The Big Picture - ‘The Devil Wears Prada 2’ and the Movies That Feel Like Our Lives

Episode Date: May 1, 2026

Fresh off Fashion Week, Sean and Amanda react to one of their most anticipated movies of 2026: ‘The Devil Wears Prada 2’. They share their feelings on the sequel, discuss how it differs from the original, and examine how the media and fashion industries have evolved over the past 20 years (1:01). Next, they cover ‘Mile End Kicks,’ a portrait of a young music writer in Canada circa 2011, with Sean reflecting on his own trials and tribulations working as a music journalist (57:50). Finally, Sean sits down with writer-director Chandler Levack to discuss both of her films being released this year—‘Mile End Kicks’ and the Netflix comedy ‘Roommates,’ produced by Happy Madison Productions (1:06:45). That’s all. Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Guest: Chandler Levack Producer: Jack Sanders Production Support: Lucas Cavanagh, Sarah Reddy, and Jamie Yukich Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm Sean Fennessy. I'm Amanda Dobbins. And this is the Big Picture at Conversation Show about angels and devils. Today on the show, we are digging into two films that excavate our mid-aughts past. The big one is the highly anticipated sequel The Devil Wares Prada 2. Later in this episode, I will be joined by Chandler LeVac, the writer-director of not one but two films coming out this year. Mile N. Kicks, her portrait of a young music writer in Canada, circa 2011, as well as the Netflix comedy roommates, which comes from Adam Sandler's Happy Madison. Chandler and I had eerily similar young adult experiences as music writers and movie nerds

had a wonderful talk about these worlds colliding and how she put them in her movies. Stick around for that conversation. But first, we got to talk about Amanda's past and her future right after this. There's something else here now. Something new. From exclusively on Paramount Plus, it's the series Stephen King calls Scarious Hell. Everything here is impossible, but it's also real. sci-fi vision calls it the best show streaming right now

we're running out of time and we still don't know the rules don't miss what the movie blog calls something you need to watch saving those children is how we all go home from binge all episodes exclusively on paramount plus okay anna windor you ready for this yeah it did feel very fitting to be sitting silently in my sunglasses throughout that entire intro you know maybe I should do that for every episode

consider it yeah I'm gonna leave them on for like the big question and then I'll be a normal person and take them off. Also, I should just say the sunglasses are the one thing I'm wearing that's not Prada. I'm sorry. It didn't occur to me until this morning that I should source Prada sunglasses along with everything else. I don't know why. I'm imperfect. What were you just talking to? Were you speaking to the camera? Various cameras, people watching my other selves, you know, regrets. I have a few. But here we are. I'm doing the best that I can. We're here. Your fandom has come for you in your 40s,

just like it came for me. And we're here to talk about the Devil Worse Pruditude. The film is directed as was the original by David Frankel. It's written as was the original by Alien Brosh McKenna. It stars Merrill Street,

Anne Hathaway, Emily Blunt and Stanley Tucci. They were all in the first one. And this movie is about Andy Sacks returning to the world of Miranda Priestley at the famed magazine runway. It's also about the future of journalism.

especially at magazines. True. So we've been waiting months to ask you, what did you think of the devil wears Prada too? I'm at peace. I am. And much like Miranda Priestley, I'm learning that my expectations and standards cannot be met in the same way in 2026. And maybe that's okay. Mostly it's not.

Mostly it's a referendum on how the world is fucked. But it's not a disaster. It's not a disaster of a movie. If I can speak for you, we both... I'll tell you what. Yeah. I liked it. I liked it, too.

I think that it is obviously not as good as the first movie. And, but it's not embarrassing and it's fun and very entertaining and interesting. And maybe interesting enough, at least to me and you, too, like, reformed Kandahast editors to make it good because there's a lot that I want to talk about. The first Devil Wars Prada is, to me, a modern masterpiece for a number of reasons. It's obviously like a light, fizzy, fun concoction about fashion and has multiple makeovers and you get to go to Paris and you dump your bad boyfriend. It's got amazing performances, including one of Merrill Streep's best performances ever in my opinion, but also the supporting cast, you know, kind of announces Emily Blunt.

It's really funny. It's really fizzy. obviously really quotable. And then is also like a very good movie about being good at your job and even what the definition of being good at your job is and what that requires, what it costs, what, you know, what you are willing and willing to give up in order to do that. This second movie is about how being good at your job doesn't matter because the world is falling apart.

And that is compelling, but also kind of a bummer. And so this movie is slightly more melancholy. This, it's, everyone is not on their A game, especially Miranda Priestley. And so I think that it's, it's smart and way more insightful about the world than I expect, about media specifically than I expected this movie to be. But, you know, you don't walk out with the same high. Yeah, it gives you many of the things that the first film gave you in that fan servicey way, where the characters are almost specifically repeating actions from the first movie

to remind you of the legacy of the film. But the tone and subject matter is surprisingly different. And a lot of times when you have a legacy sequel like this, they tend to be overly exuberant in trying to get you back to that feeling that it was so important to you when you first saw a movie. And this movie is ultimately not that interested in making you feel as happy, as buoyant as the first film did, which, you know, as a man in his 40s, I relate to.

Like, I think that there's something practical and sincerely honest about the movie in a way that I'm very curious to see how the world at large feels about it, whether or not they receive it as excitedly. But as you say, having worked at Conday Nast, myself, having been a magazine editor, having watched the world of media transform in ways that have been, you know, very beneficial for us, but not so beneficial for a lot of people that we've worked with over the years. the movie is pretty real. Like, shockingly real for a fizzy rom-com legacy sequel. Right. It's not a rom-com, but that's okay. I understand it. Well, it stars...

This one is a bit more than the first. Sure, but, you know, we'll talk about that. There's calm? There is calm, but there has been a lot of argument and discussion over whether the original Devil Wears product counts as a romantic comedy, or is it just a successful movie starring and about women. There is a distinction. If it is a romantic comedy, it's between Miranda and Andy.

And it is about, and it's a romantic comedy about the workplace. Okay. But, you know, potato potato. Well, where would you like to begin this dissection? I'm going to take my sunglasses off now. Okay. Probably a good idea. Okay.

Do I have like sunglasses, Mark? I don't know how Anna navigates this. No, you're good. Day Day Day. Thank you so much. Okay. Yeah, so it's good. Like, baseline, let's just talk about the fact that the movie is pretty good.

Not as good, but pretty good. It is funny. It includes all of the people and the scenes that you remember in mostly clever ways, even when it is kind of recreating beat for beat moments from the first film. It does it like in a smart way. And it feels less forced and more winky, winky, winky. It was very strange to be leaning over to you throughout the movie and being like, so that is a reference. reference to the opening of the movie when she's also brushing her teeth and all the other girls are putting on, you know, counting out their almonds.

So it does have a lot of Easter eggs. But it is weirdly not about fashion, which I thought was it is incentive fashion magazine and has way more fashion cameos than the first movie because famously, the original movie had difficulties getting clothes and fashion personality. because of their fear of Anna Wintour. And now Vogue and Anna Wintour are very much on board with this sequel. We should definitely talk about that. Yeah.

So lots of cameos, but it's really just about trying to keep runway afloat. And it has that four sequel thing where you got to bring everybody back together. It's 20 years later. It's not particularly natural that any of these people would be in the same place. And that feels a little bit of a bummer. You know, Emily Blunt, who is the Emily character, no longer works at runway, which makes sense. But that means she's always kind of a satellite to the show. And I think that happens with any sequel.

There's no way to get around that. And that new people kind of feel tacked on. It's not the most beautifully photographed film that I've ever seen. Would you like to read your own comments? Yeah, thanks for writing those down so that I can have them forever. At a certain point I did note to you that this looked like an episode of the morning show. I think there is a kind of glossy otherworldly digital photography that has creeped into a lot of modern movies, especially movies like this that are set in the real world. And so it looked like an episode of television at times.

Also just a tremendous amount of drone shots. And I understand why there are so many drone shots is because this movie, which I know you love, travels all over the place. It's capturing New York City on location. It's capturing several places in Italy on location. You know, there are these great vistas, but the way that those are all captured now are in the same kind of consistently repetitive, like you're in on a location

and then you're pulling away and away and away and away and away, and you're seeing the scope of a city. I think we get that shot about 10 times in this movie. And it's nice that we have that technology now to show the real world, but it just creates a kind of like sameness that feels like a hotel commercial. And so I didn't love that.

I think the stars in this movie, though, look fantastic. They do. It's kind of astonishing. Yeah. And not in, like, digitized or, you know, what was happening here. They have all aged and aged well and with aid, I would say, but believably and look very beautiful. And there's just, there still is that joy of getting to watch both Merrill's outfits and Anne Hathaway's outfits. Like, and Anne Hathaway just being, both of them being so very beautiful.

like up on screen larger than life in these places and these outfits that we would not normally get to wear. And in that way, I think it feels like an event movie, right? Like everyone looks amazing in that respect. Let's talk about Miranda and the way that Miranda is characterized in this movie because I guess I felt I should have seen this coming, but I was quite surprised by the way that they evolved or devolved this character. And I've even read a little bit of criticism about it, and it sounds like it echoes your own. So who is she in the movie in 2026? Well, she is shepherding this kind of this dwindling empire that is runway, which just bears a startling at this point and amazing level of resemblance to Vogue.

Obviously, they've always been leaning on that. And the appeal of the first movie was that it was based on Llein B Weisberger's novel, Devil Wars Prada, and Lauren Weisberger is a former assistant to Anna Wintour. and so, you know, that you were getting like an unimproved peek behind the scenes of how this very glitzy, exclusive fashion magazine and this larger-than-life woman operates was part of the appeal. Now it just seems like they have their own, like, Zoom account into every single Condé Nast meeting. I thought the number of specifics from taking the town cars away to management consultants coming in, McKinsey is name-checked, which for the... Those of you who don't know after the crash in 2008, McKinsey, the consulting management firm,

was brought into Condé Nast, and the days of your and the unlimited budgets, and the glamorous lifestyle portrayed in the first Devil Wars Prada was cut, slashed in very much the way that is described in this film. Just for the listeners at home, you and I also began working at Condé Nast. right after that happens. After McKinsey. Yeah. So which is, you know, which is our tragedy. And maybe why this movie speaks so much to us because we were raised on one version.

And, you know, we wanted to be, you know, I wanted to be Tina Brown. You can, I don't know who you wanted to be. Any number of GQ and New Yorker editors. Sure. They were living large. And by the time we got there, it was, you know, just waiting for someone to bring you back some printed out stuff at one in the morning so that you could then take. the subway home. It was tough stuff. So it is quite accurate and specific. The level of specificity that is lent to these details around what has happened to the magazine industry ultimately constitutes the drama of the movie. The like the narrative conflict of the movie is about how the magazine

industry is falling apart and the ways in which it is impacting. Essentially every single character in the movie, which to us is of course an ongoing concern and something that we think about and talk about and gossip about throughout our friendship. Do people care about this? So it's opened up a little bit where that at some point the magazine becomes upon between a very Jeff Bezos-like character played by Justin Thoreau, who is committing to the bit. So funny. He's very funny.

And he has an ex-wife played by Lucy Liu, who's like a combination of McKenzie Scott, formerly Bezos, and Lorraine Powell Jobs in terms of she's now reinventing her own life. and she has a public philanthropic arm that she's working on. So there is then, not spoiling too much, like the next generation, there's a David Ellison-like character who shows up to oversee Elias Clark, which is the stand-in for Condonast. And there is, you know, a decent amount of, you know, billionaires just playing chess in beautiful locations while the jobs and passions of many people are.

are at stake. So it's both specific to magazines and also recognizable to a lot of us at this day and time. In the age of consolidation. But it is, but the specifics again, Miranda Priestley, her personal tension is that she's up for the quote unquote global content director job, which is the job that Anna Winter like has now. And so they're really just cribbing very specifically from from this place in a way that I did not expect and was also a little bit like, to your point, is anyone who's not us going to care? What about the nature of Miranda? Yeah.

Well, so that's the other thing. Because she's, you know, saddled with all of this and runway is not once what it was and the company is going to be sold off in magazines or not once what they were, she's just reduced. And the first movie is all about her being at the top of her game and being like the best in the world and being terrifying and she's confident. and funny and, you know, like a terrible boss also, but then sort of an anti-hero. And there's, she has two moments like of weakness of threat. Obviously, her personal life, that's seen with a divorce. You know, Rupert and Murdoch should cut a check for all the

newspapers he's sold off. And then also that there's a threat of the French editor taking her job, which she bats away. And she's like, no, no, I've known what was going. on for some time. And both of these things are also very closely based on real life, I know, into our experiences. But, you know, in both of those... Was it Karine Reitfeld? Was that her name?

Yes, I believe so. So they, she's, you know, briefly humbled, but then she fixes it. This one is all humbling. This is all, she's always scrambling. She has to talk about page views, just an alarming amount of times.

At one point, she says the word social pins. she flies coach which like even now at conanast anna's like maybe if you work at spotify but not at connaz still that's the one note that really strains for duly is her sliding into a three-seater with her assistant and also then she's sitting in the middle next her assistant which is you know it's for a visual gag and it's fine but it's like come on we all know we all know that anna's still still flying first that's fine but um but she's not as funny because she's not as competent and she's not on top so she doesn't have the one-liners There are almost, she's not in it quite as much, but she doesn't have, you know, she says that's all once in a moment of defeat. I think it's wise to not do that many like florals for spring groundbreaking or like, why is no one ready?

But she doesn't have any of those big moments. And then she has a shocking amount of like emotion and shows gratitude to almost every character in her life. And that to me is the real sin. By the third one, okay? I was glad that Nigel got a moment. Yeah, I was too. That's really nice. Nigel's great.

And for a moment, actually, and I thought that they were leaving Nigel behind. And I was like, I will walk right out of this theater. That, to me, is all the people being like, I can't believe they let that woman in Lilo and Stitch get an education. To me, like, leaving Nigel behind. I'm like, that is my line. They don't need Nigel behind.

It's okay. But that's fine. Nigel is Stanley Tucci's character for the record. Yeah, okay. He's not a real. man. And then it's fine that she has to have like a moment. You're in your comic book error with this.

I know. Of course. I've been training my whole life for this. This is it. You know, I got one movie. I got to make it count. But she's nice to basically everyone else. Kenneth Branagh is her new husband who's a concert violinist.

I believe he's in a quartet. Ludicrous character. He only shows up to be nice to her and tell her to do what you want. I mean, I guess he's good at it. Yeah, you can see why she likes him because he has no interiority. He's just a kind guy who's a handsome and older. Yeah, he just like flies in from Stockholm and is like, you imagine what you want to do when you wake up tomorrow and go do that. That's what I say to you before every episode.

So to me, the greatest sin is not that she's, you know, vulnerable or reduced in status. It's that she's deeply emotional. Mm-hmm. It really... I wouldn't say deeply emotional. So to me, my perspective on this is that performance in the first film, which is so interesting and that she said she based on Clint Eastwood, right? And she never really raises her voice.

She has almost that kind of burning whisper when she's talking. She has the same, Merrill Street is giving the same kind of performance here, but with fewer one-liners. And so that acting approach is less effective because she just seems kind of low energy, delivering lines with some degree of maybe not sincerity is the word, but direct. It's not just about cutting people down. It's about trying to solve a problem at the company that she works at. And so it's just a little less fun to watch Miranda through the movie. They also hint at the fact that she has been somewhat reformed.

And there are a few scenes. Her assistant is played by Simone Ashley, whose job is essentially to tell her when she's said something inappropriate and that she's no longer allowed to say anymore because of, you know. Yeah, like, no, no, no, I can't say New Jersey. which are like moderately funny but there is a little bit to the the misconception of the character justin that she cannot like fully express or be herself anymore because of you know the world and the way it is outside it's a it is a very gen z movie and i find that which makes sense right this is well i think it's a

it's a gen z movie in so far as it's a bunch of people in their 50s and 60s trying to like throw some you know candy at gen z and be like, it's going to be okay. Not your bosses are not going to, you know, alienate you and punish you, which I think is not the best lesson to take out of this entire world. I don't, there's something really intriguing about Miranda Priestley becoming an iconic movie character, but knowing deep down that there's something, quote unquote, wrong about that character.

And it's a little like making a dirty hairy movie in 2026, but he doesn't, use a gun, you know, like it kind of doesn't make sense to do that. I've been thinking a lot about. To me, the original Delva Wars product is sort of, it's like the girl, the suitcase, the Mad Men episode, which is, you know, Don Draper and Peggy Olson in a room kind of yelling at each other about how they work together, their relationship as, you know, collaborators, but also as boss and employee. It culminates with the very famous, like, that's what the money's for.

But, you know, Don Draper is the main character of Mad Men, but he's definitely not someone that you want to be, ultimately, or do you? Exactly. There's the appeal. There's an anti-hero. Yeah, totally. A completely destroyed man who makes tremendous number of mistakes, but he's swaggering and handsome and brilliant at his work. They're very similar archetypes. Yeah, there you go.

And Devil Wars Prada came first. I agree that and I don't think when the movie was originally released that Miranda Priestley was the kind of the you know reference point that she is today and I think honestly Miranda Priestley in the film has paved the way for Anna Winter's like total rehabilitation since since the book itself because over time people started to realize wait a second when I watched this movie and he's kind of annoying you know and she's not taking her job very seriously. I don't know if you saw one of the many, many pieces that Vogue has done about this movie

was finally interviewing the real Emily. There's been a lot of speculation over the years. Oh, who is the real Emily? The real Emily is a stylist named Leslie Fremor. She's a very successful stylist. And she, shout out to her for giving this interview. And she says that she did in fact say the quote of a million girls would kill for this job. And she said when she read it that she recognized a lot, but from her own perspective, which was that she felt like Lauren Weisberger, it was very clear to her that Lauren Weisberger didn't want to be there and didn't want to be doing her job.

And so she was like, I probably was mean. And I definitely was very stressed out because it's a hard job. Yes. But I could tell this person didn't care. She even kind of resembles Emily Blunt. She does. And so the more that people watch it and thought about it. And I think also it's just an age thing.

The older you get, you start to realize just how annoying Andy is and how much she has to learn. Well, you know. And you please spell Gabana. I revisited the original film last week. And I don't have the same level of affection for it that you do. I think it's a very entertaining movie. I do think that there's a series of moments in the movie where I'm just like, this is just complete poppycock. And like maybe it is true to Lauren Weisberger's experience.

But that joke can you spell Gabana? is like you would never, ever, ever get that job if you didn't know what that was. Or if you did, then actually Anna Wintour is not as impressive a person as I thought she was. It just makes no sense. It's illogical in that world, which is so cutthroat. Don't you feel, though, maybe this is just getting older? Like, every once in a while, don't you, like, interact with your own version of, like, can you please spell Gabana, you know, when you're working with people?

And you're just like, come on. They're almost never proximate to power. That's true. that there's something about the people who get to be in that inner sanctum who get access to that kind of a person where like that person needs to be vetted. They really need to be vetted. So the movie I find is like a little wobbly. The other thing that I find very wobbly about the movie,

though with credit to this new movie it follows through on some of it, is everything in Andy's personal life, I find to be like ridiculously overdrawn and silly. Sure. And but it might inform some of like that core theme that I think you're, you've always very smartly talked about, which is it's like a movie about being good at your job, right? Yeah. And how like sometimes as a young person,

You can be really drawn into the world of your work at the expense of other things because you realize how important it is and how it makes you feel alive and it gives you a sense of purpose. And you're ambitious too. Yes. And I completely relate to that. And I love that about the movie. But like the Adrian Grenier character and Rich Summer and Tracy Thompson's characters in the movie, I'm like, I don't who those are not real people to me. They're like very poorly written characters. Well, Nate is very ambitious because he spends a week learning how to make French fries, you know, which is actually an important skill.

Too many frozen, pre-frozen French fries on the market these days. as parents of young children, of course. We know how important that is. But Tracy Thompson's character comes back into this movie, actually. And pretty credibly, I thought. I was like, yeah, I buy that they stayed friends for 20 years, despite the fact that she scolded her after Simon Baker gave her a kiss on the cheek some 20 years past. Well, sure.

I mean, that was weird. And I was explaining to you, I haven't read the book in 15 years. And the book is just, okay. I think that both films improve on it. Okay. But there's a whole side plot with that character getting in a car accident or something and having a lot of personal problems that the Andy character doesn't really, yeah, doesn't really support. I guess in the book, she's maybe merged with the Emily character.

But the point is that Andy is like not a particularly good friend that was translated in the movie into slut shaming. 2006 Amanda, did you relate to Andy? Did you feel close to Andy? So I saw this movie. This movie came out the summer after I graduated. to college and I was attending the Columbia Publishing course. Do you know what that is? I do, of course. It's...

Explain it to the listeners. Yeah, so it's essentially it's a six-week sort of summer school slash, I mean, finishing school for lack of a better word, program for people who are interested in book and magazine publishing. And it primarily focuses on book publishing. And I think a lot of book editors go there. And in addition to teaching you, like, how book publishing works, there's like a lot of networking and I guess

It's like a field team or something. I was interested in magazines. And so I remember I left Columbia Publishing course early one day to go sit and see the Devil Wars Prada, at 86th Street, AMC, I believe, because it was closest. And then also as a part of the Columbia Publishing course, like, we got to meet Anna. So I remember deeply freaking out about what I was going to wear to meet Anna. I wore heels. I wore an actual outfit. Unlike Andy, I took it seriously and I knew the target that I was going for. But in the, I think the idea that, oh, you're supposed to be an assistant at one of these magazines, like an apprenticeship, pay your dues for a couple years. And then you get to be the New York magazine journalist writing amazing pieces was how I understood what was coming my way. So in that sense, yes, I absolutely did. Do you relate to 2026, Andy Sachs? Maybe you should situate her.

Sure. So it's funny. This movie is actually mostly about her, which is the other interesting choice. Good news for me. Yeah. Well, listen, Anne Hathaway looks amazing. Every single outfit is dynamite, including the one that I purchased off of paparazzi photos and felt really good about. It did make it into the final cut.

Is that the shiny blue dress? No, but you know what? I like that dress. One of the canned dresses. Do you remember the gold dress that I bought in Vegas that I told you? I was like, this morning I got up and bought a dress on the real real. No, you didn't see it. But I told you that this was happening.

Very similar, but gold instead of blue, but shiny. Great. So I felt really good about that. Thanks. Yeah. I'll be wearing that to the premiere of Paper Tigers. Could someone from neon please get in touch? Anyway.

We're going to be okay. Don't worry. No, I know. So she looks great. But the movie starts with Anne Hathaway. winning a journalism award. She works for a newspaper. And then she's laid off while accepting the award.

Her entire newspaper team is because hedge funds are similar. A very familiar, similar structure to what happens in the real world and to journalists. And so she comes back to runway because she needs a job because runway needs some credibility after a bad journalism. After a journalism scandal, they've written a flattering piece about a company that uses sweatshops. And so she's there to figure her life out and save journalism. I sort of have my life figured out, and I don't think I'm going to be able to save journalism, so I don't really identify with her that much. Okay. I think I admire her.

What about her emotional core? Where she doesn't, she loves her work more than her personal life, can't attach to anything, and doesn't want a renovated building. Well, those are specific details about her life But I think there's something very unusual about Andy Where she's Exceedingly confident And also completely falling apart at the same time And I just having to chat with my wife last night about that

And just I feel like I encounter a lot of women in my life At this stage of my life You think I'm falling apart? Not that's unkind But that there's like Under siege But power and through is like is a is a mark of it just just in the very limited experience of my life yeah and we

and you know i lean it's called having it all yeah i i know i know and i'm i'm asking you this because i'm kind of wondering like will the people who grew up on this movie who are very excited about this sequel will will the decision to actually make this movie very much about andy's conflicts and her inability to kind of go to do certain things but also her you know she's clearly extraordinarily intelligent, right? And she's actually able to situate herself in this job that she has not a lot of training for in an environment where like, how long did she really spend as Miranda's assistant

the film? Right. Three months? Six months? How long are we supposed to believe that took place? Maybe a year. Okay. And she's like, you know, still able to fall in love and is very comfortable and confident in these high end, high market environments pretty quickly. Right. But also has like a real kind of daffiness. I think this is a great character for Anne Hathaway, so I've never really been like, well, it's Miranda's movie. I, of course, love Ann Hathaway as an actor. But I was happy that we spent so much time with Andy. It's the perfect balance for the Miranda

character. And you need someone who, they both have it together in different ways. And they both have skills that the other doesn't. And that's why both movies end with, you know, a moment of reconciliation between the two of them in the back of a town car, which at least in Europe is still available to Miranda. Yes. So I agree with you. I think that just when I watch this movie,

I watch it for aspiration, not relatability. And so I'm drawn to the Miranda character. You know? And that's a little bit about how the first movie is also about fashion, which is the ultimate, like, aspirational business.

And this is about Andy type and straight into the CMS, which stresses me out. Are people still, are you typing in with CMS on substack? You're not doing a Google doc first? I've done both thus far.

The thing that, not that anyone cares, but the thing with the CMS at substack is like, once you just drop a YouTube link or a podcast link in there, it just instantaneously populates, and there's something very gratifying about that. Okay. Like visually while you're editing. So you understand the format. Yeah. I mean, that's cool.

But publishing into the CMS, listen, I'm blogging one. I'm like 1.0. You can't be doing that. Look, I've been in many CMSs over the years. That's a content management system for those of you at home. which is effectively the tool used for publishing platforms. And we've actually circled back to the ease of use of a blogger circa 2006. So I enjoy that about it.

But this movie is so specific about things like that. It's so, it is like no one knows what a CMS is. You know, 0.01% of the population knows what that means. Well, arguably, like an entire generation of Tumblr kids knows what a CMS is because Tumblr was a CMS. Yes, they have certainly been inside of publishing platforms, but they don't call it that. Okay. Anyway, I... I do know what social pins are, though.

So Miranda has to... What is a social pin? You don't know what a social... When you pin a post to the top of your... Oh, okay. That's just called a social pin? I mean, of course I do that. I just didn't know it had a title.

Okay. We're on the glacier now. One thing that you mentioned is that the first film did not have a lot of participation from the fashion community. And this film has a lot of participation, clearly from vote and from the fashion community. Yeah.

Why do you think that is? Does the movie benefit in a meaningful way from that at all? I think the fashion community and vogue are at this point kind of different beasts. There are a tremendous number of cameos of people who just want to be in the movie. Some of them, fashion-related, Mark Jacobs, Donna Tala Versace, La Roach, Heidi Klum, Naomi Campbell, the New York Times critic Vanessa Friedman is both name-checked and then in profile. Huge look. And then, you know, just people like Carl Anthony Towns. Love to see him.

Carous Swisher. Yeah. And then the moment where I actually started physically hitting you in the middle of the screening, Tina Brown. My girl Tina is in Devil Wars Prada, too. And that's when I was really just like, I don't, I don't know what I'm going to do right now. Yeah. I don't know how I'm going to handle this.

That was cap catching the hammer for you. You freaked the fuck out. I was, but I was also like, this is weird that things are so, the things in, The things in my mind are now on the screen, and I'm pretty uncomfortable about it. Okay. Have you met Aileen Brush McKenna? I've wondered that. No, I've never met her.

But I've been big admirer, mourning glory forever. Tina wrote a great substack about the experience of being on the cameo, which had great details, including that... Do you subscribe to her substack? Excuse me. Day one subscriber to Tina Brown's substack. Fresh hell, everybody get involved. Just just asking? It's wonderful.

Listen, Tina, forever. Okay, all right. Simmer down. But I think some of the great details included that there wasn't enough, like, food on the set. So then Caris Swisher organized, like, a group delivery order. Oh. And also. They door dashed to a Hampton's estate? I believe so.

I mean, the company in question was not named, but Caras Wisher did organize the order. What do you think they got? Jersey Mikes? Probably. Yeah. And then also that Tina provided her own outfit, but then accessories were provided by the film in the costume department. Okay. She wasn't given any lines, unfortunately. She says she does talk about that. She says that she did her line so many times and was so bad at it. She was like, I understand why I'm silent because I just, I couldn't do it. Acting is very hard. She also said that she was seated next to Carl Anthony Towns at the fake dinner and that she did not know who he was and then learned a lot about. athletes' lives and how they can be traded at any moment.

Oh, my. It's really funny. She just learned that. She just learned that. She employed Brian Curtis for years. That's so surprising. Yeah, well, I don't, I think they were talking about other things. That's probably true.

First of all, shout it to Cat. He's been having a great series. Hopefully the Knicks triumph over the Hawks before. He's on the Knicks now. Cat, yeah, he's been on the Knicks for years. I didn't know that. This is his third season with the Knicks? Well, I thought he was great in this.

I was happy to see him. Yeah, he just recently went on a double date with your boy Timothy. Shalame and Kylie Jenner and his girlfriend Jordan Woods. Oh, really? Yeah, just reading about this. After the game? It stresses me out. Okay, well, either way. It stresses me out how

often professional athletes are just like out late. Even though the next day they need to use you know, they need to be in fit physical condition. Yeah, it does. Given the way he's been performing in this series, I don't want to chase it. Who am I to know? But it was nice to see him. It was nice.

Jenna Bush-Hager was in this movie. There were a ton of people who got like one line. Right. And it similarly has that comic book movie feel of like all your faves are all together at this one fun party. It felt a little cheap to me though, you know, in the way that these things often feel cheap. I agree. And it was a real like now this is this is a sequel.

We got to do something. Everyone wants to be a part of this. So we'll farm it out. I think the cheapest part of it is that there's a Lady Gaga performance as well as a cameo in the at the event that they host in Milan that is sort of like it's, I, I, I, I, guess it's akin to an Italian metball, which does often have a pop star major performance. I'm sure Lady Gaga has been the chair of the Metball at least once. And what does one do as the chair? You put your name on a lot of things and then you get photographed. Can I tell you who two of the

chairs of the upcoming Metball, which is on Monday, the first day in May, are? Sure. They are Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez. Oh, interesting. So that is pretty interesting, given the portrayal of Jeff Bezos or the Jeff Bezos-esque character in this movie. You know, we're in full spoiler territory here, but there is a kind of Lauren Sanchez-esque character in the movie as well, and it's a character we know.

Yes. Spoiler, I guess. Yes, her name is Emily, played by Emily Blunt, who now is an executive at Dior. And Dior features prominently. She is shown chastising Miranda Priestley for the legitimately bad journalism And then extracting the price of several free ad pages and a feature story about the Ope's door opening, which I really wonder how everyone at Dior and Louis Vuitton, LVMH feels. Yeah, let me ask you this, ball knower.

Does that happen in real life? I don't know if it happens at that level. Uh-huh. I know that... That is something that was oft rumored. Yes. When I was working at Condé Nast across many publications, but certainly never confirmed because it's a decision that's made at the absolute highest level. Sure. I mean, no one ever told me, yeah,

this ad page was free. You know, we all know that advertisers have to be featured in fashion spreads in certain ways. And I think the companies have had like an increasing amount of say there's now in vogue at least what's called a full look commitment, which is that you can't mix and match as they do in that famous cerulean speech in the first episode. You have to wear head to Dior or Prada or etc. Even in an editorial. I don't know whether that happens specifically. I feel pretty confident that LVMH, the conglomerate that owns Dior, is not thrilled about the portrayal of anything.

And there's also a new, very cool, very movie-invested designer Jonathan Anderson, who has done the costumes for some Luca Guadenae movies, who now runs Dior. Wondering how he's feeling about that. Seems like this was all inked and scripted before he came on board. But yes, so Emily, in addition to being a corporate fashion person, is now also dating the Jeff Bezos character and helps Andy plot a takeover of runway, which Andy thinks is going to be to protect Miranda. and then it turns out to be so that Emily, the Emily Blunt character, can be in charge of runway. So, but there,

she dresses not, she wears more Dior, but she dresses not unlike Lauren Sanchez does and is portrayed in a similar way. I mean, they even talk about how the Jeff Bezos character, I can't remember his actual name, has had like a real physical transformation and all of his workouts. It's,

it's really, really very specific. and in the meantime, Vogue, the magazine, is going to have them like on the steps that their quote-unquote biggest night of the year on Monday. I wonder if there will be any phone calls. Vogue's decision to embrace this is fascinating to me. And makes sense and it's just really about how Vogue

and Kanax have no power anymore. And I think that so there's a new American editor, Chloe Mal, who's been doing a lot of this work and I think she's been very savvy and just knows that it will be a big thing and that it will kind of up the profile of vogue at a time when it really needs that. But it's a real balance of powers

has shifted situation. Yeah. Which the movie then confirms, which is what's so fascinating. It's a really unique document of the real life echoing the movie, echoing the real life. I... The other interesting thing about that power dynamic

is that it certainly feels like this movie is going to be a huge hit. Yeah. And the screening that we went to was quite interesting. It was like it was Barbenheimer for cool moms, you know? Like there were more ladies in that screening than I can recall in any press screening in Los Angeles ever. Correct.

Also significantly more stylish people in that screening. I don't know what you can talk about it in some detail. A lot of people wearing red, which has, you know, been established as the signature color of the press tour. And it's what Anne Hathaway and Merrill Streep and then Emily Blund and then Emily Blan, Stanley Tucci when they joined have been wearing on this really extended, and to me Barbie-esque press tour, Margot Robbie was on the road for weeks in various Barbie-inspired outfits, which I thought was very clever and playing to, an audience that is not usually marketed to in movies, but that both films really deliver to. So they did a lot. We had a lot of people in red,

lots of good bags. I think bags are not dead. Is that something that's been discussed? Yeah, There is, there is, bags are dead. Yeah, that people don't want, you know, the fancy, like, ooh, the New Mark Jacobs, that's a Devil Wars Prada 1 reference. Okay. That you either need a laptop bag or a tiny bag. I'm going to go the other way. I'm post laptop and I have a new normal bag that I like.

You're sitting in front of a laptop. Yeah, but I just, that's, that's when I'm here. Okay. I'm going to be careful when you say you're post something when you were using that thing actively. It's a state of mind. Yeah. I'd love to be post laptop. Unfortunately, there were not a lot of laptop bags at this screening.

There were a lot of bad bags. No. Well, thankfully no one was using their laptop during the screening. I thought that was quite fascinating. It felt like there was maybe some more influencer invites. You know, shout out to the AMC, Burbank 16, my true one true home. I thought it was indicative of the fact that there's more opportunity to do this kind of thing for this audience. And then not every movie is the Devil Wars Prada, and it doesn't loom as large as most movies don't loom as large as that movie does.

And it's not as marketable? Yeah. Are you aware of all the tie-ins? Like, are you- No, but I mean, that makes sense. Yeah, of course. It's like Star Wars for professional women. But it is a little surprising when to suddenly be on the other side of it.

And, you know, Juliet Lippman was talking about how she was on the GE website because she needs a new appliance. And there's a Devil Wars Prada, GE. She was shopping for an appliance from GE's website. I think she was just looking at the options, and some of the options were featured in the devilware's Prada, too, which was noted on the website. So, you know, and there is like a very literal, like 30 rock vibe to that. But it also makes sense. Also, as soon as she said that, I was like, oh, I know where the appliances were. They were in the flip of the, you know, the new apartment.

And it wasn't totally tacky the way it was included. Let's talk about that strain of the story. Colin from Accounts? That was Colin from Accounts. Yeah, I've not seen that show. I know that's a show, but I haven't seen that show. Who is that person? So Colin from Accounts is the name that I don't know his actual name.

I'm scrolling. Where is it? Let's go. Patrick Bramel, aka Colin from Accounts, who is the contractor who renovated a beautiful building on Henry Street, the corner of Henry and Amity. I know because they were filming there when I was there visiting my sister and Ruthie last summer, and they showed knock some of their cameras. They were very nice.

Thank you to everyone in the Devil Wars Prattice. He said. So he's renovated this building, and Andy goes to see it because she has enough resources to buy a luxury building despite being an out-of-work newspaper journalist turned features editor at runway, which just 20 years later, just being a features editor, that's a That's tough. In the era of title inflation? Let's not scold Andy Sacks, please.

Okay. But I just, I want more for her. She's a hard-bitten journalist who's telling real stories in the real world. Yeah, I'm just saying that's tough for her. So she goes to look at- How high up on the masthead do you think she was at runway when she got that gig? What do you mean? Like, oh, how high up is features editor?

Yeah. So as I haven't looked at Vogue's Mast's head in a while, but I do think that I guess features comes before, well, I don't know. Maybe they do it out. I don't know. I don't know where it is. Not that high. Maybe it's a side-by-side situation where the story journalists are over here and the fashion team is over here.

No, it's always been that the fashion team is just so much bigger. And then the beauty team and then you've got like all the online stuff. I assume that they've renovated this over time. Okay. But she's not in the top grouping, you know, like with the editor-in-chief or global, content, whatever, creative director, so and so. And I just think 20 years later, I want more for her. Anyway, she can afford this apartment. So she goes to see it. She says that she likes old things instead of new things in the world's most obvious metaphor. And she says it directly to the contractor

himself. But it counts as a meat cute. And so they start a very innocuous relationship that is just fine until she yells at him for no reason and goes to Milan. Okay. I guess. Did you want more for Andy's life in this movie? Well, I saw paparazzi photos of her filming outside Long Island Bar, which is two blocks from the building in question and a great Brooklyn establishment. And I wanted Long Island Bar in the film, and it was cut. And I assume she went there with this guy, Colin from Accounts.

What was his real name in the movie? Couldn't tell you. Peter? Okay, good luck to him. Yeah, sure. He seemed nice. But I don't care about her personal life. You do.

What did you want for her? I wanted her to realize all her hopes and dreams. Okay. I'm rooting for her. Do you think she is? No. No. I don't think so.

Okay. What? I think she was fired from a dream job because an industry collapsed, and she was dragooned for financial and quieted personal ambition reasons to return to her origin story and try to make good on it. She was very happy to have some success in that space and reconnect with some people, but by the same token,

the movie is a slightly cynical about, it's kind of the inverse of the original, where the original is like, goodbye to all that. What I don't need are these, you know, this accoutrement of lifestyle to feel like a real person. And I assume that that's kind of the core theme of the book

as a person, as an author who abandoned that. space to go pursue what she really wanted to do. Right. But the movie is sort of like, this new movie is like, actually, it is kind of great to be at the seat of power and to look beautiful and to be styled just so. But are they at the seat of power by the end? Close enough. Or are they working together?

It's more of like a found family movie, which is silly. Yeah. But they're all. This is actually your Guardians of the Galaxy. They're all like there together at the end and she even has this lunch with. Emily, where Emily is like, I really wanted to be friends, which what? That's the second biggest sin of the movie. Just a completely false note.

Completely false. No. I love Emily Blunt, too, so I was like, I'll roll with this, but not a real. And it's tough that it's so hard to get her in the same frame as all of these people, which is always a sequel problem, right? Because characters would have moved on. But yeah, it didn't make sense. But it does feel like the movie, and it's probably just because of that, like, sequel

mandate that we have to get them all back together, that the reason that the reason that is then we want to get them back together because they all want to be together. Right. You know? Can Andy just try to go work at the New York Times or the Atlantic? Like, why are we pretending? Like, it makes any sense for her to go work at Vogue?

You're right. But even that is revealed as it's revealed later in the movie that it was Stanley Tucci's character, Nigel, who suggested that she'd be hired because she's always been his number one. And that's really meaningful to her. Had they spoken to one another in 20 years? I don't think so. It's a bit curious.

And also unrealistic. So I agree with you. But the movie really does seem to... This is why I'm like it's kind of a Gen Z movie. It's all forcing them together and be like we love each other. Gen Z loves when you speak for them. I've learned that's something they really enjoy. This episode is brought to you by Apple and AT&T.

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Any other thoughts? Do you want to make any box office predictions for this movie? No, I want to do things that I learned about the Devil Wars Party universe that I didn't know. Fire away. Number one, Miranda drinks Rose. which it does but I'm not sure I expected to see a scene of Miranda Priestley in the Hamptons and they've recreated Anna Wentworth's Mastic estate as pretty faithfully according to at least photographs that I've seen we're in deep cut territory here and so she's just in the kitchen pouring rosé and like telling Andy about her ambitions two things I never really expected to see happen also in that scene. The third false note of the movie is she's wearing pumas?

Okay. No. I thought you wrote down Stan Smith's. Was it actually Pumas? Yeah, I investigated it because it had the little blue back, but they were flatter and smaller, so I think they're pumas. Okay. It went pretty quickly. If they were Stan Smiths, would you feel differently?

But they weren't as chunky as Stan Smith. Stan Smith, they have like the very, very narrow profile. That doesn't answer my question. If they were Stan Smiths, would you I don't really feel that Miranda is wearing sneakers to host 20 to 30 luminaries for a lobster lunch in the Hamptons. I personally think that there would be a sandal. Okay. Probably an Hermes sandal. Anyway.

And as our friend Molly, who came to the screening fest, turned to me and said, I guess we all have to wear ties now. That was funny. Yeah. Which I thought was a really great observation by Molly. coming. Also, to speak to the event of it all, Molly turned down attending a, not turned down, but she was supposed to go see Devil Wears Prada 2, I believe with a book club, and was already coming to see it with me. I have another friend who's like, well, I have tickets at this time. There's a real people are making plans, reservation group quality, to this movie that I have not

seen since Barbie. So, to your point, I don't think that's going to be Barbie big, but I think it's going to be really big. What does that look like to you? Have you looked at the tracking? Well, I know that it's tracking for $180 million globally on the opening weekend. Okay. It's quite good. That's quite good.

I mean, what numbers do you want? Do you want what I think domestic opening weekend? I guess I'd be curious to know where this movie lands. I didn't really do like a legacy sequels comp thing here, but, you know, what are some recent ones? Blade Runner 2049, Mad Max Fury Road and Fury. Right. You know, we've got the social reckoning coming out later this year. Like it's obviously something that's going to be happening more and more where I think especially for grownups, that this is a way to kind of feed a quasi-precious crowd but also serve. Right.

You know, just that, that childlike brain of, I know what that is. I like that. So I'm quite fascinated by how this movie does. I think it'll also have pretty broad international appeal. Mm-hmm. Because of the world of fashion and taking place in Europe. Yes, and because I think these are high-profile characters. And they've also, I mean, they have been serving it everywhere. It has been a very international strategy smartly, I think.

Okay. Will it cross $500 million worldwide? That would make it pretty damn big. Maybe? Okay. Kind of fascinating. So, I mean, this dovetails into the conversation I want to have about myelin kicks. Okay.

But it is something that I have been thinking about, quite a bit. A few years back when the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie came out, the animated movie that Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg produced, they wrote this long, emotional letterbox review about it coming for us, so to speak. You know, these remnants of our youth kind of starting to echo deeply in ways that seem cynical, but are also very personal. Like that animated Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle's movie had a couple of musical cues, a couple of gags. in it that felt like it was really scratching something very personal, which seems silly, but you very eloquently illuminated for an hour all of the ways in which this movie kind of tapped into or failed to tap into certain aspects of your personality and your experiences as a person or how you aspire to things and how that maybe let you down over time. And we're in this rich moment because of our age and because of the state of the movie business where like this is going to keep happening.

We're going to keep having feelings like this. there are plenty of movies over the years where you see something personal happen to a character and you connect to it. Like I vividly recall with ease the dinner table sequence in boyhood where they're seated with their new stepfather or mom's boyfriend.

And I'm like, that's just like a chilling movie moment for me to watch that and to feel that and to think about the characters at that table. But this is different. This is like there's something mechanized about this. that also still kind of gratifies us, and I'm trying to get my arms around the feeling. Do you mean mechanized in the sense that it is so, I mean, it is so big and broad and certainly corporate and the number of tie-ins and they're, you know, they made a fake runway magazine that they've been handing out at CinemaCon and oh, oh, it's here. Yes, hello. Hello, Emily Charlton.

And, you know, at the screenings. And respectfully, it's not a very good magazine. You know, they've done tie-in articles. The Lucy Luke character is in there. The ads that are inspired by the original memes are much better than the, you know, kind of SpanCon features that they've done to tie into the movie. But, yeah, it does have like a fake orchestrated quality to it, which has been the source of most of my anxiety about this movie. I got to be honest, I feel fine on this one.

I mean, it's a little strange. And with respect to GE, I'm not going to go. buy a new appliance. I don't need a new appliance right now. Yep. And most of the tie-ins and the merch and the marketing stuff just has not really been for me. But the fact that it's considered valuable enough to spend all that time on it, and it does mean that more time and money was spent on the thing itself.

And so I get to have a fun time watching something, as opposed to that money and time and all that marketing stuff being spent on a bunch of things I don't care about. It's a new sensation, but I'm okay. If it were really bad, I would obviously feel differently, but it's not. Yeah, it's not really bad. It is a little bit duplicative at times, and it also is a little bit of a downer at times. But it's very watchable and entertaining in a way that you don't usually expect from a movie like this. You know, I think this movie has a kind of like action figures quality for you and a lot of the things that you enjoy where it keeps popping up. In most of the movies that I'm referring to are about totems of my youth. Comic book characters, this in June will have Masters of the Universe.

Right. My own kind of personal, I don't know about anxiety, but just kind of like that personal cringe of like, oh, this is a thing I loved. And now it's being made for people 40 years later. There's something very odd about that sensation. But this movie Mile and Kicks, to me, is probably the closest that I'll get to the feeling that you have with the Devil Wears product. where Chandler LeVac wrote and directed this movie that is clearly very autobiographical about her experience working in the world of music journalism

and working for music magazines. Like me, she worked for spin for a period of time. She went back to Canada and worked for local music magazines and reviewed records. And her character in this film, played by Barbie Ferreira, attempts a 33 and a third book. I never wrote one of those, but I certainly thought about it.

and I certainly thought it was important to write one. Who would you have wanted to do? Well, that's a generous question. I think probably check your head by the Bisi Boys. I think it would have been interesting. I know, what a shameful moment that was. There's any number of interesting albums I would have liked to have spent time on. But, you know, this movie is like, is Francis Hotme, it's almost famous.

it's a very personal coming of age story about a young woman trying to find love, trying to be professionally successful, obsessed with music, obsessed with the culture of music, but then the closer you get to it, the more you realize

that the people that are inside of that world can be kind of shitty, can take advantage of you, can treat you poorly. I didn't have the exact same experiences that the Barbie Ferreira character had. Obviously not a woman. But to see music journalism

circa 2011, in and like kind of like the shithole career that that was you know the way that you were paid for things the things that you got so excited about getting free CDs going to go to going to go to a show at the time I was having the time of my life I wasn't having I made all my best friends during that period of my life um I to this day love music and think about it all the time but it also shows just kind of like how dingy all that is and how it's the it's the opposite of the divorce product where there's no glamour true yes and you find yourself uh just standing around cubicles with groups of men trying to get a word in edgewise,

and that doesn't happen. I saw a lot of myself in this movie, even though I never worked specifically at music magazines. I worked at various websites and more general interest magazines. But, you know, I knew that's when I met all of you guys, was kind of at the tail end of that time when you were growing up. And it was incredibly familiar from the perspective of being the young. woman who doesn't have things figured out in this world and has a lot of interest. But her interests are similar, but not the same as all the men. She gives a great speech at the end that really,

really spoke to young and old Amanda, just the ways in which you have to feign interest in what's considered quote unquote cool. And then you have all these other things on the side that you know, basically like aren't acceptable for the canon. Mm-hmm. Which is true. Devil Wars Prada being one of them. So, you know, it's a full-circle moment. Totally. And now this is, Devil Wars Prada is finally being accepted,

even though it's for girl stuff. I thought it was very, very charming. Is there really not a 33 and a third on Jagged Little Pill? I don't know. I haven't kept up. I just Googled and I can't find it. Yeah, that is the, the Alanis Morset album is the one that Barbie Ferrer's character wants to write and plans to write and then things happen along the way.

I think I had very similar experiences. I'm not sure how much I like feigned my taste per se, but I certainly felt very intimidated in those circles. In 2000, the summer of 2003, I was an intern at spin. And that was a very, to me, a very hallowed period of time at that magazine because of all the people that worked there. Many of whom people know, you know, Chuck Closterman was working there at the time. Siamichael was the editor-in-chief.

Karen Gans, who's at the New York Times now, Alex Papademus, like David Itzcough, like John Dolan, Charles Aaron, who I idolized, like a ton of magazine writers and editors who knew I thought everything about everything and whose taste was superlative. And I was really, really intimidated. And I'm really, I have no shortage of ego, but I really didn't know how to talk to. I was afraid to talk to those people. And I wish I had spent more time talking to them. It's like very, I always think of it as very fortunate that later in life I got to be, friends with Chuck and got to know him because I just loved his writing so much in the way that he thought about things. But I completely related to the experience that that character is having in that way. And that sense of like, how do I contribute in any way that makes me useful, which is such an insecure feeling. Yeah. But is a very real feeling when you're in these

scenarios and you're a young person and you don't know if you totally have anything to add. And then you get older and you do a couple of things for yourself that you feel happy about. and you kind of shed a lot of that anxiety. So it was really interesting to talk to Chandler or somebody who clearly has like figured out who she wants to be or at least in part like what she wants to be doing with her time and is not afraid to just say like, I just said out loud that I like things I didn't like. And, you know, there's a certain modicum of bravery and honesty about doing that that I really appreciated. There is also a romantic subplot in this one that unlike Devil Wars Product 2 is perfectly handled

and recognizable and like archetypal in a way, but also sort of. specific and funny and you're rooting for it to to resolve in the right way. I really, really dug this. It was very charmed by it. Stanley Simons plays the lead singer of the fictionalized Canadian indie band. And, you know, I guess this is around the time of like, clap your hands say yeah, maybe like that, that era of indie pop rock. And that guy is giving one of the most accurate performances I've ever seen. That is a dude I knew. It is so funny. That is a guy who is, in bands that I covered. And he's really, really, really funny.

The other thing, too, I mentioned this in the physical media High Council episode that is coming later this month. But Juliet Garepi, the actress from Red Rooms, is in this, playing a completely different person. And I was like, who the fuck? She can also be like this? She's kind of doing a Julie Delpy kind of quality to her character that I really enjoyed.

I really liked this movie. You know, I really enjoyed roommates as well. I don't know if you got a chance to see that. I didn't see this, yeah. Okay. This is the other movie that Chandler directed, which is stars Sadie Sandler, Adam Sandler's daughter, and Chloe East from the Fableman's Inheritick,

who of an actress I have stock in. Very goofy, happy Madison movie, just told with female characters instead of older male characters about two girls who become roommates at college and seem like they're going to be best friends forever and then maybe clearly they're not. Right. And what happens from there.

It felt very enjoyable. And it was like really cool hearing Chandler talk about the ways in which she got the opportunity to do that and the relationship that she now has with Adam Sandler of all people. So I hope people check that out Very quickly the state of music criticism Yeah good bad Thumbs up thumbs down

No idea Where are you? No I haven't been reading a lot of it I respect people who do it Yeah It's some of the hardest easy work you can do I think it's quite hard It was never on my aspiration board

You know It's pretty tricky I'm relieved to not be thinking about it too much You think I should write about music in the newsletter? I think you should write about music in the newsletter? I think you should write about whatever you want to write about. Are you glad to be writing again? That's the other way in which I don't relate to Andy.

She's just like up all the time writing and I was like, no, no, no. Well, I do love that feeling. Not for me. Yeah. I do. I'm happy for you. It's so hard, which is, it sounds like the whiniest thing ever when writers talk about this because it's like, well, don't do it.

If you don't want to do it, don't do it. Quite literally how I feel. And I understand that. But there is something specifically, even with this new experience that I'm having, where when something is published, it's tremendously gratifying in a way that this can't be, in a way that other stuff I do professionally can't be. Okay. So I'm liking that part of it.

I'm glad. Which is kind of how I felt, you know, when I was writing in 2006. I need you to be doing more things that you feel happy and gratified by. And, you know, less threatening to move to the mosquito coast. So let's just get to a place where we're enjoying what we're doing. Part of the mosquito coast thinking is like, this is something I can do from the mosquito coast. Okay.

You know what I mean? I don't need anything else to do that. Do they show movies with the regularity that you... Maybe not, but I have 5,000 movies at home. Okay. Right. Have you considered that? You're going to get them...

What, I can't even... Coming up soon on the High Council, some A.V. Guy insights to be shared. Wow, no spoilers. Yeah. Okay. Let's go to my conversation now with Chandler LeVec. For the very first time, Chandler LeVac, is here with not one but two feature films. We're going to talk about both of them, but I watched Myel N. Kicks first because I am also a

recovering music journalist. And this is a very interesting, sometimes very sad vocation. And I think you captured some of the sadness in that vocation in your film. Just tell me a little bit about why you pursued that line of work before you started becoming a film director. Yeah. I mean, you were kind of my ideal audience for the movie. I was like, what is Sean Fantasy? to think of this film. And then you just posted on letterbox one word uncandy. Well, it is. I mean, it is like eerily accurate, both in terms of, I think, the perspective of the characters, the scene and just the general, like, angst in the relationships. Like, I thought you got all that stuff so right. Yeah, because I think you were writing for spin when I was interning there under the great Charles Arian.

Yes. And Kyle Anderson. One of my earliest mentors. God, the coolest person. It's just the smartest guy ever, yeah. of all time, a great writer. And so, yeah, I certainly, like, idolize you and Chuck Klausterman and all the roster at the time. Don't put me in that league, please. I was a lowly 20-something back then. Phoebe Riley, and there's so many great writers, Karen Gantz.

You have nice tributes to various music writers in your film, actually. Yeah, I have a little Easter eggs. I love that. Yeah, I mean, other than almost famous, I don't think it's a profession that gets memorialized in, in cinema that much. probably because it's something that seems glamorous but is actually just you kind of like hunched over a laptop looking despondent like seeing if your editor will acknowledge your invoice

that you have been asking for for a month and a half and you know I think I imprinted our almost famous when I was 15 and I just like how do I live in the movie forever? Okay well I'll just become the main character and so as soon as I and then it was at the same time that I was like I saw the strokes on the cover of Spin magazine in Blockbuster.

And I was like, how is this on the cover of magazine? Like, I thought I only knew about the spin. And so I bought the magazine and there was a huge excerpt from Chuck Klosterman's book, Sex, Drugs, and Coco Puffs. And so I immediately got that book. And then I was like, I want to be a pop culture critic. Like, I didn't even know this was a job that existed, but like, this is what I want to be. And so I emailed Chuck and I was like, I read your book and it completely changed.

my life, how do I, like, have your job? And he was like, instead of being like, leave me alone, he was like, well, you should start writing for your school newspaper. And he said this really beautiful thing that I'll never forget that was like, and also like don't worry about what's cool. Like everyone thinks that like, this was 2005. So everyone thinks that like Paul Banks from Interpol is like the arbiter of cool right now. But like journalism isn't about telling people what's cool. It's just about like saying what you like. It's all about your own critical taste and your authority. And so that really, like, galvanized me and kind of set me on this path where I'm, like, 16, reading, like, mystery train in the back room of Blockbuster while, like, eating a piece of sub,

and just getting obsessed with popular culture. And then, yeah, I followed Chuck's advice and immediately started writing from my school newspaper, the Edis Herald. And by the time we met, like, two years later, I was, like, an intern at spin. So we have eerily similar paths. Yes, Joker origin stories. Sort of, yeah. I mean, I was on Chuck's desk as an internet spin in 2003. Wow. When he was out reporting what became killing yourself to live, his book.

Oh, yeah, that's crazy. So I never interacted with him at that time. He's now a good friend of mine. But at the time, I also really, really looked up to him. And I really loved what he was doing in the way that he was kind of like colliding pop culture. Yeah. The thing that you just said, the advice that he gave you, that's so resonant because I feel like it took me a long time

and really actually achieve that, like get comfortable with my own taste and talk about what I thought was good and why I thought it was good. And I feel like I've read you talk about this a little bit around this film

and in general, this anxiety of wanting to have the right opinion and then getting comfortable with what you feel like is the real opinion. And I feel like Barbie's character in the film too

does a really good job of sort of like knowing when it's time to try to fit in, but then also having this like voice inside of her of like, here's what I really like

and here's who I really am. I want to hear you talk about that a little bit. Yeah, and the movie is kind of about taste and, like, how much I think the canon of, like, movies and music were kind of shaped by my male colleagues who were, like, men in their 40s in, like, hold steady t-shirts. Yeah, yeah. And me at the time, when I was, like, literally 21 years old, you know, as a staff writer for this, this All Weekly in Toronto, like, thinking that I was their peer.

And, like, now realizing now that I'm, like, almost the same age as those guys, like, no, I was like a dog that could like walk on its hind legs that had like cute, fun opinions about like, I don't know, per ubu or something. And I didn't know the bands they were talking about. And I didn't care about Bellatar movies. But like I felt like if I learned all the right like nouns and verbs, then then they would, they would kind of welcome me into their inner circle. Yeah, it's like a secret society a little bit where you want to feel like you're of weird guys in fedores. Yeah.

And why did we look up to them so much? I don't know. I don't. Some of them are like, are people that I really care about. But some of them, too, I was like, why did I, why was I interested in that person's opinion in any way?

When they don't, we actually didn't have that much in common, even though we were pursuing theoretically the same thing. Yeah. And it seems like that's, you were kind of like writing through that idea too. Totally. I mean,

I remember Chuck saying something, I don't remember where, but he said something about how like all criticism is autobiograph. Autobiography, ultimately. Mm-hmm. And how like, when you have an opinion about an album or a movie, it's like you are, you know, asserting, like, how that relates to you at that definite point in your life.

And I think because I was, like, a really messy woman in my, like, early 20s, I was a lot of the time, like, using the Passion Pit CD to talk about the, like, 30-year-old stand-up comedian who had just broken up with me for the fourth time. You know, like, it was like this weird venting tool or something or a mechanism. And, you know, both being kind of, like, rewarded for that by my editors, but then also kind of scolded for like at what point did my writing feel to like feminine or self-indulgent? And so it made me feel like extremely confused. It's not always the most lucrative line of work. You get paid in CDs sometimes. Which I love, just as I love being paid in film screenings now.

But so can you just tell me like how you made the pivot out, like how you decided to pursue filmmaking and maybe not spend your time as a cultural critic? Yeah. I mean, I think it was really getting let go from the All-weekly. And then living in Montreal for the summer in 2011, it was kind of like the first choice I ever made kind of that wasn't like a professional decision. You know, I've been this like young professional for so long since I was 18, like writing for the village voice and spin. And, you know, always with my little like no pad at the back of the show, like waiting to interview Sharon Jones with my dad there. And then she'd be like, do you want to smoke weed? And I'd be like, I can't.

My dad's here. even though my dad probably would have been cool with it. And like rushing back to the office to, you know, write the story at 3 in the morning before my deadline. Like it was just how I lived my life for like eight years. And everything else like became secondary to that. And then when I moved to Montreal in 2011, it was like the first time that I actually realized that I was like a young person. And suddenly got immersed in this incredible scene of these like underground, you know, shows that like DIY warehouses where, where like the birth of all of these incredible bands like MacDamarko and Grimes and

Tops were we're just starting. And I was like, oh, wow, like I can have friends that are the same age as me. I can like party all night and I don't have to like write an article about it. I can just like experience things. So how do you go beyond that into like writing I love movies or I like movies and I, you know, want to make movies professionally? I think it was just like something I'd repressed for so long. And it was really kind of, I think a collision of seeing Lena Dunham make girls and watching that, like it was kind of my film school and realizing it was the first time that I was the same age as someone who was making art on such a public stage and her voice and like tone as a filmmaker I like so desperately connected to.

And then I think Greta Gerwig also making Lady Bird, I would like watch the promotional video of her like being like, no kiss her. Kiss, fo. And I just would like weep unexpectedly and I didn't know why. And so I think it kind of felt like I think I've said this before, but the way that like other women know they're ready to have a baby. Like I was just like I need to make a coming of age film. Like it's like my biological clock is like ticking. And so, you know, I'd gone to film school at the University of Toronto, but I just, like, had completely redirected my focus and, like, dropped out of school. And then I had my last class to graduate was this screenwriting class that was taught by Patricia Rosema, who's the legendary Canadian director of me, this incredible movie.

I've heard The Mermaid Singing that's, like, was one of the, maybe the first female Canadian film to ever go to Cannes. And semi-chellist, who ended up writing, like, all the best madman episodes, like the suitcase. and it's just like a total hero of mine. And so they, yeah, for the class, you had to write a feature screenplay. And I think my years of like, as you can probably relate to, like, writing profiles about people and kind of investigative features. Like that's sort of the backbone, I think, for a lot of screenwriting. You know, you get 10 minutes with someone and you have to tell the entire story of their life based on like a, you know, 10 minute call in like conversation at Tiff in like a conference room or something. I've done it many times.

Yeah. I always feel bad. I'm like, this is not accurate, but this is all you've given me. So how do I do my best with it? Army Hammer, let's go. I read you had an interesting chat with him. Yeah. I remained intact.

You're safe. You're safe now. But yeah, it was just, I think it just was the first thing that made sense for my brain. And I totally fell in love with screenwriting and just the structure of it and stuff. And then after that, they said I should apply to the Canadian Film Center. which is Norman Jewison's film school, kind of like what AFI is in the States. Okay.

And then, yeah, it was the first time I, like, ever saw a camera, and I wrote three scripts that got, you know, immediately produced, and I got to be involved in all the sort of casting conversations and be on set forward. And I think I was so, like, bossy and opinionated about stuff that it was clear that I was kind of like, oh, I should be a director because I have, like, too many thoughts about stuff. What year was this?

Um, 2012. Okay. And then I started making music videos after that. Ah. So that was kind of like really the origin for this incredible punk band Pup. Yes. With Jeremy Shal and Rio, who was someone I met at the CFC. And we were dating at the time using the editors program.

So we kind of came together and made like eight or ten music videos. Amazing. But at the same time, I felt like I just had never made anything that was like honestly my true voice. So I've had, you know, Sophie was on the show recently and Matt was on the show earlier this year. And I'm really interested in how you can raise funds to make movies in Canada. And if that's specifically how you've been pursuing it, I suspect roommates was a little bit different. But at least for your first two features, like, can you just kind of talk me through a little bit how that works and how you are able to accomplish something that often, at least in America, feels very, very hard to do? Yeah.

I mean, it's so interesting talking to, like, American independent filmmakers because you're, you're really. your whole process of just getting rich people to give you money, it seems equally bananas. Yeah. I mean, it's kind of weird that the Canadian government, like, gives artists funds to make films. But I also think it's, like, we're so, so lucky. And I think the last couple years have proven, like, what an incredibly rich, like, idiosyncratic, you know, pool of filmmakers and talent are out there that are really getting

to do things, like, very freely. Like, you don't have to pay the money back. I think You better hope not I could be wrong Maybe some of it You know that there's no like Studio system where they're like telling you who should

You should cast and you know stipulating like rules on your on your script They give you feedback but you don't have to take it in the same way that like Netflix Or like I'm sure you know 20th century Fox would And it's just like very liberating And I think you're just seeing like a lot of these movies kind of enter the world state over the past couple years, and it's, it's, like, tremendously exciting. It's really cool. Let's talk a little bit more about myelin kicks.

I found that you had a real facility with the fragility of the male ego. I wonder why. Why do you think that is? That's so interesting. What do you mean? Well, there's like a certain kind of a guy who's a very recognizable guy from that time. You mentioned Paul Banks from Interpol. He was literally the first famous person that I ever interviewed.

Really? And I think he's a very nice guy. But even some of that vulnerability I felt when I was talking to him when I was 20 years old. I was 20 years old with my friend Ryan Donble who worked at pitch work for years. Together, he and I interviewed Paul and the guitarist from the band in the basement of the Bowery ballroom. And I felt a little bit like I was flashing back on that moment watching some of the interactions that your characters are having. Where it seems like this is supposed to be intimidating. and then it very quickly becomes clear

that the person that you're interviewing is just as nervous and awkward as you and just has just as many foibles and maybe even more than you do. And like how do you protect a person in that situation? Because you feel like you need to do right by their art, but also shouldn't you honestly portray

who they really are? And like how much empathy or sympathy do you have for the place that they find? I just thought it was very perceptive the way that you mapped a lot of that in the movie. I mean, I'm just having like flashbacks to like every musician I ever interviewed because you're totally right.

it's such a weird power dynamic because, I mean, you know, when you're 20 years old, like you, I, certainly I felt like completely powerless all the time, like over my parents, over my bosses, over the people I was dating, like could not hold my own in like a conversation unless I, but there was something about like being on the list and having access and the tape recorder and like as a way to like make friends and also feel like, you know, it's what almost famous says, like that you're cool. Yeah, I belong. Yeah, totally.

And so, but then, yeah, it's weird to be like 20 years old and talking to like badly drawn boy and he's complaining about, you know, how he doesn't even like the sound of his own voice anymore. And you're like, he's being so vulnerable with me and this is such a gift. But like now I am like the keeper of the secrets and like what do I do with all this information? Yeah, I've always thought like, what do I do with this? Like I can write it down in a piece, but it's not going to properly convince. It's like a real difficult thing to convey humanity too in those scenarios. Yeah, I always felt myself like accidentally getting into these very deep conversations with people. Like, I remember Wayne Coyne telling me the lead singer from the Flaming Lips about like how when his wife's mother died, they had like, they were both consumed so much by grief that they just started having sex all the time. And there was the combination of like sex and death that like gave them the best sex of their life. And I like was like, wow. And then I like wrote it in the article. My bosses were like, what are people telling you these things?

That's like amazing anecdotal. I don't know. It's such a strange thing. Yeah, I think it had something to do with maybe just how, like, unassuming I seemed or something. I mean, I think that's what Joan Didion said, too, that she's just like, when you're kind of like a small person that's like, like, I think people just want to tell you their secrets. Yeah. I feel like a lot of people in that situation also really want to do what your character in the film wants to do, which is write a 33 and a third and somehow thinks that that's like the affirmation of your insight and that you've like reached some sort of critical mountain top or something because you've written an extended personal essay about a piece of art. Like that's another thing that I feel like if you're not old enough, you might think that you made that up.

Right. It's like a thing that people do. Yeah. In the time. It was the cultural currency of our. of our day. Isn't that quite strange? Absolutely. Did you ever write one? No, I never wrote one. I never pitched one. I certainly thought of a pitching quite a few.

Yeah. But I don't, I didn't have the gumption that Barbie's character has in the movie. Well, neither does she. Ultimately, yeah, yeah. Was Alanis like a lodestar for you being from Canada? Yeah. I mean, I remember just being on the playground and someone like coming over to me and just telling me that they'd read this article about this woman from Canada who was 19 and made this album of, And she's really mad and she, like, talks about having sex and it has a lot of swearing. And I was like, I got to get my hands on this. And so I, like, after school just, like, begged my mom to, like, take us to, like, the big box kind of, like, Canadian equivalent of a Best Buy. And, you know, listen to, like, the album on, like, a little, like, in one of those little, like, players where you can sort of preview the song. Oh, yeah, the listening station.

Which I'm so nostalgic for now. Those are nice. feel for a listing station. And then I begged her to buy me the cassette. And then we put it on, I remember we're in Bramford, Ontario. My mom had a minivan at the time, like a forest green 1996 wind star. And my sibling was in the backseat, probably like three and a half years old in like a, you know, baby's chair, car seat. And, you know, I hit play.

And like, you ought to know it's the first song on Jagged Little Bill. And immediate Alanis is like, would you go down on me? in a theater. And my mom is like, what did you want me to get you? And I had no idea what she was talking about. But I was also like, this is like the prophecy of what my future is going to be. Like there's something about this album that is like telling me what it's like to be a woman. And even though my problems are like having intention deficit disorder and like having a messy room and like my mom not letting me watch Power Rangers with my brother anymore because we got too violent. Like this is like I relate to this so hard.

It's funny though just hearing you tell that story with the level of specificity that you have like it was very obvious that you have to Tell stories right that you remember where someone's sitting you know what they're wearing what they were doing at the time what you were doing where you were you were when you heard about something like that not everybody can do that too That's like kind of a weird superpower where you and like sort of make such specific Um Recent history period piece is such an interesting feat I'm always so intrigued by them because this is it all it's 2011 Is that when the film is set? How did you think about putting that on screen and making sure that it was right? Well, at first it was just because, you know, that's the summer that I lived in Montreal.

And when I wrote the first draft of the script 10 years ago, it was only like 2015. Right, right. And then over the, you know, decade that has taken me to make the movie, suddenly that's like a codified aesthetic on TikTok note as indie sleeves. Indeed. I never would have imagined. That's what it would have become. I know. So it's very interesting.

I mean, I think I'm always making movies to, like, be back in the memory of something. Like, I think the reason I made I like movies was because I wanted to be like, had this sensation again of like pushing the little like video store cart full of like jangling, you know, VHS tapes along a carpet like and rewinding things and like just all the kind of like tactile, like things that I remembered about like working at Blockbuster in high school. And it was like very exciting to me to like unearth all these like like the Jones soda you know pops that that we had that I remember like stacking in the back of the mini fridge. And yeah.

And then with this film, yeah, it was more like, oh wow, there's those like ill-fitting disco shorts again. And you know, the like specific like vape that my my friend Tyler used to smoke out of and stuff. And so, you know, I think I was really blessed with like a great costume. designer Courtney Mitchell, who's like a genius and production designer Just Hart, who's extraordinary. And like, even just to look at like the aesthetics of like Indiesle's photography that was kind of like personified by like Vice Magazine and the Cobra Snake, who shot all our promo fix for Myling Kinks. Really?

Yeah, like Jeremy Cox, my DP, who just shot A24's back rooms and is like an extraordinary collaborator. Like it was just fun to be like, okay, what does this look like aesthetically? Like how do we like make a memory and like step back in time? a bit. You did. I was, like I said uncanny for a reason. That's really quite something. So how did roommates happen? Yeah. So I was in the middle of editing Milen kicks, teaching a screenwriting class that I had originally taken at the University of Toronto, teaching the same class that, like, made me want to be a filmmaker. Can I ask you something about that time then? When you were, when you were teaching that class, were you thinking, like, I'm

going to be a professional movie director for my life. And like, I'm going to be successful and be able to sustain myself. Or were you thinking, like, I need to have multiple irons on the fire at that time just to pay the rent or whatever? I have, like, no, I don't conceive of my crew. Anyway, I just think if it is, like, a random amount of things that just keep happening to me and I continue to fail upwards and that's great. Wow. We are different in that way. I feel like I was so much more, like, craven and ambitious when I was, like, 18. So, like, what, what phone call did you receive? What email did you get? What happened? So, okay, it was 10 o'clock at night. I was, you know, marking my students' assignments at this 24-hour diner in Toronto called the

Lakeview. My agents call me and they're like, Chandler, when we sign you, who is the person you said you most wanted to work with in the entire world? And I was like, Adam Saylor. And they're like, yeah, well, he saw like movies. And I'm like, what the fuck? Like, he saw like movies. Like, what are you talking about. And they're like, yeah, he really liked it. And he has this project that he wants to shoot this year. It stars his oldest daughter, Sadie. And it's written by these two really funny S&L writers, Kira O'Sullivan and Jimmy Fowley. And if you like it, you know, read it tonight. And if you like, he's going to call you on the phone tomorrow. And I, like, was just utterly stunned. Like the, I didn't even, like, the fact that he watched this movie that, you know,

we shot in the pandemic that didn't have lights and have my parents as extras and my elderly Lee dog in the movie and my brother doing an Adam Sandler impression of the Hanukkah song when they watch SNL. All of this was just like fundamentally shocking, but the movie's also kind of a love letter to Adam Sandler. So maybe I secretly manifested it in some way. Did you, well, I want to hear what your conversation with him was like, but did someone slide it to him and say, hey, there's some Sandler stuff in here? How did it come across his transom? I think one of my, I think Adam has like a lot of agents at WME. So one of of his agents is my agent. So it was a nepo agent in that situation. Wonderful. But did he watch

it and say, oh my gosh, this is going to make sense? Also relieved that they finally got me a job after like four years. So what did Adam say? So, okay, so I'm freaking out. I read the script in one sitting. I'm really blown away by how funny and kind of surprising it is. Like it really is like a, you know, it had like this kind of honesty and like felt like a real reflection of sort of Gen Z and what it's like to go to college now. But then it also takes these like absolutely insane sort of Happy Madison-esque turns. And you know, I was thinking a lot too about like female comedy directors in the 80s and 90s like women like Penny Marshall and Amy Hackerling and Tamara Davis who directed Billy Madison.

And how, Belvie Spiris. Also a music video director. Yeah. And how like you know, there was a brief window in time when, like, those women got to shoot, you know, like... And Betty Thomas, yeah. Yeah, a million dollar, like, studio comedies and now, like, that never happens again. So crazy. So, um, so, yeah, I was, I just, like, freaked out, went to bed and then woke up at noon to a call that from a number I didn't recognize. And I, like, unlocked my phone.

And I was like, hello. And then the other line was like, jello. this is Adam fucking Sandler. And I was like, hi. And he's like, I really like, I like movies. It's a really fucking good movie. And I was like, oh my God. And then for like 15 minutes, he like was like quoting lines of dialogue back at me.

And he was mentioning like specific edits in the film and like performance beats and like how I covered like a scene. And I was just utterly shocked that, you know, this is like my idol. Like I used to walk around my high school listening to the pun. a shrunk love soundtrack of my like CD player just like imagining that I was in the movie. Like I just worship at the throne of Adam Saylor. So for him to see me as like a peer and an equal was like absolutely astonishing. And then yeah, we talked for like an hour and a half. And, you know, three days later I was like being flown to, um, to L.A. to pitch the movie to Netflix with him.

And we, we like sat in this like hotel room in Beverly Hills. And, you know, luckily I'd, made a lookbook in like the three days that I had to prepare. But it was just like incredible and so surreal, like kind of talking about like our shared vision for the movie. And one of the Netflix execs was like, that's the calmest. Like I've ever seen someone in a pitch meeting. And I was like, Adam really grounds me. But I think it was just because I had like felt like I'd fully gone to like a different like,

you know, timeline or multiverse or something. Like this was not my life. So, you know, I was in like Canadian micro budget timeline. You know, I read that like the gap for most women between their first and second features is like eight years. And so I was like perfectly content to kind of like, you know, I'd already made like myelin kicks like very quickly by those standards. So to make another movie and have that like jump was just like utterly surreal. So I imagine it had to have been somewhat challenging because you're making a movie for a big streaming platform plus also the producer of the movie is daughters in the film. That's complicated.

Plus, you know, you're making a movie, honestly, about a generational experience that you're now a little removed from. Yeah. I don't know where you want to start from that, those challenges, but like, what was the most, trickiest thing to unlock in making the movie? Well, I mean, there's just so many things. There's like, you know, he, I feel like he recognized the potential in me as a filmmaker that, like, I didn't even know that I had, you know? Because I read that script, but I'm like, okay, there's, like, a whole, like, pyrotechnic, like fire scene. there's like crazy stunts at the ropes course there's like a turkey that explodes

there's like you know this giant ensemble these big spring break set pieces where you know there's going to be like 300 extras like I don't know how to do this and but Adam's like oh you'll figure it out like no problem you got this and booby I'm like okay so I think it was really like

Adams belief in me that just kind of like made it possible and then of course you work with such a great group of collaborators that, you know, you realize that, like, the key to doing that is like, oh, well, you work with like an incredible stunt choreographer, like, Mark Fisher. Or our cinematographer Maria Rushi who shot Shiva Baby and Bottoms, like, was just so impeccably smart about, like, how to break something down and make, like, something funny comically, like, in an image. And really innately, like, elevated kind of what was on the page with, like, really strong, like, cinematic ideas. and then, yeah, then it just became fun to, like, have all these resources, like, to do, like, crazy, you know, magnolia-inspired, like, crane shots and, you know, sedicam-woners and have, like, four cameras for, you know, on a day.

I mean, it was, like, unbelievably, like, I felt like I kind of suddenly was, like, doing my PhD in, like, studio comedy filmmaking. Yeah. But everyone around me was so experienced and supportive. and, you know, it becomes like very collaborative. And I think one thing that is interesting about Adam that people might not think is like he really is like the otor of his own movies. Like, you know, and no one thinks of those movies, Happy Madison film is like being directed by the director. They're Adam Sandler movies.

And they have a very specific like otoristic kind of like themes, like aesthetic, like actors that kind of like travel through. Tone pacing, all that stuff is, yeah. Like you know an Adam Sandler movie when you see it. and um he's like working in the same tradition that like jerry louis was working and that buster keaton was working in or it's just like they've built a persona and everything is marx brothers yeah exactly yeah so you as a you are like co-directing the movie with him you know and one thing that i was really surprised by was that how much you know um runway he gave me to kind of have my own ideas and instincts about things and if i you know but yeah of course it's it's like very um

like specific, you know, when it's like your daughter's the lead actor of the movie. And, you know, sometimes I had instincts about how I wanted her to play the scene. And sometimes he had different instincts. And then I'm like, what are Sadie's instincts? And so I think we all had to kind of like just try different options and explore from different angles. And that was like kind of an interesting process because I think I've been so like monolithic in my other two movies. I feel like she gives a really good performance. And it's a hard character.

Yes. There's like a lot of turmoil in that character. And she's like not always likable, but she's not always the hero. Like she has to be flawed. It was like unusual. It's psychologically rich for a Happy Madison movie in that way. Conversely. Yeah, I feel like the tone is like Lady Bird meets TV Halloween.

Totally. In a way that I'm very proud of. Yes. You nailed it. I couldn't have said it better. I also have a lot of Chloe East stock as a fableman's boy. You know, I really, I think she's really quite special as a performer. And she's playing like a real old school, like 80-style movie character, you know, where it's like, why is this person such an asshole?

But also something else is going on under the surface and we want to know what it is. Yeah, and she's so charismatic at the same time and really likable. Like it is kind of like, to me, like a Regina George level performance. And I just think she's like such a phenomenal actor. And Sadie, too. I mean, I can't imagine like finishing your first year of college when you're about to star in a $30 million movie. and just handling it with that degree of like a plum and preparation and just kind of like professionalism and just like commitments are really going there, you know. Yeah.

So the two films, which came out on the same day, which is crazy, which we couldn't, could we locate a single person who's released two feature films on the same day? We were talking about it. Yeah. I don't think there's one. You know, Soda Burke, maybe with traffic and Aaron Brokovich. I think same year, but not same exact day. So like same exact day? Spielberg.

Is that good or was it bad? Is it, is it, do you worry about one blotting out the other? Would you like to have had six months in between? Is it easier to just pack up all this promotional moment up into, you know, a couple of weeks of time? Um, I really can't say. I mean, I was making both movies at the same time. So in a weird way, it kind of feels fitting that that they're both coming out on the same day. Because, you know, in prep for roommates, I was still finishing like the score and sound mix and color correct. So I was like on an iPad, you know, in like a frat house, like, trying to get, you know, Wi-Fi to, like, approve VFX shots and stuff. And, you know, while I don't, you know, Spielberg, when he made Jurassic Park and Schindler's List at the same time, both excellent comps to my two films. Yeah, they're similar. He, I think George Lucas did the post for Jurassic Park to kind of help him out while he's making Schindler's list. Yes.

And I'm very lucky that my wonderful editor, Simone Smith, like, really septic. for a lot of the sound mix and kind of post stuff because she, yeah, she really, like, is my best friend and, like, invaluable. And also just that my producers, like, were willing to kind of accommodate it. I think they realized it was, like, an offer I couldn't refuse. Yeah. So now what? Like, these are two very different movies, but obviously they have a tremendous amount of crossover with your point of view. Is there one path or another that you want to try to pursue? Do you have, are you doing another movie? Like, what's, what's next? Yeah, I think that's a great question.

Like, I always considered myself, like, I want to be like a personal filmmaker, like, writer-director. And, you know, if I could make, like, two personal kind of semi-autobiographical films a decade until I'm 80. Like, that would be just great. Oh, I like that. And then when I'm 80, either retire or, like, find a younger, like, host body that I can sort of, like, being John Malkovich my way into. And so I had never thought that I would be making like any kind of studio movie or, you know, yeah, like it just, it never like kind of occurred to me. And but like this was such an incredible like challenge and I'm so like grateful for the experience and just all the genius people that I got to work with. I mean, every day was like an embarrassment of riches to direct, you know, Carol Kane and Steve Busembi and Janina Gerofalo.

and like it just goes on and on as well as this like really brilliant young cast. I don't know. Like I think I'm really inspired by like filmmakers like Zach Kreger who kind of really retain their voice while like going to bigger and bigger stages or yeah or Greta Gerwig who I, you know, was again like curled up in the feudal position being like, oh, I just want to be going. And especially Matt Johnson who, you know, like produced my life. Kicks with his producer Matt Miller as well as my producers, Pat Kiley and Julie Grillo. And like, really for 10 years was like telling me, like, we're going to make this movie,

like, don't give up on it. And just to see him like, you know, work with neon and go into these, like, bigger stages, like, it inspires me. I think I'm always, like, torn because I, you know, it's funny that Sophie's movie is coming out because I always feel like, I want what Sophie has. I want to be like a, a yonist film girly and like be having lunch with Iris Sacks and like, you know, this like, you know, I remember like seeing her like take a selfie with Jafar Panani. Meanwhile, I'm like talking about VFX on a dog's butt hole, you know. But it's like, I don't know, no one's path is like linear. No, I mean, I relate to you because I think it's very normal to like and want both, you know. I think all filmmakers, like we all project on each other and everyone's career seems like it's, it's different and better than ours. And, you know, like the films are. really love are just like like Tony

Erdman and you know the apartment and almost famous and punch drunk love and like I just I don't know I want to like sort of maybe straddle that line there's like a genre blur going on in all of those movies yeah that totally makes sense I was trying to situate how I like movies in my island kicks was making me feel

and it was like a little bit of Mike Lee a little bit of Albert Brooks like you know that kind of like there's like some social discomfort and you've got this really kind of like charismatic but strange person at the center of the movie, you know, which like I, you know. Like naked, yeah. Like, well, hopefully not as devious. But, yeah, I don't know.

I just, I think it's, I think you have a singular perspective, especially on those movies. So you should definitely keep pursuing that. Oh, my God. Thank you. Well, from one spin intern to another, you know, we, I remember we worked in, did you have to work in this basement that was called the pit? No. No.

No. In fact, I was working by, when you were at spin. I was at Vibe, and I think we were you in the same building? Yeah. Was it 215 Lex? That's right. You're all the yeshiva schools. Yes, exactly.

And then we split. And we moved to different offices like a year or two later. You might have gone back to Canada by that point. I was back in Canada. But that was very traumatic because I interned at spin as a college student. And then what was exciting to go back to that building when I got the vibe job. But then it was not felt like things had changed. A lot of the people had left that I looked up to and things were revolved.

And then that's the other thing, too, is like, you get to the center of this stuff and you're like, so this is it. This is what it is. Is that how you feel? It's every day. Really? I'm just getting trying to dig deeper and deeper. Looking for the heart of it. What do you mean by that?

Just waiting to see who's, you know, what's really going to wow me? You know, what am I really going to be knocked out? Spielberg itself, I wasn't enough. Well, that was a rare exception, you know? No, it's not about that. It's not about like the people that you encounter when you're doing the thing. It's more like when you're inside the machine. What is inside the machine?

Which I'm like I actually wonder for you Similarly when you're getting now that you I feel like making a big movie like this for Netflix is a big step in a person's career It's like a big opportunity Yeah, do you feel like you're a little bit closer to like the center of how some of these things work? I have no idea Okay. Yeah, I mean it's it's interesting Ted Serendos was like sitting behind me at the roommate's premiere

And I heard him laughing through the whole film and then afterwards I like shook his hand and it's the softest hand I've ever felt in my life. Right. Not picking up a lot of lumber. And he was like, you know, like, see you on the next one. Like, great job. And I was like, like, everything is just so surreal to me. Like, I don't know.

I think I, because I have no expectations, maybe it's like an easier way to go through. Through, I'm sure my managers and agents are like, what are doing each other? You're pulling this. But it's like, I just kind of want to tell like personal weird stories and characters that I love and like can't. see enough of and kind of just like continue to make movies and and grow and like collaborate with interesting people you know and I think that's the same reason I loved journalism was like you get thrown in these like amazing kind of situations that are so unlike your regular life like you know where all of a sudden you're like um you know on the tour on the road with a band or

um talking to Nicole Hall of Center over like a buffet at the Radisson Hotel or something And then, and same with film. Like, I'm always, like, stepping on, like, a 40-foot ladder to, like, you know, riding on a crane or something. And it's, like, so unlike my real life, which is literally just, like, looking at my phone. Have you had a chance to meet Cameron Crow? I met him very briefly at his book launch in L.A. And I paid $350 to get the, like, you know, extra, extra pass. Oh, okay.

I'm going to try to get you guys in touch. I feel like you should talk to him. He's a very special person. I would be very grateful and respectful of his time. I think the way that you are living the legacy of Almost Famous would probably touch him. I tried to not lose it when I met him earlier this year. But I feel similarly. I could tell from his aura that he was wonderful.

He's very kind. It was just like the wrong way because I idolized him so much. And, you know, I think I'm a filmmaker because of him and, you know, writer because of him. and like partially a human being because of all of the movies he's made. And so I think I just put too much pressure on it. And like he was really nice, but it was like the wrong way to meet him.

Yeah. And Adam had like told him that I was coming. Because they're buds. I think he had just like texted him like a picture of like Eddie Vedder's drum set or something. And he's like, oh yeah, my friend Taylor's coming. She's a nice girl. And then I went and I was like,

And he like, I met him. He was like on stage and I went, walked over to like greet him. And, you know, I was so like, I've been imagining this moment for like 20 years. Yeah. And he was, he just like, the lady was like, oh, I really like your dress. I'm like, thank you. And then he's like, hi, I'm Cameron, which is also the same name as my dad. And I was like, I'm Chandler. And he's like, where are you from, Chandler?

I'm like, oh, is Bloor Street still around? And I'm like, the largest street in Toronto? Yes. And then I'm like, yeah, you know, like the, you know, like the, you know, like the, Yorkville music scene from the 60s, Tony Bishop, he's like, wow, you really know your stuff. And I'm like, mm-hmm. And he's like, so, you want to take a picture?

I'm like, okay. And then we like took this picture. And then I was like, this is going to be over in 25 seconds. Like, what do I do? That's never the right way to do it. Yeah. It needs to be a little bit more prolonged experience, you know? But, you know, like I'm, yeah, I'm, you know, I would be, I don't want to,

no one owes me anything. His movies have already given me so much. He should watch your movies. So that's the next step. Let's make this a campaign. Okay. Chandler, we end every episode of this show by asking filmmakers. What's the last great thing you've seen? Oh, wow.

That's such a great question. I'm racking my brain. I want to say a Pillion. Yeah. I love that movie so much. What did you like about it? I keep describing it as like heated rivalry meets the office, like the British office. Or, I don't know, maybe like an Antonioni movie or something.

But I just thought it was so funny, so moving, so tender at the heart of it. Like, I keep thinking about it. Like, I think the way that it just like, yeah, I love that it's so like audaciously queer, but it also just feels like, actually, you know what movie? It really reminded me what was Johanna Hoggs the souvenir. Yes. Like just a formative heartbreak and someone who really transforms. out of a very painful relationship, but is in some way liberated

and closer to the identity of who they really are. So well put. And similarly, like, withholding and mysterious partners who are, like, unable to really give themselves over. Yes.

And, like, you're just like, do you see me? Do you see me now? It's a great comparison. Can I, can I debase myself a little bit more for you? Yeah, yeah. And, like, the...

Why do you think we like these movies? Ooh. Let's not do that. I think I made a film about that for you. Chandler, Congrats on two films and a great 2026. Oh my God. Thank you, Sean.

Your great cinephile. And thank you for consistently repping Canada. We love you. I'm doing my best. Thank you. Thanks to Chandler. Thanks to Jack Sanders for his production work on this episode. Thanks to Lucas Kavanaugh for his production work on this episode.

Thanks to Sarah Reddy for filling in for us next week. I'll be talking about Andor. Wonderful. It's a TV show. Yeah. I've seen several episodes and quite enjoyed it, but then I had to get on with the rest of my life. I understand that. Chris Ryan's going to join me. Chris, Chris has covered and or quite well on the watch. If you want to hear that, you should check it out. But we're going to dig into that. We're on the precipice of this Mandalorian and Grogu movie. Some tracking came out today. Yeah. Not great, Bob. Yeah. Looks like it could be an issue.

Iger. In my home, we're also getting ready for it. I am solo parenting right now. So my new trick is in the in the more. to corral everyone into the kitchen and get them to eat their breakfast. I just start playing the Star Wars theme as loud as possible and everybody runs in and then starts galloping around. So we'll be there. I don't know if anyone else will, but that's okay. We'll be there as well. We'll see you soon.