The Big Picture - The Nancy Meyers Hall of Fame

Episode Date: October 9, 2020

This week is the 40th anniversary of ‘Private Benjamin,’ Meyers’s first screenplay. Meyers would go on to write and direct a number of modern comedy classics, including ‘What Women Want,’ ��Something’s Gotta Give,’ ‘It’s Complicated,’ and, yes, ‘The Holiday.’ Sean and Amanda dive deep into her filmography to build a Hall of Fame for one of the most successful and arguably underrated filmmakers of her time. Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm Amanda Davins. I'm Sean Fennessy. And this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about one of our most influential filmmakers and the woman who truly can have it all, Nancy Meyers. This week is the 40th anniversary of Private Benjamin, Meyers' first screenplay written with Charles Shire and Harvey Miller, and Meyers' only Academy Award nomination.

It is quite an artifact. We will be discussing it. Myers would go on to co-write and eventually write and direct a number of modern comedy classics, including What Women Want, Something's Gotta Give, It's Complicated, and yes, The Holiday. Her work is filled with beautiful kitchens and neurotic career women seeking love, which is why Nancy Myers is the first filmmaker featured in The Month of Amanda, a festival that Sean made up.

You can also watch Meyers' most recent effort, Father the Bride Part 3-ish, a Zoom sequel released to benefit World Central Kitchen on Netflix's YouTube. It's the full Nancy Meyers experience on the big picture right after this. You're doing that thing when you act like you're not listening to me, but think about what I said, okay? You got me of your homemade granola here. It's been so long since I had it. Oh, you miss it? So much. We sell it for $6.50 a bag at the store. Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express.

Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit superstore.ca to get started. Sean, we're doing a whole podcast about Nancy Meyers. I'm so happy for you, Amanda. This is an extraordinary time. It really is. I'm really honored.

And I just want to say that you are the person who suggested this. You slacked me one Friday afternoon and said, Private Benjamin, 40th anniversary. Let's do a Nancy Meyers episode. And so I would like to know why and what, you know, spirit of generosity sees your heart and what moved you to suggest something that would actually make me happy? Well, you know, it's one combination, generosity, one combination, selfishness, right? Keeping my podcast partner happy is just good business for me, I think.

In addition to that, I think broadly speaking, I like the movies of Nancy Myers. And I think that I know that you love them. And I was interested to kind of fill the holes, to fill the gaps that I didn't know. Because Private Benjamin is probably a movie I had seen bits and pieces of on TV over the years. But I was like, oh, that's probably, as you stated in your intro, a real artifact of Hollywood comedy time. And so I wanted a chance to revisit it. I wanted a chance to revisit Baby Boom. I wanted a chance to revisit a couple of movies that I think are interesting for us to talk about. And I also wanted to make sure that I did actually like the

21st century Nancy Meyers movies as much as I thought I did. And for the most part, I did. And I thought it would be interesting to have you essentially as like the narrator of this show, because this is, is this your number one queen? Where does she sit with Nora Ephron? Like where does she stand in the hierarchy? We're just going right to the hard stuff really fast. And that's okay. You know, I'm prepared for it. I can't really choose between Nora and Nancy because I was reflecting a little bit on why Nancy Meyers means so much to me while we were watching all of these movies, which is just awesome. For a week, it was my job to watch these movies that I watch all the time. I was like, I made it. I too can have it all for one week only. Here I am. Everyone, it's possible um but you know some of my um affinity for both of those directors like is unexamined I just kind of grew up watching those and so I was trying to figure it out and I think it's pretty much just because they're the two most successful like female American filmmakers or studio filmmakers of my lifetime certainly and some and some of, and probably like forever, if you're,

if certainly if you're going in terms of box office. And so I've just kind of been living in their world. And, you know, you and I talk a lot about how we are like children of 80s and 90s studio movies. We are like American Hollywood babies for better and often for worse. And these were the women making movies about women that a lot of people saw. So I can't pick between Nora and Nancy, but being the narrator of this podcast is going to be really interesting because it is fascinating and sometimes scary to look back on a filmmaker like this and realize what you learned from the movies and why you like something or why you don't like something. And, you know, everything should be examined, even the things that bring us joy. But this was an interesting 40 year journey for me personally. Yeah, I think I can totally relate to that. We spend so much

time on this show talking about the filmmakers that I have that same relationship to and not necessarily because of their gender, but just because I was internalizing the taste of the Coen brothers or Martin Scorsese, the people that I really looked up to when I started getting interested in movies, but not necessarily totally understanding why and almost not really thinking very hard about why I love those movies. And I guess you could make the case that they're somehow more critically recognized or art house than Nancy Meyers movies. But I think actually what's great about a lot of these movies that she makes and the films that Nora Ephron makes and her ex-husband, Charles Shire, and a handful of other people is they're genre movies. They're just like looking at horror movies or science fiction movies. You know, they're basically screwball comedies, which is a genre unto itself that we both love. We, you and I love that's one of our,

our, in our Venn diagram, thirties and forties comedies is something that we, we click on. And she's like in a proud tradition. And it's like, it's, I think it's smart and reasonable to look at the movies that she makes as part of the tradition as opposed to, you know, well, this is over here and it's made for women. And we should, you know, we can like acknowledge that it has its audience, but not give it the same sort of critical or cultural analysis that it, you know, it obviously demands. And I think we like taking mainstream stuff very seriously on the show, too. You know, we like taking pop very seriously. And she's really like, she's at the top of the heap, I think we like taking mainstream stuff very seriously on the show too. You know, we like taking pop very seriously. And she's really like, she's at the top of the heap, I think. Yeah.

I mean, that's one thing is that she has not been taken critically as seriously as I think she should have for a lot of reasons. But I think one of them is just like her movies made a ton of money. Like I slacked you at one point, like what women want made $182 million in the United States. That's crazy. And it is really interesting to look at her career right now because it is 40 years since Private Benjamin. And as I mentioned, she did do like a YouTube Zoom short film reuniting the cast of

Father of the Bride Part Three to benefit World Central Kitchen. And that was like, that happened in the last few weeks. That was a nice little peg for us, but that's the first thing that she's really done filmmaking wise since the intern in 2015. And the intern, um, was her first film in six years. So it, it has been a while since we were living in like the thriving Nancy Meyers time. And I think that that is, it's, you know, it's another reflection of, they just don't make movies like that anymore. But she is another kind of writer, director, genre type person who kind of got swept to the wayside a bit, I think, by Hollywood. So it's all of these feel a bit like period pieces too. Yeah. And she's made a handful of movies that are comfortable, could comfortably be called classics, but she hasn't made that many movies, right?

So typically when we do halls of fame episodes, we're talking about Scorsese, he's got 40 films and he's got 10 short films and five documentaries. And it's just, it's easier for him to get films made. And obviously he's had a longer career, but I think she has struggled to get certain films made. She's talked about this in the past

over the last 10 to 12 years, especially as Hollywood has changed a lot. And also she has this really interesting first period as a writer and producer before she's a director in her own right, which is like, it's kind of fun to think about what these movies would have looked like if she were in total control of them

as opposed to a partner or collaborator in them yeah and i'm i'm very curious and this is a great setup to one of the early films that i hope we get to talk about at great length which is irreconcilable differences which i which is a movie that she co-wrote wrote with her then husband charles shire um and is i won't spoil it We're going to talk more about it, but it's pretty much based on the life of Peter Bogdanovich and Polly Platt and is about working together and credit. And that's interesting in a Hollywood history way, but it is also interesting when you know that they go on to write and direct, and with Charles Shire directing several movies together. And you do wonder how much of

like whose hands are where they, they, they presented at the time very much as a unit. I believe that they were called like the Schmeyers around Hollywood. That's a joke about them. But, um, so, you know, sometimes I think that like maybe Nancy was like driving a bit more even ahead of time before she was actually directing. But you gave me a lovely segue to talk about Nancy's, the Nancy's history. Sean is not hosting this episode, but he's always the host.

So can we do like the brief Nancy history and then we can talk about some of the Charles Shire stuff? Amanda, you're in charge. That's so exciting. It's great. I feel, I guess I do feel very much like a heroine in Nancy's movies where things are going well, but I'm just a little frazzled by it because I can do whatever I want.

And I don't know what to do with all my power. So then I'm going to make some like wacky decisions, but the end it's going to be okay. And I'll cook something lovely in my kitchen. We actually are cooking something quite lovely for dinner tonight. So it works out. Okay. Nancy moved to LA in 1972, got a job on The Price is Right as a PA. And that is how she started. And then she had a number of jobs in the seventies.

She like tried to get hired in the Mary Tyler Moore show, submitted a script. She didn't really work out. She worked for the producer, Ray Stark. She also ran a small cheesecake business to make ends meet while she was writing, which is just useful because that will come up in one of the movies. And there are themes, there are biographical details that feature throughout, which is great because that's exactly what men do too. And then, as we mentioned, her first script is Private Benjamin, which she co-writes with Charles Shire, who I believe is not her husband at the time, but eventually becomes her husband. And also with Harvey Miller.

And that is a big hit. Starring Goldie Hawn, makes $70 million in the box office, and they get a Best Screenplay nomination, which do you want? We'll talk about Private Benjamin later when we do the hall of fame but um wow wow indeed wow um you know what i'm glad that nancy myers has won academy award nomination quite frankly she should have more in my opinion well at the risk of going off the rails in the biographical section it's fucking insane that she has an academy award nomination but for this movie and not any of the movies she's made in the last 20 years. I agree with you.

It's actually, I was shocked. I didn't know this until I was doing research for this episode. Anyway, they go on with Charles Shire. She goes on to make Irreconcilable Differences, Baby Boom, both Fathers of the Bride and The Parent Trap, which she directs, but it's co-written with Charles Shire.

And that is the last movie that they make together. They split up. And then she has The Nancy Meyers Decade starting in 2000. She directs What Women Want, which just made a tremendous amount of money for a movie about Mel Gibson being able to read women's minds, which 2000 was just a... The whole 80s, 90s, and 2000s were just a very different time. They just were really different. And we will talk more about it, but it's just extraordinary to me that that made so much money. Yeah, I think it's probably useful to note that

all of these movies are period pieces made in real time. They are extraordinary reflections of a certain woman's point of view of sexual and professional relationships in their time. And those times are different than these times, deeply different. And what women want is, well, we'll get to it, I'm sure. Yeah. Then there is Something's Gotta Give. It's complicated, which is really apex mountain to that era, to borrow from rewatchables. She has worked with, and this is a non-comprehensive list, Diane Keaton, Steve Martin, Meryl Streep, Robert De Niro, Kate Winslet, Anne Hathaway, Mel Gibson, Helen Hunt, Alec Baldwin, Keanu Reeves, and Jack Nicholson,

which is just to say that she can hit with the best of them. And also that we used to make studio comedy dramas starring just like mega movie stars. I still looking at all of that list of people and being like, yes, Jack Nicholson and Keanu Reeves would say yes to be in the same movie as supporting characters to Diane Keaton in a movie that over $100 million worth of people will see in the theaters. Again, another world.

She's one of the great writers of star parts. She's up there with Quentin Tarantino as far as writers of parts that people want to play. And frankly, her movies can't get made without these stars. That was true even 20 years ago. So it's a very savvy choice to know how to write this very chewy, fun, fast-moving dialogue that actors love to play with. And if you can recruit Jack and Meryl, you know you have the goods.

Yeah. The other thing that I think is savvy, though, it's been hard for anyone else to pull off, is that she actually makes movies for women and and the later part of her career for women of a certain age, as Jack Nicholson puts it, and something's got to give, which is just, you know, women over 40. And she gets Diane Keaton, who is kind of like I want to say her muse, but is, I think channels the Nancy Meyers energy in the, in the purest way over a series of films. Um, and Meryl Streep to, to play these women who are not traditionally the centers of Hollywood films, but specifically studio films and who would in other situations kind of be like at the end of their life and then just

throws everything at them, makes them romantic leads, makes them, you know, they have careers, they have full lives, they get into hijinks and love triangles in both cases. And not only was that unusual for Hollywood, but like it worked. It just made a ton of money. Yeah. It's the thing we talk about all the time on the show in terms of films that are serving audiences that are obviously there and eager for stories, but that Hollywood always overlooks, you know, this was true when Tyler Perry was, you know, running rampant throughout Hollywood in the two thousands. And people were like, how can these movies be so successful without accepting the fact that there are huge black audiences that are desperate for these kinds of movies? The same is true, obviously, for it's it's actually bizarre that there are not more people who have the opportunities that Nancy Meyers has.

And she's talked about this. That's not to denigrate her talent. She obviously is at the top of the heap when it comes to making these kinds of movies. But frequently, if you're a woman and you make a movie and it doesn't work and it fails, you usually don't get another chance to make a movie. And she was fortunate to have a hit right out of the shoot as a screenwriter, and it bought her some capital to make more and more stuff. But I think part of it is also that I wouldn't even say that her films are necessarily utterly relatable because they're very upper class. Yeah.

But her characters are very likable and very easy to connect to. So you can almost like get over. Some people can. I can get over the petty bourgeois concern of the world that she creates and enjoy most of the movies. Not all of them. Some of them I struggle with because of the constraints of the worlds that she builds.

But I really, I just like the people in them. I want to spend time with them, which is, that's the whole game in a screwball comedy. Yeah, it's screwball comedy paired with just like a very, very aspirational is, I guess, the word that marketers would use and kind of like supreme wealth porn is what other people who are maybe put off by it would use. And listen, these are very successful movies, but as you said, they are not relatable and they do not speak for everyone. They're also like extremely white. And she has like a very specific type of upper middle class, super neurotic, white career woman.

They have the same values and they're in the same beautiful homes. And as you said, some people can't get past the small stakes, I guess, of the movies. Though, I mean, they deal with life events. They just, you know, their births, their weddings, their graduations, their babies, their, you know, people, widows and death and all of those things. But with a light screwball touch, as you said, and also just in some of the most beautiful kitchens

that you've ever seen in your entire life. And, you know, I put in our outline a quote from a 2015 interview that Nancy Meyers did in New York Magazine where she was like, I don't really like talking about the kitchens. And this has been sort of a touchy thing with her in interviews for a while because I think a lot of people do reduce the movies to like the kitchen porn. I'm not going to do that. I'm going to talk about the kitchens from a place of admiration and also, frankly, just like a visual style and specificity. Like she creates a world instantly and you know you're in a Nancy Meyers movie. And it's not just from the kitchens

and the hydrangeas and the books just so, but from the entire atmosphere that she creates, which in its way, I mean, if we're going to call Michael Bay an auteur, then I think we can also call Nancy Meyers an auteur of like a specific vision. It may not be your vision, but that's hard to do. And I swear to God,

Creighton Barrel owes her like a trillion dollars for like what she created. No, I'm serious. It's like you can see the aesthetic filtering down from everything. It's like, you know, she was 20 years ahead of like HGTV and Instagram. And people do seek out these stories and this type of content, both these people and also just like pretty things to look at in all sorts of forms now. She was just very good at putting her finger on it. Her style is aging really well for me too. When her movies were first... The films that she

directed were first becoming popular and this style was emerging, I was a dipshit 20-something journalist. And I lived in a one-bedroom apartment and I had no personal style. And my wife and I were workaholics and didn't even know how to dress ourselves, let alone know how to create a candle arrangement in our boudoir. So I didn't care. I didn't understand those things.

And as I get older and I think about how to arrange and manage my life, it's still very aspirational. I think the worlds that she builds still very out of reach, but you can see as you start to build a home around yourself that it's not easy work that she's doing, that it's not like, it's as complex

as the person who does fight choreography in a John Wick movie. It's as high stakes as someone who creates CGI for a Jurassic World movie. It's all just part of the production design of the film. This stuff really matters, and she's trying to create a world. And so the kitchen porn thing is not a flip thing. It's filmmaking. And they also serve the story. The fact that the wedding is at home in Father of the Bride, which is still just a beautiful home, but it's like it's you know that's the steve martin character safe space and and he's been

in control of it and then everyone's invading him now you know invading his world and turning it upside down now again as you put it you know that's like he's just a dad whose daughter is getting married it's not like it's not world war three or whatever it's but it's still the house is filling a role and same with like the turtleneck and something's got to give, right? I mean, what she just leans into, she has like Jack Nicholson actually like cut it open, but there-

What a metaphor. Yeah. I mean, it's really obvious, but it is also that she's using those particular, those items as part of the filmmaking. She's just also so good at it it's so hard to to to make a house to find the furniture to make it all look that good yeah i don't know how to buy a couch you know just think of how many couches she's set decked throughout her career with the people that she's worked with you know like i don't know how to buy one article of furniture i don't know i

don't even know how to buy a button down shirt anymore after seven months in the pandemic. And she's a world builder. You know, it's the same premises, Lord of the Rings. She just, she makes the Father of the Bride example is really funny too, because I definitely did not know what San Marino, California was 25 years ago when I first saw Father of the Bride. And now I'm like, oh yeah, San Marino, that's the good school district. That's the beautiful, like to the east of Pasadena. Like if you drive around that neighborhood, those people, they have, they got it going on. Like it's a very suburban, safe, you know, bourgeois lifestyle, but it's really nice. And it's very purposefully chosen. And the vision of it that she creates,

she nails it. You know, She's nailing a lifestyle. I don't think I realized that I moved to California because it's complicated until I watched It's Complicated after we lived here. And then I was like, oh, that's where I got everything that's in my head. By the way, my life is not like It's Complicated in any way, shape, or form. I can't make a croissant. I don't have that kitchen and I've never seen Alec Baldwin's, but like on zoom, um, I have actually seen it in the video. And I remember I was sitting next to my dad when I saw Alec Baldwin's, but, uh, in it's complicated and he was as amused and grossed out as I was by that. So, you know, it works for everybody. It, it spans all generations. That's the other thing that Nancy Meyers is definitely a generation ahead of us.

And so I have always watched these with my parents. And it's interesting now to investigate some of the political and gender assumptions that I, you know, associate with my parents. But these are family movies. And we don't really make many of those in the same way anymore. Yeah. I guess I never really thought about them. I mean, they're obviously about families, but I'll bet that all the members of my family have all seen what women want and it's complicated and something's got to give.

That trio in particular, I think, has a place in the cultural consciousness that is pretty strong. A lot of people saw those movies. Those were movies that you would talk about at Thanksgiving dinner. You know, like, what did you think about that? You know, they have sort of like, I don't know, like high premise in a way, but straightforward execution. Like, What Women Want is insane. It's like Mel Gibson gets electrocuted and then he can hear what women think and Mel Gibson gets electrocuted, and then he can hear what women think, and then he gets electrocuted again, and then again. Like, it's just, it's a really strange movie, but they feel very accessible.

They feel very connectable to other people. And there are not a lot of movies like that now. Like, what would be the movies that you'll be talking to your family about at Thanksgiving this year? Well, that's the other thing is that they were all released when movies were still the center of the culture and like the dominant cultural, you know, and they affected everything from what you talked about at Thanksgiving to aesthetics to, you know, like we'll talk about how Baby Boom just inspired a decade's worth of Atlantic cover stories. But it's like really true, you know, and I just don't know what movies would do that anymore not because the movies aren't good but just because it you know it would be a tv show which is which is a bummer and which is maybe the reason that nancy myers has only made one feature film in the last decade yeah i mean that's probably part of it i think part of it is just that she is

at the phase of her career where she's made enough hits and she's probably got enough money and you know her daughter is a filmmaker now and um she can choose to kind of use her her talents as as she wishes she's written a couple of great pieces in the new york times since quarantine started you know she's like she would be the best lifestyle columnist at any newspaper or magazine in the country if she chose to pursue that path. But, you know, we got a lot of great work out of her too. Like we got a most filmmakers period, I mean, certainly most female filmmakers, but most filmmakers period don't get to do this much work that kind of like tracks the course of a person's life. And you can see she frequently writes characters that are the same age as her at that time and are reflecting, if not specifically, what she's going through.

Like you said before, those biographical details. She manages to work them into all the stories. And it's a fun game to take them out and look at what she was trying to insinuate or tell us about who she was and what her human condition is as opposed to Martin Scorsese's human condition. You know, like his Catholic repression and his guilt manifest through gangsters is like, that's his way of telling his story. And her way is by using Diane Keaton as this like movable queen chess piece around the board of life. And sometimes she's in the power position and sometimes she's stuck behind pawns. You know, it's a great trick.

You added a bit about film history here. Would you like to share it with the world? position and sometimes she's stuck behind pawns you know it's a it's a it's a great trick um you added a bit about film history here would you like to share it with with the world yeah i mean i i just love how she fits into like the the continuum of filmmakers you know like we mentioned she's like got some of that howard hawks dna and she's got some of that bogart bogart and bacal dna and billy wilder but then more specifically it really feels like 70s new hollywood especially and she's got some of that Bogart and Bacall DNA and Billy Wilder. But then more specifically, it really feels like 70s new Hollywood, especially the sort of dramedy filmmakers,

obviously Woody Allen because of the Diane Keaton connection and the way that she writes these neurotic characters so well and really like prioritizes the female voice as opposed to the male nebbish. But the filmmaker that she most reminds me of and i i was surprised not i was not surprised to see in that new york times interview or new york magazine interview she gave five years ago that she cited paul mazerski who i

think is like feels like the signal influence he made bob and carol and ted nalas and he made this wonderful movie called an unmarried woman which which is like the proto Nancy Meyers movie. It's this Jill Kleberg movie about a woman whose husband leaves her kind of suddenly and out of the blue. And it's like a very direct movie. It's very got like real consciousness about sexuality.

The woman in the center of it is like pretty loopy and goofy and like unafraid to be herself in a way and is like finding herself in a way that like a lot of i mean very few films of any films at that time were centering women like that in their stories and like i would not be surprised if she very closely studied an unmarried woman and mazurski is like just a total genius is a little bit of like the forgotten man of that generation of new hollywood and so she fits like I think pretty neatly into that

historical continuum of filmmakers and is like has brought obviously something I would say even more visually elevated to those movies you know she has like a higher sense of visual flair of taste than you know I guess Woody Allen

would yeah I'm she's aware of it too as well and works it into some of her films. I'm very interested to speak with you about her tribute to old Hollywood in The Holiday. But we can save that for... Have some opinions. They're not all negative opinions.

I just have some opinions about that movie. Yeah, no, I mean, it's going to be tough because I could do probably an hour on each of these movies and my feelings and questions about them. And I know that we don't have like 14 hours for this, but the holiday is it's a rich text. I'll say generally. Well, two things. One, I'd never seen it until last night. Wow.

So there were a handful of movies that i saw for the first time this week um irreconcilable differences i definitely had seen like parts of on television but um had definitely never seen from start to finish and had no idea what the movie was based on when i first saw it you know 25 years ago and so revisiting it felt like the first time and then i love trouble i probably caught on cable once or twice but like wasn't really paying attention to it and then locking into it was not stoked on what i found we're trying to yeah yeah yeah i think i maybe had never finished it it's it's it's pretty rough um and then the holiday and everything else i had seen i think multiple times i didn't even need to feel like i needed to revisit the intern or um uh it's

complicated because i just feel very familiar with those movies and it's complicated in particular it's like just such a it's like a classic um but everything else you know it was fun to look at it again how do how do we like go about this project how what are we trying to accomplish here what are we is this like if aliens come down and they say who is the greatest female filmmaker of the 90s and aughts show us their 10 bodies of work yeah i mean that's what we've done with the other hall of fames i mean i don't know whether we have to be like whether we have to litigate whether she's the greatest female filmmaker of the 90s and aughts like please we didn't i didn't prepare like nora versus nancy like a symposium for this okay because that's like

very complicated for me and i don't really feel like i need to pick sides that's not what feminism is about okay it's you know lifting up everyone but I think if we want to pick 10 movies that we can say to the aliens here, she's really important. And also you will learn how to decorate your new home here on earth. Um, that would be the object of the hall of fame. I love it. I'm down with that. All right. Should we start building? Is there anything else we need to say about Nancy? No, I think we're going to get into a lot of it. Okay. Should we just send a call there anything else we need to say about Nancy? No, I think we're going to get into a lot of it. Okay. Should we just send a call out to Nancy right now to give you a call if she's free?

Just drop you a line? If she wants. But what I've learned from her movies is that Nancy likes boundaries and likes to enter the relationships on her own terms. And I really respect that. So only if you're comfortable, Nancy. Okay. Yeah, that sounds familiar to me.

Okay, so should we just go chronologically? Yeah, let's do it chronologically. Are we gonna, so we're gonna do 10. And there are- Yeah, I think there, are there like 15 or 16 titles here? Yeah, I think so. So we don't have to like do a tremendous amount of cuts,

but sometimes it's interesting when there's like only nine really obvious ones and then you have to figure out what the 10th one that you want to put your name behind is so maybe that'll be this one i'm always ready to fight okay 1980 private benjamin the reason for this podcast i i had not seen this movie since i was like eight maybe yeah so let's let's explain the premise briefly of the film. It's a very high concept. Goldie Hawn is a woman who has just been married.

This is her second marriage. She's been married to Albert Brooks, who plays a lawyer. And on their wedding night, while copulating, her husband dies mid-thrust. And she is a woman adrift and trying to figure out what to do with her life and she can't quite

figure it out and one day she gets a call from a army recruiter after calling into a radio show? Yeah, she calls into the radio show and then the army recruiter calls into the show as well and is like, I've got it figured out

for you. This army recruiter played in a dashing cameo by Harry Dean Stanton. Wonderful. Loved him in this. I wish he was in more of it. I wish Albert Brooks was in more of it. Anyhow, he encourages her to come visit him at the army recruitment office. She visits him and signs up for the army. This is a seemingly well-to-do Jewish woman woman living i think in los angeles in the late 1970s shortly after the vietnam war has decided to enlist in the army um this is a very bad premise for a movie it's it's ridiculous like it doesn't make any sense that doesn't necessarily hold the movie back but i had a really hard time being like, how is this a movie? Right.

I agree with everything you just said. And then let me just go ahead and spoil it for everybody. Sorry. So she joins the army. She goes to basic training. They don't like her at first because she is, you know,

like a fancy lady who's just like, I want to speak to the manager. And then she makes friends and figures out how to be the best army person she can be. She's also almost raped by her commanding officer or attempted rape, I should say. And so then she gets transferred to Europe, which was like the goal of being in the army. That's right.

And then she meets a French guy. And a French gynecologist. A French guy. Yeah and a French gynecologist a French guy yeah a French gynecologist and he was in the communist party once because he loved his ex girlfriend was also in a communist and got him to sign up

and so then Goldie Hawn as Private Benjamin has to decide whether she's going to stay in the army or be with the communists because the army is very mad because it's 1980. And so you can't be dating anyone who was affiliated with the communist party. So then she picks him and they get married or they're, they're at the wedding, but he is late for the wedding. And then it turns out that he's still like hung up on his ex girlfriend. And so she's just like, goodbye.

And she leaves him at the altar. And the last shot is of her just walking off in the woods in her wedding dress. So Sean, let me ask you this. Why did she need to join the army? Why was the army a part of this movie? Like, it's not like, it's not i've kept waiting for her to turn around in the last shot and like salute you know because she's like what i really need is to like be back in the army with my friends and have a sense of purpose but that none of that happens she's just like walking off in the beautiful french countryside like why did we need to be in the army um gosh i don't know i mean i think that final shot is like a callback to the third man with alita valley like walking down through the tree covered you know that that

so there's like a there's a a sentimentality to that image but the question is correct um the premise of the movie does not make sense and does not follow through the tone of the film vacillates wildly it vacillates from like classic falling down like pratfall comedy 80s comedy to um kind of feminist empowerment comedy to uh stunt driven comedy to outright melodrama to like spy movie like there it has all of these different elements, which, you know, if, if done well, I think can work well.

But, um, I have to point out that the, the boyfriend, the French boyfriend who she originally meets in Louisiana while on leave after graduating from, um, you know,

private school basically is played by Armando Sante. Armando Sante is an Irish-Italian man from New York City. He's probably best known for playing John Gotti in the HBO film about John Gotti. He's a very good actor.

He's an incredibly handsome man in this movie. But he's playing a French gynecologist. And I gotta tell you, the whole time I was watching this movie, I was like, that's John Gotti. Why is he speaking in French?

So that is very distracting. Um, a couple of other things about this movie, three Academy award, uh, Academy award nominations, not just best screenplay, but Goldie Hawn,

best actress and Eileen Brennan, who's a wonderful actress as best supporting actress. And she sort of plays Goldie Hawn's foil in the movie. But like, there's no follow through in that storyline. I agree. Let me also just say Goldie Hawn, one of the most important comedic actresses like of before my lifetime ever. They do not give her enough to do in this movie. She's just kind of like flailing around.

She's like not that funny. I mean, she's Goldie Hawn and I'm happy she's there. But it's very confusing. I don't really, I don't know what to say. It's very hard to know what the point of this movie is. And it's not that hard to know what the point of a lot of Nancy Meyers' films is. They're fairly clear. They're fairly direct in their purpose.

And like if the takeaway here is just that, know private benjamin is just a wandering soul who can't be held down by any man or any army institution then like i guess i guess we got our point across there i just wandering soul is like the opposite of any nancy meyer's like experience at all that's just it's yeah this makes no sense so this is the only script that she ever got a um an oscar nomination for it's really nice it's a real curiosity it does kick off i would say my single biggest criticism with her films it does this is the first entry into that which is i often feel like they are 15 minutes and or one subplot too long like i i think that um now many of the filmmakers that I worship also are very guilty of this same problem,

where they indulge their interests. But I do feel like a lot of her films, and most of her movies, clock in over two hours. Yeah. But I'm already thinking of, like, the extra subplot in several of them. You're right.

There's a lot going on. Yeah, and in some ways, that's like a manifestation of power, right? Like you're able to kind of get that stuff across and the studio can't hold you back. But in private Benjamin, we were at like, you know,

minute, I don't know, 110. And I was like, what, where are we? Like what continent are we on? Like,

why is she still, I thought she found love. I know. It's like, and then the dog dog she has to like learn how to walk i don't know um okay but so what do we do about hall of fame i i feel like it has to go in at least for now because of the because of the oscar recognition yeah yeah okay i'm putting it in bold um okay i wouldn't recommend this movie to anybody though

but it's like what are we gonna do history is really weird okay so we're the 80s so it's also movies like this where i'm just like what was i watching as a child and like how was my brain formed but that's true of a lot of movies on this list okay number two irreconcilable differences i had never seen this movie until you let me the dvd this weekend thanks so much it's on my desk by the the way, so I'm not going to lose it. We'll return it to you soon. Wow, this is a vicious, awesome movie. And I can't believe it got made. And it's so mean.

And I'm sure they're ashamed of it. And I loved it. And it was completely ridiculous. I'll give the basic plot. So as I mentioned, no, no I'm gonna start at the beginning here's how it starts tiny Drew Barrymore wants to divorce her parents um which she wants she is filed to be emancipated from her parents which if you know anything about Drew Barrymore you may know that later on in life she did actually become emancipated from her parents so I was

very confused when this movie started because I was like, was this after? But no, it's just another, you know, fiction stranger than life or fiction predicting life situation. So Drew Barrymore is like very small and she's like marching into court. And it's like the marriage story scene with the lawyers, except it's like tiny Drew Barrymore with an 80s pocketbook. And she wants to divorce her parents, who are played by Ryan O'Neill and Shelley Long. And the framing of the movie between Ryan O'Neill and Cherry Long, who are stand-ins for Peter Bogdanovich and Holly Platt. And if you have listened to the most recent season of You Must Remember This by Karina Longworth, which I absolutely recommend,

then they're like not even, you will know they're not even trying to hide it. They are just stealing detail by detail from these people's lives and putting it into a pretty cruel, but in a way that works movie about working relationships and marriage and credit and Hollywood and fame and divorce. And wow. I loved this movie. Me too. It's incredibly savage. And let's just put it in a deeper context here. Peter Bogdanovich and Polly Platt

were not just alive in 1984 when this movie was made. They were still extremely active participants in Hollywood. So Bogdanovich in 84 is at a low moment. It's right before Mask, which is his big comeback. And this is right before broadcast news for Polly Platt, which is obviously like one of her big kind of coming out moments as a producer figure working with Jim Brooks. So, you know, this is like, gosh, I don't even,

this is like making a movie about Noah Baumbach and Greta gerwig if they broke up like the and and the people who made it were eight years younger than those people and also we should just point out that ryan o'neill worked with both peter bagdanovich and polyplatt on paper moon among other things and it's like definitely in their lives and then it's like sure i will play this guy in this incredibly vicious movie about their lives i just i can't believe this happened it's astonishing ryan o'neill in particular doing bogdanovich cosplay while also being like just such a handsome man he's been such a handsome man, though. I know. He really is. He's like a god in this movie.

It's true. And he's trying to do this, like, I'm a Neveshe cinephile thing. And it's like, yeah, but, like, you're Ryan O'Neill, you know? Like, you were in Love Story. Like, you can't actually totally pull this off. But you're right, though. Like, the way that these characters are portrayed, it's also very, very hard on Polly Platt. I mean, it's,

it's, it's kind of ruthless about, you know, kind of what, you know, this facsimile, this, this approximation of,

of her life turned into where she was, you know, a woman who was kind of abandoned by her husband for a starlet who is Sybil Shepard in real life, but it's played by Sharon Stone hilariously in this movie. Oh my God. And she's like, she's part Sybil Shepard

and she's like part Dorothy Stratton, except then they don't actually do the Dorothy Stratton thing, which is like the one tasteful choice that they make. Yes, it's very wise to not go down that road, but you're right. It is kind of a fusion of Sybil Shepard and Dorothy Stratton as this kind of vivacious buxom blonde woman who kind of storms into Bogdanovich's life,

takes him away from the Shelley Long character, and then the Shelley Long character kind of storms into Bogdanovich's life, takes him away from the Shelley Long character. And then the Shelley Long character kind of unravels and she gains weight and she becomes an alcoholic. And she really becomes this pitiful, sad woman who then writes a book and taps into her creative juices again and becomes a major star and then becomes an even worse person, just a truly awful person. And then that is like the engine for the emancipation case in the movie is like her parents are bad people and they're selfish and they're vain and they've made a lot of mistakes. But I just, I must've paused the movie 15 times to turn to my wife and say like, oh, so this is actually this? Like just, I couldn't help myself, but footnote the movie in real time because there's so many close approximations.

I just kept thinking about both the pitch meeting, but really when they got together and they were like, so what we want to do is we want to make a movie about Peter McDonavich and Polly Platt. But like no one is actually going to watch that right now. So what we need to do is make up a framing device where tiny Drew Barrymore is filing for divorce from her parents. And that's what will get it sold. Like what? That is what happened. It is a total bait and switch. Like if you look at the poster, you'd think that the movie is one of these like eighties bossy girl teen comedies. And it's, it's not that at all. It's like, it's, it's Hollywood schadenfreude. Like that's all that the whole movie is. And it's kind of marvelous. Like the writing is super crisp. The stars are great.

I love Shelley Long. It's a real like, what the hell happened to Shelley Long kind of situation. She was always frequently typecast in roles like this. He's very sort of high-strung intellectual women who are very like controlling and type A,

but she's great at that. She's such a good screen presence and it's kind of Ryan O'Neill before he starts to devolve into self-parody. Not a lot of people saw this movie though. It's pretty niche. I mean, asking someone to be like, okay, well, it's a little kid played by Drew Barrymore

who wants to break up with her parents, but it's a comedy. That's like, that's a big ask. I mean, it's like a interesting, you know, high concept premise, but it's a comedy. That's like, that's a big ask. I mean, it's like a interesting, you know, high concept premise, but it's also like, do I really want to go see that? And then the follow-up being like,

no, no, no, but really it's about like a Hollywood marriage going wrong. You know, it's not, it's not Goldie Hawn joins the army for no reason. No, it's not. I mean, we should say it is, it is Shire's directorial debut. And they were married at this point, I believe, right?

I think so, yeah. So it's not really a huge box office success, but it's probably the movie I most enjoyed watching over the course of the last 10 days. I think that's true for me too, but it's also because I hadn't seen it before. And I was just like, oh my God,

I can't believe that this happened. Um, and it's hard to find. It's not on any streaming services. You had to buy it. Yeah. I had to buy it to watch it. And that seems like,

you know, obviously there are often a lot of rights issues and that sort of thing going on, but I'm wondering if that's intentional that this one is hard to find because this is not what I would want to play at my honorary Oscars montage of the work that I'm most proud of, even though it's kind of some of the best work. You know what's funny though? This is an important point. The craftspeople, the artisans who work on the Shire and Myers movies are really, really high level people. You know, we're talking about like Hans Zimmer doing the score to some of their films.

And this movie is shot by William Fraker, who shot Rosemary's Baby and Bullet and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. I mean, this is like one of the great cinematographers of the second half of the 20th century. They worked with people who really knew how to make great movies. And that's like, that's one of the tricks, right? You have to be able to surround yourself with all of these incredibly talented craftspeople. And it's like, it starts a trend that they stick to for a long period of time that I think serves them really well. That kind of elevates them above some of the other stuff that could be considered in this class. Yeah. Okay. So we're definitely putting this in the Hall of Fame. Let's do it.

This shit's wild. Amazing stuff. Highly recommend. Number one recommendation. Absolutely. And I also recommend the season of You Must Remember This. Really great stuff. Definitely.

Next up, 1987, Baby Boom. Directed by Charles Shire, co-written by Nancy Meyers and Charles Shire. Sean, would you like to summarize Baby Boom. Directed by Charles Shire, co-written by Nancy Meyers and Charles Shire. Sean, would you like to summarize Baby Boom? Sure. Super, super weird movie. Diane Keaton plays a woman who is a powerful ad executive who is aspiring to become partner in this advertising firm. She's a real go-getter. She's a person who's completely dedicated to her job. She is the vision of 80s yuppie lifestyle. She has a live-in partner played by Harold Ramis, though their relationship is a complete mystery to me based on this film. Out of the blue, a distant cousin dies and that cousin leaves to her an inheritance.

And that inheritance comes in the form of a small baby. And Diane Keaton at first is completely flustered and doesn't know what to do. She decides she needs to give this baby away. She can't possibly have her career and the baby, particularly because she's told specifically by her boss that she can't have it all. Can't have the baby. So she's like, I got to get this baby. It's like fired by eventually

yes more or less is essentially shown the door when she decides that she wants to keep the baby and then

the life that she pursues in keeping the baby which is outside of fast moving is it Chicago where this is set no she's in New York is it New York

oh it's New York it's New York it's confusing because like the Nancy Meyers universe is either New York Chicago Los Angeles and so she leaves New York. It's New York. It's confusing. Cause like the Nancy Myers universe is either New York, Chicago, Los Angeles.

Um, and so she leaves New York. She buys a old home in Vermont and she attempts to rough it alone and raise this child and hijinks ensue. Um, incredibly strange film, uh, has some,

has some charming elements to it. Feels like a real relic of its time to me though. Yeah. I don't think that i didn't see this movie in 1997 because i was closer to the baby's age when it came out um oh are you were you the baby did you play the baby i well like a little bit i did like my my parents and my mother in particular was like a career woman in the 80s trying to balance all of these things and um you know and i know that that was very

stressful for her. And like, it's fine. She'll never listen to this. And she would also to admit to being a yuppie. But my mom was like 100% a yuppie. Okay, so it's it is interesting to watch this many years later as like the baby in baby boom. But um, I definitely watched it after other Nancy Meyers movies. I think I like watched it as an adult. Like I was maybe, you know, not fully mature, but I was at least a grownup and wow, is this like a weird snapshot of gender politics and expectations in 1987. And I was not joking about the Atlantic cover stories or whatever, because I, you know, I watched this and this, I think they do say like the women can have it all, which has like now become a punchline.

But also at the end, she does get it all. And I'm like, oh, this is why my generation is totally messed up because we watched this movie and we thought that we could just move to Vermont and start a baby food company and have it be really successful. And then marry Sam Shepard looking at his foxiest. It's unreal, by the way, and everything would be great. And instead we had to read, you know, like a decades worth of like, maybe you should settle or no, you can't have it all articles and various publications. And then 30 years later, Nancy Meyers makes The Intern, which I would love to talk more about The Intern as a response to or my generation's version of Baby Boom. Fascinating stuff.

I love when a filmmaker can talk to themselves, talk to different eras of themselves. That's totally what The Intern feels like. It's a response 30 years later to who she became and what our culture became um i think baby boom is is kind of similar to private benjamin in that its tone is kind of all over the place you know it's like it's in some spaces it's like a workplace comedy in some spaces it's like it's got really strong dramatic elements. I do think that Diane Keaton is, you know, just,

just incredible in this movie. And in general, like is just such a force of nature and like truly one of the great people to put in the middle of a movie from like 1975 all the way to today. And I think without someone like her this movie would completely fall apart but she has like do you know remember the meltdown scene in front of the well where she like i have to talk to you about that coat first of all like we'll talk about the performance which is amazing but then she's wearing this like you know vermont winter quote

that could probably be sold by drees for like $3,000 right now. I was like, what is happening right now? And once again, you know, like Diane Keene is great in that scene. And I think like her performance is amazing in this movie. And it's also the consistent kind of like comedic, but frazzled, but she's kind of like helping them find the tone that would animate a lot of other movies. And a lot of ways I think that while this movie is not perfect, it's like the source code for most Nancy Meyers to come in terms of Diane Keaton, in terms of the interiors, because you better believe that Vermont Kitchen,

I was clocking the various cabinetry in that. I couldn't help myself. I didn't even know I was doing it. The tone and the themes, which are obviously, you know, work-life balance and what does it mean to be a woman seeking love like but also to not have that be the only thing that defines you and dealing with all the men in your life and the expectations of like what a woman should be it's all there in baby boom i think it gets far more refined and more interesting as she goes along but um an important original text i think that's a

great point that it does feel like even if this isn't the perfect representation of the themes and ideas and the look of her movies it's totally her unpacking what her thing is um which makes i think her next movie kind of interesting because it it doesn't, it feels like kind of the biggest outlier to me in a way. Like I, baby boom has to go in, right. It like, it invents, it invents the Nancy Meyers movie. Um, but, but father of the bride comes next, right. It does. Obviously a remake.

Yeah. Remake of the Vincent Minnelli movie, which is a fun movie, but I think that this is now her movie, her and Charles Shire's movie, is the father of the bride for our generation and probably in the future because there have been so many installments now. But I know you love this movie

because you just put it on best movie dad's list. And I also found it just incredibly winning, but definitely the peak example of like, there is no dramatic tension in this film. Like there is no, no one, no one has a, no one has a problem. Like nothing is bad. It's like, it's about a 47 year old man

who's like, I kind of don't want to lose my daughter, but otherwise check out my house and my sneaker company shit's cool um but it's full of people that i like that i want to spend time with so it it works for me yeah i mean the stakes are not high though at the same time it's it is you who believes that any movie that starts with a wedding is just going to be a success, right? So this is the whole movie at the wedding. So in that sense, the stakes are, you know, the, just the, the fun 10 minutes that, um, that you like so much stretched out to the whole thing. I would also argue having been through a wedding, that there are stakes within

a wedding, even if at the end, everything is going to be okay and everyone's fine and it's a legal arrangement um yeah so i relate to being stressed out around a wedding um and i also just i felt very perfunctory for you to say that how many times in your life have you said that like like every single time someone says the word wedding i'm just like oh my god someone's gonna come and make me wear some tool. Like, no, it's just like a, you know, like put on the helmet and get under the desk reaction. Just like, no, how long do you think it'll go before I can like not have that reaction when someone says wedding? We had a great wedding. Lo um loved it just like the one in melancholia but anyway i would also say that you're unraveling we're not even halfway through the filmography just keep it together my baby boom baby boom breakdown well but also i would say that you the the dad

daughter relationship that has some stakes it's very. And like the point of this movie is escapism. And I, she has movies with more ideas. Um, and I like those movies more, but there is a real, um, intent of escapism in all of these.

There are no problems. They are all unfathomably wealthy. Like they really, everything is going to be okay. And you know that from the beginning. and that is like part of the experience um and i find that comforting and so did a lot of people because it was very successful and spawned a lot of sequels yeah it's a it's a really just a fun movie and it is the kind of movie that you can watch with your family and everybody can enjoy it and it has a kind of it has a peaceful easy feeling to quote the eagles um i it also it's just like it's steve martin like see it's kind of steve

martin um in the center of the movie which is a little unusual given like what her career becomes for the next 25 years it's not until the intern where he puts robert de niro in the center of the movie you know like even the mel gibson um what women want movie is like ostensibly a movie about women and women's voices even if it's got a ton of gender issues um father of the ride is like father is the first word in the title you know that is the voiceover comes from steve martin yeah how do you feel about her use of voiceover do you like it yeah in this one it's like steve martin talking to you which i would love for steve martin to talk to me so i think that that's that's fine it's just also this is kind of grandfathered in for me i guess i think there's something about i saw this movie so young

and it does it feels really of its time it's a very just like 90s soft. But because it's not as... I do think it's aged well just in the jokes. Like most things are at the expense of the dad or at the expense of some wedding thing. They aren't like as timely in a way that sometimes the comedies just don't age. So I don't know. I find it comforting.

And I don't really think too much about it. I'm pro. I mean, this would make it four for four in the Hall of Fame so far. And then things, I think, get a little dicey coming up. Yeah, we're going to go through a rough period. So we can do this one pretty quickly. I don't even know if you've seen Once Upon a Crime, the 1992 film that Nancy Meyers co-wrote with Charles Shire and Steve Kluger, but was directed by Eugene Levy. I didn't revisit it. I did see it in the 90s when it came out.

And I remember thinking it was like a goofy genre play towards something. But like it feels very slight. And it feels like the fact that in some places like she and Charles are not even credited at this point. Like I don't even know who has ownership over the scripts. And that's an interesting thing to kind of talk through with some of her movies, too, where she doesn't get credit for some stuff that she clearly wrote. And this is obviously the story of many American screenwriters. But this one just seems pretty slight.

Yeah. It was a not good clue. And I'm not a huge fan of Clue. So we'll skip past that. 1994 is... Can we not blaspheme Cl on this pod just clue is good I just said that I don't like it but you like it it's just not my bag and it's your bag and this is a not good version of it so we're moving along okay uh 1994 the aforementioned I Love Trouble uh starring Nick Nolte and Julia Roberts. And this is a newspaper.

Is this a comedy? Did you laugh during this movie, Sean Fantasy? Not once. Not one time. So I don't know what to say about this. It's obvious that His Girl Friday is an influence here. And Julia Roberts and Nick Nolte play. They're competing newspaper columnists this one is in Chicago and they're trying to solve like a a train accident that's maybe also a murder

and they commit every single uh ethical breach known to journalism like every single one this is the worst ethics in journalism that I've ever seen on film. That's actually probably not true because, but it's really bad. And they have absolutely no chemistry whatsoever. And I can't believe that I don't like a movie in which Julia Roberts plays a supposedly fast talking newspaper woman. Part of the reason might be that she doesn't talk very quickly. There's just like no energy to it whatsoever. It's none of the actual screwball energy that I'm sure that they were going for. And for whatever reason, just like can't realize. But this did not work for me. Me neither.

And as I noted to you, as I was watching it a couple of days ago, it's very unusual because Nick Nolte is one of my favorite and i think most underrated actors of his generation especially before he became a kind of craggy like biblical riff on himself you know like when he was still in like handsome floppy blonde hair nick nolte phase um and he's like i think he was in his 50s when he made this movie and Julia Roberts was in like her early 30s and they I think she's younger there's like a solid 25 years between them and so that's part of it and they're playing you know I think I think I called it Pete Hamill and Maureen Dowd like there there's like there's clearly a difference they're they're ostensibly competitive they have different styles Julia like I don't know if she's ever been hotter this is like the reddest her hair is in a movie she is like very flinty but it's a it's a straight up

bad script they have no chemistry whatsoever um it's during this time when chemical medical companies were like the big bad in mainstream movies you know this is like one year after the fugitive you remember the fugitive when it was like all to develop like some drug they killed you know dr kimball's wife that whole thing like this is very similar and like there's like a james rebhorn plays this shadowy figure who's like created a plot to murder somebody it's all like really convoluted and not in the fun like describe the plot of the Maltese Falcon kind of way where you're like, actually, I don't even really know what happened.

It's just like boring. And it's surprising because even in a movie like Baby Boom, which I'm like, this movie is kind of all over the place and I don't totally understand what they were going for. It's kind of consistently engaging. And I Love Trouble, I think is the only movie that we're going to talk about where I was just like, I kind of want to turn this off. Yeah mean I agree with you and I was surprised I realized

that I probably had not finished it when I watched it you know in the 90s and had not revisited it and it just it doesn't work um I thought of the movie actually where Julia Roberts plays a newspaper woman that I really do love which is the pelican brief but it's not a comedy so um she looks smashing in that as well. Yeah. And she also, and technically that's a, well, I guess it's like oil company that's ultimately to blame there, but the similar thing, similar time period, underrated movie. Okay.

So no to I Love Trouble. We move on now to Father of the Bride Part Two in 1995. Didn't rewatch this. I didn't either. That's really funny. I know what happens, which is that Annie and Diane Keaton's character, whose name I can't remember, get pregnant at the same time. And then I just remember them doing pregnant aerobics in the living room with Frank. And I remember that the nursery that they build is very beautiful. And then there are babies

and everything is happy again. So again, it's pretty low stakes. Yeah, I was just gonna say another high stakes war effort from Nancy Meyers. But like a movie that also was like a huge hit and people loved and they were like, okay, let's go on with our lives. Like this movie made me happy for an afternoon. And now I watch it on TNT every four and a half years and uh it's like a part of the american fabric um i i like it but it just doesn't feel like it's essential to anything right i agree yeah i it's the same thing it's i'm i'm glad for their success and to the extent that it paved the way for them to make other movies and for n Meyers to make other movies. That's great. But I didn't feel the need to rewatch it. I think when I was on my ninth Nancy Meyers movie

of the week, I was like, can I squeeze in the father of the bride part two? And then I was like, what am I doing with my life? I ask myself that frequently these days. But I'm sure if I saw it today, I'd be like, oh, oh i dig this this is pretty fun yeah it's i mean it's nice babies are nice so it's baby jazzercise or whatever okay next up we've never talked about this movie uh the parent trap remake directed by nancy myers this is her

her first feature as a director and and co-written with char Shire, um, starring Lindsay Lohan as both, uh, Hallie and Annie, the twins. And, um, I love this movie and this is really important to me. And I remember seeing it in a theater. So why? I think I was pretty close to Lindsay Lohan's age. I swear to God, this is so dumb, especially if you go back and look at it. I remember thinking that Hallie, who is the California twins haircut, was really cool. And that I also at like age 12 or I guess I would have been 13 or 14 needed to get this haircut. And I don't like remember seeing a movie before and being like, you know what, I actually need to have that part of thing in my life. But like, there it is the Nancy Meyers experience for you at like a prime teenage age.

It just also seemed like they were having a lot of fun. They lived great lives, right? One of the twins lived in London and her mom was Natasha Richardson. And she just like got to go to fashion shoots. And the other one lived in Napa Valley. And, you know, Dennis Quaid was her dad. And we can just the fictional dad that he plays seems pretty cool in the movie. Let's keep it at that. And they ride horses and then they got to go to camp.

And I didn't really like camp, but it seemed like they had a good time at camp so it was like a teenage vision of a Nancy Meyers world that actually spoke to teenage Amanda so I guess I was brainwashed in 1998 and haven't looked back that all seems reasonable to me um I am just just a few years older than you and it's like a few years too many um because like i was a 16 year old boy when this film was released and so you can imagine that i could not care less about it and i didn't see it until way later and by that time i was like i'm not a kid this is a movie for kids and while i proselytized for certain kids movies on this show, that one in particular probably reveals my inability to tap into like the preteen girl experience. Like that's just something that could I be any farther from a human being's experience than a preteen pair of separated twins? Probably not.

So like I almost don't I don't even really like have any criticisms for the movie i just think i think it's like obviously very well made and a good portrait of like um two different worlds you know like the the england and the napa valley yeah they're not really that different they're all just like you know at the end the some posh dad and the daughter take the concord to beat the other people back to london or whatever no i'm serious that That's how it works out. So it's the same world. But yeah, I think it's like the best realized version of a teen movie. And like the adult performances are really great and the houses like are actually like very beautiful

and the clothes are cool and it's a world that you would want to live in. And most teen movies are not like that they don't pay attention to the like things other than the the teen candy so i give her a lot of credit for that and i think it is like a nancy myers version of a teen movie this is very important to women of a certain generation though i i'm aware of that i i know that both you and juliette litman love it i know a lot of people in my life who love it my own sister loves it but um i think it like hooked a lot of people at a certain age absolutely i i like it's one of those things where like i respect it but i don't think anybody needs my opinion on it

okay well can we put it in the hall of fame though absolutely okay great so we went four for four and then oh for three and now we're back. Yeah. So this next one's going to be really interesting. Um, okay. 2000. What women want directed by Nancy Meyers. This is a script that she rewrote, but doesn't have credit on.

That's correct. Which I just think is important in terms of kind of knowing the origin and whether it's in Nancy Myers's brain or in someone else's brain. Um, this is a movie where Mel Gibson is a chauvinist ad executive and, uh, electrocutes himself with a hairdryer. And then he can hear every single thought that all the women around him have. And then he learns to listen and understand women. And also to make successful advertising campaigns for Nike. And then to marry, or sorry, to at least date Helen Hunt. The end.

This, I don't... Wow. To this movie. And to that this movie was as successful as it was. This is another one of those time capsule things that we have to understand. I think it's probably hard for anyone under the age of 30 that is listening to this right now to accept Mel Gibson as a dashing ad executive who can bed down any woman in the world based on sheer charm and looks i mean to

many people he is a demon gorgon of hate and you know crypto fascism and so you know it's a little hard to just look at him now in this part and accept it and just like kind of buy it that's even just setting aside whether or not you think the film is any good. Um, you just have to buy him as a major object of affection by the end of the film. Somebody who evolves, who understands women a little bit more clearly and who can be a sensitive

lover and father. and can also save Judy Greer from, uh, suicide. Yes. Among other things. Which just Judy, give Judy Greer something good to do. This is like the longest running bit in movie blogs,

but I couldn't believe that she was in What Woman Want as well. But yeah. But I mean, the other thing about him at this time is this is basically the end of the, you know, what we'll like loosely describe as the sane mel gibson period where he was just mostly a matinee idol because you know he later he goes on to make we were soldiers and signs and a couple of other movies after this but for the most part this is post all of the lethal weapon movies it's post like the patriot and conspiracy theory and maverick and braveheart and

you know all these films that he had made over the years and it's a few years before the passion of the christ and that's when things kind of like turn over and he becomes a different kind of a figure in hollywood and that's before all the hate speech stuff so i think if you can put this in context the movie makes a little bit more sense and then when he's kind of dancing around to frank sinatra as like the ultimate bachelor or whatever in this movie you you can kind of get on its level yeah the best way for me to put it in context is that like in nodding kill which is in 1999 there's that whole exchange about the nudity clause and julia roberts is explaining like how the how you factor in like the butt crack and the top of the butt. And Mel Gibson is the example

that the fictional Julia Roberts uses in like the rom-com because he is like the matinee idol. And like back then he was just someone whose butt you did see and like were excited to see in movies, which is also in its own way, an artifact of a different time of moviemaking. Yeah. I think Helen Hunt is also kind of an artifact of a different time of movie making. Yeah.

I think Helen Hunt is also kind of an artifact of this time. What happened to her? I mean, you know, what you always say when I ask a question like this is what happens to a woman over 40 in Hollywood. But at the time, very similarly, I think she was a huge star. You know, this is well after mad about you and after I think she had won an oscar for as good as it gets in like 97 98 that period of time yeah and so she was really kind of at the height of her her powers too as a leading lady and I think that

this is like she's doing a lot with actually not a strong female part um which is kind of strange for a movie like this like this movie's premise kind of forces restraint like it forces a kind of restraint on the nancy myers point of view that i found to be interesting um but i kind of don't believe the movie at all like i don't believe like that's a wesley morrisism like i don't believe it but like i just don't believe the mel gibson character is real i don't believe like his evolution is real. Like setting aside the ridiculousness of the premise, it's a very entertaining and well-made movie. But it's like, it's like a bunch of who we,

in my opinion. Yeah, I agree with you. I mean, like I said, it doesn't come from her brain and you can tell that she's having fun with the premise, not the premise being that like Mel Gibson,

the person can hear other women's thoughts, but like, what would you you or what would a woman like want to make a man understand and to like how to into submission and like there are like 2 000 funny moments of that you know and you can see like you can tell that she's kind of having fun and imagining like what would like a very broad audience find amusing and what's going to resonate with this person what's going to resonate with this person and like i know i've you know been making a lot of jokes about i can't believe this movie made so much money, but in the other way, it is kind of the broadest of her comedies.

So you can understand people being like, oh, that's funny. Cause it's just playing with like some very, very reductive ideas of what men think and what women think and want. And that there were still audiences for that in 2000. I, you know, they're, they tried it recently with what men want. Um, and that there were still audiences for that in 2000. I, you know, there, they tried it recently with what men want, um, in 2019 and that did not do as well. So the audience is not there in the same way though. I don't know. It's, it, it's an artifact.

I didn't hate it as much as I thought I would when I rewatched it. I thought both Mel Gibson and Helen Hunt were better than I remembered. The extra plot of the daughter and the boyfriend is... Why was that happening? That took forever and was pretty awkward. Perfect example of the one plot too many in a movie thing. Yeah. And it is also a pretty fascinating look at advertising and marketing and the concept of women's empowerment circa 2000. And what those pitch meetings would be like and how to get Nike's business. And I always wonder, so this was before product placement. Was it or is Nike getting money off of this?

I'm sure Nike's getting money. I mean, there are moments where you can see people typing at their Sony VAIO or whatever in the office. Yeah, I guess that's true. I think that stuff mostly starts in the 1980s but it is a it is a high time for that kind of synergy you know where it's like you know very corporately branded and you could make the case that that's one of the i don't know if it's like a criticism of her films necessarily but they're so consumer conscious you know they're like their lifestyle movies in a lot of ways so you're gonna find a lot of things

that you would want to buy in those movies like look at the cars in her movie there's always an audi or a bmw or you know she's she very much is like placing real life upper middle class objects in the center of the frame all the time which is kind of kind of fascinating i mean it's not that seems not revolutionary in the time when like iron man drives an audi throughout like winter soldier or whatever but back then she was kind of like, she was the counterpart to Michael Bay in that respect. Totally. Though I would say this is like the least Nancy Meyers visual of her movies. And it does have, you know, it has the Nike brand campaign and it has the box with all of the different products. And it is, it's about stuff. They are trying to sell things.

They're in an advertising agency. It's, it's very literal in that sense. Um, but, and you know, the, the apartment is very nice and there is an extended prom dress,

uh, shopping sequence, but it doesn't really have this specific visual flair that she develops, um, in the rest of the movies. And also that I think you can see in the parent trap. It's more focused on, I mean, it spends a lot of time in that office and is really just more Mel Gibson focused.

I think there's something about putting the man in the center of the movie that they somehow don't spend the time on the other things. I think that's true. I think it's also interesting to look like up to this point at the the professional lives of the people in the middle of her movies in irreconcilable differences you've got writers and filmmakers and baby boom you've got advertising executive which is so often the kind of cloak of the stymied screenwriter you know the person whenever you're trying to create a character that is like you but isn't exactly working in hollywood it's always somebody who works in advertising or potentially in magazines or newspapers like

the characters in i love trouble or somebody who's like a sneaker designer which is another kind of creative but is working in a corporatized environment the same way every hollywood screenwriter is working in like these are all you know invisible veils covering the n the Nancy Meyers point of view of the world. And the same is true, I think, for both the Mel Gibson character and the Helen Hunt character. Like, she's kind of writing through both of them the challenges of telling stories to people, of getting them interested in your wares in a way, which is smart. I mean, she's really, it's like a very, it's a fairly transparent action, but it is super involving. You just like, i really hope they get the account you know it's the same thing that mad men pulled off so well like gosh i hope they just

get heinz beans or whatever the fuck don draper was after you know that's true also i just need to put in like the fact that the you're rooting for the like highly inappropriate workplace romance where he's stealing ideas from the person is definitely a relic of its time. And there's like, there are very few pre 2015 rom-coms that would like meet the standards of, you know, gender and sexual politics is like, we have all decided that they,

they should be, you know, everybody fails in their own ways, but this was pretty weird. Do you think that Christopher Nolan stole ideas for Inception from this film? It goes into the mind and takes the motivation and the ideas and pulls it out. Nolan's huge Nancy Meyer said. Yeah, that's definitely what it's about.

I think this was such a huge phenomenological movie that it kind of has to go in. It has to go in? Yeah. I think I agree with you. So that's probably, is that going to mean a cut later on that I'm not happy with?

We'll find out. I don't think so. I think we're going to be, no, I think we're going to be okay. Okay. Next up, 2003, Something's Gotta Give. uh this is this is the masterpiece this is where like all of the the ideas and the actors and the writing and the visuals come together it is like the nancy myers movie that kind of coins nancy myers um i can't believe how charming it is I still can't believe Sean who would you pick Jack Nicholson or Keanu Reeves I'm in love with Jack I've always been in love with yeah yeah I

mean I know Keanu is very hot in this movie he seems very decent but he also just seems like like a fantasy he seems like not a real person and jack is like fat and has really bad taste and is ridiculous but it's like kind of real like that's a real guy well i mean it's a real jack nicholson to an extent and he is like commenting on like the you know decades of being jack nicholson which is so funny um i for years i've just been so mad that she doesn't pick Keanu Reeves because it's just like it's amazing to me that dreamy ass Keanu Reeves, who's a doctor in the Hamptons, is like the backup in this movie. I mean, that is when you know you've succeeded and when you're like building true fantasy worlds that people want to be a part of. And I've been mad about this for so long because he is you know all the things that you're supposed to want in a partner um but my most recent rewatch he is a little bit of a pushover so now i do kind of

understand the the reason that she goes back to jack um also it's unbelievably charismatic jack nicholson performance and the diane keaton jack nicholson chemistry off the charts yeah it just it looks like nancy myers is in love with Jack Nicholson. I mean, that's why she chose... I mean, the stories about Jack Nicholson are legion. He is the all-time human magnet. He draws people in and fascinates them. Even when he, in the later stages of his life,

looks like a giant potato, it doesn't matter. The eyebrows and that, like that weird, like growling, awkward sensuality that he has. Like he's just a really unique human being. And Diane Keaton is the exact same. We already talked about her. I mean,

it's like two forces of nature. Keanu is wonderful. I love Keanu. I am a huge fan, former big picture guest, Keanu Reeves. He's just like in the same way that I think Nancy Meyers is disinterested in a kind of Gen X slash millennial pretty boy.

I think Diane Keaton's character is the same way. I think ultimately she's like, I want a man. She seems interested in this idea of masculinity. Sure. And also maturity. It's about people later in life figuring themselves out and then figuring out love. And they make very cute jokes about their age.

And this is where I learned that if you can climb a flight of stairs, you can have sex after a heart attack again. So I don't need that information yet, but it'll be good to have one day. What a great scene, though. I mean, what a perfect Billy Wilder scene in a movie. The way that it's shot, the way the camera's facing down on him and he's freaking out. And then it shows him from behind and below and it's moving all,

it's like almost like a Charlie Chaplin scene, you know, like she's a really good filmmaker and like, we take that stuff for granted, but between putting like the right people in the center of the movie and knowing how to like, what position to put them in. This is,

this is totally the one where I was like, Oh shit. Like she really has the goods. i was like oh shit like she really has the goods like she's really really really good at this now yeah and this has a little bit there are one too many heart attacks um per your note about subplots i was just like again and i understand that some of them are anxiety attacks and yes anxiety attacks can feel like you're dying and that's very serious but most of the subplots and the the you know the side lanes and the art are also fantastic and filled i mean francis mcdormand is like in this movie for 10 minutes and it's just

amazing i didn't want it more but she's there and you know the play that um diane keaton's character eventually writes is actually like they don't show it to you but the bits they show you are very clever and funny and you actually believe that she would be a good playwright. The dancing Harry's is very funny. And the image of all those butts is just, you didn't need that for the movie to work, but she's just firing on all cylinders. Um, I also have been not to the cafe in Paris where, you know, the final scene or the penultimate scene of this movie is, but I have stood outside it next to a very large sign that says this is the move the cafe from something's got to give and taken many photographs and that was a very happy moment for me so uh this is the one congratulations to everybody

i love it just like private benjamin i have no idea why it ends in paris but you know it's great at least in this one she's like I love Paris and I'm setting a something in Paris and it's so romantic and like people deserve romance there's also that there's a line when they're having after they've had sex and they're sitting at the kitchen counter and they're eating eggs and he asks her why Paris and she's like because people need romance and what where are they going to get it? In their real lives? Like, no. So I write it. And that to me felt like Nancy Meyers writing her thesis statement of this is what I do. And it's obviously too much. But also, where else is it going to happen? I mean, I'm not going to Paris anytime soon. I'm with you you this is one of the great films of the 20 21st century all right 2006

the holiday would you just like to share your thoughts about the holiday yeah i'll describe the plot very quickly uh two women who are unlucky in love one living in surrey england the other living in los ang, are trying to find a way to get away from their lives in their respective cities. And so they agree to a house swap via a website, one moving from Surrey to Los Angeles, the other moving from Los Angeles to Surrey to spend the Christmas holiday. Upon arriving, they experience the pleasures and downsides of the respective homes of their swap partners and maybe even the people in their lives um this is uh i you know i had heard about

this movie for years there's been a rewatchables about this movie it has certainly a cult following um i would say it's not one of the most sort of box office successful of the nancy myers movies um i think it's like super weird movie like a really incredibly strange film um and i i have no idea what's going on with i don't know why cameron diaz continues to play characters that get cheated on she's one of the most magnificent people on earth like i i never buy it when someone's like yeah i cheated on cameron diaz I'm like what are you talking about but this movie opens like opens that way um and likewise not to like make this all about the physical beauty of the two women in this movie but Kate Winslet routinely playing like the sort of overlooked like a little bit frumpy woman I'm like if Kate Winslet walked

into the room you'd be like that's the most breathtaking person i've ever seen in my life so just from that vantage point i had some instantaneous struggles with the holiday um i also felt bad for her that she saddled with jack black while cameron diaz gets jude law like at really a very powerful period in jude law's life he looks very handsome in this movie um but i did like as you mentioned earlier in the episode that it is a nice little like pocket tribute to old Hollywood with the Eli Wallach character and with Kate Winslet kind of discovering these things and with Cameron Diaz really like representing the awful thing that Hollywood became as this like trailer cutting empress it's just a strange movie that really felt like it was five and a half hours it is like eight different five and a half hours. It is like eight different movies.

In a lot of ways, this is like the most literal Nancy Meyers movie because it's literally like the two women are swapping lives by swapping beautiful houses. Like it's right there. She's like engaging with it. It's not my favorite of these movies. And I shared some of my complaints on that uh holiday rewatchables that you mentioned and was uh like roundly criticized there is a vocal jack black contingent on the internet who think that he is the most important part of this movie even though his character sucks and I don't think he's a good composer and I also just having to listen to this

guy just nerd out about screenplays at blockbuster as a date before he goes and dates his like Hollywood model girlfriend who doesn't like him is not a model for a great relationship. And Kate Winslet deserves better. But OK, whatever. My other complaint about this movie. Technically, a Christmas movie, right? In the sense that they are they're swapping over the Christmas holidays. There is a Christmas Eve in this movie. There is a New Year's in this movie.

There is no Christmas Day in this movie. What are we doing? It's fine. I understand that holiday also means vacation in the UK. And so it's a play, but like, it's right there in the title. Just like, give me some Christmas if we're going to do all of this. I agree with you about Jude Law. Listen to the rewatchables for more thoughts on what Jude Law means in the world and in this movie it's very powerful I just I think that this is like a great in concept Nancy Myers movie that execution wise isn't there um they're just like and it's everything from the the Kate Winslet Jack Black they they seem like they would be really great friends but you kind of want totally you want Kate Winslet to end up with eli wallach okay yes um you know generational issues aside not physically but like they have the chemistry they're simpatico yes right you know i am i don't think the cameron

diaz house is like obviously a an incredible house that i would love to live in but like decor wise it's not really there it doesn't and maybe in, but like decor wise, it's not really there. It doesn't. And maybe that's supposed to be the thing. It's not really lived in because she doesn't really, you know, hasn't figured out who she wants to be, but like, I'm kind of here for the houses at some point.

So that's disappointing. It's like, I understand that this movie is trying to comment on Nancy Myers is experience in Hollywood and her affection for old Hollywood, but it's, it just goes a lot of places all at once. on Nancy Myers's experience in Hollywood and her affection for old Hollywood. But it just goes a lot of places all at once. Yeah. Here's what it has going for it.

Eli Wallach. A very kind of breezy sentimentality that I think is actually mostly not too saccharine. Pretty good dialogue. There's always good dialogue in every Nancy Myers movie yeah overqualified cast I think for a story that is this kind of ramshackle so you can just get away with sequences of Cameron Diaz and Jude Law

talking in a room because they're Cameron Diaz and Jude Law and then two of like the all-time cutest movie kids Jude Law's daughters. Oh, yeah. They're very cute. Also, Mr. Napkinhead. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. That stuff is all great. I do like Jack Black talking about movie scores. This is somebody who keeps talking about movie scores on a podcast. I do think that it's nice when someone literalizes what goes into making this stuff inside of movies. And I was thinking about this. We made a whole episode of movies about making movies.

And we didn't mention Irreconcilable Differences or The Holiday because I'd never seen them. So I would go back and say that they have aspects of that quality that I like too. Can I just give a note about Jack Black talking about movie scores? I just want to be really clear. I think it's cool that he loves his job and that he loves movie scores, but then he sings them to her and his Jack Black voice in a blockbuster. And that's when I had to leave the room. You don't sing them on a podcast and I appreciate that. So please don't stop. Should I start? I mean, maybe I'll start doing that. No, don't yeah should i start i mean maybe i'll start doing that no don't um i would probably start with michael small's uh clute score what do you think no i just next episode tune in i don't

like it when people start singing i get really uncomfortable please don't um i people love this movie people really like this movie even though you and i don't so I don't know what to do should be like put it in reserve I mean I think it like it has to go in four five six seven no it doesn't eight this would be eight and we have two and a half more to consider yeah but one of them is not making it in though you think one of them is making it in at the end here? Well, why don't we just, why don't we decide? Don't you want to have a little dramatic, like, tension at the end of the podcast? I do. I love to have that.

I just, we needed five more Nancy Meyers movies to have real tension. That's the thing. It's kind of like a Nancy Meyers movie, you know? The stakes are pretty low. We know what the 10 great ones are. Let's just get to the end and just say, hey, we got 10 great ones. You know, Kimberly Williams got married. It's wonderful.

Everybody's happy they live in San Marino. No, hold on. We have one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, oh, eight, nine, 10. Okay, you're right. I miscounted. Yeah, we have to put it in. Okay.

The holiday goes in for all the holiday heads out there. You know, for all the Mr. Napkin heads out there. They were very ahead of its time on Airbnb. You just gotta, you gotta say that. So that's true. Yeah. Okay. okay 2009 it's complicated if something's gotta give is the masterpiece then it's complicated

is my favorite this movie rules I'm a big fan as well I don't I don't feel like I have a lot of deep thoughts about this movie it does feel like it is it's a it's a sister piece a tandem piece with something's got to give right like very much about you know who is the person who's good for me versus who is the

person i want um it's very much about you know a woman that we don't necessarily always see on screen at a certain stage of her life as a romantic figure um it's about like liberation versus like oh did i do a naughty thing um yes which is an interesting kind of question that i think she's really good at tapping into the like oh i should do this but i shouldn't do this but i should do this which i like a lot like i think you and i is like very kind of type a-ish people like want to have happy and and like abandon like a life of abandon but often struggle with the ability to lock into that i think she's really kind of taps into that really well in the movie plus same thing with like a lot of the last movie the last few movies we've been talking about it's just like

all the best people at their jobs like meryl streep alec baldwin um you know like the whole kind of roster steve martin, like the roster is pretty incredible. Lake Bell, love Lake Bell. Yes. Who is just very funny as the new wife of Alec Baldwin and has a tough job being like the person who gets cheated on, who you need to like never even feel bad for a second that she's the person being cheated on. And Lake Bell is not self-conscious and just like very goes for it

in a in a funny way yeah this movie is also it's another nancy myers thing about like a new phase in life and you know finding like meaning at at a certain age and and and maybe when like the rest of the world doesn't like quite value you in the same way which you know you could you can do age parallel you can do career parallel there but it does does kind of like, it tracks with her career. It's also a great, you don't get to hang out with Meryl Streep very often. You know what I mean? Most of the time Meryl Streep is like doing a character and she is capital A acting and she's the best in the business at it. But this feels the closest to what I imagine having a glass of wine with Meryl Streep would be like and then being like my eyelid does this and should I get it fixed but also I hate women who

like get plastic surgery but also you know I had two bottles of wine last night it like it she is she's underplaying it and that is a real treat I have to say this house is just extraordinary there's like there's a real debate of like, does the kitchen need to be renovated? Because that's the whole reason that she meets Steve Martin's character who's an architect because she wants to redo her kitchen. But it looks pretty perfect to pretty much everyone who is not Nancy Meyers. I'm sure the new one will be lovely whenever it gets finished. It's just a treat. It's a domestic comedy that costs $85 million. It's produced by Scott Rudin, shot by John Tull, who shot Braveheart and Almost Famous, and scored by Hans Zimmer.

It made $225 million. This is a blockbuster movie with the shape of Nancy Meyers. It made $225 million. This is a blockbuster movie with the shape of Nancy Meyers. It's fascinating. It opened on Christmas Day. I remember it because I went with my whole family. Like it was an event, you know,

and there's like a big New York Times Magazine profile for her. It was still, that was only 10 years ago or 11 years ago. And that feels like an entirely different hollywood yeah and and just like um the diane keaton character in baby boom who creates this gourmet baby food and meryl streep in this movie is owns a successful bakery and like that these

are all reflections of things that nancy had in her life and she's a she's a maker of things like all of her characters are makers of things i love that too um just like a very like not um not hard it's like it goes down easy this movie i would say you know it's kind of like always fun easy to return to this hasn't been a rewatchables right no i don't think so no it has way way better than the holiday i agree with you um but I think it's also the holiday is like a cult classic of sorts the people who love the holiday really love the holiday and it's complicated is just kind of like so obviously good that I think it's complicated also is a little sometimes too much in the shadow of something's got to give yeah and

because they are similar, you know, one is Hamptons. One is Santa Barbara, but it's excellent. All right. We're putting it in. The thing that's so weird about these movies in particular, that something's got to give and it's complicated.

And even the intern to a lesser extent is they get recognized for the performances, but they don't get writing nominations. And like, I think you can credibly say that the Academy, in many respects, has weirdly gotten more sexist over time. Not recognizing any of these movies is downright weird. Talk to serious, high-minded auteurs. They have a lot of respect for Nancy Meyers because she's doing the same thing that they try to do. But for whatever reason, the Academy, they just didn't take any of her movies seriously as a writer, which I think is absurd. Yeah. I mean, preach. I agree with you.

And I think that's also true that these movies aren't taken seriously always as achievements, I think, because they look so easy. And because the worlds that she creates, they're solo stakes, and she's trying to make everything comfortable. and it is supposed to be something that you can see with your whole family. And there is it is supposed to be like everything's going to be OK. Like the edges are sanded off. That is part of what she is achieving. And I think anyone who is like living a freaking life in 2020 knows how hard that is to achieve, like let alone in your life, not let alone in a, in a movie, but it gets underestimated. And, and sometimes like people are prejudiced against it because

it's just like, oh, that's just like fluffy. Um, but it's, it's really hard work to be that fluffy as the heroine of the next movie would tell you what a segue 2015 the intern this movie is quite something this is as we said the answer to baby boom in a lot of ways it is Anne Hathaway is a early 30 something very successful CEO I think the company is like some version of net-a-porter andorter and maybe a little bit of a nasty gal or something, but not in the nasty way, just in the very successful way, an online retail company. And she would seemingly, has it all. She has a husband and some kids and a successful company. And her company hires Robert De Niro to be an intern. There's like a interns for old people program. And so Robert De Niro is a widower and he signs up to be the intern and becomes Anne

Hathaway's driver. And they strike up a work friendship that gets them through some very rocky times in Anne Hathaway's professional and personal lives. And also through Robert De Niro's period of loneliness until he starts dating Renee Russo, the company masseuse. So it is, everything works out great for Robert De Niro's character and Anne Hathaway, the women, woman who can have it all, um, does not really get it all or she has it all, but it does not really get it all or she has it all, but it does not really feel great by the end of it.

So at some point it is revealed that her husband who, what is that guy's name? Anders. Holm. Anders Holm. And he is presented as like the, you know, the perfect 2000s, like progressive stay at home partner.

And dad, you know, goes to the playground, believes in his wife's career, and then is definitely cheating on her. And then she is also maybe not forced to, but it is suggested that Anne Hathaway take on another CEO and give up the day to day running of the company because it's growing at a pace that she can't keep up with or that the board feels that she can't keep up with. And so she has kind of a climactic meeting with Robert De Niro and she's like, what do I do? And she hires the CEO and then unhires the CEO because she still wants it to be her company. And she decides to stay with the cheating husband.

So at the end of it, she still has her company and she still has her husband. But if you're me, you watched it and you're like, OK, so you don't have any help at work. You still don't have a life. And you're with this guy who didn't respect your marriage. Nothing has changed. At the end of this, nothing has changed. And you're still in the same very tricky position that you were in. And I don't know how things are going to go for you.

And having it all seems like it really sucks. I have no notes. Yeah. I think if the purpose of the film was to underline that no human can have it all, success. I think no human can have it all. And that's not even a gendered question. It's just a question of the unreasonable pressure that we put on ourselves to excel in all areas of life in the 21st century. And that we all want to be great parents and we all want to be great employees

and we all want to be great leaders and great citizens and great friends and great lovers. And it's like, you just can't, you just can't. And if that is what she is arriving at, I think that's a really radical statement. And this makes it a fascinating movie. I'm not totally convinced that that's the conclusion that she's trying to draw.

I don't think it is either, but I find it's kind of like inevitable when you're watching it. And it is also a little bit inevitable in the Anne Hathaway performance, who I think is very good in this movie. I agree, that's a good point. But kind of looks by the end,

just like a little bit crushed. And maybe she's teasing out some stuff that isn't there. There is an also interesting like kind of other generational commentary on the men in this movie because it's Robert De Niro. And then the Anders Holm character and then a bunch of kind of like slacker dudes who are Robert De Niro's office buddies. And they just like all sit there and don't do anything. And so it's very clear what Nancy Meyers thinks about kind of the gender reversal, um, in our generation. And, but also that, I don't know, I guess she thinks she's successful.

I guess she thinks that keeping her company is still the right thing for her to do because it's the same thing that she does in baby boom. It's very similar, right? Where at the very end, it's like, someone is going to take this away from you. Um, and, and the heroine says, no, I will do it by myself. And I know that's what we're all supposed to do, but it definitely just, and the Anne Hathaway character looks so crushed at the end when she goes home to her perfect Clinton Hill Brownstone. Yeah. I mean,

it could have been worse. You know, she, she is, it has to, it has to endure embarrassment and frustration, but like she owns an enormously successful e-commerce fashion company. And it's probably just crushing it.

So it's a little bit hard to feel like a total sense of sympathy. But I think, again, it's just performers that are comfortable in the Nancy Meyers métier. Anne Hathaway can do drama and comedy pretty effortlessly. Robert De Niro, frankly is the same. He can be, he can do both pretty. He can, he vacillates. And this is kind of one of his like last great performances.

He really, you know, obviously he was wonderful in the Irishman last year, but he's been taking on a lot of like real cut the check parts in the last 10 years. And this feels like one where he's working a little bit harder to tap into the ben character who is a very like recognizable figure in our lives i mean my dad is is pushing 70 you know like he's gonna he's gonna retire soon and when he retires i'm trying to think about what the hell he's gonna how he's gonna spend his time how he's gonna find his purpose

and i think that there's like something nice about trying to address that person in the world while also returning to that baby boom idea of like, can I balance all of these things at the same time in my life? It just, it's like, she's a very deft writer of characters of human characters. And I think this movie has like some flaws, but I do remember what I saw it,

not in theaters. Like I missed it because I'm like a chauvinist male. And I always, I'm like, I'll catch the Nancy Meyers movie when I need to. And like, I don't know if I've ever seen a Nancy Meyers movie in theaters in my life. But I remember just rent.

Like, I think I rented it from Netflix. I got like a red envelope and watched it by myself at like one o'clock in the morning. I was like, this is real good. This is like really well made and not really thinking about who made it or how,

but I was just like, I was locked into the film the whole time. It's, it's really sophisticated in the way that it's shot and it's all good actors. You know, it's like the same story for all these movies in the, in this century.

It's like, she doesn't, she knows how to cast every part. Yeah. It's also the, the portrayal of the internet company itself is like pretty of the moment it doesn't feel like an old person like talking down to a different generation she's with it it films like new york and that part of brooklyn very beautifully i just remembered that i was living in that part of brooklyn when it was being filmed and definitely

like was inconvenienced by the various that let me tell you they took up whole blocks like the nancy myyers production rolling to Brooklyn, just really shut Brooklyn down for a while. And that's great. And I'm pleased for her. And also I, even that doesn't really happen anymore in the same way. Um,

yeah, it's just, it's an extremely accomplished version of, of baby boom and an updated version of baby boom. Um, with maybe not the happiest of endings. It's good to have a tragedy on your resume. That's how I feel.

But then that's it. Build character. That's the last one. There's a tragedy and then, sure. There's the Father of the Bride Part 3, which did you happen to watch this on YouTube, Sean? Yeah, I did. I thought it was bad.

Like I thought it was like objectively bad. And we've said a lot of nice things about Nancy Meyers. I think she's a wonderful filmmaker. I realized that this was a charity event shot over Zoom. So we can, you know, widen the parameters of what is good and not good. But I did think this was quite bad. What did you think?

Yeah, I can't say that I'm going to want to put it in the Hall of Fame. How about that? I think the World Central Kitchen is a worthy cause. Absolutely. I'm glad that all of those people are together. And it also just like, it's unbelievable to me, having seen Succession, that Kieran Culkin is also Maddie from Father of the Bride.

I know. I was insistent when I was watching Father of the Bride to my wife. I was like, no, no, no, that's Rory. That can't be Kieran. Right, no. No, I was wrong. It's Kieran. And he's really good in Father of the bride to my wife i was like no no that's rory that can't be kieran no no i was wrong it's good uh and he's really good in father of the bride but like having seen what i have seen from kieran culkin i you know i kind of want to keep him away from maddie at this point um i don't think that it needs to go into the hall of fame but i i very much enjoyed the essay that she wrote about making this in the New York Times.

And she also wrote A Modern Love a few months ago for the New York Times that I also thought was wonderful because Nancy Meyers is a tremendous writer. And I would love it if she would write more in any format she pleases. Yeah, I never want to get divorced. But reading that column, I was like, maybe I should should consider divorce it seems like maybe there are some upsides you know she had such a level head that is like a response to like the last decade of her movie making career is like ha divorce great third act lots of drama new experiences why not that's what she does she idealizes it in a very interesting way. Like that's not my experience in my family with divorce.

It's not ideal. Mine either. But I think that's why I'm so mad at the intern character. I'm like, I know what happens if you dump this guy, then you get to date Keanu Reeves and Jack Nicholson. It's going to be okay. That's a good point.

That's a really good point. Yeah. Well, so what are our 10 you want to just run it down real quick yeah will you count to make sure we got 10 okay sure numbers person okay private benjamin number one irreconcilable differences number two baby boom number three father of the bride four the parent trap five what women want six something's got to give seven Four. The Parent Trap. Five. What Women Want. Six. Something's Gotta Give. Seven.

The Holiday. Eight. It's Complicated. Nine. The Intern. Ten. We did it. That's a pretty good Hall of Fame.

I'm feeling good about it. This was fun. I think Private Benjamin is not a good film, but everything else here, it's a good case for all the other movies on this list. I blacked out that we had to put Private Benjamin in there. Um,

I just feel like the aliens would really, would have a sense of, of Nancy Meyers from this. Okay. Yeah. I think, I think we did a great job.

Um, you know what we're doing, uh, on next week's show, right? Is, is next week Aaron Sorkin? Well,

next, next Thursday, Friday is Aaron Sorkin. Sorry, next Thursday, Friday is Aaron Sorkin. Sorry, I was just focused on the month of Amanda. Yes. No, the month of Amanda episodes are at the end of the week. You'll be back in the driver's seat soon, I promise. I hope you enjoyed this.

It was good. It was stressful, but ultimately worth it. Just like every Nancy Meyers film taught me. You did a great job. But immediately next week, um, next Tuesday is our 300th episode of this podcast, which is ludicrous.

Uh, so we're going to do, we're going to do a big mailbag. I think it should be like a gloves off, ask us anything mailbag. And I, I almost want to tempt the fates with the, the insanity of the questions.

What do you think? I, well, you've done it now. You did not run that by me ahead of time. You just said on a recording, just like ask us anything and we'll bear our souls. Like we don't always do that, but sure. Why not? 300. Let's go. Okay. Amanda, thank you. You want to send us out? Yeah. What do you normally say? I forget. I stop listening as soon as I'm done talking.

It just speaks volumes about everything in this experience. I usually, I thank you. Okay, thanks, Sean. And thanks, Bobby. Yeah, thank you to Bobby. And thank you to Nancy Myers. And thank you, everyone listening. And please send us your questions. And send the mean ones to Sean at Sean Fennessey. See you next week.