The Big Picture - The Curious Case of 'Molly's Game' and Netflix | The Big Picture

Episode Date: April 21, 2020

There's no more powerful curator than Netflix, as capable of launching a new phenomenon as reviving an old favorite. Sean and Amanda look at how 'Molly's Game' became a Netflix phenom more than two years after its release (2:24). Then, Sean is joined by director Greg Barker and actor Wagner Moura to discuss their new Netflix original film, 'Sergio' (72:00). Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Guests: Wagner Moura and Greg Barker Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's episode of the Big Picture on the Ringer Podcast Network is brought to you by World Central Kitchen. Their relief team is working across America to safely distribute individually packaged fresh meals in communities that need support. They're now serving tens of thousands of meals in some of our biggest cities like New York and LA. They're launching initiatives across America to deliver fresh, hot meals to hospitals and clinics fighting on the front lines while keeping local restaurants in business as well.

You can directly help the heroes in hospitals and clinics who are fighting for us, and you can keep your local restaurants alive. Just go to theringer.com backslash WCK to donate, please. We're trying to raise around $250,000. And if you have the means, it's an unbelievably great and useful cause that helps our hospital heroes, emergency workers, and local restaurants. Please give what you can. The money goes directly to World Central Kitchen, and it's a charitable donation. Once again, that's theringer.com backslash WCK. I'm Sean Fennessy. I'm Amanda Dobbins. And this is The Big Picture,

a conversation show about running hot, flopping the nuts, and life's big break. Later in the show, we have a conversation recorded way back at the Sundance Film Festival with actor Wagner Mora and documentarian turned feature filmmaker Greg Barker after the premiere of their film Sergio, which tracks the life and times of Sergio Vieira de Mello.

That just had its debut on Netflix on Friday, so I hope you'll stick around for that. Speaking of Netflix, this week on The Big Picture, we're going to devote some time to the only entertainment and movie company that's found a way to truly thrive during the pandemic. Later in the week, Amanda and I are going to rank the top 10 original Netflix movies on the service. But today we're going to talk about a movie that is special to the both of us, and it would seem to Netflix users right now. So Amanda, a funny thing began happening earlier this month.

I'm going to tell you a little bit about my experience with this movie we're going to talk about. Are you ready? I'm going to tell you a little bit about my experience with this movie we're going to talk about. Are you ready? I'm very ready. Okay, so more than 28 months after this movie's release, I suddenly started hearing again about this movie. First, I got a text from my brother Kyle asking, why don't people like Molly's Game? Then a story popped up in the New York Post about a minor character in the movie. Then, while idly looking at Chartbeat during this pandemic, I noticed a traffic spike on a blog post written by the ringers. Miles Suri published two days after Christmas of 2017. Then I began seeing tweets about the movie, the real life story of Molly Bloom, the quote unquote poker princess, and even interrogation of the movie's depiction of poker.

That's right. Aaron Sorkin's directorial debut has returned somehow to the consciousness. So this is fascinating to me, and I know it's fascinating to you. On the rewatchables, we usually talk about films that are cable classics, movies that we watch over and over again on HBO and TNT in the 80s and 90s and the aughts. When Molly's Game came out, it earned a modest $60 million worldwide, and Sorkin earned a Best Adapted Screenplay nomination. But it was also released at a very competitive time. Around this time, The Last Jedi, Jumanji, The Greatest Showman,

Phantom Thread, The Post, and Netflix's Bright were all released. Molly's Game barely made a dent in the cultural fender. Nine months later, it could be found on Showtime where it went largely unremarked upon. Then, on April 1st of this year, the movie hit Netflix. The great emancipator of content. And it sure seems like people are watching it. And so we have a sort of modern rewatchable

on our hands now. We're calling it a quarantinable. Amanda, what do you make of the emergent Netflix effect on a movie like Molly's Game? It makes a ton of sense. i will be honest i am like a very i'm the i'm a case study for this right because this is a movie that should really speak to me and that i was very excited about when it came out it's written and directed by

aaron sorkin um whose work i am a disciple of and And it is about celebrities and Hollywood and stars Jessica Tastain, who I like very much. And it was not a movie I had seen again until it was on Netflix. I watched it when it came out. And then however many years went by and once it was very easy for me to watch again on Netflix, for which I'm already paying a set amount of money each month, fired it up. And I will be honest, this movie is hilarious. I cannot wait to talk to you about it. And I also had a fantastic time. It is so watchable at home.

It is way more watchable at home than it was in a theater. And part of it is because it has that, is this really happening aspect to a lot of it? There is, I don't want to say train wreck. That's rude to many people who I admire and hope to continue to work in Hollywood. But it has a wow, huh, how about that? That keeps you drawn to the screen. It has a kind of manic energy and just fast cutting and a lot of different things going on that keeps you glued to the screen. You have to follow what's happening because they're talking fast and a lot of plots all at once. And it honestly is made for home viewing, which I would not have thought of

until I got to watch it at home. I had the same experience. I had not seen it a second time since we saw it. In fact, you and I saw it together. And we did at a screening. I think it was one of the first screenings that we really went to together. And we were like, we're going to make something of this. We were not doing the podcast together yet. But knowing our allegiance to Sorkin, despite better judgment at times, I think we were both like, I'm fired up. This is one of the events of the year. Let's go see this movie. We went and saw it. I think we were, I would say, mildly disappointed,

though fascinated by it as a cultural object, and then just kind of moved on with our lives. In fact, I didn't even remember until I started researching this that the screenplay had been nominated for Best Adapted. Because while I think it has some great typically Sorkinian writing, it's not really in the realm of his best work. In fact, a lot of his best work has not been nominated for Best Screenplay, and this was. So the reason that I think we're going to talk about this movie in two parts. In the second half of the show, we'll talk about the movie itself. We'll break it down. We'll break down what we like about it, what we think works about it, what't work maybe a little bit more about

specifically what makes it so watchable and rewatchable as you're saying amanda but to start i think it's important to kind of talk about how this came back into our life which i don't know if this movie had appeared on hulu or on amazon prime if we could have gotten this kind of a spike. But the thing that this reminded me of is when the show You, a Lifetime original series, appeared on Netflix for the first time. And given that Netflix's audience is radically smaller, or excuse me, radically bigger than Lifetime's, when you hit the service, a lot of people thought, oh, you must be the new Netflix show. And in fact, they did acquire the rights to you and they made a second season under the Netflix umbrella. But this idea of ownership and

provenance, and we talk about movie studios all this time on the show, we talk about this ongoing cold war between those traditional studios and Netflix. Does it matter to you? Do you keep a close watch on where a movie comes from? Or are you more just like, I want it, I need it, I got to watch it right now? I think I do pay attention as someone who does this podcast and who has been making a living sort of out of following these things for a while. But I think most people don't. I think most people are excited to watch new things in the easiest way that's possible to them. Now, there's one, not quite caveat, but exception to that, which is that I do think that people expect different kinds of movies and kinds of TV shows from different places. Even if Netflix is all you're

subscribing to, I still think that you have like a slightly different idea of what a Netflix movie or show is than what you would go see in a theater for some reason. And I think you as another example of when it was on Lifetime, it was just kind of a entertaining but not exactly prestige television show that a lot of people didn't pay attention to. And then when it made it to Netflix, it was a little bit like, huh, I can watch all of this. And can you believe that this kind of weird but engaging show happened and existed? And let's all talk about it. And I do think that movies like Molly's Game, which we didn't really talk about it after it came out because it didn't really fit into that prestige.

Let's take this movie seriously mold. It didn't quite reach the levels that you and I wanted it to, as you alluded to. And so we kind of forgot about it until it made it into the Netflix zone where you expect things to be a little ridiculous. And so I think it's more that people are just looking for a type of viewing experience when they go to Netflix or maybe when they even go to streaming. But since Netflix is kind of like the default and the path of least resistance for a lot of people, it becomes the catch-all. Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, do you think of this now as a Netflix movie? I guess so. I mean, in the sense that it got a second life on Netflix. And I think, you know, in the same way you mentioned that the Miles Suri post, which has, by the way,

been getting decent traffic this whole time because people watch this movie and then what they do is they Google who are the real celebrities in Molly's game. And we've had some SEO luck with that, friends. That is how search engine optimization works. That is a fact. But I think if we were going to continue the search engine optimization, we would definitely be resurfacing it because it's on Netflix. And we would put Netflix and Molly's Game together because clearly people are associating Molly's Game with their ability to watch it on Netflix. And I think you're right that there's a spike because it's on Netflix that wouldn't necessarily

be there if it were on Amazon Prime or on, you know, Starz, which I love, by the way, has a great movie library. And that people do just open Netflix to see what's there. And that is like a established behavior that no other streaming service has really developed in the same way. Yeah. And licensing movies like this was such a big part of Netflix's original strategy before they were making House of Cards

and before they were making movies like Roma and The Irishman. They were licensing content from other studios and using those films, those TV shows to build their power over time and to draw in bigger audiences. And now one of the interesting ramifications actually of the pandemic has been this concern over library versus original content. We haven't talked about Quibi on this show at all, and I don't really want to start talking too much about Quibi. But Quibi has only original content. They have no library content. Disney Plus has 99% library content

and only, I don't know, eight to 12 original things that families could probably run through fairly quickly. Netflix is in this very fortunate position in part because of this long lifespan that they've had to have a pretty nice balance. They're pushing aggressively a lot of their original stuff, but it's not hard for them to show us Molly's Game or show us a movie like Despicable Me, which was very watched over the weekend, or to show us even a TV series, you know, like a nature documentary series that looks like it originated on Netflix,

but it didn't. It actually came from the BBC or where have you. So it's an interesting kind of, it's a unique opportunity that the service has right now. And it's one of the reasons I think why their stock price is so high at a time when the stock prices of so many entertainment and media companies are really in peril. I mean, the other thing that I've taken away from it is I'll just watch anything now. I go to a lot of movies. You and I both go to a lot of movies. We go to a lot of screenings. We watch a lot at home. So frequently what happens is I get home from a day of screening. Sometimes I'll see two screenings in a day and then I'll get into bed and I'll just be like,

I got to read or I got to just catch up on whatever was on the internet today and I won't necessarily watch something right away. A day like yesterday, I just watched like five movies yesterday and it wasn't like a movie marathon

in consecutive hours. It was just like, it's 9 a.m. from 9 to 10.30. I'm going to watch something and then I'll have breakfast. And then at 1145, I'll fire something up and watch something. And then, you know, Eileen will come in and we'll, I'll have a snack and we'll watch Annihilation and then she'll go leave and she'll make dinner and then I'll fire up the Jordan documentary. And then it's just like this constant stream because you're in your house. I'm just watching

everything. And so I'm more likely, I'm more prone to fire up. Are you having the same experience to just like randomly firing things up? Sort of. I think what's happening is that you and I are finally becoming civilian movie watchers. We are having the experience that everyone else had all the time because we aren't going to screenings. And I have realized that I, you know, I, I like to do my homework, as people know. So I do try to in a normal situation, go see the movies that are out, go see the movies that I know that people are going to be talking about. You know, I try to stay on top of it and then fit in personal interest where I can. but often after a day of one or two screenings, I don't really feel like

that's not off time to me, right? So I don't seek them out as much. And now I'm realizing that I can just kind of do whatever I want. And so I'm, which is awesome. Shout out to everyone else who's just been watching movies for enjoyment for however many years. Good idea by you. So, you know, my whatever I want is very different from your whatever you want, because I can't sit there and watch movies for 14 hours a day. And I don't stay up to like 4am checking things off on a spreadsheet like you do. But I do find that I am kind of prone to checking things out. One thing I did this weekend was Turner Classic Movies, the TCM channel, because they normally have a small film festival in Los Angeles and they were not able to hold that. So they did it online. So they just played like the classics of

the classics for 72 hours straight this weekend. And I went through and I DVR'd everything. And then Saturday night, my husband and I sat down and we were trying to decide between Some Like It Hot and Grey Gardens and North by Northwest and something else. And we just picked one and we were like, why not? Well, I mean, we had seen Some Like It Hot before, but we enjoyed it when we watched it again. But just the randomness of being like, sure, I feel like this. I'll watch it. Why not? And I guess that is how most people

treat movies and TV, which seems like a very sane way to do it. And I'm enjoying being a part of it. It's amazing that you think that we've become democratized by this. You know, like... I didn't say democratized. I didn't say that I'm like a person... You and I specifically, you know, like I didn't say democratized. I didn't say that. I'm like

you and I specifically, you know, we, we, we have stepped down from our, from our, our Royal order and we're now part of the, the plebs. I didn't put it in those terms. I'm saying that we were being dumb and everybody else was doing it right. And I'm happy to be, I'm happy to be among the living who are enjoying movies because they can. I'm with you. I think that the way you diagnosed it is completely right. I just think that there is less order and less strategy in the way that we're doing things. And the likelihood of somebody just firing up a movie like Molly's Game makes a ton of sense.

I mean, I watched a bunch of new movies over the weekend, too, that I had varying levels of appreciation for. I started to watch Love Wedding Repeat, also a Netflix original movie. Can't say I enjoyed it terribly much. I finished it. How did that go for you? I had a nice time. I will say they tried harder and they spent a little more money on this one than they normally do.

It really helps for me that they filmed it in Rome, you know, and it was on one location. I understood the budget constraints that were put upon it, but that, you know, I guess they filmed or produced with the help of the local Italian, um, production grant and it, it looked nice and I like Sam Clayton. So it was fine. Yeah, it's more in your zone than my zone, I would say. I'll put it this way. I don't finish a lot of the Netflix rom-coms because they are so cheaply made

and so just not even B-movie. And this one I did finish on a Saturday afternoon. I mean, I kind of napped through part of it. They do a lot of the repeat aspect of Love, Wedding, Repeat. And I have to say, I didn't catch a Saturday afternoon. I mean, I kind of napped through part of it. They do a lot of the repeat aspect of Love Wedding repeat. And I have to say, I didn't catch all of that. But sure, why not? I watched a couple of other movies. I watched Sela and the Spades, which is an Amazon Prime original movie that debuted at

festivals last year that I thought was very intriguing, made by a young filmmaker named Tayarisha Poe, who i would not be surprised to learn is working on a big project after this because she has so much style the movie itself i thought was solid kind of an impressive feature debut but she's got a real handle on the world that she built so i would i would encourage people to check that out if they're looking for an exciting young voice also watch underwater the kristen stewart um horror yes thriller alien ripoff which um you know just not what you want you know like so many things you want you got kristen stewart running around under skivvies doing an ellen ripley impression you got you got a giant sea aliens monsters under the sea you got a pretty cool

solid eclectic cast of young actors jessica henshaw john gallagher a lot of people i like it's not not not a very well-made movie this movie was made in like 2017 fox discarded it when fox got acquired by disney they put it out in the middle of January. Not ideal. It got me through midnight to 2 a.m. on an idle Friday night. Okay. Not what you want. I've been looking at the Netflix top 10 a lot lately. And I don't really know what to make of it. I think it's indicative in some respects of what people are watching.

But do you trust the Netflix top 10 at all? Because I think I saw Molly's Game the netflix top 10 at all because i i think i saw molly's game on the netflix top 10 briefly but then there's a whole gang of stuff that is showing up there that i can't understand of course tiger king is going to be there of course uh you know their new dating show is going to be on the top 10 the things that you know netflix users love are going to appear there but the movies that appear there are really weird like we've noticed angel has fallen was on there for a solid two weeks and then this weekend despicable me was just dominant well that makes sense to me there's always one like canadian produced drama that like

no one has ever heard of with all respect to the great nation of canada and that that is somehow in the top 10 and it always involves some plot nation of Canada and that is somehow in the top 10. And it always involves some plot where, you know, a child is locked in a basement or something horrible. But those are the ones I'm curious about. You asked me whether I trust the Netflix top 10. Number one, no, I do not, because I do not trust any information that a large corporation voluntarily gives to anyone under any circumstances. Number two, I have been worrying about like, we all know that Netflix has a very unusual definition of a watch, which is, you know, 30 seconds or something. And so I've been wondering when I accidentally click on, you know,

whatever weird Canadian movie, because I'm, my TV is old. and so I'm bad at the interface. Is that counting as a viewer in the top 10? How many accidental watches are being counted in the top 10 is what I'm asking. There's got to be a cutoff time that counts as a watch, but I don't know what that is. They seem to change it also because sometimes when they release data, they'll be like, people watched at least 15 minutes of this movie. And you're like, okay, well, again, that doesn't count as watching a whole movie, but whatever. Yeah, especially in the context of a movie like The Irishman, watching 15 minutes is actually like a negative review. Like if you only watched 15 minutes of

a three and a half hour movie, that's not what you want. Right. So I don't trust them as hard and fast data do i think that they're a reflection of areas of interest yes and i do also think of course despicable me was on the top 10 because um people started watching it because they have children and you know what i watched part of it this weekend those minions man they make me laugh so much i think like i was just sitting alone in our living room just like giggling at the minions. And Zach walked in and was like, what is happening here? You're an adult. But also it's kind of it's self-fulfilling, right?

Because certain people seek out Despicable Me. And so the Netflix's algorithm serves it to other people. And then they click on it as well. And in a lot of ways, I just think the top 10 is confirmation that Netflix's algorithm works. Yeah, I think that makes sense. I think when I saw Molly's game on there briefly, I wasn't surprised. The premise of this podcast is largely anecdotal. We have a lot of examples of people seeing the movie for the first time and then communicating with us or you and I getting a chance to talk about it again. There have been some significant data-driven points around this. So obviously, we cited Miles'

blog post and the spike in that interest there. If you check out old Google Trends, just type in Molly's Game into Google Trends. Look at the incredible rising arc of interest in Molly's Game starting exactly on April 1st. If anyone wants to know what it's like to have you in their life, you will just get unsolicited screenshots of the Google Trends for Molly's Game at like 7.30 on a Thursday. And you're like, man, I was cooking dinner. I was trying to have a normal time. And you're just randomly searching Google Trends. Just like Netflix, the content never stops when it comes to hearing from me. I am always sharing what I am interested in. Another thing happened too that is

notable to me. So in late March, a book was released, a book called The Billion Dollar Hollywood Heist. It was written by a man named Houston Curtis with an author named Dylan Howard. And the timing is fascinating to me. Now, you and I both read pretty significant portions of this book to prepare for this podcast. Even yesterday, you were reading it, and I told you that I had put it down. And then last night, I picked it back up again

because it is a weirdly propulsive and interesting and yet also quite bad book that operates as a kind of counterpoint, a corrective to Molly's Game. And, you know, I assume that it's not a mistake that this book was released four days before Molly's Game hit Netflix, but what do you think is going on there? Well, to me, the whole book is score settling and someone who didn't really get the depiction that they wanted putting out their version of events into the world. I have no idea what the timing and how it was related to Netflix.

I'm sure that they're aware, but you have to assume it's book publishing right now, especially because of the pandemic is so up in the air. I just don't feel great about having given these two people my money. So it was interesting. It was name dropping but at the and there are a lot of celebrity stories in it and I think as a some perspective on how certain aspects

of this game worked I think especially in the poker you might have some more thoughts but yeah I mean this is a story about everybody

trying to get as much for themselves as they possibly can in all contexts and that goes for Molly Bloom that goes for Aaron you know

this is a this is a movie and a story about hustlers. So it wouldn't surprise me if if they timed it or at least if they rushed it out. Yeah, it feels like that's I have to assume that that's what happened here.

And it's an interesting document. I actually haven't read Molly's game, Molly Bloom's book. So it's a bit strange perhaps that I've read the billion dollar Hollywood heist, which is, you know, before we get into the movie, just to give you a little bit of foregrounding there, the Bill Camp character, Harlan Eustace is essentially modeled after loosely modeled after Houston Curtis. And I don't, you know, it's very dishy. It's very, very self-regarding. It is one of the most ridiculously

self-regarding books I've ever read. Houston Curtis made his fortune, his quote-unquote fortune on the Backyard Wrestling VHS series. He was a, you know, a kind of a low-rent TV producer in Hollywood who managed to enter the orbit of a lot of incredibly famous people much like molly bloom they share that one thing which is that they were fairly regular folk from modest means who arrived in los angeles and found themselves jet streamed into a very exciting absurd wealthy lifestyle driven by these poker games. Now, that's very appealing to me as somebody who loves movies, movie stars, and poker. I get the appeal there. But this is such a sordid tale in a way too. And people lost their lives. People went to prison.

Vast sums of money were lost and filtered through the mafia. On the one hand, I think we're going to have a lot of fun with the movie as soon as we transition into the conversation, but it is kind of a... Because it's so juicy, it's hard to forget or it's easy to forget that this is kind of a fucked up tale. It is. It is a fucked up tale, though. As these things go, and of and is writing this in order to justify and put the focus back on him. But as these stories go, the victims are guys who have made a lot of money making backyard wrestling videos and who write about all of their homes as opposed to kind of real people.

The stakes even for this are safer, I guess. So you can feel a little bit of the, you can feel okay enjoying a little of the schadenfreude, which is, I think, part of the reason this story is so appealing because it is all people with means getting themselves into bad situations. I agree with you. With that in mind, we're going to talk about the movie. But first, let's take a quick break to hear a word from Bill Simmons. Hey, it's Bill Simmons. I just wanted to make sure you were listening to podcasts on Spotify.

Here's how you do it. First, search for your favorite podcast on Spotify's app. They have a library of over 750,000 pods at this point. So let's say you're searching for the Rewatchables or the Dave Chang Show or the Ringer NBA Show. Once you find them, click on the Follow button. That's how you subscribe. Then click on those letters near the top of the app that say Podcasts. All the pods you're following will pop up separated by episodes, downloads, and shows.

Wait, it gets better. At Spotify, you can adjust the speed of the pods to seven different speeds. 0.5 times is the slowest. I actually sound drunk at 0.5. You can do 0.8 times, 1.2 times, which is my favorite. Everyone sounds like they just had a good cup of coffee. And then there's 1.5 times, 2 times, and if you're completely insane, three times.

Anyway, Spotify's app connects directly to many of the best automobiles in the world. It even has a CarPlay feature that's pretty cool. Best of all, it's free. Download Spotify on any device and you're good to go. Should you be embarrassed that you're not listening to podcasts on Spotify? Well, I don't want to app shame you, but the answer, unfortunately, is yes. Make the move. Listen to podcasts on Spotify. Back to yours. Okay, we're back. Molly's Game. Before we get into the story,

why do you think this movie wasn't a hit? This movie is a mess. I had forgotten how much of a mess it was when I rewatched it. And it's an exhilarating mess, but there is so much going on that it is definitely a movie about celebrities playing poker, but it is also somehow a movie about Olympic skiing, the Russian mob, legal. It's a legal drama. It's a family drama.

It's a drama about addiction. It's a drama about really bad dresses. There's so much going on that you can't focus on any one thing, even if you just want to watch it as a poker movie, which you're going to you have a a very long section here about the poker movie and I have some questions, but I just think it is, there's, there is a narrative, but the narrative is not quite clear enough for anyone to grab onto. Yeah. I think that's a big part of it. I think Aaron Sorkin in his, for his directorial debut made a big bet that this person was the right subject for his coming out party as a filmmaker

that molly bloom and her story was i don't know i don't want to say worthy that's probably a little bit unkind but as it was appropriate made sense now previous figures that aaron sorkin has turned his attention to mark zuckerberg steve jobs the american president you president, a CNN host stand-in, hugely significant figures over time. Daniel Caffey, incredible JAG Corps lawyer. These are the figures in his films, notably all men. And it's interesting that he chose to turn his attention to a woman. I would say he has a unique history of writing women. Some of them are fascinating, powerful, thoughtful women, especially on the West Wing. Some of them not so much. I'm thinking of Joe in A Few Good Men, for example. So it's a

big bet, forgive that pun, for him to place all of his attention on this story. I still can't totally figure out why this story. Now, Aaron Sorkin is a father of a daughter. And I think that that's a big part of what interests him here. And the Kevin Costner character who plays Molly's father in the film feels like very much like a surrogate in a lot of ways. And that was one of the things actually that kind of rankled me that I kind of bumped on a little bit when I was watching the movie the first time. The second time, not as much. I have a kind of a complicated relationship to that that whole storyline but you're right that it's it's the movie's all over the place in terms of

its themes in terms of what it wants to focus on in terms of where it is it's Los Angeles it's New York it's in Colorado it's kind of moving all over the place we go into flashbacks in the recent past we go into flashbacks in the distant past we go back into flashbacks in the distant past. We go back into a mid-flashback. It has this kind of like antic storytelling temporal energy that it's kind of hard to dig your hooks into. But if you're watching it somewhat passively, that stuff is not as much of a problem. If you have your phone out and you're having a snack as opposed to sitting in a movie theater stock still, it's a different kind of experience, so it works a lot better. I'm not surprised it didn't do that well. It is, I mean, candidly, it's pretty much a bomb.

I mean, given the star power and the kind of weightiness of the filmmaker, you know, it wasn't a hugely budgeted movie, but to only make $30 million in this country for an Aaron Sorkin script about like a pretty sexy topic, you know, the Vanity Fair story about Molly Bloom's game, I remember being like a viral hit. That was a huge thing. Yeah. People didn't respond to it. I guess also it was released at the end of the year

and we all thought it was going to be a big Oscar deal. And it just was not. I too had forgotten that it was nominated for adapted screenplay. That honestly just feels like a we love you, Aaron. Keep trying award award there was a good first effort as a director as opposed to actually rewarding though you know I think we should talk a little bit about the script versus like the direction because in a lot of ways this whole movie just feels to it is Aaron Sorkin just doing Aaron Sorkin with no one to push back there are no constraints there is no one saying, you know what? You don't need that one extra layer. You don't need that last joke. Like maybe

we don't need to do the father daughter scene right here. There's no one saying no. And, and when you think about this as like, this is maybe what all first drafts from Aaron Sorkin look like, that's really interesting. Right. And there is a lot that still really works for me. And I think part of the reason I enjoyed it so much is because every once in a while you get like the big flashing light and here's the Sorkin speech or here's the Sorkin idea. And I have been, you know, that's a Pavlovian response for me. I get very excited. But yeah, it was not what we wanted it to be. It isn't that polished product. It's not the social network. It's not a few good men. And I think, especially in a movie like this, it's not a

franchise. It's not something, it's not a blockbuster. So people were going expecting polished Aaron Sorkin and that gets held against it. Yeah. I think he actually has talent as a visual filmmaker. I think if you look at the way that he moves the camera and the perspective of the cameras and what characters were focused on at what given amount of time, the fact that he has to pull a couple of moves to make poker legible to moviegoers

who don't know the game, I think he does a couple of interesting things in the movie, but it does feel, I agree with you, that the script actually is the thing, and because he has sort of a total control over this project that is really, is just unusually messy for him. And it jumps out to me right away in that first sequence, which is this kind of whiz-bang introduction to Molly Bloom, the skier. And we find her at the top of a slope, and then we hear voiceover right away. Now, under most circumstances,

voiceover can be a cardinal sin. There are some filmmakers who can do it very well. Aaron Sorkin, he's got a lot of latitude. He's got a lot of rope. He gets to do whatever he wants. I got a little bit concerned when I started hearing the voiceover at the very top of this film. Maybe we can listen to just a little bit of it here.

What's the worst thing that can happen in sports? Some people answered losing a game seven. And other people said getting swept in four. Some people said it was missing the World Cup. And some Brazilians said it was losing to Argentina, not just in the World Cup, anytime, ever, in any contest. But one person answered that the worst thing that can happen in sports is fourth place at the Olympics.

This is a true story, but except for my own, I've changed all the names and I've done my best to obscure identities for reasons that'll become clear. I'm Molly Bloom. So, um, that feels more like an answer to a question on Cora.com than screenwriting. I guess so. I mean, I mean, sort of, I think what you're saying is right. I don't think this is like the pinnacle of filmmaking. And also I rewatched this cold open and I was just like, yes, circuit back, baby. Like, yes, it is. It's so ridiculous. But to me, it's like the first 10 minutes of up. She's just like talking a mile a minute and he's doing all his sports references. And she's like, you know, and it's it certainly draws you in. It's talking directly to you.

It's ridiculous. It just kind of gets my pulse racing. And I know that it's not good in the traditional sense. But I love it. I think it's so funny that this is how he decided to start his movie. The whole... God bless him. God bless him.

Do you think that the wraparound story the skiing story and the relationship that Molly has to her father works as the framing device? It's too much. I think you have to pick one. You either have to pick the skiing and the dad thing. I don't want to step on with the later parts of this, but the dad stuff is so shoehorned in in a way that is so clearly Sorkin exploring his own issues. And, you know, it comes up in every single Sorkin show involving a female. And, you know, dads and daughters, very special relationship. Love my dad. It's a formative whatever. Expect the most of your daughters. Great stuff. Do we need it in this? No. And it always just feels like

the movie is stopping in order to accommodate that part of the storyline. And I don't actually think that the movie stops to accommodate the skiing as much. It starts it. It gives you a sense of who she is. She's an aggressive person and it sets the pace quite literally. It's just, it's again, he bit off more than he could chew with this particular character development.

Do you think Molly is a good character? Do you think that she is an exciting and useful avatar at the center of a movie? Wow. I think she could be. It's interesting. I mean, he so clearly is both writing about his daughter and writing about himself in this movie and identifies as seeding this character with and turning her into a hero and someone that you're really supposed to root for, as opposed to treating her a little bit more like Mark Zuckerberg. There isn't that distance.

And I think that the movie is a little too close to Molly. But of course, it's an interesting story. Yeah, I agree. I wish it was just a little bit more ambivalent about her story and a little less eager to make her the hero of her story. And, you know, we talked about the Houston Curtis book and the fact that I think that's clearly one of the things that rankled him is that Molly is made to be

certainly a flawed person, but a person with a real integrity and morals around the choices that she made about how she ran these high stakes cards games. And I, it just doesn't, it just doesn't work for me. It feels inauthentic to me, this desperation to make her seem like a person who, though she was ensconced in this very seedy world, still had values and ethics that would preclude her from using muscle, for example, to collect on her debts or from exposing people publicly. I mean, you know, she did expose people who were previously found in a deposition, but she did put people's names in a book. I mean, this is not,

and great characters have flaws. And I'm not saying that, you know, you either, you need to be an angel to be at the center of a film. I think a flawed person should be at the center of a film, but there seems to be this desire to kind of like valorize a lot of what she did that I just, I just doesn't make sense to me. Right. Well, you can't really have villains at the center of an Aaron Sorkin film,

which with the exception of the social network, which I think we agree is his greatest script, but also which he didn't direct. And I, you know, I think for the most part part if you look at the other shows and movies that sorkin has directed he believes in that like you know good-hearted idealistic person at the center who knows the way and i often take real comfort in that i you know i

literally am still re-watching the west wing so who am i to say that that approach doesn't work but i do think it's think it's a stretch here or it smooths out some of the interesting parts of this story and of Molly Bloom. Listeners of the show know I'm a huge Jessica Chastain fan. You said you're also a fan of Chastain. For years, she was my favorite actor. When she kind of first hit the scene from that Zero Dark Thirty period through a lot of the kind of she really leaned into the auteur zone and she made a lot of movies with a lot of

young and rising auteurs which I thought was a cool choice and I really like her. I think she's compelling, great actor. She is my type so to speak and when I heard about this movie I was like this is insane. This is the most insane thing I've ever heard. This is Jessica Chastain in a movie about poker written and directed by Aaron Sorkin.

This is crack. This is going to be incredible. And that's part of the reason why I think I was a little disappointed the first time around. And I'm even being a little bit critical here. Pretty much from this point on, I'm just going to be like, this movie rules. Chastain, I think, is... This movie does rule. It totally rules.

If you get past everything we just said, this movie rules. It's complicated. And it is. You you're right it goes down easier at home i think chastain is working really hard in the movie i i don't know if she's miscast or it's just that molly is slightly misaligned to the story but she's got this like i don't i don't this level of like defiance while also trying to integrate it into an overt sexiness that just makes for kind of a strange performance. It's not a bad performance. In many ways, she kind of becomes Molly Bloom, which is what her job is. She transforms because the way that she looks and the way that she acts is not really the typical Jessica Chastain character. But there's something like i don't know i was trying to think of like what a recasting of this

would be or like who's somebody who could have pulled this off in a slightly different way did can you think of anybody that you think would be compelling as a counterpoint to chastain someone who can talk about i mean the first person who popped into my mind was uh emma stone which doesn't who doesn't have the physicality, but who has the charisma and could and could talk and who can talk. And for me, I am very sensitive to Sorkin rhythms. And I have talked about how much I think the cold open is and the skiing thing is absolutely ridiculous, but I really enjoy it. And I think that she's doing a great job until literally the last two words, which are fuck you and which just Jessica's testing does not have in her in the right way. And you need someone who can curse convincingly. You need someone who can bring a little bit, I guess, of skepticism or who maybe can bring the distance to the character that like Sorkin can't actually in

the script um and Emma Stone's a little wry and a little um she certainly can do sarcasm I don't know I guess also maybe maybe the the physicality would work if you put her in these ridiculous dresses you get a better sense of how ridiculous it is i'm sorry we have to talk about the dresses i i whoo i she looks she looks great jessica's chest stain is very beautiful and they have put emphasis on certain aspects of her appearance on purpose and i salute her and as long as she what aspects are you referring to yeah Yeah, those would be her breasts. And they look great. And as long as she was comfortable and involved in the choice, then I feel great for her. But those clothes in particular, I think they are period appropriate. And I just want to say that the late 2000s and the bandage dress situation was some of the darkest moments in American fashion or worldwide fashion that we've ever experienced.

Just really, really tough. Is it Hervé Leger? Like who is that? The dressmaker? That's the actual bandage dress, which she she does wear at one point, you know, and there are variations. It's an extraordinary number of wardrobe changes in this movie and a lot of different styles. The toughest one for me is the one that she wears the first night of the new

game when she brings everyone to the four seasons and she walks in to be like, you know, fellas every Tuesday night from now on we'll be here and she's wearing like a black lace chandelier is the only way that I can describe it with cutouts. I don't know. I don't know what to say. Yeah, it's Yeah, it does take me back. It reminded me a little bit of Hustlers, you know, and Hustlers, similarly, a film set in kind of 07, 08, and you get transported back into that period. It does seem period appropriate.

Jessica Chastain, as always, looks great. That's my takeaway on this. The only other really kind of major character in this film who gets more than four scenes is Charlie. And Charlie is a composite character, sort of a made up character. Charlie is Molly's lawyer. And because the movie is moving in all these disparate different directions, we get the present day, which is Molly facing down a trial in which she is being insinuated into a RICO case brought by the Southern District of New York. And she's looking to find a lawyer and she finally gets recommended Charlie, who is a seasoned veteran of the prosecutor's office, but who is also a high powered lawyer with a $250,000 retainer. It's played, of course, by Idris Elba. Interesting character. Definitely one of the most like sorkiny. I just made this up because I wanted to be able to have somebody do cool stuff in a movie

kind of characters. And when you get a cool, smart lawyer who looks like Idris Elba, who gets to have snappy dialogue with Jessica Chastain, it's kind of one part movie magic, one part like high level phoniness. But I really like him in the movie. I think he and Chastain are terrific together. I think the movie, think he and Chastain are terrific together I think the movie even when what's going on between them doesn't always make sense is some of the most riveting stuff in the movie what do you what do you think about that yeah I mean it's just clearly where Sorkin shines he is good at writing legal dramas and snappy dialogue and questions of morality and references to old plays And it's so clear that he's so comfortable

in this element and knows where to make them stand and what to make them say and how to create the energy that when you have to snap back to the other kind of more actiony parts of it, the disparity is quite evident. Yeah. It's interesting that a movie, we'll get into this a little bit more when we talk about the poker of the movie and we'll get there very shortly. But poker is a talker's game. Now, me personally, when I play, I'm not a talker at the table. I hardly talk at all. But a lot of people do talk. And in fact, the conversations that people have are recounted in detail in Molly's game, the book, and are also recounted in great detail in the billion dollar Hollywood heist, the the jokes that are made the back and forth we don't really get any of that out of the movie we get more like charlie

and molly talking about you know charlie's daughter and molly's background and how she ran the games and how she'll make money and why she made ethical choices and also the crucible which i i must say that the use of the crucible as a narrative device in this movie, I find obscene and terrible, but also kind of amusing. Obviously, throughout Aaron Sorkin's work, he's always insinuating Gilbert and Sullivan and classic Hollywood musicals. And he loves the history of drama, and he's always referencing it overtly in his texts. In this case, the story of the colonial America in New England and the Salem Witch Trials as a representation of Molly's game, I found to be a little strong. Absolutely. No, it's absurd. And I mean, one thing that this movie is unbelievably sanctimonious about is gossip and celebrity

gossip. And Aaron Sorkin has always hated the internet and hated people talking about other people. And even though this movie is entirely sold on the fact that a bunch of movie stars are in it and that people are Googling who are the real celebrities in Molly's game, even now, it's very high horse. That said, at the end, when she finally yells, you know, because it's my name. And then he's like, oh, so now you read the crucible. That's I just love it.

I love it so much. It just brings me joy. That's like a very obvious little puzzle that just clicks together. And it just, I mean, it feels like really old, a few good men, 90s script writing, right? It's just that it's all pretty obvious and we all know what the lesson is, but it's still very satisfying. Great stuff. Love it.

You cited one of the funniest Charlie Jaffe lines here, which is at one point Idris Elba is talking to the prosecutors on her behalf, and he's given this long speech about the absurdity of her appearing in this case. I've been in no strategy meetings. You broke her back so she couldn't possibly afford to defend herself. And now she has an opportunity. He says this woman doesn't belong in a RICO indictment. She belongs in Congress.

This woman does not belong in a RICO indictment. She belongs on a box of Wheaties. So, yes, Harrison, I am imploring you to do the right thing. She belongs in the pulpit of a synagogue. She belongs on a box of Wheaties. I really enjoy Sorkin's just blinders on going for it. Like, fuck you. I can write any character into any situation I want.

My guy can write a speech that could also be in the body of a chain email that your parents forwarded you in 1998. Okay. He can do it. And it works every time. I just want to note, by the way, that during that very long speech, which is like Idris Elba's real Sorkin moment, his British accent just pops out like half the time. I'm so glad you said it. Who cares? Who cares? I find it invigorating. She does belong in a box of Wheaties. God damn it. You make a great point. I mean, one of the most undiscussed aspects of Idris Elba's fame, including his time as Stringer Bell on The Wire, is that his American accent is terrible. It is awful. Now, that doesn't make him any less compelling as an actor he's

i think he's a great actor i think he's a great movie presence i think he's not had a chance to do enough movies like this but when you are served up on the pedestal and you have a sorkin speech which is a great opportunity for any actor in the world and you let the you let the briticisms leak out it's extremely noticeable. It's not even leaking. It's very clear. They're just like, well, this is the best we're going to get. We have a limited amount of time. We just got to let it shine and hope people are just caught up in the words.

Anyway, I thought he was very good at this movie. Are you ready to talk about the poker and the people who play poker in this movie? Sure. Yes. I'm ready to talk about the people who play poker. I did have to Google what is a debt sheet. So that is where I am with the poker. But I did Google it. And there was actually a very helpful Quora page that explained this particular quote to me, which also taught me that we're not the only people gaming the Molly's Game SEO. Oh, no doubt. It is one of the all time

I have to run to my computer movies ever made. Okay, so let's talk about it. Obviously, this story is well known by many people at this point. But if you watch the movie and you did not run to your computer and Google it, you might be surprised to learn who some of these figures are in real life. Probably the most well known is Tobey Maguire, who is represented in the film, at least in part by Player X, who's played by Michael Cera. And this is very controversial. Tobey Maguire, obviously the star of Spider-Man movies and very well-known actor, who has not really been in the spotlight as much, largely in the aftermath of this story. And I have no idea if there's any correlation between those two things.

But he's an avid poker player, widely deemed, even before the Molly's Gamebook, to be one of the best celebrity poker players in the world. Didn't play in tournaments much, but played in these famed Hollywood cash games. These games are played at the Viper Room. They're played in private residences. They're played in the Hollywood Club. They're played kind of all over the place. Hollywood Park, I should say. And some famous people played in these games. Ben Affleck played in these games. Matt Damon played in these games. Toby's best friend, Leonardo DiCaprio, played in these games.

Joker director Todd Phillips played in these games. Jeffrey Katzenberg played in these games. Lots of producers, lots of people who are very powerful in the business who you may not have heard of have played in these games. And the stakes were very high. Tens, hundreds, sometimes even millions of dollars

on the line. Tens, hundreds, sometimes even millions of dollars on the line. And, you know, that is the most interesting thing in the world to me. I wish there was a CCTV camera on all of these games so that I could see exactly what was happening and how it was transpiring. I can't even totally understand why I care so much. It's probably 60% poker, candidly, and 40% celebrity. I'm not the sort of person that reads tabloids or is obsessed with the private lives of famous people. But in this context, and knowing what poker brings out of me, I want to see what it brings out of these other people who I have a relationship to on screen or otherwise. What do you think of the big tent story? Of the poker and the celebrity of it all? Yeah. I mean, it's fascinating because I am a person

who reads tabloids. I would say that I read them less because I really want to be friends with Ben Affleck or Beyonce or whatever. And more because I understand celebrity as a commodity and that people use fame as they also as a way to get money and to get things that they want. And it is in a lot of ways, you know, kind of one of our oldest commodities because people have always been interested in who other people are sleeping with and what other people have that they don't. It's just like a human instinct. So I think in a lot of ways, this is so fascinating because this is one of the rare intersections of all of those things. You have celebrities and they're playing a game that reveals certain aspects of their character, as I have come to understand about poker. It involves like a lot of money. It involves a created environment that is everything

that we kind of imagine Hollywood to be with the tacky dresses and the lavish suites and the, you know, guys. And it involves implications of sex, I would say. And there is something for everybody in this story. And it is also, you kind of, part of the instinct or the appeal of celebrity is that you do want to know what's going on behind the curtain. You want to see these people in their natural environment.

You want to know if it's really like what you think that it's like. And this is both an opportunity to find out what's going and also a confirmation. Oh, it is as ridiculous as you think that it might be. So this movie comes 20 years after Rounders.

One of my favorite movies ever made. A movie that is in part responsible for the poker boom. That was much like Molly's Game, not a hit and had a very sort of slow build to relevance and then became a kind of cable classic that people watched over and over again in many ways molly's game kind of ignores the approach that rounders takes to the game rounders doesn't go out of its way to over explain how poker works even though sorkin's dialogue in molly's Game moves very fast,

I find it to be a fairly rudimentary approach to poker. As somebody who, you know, I don't think you play at all. Is that right? So given that, like, what did you make of it as a poker movie? You know, as soon as they say flop 50 times,

I'm like, I don't know what's happening. And it's just kind of like a stream of words. But I think they do a good job of positioning. This person knows what they're doing. This person doesn't know what they're doing. The motivations and the character stuff, what I was alluding to this idea that poker reveals something about these people, that is very well communicated. I really could not tell you about the actuality of the poker itself. You'll have to speak to the reality of the gamesmanship. Do you think that matters to the film working?

It doesn't matter to me. Does it matter to you? Well, to me, it's like too easy in a way. It's a very like 101 version of poker. So, I mean, it really speaks to an interesting issue which is it neither satisfies the hardcore fan nor necessarily informs the neophyte which isn't i mean you know the movie shouldn't be judged on on those terms but i i just wanted more like of course i wanted more poker that i think that i would want more poker in any movie that was about the world of poker but the hands that we see are pretty well

staged and they make sense that it's a kind of an it's kind of noisily and quickly edited and paced as you know part of the appeal of poker is the kind of like grinding patience that it requires to be not just good at it but the way that hands play out and like that that may seem unpleasant but also like a great deal of tension is can be born out of that dramatic tension like if you watch the Cincinnati Kid or Maverick these are not necessarily great movies but they're movies that like take their time in revealing the hands of the players this is like in the adult ESPN poker era where everybody sees their whole cards we know what people have at all times. We're kind of winging through very quickly through the game. Again, this is only going to be

interesting, I think, to people who really care about the game. But there are a lot of people who care about the game. I mean, poker remains one of the weirdly most watched non-sport sports that we have in the world right now. So I would say I was slightly disappointed while also feeling like they did a good enough job right but i think that's an important point that it doesn't satisfy you as a poker player and for me it was a little bit like okay okay okay whatever a flop is i got it good good bad but there is something about this movie is trying to do so much that it doesn't land any one of the major constituencies that it needs to make it a hit, which is possibly the reason that it was did not do well upon release.

But now in a Netflix era where, you know, your commitment is like, OK, it's going to be about poker. That's fine. I don't really care if it nails everything. I'll watch it is is now finding viewers. And to me, it's a little it's that interesting that's approach of is this for like a specific group of dedicated people or a little bit of something for everyone and and and where those various approaches work i think that's right i by way of talking about the characters in the movie the very best part of the poker story i think is largely told through the eyes of Harlan Eustace who's played by Bill Camp and it shows a fairly good version of

what it means to go on tilt what it means to go full tilt and that means you lose a bad hand you get a really bad beat in this case in the movie it's at the hands of quote unquote bad Brad a player played by Brian Darcy James who in real life is a man named Brad Rudderman who is a pretty

important person in this story because Brad's really the reason why all of this came to light. Brad was a hedge fund manager and he played in these games, at least the movie tells us, in part to lose money to famous people so they would invest money in his hedge fund. And eventually it was revealed that his hedge fund was in fact one big scam. He was arrested on securities fraud and gave up names in the process of being indicted on charges. And so that's how Molly came into public view. That's how the famous people in this story came into public view. That's how people like Houston Curtis came into public view. And those are the sort of the unknowns.

There are a couple of other unknowns jeremy strong our boy from succession appears in this movie as a very nasty fellow who is called dean keith in the movie and is largely believed to be darren feinstein who is the co-owner of the viper room and a real estate mogul in los angeles he is also molly's boss and the person who introduces molly into this world he's it seems like a real son of a bitch we mentioned kevin costner as larry bloom her father justin kirk appears in this movie from weeds very briefly as a man who's kind of wants to is in love with molly or wants to have sex with molly who may or may not be rick solomon who is himself a professional poker player and former paris hilton sex tape maker you remember rick solomon yeah classy gathering and we mentioned michael sarah

as toby mcguire or player x more specifically who's quite a vindictive figure we don't get a rod we don't get affleck we don't get todd phillips or matt damon or any of those people in this movie sorkin seems disinterested in that aspect of the story he seems more interested in the power broker side the money side, and the sort of kind of basically the evil figures of this game, which insinuates that somebody like Affleck, who we know is a longtime gambler and has struggled with gambling addiction, Sorkin was never going to put him on front street in this movie. Instead, it's about these, I don't know, these seedier, less well-known figures. What do you think about that choice?

I do wonder whether making this movie or doing this movie, what the calculation is between naming names and then making sure that you can work with people going forward. And even agreeing to be in this movie, it was funny watching Michael Cera, who plays Player X, who is pretty clearly Tobey Maguire or barred from Tobey Maguire but I was curious who declined to play the player X and why I think Michael Cera is pretty funny in this movie it already feels like kind of

dated casting and that is something that it kind of feels like time period appropriate that Michael Cera was like a big deal at the end of the aughts, but you do wonder whether everyone's thinking, okay,

well, if we don't say this or we obscure this, then maybe this person won't be as mad at us and we'll be able to do X, Y, Z going forward. Yeah. There, there was,

there's some, there's some precision here in terms of how people are portrayed. And you know, Michael Cera thing is very interesting I agree on the one hand I know what you're saying but on the other hand I feel like Michael Cera and Tobey Maguire both feel a bit like remnants of the late aughts early 2010s so

there's some correlation there I think that's true but you still need to have someone that current audiences invest in and I think it would be funny if it were, I'm trying to think of who is kind of a newer young actor who's there sending somebody up. It's like, you can't have, I mean, Chris Evans isn't right at all, but if it's one of the Avengers, if it's Tom Holland, if it's, you know, someone that you're like, oh, wow,

I can't believe this person is doing this. And they never would for the reasons I just mentioned. But it just feels like kind of a novelty as opposed to something that really adds to the appeal of the movie, if that makes sense. No, I hear what you're saying. I think on the one hand, Michael Cera's kind of innate awkward sweetness undercuts some of the vindictiveness we read about in these books about the toby mcguire-esque figure on the other hand it's kind of a kick to see michael sarah as an asshole because it's a part that he never plays it's so against type so i i still kind of enjoy it but i i know what you're saying i don't we i know that aaron sorkin doesn't watch superhero movies he told us during the bush casting the

sundance kid rewatchables that he's not interested. So I don't know if he would have even been able to draw that conclusion, but it's a good call. One thing that jumped out to me when I saw it the first time and then again revisiting is kind of the brutality of this movie and the kind of intensity of this movie, especially when Molly's

character is attacked in her apartment. That is a vicious scene and pretty upsetting in the context of what at times can be a kind of not a frothy movie, but a more lighthearted story about celebrity and gambling. What do you think about the way that the movie kind of shifts between tones a bit? I wouldn't say it's the most disciplined approach. I mean, I, you know, I understand why this movie needs actual villains. And I think the Russian mafia is a decent way to go in terms of, and you also, I think part of what happens to Molly in that context is really upsetting and you don't want

to utter cut that. It does also help you position her as a hero later on in the movie or that, you know, she didn't really know what was going on. But it's pretty startling. I don't know if you need all of it. Again, this movie is doing everything at once. That's what it is. Yeah, I agree with that. I want to talk to you about the park bench talk. Oh, boy. So there's a lot of different ways to talk about this. I actually posited a theory on the rewatchables a couple of weeks ago

on the Enemy of the State episode, which is if you open your movie with a wedding, it's probably going to be a great movie. And I also posited that if you feature a significant scene

that takes place on a park bench, probably making a cool movie. Conversation has one of these. Enemy of the State has one of these. Molly's Game has one of these. It has a park bench conversation. Now, Molly, towards the end of the film in a moment of crisis before her trial,

or I guess before her hearing, goes ice skating. She goes back to the ice rink in New York City to channel her competitive juices and she begins skating. Is it Rockefeller Center? I don't even know where she is. It must be.

No, she's in Central Park. Central Park. Okay. She's in Central Park and she's racing and she's racing and she's racing and she's breaking the rules like she once did going as fast as she can. She comes off the ice rink because she's been distracted, because somebody's been calling out to her. And that person is her father, played by Kevin Costner. And they proceed to sit down on a park bench and have a conversation, a therapy session.

The father is, of course, a psychiatrist. And though they have a difficult relationship throughout the movie, they're going to put it all on the table. Now, the first time I saw this movie, I was like, is this a dream sequence? Is this like a manifestation of Jessica Chastain's dreams? Like what is going on? It's one of the most direct on the nose scenes I can ever remember in an Aaron Sorkin movie. Second time around, I was like, nope, this is definitely

what he wants. This is definitely what happened in the movie. Somehow Molly Bloom's father found her at an ice rink and called her to a park bench so that they could have a conversation in the freezing cold in New York City about their fraught relationship and what's really wrong with her.

What do you think about this scene? I remain kind of baffled and in awe of it. It's both a train wreck and peak Sorkin. It is all of Sorkin summarized in one thing. It's completely unnecessary and also really good. Costner is amazing in this scene. Amazing. He is amazing in this scene. And it's just like a movie star walks on and is like i know what to do and and you can't turn away i just also have to say everything that this scene has to say about therapy spot on you do in fact want everyone to just give you the answers you could save thousands and thousands of dollars just it's it is like very funny. And it's once you get past the absurdities of him leaning over the ice rink, you know, Deus Ex Machina and and and why are they on a park bench or whatever?

It is really well written and the banter is very good. And it's funny when we were doing the four weddings in a funeral aliens pod, I was listening, reading some old Richard Curtis interviews, and he was talking about one of his screenwriting tricks is sometimes you just have to sit down and write exactly what the movie is about in the most obvious terms. And that's definitely what Aaron Sorkin is doing often, but especially in this scene, this is him being like, now I'm just going to write literally what the movie is about. And sometimes that works. You actually do want the most obvious interpretation, especially with emotions. It is also just ridiculous and nutty that a father just parachutes in and is like, no, you know what?

The problem isn't gambling. It isn't ambition. It isn't gambling. It isn't ambition. It isn't addiction. It isn't the Russian mob. It isn't eight other things that I've forgotten. It's not that you skied over a branch and your skiing career is over. It's not your brother. You know, it's that you saw me in a car cheating.

What? What? How is that the thing? I honestly forgot that. I forgot that it was about him cheating. I forgot that it wasn't just that he was a demanding dad, which would be enough, by the way. It's okay. Women can also have father issues because their dads are really demanding. That is not limited to sons. But no, in this case, that was was not enough there had to be some weird flashback reveal where she walks into a house and she hears her mom yelling because he's been cheating on

her and the whole thing is because molly like walked into like got in a car or saw something in a car when she was five and he knew i mean no no that's we didn't need it incredible rant um i i think you're exactly right and it's it's the same it's the same issue that the entire movie has which is the performers are magnetic and compelling throughout every sequence some of the dialogue is riveting and some of the storytelling is preposterous. It's just too much. It's that one extra thing that gets tacked on. And Sean, you work with writers.

I work with writers. We have both been writers. A writer's instinct is just like, you know what? Let me just put another thing on here. Let's just see. We can do one more thing. I can invent a bit more. And sometimes you need someone else saying no. And I just, Aaron Sorkin, we did not need the cheating dad. It was just one thing too many. Also, let me just say therapists love to make

shit about things that happen to you when you're a five. And it's like we all we grow up, OK? It's it's we all have to move past it, including these fictional characters having a ridiculous conversation on a park bench. Do you think that that conversation on the park bench bears any resemblance to the conversation that we have on these podcasts? I don't know who to I don't even want to know. I don't know. I don't I don't know either. Let's not play that game. This is a fascinating thing. I mean, I'm sure that a lot of people are watching the movie. And on the one hand, I think we're being pretty critical of the movie. But on the other hand, I'll definitely watch the movie again before quarantine is over. There's so much about it that

I kind of emotionally and just sort of like, I don't even know what the word is. There's like movie candy feeling that is very hard to come by these days. And there's a lot of candy in this movie. There's so much that works. I mean, there's three different plot lines that I think are interesting. There are performances that are great. There's so much dialogue. It moves so quickly that you don't have a ton of time to dwell on the fact that Kevin Costner just said something crazy about an affair he had 25 years ago. It is really watchable. And again, I think that idea of there's something for everyone works well on Netflix because you do just open it and you're like, well, I don't care about this, but I really do like the poker scene. So I'll just watch for that.

Yeah, I agree. I'll probably be returning to it pretty soon. Maybe we'll look for some more quarantineable, some more movies that fit this realm. I mean, I don't know if there is a movie that is more in the Venn diagram of you and I than Molly's Game. I mean, it's sort of preposterous. Yeah. You just did five minutes on the crisis of father-daughter relationships there.

That was some revealing stuff. I'm just saying. Amanda, thanks for sharing your thoughts on this and um you know later this week we'll talk about movies that actually do originate on netflix so i'll look forward to that see you then okay now let's go to my conversation with wagner mora and greg barker i'm very delighted to be joined by wagner mora Greg Barker. Guys, thanks for being here with me. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Yeah, great to be here. Greg, you made a documentary more than 10 years ago about Sergio. I'm wondering why you wanted to return to his story and do it in a slightly different way. It's interesting. I actually always saw it as a movie before the documentary. Yeah. I came across the story through Samantha Power, who was a friend, was writing a biography of Sergio, who she'd known well in Bosnia.

And I had friends who knew him too from the UN. And she told me the story of what happened on the August 19th, 2003, the day the UN headquarters in Iraq was attacked. And the first real big attack of post-war Iraq, which really began the whole civil war. And the TikTok of that day was so gripping and what happened to Sergio and the attempt to rescue him and then the backstory to his very complicated personal life. I actually, it sounds weird, but it's true. While we were having beers in Harvard somewhere, I kind of saw the movie then.

And at the time, I was making films for Frontline, so no one was going to give me a feature film to direct. Did you even try? Did you even make an effort to raise money for it? You know what? She gave another pretty well-known filmmaker the rights. She had already given him the rights to the narrative, but the rights to the documentary were still available. I said, so I want to make the doc. Oh, wow.

And then – which I did, and I loved it. It was an extraordinary experience. But then a few years after that, I've never returned to a story but I couldn't get Sergio's personal journey out of my head and then the rights – the other guy couldn't make the movie. And I said to Samantha, he wanted to renew the rights. Again, I was like, don't do it. I know how to make this movie and take a chance.

And she did. And then that was a while ago. But it was always in my head a movie. That's so interesting. I have more questions about that. But Wagner, what did you know about Sergio before you came to this project? This is actually one of the reasons that made me. So this thing happened in an interesting way because while Greg was trying to make this

movie like he said, I was also trying to make a movie about Sergio. Because I thought that Sergio wasn't, people in Brazil especially, wasn't that aware of who Sergio was and I think that it was important to bring attention to his, especially now in Brazil, to have like a human rights guy being like, people like knowing who he was. So I was, and this is, was sort of part of more of a more ambitious plan that I had, which is to produce films about Latinos that don't reinforce stereotypes.

So, and I, so Sergio seemed to me like the best way to start that. So I uh with my other uh associate producer uh brian travers like really trying to make this film and first thing that we did was to look for uh some of the powers books rights and we realized that there was a guy who had the rights unfortunately someone already had the rights of the book and instead of like competing or like we kind of joined and i had this uh uh this great skype conversation with i mean i've seen his uh talk

and it's an amazing film and then greg and i we spoke for i was in rio de janeiro he was in la and we spoke for an hour. And we understood that we wanted to make, the reasons that we had to make this film was kind of the same. We wanted to make the same film. What were those reasons? I mean, what did you guys talk about and bond over regarding Sergio? I think that this is pretty much a film about empathy. And the value of someone that looked at people not as numbers, not as statistics, but as people.

This was the most important thing that I think Sergio, the most important value that Sergio as a top UN official, as a master negotiator. But I think the most important thing about him and what made him different was the fact that he could look at George W. Bush or the janitor of his room the same way, really look at them. But he couldn't really look at himself with the same clarity, which was the, we both talked about this on our first Skype call, that's the dramatic core of the movie is Sergio. It's about, it's just kind of a film about seeing the ways of seeing seeing the world and seeing yourself and um and sergio has not looked clearly at himself before and i think that's kind of and that's part of the journey in the movie

one of the things that's so interesting about it is it's kind of a memory piece you know the way that it's structured and the way that you're kind of revealing different aspects of his life i think anybody who knows anything about him who has heard of him knows that he died tragically. That's not a big reveal necessarily, but I personally didn't know nearly as much about his life. How did you go about structuring the movie and making sure you were revealing the things about his life at the right time in the story?

Yeah, I mean, that was a challenge. It's actually a similar challenge we had on the documentary. Had an amazing editor on that. Had a phenomenal editor, Claudia Castello, on this film. A lot of it – I mean the script had a similar structure but a lot of what actually worked was discovered in the cutting room. And I think frankly my documentary background came in pretty handy then because we're used to like going into edits without really knowing how it's going to turn out. And we had to experiment a lot. It was fun.

It was fun, but it's a challenge because there's kind of parallel storylines, and yet a lot of the movie, the whole movie really takes place inside Sergio's head when you unpack it. It's his memories of who he is and how he got to this moment. And you just try things, and how often got to this moment. And, you know, you just try things and, you know, how often do you flash back to the present? And, you know, we tried, we did experimental screenings with friends and family and you could see what works and doesn't. It's a process of discovery.

What about the idea of diplomacy as a narrative tool? I feel like it's not necessarily inherently cinematic. It's inherently boring. Diplomacy, the word itself is boring, diplomacy. tool i feel like it's not necessarily inherently cinematic it's inherently boring diplomacy the word itself is boring diplomacy you have a couple of riveting versions of it but i mean what did you guys talk about how did you figure out how to put like a little bit of a like a narrative engine diplomacy is about human interaction and so with the highest stake so when you boil it down to that i mean then it's gonna be very interesting But if it wasn't for, because of this specific character, I mean, he was a very interesting person.

You know, he was, and like, and I think that the real challenge of doing the film, of even doing the script phase with Craig Burton, was to balance this, you know, the importance, the political importance that we wanted, which was in the beginning sort of the main reason of why we did the film. But his relationship with Kirk, the fact that this guy discovered the love of his life a couple of years before he was killed in a bomb attack. And it was something that we didn't invent. It's true. It's all true. And so it was just a matter of how to balance this in a script in order to make it work

as a feature, as a movie, as a feature film, because you had already done the documentary in that. So... But these diplomatic set pieces with like Paul Blemmer, who plays, you know, played by Bradley Whitford, and then the president of Indonesia, and Janani Gusmal, the rebel leader in East

Timor. Those were really key scenes and to Netflix's credit during the development, they were saying we want to sort of see how the sausage is made. Take us into the room where it happened, right? So that's – and those we really had a lot of challenge. We had a lot of fun with those scenes, particularly you and Bradley, the scene of Abu Ghraib. I mean that was like – what was that like doing that scene? So – I mean first of all –

Sergio and Paul Bremer visit Abu Ghraib. Yes. The Americans are rebuilding Abu Ghraib, Saddam's torture chambers to house new detainees, which obviously Sergio is deeply concerned about. Yeah, and Bradley is such a extraordinary actor. I mean, I was working with someone who I admired so much. You know, so this is

the first thing. And then I think the scene, the conflict within the scene works really well. You know, someone who is the fact that all the tragedy of this story, it always strikes me. The fact that Sergio didn't want to go to Iraq. The fact that all the tragedy of this story, it always strikes me. The fact that Sergio didn't want to go to Iraq.

The fact that the UN was against the invasion. And the fact that they had to be there doing something that they were against. And having to convince someone that reopening Abu Ghraib was a bad idea. So all that is dramatic enough. Though it's dramatic enough it's it's uh there was a lot of though it's it's politics it's a but there was a lot of conflict uh in terms of character wise uh going on there did you guys have to make any choices to make the movie make more sense in a way because obviously your background as a journalist and as a documentarian you are sticking to the facts as

clearly as you can communicate them but when you're telling the story of a person's life, it's not so easy. How did you navigate that? We're making a movie. This is a movie. It is inspired by what really happened, but it's a movie. And I made the documentary, the Samantha Powers book. So that's all there. We're telling what I was seeking in this film was emotional truth, which is harder to get in documentaries. I wanted to explore Sergio's inner journey, the way he's navigated between the shades of gray in life and in politics and discovers himself. So, I mean, it's authentic. My main sort of touchstone was that it had to feel authentic.

But obviously for dramatic purposes, we take certain liberties, but that's just to make things work. I have to say something. I've, the last things that I've done, both as a director and as an actor were based on real characters. So I directed my film about a revolutionary Carlos Marighella. And then I did,

of course, Pablo Escobar. And then, and then the Olivier Assayas film about the Cuban the Cuban spies, all of them based on real people. And I think in our case, of course, we worked a little bit so things would work cinematically. But we didn't, considering, compared to the things that I did, we didn't do much. There's a lot of things there already. Sergio was a very complicated guy.

He was a guy who was the world's Mr. Fix-It and the guy who did this mix of Bobby Kennedy with James Bond and the guy who would go places and the smartest dude in the UN, the guy who was supposed to be the next Secretary General after Kofi, but his intimacy is so full of contradiction and the guy who was married young and had his kids, but he was never around, never could be a father to his kids. He had a lot of affairs during his UN career, but he never allowed any woman to get in his emotional bubble until the moment that he met Caroline Glarriera.

And then, right after that, the guy died. The guy was responsible for the independence of a whole country, East Timor. And then, you know, Al-Qaeda saw that as a problem and that's why he was a target because Indonesia was the biggest Muslim country in the world. So there are so many things going on. So there was the importance of this man as a world leader but it

is, like I said in the beginning, if Sergio wasn't Sergio, if he wasn't the kind of person that he was, I don't think we would have a movie about a diplomat. He could be as important as he was but he was a very interesting character in terms of drama. Yes, which is why I actually, going back to how we began, that's why I saw it as a movie from the get-go because of all of those complications. Yeah, I was looking back at an interview of you talking about him around the time of the documentary.

And you can sense that you have a kind of cinematic vision of him, you know, as this kind of dashing figure. And he feels like the lead of a movie in so many ways. What did you do to get inside of his life? How did you research his life? So this is, again, now with all the experience that I've been having with real characters, the thing that I do is like I try to learn as much as I can about the characters. The thing that I do is I try to learn as much as I can about the characters. I read and I've seen Greg's documentary many times. I've read Samantha's books. And there was a lot of

footage of Sergio in the field. Not of his intimacy, but there's a lot of footage of him working and doing his thing. So I've seen and I've read everything in order to then forget about all that and create my own version of the character.

I didn't try to imitate him or anything. The thing that I kind of did specifically here with Sergio when we were watching that scene with Señorina, the lady that he meets in East Timor

who was a real, he wasn't an actress, he was a real person. A non-professional actor. A non-professional actor. Sergio was sort of a mix between what I've learned from him and myself. I say this, it sounds weird, but I kind of try to put myself in those situations and think and feel of how would I react if I was him. Of course, I was so merged with him already because I was watching and seeing and things so I kind of I was already like without trying to imitate I was already kind of talking like him and

moving like me and look looking like him looking at people the way he looked but he was sort of myself you know what I mean it was sort of myself at the same time in all of those scenes it was kind kind of amazing. Does it make sense? It makes total sense. Because I knew this character pretty well over the years. And we workshopped lots of scenes at Wagner's kitchen table for months, really. And to see, I mean, it was such a privilege for me. But to see, you know, an actor of your skill kind of discovering the character and taking risks and, you know, experimenting.

And I could, you know, I remember very clearly one moment where you kind of, for me at least, it was suddenly I kind of got chills because you were reading some scene. I can't remember. And suddenly the way you stood and carried yourself and talked and it's like, oh, my gosh, that's it. So there's a deep immersion that goes through, and then, you know. Yeah, it's sort of, I think I allowed him to come really smoothly, not mentally, not like, I'm going to do this and that because that's the way he spoke. Let him take over.

It was very smooth. When you're working on something like this, do you have to or want to consult with the US government, the United Nations? Are any of those organizations aware of even what you're doing when you're making a movie like this? No. Would they disapprove?

Have you heard from them? It really, they're just so, having spent a lot of time working with those institutions, they're so bureaucratic. There's really – some of the extras are former US officials, soldiers, even diplomats who are doing some work on their spare time as actors. But there's not – there's no – there's nothing to be gained dealing with that level of bureaucracy. You just get bogged down. So we weren't asking to film in any UN buildings or US government buildings. I mean, that requires a different level of approval. But no, so it wasn't necessary.

Did anything surprise you with your first narrative feature when you started making it? I mean, I was surprised how much I loved working with actors. They were incredibly generous and welcoming and so skilled. I mean, the level of detail that goes into a performance. Having just watched movies, I'd never fully appreciated it until I saw it in action. I remember the first rehearsal that we did. I think it was a lunch scene at Sergio's mother's house in Rio. It was the first rehearsal that we did. I think it was a lunch scene at Sergio's mother's house

in Rio. It was the first thing we rehearsed. And everybody ran through the scene and then Wagner and everyone else just looked at me. I realized, oh, I've got to like... I don't know, it looked pretty good to me. I don't know. But I realized then you're looking for an emotional core.

And I was very prepared. So that was the other thing that I learned was just the – a lot of making a movie on this scale which was filmed on three continents and it was very complicated is simply organization and management, team management, choosing the right people, managing it well. And because if all of that's running smoothly, then you get to a location or set in front of the camera and the actors feel relaxed, the crew feels relaxed, and then magical things happen and things just become real. But to get to that point, it's all about like just making the ship run smoothly with clear direction. And I hadn't fully appreciated how how much just simple pure management was a was a part of it a funny thing happened between when you guys started this and now that it's arriving on netflix which is anna de armas kind of became a movie star

um how did she get involved in the movie and you know what was it like working with her i mean the story of how she got involved is pretty good. So Clemens Schick, who plays Sergio's bodyguard, Gabby, was at my house. We were just talking about the movie. He was cast. I think we were just cast in, right? Yeah. Because you worked together. I had worked with him before.

And he's perfect for Gabby. I met, perfect for Gabby. And so we met, had a great meeting. He then had lunch that afternoon with one of our producers, Daniel Dreyfus, who had lived in Spain for a number of years and watches a lot of movies. And Clemens, they just started talking about Spain. Oh, we've made movies in Spain. And Clemens happened to mention he was seeing a friend from Spain for dinner that night. Oh, who is it? It's Ana de Armas, who was already the number one choice for Carolina. Oh, wow.

Because Daniel had identified her and said, and I'd seen her movies, and we thought, okay, she'd be amazing. We hadn't approached her yet. So that night, Clemens mentioned the movie to Ana. We got her the script the next day. That was on a Friday. She read the script on Saturday.

On Monday, she's at my house saying, I have to play Carolina and don't see anybody else. And this was without any of her team or anyone's team being aware of it. So, you know, she was – and it was clear. I have to say also that I think that Greg's documentary played a big role in convincing people to make the movie. When they watched the film, they were like, oh, I want to do this. I think it was the same with that.

Okay. So if we're complimenting each other, it's also your reputation and your performances in other films. Because every actor I talked to when we were casting it, it's like, I want to work with that guy. I mean, it's really what happened. Bradley said that, honestly. Everyone knew your work, so it was, yes, I'm sure the doc helped, but people wanted to work with you. Anna was

a, it was, I mean, I think that she's one of the best actresses I've ever worked with. She's an amazing actress. And she's great to work with. She's such a nice person great to hang out with and she's she's very grounded um which and you could kind of tell i remember talking to her at one of

just before we started shooting i had breakfast with her again and i was just like look you know you know what's happening to you is amazing you know what's going to happen to you you can all we can all feel it um but you know who you are you know and uh you know, what's going to happen to you. You can all, we can all feel it. Um, but you know who you are, you know, and, uh, you know, friends are friends from, you know, childhood. And, and I think that's what we needed for this role too, which I think is why she identified with Carolina. Carolina is a remarkable woman and, uh, who, who changes Sergio and brings out, you know, and, and changes, you know, and changes the whole course of, of UN operation in Timor and then in Iraq. I mean, she's an amazing individual.

And she saw there was that strength and groundedness that Anna had at her core. This strikes me as a uniquely right movie for Netflix, given the international nature of the story and maybe a movie that might have been difficult to do somewhere else. It sounds like they got involved very early on, but is that something that you guys discussed as well about how to reach as many people? I think that Netflix was the perfect house for this film. Honestly, I don't think this film would get made anywhere else.

I think that the fact that Netflix sees projects with a different perspective, not only in terms of artistic value, but only in terms of value artistic value but also in terms of market you know they see it differently you know first hand what it can do to grow your career in a way exactly so that was

the first place we pitched the film and it was really fast and they were great. Honestly, Netflix, they have this repetition of being nice. And they really are. I mean, I had the best time with them in

Narcos, and I was very pretty much involved with the directors and the showrunners when we were creating, doing the show. And also here in Sergio as a producer, the notes that Netflix sent to us, they were kind of great. They were really good.

And the ones we didn't agree with, they were fine with. And they let us make the movie. It was basically like an independent film. So we were off, you know, around the world. One of our great execs came to set for two or three days, but that was it. And then they just let us make it. It was... And you were right. I mean, this is also

a film about a UN guy, a man of the world. And we one very important thing for us in this making this film was to have actors and crew and people from all over

the world with different accents and with different colors and with different colors and with different... And this is also a film about... I mean, every time I think about a film about the UN, I think it's a film about diversity, empathy, human rights. So, you know, we have actors from Ireland, Cuba, Germany, Iraq, Jordan, Thailand, Brazil.

You know, I think that this is such a... And we brought extras from East Timor, you know, which made a huge difference in all the scenes that Ana and I were, you know, acting with those extras. And the fact that they were from East Timor, they knew Sergio. So I think that the way we did it was also very

appropriate for the kind of film that we were doing and the fact that this is a Netflix film, that it's a place that is all over the world. I think it makes, you're right, it makes very, very much sense. Craig, you're going to keep making narrative feature films now?

What is your thinking going forward? I liked it a lot. I liked it. I mean, I'm drawn to story and emotional human truths, emotional truths. And, you know, there's sometimes you can do that

better in a documentary and sometimes you can do it better in a feature film. I also have to say that right now, as a documentary filmmaker, it's very difficult to know what to say if you want to speak to this current moment because it's just overwhelming, really. Maybe in 10 years, 15 years. telling stories that speak to emotional truths and particularly this kind of truth about empathy, you know, maybe understanding and trying to find a way out of the darkness, which is kind of what Sergio did. For me, it's more powerful.

It's also very interesting to, you know, we premiered the documentary here at the festival in 2009. While we were here, I mean, Samantha Power was here and she had to go from, Obama was texting her saying get back to DC. I'm about to become president. And she went back and then part of his administration. We were all here watching and watched from Park City, watched Obama become president. Taking this film out into the world, this film about this guy who saw the world in all of his nuance. Back then, it seemed like, OK, we're all on this path,

and Sergio's kind of like, we're all on Sergio's path. It feels very different right now. And so I feel like this film, you know, through the chance of timing, is actually, this is the moment to take this story out into the world, and I'm so glad we're doing it as a narrative because it'll touch more people, and people won't see it as kind of like, oh, right or wrong or just why I don't agree with this or not. It's just a story. And I think it will attract people, whatever you think about politics.

But hopefully there's a message in there about empathy and understanding that will touch people because I think that's what we need right now. Guys, we end every episode of the show by asking filmmakers what's the last great thing they've seen. You're at the festival. You can't reveal your feelings about the festival as a jury member but what are some great things you guys have seen well i haven't had time to watch much at the festival could be any movie at any time little women oh yeah what did you like about that it's so well crafted i love the way she played in the script plays with time um and the directing of the of the cast and the ensemble was just and the whole piece is flawless and feels like doesn't feel like a period piece feels like it's it's a piece of this moment

i thought it was brian she should have been nominated in my humble opinion so i i being a juror in sundance i obviously i can't discuss uh the films that i've seen here. But last year, I was a juror in the Sydney Film Festival and we gave the award to Parasite. And I think that was the best film I've seen last year. And also, in the end of the year, I was also a juror in Portugal, in a great and very interesting film festival in Portugal. And we gave the award to a film from Tibet called Balloon.

Check this film out. It's a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, super beautifully shot film. I've never heard about a film from Tibet. It's the first time. But it's an amazing movie. Great recommendations. Fagner, Greg, thank you for doing this. Thanks very much.

Thank you.