The Big Picture - The 2012 Movie Draft

Episode Date: September 29, 2020

‘Tenet’ is struggling at the box office. The MCU is on pause. And TV is threatening to take over our beloved movies. So we have to return to the past. That’s right: The movie draft is back. Chris Ryan rejoins Sean and Amanda to make their picks for the best of 2012 (1:17). Then screenwriter Billy Ray joins the show to talk about his Showtime miniseries ‘The Comey Rule' (1:31:54). Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Guests: Chris Ryan and Billy Ray Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's episode of The Big Picture is brought to you by Heineken. Heineken Original Lager is made with pure malt and their famous A-Yeast, which makes Heineken an all-season, all-the-time kind of beer. It's football season here, and as a New York Jets fan, sometimes I just need to relax after watching my Jets play, and so what I like to do is get out on my back porch and enjoy a crisp, cool Heineken to unwind. Pick up a pack or have it delivered today and drink responsibly.

Take control. Take control of your city. This, this is the instrument of your liberation. I'm Sean Fennessy. I'm Amanda Dobbins. And this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about the year 2012. Later in the show,

we will travel back to another election year, back to 2016, when much of Showtime's The Comey Rule takes place. That's because I spoke with Billy Ray, the screenwriter behind films

like Shattered Glass and Captain Phillips, and now the writer-director of that miniseries, which wraps up its two parts tonight. I hope you will stick around for that. But first, we have some politics of our own to unpack, an election of a different sort. We're joined by Chris Ryan.

Again, Chris, welcome back to The Big Picture. No, no, no! Chris is in full cosplay Abraham Lincoln style for this conversation about the 2012 movie draft. And how are you guys feeling? Are you guys ready to draft again? Do you feel as if we are ready to agree on points of order going forward in all movie drafts? Amanda, what do you think? No, I do not feel that we're ready to agree. I have some thoughts. You laid out a constitution of sorts in a document over

the weekend, and Chris and I left some notes. And I'm all for establishing clear rules, but I think our philosophy about what those rules should be might be a bit different. Absolutely. Would you say, Chris, you're more of a Scalia or a Sotomayor when it comes to interpreting the rules of the movie draft? You always do. Why do you always do this to me? Well, just choose one that you identify with most. That's all I'm asking.

Sonia. Yeah. Okay. So there was some controversy the last time the three of us drafted. And I take some of the blame. I take the bulk of the blame. I take like 25% of the blame. You can take 75% of the blame.

Okay, 75%. Amanda is blameless. I was perfect. And then I also won. So just keep those two things in mind. It did raise some serious questions, though. And one of those questions is, do we need to change the rules of this draft that i made up fairly carelessly on a sunday night about two months ago and we might have to so the things that we did wrong were very clear which is we chose the wrong movies chris and

i two we both chose two films for the 2011 movie draft that were not released until 2012 and let me tell you i heard from the, all of whom were very certain that we screwed up. We apologize. We won't make the same mistake again. Maybe. I can't speak for Chris. But we need to evaluate,

one, what we're doing here, and two, whether or not we should be penalized for it. So let's start with the latter first. I think that you and I have, we've made an equal amount of infractions. It will do nothing but sadden us not to be able to actually use those films

in this draft, I think. You know, I think both of us probably would love to have Cabin in the Woods or Raid or Oslo back on the board, but our penalty is to not be able to use those films in this draft. What do you think of that?

Amanda, what do you think about that suggestion? I think that's reasonable. You know, my very harsh penalty was that you guys should actually have to make those exact picks again in the category. But as Chris pointed out, that would make for a very boring podcast because you'd be talking about the same movies. And, you know, I do it for the content like everybody else. So I'm willing to accept that. I suspect I would feel differently if I hadn't won. But just once again, I want to remind everybody that I did win. I was the only person who followed the rules and still won. So that's good. You keep saying you won. One of the major problems is that this is like this draft. We don't ever have an actual like voting system for determining the winner. Who won? Chris, we do. There's a Twitter account. i know you're i know

you're preoccupied with your many bot army accounts but there's a twitter account called twitter.com backslash of the big pic that's where we have all of the information about the big picture podcast so amanda won last time yes did i come in second no i don't believe you did chris you know not only did you choose two years two films released in 2011 or 2012 rather but you just made some weird choices and you have a you have a reputation now

yeah or making independently minded selections I would say I'm making I'm doing I'm making selections to last the test of time you guys can you guys can win the day I'm trying to win a lifetime's worth of speculation

and scrutiny of my picks. So you would say you are more of a Scalia then? No? Okay. Let's clarify some other rules. So we're going to make sure that we pick the right movies in every year going forward. I hope. Sorry. There was some other controversy

in this episode. Now, let's try to fight about this in a civil way but we're going to we're going to fight about it there's a sequel category when we make selections in my mind though i never elucidated this while making the podcast prequels and spinoffs qualify in the sequel category i chose the film X-Men First Class as my sequel pick in the last episode. Amanda, you took issue with this and said that you don't believe that this film qualified. Why not? Because I would term it as a reboot. And you tried to pull some shenanigans about continuity and universes and time something or other. And like Hugh Jackman is in this and therefore it's contemporaneous with, I don't really care. The fact of the matter is, is that

they are established characters with new actors who then, and this is the first in a series of films featuring those actors as those characters. So I would term that as a reboot and also as the first thing in a reboot and thus just logically speaking under you know the rules and definitions of the english language it does not qualify as a sequel in my opinion okay that opinion is wrong um it's it's not a reboot is however as you identified in our outline an origin story an origin story can be a prequel and because these characters it eventually becomes clear that the actors who are previously portraying these characters are in the same continuity with those characters patrick stewart and ian mckellen x-men first class technically

qualifies i don't know if we'll ever have another example that is so hard to define yeah yeah so let's just say for the sake of conversation prequels and spinoffs qualify remakes and reboots do not qualify going forward. There is a confusion that I have here, and it's going to come up in this episode probably, which is that what do we do about something like James Bond? Because James Bond movies are not necessarily sequels, but they're not reboots,

and they're not remakes. So what are they? I would consider this year's James Bond movie but they're not reboots and they're not remakes. So what are they? I would consider this year's James Bond movie for the 2012 draft to be a sequel. I would agree with Chris and it would also follow the first class rule, to be quite honest. Casino Royale, which also is an origin story of sorts,

to me would not qualify because it's the first with Daniel Craig and it is like, I would term it a quote reboot but there is also a longer there's something existential about James Bond where it's built to be replenished in this particular way and in either case I think Skyfall it doesn't really apply I agree with Chris so Skyfall we would say is not a sequel then no it is it is a sequel it's a sequel both to the Daniel Craig series and it's a sequel and the fact that there have been like but Tom Hardy Bond movie number one I would not necessarily consider a sequel to the last Daniel Craig movie

I'm glad you brought this up let's digress for one second I don't know what the hell is going on with is Tom Hardy going to be or not going to be James Bond. But you and I, Amanda, have talked about this quite a bit in the past. I'm very curious if you guys want this to happen, if you want Tom Hardy to be your next James Bond. If he plays it straight, yeah. I mean, that's such a big if.

And I feel like that if is actually not going to happen because of everything we know about Tom Hardy, who, you know, we like. We did a whole podcast about it with some voices that hopefully will also feature on this podcast as well, Chris. You're going to be doing a lot. One man show over here. But I think he'll I don't want like dark, even darker, brooding or, you know, Dark Knight version of Bond

starring Tom Hardy wearing a mask because it's set during the COVID era. And also it's Tom Hardy. It's sitting right there in front of him. He did it at Inception. He's practically doing it, narrating all or nothing Tottenham on Amazon. He can play it straight.

It's right there. But I have a bad feeling that this will be like, no, this bond is from rural wales and has a a fu manchu and a glass eye and and wears a daniel craig mask what if he just played bond as venom would you guys be into that no you would be into that love venom it's a good movie uh okay one more there was one more controversy and aside from choosing the raid which is the 2012 film that was made in 2011 and released in film festivals but not officially released in the united states that year i chose that movie in

the drama category now this raises a confusing question, which is, are action movies dramas? Is this a square rhombus circumstance? Or do we need an action movie category to account for the myriad number of movies that we otherwise wouldn't be able to talk about if they don't make $100 million in these drafts? Amanda, what do you think? I think that if they reach the level of being a drama, they actually should qualify as a drama. And I kind of think that we are- Who is the arbiter of that?

What? Well, we are. Like, what else are we doing here except arguing with each other and talking about different types of movies and philosophies? I think we're kind of litigating this to the point that it's not really fun anymore. And somehow we're responding to the fact

that you guys couldn't tell the difference between 2011 and 2012 with now, with like 18 qualifications for every single category. And I don't totally think it's necessary. And I think some of the fun is in deciding, do I want to put this in sequel or do I want to put this in drama? And how am I going to put this together?

I mean, this is an art. We're talking about art. We're not talking about widgets. I agree with Amanda. I think that there are action films that can be comedies and action films that can be horror movies and action films that can be dramas. If we were going to really do any major surgery to the, to the categories,

I think I'd save, save mine for, for one we haven't spoken about yet. Well, in that case, do you guys think that the raid qualifies as a drama? Sure. Yeah, why not?

Yeah. It's not funny. Well, I mean, I guess it depends on the point of view you're leaning towards. There's some other kinds of movies

that we're not addressing here. There are musicals. There are adaptations of books or plays. There are a lot of different kinds of movies that I didn't take into account when making this. Do you think we need any more new categories here?

I don't think we need any new categories. I think that sometimes when we get to the wild card, I feel like we don't get a chance to mention some films that I'm sure all three of us would like a lot. I don't know if we want to have an indie category or an underdog category or art house. But I've found that of the drafts that we've done so far, the most I've left on the table

is usually in the wildcard department because something doesn't qualify for Blockbuster, doesn't easily fit into another genre, or I need to pick something else. And this is coming from me, who's like a whack job when I'm doing this. I just wanted to ask, I'd like to put an emotion on the floor. something else and this is coming from me who's like a whack job when i'm doing this i i just wanted to ask i'd like to put an emotion on the floor which is that we have right now a category

that is for animated foreign animated or foreign and i stipulate that if animated films are good they should be able to stand on their own in the other genres. So if an animated film is good and it is a drama, why not pick it as your drama? If an animated film is funny, pick it as your comedy. But why do animated films get this special dispensation and everything else has to fight it out? This just sounds like someone who doesn't watch animated movies trying to eliminate a category that's been designed in this game. Well, you're right. Because I don't really find myself ever thinking, what a great... I mean, I'm just saying, everybody's always telling me that animated films deserve to be considered alongside live action movies. Well, then prove it.

I'm with this. Would you replace this category? Also, that foreign language films is an entire other world of films that we don't talk about frequently on this show that are part of this category. So then make this category foreign language. Why do you get to get in here and be like, oh, but I'll take this Pixar movie? Because I made the game up. I'm not sure how to answer that question. I think animated films are important.

Neither of you guys do, which is on the record about that. I didn't say that they weren't, quote, important. I just said they're not for me. Me too. That makes two of us. And I'm allowed to have my own preferences. You are. And I am as well, and the motion is denied.

Thank you for raising it, Chris. I thought it was a good motion, Chris. I liked your point. See, and this is the kind of dialogue that we need to keep. And if you just start doing very specific rules for every single category, then it's very predictable. Just let us be free. Okay.

You're now free. We're also free to talk about the year 2012. So very interesting movie year, I would say. In a lot of ways. This was a year that delivered a lot of big-time movie directors bringing some of their best films to the table. This was a year for Paul Thomas Anderson, it was a year for Steven Spielberg, for Wes Anderson, for Catherine Bigelow, Quentin Tarantino, The Wachowskis, Steven Soderbergh, Ridley Scott, David O. Russell. A lot of great American British filmmakers put out interesting work this year. And Argo won Best Picture. And Argo is definitely not in the top 20 worst films to win Best Picture. But my brain always goes to what defines the year?

What movie defined 2012? And I do feel like in some ways Argo defined the year, what movie defined 2012. And I do feel like in some ways, Argo defined the year for better and for worse. What do you guys think about that? Well, how so? Well, I think it made, despite the fact that there were these fascinating choices made by all these great filmmakers

and these kind of provocative and interesting movies and this tumult happening in the movie industry, which we'll talk about kind of operating in both directions in terms of how small, small movies are getting and how big, big movies are getting. The down the middle Hollywood story about Hollywood taking home the Best Picture Prize from a, you know, a filmmaker working in the tradition of Orson Welles and Robert Redford, you know, like a handsome movie star, great actor, taking the reins and making his big mid-period work is just is very traditional Hollywood. Now, I like Argo. I don't think it's his third best movie,

Ben Affleck, as a director? Fourth best? I don't know. Your mileage may vary there. Second best? I think so. The town gone, baby gone. The one in Florida, right?

What was that one called? That's the official title. Yep. And this. And you think this is worse than what? You think this is his worst film? How many films has he directed? you think this is his worst film how many films has he directed i think it's his third i would i would probably go gone baby gone the town argo and then the other one which is called live by night right live by night um so you know

his third best movie i definitely think it's illustrative. Looking at Ben Affleck being on top of the world on Oscar night 2013, and then seeing what happens the rest of the decade, Gone Girl accepted. And his sort of seduction by playing Batman and getting faux swole and spending half a decade in Zack Snyder movies is somewhat indicative of what happened

to movies in this decade. And I think that movies themselves just sort of got sucked up by the superhero comic book industrial complex. Amanda, it reminds me of the fact that I think the first time you and I ever had a conversation, I don't know if you remember this, was after a screening of a movie that was released this year. It's called The Avengers. I remember this very well. It was at, what was that place called?

Flatbush Farm? That's right. Flatbush Farms. That was also the first time I met Andy Greenwald. Oh. That's right.

Yeah, because Andy was there as well. I think me and you and Andy Greenwald and our friend Sean Howe and I think Willa Paskin was there. I think a handful of people went to Flatbush Farm, this restaurant in Brooklyn that is now closed,

after a screening of The Avengers. And probably the first time we had a conversation about a movie. And little did I know that The Avengers would become, I think, arguably the most important movie of the decade. And important doesn't necessarily mean best. It certainly doesn't mean best in this case. But it is the movie that just kind of, to Chris's point, reshaped what we should expect from a movie and what movies expected from us, which is an understanding of a kind of continuity and an expectation of event moviemaking that wasn't something you were supposed to forget right away. You know, the previous year, I think a Transformers movie was the number one movie at the u.s box office and the transformers movies some of which i think are okay um don't really demand a whole

lot intellectually as far as following story and whatnot the avengers is different at the end at the the stinger at the end of the avengers featured my boy thanos i am inevitable and uh thanos then became a you know big part of my life for the next eight years yeah in the lead up to uh endgame and it's interesting to look at this movie this year as kind of like a pivot point in a way a time when you could get a pta and a tarantino and a soderberg and all these great films catherine bigelow making this very provocative movie but also in the mainstream the avengers is happening yeah yeah and i think that the idea that um you're not doing it if you're not doing one of these movies becomes a little bit more prevalent

after 2012 i mean i was talking about affle, but you think about all the people who are in the Marvel and DC films. And I think Andy and I were talking about this in relation to Oscar Isaac a couple of weeks back on The Watch. But just think about how much time got sucked up by these movies of various people's careers. And does Chris Evans make more Knives Out movies if he's not Captain America? Do those movies get made if he's not Captain America and selling those movies off the back of his success in those Marvel movies? It becomes a huge, huge five for them, one for me economy in the film industry, which had existed before this. But it just seems like I often wonder, it's like, man, Mark

Ruffalo is just in the background of a lot of Marvel movies for a decade. Like, he's a really good actor. Like, what movies do we not get? What performances do we not get because of that? I think it also just really changed how we talk about movies and what we expect of them, as you said, Sean, and how we relate to them. I remember that evening at Flatbush Farm vividly because it was the first time you and I had really talked, Sean, and Andy was so lovely,

and the first time I really talked to him. And I just remember you guys explaining to me what had just happened in Avengers for like 30 to 45 minutes. And you explained the characters and you explained various references to the comic books. and i think i had no idea what the teaser meant or even to expect there was a teaser you know what i remember is that i was definitely like in the aisles or the it's not the teaser what's it called at the end the stinger the stinger i like i was in the aisle and i think a lot of

people were and i remember everyone just like turning around to be like, oh, there's more. And then a lot of people who were very familiar with the source material explained to me what that stinger might mean. And little did I know that the next 10 years of my life would be dedicated to sitting in a room, listening to the same men explain what those things might mean to me. But even there, it was about, will they bring in this character? Will they explore this line? Or how can it all go together? And at the time, it felt novel. At the time, I thought it was very cute. I was like, huh, those guys really seem to like comic books. Good for them. Yeah. What a sad indictment of my 30s that I spent it explaining comic book movies to other adults.

It's really a tough a tough break for me. Not sure how I got myself in this position. It was a very memorable movie going year for me for a couple of reasons. I mean, there's just a ton of great movies that were released this year. I think one of the reasons why this was the case was this is the Annapurna year. This is when Annapurna kind of arrives on the scene. Big big meg yeah megan ellison decides to just start giving money to all my favorite directors and letting them make whatever movie they want and you know i was i was re-watching like i like a sociopath uh the documentary diploma because i just love brian de palma so much and you know on on sleepless nights i turn that movie on thinking it will help rock me to sleep. And in fact, I just end up watching the whole movie from beginning to end

at two o'clock in the morning. It's like your Schitt's Creek kind of? Kind of, yeah. Just curl up with a body pillow and watch De Palma. Yeah. And so I'm watching De Palma and he's talking, of course, about this old saw about this moment in time in movie history in the 70s when Spielberg and Scorsese and George Lucas and Coppola, all of these guys, they get a blank check from Hollywood to make these incredibly personal films. And De Palma flatly says, this will never happen again. What we got to experience is now impossible. And that's mostly true. But you could make the case that in 2012, Megan Ellison wanted to have her own little version of the new Hollywood.

And so she gives money to John Hillcoat to make The Wettest County in the World, which becomes Lawless. And she gives money to Paul Thomas Anderson to make The Master. And she gives money to Catherine Bigelow to make Killing Them Softly, or excuse me, Zero Dark Thirty. And, you know, we get Killing Them Softly this year as well from the studio. And that was an exciting time. I think your mileage may vary on those films and how much you like them or what they mean.

But it was cool to just kind of feel like we got our independent film revolution in a way. I don't know if that, do you think that's overstating things? I mean, I remember 2012 for different reasons, but that you're certainly right that there was, this was just one of those years where the stars aligned. Those directors all got healthy budgets to make the films that they wanted to make. And we also got a generational kind of year where all the big filmmakers had something to put out on display.

I remember 2012 as one of the most voracious movie going years of my life. It was my first year in Los Angeles. Sean, you moved out shortly after I did. We were, I don't think quite prepared for what summer heat waves in Los Angeles, uh, meant for us as to pale Irishman from the East coast.

Um, and so we spent a lot of time at the movie theater and I remember it just for just so many different kinds of movie going experiences. Dark Knight Rises at Universal's IMAX theater or going to see The Candidate at like Los Filos 3 on like a 10 o'clock. I remember that was actually the end of the campaign. Yeah, that's right. Not the Robert Redford movie, the zach alifanaga's movie

uh we saw that as the third and a triple feature on a 100 degree day that started i think with beasts of the southern wild then born legacy and then the campaign which was some kind of of miracle of movie going i just haven't quite put my finger on what it is but yeah and then all the way down towards the fall when I remember we saw the first showing of the Master at Arclight after having dinner at Musso and Frank and had a real Los Angeles night. So I always remember this year fondly,

even if maybe we'll do other drafts that have more stocked up talent pools. Yeah, the Master screening is one of the most memorable LA experiences I've ever had. And I think we were actively working to have an LA experience and it worked in a way. This is also definitely for me

the year when I decided that I just wanted to commit more of my professional life to covering this stuff. And how I went about doing it was circuitous and very fortunate but because I was just working as an editor back then at Grantland but I definitely felt like a moment is happening in movies I'm very excited about this moment and it's it's good for me personally

because I was a comic book fan and so I cared about the comic book movies but I was also a huge fan of these very self-serious auteurs who were kind of coming into their middle age and meant they had more power and the ability to make more movies. And Quentin Tarantino and Paul Thomas Anderson and all those guys who I love were able to make movies kind of in the middle period of their career that were pretty powerful and fascinating and unique. And so I have a lot of fondness for this specific year, even if it isn't whatever, you know, qualitatively the best year. Amanda, you know, you were not in LA with us in the back half of this year. How do you think back on it? Yeah, no, when you were talking about seeing The

Master, I was thinking about my screening of The Master, which I believe was at the Ziegfeld Theater, I think, at the premiere in New York. I also saw it with Andy Greenwald. And that was also the first time I think that I think Chuck Klosterman was there as well. And watching that movie and then discussing it again with a lot of newish people to me who were very lovely, but that was a pretty intense experience. It was fun, though. It felt like movies were at the center of culture. And they were in the center of culture. Right. Because you had the Avengers and the superhero thing really starting and that was getting a response. And so people were excited about that. And then you had a lot of established directors taking big swings. And then you had just a lot of other, you know, smaller movies, indie movies. There were still a few mid-budget dramas. It was really interesting to me going back through the list of 2012, how many movies I had seen. And I think like you guys, I just committed to a lot of movies, partially professionally and partially because again, that was just like the thing to do

this in this particular year. But it was interesting also just like how many movies I had a visceral reaction to. A lot of these movies really annoyed me, not the ones that we'll talk about, but I remembered, oh, I remember seeing this and I hated it. Or, oh, this was really exciting. I remember getting an argument about this. And I think that is a little bit of function of where I was in my job, but also that more people just really did go to the movies still in 2012. And not in the same way. I don't find myself getting in as many arguments now because of about movies, which is actually how I show my love to other people. So that's sad. Yeah. That makes me a little heart sick about what's going on with movies in 2020.

You know, it definitely does not feel like it's at the center of culture and it might be a while if ever again, when that's the case. Well there was also a feeling at least that i had that the arguments around movies were slightly more thoughtful um i know that that seems like me saying that like you know you just got to listen to their early stuff man but yeah there was long there was like i think uh there was just like a lot of great film writing happening back then. Uh, not that there's not now, but I think it's happening in a lot of different corners of the internet there that at that point, I remember,

uh, I think Mark Harris wrote a piece about zero dark 30 for vulture. And I was like, Oh man, this movie is going to be a really big deal. Not only as like an artistic statement, but clearly is going to be something that people have very strong feelings about. And I feel like for the most part, for a while at least,

the arguments about movies like Zero Dark Thirty or Django were really interesting to participate in and to read. Yeah. I mentioned that I talked to Billy Ray on this episode, and Billy Ray is well-known for writing these docudramas about real life events. And, you know, he wrote Richard Jewell, which came out last year and Captain Phillips and a number of other films. And we talked about the Comey rule, his new project, and how it's, you know, in the 70s or the 80s or the 90s, or even the 2000s, that probably would have been a film might have been a three hour film, but it would have been a film. And now it's a miniseries. And I think Zero Dark Thirty is probably very similar. I think we talk about this all the time on the rewatchables, but Zero Dark Thirty is probably a four-part

Netflix series and not a sustained movie experience, which I don't know how much we want to talk about the politics of Zero Dark Thirty, which are erroneous in many ways. But the filmmaking and the movie experience of Zero Dark Thirty is amazing. And it's great as a movie. And I do lament that. It's recent history, but I do miss that idea specifically, being able to make a movie like that. So there's a little bit of sadness that comes with 2012. Amanda, what else was happy about 2012 and movies? For me, at least, else was happy about 2012 in movies for me at least it was a big year in movie stars and also failed movie stars and i this is a year there were like four major channing tatum performances and everyone just like conspired to try to like

make channing to not even try to to make channing tatum happen and as a person who's a fan of channing tatum i really enjoyed all of that it's also obviously a big year for Jennifer Lawrence between The Hunger Games and Silver Linings Playbook. Sean, you don't need to share your feelings on that. But, you know, this is another very sad thing. I don't think movies are the way in which we create like new acting stars anymore. It becomes and again, The Avengers is a little bit a part of this because it starts to become the characters who are famous rather than the movie star. And it's not like, can Julia

Roberts open a movie? It's like, can Captain America open a movie or can, you know, can these art, what is the investment in these characters? And I love movie stars as it's well-documented. So it's a fun year. It's also fun for the ones that didn't make it. I just, poor Taylor Kitsch who didn't really have it, but do you guys remember John Carter? I just, I may not get a chance to talk about this film in the actual draft.

So I just want to shout out Battleship. Yes. And I want to shout out how entertaining that movie is. How fucking like certain people were, the kitsch had this shit sewn up in that movie and just how absolutely ridiculous that movie is. But like, he is,

he's somebody who I actually, I, I totally like him as, as an actor, like a lot, but like, he just got done so wrong by those big, big blockbuster choices.

Yeah, I mean, he worked with Andrew Stan, who was coming off of a string of Pixar hits on John Carter, which was, of course, this very famous Edgar Rice Burroughs story that had never been adapted on screen. Battleship with Pete Berg, alongside Liam Neeson and Rihanna,

one of the all-time flexes and savages with Oliver Stone our boy Amanda Oliver Stone yeah and I don't know how long much longer we can say that but that's a good point um that's and that's three swings and three misses and uh it's sad I like Taylor Kitsch. I think we were all very fond of the Riggins of everything. And Friday Night Lights held a strong place in our hearts. And it didn't work out for him. I mean, it did work out for Channing Tatum. Although, you know, Channing Tatum was in the news last week because it was announced that he's making his first movie.

And I think three or four years, he kind of has stepped away from movie making. And it's interesting because at that time when he hit the scene it kind of just felt like he was in three movies a year every year and vanished jennifer lawrence is a horse of a different color jennifer lawrence um you know she's okay that's everyone's allowed to have opinions it's not about yeah you know that's there you go what other what what what else about 2012 before we dig into our draft anything that that sticks out to you that that's surprising or memorable i i would just say i i felt like movies had a

uh higher floor um not always the higher ceiling, but I look back at the year and while I wasn't like, man, I'm going to take some of these I'm not taking the campaign to my grave or anything there was a kind of quirky reliability to a lot of the mid-range Hollywood jumpers that were being shot back then. I think

Born Legacy, I've talked ad nauseum about that, but that is an example of like, oh, they were trying some stuff here with this blockbuster movie. And Argo is a good example of that too. Yeah, I think Argo gets a bad rap. I mean, Argo was not the best picture of 2012.

And I think Sean, to your point, it is like representative of kind of the Oscars, like commitment to mediocrity every year, but especially this year, the Oscars are really not representative of the movies that we're going to be discussing on this podcast. Unless like Chris is going to just start singing Les Miserables, which I, by the way, I please feel free, Chris, do you know a single song from Les Mis, Chris? Um, Javert, you took the bread right like is that keep going keep going you're doing great um yeah that's about that's about all I got

yeah uh Les Miserables is another um extremely memorable uh screening experience for me I gotta be honest was psyched for that movie Les Mis is is one of the great musicals, in my opinion. I, too, related to Joey Potter singing I Dreamed a Dream on Dawson's Creek. And I sat next to Rembrandt Brown, who is also a huge Les Mis fan. And we were so excited. And I can only speak for myself. Can't really say it lived up to anything that I was hoping for from the musical experience. Sean, you know what the feeling that I had most probably in 2012 watching films outside of like the five or six or seven that I was like, wow, this is just like a straight up masterpiece. I'm going to watch it like 10 more times in my life was in the moment, mild disappointment, and in retrospect, glowing admiration admiration and i think that that applies

to movies um like anything is like something as silly as premium rush and something as sort of quirky as seven psychopaths you know like there was just a general kind of like oh that wasn't as good as i was hoping the trailer was really good and then now in 2020 looking back i'm like i would i probably would see Premium Rush like twice this summer if it had come out in 2020. Wow. How do we not make all of the forthcoming movie drafts

incredibly depressing as we think back on five years ago? It's going to be difficult to pull that off. But I agree with you. I think that I like the idea of the higher floor. One other data point for me is I've never seen the film Les Miserables. I never saw it. I was never

interested in it. I have seen the stage musical. I don't care for it. It is legit like Tom Hooper filmed it on Zoom. But in 2012, it is just like if I put my computer, I'm pulling it up this close, no one can see it. And then it's just Anne Hathaway, you know, singing at you. By the way, I just want to say I Joey Potter sang on my own and Anne Hathaway as Fantine saying I dream to dream. Les Mis Heads, you know, I'm with you. Okay, don't worry. I'm going to get it right.

But yeah, I don't recommend it. Okay, let's try to get this draft right this time. Let's try to not draft any films from 2013 or 2011. Let's try to stick draft any films from 2013 or 2011. Let's try to stick only to 2012 films. So before we get to deciding who picks when, let's hear a quick word from our sponsor. Today's episode is brought to you by Heineken. Heineken would like to remind you that it's time for seasonal beers again. That's right. If you thought a cold, crisp summer Heineken was something, just wait until you taste the Heineken Fall lineup. remind you that it's time for seasonal beers again. That's right. If you thought a cold, crisp summer Heineken was something,

just wait until you taste the Heineken Fall lineup. Is it a new product? No. Just the same great-tasting lager that's perfect for any season. It's football season right now, and I'm a New York Jets fan, so that means after a Jets game, I need to find a way to relax and unwind, so I like to go out on my back porch and enjoy a crisp, cool Heineken. Heineken Original Lager is made with pure malt and their famous A-Heast,

which makes Heineken an all-season, all-the-time kind of beer. So pick up a pack or get it delivered, whatever your style, and drink it responsibly. Okay, we're back. Bobby Wagner, please help us determine the draft order. Hello, everyone. Much like last time, I have put the initials of your names into a hat. Bobby, that's a cool Zero Dark Thirty shirt you're wearing. Thank you.

It's my most prized possession. How long have you been waiting to make that joke since Sean announced the movie draft? 25 minutes. And I will pull them out of the hat. It is not a Mets hat this time because banish the Mets to hell no new era the Wilpons are gone it's a new era of Mets fandom

S Sean Fantasy first pick Sean can I ask you a question yeah you can if you could do it over again and I'm the devil and I come to you and i say sean steve cohen can either buy the mets and save you from your own doomed fandom or can become the new annapurna and write blank checks to all your favorite directors for their dream projects

which one would you choose here's the thing steve cohen has north of five billion dollars so why can't he just do both? I just don't see why I have to choose. Isn't he playing with our story in the LA Times about how he basically is doing this? Yeah, he's launching a film production company. This is happening. Anyway, guys, I'm doing a lottery here.

The next choice is Amanda. D for Dobbins. Chris, you're going last. That's fine. I usually hit third in Little League anyway. Line drives. A reminder. Well, when you play from the whites,

you got to go after the guys playing from the blues, Chris. It's tough. As a reminder, this is a snake draft. So I will select first. Amanda will select second. Chris gets three and four and then all the way on the way back. So where to start?

This is tough. As a reminder to all the listeners out there there are six categories drama comedy or horror blockbuster which you must earn 100 million dollars at the domestic box office animated foreign language which we have retained wild card and sequel with my first pick I am selecting the master predictable perhaps I don't know what how what I need to say about Paul Thomas Anderson's masterpiece to fill my love greatly it's a towering achievement in movie making it's a stunning that it was even made in the first place especially at the price point it was made at um but movie that sticks with me Chris recounted it for our first time seeing it I think I returned to the arc light twice more to see it in theaters and uh still find it just very moving it's a very moving uh story about me and chris's friendship and uh you can decide who is who in

this formulation but i love the master and i feel very grateful you blinked okay uh so now amanda it's up to you number number two pick uh so i will be picking in the sequels category and we have already established on this podcast that this film is eligible in the sequels category i am taking skyfall which is i one of my favorite movies of the decade and i used this draft as an excuse to watch it again last night because I own it on Amazon Prime in case anyone ever wants to watch it, come on over. I've got it. This movie

rules. We did an entire insane rewatchables about it featuring one of Chris's greatest moments and I say that with real affection for Chris as a podcaster. There have been a lot of highs with him, but the khakis after sex experience. Who has ever put on khakis after sex

and gotten back in bed? They're not in bed. The bed is just kind of like lounging. She is also dressed. She's not? She is at least wearing a wrap. She is wearing, it's like a pink, like kind of like cover up robe situation, like, cover-up robe situation.

I mean, when there's... No, let's make this personal. Okay. So, you... Oh, great. Chris Ryan has sex. A human man has sex. You started this.

I was ready for it. Okay. I'm not running from this fight. After sex, you get up, you, I don't know, you get up. I make myself a giant turkey sandwich, and I to the mirror and I sue you're the best What does everybody do they want to have a cigarette you can't smoke anymore Maybe you vape, but you're not supposed to do that. Do you just do you just do you put on khakis? What do people do?

You lie in a post-coital bliss And maybe you go to the you get a water and you're just like God, and you put on your boxers, maybe. I understand. Maybe he's not wearing boxers. Let me just throw that out there. Maybe he's just khakis, nothing else. He strikes me as a no underwear. Yeah. So no underwear khakis. That's weird.

That's weird and it's not practical if he feels like he's going to have to be on the run. No underwear khakis. I've done it. In what possible context? Next time it happens I'll let you know. Don't. Do me a favor. Don't. Keep it. I recommend it if you haven't sought it out. I think that this movie is just a tremendous example of what a blockbuster and a franchise and all of these words that we're going to use probably with negative connotations throughout this podcast like actually um can hold and what's possible within those boundaries i think it's extraordinary and respect to roger deakins as always great pick no no no

confusion there not a shocker from you amanda but a great pick nonetheless chris you've got two picks here so i've taken a film in drama and Amanda you're saying you're you took Skyfall in the sequel category I did okay so Chris you're up for my first pick I think I'm gonna go

I'm trying to decide it's the same movie I'm just trying to decide which category I'm gonna put it in I think I'll go drama here and I'm gonna pick put it in. I think I'll go drama here. And I'm going to pick Django Unchained. Really great. Again, when Tarantino puts out a movie, there is that feeling from when it first gets announced to when they first announced the casting

to when the first trailer drops to that first screening you go to that is usually with bated breath. I can't believe it. A Quentin Tarantino movie is about to drop. And this was just a jaw-dropping experience. Incredible performances across the board. And calling it a drama

actually might be a little bit of a stretch. It is very dramatic. It is also very funny in places. It is also an action film in some ways, maybe his most action-based film i think um but i i still love django and uh so i'll go with this in drama that's my first pick so great pick uh i think this december 2012 was a an amazing time for for movies for movie releases um i are you going to choose

another film released in December 2012 for your next category? I don't think so, no. You're not choosing Les Mis? I'm not. My next pick is Blockbuster and I'm going to go with

Magic Mike. What the fuck? What, I gave you guys a new Skyfall? I love Magic Mike. What the fuck? What? I gave you guys a new Skyfall? Like, I love Magic Mike. It's a great movie. I feel like... Wow. Number one, I'm blindsided.

Number two, I put Magic Mike on my best of the decade, and I felt like I was pulling teeth to get either of you to engage with that choice. No fucking way. I love Magic Mike. I think Magic Mike is one of the best films of,

easily one of the best films of the decade. Well, that's fine. I'm glad that you also respect it. I'm very surprised by this. I really did not see it coming. I thought Magic Mike was going to be safe for me. But go ahead, speak on it. Another amazing movie experience. The Rihanna drop in the trailer. The feeling, you know where you were when you first heard that. The feeling you get when you get about 20 minutes into this movie and realize, oh, this is like a Hal Ashby movie.

And you just realize that he made a 70s American drama but put McConaughey and Tatum topless in this movie in banana hammocks and we're just going to make 100 mil off of like $5 million budget. I'm so happy for everybody involved in this movie. They did a great job. I love Soderbergh. I love this movie. So this is going to be my number two.

Wow. Amanda is crestfallen. That was clearly going to be your next pick, I presume. I have to be honest. I wasn't even going to pick it next because I really thought both of you would leave it on the table. I just didn't feel like you respected Soderbergh and Channing Tatum enough. Don't ever doubt what I'll do for Cody Horn, man. Where is Cody Horn right now? Where is Cody Horn? What is happening? Chris and I walked out of Magic Mike, which is a movie that features more beautiful imagery of men dancing than perhaps any mainstream movie ever made.

And Chris and I are both like, yo, Cody Horn, man. Cody Horn's going to be a big star. She's got the juice. And she disappeared. It's sad. Okay. So, Amanda, you're up. All right.

So, I got to recalibrate here a little bit. I mean, Chris, I'm just glad you have good taste. I'm deleting Magic Mike from my list. This is really sad. Also, I just want to say that McConaughey should have won this Oscar and not the Oscar that he wins a year later. So, okay. Well, hmm. Wow, you're thrown. I really am. This is weird, but I guess since I don't know what's going to happen and I feel strongly about this, I'm going to go in the comedy category and we will continue the Channing Tatum experience. And I will do 21 Jump Street, which is one of the only studio comedies that has made me laugh

consistently for like pretty much the entire run in the in the certainly in the last 10 years this movie well I haven't watched it in the last year so if I'm sure some of the jokes don't land but otherwise it holds up um I had no relationship to 21 Jump Street the TV show and that didn't matter. It stands on its own. I think that this really, to me, that this isolates the Channing Tatum appeal as much as Magic Mike does, but in a different way. He's a very versatile actor. Shout out to Channing Tatum. And yeah, there you go. Good movie. This was at the top of my comedy horror lineup and um it's a hilarious film i think a little bit a little bit lost to time a little bit overlooked in the last eight years this really

feels like it should be a rewatchables you know i feel like it's in that kind of zone of movies that are fun to return to but doesn't necessarily have the reputation that you know the super bads of the world have but you know we had like such a we've been tripping over ourselves trying to define sequels and reboots and prequels and i have a bad feeling that the despite how successful this movie was that they felt like the need that they had to like make it part remember they were going to make it part of the men in black universe like there were all these like backwards bending oh right gymnastics to try to give this movie and they made a sequel, but

I remember thinking, oh, they'll probably make four of these. You could just keep making these movies. You could put new, younger people in and make Channing Tatum the boss. I just was always mystified what happened to this because they had so much chemistry together.

So, I think that that actually was an idea to juice up Men in Black 3. The thinking there was that Men in Black 3 was trending a little soft. And so they needed to power it up. I could be wrong about that. But honestly, they just should have done it. Men in Black 3 and also the fourth Men in Black movie are terrible. And just really a shame because the first men in black movie also good. Also would be a good rewatchables.

It's neither here nor there. I have two picks to make. So I think I'm in a good spot. I think I, I, I was interested in 21 jump street, but I wasn't going to take it in that slot. I think what I'm going to do is for blockbuster.

I'm going to take the Avengers, which as we noted is a movie that i like i would say it is not not in the top 10 uh maybe well it's probably the top 10 mcu movies but not in the top five um honestly weird pick yeah yeah it's a weird pick you think there's another blockbuster i should have well you this Like you already made your Avengers pitch for its importance. Like this is the opportunity for you to take the movies you actually like. Do you actually like Avengers? Sure. Yeah.

But you got to think about the grand scheme. Like what blockbuster am I going to get stuck with that I like a lot less than the Avengers? And you know, we'll see. Cause I'm making a pick. I'm interested to hear you to talk about another potential blockbuster that I assume will be Chris's pick unless I take it away from him. But I'm not really feeling vindictive at this point.

Time will tell. Well, maybe I'll take it away right now. Mm-hmm. Oh, here we go. My second pick is Prometheus. Yeah, there we go. That's fine. That's fine.

Which is going to be my sequel pick. Yeah. Which is technically a prequel, but fits the definition that we talked through earlier in this episode another another um movie going experience i'll never forget oh my god let's talk about it um with this film i believe chris andy greenwald and i saw on a Saturday morning on the weekend of its release. At the Dome. Yikes. At the Arclight Dome, immediately following one of the most raucous Grantland parties ever. I was extremely hungover. I believe, I don't want to sell Andy out too much, but I believe Andy was also not well.

Andy, very much like you, Amanda, not a big horror guy. Does not like to be grossed out. Prometheus, maybe the most viscerally upsetting scene of the decade. The baby removal scene featuring Noomi Rapace. Prometheus, obviously,

is a prequel to the Alien franchise. Ridley Scott returning to the Alien franchise after almost 35 years. A movie that I think I have vacillated my opinion on a number of times over the years. Chris, you very early on bought into the

importance, the mythology, the thinking behind the ideas in the movie. You've really dragged me along with you on this over time too. This is the perfect example of disappointing in the moment and then just grows in my estimation. Still a very problematic movie, not problematic like in the way

that you think I mean. I just mean like there's edits that don't make any sense and like somehow people get on different spaceships without ever explaining how that happened. But, you know,

Damon Lindelof worked on this script, John Spates, I originally wrote it, and is one of the most interesting objects of film scholarship of the decade there are some really incredible pieces of writing about prometheus and i think um this is the kind of movie that you know covenant pretty much sealed the deal but we probably won't get a ton more of really dark blockbusters like this yeah i agree it's just a fascinating exhibit in how a powerful person can contort intellectual property

to his own desires, you know? And you got to be Ridley Scott in some cases to get something like this over the line, but it's just a disgusting, beautiful movie. Also, Fassbender. Unbelievable Fassbender in this.

Just incredible. And we probably- The Lawrence of Arabia scene in the beginning, come on. Amazing. I think, you know, Fassbender, another person who's just not at the center of movie culture right now, and I really wish he was. And Amanda, I mean, I don't know.

I don't even know if we've ever had a sustained conversation about him on this show over almost 300 episodes. Yeah, he stopped making movies or stopped making movies frequently. I believe in part to pursue a part-time possibly sponsored gig as a race car driver. I'm not making that frequently. I believe in part to pursue a part-time possibly sponsored gig as a race car driver. I'm not making that up. But he was also another person at this time,

along with Channing Tatum, where it felt like he was happening and a lot of things were conspiring to make him happen. And he is also just very good at acting and very handsome, in my opinion. Another guy who spent a decade in superhero movies. Very true.

You wonder what his career would have been like in 1988 instead of 2012. Nevertheless, he's wonderful. I hope he gets back to making more movies soon. Amanda, you are up. Okay, so Chris, can you remind me what two picks you have? Like what I've picked so far? Yeah. I picked Django and Magic Mike.

Okay. And Magic Mike is in your blockbuster. That's very clever. Okay. So you guys have both picked blockbusters and dramas. I have to be honest. My strategy, you caught me off guard.

Amanda does not get an A for planning again. It's just not been a... I was so i think what i'm gonna do here and this is unusual and but once again i know the company i keep and so in drama i will be taking anna karenina which i was going to do magic mike and drama but now I'm no longer going to do that. And I really like this movie and this is the Joe Wright hive. And that's right. Yo,

I don't know if you know this Anna Karenina, great novel. Yo, Tolstoy, nothing but bangers from that guy. Also, I don't, don't know if I've ever mentioned this to either of you,

but I actually have read all of Anna Karenina. I read the novel. Wait, what do you mean you don't know if you've mentioned that to us? You skipped that somehow. Yeah. But I think as an adaptation, this is such an exhilarating and completely reimagined because if you've never seen Anna Karenina as imagined by Joe Wright, it is kind of put on a on a theater stage. And so you're watching the mechanics of the adaptation as you're also watching the adaptation.

And it's very clever and possibly the only way that you could consolidate a thousand page novel into a two-hour movie it also gets rid of a lot of the farming soliloquies which I understand are very important but like I'm just not really I don't need to know that much about Russian farming in the 1800s and great cast amazing cast yeah amazing cast candor right up there with horn it's true this is another kind of Vikander this is when the Vikander thing year starts

as well obviously Keira Knightley who is extremely important to me our pal Matthew McFadden how do I say his last name Chris? I think it's McFadden McFadden? okay

he seems like a pretty easygoing chap. He does. Just do it either way. Yeah. I just, it's smart and it tries something and also mostly works. So that's pretty exciting. Okay. That's a

very true to you pick, which I respect and admire. I don't think, Chris, were you thinking of taking Anna Karenina off the board? I was thinking about it for a wild card. Yeah, that was my only thing that I anticipated. Chris, you've got two picks now. For sequel, I'm going to

take The Bourne Legacy. You have to. I think you're contractually bound based on the theme music to The Watch. I am obsessed with this film. I am obsessed with Edward Norton in this movie. I'm obsessed with Jeremy Renner in this watch. I am obsessed with this film. I am obsessed with Edward Norton in this movie. I'm obsessed with Jeremy Renner in this movie. I'm obsessed with Isaac or Isaac in this movie. I'm obsessed with Rachel Weisz in this movie.

It is one of my favorite blockbuster genre screenplays that I think I've ever watched acted out. Like it's so tight and interesting and the dialogue is so electric. I think there are parts of it that drag you know that i think that the opening uh workplace shooting is a little tough after the third or fourth time you've watched this movie but um all of the edward norton stuff is absolutely like it's like putting your hand on like a train track and feeling the train coming it's so great watching him just get to chew scenery

as the second guy in a movie. So I'll go Born Legacy second. I would actually say Born Legacy is maybe my second favorite Bourne movie. So it's pretty high in my estimation. Let's see what we got here. So I got Born Legacy for sequel. Interestingly, we've already filled out

drama and sequel. Yeah. All three of us have selected all of those films in those categories. Everything else is kind of up for grabs at the moment. Which is interesting because those are fairly,

drama especially is very easy to fill out. But I think it reveals something about the kinds of movies that we like that we immediately leap to drama but also i think it is reflective of the year itself which you know we talked about it was a year of like the great filmmakers all making great films and then it starts the kind of ip franchise revolution um i suppose would be a word for it and but so there's just more to choose from and those are the big ticket movie um choices so for wild card i'm going to pick looper you took my wild card chris so uh we So let's talk about it now.

For you and me, and I'm sure for a lot of people, this might be what we hoped movie making was going to be this decade. That people were going to get all the tools in the toy box to make really cool, interesting, original genre movies. And Ryan, like a lot of the people we've talked about in this pod so far ryan johnson somebody who then spent most of the rest of the decade planning for and then executing um a star wars movie which was i think we all like liked quite a bit and it was it's a very controversial uh title in that franchise and then wound up just kind of like

fuck it and made knives out and you're just like fuck what did you what could have happened in the middle there like what could you have done if you had done Looper and then something else and then Knives Out I know it's not as simple as that but Looper, Joseph Gordon Levitt and Bruce Willis and just a really really really

smart sci-fi thriller yeah this is so I want to raise something that was raised to me by a friend who's a filmmaker. This friend is a, has a adversarial relationship with me and likes to challenge my generation, which is technically the millennial generation about the weakness of the films that have come out of my generation.

And this person said you could name 20 truly great films that came from Generation X in the 90s and the 2000s. How many millennial filmmakers have made truly great films? And this person was suggesting that Rian Johnson's Looper is one of those films, even though I don't think technically Rian qualifies, unfortunately, for millennial, if we use 1982 or late 81 as the cutoff for that generation. But the, the insinuation was that this new crop of filmmakers that are kind of in our,

our cohort, Amanda, and, and not quite you're in your cohort, Chris book close. You're, you're a, you're a late,

you're a late period. Gen Xer have not made as many great movies as we want them to make. Now, there's a million reasons for that. And we could probably do a whole podcast series about what happened in the 2010s that disallowed that.

And the IP part of it is a big part of it. The state of movie going is a big part of it. The continued agglomeration of corporations to be responsible for movie making. There's all these reasons for it,

but I didn't really have a very good argument to return. And it hurt me to even have to say, actually, technically Looper doesn't even count. So I don't even get that one, but I do love Looper. And it does feel like, I think you put it best,

Chris, like it's a real, what could have been kind of movie. You know, it's, it's not so far afield that it feels like it's unrelated to genre moviemaking or unrelated to the movies

that came before it. But it was a new idea. I guess the way I would put it, and I think that sometimes we can be a little bit sweeping when we're making these kinds of proclamations. But when you watch Looper,

you're kind of like, only Rian Johnson could have made this movie. This seems like something that he's been thinking about for a really long time. It seems so intricately plotted that it could only happen

in this original way. And then when you see him do, or when you see anybody do these franchises, they're not really truly personal statements. You know, and I think that that's the thing about Looper is it has like that sadness to it. It has some incredible prosthetics, you know, incredible nose work, the nose plays in Looper.

But yeah, I just I thought it was one of my favorite movies of this year. Great JGL year too. Yeah, he's back in the trial of the Chicago 7, which we'll be talking about soon. JGL is back. Man, can't wait for that episode. That's going to be quite a journey, Amanda. You're up now. You have another pick.

I'm going to go in... Oh, wow. This is getting dark. I'm going in foreign language and I'm going to take Amour by Michael Haneke. Yes, thank God. It's really weird you're going to take mine. Okay.

If you want to talk about memorable viewing experiences i saw this at bam with my now husband um but we had been dating for less than a year when we saw this film and it was a sunday afternoon i want to say it was in the winter because we saw it kind of you know it was winning all of the award season awards. And we kind of knew from Oscar, whatever that we needed to, to make an attempt to see it. So it's like a late winter Sunday afternoon, very dreary. And I just remember we've been dating for definitely less than a year. I mean, that's a whole other you know that's it that's another story and another argument that we can litigate some other time of how long we've been dating but

um we walked across the street from bam to a bar I don't know if it's still there it was called I want to say Berliner but spelled with a y that could be wrong but it was like a German beer bar and restaurant. And they had, um, like a lot of gnome figurines everywhere, just like decorating the bar, decorating the, the, the taps, everything. And I just remember sitting in silence next to Zach, looking all the, at all the gnomes and just being like, Jesus Christ, what is the point of life and getting older? And it had a very powerful effect on me. And now Zach and I are married. I don't really know what to say about that, but it's mostly been good so far. Yeah. and i kind of know what's thanks to amour i kind of i know what might happen and i guess i'm slightly more prepared for it than i might otherwise have been i have no notes on this

fucking monologue you just dropped oh my god it's a true story are you more of an Emmanuel Riva or Jean-Louis Trenton? Like, who are you in this relationship anymore? God, well, I think that's such a revealing question. My fear is that I would be, I don't know what's harder. I think I'm just like paralyzed with fear now. I don't want to be either, but I know that ultimately we become both. I suppose most of the time I'm the, am I the Emmanuel Riva?

I don't know. What would you say? You know me. You're the Hanneke. Okay, great. I accept. I think that's right. I think that that's correct.

Yeah, this is a beautiful film. This would have been my pick for this category as well. And just, you know, I was kind of denigrating the Oscars and I would say that this is not a, the Oscars did not do a good job of capturing the best movies of this year.

And there are a handful of movies that we're probably not going to talk about that I'm just either not that fond of or feel very middle of the road. You know, Ang Lee won his second best director Oscar for Life of Pi this year. Ang Lee is a wonderful filmmaker. We talked about him on the Sense and Sensibility episode.

I'm a huge fan of his work. I do not understand why he was awarded his second best director Oscar for this movie. But conversely, Am amour this tiny film from this you know controversial and small austrian art house filmmaker i think got five academy award nominations including best picture and best director and you know there are some reasons for that it's a more sort of accessible movie in some ways than his other films um and a less you know strafing but in other ways like this is one of the most devastating and depressing movies ever made it's like it's it's more strafing and that

it's like emotionally violent essentially as opposed to the kind of psychological terror and that he creates in the other ones it's a good pick pick. I'm vamping a little bit on Amour because I feel like I'm stuck here. I lost Amour and Luper. We're leaving some huge movies on the board. This is going to be so fascinating at the end to see what doesn't get picked. Well, you know, you can talk yourself

into a corner here, right? So I've got a few outstanding categories that I need to fill. I need to fill comedy and horror. I need to fill animated foreign language. If you don't pick an animated film, I'm flipping out. Don't you worry about what I'm doing.

All right. Worry about what you're doing, Chris. Okay. I don't know if you guys noticed, but I hustled you. I am on cruise control on this one. With the Bourne Legacy. Okay.

My next pick is going to be for horror comedy now this is a bad year for comedy i would say and i have no intention of choosing ted or the campaign to curry favor with listenership i'm choosing sinister with which i think it's with whom yeah a lot of people love ted ted fans and your mentions hell you think there are not internet recently chris you're kidding me a lot of people love Ted. Ted fans in your mentions? Hell, you think there are not Ted fans? Have you been on the internet recently, Chris? You kidding me? A lot of Ted fans.

Ted, it's okay. I don't think it's horrible. It's okay. Notably, Ted was so successful that Seth MacFarlane hosted the Oscars for this year, which is just, remember when that happened? That was extraordinary. Oh, God, yeah.

Nevertheless, I'm going with Sinister, which is, I think, one of the truly great horror movies of the 2010s Scott Derksen Blumhouse movie starring Ethan Hawke just an ingenious idea behind it about a writer who is best known for a kind of true

crime story that he published many years ago and he's trying to write his follow up to this big success and in doing so buys a house in which some terrible murders have happened and doesn't tell his family that they're moving into a murder house and then of course the memories of the murder come to the fore and people get terrorized great movie scott derrickson also falls prey to the IP universe when he,

his next project after this movie is to go make a Dr. Strange movie. I think the Dr. Strange movie is okay. He has since been dispatched from the MCU and is not making the new Dr. Strange movie, but wouldn't you have just loved to have seen three or four Scott Derrickson horror movies in the in-between time rather than Dr.

Strange. I probably would have. So I'm taking sinister. Chris, you're a sinister guy. I am a sinister guy. Ethan Hawke. a lord just stacks bricks off of

these horror movies and then goes and makes like his country music documentaries and his lovely dramas and introspective work yeah he's a badass so okay hmm I've got drama down.

I've got comedy horror down. I've got blockbuster down. Got sequel down. That leaves me with animated foreign language and wild card. I'm going to go wild card and I'm going to go Moonrise Kingdom. You motherfucker.

Which is a wonderful Wes Anderson movie. And Wes Anderson was on the heat, about to make Grand Budapest Hotel, which was his biggest hit that he ever made and a huge movie, an Oscar-recognized movie. Personally, I think Moonrise Kingdom is as big an accomplishment. I think it's a beautiful movie about childhood,

about falling in love, about experiences. It features all of the Wes Anderson trademarks. Great performances, great cast. This features all of the Wes Anderson trademarks. Great performances, great cast. This is a movie that features Bill Murray, Francis McDormand, Edward Norton, Bruce Willis, all the way down the line. Astonishing cast. Two great child performances in the film by the leads.

Wonderful score. I really like Wes Anderson. I have no idea when the French Dispatch is going to come out. And I really want it to come out. I was looking forward to it this year. Wow, I hadn't even thought about that. I know. I mean, I was so excited to be doing a couple of Wes Anderson episodes on this show

because he really is one of the signature filmmakers of his generation and we don't get a chance to talk about him that much. So I'm going Moonrise Kingdom. Amanda, you're up. Okay. I guess I'll go with Blockbuster just because that's where I am in this. So I don't really think there's any danger of Chris taking the Hunger Games and Wildcard, but I will take the Hunger Games for Blockbuster. Good one.

Remember when the Hunger Games was like the biggest phenomenon in the world. And when we all, when I, an adult woman, like read YA books, which is a thing that I did for a while, I moved recently and was unpacking the books and got all the Hunger Games, found them all pretty easily. Can't find the books I actually want. This was pretty good as far as a YA adaptation. I a ya adaptation i mean i think you know the first

in these series are always the best because when you have to write the sequels and the ya books the um the the plot gets a little crazy but i i think personally this is the better for dinner for lauren's performance in 2012 and she just kind of this is what she's good at. And I think both in terms of action and, and, and movement and then letting her face do the acting as a, and show the emotions as opposed to just yelling, um, a lot though, I guess she does move, um, via dance in silver linings playbook as well. Um. I enjoyed this. I thought it actually like imagined the, you know, world visually in an interesting way

and kind of created the same tension. And I was invested in that weird love triangle like everybody else. The YA boom, very weird time. Just a very weird time in pop culture. I mean, I guess not weird because, you know, young girls deserve to have blockbusters made for them too. And that was great.

But this is also, I believe the year that the twilight series ends. I don't know if you guys remember the last movie in the twilight series, things just really, they really took a turn. Yeah. I like respect it in a way it gets so weird with the final vampire war that you gotta like good for them you know commit to

your thing and really go weird but i i think the hunger game still does the best of taking like the way ya genre and making it um accessible and kind of like a fully realized film for everyone good pick uh billy ray who's to be on this show, also wrote The Hunger Games, notable. One of the masters of adapting IP in addition to making these serious docudramas. In a way, he is kind of a representative figure of the directions that Hollywood

goes in. Chris. We're at the end of the line here. Okay. How are you feeling? I'm okay. I had a couple of disappointments but you guys are just such great competition I respect it for

so I have two here to wrap it up comedy horror and animated form you really hate to wait this long to get to those categories it's a tough beat well it's easy for me I'm gonna go with my girl. Steel Beams Marion.

And Rustin Bone. For. Just. Everything that just happened. Marion's great man. What a character. And this movie features. Spoiler alert.

Someone getting. Eaten. Half eaten. By a killer whale and MMA fighting and a kid falling through an ice lake. So it's really- Three of your favorite things.

Yeah. This is one of the, this actually like makes a more feel like upbeat, Rustin Bone does, but she is fucking astonishing in this movie. And I think a lot of people probably know her from her English language work

and I do think that to some extent she sometimes has one hand tied behind her back when she's in a dark night. I think when you see her in Rustin Bone, you're like she is a phenomenal actress. So I really I can't say that I enjoy

this film, but if I'm going to pick one from this section, I guess I'll do this. Ah, man. Comedy horror. I could go a couple different ways here. Do you guys like Project X? Yes.

No. You know who likes it the most? David Jacoby's favorite film of all time. I know. That's right. I'm gonna go with vhs as my horror film okay explain what vhs is because actually chris i wanted to let's just do this live on the podcast i almost texted you last night and said would you like to do an episode with me in october about the best horror anthology movies of all time oh i would love to sean so many there's so many good ones to choose from. Trick or treat. Yeah.

Amanda, you're welcome to join us on that episode. I suspect you haven't seen a lot of those movies. I appreciate the invitation, but I'll let you guys have your time. So VHS is a snapshot of a moment of time when a bunch of different indie filmmakers, low-budget indie filmmakers, some of whom were, I think,

naturally sort of drawn to horror anyway, and some of whom were, I think, naturally sort of drawn to horror anyway. And some of whom were like, horror is a great way to get my movies made. All sort of started making work around the same time. So you've got like Ty West, you've got Adam Wingard, David Bruckner. And then you've got people like Joe Swanberg,

who obviously were making dramas and comedies who were like, oh man, it seems like if you you make a horror film, you have a really nice floor of money that you can probably expect to make off of that from festivals, from on-demand viewing, etc. And VHS is essentially an anthology built around the idea of these VHS tapes.

I think the cool thing about this is that you get a bunch of different movies in one. I mean, they are shorts. They are pretty creepy. They have some thematic coherence to them, but kind of like a really nice moment in time for these filmmakers who have all gone on to do different things since then. And probably not something, you know, this is the kind of thing that winds up on shutter. Now, this is the kind of thing that I think winds up on Hulu now

from the deals that they do with Blumhouse, etc. So I think this is a really cool movie. I feel weird. The reason why I might sound muted is because there are a bunch of movies left that I just can't fit into any of the categories that we have left. That's the challenge of the game, right?

And we can just talk about them very quickly. I was thinking about trying to see if you guys would allow me to do the first scene of Dark Knight Rises as a foreign film because that entire scene is acted as if English is a second language to all involved,

even though it's Aidan Gillen and Tom Hardy. I think you would have had more luck if you tried to put it up for comedy. Because I find that Dark Knight Rises is a relationship. Where's Bane? Why does he wear the mask? Oh, Bane.

We love Bane here. No one cared who I was till I put on the mask. Amanda, you've got one more pick. You have a chance to select Bane. Bane is on the board. I won't be picking Bane, though I will say that if I had to go third in sequels,

that I was going to do Dark Knight Rises just to have Chris do his voice. And also because I know that there are people who like it and who might vote for me. I have Wild Card left, which, you know, is an opportunity, I suppose, that like, as Chris

said, there are a lot of films that we have left on the table. You know, there are some obvious ones like, you know, Lincoln directed by Steven Spielberg, screenplay by Tony Kushner, you know, starring Daniel Day-Lewis. Those guys are good. And there's also like, you know, we talked about Silver Linings Playbook. I pitched the other Jennifer Lawrence film, but you know, that was pretty successful. I was wondering about that for comedy. Would you guys consider Silver Linings a comedy?

I had it listed under like as a comedy option. I think I would have accepted it. I think, I mean, it is for the most of the film. It is a very funny, ostensibly movie. Would you guys have accepted Flight as a comedy? No. No. I don't want to step on your pick, Amanda,

but I can't believe so many movies that Chris hasn't taken that are Chris Ryan movies. It's insane. I definitely thought that you were going to take Flight. Anyway, and there are also a couple fun options i could do here like there's a with stoneman movie this year damsels in distress um yeah greta i i didn't really like that movie even though i love with stoneman and i love greta gerwig so i'm not doing that um you know there are like some quirky pics that you could do like you know there's a whole like

cloud atlas is good movement um i'm not a part of that movement. I do. I do want to talk about Cloud Atlas at some point. Okay. Because I think it is very flawed, but it is very good. Yeah. And I don't even know what category it would fit into here. Right. But that would have been an intriguing pick on your part.

It could be a wild card. And I know that it would be intriguing and maybe great for the animals and film criticism, but I'm not going to do it because I have to be myself in the wild card. I will be taking Argo because I like Argo and why the hell not? Okay. Middle brow, pseudo intellectual movie. Great job. You know what? Sometimes I'm a middle brow, pseudo intellectual person. I have said again and again, I am committed to the study of Ben Affleck in time and space and cinema. Also, as previously mentioned on this podcast, and as Ben Affleck pointed out in his acceptance speech, marriage is hard, okay? So I get it. I'm right there with you, Ben. This is a great movie to watch with your parents.

It's like, I don't think Argo is the problem with these Oscars. It's like the, it's the symptom or something. I don't know. It's the result that you don't want because the Oscar voters are unimaginative. And I do not think that it was the best picture of the year, but I had a nice time. I think it's a great pick. If you can get the best picture winner in a loaded year in wildcard in your last pick, you've done a great job. Thank you. I've more pick i've got one category left it's animated foreign language this is not my favorite

year for mainstream animated films this is the brave year from pixar this is paranormal pretty good like a stop-motion animation movie i don't think either of you guys have seen it uh wreck it ralph chris you were a big fan of Ralph. You're actually dressed like Wreck-It Ralph right now during this podcast, which is a curious choice on your part. There are a couple of interesting foreign language films that we haven't talked about.

The Hunt, the Mads Mikkelsen film, which is very complicated. Holy Motors, definitely one of my favorite movies of the year. One of my favorite movies of the decade in some ways. Holy Motors? Yes. It's a Lios Karak's movie. I know what it is. favorite movies of the year one of my favorite movies of the decade in some ways holy motors yes it's a leos carax movie i know what it is i just you contain multitudes yeah i had i had a great viewing experience at the um since shuttered for what seems to be very good reasons cine family

movie theater which went through quite a bit of controversy a couple of years ago because of some of the actions of the people that ran that place but they showed a lot of great films there and that was my introduction really to the kind of independent film community and I saw Holy Motors there love that movie but I'm going with a movie called It's Such a Beautiful Day which

I've talked about a couple times on this podcast for animated it's written and directed by Don Hertzfeld who is an independent animator, who I think is one of the signature filmmakers of the 21st century. This is one of the most

upsetting films ever made, and if you wanted to do a double feature with Amour, it would probably ruin your year. And throw Rust and Bone on top, man. Yeah, absolutely. This category is just full of pain.

We've done some great work here. But It's Such a Beautiful Day is very simple, almost crude in some of its design. Don Hertzfeld draws these stick figures and animates them and creates this existential crisis for his characters and puts them through very difficult paces about what it's like to, the daily pain of living life.

And it's a very complicated movie. It has this incredibly beautiful series of score choices by all of these European composers from the 16th, 17th, 18th century set to this very simplistic animation. If people haven't heard of this movie, I would recommend that they watch it. It is absolutely one of my favorite movies. It's technically

the official release of a three-part movie, and the first two parts had been previously released, though not in the sort of theatrical way, the mainstream way that this third piece, which put all three of them together, were released. And if we're sticking to making the occasional idiosyncratic personal

picks while also selecting movies like the Avengers, this is as good as I can do because this is as highly as I can recommend a film. It's such a beautiful day, and that's it. So let's recap where we landed. I feel like we all did very well, and that's what happens when you have an amazing movie year, and this is an amazing movie year. Very quickly, we will go through each category and who we selected for drama amanda you selected anna karenina chris has selected django unchained i've selected the master for comedy or horror amanda you've selected 21 jump street chris you've selected vhs i have selected sinister for blockbuster amanda you've selected the hunger games chris you've selected magic mike i selected the avengers for animated foreign

language we have a more for amanda rust and bone for chris and it's such a beautiful day for me Chris, you've selected Magic Mike. I selected The Avengers. For Animated Foreign Language, we have Amor for Amanda, Rust and Bone for Chris, and It's Such a Beautiful Day for me. For Wildcard, Argo, Amanda, Looper for Chris, Moonrise Kingdom for me, Sequel, Skyfall for Amanda,

The Bourne Legacy for Chris Ryan, and Prometheus for me. This is going to be an interesting vote. I would say this was the least contentious of our drafts thus far. I appreciate your civility in this matter. What movies did we not talk about? There are quite a few. We did not talk about Zero Dark Thirty.

Why not? Was it fear that animated your refusal to draft this film? I couldn't find the right spot for it. Obviously, this movie I thought is absolutely stunning piece of movie making. Piece of movie making, whether or not it's ethically or morally airtight. You know, I don't think it is.

But I think as a film, it is electrifying and it is just absolutely nerve shredding. I mean, do you guys still like this movie? I can't really say I've revisited it. Yes. I mean, I think it's like an accomplishment and it's gripping and it has been submerged in doubt because of what we've learned about

what actually happened. It's also fucked up. Fucked up stuff happens in it and you have to really just be okay with that or not okay with that. And I think my feelings about it fluctuate, but my feelings about its

cinematic accomplishment do not. You know, it did really put, it put Jessica Chastain like at the center of movie culture in many ways. And listeners of this show know she's one of my favorite actresses. I don't totally understand the direction she's taken her career in the last

few years. She was in a movie that opened this weekend called Ava. I assume neither of you have seen it. I haven't seen it. It's a movie about an assassin directed by Tate Taylor. I think Colin Farrell's in it too. Colin Farrell's in it as well. It's available on VOD right now. But I mean, the movies that she's made recently include It Chapter 2,

Dark Phoenix, Molly's Game recently include It Chapter 2, Dark Phoenix, Molly's Game, we talked about recently, The Zookeeper's Wife. I don't know what happened to Jessica Chastain specifically, but at this time, this was the year she made Lawless

and Zero Dark Thirty, and she was coming off of the Tree of Life and take shelter, and I don't know. I'm grateful that she arrived. I wish she would come back. The other one that we didn't talk about

that I'm surprised didn't come up is Chronicle. We're a Trank trio here. Yeah. We're not, but I did expect that to come up on one of your lists. Sean, I kind of thought that might be in the Sean wavelength. I overlooked it. Where would it go?

Blockbuster? No, it only made 60 something, right? that might be in the in the sean wavelength i overlooked it where would it go blockbuster no it only made 60 something right yeah i don't think it made 100 million dollars in the u.s so i guess wild card wild card drama that's tough i had my heart set on looper and you threw me for a loop so to speak i am i am your looper in some ways in which direction are you older than me or younger than me or um yeah and chris no flight yeah flight look look what are we talking about with flight we're talking about the crash like i'm not i'm not really trying to watch denzel do do bumps for two hours and then have like a weird trial and then be like i'm okay it's all right i saved everybody amanda i i surprised you didn't select your favorite movie of the year, The Hobbit and Unexpected Journey. That was shocking.

That's the first one, right? That's just where they eat a lot. That's the 25 minute scene of them breaking plates and singing. Yeah. I think Sean and I saw that the day after Christmas together in Glendale. That is a fact. I have never seen this and I never will. If this is your thing, I guess go with God. No, thanks. I would have loved to have seen what Guillermo del Toro was

going to do with the Hobbit movies. Unfortunately, Peter Jackson returned to them instead and basically just repeated himself for four years, which is just a very odd choice um couple of other ones that we missed that are notable no one selected lincoln as amanda pointed out which i don't know that just seems weird um and no one's like to killing them softly which i think is a movie that got a big got a got a resurgence of interest around the time when quarantine started and as our world slipped into a bit of disrepair. And I think it's like a very overwritten movie that is over stylized as well, but is also kind of prophetic and deeply cynical about the way that politics and crime fit together in our society. Again, Amanda, you had a chance to take ted you could have that on your board didn't do it right thanks two really beautiful documentaries this year that

we didn't talk about searching for sugar man which i believe went on to win best documentary at the oscars and jiro dreams of sushi which i would say is kicked off a netflix wave of interest in documentary and it was not originally produced by Netflix, and it's not the most successful movie that Netflix has ever run, but it was a discovery. And I think that at this time, people were starting to get used to it. And really, it probably happened in 2013 after the movie left theaters and arrived on Netflix, when people would just be like, what is this? That's a beautiful photo of sushi on this little tile on my TV screen. Should I watch this movie?

And this movie got a huge response on Netflix. And then it led to, I believe, the creation of Chef's Table, which is one of the longest running series on Netflix, this documentary food series made by the same person who made Jiro Dreams of Sushi. And it's an important movie. And we didn't talk about it. I feel bad about that.

So shout out to George and Sushi. Any other movies that you want to mention before we wrap this up? The Five-Year Engagement. I enjoyed that when I saw it. Emily Blunt. It certainly felt like a five-year engagement watching that film, right?

How many people have made that joke? Let me tell you though, the Dakota Johnson performance in Five- Five Year Engagement, she shows up and just steals it for like 15 minutes at the end.

I think I've, literally, this is one of the first times this has happened. Every movie I wanted to talk about, we hit with the exception of,

no, we talked about Battleship and I wanted to make sure we talked about Battleship. Yeah. Congratulations to you, Chris. Congratulations to Batt. Yeah. Congratulations to you, Chris. Congratulations to Battleship. Congratulations to you, Amanda.

Who do you think the people are going to vote for, guys? Tell me right now. I really sunk my own Battleship with my last two picks there. At least with Rust and Bone. I think I bummed myself out. Amanda, who do you think is going to win? Well, you have the Avengers, so I understand strategically why you picked that. I would challenge people to think outside the MCU, to dream bigger as movies did in 2012.

It's a beautiful sentiment. Chris, Amanda, thank you guys as as always, for drafting movies with us. Now let's go to my conversation with Billy Ray. I am delighted to be joined by screenwriter, director, producer, Billy Ray. Billy, how are you doing? I'm doing great. Thank you for having me. I'm glad you're here.

You've written so many of my favorite projects over the years and a lot of different kinds of projects. So you've written blockbusters, you've written docudramas, you've written prestige material, you've written popcorn material. At this stage of your career, what compels you to start working on a project? You know, it's the simplest litmus test in the world. Do I wake up thinking about it? If someone offers me a project, it doesn't matter how much money may be involved or if stars are attached or a great director, if I don't wake up thinking about it, if there isn't something subconsciously kind of trying to claw its way out, I just won't do my best work. So that's the test I apply. Do I wake

up thinking about it? How did James Comey come into your field of view or maybe your dreams? Well, I had been wanting to write something about the Trump presidency and its impact on the American democracy. And in particular, it was making me pretty crazy that he kept talking about this myth of the deep state, which I knew to be just public servants who cared about their country and cared about democracy and cared about the apolitical intentions of the institutions that kept that democracy going. But I didn't quite know what the right vehicle for it would be. And then one day, this great producer named Shane Salerno called me up and said, do you want to adapt Comey's book? And it was the night before it was published. And I said, oh my God, give me that book. And I read

it overnight and I called him in the morning. I said, I'm in. As a man who was in journalism school when Shattered Glass was released, we all owe you a debt of gratitude. You served up at least one course day for all of us. But from that experience on, I was curious when you're taking on a story that is based on true events, what's your process like? How do you research? How do you go about dramatizing these events? Well, in this case, you know, I had the jumping off point, which was Comey's book. Even though I think nothing in the first 172 pages of that book actually winds up in the story, because we weren't doing a biopic. We were doing something that was a lot more compressed than that. But then, you know, you get on a plane

and you go to D.C. and you meet everybody that you can meet and you pretend you're a journalist for a second. You know, you bring lots of notepads and you interview everyone that will sit down with you. In my case, that meant talking to people who had been at the FBI, people who had been at the DOJ, lots of reporters who had covered the story, people from the other side of the aisle. I wanted as many perspectives as possible. Then you got to read all the public-facing documents. That's the IG report and all the other books that were written about it. And then you have essentially this mass of material. I think at one point I was working off a treatment that was 144 pages long, just everything I knew about the story. Have you ever done a sculpture of an elephant?

I don't. You start with a block of granite and you chip away everything that's not an elephant, right? So all the research is your block of granite. And you take a step back and you say, okay, what's the elephant in there? What's the story that I want to tell? Well, from the beginning, it was always, I want to tell a story about how heartbreaking it is to be a public servant right now. And so everything that stuck to that idea stayed in and everything that didn't stick to that idea came out. And that's the process. How were you received in Washington by the FBI, the DOJ? Obviously, secrecy is a part of the work that they do and they've been under threat from this administration over the last

few years. Did you work hard to earn their sympathies? Were they willing to talk to you? What was that experience like? It was a closed door. I mean, I got no help from the FBI, which was a great contrast. In 2005, 2006, I made a movie called Breach, which was set in the FBI, Chris Cooper and Ryan Phillippe. And we were the first movie ever allowed to shoot inside the FBI. We were not extended that kind of courtesy in this particular case. And we didn't anticipate that we would be. And I'm trying to remember, did we ever physically walk inside the Department of Justice building? I think so. I think we got into the lobby and that was it. But we were not expecting a lot of help. That's part of what the story's about. There's so much distrust of so many of these public

institutions, but you've returned to them quite a few times in the stories that you've told over the years. Like, what is it that is you have like a personal connection to this world or what draws you to these people? I think what it is, is, is that question itself.

People in America tend to mistake the FBI as an institution. It's not an institution. It's a group of people who are stewards of an institution. And those people can have good intentions or bad intentions. They could have good judgment or bad judgment, but they're making the decisions, not the building. And if you need an example of that, look no further than the United States Postal Service. It's a very different animal with Louis DeJoy running it than it is with an actual human being running it who cares

about people getting their mail. Similarly, the Department of Justice is a very different animal with Bill Barr running it when he's trying to turn it into this semi-fascistic wing of the Trump administration, of the Trump political machine. Very different thing if you have an attorney general who actually cares about the rule of law. So I was fascinated by that. I always have been. That idea of, okay, the person in charge of the FBI at that particular moment is James Comey. Let's go inside those rooms that people did not have access to in 2016 and 2017. Let's show what really happened in there. And let's say to the world, okay, be Jim Comey for five minutes. Here are the facts on the ground. Here are the constraints. Here are the pressures.

Here are the political realities. What would you do? This is not an apology for Jim Comey. It's an exploration of what went into the decisions that he and his team made. And you may question those decisions, and I do, by the way, as a citizen. And Director Comey knows I feel that way. But I don't question the process by which those decisions were debated. I think that process had a great deal of integrity. What was your opinion of him before Shane approached you about doing this, of Comey? Well, initially, I hated him.

That's why I ask. I feel like many people felt that way. Oh, yeah, and many still do. I'm getting slammed harder from the left than I'm getting slammed from the right, at least at this moment. People who feel that I... How dare you make a movie about James Cone? Although I have to discipline myself to stop calling it a movie.

That's a very old habit. It's a series. It's a series. It's a series. It has movie energy, which is why you're on a movie podcast talking about it. Thank you. It does have movie energy. And by the way, while we were shooting, we called it the movie. We never called it a series. It was always going to be this three and a half hour movie that people just took a break from after night one. But anyway, getting back to the original point, which was, please remind me. Well, just what you thought of Comey before you started working on this story about him.

Thank you. I got myself off track. I, like so many Americans, blamed him for the election of Donald Trump. And as a matter of fact, I said that to Director Comey the first time we ever spoke. I was very clear with him that that's how I felt. I've now learned from no less an authority than James Clapper, who told me that the definitive factor in the 2016 election was the Russians. No question. And Clapper would know. And clearly,

they are trying to do it again in 2020. That's not a matter of conjecture. That's a matter of fact. And except now they have a completely knowing and perhaps willing participant in the White House itself, which is pretty sobering, which was all part of the reason why I felt it was so important to tell the story. I thought it was really important that Americans see this story, learn what Russia had done in 2016 before it was time to vote again in 2020. At what point did you meet James Comey? First conversation was a phone call where I had to sort of audition as the writer. And then it turns out shortly thereafter, he had to be in Southern California, which is where I

live. I live in LA. I think he had to be in Laguna on his book tour. And so I drove down to Laguna and that's where we actually met face to face. And I saw all six foot eight of him. And we talked about our family and we talked about our backgrounds and just got to know each other. And then I sent him 151 question document with just some basic stuff that I needed to know before I could even begin my research. And some of it was about the FBI and some of it was, you know, teeny stuff about, you know, what's your favorite food? And do you ever wear jeans? And, you know, what are you capable of cooking? And do you do you argue with your wife in the same way that you might argue with a co-worker? Those kind of things would just help me write up as a character.

What's significant about Comey is I've known him now over two years and he knew I was writing this story, of course, and had a million different opportunities to manipulate me or spin me or to try to steer me into creating a more flattering portrait of him. And he never did it. That told me a lot about his integrity. The series, the film, whatever we're calling it, seems sort of primarily oriented around this crisis of duty versus procedure, this complicated sense of honor that Comey seems to be coping with. When you were talking to him, did you, did you kind of try to interrogate some of those ideas specifically from him? Or were you just trying to get a sense of him as a, as a guy, as a man? It was all of that. I asked him about everything

under the sun and some of it was sort of big picture and some of it was very, very granular. Some of it was, okay, what went into this decision? And some of it was, okay, what about your personality made this a priority for you? If you're trying to capture a real character, whether it's Captain Phillips or Richard Jewell or Stephen Glass in Shattered Glass, you've got to get inside their head.

You've got to know how they think. And that goes for the big picture stuff and the very granular stuff, or you just can't write them with any sort of authenticity, I think. One thing that I find kind of a little bit vexing about him as a figure is, unlike some of the other characters that I think that are real people that you've written so well, he's such a logician and he's such a clear communicator that it's a little hard to get any sense of psychology.

Like it's really hard to get a sense of if he has kind of an inner turmoil because he's, he has carving such clear paths for his thinking. Is it, were you able to kind of like scrape away at some of that when you spoke to him or did you find that he had a very, you know, kind of proper approach to answering your questions? Well,

yeah, I think there is, there is that propriety and there is that i think incredible sense of inner peace that he may not be happy with the results of 2016 but i think he is very satisfied that he did he followed his true north um so sure you have to find a way to to demonstrate that inner life thank god i had jeff daniels who's a brilliant actor who plays a lot of inner life in every character but certainly delivered on that level here and i think the bigger thing is um i think our actions define us we are what

we do and ultimately you just look at what he. And that tells you who he is and what he values, for better or worse. But I knew that if we captured that, we'd have a really compelling, layered, nuanced character, which is, for me, who Jim Comey is. Were there any circumstances here where you couldn't come to a definitive conclusion about what had actually happened and you had to kind of dramatize the experience? No, no, everything in there. Everything in there. I feel very, very comfortable happened.

I stand by all of it. Things that I wish I had more information about. For example, I wrote to him when I was still writing the script. And I said, at what point did the FBI become aware of Russia's penetration into the NRA? And he wrote back, I cannot tell you. And I would ask him another question like that. And he would write back, nope, I cannot tell you. And I would literally say to him, hey, I'm trying to make a living here. Give me a break. I need some insight. I I would literally say to him, hey, I'm trying to make a living here. Like, give me a break.

I need some insight. I'm sorry, there are just certain things that are in the lockbox I can't tell you. And again, that tells me a lot about who the guy is. He can keep a secret. That made my job tougher, but in a weird way, convinced me more and more that I was doing the right job. Can we talk about portraying Donald Trump on screen? I'd love to.

So to my knowledge, I don't think this has yet been done, at least not in the way that you've done it. And I think it's actually oddly risky because we're in this moment where everyone can be publicly accosted for not falling in line. So I guess before we get into kind of casting Brendan Gleeson and even writing the character, quote unquote, did you or the network or anybody have any misgivings about just putting this person who's in our lives every day on screen? If the network did, they never said so. And, you know, they were paying me to write it and then they

were uh paying to go shoot it so maybe they were home screaming into their pillow i don't know you know for me um the attempt was always we're going to do the first dramatic interpretation of donald trump ever you know i love alec baldwin but we were not doing a sketch and maybe this will be the only dramatic interpretation of Donald Trump ever, because what actor is going to want to take this on after they saw what Brendan Gleeson just did? I mean, he has set the bar pretty high. That brought with it a lot of responsibility, of course, and a certain level of risk. I'm comfortable with that risk. I'm not a journalist. I didn't make a documentary. My job is a dramatic interpretation of events as truthfully as I could possibly make them.

I imagine to the extent that Donald Trump is aware of our series, it will infuriate him he doesn't seem to take that with a great deal of humor that may come back on me in some way uh that's not something i look forward to but uh i made this movie for my country and that that involves risk um i'm comfortable with it so what about brendan how does he become the person who portrays this? And did he have to be talked into it? Was he eager to do it? I'm kind of curious about all the aspects of bringing someone on board to do this job.

Well, Brendan turned it down initially for reasons that seemed really obvious. I mean, you're living happily in Ireland. Why the hell would you want to come to Toronto where we were going to shoot and tell the story of Donald Trump and then get your head handed to you? So I understood why he said no, but I had a great casting director named Sharon Bialy, and she stayed on top of Brendan's management team and just kept saying to him, Brendan should do this, Brendan should do this. And thankfully, he changed his mind, which was a great act of courage. He has a lot of talent. He could play a lot of different parts,

but he was so uniquely suited to playing this guy. He's fearless, which is great. And he has a great physical presence. He kind of hulks around in a way that's very, very Trumpian. And I think it comforted him that I had no intentions of taking any cheap shots at Donald Trump. I didn't want to do jokey makeup or jokey hair or suits that didn't fit. I didn't want to do any of that stuff. I wanted to tell the story of the relationship between Comey and Trump in such a way that Trump's behavior would be the thing that people judged him on. I think that's fair. And again, if we go back to we are what we do, we can all see what Donald Trump does, and either you like it or you don't, but here's what it is.

Was there anything about him in portraying him while you were writing him that you felt like maybe had not been captured before, had not been discussed that you wanted to emphasize? That's a great question. Yeah, I wanted to highlight what was so clearly a disinterest in his part on, how do I say this, a disinterest for him in the actual job. That he's not actually interested in being the chief executive of the United States. He's not actually interested in doing the work of the presidency. There's a scene in our show where Director Comey is briefing Trump and his team about a terrorist threat that is facing an East Coast American city

that coming summer. And everyone is quite appropriately horrified, and Trump's not paying attention. And that is a fact. That happened. That, I think, would qualify him as the first president in American history not to be terribly interested in defending the American public from a very real and present danger. That was important to me, that that part of the Trump presidency become clear. Aside from Trump, do you have a sense of how other real life figures are receiving this? I don't know if many people have seen it. I don't know if James Comey has seen it, for example, but what has the reception been like thus far for you? Director Comey has seen it and is very, very proud of it, which is, of course, gratifying. I've only got anecdotal evidence of how the thing is playing out there. I've done,

I don't know how many interviews in the last two or three weeks, and I've been pretty heartened to see how journalists feel about the series. It sounds terrible to say about your own work, but it sounds like they really love it and think that it's important and think that it's going to make a contribution to a national conversation about where we are as a democracy and where we've been and where we may be headed if we're not careful. But again, that's a relatively small sample size. So, you know, we'll see. We just have to wait till Sunday when it airs on Showtime, and then we'll see what people think of it.

Was this always meant to be a miniseries? Or had you imagined it as a film at some point? What was the, how did you, how did it come to this shape? There was about a two second conversation about doing it as a feature. And very, very early in the process, there was a pretty big-name director who was going to direct it, and I was going to write it for that director. And then he bailed. He kind of chickened out. I started to think about it as something that I would do.

And once that happened, I said to myself, there's no way I'm going to work this hard on something for two years and then have it open against Avengers 4 and get its ass kicked. That just doesn't sound like fun at all. Plus, I thought there was more than two hours of story here. And it turns out there was nearly four. And I had never done a limited series before. So that sounded like a really great challenge. And all in all, I think we absolutely picked the right platform and the right network. How do you make decisions now about projects you want to direct or projects that are just for hire?

What goes into that calculus at this point? There are very few projects that I feel capable of directing. What makes you say that? I just think I have a pretty narrow uh visual skill set um i i think there are a lot of things uh i'm not great at in terms of directing um you know if i finish a script like captain phillips it's really clear to me that paul greengrass is a better idea than i am if i write richard jewell it's really clear to me clint eastwood is a better idea than i am um but in this particular case,

I felt like the thing that I was trying to say was so specific and was so within the scope of other projects I've directed before, I felt comfortable telling this story. And I felt this story was not going to suffer at all from my limitations as a director. I think you're tremendous at people talking in rooms movies, which is one of my favorite subcategories of movie. Can you talk about just the challenges of making a movie, of making something like that just interesting to watch? Sure.

And I will say the most gratifying thing so far is that no one's called it boring. It's definitely not boring. It's riveting. Now, part of the credit for that goes to my DP, Elliot Davis, who's incredible. A lion's share goes to my editor, Jeff Ford, who's, I think, the best editor in the business and really understands pace and performance and all of that. But I think the two biggest factors are, one, just making sure on a script level

that even though you're writing scenes in which information is getting passed between people, that the scenes are not actually about information, that the scenes are actually about the emotions of the characters inside those scenes. And if you look at the scenes in the Comey rule, everybody in the room has a point of view that's really specific and really charged.

And they have a lot of skin in the game and they care about the outcome of all these decisions. So what you're watching actually is not informational. It's emotional and it's harrowing and it's powerful in that way. And then the next huge element is you got to have great actors. If you don't have great actors, then you really do have just people talking in rooms. And boy, oh boy, did I have great actors.

Are you the sort of person that will go back and look at some films before you start something like this just to kind of get a sense of how it should look or the pace or the feeling of the movie? Like, are there, are there presidents talking in rooms movies that you looked at ahead of this? Well, all the president's men has always touched on for me. Um, it's, it was so seminal in my life and, and, uh, I've been passionately ripping it off ever since. Um, you know, uh, Picasso once said good artists borrow and great artists steal and I I'm endeavoring to be a great artist. So, uh, Picasso once said, good artists borrow and great artists steal. And I I'm endeavoring to be a great artist. So, uh, yes, there's a lot of all the president's men in anything I do, especially if it's set in DC. Um, but actually the two movies, uh, that in the screenwriting phase were the most impactful for me. One, uh, was Jaws Jaws, because I thought it was just so brilliant the way they held off

the reveal of the shark. And I said, okay, that's what we're going to do here. We're going to do night one. You're going to know there's a shark out there, but you're really just going to be following Chief Brody, in this case, Jeff Daniels. And you're not going to experience what that shark looks like until the protagonist does.

So the end of night one is, okay, the shark's out there and now our hero's in the water with him. Okay, now what? Well, tune in for night two and you'll see. So that was the first thing, structurally. And then the second tentpole for me was Amadeus because I loved the narrative framing device they had there with Salieri telling the story of Mozart. It was such an interesting choice, and I thought, Rod Rosenstein can do that for me. Rod Rosenstein can be my Salieri talking about Comey as Mozart, as the kind of leader that Rod knows he will never, ever be. And it seemed like a really good way to hang a lantern on the idea that people are so divided about Comey that they find him to be such a polarizing figure.

I wanted to announce to the audience within a minute of the movie starting, I know you aren't sure how you feel about Jim Comey. I'm going to let someone who hates Jim Comey tell you Jim Comey's story. That seemed like a really good idea too. Yeah, I was interested in that specifically because I think a lot of Americans have opinions of Donald Trump. Many Americans have opinions of James Comey or even Sally Yates or Michael Flynn or other people who were portrayed in the film. Rosenstein is a big figure in this story, but I don't know if people have as many opinions about him and they're going to if they watch your film. Do you know if Rod Rosenstein has seen this or if there's any sense

of, you know, because he comes out not looking great. I have no idea. And the more I've learned about Rod Rosenstein in the last month or two, the more I feel like I probably took it too easy on him. Wow. I wanted to ask you quickly about Richard Jewell, which is a movie that I really admired, but did come under some criticism. And I was curious if, as that criticism was happening about the way that some of the real life figures were portrayed, that gave you any pause or concern about doing something like this, which is at sort of an even greater scale in terms of the story that you were telling? Well, first, I would say that the mistake I made on Richard Jewell was I put something, one inference in that movie that I believed to be true, but I could not prove. That was something that really, really hurt that movie. And it's a deep, deep regret.

I mean, you learn stuff on every movie. And I certainly learned stuff on Richard Jewell. That said, I had written a draft of Richard Jewell in which the character in question, the Olivia Wilde character, I had given her a false name. And I suggested to the studio, you should do this. And they chose not to. They chose to go with the real name, which exposed us to that fire. And that was a lesson learned as well. Did it make me more careful while I was making the Comey rule? Probably. Probably. But I also think it's really tough with some movies to know where they're going to land in terms of history i could be dead wrong um and i could be just flattering myself uh both those things are real real possible but i think five years from now 10 years from now uh whenever

uh clint eastwood's career is looked back upon in its totality, I think people will say that Richard Jewell was one of the most underrated movies of his career. I'm very, very proud of it. I think it's really actually quite a great film, but obviously, you know,

that had been such a talking point. I was kind of curious about your point of view on that. And to that point, is there, is there a true life story that you've always wanted to tell but haven't gotten the chance? You're so good at capturing these stories. Oh, thank you. There are a million World War II stories that I'd like to tell. I never tire of reading about them. I never tire of learning about them. And I never lose my desire to shine a light on that seminal moment in world history and America's extraordinary

contribution to saving the world. I would love to do more of that. There's also another story that I think is very, very close to production that I'm really, really excited about. I don't know if you know the story of Tommy Smith and John Carlos, who were the two sprinters in Mexico City in 1968, who did this on the medal stand. That was a story that I chased the rights to that story for 22 years before I finally tracked those rights down. And the script is now written, and it's at a studio that wants to make it.

And I think COVID willing, that movie will be in production this year. And that's something I'm really, really excited about. Amazing. Billy, we end every episode of the show by asking filmmakers, what's the last great thing they've seen? Have you been watching much as you've been doing press for the Comey rule? I've been watching a lot of TV, lots of streaming on TV, showing my wife The Wire, which she had never seen before. And that is extraordinary. Yeah. Oh my God. I just got done last night with season two of Pen15 on Hulu, which I think is wonderful. Just great. So daring and so different. Part of the ethos of Hollywood right now is that so much of the exciting stuff is happening in the streaming space, in television, as opposed to on the screen. And obviously COVID is a part of that. But

I think that the fact that a story like The Comey Rule found its home on TV and not in the features, when it was being written by someone whose life has been dedicated to features, kind of tells you where the tides are shifting right now. And I don't think that's a good thing. If you made All the President's Men today, there's no question it would be a streaming play. No question. Probably 10 episode, too yeah maybe so maybe so but i would argue uh absent steven spielberg if you made schindler's list today unless you had steven spielberg that's a streaming play too for sure um spielberg gets to play in his his own sandbox and he's earned that right. But I can't think of another director alive today who could make Schindler's List in today's Hollywood culture in that climate and could get it made as a feature. I don't think anyone else could pull it off. I wanted to ask you one other thing in that regard too. I'm always curious with

kind of master screenwriters, what's the last great movie you saw where you were kind of jealous of the script itself? Well, there were a number of them last year. I thought Parasite was pretty extraordinary. I thought Jojo Rabbit was extraordinary. I thought 1917 was extraordinary uh i would have been really proud to have been the author of any of those and and it is a horrible thing to say it's self-aggrandizing but i thought richard jewel was the fourth um of what i thought were four really really great movies last year and again i'm biased but um but for me though those four were my favorites of the year. And the other three, the ones that I had nothing to do with, they were, oh my God, all so daring in their own way and so groundbreaking in their own way and all of them just so emotional. Yeah, there's still great work being done out there in features.

Absolutely. It's just the system as it exists right now is designed to keep great work out um if you make a great movie today it's it's an accident like you you somehow sneaked it through but uh but the system is there to try to make everything homogenous so that every movie is for everybody which means every movie is really for nobody. And that's something TV is not doing right now. And that's why TV, for the most part, is more interesting, I think. I think the Comey rule is doing it, Billy. Thanks for doing the show today. Thank you. It's really been a pleasure. Thank you again to Billy Ray, Chris Ryan, Amanda Dobbins, and Bobby Wagner.

Thank you for listening to The Big Picture. Tune in later this week when we will be talking about our favorite movie dads. We'll see you then.