The Big Picture - The Idiot's Guide to Winning Best Picture. Plus: We Make the Case for 'Parasite.' | The Oscars Show

Episode Date: February 3, 2020

'1917' has run roughshod over the preliminary awards shows, dominating at the BAFTAs over the weekend. Does a WGAs win for 'Parasite' create any daylight for the South Korean sensation? Amanda and Sean break down the film's chances with a deep dive into the preferential balloting system that the Academy uses to determine its Best Picture winner (2:15). Then, they make the case for 'Parasite' as the right pick for the prize, celebrating its writing, production design, performances, direction, and so much more (37:02). Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, what's up, guys? It's Liz Kelley, and welcome to The Ringer Podcast Network. Up on the site this week, The Ringer staff has ranked every episode of The Good Place in honor of its series finale this week. Writers Alison Herman, Miles Suri, Andrew Gutadaro, and more take you through all 51 episodes and celebrate what made the show so great. Later in the week, we're also releasing our February streaming guide with tons of TV and movie recommendations to get you through the month. You can check both those things out on TheRinger.com. I'm Sean Fennessey. I'm Amanda Dobbins.

And this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about the Academy Awards. If my voice sounds strange, it's because I've been very sick, but I am alive and I am thriving. Amanda, you're going to have to carry me through this podcast. I can do it. I remember distinctly a week ago before we headed out to Park City, you said, did you get a flu shot? And I said, I would never get a flu shot.

It's not something I do and I don't believe in it and I'm very strong. You know, I did think about that this weekend, but I wasn't going to bring it up with you. I am glad that you have come to that recognition yourself. I did and I came to the recognition that I am susceptible to the flu, which I am beating. I am in the process of destroying the flu inch by inch because the Academy Awards are almost here. They're here in one week and frankly, I'm really excited about them. We're going to be doing a live show immediately after the awards on Sunday, February 9th. Before we get there, we're going to have a bunch of shows now. This episode that you're listening

to at this very moment, later in the week, we'll sit down with our pal Wesley Morris, give out some alternative Oscars, maybe to correct some of the problems that we'll discuss in this episode. And we'll also do predictions in all 24 categories at the end of the week. So lots and lots of stuff coming from the big picture this week. Later in this show, we're going to make a case for a movie that we would like to win best picture, that could win best picture. It could. I went through like the gamut of being like, oh, maybe this is possible

and then I'm investing too much in my own expectations and we can talk about our feelings a lot during it. But I think it's worthy. We're going to get into some of the woolly math that is required even in this first segment. So let's go right to the big picture's big picture. This is a problem in the big picture. Do you know what I mean?

Okay, Amanda. So time is tight. We've seen every single Guild Award now. We've seen all of the ancillary awards. We've seen the WGAs, which happened over the weekend. We've seen the BAFTAs. Should we talk about what happened in those two places before we get further into the muck? I think it's important to.

Okay, so what did you see at the WGAs? Something that I think was probably not music to your ears. Yes. Taika Waititi won the Adapted Screenplay for Jojo Rabbit, which meant that he defeated Greta Gerwig for adapted screenplay at the WGAs. And it feels like this more or less confirms that Greta will not be winning the adapted screenplay Oscar in a week. Yeah. Which, you know, not ideal. People are making choices, and they're their choices, and they're not mine. That's really all I could say at this point.

Our producer Bobby Wagner came in this morning and he said, guys, I saw Jojo Rabbit over the weekend. I liked it. And frankly, I've been hearing that a lot from people. People don't really seem to agree with us about this movie. And the Academy, there seems to be a lot of support. This movie also won a costuming award over the weekend. It's gotten a lot of love in some of the smaller Guild Awards too. And there is a little bit of a weird,

is this actually the dark horse of this race thing going on with JoJo? I don't think that's likely. I think it's a little too late. You do wander in an alternate universe if we had kind of three more weeks. And again, if the timing were slightly different, I think JoJo kind of both peaked early and peaked too late. I agree. Because it did win the Toronto Award in September and then everyone forgot about it. Or we went through like an early backlash cycle and no one really had the appetite to go through the full backlash cycle, which I applaud everyone. I didn't think we could see this kind of restraint. I include you and me in that, Sean. And now people are just kind of seeing it and

being like, huh, JoJo is one of those things where it's just not the best movie of the year, and I don't think it's the best screenplay of the year. And if we don't have to talk about it in terms of best, it's like, it's fine. Parts of it worked better for me than others. I think you and I feel like that you enjoyed the comedy and I enjoyed the feelings. But, you know, if people like it, that's fine. It's just, is it a better screenplay than Little Women? No, I don't think so. I don't think it is either. I don't think it's as inventive. It does do something unique, which is it takes what is a fairly serious novel and transforms it into something that is sort of like a comic fantasy. And I think that there are writers who just like Taika's approach to storytelling. And so they recognized him here.

I have to revisit Jojo at some point. You know, it's just not a movie that either of us connected with. And I agree. I'm thankful that we did not revisit it on the show and then just take it apart only to infuriate people. I think that that was inevitable because for some people,

this is just a very meaningful movie. And there's just not much to be done about that. Also a meaningful movie, Best Original Screenplay winner, Parasite. Now, of course, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

was not eligible in this category of the WGAs because Quentin Tarantino is not a member of the WGA. So a slight asterisk on this win. Nevertheless, Parasite sort of seems like the frontrunner for best original screenplay at the Oscars right now, which is not something I would have predicted five months ago. I do think that Once Upon a Time of it all complicates it at the Oscars, especially because screenplay is used to give an award to something that's not going to win anything else so often. And for whatever

reason, it seems like Once Upon a Time, with the exception of Brad Pitt, is headed in that direction. Yes. It's in a black hole portal. Yeah. It's weird how this happens. Yeah. I don't understand that. Did you happen to watch Bong Joon-ho's WGA speech? I did not. It was very charming. He used this opportunity to talk about all the other nominees. I always love it when people do that, especially when you're winning five or six times and it's someone you like. And I just want to say that Bong Joon-ho is apparently also part of the Agatha Christie hive.

So that's really exciting to me. Wow. And then he spent a lot of his time talking about how much he loves Noah Baumbach and specifically the letters and marriage story and how jealous he was of Noah Baumbach and of those letters. So I really feel a kinship with Bong Joon-ho. That's just what I have to say. He's wonderful. I was thinking about Marriage Story over the weekend, too. I feel like Marriage Story has become like the difficult son who no longer comes to Thanksgiving dinner. You know, it's like... Very apt for a Boundback movie. I mean, trying to fit the metaphor neatly into the frame. This is a great film from a great

filmmaker that for six months, people told me this will be a very important movie at the Oscars. And it's just kind of, even more so than Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, just off the map, just completely off the map. Even weirdly more so, it feels like, than The Irishman, which is such a strange thing. I thought for sure for months and months that Marriage Story was going to be the frontrunner for Best Original Screenplay because I thought Quentin was going to run in Best Director. Right. And that has just not proven to be the case at all. You should not gamble on the Oscars, period. No, at all. You know what I was thinking about?

I do think Marriage Story is sort of the, it found its audience and critics and people who talk about movies. It's still a pretty niche movie, but it's a niche movie of a lot of people who have platforms and microphones and just, like, want to talk about their feelings and their marriages on a podcast. Yes, I am subtweeting us. Do you remember 20th Century Women, the Mike Mills movie? Of course. It's a similar thing where that movie, I read so much about it because I just think it resonated so much with the people who were covering and writing about it. And everyone else kind of likes it, but it did feel like maybe Marriage Story had the heat because of us, I guess. Well, but those movies historically do often win best original screenplay.

You know, if you think of Spike Jonze or Wes Anderson or, you know, a lot of writers over the years who kind of have that, I don't know, that particular kind of hipster flair that Noah's movies have. Well, I do think that Parasite has also been taking some of the hipster, not even hipster, because I do think everyone who sees it is like, wow. It's cinephilic, though. Yes. And there's been an advocacy aspect to it and a critical enthusiasm to it that has maybe stolen some of that energy from AeroStory. It's true.

The BAFTAs. Wow. There's a lot to. This was an intense, intense thing to relive on Twitter. I'm not going to pretend like I actually watched it. Was it intense for you to relive? Because I feel like awards wise. Oh, it's so boring. Things were so dull. I mean, you had just complete chalk across all of the acting categories. And then in best film, you had 1917 and best director, you had Sam Mendes, 1917, which I fear is the outcome at the Oscars,

which is immensely boring. Now, Bong Joon-ho did win for screenplay, I believe, at the BAFTAs as well, which indicates maybe even more strength in that category there. But what was it that made you woo? Well, it just seemed like a combination of extremely predictable and boring, and also, I don't want to say awkward, but all of the clips, there was just low energy and discomfort in the room. It is obviously a complicated time in the United Kingdom right now. And obviously, I think the complete lack of diversity at the

BAFTAs is something that people have been feeling. There has been a lot of internal conflict, I guess, at the BAFTAs, and it was obvious in the room even before Joaquin Phoenix's speech, which I think we should talk about. Absolutely. And which will come as no surprise to anyone, I kind of admired. Oh, I did too. I think he said the right thing and thoughtfully. And it's weird, when he gave his speech at the Golden Globes a month ago, I thought it was like high camp theater. I thought he was doing something that was akin to the I'm Still Here documentary where he was just needlessly weird and uncomfortable. And I know you think he's very handsome, but he seemed to be like stretching the limitations of reason in his speeches. But over time, his speeches have gotten

better and better and better, more purposeful and more purposeful. He's had more interesting things to say. He did that thing at the SAG Awards where he spotlit

every single nominee in the category and said beautiful things about them. And he has all of a sudden become this, I don't know, this emotional bellwether

for awards season. It's been fascinating to watch. And it is clear that he's working through it and I think what I liked about this speech that he gave at the BAFTAs was that he had given it some thought ahead of time and he had some purpose, but it is also a person thinking through these issues in real time. I appreciated that he acknowledged his own

place in it. I think it was at the Golden Globes where he said, you know, I haven't always been, I haven't always done the right things. I've made a lot of mistakes. I appreciate the the lack of sanctimony in and I think that made the speech more effective for me. I will also say it just in terms of social understanding, it's like the complete opposite of Joker and and and purpose instead of nihilism, which I also appreciated. It is a fascinating contrast that he's using the performance in this movie as opposed to really any of his other films in the last five or ten years to send these messages. Now, you know, certainly the campaign of Joker would have you believe that empathy is the key factor in that story. Oh, my gosh.

You know, that's certainly debatable. We can't. We'll just move past that one. We'll move past it. I thought that 1917 winning Best Picture and Best Director was very ho-hum. And not surprising at all. Obviously, this is a British award show. And 1917 is a deeply British film.

It is about a very particular moment in Britain's history and the war. But man, we've done this on three previous episodes. It's just, this feels so locked in right now and so predictable. We can talk through essentially every major Guild Award and specialty award over the last six weeks or so just to get a clearer sense of how this appears to be lining up for 1917. Shall we go through those? Yes, please. Okay.

So in January, we had the Golden Globes. 1917 won Best Picture and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood won Best Musical or Comedy. This seemed to kick off the 1917 frontrunner race. I didn't want to believe it at the time, but looking back, it's pretty obvious what was going on there. Sam Mendes also won that night. At the Ace Eddie Awards, we had a Parasite win, which was interesting.

1917 isn't really competing for any of the editing awards, even though those are historically very predictive of Best Picture, because 1917 does not have a whole lot of editing in it. The PGAs gave 1917 its Best Picture. The ASC Awards, the Cinematography Awards, gave Roger Deakins in 1917 its award. The DGAs gave 1917 its award. The SAG Ensemble went to Parasite.

Now, 1917 was not nominated, but that was one of the great, inspiring, and exciting moments of award season this year. The WGAs, as we just mentioned, just went to Parasite and Jojo Rabbit. And the BAFTAs go to 1917. Now, man, there is not a lot of likelihood that 1917 is not going to win. It's the Golden Globes plus PGAs and DGAs for me. I think the DGA is when I was like, okay, this is over. I agree.

It's an overwhelming collection of winners. Now, a couple of things. We mentioned Best Editing as a bellwether not being there is notable. Best Original Screenplay not being likely for 1917 is also meaningful. And also, there are no acting nominees there for 1917. So that's a highly unusual scenario in which a film that is not going to win Best Editing, is not going to win Screenplay, and has no acting nominees is a likely lock for Best Picture. So we're in very unfamiliar territory here.

Best Picture routinely goes through the Screenplay Award, which is why I think Once Upon a Time in Hollywood for a long time was seen as a frontrunner. There's just like an inch of breathing room there with Parasite potentially getting that win. I also think Parasite has a chance to contend in things like production design and editing as well, which if you see early signs that Parasite gets those wins, I think that would be pretty meaningful. There's an air of inevitability going on here. I agree with that. Can we talk about how I briefly convinced

myself last night that maybe there would be room for Parasite? Yes. And it has to do with the mechanism of how Best Picture is decided? Yes, let's do that. Yeah, so we're going to try to explain the preferential ballot. I feel like this is an annual ritual between you and me where we sit and try to explain how the preferential ballot works. It is quite complicated. It's very complicated. And it seems like even many people within the academy don't totally understand how it works. Even in doing some research for this conversation, it's extraordinary how many times the same writer is writing the same piece explaining the preferential ballot. I don't totally understand. It really just strikes me as Hollywood's electoral college, like a needlessly complex thing that doesn't necessarily reward the person who gets the most votes.

Yes. Which is a fascinating and confusing choice by Hollywood. Essentially, Hollywood is striking out for the most liked movie, not the most loved movie, which really feels antithetical to Best Picture. I feel like what you want out of Best Picture is passion. But let's explain it first and then we'll talk a little bit about the political aspirations of the preferential ballot. Do you want to start? Because I thought that I understood it until I read all of this stuff that you put on our outline, and I was like, oh, interesting. Well, I'll give a little history as a background here. So this is a confusing process and very

arcane. So back in 2009, as many people know, after failing to nominate the Dark Knight among its crop of Best Picture nominees, the Academy essentially revises its system. So for 12 years in the 30s and 40s, the Academy ran more than five nominees, but ended that tradition in 1944. It expanded the pool again in 09, essentially accounting for the fact that not popular enough movies are being nominated. And with it returned the voting system that the Academy used in the 30s and 40s, the preferential ballot. So what is that? Help us understand, Amanda. Okay. So as you said, it is a system that essentially elects the most well-liked movie. So every voter in the Academy is asked to rank each film from 1 to 8, 9, or 10. This year it would be 1 to 9, depending on the number of

nominees. In the event that a film does not receive 50% of the number one votes, then the film with the fewest number of number one votes is eliminated. Those votes are then redistributed with the film at number two on the ballot. Okay, I just read that because it's important to get the actual rules down, but that's very hard to understand. Those are the details. Yeah, so should we explain it like with an actual ballot? Yeah, let's unpack it.

Okay, so an Academy voter is ranking one through nine. Those are the details. Yeah. So should we explain it like with the actual ballot? Yeah, let's unpack it. Okay. So an Academy voter is ranking one through nine. Let's say there's a lovely Academy voter who loves cars and puts Ford versus Ferrari at number one. You know, just loves. I actually talked to a friend who lives in Mexico who was talking about F1 racing and Ford versus Ferrari and all that stuff yesterday and gave me a newfound appreciation for Ford versus Ferrari. Let it be said here on the show that Ford versus Ferrari rips. It's a really good movie. But I just, part of my resistance was just like, cars, you know, not so much for me,

but this person who really made me understand how cars mean a lot to a lot of people in places that aren't my home. Anyway, so my friend puts Ford vs. Ferrari at number one. And Ford vs. Ferrari does not get a lot of number ones. It gets the fewest. It gets the fewest number ones. Which is plausible, frankly. Yeah.

God bless it. So Ford vs. Ferrari is out. And whatever film that my friend put at number two, let's say that my friend put Little Women at number two. Shout out my friend. His vote goes now to Little Women. Yes. There's essentially a pile of ballots for each film.

Think of it that way. So the piles are being stacked. And as you go through the list, that ballot goes on the Little Women pile. And then let's say we realize that Little Women actually has the fewest number of number one votes after Ford vs. Ferrari has been eliminated. So we remove Little Women from the pile. And then we redistribute those ballots into all the films that had either one, two, or three. And it goes on and on until a film finally gets ultimately to 50%. So redistribution is the key here. It's not about something being fervently loved. It's

about placement and it's about how people are voting. And, you know, in years past, particularly I think of last year with Green Book, I thought Green Book was very divisive. Its win proved to me that it was not very divisive because usually in a year like that where you've got Green Book and Roma and you've got Green Book and Roma and you've got kind of two frontrunners neck and neck throughout most of the award season, you'd think that there would be like a lot of one, two, and three votes.

And there obviously were for Green Book. I thought that there were going to be a lot of eight and nine, or maybe there were only eight nominees last year. So seven and eight votes for Green Book last year. That evidently was not the case. In fact, that there seemed to be a sort of broad support for that film across the board. I'm not totally sure if there's any

film this year that has broad one, two, or three support. I guess 1917 and Parasite as the front runners seem to be those kinds of films. But I would have thought given the variance of the kinds of movies that we have, that things would be much more scattered, which is why a lot of prognosticators like you and I are saying, like, not, don't, you know, just wait a minute here. There's no guarantee that we're going to get 1917 or even Parasite in Best Picture. Like, it's not guaranteed. I agree with that. So, the scenarios are for this year, if 1917 just has 50% out of the gate, then it wins. And that seems really hard to imagine. 50% of number one. It's mathematically just highly unlikely because you've got nine nominees. Right. So

just mathematically trying to organize that, even more so than last year when there were only eight nominees, starting at 50% is, I would be shocked if that's ever happened. Right. And I think that's probably impossible for any movie this year. I will say I started turning around my opinions when I was thinking about you can see Parasite at one or at two for a lot of people. It seems like a really, really, really widespread number two choice. And I have a hard time seeing it below number three. I mean, you know, the Academy always surprises us and disappoints us. I say that every single time I say something optimistic on this podcast, but it seems to have pretty universal ratings.

So if it's at number two, if it's at number one for a certain amount of people, as I think it will be, and then if it's at number two for even more people, like maybe? We have not read any of those anonymous voter pieces in the trades that come out every year, which on the one hand are a bit preposterous, but on the other hand indicate how some people in the voting body feel. I just have not heard a negative campaign

for 1917 or Parasite. Like, neither film really has anything going quote-unquote against it. And Parasite's a particularly interesting example because it's a foreign film and frankly, foreign films are just less watched and less meaningful to American voters. That's just the fact. It's not a good thing, but it's just historically a fact. No film has ever won this award for a reason. No foreign film has ever won this award for a reason. So even though I think generally what you're saying is true, I feel like there's a little bit of a silent majority

thing going on here where a lot of people are going to put it lower than they say that they will because it's foreign and they don't love it as much or they don't want to reward that or whatever fraught or they never saw it we're speculating at a high level here but you wouldn't be

surprised you know you've encountered a lot of people like this in Hollywood and elsewhere that they just don't like foreign films. They just don't connect to foreign films. There's a reason that the campaign that director Bong has been running on has been so clever and so smart. You know, the speech that he gave, I believe it was at the Golden Globes about the subtitles and the power of those films and how it's just an inch away. I think he's essentially just trying to communicate, like, get over yourself, get over your localism, get over your own, you know, ethnographic bias and think about the wider world.

I would love for that to be true. I very secretly have some doubts. And if that doesn't pan out, then it's 1917 all the way down. Yeah, I do as well. And like I said, I knew that I was kind of talking myself into the thing that I want to happen. But I do think between the editing, between the SAG Awards, which is like a huge voting body, WGAs as well, there is a ton of enthusiasm for this movie. There is like passion in a way that there doesn't really seem to be for as many other movies where it's a lot more spread out across all the other movies. And this seems

like a lot of people are very excited about it, which just to me indicates that it could have a lot of top three votes. And that's maybe all you need in this system. I agree. I agree. I hope that's the case. Unfortunately, because the Academy is scared, running scared all the time, they will not reveal the votes. Reveal the votes, you cowards. Whoever sent us the suggestion of how to improve the Oscars telecast by, number one, releasing all the votes, which to echo Sean, release the votes, you cowards. But number two, to start at nine and to release the, you know, to kind of release the ranking. And so like the ninth place vote getter is Ford versus Ferrari. And you do that every what, 15 or 20 minutes. Someone can do the math for me. The elimination chamber of Oscars.

It's so good. It was a great idea. I can't recall the Twitter user who shared that with us, but that would make for an incredible telecast. So much more fun than what we do here. And frankly, I don't think disrespectful to the other films. If you're nominated for Best Picture, you did it. You know, happy to be there. That's a thing that you should be proud of for the rest of your career. And then you know that you're actually going to get to go up on stage and you can prepare something to say for your eighth place. You know, you think you should be able to go up and talk when you after you've been

identified as the ninth or eighth or seventh place finisher? I think so, because, again, I think we want more famous people. We'd have to adjust it. So it's not always the producers talking with all respect to producers who who make magical movies happen. But no one wants to hear from the producer. No, but you'd love to hear from James Mangold or Greta Gerwig when they go up early in the show, which is likely what would happen based on how we suspect the voting is going to go this season.

It's such a good idea. It's such a good idea. And maybe that happens sort of in lieu of showing clips from the film. Yeah. Maybe rather than just saying like, this is Ford versus Ferrari, you just have the filmmakers go up early on in the show and say, thank you so much. This film was, you know, the joy of my life. And I appreciate you putting it here on this stage in the first place.

That would actually be a respectful and exciting way to do the show. Unfortunately, it will never happen. Yeah. So a couple of other things about the preferential ballot. Some voters think that they can avoid helping films they don't want to win by only listing a few of the nominees on their Best Picture ballot. But that is not the case. If a voter only lists three titles, but those three titles are eliminated before tallying is finished, then that ballot is discarded and has no influence

on subsequent rounds of voting. Very notable. So stop trying to game the system, Academy voters. So there was a piece in IndieWire this week by Tom Brueggemann in which he said that lots of voters are still really confused by the preferential ballot, which is fascinating because it's been around for over 10 years. And it's how they choose the most important award in the entire industry. You'd think that they would have some sort of like instructional video to send to people to explain how it works. But, you know, it's partially because the way that they choose other awards is complicated. Take, for instance, the Academy's preliminary voting for best international feature.

The voters give a score for each contender, which are then averaged to figure out a consensus. So some voters overthink to the point of unintended consequences, believing that somehow the ranking of one to nine results in an average ranking, which hurts the score of a film that is ranked at number nine. But no such tallying is done. It's not part of the system. Maybe just find one way of voting and stick to it for every award.

I agree with that. Right? It does seem like everything, especially the subcategories, seem like tremendously complicated. I do kind of think the basic just rank them is easy to understand. And the confusion is when people are trying to game a system or figure out how they can best advocate for their particular film. Because, you know, this isn't just a pure expression of love of cinema at this point. It's everyone trying to get one up on everybody else.

But I agree. Standardize it and then release the votes. What do you think is the downside of just the film with the most number one votes winning? Is it because they are afraid that a film with a really fervent fan base would overwhelm consensus? Well, I think there is a distinction between a fervent fan base in the world and a fan base within the Academy. So I don't know whether it's just that they don't trust the Academy any more than we do and the actual voters.

But they are the Academy. They don't trust themselves. Are they afraid that Joker's going to win? I don't and the actual voters. But they are the Academy. They don't trust themselves. Are they afraid that Joker's going to win? I don't understand the issue here. I think there is also, it protects against people who haven't seen all of the movies, but you can imagine if it's just kind of direct democracy, then everyone is watching the one movie that they like.

I'm like, eh, I don't need to see the rest. I'm not interested in that. And then Joker or, I don't know, Jojo Rabbit wins. I'm not sure., I don't need to see the rest. I'm not interested in that. And then Joker or, I don't know, Jojo Rabbit wins. I'm not sure. I just don't understand. First of all, watch the movies. If you vote, watch the movies. It's nine movies.

Yes, I agree. You're in the industry. You're voting. You're taking the time to vote. Don't do so needlessly. Don't do so frivolously. Take it seriously. I'm on record with this, as is Carey Mulligan.

Watch the movies. What would your preferential ballot look like? Did this last night. I thought it was, so we have them written together, and I think that ours are, it's very cute, because they're just like minor variations, and also they are in no way representative of what the Academy will be doing. No, not even a little bit.

But what I thought was interesting is that we both have like five films in the top five and the order is like very different. And then just for me, there's a real drop off. I don't want to speak for you. You know, I don't think it's a real drop off. I just think it's pretty clear to me what is the wheat and what is the chaff. Yeah. What are the things that what are the films that will live with me forever? And what are the films that I think were good?

Yeah. And I'm ready to move on from. Yeah. Why don't you read your list? So I put Parasite at number one. And I put Once Upon a Time in Hollywood at number two. Marriage Story at number three, because I still remember. It was made for me.

And I, like Bong Joon-ho, just really weep at those letters every time I think about them. The Difficult Son at Thanksgiving. Yeah. Four, I did Little Women and five, The Irishman, though I went back and forth between those two. And again, I think that all five of these movies are pretty extraordinary. Then six is 1917. Seven is Ford vs. Ferrari. Eight is Jojo Rabbit. And nine, it will surprise no one to learn, is Joker. So my ballot is pretty close to yours, though. The distinctions are key.

Number one, of course, for me is Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, which was my favorite film of the year. Two is Parasite. Three is Irishman, different from year three. Four was Marriage Story, different from year four. Five was Little Women, different from year five. Though we basically just inverted that tree of films there.

And then six and seven, I have the same as you, 1917 and Ford versus Ferrari. And then I have Joker above Jojo Rabbit. Right. But yes, I agree. This is, I don't think our ballots are representative of how people are voting at all. No, zero percent. What's wrong? Are we the problem?

Or is the Academy the problem? No, I think the Academy is the problem. I'd like the Academy to catch up with us because this was such an exciting year. And I really did sit there kind of rearranging. And at one point, I had Marriage Story a little lower. And then I was like, no, like, you know, honor your convictions. And I was moving things up. But I really love each of these top five movies.

I think they're important. As you said, I will continue to think about them. I think I've seen them all multiple times at this point. And then there are some other movies that might win. So I think that we are the future. We and the children are the future, okay? I wish that that were true. I opened this part of the conversation

by suggesting that maybe this is sort of the electoral college. Should they be doing away with this? Does this system work? Do you feel good about the best picture winners of the last five years? No, but have you ever felt good about the best picture winners? Do you think it's the system or do you think it's the voting body? Well, I hold the voting body responsible. I think it's a little bit of column A and a little bit of column B. I mean, I think if you look at the film, first of all, there were more great films in the 70s than there are in the 2000s. I don't think it's crazy to say that out loud, but the films that won Kramer vs. Kramer. I mean, that's... That is good. That is an undeniable collection of films.

Now, you could quibble and say, I don't know, Star Wars should have won over Annie Hall or, you know, all that jazz should have beaten Kramer vs. Kramer or something. There are small, small differences. But in the 2000s, I mean, we've just had a lot of dog baby winners. You know, this was the decade, This was the century that brought us Crash. That brought us The Artist. That brought us Green Book. I mean, these are not world historical films.

They're just not. They're just not going to be studied. They're not important. They're like, they're fine entertaining movies. Even Argo, which is a movie I really like. Yeah. Like, is that an important movie? No.

Did that movie really do anything for the future of movies? And Lord knows I love Ben Affleck, and I thought it was cool that he made an ambitious 70s-style spy thriller. It's an okay movie. I liked it, but I agree with your point. And then, of course, The Shape of Water and Green Book the last couple years are pretty tough. And The Moonlight Wind is controversial and fascinating, and some people think it was bad and some people think it was good. I thought it was great. But, I don't know, it just feels like Best Picture is in a state of disrepair right now.

And whether it's they need to go back to five nominees or do away with the preferential ballot or both or something else, it just feels like it needs a tune-up of some kind. Any ideas? You know, I have controversial ideas that are best left to the hottest take, which I have also put on the hottest take. But I mean. Is that about wanting to have sex with Joaquin Phoenix? That's also on the hottest take. And on this podcast every week, we'll be continuing that after the Oscars. That doesn't expire.

No, I think that there is both. I don't want to say a problem, but this is as much shaped by the Academy itself and the voting body than it is by the system. And maybe having five nominees would kind of focus attention. It would also crowd out probably all of the movies that we're very excited about. We've spent all season talking about the issues kind of below Best Picture in terms of the people nominated for director and the people nominated in the acting categories, and it is not representative of the richness of movie or American movies or American life. And I think that we've said it just is going to take decades until the Academy kind of refreshes itself.

So I do think that is about the people voting, but rather than the system itself. So I don't know if you just open it up to, you know, first most votes wins. Do you think that's going to solve anything? I don't know if there's any good solution. And I think you're right that historically as electorates grow, worse candidates thrive. That is a that's certainly historically true in America and in many other democracies. And maybe that's just where the Academy is in its system right now is it's in this place where it is, I don't know, it's been fattened up and it's too fond of itself and it's not as inventive as it used to be. I still think of Moonlight as this turning point. I thought it was going to be this turning point in the Academy. I thought the future of the Oscars

was going to change forever and the opposite has happened. Yeah. I just, to the extent that the Oscars are a reflection of where we are as a culture and also as like a movie culture, it's no wonder the 70s,

which are the greatest decade in American cinema history, and also a time of reinvention and still pretty focused, you get some great stuff in the 2000s and the most recent decade. Our priorities are different. Our culture is different. And even 2016, which not to take away from Moonlight, which was an astonishingly wonderful movie and a wonderful victory, it should be seen in how people were feeling about the world itself at the time. Absolutely. Or not should be, but could be interpreted in how people were feeling about the world itself at the time. Absolutely.

Or not should be, but could be interpreted in that way. I think that's very well put and very well reasoned. Both the Moonlight Point and what role cinema played in the lives of Americans in the 70s versus what role it plays now. To which I say, give Avengers Endgame best picture. Okay. I am inevitable. Wow. I Endgame best picture. Okay. I am inevitable. Well, I walked right into that.

Okay. Let's take a quick break to hear a word from our sponsor, and then we're going to talk a little bit about why the Academy should give Parasite best picture. Today's episode of The Big Picture is brought to you by Peroni. Italians know how to live life. Great food, familia, celebrating beauty and style around them. Their vision, to create a beer that would embody Italian values of quality, craftsmanship, and style. Amanda, let me tell you, we were on stage in Park City last week doing a live edition of the Rewatchables,

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Stock Up, Stock Down and going right to the big race. Okay. Well, mama, look at me now. I'm a star. We spent this whole episode talking about Best Picture.

Mm-hmm. I re-watched Parasite As did I I gotta tell you I think it should win I do too I love Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and I'm always gonna love it and Quentin Tarantino's movies

mean the world to me and I see it as a movie that is trying to win Best Picture and in fact I think it has been identified as a movie trying to win and so it will not win That doesn't always happen but, I think it has been identified as a movie trying to win and so it will not win. That doesn't always happen,

but in this case, it has happened. That being said, the movie that could essentially alleviate all of this stress that we were just talking about, about what's wrong

with this category, how do they fix it, what are they... If this movie just won, it would make that whole conversation null and void. It would make it totally bunk. I completely agree.

It would be so surprising that I'm not sure I would know what to do. It would be very much like Moonlight because it is so rare for the actual best film to win. Yes. Now, you've been on Parasite since you first saw it. You said, this is my favorite movie. This is always going to be my favorite movie. I knew it from the second I saw it. Why?

What was it about it? Because we've done a podcast about this movie with Donnie Kwok. Yes. I also interviewed director Bong on this show. We've obviously talked about it at length, but we haven't had the kind of spirited in-depth conversation that I would like this show to be known for. Sure. So what is it about Parasite? We'll get into specifics, but the big picture thing for me is just, I mean, this is an absolute masterpiece. This is excellence and someone in total control of every aspect of the movie making experience. There is not a down moment. There is not a mistake or something you're like, maybe we would redo it differently. Bong Joon-ho is so completely in control, which I'm a control

freak. It takes one to know one. And I do actually respond to this idea that the movie is just, it is so minute to minute perfect, which like you don't, and that's an empty word at some point because it's just effusive praise, but I've just never seen anything where like tonally every shot, every performance of the screenplay itself, which we should talk about because I saw it for a third time and I was like, wow, this guy can write. And you know that, but that's not what you're thinking about when you're watching it. It is also in addition to being such an accomplishment, like a technical accomplishment is enjoyable to watch. It's a movie. You're on a ride. And I don't mean that

in the dismissive Martin Scorsese way. I just mean that you are wrapped up in the story and finding out what happens. And it's entertainment while also being intelligent, having ideas. It works on this specific insular level of the story itself. It talks about like big issues of class and capitalism. It is suspenseful. It is the performances. It just, every single box, it ticks. I've really not seen anything like that in a long time. It's highly unusual.

I think actually the point that you made that is key is that it is a movie movie. Yeah. It is an immensely watchable movie. Now that sounds like faint praise, but in this context, if you go back and watch a lot of the Best Picture winners over the years, they feel kind of stodgy and kind of overlong and self-important. And I think a lot of what Parasite is about, which is, of course, it's not just the division between people and class. It's the division between people and technology,

people and cities, people and their jobs, people and their children. The whole idea of division is kind of riven throughout the movie. And a lot of it is very subtle and a lot of it is very clearly understood. And I like all those subtle little touches. On rewatch, I liked spotting things like the photo of Chung Sook doing the hammer throw and indicating that she was almost like an Olympic-level hammer thrower.

Yes. And then we see her later when she's at the Park family house, and she's doing the hammer throw as they're in this sort of bacchanalia of celebration, which is like a very subtle indicator of like a life that came before for her. And I believe also in that in the flood scene when they're back in the apartment that it's the metal that is right next to that photograph is one of the things that is trying to be saved. Yes. Because it has that meaning to people. But yeah, there are those details.

It's such a marriage of like the actual text itself and then also the subtext. And sometimes you really have to go digging for one or the other. It works on the surface and then it also works on many different levels. And it also is making fun of itself for working on the different levels. You know, it's so metaphorical is a thing that which has become a catchphrase now. I feel like we kind of make that as a joke, at least on this podcast, that it is both achieving what it's trying to do and also very self-aware. It's very unusual for a film to know itself so well. And I would argue that a lot of director Bong's movies don't exactly have this quality. They're very conscious about genre. They're very conscious about genre. They're very conscious about the kind of movie that they are.

But I don't think that they're conscious about the commentary of the movie necessarily. Like The Host is an ecological thriller that is also like a parable about why we shouldn't pollute the environment because a monster will come and destroy us. And Mother is like an interesting, fraught thriller about the relationship between a man and his mother and what lengths a mother will go to to protect her family.

This movie, and Snowpiercer, is so over the top and so absurdist, and Okja even more so than Snowpiercer, that it felt like Bong Joon-ho was going into this

realm of ridiculousness that I don't mean that the films are ridiculous but the story structures were so elaborate and the way that he was telling them were so, it just seemed like he had galaxy brain every time he sat down to make a movie. There's a metaness and a remove from them. Yes.

Like you're aware of the capital C commentary. Yes. And, you know, in many ways, that's effective. Like, I was not the biggest Okja fan, but after my wife Eileen saw Parasite, she just felt, which she, I think, had the exact same reaction that you did. She just fell in love with it.

She was totally entranced by it. She was like, I have to go watch all of this guy's movies. I would catch her every couple of nights, like, catching up on a movie. And I came home the night she watched Okja and she was just in tears. She was just completely bowled over by it and loved it. So it's not that those other movies aren't effective, but by grounding this movie and winking at us and acknowledging the meta-ness of it, but also by making it a kind of non-supernatural, non-scientific story, by making it a human story, I think he kind of sees the power back from his own kind of storytelling. It's a very, like, a strange thing that he did.

Like, I think that the movie is in some cases very Hitchcockian and very composed and very controlled, but also still immensely humorous and curious. And also, I find it to be not judgmental. I find that even though theoretically the Park family is this, you know, very privileged upper class family, they're not really the villains of the movie. No, they are like, they're kind of mocked. I think it's... They're selfish bystanders. always like in a Hermes bag in one corner. The details of consumerism are like very apparent. And that is maybe not, there's no judgment in it, but there is commentary, if you will.

And I think one of the things that Bong Joon-ho does so well and that astonishes me in this movie is the tonal kind of bouncing act that it does and really the amount of tones that it can achieve and it turns on a dime and it goes from satire to horror to deep emotional like resonance within the span of 20 minutes and you as the as the viewer I guess guess, are being, I wouldn't call it manipulated because that has such a negative quality, but you're just on that journey

and you're going to feel whatever he wants you to feel in any particular moment. And I have never really, that's so difficult to do. And it works every time for me. I both know what I'm supposed to feel towards each of these characters. And then that shifts very quickly. And I find myself feeling another way just because of something that he's put in the frame or like a different line reading.

And it's so rare to be able to have such control of your audience's emotions and reactions in that way and to shift them as frequently as this movie does. Also, the thing that filmmakers often use to control your emotions and to kind of bring you on those journeys, and you see it in something like 1917, your lead character is fundamentally decent and on a meaningful mission and bound for glory and score and composition in the frame is what drives us throughout the film even in a movie like once upon a time in hollywood you've got two you know fairly unlikable protagonists ultimately when you boil them down and then sharon tate who is more likable and it's sort of a a beam of goodness but for the most part, two bad guys, but two guys who are more righteous than the Manson family. And they have to kill the Manson family to right the wrongs of 1969. And, you know, that's what makes that a fairy tale.

The Kim family is not really a decent family. They are obviously the products of a vicious system that turns people into grifters because they don't know how to survive otherwise. And we accept that. We understand that going into the film. But they're grifters. Yeah. I mean, they are, they're crooks. And we don't hate them. We love them in a lot of ways. Yes. But the things that they're doing are prettier. They're actually made to seem, from the very opening moments of the film, disgusting. Living in filth, surrounded by stink bugs, covered in fumigation, eating junk food, getting drunk, stealing Wi-Fi. Right.

This is not your typical stiff upper lip Englishman. This is not your Russell Crowe gladiator bound for a different kind of glory by defeating all of his foes. Like this is a very unusual framework to make the sort of the leads, the key empathy figures of your movie. I'm so fascinated by that. I feel like it's still a little bit unexplored. Yeah. I wonder if you're supposed to feel empathy with anyone in this film. I mean, you are, but there's no one presented to you in the way of, say, 1917, where Rick and Cliff are presented to you as, you know, I don't want to use antiheroes because I'm really tired of talking about that. But they are people that you are supposed to identify with and root for, despite everything that you're told about them.

And that's kind of the trick of the movie is subverting expectations and who we call a hero and why. And what happens to heroes. And this is, I guess, also about who we call a hero and why. But in reverse, because you are you're drawn to these people because they are charismatic and they get funny laugh lines and there, there is humor throughout this film and, and, and also empathy and moments of humanization and connections between the people. Like I, you know, I think of the scene of Jessica just being an expert document forger and then the dad being like, does Oxford have a degree in document forging? And that's like very funny. But, you know, it is also suggests like potential that is not quite explored and what people kind of have to do to with what they're given.

But you're also you're always in this movie constantly examining why you are empathizing with someone. And then your allegiances really do shift throughout the film or they go to each person. It's not the typical once upon a time

in Hollywood thing where you're like, well, those are the stars of the movie, so I know I'm supposed to like them. No, it's true. And I think there's

something interesting in that, in what you just described, which is that that is like a clear criticism of the fact that most societies are not meritocratic. You could be like Jessica, you know, like Kim Ki-jung, and you could be brilliant. And you could still be stealing Wi-Fi and living in a basement apartment in downtown Seoul and flooded with vomitous bathwater. That's all possible. But also,

these people also made choices in their lives that indicate that they didn't do everything that they could have to go to university. The point is that it's very nuanced. There's no definitive take. And this is one of the reasons why I have a really hard time believing this movie is going to win because it actually just requires too much commitment of thought to really understand it. And most movies

that are in these positions are big, obvious, down-the-middle fairy tales. I think that maybe it requires a ton of thought to understand every single nuance in it. And I have been rewarded by seeing it multiple times. And, you know, whether it's noting the certain echoes in the screenplay or just one with like just the levels, like the actual physical levels that are just present throughout this movie, which is honestly like a pretty it's not obvious, but it is. It's pretty literalized and you don't have to dig around too hard to see it. And I think one of the strengths of this movie is the rich family and this is the poor family and

then there's surprise because this is a spoiler podcast a third family and and and understand on a pretty basic level what it's trying to say and then at the end still be walloped by that very last imagined sequence that you you can get as much out of this movie as you want to put into it, which I think is pretty rare for something with this much thought. I totally agree. That final sequence, we didn't get a chance to talk about the ending last time we talked about this. Amazing ending. Unbelievable. So the film, you know, essentially climaxes with this very violent scene in which characters are

stabbed at this birthday, at this sort of garden party. It's a garden birthday party. That the Park family is throwing. Sure. And then we learn that Song Kang-ho's character sort of escapes and leaves the house and then sort of dragoons himself into the basement. And then we see over time this story that Choi Woo-sik's character tells about what he would do to essentially free his father,

which is go to school, become a successful person, buy the house, and then after many years, free his father and let him come out into the garden. Obviously, the architectural design of the house, metaphorical as it is, is incredible.

It's a beautiful thing to be inside of, even though it is a commentary on the sort of soullessness of this kind of modern architecture. The ending itself, I still don't know if I'm fully decided on if it is a criticism of the bootstraps. Pick yourself up and do the thing that you think you can do with your own intelligence and hard work, or if it's a sort of open-hearted pledge to that kind of ability to grow up inside of something. Because the movie is obviously so, it has such an acid burn contempt for capitalism that I still am undecided on how it ultimately feels because it is, it's, it's fantastical, the ending, you know, it's not, it's not literal. I took it more as like an empathetic nihilism, which is probably a oxymoron, but, you know, you're just watching something that, you know, is never going to happen. And that is impossible,

but also that, that we all organize our lives around the possibility of this thing happening. And our entire lives, everyone under the capitalist system is organized around the idea that, you know, if you dream it enough, then you too can buy the house where then your father can live in sunlit captivity. It's, you know, even the thing that you dream of in this, I think, pretty wistful and melancholy ending is a prison. Still a prison. Exactly. And so, so for me, it was, I do think, I don't know if there's like cruelty in the end of it as much as just kind of, it's really sad. That's my response to it, of just kind of that we're all trapped. Yeah, it's all very, it's very elegiac, the way that the whole final eight, seven minutes

of the film is told is really beautiful and amazing. And it obviously is the kind of perfect capstone to this otherwise orgiastic violence. It's interesting too, because it mirrors Once Upon a Time in a lot of ways. You know, that incredibly violent, you know, moment of reckoning that happens, followed by a sort of very sweet, quiet, fairytale-esque moment with Rick going up the driveway and being led to the house by Sharon Tate. and it's fascinating that these movies have been embraced whereas 1917's ending is just your sort of more prototypical the good guys won but did they yeah kind of ending i have been thinking a little bit about um well a lot about parasite in relation to 1917 on a lot of reasons but one thing i was thinking about this weekend is you know when i was explaining like Parasite, I went on and on about kind of like the technical achievements for a bit, because I do think that this is just such a feat of filmmaking. And I'm usually loathe to say that. I don't want to like nerd out too much. But I think what Parasite has

is that just every single task is completed with such excellence. But as I said, then it's also just something that you really want to watch and think about and revisit. And you don't have to think about the technical aspects of it in order to appreciate it. On the flip side, 1917, you only appreciate it because of the technical stuff. That's right. There is, there's virtuosity and there is kind of insouciant mastery, you know, like there's just a big difference between those two things. It's funny, as I think about the filmmakers that I love most, it's typically people that have, that are virtuosic, but it's mostly invisible. Like David Fincher is a, is an icon to me because he makes movies that look incredible

and feel like they are made by a master craftsman, but they're not always very showy. In fact, like you're supposed to be enveloped by them a bit and drawn down by them. And Parasite is kind of the same way. Even though it's flashy and it's production design out the wazoo and the music is very insistent,

it's not subtle that's not that's not what we're saying right it's not it's just not like look at me wonder power of 1917 i mean you know that i feel about this and i mean that's why the deacon's cinematography thing with you just describing shots was such hell for me because i don't want to see the work. I don't want someone, people who just want credit for trying or just want credit for their process or, wow, look at how all this came together. I never care about your artistic process, whether you're a filmmaker, a writer, an actual artist, like, please do not tell me. I don't want to hear about it. We disagree about that for the record. Well, I mean, you know, I'm curious and I think

you can learn something from it, but so often process is used to justify the result. Well, that I agree with. And it's absolutely not. It's either it worked or it didn't. And I only want to see, I don't want to see the effort, which I'm sure my therapist would love to talk about. But so I agree. And this does, for all of the intention and the craftsmanship in it, this movie does, Parasite really is effortless.

It's been interesting to watch the awards campaign featurette market go toe-to-toe. 1917 was very early on this. Before the film even came out, they were sharing eight-minute clips explaining how they did certain shots. Parasite has gotten involved in this game over time and shown, you notice how meaningful storyboarding is to director Bong and what level of design goes into this film.

All of which I would encourage people to seek out. In particular, on the Academy's Twitter handle, they're kind of looking closely at every film and showing a lot of behind the scenes

photographs and writing that indicate how some of these films are made. I tend to think that that is cool. I agree with you though that when you use it to justify greatness, that there's a fly in the ointment. Or if that's the definition of greatness.

I mean, please storyboard. Like, please have beautifully composed shots. I'm not trying to... Please do. Please do. I'm not trying to say that those aren't essential to the movie-making process, but so often that's it. It's like someone, you know, made something beautiful and you had to sit there and it didn't it didn't feel like a movie.

It felt like an assemblage of shots and an assemblage of someone, quote, making their art. And at the end of the day, I'm not interested in the artist's experience. I'm interested in my experience because I'm an American. So I just, and I think the other thing is that I think Parasite actually works for both. And that's what's phenomenal about it. You can go back and analyze every shot, every line, every single choice. It does reward repeat viewing. I agree. So we've poured our heart out about what's great about the movie. Let's talk a little

bit more about why this would be great for the Oscars and why this should happen. So this movie's got six nominations. Let me see if I can remember them off the top of my head. Best editing, best production design, best original screenplay, best director, best picture. What's the sixth one? International feature. International feature. Now, it is all but certain to win an International Feature. I think it has a good chance to win for Best Editing. I don't think it's going to win anything else at this stage. Okay.

But those six nominations are six categories to be proud of, especially without any acting nominations. Those are kind of the key categories. If you look at the kind of like sound mixing and sound editing, those are perfectly fine technical categories. But the key technical categories are best editing. How is the movie cut together? Right.

Best production design. What is in the frame? Yeah. How did they make the things? And when you watch a movie, people don't realize everything is invented for the movie. Yeah. A lot of times things are shot on location. Sometimes you'll rent a house and you'll be like, you know,

you can't build the house from scratch. But every item that they put in a house, that's production design. Yes. So this movie is so meticulous

in that respect. And so it's, essentially it's been chosen by the right artisans, the right crafts groups. That alone is a good sign that it's trending in the right direction,

if not ultimately the final direction. But more so than that, I feel like this would be just a huge step forward for the Academy to reward a movie like this. I think it would in the same way that I thought Moonlight would alter my expectations of what the Academy Awards was going to be in the future. This is the first time a South Korean film has been recognized in international feature, let alone Best Picture.

So that's pretty wild. There's a long history of South Korean feature filmmaking, so it's very strange. Obviously, not just Bong, but Lee Chan-dong and a lot of other filmmakers over the years have emerged in the world as significant filmmakers. The Oscars needs to be more unpredictable in order to thrive at this time. There has to be a reason to tune in. Just rewarding 1917 to me indicates, even

though people like that movie, it's doing well at the box office, et cetera, et cetera. I think that's bad for the Oscars long term. The predictability. Yeah. Yeah, of course. I think also just rewarding a movie that everyone thinks is fine is bad for the Oscars. To actually reward a movie that people are excited about is good for movies and good for the Oscars because what you want is passion and specific enthusiasm and commitment. And I don't really think, you know, 1917 is consensus and consensus does not really have any long-term lasting affiliations. Unless we're talking about president of the United States. Okay, cool.

Also, it'd be nice to reward a master on time for probably his best film. Yes. The Oscars is not usually very good at this. No. You know, Martin Scorsese is running this year for The Irishman. He famously won for the first time for Best Director for The Departed, which, frankly, is a cool movie.

Cool as hell, I might say. Yeah. I'm a big fan of The Departed. I have no idea what happens in about half of it, but I enjoy it. It's Marty's, like in about half of it, but I enjoy it. It's Marty's like 11th best movie, 14th best movie. It's a cool movie. It's a gripping crime thriller that isn't really about anything. Unlike, say, Mean Streets, Raging Bull, Taxi Driver, Goodfellas, New York, New York,

Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore. I could go on. All films that are superior, fascinating works by Martin Scorsese. He's overlooked for 25 years, finally gets rewarded for this movie. If you told me Bong Joon-ho was going to win Best Director and Best Picture 20 years from now, I wouldn't be shocked. He's obviously become this kind of fascinating pop cultural figure in the last three months. What do you make of that? Well, first of all, I just make that I would like to be friends with bong joo ho i'm just i'm part of it i think that he has he has the personality and you know these are a personality contest to an extent there is a campaign aspect to them and he also is just seems like an interesting

person so i mean obviously he's a tremendously gifted filmmaker, but and that usually requires some sort of personality or vision of the world. I think that it will mean long term that people do seek out his movies more than they did in the past, which that's that is good. And that does mean that he could perhaps continue to be in the Oscar conversation five and 10 and 20 years from now. Do you think we should do a Memories of Murder podcast when that movie is officially released? Yes. You know, I just watched it last week on a very weird streaming site

with commercials every 10 minutes. I can't say that it was the easiest way to watch it. Well, I know Neon bought the rights to it. I think they're going to release a Blu-ray of it, which I look forward to as a physical media nerd. It's a fun movie. It's a fun movie to unpack in a lot of ways. I guess I'm not totally sure if he's going to get another shot. As I said, I wouldn't be shocked if 20 years from now they gave him a look like this, but this is an amazing convergence of events. I think that's true. I think he has a couple of things going in his favor, which are that, as we just mentioned, he has become more of a brand name than certainly before this time last year.

You know, it depends on what he decides to do next. He obviously has an interest in genre film and those do well. And I think I could see a world in which if he wants to do another monster movie or his, you know, another Spielberg-esque movie that... Another super pig movie, perhaps. Yeah. People would seek it out and probably more so than they would five years ago. So that helps, don't you think? I think he's got a chance to be a commercial filmmaker. It's funny that the movie that has become probably his most beloved is the first that has returned entirely to his native Korea.

You know, Okja and Snowpiercer were bids for an American audience pretty blatantly. And I don't mean that as a criticism, but casting Chris Evans and Jake Gyllenhaal in your movies, you know, you're making a move there. Now, those films are very strange, but they're still meant for American audiences. Parasite, which is a huge hit in South Korea, like one of the biggest movie hits of the last 10 years in that country, obviously works at home, but it works abroad. In many reasons, it's still kind of cranking out. I think it's going to end up getting somewhere between $35 and $40 million

at the box office, which for a foreign language film would probably make it, I think, top five all time, which is pretty wild in the history of film. It'd be interesting to see what he does. Obviously, he's producing a Parasite TV miniseries, it sounds like, with Adam McKay, maybe directing an episode of that. I can't say I'm thrilled by that idea. I know people are concerned about it, but why are we—let Bong Joon-ho make some extra money. Like, why are we mad about that? I'm not mad about that. It's a fair point.

It's a fair point. That's where I stand. Bong Joon-ho, get money from this capitalist system that you have so elegantly, metaphorically dissected. Yeah. I'd like to see a kind of classical, another classical thriller from him of some kind. Or a monster movie or whatever. But I just think he is our Hitchcock. You know, that's not overstating things.

And if you look at Memories of Murder, even if you look at The Host, you can see The Host is not so far afield from Psycho. They have a lot in common, ultimately. What do you think a 1917 victory really is going to ultimately mean? I know that we're essentially previewing a conversation we probably have to have Sunday night. I can't get too worked up about it, which is probably bad for podcasting. And maybe I will on Sunday night. Every day that goes by and I think about 1917 sweeping in this year of movies that we have, I'm bummed out because it is just boring and predictable and signals that

the Academy has not really evolved in terms of its definition of great cinema, as we might like to believe. I don't know if it's like the end of the world if it wins. I think it's worse for the academies and the Oscars irrelevance than for movies. Yeah, I generally agree with that. I feel like I say this every podcast now and I'm like, 1917 is pretty good. I don't really, I certainly don't hate it. And it's better than, it's a hell of a lot better than a lot of other Best Picture winners in the last 20 years. Hell, the last 75 years. But you're right.

It is specifically because of the company that it keeps. It feels like a slightly more tragic outcome. Yeah. It's just it's boring at a time when you don't want boring and when there are so many other unboring options. I'm a little bummed out by the online conversation around it. You don't like to see that. The reply guy aspect? Yeah, yeah. It just, it really seems like there is a pretty vociferous it's my way or the highway culture surrounding this movie, which, you know, I know that I am on this podcast being like, it's my way or the highway every single time we talk about a movie. But like a kind of a lack of curiosity or willingness to discuss that's a bummer. Because as we discovered when we did our preferential ballot, there are like five amazing movies that we ranked in a completely different way.

And it's talking about what you value in a movie and kind of what one film achieves and what another is bringing to the table. And that instead the conversation becomes like, no, it's just this movie because of these technical achievements. That just, it seems like a pretty limited view of the year in movies. I agree. Let's hold the rest of that thought for later in the week. As I said, we'll be back on Wednesday, me, you, and Wesley. Looking forward to that. And then Thursday, how are you feeling about your predictions? You ready?

You're going to be chest out, very prideful, a student that you are? I mean, I will try to be an A student. I don't know how it will go. I think we'll have a real conversation then about how many risks we're going to take. That'll be interesting to see. Yeah. Let's bring some betting odds to the table too. Okay. I was wondering about that. Like one of my very good friends texted me this weekend and sent me the betting odds and was like, let's make some money. Not the year for that. No, it's not the year for that. That was my first instinct. But then, you know, I do wonder if on this platform, if we start trying to influence betting odds or does that get us in some legal trouble?

I'd just love to discuss. You think we have that much power? No, I don't. But how are they pulling together the Oscars betting odds? That's something I'd like to know. Are there independent investigators? There are people who work in Vegas. They're bookmakers.

Sure. Who are sophisticated about these sorts of things. What's the research that they're doing? You know, it's a good question. I think we should maybe talk to somebody like David Hill, who writes occasionally at The Ringer. Maybe we'll have him on the show one time, just to talk about what goes into the work of bookmakers

or the people who set the odds at casinos in Vegas and around the world. There is research. There is a lot of research. Are they talking to voters? I'm not sure. Vegas historically is very good on the sort of the technical and below the line categories. They tend to have a really keen insight on strange things like best visual effects.

I tend to get best visual effects wrong like every year. Every year I'm like, it's going to be a comic book movie and it's never a comic book movie. It's always something like Blade Runner 2049. This year I feel like it'll be the same thing. It will not be Avengers Endgame. It'll be something else. But for whatever reason, Vegas always knows where those categories are going. And there has to be a

significant amount of research that goes into those choices, plus a lot of historical data, all the stuff that we do on this show. Right. I just hope they're doing more than reading the blogs that I read. That's probably where they start. It's probably not where they finish. Okay, good. I will not guarantee anybody can make any money from listening to this podcast.

Period. I won't either. No. But it'll be fun to talk about the odds. Yeah. Until then, I'll see you on Wednesday, Amanda. Sounds great. so today's episode of the big picture was brought to you by regal with an annual regal unlimited Thank you.