The Big Picture - 'The Irishman' Is (Almost) Here, Eddie Murphy Is Back, and 'Diego Maradona' Scores | The Oscars Show

Episode Date: October 1, 2019

Marty back! 'The Irishman' premiered at the New York Film Festival to rapturous reviews over the weekend, so Sean and Amanda look at the film's chances at the Oscars. Is Martin Scorsese's latest the new front-runner (1:40)? They also discuss Robert De Niro's hilarious comments on cable, look at Eddie Murphy's return to the screen in Netflix's 'Dolemite Is My Name,' and analyze a quietly shifting Best Documentary category (39:07). Then, Oscar-winning documentarian Asif Kapadia joins to discuss the making of his new film, 'Diego Maradona' (57:16). Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Guest: Asif Kapadia Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's up, guys? It's Liz Kelley. Next week, the Ringer Podcast Network is debuting a new podcast with Vampire Weekend bandmates Chris Thompson and Chris Baio called The Road Taken. Here's a quick trailer with more info. Hello, friends. Welcome to the trailer for The Road Taken with CT and Baio. I'm Baio, a.k.a. Chris Baio.

I've watched Chris bring his sunny positivity and shredding bass lines to stages all around the world for the past 13 years in the band Vampire Weekend. Chris Baio. who experience all the thrills and boredom that entails. To help us process our own experiences along the way, we'll be having conversations with peers, idols, and maybe a rando or two. The Road Taken with CT and Baio, part of the Ringer Podcast Network, coming soon on all podcast platforms. I'm Sean Fennessy. I'm Amanda Dobennessey.

I'm Amanda Dobbins. And this is The Big Picture, a conversation show separating fact from fiction. Later in the show, I have an interview with Oscar-winning documentarian Asif Kapadia, whose new film Diego Maradona premieres on HBO tonight, Amanda. Full disclosure, our boss Bill Simmons is an executive producer on this film. But don't let that deter you. This is an extraordinary movie in keeping with Capadia's last two docs, 2011's Senna and 2015's Academy Award-winning Amy. Which takes us to the big picture's big picture. This is a problem in the big picture.

Do you know what I mean? Amanda, there was a movie premiering in New York on Friday. You and I were in Los Angeles. We did not see this movie. We're going to see this movie very soon. But it is without a doubt the movie news of the weekend. And that movie is called The Irishman. And The Irishman premiered to what I would describe as 100% approval rating hosannas from on high. What'd you make of the reaction to Martin Scorsese's latest cinematic achievement? I'm excited. It seems great. I mean, you do have to take it with a festival grain of salt. There

is something to this movie premiering at the New York Film Festival on a Friday. It's a self-selecting crowd, a self-selecting group of people. But it looked like a lot of fun. All the images of Pacino and De Niro and Pesci and Scorsese up on the stage and at the parties having the time of their lives indicated to me that this is, they're having a great time. And that really, I think, infuses the movie itself, that it is something, like, it worked. You know, it's three hours. We didn't see it for a long time. You know, it could be a rehash of some things maybe, but it seems like the gamble paid off on this one. It's not only three hours, it's three hours and 20 minutes. Oh, right. Okay. I was trying to be kind. It's based on the 2004 memoir called I Heard You Paint Houses by Charles Brandt. And it stars Al Pacino and Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci.

And it uses de-aging technology to make these men seem younger. And that has been a big talking point of the movie up until people saw the movie. It was clouded in a series of yeah buts, I think, all leading to last Friday. The yeah buts include the de-aging technology. They include, does Robert De Niro still care about acting? Can Al Pacino not go over the top in a performance? Does Marty still have it? Can Joe Pesci still speak?

We haven't seen him speak publicly in many years. And it seems like all of these things were proven to be false alarms at best. And I think a lot of people seem to think that this is the frontrunner for the best picture. And there's something kind of amazing to me about that. Now, obviously, we're taking a mountain of salt to your point, given the festival atmosphere and it being New York and everything. But still, this is the disruption. Right. And we have not seen it yet. And we're very much looking forward to seeing it, but we have not seen it yet.

You know, I will say when the Oscars aired, what day was that in 2019? February 20-something. Late February. Yes. There was a commercial for The Irishman and it said, debuting in theaters and on Netflix this fall. And I think at that moment, you and I considered it to be the 2019 Oscar frontrunner. That's fair.

And these things do, it is a little horse racy. It goes back and forth. And so the questions, as you just mentioned, were that, you know, would it live up to that Oscar frontrunner status? And I think the answer is yes. It's definitely yes. I wonder if it completely resets the expectation of the Oscars this year, because I was assuming that it was absolutely going to be a player.

Now what this means is there's almost certainly going to be two Netflix movies nominated for Best Picture and maybe even three Netflix movies. So you've got The Irishman, you've got Marriage Story, and you've got The Two Popes, which premiered a telly ride to acclaim. And that signals something significant changing. And a lot of the column writing and the tweeting and the sort of not the day of reaction, but the Saturday-Sunday reaction, I think, to The Irishman, including there was a column by Owen Gleiberman from A Variety who reflected on, I think, a lot of the anxiety that Roma produced last year about the idea of a streaming service releasing what may be considered by many people to be the best movie of the year, what that means for moviemaking, what that means for the future of the Oscars. But The Irishman is kind of a mega-sized version of that question or problem or whatever you want to call it. You could make the case that it's nothing, that this is a completely overstated situation. I wrote about Roma in that context last year. And I think the question here is more like, this is a $160 million movie. No studio other than Netflix was going to pay for this movie. It's the kind of movie that I think

actually could do pretty good business if you put it in movie theaters. It's got great reviews. It's got a lot of brand names. It's a gangster movie. I don't know if it's going to be a $500 million movie, but it could be a $100 million movie. And so with that, the fact that we're never really going to know that because even though it's going into theaters, it's not going into the big theater chains. I think we do have three or four months now of Netflix anxiety to tangle with. Yes, for sure. I mean, I don't want to downplay the narrative of that in last year's Oscars and in every conversation that anyone has about the movie industry right now. You know, I think ultimately people didn't vote for Roma because it was a two and a half hour foreign film and they felt like, you know, values were being shoved down their throat and they just

wanted to vote for the familiar feel good, like virtue signaling, except not Green Book. I think those voters will like not think twice about voting for The Irishman instead of something else. I don't think Netflix will come into the equation that way for them. I just, I kind of think the position that The Irishman has in this Oscar season will be less about streaming platforms and more about age and values. And it's like I said, it's like a new Oscar bait in a lot of ways. Yeah, it's an interesting thing. I could sense that last year, at some point, Alfonso Cuaron just got sick of having to answer questions about Netflix.

Yeah. That after a while, and he was in a very similar situation, I don't think that there was necessarily a company that would have paid as much money for his film as Netflix did to distribute it, even though they didn't originally finance the movie. And I wonder if Scorsese at some point, now he's probably not going to do a ton of press because he's Martin Scorsese and he doesn't have to. But I wonder if at some point he's just kind of like, enough. The movie is the movie. Yeah. Let's just think about it that way.

But for our purposes, we do kind of have to, we have to tangle with it. And three nominees from that studio would be, it'd be a fascinating test of the Academy because Marriage Story is definitely one of the best movies I've seen this year. And it checks a lot of boxes for the kinds of movies that Oscar likes, if not best picture, at least every category nomination wise. And The Irishman is right down the middle, new Oscar bait. And old Oscar bait.

I mean, I think that's the... It's kind of the exception in so many ways because it is on Netflix, but it's also Scorsese and De Niro and Pacino and Pesci. It is all of the old things. I mean, there's just... You know, I was thinking about how excited my dad's going to be just to see the Irishman.

And they're just. This is dad core. Yeah, but it is also a cinematic triumph, apparently. So anybody who actually cares about movies will also be interested. And they are doing theaters and Netflix. It just kind of they like four quadranted it, for lack of a better word. So it seems like a last exception as opposed to the future of movies, if that makes any sense. No, it does. I think that Best Picture contenders come in all shapes and sizes.

Some of them are powerhouse 14 nomination kinds of films. And others are admired and respected. And they get three nominations and we acknowledge that important people made a movie, but that we can just kind of move on.

I think that there was a perception that this was possibly the latter. That no matter what happened, it was going to be respected and it could have just kind of come and went. Instead,

based on the reactions, it basically seems like Steve Zalian's more than likely going to get a Best Adapted Screenplay nomination Rodrigo Preto's

going to get a Director of Photography nomination Martin Scorsese's going to get a Best Director nomination and Robert De Niro and Al Pacino

and maybe even Joe Pesci enter two very very crowded fields so let's set aside supporting actor for a minute because we're going to talk about that a lot more

as we get closer and closer to a Tom Hanks movie that's coming out later this year. But just in best actor, these are the primary candidates at the moment. Leonardo DiCaprio for Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Joaquin Phoenix for Joker, which premieres this week, Eddie Murphy for Dolomite Is My Name, which we're going to talk about very shortly,

Christian Bale in Ford vs. Ferrari, Adam Driver in Marriage Story. Antonio Banderas in Pain and Glory. Jonathan Price in The Two Popes. And maybe even Adam Sandler in Uncut Gems. I'm sure there are some other people that I don't have listed here that people are going to get mad about, but that's about 10 people, eight of which are hugely famous. Hugely famous. That doesn't even count Brad Pitt, who's going to be there for supporting. It doesn't even count Brad Pitt, who's going to be there for supporting. It doesn't count Tom Hanks, who I mentioned. Right. I think this is like great news for the Oscars. Like as great as news can get that this many famous people with a Martin Scorsese movie are going to be there.

And is there any chance, and this is slight concern troll, but that it's too much good news and that people will sense that the Oscars is desperately trying to maintain its relevance by celebrating its most famous people. I mean, when are they not trying to desperately maintain itself by celebrating its, you know. Well, who won best actor last year? Rami Malek. No one knows who that is. Sure, but $800 million worth of people, maybe it's over a billion now, saw it. Rami Malek didn't win the Oscar last year. Freddie Mercury won the Oscar last year. And a lot of people who love Queen were like, oh, that guy, wasn't he great?

They have no idea that he was on Mr. Robot. They have no idea who he is now. It's just kind of like, wow, those teeth definitely look like Freddie Mercury's teeth. Did you see the photo? Someone tweeted a great photo of Rami Malek recently wearing a backpack and some jeans and a button-down shirt. And they said he looks like an NYU student on his way to think coffee. It was really great. Anyway, I encourage people to check out Twitter once in a while.

Yeah, you're right. Freddie Mercury did win that Oscar. I think in general, it's a pretty great thing for the Oscars that all of these people are going to be there. And I think we're going to probably focus on that a lot over the next few months. Supporting actor two is really interesting. Just the idea of Al Pacino getting a chance to win another Oscar for maybe a better performance than Scent of a Woman. You know, with that comes also the big question of will Scorsese get a second Oscar? And, you know, in the back of my mind, I had been kind of planning for the Tarantino Best Director Oscar.

I had been banking on this for a few months. And now I'm like, and there's notably a really fun Q&A between Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino on the Directors Guild of America's website that published today. But the idea of Marty's number two stealing from Quentin's number one is a little bit painful for me. me well i feel like we had this conversation like four or five months ago which was that this oscar season shaping up to be like tarantino versus corsese and like the you know it's basically again we haven't seen the movie but the irishman does apparently have this quality of like um a bunch of men at the later period of their life looking back, taking stock of things, one last hurrah, maybe. So it's like, you know, a pirate looks at 40 with Once Upon a Time and a pirate looks at 80 with The Irishman. It's true.

I mean, it's like two generations of directors who are extremely important in terms of shaping what came next for their, you know, respective peers. So it's interesting. It's like pretty exciting as a face-off. I mean, the most classic Oscars thing would be for us to talk about like Scorsese versus Tarantino for six months. And then like, you know, I don't know what wins. Bong Joon-ho, baby. I was going to say it's J.J. Abrams who's directing Skywalker, right?

Yes, it is. Yeah. So I mean, like literally that would probably be the most Academy thing of all time. To me, the most Academy thing would be Sam Mendes winning for 1917. Yeah, it's a great point.

That would be the thing where you'd be like, really? Like we're not giving it to Marty or Quentin Tarantino or even having any fun and giving it to Bong Joon-ho or Baonback

or somebody like that. Or a woman, God forbid. God forbid. I mean, Greta possibly could be competing this year. There's only a handful of people who've won. There's one guy who's won four Best Director Oscars,

and that's John Ford, largely considered the greatest director of all time, though I don't agree with that. There's two who have won three, Frank Capra and William Wyler. Notable that all of these men haven't made a movie in 75 years when there were not as many people making movies. And then there's a whole gang of people that have won two.

Among them, Alfonso Cuaron and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu and Milos Forman and Elia Kazan, David Lean, Ang Lee has two. Many people don't realize that. Steven Spielberg, of course, has two. Oliver Stone has two Oscars. Billy Wilder, Robert Wise, Fred Zinneman. On the one hand, you've got a very historic collection of filmmakers and Scorsese, of course, fits right in here. But on the other hand, you can't really use this to determine who is the greatest director of all time, because I don't see Akira Kurosawa's name here at all. I don't see Stanley Kubrick's name here at all. I don't even see Francis Ford Coppola's name here. So there's a lot of people not quite on the list. And, you know, the Oscar

sometimes is very stupid. And so if we find ourselves, and no disrespect to Sam Mendes, who I think is a very good filmmaker and and I'm quite looking forward to 1917. But if he wins there, and Scorsese doesn't get his second, and I'm not, how many more movies do you think Martin Scorsese will make, if you had to guess? I don't know. I mean, there is kind of a, again, we have not seen this movie. But I did get kind of like a, not quite a swan song, but an end of but an appreciation type vibe to this. So at the same time, they're just still out here being like, isn't it great that we made movies? These guys are having a lot of fun. I can't believe we've gone this long without playing the De Niro clip.

Can we play the De Niro clip? We have to play the De Niro clip right now. Robert De Niro, for those of you who were sleeping under a rock, appeared on Reliable Sources with Brian Stelter today. Here's what he had to say. Folks on Fox come after you. I remember the Tonys when he got up there and cursed. A lot of criticism of you. Fuck them.

Okay, well, you know, this is cable. So it's not an FCC violation. But it is still a Sunday morning. I do wonder why you choose to go that way. Let me say something. Why do you choose to go that way? We are at a moment in our life, in this country, where this guy is like a gangster. He's come along and he's

said things done things we say over and over again this is terrible that we're in a terrible situation that's the funniest thing i've seen in about five weeks what do you think that that has any impact well first of all let me just say this yeah robert de niro is running he's running definitely for best actor possibly for president of the United States of America, certainly for sweetheart of the Oscar show here at the big picture. Do you think that people like this version of Bob De Niro? Do you think that they want this person to be?

Yes, of course. Because don't you want him to be the De Niro that you've seen in movies? Like you don't want him to be the intern. You want him to be on like which like all respect to Nancy Meyers I like the intern that's a good movie I do also like the intern I've thought a lot about it but you want De Niro to be out in public being like that guy's a gangster fuck him like you actually do want to believe that these guys are as like titanic presences at the people that we have

like made them to be in our minds. But how strange for that to come across on reliable sources that Brian Stelter on a Sunday morning. It's really just a weird place to show up. Took that as that was on Sunday morning after the Irishman premiered on Friday in New York to just through the roof rapturous reviews. And these guys are so happy. They're just like, we did it. And you can see it in the party photos. I mean, like they're, they're with all respect, slightly older gentlemen. They don't always appear in public or seem very happy about it. And they were just like, we were back, baby. So I brought it up because it's like, you know, I think after this reception, maybe Scorsese is like, cool, I'm on it.

Let me make four more movies or however many I can fit in. I do feel like the reception is encouraging these gentlemen to share with us, which is great. The more the merrier by me. Definitely the more the merrier. On the opposite side of the spectrum, I don't know if you saw the clip of Joe Pesci being interviewed in the immediate aftermath of the premiere of The Irishman, but the cast and crew were on stage and Kent Jones, who curates the New York Film Festival, was talking to each actor and Scorsese about the process. And Kent Jones flung, I think, a pretty obvious softball that in the Brian Curtis parlance here at The Ringer would be called the

talk about. And he said, talk about appearing in movies after not showing up in one for, you know, over 20 years. And Joe Pesci took a beat and he said, no. Then he handed the microphone off because he didn't want to talk about it because he doesn't care. And it's two versions of, on the one hand, arrogance, but on the other hand, a of well-deserved right state of power and if robert de niro wants to go on tv and say fuck him he kind of can do that in a way that a lot of other people could you imagine if if tom hanks or julia roberts went on tv and and said fuck him about i actually can't remember can't imagine julia roberts doing it and would enjoy it she's a little edgy like that's but she never shows up and does conversation. I mean,

when was the last time she showed up and had a conversation on a talk show? It's got to be years. Yeah, I'm just on Oprah. And that was a long time ago. It's true. And she shows up at the, didn't she give Best Picture last year? Or she gave one of the major awards at the Oscars last year when she was wearing her formal glasses and was just like, I'm Julia Roberts. She did give out Best Picture because she like worked it for a minute before she had to say Green Book. You remember that? She was like, I know where I am.

I know you don't want to hear this right now, but I'm just going to say it anyway. That was one of her best performances in years. So I can't, you know, it is true that you want something different from Robert De Niro than you want from Tom Hanks, which we'll talk a lot more about in the coming weeks.

But this is definitely what I want for Robert De Niro. So, A+. A+, from Bob. As far as The Irishman goes, we'll talk about it a lot more here on the show. The movie is not hitting theaters, and even by the definition of theaters, it's a bit complicated. But not hitting theaters until November 1st, and then a few weeks after that, it'll arrive on Netflix. I would guess that Adam Neiman, Chris Ryan, and I will do a Top 5 Scorsese podcast.

I would guess that you and I will talk about the movie in great detail when it's finally released. You know, let's make a transition to Stock Up, Stock Down, because there is an elegant conversation to have about this relatedly. If it goes bust, you can make 10 to 1, even 20 to 1 return, and it's already slowly going bust.

Let's talk about Stock Up, and it's Eddie Murphy. But before we talk about Eddie Murphy, I want to talk to you about the conversation around Netflix movies, because this is a bit complicated for us. So it's a little bit inside baseball, but I want people who are listening to the show to kind of understand how tricky Netflix is making this, I think, for not just the crittorati or even cinephiles, but the public at large. So the movie The Laundromat, which Steven Soderbergh directed, which we have not discussed really hardly at all on this show, is in theaters right now. It's in Los Angeles. It's in one theater, The Landmark. I haven't seen it and you haven't seen it. We're seeing it this week.

Dolomite Is My Name, which is the new movie starring Eddie Murphy, who has been featured in the New York Times and who is arriving again once more before us as one of the great comedy champions of the 20th century. That movie opens technically on Friday and it's opening at the Alamo Drafthouse in downtown Los Angeles,

my wife's favorite movie theater. And it's opening at the Alamo Drafthouse in downtown Los Angeles, my wife's favorite movie theater. And it's interesting because I don't know if you can bring the same kind of, the right kind of energy to a movie that only opens in one theater and isn't going to be expanding. You know, this isn't like

when The Farewell opens in 15 theaters across the country, but we know it will eventually get to 1,500. It's opening in just a handful of theaters because those are the only theaters that will host the movie. So we're going to encounter this again with The King in a few weeks, and then of course with The Irishman, and then of course with Marriage Story, and that's four or five. And then The Two

Popes too. That's four or five big movies that are coming out this year that people are not going to get to see in a movie theater for the most part. And those that do, they're going to have to hunt it down to find it. And the timing of when we discuss these things, I think is a bit complex. So I want to talk to you about Dolomite Is My Name and Eddie Murphy. But I think we have to be mindful of the fact that unless you were at the Toronto Film Festival, you probably haven't seen the movie. And so we'll do mostly narrative-bound conversation and not plot conversation, though. So narrative to Eddie Murphy. Exactly. Right. So we're not going to spoil it for everyone. Certainly not going to spoil the movie.

And we won't be spoiling any of it. We'll make a sincere effort to not spoil any of the, especially these Netflix movies, which are harder to come by than your, this movie's out in 3,000 theaters. Check it out if you can. For example, Joker's out on Friday. We'll be seeing it this week.

Jason Concepcion and I will have a conversation. We'll publish a podcast probably on Thursday night. So if you've seen it, you can listen to it right away. And then on Monday morning, you and I will talk about Joker. That's different to me than Dolomite Is My Name. So Eddie Murphy is back, sort of. He'll be back in one to four weeks, depending on your location. I know I've just said a lot of confusing things about the state of movies, but I do think it's kind of important because it's kind of important to the rollout of enthusiasm for somebody too. So historically with a movie like Dole of Mine is My Name, when Eddie Murphy comes back, and this actually happened once before with

Dreamgirls, when Eddie Murphy came back and had a serious role and was nominated for an Oscar, the movie just came out and people saw it and they're like, ah, love Eddie Murphy. And there was energy behind it. Now, Eddie Murphy has already been profiled in the New York Times. We've already heard that he's going to be hosting SNL in December. This movie is coming sort of in a few weeks, but also Friday, but who knows. Do you think that this kind of star rollout can be as effective as that 3,000 screen rollout that I was describing? Well, I think it depends what your end goal is. I think getting people to watch the movie and winning Eddie Murphy and Oscar are kind of two different tracks at this point.

So in terms of getting people to watch the movie, I think probably, you know, I think at some point what you have to do is put Eddie Murphy in your movie and then serve it to people on Netflix when it's on Netflix. And that is how the most people will see this movie. And I think that is still the most effective way. A very quick anecdote about this. Yeah. I recently, I got my own Netflix account. Really big news for me.

I've been sharing with my husband. You're paying for a separate account? No, actually. I mean, it's a complicated thing with the people at Netflix are lovely. They do screeners differently, but they assigned it to an email. So then I had to say, whatever. IT with Amanda is very boring. But basically what it means is that I opened a Netflix account that was brand new and it

had no learned behavior about what I watch or what anyone watches. And so I assume what it was serving was just what people like to watch, like the most popular things on Netflix. You know, maybe it did something based on location. Again, I don't know totally how the algorithm works, but it was really fascinating to scroll through and see the categories that were presented and the types of movies that were presented, which it will not surprise you to learn are very different from what Amanda watches at home because I just like rewatched The Crown and then also related Crown content. But it was, you know, it was a lot more blockbusters, action movies, but it was just, it was so clear suddenly of just like, oh, well, I would click

on that thumbnail. I would not click on that thumbnail. It was like me rediscovering the power of the algorithm. Because normally when I go to Netflix, I'm like, I'm trying to watch something for this podcast or because someone told me about it or something, but that's not how most people watch it. They just like open their Netflix. They're like, hey, there's this giant thing. I guess I'll watch it. Yeah. I think it has the arcade effect where when you're a kid and you walk into an arcade, you don't say, I only want to play one game.

Now, maybe you like one game more than another game, but you're probably like, I'll play five games. I'll play nine games. I want to play skeeball. I also want to play Rampage. I also want to play Street Fighter 2.

Like that, I think that Netflix has created a kind of expectation where you're like, I can bounce around. I can do a lot of different kinds of things. That's probably what you're seeing too, which is that there is a broad approach to the way they're serving people.

Right. It just reemphasized the aspect of discovery in that process, which is not normally how I use it, but is how I think most people do use Netflix. And it's actually part of the service that they offer. So that's a long way of saying is that I think they'll just put Eddie Murphy in a thumbnail or like five different thumbnails and they'll rotate through them. It's very funny. The Politician debuted last week, which is a Ryan Murphy show. Gwyneth Paltrow is on it. I have only been getting Gwyneth Paltrow thumbnails because it knows who I am. So to your needs. But, you know, that's a star rollout. Just Eddie Murphy's face. Eddie Murphy in large letters on your screen. People will click on it.

And then, you know, if someone happens to read the New York Times and it's like, oh, Eddie Murphy, he's back. Maybe I will check out that movie. That's great. But I think that's gravy on what they're trying to do. I think you're probably right. It's probably a more effective rollout, ultimately, on October 25th when the movie hits the service to just show people Eddie Murphy in the Dolomite costume. Yeah.

You know, what was your level of familiarity with Dolomite before this movie? Had you seen the original Dolomite starring Rudy Ray Moore? So the movie itself, this is not spoiling anything, is essentially about the making of the rise of Rudy Ray Moore, who was a middle-aged comedian working in Los Angeles, who was really struggling to find success, and created a character called Dolomite that was born of a lot of sort of old African-American tales and jokes and somewhat out of the Griot tradition, somewhat out of the Your Mama Joke tradition, and blended all that stuff

together to create this sort of black superhero slash parody. The movie follows the arc of Rudy Ray Moore's career. And the movie Dolomite, the original movie, was a major cult success for years and years, a big time midnight movie. It's a bad movie. It's bad. It's funny. And the question of whether it's meant to be funny is an interesting part of this story and this rollout and Eddie Murphy in general to me. Because in the original Dolomite, you can see kind of boom mics falling into the frame. The set collapses during a sex scene at one point. And that's part of the bit.

They don't stop the movie. They make that a part of the movie. And so you can't tell if it's like kind of an airplane style spoof or if it's actually just a really shoddily made movie. And Dolomite, as my name goes to great lengths lengths to recreate some of the making of of this movie. It's interesting for Eddie to be reexamined or returning by examining a hero of his who never quite got his credit at the time, never quite got his critical cultural due in his time. Because I think Eddie, even though he is, I don't know,

probably one of the five or six biggest movie stars of the last 40 years, I don't know if people really respect Eddie Murphy. And whether you can or should is an interesting conversation leading into award season. Do you think that this is a person that has sort of been overlooked or been dismissed from the popular consciousness? Like, what is your sense of Eddie Murphy to people in the world right now? I mean, what you said is true that I think he's simultaneously like one of the biggest movie stars and just stars, actors, comedians of our lifetimes. And also that people don't take comedians as seriously and i think that's kind of

a lot of the issue both in both in society but specifically with the oscars it's much harder to win an oscar for for a comedy it basically rarely happens very rarely especially in klein and a fish called wanda. Very rarely. In terms of just culture at large, that has changed a lot in the last five, 10 years. I mean, God, there are so many comedy podcasts of people like explaining the jokes to us, which I think has limited returns, but at least like comedy as an art form, these people as experts who have a craft they have honed over years. I think that that people have become more aware of that generally. But in terms of how good he is, how great a comedian Eddie Murphy is, and how great a movie star that he was, and how many people saw so many of his movies, which is just kind of impossible to do now, I think all of that

is probably taken less seriously than it is for, say, Tom Hanks. that still has humor, but is more indicative of the kind of thing that is celebrated largely by prestigious culture. Now, I would argue that there's something about Mary Dumb and Dumber and Kingpin are all vastly better, vastly better than Green Book. Those are three of my favorite movies of the 90s. I love those movies. But Peter Farrelly was never going to get into the best director conversation by making those kinds of movies. And Eddie Murphy, even though he's playing a comedian here, he's giving a pretty dramatic performance. And he was not likely to be recognized by the Academy for his performance in Trading Places, even though that's one of the funniest things that has ever happened in a movie. It's just Eddie Murphy in Trading Places or Eddie Murphy in Coming to America. You know, Eddie Murphy has given, you're smiling at me because he's just given us a lot of joy over the years.

He's just, we did a Beverly Hills Cop rewatchables the other day. I don't even think Beverly Hills Cop is that great of a movie, but there's so many times where Eddie Murphy just says something or looks at you or looks at a character where you're just taken away by him. And it's presence. We talk a lot about movie star charisma and that thing of you put a camera on someone and they just fill up the space.

And he has that. Majorly. And he has it in a slightly different and more in a rarer way than a lot of movie stars because you just, Brad Pitt just looks like Brad Pitt. But Ed Murphy's funny. You know, it's just, there is a very special tone. He can change.

I think it's Wesley Morris who always says, can they just like change the property of the room around them? And he definitely can and also make everyone laugh. And I think he's doing that in this movie, too, in a big way, which is interesting. Whether he actually gets into the best actor conversation is unclear, though. I think the course he's charted here is a very smart one. So this is just his fourth live action film this decade. Do you know the name of his last movie?

No. It's called Mr. Church. It's a very sentimental drama that is not very good. That was released in 2016. So that's crazy. Three years ago, there was an Eddie Murphy movie called Mr. Church. No one's ever seen it.

No one cares about it. It's completely meaningless to the culture at large. Going forward, he's starting a stand-up tour soon, which will culminate in a Netflix stand-up comedy special, which is fascinating because Eddie Murphy is one of the greatest stand-up comedians of all time. But he is sort of the key figure in the what's aged the worst department. You know, like a lot of the comedy in Raw and Delirious, his two mega famous standup specials,

is just in the traditional category of like, can't say that anymore. Can't even think that anymore. None of that is going to work, you know? And he addressed some of that in this great New York Times profile with Jason Zinneman, talking about some of the jokes about AIDS

that he made at the time, or gay people, or women. Like he really was very insensitive to what 2019 would perceive. I don't really think that that's going to hold him back though. I, he really was very insensitive to what 2019 would perceive. I don't really think that that's going to hold him back, though. I thought he was kind of like briefly contrite about those things, clearly communicated that he was a different kind of a guy. It was a different kind of a time. And I don't I haven't seen anybody out there trying to cancel Eddie Murphy. Well, it's, you know, early days. I mean, and I think that that's a

that's a separate conversation that honestly, I don't really want to get into because I think— Should we make this a comedy podcast? No. But I think also, I think he handled that New York Times profile very well. And he was, as you said, it's just like, I was a young person when I watch it now. I, you know, I could see what I was going through and it's a different place. So I think that goes a long way. I mean, a lot of people can't say that, which is mind boggling to me in 2019.

But I know I don't. I think he is also so he's so famous and also has kind of evolved past. Like we have already seen the evolution of eddie murphy past raw you know we have seen like the dr doolittle phase of eddie murphy he's kind of gone from really really shocking comedy to biggest movie star of all time to like biggest movie star all the time who's in movies that you watch with your kids. Daddy daycare. Yeah. He's all the way around to fatherhood.

But if you've demonstrated that change over time in public already, I do think that that goes a long way to people giving credence to the idea that you don't believe those things that you once said. Eddie Murphy has eight children. Yeah. Isn't that extraordinary? Right. I'm terrified by the prospect of one.

He's also hosting SNL, which is a pretty big deal because he's returning to the site of his launch. And he famously has shied away from appearing on the show for years. There's a very famous David Spade look mom a falling star joke on Weekend Update showing a photo of Eddie, which then led to Eddie basically denouncing SNL for many, many years. So him coming back. And in that profile by Jason Zinnemann, he said that he's going to be doing Buckwheat. He's going to be doing Mr. Robinson. And he's going to be doing his old school SNL characters,

which I don't even know how those characters will play in 2019. But that's kind of fascinating for him to make a concerted effort to remind people why you love Eddie Murphy, which is all part of a strategy. It's maybe part of a personal strategy for him to kind of go out on the right kind of note, but it's also an award strategy. You know, it's also a, it's a campaign strategy. And I wonder if you set all that stuff aside, if you think that his work in Dolomite Is My Name is, is truly awards worthy, if it's,

it's, if it, if it deserves to be in the conversation, even though we know that deserves to be as a meaningless phrase when it comes to actual Oscar voting. Yes and no. I mean, it is such a quintessential Oscar performance and there, you are watching it and are just like, oh, hey, Eddie Murphy's back. And there are scenes that it doesn't matter what's going on around him. And it's not even really about the character that he's playing. It's just like being there with Eddie Murphy, who is fascinating to watch on camera. And it does engage with,

it's a story about, as you said, a person who maybe did not get as much respect or recognition as they deserved. And so it's eddie and murphy engaging with the extra curricular narrative of of his life and career which i just i really do think the oscars like that they like they like a comeback or someone coming back from some time in the cold they like someone who is thoughtful and reflective and they like a performance that has meaning in some way. And I do think that that narrative gives it some extra heft. There's one other thing working in Dolomite Is My Name's favor,

which is it's a movie about Hollywood. It's a movie about moviemaking. And there are not as many of those this year. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, of course, is one of those. But, you know, as we know, those movies tend to do well during Oscar season. So we'll keep a close watch

on Eddie Murphy. And maybe we'll talk a little bit more about Dolomite Is My Name once more humans have seen the film. You know, just for stock down, I just wrote The Irishman, even though we just sang its praises and reflected on all of its success.

Because I do think that there's going to be a little bit of backlash to the uplash, you know, a little bit of, do we really want to celebrate this? You know, but it's October 1, so we have five months. I think that's true for literally every single thing that we will talk about on this podcast. It happened for once upon a time in Hollywood. It's just kind of... Not for Thanos. Okay. Thanos is still

rising in the ranks. Number one in my heart. Great. Best supporting actor, Thanos. I am inevitable. Okay. Can we just do some photos for this podcast

of you and a giant Thanos head? I want to be... I want to... I want like a photo... I took a photo with Werner Herzog in this room once. I want that photo, but me and Thanos. Okay.

Just arm and arm. Do you want it to scale? Well, he's tall. Right. That's what I'm saying. He's like nine feet tall. Right. So he probably wouldn't fit in this room ultimately.

I think just barely. You think gauntlet or no gauntlet? You think he'd let me wear the gauntlet in the photo? The gauntlet is the glove? That's the glove. Okay. That's very confusing to me but um i don't know doesn't the isn't the gauntlet very powerful doesn't it suck away your soul or something no uh thanos if you're listening

please dm me um we'll figure this out get you on the big picture amanda let's go to the big race okay well mama look at me now i'm a star i mean we're going to talk about best documentary and we're going to talk about it for two reasons one as i mentioned earlier today diego maradona debuts it's from an oscar-winning filmmaker asif kapadia i spoke to him later in the show it's a pretty brilliant movie we'll talk about it a little bit here. And also because DocsNYC has released their feature list of 15 films to keep an eye on. And DocsNYC is an organization that runs a festival in New York every November, and they screen a lot of documentaries. They choose 15 documentaries every year to spotlight.

Those 15 documentaries usually more or less coincide with the Academy shortlist, which is released, I believe, in January at the top of the year, maybe even in December. And it's an interesting list of movies. I'll briefly list the movies, and then maybe we can talk a bit about the category, because it's a tricky category that a lot of people, most regular folk, don't get a chance to see these movies until we get into Academy season, and this year more than ever for a couple of reasons. But Diego Maradona was on the list, as I mentioned. American Factory, which came to us from Netflix. Apollo 11, which is one of the few big doc hits of the year, which Neon released. One Child Nation, which Amazon bought out of Sundance. The Edge of Democracy, which is Petra Costa's story of the Brazilian government. That's

Netflix as well. The Cave, which Nat Geo has. That movie is going to be released later in October and was a huge hit out of the Toronto Film Festival. The Biggest Little Farm, Neon also released this, also a bit of a hit this year in the doc category. Knock Down the House, the famous AOC documentary that was purchased out of Sundance and aired on Netflix. The Kingmaker, which is Lauren Greenfield's upcoming film about Imelda Marcos. Lauren Greenfield, perhaps the greatest chronicler

of wealth in this country. The Great Hack, which was also a Netflix movie about Cambridge Analytica. Ask Dr. Ruth, which Hulu wealth in this country. The Great Hack, which was also a Netflix movie about Cambridge Analytica. Ask Dr. Ruth, which Hulu released earlier this year, also had a Sundance. And Honeyland also had a Sundance, which Neon also released. And The Elephant Queen,

which is Apple TV Plus' first foray into documentary. And The Apollo, which is HBO, Roger Ross Williams, who's a governor with the Academy, his documentary about the Apollo in New York City. And For Sama, which is HBO, Roger Ross Williams, who's a governor with the Academy, his documentary about The Apollo in New York City. And For Sama, which is a PBS documentary. That's the full list. 15 movies. Now, almost all of these movies have been released.

I think only three have not yet seen the light of day. The Apollo, The Elephant Queen, and The Cave. How many of these movies have you seen? I think I've seen four. Pretty good. Thank you. Pretty good. I was very proud of that last night and shared that fact with you and you didn't respond. So I'm glad that I'm getting a moderate gold star. I've seen 12. Well, yes, but you're you. I'm way ahead of the curve this year, though. Historically, this is the category I struggle with

the most. And frankly, it's gotten a little bit easier to see movies like this, in part because five or six of these movies are really appearing on TV first. I mean, Ask Dr. Ruth hit Hulu months ago. You know, The Elephant Queen is going to be available on November 1st, the day they turn on Apple TV+. The Apollo is going to be on HBO later this month. There's four Netflix movies on this list. There's a Showtime movie on this list, Diego Maradona, which we're discussing, you can see on HBO tonight. And it is an interesting thing that's changing about the documentary format because last year, the big story about documentaries was theatrical. Three Identical Strangers, what a huge hit. Free Solo, what a huge hit. The Mr. Rogers film, what a huge hit. RBG, what a huge hit. All four of those movies did great business in theaters. And people felt good about them.

Now, my prevailing theory about that is that MoviePass was active in 2018. That's a good point. And it feels a lot easier to go see a doc in theaters when you can use MoviePass to pay for it, as opposed to your hard-earned $18. I think that's a little unfair to documentaries, especially if you've seen a movie like Apollo 11, which you should see in theaters. Yes. But for the most part, a lot of these movies were scooped up before they even had a

chance to appear in theaters. You know, these Netflix movies, I think a movie like Knock Down the House could have done pretty good indie film business, but it appearing on a streaming service is interesting. Do you think that that's unlike maybe the Dolomite Is My Name or the Irishman issue? Do you think it's better for these movies like Icarus, which won two years ago, which was on Netflix, to appear on a streaming service first? I do think they make more sense just in streaming context. They're just watchable at home in a way that narrative films, maybe you lose a little of the immersiveness or the attention span and people are looking at their phones or whatever. But I think documentaries are, you know, they're often quite visually beautiful. And I think we should talk about like a couple of these movies and the footage that they get. And it would

be exhilarating to see it on a big screen. And I was thinking a lot about how you and I both went to see Pavarotti in theaters. And it was just like watching a Pavarotti concert. But the fact that you got to hear it so loud was really essential to the experience. So I'm not trying to take away from the theatrical experience, but I do think documentaries just like they're really, really watchable at home. They kind of fit with the, huh, I'm curious about this. Okay. And then suddenly you're sucked in and 90 minutes have gone by and you're like, wow,

I would really like to know what's going to happen at this factory or whatever the case may be. And so I think it's always best for movies to be where people are going to watch them. I just fundamentally think that that's the case. I agree with you. A couple of these movies

are more quote unquote cinematic than others. You know, we mentioned Apollo 11, which you and I have talked about a few times on this show already this year. I think Honeyland, in a way, is a very cinematic movie. I didn't see it in theaters, and I watched it at home, and I could sense the loss of experience that I was hoping to have.

On the other hand, I do think that a movie like The Great Hack kind of plays better as like a wallpaper movie. You know, it's packed with information. It's got a couple of really interesting interviews in it. It's not my favorite documentary I've ever seen, but it did help me understand Cambridge Analytica a little bit more deeply. And it didn't require rapt attention. And I wonder if that movies like that will be rewarded more in the future. I mean, I think we've certainly found that to be the case for scripted and narrative films that we've talked so much about, like the ideal, quote, Netflix movie, which is a little more fast paced and is switching all the time to keep your attention, but also doesn't require you making an event out of it all the time.

And I think I think that's true. I think that's also just the appeal of a documentary documentary ultimately is you don't know about something and you're kind of like, oh, I guess that's true. I think that's also just the appeal of a documentary ultimately is you don't know about something. And you're kind of like, oh, I guess I'm curious. And then it's that idea of discovery of like, huh, wow, I didn't know that I was going to be so excited about this. And I do think this streaming, surfing around experience rewards that. What is the best of the four that you've seen so far this year? Or what did you like the most? I was absolutely blown away by American Factory. It's a pretty amazing movie. And I will say this in public. A few months ago, or maybe like a month ago,

I remember you saying to me, I know that you are not going to want to hear this. And like, I don't want to be your dad, but American Factory is like really amazing. You'll really, really like it. You were 100% right. Thank you. Wow. No, you were just totally right. Bobby, please mark this. Carve this audio out. Send it to me in an email.

Please note that I can admit when Sean is right. And let's go back and look if Sean's ever admitted I'm right. No, but I just, it has it all because it has so much access. So many scenes where you're like, I cannot believe that I got this. The short version of American Factory, I'll try to summarize it, is that it's a plant in Dayton, Ohio, that was closed, I believe, in 2010 after 2008. I believe it was a General Motors plant. Yes. And it is reopened by Fuyao, which is a Chinese manufacturing conglomerate.

And so it is about reopening this factory and what happens when it is a Chinese company investing in America and working with American workers. And so it's about everything. It's about capitalism. It's about cultural ideologies, culture clashes, globalization, you know, labor movements, philosophy of like what it is to like, what is life and what is work. And the amount of access they got in both China and in the U.S. is extraordinary. They have a real sense of characters. And then it's just, it's about everything. It's amazing. Yes, the movie is directed by two filmmakers, Julia Reichert and Stephen Bogner. And, you know, has some legacy. Julia Reichert made a movie called The Last Truck,

Closing of a GM Plan in 2009, which is about this plan. And, or maybe, I believe it's this plan in Moraine, Ohio. And that is where the relationship began with this part of the country and with this idea of the American worker and what they represent and how they're treated and how they treat the world. And the movie is incredibly deep about these ideas. Most movies are just a mile wide and an inch thick. And this movie goes way into the psyche of people who have lost their jobs and regain jobs and what that means. It goes way into the psyche of really what corporations think and how they treat people. You're right that the access is amazing.

The filmmaking is amazing because so much of the work that is done in the movie is this intensely physical work. Fuyao in the movie is largely focused on glass in this Dayton manufacturing plant. And so the idea of glass is this incredible metaphor for everything happening in the movie because it is so important and so transparent and so vital, but so breakable and so precious. And it's just extraordinary what the movie is able to convey about the things it wants to say about our country and China and the future of the American workforce. Yeah. And I think it is really empathetic across the sides and curious

without being heavy-handed. It doesn't totally pick a side. Everybody's a little right and everybody's a little wrong in this. Even though it's, you know, it's clear that the filmmakers have a point of view and have some interest. I think they have the most empathy with the workers,

but I think that there is a strong case to be made coming out of the movie that's like, this is how capitalism works. Yes. And unfortunately, it's painful and people get hurt by it, but it is the system in which we exist. my own personal values and what, you know, how I compose my life and how much of that has been trained by the values of America and capitalism and how much of what I think is right and how I think that the world should be organized is actually true and how much of it is like totally fucked and is just a product of the way that I was raised and the part of the world that I happened to be born in. It's fascinating. I don't have any answers to any of that, by the way, but

it really, I can't remember a movie that is, or really any sort of philosophical text, frankly, because I usually have very little patience for that, but I can't think of anything that has engaged me on that level in recent memory. I agree. I'm really glad that you liked it. I would recommend this as highly as any movie I've seen this year. It's really incredibly sophisticated and well-made. And it's made in basically a verite and interview style, which a lot of these films are like that. You know, Knock Down the House is very much like that.

The Biggest Farm is very much like that. The Great Hack is very much like that. It's kind of following people in real time and then using a little bit of archival and a little bit of interview footage. The two movies, though, that I think have a chance

to maybe upend American Factory or The Cave are Apollo 11, which we've talked about, which is entirely archival and which is just an incredible feat

of movie making, and Diego Maradona. And I think if Asif Kapadia had not won for Amy, he would be winning for this movie. And it's kind of the opposite of American Factory. You know, it's not a big ideas movie. It's a lone man movie.

It's like a portrait of, I guess, what he has called the final chapter in his child genius trilogy. So Senna is about a race car driver. Amy is about a singer. Diego Maradona is about an athlete, a soccer player. Same thing. I don't know where this footage came from. I don't know how he got all this footage. This is astonishing. It's absolutely crazy how much we see of Maradona, who we should say the film captures largely his career in the mid to late 80s when he joins Napoli, the club in Italy, and resurrects that club from a long stretch of struggle

and brings them to the top of the standings. And they experience great success. And it's part of this pattern that he creates in his life where he goes somewhere. It's immensely difficult at first. He manages to change the culture of the place they win, have great success, and then he spirals out of control and has to leave. And it's this very delicate portrait of a person experiencing fame and joy and pain and

repression all at the same time. There's so much footage in it, again, that you're just like, I can't believe this exists. I can't believe they just have so much footage of him, you know, working out on the treadmill with things around him or at the club or just so much contemporaneous stuff. And also, a lot of it is archival footage from him playing soccer, which, you know, I confess I don't have, I had not seen as much of it as maybe I should have. I did have to text Chris Ryan halfway through watching this and being like, so who are the greatest soccer players in the world? And he confirmed that Maradona was one of them. And I was like, great. Okay. I believe Chris has Maradona at four on his list. Yeah,

I think that's true. Which might be controversial. But I just, you know, I just needed to know that he's in the group. I assumed, but you don't always want to assume. I will say, I think it does have a little bit in common with American Factory, just in the sense of there is a type of documentary that is like, here is our thesis, and then we will explain to you what happened, and we will use the experts, and we will, it's kind of like basic feature journalism, which I enjoy. I don't mean to malign that at all, but it's- Wikidocs, they're wikipedia docs yeah it's neatly tied up it's like you would you like to know more about this here is what you need to know more about and

Maradona for me opened as many questions um as it did answers I mean I did walk away convinced that he's an incredible uh athlete and soccer player I also just think that they just weren't really goaltending in the 80s, but that's fine. It's a hot take. Well, I just was watching it and I was like, this is not like the World Cup, at least that I have watched recently. But it does raise so many questions about fame and how he was treated in the world of soccer and obviously substances and the Italian justice system and how we remember people and even how we... It was so interesting. I watched this movie and then went back and I was like, what's the last thing I knew about Diego Maradona?

And it was like some 2018 World Cup memes. Those memes look very different after having watched the film Diego Maradona. I had a completely different understanding of them. But I think it both presents a really full portrait of a person, but also leaves it to your own interpretation. Agree. I think when our heroes become a joke is a fascinating subculture of analysis. He doesn't really become a joke in the telling of this movie, but you can see how he gets to that place. On the other hand, you can also see the way that it looks like he's got the ball on a string when he's running down the field.

It's just mind-blowing. Truly mind-blowing stuff. And I'm not a hardcore soccer fan by any means, but it's absolutely amazing. And also amazing to see him in a club in Italy at 2 o'clock in the morning, clearly just coked out of his gourd, having the time of his life and also kind of withering away in real time. I mean, there are very few movies. Imagine a movie like this about LeBron James in 2049. I mean, that's really what this is. It's an athlete of that magnitude, of that power, of that skill, of that notoriety, kind of felled in real time. It's just a completely fascinating movie and a great subject for a documentary.

That's the other thing is a lot of times, a lot of these movies that are on this list are good. You know, Ask Dr. Ruth is a good movie. She's Dr. Ruth. You know, it's not, we're not at the height of human experience here. She's had tremendous experiences and been very influential.

But Diego Maradona has reached a level, just much like Amy, of fame and achievement that only probably a few hundred people in the world can relate to in really in the last hundred years so it's an absolutely amazing movie any any other documentary notes you want to make before we get out of here I think that's it like I said I've only seen four I've you you made a larger list and I have seen some of these yeah I, I think it's interesting that a movie like Fire, which was on Netflix about the Fire Festival, which is no doubt one of the most entertaining documentaries of the year,

and certainly well-made by Chris Smith, who has made a number of great docs, including Jim and Andy a few years ago for Netflix, and he made American Movie many years ago. I don't know why a movie like that can't contend. I guess it's possible it didn't have a theatrical release, so that might be the issue at hand. But that too is the kind of movie where if this category wants to youthen itself a bit, young it up a little bit, you may want to consider. It's certainly the internet pick. It is. It's the internet pick. And I guess the Oscars has not yet reached the phase where there are enough voters who are on Twitter all day.

But it is kind of that documentary of the year. It certainly created an idea and an archetype. I mean, it's like if you want to give the Oscar to the most referenced, then I think like the Fyre Festival, like the Fyre and the Fyre Festival created the whole scammer universe that now we just talk about all of the time. Keep your eyes peeled in 2020 for my documentary about Thanos. Okay. Oh boy. In the meantime, let's go to my conversation now with

Asif Kapadia, where we'll talk more about Diego Maradona. I'm delighted to be joined by Asif Kapadia, the filmmaker behind Senna and Amy and his new film, Diego Maradona. Thank you for being here with me. Thanks for having me. I have a very important question right at the top of our chat here, which is when you are attempting a biographical documentary of a world historical figure, where do you start? What is the first thing that you do? I would say the first thing, it depends on the character, but really I'm looking for

a personality. I'm looking for charisma. I'm looking for drama. So I suppose the first thing I would say is, is there enough to make this a movie? And in this case, how did you come to realize that there was enough for Maradona, who is, you know, of course, a very well-known figure, but also maybe doesn't, we don't know as much about this part of his life that you spotlight. I grew up in England, so I'm a football fan. I've grown up playing football, watching football. So I'm very aware of Diego Maradona and his story. I saw a lot of the World Cups. What happened in his particular case is when in the mid-90s, I read a book about him. I was still a student at the time. And this book went into his kind of life and kind of the chaos

and the madness around him. And I guess that was the kind of life and kind of the chaos and the madness around him. And I guess that was the kind of moment when a kind of germ of the idea first went into my head and said, you know, wouldn't it be great one day if he ever got the opportunity to make a film about Diego Maradona? So we're going back to 1996 right now. It took a long time for this to come to fruition, but it was always in the back of my head that if you were going to do a film about a footballer, he would be the guy to do the film about. This is the first in your sort of trilogy of child geniuses in which the subject is still alive. Did that make the kind of composition of this movie, the production of it more complicated than Senna or Amy? Honestly, they're all really difficult in different ways. Senna was difficult because it was the creation of this style. You know, I'd never made a documentary before. I never

made a documentary in any way, but the idea of doing it entirely out of archive, which is how I wanted to do it. I wanted it to feel like a movie where you were watching the story in the present. So that took a long time. I was like five years in the creation. Amy was tough because it was so painful. A young girl died. Nobody wanted to talk to me. Nobody trusted the press or the media. So I come along and it was only like a year after she died. It was really raw. It was very challenging to get the trust for people to open up and to talk to me. Maradona's tricky because he's Diego Maradona. He's this kind of mythical character. He's still alive. I wanted to talk to him and interview him, but is he the most

reliable witness for his own story? I'm based in London. The story takes place in Italy and Naples. Diego was living in Dubai. And most of the key voices were in Buenos Aires, in Spanish and in Italian, both of which I don't speak the languages. Okay, so this film was a challenge in a whole different set of ways. So how did this project come to you? Was it your idea to pitch it? Because I know that for Amy and Senna, the circumstances were slightly different. Did this one originate with you? Do you know, all of them, what happens is people kind of approach me with different stories and different characters and my producers come to me with different projects.

And I guess the instinctive answer is, this person I'm interested or maybe not. I don't think that person I want to spend three years on. With Senna, Amy and Diego Maradona, in different ways, they kind of came to me. But with each of them, I have this initial gut reaction of, yeah, I want to do that story or no, not interested, not for me. And Maradona came about because, like I said, I'd read this book about him, and then a producer got in touch. Around the time of the London Olympics, we're talking about back in 2012, just after I'd made Senna and said, this guy, this producer says, you know, I think I've got access to some, a private archive of Diego Maradona footage.

Would you be interested in making the film? And I'm like, I'm a big fan of football. I think it's an amazing story, but it seems too close to having made a Brazilian sporting hero to go off and make the film about the Argentinian sporting hero straight away. So I actually said, look, I don't think the timing's right for me. I went off, I did Amy, I did various other things. And then the project came back again. And at that point, having made two of the films, I thought, okay, now I'm ready to do this because Maradona's still alive, because his life is longer, because he's such a challenging character.

And I guess I was older. And I think partly Maradona's story is about someone who gets old and has to deal with, you know, having this incredible talent when he's a sportsman, but made lots of mistakes along the way and dealing with his mistakes, or sometimes in this case, never quite dealing with the mistakes that he's made in the past. And I was ready to deal with that kind of idea of getting old as well in this film. Did the fact that a lot of that archival material that you said was presented to you

originated in Italy during that period in Maradona's life push you towards focusing on that period? Or was that just a more of a creative decision that you made after looking at the scope of everything that he had done in his life? Yeah, it's a two way thing. I think partly my job is to kind of find a character and find a story and research everything. But then also you have to go with the material, you have to go with the drama. And actually, having researched everything from Argentina to Barcelona, to him hanging out in Cuba with Fidel Castro and everything that he did, you know, in the 94 World Cup, really, whenever we looked at it, whenever we viewed it and screened it, the story always seemed to work best when we got to Naples. That there was just something that clicked and it happened to also be where the footage was at its strongest. And in the end,

I'm making a movie here. I'm trying to make something that people are going to watch. I want the story to be visual and to be told to you via the images. And the best images and the kind of most intimate footage we had definitely was the period of time when it was in Naples. The biggest story was Naples. That's where he wins the World Cup. That's where he wins the two championships of Napoli, who have never won before and never won since to this day. So it felt like in terms of his sporting achievements, Italy and Naples was the story. Naples itself is an amazing character. And it just felt like all of the key problems that he has had to deal with in the rest of his life really all started in Naples. So if we're going to take

someone's life and he's led a very long and complex life, you've always got to kind of find the essence to the story. And in the end, the kind of the center point and the essence of it was Italy and Naples. Seven years, he's never spent anywhere near as long anywhere else. Seven years was the longest he stopped on his journey in life. And so that's really how it came about. So it's a kind of synergy between the story, the drama, the characters you meet, but also the footage in order to tell the story. When you and your producers spoke to him about this, did you make it clear that this was the period that you want to focus on? Or was there just an understanding that you would try to make something about his achievements and some of the struggles that he had?

Yeah, no, I honestly, I know nothing when I start these movies. All I know is a character. And I'm like, okay, I'm going to talk about everything. And the producers would often say, you should focus on this, or you should be doing that. And I'm like okay I'm going to talk about everything and the producers would often say you should focus on this or you should be doing that and I'm like no I need to know everything I need to see everything because even though we focus on Naples the characters that we deal with like his ex-wife like his trainer Signorini all of these other people sometimes are outside of the scope of the story but I find them you know they may be in Argentina they may be in a latter part of his life but they are the people to help explain what is going on in the story. So I kind of frustrate everyone often. I drive the researchers and all of the team mad because I want to know everything

and see everything. And only once we've got it all, do we start to focus it down in order to reduce it to the movie that you see now. So when I spoke to Maradona, no, I wanted to ask him about everything. I didn't realize at that time it was going to be Naples. I'd say one of my producers always felt that was the story. But we had a screening of a three-hour cut that had, it was 45 minutes before we got to Naples. And it was another half an hour after he left. The film was great.

It was really interesting, but it's too long. It was too long. And no matter what we did, the movie always just seemed to click and kick off when he arrives in Italy. And so we had to, you know, the opening of the film is this crazy drive. It's like French connection or something. It's five minutes long. That five minutes in a previous cut was 45 minutes. And it went into everything that happened to him in Argentina, everything that happened to him in Barcelona. And it was great. But what's interesting about Maradona's life is he's a kind of character that goes somewhere. Everyone wants him. Everyone wants him there. He's loved. It goes well. He does something brilliant, and then it will go wrong

and end badly, and he moves on to the next town. And everyone loves him, and he's great, and he does something fantastic, and it will go wrong again. He'll get done for doping, or he'll get in trouble, or he'll get banned, and he leaves leaves and he goes to the next town. And he essentially repeats the story. So this film, when we did a long version, was a repetition of the same story happening again and again and again. So it was quite unusual to watch because you feel like, oh, I already know this. I'm just in a new place. But the biggest story was Napoli. And that's really why we chose that. Did you find himself reflective in any way about that kind of pattern that you just identified? It's a good question. You know, maybe Diego, had I met him, would have been self-reflexive. I think Maradona and the person that I met,

he never really looks back. He's never made a mistake. The world's against him. You know, he's fighting his lone battle. So he doesn't necessarily see it. He probably wouldn't believe the kind of thesis of there's Diego and there's Maradona. As far as he's concerned, it's just me. I'm just one guy. It's what everyone else says. So sometimes, you know, even though I met him and I interviewed him for quite a long time, he was living in Dubai at the time and I had nine hours of interviews with him.

So whenever you hear his voice in the film, that's from my interviews. But he's also at times quite an unreliable witness. That's why he's Diego Maradona. He will create history. He will create a story depending on the mood he's also at times quite an unreliable witness. That's why he's Diego Maradona. He will create history. He will create a story depending on the mood he's in today. So I'm meeting this guy in Dubai, but I'm asking him questions almost about another character I never met. At this point, did you know that you wanted to use this style

that you've honed over these last three films for this film as well? Or was there a universe in which maybe you used a different kind of documentary style here? I did. In my very first meeting with him, I went to Dubai with a crew, a full camera crew, sound recordist, translators, there's eight, nine of us, you know, two producers, because everyone wants to meet Maradona as well. Okay. So we go there and the kind of cliche meeting with Diego Maradona happens. We're told to arrive on a certain date. We go there, we hire a studio, bring equipment and we're ready to go. And then we're waiting and we're waiting and he doesn't turn up. And then his people say, oh, he's not feeling well today. Try tomorrow. Okay. We do it all again tomorrow. Same thing. Waiting, waiting. Not today, tomorrow. So basically we spent a week

in Dubai doing nothing, waiting for him. So I was like, you know what? That's it. I'm not doing this again. I'm going home, but I just quite like to say hello. So I managed to talk myself into his home and we've had a five minute meeting having waited for a week where we said, hello. He said, we're going to make a great film together, but I'm not feeling well right now. I'm like, okay, fine. I flew back to London. Now I've made two feature films, Senna and Amy, where I never met the lead character. So I'm like, I'm really happy to just go away and make the film without him. And actually it was his people that got in touch months later and said, uh, do you want to talk to him? And I'm saying, I'm only going to talk to him if he's ready to talk to me. And they said,

no, no, no, this time he's ready to talk. So I went back this time, but because of the complexity of always getting to him and getting in the door, I decided not to bring the crew. So I went back to the kind of old fashioned way, which is I go there with a minimal entourage. I did the sound recording myself. And that way we started to build up a relationship when we started. So initially I wanted to do it differently and film him. But in the end with everyone, I think there's a performance that comes with being on camera. And I'm a huge fan of radio. I'm a huge fan of podcasts. I'm a fan of audio being actually more honest than the visual medium. So what I want to do is I want to talk to someone and I don't want a performance. I want to get down to some truth and I don't want them to feel like they're performing.

I can do all the visuals using the archive. And so that is essentially my style. And in the end, I came back to what I feel like I do best. You're really speaking my language with the audio talk there. I'm a radio guy. You know, I've grown up, for me, that's always been my kind of way of experiencing the news or experiencing, you know, the world and learning. Back in the day when I used to listen to the BBC World Service, you know, I'd be traveling

and I'd have a little shortwave radio. So now we've got kind of digital things. I just think there's something, I know how uncomfortable I am when I'm on camera and there are lights on me. And I know I'm far more honest when I'm not being looked at. And I think that works with really famous people. They are sick of being filmed and presented in a certain way,

but they forget the medium when they're talking. Do you know what Maradona makes of the film? Has he seen it? Does he have feelings about it? He hasn't seen it. I tried many times to show it to him over a year ago. And it's interesting. It went back to the cycle, as I talked about earlier on, to that first meeting where we spent ages chasing after him. And the more we chased, the more he cancelled.

And then we get to the end of the process and I'm like, it's all been going really well. And I say, look, can I come back to Dubai and show you the film? And suddenly he was too busy and he's traveling and he's here and he was there. Now, is that just because he's busy? Is that because he doesn't care? Is that because he doesn't even know who I am? He doesn't remember me? Or is that because he's worried about what might be in the film? Because he never looks back. He never deals with the mistakes or his past.

He just moves on to the next place. I'll leave it to the audience, really. Because when you see the film, you'll have to decide, is he ready to look at it? Now, I'm still trying. In two weeks, I'm going to Buenos Aires. And the plan is, once again, to go to his home and to show him the film. I'm still trying. In two weeks, I'm going to Buenos Aires. And the plan is once again to go to his home and to show him the film. And we'll find out in two weeks.

Do you think there's any chance he's potentially snuck into a movie theater somewhere in Europe and checked out the film and just not told anyone? No, he's been in Mexico. The whole time where the films come out in Europe, I mean, we tried to bring him to Cannes, to the film festival.

We tried everything. Absolutely no chance because he's been out in Sinaloa. He's been coaching out in Mexico and then he's been back in Buenos Aires. And the truth is nobody out there has a copy. And we're setting that up now. I think it's only going to happen if I can kind of, either he comes to a theatre and we do a private screening or right now what's more realistic is we go to him and show it to him in his home, surrounded by his friends and his family and trusted people who will kind of make him feel calm. I think he gets nervous. You know, he's like, he's insecure. That's the thing that people

can't see. And that's what the film's about. It's actually quite a vulnerable character at times, yet he's covered up with all his kind of macho Latin bravado. But underneath it, he's kind of a child at times. No, it's true. You absolutely capture that in the film. You know, I wanted to ask you, you've obviously done these three beautiful, celebrated documentaries. You've also done work in the narrative space. I'm kind of curious for you and your career, where you see yourself going, having done this trilogy and, you know, you've done series television and films. What are you going to do next? You know, I always like a challenge. I try and push myself and kind of experiment, I guess. So, I've made fiction films in the desert in India

and in North Pole. And then Senna came along and it was a change of style. I love sports. I've been quite happily in that medium. But I've also directed some of Mindhunter, the series for David Fincher. So I suppose now, while I've been making my projects, the industry's been changing. So now there's this whole kind of long form thing going on. So I'm trying to find a project right now. And I'm thinking about things. I'm reading a hybrid project that's somewhere between fiction and documentary. But I guess I want to deal with kind of the state of the world, politics right now, you know, where are we going? What are we doing to ourselves? That seems to be the biggest story right now. So my gut is I'm probably not going to be doing a biography next,

but I'm going to try and do something on a sort of grander scale, bigger scale, but that's dealing more with kind of the state of politics and the world and what the hell are we doing. And if we don't sort ourselves out, I think we're going into a dark place. What did you learn on the Mindhunter experience? I'm curious about that. I had a fantastic time. Weirdly enough, this explains how I work, okay?

I actually went off to Pittsburgh to shoot that for David Fincher while we were prepping and researching the Maradona film. So the two things happened at the same time. And Mindhunter came off the back of me meeting David Fincher because he'd seen Senna and really loved it. I mean, it's a mad story. I'm sitting there having a pizza with David Fincher while he'd seen Senna and really loved it. I mean, it's a mad story. I'm sitting there having a pizza with David Fincher while we're doing pre-production. And I'm like, why am I here?

How did you even find me? And he goes, well, the interesting thing is my best friend turns up one day, knocks on my door, says, you've got to watch this. And his best friend's Brad Pitt. So Brad Pitt turns up with a copy of Senna. And Fincher and Brad Pitt then go to like Steven Soderbergh's house to watch it. And it's just nuts.

You know, this could be like a totally made up story, but I'm going to believe it. So they knew about me because of Senna. Then I made Amy and Charlize Theron, who was one of the producers on the show, had seen Amy and she was nominated for Mad Max. So she must have recommended me to Fincher. And I had an interview with him while I was on the awards run. And essentially what I said, I read the script for the series and it was an amazing script by a Brit, Joe Penhall. And I said, look, I've basically spent the last

few years of my life making this film, Amy, where I'm investigating a crime. Some young, a young woman died. No one seemed to care. No one seemed to do anything about it. No one got in trouble. So what I did is I met people and I brought a microphone and I recorded interviews with them and using those interviews where I've met a lot of narcissists I met a lot of I'd say virgin psychopaths I tried to create the narrative of the story and that's essentially what the show's about so I explained this is what I do this is what I've been doing for the last three years and somehow or another that kind of connection worked with Fincher and And we went off and did the show together. It was a great experience.

My first experience of doing television. That's fascinating. Asif, you know, I end every episode of this show by asking filmmakers, what's the last great thing that they've seen? I'm curious. Are you watching a lot of films these days? A lot of series? What have you been enjoying?

I'm mainly a film guy, I have to say. I was at the Cannes Film Festival. And I would say the last great film i saw which is about to open here i believe it's called parasite oh it's wonderful it is a korean film and it's amazing i saw it at a world premiere i was right in front of the director and i said i think this film's gonna win it did win i just met him because we showed diego maradona at the telly ride film festival and the director was there. And so I would say Parasite is the film to look out for. There's a couple of other films.

I just saw also Fernando Meirelles' film, The Two Popes, which is amazing and brilliant and funny, but also got a hell of a lot going on there. So those would be the two films that I think will be, both of them will be in the mix at award season. I love those.

I just saw those at Telluride as well. Those are wonderful recommendations and I would encourage everyone. Yeah, 100%. Those the mix at award season. I love those. I just saw those at Telluride as well. Those are wonderful recommendations. And I would encourage everyone. Yeah, 100%. Those are two of my favorites that I saw there. And everyone should see your film as well. I think it's your best work and I really enjoyed it. So thank you very much for doing the show.

Oh, thank you. Thank you very much. Thanks to Asif Kapadia. And thank you, of course, to Amanda Dobbins. Please tune in to The Big Picture later this week, where Jason Concepcion and I will be taking a deep, deep, deep, deep dive into the world of the Joker.