The Big Picture - The Clint Eastwood Mt. Rushmore, and the Curious Case of  ‘Juror No. 2.’ Plus: ‘Heretic’!

Episode Date: November 12, 2024

Sean is joined by Adam Nayman to discuss the head-scratching rollout of Clint Eastwood’s justice system interrogation, ‘Juror No. 2’ and the movie’s successes, shortcomings, and Eastwood-isms (1:00). Then, Sean briefly discusses the appeal of ‘Heretic’ (55:00) before being joined by the film’s directors, Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, to talk about their writing process, Hugh Grant’s lead performance, the state of getting movies made, and more (58:00). Host: Sean Fennessey Guests: Adam Nayman, Scott Beck, and Bryan Woods Senior Producer: Bobby Wagner Video Producer: Jack Sanders Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's up, everybody? Chris Vernon here, and welcome to a new season of the NBA and the mismatch. And huge welcome as well to my new co-host, Dave Jacoby. I can't wait to link with you twice a week, every Tuesday and Friday, right here on the mismatch to break down everything that's happening in the league. Who's playing well, who we loved, who we loathed, trade rumors, team dysfunction. We've got you covered right here. So follow us, subscribe, and hit us with those five star ratings on Spotify or

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Up to $500,000 in total contributions. I'm Sean Fennessey, and this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about Clint. Later in this episode, I'll be talking with Scott Beck and Brian Woods, the writer-directors of the new Hugh Grant horror thriller Heretic. Scott and Brian wrote A Quiet Place. They directed a clever 2018 horror flick called Haunt, and they're hardcore cinephiles. Stick around for our chat. But first, interesting conversation today. We need to talk about Clint Eastwood and his new film Juror No. 2, which you may have seen

if you live in France or within driving distance of one of the 38 screens that is showing this film in America right now. We'll discuss why the movie itself is not available to the public at large and what is going on in the film. And we'll also talk about Clint Eastwood's legacy. We're doing so with the not-so-mean pod guy, the wonderful pod guy, Adam Naiman.

Hi, Adam. Hey, Sean. How are you? I'm doing splendidly. I'm so happy to be back talking with you about Clint. You know, me, you, and Chris Ryan, some years back during the COVID-19 pandemic, recorded an episode about the film Cry Macho, and we talked about why we love Clint Eastwood's movies.

And we're back here. Clint's back with another film. And boy, this sure is a pickle in modern entertainment times. What the hell is going on with Juror No. 2? What the hell is going on with Juror No. 2? I live in Toronto, where one, you know, Canada, that's your neighbor to the north. Is it now? You know, is it now?

One theater in Toronto showing Juror No. 2. And I was lucky enough to see the movie at a press screening that seemed to be arranged very hastily but my timeline on friday was filled with the cream of a toronto's film community turning up and paying their hard-earned money to see juror number two and then people tweeting at me being like i live in other parts of canada it's not playing here and then people tweeting i live in other parts of the states it's not playing here. And then people tweeting, I live in other parts of the States. It's not playing here. You said 38 theaters. That's apparently the number, right?

This is a stop the steal situation. We have to count the theaters, but it's less than 50. Less than 50. And that's an astonishing thing for any movie by one of the major studios, a studio whose whole existence is built on size. They're huge Warner discovery. They make everything. They, they,

they do everything. Why would anything be in 50 theaters with no plans to roll it out larger? But I read today to just get it out of theaters and onto max by the end of the year. And why indeed Clint Eastwood? And the question that this is a really good movie, which we'll hopefully get to later, isn't even what we're talking about yet.

It's just why? Do you know why, Sean? In my opinion, you pay attention to the industry. Your job requires you to. I have some theories. I have no hard reporting. I think you've got two competing things happening here. One, you've got Warner Brothers things happening here one you've got

warner brothers recent merger with discovery leading to an extraordinary amount of debt and so that debt has um i guess encouraged some of the leadership at the studio to cancel the release of certain movies like batgirl or like the uh reportedly great coyote versus acne film which apparently we're never going to see. And then in this case, and in the case of a couple of other movies, though not many, a very, very, very, very modest theatrical release before making this officially a streaming film.

You know, Warner's is doing a lot of straight-to-streaming movies. They just released a Salem's Lot film that seemed like it was intended to be theatrical originally and went straight to the service. And so we've been going through this for years. Warner Brothers in particular has been at the center of this kerfluffle of streaming versus theatrical since the pandemic, in part because of the Project Popcorn initiative, you may recall, wherein all of the 2021 slate films were sent directly to Max.

That wasn't ideal for moviegoing at all. And Warner Brothers, even though there's been some regime change, some confusion about what is the right way to platform movies. Also, Warner Brothers is having a tricky year in terms of its theatrical releases writ large. They have had huge success with Dune Part 2, Beetlejuice. Beetlejuice has done pretty good business. But if you look at Furiosa, if you look at Horizon Part 1, if you look at Trap, these are movies from big legendary filmmakers that did okay to poorly. And I sense that the leadership that is not the top-line leadership, the sort of CEO David Zaslav-type figures, but even just the film studio leadership, is a little unsure of what it

means to be a master these days and whether or not masters deserve to be platforms the way that they used to. Now, we can talk about what Clint Eastwood means to the movies in this conversation, and we should. But one thing that's interesting about Clint to me is that within the last six years, he made a bona fide original hit for the movie theaters in the movie The Mule. He was in his late 80s when he made that movie and was still able to draw audiences. So I find this decision to be flummoxing at best, deeply discouraging, and maybe even crisis-like at worst. I think I like this movie. I know that I don't like it quite as much as you, but it's so obvious that a movie like this has commercial potential because you can just look at all of the other movies being released around it and how

they're performing. So I find the whole thing a massive, massive bummer. What do you think? Well, because you can't discredit someone until you give them the credit where it's due in the first place, right? And Warner Brothers historically, not solely, but historically is the place where a kind of master filmmaker works. They're not the house that Stanley Kubrick built, but he certainly paid some of the rent in the 70s, high overhead with Stanley Kubrick, you know? But the artistic currency of Kubrick is a lot, and so is Clint Eastwood, and you mentioned some more contemporary people. I think it's interesting that filmmakers who listeners of this show are probably more fond of than I am, but who you have to take seriously, like your Christopher Nolans and like your Denis Villeneuve are the filmmakers who Warner has like cultivated and alienated in a very short span. In the last couple of years. years so you don't even have to drill down to the kind of commercially dicey masters like a george

miller or even a shamalan to talk about the idea that like this is where nolan supposedly was going to make movies where denis villeneuve is making movies that work and every skirmish with warner brothers ends up like these people not liking the studio and its leadership or feeling compromised i put in my piece on juror number two it's's a throwaway joke, but it's not funny. Two jokes, which is why is Tom Cruise, who I think only believes in movies, I don't know what values or human feelings he has beyond the fact that he likes movies,

working with someone treating them as a tax write-off. And God help us with Paul Thomas Anderson's movie. This is not based on any knowledge. I have no knowledge of anything except that I really want to see this movie. $140 million, big tax write-off. You know, I'm not stirring stuff by saying it. I'm like, what trust do we have? What happens when Warner Brothers cancels Wile E. Coyote?

You can't actually cancel him. He has to keep coming back. That is the fucking point of the character yeah is he he keeps coming back and they're like actually no wily coyote you can't exist for me spiritually that was the last straw you don't let me see a wily coyote movie and you're an enemy of of art and clint eastwood is in that same category and the mule was a big hit and uh whatever else you think of his recent movies we can talk about this whole idea that he still makes movies and not content which is a shriek

a shrinking list of of anybody but you would think that if you spent the money on the thing you'd try and make the money back on it and the idea that this all happened supposedly and i know it's more dramatic to boil it down to a single exchange and it's a little glib but like the idea that this all happened supposedly, and I know it's more dramatic to boil it down to a single exchange and it's a little glib, but like the idea that the studio exec who will not be named, because if I say his name three times, he's going to come around and cancel a movie that I like, you know, responded to the idea that you should maybe be respectful to Clint Eastwood with like, we're not here to make friends. You know, this is show business, not show friends. Yes. According to great Bob Sugar. Yeah. That's what the fucking bad guy in Jerry Maguire says.

It's not what Jerry Maguire says. It's the guy who we don't like in Jerry Maguire. By the way, does Tom Cruise know that he said that? Because Tom Cruise, who I think can't tell the difference between reality and fantasy sometimes might be like, someone said that to me once. I didn't like that guy. Yeah. You know?

Tom Cruise of the fewer clients, less money verbiage in that film. And yeah, I mean, I know we're talking about Clint and not Tom here, but it's like, Cruise has now crossed that Rubicon into being more of an East Woodian figure because he is kind of standing up for like the movies, you know? This is like Cruise's stump speech and uh i don't like thinking that he might be collateral damage in this same idea of a studio that is from the very foundations of movie making now kind of being like we don't know if we make movies anymore and if we do should we really release them and do we trust when critics say something like trap is good

because without putting too fine a point on it, that wasn't press screened either. Yeah. I mean, there's the very small experiences that folks like you and I are having with a particular studio at a given time. And then there's the history of that studio. And then there's a kind of tech incursion in the way that the entertainment marketplace has been wildly disrupted in the last 10 years. The ironic thing, I think, is that it's not just that Warner Brothers has this extraordinary history of supporting great filmmakers who are very audacious. This is the studio of John Calley, one of the great creative executives in movie history. But it's also, Mike DeLuca is one of the studio chiefs there now.

And Mike DeLuca is renowned for having tremendous taste and for giving filmmakers a chance. He worked at New Line for many years. He, of course, is responsible for getting Boogie Nights into the world. He brought Paul Thomas Anderson to the studio.

He is in part responsible for bringing Tom Cruise to the studio on a producing deal. He brought M. Night Shyamalan to the studio on a new deal, removing him from, you know,

other agreements. Like, he is a, at least for us, that very delicate intersection of auteur craft and entertaining mainstream movie going like mike deluca is one of the good guys in that equation he wrote in the mouth of madness yes so life it's a lifetime pass everything you've said is probably higher up on the resume but like dude wrote in the mouth of madness, Toronto shot classic, by the way. I mean, that's a light that that's a lifetime pass. And I don't speculate on the psychology or how these people feel in their heart of hearts, but

sure. He's not thrilled. Whatever he might think of a juror number two, the press is bad. Yes. Right. And I, and I know it's easy to create these institutional villains and, you know, go after Zaslav as an embodiment of something bad, the same way it's easy to prop up Eastwood is something good, but it's like, what else are we supposed to do? We're not supposed to know how the omelet gets made.

Our job is to be critics and commentators and weigh the evidence and read the tea leaves like jurors, you know, and, and, and ascribe guilt and innocence and i find uh warner brothers guilty of doing clint eastwood dirty you know like heart seriously here this makes this is awful i i don't know what the sentencing will be for this crime but it isn't

good let's just give it some context too for the contemporary times the movie reported we're recording this the week after its release this episode may not come out until the following week we'll see i think by the time this episode comes out it may not even be in any movie theaters anymore it may be completely pulled from movie theaters and so it makes having a conversation about the film complicated but at the time that we're recording conclave has already made north of 15 million dollars in movie theaters with a wide release. A movie that, even though it's a papal drama, that is a mystery movie, is essentially appealing to the same audience

that a movie like Jury No. 2 is appealing to. Conversely, the film here did not perform nearly as well as it would have liked to, and that is a film that is sort of like a technocrat's idealized dream versus Clint's style, which is this very forthright, typical, sturdy, dramatic genre picture, which he has thrived with for decades. You know, you've also got to consider this movie made $5 million internationally and millions in France, his beloved France, where Eastwood has been venerated for decades. So, you know, and also we're in a time where it's

so clear to me based on the success of a show like Presumed Innocent that we're like also we're in a time where it's so clear to me based on the success of a show like presumed innocent that we're like we're in the mode we're in the mood for the scott tarot john grisham right down the middle legal drama this is something that people have liked and have always liked and for whatever reason it was cast off to streaming television and it very much belongs at the movies so i find the whole thing bewildering it feels like ultimately some combination of contempt and negligence and i don't know what the percentages are in those two directions but it is it is it is frustrating and i think there there is a there is maybe a not a point of view but there's like some rhetoric which is like well

okay so the law of averages has to come for Eastwood eventually, and he's been insulated for so long. Malpaso with its deal with Warners, he gets to make whatever he wants, he makes it how he makes it. But I don't really know how many people making that argument can square that with just the tension we all live under, which is it's an industry, it's a mercenary industry. And if Clint's movies provide return on investment, they're never going to stop giving him that freedom. If he happens occasionally, more frequently than most to make either good product or arguable art, I mean, that's a whole other discussion. I don't think the problem here is that Warner Brothers or its executives have bad taste and don't see that juror number two is good.

I'm like, my argument is they spent money on it. They could potentially make money on it. Leave the adjudication of whether it's art to the jurors who work as film critics, but just let audiences see this movie. I think this movie shouldn't go to max. This movie should be put in a time machine to 1997 and played with commercial breaks on TBS, that would actually be a good thing because back then I think we were all taking the idea of like well-made self-contained movie shaped objects for granted. We didn't know how good we had it, not just with Eastwood, but sort of in general, like

this movie made me feel to some extent it's much better than this movie, but it's sort of like, Oh, like it's like watching primal fear you know percent and uh it's also like if primal fear was sort of brissonian but that's the pretentious critic part of it later but it's just like this is just an entertaining movie man yeah i wonder if and i you know this can lead into a conversation about the film and some broad strokes and then maybe we can just locate five minutes that people can skip over if they want to to talk through the ending of bit because i'm fascinated by the ending of this movie yeah but the movie itself is not sexy at its core it's it's a really classic moral exploration of personal and institutional failure like those are clearly the thing and those are things that

he has been interested in maybe even obsessed with for roughly 20 years now in his films. With an extremely sexy front man because Nicholas Holt, he of the blue eyes, they are Clint, Clint caliber blue eyes. Clintonian even. Clintonian blue eyes, Clint and Clintonian. But yeah, not, not the sexiest, not the sexiest movie in a lot of ways. It's also a movie that's very formally made. It has some interesting moves. You know, there is a clear, like, noir Hitchcock thing going on

inside the strategy of the movie. But it's just a lot of interiors. It's a lot of archetypal characters. It moves in patterns that are familiar. And so because of that, sometimes that can be a good thing. Sometimes an executive can look at a movie like that and say, like, I know what this is. I know how to program this. I know how to market it.

I know how to get it out into the world. And sometimes that might make them think, like, this is a seen it all before kind of a situation. This is a guy working in an old register that doesn't get what modern entertainment culture is all about. And so I think because of that, even just the way that scenes are blocked, they feel like a Malpaso movie from, if not 1972, then certainly like Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. You know what I mean? That's a movie that this is in relationship to another Southern set legal drama.

And so maybe it just feels like passé to them. To me, it was very comforting. It's comforting and it's also troubling because one of the things this movie argues it's not a movie that's that subtle in some places but the classicism of it and the familiarity of it is subtle because it's basically saying yes this could have happened in 1955 or 92 because our legal system has remained not our i'm canadian anyone listening i take back the hour. I'm not the one having an election today. Good luck. But that the American legal system, which ours resembles in a

lot of ways, is set in stone. And a lot of things about the United States and its values and its processes and its assumptions are set in stone. So in that case, it's not that the movie's familiar or derivative, it's like eternal. And the moral crisis that this movie pivots on is not something that was invented yesterday. Nothing's ever invented yesterday, but people like to convince themselves that certain themes like, oh, this is topical. And it's like, no, this is topical the way like, you know, Genesis is topical. The book of Genesis, you know, it's like, it's pretty, pretty, pretty, you know, know this is like am i my brother's keeper stuff yes you know yes and uh i think being a bit of a monument and a monolith himself being a mount rushmore unto himself uh quinn eastwood is very interested in how things change or don't over time and that's the kind of lens that you talk about the movie

through yeah it could play on TBS in like 1995. But I mean, it would be a pretty profound movie even then, I think. I think so too. Because I don't think, you know. Yeah, I think. Well, I don't know if I would have said that until I got to the conclusion of the film. Like I think the emotional quagmire that the character finds himself in is certainly rich. It's definitely rich.

Should we tell people what it's about? Yeah, we should. The trailer's interesting because you'd think it spoils the movie, but the best thing about the movie is even if you know the premise, it's still interesting. So it's about a juror for a high-profile murder trial. This juror is a successful freelance magazine writer of some kind living in Georgia who finds himself struggling with this dilemma, which is that he is on the jury of a case

in which he may or may not have played a major and potentially devastating role. And there's a man on trial for his life for murdering a woman who was his girlfriend and Nicholas Holt was present seemingly at the events that are depicted in the film's case. So Nicholas Holt's character has to determine how to operate inside of this situation. The case that is presented feels very open and shut. It appears that the man who is on trial is guilty.

And then invariably the movie, roughly a third of the way through, becomes a 12 Angry Men style disquisition on guilt and truth and reasonable doubt and how we can know what's real and what's not. And also I think has some very

clever contemporary spins on how everyone thinks that they understand everything about true crime, but also people who get called into jury duty just need to go home and take care of their kids or go take care of their pregnant wife, which Nicholas Colt's character has a, with a high risk pregnancy played by Zoe Deutsch. And so it's a, it's a straight down the middle potboiler drama. Well, and I was grateful to get to write about it at some length for, for, for Ringer. You know,

it's wonderful to get to write 2000 words on a movie. It's hard to do that almost anywhere else. I'm just saying that out of gratitude. It's a great piece. Uh, you know, the, the 12 angry men thing is interesting. Cause I know we're treading on spoiler territory territory. We're actually being more careful than the trailer, which kind of comes out and says what it is, but also it spoils the shit out of it spoils the shit out of it but i still think the movie's good but let's just say that you know in 12 angry men the legacy of that movie and it really is a kind of centrist lib legacy 12 angry men is like the boomer centrist movie hall of fame it's also one of the 10 most popular movies highest rated movies on letterboxd which obviously means

that the kids still relate to it i have noticed noticed that. And I think part of that is because that movie, like this movie, is genuinely entertaining. Genuinely entertaining. But I mean, in 12 Angry Men, you have Henry Fonda in his white suit. He's the only one in the jury room who looks at this Puerto Rican kid in the defendant box and imagines, that could be me. And if it was me, would I want us to talk more about it? Suffice it to say that in Jura number two, Nicholas Hoult comes to the same conclusion, but not because he's the best person in the world. He has other reasons for maybe putting himself in that defendant box imaginatively and sort of, what is his duty to this defendant?

What is this duty to himself and to his country? Suffice it to say, country is not at the top of his list of priorities. I think the movie suggests maybe nor should it be, nor can it be, nor will it be for any of us. I'm not trying to tip our hand about when we're recording this, but like it's an interesting election season movie about self-interest. Where does self-interest where does self-interest lead do you vote for yourself or do you vote for for for for the idea of other people which is like at the core of every ideological and policy debate in american history you know so yeah it's scott turow but it's also a philosophical treatise of a movie it is and it's not a mistake that the character that Holt plays is in recovery and attends AA meetings throughout the film. One of the funny things about the movie is that Eastwood, because he's Eastwood, is able to cast these extraordinary actors in minuscule parts. has a big flashy part as a prosecutor. She's obviously wonderful. Then you've got J.K. Simmons as a juror

who also has some expertise that he brings to the case. And then you also have Kiefer Sutherland coming in for basically two days as both sort of an AA counselor and an attorney. And that is the character for whom he's sort of like the therapist of the movie sort of receives Nicholas Holt's guilt and tells him what to do with it. And Kiefer,

Kiefer Sutherland comes off the bench in this movie with like four, four, four for four from three and like five minutes. It is a true Dion waiters. He goes crazy for a few minutes. It's just nice. It's just nice to see Kiefer Sutherland in a big fancy Hollywood movie. It really reminds you just what a dependable screen presence someone like that can be. I don't know if he would have done a part like this for almost any other director, but it raises the stakes. It raises the sense of importance when you're watching a movie like this too. Yeah. And there's so much pleasure in watching people like Tony Collette and J.K. Simmons, who are always good, but sometimes it's not, I believe it's not about taking them for granted.

It's more that, I don't know, the movies that it's more of an issue with the movies that they're in. Like in some ways the movies are not too ambitious or too pushy, but they're just so like, I like, you know, J.K. Simmons recently being in Saturday night. Like I couldn't enjoy that, but, but him coming into this movie, his character, and I know we're trying not to spoil it, but it's the most brilliant characterization in the entire movie, which is what if someone who could potentially solve the movie is going to show up, but this movie still has to be two hours long. What is the movie going to do with that? And I love what it does with it because it's both incredibly clever and innovative in a kind of storytelling way. And it's also very telling about what happens in life, which is often people who are in the best position to understand

something or do something are prevented from it. And there's a bureaucratic reason for it, which really ties to sort of Clint's conservatism, but is also not wrong. Like people are punished in some ways for having an intelligence. We're not punished, but people are prohibited from having an intelligent informed perspective on something, even something important. Yeah, you just hit on something that I think is important. Obviously, one of the stranger moments of Clint's career is the speech to the empty chair that he famously gave at the Republican National Convention that codified him clearly in the mind of many Americans as a far-right-leaning demagogue type.

You know, reasonable people can disagree. I think his politics have always kind of shifted pretty dramatically over the years. And in some cases, he's portrayed as like a lout when it comes to women. In some cases, he's portrayed as like wildly progressive. So he's portrayed as like a lout when it comes to women in some cases he's portrayed as like wildly progressive so he's he's a bit of a difficult nut to crack i think that a movie like this depending on what you want from it you could it can be read as a classic libertarian interpretation of the way that institutions operate it could be seen as a like a necessarily reformist portrait of the way that institutions need to change it could be seen as a necessarily reformist portrait of the way that institutions need to change. It could be seen as purely, as you said, the sort of Brissonian moral exploration,

which is much more about the self and is a little bit less interested in ultimate. It's essentially like we can build around the way that these institutions insist on holding us back. If you look at Richard Jewell, if you look at 1517 in Paris, if you look at American Sniper, if you look at The Mule, if you look at 1517 to Paris, if you look at American Sniper, if you look at The Mule, if you look at all these movies about these people that

are trying to operate inside the system to a point and come to a realization that the system cannot contain their own perception of rightness, then that really is where Clint always lies. Like Sully is very much about that, another movie about a character who goes on trial

wrongly and needs to get restitution for the misdeeds of the institution. So yeah, he's very interested in why people try and do the right thing. Should they try and do the right thing? What is the right thing?

That's the common thread to almost all those movies. And there's a couple movies in there I really don't like. I'm not a fan of a fan of american sniper but i'm very fond of its weird spiritual doppelganger which is 1517 to paris which i think is the better version of that story and this one is weirdly similar to richard jewell i agree uh very very similar to richard jewell which is a late clint i like but boy does he drill down to the personal. Again, it's not a spoiler, but it's a way of describing the movie. There is no more

resonant image in this movie than that of an empty chair. And anyone who's going to tell me that he doesn't know that and that he is not, whatever his age, a lot of the positive rhetoric around Clint almost verges into a kind of reverse ageist criticism where everyone's just trying to celebrate him because he's kind of old. And it's like, he's old, but he's smart as a fox, man. I mean, that, that, that shot of the chair,

which is not the second unit. You can tell me that the second unit directed the battle scenes in American Sniper, if you want. That empty chair is Clint and it, the empty chair points pointing towards him in a way not that he's the man who isn't there but that that's significance of what it means to question institutions what happens when that questioning gets turned around on you and it's not a word i

usually apply to eastwood because i'm a critic i don't love all of his movies but there is something kind of heroic about the fact that he still wants to try and make movies about serious things. When even the best filmmakers that we deal with that we have put everything in quotes or face away from the present because they want to do these luxuriously subsidized period pieces. I love how contemporary journal number two is, even though it's obviously quite classical. He's not given up. I think that lack of irony or hipness is part of why it is in this position that it's in.

It's an interesting movie, too, because let's just tent five minutes around the ending of this movie. If you do not want this movie spoiled for you, and I fully understand that you do not, because in all likelihood you have not seen it, and you want to wait until it comes to max. And Adam and I would both encourage you to see it. Just fast forward five minutes. Spoiler warning. I was, I would say I was enjoying the film with some reservations

because of some very stilted characterization, especially in the jury room, a handful of performances that felt very much not able to achieve what they needed to in the Clint filmmaking style, where you're like getting one or two takes and they're moving on. A couple of actors who could have used more. This is not the case for Nicholas Holt or J.K. Simmons or Tony Collette or Chris Messina. The stars of the movie, I think, are uniformly excellent in the movie, but there are supporting characters who needed a little bit more time to

shake things out, and maybe the script needed another pass too. Nevertheless, when we got to the ending of the movie in which by some chance the Nicholas Holt character has been able to extricate himself from deliberating at the end of the jury. And the jury has convicted the man who is on trial.

And he has returned to his quiet life in the suburbs with his wife. They give birth. They have a child. All the while, the prosecutor, played by Colette, is having serious doubts about the case, after she's confronted by J.K. Simmons' character, an ex-cop. And she goes to great lengths to look into the research that Simmons' character has unearthed, and she does finally realize that, in fact, the case is a hit-and-run and not a murder with a blunt object. And the hit-and-run was perpetrated by Nicholas Holt's character. And so the film has this drawn out conclusion over the course of seven or eight minutes

where we're not entirely clear after sentencing has transpired where we're going to go and what's going to happen to Holt. We see him with his family and his baby. We're waiting and waiting and waiting. And finally, there's a knock at the door and Holt answers the door and standing in the doorway is Toni Collette. And finally, there's a knock at the door and Holt answers the door

and standing in the doorway is Toni Collette. And she is there, presumably, to tell him, we will not be battling the appeal of the convicted man. We're going to let him free and you're going to be tried for this case. Presumably, that was my interpretation of it. But the movie stops right there before Toni Collette says anything.

And she just exists as this representation of moral return, essentially. That you can never really escape what you have done. And you may spend the rest of your life feeling chased by it. And I was blown away by this ending. I thought it was incredibly bold and really put the onus right back in our laps and just said sit in that sit in it how does that make you feel which i just i i absolutely loved um do you agree with the way that i read it what do you what do you make of it yeah i agree with the way that you read it right up to the fact that it is um you know moral return and yet no confirmation of where that

moral return leads the colette character to me is one of the most admirable things about the movie because there's another era of clint's filmmaking including fairly recent ones where this would be a hillary or god help us you know camel a coded character the way that that um judy davis was quite brilliantly in absolute power where it's like, uh, you know, that's like Norm Macdonald's version of Hillary Clinton. She's like, cover up this murder, cover up that murder. We got to cover up the president's murder. I mean, you know, Clint is not, uh, it was not, not funny about those things, but that in this movie, she is set up to be a hypocrite, which is her name is faith, and she's trying to prosecute domestic abusers,

and she's trying to be a sort of progressive liberal DA. And you feel, not just because of Eastwood, but because of the genre, that this may be a movie about how she is just as willing, if not more, to sweep things under the rug. You are led to think she is going to be someone whose ambitions to do good make her do bad. And she's not. She is someone who comes to a realization that her desire to do the greater good is going to be compromised if she maybe doesn't investigate this one small thing that she could get away with. I am not sure that she has showed up at Holt's door at the end of the movie to bring the house down on him, but it's to see him. And the staging, I don't think Eastwood is doing this movie, but the staging reminded me of the end of Taking a Pelham 123, except at the end of Taking a Pelham 123, you know Walter Matthau is going to call the cops on Martin Balsam. I'm not sure she's going to, who by the way is from 12 Angry Men.

I'm not sure she's going to call the cops, but she sees him. So what does it mean to be seen? His son, who's looking up at him in that last scene, all he sees is his dad. And what's the dialogue in that scene? Oh, he has your eyes. Oh, I hope he doesn't have your mouth. Oh, he's got my elbows. I mean, his son is inheriting all these things about him and his wife, who has every reason to have not wanted him to serve on that jury and to help her through a difficult pregnancy and every right to not want to raise that kid alone. I know people are going to say Clint Eastwood can only conceive of pregnant wives as being a burden, but I don't see that. I think he has empathy for that character for sure.

I think he has huge empathy for that character. i think that she's judging him too because there is so much about that ending and so much about the whole plot mechanism of the movie which is both contrived but also a comment on the system that it's because of his history of alcoholism that no one would believe he wasn't drunk when what happened happened the same way that gabrielle basso not insignificantly jd vance on the stand in this movie i mean it is mr hillbilly elegy playing that part but to the same way that people would just assume he's guilty because of his past the whole character is never going to get off on a drunk driving charge because people assume that he's an alcoholic he tells his wife one truth at the end of this movie while denying her a larger truth.

And I think the truth changes depending on who we tell it to. But he is seen in that last shot by her. And we see him too. But we've seen him all along. It's not a twist ending. It's the only ending. We've seen him all along and we're asking ourselves how we feel. So now within the world of the movie, he's been seen as well.

And that's horrifying i hadn't considered what you just said about how he very easily could have made this a portrait of a failed progressive but the fact that she not only confronts him on that park bench in that critical scene but then follows up and pursues it is another one of those upendings of our expectation, you know? But, you know, I also,

and this is, you know, this is obviously that, that incredibly pretentious place that everyone, you know, doesn't want a film critic to go, but I just thought of, I think you should leave.

You know, I thought of the sloppy steaks sketch where Tim Robbins with the old guys, like, you know, looking at the baby is like, this baby knows I'm a piece of shit, you know? That's what I thought of at the end of juror number two, not only was I laughing about the fake baby from American sniper, cause this is evidently a real baby at the end and quite a

beautiful one. It's like a much more realistic ending than the end of megalopolis involving a baby at the end of megalopolis copeless, like, ah, we got to save the world for our kids. Our kids are beautiful. We need to freeze time for our kids. And Eastwood's like ah we got to save the world for our kids our kids are beautiful we need to freeze time for our kids and eastwood's like actually the second we have kids we lie to them about who we are and what we've done and if we ever get called out on that lie that's going to ruin that kid's life so of course he lies uh the fact that that whole last scene is that baby looking up at him seeing one thing and then tony collette at the door seeing something else i'm not trying to be lofty here but it's like that is life and that is art

I'm sorry I don't care that Clint's 94 and I don't care that David Zaslav can't see it I don't care that's art and it's very moving to me to see it that way hell yeah Adam I couldn't I couldn't have said it better it is art Clint do you think this will be his last film presumably right I hope I hope not.

I hope he makes a documentary about an insurrection on Warner Brothers. You know, I mean, I'm kidding, but no, I don't want him to stop making movies. I don't want any of these guys, any of these filmmakers to stop making movies because it feels like beyond their own filmmaking, which is needs to be taken on each term. We can't totally heroize these people. Whether it's an Eastwood. Or a Scorsese. Or Elaine May. Who's really Eastwood's generational contemporary.

And is also being prevented from making movies institutionally. I think has a lot more to complain about over the years. Than Clint Eastwood. I wish Elaine May had 35 movies. To have her 36th taken away from her. You know. But these are the filmmakers who um i think they still see movies as movies and not as uh you know widgets the the

self self-contained movie shaped objects make them great again man i i i ask because this show has inadvertently become a series of viking funerals or analyses of the closing moments of a lot of the great masters and i think probably one of the reasons why i'm doing it is because i was i've been obsessed with those figures for a very long time and so now a killers of the flower moon arrives a um a gladiator 2 arrives uh there have been a lot of examples of that obviously megalopolis is a representation of this there have been a great many over the last five or six years of these octogenarian septuagenarian directors clint is the oldest active filmmaker um as far as like i don't know it's frederick wiseman he's probably roughly in this zone as well. Wiseman, Elaine May, I mean, if you go international,

it's a wider group, you know? But he's pretty much at the, he's at the top of that, at the top of that pecking order. Right. He was almost a grown man at the advent of television. So he's really been around for some time.

And yeah, I don't know if this is necessarily like a fitting capstone but i think any of the last seven or eight movies would have been fitting capstones you could have read them in a way that allowed you to say well this is like the final note about his like how his moral universe bends i think is where a lot of these films are well and he's a filmmaker who's spiritually indebted to John Ford, who it's not as if he's been forgotten by the world because two years ago in Eastwood's Spielberg's semi-valedictory movie, he had David Lynch play John Ford. I mean, these people aren't forgetting their history. But Ford's a guy who, when he made Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, had the moment that I think Eastwood's whole career keeps reflecting, which is that idea of printing the legend, which is what Americans do.

It feels good to. And in printing it, you do kind of burnish it and build it up. I mean, Eastwood's movies have an awful lot to answer for in some ways in terms of the glorification of police violence and myths about the old west but you know what as he's become a filmmaker rather than just a movie star he's at least questioning them a little bit sometimes and questioning them a lot and what else are we supposed to expect from the most famous successful you know public people i mean this is not a complacent filmmaker he's never been complacent i wish that the multiple generations that might look back at Clint and, you know, think of him as a dirty grandpa or a whatever,

had a fraction of his curiosity about different things in the world. It doesn't mean that he always treats them well. Not all his movies are good. Some of his movies, including those early 2000s Oscar nominated movies to me, I think they're quite bad, some of them. But really, I think Mystic River sucks. I think some of his movies from that period have not held up, but he's always interested. Imagine staying interested in tier 90s in anything. Yeah, I'm just trying to get to my 50s here. So the idea of tacking 50 more years on top of this is fascinating. Yeah, good luck to all of us. Will you do a big picture exercise with Clint's career for me? Yeah.

Okay, so it is actually election day on the day that we're recording this episode. And so I want to build him out Rushmore. We did our top fives last time. We could do a Clint Hall of Fame, but that's frankly a two-hour episode, and I don't think we're prepared to do that right now. Maybe after everyone sees Jury No. 2, that could be something fun to do,

to say these are the 10 films that best represent his work. Is Chris around? Text him. What's he doing? Chris is actually on his way to London. He has abandoned America at this fateful moment. Is he watching the Sixers lose? When is he not this season? When is he not?

Sorry, go on. Did you just get a Raptors-Sixers dub? Hey, man, we just want ping pong balls. The Mount Rushmore for Clint Eastwood. The four films or four roles. Let's do roles because I think that's actually a little bit easier to navigate in this conversation that sort of best represent

the Eastwoodian iconography and also the ideas of his work. Like I found this to be a little bit more challenging than I would have expected even as I set out on some contenders.

I'll throw some contenders at you and if you have something else that springs to mind feel free to make the case. To me there's eight contenders. There's the man with no name

from any one of the Dollars Trilogy films. There's David Garver from Play Misty for Me. There's Dirty Harry, of course. There's the stranger from High Plains Drifter. There's Josie Wales

from The Outlaw Josie Wales. There's Philo Badeau from Every Which Way But Loose. There's William Money from Unforgiven. Yeah. And there's Robert Kincaid from The Bridges of Madison County. Interesting. Now, there are four presidents on Mount Rushmore. I fear that some of these Eastwood icons are duplicative, but perhaps not.

And have I forgotten anyone or anybody else that you'd like to throw on top of the pile? No, they are duplicative, which is why I think the man with no name and William Money kind of have to be there. I agree. And the idea that the man with no name grew up to be William Money is why Unforgiven is a movie. I have a hard time talking about with a, you know,

without a little tear in the corner of the eye, but also because man, imagine reckoning with your career and legacy, and then just doing it for another 30 years. It's crazy. I mean, unforgiven years, unforgiven.

Everyone was like, cool. He, he did it. He threaded the needle. This is who I was. What's the, the,

the, the, the, I think you should leave that. I used to be a piece of shit. I still am. I mean, that's the thesis of Unforgiven. But also the thesis of juror number two. you know, a president or, or, or birth to use. You can't not have dirty Harry agreed who has more to answer for than the Western characters, because in the Western films, that's the society that's in formation and anything goes dirty. Harry is sort of like,

okay, well we have rules and laws and institutions in America now, and they're keeping this guy from shooting people. So, you know, dirty, hairy, problematic, f know dirty harry problematic fave problematic problematic fave of mine both the movie and the guy um for the fourth one i got a fun one for you how about bronco billy because all he wants to do is put on a show about america

with his friends who are more diverse than you would guess. And if they have to like rob a train, then they'll do it. But they mean well. So that would be one. Okay, I will definitely entertain that because I like how you're thinking. And I would also suggest that it's a movie that I should like more than I do. And I take seriously as a cultural totem. But I'm sorry, my friends hate me me but i just think it's bad gran torino which is very much the empty chair era eastwood but also the half time in america era eastwood where it's like oh this guy needs to comment on american affairs and grant gran

torino not an insignificant film i think it also made like 290 gazillion billion dollars it was a big hit so walt kowalski is knocking on the door okay those are incredible additions walt kowalski is an interesting choice we don't have craggy clint and craggy clint got a lot more mileage than i ever would have guessed in 1993 the idea that he went on to star in several films in the 2000s is fascinating. Or pre-Craggy Clint in the best movie he's in that he never directed, which is In the Line of Fire, where literally it's like only Clint Eastwood can keep Kennedy from being assassinated again. I love In the Line of Fire, and i love eastwood's performance in it if there was justice he'd have probably been oscar nominated for that movie in 93 ahead of i don't know daniel day lewis or something i mean you know he's he's great and in the line of fire but yeah super

craig eastwood you'll notice i'm not mentioning million dollar baby but other people might might feel that that character's there the the the politically unpredictable clint well i think that that character is actually an interesting representation of director clint that like in fact his role in that film is in line with the sort of the way that he shepherds projects and manages actors and trains people to be able to do the work and has a team and people he relies upon for years in the Morgan Freeman character. Like it's, you can read that movie that way, which I think does have some kind of helps the Mount Rushmore case. I've never been a huge, I do quite like Mystic River. I do not like Million Dollar Baby. I've always had a hard

time with that movie personally. There was a feeling when those were all coming out in the 2000s that everyone was sort of overcompensating for him not being taken seriously outside of France. Sure. Outside of the Oscars. Right. Right. Because you mentioned Kincaid and Bridges. I don't know if that's one of my Mount Rushmore Clint characters, but it's one of his best movies.

I. And it's a great movie, The Bridges of Madison County. When I made this list, my heart was telling me that that is the best fourth choice because it's the only one of these other iconic figures that shows a different side. That shows that there is clearly a romantic Clint. And in that film, he's a photographer. He's an artist. He's a person attempting to live a kind of quiet life like clint despite being a former politician and somebody who is you know at the center of american culture for years and years does sort of just seem like a guy puttering around his house sometimes and well yeah sure with

interests with with real with with real with with with real interest i, it's funny. I mentioned the JURR number two review that, you know, Unforgiven, Perfect World, Madison County. No one puts these on lists of great runs by directors because they're so unflashy. But those are some really good pieces of Kino, you know? Those are really good movies. I'm with you when we were doing a lot of Kevin Costner coverage I was really pushing a perfect world hard as sort of like an exemplar of quality thriller myth making you know like that is a thing that they are like he is once again operating inside of iconography and then trying to like upend it at times too and by letting Kevin Costner play a Clint Eastwood part in a way that is so fascinating. I've never used the word take in my life, but can I give you, can I give you a take? Let's go, man.

Give me your first take. That horizon solidified for me, which is that Kevin Costner is, we have Clint Eastwood at home, but that's not, but that's not nothing, you know? And I was thinking about, I was thinking about horizon as earlier. I didn't put it in the juror number two piece, but that belongs on that list of like Viking funerals for movies. It's not going to, I mean, that's the one that's not going to get finished. Coppola took himself out of this problem by just paying for it himself.

You know, good job. Costner tried. He put as much money as he felt he reasonably could without detonating his children's inheritance and then he had to go elsewhere to get the money that one is interesting though because that is like that is a different representation of what this era of Warner Brothers represents which is that that movie was not financed by the studio in fact it wasn't even financed by one of the studio's big production partners

it's just a distribution deal because Costner and zaslav have a relationship yeah that to me is a sign of like it is a kind of an old hot old world hollywood move but it's also a sign of the kind of like cronyism that is fucking with the the movie business right now that i don't like the cronyism but also this idea of scale which is that Eastwood supersedes so many of these filmmakers. They kind of want what he has, and what he has when you look at it is actually very small scale. I love the idea that Cry Macho was seen as some big waste of money at a $30 million budget. You know what? If this was 1987 and he was making Ishtar for $30 million, great movie, Ishtar, by the way.

I understand this. His movies are so cost-effective. Yeah. I mean, look at Unforgiven. Unforgiven is a, is a simple Western, you know, it's an American epic, but what, what, what was the budget for Unforgiven relative to Horizon? Well, that's what I mean. So Horizon is sort of too, it's, it's the East Woody and syntax of the Western and manifest

destiny, but it's the megalop, megal the megalopolean Coppola scale where you want to get a cookie for kind of wasting money or spending money, not wasting. Waste is in the eye of the beholder. And then you've got Eastwood off to the side with the exception of the World War II epics, which I don't love either, but with the exception of Flags of Our Fathers and Iwo Jima. These are pretty modestly scaled movies, even American snipers, not like a widescreen sweeping epic. And so in that sense, it really should be a closed loop of like, leave the guy alone, not because he's great or an artist or because we need to prop them up. And a lot of filmmakers would and should kill to have the resources that he's had. I'm sympathetic sympathetic to that argument which is it's hard to cry for quinn eastwood but like it's a business at least from the studio point of view if people make you money leave them alone that's how i feel about you adam

just making dough you do i i i didn't check do i have a 30 podcast deal with uh what you have you host 30 individual podcasts or you appear on 30 episodes. I don't think the former could, should, or would happen. The latter, I think we're getting, we're, we're getting towards, I like to think of this as the Malpaso production side of, uh, the big picture as I retreat into my fortress of regret and conservatism, which is definitely how people know me, describe me. I'm. I'm like, oh, woke, you know, just like Clint. You've done wrong and you should not be forgiven, but you can be accepted. That's the truth about you. Wait, so what's the fourth? Is it Kincaid? Is it Kowalski?

Is it Bronco Billy? I like you putting every which way but lose on there just as a reminder that Clint is humble enough to always win fights in his movies, but like he needs an orangutan's help every so often, which I think is deeply, deeply, deeply endearing. Here's the other fun question, not to make this go longer, but to think about, maybe leave the readers, the listeners to think about too.

Is there anyone else you could do this with? Is there any other actor not just actor filmmaker but who truly if we're not lowering standards or moving goal posts has a mount rushmore of characters that tell the story of a half century of american cinema and before you all jump and say de niro or pacino or cruise it's same thing. Yeah, I think you probably could find actors from the middle part of the 20th century who do this. You know, I think Jimmy Stewart, you could do this for him very easily. You know, Henry Fonda, you mentioned earlier in 12 Angry Men. There are a handful of characters who portrayed Abraham Lincoln, you know, or who portrayed Wyatt Earp, you know, that they are representational in that way contemporarily

i mean we'll do it we did it for michael keaton and we put fucking mr mom on there so we'll do it because we're a podcast and we got to have have bits where was where was gung ho i didn't hear that one didn't oh no didn't was not represented by one of the presidents of mal rushmore gung ho uh not a terrible film i would say it has a very awkward portrayal of our relationship with Japan. Yeah, it's an awkward portrayal of everything. But it's certainly a movie. No, I just mean that with Eastwood, the expansiveness is also the limitation. Because all the other people you'd mention as better actors,

like one guy I was thinking you could actually do that with in a way is Denzel Washington, who really is the heir to a lot of those actors put together, not just Stewart and Poitier for obvious reasons, but like he's the great movie star, I think. But with Eastwood, he doesn't have Denzel's bag, you know? No. Denzel can play anything. Eastwood can't. And yet he does, you know,

the testimony to breaking beyond your own expected limitations, which is something you always do on the big picture, Adam. Oh, this was, this was fun. And you've done a great service by talking about a juror number two to a big listenership. I hope that they, I hope they watch it. Cause it's going to be, it's going to be on that ringer year end list.

I don't know where. I hope they do too. In fact, I think maybe the next time I see you, we will be talking about our favorite movies of 2024. So I look forward to that, Adam. Saturday night, number one, uh, with a bullet. Okay. Bye mean pod guy.

Bye. See ya. new thriller from a24 there's only three actors in this movie pretty much hugh grant sophie thatcher and chloe east you may remember sophie thatcher from the boogeyman in theaters last year or from that showtime series about the flock of girls who are cannibals whose name is escaping me right now bobby wagner do you know the name of that show i do not okay not ideal and chloe east so you may remember from The Fablemans, who played the puckish young girlfriend of young Sammy Fableman. This is a movie about two Mormon missionaries

who attempt to convert an English guy who lives in their neighborhood in Utah. The show is called Yellow Jackets. Yellow Jackets. That's what I thought, but I wasn't sure. Thank you, Bobby. Didn't want to get it wrong. That's what I'm here for, you know,

to look things up 15 seconds after you ask me the questions. That's why I thought, but I wasn't sure. Thank you, Bobby. Didn't want to get it wrong. That's what I'm here for, you know, to look things up 15 seconds after you ask me the questions. That's why they pay me the big bucks. Maybe I should start again on what this show is about. The movie is about two Mormon missionaries who stumble upon an Englishman who lives in their town in Utah who is interested potentially in joining the Mormon church. And they knock on his door. It's a cold and wintry night. And they enter his house. And very quickly, it's clear that something is not right. It's become a bit of a joke on the show recently to say that movies are becoming increasingly

more about podcasters. Hugh Grant's character in this film is not a podcaster, but boy, he sure talks like one. He's got a lot of ideas and a lot of speeches and a lot of strong feelings about the way that faith and truth operates. This is an interesting movie, actually, to pair with Juror No. 2, because what's really true and what's really faith in our imagination is at the center of the movie. I thought this was a really entertaining film. Hugh Grant is on one. It's genuinely a tragedy to me that Amanda is not here to talk about Hugh Grant and what Hugh Grant has done in his career

and what he has been up to, especially in the last 10 years, when he has completely resigned himself to being a romantic leading man and is now fully in freak mode. Every movie he makes, from the Paddington films to his work with Guy Ritchie,

to this movie Heretic, every character is a fucking weirdo, and I love it, and he's so at ease with this combination of, I don't know, there's a little bit of Jordan Peterson in this character, there's a little bit of mansplaining guy that you stumble upon at the

bookstore, there's a little bit of a professorial dickhead quality to him. Really, really interesting. And so this movie is a series of conversations between these two young Mormon missionaries and this learned Englishman. And as they walk deeper and deeper into the world of his home. So I really enjoyed this movie.

I think it's not perfect. It definitely has some flaws in the telling and, you know, it steps towards something that is more hard genre at times. And whether or not that appeals to you, your mileage may vary. But I had a really great time with it. So let's now go to my conversation with Scott Beck and Brian Woods about Heretic. Scott Beck and Brian Woods are here. I'm very excited to talk to them. A thorny new feature that I really like is called Heretic. Guys, did you meet in college or did you meet before college in Iowa?

Before college, Brian and I, we met in sixth grade. We were 11 years old. Sixth grade. Yeah, so we go way back yeah we were when i met scott i was like oh you you make movies with your star wars action figures too like oh cool let's combine our collection and and have bigger battles it was kind of like we were like pathetically still kind of playing and making movies with our toys at a at a maybe a slightly too old of an age well then, then that actually changes the expected answers

I was thinking for this question I'm going to ask you. But what were the movies that you bonded over then when you met in sixth grade? I mean, it was very much sixth grade movies. So, you know, it's like Billy Madison. Hell yeah. Armageddon. All of our credibility is going out the window.

We did actually bond over that really was actually like led to heretic in a, in a crazy way. Um, in seventh grade, um, when we were 12, we both saw Robert Zemeckis' Contact and absolutely adored that movie, adored that it,

even at a young age, it felt like, uh, wow, this is a adult conversation about religion in the, in the, you know, guise of a,

of a popcorn movie. Um, and what else do we love? I mean, it's, in the, you know, guise of a, of a popcorn movie. Um, and what else do we love? I mean, it's, it's when you, when you grow up with somebody that loves movies, your, your taste kind of develops and we have this, like our taste really runs the gamut between lowbrow and highbrow. And we kind of like it all. And our hope is that our work is kind of a mishmash of all of that as well. So you basically name a movie, we're probably a fan of it. I've been accused of the same thing. When did you guys realize that you could and should actually work together

and try to make films together? How long did it take before that crossed your minds? I mean, we were technically like making films together when we were 12 or 13, like these short films and we would act in them. We'd coerce our friends in them against their judgment and their will. But I think it was really an earnest in high school. I remember sophomore, junior year, digital editing was starting to become a thing. And we were going over to each other's house and like workshopping a movie and it just felt like oh wait maybe this could be a career path and we would join forces

finally to like write scripts together and and actually co-direct at that point the movies would get increasingly more and more ambitious like uh in high school we did like our version of magnolia it's like a feature film hyperlink ensemble uh piece and uh all of our parents and friends were like what the hell is this uh pretentious pile yeah but we we would like put on screenings at like the local imax theater uh we we even went to local community colleges like their film courses um and handed out scorecards along with showing the movie. And we would emulate the studio process because we were just learning it from reading books or listening to DVD commentaries and trying to take it very seriously at that teenage age.

So how did you crack in? How did you eventually... Did it seem impossible from where you were coming from to actually break into the business? It did seem impossible. We grew up in Iowa with no connections to the film business. We didn't have any like family or friends. So we would just, you know, we'd study a lot online and listen, watch DVDs and filmmaker commentaries. And I think our break in was probably in college. We won a content, like a filmmaking competition through MTV. And the prize was like a nationwide contest or competition rather. And the prize was a development deal with MTV Films.

And that development deal was not real. We later learned, like it was like, they were like, yeah, here's $2,000, like get out of here. It was like basic prize, but we pretended like it was real. But we pretended like it was real. We treated it like it was real. And we used that to get meetings with managers and agents

who definitely did not sign us at the time. But it was like the first little piece by piece. We would kind of wedge our foot into the door. And one of the first people in the industry that really opened the door for us was David Gale. He used to be an executive, the head of MTV Films, and produced movies like Election, one of our favorites from Alexander Payne. And he saw that we were trying to an idea, let's put something together. And we shot this tiny pilot for this idea that we had. And we were able to use that as a directing sample that ended up getting us our first low-budget feature film, this movie called Nightlight. And step by step, it was like the door started cracking open and then it would shut just a little bit and we crack it open further and shut a little more. And like just it was an ever evolving process.

So and it definitely took years. I mean, it was like we've I mean, I don't know. We wrote at least 40 screenplays before we ever sold the screenplay. Like it was it took a long time, but it was fun. We love we love movies. I'm always interested to have writing, directing duos on the show because I'm curious to hear how you write together and how you direct together. So I always joke that it's like, is it two men with their backs to each other banging away at their typewriters, throwing ideas out in the room? How do you guys

do it? It's a lot of laughter and a lot of debate and kind of, you know, pitching. We, we, we feel like our process is a process of competition. So it'll be like, um, you know, when we're like getting excited about an idea, like, like a quiet place, it's like, Oh, okay. Like maybe it's like a modern day silent film. And we kind of like talk it through and talk it and talk it sometimes over the course of years. Like, what if, what if this happened? And like, what's the worst thing that could happen if you couldn't make a sound?

What if you had a baby? You know, and like just batting ideas around. And then when we get into the writing, it's, you know, somebody will write five pages and then send it to the other person. And then they'll revise those five pages and kind of challenge those pages and pick it apart and then write five more.

And so it's always a process of pushing each other to do better. And then as directors, a process of, of pushing each other to, to do better. And, and then as directors, we just, you know, on set, we have a umbilical cord between the two of us. Basically, we just like, we're always like side by side and we have every conversation with every department head and, um, you know, actor together, uh, so that we're always in on it. And, uh, I don't know, it doesn't feel, it doesn't feel like less work. It doesn't feel like, oh, there's like half the work because there's two of us. It feels like we share a brain, but it's like a kind of a collaborative conversational process.

Well, I think it's because it demands for us to scrutinize each decision that much more. If I have an idea and I pitch it to Brian, he's going to look at it from his own lens, which luckily we share a sensibility. So it's usually not that far off the mark, but then I'll add to that. And then we kind of come to these ideas or visions or conclusions of what artistically we think

is the best move for the movie. And then of course, once you're on set, you open yourself up to the rest of the collaboration collaboration but it feels like we already started collaborating from the get-go and it's super cool because you're not precious about any idea when somebody else is involved it's very easy to be like you know work on something be like this is terrible because it doesn't it you don't have the like kind of it's just a different ego a different pride of authorship it's it's shared and you can and you can be a little more critical it's just a different ego, a different pride of authorship. It's shared and you can be a little more critical. It's great. So tell me a little bit about where this movie comes from.

Are you guys religious? Are you people of faith? We grew up Christian. I would go to church every single Sunday up until I went into college um, growing up in Iowa, like it, it very much was just like, it's a, it was a Christian place. But then as we got older, um, we both married into families that came from different religious backgrounds. Our, our circle of friends expanded from non-religious to like religious and other um belief systems um we even have friends that are like in scientology like it really name a religion we we probably have a friend or family member a part of that and that's wonderful because they're like it expands your mind and and you kind of you can approach kind of each thought process with empathy it's kind of each thought process with empathy. It's kind of our jobs as writers anyways,

like putting yourself in somebody else's shoes. And so our religious journey is extremely complicated. It started as a, I think when we were younger, a place of fear, which I think is maybe universal, this kind of universal human fear of what happens when you die. That's what we're all afraid of. And really, religion is a medicine for that fear. As we've gotten older, I have to say, I think we find ourselves more excited to embrace the mystery, embrace the idea of who knows? It could be this, it could be that, it could be nothing, it could be this it could be that it could be nothing it could be something and and trying to come to terms with that but uh but definitely the the movie heretic is um you know an exploration of those anxieties if nothing else is that where it started with this sense of trying to you know

collate all these different ideas about faith that you've been hearing or that you've been exposed to in your adult life and trying to find a way to blend them up into a movie or did it start as like a thriller horror movie about two young women who come to a guy's house like how do you do you think in that that way i think i think it comes first and foremost from like a very personal place uh the same way that like an inspiration point like contact or um inherent the wind with with uh stanley kramer's movie with spencer tracy where, where you're debating and having a discourse of ideas. And that's an extension of so many things that Brian and I have wrestled with over the decades that we've known each other, trying to get to the bottom of basically unanswerable

questions and the unknown. So I think it starts off from that. And then I think we can't help but shake the idea that the questions that we've been consumed with that have to deal with cult or or what's out there and and what's the true religion um or is there none that stems from like those ideas kind of being scary to us um because it's real there's something relatable and there's something that we're we're searching for and can't quite scratch it at the truth and so i think the vessel of it being in a horror movie kind of complements that um but also there's there's a history of the horror genre that we love where trojan horses um in ideas that might not be tackled best in in like straight dramas or straight stage plays um think about movies like night of the living dead and how it

tackles the idea of racism or invasion of the living dead and how it tackles the idea of racism or invasion of the body snatchers and and tackling like the red scare of communists come back in like the 60s and and so it's um it felt kind of like a perfect fold to talk about religion but in the body of a of a thriller and we'd also been wanting to attempt, we had this kind of notion that, you know, horror is so cinematic. It's so perfect for jump scares and monsters hiding in shadows and all these kind of cinematic conventions that create tension and scares. We were kind of like, are we overlooking the psychological component of horror because these other elements are so exciting as filmmakers. And so we got excited about this idea of, can we do a movie that's almost exclusively dialogue in terms of how the tension and terror is activated in the film? And it was a question of like,

can you replace a jump scare with a philosophical thought that's equally as terrifying, if not more so? And yeah, it was just, it was a fun experiment. I love that approach. Mr. Reed is an interesting character. He is an incredible star part. Like just in terms, as writers,

I'm sure you guys were just like, we are spring-loading this with the most charismatic person possible. And he's, you know, smarmy and he's a know-it-all and maybe evil. But is there any, does he have a point though?

Like, that's something I was wondering about as I got to the end of the movie. Like, is there like, is he right about some of this? Yeah. I mean, I think,

yeah, I think he's, uh, I think he's making, I think he's, uh, he's, he's testing his hypothesis.

He has a theory. He, right. He's been, he's, he's spent his entire life studying, um, religion and he has a theory that he is testing on this night. And he's, you know, he's not, he's been he's he's spent his entire life studying um religion and he has a

theory that he is testing on this night and he's you know he's not he's not positive he's right but he thinks he's right and uh i don't know but i you know i think with the character mr reed but also the um the other two characters sister paxton sister barnes like uh certainly from a from a personal standpoint like there's a little bit of us in, in all of these characters. Like there's, there's part of us, you know, with, with Mr.

Reed, that's like, yeah, some of these things don't all add up or you take things for granted and you really need to scrutinize them more closely to really come to your own summation of, of what your, your value system is.

Um, but there's also the degree of like Pax and Barnes where, um, maybe there's certain things that, that are beautiful about being a good person. And that's kind of at the root of things. So I think it's like we say that like heretic is kind of equal opportunity at both supporting certain beliefs, but also kind of coming down on them. and uh and we're certainly asking questions that we we are purposely aren't delivering answers for because the core ambition of this movie is really if you engage in it um hopefully you're engaging in it at a level of introspection where we're able to reflect even if it's just for like five

minutes as you leave the theater reflect upon um why you know what makes you you as as a human being and why do you believe or don't believe the certain things that have been presented to you in your life. I had an interesting experience with your movie. I saw it the day after I saw the director of Contact, Robert Zemeckis' new film, Here. Oh, wow. Both your movie and his new movie

are in really confined circumstances, you know, a really constrained environment. Obviously his is just in literally one space, but yours is not so far from that. I mean, you spend a lot of time in two rooms in the read house. Um,

and that's pretty challenging to make cinematic to your points. Um, can you talk about how you sought to make this movie look and feel and be like edited and paced as well as it is given those constraints. The, the movies also both share the first four letters. That's true. Yeah.

By the way, we are just in the listings right now with the movies. It is. Yeah. Yeah. It's probably not great for us, but, but I cannot wait to see the Zemeckis movie.

I love the bold swing of it. The gimmick of it is, is so, so cool. What, what he appears to be doing in that film. And yeah, I think our biggest fear,

like we had no, even though we had some kind of stage inspirations for this film, like, like mammoths, Oleana was, was a touchstone for us. There are some like kind of theatrical pieces, like death and the maiden,

the Plansky film, I believe is based on a stage play. Like we had those kinds of things swirling around. Um, but we, um, really, really, really did not want to, uh, have the film feel like it was this contained thing. We wanted to feel large in scope. So that's when you hire, um, the greatest in the talk of rock, land and earth for our money, Chung and Chung who, uh, shot old boy and, um, you know, any, any any you know last night in soho and a million other beautiful things and and he came in um and first of all he's a great collaborator great partner wonderful person but he um really pressured us to uh

ironically uh make sure that the the film uh feels boring at first and that we're kind of flat and simple for the first uh you know 15 minutes of the film so that we're kind of flat and simple for the first 15 minutes of the film so that we have somewhere to go. He was very aware that the movie is a lot of... It is dialogue driven and it is contained and the kind of claustrophobia will naturally come out, but we had to create an arc for the style. And that rule really fell into all the other departments as well um meaning sound design like the sound design starts getting heavier and and more uh subjective as as the movie goes on and even the music the music there's some music at the beginning but then it kind of disappears and and we're not trying to go wall to wall music during some of these dialogue

and just let the, uh, the voices and the actors really carry the, the, the sense of, um, attention. Um,

even, you know, the costume design, like there's certain layers that, that are purposely put on the characters so that over time, like they start literally shedding more layers as, as metaphorically, they get to know each other a little better and there's more mystery that's unveiled um so everything was really engineered in a way that there wasn't a predictability that there was an

evolution so that hopefully it wouldn't have a feeling of sameness like room after room or conversation after conversation uh i watched hugh grant talk about reuniting with chung after working on wonka which is like the most different possible kind of movie than your movie um and then you know had me wondering just how hugh came involved and you know it seems like it is written for him in so many ways because he's just this like incredible deliverer of sharp dialogue um yeah what was yeah what was the process of him getting involved as mr reed so um in retrospect we can't imagine anyone else playing mr reed but like when it came time to casting the project it was a blank

slate like we're we're not the filmmakers that are writing with anybody in mind and that's partly because like whoever you want to get, you usually aren't going to get. But in this instance, we were like, I don't like, I don't know who's, who's going to come in and be able to recite 120 pages of dialogue,

but perform it with like an evolution of the character. Who's going to be able to be charming so that Paxson and Barnes and the audience willfully puts themselves into these situations that may or may not be dangerous like who's going to weaponize dialogue and um it was one of those things like with our producer stacy share like we started creating a list and then uh we had a24 that came on board we're looking at these lists and and the name hugh grant stuck out to us collectively because we were like that's interesting like no one initially felt like, oh, Hugh Grant is the top of the list. But as soon as like Brian and I started thinking back of him being in Cloud Atlas 12 years

ago and disappearing into a multitude of roles and then looking at the various turns that he's had in his career where he's played darker and edgier characters, we started rereading the script with his cadence in mind. And it basically was like plucking Hugh Grant out of Notting Hill and imagining him reading that dialogue. And all of a sudden, it felt scarier. And we're like, this could be really incredible and wonderful. And then at that point, we were like,

there's no one else to play this role. And we kind of moved all our chips into the Hugh Grant, uh, camp with fingers crossed that he would do it. And the irony too, for us is that the only hold back for us with Hugh, and it was a very minor one, but the thing that we were debating,

we were like, Oh, like we didn't really see him as like somebody from England. We didn't see him as a Brit. And then, and then we had to like think back and we're like, what are you talking about? Like Richard Dawkins,

Christopher Hitchens, like all these like great, you know, British thinkers were like a huge influence on the role. And then once we like, once that popped into our head, we just felt stupid for not having written it for Hugh. Yeah, that was going to be my next question was, did he start out as an English guy? But I guess not. No, no. I think that's partly because brush, maybe it's short sighted, but like growing up in Iowa and, and it feeling like religion is a hot button item to like bring up at the dinner table.

And so we felt like, oh, it's total Americana. Like this is, this is, um, a powder keg and, and Mr. Reed has to be built into Americana. But then we were like, no, there's something disarming about, um reed being british like when you're sitting when paxton barnes are sitting across from him and he seems a little eccentric at times it's like do you just write that off politely as oh it's just like a slightly different culture that that he comes from and it ended up being like a secret weapon for for the character there's something kind of alien about it i was hoping you guys could maybe help me understand what it is i'm trying to say. But, you know, there's like a little bit of like Jordan Peterson in this character. There's a little bit of like your favorite like history podcast telling you about Napoleon in this character.

Like, it's just like this confluence of mansplaining culture over the last 10 or 20 years. And it felt like you were riffing on that. And obviously, you've got these two young women who were subjected to all of his shit. But I assume that was on the surface when you were writing it. Totally. I mean, I'm happy to hear that you picked up on that. I'm curious if you also felt any traces

of Keith Raniere from the NXIVM cult. Totally. Somebody else who we talked about who is kind of capable of generating word salad that sounds really thoughtful and intelligent, but maybe upon reflection, it's a little hollow. He was an amalgamation of a lot of different figures, even religious or cult figures in recent history,

like in L. Ron Hubbard. It was just a melting pot of all these people. But I do think there's an element of the movie. This is this is a talking movie and it's a movie about big ideas there is an element that we're recognizing that's maybe a bit more of an afterthought i have to admit but we're recognizing that there's a bit of this kind of podcast culture that that is uh represented in heretic on on some kind of weird fucked up level. But yeah. Yeah. I mean, that occurred to me,

obviously someone who does this and, and I'm probably receiving ideas, regurgitating them on the podcast. And then people are going out into the world and regurgitating the thing that I'm saying on the podcast. And it's all this like thought that we imagined to be our own, but is not. And read feels like this representation of a person who's like,

I am the one who has come to the proper conclusion about the nature of faith in our world and it's like he's just another guy who just read a couple of books so i don't know it's just such a good idea and that's one of the things we're definitely scratching out with the movie is this kind of idea of certainty and like the danger of certainty the danger of going i'm the one who knows the true answer and you do not and um yeah yeah well i mean also the movie delves into the danger of going i'm the one who knows the true answer and you do not and um yeah yeah well i mean also the movie delves into the idea of iterations i mean the iterations of religion over time and how there's comparisons but also like to to exactly what you're saying like uh there's a degree at which if you crack open who mr reed is like he's iterating on these

certain ideas like does he have all his facts right is he making compelling arguments or is he making arguments for the sake of rhetoric to just simply convince in the room like these these are all things that are um layered subtextually to to this character but absolutely kind of comment on um what we're feeling in just the the day-to-day discourse um whether we're talking about politics or religion like there's there's a divide and there's a degree of many people that feel like they come down on the uh you know certain truth and and that's a dangerous place to be there is a depressing feeling of like everything is a hot take and that's the only thing especially like when you like uh look at twitter um you know it's like anything any rational conversation has since been beaten out

with whatever the algorithm is now like it's just it's just hot takes left and right I don't know so like the movie is maybe the movie is commenting on it maybe it's just in the air in our heads and our guts

as writers but yeah I did wonder, watching the movie, did these guys listen to a lot of podcasts? Because it felt like maybe you did. Maybe, maybe not. One other thing that I liked about it was, and this is also kind of internet brain, so if I'm off base, let me know.

But you've got the fast food rankings, you've got the history of Monopoly and board games, you've got the Hollies Monopoly and board games. You've got the Holly's Radiohead, Lana Del Rey, sequences and explanations that feel very much like, you know, on the one hand, they're a little bit of like dorm room stoner debate history conversation, a little bit of like Reddit, hey, did you know going on there? And really, really fun in the context of these big explanations of what could otherwise be really weighty and kind of boring ideas. I was wondering if you could just talk about how you

landed on using those portals to have some of the dialogue for read. So yeah, I definitely felt a lot of people making the Reddit comparison, which I have to say, I'm not on Reddit, so I don't really know much about Reddit, but it was somewhat organic, I got to be honest. We started writing the scripts about 10 years ago, and we got to about 15 pages into the script where the missionaries sit down with Mr. Reed, and all of a sudden, his writers were confronted with this character who has a genius level IQ, who knows everything about every world religion. And we just felt like we were not, we just weren't fluent in his language. We just didn't know quite enough

about the world's various religions. And so we pushed pause on the project and kind of spent the following 10 years writing other projects, working on other films. But in the meantime, as a hobby almost, kind of just reading different atheist thinkers, different philosophers, different like we'd never read the Koran before. So read the Koran, read the Book of Mormon and just started filling Um, about two years ago, now all of a sudden, uh, we felt like we could put religion into terms that we could understand 10 years ago. So we could

like, Oh, we can put it into terms of fast food. That's something that you, uh, sadly, Brian knew a lot about 10 years ago. Um, you know, it's like we could, the metaphors just seemed fun and obvious all of a sudden. And so that was kind of the birthplace of that. And I think beyond that, it felt important to us to find tonal shifts in the storytelling too, where kind of like you said, it could just be very dry if you're only talking about headier topics. And for us to kind of turn the screw and you're not quite sure where the conversation's going when it deviates from talking about the history of polygamy into this diatribe of favorite fast food,

and then you wrap it back. Like to us, we really hope that that would create this sense of like shifting sands underneath the character's feet. I really liked it. I read that you guys own a movie theater together. Is that true? We do, yeah.

We opened up this movie theater. It's called The Last Picture House in our hometown of Davenport, Iowa. It's been open nearly a year and it was kind of like a side project that was going on the last few years that is emblematic of our love of the theater-going experience

and how important to us it is to watch movies in a communal space and where, where we're from, like there's a multiplex and that's it. So you basically, you grab your popcorn, you see a movie and then you're gone. But this theater, the last picture house,

we've got a couple of screens. We've got like Dolby Atmos sound, which there's no other Dolby Atmos theater in the area. We've got like a rooftop screening area. So you can watch movies outdoors. We've got a rooftop screening area so you can watch movies outdoors. We've got a lounge so you can grab a drink, grab a cocktail or a mocktail and hang out. And we can bring in special guests. We brought in Michael Sarnofsky, who wrote and directed Pig and the latest Quiet Place.

He came out opening weekend to show a Quiet Place day one and talk to the audience. And so it's born from our love of the theater-going experience and trying to the audience. And so it's like born from our love of the theater going experience and trying to do something special in our hometown. But it's also like bringing in some of these special guests. It's creating a link between our hometown and having a career in the arts because in our childhood that felt so far away. Um, and anytime like, um, someone like a Paul Schrader would come and talk at university of Iowa, where he went to school, it felt like all of a sudden, Oh, like there's Hollywood right in front of us. Like there's somebody that has, has made a career and had something incredible to say, how do you get there? And so our, our hope is that there's

other, other filmmakers or artists here in the, in, um here in Iowa where we're from that have a have a little more of like a gateway or insight into what it takes to have a career in the arts. I really love that. What have you learned about the theatrical exhibition business, both as filmmakers and now as theater owners? Please be honest. you learn well i mean oh my gosh i mean you learn so much but you you do learn the importance of like getting people in the doors it's not just about i mean believe me there's like so many cool obscure movies we'd love to play all day every day but you have to you have to play things that um you know you have to share the screen with with with with things that

people want to see i think like one of one of the major things is really feeling the the shift of culture in the last like 10 15 years now with the advent of distractions it's not just like streaming but it's like the um how movies have just become one little facet of distractions. Whereas when we were growing up as kids going to the movie theater in the 90s, movies were one of only a couple things that you could go spend your free time with. And so by virtue of that, people would just show up in the lobby of a movie theater, not knowing what they're going to see and be like, okay, let's see what sounds good, what looks good.

And all of a sudden, you have movies like um i just watched this the other day remains of the day that is this like quaint movie that today would probably just be on streaming but like that movie goes out and grosses like over 60 million dollars probably because a lot of people just showed up we're like what should i see i'll see that anthony hopkins movie well you know like we also like so as a filmmaker that is now in exhibition you learn the responsibility that the filmmaker also has to be filling these theaters like uh ryan johnson i'll put him on blast for two seconds our hero by all accounts the nicest sweetest uh person in the industry but anytime a ryanian Johnson takes a theatrical experience like Knives Out and sells it off to Netflix, you're selling out the theaters because we as a theater need that.

We need Knives Out because people want to see that in our place. And if we don't have a cool movie that actually draws people out, you're just sending more eyeballs to Netflix. And on some level, that is selling out a little bit. But I do think, you know, one thing we've noticed is as much as like blockbusters really hit, like, like a twisters was, was very successful for, for our movie theater. There's also plenty of space for movies like late night with the devil. Um, that was a movie that I think we booked, uh, like a few weeks after it, it came out and we had a gap where we could put it in. And we had a great turnout for that for that movie for like two or three weeks.

And so there's there's the love of genre that I think is still really anchored strongly. But you can make as many guesses, you know, of a certain movie isn't going to perform. And we're constantly, you know, flabbergasted by the things that hit and the things that miss. And I think that's probably a global thing right now. It's fascinating. I mean, it's really unusual for active filmmakers to be getting that up-close experience and seeing what people do want to see and don't want to see. Do you think it informs the kinds of movies that you're making as well? Like, have you learned anything and feel like it's filtering into the work? That's a great question. I feel like we're so close. Within

the first year of opening up the movie theater, I'm not sure anything's quite hit. But I will say our intent has always been to write for the theater, the big screen experience. Going back to writing A Quiet Place, that movie was engineered in a way let's just talk like sonically first and foremost we're like even if we don't have much money we make this movie independently let's just say we don't have money for cgi sound design like that's where we're going to put all our resources so that you're hearing this in a movie theater and it's terrifying you um and and i think beyond that we're always writing these scenes from the first standpoint from an audience perspective. We're trying to understand what does the audience think is going to happen?

How can we subvert that? How can we provoke them? How can we use all the tools of cinema to do that? earlier about how do you make it cinematic where otherwise we could have just you know made it a stage play and and really demand an audience to be provoked by the choices we're trying to do with like the camera and the sound design so that's that's always at the forefront of our mind i don't think that's going to go anywhere any anytime soon you guys know what you're doing next we are deciding between um four different projects and um yeah, they all run a different, like we've got a big, really big science fiction idea.

We've got a small kind of contained spiritual sequel to Heretic. We usually just, it's whatever idea just keeps us up at night and we keep coming back to. So we're kind of pushing through that right now and figuring out what it's going to be. Yeah, we're hoping whatever it is, like A24 who did heretic with us um have been like some of the best partners

like it's it's um it was very satisfying because we've been a24 fans since pretty much they formed their their studio but um it was really satisfying to see like the internal workings of that studio because they are so filmmaker friendly they're so open to have like creative conversations and not just put down like mandates of like you have to do this or like your movie tested like this so we have to change like x y and z about the about the plot or do reshoots or anything like they're very receptive to just having an open conversation and in the best way possible most fulfilling way possible guys i end every episode of this podcast by asking filmmakers, what's the last great thing they've seen? What have you guys seen recently?

They like, Oh man. Um, I mean, I, I, I mentioned it earlier. I saw remains of the day,

like probably last. And I was actually like really, really impressed by, um, the craft of that movie, James Ivory. Um, but I also just re-watched for like the thousandth time spielberg's artificial intelligence which huge favorite of mine yeah yeah wonderful

to hear that because it's it moves me so emotionally um it feels isolating and also um this the story of pursuit of love all at once. But I also feel like we're kind of tackling AI right now in real time. AI as a topic in so many different industries and certainly generative AI in the filmmaking industry. And then some recent stuff that I know Scott and I both liked is like Challengers, we really loved this year. And then some recent stuff that I know Scott and I both liked. It's like challengers. We really love this year. Saturday night was fun.

Rebel Ridge was a lot of fun. You know, I'm just naming off movies that people have seen already, but it's been a good year for movies. We've been, we've been, you know, thrilled with all the stuff.

Coppola's megalopolis. Like we saw that in IMAX and had a hell of a great time watching that. To say the least. It's not a movie that immediately we're like, Eureka, we totally get that. But you see the ambition, you see the passion there, and it was a really beautiful experience.

And Will and Harper, that made me cry. Yes. Oh, God. Starting five minutes in. Destroyed us. That's a lot of great recommendations. Scott and Brian, thanks so much for doing the show. Really appreciate it on heretic i really love you guys oh thank you

appreciate that such an honor to be here thank you thanks to scott beck and brian woods thanks to adam naiman of course thanks to jack sanders and thanks to our producer bobby wagner for his work on today's episode. Later this week, we'll discuss Netflix's awards player, Emilia Perez, and do some Best Picture power rankings. We'll see you then.