The Big Picture - The David Fincher Movie Draft

Episode Date: November 3, 2023

We are drafting again! Sean, Amanda, and Chris Ryan reunite for a draft of the work of acclaimed director David Fincher. Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Guest: Chris Ryan Senior Producer: Bobby Wagner Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Learn more about the albums you love with Dissect, a music analysis podcast hosted by me, Cole Kushner, a lifelong musician. Each season of Dissect dives deep into one album, examining the music, lyrics, and meaning of one song per episode. We've covered albums by Kendrick Lamar, Tyler, the Creator, Frank Ocean, just to name a few, and our brand new season just launched All About Radiohead's 2007 masterpiece In Rainbows. Listen to Dissect on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts, because a great art deserves more than a swipe. Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express.

Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit Superstore.ca to get started. I'm Sean Fennessy. I'm Amanda Davins. And this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about our homie, the big homie, David Fincher. CR is here, Chris Ryan,

and we are drafting from the works of David Fincher today. Amanda, how are you feeling about this exercise with me and Chris? Thrilled, honored. You know, I think it's gonna be really wholesome and positive experience. There are no traps in the work of David Fincher or in the structure of this draft. So I think we're just gonna keep building.

Yes. You have entered Chris Ryan's Swedish sex yes um you have entered chris ryan's swedish sex dungeon and you have been strapped in so please prepare yourself i fucking like david finchard's movies too right and this is an interesting one because like we meet here yes this is the shared this is the center in the work of just like one of our great living filmmakers and i think like the the sense of humor the precision the perfectionism the you know the embrace of genre are all things that we agree on but i you know as always your venture favorites are going to be like slightly different than my venture favorites and and then also um we're drafting from a pool of 13 films.

Yes. We're chopping things up a little bit. So that's interesting. Is it 12? I think it's 12. Well, Sean, I am reading. I thought it was 12 too until I opened this document.

And let me read the script to you. This week, we are celebrating David Fincher to commemorate the release of The Killer, his 13th feature film. I might have just gotten that wrong. What if you're his Tyler Durden? Or he's yours? Yeah.

Or, you know, it could go both ways. I was thinking about the pairings and the sort of like, why is Fincher special to me? And then who are, you know, we have a little hall of fame of filmmakers that we obsess over right here at The Ringer, especially on this show. You know, PTA for me and Fincher in many ways

are kind of like, they're fused together and they're two different sides, I think, probably of the personality that I've shaped around their movies. Chris, you, of course,

Michael Mann. And the Russos, yeah. Amanda, some might think, oh, you know, Nancy Meyers, but I think of Steven Soderbergh. You know, it's really like your pairing. And Fincher and Soderbergh, of course, are I think of Steven Soderbergh you know it's really like your pairing and Fincher and Soderbergh of course

are great friends and Soderbergh just like edits his scenes on the fly which is just sick and amazing maybe we can talk about their creative partnership that doesn't actually come to anything

but just is like two bros in a basement talking about good cuts but I think it's interesting that he is a uniter for us. Yeah. Because his movies are wildly successful, iconic, generation-defining in some ways, but very fucking perverted and funny and weird.

Yes. And he's part of a lineage, right? He's part of a lineage of a very particular type of filmmaker. Hitchcock, De Palma, the guy who's incredible at mainstream entertainment, who is very clearly interested in a much more lurid side of the human sensibility. But everybody's like, you know what? It's cool. He's good enough at his job.

We're actually into it. I'm actually comfortable having my interests in the underbelly of life exposed because this work is so good. I like having it revealed to me that I like this, which I think is like the ultimate superpower as a filmmaker. Even more so, you know, I mean, Scorsese does this. Other filmmakers do this.

They're not alone, but I just, I'm so amazed by it. And I think you go to a, I mean, it's a very, it's nice that we're twinning with like Martin Scorsese's killers and David Fincher's killer. And one is about like evil and God and what we're doing to this place that we're spending this limited amount of time. And the other is just like, welcome to the fuck hut. Like we live here.

We're never getting out. Let's turn on the smiths. Do you remember the first Fincher movie you saw? Movie is a good question. The first Fincher I saw was absolutely the Freedom 90 video featuring the supermodels. Kirstie Turlington, Cindy Crawford, Linda Evangelista. Just watching MTV. Yeah, I think so.

And then Vogue, the Madonna video soon after that. But I don't think I saw Seven when it came out for obvious reasons. You missed out. Sure, but I was 11. So I don't know. Maybe that wasn't quite right. Was it Fight Club? It was probably Fight Club.

You go alone by yourself? Yeah, I did. Yeah. Quote unquote by herself. Right, exactly. 14 years old, just me at Lennox Mall being like, hello. Have you considered that I'm your Tyler Durden? Did you know that we've only just been podcasting the two of us?

It's funny because I was listening to your game, Rewatchables, on the way here because I only got to rewatch part of the game before I got to work. And I was like, how can I do a crash course on the rest of it? And the whole conceit of that movie

was that our podcast, or like all the podcasts have been an elaborate joke on you, Chris Ryan, and also the Sixers, which was funny. So yeah, there's a lot of that in these movies. Sierra, we've talked about David Fincher together for hours and hours and hours. And yet, I don't know if I know what your first Fincher is. Is it Seven? Is it Alien 3?

Well, so like Amanda, I think this is one of the greatest directors that you wind up experiencing without knowing you're experiencing. Where like grow up watching Aerosmith and Madonna videos and you're like those are indelible like they're imprinted in my memory and I didn't know

they were Fincher at the time I don't think even MTV used to put directed by at the bottom of the videos that's a good question you're right

I think they waited so growing up like some of the most iconic music videos I'd ever seen are directed by him but I think I saw Alien 3 in the theater

I was already a big Aliens fan. So in some ways, going to see Alien 3, still didn't really know who I was watching a film by. And then obviously with Seven, it becomes like a kind of like, oh, well, this is a major filmmaker. And we're going to be studying him 30 years in the future. Have your attitudes towards his movies changed while still enjoying them? That's something that I'm kind of working through as I revisit,

because Seven is the first one that I saw. Seven, I think for a particular type of young person, kind of hit like a bomb. You know, it was a really like a kind of mind expanding thriller. And obviously, it's very much like what happened in the music industry when Nirvana hit, you know, where just like every movie

just kind of seemed like Seven for five years there and the same way that every band was trying to sound like Nirvana. And I see it now and I see a much more

mournful, depressive, like family drama when I watch Seven now. And when I watched it when I was 13 and probably when I was 25, I was like, this is a sick serial killer movie. This chick's head gets her head, she gets her head cut off. That's amazing.

And now I'm like this from the opening shots of Gwyneth Paltrow in that movie. I'm like, this is about how the nuclear family is dead in America. You know what I mean? Like you see, you see the movies very differently. And the same is true for the game. The same is true for even Dragon Tattoo,

more recent films. Do you feel like as you are re-looking at the work that it feels different to you or is it just like this is the same pervert I've always known and loved?

Yeah, no, I would say it's the same. This is really fucked up and it's exhilarating that something is really fucked up. And I guess I re-watched Gone Girl last night and it plays a little bit differently because of the Ben Affleck of it all. And again, it does seem like every movie for the last 10 years targeted to women and every book targeted to women has tried to be Gone Girl.

So, you know, I guess i did watch it slightly differently and and thought it was funnier and you know but i appreciated it but no i think part of the appeal of him is he is a window into uh just like an electric cynicism or maybe even nihilism that I maybe don't share on like a subject level, you know, like maybe I'm not sitting here thinking about weird sex dungeons all the time on my own, but sad, I know, you know, we can only, we can only speak to our own experience. Think how full your life could be. Yeah. But then, you know, he, he just like find something in the sex dungeon that speaks to me, you know, and I'm like, oh, okay, sure. Everyone is really fucked up, you know, he just like finds something in the sex dungeon that speaks to me, you know? And I'm like, oh, okay, sure.

Everyone is really fucked up, you know? And this is how he wants to express it. And I can get on that level for two hours or three hours. Can I just say, like, so one of my favorite pastimes is watching actors talk about working with David Fincher. Yeah. And it's funny because it's like, he made me piss in a bottle. And then it's also funny when they realize something about filmmaking that they seem

to have not known until they were working with him. So I watched this really fun roundtable where Mark Ruffalo was talking about working with him on Zodiac. And Ruffalo is talking about like, it's my first day. It's a one-er. It's a walk and talk. And we're on take 35. And he sees Fincher walking towards him for take 36.

And he's like, well, they got the wrong guy. And I'm going to get paid either way. And I'll have to go home. And I did my best and that's just it. And Fincher walks by Mark Ruffalo and moves in the background extra two inches to the left, then walks by Mark Ruffalo again and like slaps him on the shoulder. And he's like, let's go. And he was like, what I realized is that I am 10% of the frame in a David Fincher shot. Like I am not the star. I'm not taking it up. He's seeing 100% of the frame. So to answer your question,

the way that my like attitude about his films has changed over the years is as his public persona has grown and we know more and more about how he makes movies and the way he sees the world and the way he sees a shot being composed. I rewatch these films compulsively because I'm like, every single decision was made here by this guy.

And there is a reason why a window wiper is going when they're approaching the house for the first time in Dragon Tattoo. Or there is a reason why, you know, the shot was like this, looking up at the apartment building in Fight Club. And like, I find it to be such a rewarding experience to go back to his movies

because they're also fucking super entertaining and fun to watch and like funny and twisted and violent and everything that you want to be able to feel inside of a movie theater. Yeah, I think that's really definitional for one of the reasons why all the movies are rewatchable. Even the ones that I am iffy on, and there are still some that I'm kind of iffy on,

even though this is literally on my on my Rushmore of filmmakers but I'm kind of fascinated by his legacy and I don't want this to tip into a conversation about the killer too much because we'll do an entire episode about that movie but that decision to make that movie is is a little bit of an announcement of like, I know what you think I am, and I will show you just how much I am what you think I am. And I don't know if that portends like an acceptance of that for the next 10 years or an abandonment of that. Because he has obviously spent really the last 12 years,

13 years, redefining our expectations, post-social network, everything he gets up to. He's kind of trying to upend, I think, our expectations, post-social network, everything he gets up to. He's kind of trying to upend, I think, our expectations of him a little bit. And sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. And some things feel like side projects and some things feel like cash grabs or, you know, like obvious, you know, like who else would direct The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo? Of course, he would make the most magnificent adaptation of that schlocky novel. But The Killer in particular feels like an interesting time to do this exercise

because it feels like we now have like a full body of work. Like if he died tomorrow, and of course, I hope that he does not, he would be like, this is totemic.

Well, I mean, he would make that joke. You know, he would make that joke. For the pot, I mean, not for that joke, yeah. How do you think he'll be remembered? This is a beautiful sicko. And also as a perfectionist. To chris's point the longer he works the more the legend of david

fincher grows in terms of how he works what he expects of actors what he expects of everyone in the um the shot i think there was a great again i've been quoting matt damon on the bill simmons podcast a lot recently great podcast episode if you never listened to it but he tells the story about uh david fincher like absolutely losing his mind at how an extra was walking in a shot he's just like that is not how a normal person in the bookstore yeah which is just like absolutely invigorating um to hear when you are also a perfectionist and something like that will just absolutely make you want to jump out of your skin. And so I think that the exactness of Fincher will live on as much as just like the absolutely, you know, deranged sex dungeon stuff. Do you think that overwhelms the other good things that he does?

Well, here's the thing is he is not the writer of his material, generally speaking. I have some thoughts about that. And this was like, there's a viral Quentin Tarantino clip where he talks about the difference between him and Fincher. He's like, Fincher's the best, probably the best pure director of my generation, but the difference is I write my stuff. And he was, I don't know if that was a little bit of a competitive jab at him, but I think that the fact that there is not,

every film that you see that's directed by David Fincher is a David Fincher film, but I don't think of them as a film by David Fincher. I don't think of them as, other than Mank, a piece of autobiographical, kind of like, here's how I'd like to see the world. Like all of the psychology, all of the compulsions, all of the depravity, all of the humor is shot through whatever piece of material he's interested in. He's a hired gun.

He's always seen himself as a hired gun. Music videos, commercials, movies, adaptations of books, all the projects, even if they're immensely personal, he's like, you want me to do the job or not? And that's a fascinating way to look at an iconic director because so often on shows like this and all over the place, the auteur theory and everything that you can think about with the history of movies, it's like the visionary filmmaker. And this is the funny thing.

I don't want to step on the killer either. I hope I get to chime in on this. But when he and I went and saw the killer the first night at the Academy Museum and Fincher was on stage and he brought out, he was out there with Eric Messerschmidt and Kirk Baxter

and a bunch of the people that he works with routinely. Every question that was asked, the other guy would be like, that was David. That was David's idea. David had the idea to do this. It's like, it's his movie.

Andrew Kevin Walker, the screenwriter on the first question of the Q&A, redirected the question to Fincher because he was like, well, David came to me in 2007 with this idea for this movie and he pitched me the entire movie. So it's like, sure, he doesn't get screenwriting credits, but he is deeply authorial on all of his movies. I watched a Fight Club clip of him directing behind a behind the scenes Fight Club clip where it's when Edward Norton arrives and Brad Pitt steals the car in the background and he's walking the crew through what they're where they're going to put the camera with her new and he just does the scene. He's like, it's going to be like this and then we're going to cut to a medium and then we're going to see him in the background and then it's going to go he just does the scene. He's like, it's going to be like this, and then we're going to cut to a medium,

and then we're going to see him in the background, and then it's going to go like that. And you're like, oh my God, this thing is just in this guy's head already. It's just a matter of getting people to do it. It's pretty remarkable. The draft. This is complicated, of course.

We don't have enough movies, theoretically, to do a traditional draft. So we are continuing to expand the parameters for the lawyer movie draft. We added characters into the mix. How about Griff, huh? Dominated. Dominated. But he also, and I say this with love and respect to Griffin,

I think he spent like three months preparing for that draft. Right, yeah. And I think I spent like a night. Yeah. So. He spent three. It was hard earned. Yeah. He did also get the first pick.

He did get the first pick. The first pick rule holds, which is that it traditionally ensures. And also, you know, he came into our house and he took Michael Clayton from us. Who won 2006? And legally won.

Yeah, that was tough. Who won 2006? I don't think we did a poll. So we might have to speak with... Bob, did we do a poll for 2006? Randomly went back and listened to that. I don't know. Let me check. And you were really on your bullshit on that draft.

How so? Which one was that? Because that was him taking Talladega Nights in Wild Card. Okay. Taking a blockbuster and a comedy off the board for us. It seemed like a good move. I have absolutely no memory of this. What did I draft?

I think I did that because I lost something. You had Devil Wears Prada. Oh, right. And then you went full Amanda and got Marie Antoinette and... Didn't I get the Queen? And the Queen. And the Queen. Okay.

Yeah. I have no recollection. I really... I don't remember. Sorry for treasuring moments that I spent with you guys. Well, you didn't treasure it. You just re-listened to it.

So you remember it. Let's talk about the categories. Okay. Chris and I started talking about the categories a couple of weeks ago, started vetting them with you a week ago. Are you feeling like where we landed is appropriate? I like the categories.

Okay. We just have to talk about the rules of the draft and specifically repeats. Okay. Because, so would you like to read the categories since you came up with them? Sure. I'll read the categories and you came up with them sure i'll read the categories and you explain the guys have been talking a lot about you like went to see the

killer together and that was like a really special thing and how cool it was so i just want to say that i saw the killer at the venice film festival where it debuted okay and i walked out at 11 a.m and i just sent you a text message that was like this fucking rules and i was right um chris and i did more together around this film because you betrayed us by seeing it ahead of us. You could have come to Venice. I'm glad I didn't. I'm glad I saw it in the Academy Museum

surrounded by the great works of cinema. I am glad I saw it at the Palazzo di Cinema. On the water. I mean, the only person that we were missing was Bill Simmons, who was going to come to that screening. And then it was the first night of the NBA. Yeah, he was like, I got to watch Chris Debs. I'll read the categories and then you can explain the issue that we have. Does that sound good? Yes. Six categories. Thriller, of course, David Fincher, the master of thrillers.

Blockbuster, $90 million threshold. Oscar nominee. wildcard, and then two wrinkles. The first is sequence or scene. David Fincher renowned for his incredible oners, for his amazing CGI inventions of moving the camera through homes, through spaces, and also renowned for stunning moments in his movies, shocking and exciting moments. And then the last category is music, video, or commercial. When we did his, when we ranked his works in 2020 ahead of Mank, we included commercials and music videos in those rankings in an epic two-part episode. If people have not heard that one, I suggest they go back and check that out.

You were. Yeah. Very, very fun. Honestly, probably some of the best stuff we've ever done. So this, this is a speaking of remembering our work together um okay so what's the issue here so as mentioned we have 12 films not 13 as sean put in the you didn't have to read what was written down now maybe that was a test maybe that was me trusting you you know which i try to do maybe you're in the game every day maybe i am this is the first challenge. You're talking to an empty chair right now. So we have three, we have 12 films. And music, video, or commercial is, you know, that's three things that are a different bucket. But that means that we have 15 slots to fill between thriller, sequencer scene, blockbuster, or wildcard.

Now, obviously, wildcard can also, doesn't have to be a film. Can be a television series. Yeah. Could be a music video. Right. Could be a commercial. So that's 12 movies for 12 spots across Oscar nominee, blockbuster, sequencer scene, or thriller. blockbuster sequence or scene or thriller things have to break just right for the movies to for

for everyone to be able to draft everything because there are only a certain number available for blockbuster only a honestly a disgraceful number available for oscar nominee because the academy just sucks i'm willing to give the numbers that are eligible in each category. Okay. Do you want to do that just as a talking point for the audience? Sure. So I believe in Thriller,

there are two, four, six, eight films eligible. Okay. Which would make four of his films not eligible for Thriller. Oh, okay. I only had six, definitionally. But go ahead. Now, obviously, for Sequencer scene, all films are eligible.

Right. For blockbuster, two, four, six are eligible. Right. Crossing the $90 million domestic threshold. For Oscar nominee, five movies are eligible. Right. And obviously, Wild Card is wide open. Right.

So I think that there is only like two permutations. Where it all works out. Where it all fits. Yeah. And we would sort of have to work together. Help each other. Yeah. And not be assholes.

Because I got to the point where I was gaming out, okay, well, if I do this, then that. Some movies have to go in one of two categories or else the draft is broken. Yes. So do we want to work together and not repeat or do we want to say okay you can sequence or scene does not take its originating film off the board and so okay so what do you think about this i boy i'm a swing voter uh i i feel like i could probably do this because I have a bunch of wildcard stuff that's truly wild. But I do think that one

of us will get completely fucked. And if somebody is like, I'm taking social network and wildcard, then like we're going to go. That would send the whole episode upside down. I think what we were trying to figure out is, is it funny if someone has an incomplete?

If someone has a not eligible and cannot be voted on? And then Amanda suggested we throw trades in. So I'm not... Okay. But for like future picks. Yeah.

For future picks. That's what I thought we would do. Isn't that what you do? Yeah, you get like draft picks and all sorts of stuff. But for draft placement because we don't... Everybody has to have the picks.

Barbie's face right now. Bob, are you okay? Bob is like... I didn't know I was signing up to be the picks right now bob are you okay i was like i didn't know i was signing up to be the commissioner of a fantasy no no i like this i'm gonna introduce the stepien rule but for the big pick draft okay uh yeah no it's always like four first round picks in 2033 or something i've been reading the ringer.com congratulations to you i hear everything that you say. I hear all of it.

You hear it all because it's happening in your head because I'm not real. Do I like it? No. Do I remember a lot of it? Yes. If you introduce trades, I will get more interested in becoming the Sam Presti of the big picture than I will in winning drafts. That's actually maybe a good place for this to go, but I think it would probably...

Was Presti the process? No, he's he actually did it though where he over the course of 10 years like rebuilt a team to now being like oh they're good again yeah they're really good who's on their who's on the chet holmgren and shay gildress alexander and josh giddy aka the slob wizard although he doesn't like being called slob i was gonna ask would to ask, was that like a self-designated slob? No, John Hollinger named him that and he was like, that's funny. And then like after two days of being called slob wizard, he was like, we can retire that. Okay, that's an incredible nickname though.

It's tricky because I want to do this twice. Like I want to do an episode where we don't double up and then I want to do one where we do. Just to see how differently it plays. Do you want to not double up and then at the end we can like come. Allow a dispensation. Yeah. Come together and heal and just like redraft within the episode. I know you have a hard out. You always do this. I'm so sorry.

You know, we have so many ideas and then I just like, I have so many ideas. I also literally was late this morning. It's just not ideal. It's okay. And the studio didn't work. Let's just go under the hood. You know, everything's a mess. We've got one hour and 20 minutes to make this work. I'm really hungry. I didn't have breakfast.

And I have some peanut M&Ms in my bag left over from Halloween. And I'm like, can I eat them in between picks while not crunching into the microphone? Amanda's saying I'm really hungry is like Stellan Skarsgård, like tightening the neck brace, you know, in the basement. And Daniel Craig is like, oh dear.

I'm going to be fine. Let me just say that like historically, you have overestimated the correlation between me not having eaten and me being cranky. No, I have not. It's something else. Actually, I would say probably that having to pee is a bigger factor for you. Yes, that is true. No, actually, I would say probably that having to pee is a bigger factor for you. Yes, that is true. Oh, interesting.

Yeah. Yeah. In other pods. Also, he's peeing at people who haven't had access to food and get cranky. It's like you really can't be talking to anyone. That's not true. I don't eat. No, he pretends like that's just his personality.

Yeah. But it's definitely a factor of like if he had a turkey sandwich, he would be 8% nicer. If he had a dry turkey sandwich, no condiments. No mayo, no mustard. We talked about this on a future episode that has not been released yet. Oh, about your eating?

Or about my turkey sandwich maintenance? But Chris was there for the mustard reveal. You were there for that? Yeah. Oh, you were there that I don't like it. When did that happen? I'm not doing two episodes of the mustard speech, okay? Just putting that out there.

We're like definitely eating into time that we could be talking about Swedish sex dungeons. I think we should not be able to repeat just to see how it goes. Oh shit, I don't have the peanut M&M's. Oh no! What happened? Do you want to go out and check?

And we'll go. There's no food here! Guys, it's wellness week. It's a holiday in Sweden, okay? So we don't have snacks. The magnificent irony of Wellness Week at Spotify while we do the David Fincher draft. I'm obsessed. We did not plan this, but it's going to work out perfectly. Let's just do it where we can't repeat it. And chips fall where they may. And I think

your idea at the end of saying, you know what, let's allow for a dispensation of some kind is a nice one. This could create some chaos. Still, I want to do it. How do you feel? You good? I've long been pushing for bartering being part of these drafts. I think that we should just

loosen the rules even more. You're being too uptight about it. You're being too Fincher. The thing I don't understand about trades is I don't know what future compensation looks like

because you have to make your picks. You can't give up a pick the way a sports team would give up the rights to a pick. You could say you could move from three to one. This is not real. You can't give up a pick the way a sports team would give up the rights to a pick. You could say, you could move from

three to one. This is not real. It can be whatever we want it to be. Sports is not real either. It's just a game. Oh my God. True.

This is a multi-billion dollar industry podcast. Just like professional sports. I don't know if there's a sports correlation for this, but what about like a future ability

to take a drafted movie away from someone oh my god this is now we're making survivor for movie drafting yeah that's right but so it's like if i really need a movie from you you get what you're like i'll take it from you yeah but in the next draft you can just take something from me but also but you don't know that that person has played that card yet. They play it privately with me so that you draft it live and then I reveal to you

that you can't have it. The problem is if we ever do anything else, like a Julia Roberts draft and I take Pelican Brief from you for a third time. That's the last podcast we make. Yeah, because Amanda goes to prison after murdering you live on the air.

I can't do that. My son would be too upset. Have you thought about that? That's kind of a Fincher movie, actually. Yeah, no, that's true. But like a new thing is that my son is absolutely obsessed with, he's a CR head. And so, but like, but I do actually feel warmer, do you know? So I don't know how, because it's very beautiful.

After 15 years of hating your fucking guts, she's finally decided you're okay. Am I going to like go for the jugular in this? Oh yeah. But you know me. I bounce back. I'm not gonna be like, oh no. You bounce back. You're just grousing about what happened to Talladega Knights. You hold grudges too. The reason I brought, I specifically brought 2006 up because that's the kind

of dirty pool that you play. What dirty pool? If you do it today I will be celebrated as a king among men okay let's just all right let's go no repeats let's see how it goes yeah just like should we take a quick second to go see there's no snacks outside why don't you run the eight fold and get like a thing because they're all gluten-free i think i'm trying to move my meeting okay i'm okay let's go i've been eating gluten-free bread actually it's pretty good it's not worth

it I have to be honest if you I understand that there are people with real gluten issues yeah it's and I'm happy that they have an option but like Bobby hit me with a draft order okay what shaking the tiles in that what hat is that that's not the top is that a top gun head it is the top gun okay do you ever wear the top gun hat no i don't take the scrabble tiles out of this it just sits on the desk waiting for the next draft selecting first will be sean holy shit okay well now we're gonna here's the, is that if you fuck it up on pick one, then you're just an asshole. You know, it's like, it's like, there's no defense. How did I get myself into this situation where I'm doing this with you?

I'm second? Amanda is second. Okay. No, but it's just kind of like later on, you could have made a pick and then you, that fucks it up and you could say well your machinations forced me to do this but now if you fuck it up on pick one you only have yourself to blame i see yeah and just to be clear the killer is available the killer is available because it has been released in movie theaters it is available on the netflix streaming service on november 10th which is when we'll be talking about it on this show i promise when we talk about it we will not reveal anything about it.

Fuck. I don't know. This is really hard. I actually don't know if there's like a right pick here. You can tell me, you can yell at me if I make a mistake because of the complicated nature of this decision making and also the complicated nature of what favorites are. I think because this film is only available in a very small number of categories and it is my favorite David Fincher movie.

I think this is the right one. In thriller, I will take Zodiac. Correct. Which I think is Fincher's masterwork. And this movie only really applies to thriller and sequence. I guess you could also take it in wildcard theoretically, but the. And this movie only really applies to thriller and sequence. I guess you could also take it in wildcard theoretically, but the idea of this movie lasting until wildcard is hilarious.

Yeah. I think this was probably the number one draft pick. Yeah, it was. I thought it was. But also because it's not eligible for Oscars or for Blockbuster. Right. But the trick of it is there are so many movies eligible in thriller that are not eligible in other categories.

Right. So you could make the case that this is not the right move. It might have actually fucked the draft by doing this. Okay. So I don't know. Well, there was one other option, but we can. It's almost hard to be competitive because we're doing a math equation together. Right.

But this is a director. There's not enough movies for it to just be like, oh my God, I can't believe he rope-a-doped you into getting this and then he got that. Right. His worst movie is good. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

No, I agree. I was thinking about that when you were talking about the game. I was like, who has a better eighth best movie than David Fincher? Maybe Tarantino. It's a very short,

you know, Scorsese, people who've made 70 movies, but he's got like 10 bullets in his gun. So that's part of what makes this fun, but part of what makes it hard. Right. Okay.

So Zodiac in thriller, my first pick, Amanda, you're up. I will obviously take social network and I'm going to do Oscar nomination. Um, I, I thought about this.

Yeah. That's my pick. But I, I, I think that those are kind of like obvious one and two. And now, and now Chris can get really frisky and now Chris can also really fuck things up. Um's my pick. But I think those are kind of like obvious one and two. And now Chris can get really frisky. And now Chris can also really fuck things up.

Social Network is my favorite David Fincher movie. And we think it is the best movie of the 21st century so far. Certainly of the last decade. No, just 2010s for me. Just 2010s. Okay. I would take. There Will Be Blood.

There Will Be Blood. Yeah. I'd probably take Zodiac over it, honestly. I mean, you did famously on the David Fincher rankings. Yeah. That's a good conversation to have, actually. Again? No, like, that's kind of like a back pocket best movies of the 21st century.

Actually, what I've been wanting to do, I don't know if you want to get in on this, but what I want to do is a big, the underrated, like the lost movies, like the lost classics of the 2000s. Why would I not want to get on that? Because a lot of them are just like the rover. Are like boy movies? Yeah, just me and CR

just like smashing fists together and being like, remember when that guy got his throat ripped out? That's why I should be on it so I can be like, okay, and remember this. Right, music and lyrics.

Yeah. I was going to say Morning Glory. Okay, thanks so much. That actually might be on my long list. Okay, you've made your pick. Chris has to make his pick.

This is awkward. In Oscar nominee, I will take Gone Girl. Fuck. Rosamund Pike's Oscar nominee. Fuck, fuck, fuck. And then in Thriller, I'm going to take seven.

Okay. Wow. This, it's like watching the sands come down the hourglass, you know? Do we have to talk about it? No,

we don't have to talk about it because like this is, this is actually, I almost feel like this is- He moved his meeting. Oh yeah? I didn't. No,

I didn't. It's with a very prominent person so I can't move it. Okay. It's David Fincher. It's me and Fincher talking about the draft results I have no

we're so screwed this is fucked up this is gonna be a mess so we've just taken what I think we believe are his four best movies Zodiac

Social Network Gone Girl and Seven are off the board yeah I feel okay alright I think this is still I think this is still going to be okay. I, in scenes and sequences,

am taking the Enya torture scene from Dragon Tattoo. Okay. You're a badass. Thank you so much. That's good. That's really good. That shit is fucked up and awesome. Yeah. That was was my where was that

on my list 7th on my scenes list but I think all but 1 have already been taken off the board no that's not true all but 2

have already been taken off the board so now that you also could have done Zodiac in scenes or sequences I thought about the lake barryessa killing

that was also my pick that was mine as well and and i wonder whether that was that was mine too this is nice i was gonna do the the taxi cab yeah i have that on my list as well the cab ride i have two cab rides also david fincher master of even though this is kind of hacky having the radio playing or having like information being conveyed in that way happens in uh dragon tattoo it happens in zodiac it happens in yeah yeah okay so that means i have two picks now and so many movies are off the board holy moly i actually just need to like mess with my document a minute to just remove potential picks off we might be we might be fucked i think we are

yeah sorry i i fucked it up because dragon tattoo should have gone in black he can do something right now that will pretty much wipe me out so this is almost like playing battleship i am going to in sequence select the where is my mind conclusion of fight club okay because fight club is not really eligible in any other categories at this point besides thriller which i have already taken so i'll take where is my mind the revelation that you know jack is tyler durden the exploding buildings you've met me at a very weird time in my life. Yes. Yeah.

And Marla and the narrator embrace. For the sake of conversation, I would have probably taken single-serving friends from Fight Club as my sequence. Just the plane ride together? No, the montage of him. Like, you land at Sea-Tac. Oh, yeah.

The insert shot mega moment. Yeah, yeah. Fight Club? Okay. And then he sees Tyler going past him on the escalator. Go, speak on it. I just, you know, we were talking about the Blank Check episode that Alex Ross Perry was on.

And in that episode, he says something that I think is right, which is ultimately like when I was 13, this movie, or 15 or 16 or whatever, when that came out, this movie kind of defined a point of view that I had. And as I've gotten older, I've realized how kind of juvenile and obvious that point of view is. And that we've kind of, as a culture, moved way past it. And also, the movie has been kind of grabbed by a bunch of people who have kind of misinterpreted it. And I agree with all of that,

and the kind of like anti-consumerism and all that stuff that has seemed so obvious to us now, which was not at the time, is revelatory. But as a pure filmmaking exercise, it's such a wild fucking movie. It's such a fun, thrilling innovation on popcorn thriller that you just can't, like I couldn't look away when I was watching it last night. Stayed up till one o'clock in the morning for no reason

just to finish a movie I've seen 300 times. So I still have a lot of love for it and I'm happy to have it on my roster. I do feel like we're kind of fucked up here. So I have one more pick and I think that means in Blockbuster, I will take Panic Room. Yeah. Which I think is means in Blockbuster, I will take Panic Room. Yeah.

Which I think is kind of the only move I have. Well, there's one other move which I have to make now. Well, tell us what it is. Which is in Blockbuster to take Benjamin Button. Right. Because it's still eligible. And you know what? I think it's underappreciated.

You've made this case before. Incredible. I mean, obviously with Fincher, like the filmmaking, I just think a lot about like Cate Blanchett dancing, you know, speaking of taxis. And it's affecting. He's trying something different. I think it is like a movie about grief and a lot, you know, and, and very affecting and certainly manipulative, but also like it worked. I cried a lot when I saw this.

So I don't know. It's beautiful to look at. It's weird. It is. I mean, it's about being in love with like a old man, baby, you know?

Yeah. I sent you guys, what commercial did I send you that he, Oh, the Orville Redenbacher commercial that he made for the popcorn company before making Benjamin Button, which is clearly like a test to see if he could do the technology of aging and de-aging a non-person. And Benjamin Button, I don't know.

I feel like I'm exactly where I was with you three years ago on it, where it's like, it's kind of astounding, and it's theoretically his most emotional movie that feels like his most bloodless movie to me. It feels the most like him trying to wear someone else's skin. Yeah. And what I want is him getting under the skin. You don't really want

emotion. You want... I want the visual representation of repressed emotion. That's like what his movies are. Okay. His movies are Mark Zuckerberg stewing

in his seat while a lawyer tells him how much money he took from his friend you know what i mean like that is what he right like daniel craig being confounded by his inability to understand what is happening in this world that he doesn't understand that's something that i he does so well him doing florid love it's beautifully made beautifully made but i just never like i don't buy it you know what i mean yeah but to each their own so what we worried about happening i think just happened yeah there are no blockbusters yeah so which which i i'm but i'm okay right that's the thing is i what everything i did was to survive yes so i probably should have taken gone girl and blockbuster in

retrospect i don't think it would be fair for me to try and like trade it to myself into a different category. If you had done that you would have fucked me. Yes.

Because you would have only had one move left. Yes. Which would have been to take Mank. You know what the thing is is that when

you're drafting for as much as you're thinking about like the categories you do want to take the movies that you want on your board. Yeah. So I guess I am I can't have a Blockbuster.

I have an incomplete test. Let's play it out. Would you guys allow Chris to put 7 in Blockbuster? Because it's eligible there. Well, so is Gone Girl. And I have both of those. I have 7 and Gone Girl. Chris already has both of them.

Let's play it out and then we're going to read the rest. So I'm going to, for sequence, I'm not going to spoil anything for people. I'm just going to say Scooter, the killer. Oh, interesting. Interesting. Okay. I was wondering where this would go.

Because if you've seen this movie, you've got to take it. And whether or not this is a top five Fincher movie is a great conversation. I don't know. I'm not saying it is necessarily. But stuff like what Chris just said. Yeah. Is there like, ooh, like my fingernails are tingling when I'm watching the movie. Yeah.

Okay. That's a good pick. I like that. You don't have a sequence yet or you do, Amanda? I do. I screwed everyone up because I took Enya and Dragon Tattoo probably. For it to work work it should go in Blockbuster or Oscar nom

yeah but you knew that too that's good drafting well it was it was something that you wanted which I wouldn't take away from you

also all of my sequences were already off the board I mean I could have thought up some more but like honestly I saw The Killer two months ago so

I remember certain like scenes but I can think of five scenes I would have taken in sequences in The Killer because months ago, so I remember certain scenes. I can think of five scenes I would have taken in sequences in The Killer. Because it is a series of sequences. Yeah, it is a series of sequences, and I remember some of them, but my mind isn't as sharp as yours. How many times do you think I'll watch The Killer before I die?

I mean, you can really just throw it. That's a real throw it on and be like, oh, he's about to do this. Or like, oh, this is about to happen. I need. There's no. So-and-so's about to show up. There's no physical copy of Mank. They don't. No one.

There's no Blu-ray. There's no DVD. Okay. Like when Netflix gets new from deep space, like what's going to happen? Like when the aliens come and they're like you guys destroyed cable television

yeah when Ted Turner comes back to life and takes down Netflix but it's like I if you I don't know

I guess I I screwed it up and it doesn't matter it doesn't really matter because this is probably going to happen because like Sean said if I had picked if I had picked

if I had done like if I had taken Gone Girl and Blockbuster, right, instead of an Oscar nomination, I probably would have then come around and maybe even not had an Oscar nom. So there was not enough. We needed the killer, the game,

and I'll tell you what I did is what I did, what I did what I back pocketed was if I couldn't get something like Fight Club in sequence I had a sequence from Mindhunter yeah

and that that was a way to kind of I'm surprised also that like Mindhunter Mindhunter could be eligible for Thriller for Wildcard

oh I hadn't considered that it is eligible for Wildcard of course and that is that would be the final knife fight of this draft but

to me it needed the movies that only had a couple of optionalities needed to go in sequence so with you taking Dragon Tattoo

and me taking Fight Club we kind of just like we blew it up yeah and that's fine it is what it is let's keep going so you took

you drafted I took Scooter the Killer as my sequence and I took wait did I do as my sequence and I took... Wait, did I do anything else, Bob? No, that was it. So I have another pick here, right? Yes.

Yeah. The incredible thing here is we have an hour, which is great because we're going to just keep going. We're going to do this all over again.

What do you mean? Like once we've completed this, we're going to change the rules and draft again. Oh, so we do need to speed up. I'm going to take the season finale of the first season of Mindh do need to speed up. I'm going to take the season finale of the first season of Mindhunter as my wildcard.

Interesting. So, like, what you could have just done is said Mindhunter. Sure. Okay. But I'm just being specific because you didn't direct every episode of Mindhunter. Oh. Quote, unquote. Well, that was something I wanted to ask is could you have said, like, the matte paintings from Empire Strikes Back have been selected in my wildcard?

I have some pretty funny wildcards. Yes, I also have some creative wildcard options. You said to get creative, so I tried to bring... I should have trusted you. You guys are the best. Okay, so that sequence, what I have is Holden visits Ed in the hospital in Mindhunter episode 10, season one,

which to me with... Is it In the Light, the Zeppelin song? Yes. Which is like, that is as radiant a sequence as he has ever made. When he fucking hugs him. When he hugs him, yeah. And is a callback to Fight Club in some ways. Giant man hugging sad little wimpy boy.

Yeah. Kind of a metaphor for Fincher's whole career in some ways. Great pick. Thanks. So you have another pick now? No, I just did Scooter from the Killer and I did, yeah. All right, so Amanda, you're up. What categories do you have open?

Tell us. I have Thriller, Music Videos, and Wild Card. Okay. I will take the Game and Thriller.

Good. And I guess if I had taken the Game, you could have taken Mindhunter and Thriller. Yes. The Game here is a good value pick yeah listen i just i love a movie about a house which um panic room is the number one movie about a house in the david fincher canon but the game house is really pretty underrated um and i deeply love michael douglas and i don know. This movie's pretty fucked up.

It works for me. But I also, you guys were talking about on Rewatchables about how if you rewatch it like three times in a week, you're like, this doesn't make any sense. But if you drop in every couple years, you're just like, oh, I wonder what's going to happen to Michael Douglas.

This is pretty exciting. This is an interesting decision you've made. Because you've just given up something that I know you want to me. In music video? Yeah. I think that the

music video advertisement category is like the most relaxed I feel about being. If you if you do that What?

You just you made your bed just now. You could have just let me have the game and you could have had Freedom 90. She could have had 5p and a 9.

I would happily put the game in wildcard and then I would have bangers all up and down my board. But you made that decision. Okay, if you want to do that. Also, if you think that you can speak in an informed way about Freedom 90 and its impact,

then you can have it. But if your blurb doesn't live up to my standards. What if I choose to say nothing? Why don't you just take- What if I simply hold it in my hand? Why don't you just take one of your, like, okay. I guess, was it Tuesday morning of this week or Wednesday morning I woke up

because I go to bed at a normal hour and I had 15 text messages unread. And I was like, oh God, what happened? Who died? And it was Sean just sending a list of commercials to the group chat I was involved in that you went to bed though at some point and Sean just like kept sending YouTube commercials all that's happening right now is people are listening to this show and they're like it must be so cool to be friends with Sean he just sends

me these great messages no but you're never like how you doing doing? You're like, here is a Nike commercial from 1992. It's 1 a.m. It was like 1047. Yo, can I say something? It was 147 a.m. Oh, sorry, Bob. I just assume you mute notifications at a certain point.

No, Bob got on it like 2 a.m. the other week to be like, damn, look at Biden. Biden loves dead reckoning. That's what it's like to be friends with me. People are listening like, that is sick.

Biden saw the entity. He was scared. Okay. Can we go back to your text messaging for a minute? Yeah. My exquisite series of exchanges. Okay. So you recently shared some feedback that your sister gave us based on our Five Nights at Freddy's episode.

And it was a text message exchange. So your texting style was featured in that. Yeah. And everyone was like, bravo. This is the Hemingway of our generation. You were texting without capitalization or punctuation with your sister don't think that's accurate yes you were and i just want to let you know that and let everyone know that when you text with us it is full fast bender and the killer punctuation and capitalization

at all times so i just want people to know that you are what what you just said is not correct okay let's pull it up there there are no periods at the end which there's always a period there are exclamation points question marks letters are capitalized i have a style of communication and it is consistent okay there's no forbid empathy there is no periods you won't see periods from me ever Amanda you can't catch me in this

I am who I am just like the killer I am what I am I'm just looking at our text messages and they're entirely like parked parking

parked yet parking walking yeah it's not ideal Los Angeles it's actually ideal. Los Angeles. It's actually not that fun to be friends with us. Okay. So,

you don't want to give up the game now. You want to hold the game. No take backs. Yeah, not if we're doing another draft. So then I will take in music video Freedom 90 by George Michael. All right, speak on it.

Starring the supermodels. Speak on it. What's your favorite shot in that? I mean the jacket probably lit a flame sure and what put put that video in context for us uh sure it's a stylist meeting a stylist it's two great creative minds searching for meaning in their creativity george Michael, who'd been a big, bold, brassy pop star, trying to reinvent himself as a solo artist onto his second record and trying to create a new image,

a bolder image for himself, meeting maybe the single biggest transformer of pop stars. This is somebody who made Paula Abdul seem credible, somebody who helped Madonna reach new heights she'd never seen before. And then using the powers of sustainable beauty to elevate together. It's an amazing concept. What does sustainable beauty mean to you?

The Supermodels documentary, 25 years later. Look at how they look 35 years later. They look exactly the same. Well, they do and they don't, which is a topic of the next episode of the Supermodel documentary, which you didn't watch. I didn't watch it, no. I had mixed feelings on the doc, but it does write, I think, wisely posit with the help of David Fincher, who sat that the second episode and basically the ascent of the Supermodels ends with Freedom 90. And so this video not only is, like, memorable in Fincher's career and is, like,

a sign of things to come, but this is, like, in a lot of ways, this video is what propelled all of their careers because it identifies them. It, like, brings them together as a thing.

And then it's, like, the four girls and then they walk the Versace show and they become sort of stratospheric. So it it like, basically invented

the supermodel era? Whether or not it's more important for them or for George, you know, the late, great George Michael

and Fincher himself is an interesting conversation. Right, right, right, right. It was mutually beneficial for everyone, obviously. But that's,

it's the kind of video that gets a filmmaker the opportunity to make an alien movie. You know, it's like, it is that iconic a filmmaker the opportunity to make an alien movie. You know, it's like, it is that iconic and that profound for his career. It's also, it's just an incredible song. It's really, it probably is my favorite George Michael song.

And so you take that and you put it together with the video that looks like that and the iconography it creates with the supermodels. And it's perfect. There are great, other great videos he's made here, and there's plenty to choose from in this category, but this is the one, in my opinion. And then an Oscar nominee, I've got to take Mank,

which I still think is great. Okay. And it's incredibly funny to think about the killer as a response to Mank, and we will talk about why that is the case when we talk about the killer. Mank is the good version of fincher's sincerity in my opinion it is what it is what benjamin button can't accomplish

but right i know i know reasonable people can disagree i think yeah definitely um okay so amanda you have a pick now in music video or commercial i will take vogue, Madonna's Vogue, which frankly is also iconic. And Madonna's really important to me. That's it? You made me give a disquisition on Freedom Nightingale. Yeah, I did, because you had to earn it. I don't know. You said Madonna is important to me.

Yeah, well, she is. I love Madonna. Yeah, I know you do. Is this video better than Express Yourself? I think so. I think it's also more iconic. It's more iconic. It's like the one.

You'd see it in your head. Express Yourself is like a, almost like a compendium of pastiche, like references to other things. And Vogue almost is like, well, holy shit. Like this feels, I knew even though it's obviously

also drawing off of like a culture. One of the things that I hadn't really put together before when I was thinking about Mank was that there are a lot of music videos and commercials in this era for Fincher in like 90, 91, 92. There's a very famous Nike commercial with Charles Barkley. It's very openly a riff on like Busby Berkeley and the iconic, you know, the old Hollywood that he's very interested in. Yes. the iconic, you know, the old Hollywood that he's very interested in that I think maybe even I failed to draw that connection but this is something that he likes,

you know, and that he and Madonna bonded over and they talked about a lot. That was much more express yourself in Vogue. Vogue is more like, you know,

the kind of ballroom scene and the club scene and her, you know, doing what she does, pilfering from it without really any care in the world

about what it might do to the rest of the people who developed those creative acts but, you know, Madonna is Madonna. Okay. I'm quite curious to hear what Chris without really any care in the world about what it might do to the rest of the people who developed those creative acts. But, you know, Madonna is Madonna. Okay. I'm quite curious to hear what Chris does for music video or commercial,

and I guess you'll be going there next. Yeah, and I'll be taking Leave Nothing, the Nike ad, with Troy Pomolamo and LaDainian Thomason. That's the one where it's just golf? No, that's the one with these guys from birth to glory. Oh, right. Oh, that's a good one. Yeah.

One of the coolest commercials ever. And I know Ennio Morricone music playing. Yeah. I texted you guys in this wonderful series of exchanges that I shared that that commercial, which is 30 seconds long, is better than any sports movie in the 21st century, which I believe. Okay. Okay. You have one more pick, Chris.

I don't oh shit so this is it oh because you can't do Blackbuster so unless we were to allow perhaps after we go through this exercise again we may think what if you could

trade categories within itself but that would obviously for this version of it I came up short. Oh, okay. And it lines up perfectly because you've been wanting to take House of Cards and it's still on the board. I'm taking the Gone Girl

director's commentary, obviously. I don't think that's eligible for the record because Gone Girl's already been taken. That's a part of Gone Girl. Oh, boo!

What? Oh, that sucks. Okay, that's a part of gone girl oh oh that sucks okay that's fine do you um you can't watch gone girl commentary without watching gone okay but yes you can and i do it on the internet all the time do ben affleck interviewing david which is obviously also please please look at my list please honestly look at my list of wildcards. Is it Ben Affleck interviewing David Fincher about Mink? Yes. Yes. So just take that. Director's Roundtable.

Okay, but look at number four. Should I take number four instead? It's really good. I've had a lot of exposure to it. I think the Ben Affleck one is better. All right, that's fine. Why don't you just say which other one it is? My other option is David Fincher driving around Hollywood in his 90s white Mercedes,

which he just convertible, which he does all the time. He's just like around. You can go driving and seeing David Fincher be awesome. That's a great pick. Didn't he and Soderbergh used to have an office somewhere? I don't know. I'm not sure do i want um a closed circuit camera on them at all times when they're conferring over their cuts yes i do i

would like to watch them talk about like do you what is so appealing about that working relationship to me is that like i don't think there's a lot of conversation i think it's really just like two smart guys who understand each other and it's unspoken. And it's like, hey, can you fix this? And then he's like, yeah. And then it's just like done. It's not like, hey, man, did you see the Broncos this weekend? Or maybe that is, but they aren't sitting there for like three hours being like, here is like my, you know, talking about their feelings about their edit.

Right. I want to know their shorthand. Yeah. Yes, exactly. That's what I'm interested in. Yeah. I want to know like why Soderbergh's like, take this out, put this in. Right.

I'm taking Alien 3 and Wild Card because if given the opportunity to take a movie, I will always take a movie. I would never take House of Cards. I don't really have a gimmicky pick. I don't want to pick a Matt Banting from Indiana Jones 2.

Cool. Alien 3 is really good. It's not great, but it's really good. And without it, we would not have the David Fincher we know and love today

because it clearly informed his desire to control everything at all times and that obsessive control has given us masterpieces of cinema

let's do this all over again but before we do let's recount what we got okay you want to run through your picks

sure in Thriller I have the game in Blockbuster I have Benjamin Button in Oscar Nom I have Social Network in Scenes and Sequences I have E, the Enya torture scene in Dragon Tattoo. Music videos, I have Vogue. And in Wildcard, I have Ben Affleck interviewing David Fincher.

Chris, what did you get? From the Killer. In music, video, or commercial, I have Leave Nothing, the Nike commercial. In Blockbuster, I have Nothing. In Oscar nominee, I have Gone Girl. In wildcard, I have the season finale of the first season of Mindhunter. Okay.

In thriller, I have Zodiac. In sequence or scene, I have the ending of Fight Club. In music video, I have Freedom 90 by George Michael. In Blockbuster, I have Panic Room.

In Oscar nominee, I have Manc. And in wildcard, I have Panic Room. In Oscar nominee, I have Manc. And in Wildcard, I have Alien 3. So, Bob. You want to do this again? Bob, get the tiles out. We're speed rounding.

Oh, wow. With this new change, you can select sequence or scene and it is eligible. And I will also allow things like director's commentary to be selected in Wildcard. Oh, now you're going to be generous

after just like being it everything was going really well and then you just became still going well what are you talking about five minutes just because you got mad doesn't mean things are going poorly the world does not revolve around you amanda we were all having a nice conversation and then you just decided to be a shithead no i didn't this is me on every draft. This is who I am. Accept it or die. Well, who I am is telling you you're being a fucking prick.

Well, and therein lies the magic of this podcast as CR sits calmly in the corner waiting for us to stop doing this. He just started being a jerk. Don't bring me into this. I'm going to decide who wins. This is going to go on forever.

Bobby, get those tiles out, bro. It's just like, you don't have to be so mean. I'm not mean. I have a code. I'm living by a code. Samurais aren't mean. They're just samurais. They just kill to live.

Chris is going first. Yes! Fuck yeah That's karma for good behavior And Sean is going second Whatever Wow really We gotta get this girl some M&M's I don't want anything from you now

What if first, number one, I took 3 of 90? And then I was just like, here's my blurb and I took like 25 minutes. It's not even that. It's that that he just did

kind of despite me and then was like, absolutely not to Gone Girl director's commentary, which I feel is a completely separate piece of media and is you you literally cannot

watch the commentary without watching the movie yes you can have you heard of YouTube that's not that's not available

that's not that's part and parcel you can't like buy the Gone Girl director's commentary I don't care about physical media you can't

you can't digitally buy it Mark the big question is physical media you can't you can't digitally buy it Mark the big question is who's who's Zuckerberg who's Eduardo Saverin

and who's Sean Parker on this podcast that's what you gotta answer for yourself who gets I know Chris Chris is Sean Parker I think I would

definitely be the one who got diluted down oh you think you're Eduardo yeah but Eduardo still got like literally $500 million. No, because you two would just be like,

we're fucking killers! And I'd be like, I thought this was supposed to be fun. You have a pick. I'm going to take Social Network in Oscar nominee. Okay. All right.

I'm going to take Zodiac and Thriller. Okay. But we can repeat with scenes and sequence. Yes. Okay. So then I will take... It's going to be interesting when we try to get people to vote on two different drafts for the same episode.

I deleted my notes, which is really stupid. You got to do Command-Z. Command-Z on the page. But she's doing it in her notes app. Don't tell me what I do or how to do. Because you know I'm right! Getting all defensive! Just do Command-Z

on your notes app! What does that do? Start your computer in recovery mode. I could not help you. You can go fuck off. I'm command Z-ing because what I do is I delete options. Why don't you do this in Google Docs? Yes, we all do that.

Command Z. They'll come back. Because then it's confusing to have two Google Docs up in the browser at the same time. That's interesting. I wonder if I should try that. Yeah. I have two Google Docs up in the browser and I trounce you guys in every draft. So do you think

I can get through the rest of this draft without directly addressing him? Or looking at him? Do you want this

to be your last episode? If you just pretended he was invisible. Can you tell Sean that I would like to draft? Can you tell Sean that I have hit Command Z?

Did you try it? Did you try to restore your notes? I just said, yes, it worked. You're really not going to look at him? Are you sad? Like, now we just get to talk. get to hang out this was because she couldn't select the gone girl director's commentary this is what it's like this is the long tale of youtube being like we're children of divorce now you're gonna feel like one too

yeah who do you want to live with mom or dad okay so I don't know I guess what I'm gonna do here are you gonna go for variety? you're gonna have like two really different I'd like to remind you

that the suit and tie video is still on the board okay that was funny I'll acknowledge that remember that? that was his last music video yeah 10 years ago um I'll in

blockbuster I will take gone girl and in scene sequences I will take the lake scene from Zodiac okay good picks thank you um now back to me

in blockbuster I will take seven okay you're the middle one i'm in the middle you're up got two picks and thriller i'll take fight club okay can i can i do um the killer here based on projected impressions on Netflix? No. Unfortunately, something that has been destroyed. For Blockbuster then. You got some options. I'll take Dragon Tap. Okay.

Good pick. In sequence, I'm taking I'm Coming Back for Everything. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Eduardo Showdown with Mark Zuckerberg and Sean Parker. Lawyer up. Which I think is just... Yeah, that's a good one. I also...

I... Mine from Social Network would have been when they're doing face mash. Yeah. And the cutting in like the fight club. Yeah, the finals clubs.

Yeah. Not everybody has taken their sequence yet, right? Because we should do a quick like what sequences should we have taken? Run down. Have you done your sequence yet? I have not. Oh, a quick, like, what sequences should we have taken? Rundown. Have you done your sequence yet?

I have not. Oh, okay. Okay, so Dobbins has got two picks. Sure. So in Oscar nom, I'll take Mank. Okay. A film I enjoyed. Man of Cypher is very good.

You know, I like old Hollywood. I agree that this is like the more successful version of David Fincher working out his feelings about his dad. You're trying to fuck this again? Am I fucking this again? Well, if you take what I think you'll take next, you will fuck it again. Am I? Keep going. In Thriller?

Nope. We're okay then. I'm going to take The Killer. Okay. That's good. Good Thriller? Nope. We're okay then. I'm going to take The Killer. Okay. That's good. Good job. Thank you. You better lawyer up, asshole.

That's what he says. I know. That's what people know it as. Okay. So I have a pick. No, you've taken two? Yeah, I took Mank and The Killer. I think I really only have one place to go here,

which is Oscar nominee, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Yes. So if I don't take that, I don't get one. And that was really weirdly the hardest category because those are the least beloved movies too in some ways. Like they're in that kind of like five to nine range. The Academy's relationship to David Finchercher is absolutely shameful speak on it it's i i mean he's frequently not nominated zodiac not nominated um he when he is nominated let's see it's for performances like

gone girl was because of rosamund pike dragon tattoo was eligible because of runy mara both great performances i like those actors but like was any of the rest of the filmmaking or anything in knowledge no it was not mink is like i really like mink i'm glad to get it but it is in addition to being you know a screenplay co-written with his or written by his father and then he he took a co-credit um like a traditional academy play so that's the only time that they'll recognize that that or social network which they He took a co-credit. Like a traditional Academy play. So that's the only time that they'll recognize it. That or Social Network, which they at least nominated in a few categories, but then didn't give any awards. He's never won an Oscar.

It's the Social Network King speech remains the ultimate sin. It's up there with the Goodfellas, Dances with Wolves. You know, like it's a nightmare. And Dances with Wolves is a lot better than The King's Speech. There aren't, to my knowledge, that many, like, below-the-line nominations. They've started to come up more. I thought about this when we

saw The Killer and all of those great below-the-line, you know, like, Ren Kleist, who's his sound designer, is, like, Elvis Mitchell introduced him as the greatest living sound designer in the world. Like, he is truly at the top of the craft. Eric Bezos Schmidt, now Kirk Baxter, his editor, you know, Angus Wall has won Oscars for his editing on previous films. His below the line people have gotten love. But what I said to Chris was, I think there's a good chance that David Fincher will die and all of his product like

department heads will have won Academy Awards and he will not. That's insane. That's insane because he has not only identified those people, but he works very closely with those people to make that work what it is. I mean Atticus Ross and Trent Reznor too. Sure, yeah. You know like his ability to assemble talent

and hold those teams together is also puts him in a very rare class. Okay. Is it my turn? It's my turn, right? Yeah. Your turn.

In the interest of breadth of stuff like because I don't want to just pick like the same movies over and over again for sequence shot I'm going to do

the U-boat battle in Benjamin Button oh oh I have since having not rewatched it I don't even really remember that well

it's just an incredible like moment where there's like a naval battle in the middle of the movie and then I guess I have wild card and music video ad.

For wildcard, I am going to pick David Fincher's contributions to the Truffaut-Hitchcock documentary, where he speaks very lovingly of Hitchcock and essentially is talking about himself. It's talking about how his dad gave him this book, Truffaut-Hitchcock, or Hitchcock, Hitchcock Truffaut as a seven year old and how he would just like look at the frame by frame breakdowns of scenes from sabotage or whatever and just, you know, realize like what filmmaking actually constituted and what he was seeing and what filmmakers were doing that made him feel certain ways and he also talks a lot about perversion and proclivities

and interests and how they come through your movies no matter how much you try to mask them and it's just awesome awesome filmmaking chop shop there

really fun movie I think it's on Tubi it is on Tubi yeah it's a nightlight for me it's something I fall asleep to sometimes that's nice

Hitchcock True Film it's all my dads that's bad sleep. That's bad sleep hygiene. It's fucking Assayas coming in there. It's Olivier Assayas, Martin Scorsese, James Gray, David Fincher.

I can't remember. There's like two or three other. I love all of, those are all very important men to me and to the world at large and certainly to the history of cinema. But you need to learn to fall asleep without a screen.

Oh, I fall asleep to screens too. I know, you both do. Why is it bad? Because it messes with your sleep patterns. When it ends, my TV stops and then it turns off eventually. So I feel like it automatically turns off. It's not that it wakes you up, it's just that

your brain, the REM cycles, all this sort of stuff. Maybe I want to be this way. I think what we're saying is I... Have you considered my agency be this way I think what we're saying is I have you considered my agency in this I on behalf of the world at large would like you to be different I'm getting a lot of positive feedback these days are you you know what the feedback I get is this is always the feedback I get on everything I love this show so much but and what's the but you're a piece of shit or you know what it's always like something you know completely peripheral

to what actually matters but you know invariably you forgot to mention that movie yeah the dumbest complaint in podcasting history

um okay I'm going to take uh just because it's funny I'm going to take only the Nine Inch Nails video from 2005

which is uh strictly uh digitally animated version of Trent Reznor's face on a computer which is one of the weirdest

videos of all time and I feel like I guess this is how they met or how they started collaborating and first of all this song bangs if you haven't heard

this Nine Inch Nails song kind of mid-period Nine Inch Nails I'm a medium Nine Inch Nails fan certainly not an expert, but big fan of this song. And this video looks like a commercial

for Hewlett Packard, but in a cool way. One of the funniest things in the history of Fincher's works is when in Dragon Tattoo, she goes to get a replacement security thing from a guy

who lives in an apartment in Stockholm and it's just like a room full of computers and he's like kind of an overweight like hacker and he's wearing a nine inch nail. And meanwhile Trent Reznor is making like this music concrete like

stuff for adventure. Okay. Amanda. My last two picks. In music videos, I will take Freedom 90, which invented the supermodels. And in wildcard, I will take the Gone Girl director's commentary. Because I'm allowed to. I guess I didn't really get to talk about Gone Girl uh

this movie fucking rules is so good and you know it's so entertaining it is a hilarious movie about uh Ben Affleck and basically torturing Ben Affleck and I guess you know Ben Affleck is a stand-in for all um pushover husbands or um and, and, and, and sad dudes. And it's truly, truly funny and messed up. And the director's commentary just like kind of doubles down on it because it is, it's talking about how they made the movie, but also just making fun of Ben Affleck even more,

you know, like Ben Affleck's in on the joke, but it's, it's not totally at his expense. Uh, but it does. Well, it's very entertaining and it also kind of unlocks some of the perspective of the of the movie it's a movie that there probably should be more of doesn't mean that there would be a movie as good as it like movies like it or

there should be more in this film like there should have been more to it it did really well financially yeah and it was a huge book with big big stars or at least a big star and i still think that there's a market for a big glossy adaptation like this would automatically be a series a mini series now there is no question that this wouldn't be a six-part series on max and this story works as a movie this the adaptation of that book and the way that it changes the book the way that it lied some things is perfect to me and it is what like hollywood was built on for 40 years right and it in some ways kind of feels like the end of that this is what i feel similarly about dragon tattoo where it's like dragon tattoos two and a half hours they cut out a lot of the stuff in the book about like these in-depth investigations into hacking and swedish security and all this stuff and i think that that

movie fucking rips like it's so good but you could easily see the five episode six episode dragon tattoo yeah yeah it i mean it also we're in this phase now i've been thinking a lot about adaptation especially since killers of the flower moon which is like the more i think about it just like an incredible work of of like adaptation as art because it's it's different and you know it takes all of the materials that are there but it turns it into martin scorsese's vision of the story um rather than defines it in some redefines it and it's been interesting to watch people who were book readers first you know be frustrated be frustrated because instinctively when you've read a book and you know i feel this way as well with all the

books that i read when you read it and i think i felt and i did feel this way about gone girl the first time um you want it to be an honest we're not an honest but you want it to be the version of you want to see what you imagine exactly yeah exactly like that's so yeah so not only do we live in this time of you know 20 part miniseries or whatever but we also do we live in this time of, you know, 20-part miniseries or whatever, but we also do definitely live in, like, fan world time. And so there is the instinct, in addition to stringing it out for as long as possible, to give the people exactly what they want. Or to give people the world that they imagined. I think that often sometimes comes at the expense of good art. I think you're right.

I agree. Thanks, guys. I would say that I, as a Gone Girl reader and a Gone Girl viewer, I think that I would rather, in some ways, come out of a movie like Kills of the Flower Moon or Gone Girl and be like, what an interesting take on that book.

Yeah, of course. And I would, even though it is one of my favorite movies, go see No Country and be like, that is exactly what I saw in my head too. of my favorite movies go see No Country and be like that is exactly what I saw in my head too both can be good yeah both can be good

it's true though I think it's harder to make a good faithful adaptation well then it depends on the material yeah I agree

some books are very well suited to and some books are even written to be yes adapted right that's true I guess of a good

a good novel most like sophisticated literary fiction just has way too many characters, way too many side doors. There's too much thinking. There's too much internal. Yes, exactly. The interiority is hard to capture. The killer's example is really interesting, though, because the way that book is paced is it's all about revelation. Yeah. And Killers of the Farm in the movie just dispenses with that in the first 10 minutes.

It's almost like they're waving a red flag at you that's like, it's these guys. And that is the ultimate inversion. You almost never see that. You never see a movie adaptation

kind of reject the formal structure. And so, they're interesting counterexamples. Gone Girl is pretty close, right? It's like pretty close

to the book. It is very close, but, and even the way that it does like the the perspective shifts between like the amy's diary and flashback i mean all of those those flashbacks are so sinister and amazingly directed yeah um and then the reveal is awesome like that that was another one of my potential sequences is like once you get to halfway and it's like it's i'm so happy now that i'm dead and it's how and the eating burgers and stuff yeah and the flashback to like how she did all of it and then it segues into the cool girl

speech which is sort of the iconic gone girl moment it's really good it's very close the book necessarily because it's written it's written from amy's perspective from that character's perspective and this is a shifts a lot to ben yeah which you know as the world's foremost ben affleck scholar and officiant and enthusiast that's great but it is like this is an aficionado though do you not clarify yourself as an aficionado um well i thought that that was a synonym of the word that I already said that I can't remember now. So I was trying to. This is podcasting.

Just saying words, hoping they're the right words. I can't tell you how often that happens. I know. I'm just going to roll with this. Okay, I have one more pick and then I think we should talk about honorable mentions in some fun categories. I have to do my. Oh, I'm sorry. Ad.

Oh, you didn't pick that yet. Yeah. Okay, go ahead. Oh, is it my turn? Yeah. Oh, I'll do Dress Normal, the one, it's a Gap ad that Fincher made

about 10 years ago, and it is the one that's set, I think, at the Encino driving range, but I'm not sure. Mm-hmm. But it is a black and white campaign that he did for Gap.

This one is a dude in a bomber jacket taking practice swings at a driving range while his... Oh, this is the golf line. Yeah, while his lady friend seductively dances to old-time radio songs. Yeah. Yeah, wait a minute.

The Numero group reissue. So those, I think that's a quartet of commercials. Yeah, a lot of ones, a guy running up the steps. I believe this is his last known commercial work. I could be wrong about this, and if I am wrong,

please correct me, but there are four short films, basically. There's Golf, which you've selected. There's Drive, where a young woman takes her jeans,

like comes out of the rain soaking wet gets into a car and takes her jeans off in the back seat of the car yep there's stairs yep and then there's the kiss which is two people dancing and then they start making out these four commercials are better than i do it's like what i think of when i think of the gap this is make out, you know. Is it? Again, I will just allude to the killer and David Fincher's relationship to commerce. Yeah. The incredibly tangled web we weave as people who think they have morals, values, and ethics. And principles, yeah. And then accept lots and lots of money from Nike and.

The Gap. The Gap The Gap and many other corporations and you know what? Here we all are. Honestly, who cares? Who fucking cares? Like really? Like you really

really need to destroy everything so badly that David Fincher makes this beautiful commercial for us? No. Fuck off. In Wildcard

I will take the game. Cool. Which somehow went undrafted this second time around and you just like you believe in films you know I do

films only what if films on the board you're gonna take it better than a commentary I mean I love commentaries but imagine you could have an entire film all to yourself

I did I got both the film and the commentary you can't hear the dialogue they're talking over it I enjoy the Gone Girl director's commentary all David Fincher commentaries

and all behind the scenes documentaries are all exceptional and worth watching all interviews are seems like a great hang he's very funny

yeah I mean we're probably understating just how funny all of these movies are so we should go through our honorable mentions for sequence

or scene because I think we've left a lot on the bone right now no one took What's in the Box it was on my list but Seven for sequence or scene. Because I think we've left a lot on the bone right now. No one took What's in the Box. It was on my list,

but Seven was gone the first time around and the second time around I could take the lake scene from Zodiac. I just wanted to diversify my portfolio by taking the Benjamin Button sequence. Have you ever gone as Sloth from Seven for Halloween? I'm doing it right now. You should see underneath the sweatshirt. What other scenes?

I love when the game begins and the talking news anchor starts addressing The clown on the front step. The clown. I love the end of Seven where he's like, explain to me. What am I not understanding? John Dole has the upper hand. No, I love the end of seven where he's like, explain to me. What am I not understanding?

John Dole has the upper hand. No, I mean, I'm sorry. The end of the game and also the end of this and at the end of seven. And then what else did I have here

is written down. I think they all got picked. I mean, what was your own or shared diluted down to the taxi driver, murderer? I mean,

any number of things from Fight Club. The basement scene. In Zodiac. From Zodiac? Yeah. You have that coming down as well. You know, I reference that California doesn't really have basements all the time. And that's another one where it's not like as widely shared a reference.

I think everyone else would be like, oh yeah, Zodiac. And it's like mostly blank stairs. Not enough people have seen Zodiac. I guess not, yeah culture also from zodiac door to door i've walked it yeah that's the final sequence conversation between gyllenhaal and ruffalo is i almost like stood up and started applauding when that sequence ended i was like jesus there's you can't do better though it's not like a very flashy sequence but when um ruffalo and Elias Kataeus and Anthony Edwards interview the killer. Arthur Lee Allen.

Arthur Lee Allen. And he's just like basically like how I would have done it if I had done it. Yeah. He's like, those knives were in my trunk because I was carving up chickens. Yeah. I had the cab ride in the game

and the cab ride in Zodiac cabs yeah both of which are really cool Henley Royal Regatta from Social Network that's a good one

really good um Desi's murdering Gone Girl oh yeah when she slashes him yeah that's like a and then

then the way it plays out all the way through when she kind of comes home covered in blood and then tells her story. I was watching Gone Girl the other night and the, I'm that C word scene is so fucking good. It's so good.

Is that when they're reunited right before the, yeah, yeah, it's really good. Um, I've killed for you scene. Yeah, that's that.

What about the breakup at the beginning of social network? Yeah, that was on my list as well. It's kind of Fincher and Sorkin at their best together. Any other nominees? No, I think we mentioned all of them. We've got 19 minutes here before I have to go to my meeting. Okay. What else do you want to say?

Do you feel like we can heal? Well, can I ask a quick non-meta question? Well, not even look at me. It's meta, but do you think that this is an interesting execution of the draft format? Is the sort of... It not working? No, I don't. Like, death pool, kind of.

Yeah. I thought it was a worthy experiment. Yeah. We're on, like, a LAR 50 at the draft or something. What draft is this? We started in 2020, right? You're the one with the spreadsheets. If we did one a month since the spring of 2010,

it's got to be in the 30s or 40s at this point. It's a lot. What would you like to draft next? Well, he said Julia Roberts movies. That would honestly get really thin. When we did the Hall of Fame, there was just like a 15-year run. Oh, oh yeah but she does have a new movie coming out did you happen to catch bill simmons's proclamation about the most entertaining actress of the 1990s no the rewatchable

which which episode on the in the line in the line of fire i'm i'm part way through it you know but the i had to listen to you talk about the Pigeon Tunnel. So that jumped up and then I needed some recap on the way here. So I haven't made my way back to it, but I'll get to it. You know, I'm always listening. Thanks. Do I like it? I don't know, but I'm always listening.

Julia Roberts movies. Is it a similar issue with Fincher? Yeah, no. And there are fewer good ones. You have one like on the lineup for later this year that is sort of my dream, but I'm also pretty stressed out about it. Was it rom-com?

Yeah. I kind of took it off because they moved the movie. Oh, because it was for the Glenn Powell movie? Right, yeah. I mean. Do you think we should do the rom-com? I kind of wanted to do it with us and Juliet and Bill. Yeah, no, I think that's great.

Should we do a holiday movie draft? We did that. Oh, we did? Yeah. See, this is what I'm talking about. We're burning ourselves out. This is draft number 41. Okay. 41. So what I do want to do in December is... Should we draft our shared friends?

Friends? That's good. in December is... Should we draft our shared friends? Oh. That's good. In December, I want to do the 2020 movie draft, which I think is insanely hard.

Yeah. Because of COVID. Yeah, no, we remember. Chris and I watched The Morning Show, so we have not forgotten. We have constant reminders of what's going on.

How's it going? What's been going on with it? Yeah, so I'm not quite caught up. I'm behind, too. Yeah. It's been hard for me to get over the January 6th stuff. That was really bad.

Because it resonated so deeply with you. I just saw myself literally in it. Yeah. I've kind of blocked off that they're still making episodes, and then I have a friend

who texts me, like, on Tuesday night, and he's just like morning show is bad again and I'm just like fuck there's another episode that I haven't seen was it like did it ever become good they started this season with

the like they were doing their version of the Sony hack and that had a lot of potential and it will shock you to learn that that potential has not been realized. Yeah, there was like, they had it and they were like, you're just basically like the ramifications of this would be the entire season and then they just drop it, honestly.

Yeah. Do you feel like Sean is a dick to you a lot? Or do I just bring that out in him? Not in the way that he's a dick. No, I actually don't. Yeah. I don't. I don't. Yeah.'t i don't yeah i also

like you're special it's hard to be friends with somebody that you work with all the time because you have to be used to their professional rhythms as well as their personal rhythms now speak on that that's no that's insane are you kidding nobody understands the balancing act that we agree that is actually maybe only to us but it is interesting it's i think i'm a personally pretty steady person, but Sean has seen me in professional peaks and valleys and moments of true volatility. In moments where I've forgotten a nicotine patch or haven't eaten yet or got mad and tore a legal pad in half.

I have both of your backs until you die, but I have Chris's back in a hurricane while battling afghanistan yeah terrorists you know what i mean like it's a it's a there's a there's tears yeah there's tears of love thanks for sharing that on the podcast what will happen to me in afghanistan well if you if you clock another seven years working with me the way chris has yeah and frankly chris chris is willing to accept more bullshit from me than anybody. I know,

but that's why you need me. I mean, I agree. That's why you're here. We're doing it. We're doing it together. But is it thankless? Right?

Like, do you feel like, you know, you deserve a parade in the victory of the Canyon of Heroes? Professionally, yes.

He shows up when he has to. He knows how to... He can be much nicer in personal life. And he's gotten... I don't think David Fincher would enjoy this. I don't. You want to know why we're doing this? Because we don't really know anything about David Fincher.

He doesn't have a letterbox account. I don't know if he plays fantasy football. That's why I love him. Do you think he watches the NFL? I'm sure he does. He feels like a guy who just likes Mike McDaniel a lot. I'm a little reluctant to explore what are David Fincher's hobbies, if I'm being honest with you,

because they could be quite unusual. Because if you watch the title sequence for Dragon Tattoo, they seem to come from a place of deep knowledge. It's funny that you mention deep knowledge. I was thinking, it's funny that you mentioned that because I was thinking about this re-watching Fight Club last night because obviously, you know,

the famous Ikea sequence near the beginning of the movie where he's kind of, the Edward Norton character is buying everything in his house and is filling up his house catalog style

in real time. And on the one hand, it's obviously a massive mockery of this consumerist impulse to buy things to not feel and to feel complete

by making purchases. But, you know that David Fincher has an immaculately designed and architected home you know that he has cars are exactly what he wants them to be so so much of the criticism and the jokes in the movies is self-abnegating you know it's clearly self-parody if he just has like a lazy boy directly in front of a tv with a beverage holder in it. And that's it. If he's just George went from cheers at home. He's living in the breaking bad apartment.

If you could meet Dr. Fincher, what would you say to him? Honestly, what are your favorite restaurants in LA right now? What do you think he likes well i i have i've previously mentioned i saw david fincher at all time it's a restaurant i also really like uh and i just i trust david fincher as he does in all walks of life to have

a great bullshit detector so he's not gonna you know, some cavernous, like, place where they do things differently, you know? Yep. It's, I think that he and I have a similar level of patience and... Do you? Yeah. I would invert that. Oh. David Fincher is more than happy to do 80 takes of one shot.

Yeah, do you want to do 80 takes of one shot yeah do you want to do 80 takes of this podcast to to win yes to get it right yeah but you haven't like i don't you don't deal with editor amanda ever i have yeah but i like don't really bring it for you and the way that i bring it for other people i i would like to get it right. And I would like to get it right my way. And my least favorite part of every single editing project is the part when the people come in and they're like, well, how much do you care about this note? And I was like, my answer is I care about it

or I didn't give it. So in that sense, I relate to David Fincher. This is a great opportunity to announce your feature directorial debut debut Satan's Teacup which you've been working on for several decades. Six nights at Freddy's. What filmmaker

do you think you most resemble as a professional? Or as an editor we can keep that those parameters. Nora Ephron. Yeah.

Yeah. No I I obviously relate a lot as Amanda predicted to the like unscrupulous perfectionism that is actually just hiding like a wave of regret and doubt. And that is obviously like, I think clearly powering a lot of what he does. It's overcompensatory, but it creates results that work. And like, I have always been super class conscious, super intellect conscious, super like, I don't know why that's the case. Probably some combination of the circumstances in which I was

raised and the DNA that I have. But he strikes me as a person who is like, I'm smarter than everybody, but it's important that people know that I'm smarter than everybody. You think he thinks that? Absolutely. You see the way he communicates with people? He's so wry and cutting. You wouldn't do that if you weren't more confident.

Sure. If you were more confident, you'd just be like, I don't care. You'd be Stanley Kubrick. You'd be like, I don't do interviews. Well, he doesn't really do interviews.

Yeah. He does. He does. He's been interviewed dozens of times. I thought he did the Mank promo, like, I'm going to try and win one here. But, like, I would be, you know. But why? Why would he care about that?

I don't know. Because it's his dad. Yeah. I don't know. It's funny. I don't pick up the doubt as much as you do. I mean, obviously, it's there a little bit. But there is.

He's the kind of person, though, who really doesn't want to be asked, what does it all mean? Yeah. Like, he relies on there's an incredible and crucial line in the killer which is that skepticism is often mistaken for cynicism which is like

definitional for me like when that character says that but I don't believe that the character actually believes that I believe that the cynicism is protecting

a lot because it protects a lot for me am I over reading it? it's possible it's possible but I do really relate to a lot because it protects a lot for me. Am I overreading it? It's possible. It's possible. But I do really relate to a lot of the way that he approaches the work, the world, the way that he talks about the work.

I like, I think the thing that I love about him, even if I don't necessarily see myself in it, this is strange, is he keeps the main thing, the main thing. And he has a very, like his attitude on the reason they do 80 takes, he's like, do you have somewhere else you need to be? Like why? Like we're making a movie. Let's get it right. Let's get it so that we have.

Amen. And he'll be like, you know, like this guy's going to be at this energy level and this guy's going to be at that energy level. And, you know, it might be traumatizing and it may be hard, but it's not supposed to be easy or everybody would do it. That's why you wanted him to direct the Marvels. But I probably personally

am closer to Clint Eastwood two takes now that's long. I was like, I think we got it. But that's because you have... And then every once in a while I make Mr. Grover and it's great. That's what I was going to say.

Do you think that's because like Clint, you are... I don't want to say confident to a fault because that's not the point. You're sort of like, I was going to say. Do you think that's because like Clint, you are, I don't want to say confident to a fault because that's not the point. You're sort of like, I know I got it. No, but I think that I probably have a way more like my life's work is an accumulation of days.

And so like what you have to do is just like go on to the next one. And we'll like, if that one wasn't good you'll get maybe you get it back on Thursday hard hat mentality that's why you're so relatable that's why there are hordes that follow you you're just one of them chief among them being Knox leading a legion of aging men do you guys want to read your picks for the second version of the draft?

Sure. I'll go first since you guys are opening your laptops. In Thriller, I got Zodiac. In Sequence, I got You Better Lawyer Up Asshole from the Social Network. In Music Video or Commercial,

I got Only by Nine Inch Nails. In Blockbuster, I got Seven. In Oscar Nominee, I got The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. And in Wild Card, I got The Game. Amanda. In Thriller, I got The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and in wildcard I got The Game Amanda in thriller

I got The Killer in sequencer scene I got The Lake Scene from Zodiac in music video or commercial I got Freedom 90 in blockbuster

I got Gone Girl in Oscar nominee I got Mank and in wildcard I got the Gone Girls director's commentary I got movies in all the categories

this time around in thriller I got Fight Club. In Sequence or Scene, I took the U-Boat Battle and Benjamin Button. In Music Video, I took Golf, The Gap, Dress Normal. In Blockbuster, I took Dragon Tat. In Oscar Nominee, Social Network. And in Wild Card, David Fincher talking about Hitchcock in the Hitchcock True Faux Doc.

Bobby, you feel good about this episode? Bob, are you you a Fincher guy? I love Fincher yeah but I don't relate to him like his process in the same way that

maybe Sean does or I guess Amanda in editing does but I mean I love his movies and in life yeah yeah

I don't I don't have that level of underlying intensity you don't have the don't fuck this up energy that Amanda and I both bring to many experiences. I don't know if that's true. I guess you don't have the energy, but you don't fuck things up, Bobby.

That's one of the things that I love and appreciate about you is you just like get it right. And we don't have to have the conversation, you know? We were just discussing this with Bobby this week. Exactly. And that's true with Sean too. I'm more of a Chazelle and Sean is my J.K. Simmons. Yeah. The circle is complete,

because trust me, I have been the Miles Teller in that scenario. Okay. Bob, thanks for your work on this podcast. You're the producer, as always. What are we doing next? Oh, yeah, we're talking about Priscilla next. Yeah.

We actually already talked about Priscilla. Should we re-record that one to get it better? We probably could do it again. 87 times. I just have to say the metaphorical resonance of doing the Fincher draft twice over to get the right take

is good stuff. It's beautiful. That was kind of the idea. Yeah. So thank you for recognizing the idea. Yeah. CR, thank you.

Yeah, my pleasure. Do you have to pee again? Are you okay? No, I'm good. I was just clearing out. I know it's meeting time for you. It is meeting time so you guys are going to

do the killer on the 10th you are invited you want to come in I will be there okay I will just say it might be top 5 for me might be for me too

I'm seeing it again on Monday guys you're welcome to join me at the Alamo Draft House I want to see it again in the theaters before it's not in theaters anymore

what a sin isn't that a shame close personal friends of mine did not me at the Alamo Draft House. I want to see it again in the theaters before it's not in theaters anymore. What a sin. Isn't that a shame? Okay. Close personal friends of mine did not did not know that it was in theaters. It's a travesty.

No, I mean, that part really sucks. It's just absolutely devastating. Anyway, thanks so much for listening to this podcast. We'll see you next week. Thank you.