The Big Picture - ‘The Iron Claw’ and the 10 Most Underrated Movies of 2023

Episode Date: December 29, 2023

Sean and Amanda each share five movies from the year that they feel were either under-discussed or underrated (1:00), before inviting The Ringer’s David Shoemaker on to dive deep on pro wrestling, the Von Erich family, and the way they’re represented in Sean Durkin’s new film, ‘The Iron Claw’ (28:00). Then, Durkin joins to talk about the unique challenges of recreating pro wrestling’s pseudo-reality in cinema, casting stars such as Zac Efron, Jeremy Allen White, and Harris Dickinson, what movies he took inspiration from, and more (1:12:00). Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Guests: Sean Durkin and David Shoemaker Senior Producer: Bobby Wagner Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What would you do if you got scammed? Would you suffer in silence, or would you do something about it? Well, I got scammed once, and this is the story of what I did. I'm Justin Sales, the host of The Wedding Scammer, a true crime podcast from The Ringer. And for seven episodes, we're hunting a con man. A guy with a lot of aliases. A guy who's ruined a lot of weddings. And with the help of some friends, I just might be able to catch him.

Listen to The Wedding Scammer on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit superstore.ca to get started. I'm Sean Fennessey.

I'm Amanda Dobbins. And this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about iron claws and iron men. Later in this episode, we'll be diving deep into the iron claw, the new professional wrestling drama from Sean Durkin. And we'll be joined by who better than The Ringer's David Shoemaker, our world-class wrestling podcast host and historian, to talk about the film. Later in this episode, I'll be joined by Durkin to talk about how he made the Iron Claw. I hope you'll stick around for that.

But first, we're at the end of the year, our final episode of 2023. We wanted to get in some last licks for films we maybe didn't spend enough time on, or maybe the world didn't spend enough time on. So we're going to talk about our most underrated and overlooked movies of 2023 amanda you ready for this i am yours are deeper cuts than mine they are well my i'll give you my mentality around this okay we talk about probably north of 150 movies a year on the show maybe more maybe 200 movies a year and i still feel like god i wish I had like seen this in time or found five minutes to just dedicate to explaining why I think this is cool. And invariably, I just don't. And I feel bad. I don't know why I feel bad. I probably need to get over that. It's not a big deal. But I tried to pick five movies that

you just haven't mentioned. I haven't time on myself um talking about on the show in one case i spoke to the filmmaker but i think that this is a very exceptional movie it's in my top 20 of the year but in other cases it's more movies that like there's one movie on here i just saw like a week ago so how did you think about putting this together movies that we touched upon but possibly didn't spend enough time on and or the world at large. Like, and the end of the year list. Because, you know, we've been doing these, like, episodes with various lists. And these are just movies that haven't shown up anywhere else. But I'm like, no, no, no, that was really good.

Like, yes, if you have a week or two. You know, if you have time in the next week or two you know if you have a time in the next week or two you should seek this out do you want to start sure um this is a this is a double whammy the the two funniest movies of the year in my opinion um bottoms and joyride like two like vaguely perverted uh female-led uh comedies that came out over the summer. And I laughed a lot at both of them. I almost put Marshawn Lynch in my performances of the year for Bottoms. It's wonderful. Yeah, I felt like this would be a better spot for it.

Joyride, I think, is actually legitimately overlooked. Totally. I think it's pretty funny. And it's the kind of thing that we're always asking for. And it's like a new spin on an old story. And, you know, not like perfect, but pretty good. Yeah. And I don't know.

Is it streaming now? I know it's available to buy on VOD. I don't know if it's quite streaming yet. I think it's a Lionsgate movie. So when that hits streaming, I think a lot more people will discover it. And Bottoms, do you feel like an honorary member of Gen Z? This is the Gen Z movie of 2023. Yeah, I do. You know, we see eye to eye on large water bottles that we carry everywhere. I don't have a Stanley because I know my place in the world. Do you know

what that is? I do. You have a Nell gene. Yes, I do. Which is a real elder millennial. You know what? This was gifted to me by my husband many years ago. Okay. And. It's pink. It's pink. Yeah. He picked the color.

Did you bring it to Barbie? I don't know. Probably. I take it everywhere because I can't hydrate from like a glass of water, you know? What? It's like I just, I forget where it is. I leave it. My water bottle just has to go with me, you know?

And then it's there. And then I drink water. And then I feel better as a human being. This has been another wonderful journey into the psychology of Amanda Dobbins. My number five is a movie called Divinity, one of the weirdest and more fucked up movies of the year, written and directed by Eddie Alcazar and executive produced by the homie Steven Soderbergh. Did you almost say the homie Steven Spielberg? He's my homie as well, but not in the same way. It stars Steven Dorff, Moises Arias, and Karrueche Tran. Very strange film.

Science fiction, black and white, shot on film, I believe. It's about the son of a scientist who has developed technology for immortality. And he now controls and manufactures his father's once benevolent dream into a nightmare. Very short film. Very weird. weird debuted at Sundance uh 2023 and kind of came and went and I think there's like a particular strand of Eddie Alcazar head who's like this is my new late night programmer genre god and then there's everybody else in the world which is to say like nine billion people who are like what the fuck is this dude um but if you have any kind of interest in independently made genre movies this one is wacky enough uh to check out what's number four for you you hurt my feelings on another film that

premiered at sundance this is a nicole hollis center film that you have kept bringing up throughout the year and so this like i put on the list as like i'm in it obbins have been personally underrating the fact that julia louis-dreyfus starred in another nicole hollis on her film about um small people who can't get over themselves in intimate settings who can relate yeah it's i mean julia louis-dreyfus twice menzies who i think is wonderful um and the the most recent season of The Crown has really just made me even more grateful for the time that he spent on The Crown in seasons three and four. It's tough going over there. I don't know if you know that.

On The Crown. Yeah. Yeah. Well, your bet didn't pay off, alas. I jumped ship after seasons two. Okay. Well, you saw the two best ones. But three and four with Tobias Menzies are good. I mean, this is a story about a small lie that is told in a marriage and then is exposed and then

everyone kind of unravels. I love this movie. I was throwing some names of filmmakers who do a certain kind of satirical drama at Core Jefferson yesterday on the show and he was like you know who really inspired me is Nicole Holofcenter and I was like that's actually right

that's a good name yeah I mean this even like the Julia Louis-Dreyfus character is also a novelist of who's which I guess

she's not a novelist she's a memoir and then she tries to become a novelist failure to launch on the novelist part yeah exactly

and that's part of the issue. That's kind of the instigating factor of the movie. Anyway, just delightful stuff. Pretty funny therapy movie too. Menzies plays a therapist. A lot of interstitials, especially David Cross and... What is David Cross's wife's name? Amber Tamlin.

And Amber Tamlin together are hilarious. Okay, my number four is a movie called Fremont, which very few people have seen. Also a Sundance 2023 movie. Sensing a trend here. A lot of these movies that get bought by small distributors and don't get big audiences. Co-written and directed by Babak Jalali.

And really fascinating movie. Really unusual tone. Also black and white. It's about Dania, a lonely Afghan refugee and a former translator during the war who spends her 20s kind of drifting through a strange life in Fremont, California. This movie has an unusual tone, also a therapy movie. She spends a lot of time with her therapist,

who's played by the great Greg Turkington, for fans of On Cinema at the Cinema. And Jeremy Allen White pops up like two-thirds into this movie with like an incredible cameo. I have no idea why or how he got in this movie. It obviously was made before he became the bear and car me and all that. But he's terrific. And Aneta Wally Zada, who's the star of the movie, is transfixing. So that's Fremont, which I think you can watch on VOD right now.

What's number three? My number three is underrated by the world at large, not by the big picture i want to shout out bobby wagner who had this in his top five as i believe did chris it's had a global pipeline uh which i was the most exciting like new movie yeah that i saw this leftist amanda yeah let's go it's i mean it's good it's got its ideas it sticks to its ideas it was riveting like as a piece of experience filmmaking i you know you want to know what happens you don't feel like you can miss a second um as a work of adaptation got it hand it to daniel goldhaber and ariela barrer and jordan's soul who took a like man of non-fiction manifesto with like no characters and turned it into

something very riveting and once again, you know, shout out to Gen Z, my people. You know, we're just out here. You're Gen Z mommy.

You're mommy. Yeah, I'm mommy. That's why. Yeah. I have a question for you. Yes. What do you want your role to be on the leftist commune?

What do you think I'd be good at? So many things. There's so many options. That's so nice, Chief Disciplinarian. The important thing is there's no power. I'm not assigning you.

I want to hear what you want first before I suggest something. I think I'm meeting you where you are. I think you can help guide me. We can brainstorm about this offline. I'm trying to imagine a world in which Amanda is operating where everyone is equal and how that would go. I'm not sure that's necessarily your most comfortable position. I'm just going to be real with you. The leftists are slightly upset about the cycling thing.

I'm just going to be honest. I tried to get ahead of that. I tried. Don't apologize. I tried to steer you guys away. The thing about cycling is that the cyclists think they're unequal. If you're a true leftist,

you would understand that the cyclists are taking more than their fair share of the road and our resources. There is no ethical cycling under capitalism. Come on. Okay. This is a great movie. I like this movie a lot too. i like that that you and chris and

bobby also love it it might be actually the center point of the pod this year we maybe the movie that the four of us have the most you know killers of the flower moon aside have like the most vociferous i've been like this is great there actually should be more cinema like this like there feels something urgent and young about this movie that is exciting uh my number three is kind of related to this not tonally in the way that it is told i'm gonna just say this film will be a challenge for many people that are listening to the show and it's going to sound like a fake film when i describe it to you people just love this it's the end of the year god damndammit. We've all been working hard. This film is called Unrest. I'll tell you why I watched it. Two reasons. One,

it appeared in the top five of the film comment top 20 movies of the year. And I was like, what is this? I haven't heard of this. I don't know it. I think it played some festivals, but I missed it. Two, it's made by a Swiss filmmaker and set in Switzerland in the 19th century. The filmmaker is Cyril Schlauben. He's made one other film. I haven't seen it. I don't know any of the actors in this movie. This is the description of the film. A young watchmaker, Josephine, in 1877 Switzerland, gets involved with the rising anarchist movement as new technologies begin to transform money, time, and labor in a small town. First of all, Bob, you have to watch this movie.

This is very much in your kind of intellectual and emotional register. Great. Very oddly framed movie. Every shot is framed in a way that I've basically not seen in a movie. It's like a series of mediums or close-ups on objects, and that's it. So you see characters in the frame but they're at like a middle distance which movies never do unless they're establishing shots but it holds an establishing shot for like three minutes while people are talking so it feels kind of like it's

documentary it's like performed documentary but then also it's about like the the construction of watches and how a watch is this very complicated time piece the unrest is of course about the time in europe in the 19th century but also it's a it's a piece in a watch it's it's a it's like a little mechanical device that goes into a watch that allows it to set very unusual film with a lot to chew on if If you were interested in the collision of essentially like socialism and anarchism meeting as intellectual ideas, I know that this sounds really heady. It is really heady. I genuinely think, you know what it is?

It's new. There's nothing that I've seen that is like it. And so it's nice to have something new. That's also had a little pipeline. Are you aware that there was a major clock making plot line on this season of the Gilded Age? I am because you and Juliet and Chris Ryan and Mallory Rubin and Jeff Chow and my wife Eileen are all aggressively consuming. Like, literally mainlining The Gilded Age.

So I am not yet because I have basically been waiting until we are done recording all our episodes. Once my responsible art watching is done, then I am going to watch the layperson's version of Unrest, which is season two of the Gilded Age, which apparently also has to do with labor unions and one guy trying to get a patent for an alarm clock. Okay, that sounds good i won't be watching the page um and and some of the worst cgi that i've seen on television which is really saying something like things are getting fucking out of control there's no cgi in the film unrest which i think you can only rent on amazon ironically is not available on any other streaming service uh it's just like i know that's not a real house. Like, that is not a city block.

That just someone, you know, put that together on The Sims or whatever and then sold it to HBO. I don't think they use The Sims. I'm going to take a wild guess. Again, the elder millennial just pouring out of you already this morning. What's your number two? Passages. Yeah. Which you featured on your best

performances um that you put friends ragowski who is kind of like the the bad boyfriend the toxic boyfriend at the center of this very intimate very sexy uh very uh memorably messed up movie about like a character that we all knew once upon a time i guess if we're elder millennials i don't know maybe my gen z kids know not to behave this way um i hope so but also there's something really transfixed and and the movie just isolates what is so transfixing about the really terrible people in our lives. And how you just still kind of want to keep them around, even though they just get up to, they're impossible. So it also, you know, it's like filmed beautifully in a lot of

lovely French apartments featuring the Merci linen sheets. Do you know about Merci? No. Like a big breakthrough for Merci, which is a boutique in Paris. Bobby, did you go? To Merci? Yeah. I did not. No, I did not make it up.

I apologize. You know, it's kind of like, it's fine. It's okay. Internet famous. I did take up some of your other recommendations, though. I sent you photos from other recommendations. Listen, you did great. As I was saying this, I remembered that I sent you. I was like, you go to Merci because then there are a bunch of other cool boutiques around there.

You skewed from your leftist doctrine here with your consumer culture. Well, I would argue that they are relatively affordable, high-quality linen sheets in a variety of colors for everyone. As featured in the film passages on an indie budget. I believe Marx wrote about that. Affordable, elegant linens. We can have artful, nice things

on the leftist comedy. Yeah, sure. We can have this. They're well-made, they last for a long time, and they're available to everyone. This is why Czar Nicholas II needed to be killed.

You know, we need more affordable linens. You know? He was hoarding all of the linens. You know what? Nice sheets are like a real game changer,

just so you know. Leftist Amanda in 2024 will be my favorite character. There is no doubt about it. It is you drinking from a $9,000 teacup. Yeah, where is my teacup, guys? We've got one episode left. We might have to lose that one. Okay, all right, fair enough.

What about a less expensive teacup with a lid um moving on uh my number two is the kane mutiny court-martial we mentioned it very briefly on our lawyer movie draft with griffin and david from blank check the movie had just come out on paramount plus this is the final film from the great william friedkin who uh wrote this adaptation of the novel and play which has also been a film from the 1950s and from the 1980s. There's been a lot of versions of this movie. I really like this one. Really fierce, tight, very masculine, very kind of situated closely in the Iron Claw world, actually, in some ways about the frailty of masculinity and the lies that people tell each other to get through things. Also, just like a classic courtroom exchange, Jason Clarke in one of two roles as a ferocious, I guess he's a defense attorney in this film. He was a prosecutor in Oppenheimer.

Jake Lacey, Monica Raymond, and Lance Redeker in it. Just a really, really sharp, good, kind of, if I say made for TV movie, I don't mean that as a pejorative. It is a very solid final film for William Friedkin, one of my favorite directors. So thought if people have not seen that, it is still available on Paramount+, Kane Mutiny, Court Martial. Okay, number one.

My number one is for all of us, you know, and it is, it is Wes Anderson's Asteroid City. We loved it. We dedicated one episode to it. We've talked about it. It was not on anybody Asteroid City. We loved it. We dedicated a whole episode to it. We've talked about it. It was not on anybody's year-end list. Are we taking him for granted?

It was not on enough critics' year-end lists. Like, it just, it was not on any of my other lists. I almost put the Margot Robbie, Jason Schwartzman scene at the end on scenes of the year. But then that kind of crowds out all the other lovely moments in Asteroid City, which is just, we're taking Wes Anderson for granted and shame on all of us. Yeah, this film was featured in Variety's Worst Films of the Year list,

which is a troll act that we do not support. And that's just embarrassing. It's wildly dumb. This is a great movie. This is one of his best movies. It's just also not playing at the Oscars at all. You know, what are we doing?

Focus released it in June. You know, I guess that was like a no-brainer. Sure. But I did have it at number four. Oh, you did?

Oh, Bobby, forgive me for that erasure. It's a banger. Okay. It's a banger. It's a very good movie. Now you've seen Iron Claw. Is it still in your top five?

Unfortunately, I think that that would bump How to Blow Up a Pipeline, which is fifth. Wow. Wow. Sorry. Okay, who's abandoning the leftists now? Yeah, you've shifted to the crass consumerism of professional wrestling. The fake it's so real.

The unreality. Capitalism for capitalism's sake. My number one is 1001, which is another movie that I saw at a Sundance, the directorial debut of A.B. Rockwell, who developed her screenplay inside the Sundance Institute. She was a guest on the show, and the film was released in April, also a Focus Features release.

One of the best performances of the year that we didn't set on our episode from Tiana Taylor. A very recognizable vision of 1990s New York to me. It's about a single mother who effectively kidnaps her son at a foster care to raise him herself after, I think she's released from prison, if I recall correctly. And they kind of struggle through his adolescence together, living in New York.

And she kind of builds her life up and builds a life up around him. And then there's a kind of tragic twist to the film. Another very sad, very deep, very thoughtful movie. The thing that I really liked about it is that Rockwell showed something really interesting in the editing style of the film. I thought the way that she showed how time passed was an unusual and clever stroke. And also just, you know, a beautiful picture of Harlem at a very specific time and a soundtrack that is like very recognizable to me as well. A lot of like Wu-Tang and Biggie and Oz and that kind of stuff. And a person who like I hope gets a chance to make more movies because she's really talented.

Any honorable mentions for you? No. I accidentally deleted them from the document and now I don't remember what they are. I wrote down Dungeons and Dragons, colon, Honor Among Thieves. Okay. And Bradley Cooper's performance in that film. Sure.

Which I saw. I went to go see a movie last night with a friend and he turned to me earnestly at the end of the movie and he said, did you see Guy Ritchie's The Covenant? And I said, yeah. So you went to see that movie with someone other than me?

No, I saw a second film. Oh. I saw Anyone But You and then i saw silent night the new john woo movie oh i'm fucking committed man i'm about this life i love films that's not what i was asking it's not that has nothing to do with anything i am about this life okay uh what else equalizer 3 fucking awesome just rocked they went to italy you just shot some guys

that was great shot italians this time sure why not uh sick the horror movie which i mentioned did you see knock at the cabin no cabins what is this the leftist thing no it's like an anti lincoln thing like no log cabins no it's it's really just like, it's sort of not my ideal environment, you know? I don't know where I am on forests. You prefer high rises, gentrifying communities. Sure, or I like a vista, you know? Yeah. I like the ocean.

You want to live in a vista? You know, cabins, mountains, that's just not where I am. I admire the way that you've transformed your own insanity into like a like a like a cult it's impressive i'm just i'm just what is it like a cabin i don't know i it's like i don't really want to be in the woods it takes a long time to get in it takes a long time to get out the cabin is not about whether or not cabins are cool it's about the apocalypse um not where i would choose to spend the apocalypse i feel bad because uh andy greenwald texted me on friday night and he was like did you just did do you have a screener

for fallen leaves and i said no and he said okay and then three hours later just send me a photograph of a ticket of fall from fallen leaves he just went to go see fallen leaves because he loves aki kurasmaki and he was like I would love to talk about this movie like I have nowhere to talk about it he does host The Watch so he could talk

about it there but I was like I think maybe we'll do like an overlooked episode and I can invite you and then here we are we just finished the episode I'm not

I didn't invite him I still haven't seen it because I can't maybe when you see it the three of us can chat I would really really like to but it was only playing

in Santa Monica the last time that I looked, and that is just not doable for me in the current climate of me having a child. Right, because you don't want any gas emissions because you're a leftist. Is that the concern? Okay, got it.

I got to get that carbon monoxide out of here. Bob, you want to give a shout out to any underrated movies from the year? I mean, one of my favorite movies of the year, you guys didn't mention, Perfect Days, a Vivian Vendors movie. I know I talked about it briefly in performances. The Koji Yakusho performance is just really hard to pull off and not the type of thing that gets a ton of acclaim or really cuts through all the noise at the end of a movie year. But it's a really quiet movie about this guy who cleans toilets, but it ends up being sort of a reflection on like the internal self

and what it takes to move through life and make routines for yourselves and how we protect ourselves with those routines. And it has all of the classic Vim Vendors, golden hour shots, and all of the stillness and the emotional weight of a classic Vim Vendor's movie.

I don't know if it necessarily reaches the heights of some of his most acclaimed movies, but I just felt like it was such a treat to see that movie in the theater with a crowd that was really engaged with it. And also, I felt really seen by a guy who needed to buy two coffees to start his day, not just one coffee, because that's become me more and more over these years producing this pod yet another film that appreciates physical media

you listen to a lot of cassettes throughout the film big time huge physical media movie don't roll your eyes we're winning right now we are winning the war the physical media enthusiasts

against who? the evil in the world okay those who refuse to accept that art can be sustained and experienced over and over again. Sometimes you're just on your way to work and you just need a tune, you know? Yeah. You want to jam out to Steve Miller band in your car.

Nothing wrong with that. Pop in that cassette, right? Maybe you don't have internet connection. You know, maybe the Wi-Fi is down. Imagine if you guys had a printed out version of the outline when the Wi-fi went down earlier today well we used to do that there was a wonderful time when bob was producing us in person and he would print out questions that i would write down for filmmakers those days are long gone only one-sided too one-sided pages that was a very important part of it i don't remember that but that sounds good it was like your rider like

red m&ms only like one-sided printing of the questions. I just want one teacup with a lid on it. You know? And it's like, you've just been talking to me about, like, steel cage DVDs for, like, eight years. Steel cage. And steel cage death matches, too. You should be imprisoned. You should be sent.

You should be tried at the Hague and then sent to a jail at the bottom of Antarctica. You know what's not very leftist? All the plastic that they're using to make your little DVDs. So true. I can't argue there. So true. I can't argue there. Nevertheless, I have steelbooks.

Steelbooks are made of metal. Also, DVDs, they can be recycled. Boom. they can be recycled boom but you're not recycling them because you have to have every single recorded moment in your personal archive just for your own use here's another thing that's not very leftist ownership yes so sure but i it's a lending library preserving anyone who are you lending it to not me well i'm lending it to real friends. People who come over and they say, hey, I love you so much. And I really appreciate this archiving you're doing. I'm not allowed in your house to say that to you.

I show up and all the blinds are closed. When we sat down today, what did I hand you? Oh, yeah. A piece of paper with a QR code. Yeah. And what does that QR code get you? The magic of cinema. That's what I do for you.

So don't tell me that I don't share with my wonder for film. Because I do. Preserving and archiving the arts is kind of a leftist idea. Of course it is. Of course it is. Where are the strongest ideas in our culture emanating from? Sean is not starting a foundation. It's not for the greater good.

It's for him. No, you're wrong. And his little ADU. First of all, this project of this show is about lifting up the art form so that more people can experience it.

And I'm building a library and one day that library will be gifted to some special organization and they will look at all this plastic and say, thank God Sean did this work.

Thank God he put in the time, he spent the money, he thought, he conceived of this epic project. I will soon be understood. When you walk through the front doors of that library, you'll be greeted by the light from the lighthouse.

We'll finally fucking get it. We should go to David Shoemaker and talk about the Iron Claw. You ready to do that? I am. Okay, let's do that right now. David Shoemaker is back on the pod. David, how long has it been? It's been a long time. I don't even remember.

I do a lot of podcasts, you know, they blur together. I feel like it was Aquaman. Is that possible? Because we're on the eve of Aquaman 2 as we're recording this. Is that the last time you were here with me? It might have been. It might have been. Well, that's just a grave error on our part. Nevertheless, you're here for the perfect, literally the ur-David Shoemaker movie.

I can't imagine a more Shoemaker movie, and so I was very eager to hear your thoughts on this. We're talking about The Iron Claw, written and directed by Sean Durkin, which is about the Von Erich family, the Von Erich curse, a professional wrestling story, a new melodrama from A24. So David, before we share our opinions of the movie, I was hoping you could just help us understand who the Von Erichs are and why this family from Texas is worthy of a movie like this. It's funny, you know, I've been writing about wrestling and podcasting about wrestling, but writing wrestling for a long time and, you know, dating back to Grantland, the stories that I would tell, the stories that I would engage with, the sort of like real life

things that were the way that real life intersects with the pseudo reality of pro wrestling. The Von Eriks in a lot of ways are sort of like the Ur story, like the ancient manuscript of this, right? Because what makes them so interesting is everything that surrounds the things that happened in the ring. They're a family of pro wrestlers. The dad, Fritz Von Erich, real name Jack Atkinson, his name was, I mean, he initially played a Nazi or a, you know, Nazi sympathizing

Prussian. He did that in the Northeast, came back home to Texas, ended up continuing in the wrestling world, bringing all of his sons into the wrestling ring, keeping the Von Erich name, obviously, because that's what you do in wrestling, I guess. And sort of defining territorial wrestling in a lot of ways. Making, just being incredibly successful in Texas and outside of Texas. But of course, what people remember about the Von Eriks aren't necessarily championships or even, you know, the ESPN show. But it's the tragedy that surrounds it. It's that all but one of his five sons, well, six sons died tragically. And again, as a guy who got his start

writing a column called Dead Wrestler of the Week, I mean, this has always been a subject I'm focused on. And as someone who grew up in Texas and watched the Von Ericsson ESPN and went to the Sportatorium, I mean, this was, these guys were incredibly meaningful to me at all different parts of my life. And so the tragedy, the tragic side of pro wrestling is sort of baked into my fandom. Why do you think it took this long for this to become a movie? This is the most movie idea ever. Well, it's, I mean, like you said,

we'll get into what we think of the movie later. It's a lot of material, right? I mean, this could have been a, I mean, this could have literally been a six-episode TV show where someone died at the end of every episode, right? I mean, it could have been much bigger. I think, you know, it's a lot to handle. I think there's two big things. One, you know, how do you lot to handle. I think there's two big things.

One, you know, how do you make a wrestling movie kind of in general? I talked to Sean Durkin. He said that he was looking more at boxing films than wrestling films because there's not a great oeuvre of wrestling movies. And the audience is really difficult, right? I mean, even I deal with this all the time when I'm talking about, like, you know, ad rates on wrestling broadcasts and stuff. I mean, you have a, you have a diehard pro wrestling audience that wants one thing, and then you have a mainstream audience that presumably

wants something totally different. Right. So that's, that's, that makes it really hard. And then, you know, you have to think about what, what film you really want to make, you know, I mean, is it like like is it going to be an instructional movie on pro wrestling is it going to is it is it going to teach us about the world or is it going to hone in on the tragedy you know i mean i don't think the opportunity was probably there to make anything resembling a good movie even 10 years ago about pro wrestling um but even if there were, I mean, you're right. On paper, this is a very straightforwardly

makeable movie. But then when you actually start writing it out and you realize the entire second half of the movie is just a series of tragic events, it's sort of mind-boggling. So Amanda, how many hours collected do you think you've consumed professional wrestling in your life? I would say prior to knowing you and David Shoemaker

and everyone else here at The Ringer, probably like an hour of highlights. I knew who Hulk Hogan was. He's still alive. Sure. I feel like his career has taken a different turn. Yeah, sure. I knew who Hulk Hogan was. He's still alive. Sure. I feel like his career has taken a different turn. Yeah, sure.

Absolutely. And the ways that I'm aware of him in the news media was also slightly different than in the 80s and 90s when I was growing up. And it was like a pop cultural phenomenon. So something like you kind of knew and you saw a highlight reel or a commercial commercial maybe but it's not like I had ever really engaged in it and then after that probably cumulative hour um it's it's really just the time spent with you yelling various pro wrestling names and moves at me and then um I saw the film Andre the Giant which which Shoemaker was in. You were wonderful. And so does that count? That counts, sure.

I saw the Florence Pugh film Fighting With My Family or For My Family. With My Family. Yeah, Fighting With My Family. Not a bad movie. Sure. So, you know, that's another two hours. Okay, so we're looking at like five hours of content. You know, and when i went to mexico city

i went to lucha libre wow and that was awesome that was really fun yeah those are real bona fides well sure but that was like you know i i i don't speak a lot of spanish so it was more experiential than like a learning you know i i don't know that i you weren't following the plot line exactly of the of the events that evening. Exactly. Well, then it's perfect for you both to be here on this show to talk about this movie because I'm certainly not the expert that David is, but I was a very passionate wrestling fan as a young person

and to this day, I'm interested. And the Von Erics are interesting because you're from Texas. I'm from New York, David. And I barely knew who they were when I was a kid. I knew Kerry because Kerry had a stretch um in the WWF as the Texas Tornado but aside from that which is which is rendered in the film um but aside from that I just didn't know who they were and regional wrestling as an east coaster in the 1980s and early 1990s was not even foreign to me it was like I didn't I didn't think it existed I didn't know anything about the history of the sport of the entertainment.

Like I didn't know about any of those things. I just knew I would like to watch Hulk Hogan or Bret the Hitman Hart or whomever every week. So, you know, as I got older and frankly, when I started reading you, David,

I started to learn a lot more about this stuff, but this is a story that like, it feels in many ways like the, I don't know if it's the most significant, but maybe the most representative of the paradox of professional wrestling. And so it is this epic tragedy. And on the one hand, I can see why a lot of people will look at the material and say no. But on the other hand, it has made for, in my opinion, like an amazingly powerful movie. I was out with a friend last night who's a producer and he was like, I listened to your pod, your top five pod.

And I was like, where the fuck is the Iron Claw? Like this is such a Sean movie. This is such a great way to end the movie year. I'm so surprised. And the truth is that when we recorded that episode, I hadn't yet seen this movie. But I wouldn't say it would make my top five, but I really, really, really responded to it. And I've mentioned like I've been

a little bit up and down with Sean Durkin as a filmmaker and I felt like this was an incredible use of his talents as a dramatic filmmaker Shoemaker as as the expert and as somebody who you know saw these guys the real life Von Eriks as a kid performing like what what did you think of the movie um oh I thought it was really good and i kind of wanted you to answer the question first so i i wouldn't have to just jump into the or jump into the ring solo but i mean this is a story that that i've that i've thought about a million times and and you know how to tell the story i think is the big question um how to cast the story i think is one of big question. Um, how to cast the story, I think is one of the other reasons why a movie like this is really hard to

make. Right. We can talk about that later, but how to tell the story is, is a real, I mean, it's really difficult. And,

and Durkin obviously chose, uh, just to kind of go in a straight line. Right. Um, which may be the only way to really do it. I really enjoyed the movie every second of it. It did feel like a boxing movie.

But having heard him say that about the boxing movies, the thing that really stuck with me is that like with boxing movies, the climax is always in the ring, right? And this is a pro wrestling movie and the climax or the high points of the movie are never in the ring. Which that's part of what makes it really difficult i think to to tell a really difficult story to tell and a difficult movie to process i think the longer i've sat with it the more i just had ideas of like what if it was like like you know picking

my editor's pin back up like what if it what if it went in a different order you know what if it just felt different what if it was more i mean i'm not a jerk and completist i'm a big fan of marcy marcy martha marcy may marley uh i don't even know you got it yeah okay but um but that movie had such a sort of ephemeral untethered quality to it and and i wondered if this movie might have benefited from some of that sort of just ambiguity. But that's the opposite of what happened. So it's really impossible to process. I like the movie. I like the movie a lot. It's funny that you say that because you didn't know anything about the story, right? When you sat down?

I knew absolutely nothing. I mean, I had seen some of the early paparazzi photos of Zac Efron in the haircut and um but I I think because I knew it was and I knew it was sad you know because I knew all the all the men who got invited to the first screening started crying um so I was prepared for that but otherwise I purposely I like I didn't even watch the trailer. So I really genuinely knew nothing. So I ask that because. Wait, can I ask a question? Yeah. Did you know it was a real, a true story?

Well, I went to the premiere here in L.A. And Kevin Von Erich was introduced before the movie. He was there. And so, you know, respectfully, that turned out to be a bit of a spoiler for me. Yeah. Kind of bummer that they did that. Well, but you don't know it's a spoiler about until an hour through.

And then I was like, oh, oh, oh. So I knew that much. And then, you know, some of the speeches before introducing the movie were like, I didn't know that much about the Von Erich story until something. So I knew that. And I guess also Sean had been like,

this is a true story you know so that lives rent free in my brain very bad impression of my wonderful voice um i asked that because i think that actually this movie has a lot in common with martha marcy may marlene which is that both movies about halfway through you start asking yourself like oh no this isn't what i think it is is it like oh man is she in a cult yeah and is she like being groomed and raped and like oh man i really hope that's not oh fuck and this is the same thing where like the second death happens and you're like it's oh it's before no it's the exact scene when Zac Efron goes to talk to Jeremy Allen White in the kitchen after he has the belt. And he's like, I'm going to go for a motorcycle ride.

And it all clicked into place. And sorry, can we do like full spoiler alert in case you're like me? I think we'll give it one at the top of this. Yeah. Okay. Anyway, so that is the point where I was just like oh no they're all gonna die like and it like all came to which frankly is a testament to the the movie making and also maybe me being an idiot but uh it's it is a very powerful sudden dreadful realization that that the film has definitely set up but still you don't want to give into it until

right then. It's very effective. It's a very sad film. You mentioned the actors, David. We haven't, we've barely said their names. So Zac Efron, Jeremy Allen White, Harris Dickinson portray three of the Von Eriks. The fourth is portrayed by Stanley Simons. He plays Mike. He's great. He's so good. He's wonderful in this movie, yeah. And he also has a very complicated arc.

There's another Von Eric. There are actually two other Von Eric brothers who one of them died as a young boy and the other is not portrayed in the film. And his story is also quite tragic. And so that shows like there was almost not even enough room to portray the

totality. They kind of subsumed that, or the two youngest brothers sort of became one brother. Yes. Just for the sake of, of streamlining the story. Um, and the,

the, the eldest, I guess, brother, uh, Jackie died as a young child. Um, when he was electrocuted and fell into a puddle of water and drowned.

I mean, it was, there was, it's just incredibly tragic situation. Um, and there's nothing you can really do with that. Although I guess, given the fact that the movie did open with their,

with Fritz in his wrestling career, they could have played around with that a little bit, but that the death of the first son is the real specter that just hangs over the entire thing and really from a narrative perspective um you know it informs everything that happens after it it gives you it it tells you what's about to happen you know i mean that's this is tragedy number one yeah i just feel like it would have been almost too much to bear to try to capture that in this movie the same reason that we don't see chris von eric is like it just it because by too much to bear to try to capture that in this movie. The same reason that we don't see Chris Von Erich.

Because by the time you get to the end of this movie, it's just such a sledgehammer of tragic events over and over again. So to imagine, anyhow. They introduce it as part of this historic curse that the Zac Efron character, Kevin, like believes in and introduces pretty early on. And so it is looming over it in a different way. But like if I had had to watch a five-year-old get electrocuted, like in the first 15 minutes of this movie, I just would have walked out, you know?

Yeah. Yeah. I think that was wise. I think casting a movie like this as you said David is really hard professional wrestlers are otherworldly human specimens and

most actors are not that the Von Erichs were very tall and strapping and powerful the actors in this movie are also very strapping

but not so tall please do not disrespect Harris Dickinson he's tall in that way he is pretty tall and he looks

I think the closest actually to the brother that he is portraying David Von Erich yeah sure but David since you were watching them

in real time like what did you make of the casting and what did you make of the performances in the movie well I mean it's hard

I mean I watched World Class Wrestling on ESPN I feel like they were playing it in real time and also in reruns. So time was sort of a flat circle. Kerry Von Erich, like you mentioned, WWF was its own sort of island, but I was a huge, huge fan of his there.

So, you know, it all overlaps in a weird way. I think as a, you know, guy who's been like fantasy casting this movie since he was 12 years old, I had a little bit of... I think I just constantly came back to wondering if they could have just swapped Jeremy Allen White and Zac Efron. Interesting. If for no other reason than because Zac Efron is twice as big, as muscular as ever in the movie,

and Cary Von Erich was the He-Man figure of the family um I mean Efron was incredible and I think that this is not what you asked but I think that one of my hang-ups the movie the more I live with it is that it was so much Kevin's story I get that he's the emotional rock and I get that he's the survivor but in real time as he's the survivor. But in real time, as a kid watching this stuff, Kevin Von Erich was like Von Erich number two, three or four, depending on what era you're watching. And to me, you know, like as far as my fandom went. Yeah. Yeah. I was going to ask you about that because I mean, Kerry was was Kerry was the guy, at least when when when we were kids.

Right. Yeah. I mean, when we were kids, we loved muscles, you know? I mean, like when Kerry Von Erich and the Ultimate Warrior and the Road Warriors teamed up at the Survivor Series, it was my happiest moment as a wrestling fan. It was just like all of the veins you could fit on one TV screen, you know? But yeah, I mean, I think that this is a more accurate portrayal than it would have been if you just make Kerry the hero or whatever.

But, you know, that's one of the choices this movie has to make. Do you deal with one character's arc from, you know, Olympic success to top of the wrestling world to his own death? Or do you focus on the person watching all of this tragedy happen? And, yeah, I mean, I thought all of the actors I thought were really incredible. The scene that you mentioned, Amanda, where Zach Efron's character talks about his older brother who died as a young child is just an incredible acting performance by Efron. I mean, he was so good. There is so much for as big and muscular as as he is there's so much happening on his face

throughout the movie you know there's just there's so much real acting work getting done i don't think i mean i think the pound for pound chat champion in terms of just like his face is interesting in the world is probably jeremy allen white right now right and that's and that's why i mean that's another reason why i was just like i would like to stare at him processing more than just being you know being the the the jock brother well zach efron is undoubtedly more famous than jeremy allen white but in the last 12 months jeremy allen white is more famous and i wonder if this movie were made one year later would they have even entertained the idea of swapping the roles because i think when you look at jeremy allen what you think of him is like actually more kind of an internal anguished kevin von eric think when you look at Jeremy Allen, what you think of him is like actually more kind of an internal,

anguished Kevin Von Erich figure. And you think of Zac Efron and you think of him as like a little bit of a wild man and a little bit of like, you know, a charisma machine like Carrie was. And so you're right. There is like, it feels off. And yet I would not trade the Zac Efron performance for the world. Like I said on a recent episode, like this is one of my favorite performances of the year.

It's like a proof of concept for a guy who like I've always watched him and like he should get better material. Like I wish somebody would just take it, put him in a great movie. And it's very exciting. It is distracting how enormous he is. I mean, he is like an epic Rodin sculpture.

Like he is not a human. Well, I asked Bobby who saw it last night to really pay attention to the bulking and to the muscles and perhaps any enhancements that might've, like the veins were so pronounced that I was like, are those makeuped on? Or is that just real?

Bobby. Bob is shirtless right now, potting. Yeah, exactly. No, I don't think that they were makeup or CGI. I think that they probably just gave him, like he probably was lifting weights right up before the gate opened on the camera. Right, right, right.

And he probably had like nitric oxide supplements to widen the veins and more blood flow to make it look more ridiculous. But this is like a common thing in bodybuilding. Is that what people do? Yeah, yeah. We talked to, we interviewed both both jeremy allen white and zach efron um on the masked man show this week and uh i guess that podcast is already up so check it out

but i asked him about getting into shape and i meant it in a very general way it's just like oh crap i got this part now i gotta start eating five chickens a day or like you know what i was trying to just try to just get in their heads a little bit zach efron answered with a lot of specificity there were some terms i wasn't familiar with so yeah and i i do think he was just from a practical just trying to just get in their heads a little bit. Zac Efron answered with a lot of specificity. There were some terms I wasn't familiar with. So yeah, and I do think he was, just from a practical perspective, was attached to this movie for much longer than anybody else.

And I think he said that Durkin sent him the script during quarantine. So my guess is that he just had, you know, like two years of, I'm going to look like a professional wrestler and not much else to do. Right. Is it also true that they were each responsible for their own physical training? It sounded like it, yeah.

They didn't go to Iron Clock camp. They each, and then they all showed up and were comparing the muscles? I don't know, but that passes the smell test. I mean, they did have a wrestler, Chavo Guerrero, who's a wrestler that most people of my age will remember is out in L.A. working the family tradition of teaching people to look like wrestlers in movies, and he trained them all. But I think they spent a very minimal amount of time with him, too. I mean, they just kind of showed up and made the movie.

Did you think the wrestling stuff was credible in the movie? This is a big challenge in movies. Yes, yes. I mean, if you go back and watch the old world class stuff it's not it i mean it there's not some incredibly high degree of difficulty you know i mean they were fritz was taking the sons and putting them in the ring you know and having them teach each other the way you like you know have your have your sons teach each other like mow the lawn you know i mean it's it's a it was um i thought the entering stuff was really great and it was shot just beautifully

I mean really that was just an incredible incredible film work even some of the the other actors you know the one that

the guys playing the villains are out or whatever I mean it was it just all looked just so plausible to me

we haven't mentioned Holt McCallany and Maura Tierney who play the the patriarch and matriarch of't mentioned Holt McCallany and Maura Tierney who play the patriarch and matriarch of the family. Holt McCallany, longtime

Sean Fantasy all-star, one of my favorite character actors. You can see him in many of David Fincher projects. This is actually one of the first kind of big,

significant parts he's had like this. I mentioned to you guys before we started recording, I didn't realize that in many ways he's kind of the second or third lead of the movie

and not at all a supporting character. And Maura Tierney, as is so often the case with a story like this I mentioned to you guys before we started recording I didn't realize that in many ways he's kind of the second or third lead of the movie um and not at all a supporting character and more tyranny as is so often the case with a story like this especially a story set in this world at this time it's kind of like the emotional fulcrum of the movie and a lot of the sadness and um angst and weight kind of falls on her shoulders as a mother who keeps having to go to the funerals of her own children in such tragic terms um I thought both of them were fantastic. Like it's unusual for a movie like this set in such an outsized world to not have anyone overdoing it. You know what I mean?

Like it's a very easy world of overperformance. And I was really impressed by the tone that he holds in all the performances throughout the movie. Well, I was going to ask you both because I I, not knowing anything, I went to this movie and I was like, oh, so this is a bad dad movie. This is a, you know, a stage dad who pushed everyone. And towards the end of the movie, there's like a pretty direct confrontation on the part of Zac Efron's character.

Like, to that effect, that's not like an insightful... He literalizes it yeah but is that how you understood the story in real life or is there is that you know some of the interpretation that's being brought i mean in your book the squared circle like you write at length about the the von eric's like was the is the psychology of the family like widely understood i don't think it's ever i mean kevin von eric still you know talks he's done some press for this movie and has given interviews there's a great um texas monthly piece i believe uh from that was told from his point of view um but i don't think that there's

a lot i think there's a lot that we'll never know you know obviously the real dynamics the family and to what degree fritz was kind of a tyrant and to what degree he was just sort of simple. You know, I mean, I don't mean that in a negative way. Although when you talk about the acting performances, Mara Tierney's character is the only one that really works in subtext. Right. I mean, she's the only one where it's like she says a thing that she doesn't mean, you know. Yeah. And and her performance is incredibly powerful because of that. The Fritz von Ehren character is just says exactly what he wants and expects everybody just to like fall in line, which they do for the most part. You know, there's he doesn't, you know, physically hurt his children in this movie. I guess there's been some intimation of that.

But, you know, I think it's more of just a measure of the time, you know? But it's more of just, I'm going to tell you what to do, and then just completely clear out throughout the entire movie, right? It's just like, you disagree? Well, you boys settle this yourselves. You know, you figure out the way through it, which is a very particular form of, I don't know if that's child abuse or just, you know, old fashioned child rearing, but it's, it's, it's pretty, it's pretty evocative. Does that resemble your parenting style these days, David? Yes. Yeah, it's, it is a bad dad movie.

It's in the, it's in the mode of like the Great Santini, a story like that about a domineering person who has deeply scarred his, his offspring. Yeah. Well, the thing that I really liked to this movie, number one, because it's just like it's a movie, you know, and I knowing nothing about it was just like, oh, I too cannot believe it took this long for something that is just so pitched for the screen and like in a very tragic way. But it also helped me understand

why you guys are so into wrestling a little bit um and and i don't i'm not i'm not gonna say it's like a good wrestling movie because i like have no reference but um and i and i still have some questions about how wrestling works i like i have to be honest. But the emotional stuff within it compared, like, paired with the physicality, I was kind of like, oh, this is a little bit like boy ballet movies and, like, also boy, not quite like reality TV, but to the word you shun, melodrama. I was like, oh, I get it. It's about performance and emotions and parents. It's stories. It's telling a story. It's just stories.

And I was like, oh, I see. I get what they're doing here. So the movie at least, you know, and I do think kind of like the family psychodrama was a part of that. You know, it's just like any other stage mom movie, but it's stage dad. There's a crucial scene in the movie

that I think for fans of wrestling will seem somewhat rote but i think for anyone that is like you is essential which is the first kind of date between lily james's character and zach efron's character where she's sort of you know very interested in kevin and really kind of putting herself forward to kind of be with him and so she's very inquisitive about what wrestling is and what it means to him. And very sweet scene. Also like one of those scenes where you're like in the beginning, you're like, oh man, things are going to go so fucking bad in this movie.

But he has the opportunity to kind of explain what wrestling is when she asks him about it being fake, which is a kind of verboten word in the world of professional wrestling because he's like, you know, when I broke my ribs or when I fell down and got bruised or when I had ankle surgery, like there's nothing fake about that. And you literally will hear

professional wrestlers say that. To this day, they will talk about that kind of thing in interviews. And so it like, it's almost a way of explaining the art in both physical and emotional terms

to audiences that might not understand it. Yeah. And it was very effective. And the thing he says about it's like, so when I'm really understand it. Yeah, and it was very effective. And the thing he says about it's like, so when I'm really good at my job, I like get a promotion just like everybody else. And that's how the titles work.

And I was like, oh, I understand that. I still have some questions about like ultimately how it's decided, you know, because that was a very useful kind of one line summary. But then there's a lot of stuff in the movie about like, oh, your brother's finally going to have his chance at the belt. Well, I'll let David explain

how some of that stuff works. Okay, well, setting aside the Von Eriks for one second and the weird, like, you know, internal competition in the family. Right. At this point in time, WWF existed as its own thing, but the NWA for decades

had been this national governing body of pro wrestling, and there were a bunch of different territories. Like, Fritz NWA for decades had been this national governing body of pro wrestling. And there were a bunch of different territories. Like Fritz von Erich had Dallas, but it goes much bigger than that. And there was a Boston territory, a New York territory. Was there an Atlanta territory? Well. Became WCW, right?

WCW, I mean, that was the home of WCW. There was Georgia, there was a Georgia championship wrestling. And there is Florida. There is North Carolina. And, you know, all over the place. Like every big metropolitan area had a territory that went a couple of states. The other big one was the AWA in Minnesota. But that, you know, went down to Chicago, depending, you know, at various times. But the NWA sort of home office, which there was a board.

There were multiple people deciding, but they mentioned Sam Mushnick, who had been, who Fritz had worked for prior to the kind of present tense of this movie starting, was the main dude. And he and the sort of major power players kind of get to decide who's champion.

And that's, and that's for a long time was Harley Race, who worked directly in Phil Mushnick's territory, but then later obviously became Ric Flair. It's sort of the biggest state. They sort of pinpoint who's the biggest star. And that guy now has to sort of leave his territory and tour around the world, making other people's stars look good or look competitive.

And then they decide who the next champion is going to be if there's somebody better. So they do. They sort of identify the biggest star and probably more importantly, the biggest star who they can work with. Right? So that's a weird subtext to this whole thing, too. At various times, the wrestlers literally had to put down a cash deposit to take possession of the belt so they wouldn't just go rogue with it. Okay.

But you also have, in every territory, it's like you can make somebody your star, then they can just go take a bigger check from somebody else right so you have to find various ways to protect yourself against this which is often either giving the wrestler an ownership stake or making your kids the stars because they don't go they won't go anywhere right um and that's what you see a lot in this now in terms of just how the sons got their various you know were kind of ranked internally i think that I think that there's an early scene in the film where Fritz literally says who his favorite son is and then how the rest of them go on. It's a breakfast, yeah. That just sort of, I think that sort of tells you all you need to know.

I mean, yes, when Carrie got his shot over Kevin against Ric Flair in the movie, yeah, I mean, Carrie had become a more electric star that was getting more reactions from the crowd. I mean, Carrie had become a more electric star that was getting more reactions from the crowd. I mean, that's just a sort of fact and that's how those things happen. But it's a programming decision, effectively.

Yeah. Yeah. But so, just to be clear, I'm not trying to denigrate. Like, once they're in the ring, like, the outcome has been decided? Yes. Okay, and it's been choreographed, essentially, like a ballet.

I think you see a very good version of that in this movie. Yeah, where they're talking before. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Is it when David is being introduced, right? And so there's kind of like, there's a walkthrough of the performance, which is, that is effectively how it works, right? More of just like a, they bullet pointed, basically. We're going to do this, we're going to do this, we're going to do this.

But it's like, we're talking about, they say six or eight things, and the match is going to be 20 minutes long, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So they're kind of, I mean, it's performance, I get it. Most of it's done on the fly. And Ric Flair, you know, has been on the record about this a lot. But like, you know, he came into town presumably like the day before. He like recorded a video that they mailed or like sent in a, you know, somebody like wrote it over on a horse-drawn carriage that they put on TV and then he just shows up and then he and whoever, whichever Von Ehrich he's in the ring with have to sort of figure it out on the fly. Okay. So there's a lot

of, there's a lot of improv. I wanted to ask you about Ric Flair. Now, are you familiar with Ric Flair? Yeah, you talk about him. I mean, he's- And so when he showed up in the movie, I was like, oh, Ric Flair, I've heard of him. Right. So he is, of course, one of the most famous and successful wrestlers of all time. He's also more or less been a meme for the last 10 years. Like his energy and his promo style, that image we see of him in this film talking as a promo. He is the master of it. He is like the, is he the greatest of all time, David? I don't know.

The Rock. In terms of promos? Yeah. I mean, he's like the is he the greatest of all time david i don't know the rock in terms of promos yeah i mean he's he's he's up there um i uh i didn't love the guy they chose for rick flair for whatever reason and maybe it's because he is unmatchable unimpressionable but i was just it took me out a skinny neck but once he took the robe off the body looked kind of right yeah i mean here's the thing i've said this i think on my podcast, but bad Ric Flair wigs are just undefeated in, like, movies and television. There isn't, I don't know how so many fake Ric Flairs have been out there and no one

has ever put on a wig that looked like real hair. You know, it's just like, it's like they're at the last minute, they're all rushing to Party City and finding an Andy Warhol wig or whatever, you know? And, and, uh, but you know, I think that no matter what the Ric Flair is such a particular look, he's like bird, like Eagle faced and he has a bot, the body type of a man who lost 150 pounds at some point in his career, but still looks physically imposing and is just a very unique thing. But the most important thing is just the explosive charisma. And that, I mean, if you could cast that,

I don't think you could afford the actor, right? I mean, it's just, it's really difficult. It's just a very slight thing. Can we talk about charisma for a second? Because you guys have just not been talking about Harris Dickinson a lot. And that was very powerful. Is it a tall white man you're interested in?

How surprising. Wow. But he does play the Christmas. He's really good. And he is the guy who is doing all of the promo. Is that what it's called? Yeah. For the family.

And he's like very good at that. It's a great moment when he grabs the mic in that first match. And you're like, oh, he's the talker. But, you know, for the first three minutes when he's at the dinner table and or at the breakfast table i guess i should say in that scene that david was talking about and it's just kind of asleep i was like what harris dickinson is british and i know that and everybody else knows that and like sir what are we doing here and then he totally pulls it off yeah he's very good there's also an incredible scene

um at the wedding when it becomes clear that he's sick. And he's in a van. He shares a scene in the bathroom stall with Zac Efron that is, again, kind of to your point, David. It's like, this is heavyweight movie acting. You know, like, I really, really respond to this level of excellent drama. And, again, like, that for me was the moment when I was like, oh, they're just going to show us all the bad stuff. And then they all do a dance at the wedding together, which I was like, that was when I was really like,

oh, this is just like, this is for boys, what I, you know, liked. It was great. I was delighted. I think the word you used was ballet, and I think that's right. It is a kind of masculine ballet. Just a terrific movie.

Anything else jump out to you, David, that you think really worked that you wanted to cite? I have a question for you. Why do you think that, this is a real spoiler? I have a question for you. Why do you think that, this is a real spoiler. Okay. I can ask it really vaguely, but why do you think that last scene with Carrie

happened on a dock by the lake and not in a wrestling ring? Oh. Let's just put a giant red flag around it because we have to talk about it because it's an important scene in the movie. If you do not want this film spoiled for you at all.

You've already made a mistake. Yeah. You've had a lot spoiled for you. Because you've made it this far. You're referring to the afterlife sequence. Yeah. Which was a bold choice, just full stop.

Yeah. But a 99 out of 100 times, this scene would not have worked for me. And I thought he pulled this off. I did as well. You know, I was like wrapped up in like the heightened emotional state of it all. And also, the way that Zac Efron is playing his character is necessarily very different from all the other brothers but you know there is the charisma the energy by definition like kind of depletes as the movie goes on and so then to suddenly like be

reunited back with all of them is such like an emotional surge you're just like you know like that actually just fills the vacuum of the movie so So as I was watching that scene, I, I could feel myself like tightening up and saying like, Oh my God, is he really doing like a heaven thing? And like, is this really like they're all being reunited in heaven together? And then,

but there's a kind of warmth in the, and it's written very carefully and very quietly. And I think the answer to your question, David is because the youngest brother, Jack is in the scene. And Jack was not a wrestler. And Jack's experience in life was on that plot of land in Texas. And that that was the experience that they all had together.

And that final reveal of Jack being there is very, very powerful. And then Jeremy Allen White kneeling down to him. I mean, that is an incredible moment of acting. I'm getting chills just now. This is great stuff. Me too. I i mean you know and so i think that like rather than these three guys who you know knew each other as performers it's actually these four men boys who knew each other together on this farm in texas basically and this is on this ranch and i thought it was a great choice i i can't believe it worked um i was i was uh texting with another friend who had seen the movie

and we were both like, this should be awful. Like on the page, I can't believe that someone was like, good idea, but it worked. No, you're right. I mean, I think it was the right choice too. I mean, from the very beginning, you know, at that date scene that we keep coming back to. And by the way, knowing what's going to happen in the movie,

not being surprised by the tragedy, Lily James in that scene, I felt so bad for her in that scene just like you said amanda you're just like oh you're just gonna you didn't even you're choosing you're opting into this but you don't know what you're opting into you're dudes just saying like hey there's a there is a curse surrounding my family and she's just like oh honey let me give you a hug um uh but yeah from that very big from from that scene he talks about what he wants to do is just hang out with his brothers, right? Yeah. Like, oh, I'd be a world champion, you know, whatever. But like, he wants to hang out with his brothers. And that's sort of what we got there at the end.

I just keep coming back to what I said before, which is like the climax of this movie is not in the ring. And I don't know if there's, there's no way to get it in the ring. And I think that that's, as a wrestling fan, I don't know. That's there's no way to get it in the ring and I think that that's as a wrestling fan I don't know what I what I that's what I just keep circling in my head I just I just I just keep wondering that I mean the high point of the Von Erich family was I guess was was Kerry Von Erich beating Ric Flair you know and then the way they filmed it in the movie it was just like and then that night he just got on his motorcycle. And I mean, it was, I mean, it's, there's no time for joy. Bob, you saw, you liked the movie. I love the movie. Yeah. It's a sad boy classic. I came out of it. Well, first of all, people were like sobbing, like for minutes after the film ended, which I do not count myself amongst them,

but I understand why it's very like the way that it pulls you in and the way that it almost like empathizes and humanizes this idea of masculinity, which is such a clouded topic in our culture right now and such a thing that everybody feels like they already have a full understanding of movies that are masculine or post-masculine or unpacking the idea of masculinity and to put

that on screen and then also get buy-in from everybody to be sobbing at the end when he's sitting there with his sons on his lap oh my lord saying right well i mean that's saying yeah will be your brother's dad like oh my god that's that can be that can go so wrong i just got to feel so oh my god i can feel so emotionally manipulative. And in this movie, it doesn't because it did the legwork. And all of the performances are effectively portraying that brooding masculinity and self-loathing masculinity. Especially Efron, who is just phenomenal throughout the movie. Aside from everything that he did to put on seemingly 25 pounds of muscle, which I will not speculate about.

He put on 25 pounds of muscle on his jaw. Like he's just so big. He's so big. The first shot of him in the movie when he's sleeping and he's like folded over himself. That's awesome. And his pecs are just like fighting each other in his sleep. From that moment on, I was like, this is my fucking movie dog. I can't believe I did my top five already.

I screwed up. I should have waited. Boys aren't made. When the second brother emerges in Haynes Briefs, it's like you're like, this is a real choice. It's not just one getting out of bed.

This is quite a life for Maura Tierney's character to be surrounded by all of these bros. So many amazing shots of just thighs and torso. No head. I was like, yeah.

Yeah, we did it. The one brother having to use the bathroom and the other one jerking off in the shower. I was like yeah yeah we did it the one brother having to use the bathroom and the other one's jerking off in the shower i was like that is that's that's some real shit uh that's really it's terrifying but but there's an there's another side to it too which they didn't go into i was kind of surprised they didn't do it but kevin von eric has said that during their heyday in dallas they used to you know they would emerge to the crowd and he said they would walk to the ring with a hand over their mouth

and a hand over their crotch because they were going to get physically, they were going to get sexually molested no matter if they didn't on the way to the ring. I mean, it's just everybody in the crowd wants a piece of the Von Eriks. Can I also say two unbelievable musical sequences that are like some of the highest highs

in movies that I've seen this year and just got me like just jacked up ready to go to war and then immediately thereafter several just crushing brutal crushing hammer blows of scenes to bring you right back down but the two the the time of the season sequence where they're walking into the first fight right before he meets lily james's character after that and then the uh obviously the tom Sawyer montage. That's as good as it gets in movie montage making.

The timing of it. The fact that it is Rush. The Rush posters on the youngest brother's wall behind him. Dudes rock and dudes are also sad. Got me right in my core. It's a very good period piece.

And it's an amazing way to round out the movie year. I'm just delighted that the Iron Claw exists. I hope people go see go see this movie i don't know it feels kind of commercial to me i think i the obviously premiere crowd is a premiere but it was a pretty fascinating mix of uh you know snooty hollywood people a lot of like wrestlers like i mean that you know that was amazing. People watching IRL. And then young people who were trying to take photos of Elizabeth Olsen, who was there supporting Sean Durkin because of Martha Marcy Maynard Lean. And I was like, oh, this is a broader audience than you normally see at one of these shindigs.

Yeah, I see it in movie industry terms as a little bit of a bridge to the new era of a24 that is coming where they're kind of expanding the scope of the stories that they tell and you know we we haven't even really talked about civil war the trailer for the new alex garland movie which is also like kind of a step up budget wise but i think in the next couple years we're going to see a lot more movies that are like this that are pitched at a broader audience than the very cool 31 year old living in Williamsburg. Um, yeah.

And this is like a movie you could recommend to your parents. It's a movie you could recommend to a 14 year old. Like it's a very, it's very sad. It's very tragic, but it's very, um, relatable, very human,

very accessible. Uh, David, uh, thank you so much. You're on the press box, the mass man show. You're making art for the ringer.

We've been working together for over 10 years what else do you want to pitch about yourself? I just want to say this was a really good year in performance review by you so thank you so much

for doing this and that's tomorrow David okay I thought I could sneak that one by alright well thank you for having me

on the show this has been a lot of fun the movie is so good. It's just so good. And I will just say, definitely the greatest wrestling movie that's ever been made. No matter what problems you have with it. I don't think, I mean, the bar is relatively low, although the wrestler with Mickey Rourke was great. But I just, I'm so happy it exists.

You heard it from the expert himself. Thanks, David. Let's go to my conversation with Sean Durkin. Sean Durkin is here. He's directed one of the best movies of 2023 the Iron Claw Sean I was wondering do you remember the first time you saw professional wrestling I can't remember the first time I just I was really young and I just used to I just remember like my first memories of it being I mean I was probably six seven um living in England I just remember Saturday mornings it being on vaguely.

But then more firm memories came in the WrestleMania, some early WrestleManias, things like that. Was pro wrestling a connection to North America for you? Is it big in England? That's a good question. It may have have been actually uh i think you're the first person to suggest that but maybe i mean you know i i had this childhood where i was i was living in england i had been born in canada we had lived in new york for like six months before moving to england my dad was english but raised in canada but always wanted to live in America. It was this, so it was like, my identity was, was quite unclear where I came from. Um, and so, but my dad talked a lot about America and always wanted to be in New York. And so, so I think maybe there's something like quite American I was trying to tap into. That's, that's really interesting.

Um, I don't, how the hell did you become aware of the von eric family because like you know wrestling at this time so territorial so scattered so hard to follow you know we're similar in age and i had no idea who they were until carrie hit wwf so how did you come upon them so i um so i was you know i was watching what i could on tv i was you know getting all the toys i could collect pro wrestling illustrated, even like backordering pro wrestling illustrated. I was just consuming. And so I was like reading about territories,

you know, that were either no longer active, you know, I'd get old magazines and, and then old VHS tapes. And, and I found a VHS tape of parade of champions. Um,

and it must've been three been three years after it happened, four years after it happened, and then kind of put it together and then also had some sort of Freebirds, Von Erich match on a Best of NWA tape. But my mother would drive around Surrey looking for bookshops, whatever VHS tapes they had in bookshops, and found some obscure stuff, I guess. And I just loved them. I loved the way the Sportatorium looked.

I loved those matches. They were just much more raw. They just had this energy that nothing else had. And so I just love them. And then Kerry, I think it was solidified by Kerry being in the WWF because I got to see him live a few times. So the world obviously is kind of confusing and arcane for anyone who has not experienced it before. So I was wondering how you thought about when you were writing the line between making sure you are thoughtful and emotional about the

family drama but also making the viewer understand the odd complexities of this world in texas at this time yeah it was it was tough yeah it's um it the whole thing was a really delicate balance and it you know i wrote for seven years and and a lot of that time was taking this quite clear huge epic story of this family which you know in some ways you could have made a decision to tell make a movie about any one of them um and there was so much there and it was so rich that that the that the the writing process became about chipping away to find the core. And so it would be, you know, cutting something, focusing on a time period and all these things.

And within that sort of also working to get the details right. Like I'm not from Texas. I've not spent a ton of time there, but you know, if you make a film about wrestling, you make a film about Texas, they've got to be right. Both of those things are true. And so just really spent the time to get the texture and to, you know, research everything we could speak to people that we could. I don't know. Even the more like textural side about living there, what it felt like, you know, and and yeah, just just like worked at that balance.

And I'm a very instinctual filmmaker. I kind of am constantly examining, like I said, sort of little by little to a place where it just instinctually feels right, I guess. And I don't always have a great answer for that, but it's just kind of

what it is, is feeling it out. I really appreciate how you are steadfast in holding the tone of this movie. And tragedies are very, very rare in American movies. There's not, and there is obviously something very hopeful about the film by the time you get to the end, but this is a very tragic movie. Was it hard to convince people to get this made? Well, yeah, it's not an easy movie to get made. And I think wrestling has sort of grown again alongside this process. So in 2015,

when I started making it, it seemed even crazier, but you know, over the last eight years, wrestling sort of rising to this peak age again, you know, and then also, you know,

things like dark side of the ring and, you know, things like that coming out around it. Like, I think it helped give context for when I did go out into the world with it. So it was difficult, but I think I was always really clear that I, as much as it is about the tragedy of this family, the so-called curse of this family. It is also really about the celebration of this time in wrestling and these brothers and this brotherhood and, and Kevin's survival story, you know,

Kevin's Kevin's survival and the way he speaks, uh, the way he is completely unafraid to speak emotionally and look at his emotions and look at the hard times look at the good times not judge them he feels uh he's like this wise old man but his like emotional palette of the way he speaks is very modern and so it felt to me like he was this guiding light of like okay well yes there's a lot of tragedy, but also we're going to go in and celebrate this rock and roll fame of these brothers. And also it's really about Kevin finding a way to break the molds of masculinity

that had essentially crushed his entire family. And that felt really positive and exciting and modern, I guess. I'm such a big fan of Holt and it's so cool to see him have such a deep part like this. You know, I know you've talked a lot about the casting across the board, but in particular, like Fritz is a,

he's a weird character in the history of wrestling. How did you think about writing him and why Holt? He was, Holt was probably the first actor I concretely saw and was like, okay, that's Fritz. You know, I think technically Zach came on first and we sort of, you know, we're building the movie around Zach. But Holt was the one, you know, I saw him, I loved Mindhunter.

And I think, you know, I was writing at the time when it first came out. I saw him and sort of immediately just had this like intensity, vulnerability, you know, just so believable. He's just so believable to the period and the stature. And I knew that Fritz was going to be a divisive character. And I knew that he had to be right. He was another one of these things that just had to be absolutely perfect because he's the fabric of the movie. It's his world, and it becomes the boy's world,

but it's the wrestling world that he's the boss. He's the actual boss in the wrestling federation and also in the family. And the world that he came from and the kind of masculinity that he carries and passes on to his boys just has to be there. And Holt just got it just immensely. And he's just such an incredible actor. And he is all in in this way that just he becomes the rock of the film. He becomes the base of everything. Like he is just so, you know,

intense and dependable and all these things. And he's really, he's just such a gift to directors. You mentioned that Zach came on first. And, you know, obviously Zach is the movie star of the bunch, but everybody that I've talked to who's seen it has come out and said like, holy shit, Zach Efron. And that, bunch, but everybody that I've talked to who's seen it has come out and said, like, holy shit, Zach Efron. And that everybody thought he was talented, and he's obviously been famous

for a very long time, but never been given an opportunity to do something like this. Obviously, he also physically is otherworldly, the way that he looks in the movie, and that that is a special effect onto itself. What were your initial conversations with Zach like about how to do this with Kevin? I've been a fan of Zach's. I love all kinds of movies, right? So I watch

everything and I enjoy everything. And so over the years, I've just been such a fan of his and loved his comedy work in particular and always felt like, okay, I think there's something really interesting happening behind his eyes here. And he's got such an incredible presence. I would love to put him in one of my worlds, put him in my atmosphere and see what happens. That's a really intriguing prospect for me. So when we started to talk about who Kevin could be, um, you know, he was an immediate, uh, early idea. And, you know, so we reached out and I met with him because the thing that, that makes Kevin, I think particularly difficult to cast and, and, and even to portray is that he's, he's quite quiet, you know, he's got this purity to him.

So he's incredible in the ring. His athleticism is unparalleled. He's a brilliant wrestler, but he doesn't succeed the same way because he doesn't have the charisma. And, but it's not a lack of charisma. The lack of charisma is almost like out of being sort of too kind.

And so and so, so I, I, I needed, I knew that, that I needed the person to have this innate sweetness because I don't think when, when a role is that quiet,

I don't know how much you can perform sweetness as an actor, honestly, like true, true sweetness. I like, and, and, but especially when it's this quiet,

when it just has to sit there below the surface and come across in certain moments. And I just could tell from meeting him the first time that he just has that. He's really great. You've talked a lot about the decision to not include

Chris in the story. I don't want you to have to repeat yourself there. But I was wondering if there were other things that were part of this story that you don't want you to have to repeat yourself there, but I was wondering if there were other things that were part of this story that you couldn't include or wanted to include but couldn't find space for because it is such an epic scope, the story of the Von Erich family.

Yeah, I mean, there's so much. I mean, like I said, when I started, I laid out this timeline of facts. And it's really hard to find facts in the wrestling world because it's so full of myth, gossip, you know, things like that. But we really built a really reliable timeline and, you know, starting with Fritz and his childhood, you know, and there's episodes of Fritz's childhood that are just, you know just really give you an understanding of where he came from. There's stuff, there's things I played with, like, do we portray Jackie's, the oldest brother who died young, do we portray that in the prologue?

All of the boys got married you know like uh david david actually got married and had a child and his daughter died when she was a year old um carrie has a family um who have actually become quite close with now over the last couple years and they're not portrayed and so there were all of these things that, you know, just had to make, it's difficult to say they don't fit because I'm so connected to them on a human level. But I had to really separate as a screenwriter and as a filmmaker and say, okay, at the end of the day, you have to separate and look at them as characters on the page. And look at the story and what repeats and what the real focus is. And since the focus was Kevin's survival, everything had to feed that. And so there just, there just wasn't,

there's no, there's no way to tell this, this story and its completion in a film or in any sort of visual format. I don't think, cause it's so huge. So it was just making those decisions to, to serve the story, to get to that sort of,

you know, emotional truth about, about the family and the camaraderie and the wrestling business at the time and that you know themes of masculinity that i'm interested in which i think you know are are sort of within all of those stories that didn't make it but but you know the energy of it the idea is that the energy of it would be represented here i did think about that watching the movie that there's a part of me that wanted to see and know more about fritz's life because obviously what we give to our children what men give to their sons

is this you know very this looming idea in our culture for 100 years 500 years and you probably could just do a an infinite series of what fritz's father gave to him of what fritz's father's father gave to his father you know what i mean? Presumably that this is part of this long chain of resentment, sadness, frustration, anger, rage, all these things going on. How do you contain all that into a smaller picture? I'm sure you've thought about maybe expanding it. Yeah. I mean mean there was definitely a time you know when we were a couple in years into writing the script and we couldn't i couldn't quite crack how this was ever going to be a movie and we said okay do we look at it as a series

but then i think the way television's headed it's like actually no because i don't think tv is a place where you can look at sort of darker more nuanced things now like that the the the energy for that seems to have gone a little bit so actually film it was it was the right initial idea and continued to be and um yeah it's just it's just one of those things of the process of just like it's so hard to lose all these stories that you love and and and also visualize there's so much stuff. Like when I read about something from child, for the child,

I'm like, Oh, I can visualize, visualize that immediately. Um, but yeah, there's just, you know,

just not room for everything. So they're tough choices. Was there something really challenging to recreate from this period? Um, yeah, obviously the wrestling is is challenging but never really worried if we could do it it was just a lot of hard work to do it yeah um and in particular like even finding the sportatorium which we thought would be easy because that building is as simple as it comes you know it's

the sort of giant tin shed but uh getting the right finding the right tech like structure with the right texture finding the place big enough to to put in you know like what i think like 2 000 seats or whatever it was that we built um getting the right shape getting that sort of you know oval shape it was really it. Um, and we didn't, we didn't find the sportatorium until like almost three weeks before we started shooting. So we were deep in crap. Yeah. And so, and, and, and my designer, James Price, um, is, who's incredible. Just, he just knew what he needed and just kept looking. And, finally found it. He called me down. He had found a furniture showroom.

And it was not a wide open space. He could see from the building it was the right shape. But when you went into it, it was all a bunch of offices. And then about 20 fake living rooms all filled with furniture. But there was no ceiling on it. So you could look up and you could see the roof of the building the ceiling of the building and so he could tell from that he's like if we can get all this furniture out here and knock out all these walls then we can build it um so it was it was much more complicated than we ever anticipated it would be

and uh we just pulled it off they were still building in our first shoot day in there i you know i wasn't in te in Texas at that time, but everybody I know, including David Shoemaker, who I know you talked to, is like, they got it. They nailed it, which is just very challenging for something as unique as this story. Yeah, and it means everything. And again, it's that thing. It's like, you have to get it right.

And, you know, Chavo Guerrero was around, and he has so much knowledge of that. But also, we cast a referee named James Beard, who actually used to be a WCCW referee in the years of the company. And so he was there for some of it. And just having those eyes, I just had a few people around who just had the eyes to be like yes you're on the right track you mentioned um tv and i i went back and looked at um the tv work that you've done uh in

the last 10 years or so which is really really good like south cliff and dead ringers are so interesting and so unique but it seems like you have like have you made a are you shifting back to i you know i'm very happy that you'd be shifting back to film but like are you is that an official thing is it just that the industry has changed and that's what's happening no i i really look for me it's about great writing great writing comes my way i don't care what the format is um and so it's not often that i'm moved by a script i get sent to the point where i actually want to make it, but Southcliff and Dead Ringers were those things. They were just immediate. They were just weren't like anything else out there. And also, I also look for things that I don't think I could write either, you know, where it's like, I don't think I could write, I couldn't write that. So

it's exciting for me to be able to make it knowing that it's different from what I would generate myself. And so I'm always open. I'm always looking and reading. But it's quite rare where I see something and leap at it. Do you want all the films to originate with you? Or are you open to doing someone else's script there? I would work. Yeah.

Actually, there was a couple of movies I tried to make that other people wrote. And they just fell through for various reasons but i i'm completely open to that looking back at uh everything you've done basically everything has an element of psychological horror what why why why is that why do you keep coming back and back and back to those kinds of stories, do you think? I mean, if I boil it down to a film sense, I would say that The Shining and Rosemary's Baby are the most influential films to me. I think some of that was... I don't know. When I was was a kid i really liked being scared and like yeah i was living in england and like my mom and i would go for for walks on hampstead heath and like in the fog and she would tell me ghost stories you know and it was like and and then there was a time where you know we were like living out in the country there. And, you know, it was when, you know, at an age where your imagination starts to run wild a little bit and living in a slightly isolated place.

I think, I don't know, I think it was just when it's like feeling those fears and things. And it was when my, you know, I like my storytelling brain started to kick in and just thinking about movies for the first time. And, um, so I think it's just where it lies. And I think, I also think that film is the only art form that can capture fear in, in, in, and I think fear is such a, obviously such a universal emotion, but watching it back on film, it's just a really unique thing that no other art form can quite elicit. And I think I just really respond to that.

I also just love being inside family dynamics. I mean, I'm endlessly interested in family dynamics and questioning family values and why we believe what we believe and questioning where we come from. And I think there's a lot of psychological horror in that. When I think I really, when you're at a point and you have a sort of realization about maybe a trend that's running your family or something like that, it feels feels it can feel like a psychological horror reveal and uh i love just bringing genre to to drama i just think it really heightens it and it's just

it's just an interest of mine that i love i'm literally right next to me is the giant lee unkrich the shining book i don't know have you seen this yet this like thousand dollar oh no book about the make none i haven't seen it in person it's it's uh it's stacked i received it as a gift and i don't think i knew what i was getting myself into it's so fucking big but it's really cool i don't have room for that i honestly don't but um but i look forward to tearing through it um you know you really had like the art the classical independent filmmaker arc like widely celebrated debut you won a prize at sundance you know a lot of anticipation for your next film you did some tv you made a movie the pandemic like hit right as your second feature was rolling out

into the world and now you've got a third film majorly acclaimed i'm sure your life doesn't feel like the kind of cliche that i would plot on a show like this but it is it does feel very standard in a way like is it is it what you expected it would be when you thought about making a filmmaker? I don't know. Honestly, I try not to think too much about future and results. I think there's so much of our industry that's results-based,

whether it's if you're making an independent film, it's selling that film, or getting to festivals, or if it's box office, or if it's just completing a movie. But we spend so much time in the process of all those things. And so I just constantly try to step back to the process of like, hey, I'm writing. Right now I'm writing. I'm solely focused on writing. Right now I'm'm writing. I'm solely focused on writing or I'm right now I'm doing press.

I'm solely focused on doing press and just trying to be in those moments of the process and try to just focus on those without getting too macro. I think, um, you know, the other, the other thing is that I just, I had a bunch of films fall apart between Southcliffe and The Nest.

And maybe that is also the sort of typical arc, right? It does happen, yeah. It was like, got really close to making a big biopic, got really close to making a studio film, like, with a big title, like, and then ended up doing Going Back to the Nest, which is my most personal film. But I was writing it all at the same time. I was writing The Nest, I was writing The Iron Claw, working on a script about Janis Joplin, never happened, you know, doing all these things simultaneously. so i guess it never feels quite as clear as like an arc because it's all happening at once and all in different stages at once

um i'm i we're far enough into the interview that i need to ask you about um this extraordinary scene in the movie the iron claw which is i i feel like you must have said it i'm i know everybody i've talked to who has seen it has said it, but a scene that really just should not work, which is a kind of representation of the afterlife where the brothers who have passed kind of meet each other. And as it started to happen while I was watching it, I thought, oh, I don't know about this. And then by the end of it, I was like,

this is maybe the best movie scene of the year. It's unbelievable how moving and how well you executed on it so just pulverizing like can you just talk about the decision to write that and include that in a film that is otherwise so grounded to the point of like intensity and something that is so very

different from the rest of the film yeah thank you yeah it shouldn't have worked, should it? It was bold. And it was definitely in there early. It was definitely one of the early things that stayed for me. And I just, you know, we talked about it a lot.

It's like, is this really working? And someone might read the script and be like, that doesn't work. Yeah, I was like, yeah, it does. Yeah, it does. It's going to work. It's going, is this really working? And someone might read the script and be like, that doesn't work. Yeah. I was like, yeah, it does. Yeah, it does. It's going to work. It's going to work. I think it started from the fact that Kerry's suicide note was real. That's his actual suicide note.

And so I can't remember exactly, but I feel like it might have just started from wanting to visualize that. Not necessarily for him, but in some ways maybe for him but also from the very beginning like we talked about my interest in sort of blending a bit of genre to natural drama

is interesting and what I looked at here was I was looking at a Greek tragedy and there's so much myth in wrestling and there's very much this you know man against God's battle that happens in the ring and in the wrestling world and and that Fritz embodies as well in some ways you know Fritz embodies it with his sort of fight against the powers that be that you know and and and so i wanted that mythical thing and the curse was a big draw as well like obviously that you know the curse it's not about a mythical curse but there is an atmosphere to a curse that i thought allowed for the film to have

um yeah just to step out of naturalism entirely but I it really came from an emotional place whether you know whether it started from sort of honoring Carrie's note to just wanting to for Kevin reunite his brothers and visualize them in a sort of purest state. I wanted to see them together and I wanted to see them tender. I think the only direction I gave them was that they would sort of touch each other in ways they wouldn't in real life. Because they're quite affectionate. Describing them as like illiterate puppies at times. They're not afraid to touch each other, but it's always like a little bit rough and tumble and it's a back, back pat and it's, you know, a little rough. And then you get in there and it's, it's very tender and touching each other's faces and it's, it's gentle. And, and I really wanted that sort of sense of, um,

pure, loving, gentle connection. That's the opposite of the sort of masculine mold that they're supposed to operate in. And to try and visualize something very pure, I guess. It's really beautiful. We end every episode of the show by asking filmmakers what's the last great thing they've seen.

I know you're doing a lot of press. Have you seen anything? What have I seen yes um i've gotten to this point in my life where i write down everything i've seen because i can't remember time time to join letterboxd sean that's where you gotta go um it can be honestly anything i i've had I've had filmmakers say like buildings, art installations. Oh, okay. I got to go to MoMA on Saturday, which was incredible because I haven't been in a long time. My wife came with me to New York without kids, which was fun.

I did miss them terribly, though. Yeah, sure. And there was a Richard Serra piece there. I don't know what it's called. It's like four iron blocks, and they're stacked around the room, and it just took my breath away we stood in there for i don't know almost 30 minutes and just like soaked it up and it was it made me very emotional

and i have no idea why but if just like touching it and just being close to it and just there's something about the magnitude of it and thinking about i don't know i eventually started thinking about how this even get in here but actually before that i wasn't thinking about anything it was just close to it and then uh experiencing it and it was really really moving and i don't i don't know why i uh i've had that experience with various sarah sculptures in moma yeah it is like you almost don't want to leave so you can keep trying to figure out its power you know i actually compared another movie to seeing a richard sarah sculpture on the show this year so that's very

weird that um yeah when i was thinking of the zone of interest i was like it's kind of like looking at a sarah sculpture but, it's an incredible recommendation. Hey, Sean, this was really nice. And your film is absolutely wonderful. I really hope a billion people see it because I think it's so great. Thank you. I really appreciate it. And thanks for being on the show.

You have me on. Okay, we're at the end of the year, Amanda. I'm going to do a quick tease. Early in January, there's going to be a little special big picture event of some kind. That's all I'm going to say. I literally don't know anything else about this.

So am I even invited? You're invited. Okay. Will you want to come? That's an open question. Who knows? I'm not sure how leftist this event will be. Also, thanks to-

I'll be there. So it'll be leftist enough. That's right. There'll be representation at a minimum. I want to thank Sean Durkin on this episode. Just imagining me setting up a little, like a Lucy from Peanuts like cardboard outside just being like the politics of this movie do not align with the Gen Z leftist movement

sir or madam do you have a minute for leftism it was nice that David Shoemaker came I'm glad that we we got to spend some time with him I want to thank Bobby

for his work on on this show both on this episode and this year Bobby it's been a very expansive year for the podcast I want to thank

the listeners of this show because if they don't listen to the show we don't have a show that's true I want to thank you for always doing the work thank you

for definitely being just super generous and nice to me all the time and letting my light shine because I feel really taken care of when I'm with you

on pods and I want to thank films I think without films we have nothing yeah it was a good year for them it really was

films you did good not to end the year on a bad note but are you at all trepidatious about 2024 yeah of course yeah in every way how so well i mean there's a lot in the world that's going to be happening that i don't want to spend my time on which is why i'm setting up my leftist booth outside whatever event you're hosting outside your house how exciting exciting. Down with plastic DVDs. Just incredibly rude material. Well, thank you for listening to the show and we'll see you very early in 2024. you