the Wind, something like that. This was the movie that got me interested in old Hollywood as a teenager. And I think it was because it was about making movies. I think for the same reason that like these movies resonate so much, they're, they're sort of, they're all

self-reflexive, you know, they're, and you know, you use the word knowing a lot, and I think that that's a hallmark of most of these movies is you go in, I guess with the highest level of interest, you go in knowing a lot about what happens inside of this system, this business, this otherwise closed loop. And I think the best place to go after watching movies like this is to go to some of those movies we didn't put on our list. Those sort of like the Burden of Dreams is the Lost in La Mancha is the movies about what actually happens when you're on the set. Because for the most part, I find most of these kind of satirical, clever films to be very accurate, at least as far as I understand how movies are made, but not always. And in fact, sometimes what really happens is even more extravagant and ridiculous and impossible seeming than what's actually in the stories that these people are trying to tell. Did you have any runners up that you wanted to cite? Well, I almost put Somewhere by Sofia Coppola on this list, and then it did not pass the test of the movie within the movie isn't named.

You know, there is that great scene when Stephen Dorff is sitting just there waiting, having the plaster put on his face for the mask, which is a great summary, I think, of being an actor in a lot of ways as well. But it was more about the experience of being an actor or being Francis Ford Coppola's daughter than about the actual making of a movie. So I didn't include that. I also didn't include Hail Caesar, which I have a lot of affection for. But just to me, the movies that I put on my list stand as movies and kind of, again the happy endings for the most part in the Hollywood stuff that I look for it whereas Hail Caesar is just a little bit more like very clever commentary to me at least but that doesn't

mean that I don't think about it all often I mean Alden Ehrenreich we thought you had a whole career sir would that it were um yeah I agree I like Hail Caesar a lot I couldn't couldn't put Barton Fink and Hail Caesar both here I can only stand so much I guess there are some

classics that we didn't talk about you know we didn't talk about all about Eve which isn't frequently about the making of something but is absolutely about the Star Machine which we've

talked about a lot here I wanted to put Mulholland Drive on here and I didn't but that is in many ways really about kind of the making of a film never forget Justin Theroux's scintillating portrait of a very pretentious film director. The one that I left off that is a little bit hard to watch these days, a little bit hard to find that I really like a great deal is Albert Brooks' Real Life,

which is a movie that is often credited as kind of presaging reality TV. And it's about, uh, a man who goes into a regular old family's home and captures their life, uh, for public television. And it's inspired by a PBS series, um, from the 1970s. I think it's Brooks's first film. And if you can get your hands on it, it's really clever, really smart. Does a lot of that does a lot of the stuff that I wish Irresistible did, you know, that I was mentioning, that sort of that Strangelove does and the network does. It kind of sees the future of where movies are going and where TV is going. And then the last one I just wanted to cite is State in Maine, which is David Mamet's

very cockeyed satire of the making of a film in a small town in New England, which has certain storylines that are a bit rough. For example, Alec Baldwin's character's predilection for teenage girls, not really what you want. But it also features some amazing dialogue and absolutely gut-wrenching Philip Seymour Hoffman performance that is so precise and fun and smart and sad desperate desperately made me want to do a phil hoffman episode of this

show my my absolute favorite actor um and what else you know i also thought about the aviator which i haven't re-watched in a long time can I tell you something? I rewatched The Aviator on vacation last year, or I rewatched two thirds of The Aviator on vacation last year, and I couldn't really tell you why. Strange movie. I think it's okay that you left it off this list. I mean, it's obviously interesting, and it's very funny to see Cate Blanchett just doing a straight Hep hepburn impersonation that she like won an oscar for but that's okay whatever i too like

katherine hepburn um and you know there are lots of planes flying around in the air which is exciting it's it is a it's a movie that loves and is obsessed with all the history as much as you and i are but it's like maybe slightly too mired in it. That would be my take on it. Um, and, and recreating rather than kind of excavating as it were, but who am I to, to tell any of those individuals what to do? Yeah. You know, in, in the face of all the Irishman Scorsese ology that we did last year, I, for whatever reason, this just didn't make it into my rewatch pile. But I'm going to watch it again at some point. Because there are stretches of it that are definitively about Hughes' filmmaking career.

I feel like we put together a pretty good list. I feel like the haters are going to say that we were too Hollywood-focused. And to them, I say, chill. Please chill. You alluded to this earlier, but later this week, we're going to be doing a best of 2020 list so far this year episode with Adam Naiman. Are you excited about that? How many of the five do you have listed right now? I have three, though only two that I feel really fixed on. And I'm going to put on my creativity hat and my positivity hat before this podcast. And so we can talk about the good in film and not the frustration in film right now. It can be a time for celebration.

How about that? Okay. So just to preview, number five, you've got Trolls World Tour. Number four, you've got Scoob. Yeah, which I've seen for sure. So I've seen it and it's on my list. Number three, what's up? Doolittle, right? Yeah, that was this year. Wow, okay. Birds of Prey, also this year. Number two, you're giving away your whole list early.

And don't forget Natalie Wood, what remains behind. Okay, well, if you're excited about hearing about movies that came out in 2020, hopefully you'll tune into us later this week. Amanda, thank you for doing this. Thanks, John. you