The Big Picture - The ‘Once Upon A Time ... In Hollywood’ Take Cycle, Reviewed | The Big Picture

Episode Date: August 9, 2019

We attempt to have a nuanced conversation about the complicated reception to Quentin Tarantino’s new film. (0:00) Then, we break down the latest shakeup in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' leadership, and how it will affect the Oscars' future (2:00). Plus: Oscar-nominated writer-director Andrea Berloff joins the show to talk about ‘The Kitchen’—her crime drama about 1970s New York, starring Tiffany Haddish, Elisabeth Moss, and Melissa McCarthy (1:06:34). Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Guest: Andrea Berloff Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, it's Liz Kelley, and welcome to the Ringer Podcast Network. Up on our site, the Ringer has just published their first-ever fantasy football rankings. Our NFL experts Danny Kelly, Robert Mays, Danny Heifetz, and more rank and analyze the top 150 players in 2019, with printable and mobile cheat sheets to take with you wherever you're drafting. To check out our rankings and for more preseason coverage, listen to the Dynasty Football Podcast or head over to the ringer.com i'm sean fennessy and i'm amanda davis and this is the big picture a conversation show

about the truth and lies in hollywood. Amanda, I have returned from vacation. I have returned from Sweden and I come bearing gifts. Great. I'm here to talk to you about the Sturman Drang that surrounds Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, among other things on this show. I was hoping for something from the Acme outlet, but this is fine.

Let me tell you a couple of things about Sweden. Okay. Before we get too deep into Tarantino land. One, beautiful country. Lovely people. Okay. they all speak english and whenever you say english to indicate that you only speak english because you're a foolish american they say of course they all say of course because it is evident that they all speak english and it's easy for them wonderful people there the acne store is a little disappointed oh Oh, that's too bad. Did you go to the outlet, the famed outlet? Went to the outlet and went to two of the studios,

all of which I found a bit wanting. Okay. It is a tough time for Acne right now and also fashion in general, but we don't, it's a different podcast. Different show. Okay. Different show. We'll get there at some point, probably over dinner. But now we're going to talk a bit more about movies. Later on in the show, I have an interview with the writer director, Andrea Berloff, who has a new movie, The Kitchen, coming out. You may know her name. She was nominated for an Oscar for writing Straight Outta Compton.

And now she has a new film with Melissa McCarthy and Tiffany Haddish and Elizabeth Moss in theaters at this very moment. But I think we need to talk about a couple of things. One of them has to do with the Academy Awards. And the other one has to do with Quentin Tarantino, as I mentioned. And there's a little bit of intersection between those two things. So in my absence from the United States of America, it appears that people had some takes. Yes. There are some takes about the Tarantino movie. This is a thing that you did that I really admire, actually, which is that you stuck around,

we celebrated your birthday and also Quentin Tarantino day, and then you just left and we all had a discourse without you. Into the clouds. It's really aspirational. Into the clouds and out of the clouds. I'm going to try to be doing that next week on my own. You are on your way and you also celebrated a birthday while I was gone. I did, yes. Leo season. That's amazing. You turned 14 years old, which is so exciting. You're Benjamin Buttoning all the way back to the Spider-Verse. And yeah, I mean, I did purposefully kind of align my vacation for the getting out just as the Tarantino of it was happening. Now, that's probably overstating things a little bit, but I sense that there would be a

discourse. Yes, we were quite busy without you. Yeah. On the internet. I see that. And I'm proud of everyone for stepping up and making their voice heard about what a brilliant and or socially irresponsible movie this is. I want to try to have a conversation with you about this in a way that does neither a hard defense of the film nor a difficult judgment. I'd like to have a nuanced conversation. Yes. Because I think there's a way to communicate about this in a way that is thoughtful while not letting things off the hook. So I will say I always find, you know, the nature of Internet discourse is people yelling at each other much as we do on this podcast. And it can always be grating.

But there was also a level of conversation I think had both in some great writing on the Internet and also people I have been talking to that I found really rewarding. Even with people who really did not enjoy this movie or had issues with it. And I think you and I both just had a very strong reaction, positive reaction to this movie. And I saw it again and felt the same way. I have a real connection to it. But I do think that there was a level of conversation that, for me, made me think more about what I do relate to in the movie and what I don't

and made the experience much richer. And I think, and that came from a lot of people who didn't really like it. So that's, it's okay. Certainly it's okay for people to not like things, even not like things that I like. Right. I bring it up because the movie has clearly become a hit. I wouldn't say it's a mega hit, but it's done quite well in its first couple of weeks in box office release. And I kind of like tried to shush you a little when you asked me about it on this show about the film. I was kind of like, let's not get too into whether it's going to do well because I don't want to put that hex on it because it has been such a challenging summer. And movies like this in particular are a bit imperiled at the box office, which is we've

talked about frequently. And it turns out people are interested in Tarantino. They're interested in Brad Pitt. They're interested in Leo and they're interested in Hollywood and this story. And so the fact that a lot of people are seeing it, that means that a lot of people will be sharing what they think about it at a higher volume. And so it was interesting from afar to watch the take cycle last, not just two days or five days, but eight days, 11 days. Oh, wow. There's a new piece about Bruce Lee's representation in the film. And it's the fifth piece about this. You know, obviously the vagaries of digital media create a kind of hype cycle around things. And

sometimes it lasts longer than others. This one I found fascinating because Quentin really overloads his movies with things, and that gives you a lot to dissect. What was the kind of the key thing that stuck out for you about the discourse as it was unfolding after the movie opened? Well, it was something that I got wrong because I think you asked me on our initial reaction podcast. You asked me to predict the discourse, and I totally got it wrong. But I especially got it wrong with respect to the portrayal of Sharon Tate and the women in this film, which has been an issue since the movie debuted and the first press conference at Cannes. And I think I knew that it would be a talking

point, but I had such specific expectations for what we would see. And basically, I thought we were going to see a very grotesque reenactment of Sharon Tate's murder. And we didn't. And I was like, oh, OK, not so bad. And I think that and I assumed that that would kind of end. And people, I think, rightfully had a lot of thoughts and reactions to the rest of the portrayal of the Sharon Tate character and also to the

other ways that women are used in the film, which has I'm always for. We should always talk about that. I thought that there was a really great piece by Alison Wilmore, the BuzzFeed, about how Tarantino uses women characters in his films more generally and very thoughtful. And, you know, he is a director who has leaned into the kind of male nerdy fantasy aspects of the movie. So I think it's really important to examine that. I was really surprised by the Cliffs character's wife death stuff because it's very short and i i just i didn't really think about it that much which was a mistake on my part i failed at media forecasting i'm sorry you don't have to apologize and at least not in this space um i also really liked alison

wilmore's piece i would highly recommend that that's probably the single best post once upon a time in hollywood piece that i've read and the reason that i liked it is because i think that achieved what i'm trying to achieve in this conversation, which is it was really nuanced. And there were moments where she wrote about the sophistication and the sort of like almost the emotional dedication that he has to a certain kind of female character. And then there are the other times where he writes things

that seem so flip or so fetishistic or so like sometimes hateful. And the person who can write Jackie Brown is also the person who can kill Cliff Booth's wife in that way off screen. And the trickiness, the complication around that, I really admired that. I think that one of the tricky parts of this is that there's a desire to indicate

that characters are heroes in all movies like we're all doing the joseph campbell thing and i don't know that cliff booth is a hero and so i don't know that necessarily we're meant to valorize him now he does something that could be perceived as heroic because he he kills hippies who are going to kill sharon tate in this imagined universe but there's a there's a there was a lot of work in a lot of the pieces and certainly in a lot of the very bad tweets. And there were so many very bad tweets. As I've been catching up on tweets, let me tell you guys, your tweets suck. Even still, the desire to put intentionality on characters where they can't necessarily locate it is a tricky game.

And you can do it with every movie and every book. And there's no way to really know. I agree with everything that you just said. And I've been thinking a lot about this because, you know, this movie is in a lot of ways about has-beens and people who didn't quite get their chance and in some ways were storing it. And so that doesn't make Cliff like a hero or a cool guy, but there is real power in casting Brad Pitt in a movie and making a movie about him. And so there's like the hero is

sketched out in the character and there is what we as an audience see and respond to. And we're all very swayed by the movies. I'm super swayed by the movies. They have an immense ability to lionize someone. It's very hard to make a movie about, you know, even villains in movies become the characters that we love and relate to so much because there is something about putting someone up on the screen and the way that we've learned to receive characters in movies, which in a lot of ways is what Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is about, that it just gives them credit and endorses it in a way. And it's not even if it's like an explicit endorsement, but we learn behaviors, we learn standards, we learn what's cool, We learn what to aspire to from movies. And so I didn't think, I did think twice about Cliff Booth's Ex-Wife, but I thought about it in terms of a comment on Brad Pitt's own life. And I was only thinking about it in celebrity terms, which is maybe a referendum on how screwed up my brain is when I'm thinking about things. But I didn't think twice about it, but I have been thinking through my own, I want to say, not indifference, but just the fact that I didn't think about that at all when watching the movie and what that says about how I invest in characters

and the power of the movies and what I'm willing to look past. Right. And are you willing to view your characters under the terms of a zero-sum game? Because, you know, we did a rewatch of all about Reservoir Dogs recently. There's so much language in Reservoir Dogs that is distasteful, some of it hurtful. The way that the characters talk to each other, mostly just a bunch of white guys, is really nasty. And, you know, we always talk about on the rewatchables, like, has this aged well? Has it not aged well? That's a, that's a, such a fraud category because, and I've been guilty of having this kind of a conversation in the past. The trickiness of it is these are characters saying something. And in that movie, those guys are criminals and they're bad

people. And even though they're entertaining and it's fun to be with them and it's fun to learn about the interiority of the experiences that they're having, you don't really want to necessarily like fully root for them. You go into a movie knowing that there is an inherent criminal flaw in these people. Cliff Booth is similar, even though he looks like Brad Pitt. This is a has been, never was, who has tendencies towards violence and who has not succeeded despite looking and acting like Brad Pitt because he's a bad guy. I absolutely agree with you and process all of this the same way. And then I don't even feel guilty, but I do just question myself from time to time. Because Reservoir Dogs, then we go and I don't watch it over and over again because it's far too violent for me but every morning I wake up and

I watch it I sit down two hours boom but the language people do quote it the language these ways of talking even if we know that these are criminals and characters it just movies are powerful and they seep into our lives you know I grew up in the freaking 90s in the United States of America so I'm trained in how like various imagery of women throughout the world has totally warped my brain. And it has. But and that doesn't mean I don't enjoy it. And I don't like to go see movies like this. We're trying to talk with nuance. I have two things in my head at the same time, both that I didn't care and I kind of know it's bad for me, maybe. Does that make any sense? Yes, but I don't think that there will be a rise in the sale of harpoon guns

because of the Cliff Booth character. You know what I mean? There's a way to literalize the anxiety. It's just kind of like if you make it a joke or you make it a written off thing. It's not a big deal, but also then if that can be a joke, then that is a joke in people's minds. It's just indicative of not even a joke, then that is a joke in people's minds. It's just indicative of not even a worldview, but just a reality of how the world thinks about things.

I think it's a reality of how Quentin Tarantino thinks about things, which is to say, maybe not necessarily always progressive, though he is at a kind of a constant war. Because if you look at the people who are essentially rewriting history in his last handful of movies if you look at Django Unchained Django rewriting history is an act of revolution it's an act of power it's an act of empowerment if you look at what Shoshanna does in Glorious Bastards that's someone seizing the wheel and steering it into her own fate, the fate that she wants, not the fate that these evil people want. So I think there's an immediate desire to conflate those two things with what Rick Dalton and Cliff Booth do in this movie and what the ramifications are for the way that we see Sharon Tate, for the way that we see Cliff Booth's wife, for the way that we see Francesca Copucci, for the way that we see these young, angry female hippies and Tex Watson in the house.

And like, just the urge to say, well, this was like this before, so this must be what he means with this one is very simple and a little bit sad to me. I agree. And to talk a little bit more about the Sharon Tate reception, I haven't understood. Well, there are some people who really enjoyed it. But I think to the extent that that received a backlash, I don't understand that at all. To me, she is the she's not the herself in the film and the joy and the happiness. And I just think it's really beautiful.

It's like a really nice, I am still touched by it. It's a great performance with not a lot of dialogue, which is a hard thing to do. And she's communicating something about what we want to see in this person that is powerful. And I don't think that we should be, we can be counting lines in a literal movie. No, that's fucking nonsense. No, and so I just, I, anyone can see anything they want in a movie and I'm not trying to take it away from them. I completely disagreed with the criticism of the Sharon Tate stuff, I found it to be, I mean, it is about literally giving a person another chance and also about recognizing a body of work that has actually not been recognized because she was overshadowed by these events. Right. And very savvily choosing to show her

the real Sharon Tate in her, the film that she performed in while she watches herself. You know, there's, there's, there is some intentionality there that I think we can get to the bottom of. The one that is much naughtier and is very related to some of this is the Bruce Lee stuff. Yes. And, you know, there's a very good piece, reported piece by Jen Yamato in the LA Times about this shortly after the film was released, in which she talked to members of Lee's family and talked to a lot of Asian American critics and just a lot of people who are sort of in the industry to get their sense of things. I'll say when I saw the movie, particularly the second time I saw it, this is how I understood it. And I'm curious to know

how you perceived this, the scene in which Cliff Booth has a friendly fight with Bruce Lee. Cliff Booth is misremembering history while standing on the roof of the home of the guy who he works for in an effort to valorize his failed past. And whether or not he actually kicked Bruce Lee's ass should be in question because he's a bit of a dubious figure. Now, that does not change the fact that in the movie, we do see Brad Pitt kick Bruce Lee's ass. So that is communicated to the audience. And I can understand why not everybody would read it the same way that I read it. But I saw it as actually, sure, Brad Pitt looks cool taking the wig off and he's in a tuxedo and he looks very, I don't know. He's concentrating so hard on hitting all of his little fight moves. That's the one time where you see the seams. Brad Pitt's just like, I got to hit this. I got to hit this. But whatever,

Brad Pitt's an icon. Right. And Mike Moe, the actor who portrays Bruce Lee, is doing a Bruce Lee impression. And he's doing the vocal intonation, and he's doing what we've read in the past, what Bruce Lee was like in some respects, which is that he was a very confident guy, and that he was quite certain of his greatness. Now, he's very smug and smarmy and unlikable in a lot of ways, the way he's portrayed here. Now, is that the way that Quentin Tarantino sees Bruce Lee? I would argue almost certainly not. It's the way that Cliff Booth remembers Bruce Lee in the scene. But I can

understand why people would still be bothered by it and why the Lee family would be offended by it because Bruce Lee is not portrayed on screen that much anymore. Right. The Lee family was offended. And I completely understand the family of this person being offended by the presentation of their father or family member on the screen. Like, of course, I would be too, if that's how you're showing my dad. Of course. Yes, of course. Completely understandable. And I think there's also something to the fact that this is one scene.

So there's just like, there's not any development. It just kind of is what it is in a bitsy played for laughs moment. To your point about it being a recollection and exaggerated, I think that's also absolutely true. I mean, number one, this is an entire movie about memory and nostalgia and myth-making and Hollywood. And I was having a conversation with Bobby, our producer, and Craig, another podcast producer. And it was about whether this scene was a flashback or like a hypothetical, a dream-ish sequence.

And Bobby and Craig put forth that it was a dream-ish sequence. And then I corrected them with, you know, various things about the t-shirts and the costumes that people are wearing, which is fine. I was correct, but I do think that they were getting at something. Bobby, thank you for staying silent this whole time. When will you launch I Was Correct, the Amanda Dobbins podcast? I think it's called Every Day in My Marriage. But anyway, I think that Bobby and Craig, while not having all the details down, were getting at something exactly right about that sentiment and the feel of that sequence, which is that it is not totally real.

I mean, they pointed out that you can't really throwing someone into a car would not produce a dent of that size. It is exaggerated. The word you use is recollection, and it struck me as an unreliable recollection, a fantasizing of something that did happen. And it's obviously a painful memory because he has located it as the reason he can't get work. This choice that he made, so best case scenario, at least he got to kick Bruce Lee's ass. That was my understanding of it in a very pure way. I think it's presented that pretty clearly in that it's just like he's on the roof and he's shirtless. And, you know, that is distracting in its own way.

But he's shirtless. And then I've had so many conversations about Brad Pitt's workout regime in the last two weeks while you were gone. I would say that that's what I spent my time doing. And we can circle back to it. Thanks for not doing it on the show. But he is there on the roof and it like looks into the distance. I wouldn't say that it's honestly the most sophisticated storytelling that I've ever seen, to be quite honest. And then they flash back to it and then they go immediately back to him and the same place on the roof. And he's like, yeah, that makes sense.

Or like, that's right. Or whatever Brad Pitt thing he says. So they are presenting it as memory. Again, I also understand how people could watch it. And it's one of the few actors of color in the film. And not feel it's very short and it's not of the few actors of color in the film. And it's very short. And it's not presented in a... It's not respectful.

That's very true. It's not respectful. So let me ask you this. We had this conversation a lot around Sharon Tate, especially before we knew what the film was and we were afraid. But should you be able to do this to Bruce Lee, even if your intentions are good, even if what you're trying to show is that Cliff Booth is a failure who screwed up his big chance to be successful as a stuntman in Hollywood by doing this thing? Can you take the legacy of Bruce Lee and appropriate it in this way?

Because that, I think, is the heart of the crisis of this part of the story. So I don't know if you know this because i don't think i've ever had to pull this editing trick out on you but i actually don't allow any of my writers to use the word should in writing when making arguments because i just i who am i to like be able to or is anyone be able to say definitively this is the only way that we can do anything i don't have an answer like so this should you be able to do this at all? It's nuanced. I think it definitely depends on situation and who's doing it and how it's being received. And I think it's also, it's always going to be received differently.

It really is. And I think that the Lee family is probably always going to be offended by anything that isn't extremely respectful. And I don't think that you have to be... No, I guess you don't have to be respectful if you're doing character motivations in a fictional thing. But I think you have to be prepared for the fact that people are going to be offended. And I think it's important to be able to have conversations about these things in a responsible way.

I'm not mad. You know, I think it's great that we're talking about it. Yeah, I think so too. There was an interview with Mike Moe, the actor who portrayed Lee, I believe on Birth Movies Death, in which he talked about what the plan was originally for the scene. And what he indicated was that the scene was meant to be much longer, and it sounds like much less in Bruce Lee's favor.

And that Brad Pitt lobbied to make that less the case, to not quite, to have Cliff not beat up on Bruce Lee as much. Well, Brad Pitt remains one of our great humans, but this is also where just the my brain shuts off in terms of like dude fighting stuff because i just it wouldn't have mattered it just that never would have occurred to me to be measuring it that way i think another thing that happened while you were gone was that there was a wall street journal piece about the negotiations for the hobbs and shaw acting. Definitely caught up with that one.

Which I believe is related somehow to the world of wrestling, which you all like also understand. Great stuff. Right. But that was like, honestly, a peek into a foreign, like aliens. You know, if we like went to another world and you were explaining to me how the mind of a society we'd never interacted with before works.

That's, I'm just like, what are you guys talking about? Isn't it amazing how all of my adolescent interests, and I don't mean the things that I'm interested in now that are adolescent, but the things that I was interested in as an adolescent are like front page news in newspapers now, like professional wrestling and superhero movies. Amazing is one word for it. We could also have some conversations about some correlations

and whatnot but maybe we live in hell for that reason but it is amazing that that is the case you're right though that there are there's a certain kind of a masculinity in in in measurement here and you wouldn't have noticed necessarily i think if cliff booth beat the shit out of bruce lee it would have been more apparent i mean if it become like Tarantino violent, then I would have been alarmed. But the counterpoint to that is if it had been even more ridiculous, maybe it would not have been as hurtful to the Lee family because it would have been so evidently fantasy. I think it would have been hurtful to the Lee family no matter what. And frankly, that's their right. But I'm not taking that away from that. But to maybe it would have seemed more considered. So I take your point to other people.

But I think if it's your dad, you're just gonna be mad. And I think that's your right. I can't imagine what it'd be like to watch my dad get thrown into a car in a movie. That's gonna be a different podcast. Wow. Yeah. Would I be throwing him into the car? This is your, you're just letting it all

out in real time. No one prompted this. I love you dad. Okay. So what are some of the other controversies around this movie? You mentioned a Caitlin Flanagan piece that I apparently missed. Wow. So that was, you know, we could have brought that up in the Sharon Tate situation. I want to be very clear that I'm not endorsing this Caitlin Flanagan piece. And also that the way that she writes about consent is just not something that I need to be anywhere near in ever. And, you know, and I think she also just does a really bad faith job of she's engaging with all these criticisms in the columnist. Really? She's not trying to have nuance trying to provoke thought yes well she tried to provoke response response which is quite different than thought right but

i did actually think that despite all of that she had some insights that resonated with me in terms of how the sharon tate character is portrayed and then i just felt very old and conservative which has just been another that's been the really interesting narrative about this. Right. Because we talked about Internet discourse. I've had conversations with people in my own life who I respect a lot, who had varied responses to this movie. And I think there are some people who found it kind of long and pretty self-indulgent. And I was surprised by that

because a lot of these people are also people who see a lot of movies. And I kind of assumed that anyone who just likes movies as much as we do also connected to them in the same way that I do. And of course, that's not true. Big mistake. Yeah, if you want evidence that I also am a Leo,

there it is right there for you guys. And an only child. I mean, we're all sharing today. But, I mean, it is obviously extremely nostalgic for 1969, but also an movies, and that's how I understood certainly Los Angeles and certainly all of these things and movies and things that are very interesting to me. So I can understand that nostalgia, but it also could be seen as pretty retrograde. And I have been reckoning with that personally. I'm not really reckoning with it. I think it's retrograde.

I think of myself as a very sincere consumer of this stuff. And I am pretty analytical and also emotional at the same time. I kind of pride myself on that. I'm trying to do this show in that vein, which is that when I love something, I really want to communicate about it. If I don't like it, I try to find thoughtful ways to dissect.

There are certainly some things that you can dissect in this film. I don't necessarily think that the core thesis which is there was an era in American history particularly the American history of popular entertainment that seemed innocent but was not that innocent and then there was another period that seemed revolutionary and powerful and was not that revolutionary that is nuance in a lot of ways. To say that there is something useful in a 1950s TV show and that there were not always useful things in, say, the movement of the hippies,

it's okay to have both of those thoughts. Like, you are not a retrograde conservative asshole for trying to put your finger on that concept. Now, obviously, we're a world that thinks in binaries now in all ways. And so people are not the the the conclusion that quentin tarantino killing hippies indicates that he hates hippies is insane to me i agree with you and by saying retrograde i didn't mean that you know i thought that he didn't respect the manson family enough i'd like to quote

i'd like to quote jason gallagher one of our producers here at The Ringer, who we were having a conversation while you're gone. And I think I can speak for him that he enjoyed the movie. And at the end, he said, I don't know. I'm still out on the Manson family.

Which, same. I, too, am still out on the Manson family. It's a brave show of faith there from you guys. I think I was as you mentioned I'm not trying to make this about my birthday but I was thinking about getting older and I was thinking about my particular relationship to this movie on your 14th birthday I know well

you know puberty it comes fast but and and kind of thinking about what i value in a piece of art and how i connect to it and that sense of longing for a time it's not even a time that is past necessarily because like i don't really i don't like westerns it's not like i want to go watch any of these things that are in the movies or be any of these people no but you like innocence there's a there's the there's the communication about innocence lost yeah and i just and i think also this belief that that movies and art are a place that you can that can be great that can be mythical and magical and that there is separated from like the cynicism of the real world. And I find it increasingly hard to feel that way as I get old, as we all do. And I was just thinking about how I reacted to that and the fact that I was turning a year older and that time

passes and we all lose our innocence. One year wiser. That's all you are. I guess so. The reason that I wanted to have this conversation with you as soon as I got back is because I want to get out in front of it as much as we can. And the reason I want to do that is because... Six more months of this, baby! This movie is definitely going to be nominated

for Best Picture. Let's do it! And we will be talking on the Oscar show, which I think more formally will bring back the Tuesday Oscar show pretty soon. I would say September. Okay. This is literally the first i'm hearing about this bobby what do you think why not okay so september we're in a slow time right we are in a slow time but so we're kind of easing into it but this this movie more than any other and and frankly since i've been back

i i kind of dismissed the idea of the farewell being nominated for best picture for like 24 hours i just want to put that on record. I've been in touch with many a person in the industry, let me tell you. So much has been happening in the Academy. So I'm, you know, all the feelers are out. Nevertheless, I just slightly dismissed the idea of The Farewell being nominated. The Farewell and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood have emerged, I think, clearly as the only two movies that could be nominated for Best Picture. They will be released basically in the first eight months of the year. Whether the farewell gets there or not, we'll see.

This movie's getting there. From what I've heard, there's a sense that it's getting there in a big way. There was a report I read about an Academy screening the night the movie opened, which is when members of the Academy are invited to come see the film for free because they are members of the Academy and there was a line out the door for this one. Well, that was also true for A Star is Born and look where that got us. Well, but it did get many nominations. That's true. And so really what I'm ultimately interested in is not whether it's going to win

because we can talk about that for many months, but whether it's going to be there. I mean, what's today? Can I just say? Am I allowed to say what I said to you before the podcast? Yes. Yes. Okay. It's August 8th and I do feel that this will win for best picture because it just, it makes Oscar narrative sense, right? Of course that Quentin Tarantino would win for this nostalgic, divisive movie 25 years after the movie, after his masterpiece, which is Pulp Fiction.

Right. And this is- People never win for their first movie or the great movie. It's like, I mean. It's like Scorsese winning for The Departed. This is how the Oscars do it. I think there's a lot of insight into that, and I could definitely see a world in which that happens. Whether it will happen, I don't know. There's so much that we haven't seen yet, and we'll talk a little bit about some of the things that we're going to start to see in the next six weeks or so. I've reserved the right to change my

mind like 55 times, but I'm just saying you can see the narrative from here, both in terms of the year and also historically speaking. This is what the Academy loves to do. Even the new Academy. I agree. We're just about to get to the new Academy, which I look forward to talking about. DiCaprio, Pitt, maybe even Margot Robbie will be nominated depends on what the field is like for best supporting actress

you gotta keep in mind that Sony put a lot on the line to get this movie made they paid a lot of money for it they've been promoting the hell out of it it has not yet opened internationally so it'll be hard to say whether it's a big international hit but it's gonna do well over 100 million dollars in America it's probably gonna be maybe the second highest

grossing Tarantino movie third highest grossing tarantino movie it might have legs because it's opening now and they may reopen it in the fall cinematography production design editing you name it all that stuff is is i don't if not likely certainly possible and it'll be interesting if this becomes quentin gets to wave his best picture or best director Oscar around for this movie, which I don't really think I've seen anybody say it's his best. Even people like me who are serious, deep fans of his. I haven't seen anybody try to do the like, well, it's his latest, so it's his best. Well, that'll come in like November. You think I should use that take?

No, I'm just saying. I've been thinking about it and this is actually his best? It's just like in this cycle that we are now predicting, I think that probably hits in November. And then. The media prognosticator is back. Right, and then it comes around. Okay. All right. I'll think about that.

Okay. I mean, you don't have to do it. I just imagine that someone will. We're going to talk a lot about the fall festival soonish i'm going to tell you ride i'm very excited about that i'll probably be speaking to adam namen at some point on this podcast he's going to tiff there's a lot of films opening there's a lot of films that are carrying over from can they're starting to show can movies now i'm seeing a couple of them in the next couple of weeks that i'm excited about i I don't know if any of these movies, as I indicated, really have like the weight and

the power of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Do you want to read them? Yeah, well, I mean, we'll do a couple. It's a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. I will say I was late to that trailer and I watched it and I was like, oh, this is going to work. Really? Yeah.

I actually did watch that trailer. There's a lot of journalists in movies this fall and that's all I have to say about that. Yeah. Who plays Tom Geno again? Is it Matthew Rhys? Yeah. Okay. That's fine.

I miss the Irishman trailer completely. Yeah. That's opening the New York Film Festival. I sense that that will be something of a big deal. Here's the thing. Martin Scorsese gangster movie like let's not overthink it our our our boss Bill Simmons um made a trailer reaction video with Chris Ryan I can't say I agreed with his reaction I didn't I didn't agree you know okay it's an emotional journey um that

move that film is opening the New York Film Festival the centerpiece of the New York Film Festival is Marriage Story which is Noah Baumbach's much-touted on this podcast and elsewhere forthcoming divorce drama. I'm tremendously excited. By all accounts, it will be at the very least interesting. I suspect it will be

very controversial because there's going to be a lot of Noah's real life in there. And then that's closing with Motherless Brooklyn, which is a book that I re-bought and re-read

while I was in Sweden. Wow. And quite liked. And now confused about why Edward Norton made it a period piece. Yes. Which is a big change. Juliette Lippman also had some questions about that as well. I think I read that book when I was about 19 and I'd forgotten that it doesn't take place in the 1940s after I saw the trailer. Anyway, notable change. TIFF has a bunch of other films. I

mentioned It's a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, Ford vs. Ferrari. I suspect we'll talk a lot about that. Uncut Gems, the Safdie Brothers movie. I don't know if that's going to be an Oscar movie, but it'll be a TIFF. Telluride has not announced anything because they never announce anything until the day before the festival. So I am going to this film festival

and I have no idea what's playing there. Off the record, I have a little bit of an idea, but I can't talk about that on this podcast. I promise we will talk more about all this stuff. You and I are going to be seeing a lot of these movies in the next two months. Yes. We'll probably be a little bit more horse racy than we were last year. I think last year we were like,

oh, we'll see stars more when it comes out. Then we'll weigh in and see what happens. I already started it. I was already like, I know who's going to win the Oscar. You made your declaration. Yeah, why not? This is all meaningful in other ways because there is a bit of an Academy reboot that happened while I was away.

David Rubin, the longtime casting director and a longtime member of the Academy, was just named Academy president a couple days ago by the governors. And this is, on the one hand, very significant. And on the one hand, we don't know yet. On the one hand, it means the end of John Bailey after one term, two years. So it was a bit of an ignominious run. Yes, it didn't go super well. A lot of the proposed changes that he made were shot down by the public. Yes.

And that includes the popular Oscar, and that includes cutting categories in the telecast, and they did not change the 10 Best Picture nominee system. I'd say also just narratively it wasn't handled as well as you might hope if you're in that job. It was not. There was no host of the last Oscar telecast. You may have forgotten about that. That was completely mismanaged. Remember Kevin Hart and all the things that happened with Kevin Hart? I actually didn't until you said it this past moment.

This was a great year to launch an Oscars podcast because there was a lot to discuss. The races themselves kind of sucked and the winners kind of sucked. And that happens frequently. David Rubin is a bit of a different figure from John Bailey, who's very old school Hollywood, but was a cinematographer and an artisan and did not necessarily seem fully in touch with modern cinema. David Rubin in his interview with the Hollywood Reporter today cited The Souvenir and Midsommar as his two favorite movies of the year. You love to see it. I mean, what? Wow. Yes. That is just amazing.

And David Rubin is not going to have more say in what movie wins best picture because he's the Academy president, but he will have some say in the choices that they make. And he certainly strikes me as a person with some taste. He also, can I just say, casting directors require a huge amount of emotional intelligence, which is crucial to managing a process like this and understanding

kind of what people want and how they want to hear it. And that has certainly been missing from certain aspects of the Academy. I believe that his resume includes the bulk of Anthony Minghella's films and is responsible for essentially bringing Juliette Binoche to Hollywood. And he cast the English patient. Yes, he did. So, you know, this is a person with some insight into what is good in a very objective sense. Yes. And I'm so interested to see how this shakes out because the Academy has changed so much. You mentioned the new Academy. They've added 3,000 members in the last four years.

And that will determine, have a bigger effect on determining who actually wins, like best picture in all of the categories. Because there's the voting body and then there is the management. And each body has been acting in unusual and occasionally upsetting ways. But, you know, they continue to add members and we'll see when it tips over in terms of who actually wins Oscars. So Scott Feinberg and the reporter asked Rubin if he could see a world in which the television academy and the film academy merged at some point in the way that it had in other award shows.

And I thought Rubin's response was really interesting. This is what he said. He said, I don't know about the melding of the two academies, but I do think that we should be spending a lot of time focusing on addressing the question of, quote, what is a motion picture? That's really a continuation of work started this past year. I'm hoping that we can bring together the best and brightest

of our filmmaking colleagues to address that question because it's on everybody's mind. And we want to be sure that we are recognizing and extolling the virtues of great storytelling in whatever form it's being digested. Now, is that a blind signal to Netflix movies movies should always be eligible they should never be eligible should oj made in america no longer be eligible or should it always be eligible we don't know yet we don't know and ruben can't say specifically yet what he thinks but i think But I think this is really the core crisis of the Oscars.

And him putting his finger on it keenly in his first public interview as the president of the Academy indicates that maybe some choices will be made very soon about what is and is not eligible, at least in the short term. Any predictions for what we might get? Well, I think whatever form it's being digested is an interesting turn of phrase that ends that sentence. And, you know, I don't know what that means, whether that's pro TV or whether that's like Netflix movie versus whether that's about distribution platform. I really have no idea. They have to fix some rules. I would be surprised if they change the rules such that the TV and motion picture academies are joined. That seems extremely radical. I highly doubt that will happen.

And a lot of people giving up a lot of attention and money. I'm not sure that that makes sense for anybody. Maybe 10 years from now, but right now, no. But in terms of theater release requirements and, you know, we were talking a lot about will the lion king be run in best animated does it count as best animated how we're defining all of these issues they they have to put rules in at some point or else it doesn't make sense anymore and it i think even in the past few years there have been all of these questions and there was kind of category fraud. And when there aren't rules, then there's no point to it. I mean, we

made this whole thing up. It's like an awards show. It's very silly. We're handing out awards, but people need to know what they're invested in. So they actually do have to make those decisions at some point or else people just won't invest in them anymore. And that's their crisis. Speaking of rules, Rubin being a casting director is also very notable, I think, because as Feinberg pointed out in his Q&A, that the BAFTAs just added best casting as a category in their award show. Rubin would probably be significantly interested in potentially adding best casting. You know, a Tarantino movie is as good a platform for casting a movie as any. I think that it also opens up the potential of

other categories being added. Now, on the one hand, I think that might terrify you as a person who has to consume all that and imagine a four-hour telecast of the Oscars. I think I would love for people to get awarded for things. I love people having their work recognized. I think that's really great. I don't know that it needs to take four hours. Okay, well, that's debatable. David Leitch was here a couple weeks ago talking about Hobbs and Shaw. And as he and I talked about, like, they're not being a Best Stunt Work award is insane.

It's quite ridiculous given the state of modern movies. The fact that we have a visual effects Oscar and not a stunt Oscar. And there's also something to the effect of the Oscars. ABC, everybody wants people to watch this show. They want people to invest in it, and you need awards that people can understand. People don't really understand. Still, I barely understand the difference between sound mixing and sound editing, and I've filled out a ballot for many years now, but people do understand what a stunt is. People can understand what casting is. Those are accessible, visible, sexy-ish categories. Yeah, if you get to show a clip of Tom Cruise

doing a fucking halo jump out of a plane and be like, this was a good thing that happened in a movie, people are going to be like, I agree, it was a good thing. They always do show it anyway. It's always in all the montages. They're just like, wow, movies are amazing. And now let us give us an award to, I don't know, Shape of Water. Okay.

Yeah. Out of the montage and into the category. That's what I say. So, I mean, the real trickiness of the Oscar narrative is that a lot of this news happened right in the aftermath of the Academy Museum still being in complete disarray. I don't know how much people actually care about this, but I find it interesting. I was about to say, Pete, no one cares about this. Like, no one cares about this at all, even though in some ways it is a representation of all the actual positive work that the Academy does. Because, you know, we talk about the Oscars, and that's what we're focused on, and that's what this podcast is often about. And as I said, it's just like a made-up thing where we just give famous people shiny trophies it does not matter at all and the academy is involved in film preservation and film history and protecting this resource that we spent

the first half of this podcast talking lovingly about because like we see ourselves in the movies or whatever so the academy museum as a representation of that work is important, but like whether or not the construction is on time, I'm sorry, I don't care. No one cares. They literally did a montage of the construction, like a time-lapse during the Oscars. No one cares. So they're many months behind in the construction of this $400 million museum for old movies, which to someone like me is very appealing, and I will go, and I am very excited. On the other hand, what you're saying is 100% right. No one cares.

Well, I'll go to the museum, and especially if they're shutting down all the theaters and no one's going to know what a movie is in 25 years, it's super important. It's not the museum that I don't care about. it's about the construction lag and the mismanagement it's a lot like a political process story and i'm just like i don't give a fuck but like let's talk about the real issues but the other thing it is is me and elizabeth warren it's a it's a living it's it's not a it's not alive but it is an active embodiment of the failures. It's a metaphor. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's fine, but like I don't— Falling behind the times, overspending on the wrong things, people moving in and out of roles of leadership,

building a shrine to something that doesn't matter to people anymore. These are complicated convulsions of anxiety in Hollywood. I mean, it's an amazing edifice of expired importance, and it's not even open yet. That's just fascinating to me. I agree with you, but also, like, that doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. It's a great metaphor, and I hope someone will use it

in the lead of a piece, and God bless you. It's right there for you. Don't steal my lead, okay? That's what I'm saying to all the listeners out there. Now we're in here and they're saying, I'm going to steal Sean's lead. But I mean, it's a rich metaphor, but it's just like, we've got a lot of problems. The Academy has a lot of problems. Hollywood has a lot of problems.

You and I have a lot of problems, both movie and personal. And it's just like the fact that the construction isn't going well, just like every single other construction construction isn't going well, just like every single other construction project in the history of mankind. I'm sorry, I can't. The Academy needs a Robert Moses. It needs a taskmaster. Okay, no one needs a Robert Moses.

It's the Long Island talking. Yes. I'm going to transition somewhat awkwardly to something you described to me before we started as, will you just be lecturing me about these dead people? That's not... Which is what you said.

I was really trying to... We were nuanced in the first part of this podcast. And don't make me be disrespectful in public. I can only be honest. Okay. I didn't get a chance to say this because I was out and I did want to acknowledge the death of a couple of significant people.

I don't know if there should be like a routine acknowledgement of the work that people have done on this show because people, meaningful people in Hollywood die all the time. But these two stuck out to me

for whatever reason. The first is Rucker Hauer who, you know, died more than a week ago now and is just a great and unique and entertaining danish actor and he's best known for blade runner but he's performed in a lot of different kinds of movies and he's performed in a lot of trashy movies that are fun to watch you know he's performed in a lot of movies like the hitcher like the original buffy the vampire slayer movie

like surviving the game he kind of revived his career a little bit with Sin City and Batman Begins. I think his best stuff is the early Paul Verhoeven movies. For those who don't know, Paul Verhoeven is the director of films like Basic Instinct. He is a quite twisted and fascinating director. He also made Total Recall. But he made a couple of movies with Rutger Hauer

and Hauer basically got his start with him. Two I will point out is Turkish Delight and Soldier of Orange. I assume you don't have any Rutger Howard takes, Amanda. No, I mean, I enjoyed Blade Runner and also the original Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Yes, he's quite funny in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The other person who passed away is D.A. Pennebaker. And D.A. Pennebaker was 94 years old. So it's not as if it was a complete shock.

But this is one of the three or four most important documentarians in American history. And it would be upsetting for me to not acknowledge it. Don't Look Back is a, for a certain kind of person, a life-changing thing to see about the way that we build myth and the way that we tell stories about famous people in this country. Which, even though it's about Bob Dylan and I can sense your skepticism, I think actually correlates to a lot of your interests. Yes, it does. It does. It is your version of things that are interesting to me. And it's not disinteresting to me.

It's just, it's not my passion. Where is my ringer dish episode on D.A. Pennybaker is my question to you. Whenever you would like to come on the podcast. We have a vacancy next Monday. I got very interested in him as a person who started out as a music journalist and a lot of his best and biggest work you know he chronicled the monterey pop festival which featured these kind of career and culture changing performances from jimmy hendrix and janice joplin and otis redding really phenomenal movie if you haven't seen it he was in basically in the news this year because documentary now parodied original cast album company which is the performance of an album of

the company musical by Stephen Sondheim that is just a really funny episode of documentary now. And it's a pretty searing and like darkly funny movie about egomaniacal people trying to make something perfect. So I have a lot of love for that. I mean, he made a David Bowie concert movie. Have you seen Town Bloody Hall? No.

Do you know what this is? No, I don't. This is also important to your interest. Maybe you should be a Penny Baker fan. This movie is basically one long debate between a series of feminist thinkers and Norman Mailer in the late 70s. Oh, God.

I don't know. Go find this movie on YouTube. It's infuriating and hilarious and just an absolute time capsule. And Penny Baker's sense of kind of where to put the camera and when to let people just start talking shit is one of his great gifts. Another version of that is The War Room,

which is the 1993 documentary about the campaign team behind Bill Clinton's eventual election to president of the United States. That I have seen. That this is a very good and kind of classic modern documentary. And a lot of people have been ripping off The War Room for the last 25 years. United States. That I have seen. That this is a very good and kind of classic modern documentary. And a lot of people have been ripping off The War Room for the last 25 years. I wrote about political documentaries earlier this year with the release of Knock Down the House. And boy,

all those filmmakers like, oh, D.A. Pennebaker a lot. And his partner, Chris Hedges, who survives him and who made a lot of his later period films with him, including The War Room. I'm done lecturing. Go watch Pennebaker's films. i'm done lecturing like go watch penny baker's films that was recommendations okay and appreciation hour with sean fantasy um i hope you wrote down those titles i i consumed a lot on planes i'm not gonna read everything i consumed to you but i i did want to check in with you about a couple of things. I would love to. This is quite a list. I saw Tolkien. Okay. Hellboy.

And isn't it romantic? Yeah. I can't say I enjoyed any of them. Okay. That's fair. And I don't understand the purpose of any of them. Okay. Here's my individual take on all of them very quickly.

Tolkien is a biopic about J.R.R. Tolkien, the author of The Lord of the Rings. Perhaps one of the least interesting films I've ever seen in my life. And I cannot understand what the narrative logic of the movie was. Are you a Lord of the Rings? I think it's good. Do you like consuming Tolkien content? I'm certainly not opposed to it. I'll be watching the Amazon series. I've seen every Peter Jackson film. I saw the animated Hobbit movie. I'm interested. Can I tell you like a real low

point in my academic career? Certainly. So I studied Latin and Greek in college, which is actually not the low point. That's just the setup to this story. But in Greek class one day, which is pretty hard. Were you a classics major? I was. In Greek class one day as a treat, my Greek professor just decided to teach us Elvish for some reason, because Tolkien had borrowed like a lot of the mechanisms of ancient Greek in order to put together Elvish. And that was that was a tough day for me looking and looking at my choices. So perhaps this film would be more meaningful to you than to me, because there's quite a bit in this film about his studies in philology and i can't tell you anything less interesting than a person talking about how interested they are in language in a movie that's the opposite of movie action is a person talking about how much they like words that's not a movie hellboy seriously what the fuck i i don't know

sean you tell me there obviously have been two hellboy films before this made by guillermo del toro those movies are good for what they are based on the mike mcdowell the comics um ron perlman plays the lead in this new movie david harbour plays the lead it's directed by neil marshall i believe who um filmed the battle of blackwater episode of game of thrones he also made that's the good one that's the good one, right? That's the good one. He made The Descent, which is a great horror film from the early 2000s. Talented director. This movie is a fucking shit show.

But not intentionally. I mean, I never say that about movies on this show, but I was like, what is going on here? Why did this happen this way? I do not have the answers to you on this.

Okay, the third thing is isn't it romantic? Which I know you saw. You mentioned it a couple times on this show. This movie's not funny. No, it's smart times on this show. This movie's not funny. No, it's smart. It's intelligent.

But it's not funny. But it's not funny. Yeah, I agree with that. It's smart about, it's like a good essay. You know, it's got all, it's like, here's what happens in romantic comedies, and here's why they happen. Yes. And here's an example of how it could happen. But with no jokes?

Yes. I think for me, the real problem is that I don't find Rebel Wilson funny. Me neither. Yeah. And so. I used to. I appreciated the send up of it. And I think I cited it as part of this kind of generation of women writers and filmmakers my age reassessing the romantic comedy and kind of taking it apart and putting it back together.

And some ways are more interesting than others. And I think, I don't know if you watched Hulu's Four Weddings and a Funeral on your... I did not. Right, because you haven't seen the original. I haven't. Because I, we're going to move past it. We don't have time for it at this point. That came to light from my wife over our vacation that I had not seen the original because she

expressed interest in the TV series. And that was actually the most caustic look I've ever received from her that I haven't seen this film. When I learned it, I closed my computer and stormed out of a meeting. And basically was called back to deliver the punchline that I had not delivered because I was so angry at you. But that is not a productive re-examination of a romantic comedy text. I'll just leave it at that. The new series. Yeah. And I think we are kind of reaching the end of this meta-romantic comedy moment. What will you trade me to get me to watch Four Weddings and a Funeral? That's a great question. Well, I guess you would have to pick how exciting i would should

probably be if we're gonna kind of do matchy matchy it's like it's a well i guess it's like sense and sensibility it's one of the best examples of a genre that i am extremely passionate about but wow would you watch like more conversant in romantic comedies. I am. I am. I have not seen most of the classics. That's probably the only true blue classic I've never seen. Right. But should I make you watch a Shaw Brothers martial arts movie? I mean, if you want. Yeah.

What would be a productive conversation? We'll have to come back to that. I would just kind of be like, well, I noticed some things. Here's what I would recommend. Just at AKbbins for all the movies that you wanted to watch which i'm sure will be great for your mentions thanks so much guys i'm going on vacation do whatever you want i'll be closing twitter don't don't tweet stupid things in amanda just good suggestions just just movies that you actually want to hear us talk about um there's a lot of movies coming out in august i'm going to be talking to a lot of filmmakers

around uh these films that are coming out i'm looking forward to some of them's a lot of movies coming out in August. I'm going to be talking to a lot of filmmakers around these films that are coming out. I'm looking forward to some of them, a few of them in case you're looking forward to them as well. Blinded by the Light, the new Bruce Springsteen oriented English romantic comedy fantasy. Hulu has this documentary coming out in August

16th called The Amazing Jonathan Documentary. Really looking forward to talking to the director of that movie. It's very good and I won't spoil anything. Can we say what it's about or can I ask what it's about? You can ask what it's about.

Is it about a magician? It's about a magician. You love magicians. I do love magicians. That's nice. That's nice for you. This is a very special execution of a story

about a magician. Where'd you go Bernadette? I wonder if we'll be talking about this movie because no one else is. We will. I haven't seen it.? I wonder if we'll be talking about this movie because no one else is. We will. I haven't seen it.

Nor have I. It'll be later. In some capacity, we will be talking about it. I am increasingly nervous about in which capacity, but. Yeah, this movie has been pushed twice now. It's directed by the estimable Richard Linklater. It's being released by Anna Perna. It's based on, who's the author of the novel?

Maria Semple. Maria Semple, a beloved novel. Yes. I'd recommend that if you need some summer reading. And it also stars Cate Blanchett. Cate Blanchett. And I, What?

By all accounts, It's happening. No bueno. We shall see. I'm sure we'll talk about it when you get back from your vacation. One of the best movies I've seen this year

is the Netflix documentary American Factory. Talking to the two filmmakers behind that movie next week. I would highly recommend that to all people that are interested in America and the workforce and the economy and also just what Netflix is doing with documentary.

This is a very, very special and sophisticated and deep movie. And then there's a whole bunch more. Ready or Not is a horror movie. Brittany Runs a Marathon is Amazon's sort of comedy, though this film was not as much of a comedy as i might have expected starring jillian bell i don't think i'll get a chance to talk to you about loose which is a was a big big box office performer in in in modest

release this weekend are you familiar with this movie at all no i actually i thought this was a different movie uh naomi watts and tim roth star in the movie about a couple who have adopted a child from africa and um as he grows up in america he communicates some things to a high school teacher and he becomes the subject of some controversy and apparently it's a very challenging film i have not seen it but it did actually extraordinarily good business for a movie like this and there's a feeling like if rolled out properly could also be in that

kind of the farewell vein where it's just a word of mouth. It's kind of controversial. The takes might start flying if it opens up in more than four theaters in this country. I'm going to check that out very soon. So I'm looking forward to that.

I have not even really heard anything about it. It was a Sundance film. It was bought by Neon. We'll see what happens. Likewise, The Nightingale, that is a Jennifer Kent's follow-up movie, which you are shaking your head

and you will not be watching, which looks like a very disturbing and complicated movie and is also a story about rape. And that has been a big talking point of that film is how it's portrayed and who is portraying it. So maybe we'll get into those two films.

I have literally no idea who in the world I would talk to about them, if not you, so I'll have to figure that out. What else? Anything else in the movie world you want to address before we get out of here? Well, I wanted to talk about the books list that you left at the end of this document. Sure, sure. What do you want? I already mentioned Motherless Brooklyn.

Sure. I enjoyed rereading that. These are just books that you read. Yeah, I finished Somebody's Darling, the Larry McMurtry novel, which was recommended to me by our pal Andy Greenwald and which has come to light as an object of fascination of Chris Ryan's and your husband. Yes, I'm just surrounded. I had no experience with Larry McMurtry.

I think I tried to read Lonesome Dove once and I didn't really get it. And I didn't totally realize that he wrote a different kind of book, that he didn't write just these 900 page doorstopper Westerns, that he wrote like very weird character studies of complex people. He's obviously quite famed for writing these very complicated women in his books. This movie, this book, I read it because I was like tweeting about books about Hollywood. And this is a, it's a 1978 novel about three different people going through Hollywood. One of them is a 63-year-old screenwriter. You can tell that that's loosely based on Larry McMurtry. One of them is a aspirant producer, handsome guy who's worked in,

I believe, the lumber business in Texas. And he's decided that he wants to be a big-time Hollywood producer. And so what he does is he moves to LA and he starts sleeping around and starts to rise to the top of the industry. And then the third person is a female film director at a time when there were no female film directors. Yeah, I was going to say. And she's clearly based on Polly Platt after the experience that McMurtry had with her and Peter Bogdanovich on The Last Picture Show. And for the portrayal of this character, the book is fascinating because it predicts a lot of the crises of the female filmmaker. It was not aged necessarily terribly well in some respects. You can imagine the sexual

politics of 1978 in a novel like this is somewhat complicated. But anybody that is interested in what Hollywood was like seen through the lens of Larry McMurtry, this book is like a must read. It's just there's so many funny, singular evocations of a person's instinct. He's really got a knack for that. Have you read any Larry McMurtry? No, I haven't. I just really feel like I woke up one day and every single male in my life just was carrying these giant books around. And I was like, what happened? Did I miss the meeting? I mean, he definitely convinced me to buy a couple more of his books. So that's the most I can say. I think somebody's darling is at our house or maybe coming on vacation with us. So

perhaps I will also read it. It's imperfect. And it's written in three acts from three different perspectives. So it's more of an experiment. McMurtry fans, I have learned, don't think it's one of his best. But it's about my interests. Yes. So I got into it.

I read Dr. Sleep, which I never read before. And I'm about to embark on a Stephen King thing here. Oh, right. Of course. Because it... Chapter two is coming. And then Dr. Sleep, which is the sequel to The Shining. Have you read any of Stephen King's novels? I don't think so, actually, which I'm horrified because I have my close friend Gilbert has, I think, read every single month. That's right. In fact, I think he ranked them for Vulture once upon a time. Yes. I just never that was not put

in my hands at a young age for some reason. I think probably because I'm a scaredy cat, but. Should we do a Stephen King episode? Yeah. Okay. There's a lot of movies to watch. Okay. Maybe that will be one of the things I ask you to watch then.

Okay. I can do that. Okay. That's. I'm emotionally equipped for that. Let's, let's plan on that. Do you have one that you've always wanted to see? Cause there's the classics.

There's the Carrie. Right. The. Well, I've seen Carries. I've seen the Shining. I'm not a Rube, but I mean... I won't make a rude comment. Okay, yeah.

The only other book that I read has nothing to do with anything that we're talking about, but it's Otessa Moshfieg's Eileen, which just, wow.

She's very talented. I haven't read Eileen. I've only read Year of Rest and Relaxation. I had read My Year of Rest and Relaxation 2 last year on my vacation and I was knocked out by it I stayed in a hotel in sweden that

Is called et hem Which means a home. Mm-hmm. It's probably the single best hotel i've ever stayed in in my life. Love it Let's just turn this into a travel podcast Well, I I don't want to say too much more about it And i'm certain that people would like me to wrap up as soon as possible. But Ed Hem is meant to evoke the feeling of being at home. It's a hotel you really don't have to leave. There are a lot of sitting rooms. There's an honor bar. There are dozens of books in this place. Good books, books with taste. There are board games. There's, you know, when you dine, you can dine in the kitchen with the chefs and talk to them if you

would like to. If you'd rather eat in the greenhouse, you can go eat in the greenhouse. It's an extraordinary place. There were three copies of Eileen. Really? In this place. This is the only book I saw that had more than one copy. I'd been wanting to read the book. And I was like, this is a sign.

I have to read it. I didn't actually finish the book, but I'm about halfway through. Okay. You took the book with you? That was allowed? No, I bought it. Oh, okay. Because I didn't want to steal anything from the hotel that I really enjoy.

That's really nice. But she's just a wow writer. I agree. Really like a generational talent to me. I don't read nearly as much fiction as you do but I'm just so taken with her. No, I think she's just tremendously both just like her mind is so specific

and like traveling to another world and then also her ability to write sentences and pace the story is phenomenal. I definitely need Fincher to adapt one of her books. That would be, that's a lot to take in. It's the right fit, but then I'm just already physically uncomfortable. I mean, Fincher with Eileen would be absolutely incredible. Those are my book recommendations from my vacation. That's great. What a lovely trip it sounds like you had. Yeah, it was good. It was good.

I hope you enjoy yours. Thank you. I'm taking six books. So maybe I'll have some book recommendations when I return. Six books? Yes. I impulse ordered two more last night because I had four that I've been kind of waiting. And then I was like, what if I don't have enough?

What if I need two more? So then I impulse ordered two more. Well, when you come back, you do a book report. In the meantime, next week, Bobby Wagner and I are going to do a mailbag. Amazing. So if you have questions for me, I will not be answering any of Amanda's questions in this mailbag episode. But if you, in this very slow movie period, would like to know anything about the world of movies or just hear about more of my bad once upon a time in hollywood takes uh please at the big pick we'll send out a tweet about that and um maybe i'll answer your question or maybe i'll just write fake questions

that's what i was gonna do so that i can monologue some more i'm sneaking amanda's questions in under different names for you amanda i got you i suspect i'll be able to suss them out i'll know i'll know the know the truth. Amanda, thank you as always. Thank you, Sean. Welcome back. I am delighted to be joined by the writer-director, Andrea Berloff. Andrea, thanks for being here. I am so happy to be here. Thank you. Andrea, why is The Kitchen your directorial debut? That is my first question for you. It's a great question. So, I think for a few reasons. First of all, I have never felt this connected to any of the scripts that I've written before.

I sort of felt like this was the one that I had to do. I finished the writing and had so much more to say. I knew what these costumes should look like. I knew what this music should sound like. I knew what kind of performances I wanted. I just was so intent on every single piece of it that was not on the page that I felt like this was the one that I should go for. In your life, how many scripts have you written? I don't know. Would you, could you put a ballpark on it? I mean, for money? For money? Sure. I don't know.

30? I don't know. I don't know. I'd have to really do some math and add up over the years. I've had a, you years. I've been working professionally since 2003. So a few a year. I'm always fascinated by somebody who has been doing the work that you've been doing. Now, obviously you are Oscar nominated screenwriter. You've done very well for yourself, but only a handful of credits, but you've written a lot of pieces and not everything gets produced in Hollywood. And I think that there's a little bit of a lack of understanding of how that works, why that works that way.

And also what it's like for somebody like you who's been doing a lot of work. Right. To get to this point. You know, it is, yes, I have done a lot of work to get to this point. But yes, not every script gets made. So I have scripts that I have complete ownership over that I've written every word. And then the studio says, no, thanks. We don't want to make that.

Or there's also like you'll jump onto somebody else's movie and help them out for a little bit, which I'm perfectly happy to not have ownership over everything. And I'm perfectly happy just to help somebody achieve their vision. So there's lots of different ways to go about this career. How did you get to this first moment in 2003 when you started writing? I had been working for Bob Shea and his wife, Ava Shea. Bob was the founder of New Line. I had been working in their house as their personal assistant, part-time taking care of their household, and used that time to quietly learn how to write. It was a part-time job, and so the rest of the time I just sort of sat by myself in a room and figured out how to do this. And then I finished a script that, you know, friends seem to like. And I knew one other assistant at New Line. And I gave, and that was, she was it. If she had said no, that was, I didn't know anybody else in Hollywood. What was the script? Caress. And it was a true story about Harry and Caress Crosby, 1920s Boston. Harry was incredibly

wealthy. He was JP Morgan's nephew. And they ended up having an affair. She was married. They ran off to Paris together, Paris in the Roaring Twenties. And he descended into mental illness and she didn't know what to do because she didn't want a second divorce. It would have been too scandalous. And so she just decided to spend his money. And she became the patron saint of Paris in the 20s. So she's the one that discovered Salvador Dali and James Joyce and Hemingway. And she backed them throughout the 20s and many other artists, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and there's more. So she was the Medici of the salon. She was the Medici of that whole period of like really one of the more influential people of the 20th century. She invented the bra. She held the patent on the bra. I know she was amazing. So it was this crazy, and it was a hard, like tons

of, you know, sex going on. So it was this like very hard R period piece about this woman. And is this from being a person from Massachusetts that you knew about this? No, not at all. I was reading a book. Um, I can't remember what the book was about, but the book said like everybody in Paris in the 20s was crazy and the craziest person of all was Harry Crosby. He, you know, sort of like gave a little bio and then he ended up killing himself in the arms of his lover. So I was like, who's that that's the craziest person of the roaring 20s and just started researching them and found them to be fascinating. When you were working for the Shays, was the idea that you had moved to Los Angeles to be a screenwriter? Was that your plan?

No, I don't know what my plan was in retrospect. I was like, I was going to make it, but I don't know what I was making. I, I had spent a couple of years working in theater in New York, uh,

uh, acting and producing plays in New York. And I did not like it. Um, and I did not know what to do with myself. And so I found myself here and I, I acted in a bunch of commercials here. It turns out I am not a very good actor and I did not like it. And I did not know what to do with myself. And so I found myself here and I acted in a bunch of commercials here. It turns out I am not a very good actor and I was, I kind of picked up on that pretty quickly. And then while I was here in LA, it was like everybody else is

writing screenplays. Maybe I should too. And so I wrote one that my friends liked. I didn't know anybody at that point to show it to, but it was also like not that good. It was my first script. And then I wrote this, Harry and Caress was my first script. And then I wrote this. Harry and Caress was my second script. So what happens then? You give it to an assistant at New Line and they say, you got a future in this business, kid. Write another one? Or do they say, we're going to make this?

No, it happened really fast. So she read it. She gave it to another assistant. And they both liked it. And they were talking about it. And the president of Fine Line, Mark, which doesn't exist anymore. It used to be a division of New Line. I remember Fineline.

Mark Ordesky overheard them, and was like, what are you guys talking about? And they're like, oh, well, it hasn't even worked its way through the system yet. And he's like, let me just read it. It sounds cool. And he optioned it the next morning. So it went really fast. That is amazing. It went really fast.

It was like within a few days. And then it did not happen, obviously. No. The script never got made. What was that like to experience that? It not getting made? Yeah. I think I don't have any expectation of my scripts ever getting made.

I mean, there's something like, I don't know if this number is still right, but at least when I started, because I think, I don't know if it's right, because I think studios buy less scripts now than they used to. But when I started, the rule of thumb was 5% of scripts that studios own get made. So that's not good odds, even once you're through the door. So I never had the crushing blow of it's not going to get made. It was just like, okay, now can... I mean, by the way, I made very little money in that.

I basically just paid off credit card debt. Then I was like, how about another one? Can I work again? So it was more just the excitement of getting paid to write at that point versus being disappointed that the movie wasn't going to get made. Was there any expectation that you were going to direct at some point? Had that occurred to you at this time? No, no.

It took me a bunch of years of sitting on other people's sets and just watching and watching and watching to finally feel like, okay, now I got it. Now I can do it. Can you tell me about some of those? I'm curious about like who do you... Before I say it, there was some study that said that men have no problem raising their hand even when they aren't ready. And women want to know that they're ready to do something something and so perhaps sometimes that's why it takes women a little longer interesting so how did you get onto sets then is this you were a world trade center for example yeah like were you on that set yeah so so 2003 obviously i sold my first script 2004 i got

hired for world trade center i turned that script in in october of 2004 and 2005 it was in production so you know I had a really great experience with Oliver Stone making that movie and he kept me around and you know could have fired me because he's certainly capable of writing himself and he did not right he's a great writer and he did not and you know definitely put me through my paces and worked me and worked me and worked me and you know I sat on set for a great deal of that movie, just sort of watching him work and watching how it got made. And I learned a ton. What are his sets like? They're very quiet and well run. I mean, I want, I've only been on his one set, so I don't know what else, but he's not a screamer. He's very efficient. He, you know, takes his time. He's super curious. He asks tons of questions. Why

are we doing this? Why should we do it a different way? You know, he's, his mind is going and going and going. He's a very hard worker. I mean, I don't know how else to say it. Nobody, success does not happen by accident. I've been around a lot of very well-known directors and they work their butts off. So at that time, are you still thinking, what I'm going to do is just keep writing and just be a writer? Yes. What kind of movies do you want to write at that time? Because Hollywood has changed so much. So I'm so curious. Oh my gosh. Well, listen, I, so I was, I sold Harry and Caress and then Fine Line, the same company, had me rewrite another female driven period piece for them that also didn't get made.

And then I looked around and thought, how many female driven period pieces are getting made? And the answer was just about zero. So I really consciously went out and got a couple of cop jobs. So I got, and one of those cop jobs ended up being World Trade Center. But I ended up taking time to really be like, let's change, let's shift gears here. And I have to learn how to write like a boy. So why that? Was it just to get into that perspective because those movies get made? Yes. Because I wanted to work and nobody wanted female-driven content throughout most of the 2000s, most of the 21st century. Nobody has wanted female-driven content and I needed to support myself.

But you could have written a big time action movie. You could have written a superhero movie, a fantasy story. Why cops? Why does that become an area of interest? That felt to me like, especially in that era, remember, there was not a lot of superhero movies in 2004, 5, 6. That was not what was going on. It was the big action movies with beefy boys and guns and those kinds of things. And to me, like a more contained cop movie felt like a way into that world, into learning how to write with that voice. So how do you train yourself to do that? You just watch a lot of movies, read a lot of scripts? Watch a lot of movies. Yeah. That's always my answer is watch a lot of movies. Were there any Bibles for you when you were teaching yourself how to do this?

I love Michael Mann's work. So there was a lot of Michael Mann going on and he's been something of a mentor over the years. So there was, yeah. Can you tell me about that? We are, we are massive Michael Mann fans here at The Ringer. Yeah. He's just been very nice to me. I don't have any specific, like he's never sat me down and given me lessons, but he's just been very kind over the years. Seems like you, between him and Oliver Stone, there's like a methodical genius level writer director, but like a real masculinity in the work. Like who are some other filmmakers that were interesting to you as you were moving through the business? That is a great question. I wish I had a list.

I feel like whenever anybody asks a question like that, I'm like, I've never heard of a director in my life. I might go completely blank. Have I seen a movie? Do you want me to vamp while you brainstorm a little bit? I'm sure I've seen a movie before. I can say some nice things about your film, which I liked. Sure, thanks. You know, I think any of the great writer-directors, so whether it's Tarantino or, you know, I mean, for me, it's never about actually just that.

I love Eric Roth's work as a writer, and I love Scorsese's work as a director. And, you know, so it doesn't have to be just writer-director. But, you know, I think people who have a real voice and something to say specifically that's different than other people's voices really appeal to me. What's happening between World Trade Center and Straight Outta Compton? Nine years of no movies, or ten? I don't remember. Nine or ten years of no movies made. You're getting work. But I worked consistently the entire time. Now, interestingly, then I had three movies come out in a row, and all of those movies were written during that period. So it just takes a long time to make a movie.

And the industry changed during that time period. It went from you could make a smarter movie, you could make a biopic, you could make a smaller movie, and the studio would make that movie, to absolutely that's not happening. You've got to make a big movie. So there was also some trial and error for me in learning how to go bigger. You were sort of raised in the studio system in a way. Totally. I've only ever worked for studios for the most part. One or two independent finance years, but mainly totally a career in the studio system.

When did you become conscious of kind of a split happening? Because I always think it's interesting to kind of talk to studio filmmakers now, especially those who are pursuing like a directorial debut inside the system. You know, have you very firmly wanted to stay on that kind of track because you have grown up inside of it? I'm really comfortable operating inside the studio system. That's where my relationships are. That's the kind of script that I write. I mean, I don't necessarily see myself writing a small movie.

I just feel like I'm more confident at this point. That's the structure I know. That's the kind of story I want to tell. They just tend to be a small movie. I just feel like I'm more confident at this point with that's the structure I know. That's the kind of story I want to tell. They're just tend to be a little bigger. That doesn't mean I don't have something in me maybe in the future, but that's just the world that I know. You know, I think that's funny that we all get put into these boxes that had I put into, been, you know, started on a different track, maybe I would have ended up with a different career. I don't know. Yeah. It's easier for jerks like me to organize everything in different platforms and be like, well, this person is like a Netflix filmmaker

and this person does this kind of thing. Let me tell you, more often than not, it's who wants to pay you. I mean that for real. And that's almost every writer I know. They look back on their career and they think, I made this decision because my kid had to go to school. I made this decision

because I needed some place to put the baby. You know, like it's, yes, we all are artists and, you know, want to have a body of work that we're proud of. But a lot of the time, you know, like it's, it's, yes, we all are artists and, you know, want to have a body of work that we're proud of. But a lot of the time it's like, you got to have a career who wants to pay you for the next job. Why did you take on the Straight Outta Compton gig? So I think it was 2011 maybe. I, um, I heard that New Line was hearing pitches from writers on that material and I took a look at it. I was always a fan of the music, but not like a rabid fan. I thought the songs were cool, but I was not a crazy person

about it. 2011, I heard that they were hearing pitches and I started looking at the material and I felt like, okay, that's great that they want to make a movie about this band, but movies about bands haven't worked in a long time. And so what's different about this story? I don't think this is a movie about a band. And that was my big pitch to them that I went in and I said, this is not a movie about a band. This is a movie about police abuse and First Amendment rights. And, you know, it has great music and it'll be fun. It'll be a great night out.

I have all that high energy. And then we can get people talking about these issues. And in my mind, that's kind of the only way you can get a movie that's about something working today. So it's got to be really fun and entertaining. And then you can slip people some medicine on their way out the door. Trojan horse, yeah. Exactly. So that was my pitch to them in 2011.

And at that point, I had done a lot of true stories working with people who were alive to help bring their stories to the screen. So they also felt like I would know how to. There was so many people that they wanted me to interview. So anyway, they hired me because I think Ice Cube wanted the big event movie and not the little music biopic. How many people did you interview? I don't know how many. I do know that it took me 10 months. There were dozens and dozens and dozens of people.

And some of these people were extremely famous, and it was not as easy as like, okay, I'll call you up and see you next week. It was like, okay, he'll see you in three months, you know? So it took 10 months to get all the interviews down and I recorded all of them and ended up with a thousand pages of transcripts from all that. And so this was journalism. To some extent. I mean, you know, at least in the early days. And from that, you can also see how does Dre speak differently than Cube right you can see their speech patterns on the page and start to analyze that and so it

you know we took it from there how different is the film from what you pitched to what Compton millions of people saw yeah

I think the end of the movie is not my ending of the movie it's really different than what I pitched and I think but I think it's pretty close it's pretty close I still think I mean what did I just pitch you it sounds like it's kind of the movie. It's really different than what I pitched. And I think, but I think it's pretty close. It's pretty close. I still, I mean, what did I just pitch you? It sounds like it's

kind of the movie, right? Big event movie that's super fun. Yeah. But I always feel like when there are famous people involved in telling their own story, it can get fraught and get complicated. Yes, it can. There's sensitivities that come with those, with people who have power. Yeah. You know, yes, absolutely. And there's certainly things in the movie that I did not write and that I would have done differently. But I think overall, the big goal, it's achieved that. If this is too strong, let me know.

Did the movie change your life? No. Really? A great life. Come on. I have a lovely husband, cute kids. I have a good life. So then it was too strong.

No movie is going to change. Did it change your career? I don't know. Isn't that funny to say? I think that my career was in a good place and people liked that movie. And I think the world was changing also to some extent, especially come 2017 when New Line was looking to hire a director for The Kitchen, I think people were waking up to the fact that, hey, there are a group of women who have been doing solid work within the studio system for a very long time

who have not been getting the respect or attention that hopefully our work had merited. So I think it was all kind of a confluence of good timing for me. Yes, I think Compton was well-received and people liked it, and that's really awesome and gratifying. And I think the world changed. So I think I was sort of at the right place at the right time.

Yeah, I was curious if that somehow significantly opened a door that might not have been open to you otherwise. Obviously, it's understood that it's much harder for a woman to get a job like this in a studio system. How do you make it clear that this is something that you want to do

and then get taken seriously under these circumstances? Does having an Oscar nomination make that a lot easier? Sure. It helps. There's no question. It helps. But it's not everything. It helps me get that meeting. It doesn't help me get a movie made. So how do you sell yourself as the person to make this film? I think because I so specifically knew everything that I wanted for this movie. I think two things. Number one, I think I had a pretty good pitch as a director, obviously enough that they're like, yeah, that sounds cool. We want to see that movie. I don't want to interrupt you, but what is in a pitch like that? What are you – are you bringing like visual examples?

Tons of images. So you go in with like here's what 1978 Hell's Kitchen looked like and here's what I would take from that. You go in with tons of photos of costumes and cars and really tons of visual images. I also went in with thumb drives that I handed out to the executives of a playlist because for me, music was always going to be really important in the film. So I put together a playlist of songs that I thought would be representative of the kind of music I'd find. What songs? That's a great— But I had just looked at it, and only one song was on that original list that is actually in the movie, which is Barracuda.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, by Heart. That makes sense. Which is a great song. Okay. Yeah, but otherwise, you know, then you really like get the film going and you're like, well, that song doesn't really work in this moment. But, you know, it was sort of the concept idea. So, yeah, just tons of visual stuff.

But I don't think it's any coincidence that it was New Line that hired me for my first movie. You know, if we go back to my days of working for the CEO's family, I have known this group of guys for nearly 20 years. So they know that I'm not a crazy person and I'm not going to run around and waste millions of dollars and that I'm responsible. And, you know, I think that, and I wrote straight out of Compton for them. Like it's been a long, a long journey of working with, with this group of guys. So I think they also trusted me in a different way. So you said that the first thing they do is you go in and pitch and there was a second thing. Is the second thing just that they know that you are a...

I don't know. I interrupted myself and now I don't know what the second thing was. Sorry. It's okay. What was surprising to you about directing a film even though you'd been on sets and you were not anticipating?

You know, there's this culture that the director knows everything. There's this culture of everything goes to the top. And I think it's a little bit, it's certainly important that one person is steering the ship. And so one person has to be the decision maker. That's all fine. But then all of the stuff of like, you know, what kind of dried fruit would you like in your trailer? Like all of that just is such a waste of energy and time. And so some of that like pandering made me a little like, come on guys, let's stop doing that and let's just make a movie.

What about choosing the people that are really significant there? Obviously your production designer and your editor and your cinematographer, all of these people are elemental to making the movie. Yeah, I feel really lucky. I got a great team. Do you get to handpick those people? So how does that work? Yeah, in conjunction with the studio. I mean, I couldn't have just gone off and hired a friend,

you know, the studio had to approve all of those key people, but we, it worked with, it worked like this. So listen, I was very clear that, you know, I wanted to make sure that women were represented in my hiring. But specifically there were two key jobs that I thought it would be great to have women fulfill, which was the position of director of photography, cinematographer, and an AD, assistant director, first AD. Those are two very prominent positions on set, and I felt like having women in those positions would really say something. So whether or not I could achieve even 50% hiring, to me, it was just really important to where I was putting my energy. So I was lucky enough to hire Maryse Alberti as my DP, and she's just a phenomenally talented DP and has a very long resume and has done all different kinds of genres and styles. And we handed her a really tall order because I wanted it to look like

an authentically gritty 70s gangster movie, but I also wanted the women to look beautiful in every frame. And that push and pull, that dichotomy is really hard to achieve. And I think she did a great job at it. The cast obviously is incredible. And you have two actors that are known mostly as comic actresses. Yes. How did you guys decide who the leads of the film should be? And then also, how do you decide how to surround them? Because it's a little bit of a murderer's row of character actors. And I'm kind of fascinated to know, like, what comes first?

Are stars coming in first and then you're building around? Stars. Well, let me back up and say this. Maybe this was number two on my list. So, you know, yes, they hired me to direct the movie, but the movie was not greenlit. So it was a little bit like, good luck getting cast, kid. You know, because they're not going to greenlight the movie unless you have stars in it at a studio. Did Melissa McCarthy come first?

Tiffany Haddish came first. Interesting. So Tiffany, we were just getting ready to start casting. We didn't even really have ourselves totally organized yet. And my producer, Mike DeLuca, called me and said, I just saw this. I just met. I just had coffee with this woman. And she had this movie open this weekend. And I think she could be Ruby.

She's amazing. You should go meet with her. I think she's going to be a star. So I like quickly ran out and saw girl strip, which had just opened that weekend and saw what everybody else saw, which was that she was awesome. But of course, like that doesn't translate into a dramatic role. So I went and had lunch with her and saw what Mike saw, which was that she, she's the total package. She's so smart and has such depth to her and such soul and such a good egg and such a like hard worker and so much crazy ambition. I mean, she will sit there and tell you, here's what I'm going to be doing in 2021. Here's what I'm going to be doing in 2023. And by 2025, look out world, you know, like she just has a real sense of what's coming for herself. And I thought immediately, well, she could absolutely be Ruby. You know, she's so crazy good. So we but just the whole the whole character the disposition of the character the approach the backstory the way that her character makes choices

in the movie how much of that is coming from the source material that they're sending to you and how much of that do you get to flex around inside i i created hello i created ruby ruby was not in the source material so how much flexibility then did you have around that were you did you have to stick to any basic tenantsets? No. No. You know, the comic book is fantastic, and I took the original concept. The original comic book was three white women, two of whom were sisters. So I just took the concept of women taking over the Irish mafia. And there is a hitman character named Gabriel who is played by Donald Gleeson. So I definitely used him most directly, I would say, from the comic book. But almost all the other characters are inventions of mine. And

New Line really gave me the freedom to do what I wanted to do with the material. And, you know, by the way, I want to be very clear, I did that in conjunction with the comic book author and illustrator, Ollie Masters and Ming Doyle. I kept them involved from day one. I just think all too often we're not kind to each other in Hollywood. And I wanted to have them be part of the process and have them understand why I was making the choices I was making. And I had them really involved. They were on set with us. They came to my house for dinner last week. You know, I mean, I really wanted them to be part of the process and feel ownership over this as well.

How much adapting work had you done over the years? I've done quite a bit. Yeah, so you're comfortable in that space of knowing what to cut, what to add. Yeah, you know, books are books and movies are movies. Have you ever read one of those terrible books that they've taken a movie and tried to make it into a book? I don't know if you've ever seen this. Oh, yeah, sure. Those don't work at all.

So why does everybody think you should be so beholden to a book when you put it on screen? They're two different mediums. They're both wonderful. I love reading books. I love watching movies. They're not the same thing and they're not the same experience. So you've got to, no matter what the source, unless you're writing Harry Potter, where a fan is going to ding you, if you make one wrong step, you got to have the freedom to make it a movie. Otherwise it's just going to fall flat. You got to go for it and make

it entertaining. What do you think Melissa saw in the script that you put together? I don't want to speak totally for Melissa, but I will tell you, I have a sense, which is she's not getting offered roles like this ever, at least not at that point. I think she's going to start to get offered more and more roles because I think she can do no wrong. I think she kills it in this movie. What I think is amazing about Melissa's performance in this movie is that in many ways, although we've all seen a million Melissa McCarthy movies over the years, nobody has seen her do this. In some ways, this is the truest representation of Melissa that I've seen. She is fierce. She's a really protective mother. She's very determined. She has a great head on her shoulders. She knows what she wants. I mean, in some ways,

all these characteristics of Kathy are Melissa's characteristics. Minus the murder. Minus the murder craziness. But yes. But yeah, you know, so I think that she just saw bits of herself within the character and wanted the opportunity to do something like this. What about the rest of the cast? You mentioned Donald Gleeson. Very, very good in this movie. He's very good in this movie. I'm very excited about him. Big fan of his. This is a good, he's usually so beatific. I know. With the exception of Star Wars, I suppose, but he's very down and dirty. He is down and dirty and like the ladies love him. And, you know, he's kind of dreamy in this movie. And, you know, I think he gives a really interesting nuance.

It could have been a very flat. What I did not want in the role of a hitman was like some big thuggy kind of dude, you know, with big muscles. I wanted somebody who looked a little different and was out of the box. And Donal's great. He does a great job. Elizabeth Moth is obviously the third member of your trio. When you're making a movie like this and you're trying to get it greenlit, do you need to have, do you need to say what I have is three brand name actresses? What is it

like to get, you do. Yeah. So what is that process like in terms of identifying? Do you have a long list of people that you're like, I love these people. I go out to X first. How does that work? The list is not so crazy long because when you're making a studio movie, there are very few women who can get a studio movie greenlit. So it's not like we're looking at 75 women. We aren't. We're looking at a handful. And it really boils down to who's right for the role. And then it becomes like a three-person long list. And so we ended up going to Elizabeth and the whole time I was like, oh, she's going to say no. She just won the Emmy. The timing is terrible. Why would we even bother? We're going to waste our time and we're going to have to figure out somebody else. Like,

you know, I was talking myself out of her before we had even shown her the script. And so we sent it to her over a weekend and by Monday she said yes, which I just could not believe. And I was on the phone with her Monday afternoon and she called me Monday afternoon and said, I would just said, I cannot believe you're saying yes this fast. And she said, well, I'm not an idiot. I know a good job when I see one. And I was like, okay, welcome aboard. It happened really quickly with her. There's a sense here, I hear, I think at this company that she is the best living actress, actor maybe. I mean, there is more than one first take in the movie because she would walk out the

door and say, okay, guys, you ready? And I would say, do you want to rehearse? And she said, no, let's just try one. And she would do a take and we would all sit there sort of in silence because I mean, she was just knocking it out of the park every take. That's TV training too, though, right? You got to be efficient. You got to do it. That's so interesting. So good. What about everything in post? Was the movie that you shot, the movie that you got when you were editing it, was there anything surprising to you about what you ended up doing and then when you had to put it all together?

I've always had a very clear vision for the movie and this is very close to what I wanted. But I think what surprised me in our initial cuts was how careful I had to be with Melissa and Tiffany in particular, because the audiences want to laugh at them. And so all it would take would be like the wrong eyebrow or the wrong look and people were laughing at the wrong spot. That's so interesting. So we had to go, even though there was nothing funny about the moment, it was just that people look at them and want to laugh. So we had to really be ultra careful with what we were presenting when and make, and only let the audience laugh when we wanted them to laugh and make sure that you know everything was as tight as it could be otherwise

do you find yourself keeping a close watch on the evolution of their careers while you're putting your film together because i can't worry i mean you know come on we're all you know what we're all on our own journeys and i think that their careers are phenomenal and i hope that the kitchen ends up being a nice stop along the way for them. Yeah, I guess I only ask because the perception of a person who's known for comedy, if they're just doing different kinds of work or if people love something that they've done recently, how will that affect your film and the way that you shape your movie? That's a great question, and maybe with more experience, I will allow that to play in. But right now, I just felt like I'm going to make my movie, and I'm focused on doing this. You're going to make more movies? Oh, yeah. Do you have one in the works? No.

Do you see yourself only writing and directing at this point? Is it possible you will still work as a screenwriter? Yeah, I'll do both. Okay. So how do you decide? I love writing. I mean, listen, I hate writing. Writing is awful. Let's be clear. There's no such thing as a good writing day. I can relate. It's the worst. You sit and stare at a blank computer and tear your hair out and just feel horrible about yourself and about society. So it's awful, but I will keep doing it because I do like it in some way. But you don't know what's next? I'm writing a few things and talking about a few projects, but nothing is set yet. Is there a dream genre that you want to do? Because you said you started out writing these period pieces and you trained yourself to write a different kind of

movie. And this movie is very related to those movies that you trained yourself to write in some ways. New York, there are some cops in it. It's mostly criminals. Um, there's a bunch of things I would love to do, but I think, listen, I have two things to say on that topic. I could give you a list of things I would love to do and that I dream of doing one day. That's fine. We all have things that we want to do. But I will say that we are living through a blip and a moment in time where a few women are being given opportunities to go direct movies right now. And if these movies don't work and people don't go to the box office and buy tickets,

this era is going to come to an end. I assure you, this is not permanent. There are like a handful of women directing studio movies right now. If these movies don't work, there will not be more. So, you know, I can tell you the five things I would love to go do. I hope that people go see The Kitchen so that I have an opportunity to go do them again. And that, by the way, five other women and then 10 other women after me have an opportunity for them to direct in the coming years. Because if these don't work, there will not be more opportunity. Andrea, we end every episode of the show by asking filmmakers what's

the last great thing that they have seen. I don't know if you've had time to watch many movies lately. That's a great question. I really liked Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. I saw that last week. Can you tell me what you liked about it? It is. Nobody else could have done that movie but him. It is his.

It is purely his. It is his voice. And I think that's awesome. And I think we should, you know, in France, there's this great culture of celebrating the voice of the artist. I don't think we have that culture quite as much here. And I think it's really something special when it comes along. I think people could say the same about the kitchen. Andrea, thanks for being here.

Thank you.