The Big Picture - The 'Joker' Aftermath and Martin Scorsese's Marvel Movie Mishegas | The Oscars Show

Episode Date: October 7, 2019

Todd Phillips's 'Joker' is one of the year's biggest hits and most controversial films. Chris Ryan joins Sean and Amanda to talk about the film's success and whether all the hubbub was worth it (1:07). Then they take a close look at Joaquin Phoenix's Oscar chances, the Best Actor race, and Martin Scorsese's comments about Marvel movies (32:20). Then, Sean is joined by The Ringer's Shea Serrano to talk about his new book, 'Movies (and Other Things)' (55:08). Host: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Guests: Chris Ryan and Shea Serrano Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you. along the way. We'll be having conversations with peers, idols, and maybe a rando or two. The Road Taken with CT and Baio, part of the Ringer Podcast Network on all podcast platforms. I'm Sean Fennessey. I'm Amanda Dobbins. And this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about how to be a clown to amuse you.

We're joined by Chris Ryan to talk about the Oscars and comic book movies and perhaps where the Twain shall meet. Later in the show, I'll have a conversation with the ringer Shea Serrano, author of the new book, Movies and Other Things, the first installment in our ringer books imprint. Please stick around for that. But now we go to The Big Picture's big picture. This is a problem in the big picture. You know what I mean? Amanda and Chris, we sit here in the aftermath of The Joker. The Joker has

arrived. It is perhaps the most controversial movie of the year. It is an extraordinary hit. I know that you two saw it together. We did. On a Friday afternoon, arm in arm. Can we share the story? Please do. Can you set the scene? Oh, you want me to do it?

You do it. You tell the story. I went with Chris Ryan because Chris Ryan is like my emotional support person. And I was like, I want to be in the best possible situation that I can be in to see Joker. So we went on a Friday afternoon, 3 p.m. The Arclight. And I would say it was a giant theater with maybe 20 people in it. Ringer pal Micah Peters was also there with a couple of friends.

Then me and Chris, five other people, and a woman with a dog in a baby carriage. Sitting in the front row. It was a jumbo-sized baby carriage. It was for large babies and small dogs. The dog had its own popcorn, we think. Yeah. It was definitely eating popcorn.

Micah said he saw them at the concession stand and she was feeding the dog popcorn. And Chris just yelled, like, what is happening? What is happening? There's a dog eating popcorn for about 10 minutes before the movie started. Because we got there early because, you know, we wanted to be ready. So that's the scene in which we saw the Joker. And I would say after the movie, if I had to review Joker, if you were ever going to bring a support animal to a movie,

it would probably be this one. And I think the movie is sort of a dog in a baby carriage, you know? It is kind of a, it looks like one thing, but it's actually another thing. Or maybe I'm overstating things. Obviously, I think that the conversation around this movie is sort of eclipsed the concept of fraught. You know, we're all the way back around on the other side now where I think this actually turned out to just be a comic book movie. And we went through really all of the hype cycle that you can imagine. You know, Amanda, you're usually very wise about what's going to happen. Thank you.

In the outlay of a movie release. And I tend to think you have great foresight. Did you see specifically, like, let's just walk through the stages and I want to know kind of what you think about how we got to this place. So the movie premiered at the Venice Film Festival. It won the Golden Lion, which is the top prize. It then premiered at Toronto in its Canadian premiere, North American premiere. And I would say it was pretty roundly criticized. And the backlash started with American critics. And then sight unseen, there was a backlash to the backlash from fans of the movie anticipating the film.

And then- They can't be fans of the movie if they haven't seen it. I agree with you. Fans of, well, we'll discuss that. From fans. From fans. Without an attachment to any product. From living humans.

And then the movie opened amidst this controversy. And I would say what seemed to be a sincere panic about what the movie might incite. And then there was no violent incident, thankfully, during any of the screenings of the film. And the film went on to break an October record and become one of the most successful movies in recent memory. It made $93.5 million in an idle weekend in October, which is pretty extraordinary. So how much of this did you anticipate? Because you and I have been making jokes about Joker for going on six months now. A lot of it, though it's always surprising the levels that people and Twitter and the internet can reach. I mean, I was surprised by how quickly we got to all of the places and some places I couldn't have even dreamed of.

I got to tell you, Martin Scorsese in the middle of this with with his thoughts about comic book movies i didn't anticipate it and we'll talk more about that i think really from the trailer which is the one thing that you skipped um the reception to the trailer and the trailer itself which was like this is a serious gritty comic book movie a pretty good trailer honestly i thought it was very good it kind of signaled okay there is this is going to be an event and then as soon as it won the golden lion you're just like oh oh boy the festivals now are both they're kind of oscar deciders and also here's what you're going to be arguing about for the next six months it's amazing how quickly that happens so i think we knew that it would be a point of discussion and i think there was something in the basic premise,

which is like a superhero movie that's trying to be an arthouse gritty movie that's trying to be superhero plus. There's just so much argument and hurt feelings and controversy baked into that, that we saw a lot of this coming. Again, I could never have predicted all of it. The height of it. Chris, did you think it was worth it? Did you think that it was worthy of all of this? At least imagined anxiety. I think the three of us probably are spending a little bit too much time on the internet. No, I mean, I think

that this is a testament to how broken this whole thing is now. We had like 800 people screaming at each other, 200 people had seen it, and now it's been out and it's a hit and nobody wants to talk about it anymore. That's right. What the fuck are we doing? Like somehow this whole thing happened where it was just like Tony Scott won the Pulitzer for a movie that no one had seen yet, you know? And then when you go see it, you're like, you almost feel like it's weird that the discourse is now coming before the actual experience. And I think that this is the testament to that. You've been, you know, all three of us have actually talked about this in

our role as editors over the years, where we have been witnessing the conversation about things happening in publications far ahead of people engaging with the thing. And one of the most interesting things to me about Joker is, I think you're right, Amanda, the movie kicked off this huge anticipation with a very good trailer, as many movies do. We talk about these trailers on this show all the time. And there was this expectation that the movie was going to be meaningful somehow. And obviously, Todd Phillips, the director and the co-writer of the film, has talked about Trojan horsing meaning into a comic book movie. But upon reflection, and I should say, I kind of enjoyed the movie. I don't really think that the movie has a lot to say about anything, which means it is kind of just like any other

comic book movie. It's an entertainment. And even if its messages are muddled, that just doesn't mean it has like any conclusive evidence of deep and long lasting political philosophical thought in our country. It's just a movie as so many of these things are. And I don't know, I don't quite know how to untangle the nine months of lead up to the three days of movie going we have. And then everybody just stops caring. And we start thinking about the next movie coming out next week. Well, in a lot of ways, Joker is important because it crystallizes this moment in movie going,

which is there is the movie that exists on the internet and in conversation. And then there's the actual movie that is like a, a piece of art or commerce filmed by a director with actors and a script sometimes and like costumes and stuff yes and you know and and those two entities in 2019 are often completely divorced and it's not just for the joker though for joker even though this it's kind of this is the like the highest the climax of this phenomenon but anticipation and memeing and arguing about a trailer and projecting expectations onto a cultural product well before it's released is like kind of how we consume culture now. Yeah, this is like the shitty version of Star is Born.

Like it's Star is Born, but it makes you feel a lot worse when you've seen it. And Star is Born felt pretty bad at the end of Star is Born. It's true. So a very elegant segue by you, Chris. This was the one-year anniversary of the release of A Star is Born, a movie that Amanda and I breathlessly celebrated for, well, 12 months. And it's also the one-year anniversary of Venom. And I was speaking with someone who works in the movie business last week, and they were like, circle this date.

This weekend is the new weekend. And we have a new weekend every year where we realize that you should put a really big and important movie out on this weekend. I'm not even really sure what the movie in 2020 is going to be. But now everybody who works in Hollywood knows if you open a movie in the first week of October, for some reason, you can capture the imagination of a lot of people. It didn't quite have the same, I don't know, four quadrant boom that both The Star is Born and Venom did. I think a lot of people probably went to go see Joker and then realized that it kind of isn't an event movie. You know, the movie had a B plus cinema score, which is pretty good, but I don't know a single person who walked out who was just like, I feel really, really good about having gone to the movies. And I, like, I wonder, do you think that the movie will have a significant drop off next week? Do you think it will stay in the culture and the consciousness as the months go by? I mean, I just think there's an element to this of there is a built-in comic book fan base now. years and years and who do see any movie with any of this mythology in it as something that they

go see that's part of their viewing experience. And I don't actually begrudge anyone that, but that's a pretty large fan base. So some of this success, which was also some of the success of Venom, is just, oh, I know what that is. Okay, I'll go see it. So I don't think it'll totally drop off because I think people are used to that's just such an established fan base at this point I don't think

it'll be like massive in week two because it's really hard to get I don't know how many people are repeat seeing this

how about that that's a good way of putting it because obviously a movie like Endgame succeeds at a mega level because you have guys who are

and it is often guys, going to see the movie 10, 12, 18, 34 times. I also think for a movie like this with word of mouth, and I'm not trying to sound like an edgelord,

it should have been more provocative because a lot of my friends and family were like, oh, should I go see Joker? Is it really that big of a deal? And I was like, eh, I mean, like, not really. You know what I mean? It wasn't even like I was like, should I go see Joker? Is it really that big of a deal? And I was like, eh, I mean, like, not really.

You know what I mean? Like, it wasn't even like I was like, you should go see it because you really are going to want to, we're going to be talking about this for six months. So you should go see it. And I want to hear what you have to say about it. I'm like, you know, honestly, it's like, read the blogs. And that ultimately is like kind of what I'm getting at where it's like, if you analyze something so much before it comes out, while I understand the market forces that demand that, you are kind of running the risk of sort of running out of things to say about a movie before it's even in theaters. I think there's also not a ton to say about this movie.

I mean, I do think you can read the blogs and you can watch the memes, which fantastic memes, great memes, A plus stuff. I've been doing the Joker dance all weekend. I really feel like I'm honing in on a specific like choreography, but also of the moment movement that is very special. And I'll always have that. Yeah. So, but what's so interesting is that this movie that was the fixation of the internet well before everyone saw it ultimately kind of ends up just being a perfect internet product and not really as much of like a sitting in the theaters there's character development and pacing like movie experience yeah it's true we're're going to talk about the Oscar ramifications of the movie, but there are theoretically a lot of significant concepts that are broached in the movie.

If you're generous to the film, I think you can say that it's a movie that wants to explore mental illness, that wants to explore race, that wants to explore loneliness, that wants to explore comedy. I don't know if it really lands anywhere intellectually on any of those things. In fact, I find the more I think about it, the more confusing I find it. And I will say, I think that there is a strong case to be made, that that is actually a good thing. And that a movie that is just a provocation and is ultimately about the kind of meaninglessness of aspiring to meaning is a good idea for a movie. And there are a lot of good movies that are about that.

In fact, many of David Fincher's movies are about that, at arriving at a non-conclusion and feeling frustrated by that. I don't know if Todd Phillips has thought that far down the line about things. Obviously, he has come under significant fire for pretty much every quote he's given in this press cycle. And I think he's actually, to his credit, he did a nice job of essentially creating atmosphere, of amping production design, of improving cinematography, of carefully crafting the look and feel of his movie. The idea is though, I don't know if they really stand up to any interrogation. And that's part of why I think what you guys are saying makes so much sense, which is like this movie just won't last. And the reason that a movie like King of Comedy lasts is because you can return to it and

feel like, oh, I'm understanding something new about fandom, about aspiration, about fame. And I just, this is like a, it's like a Joker Halloween costume it's not a Joker costume I think it might last but not in the way that any of us like think about lasting movies but it just it is has a lot of really powerful images and the way that we disseminate information images right now in the internet like I was making meme jokes but i think that is like quote lasting in 2019 and all you really have to do is create a scene or two that people can repurpose or relate to um or find a way to work into their own life as as i have and sean has definitely been memeing all weekend um yeah adam gaze the fucking joker of my life head coach of the new york jets stop

clowning me adam gaze so in a way in 2019 that's all you have to do to like last as as it's a good point as a complete movie as a movie about like ideas um i well it might last in other ways if not in ways that we would want i agree with you you that I kind of think it doesn't really get there. I thought wants to explore was like an interesting turn of phrase that you use. And I'm not really sure that it actually, I think that might be the issue is that it doesn't totally,

maybe it wants to, but doesn't know how to explore. It's more of like a vision board of various headlines and associations that don't really come together from my point of view. I was like very confused by it. I think that's what we walked out. Yeah, I think that it was especially the first two thirds are a very claustrophobic, messy, indulgent work. And then the last hour is pretty electrifying and pretty haunting. Mm-hmm.

And I weirdly think that if it's going to last, it's going to be because Joker 2 would be pretty good. Like, I actually think that they, at the very end of the movie, land on something and then are out of movie. Yeah, and that's the funny thing about this conversation. I completely agree with what you're saying.

I similarly, I was really kind of locked into the last 30 minutes. And candidly, the last 30 minutes is when it sort of turns into more of a comic book movie. And I think maybe just the visual and emotional language of comic book movies is a little bit easier to understand in Todd Phillips's hands

than the psychological examination of a sick person. And I don't know if he's yet fully capable of tangling with that. But weirdly, even though he's kind of criticized what has become of our movie-going life with comic book movies, he might be able to make a really good one. And go ahead, Chris. Well, no, I was just going to say that he obviously has these... He longs to make stuff like Taxi Driver, like King of Comedy, and even touch some of the classic Joaquin performances like The Master, or even Walk Hard.

Walk Hard? Walk the Line? Walk the Line. That's what I knew it. You're the second person to make that mistake recently. Walk the Line. But, you know, all those movies have foils for Joaquin.

And this was a weird... I can't believe I'm saying this because before this movie, I was the biggest proponent for like, let's Trojan horse it, man. Let's take these... They're only going to make these movies, these IP movies. Take them and then make the movie you want to make and just do the lip service to the IP.

And this movie was missing Batman. This movie was missing a foil. Well, Chris, it actually wasn't. The highlight of my moviegoing experience was when Joaquin Phoenix is at the Wayne Estate gate and there was like a very small person who says, I'm Bruce.

And then Chris leans over to me and very theatrically stage whispers, that's Batman. Which is really all the summary that you need of. But yeah, it's a character. The problem is that it's a character study without a real definition of who the character is. And a lot of that seems to be because Joker in the comic book mind has always been oppositional, as you said. And when you try to pin him down without opposition, suddenly opposition is the whole world and also possibly a mental illness that it doesn't really have its arms around the movie, I mean. And it kind of just doesn't add up. But once they're done with the character development

or lack thereof and just get to a place where Joker is like a villain and is the nihilistic character that we all know, at least somewhat, then you're like, oh, okay, cool.

Yeah, although, boy, it's kind of complicated. I talked about this a bit with Jason Concepcion last week. I think that there are some versions of the story in which it's evident that he is the villain and he needs his counterpart. But then there's a whole other version of the story in which the Joker is portrayed as an anti-fascist, anti-corporate revolutionary. And there's like not insignificant evidence that Todd Phillips is trying to draw our attention to that, which is there's not a lot of history with the Joker character being that kind of a figure.

You know, there is a lot of evidence of him hating Bruce Wayne and wanting to kill Batman. Yeah. But there's not a lot of evidence of him being a politicized figure in that way.

In fact, he's quite the opposite. He's like a person who doesn't believe in anything. And even though his character in the movie says, I don't believe in anything. He's sitting on the couch, Robert De Niro's character,

before he shoots him in the face. And he says, basically, I have no politics. But the movie says otherwise. The movie has people in clown masks holding posters that say something. And so the reason why maybe I'm being a little bit too glib by saying it's just a comic book movie is it's putting things in the movie that you otherwise don't see in these kinds of movies. And I don't know if there's...

Is there really any ramification for that either like perhaps perhaps not I just it's shocking to be able to Trojan horse in an idea without giving it kind of the context it deserves and I don't know you were you were you were asking me recently about like um whether the Trojan horse thing actually can work. Well, because it's both in the publicity and the execution. So I think we're running into some hurdles with it in the publicity, where when you come out, like you were saying, we were talking about this yesterday, where you come out like three months before your movie comes out,

and you're like, this is Taxi Driver, just FYI. And it's like, I'll decide that, you know? Like, no disrespect, but that's not how it works. You don't just get to say, this is last temptation of Christ, by the way, you know, and then it's a movie about, you know, Ant-Man, you gotta kind of go through the actual process of it. And it's obviously that kind of thinking has become dogma in Hollywood where people are coming in and saying, yeah, I want to, I know you guys have the clue IP, but what I'm going

to do is make Nashville, but it's Clue. And they're like, oh, it sounds amazing. It is literally what they used to do in the 80s where they were like diehard on a plane. But now we're trying to like kind of mix high and low so that we can engage people's film nerd, film Twitter brain while also being like, let's make $800 million.

And I just think in this case, it's not entirely a successful comic book movie, and it's not entirely a successful portrait of a person having a nervous breakdown. So I don't know what it is in the end. And it's also really like paint by numbers, Scorsese pastiche. Does saying this is taxi driver work for anyone?

No, I'll tell you why. I will tell you why. First of all, have some balls and set it in New York City. Stop calling it Gotham. I know that. But just have it being Gotham. I mean, just do it. And second of all, taxi driver is driven by subjective perception.

It's all about how Travis is seeing this world that on its surface looks like New York of the time, but he sees the need for a rain to come and wash everything away. And he sees prostitution and violence and just, you know, all this behavior. Arthur's perception is just his apartment and it's just his like his physicality. It's all like, he's just like acting out and literally dancing out demons inside of him. And I feel like that he's just like acting out and literally dancing out demons inside of him. And I feel like that's why it feels so much more claustrophobic

because we don't actually, he's not really interacting with the world, really. He's interacting with like an imaginative little like, it's a comic book. You know what I mean? So I wonder if Todd Phillips

or anybody else associated with the movie never came out and said the words taxi driver or king of comedy or any of the other reference points. If they just presented the movie and they were like, mom's the word. We have a Joker movie, so we don't have to talk. The press is going to kind of do itself. Would we give it more credit or have a little bit more respect for it? Because. That's what I was asking.

But plainly, like I personally like a pastiche. And I like a movie that is overt in its homage to its predecessors. And in fact, some of my favorite filmmakers do that all the time. And, like, Uma Thurman's costume in Kill Bill is the most obvious Bruce Lee homage in the history of movies. But there was never a time when Quentin Tarantino came forward and said, You know, I was thinking a lot about Bruce Lee and I rewatched Enter the Dragon and I thought I should put her in that costume.

We just understand it because there's a visual grammar to movie history. And if they had just presented the movie without a lot of this stuff, and maybe you're right that it is a little bit too obvious at times, but for the most part, I think that they would have gotten off the hook a little bit if they wouldn't have worked so hard to enunciate everything.

Yeah, I agree. I mean, you're setting expectations. And it is sort of the fact that you have to yell, hey, it's Taxi Driver. Hey, it's King of Comedy is also it's the same style with which the homages to or the like fake reboots of King of Comedy and Taxi Driver are in the in the movie. There's an obviousness and I like I want you, the film community, to recognize that I also like these movies, which is not fair. That's what I'm saying. I don't understand who that declaration three months in advance is for because it immediately

kind of paints you as a try hard with the film people, which is unfair. You know, I agree. Trying something is good, especially trying something with good movies and all art is stealing. And then I don't think that, but I don't think saying like, hey, it's Taxi Driver gets the random comic book fan in. I don't know. I mean, I imagine there was a presumption of prestige in citing those words and maybe not realizing what that would mean. Honestly, though, at the end of the day, and I hate when people say at the end of the day, but I'm going to say it, it worked. Yeah. I mean, the movie is a huge hit. It is a huge hit. And we're having this conversation. But it's a huge hit because it's called Joker, not because it's called Arthur. Yeah, that's the thing. And

my problem with the movie is not really like Amanda and I walked out and we were just like, boy, you know what? People maybe had a point by that ending. You know what I mean? Like we were talking about like that was not like there was no ambiguity about that ending. But to me, the problem with the movie, we talked about Jaws, we talked about other Scorsese movies. This is like if you made Jaws, but it was from the perspective of a shark. And ultimately, like Joker needs to be hidden. Joker needs to be the thing that throws the story off its axis

and challenges another character. It's difficult to spend the entire runtime with Joker because you get bored. You get tired of it. You get tired of all that stuff. And also keep Joaquin in basically an aquarium alone and not have him like, you have brief interactions

with Zazie Beetz and Bill Camp and his mom. But ultimately, it's really a one-man show until the last hour when he gets out into the world and starts having like a couple of scenes

back to back to back where he's going through his life. I think that you really run into like, you're not supposed to show the alien that whole movie you're not supposed to show the shark throughout all of jaws you throw it in to scare the other characters i think that's very perceptive i think it's mostly true i wonder if the next movie if they make a next movie and who knows given the success usually it portends the next movie if it's a 50-50 Batman Joker movie because they don't want it, they know they can't keep doing the thing that you're talking about. Let's just talk a little bit about the awards conversation around this movie. I would

say coming out of Venice, I may have even said it when we're doing a little bit of prognosticating that a movie like this could compete because the Golden Lion winner the last two years competed in Best Picture. Roma was a Golden Lion winner and, you know, it's plausible. Shape of Water was a Golden Lion winner. It's plausible that a movie like this could have been nominated for Best Picture. I think there's still a prevailing sentiment among awards watchers that the Academy, despite the controversy and some of the conversation around this movie are going to like it. You know,

they're going to like, even if it's just a Joker costume and not what the Joker is actually wearing, not actually that polyester suit that they're still gonna, they're going to appreciate those taxi driver affectations as much as the common moviegoer might. And there's, I think it's understood that Joaquin Phoenix is a lock to at least be nominated and he's a person who's not won.

And so I presume that we're going to just be talking about this movie for four months. Can I ask you a question about that? Sure. Do people enjoy the Joaquin Phoenix experience? As a moviegoer or as a celebrity? As like

if he has to do this for the next four months like I'm going on the promotional trail, but also making fun of the promotional trail? Are people into that? Well, he showed up to the Alamo Drafthouse in Los Angeles on Saturday night and appeared at multiple screenings.

And upon seeing that, and I received an email, a press release email, indicating that Joaquin Phoenix had been to a movie, my first thought was, this motherfucking clown is running. Yeah. He is running. He's running.

He was dancing. He was literally dancing. He was singing for his supper. And, you know, on the one hand, it's kind of nice that Joaquin was like, I'd like to get out in the world and support my movie. And he's obviously proud of what he did. And I think all controversies aside, Joaquin Phoenix being one of the great living actors trying really hard. I mean, he is trying really hard.

And Oscar is often for the most acting, not the best acting. And he is doing a lot of acting. So I think they appreciate that. Whether the Academy or Amanda and I every Monday morning or any other person enjoys him doing meta commentary on the process of running for the award. I'm not sure, honestly. I don't know. He's dialing it back a little. I thought that, I mean, sure.

I think that like him on Kimmel was like, he's going full Andy Kaufman here. I mean, not to the extent that he did back with, I'm not. With Letterman, yeah. Yeah, but when watching him kind of just be like spaced out for 11 minutes and like kind of making fun of the cinematographer and then at the very end just being like thank you

jimmy for having me you know i i was like oh are we gonna do this till till february really like we might are you ready to do it till february here's the thing i just love joaquin phoenix i don't i mean i find all of the i find i didn't make it through the Kimmel interview, but that's fine. Like, you know, I don't have to. I saw part of it. I still have not completed the Vanity Fair cover story just because, you know, you can only have so much secondhand awkwardness in any given time. I found it to be a little upsetting to read, honestly. But, you know, it's also, he's on the cover.

He's there. How many people actually read the inside of a magazine as opposed to looking at a cover? Not that many, as we all well know. And I just he's so mesmerizing in this movie, even though, honestly, I think the performance kind of undermines some of the movie because he just is going so balls out from minute one that there's just nowhere to go. And it is- Phillips is definitely infatuated with him. Yeah.

Yeah. But I just, so I'm okay with, I'll take it in small doses for the next four months and then watch him be very weird and win. I mean, he is a tremendous actor. Yeah, I mean, he's in that rare company of actor and actress. He's in that kind of Daniel Day-Lewis,

Meryl Streep category of like never bad. He's never been bad in a movie. He's in that kind of Daniel Day-Lewis, Meryl Streep category of like never bad. He's never been bad in a movie. He's always interesting, even if the movie around him doesn't always work. You know, when my wife saw the movie, she came out and she was like, that would be a really great double feature with her. It's basically about the same guy. And I hadn't really thought of it that way, but you can kind of see his career in this,

almost this sort of timeline of disaffected lonely weird people and he's kind of playing iterations on the same theme every single time out and he hasn't been fully recognized for it and he's understood to be a really great performer I don't know if he also strikes me as the kind of person who could say the wrong thing at a given time and find himself in a flare-up in December and then all of a sudden we're like, oh, well, remember when Joaquin was the front runner? Guess it'll just have to be Adam Driver now. It's hard to say.

It's really hard to say. And Marriage Story is a much more classical Academy movie, and it might be a lot easier to reward that performance. I would like to see Joaquin Phoenix in movies until I die. Like, I just genuinely enjoy him the same way that I think you do, Amanda. Even if it has to be in Joker 2 and 3 and 4 and 5 and 6, which it might be. We're going to talk a little bit more about Best Actor in a minute. But first, I think it would be a mistake to not talk about Martin Scorsese and comic book movies, given the conversation we've just been having.

But before we do that, we're going to hear a word from our sponsor. Today's episode of The Big Picture is brought to you by Masterclass. Masterclass lets you learn from the best with exclusive access to online classes taught by masters of their craft. You can learn how to, I don't know, direct a movie from Martin Scorsese, who is not a fan of Marvel movies, but he does love movie history. Or you could learn how to play poker from the big homie, Phil Ivey, who is really one of my true icons. With over 60 different instructors across tons of categories, there is literally something for everyone. The Masterclass app is accessible on your phone, web, or Apple TV, and each class is broken out into individual video lessons and downloadable materials, which you can explore

at your own pace. I highly recommend you check it out. Get unlimited access to every Masterclass, and as a listener, you get 15% off the annual all-access pass. Go to masterclass.com slash big picture. That's masterclass.com slash big picture for 15% off Masterclass. Okay, we're back on the big picture and we're talking about Martin Scorsese, who I think is a hero to me and a hero to Chris Ryan, and maybe after Friday's story, a hero to Amanda Dobbins. He was always a hero to me and a hero to Chris Ryan. And maybe after Friday's story, a hero to Amanda Dobbins. He was always a hero to me. Here's the thing. I respect excellence. Okay. And so does Martin Scorsese. And that's where we are. Get on board, everybody. It's 2019. We honor great things. Martin Scorsese is on the campaign trail as well. He is running for the film,

The Irishman. And he gave an interview to Empire Magazine, the British magazine. I must say I'm consistently shocked and awed by the level of access that Empire Magazine acquires. They're like, yeah, we just had a six-hour sit-down with Steven Spielberg about his entire career. We'd like to publish that transcript in full here in the magazine. I'm like, where the fuck did they get this? I'm trying to book filmmakers on this show all the time. Anyhow, here's what Martin Scorsese said. He was asked about Marvel movies, and he said, I don't see them. I tried, you know, Martin Scorsese said. He was asked about Marvel movies and he said, I don't see them. I tried, you know,

but that's not cinema. Honestly, the closest I can think of them as well made as they are with actors doing the best they can under the circumstances is theme parks. It isn't the cinema

of human beings trying to convey emotional, psychological experiences to another human being. Chris and Amanda, what were your thoughts on that comment?

Go ahead. I just, I'm just making like the Joker upside smile. Give me the makeup. I'm doing a dance. Well, yes, but I don't know. I don't want to hurt anybody's feelings. And I think that this immediately, there were a lot of hurt feelings

and that was really spectacular watch. It was just like a lot of people telling on themselves, which is just very special for me we have talked about movies as amusement parks on this movie a lot on this podcast a lot and that's more in the context of how people go to the movies how people consume things it's more like you don't go every week you go a few times a year and it's for a certain level of thrill and experience and an amount of money spent also, quite frankly. So, but even when we've said that we haven't talked about, we haven't meant like the quality of the movies themselves. And here's the thing. There are some quote good superhero movies and there are some that are like absolutely horrible.

And it's a genre like anything else. And I'm actually loathe to dismiss genre movies, even if this is not a genre that speaks to me. And even though I do think it has a stranglehold on moviemaking, as evidenced by, you know, the however many minutes we just spent talking about Joker. Yeah. On popular culture. On popular culture at large. You know, I think, number one, respect Martin Scorsese. Maybe what he means here, who am I to say what I think he means? But the truth in this for me is just that Marvel movies in particular are a different way of thinking about a movie. And it's less as a

standalone unit and more as an interconnecting series of story updates via film and TV and things you read. And it just changes what the actual unit of a movie is. And I don't mean that in that's value neutral. It just kind of has changed it. And so I think he's right in that sense. I am not a person to decide what quote cinema means. So I'll bow out there. Martin Scorsese, Chris, turns 77 years old in one month.

It would be way weirder if he was like, I was really into phase two. What are we talking about here? Wouldn't it be weirder if he was like, I am a man in my late 70s who has seen, what, 23 Marvel movies? Yes. It would be bizarre. Yeah. If he was like, I'm super into Guardians. You know who else hasn't seen any Marvel movies?

My mom. Yeah. Same age. Yeah. So, chill out. Second of all, you mentioned he's on the political trail. He's on the campaign trail for the Irishman. This whole story is essentially like the same way any story in politics plays out. Someone gets a quote and then immediately a thousand people run to the closest celebrity

they can find or the closest politician they can find and say, I'm not sure if you saw these comments from Martin Scorsese, but what is your take on them? And they don't even need to run to anybody because James Gunn jumped on Twitter and was like, I defended Marty during the last temptation of Christ. And I wish he would have done the same for Guardians of the Galaxy. I paraphrase. I am not by much. I enjoy the films of James Gunn.

I wish he had not said that because he did. He did what Amanda said. He told on himself and his insecurity was borne out on Twitter instantaneously. James Gunn, step away from the Twitter account. How have you not learned this already, sir? It is not your medium. It's truly not what you want in that situation. You just got to sit that one out. But Chris, to your point, Samuel L. Jackson over the weekend was asked about Martin Scorsese's comments. Here's what Samuel L. Jackson noted Nick Fury

in the Marvel Universe said. I mean, that's like saying Bugs Bunny ain't funny. Films are films. Everybody doesn't like his stuff either. Everybody's got an opinion, so I mean, it's okay. Ain't nobody going to stop him from making movies. So I think that that's a pretty reasonable rejoinder. It's one, perfectly fine that Martin Scorsese doesn't like Marvel movies. Two, it's perfectly fine that Marvel movies will continue to exist as they always do yes this is a in one part a fake controversy in another part

a kind of fascinating media execution well because there's a substance that Sorsese's comments that I think we can address which is whether or not his definition of cinema is yours

or ours or other people's and whether or not when you're watching a raccoon talk to a tree right you're like in space you're like is just, that's what it's about. That's what life is about. Or whether you were like, I understand that that's sort of what life is about with three

layers of impossibility put in front of it. You know what it is? But you know what? It's not that simple because I know it's not. And you know, I'll also say is I've not like I've had any experiences. They're like good fellas, right? Like if you're, if you're being more generous It's not that simple because... I know it's not. And you know what I'll also say is, it's not like I've had any experiences that are like good fellas. Right. Like if you're being more generous, and I try to be more generous to these movies because I try to be realistic about history,

we'll look back upon everything. There was a time in the 1920s when F.W. Murnau was like, I'm going to make Nosferatu. What I want to make is Dracula, but I can't because I can't secure the rights. So I'm making Nosferatu a movie about a fucking vampire. Yeah. You know, it's not real vampires. He's like,

it's like mean streets. Vampires are as real as talking trees. It's mythology. And there's mythology is used as a, as a Trojan horse, forgive the phrase to tell stories for centuries. This is not new. You know, the, the Odyssey is doing the same thing. Now, obviously, the movies are not being made for Martin Scorsese. And obviously, Marvel movies are not the Odyssey. I'm not trying to make a false comparison there. But it's reasonable to expect that generationally, there's going to be a different interpretation of what these movies mean and can mean going forward. Also, if we even get outside of authorial intent, if we just want to look at a movie as a

text and analyze it any which way we choose and draw different conclusions than the ones the filmmakers like Todd Phillips want to particularly ascribe to it, we have the power to do that too. So Martin Scorsese, I literally think is probably my favorite movie maker ever and probably will be that way until I die. But it's okay for me to be like, not every movie has to be Amar Kord. Not every movie has to be Ozu. And they weren't when Martin Scorsese was like, what I love is the B pictures.

The 1930s, like, shoot-em-up serials, westerns, musicals, like all that stuff. He loves Val Luton, who made Cat People, who at the time was considered much the same as Marvel movies. It was like, this is the kind of stuff that we use to kind of crank people into the audience room and then crank them out and then make another one to crank in new people. So I think the context of a conversation around this is really

important. Does it make me sound like a crazy person who's super into talking trees? A little bit. I get that. But I think it's important to surround the conversation with all of the information about film history rather than just movies in outer space or movies with guys who wear capes are not for me because there would be a difference between saying this is not for me and saying this is not cinema so can i just say one thing really quick there's this really great interview that you can find online i think that's via the dga's website that says back and forth between scorsese and tarantino and tarantino's asking him a lot about like the new york new wave like him and sydney lamette and Scorsese and Tarantino. And Tarantino's asking him a lot about the New York new wave, like him and Sidney Lumet.

And Scorsese is so articulate, and it's such a moving description of wanting to make movies that were reflections of these neighborhoods, these different neighborhoods in New York, and how Mean Streets is completely different than Serpico. You know what I mean? Like that these guys had sensibilities about very specific parts of New York, and that they were reflections of American life at various points. And in my interpretation of what he's saying here, that is ultimately what he's talking about is that like he doesn't really feel like when he goes to see a Marvel movie, it's a reflection of any kind of real human experience. Now, obviously, someone like James Gunn goes to great pains to say,

this is a movie about friendship and family, which are human experiences. But I think that there's the layers of removal from reality that is what Scorsese is kind of ultimately reacting to, which isn't to say that Hugo is realistic. That's what I was just going to say. Which isn't to say that, yeah, I know, I know. Like, Martin Scorsese has worked in genre just like any other filmmaker has. So you're canceling Scorsese on this podcast.

Not only am I not canceling him, I'm renewing him. We've been talking in monologue for 10 minutes. And so now we're going to let the woman say something. You know, I mean, I do think it's possible that he's speaking to a specific thing in this interview. Also, it's like a pretty narrow definition of like. He doesn't like Justice League. Right. And cinema is such like a specific

and yes pretentious word but i think he is probably talking about a specific experience and i think chris you're right that it some of it is just a response to like the corporatization and the you know widgetization of of all of these movies and that doesn't mean that they also can't like make you feel like you were having spending some best time with your. And that doesn't mean that they also can't, like, make you feel like you were having, spending some best time with your buddies. And that doesn't mean, which, you know, I guess if you love trees, more power to you. But I think that he is just,

he is speaking about how he makes movies and what he wants to see in them. And it's a pretty limited definition of that. And I think that's fine. If you like movies beyond what Martin Scorsese defines as a movie, like your view is valid too. I am not and will not ever cancel Martin Scorsese. I vow I will renew him forevermore.

It's okay to disagree with people sometimes. And I think on the one hand, shame on people like James Gunn for being so sensitive because he's had all the success in the world and is going to continue to because he makes very popular movies. But also shame on me for caring so much about one comment in Empire Magazine one time. You know, it's like everybody is kind of stuck inside of this same conversational cycle. The interesting thing about it also for me, just from a spectator, was there were so many people who were so upset and which just reveals like the desperation for validation from an institution. And like from James Gunn on down, people just being like, wait, but dad doesn't like my movies. And Joker in a lot of ways is this attempt to be taken seriously.

And it's like we can make a prestige superhero movie too. We have seen the great cinema of Martin Scorsese. And how desperate that approval, how desperately people want that approval. And that's kind of like what this is all about. And that the whole firestorm around Joker in a lot of ways is just like a lot of people just being like please like me please take me seriously and it's just it's fascinating that these movies have been a part of our culture in they have been

the major force in our culture for what 11 years 11 years now i, if you're starting with Iron Man. And still, how much success do you need in order to feel okay? I'm just checking my notes here to try to put a bow on this conversation about Joker and Martin Scorsese. And I've got a note here that says, everyone has brain damage. I can put a bow on it. You know how this ends, right? Scorsese wins Best Picture. Yeah. Walks up on stage.

He pulls off a Scooby-Doo mask to reveal that it's the Joker. And he yells, Release the Snyder Cut. And then the screen goes staticky. And then the Zack Snyder Cut plays right after the Oscars. Well, mama, look at me now.

I'm a star. Well put, Chris. we're going to transition to the next segment of the show which is usually stock up stock down but we're going to fuse that with the big race so that we can talk a little bit more about one of our favorite actors and the best actor race so let's do that now guys we talked about joaquin and joaquin's chances there was another movie that opened on friday much more limited not quite 4 4,000 theaters, but a movie that I think Amanda and I both flipped over called Pain and Glory. Unbelievable. Pedro Almodovar's new film. Chris, I don't think you've seen this movie, but I wanted to get your reflections on Antonio Banderas as an actor.

Is this a person that you have a relationship to? Because I think it's actually quite relevant to the best actor race. I don't really. I mean, I've obviously been a part of my film going life for 20, 25 years or whatever, but I don't have a deep relationship to Antonio Banderas' work. And that's an interesting aspect of this conversation because this film is kind of sort of a Romana Clef about Amodovar's life and the pain that he is experiencing. We leave the term as auto-fiction. It is auto-fiction. And we talked about this film non-fiction from Olivier Assayas earlier this year, one of our favorite movies of the year.

And this is a handy sequel, a nice double feature to that story seen through Amodovar's eyes as portrayed by Antonio Banderas. And this is a reunion of sorts after Banderas made, I think, four films with Amodovar in the 80s. Law of Desire and Matador and Timey Up, Timey Down. I think Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. And those four films are considered all-time Spanish classics, all-time European classics.

They're nominated for Oscars. They kind of kick off really one of the great careers in 20th century and 21st century filmmaking. And he is a master who I think has been a little bit of a down period and has bounced back in a big way with this movie. People who have seen this movie have praised it to high heaven. But Antonio Banderas, in the early 90s, came to America. He did not speak a lick of English.

And from that time, he took on a career as kind of an action star. Not necessarily the kind of passionate, romantic figure of great emotional complication that he was in all of Pedro's movies. He became Desperado. He became the guy in... X and what's it? Was it X and Sever? Yes.

Ballistic X and Sever. He was in a lot of bad movies. And I think the American consciousness about Antonio is that he is not necessarily a great actor. I think it's that he is kind of a slab of beef married to Melanie Griffith. He's a celebrity. So it's interesting. And Amanda, I kind of want to hear what you liked about him in Pain and Glory to kind of underline whether we think he's going to be able to compete with some of the heavy hitters that we'll talk about in this category. It's a quiet performance. It's kind of the polar opposite of Joaquin just in terms of

there's a real physicality to it, but it's a withdrawn physicality as opposed to Joaquin dancing around all the time. It's not flashy, but really moving. and it does have that, um, actor and director reflect on their career and their life outside of the movie, as well as within the movie that I think it, it's clearly, um, Amodovar's life in a lot of ways, but Banderas is bringing his own experience and it's, you know, it's another man later in life reflecting on career and life and and what has been achieved and what perhaps has yet to be achieved which I it sounds I'm aware that I sounded dismissive when I was saying that but not the case at all it was it's actually very moving as many of these movies have been this season we're just in a real like old guys look

at stuff uh phase of the Oscars. We're always going to be in that phase just for the record. I'm aware. Chris, would you describe yourself as a person who has pain? Sure. Yeah. Physical pain? A couple of like nagging maladies. Sure. Yeah. Amanda, what about you? Do you have physical pain? Yes. I'm a woman, so we're built differently, which I actually did think about halfway through this movie, but yeah. So in the film, I don't think I'm really spoiling anything to say that Banderas' character takes up recreational heroin use to assuage some of the deep pain that he has in this film. Let me tell you something, though. Didn't watch the trailer, didn't read about it.

When he started doing heroin, I was like, oh, this is what this movie's about, huh? I really recommend just going in cold. Yeah, but I don't think that that's giving anything away because the movie is not really about his crippling addiction or anything like that specifically, but it is an interesting physical performance and it is quiet like Amanda is saying because he has

to signal that he's not comfortable throughout much of the movie and there are these really tender moments where he's close with a person and you can see that there's something sort of withholding about him. And it is a really interesting and subtle performance. And you can see how much easier it is

for certain performers to speak in their native language and what comes across as an actor when you're able to speak Spanish versus having to speak English in Ballistic X versus Sever or whatever. And I will say Antonio Banderas has been just absolutely delightful on the campaign trail. He was on fresh air last week. If you've not heard that interview, I would highly recommend it.

He's a terrific storyteller and just seems to have a really good sense of humor about himself. And I hope that this is the kind of movie that breaks through. I think it's going to be a little bit challenging, despite the fact that he's also appearing in Steven Soderbergh's The Laundromat, which I don't know when we're going to talk about that movie in full, but Amanda and I liked it, and I guess everybody else in America hates it. We really liked it.

It's great. I thought it was great. Like, kind of uncomplicatedly great. Not out yet, right? Not out yet. It hits Netflix in two weeks. So it's in theaters right now. I think it's in one theater in Los Angeles.

But here's what Banderas is up against right now. Joaquin, noted. Leonardo DiCaprio. Heard of him. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Robert De Niro, The Irishman. Adam Driver, Kylo Ren. Just kidding.

Adam Driver, Marriage Story. Jonathan Pryce, who ably slots into old guy who has not yet been recognized properly for the two hopes. And in every betting market that I've looked at and every like, you know, pre, pre, pre predictions is the most common name. Yeah, that's what they said about Glenn Close.

That's true, though. She did get nominated. Yeah, she did. But because when you look at this list, though, his nomination is going to take some take another big names nomination slot. Yes, and if you look at the people who are on the outside looking in of that sixsome, you've got Eddie Murphy in Dolomite Is My Name, Adam Sandler in Uncut Gems,

Christian Bale in Ford vs. Ferrari, Michael B. Jordan in Just Mercy, and Daniel Kaluuya in Queen & Slim. Probably as stacked as a category has ever been. And the way that the Oscars usually goes, that means Jonathan Price will win. And everybody will be like, did you see the two popes? Was that good? I don't really know.

I'm not sure. I'm just saying last year we did this bit with a movie that Jonathan Price was in for six months. And then it was the only surprise on Oscar night was that Glenn Close did not win. But in this equation, Jonathan Price is actually the Olivia Colman. He's not the Glenn Close. Okay. You know, I think that the Glenn Close in this category is probably Joaquin Phoenix. Nominated four times, hasn't won, he's due. I was going to say, I know that you were joking with Adam Driver as Kylo Ren and I'm sure that

he will be nominated for Marriage Story but the Star Wars is a big part of that. Oh yeah. And when he gets nominated it will be for both those things. And in the back of my mind I have kind of been wondering

like I think the only thing that can really totally derail Joker momentum is that if the last Star Wars is fantastic and everyone's like

oh okay we'll just do our blockbuster. We'll spend our blockbuster energy here. We should crown this. Yeah. Right. And then suddenly Adam Driver is taking that spot. And with the, you know, extra convenience of,

he's also in like a quote Oscar movie. So would they not, they're not going to run any Endgame stuff? Like they're not going to try and go Endgame best picture or Downey best actor or any of that stuff? I will say that in my mentions, there are quite a few people who have asked me to talk about Robert Downey Jr. in this category. Now, Chris, you're familiar with the I host a podcast and people in my mentions ask me to do something. That doesn't mean I always do it, but sometimes you do. For example, I speak for your mentions. You, but you, I'm the, you talked

about Peaky Blinders on your show. I did. After years of people being like, when are you going to talk about Peaky Blinders, bro? And I don't really know how to talk about Robert Downey. Is Robert Downey Jr. even the lead of Endgame? He's in like six scenes. We're going to talk about Robert Downey Jr. being nominated for an Oscar for Endgame just to let you know that that's not going to happen and we're not going to talk about it anymore.

The end. Who is a better skinny actor? Robert Downey Jr. when he doesn't have any food in Endgame or Joaquin in Joker? Joaquin. Yeah. Yeah. The dancing's very good.

Yeah. Chris, out of all the people I just named, who do you want to have an Oscar? Leonardo DiCaprio. He has one already. He got it for The Revenant. Oh, so we're just like, who doesn't have one that gets one yet?

Is that what- No, no, no. But you want him to have a second. Yeah. And you think Antonio Banderas should die in a fire. No, I just haven't seen that film yet.

But I would say... It's very beautiful. See that in theaters. I mean, I guess you can only see it in theaters right now. It's such a beautiful movie. Yeah, I can't wait to see it. It's really visually enthralling.

You guys have definitely made me very excited for it. I think Leonardo DiCaprio. Without seeing Marriage Story and a bunch of other stuff, that's my favorite performance of the year. Where does Marc Maron rate in the Best actor race this year for his performance in Joker?

That was amazing when that happened. I was like, wait, I know that guy. You got one scene. Brian Tyree Henry, one scene. I think that's when I looked at the dog and be like, what does the dog think about Marc Maron being in this spot in this movie? The dog's like, lock the gates. Dog really didn't respond to Joker, just so you know.

Seemed to be sleeping. Amanda, what about you? Any closing thoughts on best actor? like lock the gates. Doc really didn't respond to Joker just so you know. Seemed to be sleeping. Amanda, what about you? Any closing thoughts on best actor? You know, I know I just said that Joker might take a hit, but it seems like Joaquin's a lock. I really believe that. I think it's time for Adam Driver,

even though I know he's only 35. And it's just kind of, it's also they've engineered this in such a way where Marriage Story comes out and then a month later, Star Wars comes out and it's the end of the Star Wars thing. And it just, it ticks all of the boxes. And also, he's a tremendous actor. We're going to have to wait to see before we talk about Marriage Story,

among other movies. Guys, thanks for chatting with me about the very delicate incidences around comic book movies in 2019. I appreciate you both. Now let's go to my conversation with Shea Serrano. Usually in segments like this, I am joined by a master filmmaker of some kind talking about the making of their movie. I'm joined by a master of a different sort. I'm very delighted to have my pal and the ringer, Shea Serrano, here to talk about his new book, Movies and Other Things. Shay, what's up? A lot. A lot's going on. A lot is going on. I'm very happy to be here.

I'm extremely on the record about you being like hair to shoes, one of my favorite people in the world. What about my soul? Well, you know, all of the stuff in between those two things. Okay. As long as it's in there, it's good. Well, you know how much I appreciate you. I'm really happy that you're here to talk about this

because you wrote a book about movies and this is a podcast about movies, as you may know. I want to do a little bit of a diagnostic. I want to ape the long form podcast a little bit and ask you some questions about the creation of this book, where the ideas came from, how you chose the chapters. When did you know you were going to do this as the second installment in the end other

things? Is it a trilogy, a quadrilogy? It'll be a trilogy, I think. A trilogy. Okay. So how did you know this was number two after basketball and other things? Well, basketball and other things came out. It was like a measure of success. And when something like that happens, the publishers are like, do you want to do another book? And I really enjoyed writing that book a lot. I liked the structure of it, which is like each chapter is a different thing. And you can like dig in as far as you want and you don't have to worry about anything else. You don't have to like cover all of the history of anything. You just pick a thing that you want to talk about and you write that chapter and then you move on to the next one. And they can all sort of stand

alone, but there's definitely some connective tissue in there so that it feels like one big project. And so I wanted to do another version of that. And when we started thinking of ideas, it was like, well, I also like movies a great deal and I've not written that. And I know how much time is going to go into researching for this stuff. It was like a very small pool of things that I would like to spend that much time inside of without getting like sick of it. And movies was one of them. It was like movies, rap, television, and basketball. Those are like the four things that if I'm going to do a book, it's more than likely going to be about those things. And so we just settled on movies. There you go.

Did you have sequel anxiety? Because a lot of times if you make a second installment in a series, there's an expectation that it has to be bigger and louder and more successful than the last to justify its own existence. So when you're coming to this, do you have a kind of concern or did you purposefully try to make it bigger or any different from the first book? I didn't have that concern until right now. So thank you for that. Oh no. No, I did. I spent a lot of time thinking about it because the basketball book was like, it made it on the bestseller list. It got a, it was on president Obama's list of like favorite books of the year. You're faltering one of my questions here, man. A lot of cool stuff happened to it. And so it was like, well, when we do this book, like, what's the point? What are the boxes

we're trying to check off with this one? And ultimately Arturo and I just decided it kind of doesn't matter. Like if you did those things, whatever, this can be your victory tour. When Dirk Nowitzki won the championship in 2011, he showed up for 2012 like, I did it, I'm done, cool, and just sort of was celebrating himself for the rest of the time. He had sort of earned that right. And so when we were thinking about what to do, it was like, well, we can let that stuff sort of scare us away, or we can just do some stuff we want to do. And we just decided to do some stuff we wanted to do. You mentioned Arturo, Arturo Torres, who's the illustrator of the book.

I mentioned this to you a few weeks ago when I got my hands on a copy of it, but I was like, damn, Arturo stepped up. Like he went up a level here. I think people are, especially sincere fans of yours, are kind of fascinated and love the partnership, the creative partnership that you guys have had. How does it work where you come up with an idea and you talk about how to kind of visually execute the idea? Like walk us through the process that you guys have working together. There are a couple of different ways that this happens. Sometimes I'll write a chapter and I'll know like exactly what I want because there's like a specific line in there

or a specific idea in there. Other times I will have no clue what I want and I will have written the chapter and I'll just be like, Arturo, I'm going to send you the thing, read the thing and tell me what you want to draw. And it's one of those two things. And then once we settle on what a general idea

is that we are going to go for it, then I just try to get out of his way. What was one where he just came up with the idea and he gave you something like really surprising? That would probably be for the first chapter. We wrote about John Wick, Tom Hardy in the drop, Bob Saginowski and Robert Neville in I Am Legend,

Will Smith's character. And the whole chapter is about them like taking care of their dogs. It like a silly thing but also like secretly not and i was i didn't know what to do it was like we should probably have some dogs in here i think i don't know what do you want to do and he was like oh duh just let's have them all giving the dogs a dog bath and he was like because the whole point of the chapter is like these are tough movie guys and like but when they're with their dogs they don't have to be that. They could just be like dog owners. It's very sweet watching Bob Saginowski with Rocco in the movie or John Wick with like either the little beagle or the pit bull that he has later on.

They're just like very tender with him. So let's show them doing that. And I was like, all right, cool. Go nuts. And he did that. One of the things I like about the book is it's not going to be like anybody else's movie book. There are a lot of books about movies. I've read a lot of them, but in the first chapter, set aside the fact that you have a very funny high concept execution and you're introducing the book about movie characters and their relationship to their dogs. There's never

going to be another movie book that is taking that approach. But in addition to that, the movies and the characters that you focus on are not in the commonly accepted kind of cool guy canon of movies. They're in a kind of populist and very Shea collection of stories and movies and things that you're interested in that I think a lot of people are interested in, which is one of the reasons why you have accumulated so much success over the years. But Bob Saginowski from The Drop, that's just a weird pick. I don't think a lot of people have seen that movie. On the other hand, Neville from I Am Legend is a huge movie

that a lot of people have seen and know exactly what you're talking about, but nobody ever talks about I Am Legend. I assume I know the answer to this, but I'm going to ask you, how did you figure out which movies you wanted to talk about in this book? And were you using it in any way as like a rejoinder, like an oppositional thing to what we usually hear about when people are writing or talking about movies? No, I try to get away from any of those conversations and just focus as much attention as I can on the stuff that I like. And that's really all that it is. I'm going to watch a ton of movies and whichever

one sort of jump out at me for whatever reason, I'm going to spend my time with those. And I mean, there are a few different reasons you would want to do something like that. But for me, I found like if I'm talking to somebody and they're telling me about a thing that they like versus the thing that they like love or hate or whatever, when they're really excited about something and they're telling me about it, it gets me excited too. And I feel like a certain way, even if they're talking about something that I don't know anything about. Like if I'm listening to a podcast with you and like Jordan Peele and y'all get into like some super film nerdy stuff and I have no idea what you're talking about, but you're very

clearly like discussing something you care a great deal about. It just makes me feel good and it makes me feel invested. And I want to try to do that with the stuff that I'm writing. I just want to celebrate stuff that I like and seems to work out what what was the number one well what was the first chapter you knew you wanted to write for the book even if it isn't the first chapter that appears in the book the first chapter that was 100 certain is absolutely going to be in there was the Selena chapter um that came out in you know-90s, starring Jennifer Lopez as Selena, is a really important figure in the Hispanic community or Latinx community or Mexican-American community,

like a big, big figure. And the movie just sort of came and went. And it was huge for us, but not for a lot of other people. And so I wanted to write about that because of that reason, but also just because I like it a bunch. And I wanted a picture of like a bunch of movie Mexicans in there and just sort of hanging out and having a good time and like being joyful. And so that was one where I knew 100% this is going to be in here and it's never going to get cut. A lot of the other ones, I wrote way too much and we ended up cutting six, seven, eight chapters.

Really? Yeah. But that one was like never on the table for losing this one. I want to ask you about some of those chapters, but it's funny on the cover of the book, I noticed that there is a little bit of what I presume is serendipity. We talked about Selena on the show a couple of weeks ago because Jennifer Lopez very much in the news, given her performance in Hustlers, a lot of Oscar buzz performing at the Super Bowl, et cetera. Amanda and I did a top five J-Lo performances conversation. Selena was in our conversation. And Selena's on the cover of the book. Correct. As is the Joker. Correct. And there's a Joker movie coming out. As is John Wick. There's a John Wick 3 movie that dominated 2019 so far. How much of this was by design and how much of it do you think is just happy accidents

in terms of like, because you have an ability to kind of get into the zeitgeist a little bit where you're just like, I know what people are connecting to. And I know you come to it authentically, but how much are you strategizing? Like, it'll be good when the Joker is happening

and the Joker's on the cover of my book. When we started doing this, working on this, I, I wasn't even thinking about the, the new Joker. Like it's not mentioned in the book at all. There's a section in the book talking specifically about Jack Nicholson's Joker,

Heath Ledger's Joker, Jared Leto's Joker. And I didn't even think to mention the other one. That one just sort of happened. I was, I'm sure I knew about the movie that it was coming out and it would have been very easy to slide us a sentence or two in there, but I just wasn't thinking too much about it. Mostly we're going to keep coming back to the same thing. It's just stuff that I like. And that's all I'm really concerned with at this point, because I mean, even if the book sells five copies, they still have to pay me. So like, I'm just going to do, I'm just going to do what I want to do. And then like, you know, hopefully it does well, but if it doesn't,

it's like, I'll be sad and then I'll move on. Is it hard to get book editors to understand exactly what you want to do sometimes? Because my favorite chapter in the book by far is the Michael Myers press conference, which is just like a hilarious and feels like a classic Shea construction. Right. But I think if you don't know you, you might be like, what is this? What purpose does this serve

in this guide that you have created? Is it sometimes hard to kind of get across like why you think something is right for this, especially when you're going through a process where you're cutting chapters and you're figuring out what has to stay and what has to go? No, because I've only had two book editors so far

for the books. The first one was Samantha Wiener from Abrams. And we came into the like book game together. The first book we did together was her first book that she bought. Then we did the Wrap Your Book together. And we were just sort of figuring it out like side by side. You did the coloring book together?

We did the coloring book together and then the wrap your book. And we were just like, I don't know, do you want to try this? Can we try this? And she was straight up like, go nuts, do what you want to do. And then like, I'll try to shield you from what the publishers are, you know, the people above me are saying, or trying to get us to have happen. And then with the new publisher, Sean Desmond, he was the same sort of way. He was like, I want to help shape this, but mostly I just want to sort of keep you from going too far into the jungle. And let me help you that way. So there's not like a ton of pushback on there.

Every once in a while, I would get really mad about a thing and like dig my feet in and be like, absolutely not. There's not, let's just throw a total fit about it. And it'd be like the dumbest thing. But for whatever reason, I would have it in my head that I just cannot bend on this thing. We got in a big fight, for example, about the footnotes in the book. I wanted them to look a certain way. Specifically, I wanted in the book, whatever the first page of a chapter is, I want no footnotes on that page.

I don't care if there are 25 footnotes in there. I want you to flip to the next page to see them. Why was that? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. More than likely it's because I mentioned it in passing and Sean and then the designers, the guy named Jared, Sean and Jared were probably like, no, that's not a good idea. And as soon as I said that in my head, I was like, no, this is the best idea I've ever had. And I'm not going to do this book if you

don't let me do the footnotes that way and sean who's like this very he's like a sweet guy um but also super sneaky with like his editor stuff uh he's he's good at like directing you where he wants you to go and making it feel like like you're like it's your decision and uh and i don't know how it happened but by the end i was like you're right this is the footnote should be on the first page absolutely i'm glad i thought of that Sean and he's like I'm glad you did too Shay like he's like the you know the the book editors are like the the parents who they put the kid on like that leash and they can you know you're sort of running around in the room trying to like gouge your eyes out on the corners of tables and they're just like careful careful you know what I'm saying

I do know what I'm saying? I do know what you're saying. As an editor, I know exactly what you're saying. How did you get John Leguizamo and Don Cheadle to participate in this? They wrote the foreword and the afterword of the book. It's pretty, pretty big flex by you. I just asked. That's all that it was. What does that mean? Explain to the world, because you don't have John Leguizamo's phone number, do you? I do not. Nor do I have Don Cheadle's phone number. You didn't hit him up on the two-way?

I didn't hit him up on the two-way. What I did is I said, well, who do I want to write the foreword for the book? And the first conversation you have is like, oh, who's going to help sell copies of the book or whatever? Because it's like, what's a name you can put on the cover? What's a name you can put on there? If we put Bradley Cooper's name on here,

will we sell copies of the book? We went to everybody. No, no, no. So you have this conversation in the beginning and you're like, well, like that's the first, the start of it. And then I'm saying, well, I mean, honestly, I can't remember a time in my life that I saw a book and I was like, oh, so-and-so wrote the foreword. I need to buy this book. This never happened to me ever. And anybody that I asked, that's probably not happened to them either. So I don't want to use this as an opportunity to try to get 10 more sales or whatever. I want to use this as an opportunity to talk to somebody who I care about, somebody that I like a lot. It was the same thing I did with the basketball book. We probably could have gone to a number of people at that point, but Reggie Miller was the first basketball player I fell in love

with. And I was like, I probably never have the chance to talk to Reggie again in my life. I would like to use this as an opportunity to. It was the same thing with Leguizamo. Leguizamo showed up in my life in the late nineties. He had a comedy special called Freak directed by Spike Lee. It was brilliant. It's still to this day one of the best things I've ever seen. I love that special, yeah. And then ever since then, I'm just like everything that he has put out, I have consumed. I want to watch it.

If he's in it, I want to see it. Sometimes it's like stuff I'm really excited about, like, oh, shit, he's in John Wick or whatever. Other times it's like, I guess I'll watch this only because of Leguizamo. Like when he was in Moulin Rouge, I'm like, well, I got to see it. Either way. But yeah, I just was, let me use this as an opportunity to tell this guy how much I care about him. And so I reached out to like a person who I knew I'd worked with him before and explained

what I was doing and why I wanted to talk to him. And then I make sure to mention how successful the other book was. And then you just sort of cross your fingers and hope. And it was the same thing with Don Cheadle. Don Cheadle has been in my life forever, since like Colors, you know what I'm saying? Like the 80s, he's been in there. And he's just another guy who has always been very cool.

He showed up in like the Kendrick Lamar video and you're like, this was the best pick you could have possibly made. And he's had this new renaissance with the Marvel movies. But before then, he was like the devil in a blue dress and like the Earl Manigault movie. Like he's been in all this stuff that I like. And so, again, I just want to use this as an opportunity to like tell these people how much I like them and then cool. So what did you say to them when you made contact? Did you, cause they're, they're forward and they're afterwards are, they're similar and

they're oriented, I think around what this book ultimately is, which is like a celebration of movies they love and like your journey through movie history and movie experiences and theirs as well. So what do you say to them? Like, I just want you to talk about this. No, I have like a set of questions that I'm asking, like with in the forward, I want to set up sort of the like, and John does a great job of this,

like the magic of movies and like how it's different from every other, how it's different from, I just was intending for him to talk about the difference between that and television. And then he went into stage plays and all this other stuff. And he did such a wonderful job of like summarizing all of that for me which is cool to have somebody who has worked with every important person just like talking about it and then with um with don at the end it was like the a version of that but like let's close it let's close that conversation out

now and talk a little bit more about being a movie star and like what that could possibly mean and like where we go from here and what happens when that part of your life is over and like you know we're going to try to have like a top and bottom of this sandwich here and there you go as a hardcore Brian De Palma nerd I really enjoyed like was almost a little story about working on Carlito's Way so so when we the forwards, they don't actually like sit down and type it out. You talk to him on the phone, uh, usually for like 20 or 30 minutes. And as told to, we call it in the biz. Yeah. And as told to, and we talked about that and we talked for like an hour, which was supposed to be a few minutes. We, he just kept on going every, he had so much like cool shit to say. Same thing with Don Cheadle. And what I

was really struck by is that after I wrote up the thing and I'm like, all right, I'm going to write it up. I'm going to send it to you, to your team, your lawyers, they can look it over and sign off on it. And when I sent it to each of them, they sent it back with notes, like actual change this to that. I want this to say this this here like straight up more than i get from a regular editor moving these pieces around i think it would work better here it was like really cool to see that part of their brain turned on and i really appreciated it for sure that's interesting you know they care yeah what's your favorite chapter in the book everybody asked me this question and i give i've been given a different answer every time.

I like the Regina George chapter. That's a, that's a great segue because we're going to talk about the Regina George chapter. I saw you, I saw it. I just saw the picture right now when you opened it up. That's why. I think that the, so there's, there was a book when I was growing up called the Ego Trip Book of Rappless. I remember that one. Am I familiar with this book? This book, even more so than the basketball book, more so than the rap yearbook, reminds me of that book. Because that book was, when I was younger, it was like a pathway to discovery about ideas, not just about rap, but about all the things that I was interested in when I was a teenager. And it kind of showed like a little pocket history of something that I was obsessed with. And as an adult, when I flipped through the book of Rappalos,

it's like a warm blanket. You know, it's like, ah, this makes me feel comfortable to remember to listen to ultra magnetic MCs. You know what I mean? Things that were important to me when I was 16, that as you go through life, you're like, oh, I've moved on to the next thing.

Doing a movie podcast, I'm seeing a new movie almost every day at this point. And so what I tend to do is overlook the very obvious and great things from the past. We're fortunate to have the rewatchables here. We get to re-experience movies that we love. But in this chapter in particular that you're talking about, which is entitled, Who's in the Regina George Circle of Friends? I specifically felt like I was going back to some movies that

maybe I had kind of intellectually moved past, but that are still meaningful to me. So where'd the chapter come from? How'd you come up with the conceit? And what should we say about it? Well, so the chapter, the reason we did that one is, how do you explain it? There are like different types of chapters in there. And some of them, this one in particular, are meant to serve as glancing back at a period of time where a genre of movie was really, really popular. High school movies, they definitely had a run.

And then they just sort of disappeared for a while. Which is why you get that feeling that you were talking about there because a lot of them, the ones that you're probably thinking of came out in the like mid to late 90s, early 2000s. Exactly. When you were probably late high school, early college and doing a lot of the same stuff and feeling a lot of the same things. So I wanted to like have some chapters in there that did that. And I was like, all right, cool.

I remember high school movies. I really liked high school movies. Even watching them today, they're fun. Just reminds you of being in high school. So let's have a high school movie chapter in there. All right, cool. That's the first step. We're going to do that.

And then it's like, all right, what are we going to do? How are we going to do it? And this is where it starts to get a little bit trickier because what you don't want to have happen, the bad version is like, oh, well, let's do the best high school movies of all time or whatever that's been that's been done a bunch let's do the best high school whatever's of all time like i get it those lists sort of have to exist but this should be something a little further than that so you start digging around in like the high school movie genre and you figure out you eventually you come to realize that so much of it is is like set and like uh like a social setting like that's a big part of the high school

experience is just the social aspect of it that drives more than like the academic stuff that drives everything yeah hierarchy yeah it's like um it's as much like a, like a gladiator movie in a way, you know, where the people are jockeying for position. At a certain point, at a certain point in your life, that becomes extremely important. And so I'm like, all right, cool. We're going to do a high school movie chapter. And the like smart way to do it is you have to base it in some sort of social setting. And okay. So now we just need like different social settings that we can do. And after playing around with it long enough, you're like, oh, okay, I got it. Boom.

Regina George is one of the best creations in a high school movie as far as characters go. And there's a part in her movie, like you rewatch it and you're looking for like the angle in. And you realize there's a part in her movie where everybody sits in the cafeteria is like a big thing. So let's do it to where we're going to have her at her table. And each table has six seats. And it's usually her, her two friends, and then the new girl, Katie. Let's get rid of those people. And now we have five empty seats.

And we have to fill in that table. Who's going to sit with Regina George? And there you go. Now we have opened up all the doors. And we can talk about any high school movie we want and whether or not they would fit in here. So it becomes less of like, who's the best high school movie character and more of like the next level below it is like, who would make sense to sit at this table? Some people clearly would not make sense. Some people seem like they would. And then you dig in and you realize they wouldn't, the opposite happens. And that's what Arturo and I were trying to do with so much of

the book. It's like, figure out the smart way to talk about a thing that maybe doesn't get talked about in a smart way enough. So the one thing that you left out of that very clear and clever description of the chapter is something that I think you do better than anybody, which is that you write personal essay that does not have any of the bullshitty trappings of personal essay in the modern times. So we learn a lot about you and your experience when we read this chapter, because you are talking about your high school experience, the people you were friends with, the way that you interacted with them and what you understood about them, how physical appearance and actions dictated your relationship to them, how long you knew them, but you do it very breezily, very much in your own way, not in a kind of like

uncomplicated, but in very clear and very relatable fashion. And I don't know how, I'm genuinely not sure how conscious that is. Maybe I'm kind of dazzled by it because I don't know how to do this. Like I know how to write about Regina George. I know how to write about Mean Girls. I think I could probably write about it interestingly. I'd probably do it differently than you. I have no idea how to like write about myself or my experiences. It's one of those things I don't have the capacity for. Do you always think I'm going to start one of these things by relating something personal about me? Like, how do you decide when to integrate those personal experiences into something that has as high concept as Regina George's school cafeteria table?

It's a feel, I guess, more than anything else. Does it feel like this should be in here? And the way that you decide if it should or should not be in there is like, does this serve the purpose? When I was early on in my writing career, I had an editor, this guy named Ben Westhoff. And I remember he was working on a book. He was in Houston because he was traveling around the country. And we'd never met in person. We just interacted online. And this was before he was even my editor. And he just showed up. He was somebody I looked up to a lot. And he came and we were hanging out. And he was like, hey, do you want me to read a thing that you wrote and tell you what's good or what's bad? And I was like, that's absolutely what I want you

to do right now. And I sent him a thing. We were sitting together in the room, in my front room. And I was like, oh, here, I wrote this. I really like this. And he read it. And it was like, it had a thing in there, like what you're talking about here. It was about Scarface. And it had a quick little aside and then went back to the thing. And he read through it. And he was like, okay, I get what you're trying to do here. But listen, everything you write should have like a clear point that you're trying to arrive to. And every sentence in your essay, in your chapter, in whatever, every sentence should help push you in that direction. It shouldn't just be there because it sounds cool or it's funny or it's not related to anything at all. And it's just like an aside. It shouldn't

be in there if it's that. Get that out of here. But if you can figure out a way to do it and help you get to the point, then it makes sense to include it in there. And I never forgot that. And I think about that every time when I'm writing something like, does it make sense for me to add in a thing about myself here? Or am I just sort of being self-referential just to do it? And if it feels like it's going to help me arrive at the point I'm trying to make, then I do it. And if it feels like it's not, then I don't. The other thing that happens in this chapter that I enjoy is it's a kind of a clear example of the stream of consciousness writing that you're very capable of doing that I think a lot of people fail at, which is as you're kind of cycling through the characters that you potentially

want to put at this table and you're categorizing them and moving them in and out of places, at some point you're like, actually, I've changed my mind and I'd like to move this character to the table. I think in weaker hands, that's like a cheap stunt. Right. But if you're, and you know, we're kind of almost halfway through the book by the time we get to this chapter. So we feel like we're on a journey with you. So if you just say, actually, I do want Harry Osborn at the table because here's why he makes

sense here. It feels a little bit more familiar, but how do you make kind of flights of fancy choices like that without getting too in the weeds of what Ben was telling you not to do? So the way that I do all that stuff is anything that I've written before I wrote it down into my computer or wherever. I have a conversation about it with somebody. More often than not, it's with Laramie, my wife. And that's what happened here. I was like, brainstorming the idea back and forth with her. This is what I'm thinking for the chapter. These are the people, the characters that I want to put in there. And we're just talking. And doing that does a number of things. Number one, it helps, it helps it feel a little more round because she's able to like point out holes that I've got,

or like add a thing that I haven't thought about because she's just thinking differently. So we're, we're doing this back and forth and I'm just sort of cataloging all the stuff that we're saying. And then I take all of that information and then I write that. And I write a version of that, like a cleaner version of that so that when you're reading it, it's just me that's talking the whole time. But it very much feels like we're going back and forth with one another. And when that thing happened in there, that's what happened in our conversation. I was like, I got the people. And then the further along we got in there, she might've said something that made me think of something else. And I'm like, actually, I would like to go back and get rid of one of my picks for this new thing, because you just said a new thing. And that's how all of that stuff works. What does Laramie think of your books? She's not read them, which is a running joke in our house. She reads all of the time. She reads, she's got a book in her hand basically every day. She just powers through them.

Like it's nothing, just two, three days, 400 pages, no problem. She's never read the rapier book or the basketball book or this one. And I think it's the best thing in the world. That's the most marriage thing I can imagine. I have a very similar relationship with my wife. There's a lot of stuff that I do that she's just like, yeah, I just didn't get to it.

Yeah. Didn't have the time to check it out. Yeah. And I, and I'm like, I mean, that makes sense because she's in graduate school and she's taking care of our family and she's running everything.

And it's like, sorry, I didn't get a chance to watch John Wick one, two, and three to read your essay about a dog. Sorry. And, and, and it's like i sorry i didn't get a chance to watch john wick one two and three to read your essay about a dog like sorry and and and it's really it's helpful it's helpful for me that that her that her brain works differently like we need one smart person in the house at least let's talk about movies in 2019 one of the things that you have in here is you kind of dive bombed in a book smart chapter yes i assume that that was a fairly late

in the process edition because that movie came out yes it was um how did your editors feel about that sean was super excited that i told everybody to stop everything um no he was cool about it he uh so this is the the way that this happened is we we finished a book the book was done i was like awesome all the chapters are finished i turned them all in um they're going we're doing the way that this happened is we finished the book. The book was done. I was like, awesome. All the chapters are finished. I turned them all in. We're doing the editing process. Laramie, let's get out of town for like a couple of days. Just me and you. I want to like decompress because we were going hard at the end with the book stuff. And she's like, all right, great. And so we dropped the kids off. We were going out of town to, we were going to Corpus, a couple hours south of San Antonio.

Going to hang out at the beach, just be alone, go on a date, whatever. It's romantic. Right? Yeah. And as a way to like get into that moment, we stopped and we watched Booksmart because it had come out and I'd been wanting to see it. And I could, it was pretty easy to tell early on

that it wasn't going to be in the theaters for a long time and so I catch it now or wait until it's on demand and I wanted to see it in a theater it's just more fun and we went and watched it and it's one of those movies where even as it's playing you you are able to tell very obviously that this is going to be a movie that lives for a long, long time. Cold classic. Instant cold classic. Instant. It's going to be an important movie to a lot of people.

It's probably not going to do that great at the movie theater, and it ended up not, which sucks, but it's going to live. And if I had to pick one of the two, I would pick that. Then a big thing at the movie theater that disappears forever. But we watched it and I really was just like, I love this movie. I love the actors in it. They're so funny. The movie's so well written. They do so many cool little tricks in it.

I want to write about this for the book. And as we were driving from the movie theater afterward to Corpus, I emailed Sean, the editor, and I was like, listen, I just watched this movie and we need this movie in the book. I think it's going to help. It's going to make the book more interesting. And he was like, I don't want to do that. We're already done. And I was like, no, but please.

How can we do this? And he was like, all right, if you can get it done by this day Uh, like sunday it was friday night If you can get it done by sunday with art and everything to me then then i'll put it in there for you And I was like done And I got a phone and I was like, uh Laramie, can you drive? And so she drove to corpus and I was riding in the car and then we got to the hotel And I stayed in the hotel all of Saturday and all of Sunday. It sucked for her. She didn't get to do

any cool stuff. She just was in the hotel with me. And I rode in there, Arturo drew everything up and we turned it in and we're like, all right, cool. We made it. And we got it in there. That's a great story. I'm glad I asked you about that. This would not be an episode of The Big Picture if I didn't ask you some kind of existential crisis questions about movies. Okay. So a big theme of this podcast over the last year or so has been, are movies in a lot of trouble? And there's a couple of different reasons for that.

And hearing you talk about Booksmart makes me think of it, which is that's a movie that didn't do that great at the box office, but probably did even worse than it would have done 10 years ago or 20 years ago. There's a chapter in here about the MCU, which is the most popular kind of movie that we have right now. Is there a part of you that is, are you as engaged with movies as you were when you were first encountering John Leguizamo in the 90s and kind of falling in love or seeing Stand and Deliver, Blood In Blood Out, like some of your personal classics? Or do you feel like things are moving in kind of a new direction that you're not

as connected to? I feel very much connected to it. There are times when you sit in the theater and you watch it and you're like, oh, this was an experience. And I don't know if they're harder to come by or if it was easier as a kid to just like fall into a thing. But when they do show up, like when Booksmart came or another recent example, something like Get Out. And that movie showed up and it was like, oh, shit, this is wonderful. I love this. I love every part of it. I can't wait for, who is this, Jordan Peele? Oh, the comedy guy.

Like what's going on? I don't know what's going on, but I can't wait for his who is this, Jordan Peele? Oh, the comedy guy. Like, what's going on? I don't know what's going on, but I can't wait for his new movie to come out, whatever it's going to be. That definitely does happen still. And it doesn't even have to happen in a movie theater, really. Like, sometimes a movie can come out on Netflix, and it can grab everybody's attention for a little while, and you get to be a part of that conversation. Netflix had, like, three or four really good rom-coms. Like Always Be My Maybe, The Setup, To All The Boys. Like those three movies came and they sort of grabbed a hold of the conversation for a while.

And it's fun to be a part of. I feel definitely connected to all of that stuff still now. It's just, if it's cool, it's cool. What are some other good 2019 movies that you've seen? What would you recommend to Shea Serrano fans, readers of the book, readers of your work? Well, Booksmart is, I'm going back and forth between Booksmart and John Wick 3. Those are, for me, the two best movies I've seen this year. And it's just a matter of like.

Those two movies don't have a lot in common. They don't have anything in common, except that they're fun to watch and really smartly done. And I like that. So I would say I would pick those two. You have to watch those ones. Hustlers, really. I mean, you were talking about Jennifer Lopez. She should have gotten um

oscar attention for selena this is 25 years later um i'm hoping that it happens like please let it happen but definitely that one what did you like about hustlers uh it's again i really like i really like genre movies i really like uh like scammer movies are really fun to watch. I like to see, I like the ascension. I like when stuff starts to go crazy and then you're like, oh shit,

how are we going to get out of this? Me too. I like a good quick little joke. One of my favorite jokes that they have in there is in the, they actually put it in the trailer when they're interrogating her

and their phone, and she takes the phone out and they're like, who gave her her phone? And she's like, this is like a fun little thing like that. That one was really good. Don't go see Rambo. Rambo was really bad.

Oh, no. Yeah. That's tough. You're in on the Rambo franchise, though. I like Rambo. First Blood is good. First Blood is great. I thought when they made Last Blood, I was like, oh, I get it.

They're going to connect everything back together. And they went the total opposite way. I haven't, you know what? I've been wanting to see The Farewell. I haven't seen that one yet. It's very good. I keep hearing everybody talk about it. I don't know how to watch it.

Is it out in theaters? It was in theaters, but not in a lot of theaters. It may not have come to you. It didn't come to San Antonio? It may not have come to San Antonio. You know, they did give it a modestly big release. It went into about a thousand theaters, but it may not have come to San Antonio. But it'll be, I think it'll be on VOD very soon.

A movie that I was really excited about watching was Us for a bunch of different reasons. But I don't think anybody is better right now than Jordan Peele at putting stuff in a movie for you to find. And that's just, like, who else has done that in the last 15 20 years like the way that he's doing it it's just even if a movie is bad that he does

Us was it was nowhere near as good as Get Out but it was still so much fun to watch just because from the moment

it starts you're like okay the rabbits are gonna it's gonna mean something every single thing the song is gonna mean something

I can't wait to like look this up when I when I get home. I agree with you. This is a pro Jordan Peele podcast for sure. Hobbs and Shaw was fun. Not great.

Not great. Not a great movie, but fun to watch. Let me ask you one question. I was having a conversation with someone last night. We were talking about the Fast and the Furious franchise. You are well known as a major Dom Toretto supporter, as a major Fast and the Furious advocate. That's one of your key advocacies, I would say, is respect Fast and the Furious. This person last night said, I think the Fast and the Furious is on the way down. I think that this franchise is imperiled. And Hobbs and Cho was okay.

And the fans thought it was okay. I liked it. Right. You know, it had some great stunts. Do you think Fast and the Furious in general is in trouble uh it's in a little bit of trouble yes but only because we're missing paul walker who's such a big part of it um hobson shaw is not a fast and the furious movie i know fast and furious presents but if you don't have dominic's right or hobson shaw or like any of the main components it's not the same okay um so we can't count that as part of this.

Okay. But yeah, like where does it go from 8, from Fate of the Furious? And you're like, I don't know what we do now. That one was good. It was fun to watch. It wasn't great. You come off of something like Furious 7, which is a masterpiece in the genre. You're like, this is exactly what I want in this kind of movie.

Fate of the Furious was Charlize? Yes. Okay, yeah, that was okay. Yeah, it was like, okay. They made some weird choices in there. When she shoots the mom in the head in front of the baby, you're like,

could have done without that. A little intense. Could have done without that. That was a little intense. But there's, you know, you got to make some missteps every once in a while. What would you do with the Fast and the Furious

franchise going forward I know exactly what I would do tell me with the Fast and the Furious franchise everybody is like pushing bigger what's the next stunt piece

what's the big thing we gotta go to outer space we gotta get Dominic Toretto in a fucking a Dodge Charger with no space suit talking about you don't

you don't need oxygen if you've got family and then just vroom out and like whatever fast Astra yeah

that's what we need something like that I think you go the opposite direction I think you tone everything back you go back to the beginning

we go back to just straight up street racing we have a some sort of Dominic Toretto unexpected connection. We bring in Zendaya as his stepsister. What? His stepsister, who is also a gifted street racer.

And finally. Love that. Finally, for the first time ever, we see Dominic Toretto lose a race. He's never lost a race that he was trying to win. He lost on purpose to Brian when they announced the baby was coming and he wanted to give him the money, but he never has ever lost a race. And we finally see it happen. And we're like, all right, she's taken over. She's going to be like the center of this because you need an actress or an actor, whatever the right words are here. You need somebody who can do like all of the different things

that Dom can do. Dom can be funny. Dom can be intimidating. Dom can be like overly emotional. And Zendaya, after Euphoria came on, it was like, oh, she can do whatever you need her to do. Like there's no question about this at all.

Just that's what I would do. I would go small and reset everything with a new center. I like the idea. Shay, we end every episode of this podcast by asking filmmakers what's the last great thing that they've seen. You're not exactly a filmmaker, but you're a maker of things. What's the last great thing you've seen? It could be old, it could be new, it could be anything. Just something that you loved. Oof, that's a big question. The last great thing that I saw was, I'm going to get super specific, and this is not going to fit in this conversation we've been having at all, is I saw a video clip of my beloved Tim Duncan running laps at the Spurs practice facility with the team.

He's come on as like an assistant coach of sorts. And we got a video of him. The team is running. He's way off in the background by himself, also running laps. And it just, it made me happy. Would it surprise you to learn that you are not the first person

to make a Spurs-related recommendation after being asked this question in 2019 on this show. Really? Jesse Eisenberg, in June, said that the best thing he had seen recently, the last great thing he had seen, was a Spurs-Hawks game. Oh, beautiful. I've always loved Jesse Eisenberg. He's incredible. There's a whole thing in the book about him.

I'm not joking. His performance in the Social Network, one of my all-time favorites. Can I ask you one question before we go? Of course. And you can answer this as fast as possible, and I'm going to tie this all back to Regina George. Okay. You're in Regina George's spot.

You're at the cafeteria table. You have five empty seats at your table, and you can fill them with any five high school movie characters that you want. Which five are sitting with high school Sean Fennessey? Not today, fully successful, fully realized Sean Fennessey. I'm neither of those things. 17-year-old junior in high school Sean Fennessey. I was pretty awkward back then.

Did you have a long hair? No, no. I had like a buzz cut. A buzz cut? Yeah, my hair was very, very short for a long time. That's even better than long hair. None of this swoop. So is the question who would I want to sit with or who would I feel comfortable with? Because I identified with Randall Pink Floyd from Dazed and Confused. Okay.

I felt like I was a little jockey, a little bit burnout-y, a little bit of a loner. And trying to kind of fuse all of those things together. Trying to make that identity work. Very strong first pick. So that would be one. It's you and Randall. Hmm. Hmm.

Similarly, this is basically the same exact character. But I'm going to share it anyway because it's a movie that has a spiritual connection to days, which is Richard Dreyfuss's character from American Graffiti. Oh, we went way back. Went way back. And that was something I was going to ask you about because you don't, you have cutoff points, but then every once in a while you'll drop a reference to coffee or something from the seventies. But for the most part, you're kind of operating eighties,

nineties. So that's two. I need three more spots here. Three more. It's a lot to think about. I spent a lot of time thinking about this myself. Well, I love Katie Heron. Okay. You're going to take Katie? I mean, Lindsay Lohan and I have a Long Island connection. I don't trust Katie. Really?

She went too far dark in Mean Girls. She just took over. What's Brittany Murphy's character from clueless named oh oh um i know you're talking about i don't remember her name though she's wonderful she's wonderful she's a ray of sunshine yeah i'd like to be around her yeah oh well one person that you had in your chapter was cuba's character hi her name is ty ty cuba's character from boys in the hood who um i think I don't know I think a lot

I think a lot of people our age had an emotional connection to that movie yeah and he seemed like I think that was

such a such a specific vision of fatherhood and sonhood and I I was always kind of

moved by his character in general like how specific his struggle seemed. I feel like I would get along well with him, but I don't totally know the premise. Like is the premise that these are the people

that I want to hang with? Yeah, this is going to be like your group. You get out of fourth period or whatever class, it's lunchtime and you're like, this is who I want to sit with. I think that's a good crew for me. I think I have my group. I'm missing a person.

You're missing one. So I have Katie. Oh, I'm missing a person you're missing one so I have Katie oh I forgot about Katie I have is it Trey? Katie Trey Ty

Ty Randall Randall and Richard Dreyfuss' character from American Graffiti I did it yeah you did it was this a good list?

that's a pretty good list not good as mine but pretty good Shay your book is called Movies and Other Things it's literally out in bookstores today if people haven't pre-ordered it

they're fucking cancelled otherwise thank you so much for being here and chatting thank you thanks again to Shay Serrano and thanks of course to Amanda and Chris Ryan please tune in later this week where Amanda Dobbins and I will be breaking down the long and maybe not so hallowed career of one of our greatest movie stars, Will Smith.