The Big Picture - The Oscars Are Removing Four Categories From the Telecast. Why? Plus a Conversation With Nominee Nicholas Britell | The Oscars Show (Ep. 126)

Episode Date: February 12, 2019

We sift through what’s real and what’s just British after the BAFTAs this weekend, and whether or not the ‘A Star Is Born’ media blitz is helping or hurting its stock at the Oscars. Then we wonder what might happen if the Oscars telecast is as much of a disaster as it’s shaping up to be. Finally, Sean sits down with Nicholas Britell—the composer of the ‘If Beale Street Could Talk,’ ‘Moonlight,’ and ‘Succession’ soundtracks—to talk about the process of conceiving a score and working with a director to execute their vision. Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Guest: Nicholas Britell Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's episode of The Big Picture is brought to you by Bud Light. Did you know not all alcohol products are required to list their ingredients? That was news to me. Bud Light is changing the game. They believe that we deserve to know our beer's ingredients, so they put an ingredients label right there on their packaging. Bud Light, brewed with hops, barley, water, and rice. No corn syrup, no preservatives, and no artificial flavors.

Find out what ingredients are in your beer. Bud Light. Enjoy responsibly. AB Bud Light Beer, St. Louis, Missouri. I'm Sean Fennessey. And I'm Amanda Dobbins. And this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about the Oscars. Amanda, we are here in the waning days of the Oscar race. I hope everybody will stay tuned.

After our conversation about the Oscars, I have an interview with the great composer Nicholas Bertel. I know you're a big fan, Amanda. Yes. He, of course, wrote the music for If Beale Street Could Talk, for which he is nominated and also Vice and also Moonlight and a number of other great scores. But we're going to talk right now about British Oscars, the BAFTAs. They happened earlier this weekend and they were interesting. Amanda, any reflections on the big winners at the BAFTAs?

Well, I would say that there were some, nothing was a total surprise, right? There were a few breaks from kind of what we see to be the established frontrunners at this point, specifically Olivia Colman, one for best actress, and Rachel Weisz, one for best supporting actress. Key note there, both lovely British women. They are indeed. At a British show. And we did talk, I think, last week about the idea that British people do tend to do this from time to time, though I think we should talk a little bit more about how frequently they favor their own and how much that is a predictor or not a predictor

as the case may be for the real Oscars. It's fairly frequent. There's always at least one film that, I was looking back at sort of some acting award trends and I read that in 2015, Dev Patel won for his performance in Lion, which is not a performance I recall winning very many

awards stateside. So, you know, British Oscars are going to British, you know, that's okay. That's certainly their right as a body. You know, we've talked on previous episodes of the show about how there's a decent percentage of people who vote for the Baptist who also vote for the Oscars. So there are some lessons to take away from here. I'm a little dubious of Rachel Weisz's campaign. However, best supporting actress historically, one of the most difficult to predict. And she is your queen, even though Olivia Colman will be the queen. I think your queen is Weisz. Yes. In this movie. In this movie.

I was quite taken with her. I'm quite taken with Rachel Weisz in pretty much everything she does. I am as well. She's quite charming. Very, very talented actress. I don't think that the Oscar races in particular are changed by these two outcomes, but actresses, and particularly sporting actresses, like I said, have been up in the air. I think Regina King not being nominated at the SAG Awards has created some doubt about who is really the front runner in that race. Olivia Colman's speech was wonderful. She is really charming, isn't she? She's really funny, yeah. She kind of has this daffy, loving quality that is completely different from the energy

that she brings to pretty much any performance I've seen of hers, but certainly in The Favourite. Yeah, she's a really gifted real-life comedian. Yes. And just putting that on display. Let me ask you a question. This is kind of jam session territory, but there was a lot of noise around the presence of the royal family at the BAFTAs.

I don't understand any of that stuff. Can you explain it briefly? Well, so we should say that it was Prince William and Kate Middleton, aka the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. So not the whole royal family. You make it sound like they're the stars of an action series. They have like a lot of different titles. So that's kind of their official title, but no one calls them that.

Yes, they were there. They go every year and they had an entrance that you can watch like on the official count of it's the Kensington Palace Royal account. That's where they live. Wow. And it's their entrance into the auditorium and everyone is standing and it's dead silent. And it's the most uncomfortable the auditorium and everyone is standing and it's dead silent and it's the most uncomfortable thing I have ever seen like no one is applauding which would be

one normal reaction there is no music playing which would be another normal reaction so it's just a large auditorium of people standing up looking kind of like politely confused Viggo Mortensen is like very front in the frame, just being like, wow, hey, I'm here. And also, so are some royal people. It's very strange. I don't know why they did this. Is pin drop silence a marker of British adulation?

No, I was trying to think of, you know, other entrances that I've seen. Like, remember at the Olympics, when London hosted the Olympics and they did that whole video with Daniel Craig as James Bond and the Queen? Yes. And then, like, she fake parachuted in. And the real Queen came in and everyone applauded.

And there was, like, music. It's not like you have to sit there and be silent around a royal person. I mean, I don't know. I've never met any of them. Juliette Lipman sat next to Princess Anne once at a Hamilton performance. And that's really all the experience I have. But I don't think Juliette had to be silent. If you were confronted with the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, would you hug them?

No. Okay, I think you'd get shot if you did that. Would you hug any British person? I wouldn't hug anybody. Right, exactly. Okay, there were a couple of other awards at the BAFTAs. We should probably talk about those a little bit. I think both of these awards kind of signal an inevitability, whereas Olivia Colman and Rachel

Weisz feel very trapped on the other side of the ocean. I think Rami Malek winning best actor is starting to crystallize that race, which is surprising. I feel like we've gone through the seven stages of grief with this race. For those of you who don't know about the rewatchables, we have a podcast in which we rewatch old movies and evaluate them. We did a fairly new movie this week. We did A Star is Born. Have you heard of it? You may have heard of it.

We talk about it every week on this show. We'll talk about it later. And in that conversation, we talked a little bit about Rami Malek sort of leaping ahead of not just Bradley Cooper, but even Christian Bale here. And the Rami Malek way have just happened. Do you think that this confirms? Well, Bohemian Rhapsody is technically a film about British people. Okay.

So that's something to keep in mind. I think that it was nominated in several other kind of British forward categories. I like how you're thinking. So you got to think about Freddie Mercury as a person who is especially meaningful to that country and like Live Aid, we all know what that is, but Live Aid is like the most important thing that ever happened to most British people.

I don't know. If you're British and listening to this, I'm sorry. A lot of blasphemy about the Brits on this episode. I really like the British people. I do think he's the favorite still. I'm mystified by it, I guess. You know, actors like other, like, actors like capital A acting. They like big shows. They all want to, like, be out there, song and dance, and some spangles, and, like, it's our time. And, you know, I get it. If I could do it, maybe it would be fun too. So. You mean if you could physically embody Freddie Mercury, you would do it?

Well, I would want to sing. I wouldn't go halfway. And that's the other thing. We're not talking about this. He didn't sing. I just, let's, let's, let's revisit this. He didn't sing. I think that you should have to sing to win an Oscar. That is just my take. You really blew the lid off this one. Turns out he didn't sing. There was another inevitable sort of seeming award, which was, of course, Best Film, which went to Roma. And you and I were talking a bit before this podcast started about whether Roma's win is inevitable right now. And I think it is, and maybe you don't think it is, because there are so many award shows and there are so many Guild Awards. And the way that all of those award shows are publicized means we have way more awareness of what has won. And so

we're able to track the race a lot more aggressively than we used to. Now, to your point, Roma hasn't won that many Best Picture awards. It was not eligible for the Golden Globes. It won the Critics' Choice Award. It won this award. I believe it won the DGAs. You know, it feels like this is the direction we're moving in. It's the odds on Vegas favorite. In years past, you know, we talked specifically before the show about what was happening last year with The Shape of Water. And it felt like it was Guillermo del Toro's time and The Shape of Water was going to win. And there was the sort of problematic movie that could upset it, which was Three Billboards.

Yes. And then there was the sort of series of hopefuls that were far less likely to win. Get Out, Dunkirk, Phantom Thread, Lady Bird, number of movies that we loved. The internet's favorites. The internet's favorites. Yeah. And this year is somewhat similar. Now, I think that Roma is a bigger achievement than The Shape of Water personally,

but they have a lot in common. And then the sort of problematic fave is Green Book. And to a lesser extent, Bohemian Rhapsody. Yes. Yeah, you got two for the price of problematic fave is Green Book and to a lesser extent Bohemian Rhapsody. Yes yeah you got two for the price of one. Yes and then we've got these other movies we've got Black Panther, we've got Black Klansman, we've got A Star is Born that boy it sure would be wonderful on the at the strike of 11.01 p.m on Sunday February 24th when we can all just say ah they did it they did it right we got something we wanted. Do you think that Roma is as inevitable as the shape of water was one year ago? I do not think it is as inevitable. I still think it is the front runner. If we were doing our

ballots today, I would pick Roma. I think probably when we do our ballots, I will pick Roma. It has kind of the most cross-gilled support, as you noted. It does have that Shape of Water feeling of industry people and people are I thought Roma was unbelievable and it was a really special movie experience for me. So in that sense, yeah, I guess it does have Shape of Water. I just really keep going back to how spread out all of the awards this season have been. It has not been a horse race between two movies, which last year it was Shape of Water with three billboards, pretty much. And then we all talked a lot about Get Out. We kind of like tried to secret that into existence. Yeah. And Three Billboards, we should say, won at the BAFTAs last year. And even though Three Billboards is theoretically a movie about America, it was written and directed by Martin McDonough, who is British. Exactly. So, you know, this stuff is

increasingly difficult to predict based on previous awards. Right. I think also the fact that you kind of have two spoilers in Green Book and Bohemian Rhapsody changes the mathematics in terms of the preferential ballot. I think, I don't know, it's similar. And again, I think it'll probably be Roma, but I'm more confused than I usually am at this point in the Oscar season. I am too. We've got 10 more days and maybe two and a half more episodes of this show to figure it all out.

I did want to note that the BAFTAs, the telecast was fine. The awards are good and not necessarily the way that they give them out, but the categories that they have. I thought you were literally talking about the actual physical trophy. No, the trophy is odd. Which I find alarming. Yes, the trophy is a sort of Shakespearean mask. Yes, it's the drama mask.

The drama mask. And yeah, to hold that is a bit eyes wide shut. Yes. So I'm not in favor of that. What do you think is the best shaped award? That's a great question. Across all awards. It's definitely the Oscar.

You think so? Yeah, streamlined, but powerful. Very phallic. Well, you know, I mean, it's literally an award about Hollywood, so at some point you gotta... Okay, so you're going Oscar. Yeah. I'm going, um, sure, Oscar. That sounds fine. Emmys are too spiky. I would be worried about my, like, poking my eye out. There's something profound about an Emmy, though. You put an Emmy on a shelf, it's like, that thing is in charge. That giant ball. It looks like a Christmas ornament. Okay. What I meant to say about

the BAFTAs was that the awards themselves, the categories that they give out, are pretty interesting. Outstanding debut by a British writer, director, or producer is a cool category. Agree. Wouldn't it be great if we could just put Bo Burnham in that category this year?

And particularly Bradley Cooper. There were a couple of really cool, I think John Krasinski might find his way into there. You know, there's a few people that would do well in that category. Don't you think? I agree. So why don't they do it? I don't know. I appreciate that British people seem to take pride in their industry.

Me too. In a way that the Oscars somehow don't seem to be able to communicate, even though they make us watch so many montages. We're going to talk about that a little bit. Yeah. The other category is similar to this one, which is Rising Star, which is a category that I lobbied for on TheRinger.com like three months ago. This is just so obvious.

Just put more young, interesting, exciting people on the conveyor belt of stardom. This is the way to do it, to put them in front of 30 million people on a TV show, right? Counterpoint? Yeah. Best new artist at the Grammys. Yeah. Which is like the most laughable award across any awards show. I mean, and part of that is because the Grammys are also laughable and the eligibility periods

make no sense. And what's new to someone is, you know, not new to someone else, especially in music. Did Dua Lipa win last night? Yes. Okay, so Dua Lipa has like 3 million followers on Twitter. The idea of her as a best new artist is insane. Right, but every year we say that. Yeah, that's true.

Okay, so you're saying the Baptist shouldn't... No, no, no, but this is a nice word. This is best case because it was Letitia Wright. It was Letitia Wright. And that's fantastic. That was very cool. Letitia Wright also has been acting for like four or five years. But nevertheless.

At least they say rising instead of new. Oh, good. Good designation. That's smart. Okay, so we'll do that. Any other reflections on the BAFTAs before we move on to our next segment? I just really felt all of the royal stuff was weird. Just again, besides the entrance, the Letitia Wright reminded me of this.

Because you can also, on the Twitter account, watch Prince William and Kate Middleton having awkward conversations with all the winners. And there's a video of Prince William and Letitia Wright talking and doing their best to connect. And he's very excited and she just is, she's playing along, but it's so weird. It's very strange. Let's play a quick game. What was Kate Middleton's favorite film of 2018? I really have no idea. You have to make a guess. Do you think it was Bumblebee? No. I mean, I don't really think they have seen that many movies. Spider-Verse, right? So yeah, it's definitely Spider-Verse. Spider-Verse rules. Have you heard of Spider-Verse? Yeah, I have. So awesome. That's great. What about William's favorite film? Probably Mission Impossible.

Yeah, hell yeah. Yeah, which respect. Yeah, okay, great. Let's go to our next segment, which is called Stock Up, Stock Down. If it goes bust, you can make 10 to one, even 20 to one return, and it's already slowly going bust.

Okay, Amanda, I'm sure that listeners of this podcast are going to tell us to shut the hell up as soon as I say what the subject of this Stock Up, Stock Down is, but it's Bradley Cooper. And there's a very good reason for that. Bradley Cooper was back in the news and his campaign continues apace. He had two very vocal, I guess, defenders come forward for him in the last few days. Campaigners, because that's what it is. They have finally decided that they are willing to campaign for an Oscar. Months too late.

It happened too late. It's been a very curious situation. The first, of course, on Friday afternoon, Deadline.com published, I guess you could call it an essay. I'm not sure what the word for what was written exactly is, but a sort of a defense, a full-throated appreciation of A Star is Born by Sean Penn. Sean Penn, of course, is an actor, a filmmaker, an activist, an author. Okay.

Though you might not feel that based on some of the words that are written in this piece. I would highly encourage anyone listening to this show to seek out those words. They are quite a tangle and they are extremely red-blooded masculine about a movie that I think does a nice job of untangling some of those ideas of masculinity. So I found Sean Penn's notes on the movie to be a little bit strange and a little bit misguided. I didn't point out to you that there is a very interesting segment in Sean Penn's WTF interview from March of 2018, in which he has clearly just recently seen

a cut of A Star Is Born. And he's technically not allowed to talk about it, but he is really singing its praises to the absolute hilt. And when I heard that, that was the moment when I was like, this movie may be a disaster. A couple of episodes later, maybe a couple of episodes before, Jennifer Lawrence did the same thing on WTF.

She said, I saw a cut of A Star Is Born. Bradley is a genius. This movie is going to change everything. And I thought that that was odd too. Those are two people whose judgment I don't always trust if I'm being honest. However, A Star is Born came along. Obviously, we fell in love with it. Check out the rewatchables, yada, yada, yada. Come to find out, well, after Bradley Cooper has not been nominated for Best Director, Sean Penn has come forward with this essay. What was your instant reaction to the publication of that essay? The instant reaction is what is happening and what have I done to somehow be in this timeline and narrative? Yes.

What else do you and Sean Penn have in common? I just, you know, I have a couple of things. The number one, and I already alluded to this, is I just cannot believe how much they have screwed up this Oscar campaign. And I think a lot of this, I don't want to place blame, but mistakes were made. And we know that Bradley Cooper is not the most press forward actor or director. He doesn't love doing it. It was featured in the New York Times. It has been featured in pretty much every interview that he's ever done, begrudgingly. Watch the Graham

Norton clip from this year as well, where he just honestly looks frozen. It's not his area of expertise. And that's fine, but that's not how you win an Oscar. And they clearly decided to do as little as possible and let the movie speak for itself. And then after the Oscar nominations, when Bradley Cooper was snubbed from Best Director, they realized that was a mistake. And so now they're putting him in an interview with Oprah. They're putting him on the Today Show. He's out and about. And they're also apparently calling friends in this case. We can't confirm this. This is speculation. That's speculation. That's's true but i would guess

that it's not unrelated i think that there it's completely plausible that sean penn who i noted a year ago was stepping out for this movie just sort of felt offended sean penn's relationship to the oscars is also quite fraught and interesting the last time i remember him on the oscars telecast i believe he was giving best picture to Birdman and making a joke about the border. You may recall that in 2015. Anyhow, the other person who came forward was Paul Schrader, my problematic fave. I love Paul Schrader. He's nominated this year for best original screenplay. He also wrote, I guess, an email to IndieWire? Yes. In which he clarified that he felt that the best director of 2018 was by far Bradley Cooper, in part because he helped Lady Gaga transform into Ally and got an astonishing performance from her. Now, I think you and I agree with that. Yes. I don't know if anyone else watched

the Grammys on Sunday night, but Lady Gaga's performance of Shallow confirms the vision that Bradley Cooper had for her and the type of performance that he was able to get out of Lady Gaga that is perhaps different than what she would do when left to her own devices. Yeah, I noted last night that I thought that this reminded me a lot of the three or four years that Lady Gaga was having before this movie came along, which was three or four years of her career that I was not super interested in, except for when she was singing Father John Misty songs, but that's neither here nor there. Nevertheless, Paul Schrader's essay I thought was a nice gesture,

and I had heard him talk in the past about Lady Gaga's performance. Apparently, he was very fawning of her at the Oscars luncheon a few weeks ago, and he approached her and just was really taken with her. And one of the things that he cited was he had worked on a film in the 80s with Joan Jett, and he attempted to do a similar transformation with Joan Jett to make her into an Oscar caliber actress and felt he didn't succeed. And he took the blame for that. And he said, it's the director's responsibility to make that performance work in a movie. And, you know, I thought that this was, I don't know how strategically campaigned all this was. It's kind of hard for me to say. Like, I think if you're,

you're probably wise to be cynical about the way that everything unfolds in awards season because it is highly orchestrated. But also, you and I really admire A Star Is Born, and I think a lot of Bradley's peers really admire A Star Is Born. That's true. I just, especially with the timing, I don't think it's unconnected. And you're right that it may just be in the ether that this is a performance and a film that's been overlooked. And so, people with the means to call up reporters have decided to do that. I will say that the, the two sudden defenders of a star is born being Sean Penn and Paul Schrader, just not the white Knights that I personally was looking for.

It doesn't really speak to like my audience or how I connect to the film. I don't know that it rounds out the qualities of the movie that we want Academy voters to react to, but maybe I'm wrong. I can't get out of my head the idea of Sean Penn being held back by several police officers and saying, is that my Bradley in there? I feel like I'm going to dream about that. I understand that Sean Penn and Paul Schrader are perhaps not your... The only two people being Sean Penn and Paul Schrader is bizarre. And the cast of The Rewatchables, among others. It's a very interesting time because, and you noted the Grammys last night. I mean, Shallow did win a Grammy. Did it win two Grammys? Yes. It won the Grammys last night. I mean, Shallow did win a Grammy.

Did it win two Grammys? Yes. It won two Grammys. And now maybe Bradley Cooper can EGOT, which is something we should consider. Though he may not win any Oscars this year, so it might be a while. Yeah. The idea of Bradley Cooper having a Grammy before an Oscar is heart-wrenching. I am curious how the Shallow of it all at the Grammys will affect the Shallow of it all at the Oscars.

How do you mean? Well, Sean, it was not a good performance. It just was not a good performance. I see. I thought you meant winning at the Grammys. You mean just Lady Gaga in the cat suit doing the thing. Yeah, and then also it being so prominent. And this was very sad,

but Lady Gaga in her acceptance speech for the kind of second televised award that Shia LaBeouf won, she started off a portion of her speech by saying, in case I don't get to say this again, which reflects the knowledge that perhaps she will not be winning any more awards. I actually think that that was smart and will kind of cut to Academy voters' hearts and she will at least win for best song. But you never know, especially because it's won so many awards already they might be like yeah whatever they took care of it oscar voting opens today so if you're listening to this show and you love shallow perhaps vote for shallow if you like all the stars and you want to reward kendrick lamar you can do that too um what else anything else about the press blitz that's happening around stars born right now where's the love for sam elli? I feel like that's just baked into the industry. He's probably the best chance for an upset, right? I don't know. I guess

so. At the Oscars luncheon, Glenn Close was apparently going around referring to him as her fictional husband or something. Same. Yeah. Same, Glenn. I think that everyone is really taken by him in the same way that you are. So I don't know that they need to do the extra push. I mean, the fact that he got nominated means that people are taking him seriously. Something really funny is happening right now with Sam Elliott, which is that he is the star of a movie that came out on Friday. And so he is doing press for this movie.

He is literally the star of this movie. Sam Elliott is not the star of very many movies at this stage of his career. The name of the movie is The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then the Bigfoot, which, you know, I think says a lot. It's more knowing than that title may indicate, but this is really how Sam Elliott is spending a lot of his time is talking about this movie and also his performance as Jackson Maine's brother. So in conclusion, support Sam Elliott. Support A Star Is Born. It's very good. It is very good. Would you say it's stock up or stock down for Bradley right now? I really don't know because this press blitz

has not had its attendant effect on me, but you don't have a vote, but I don't have a vote. And also I liked the movie. So maybe all the people who are not responding to the movie will then respond to this fakery. Yeah. I mean, I think older white men consist of a huge portion

of the Academy voters. Sean Penn and Paul Schrader just happen to be a couple of old white guys. Yeah. So it could be savvy strategy. We will see. We're going to move to another topic

in Stock Up, Stock Down, which is not a film or an actor or an actress or a director, production designer. It is the telecast of the Oscars. Today, we learned the four categories that the Academy will not be showing us on the telecast. Those categories are cinematography, which was speculated upon and has been confirmed, film editing, live action short, and the category of makeup and hairstyling. Now, it's notable that you can't make a movie without cinematography or editing. So that's interesting that we won't be seeing that on the Oscars telecast.

What do you make of the choice to not put these four categories on television, Amanda? I would also just argue that you don't want to see a movie without makeup and hairstyling. But anyway, this is a mistake. We're both agreed. This is a mistake. Huge mistake. Yeah, this is a mistake. And I think that you and I possibly differ on the goal, kind of like the reasons for doing this, which is to make, say, a more efficient Oscars telecast or really to reimagine what the Oscars should be in 2019. But the way that they are doing it by kind of randomly cutting four categories from the Oscars is lame and unfair and is not the spirit of the show or does not understand why people tune in, which is to watch people win awards and give speeches. And it just kind of also, this show already feels terrible.

You know, it's gone wrong every which way that it can go wrong. We haven't even watched it yet. And it's just another, like, this is a bummer. This feels gross. It's just tone deaf. The reactions was instantaneously negative to these details that were revealed. It's been cited over and over again that John Bailey, the current president of Ampus, is a cinematographer. So, you know, there's some speculation that maybe because he's a cinematographer, he's trying to seem like the bigger man by moving his category off of the telecast.

That's pretty cynical, though this whole thing is pretty cynical. So that's certainly in play. You know, you are not a huge fan of short films, Amanda. Is that fair to say? That was an unpublished private take that you just made public. And that also is not the correct representation. I think what you said to me verbatim was kill all short films. Is that right?

No. Okay. No. Okay. I just said, I think this was after, you know, trying to do the first round of my ballot and being like, I don't know what's going on. But the thing that I said to you was there is some sort of argument where if you put all the short films together, it is a slightly different product than a feature film. And if you were like, okay, we will award these at a different ceremony, we'll do different awards. You know, obviously short films and feature films are

connected. They use the same skills and people who make short films often develop into feature films. But it's not as plain mean spirited as just being like, well, sorry, you edited this movie and saved it and you get your award during commercial break. Yeah. Makeup and hairstyling, for example, like there is no vice without makeup and hairstyling. You just can't make that movie. It can't happen. And to shunt that to the side is strange. Now, there are some details here that are kind of interesting to go through, which is they say that we will be able to see the acceptance speeches later in the telecast. I'm not totally sure how that will work. Maybe in between or going out to commercial, they'll show us someone receiving an award and thanking people for 30 seconds or something. I'm not totally sure how they'll maneuver that. They're also saying, hey, watch this show on our live stream because we have entered the 21st century at the Oscars and we

will now have a worldwide live stream like every other thing that we consume. Do you think many people will be watching the Oscars on a live stream? I guess that does help with the sort of worldwide audience. I think more people will than would have five years ago. And as soon as you asked me that, I was thinking about how I watched the nominations this year on a live stream, which I, until three or four years ago, it was on Good Morning America. And now we are conditioned to that. I think it was also, and this is kind of like an awards nerd deep cut, but the real VMA heads know that the best camera is, are the reaction cameras that are live streams throughout the VMAs. So there is a subset of people who is used to this.

And there are so many cord cutters. So you think we'll have an additional production, like a new way of seeing the show on the live stream that we won't see on the telecast? No, I just think that there are many people who already don't have networks or don't have cable subscriptions and who are used to watching things on their computers, like definitely everyone under 30 will be watching this on their computers or they'll go to a party. But a lot of people do. So it doesn't seem that far fetched. And I think in some ways is the Academy catching up with the many different ways that people do watch TV shows. That doesn't bug me as much. The fact that people are being shunted to just the live cast, it's rude. I mean, this is just like rude. It's exclusionary. It's like being picked last in elementary school. And it definitely negates the spirit of the awards,

which are to celebrate people instead of making people feel bad. I have a lot more to say about that, but let's just underline a few more aspects of how this was decided and what it will mean for the future. So the four categories, according to The Hollywood Reporter, that are getting the abbreviated treatment this year will be guaranteed a regular spot on the 2020 broadcast. And according to several sources, The Reporter says, a video demonstration of what this new format will look like was shown to the various branches. It is said to have included most of the presentation minus the winner's walk to the stage. The goal, they were told, was also to include the spirit of each winner's acceptance speech, although the speeches could be edited if they turn into a long list of thank yous. I don't know what that means.

There's one other note of cynicism here that I have to point out that I saw Mark Harris pointed out on Twitter, which is that there's not a single Disney film in any of these four categories that has been nominated. And that feels a little bit dubious in terms of how they made some selections about what should be on TV and what should not. What do you think about that? I mean, I always like a conspiracy theory, and I'm sure it's not unrelated. And again, it just underlines these are arbitrary at best, and it's not the way to improve the show. There are ways to improve the show. This isn't it. This is all in an effort to get to three hours, which who cares?

Like that's arbitrary. No, no, no. High take. That's a good goal. That's a good goal. Time limits are good. There is no reason for this show to be four hours long. There's just not. It's certainly harder to make it three hours.

I understand that live shows bloat and people talk and things don't go as planned, but the goal of keeping it concise and clear I understand that live shows bloat and people talk and things don't go as planned. But the goal of keeping it concise and clear is admirable. And more people should do it, not just in live broadcast, but across all mediums, film, television, music, writing, phone calls to me, whatever. We will just never agree on this. There are two contingents. There are two contingents.

There is the keep the Oscars as long as it needs to be because who cares? It happens once a year and we've organized an entire podcast around it. And then there is you, militant zealot that you are, insistent upon a time frame on something that is creative. But how long does it need to be? That's the whole segment. There's so much stuff in the Oscars that doesn't need to be there. One montage is amazing. Two montages, well-edited, well-chosen, fantastic. Freaking 18, no thank you. Let the nice makeup person walk to the stage in front of everybody else. I don't agree with how they're

making the cuts, and I think it's really unfair, and I think that it suggests a misplaced priority on the part of the Academy or the producers or ABC who could know. But I think the idea of making the show more watchable is not only good, like, Lord, they need it because no one else is going to want to watch it otherwise. Can I disagree with you just a little bit? Yeah. I understand that I think widely people think that the montages are a big waste of time. As a young person, eight, nine, 10 year old Sean, picture him, lovely child, really great kid. He's got big dreams,

big aspirations. All he wants to do is watch movies. When you see those montages, when you're eight, nine, 10 years old, and even when you're 25 or 45, you don't know everything about film history. So when you see North by Northwest in a montage about great Cary Grant performances, or you see, I don't know, Casablanca about great romances, it indicates that there is a wider film history. And that is definitely the feeling that the Oscars are trying to give you with those montages. Now, there's definitely overkill. There's far too many. Some of the ideas are too specific or too weird, but I think that there is value in those. I agree with you. And I think the point is just that they're clearly choosing montages over awards and I'm concerned that they will go too far in the other direction. I see what you're saying.

There are already too many. I'm thinking a lot about the Grammys because we just watched them and they were four hours and they were terrible. They were really bad and there was just so much time filling and long performances and tributes to people who weren't nominated. You know, I think they presented maybe eight awards over the course of four hours. And it was just a lot of, there was like a Jennifer Lopez Motown tribute. Okay. I love Jennifer Lopez. Truly. I love Motown. Truly. It made no sense. It went on forever. That was bad. And this was also in a year when many of the biggest and most famous names refused to show up to the Grammys. So they were clearly filling time by programming mediocre at best performances that no one really cares about.

Yeah. I mean, the Grammys are a different, I think they're a different proposition in large part because they 20 years ago decided to just be a concert. And it's just a different sort of formulation. You know, the kind of show that the Grammys wants to have is actually only obsessed with the past. One of the biggest problems with it is that it has no sense of modern music. It, you know, Kacey Musgraves won Best Album last night. That's great. We all love Kacey Musgraves.

I think a lot of people who are real Kacey Musgraves fans felt similarly to the way that people watching the Oscars do, which is like, she should have won this for the last record three years ago and not this cycle. They're always kind of a step behind. At least the young person won and a woman won, which was great. But that is not really an award show that is about awards. It's an award show that is about performances and it is about sort of the pageantry of performance, the Oscars takes itself a little bit more seriously. And part of the reason that it takes itself more seriously is it says the act of making movies is a big part of the proposition of this show and it deserves to be understood. And that's why we give out best visual effects and production design and sound editing. These are small pieces of a puzzle that come together to form this beautiful tapestry. And when you start taking that stuff away, you start denigrating the idea of this show. And that mostly only offends people like you and me who are kind of interested

in some of these bigger ideas, but it does create a sense of understanding around what this award show is supposed to be about. So if you're just obsessed with getting down to three hours and only getting in the 16 awards that people really care about and that's it, I don't really know what the point of the show is. Does that make sense? Yes.

Like just watch the Critics' Choice Awards. Well, but it's the Oscars. I mean, you know, like they do have- But that's what the producers are saying. That's why they're like, you got to watch me because we're the Oscars. But if you're not the Oscars anymore, then you're not. Yes. But what is like not the Oscars mean?

Because you're not airing every category or because no one cares It just depends on it It says one thing is more valuable than another and that's historically now what it's been about Some of the things that we have criticized it for over the years like it wasn't a problem When titanic won and 55 million people watched the show and they also gave out best live action short. It was fine It was it's much more about this anxiety about the place of two things. One, movies in our culture, which is obviously my obsession. And two, the nature of live events and award shows, which is something you've pointed out a lot.

Well, you know, I think the thing is that 20 years ago, they didn't have to make a distinction. They could just be the Oscars because you had four networks and then some cable stuff and everybody watched them and we still all tuned into live events. And I've said this a million times, I'm sorry for repeating myself. The way that we watch television and movies has changed dramatically, even in the last two years, even in the last year, the way that we respond to live events and just kind of what we should be watching, what's important, what is the center of the culture has really changed, mostly because the way that people consume any sort of culture has changed. And so they used to be able to get away with kind of doing whatever they wanted because it was the Oscars and everybody watches the Oscars. And now they are having to make some decisions about what the Oscars are, which they have never

had to before. I don't mind that they're trying to make it into a watchable show because it is a show as much as it is an institution. It's like nobody, you know what nobody actually cares about is the Academy with all respect to the Academy. And nobody like the traditions and the history and what this august body does for the industry is completely impenetrable to like even you and me really anyone watching and so all secret society yeah and so all of the criticisms of the changes in that regard of being like this is not what the academy has done i you know i side with the producers on that but i agree with you that cutting the lesser categories is a worrying decision of being like well the Oscars are going to be more about popularity or stars or I think the problem is they don't know what the Oscars are that's the thing is that they're kind of much like the popular Oscar thing where

they kind of floated it and then took it back and we don't even know whether it's still happening they're like well maybe we'll cut five categories but took it back and we don't even know whether it's still happening. They're like, well, maybe we'll cut five categories, but we might not. And we don't know which ones and it'll change every year. They're just kind of stumbling around in the dark instead of making some actual decisions of here's what the Oscars are in 2019 in the streaming age. And they need someone who can make those decisions. It's hard. I'm not in charge and I don't have all the answers, but the waffling, confused nature of it all is the biggest problem from my perspective. Let's contextualize this a little bit. Last year, 26.5 million people watched the show. That's the lowest ever. I think it was a 12% drop in the previous year's ratings.

So if we forecast, let's say the ratings are down again this year. I think they might be up a little bit. People have pushed back on that and said that's not the case. Everything has been down. The Globes were down. The Super Bowl was down. Everybody thinks they're going to be down. I think they are going to be down. So they may be down. I think that A Star is Born and Black Panther and a number of more successful films in the mix this year indicate they might be up. I could be wrong. Let's say I'm wrong. Let's say it's 23 million. That's a disaster, right? That's down. They've made all these changes. They cut it to three hours. They cut the categories. They essentially whittled it down to within an inch of its life. Then what do you do? Do you try to make it a two-hour show? Do you announce that

The Rock is going to host in April and then let 11 months go by before he does host? Because that is what was speculated last week. The Rock was actually interviewed by The Hollywood Reporter about what he would have done if he were to be the host of this show. I love The Rock. I'm not sure that The Rock necessarily would have changed the complexion of Oscar history. Yeah. But what do you do if they're down? Do you cut more awards? Do you make it just awards about Avengers? How do you get people interested in this show? Well, I think you have to recalibrate. And this is what I was talking about. They need to make some hard decisions about what the Oscars are and who they are going forward

because you're never going to get 55 million people again. You're just not. That's just- I agree with that. That's not how- They're never going to get 40 million people again. Right. Yeah.

And it's probably going to be down. And I think this is true of television, of movies, of what we do, frankly, of appealing to the broadest swath possible of people doesn't really work anymore. You need committed, passionate, obsessed, specific fan bases and audiences. That may have been informed by your time working at The Ringer, which is exactly what we do. We are serving smart niche audience as much as possible and giving them as much as we can about the things that we're passionate about. That's true.

But the Oscars used to be a thing that 50 million people watched. Well, so did a lot of things. So did regular television. That's true. So did regular movies. But that stuff is dying. So does that mean the Oscars are dying?

Is it too strong a statement to say in the year of our Lord 2019, the year in which we launched this damn show, that this institution is dying? I guess we can wait until February 25th to say that for sure. I would also, I think it's sick. It's sick. It's not doing well.

I think that it can be turned around. I think it will look different than it did in 1999. And I do not think that the current changes being made suggest a healthy, robust future for the Oscars. But, you know, maybe someone will figure something out. Maybe someone will. Our colleague, Brian Curtis, has this axiomatic phrase that he uses all the time, which is that the NFL ratings will not affect your life. And he uses it anytime there is a report about the ratings of any kind of institution that we follow closely. I don't really agree with that axiom because this is a real time example of if

you're interested in the Oscars, the ratings of the Oscars are influencing the shape of the show. So it will be interesting to see what happens. Also how quickly they kind of usher everyone off the stage after their wins. That's the other thing that is a little bit undiscussed here is the acceptance speeches are the reason to have the Oscars. Those are the real moments of the award. The Sally Field, you like me, you really like me. The Jennifer Lawrence, like being completely unprepared and emotional about her win. Julia Roberts' win for Erin Brockovich. These are the moonlight La La Land snafu. Where would we be if we had to get in under 1059 to get that award out into the world?

That would have been a disaster. The sort of unpredictability and the human drama is the point of the show. And they're making an attempt to quarantine that. And I'm against it. That's my last word on it.

I do think that the reports of how they instructed the nominees to be quiet at the Oscar show were pretty rude. I mean, they're Oscar nominees. It's their moment. And you're right. It suggests a fundamental misunderstanding of the magic that is someone crying on stage and kind of really emoting in real time. That is why we watch it. But again, I agree with time limits.

It should only be three hours. Figure it out. And if you can't figure out, hire someone who can. Okay, so maybe next time they'll hire a proctor who gives the SATs. Let's go to our next segment. It's the big race. Well, mama, look at me now. I'm a star.

Amanda, we promised last week that we would talk about the best screenplay categories in the big race. And I must say, I didn't really study up too much before we got ready for this segment. So I'm curious to hear some of your thoughts. Yeah. There are certainly some favorites in these categories. Of course, the Oscar splits the screenplay category

into two different categories, one for best original screenplay and one for best adapted screenplay. This year, I'll just run, should I run through the nominees for original and then we'll start from there? That sounds great. Okay. So the original nominees are The Favorite, Deborah Davis and Tony McNamara, First Reformed, the aforementioned problematic fave, Paul Schrader, Green Book, the true problematic fave, Brian Curry, Peter Farrelly, and Nick Vallelonga, Roma and Alfonso Cuaron, and vice, Adam McKay. I think we should clarify not our problematic fave, our agreed book.

No, perhaps the academies though. Yes. Which is something we will discuss here, I'm quite certain. What is the favorite in this category right now? Wow, you just really set me up for that one, huh? It's the favorite. Yes, it is. I mentioned eight, nine, 10 year old Sean Fantasy once upon a time. This was my favorite category as a young person. You're such a nerd. Because this was the category that often awarded the films that I liked best. Yes. And they often evince this sort of like,

sure, the Oscars rewards Braveheart, but what I'm really into is Quiz Show, stuff like that. Of course. And so I always looked to it as a kind of a bellwether for what's really, for lack of a better word, creative in Hollywood in the year of the Oscars. So The Favourite, I think, kind of represents that. I think when we look back, we're going to say this is definitely one of the more inventive,

thoughtful, less mechanical and campaign-heavy movies of the season. I do think that Green Book could upset this though. And if that happens, it kind of flies in the face of all those warm feelings I'm talking about. What do you think? I agree with your description of this category. It is. And I, I feel like we're at the point in the Oscar season where I have just said the same things over and over again, and God bless you people for listening, but this is the consolation prize category. It's that we'll give you this one, and then you don't win anything else. That's right.

Jordan Peele won last year for Get Out, and then Get Out did not win any other major prizes. My queen, Sofia Coppola, back in 2004, I think, won for Lost in Translation. It is always the people who we love. And that also possibly says something about how you and I respond

to movies and what we look for. It's a little bit of a cool kid category. Like, let's, I'll list some previous winners. You ready? So Callie Curry won

for Thelma and Louise in 1992. That was really great. Jane Campion won for The Piano. Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avery won for Pulp Fiction.

Joel and Ethan Coen won for Fargo. Good Will Hunting, of course. Ben Affleck and Matt Damon's famous win. Julian Fellows for Gosford Park. That's one of your guys. Charlie Kaufman has an Oscar because of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I could go on. The Hurt Locker,

Django Unchained, Her. These are movies that I think we have a lot of fun unpacking on podcasts That we think about That certainly stick with me a lot of the time But you're right Almost never win Sometimes you get Fargo

Or Shakespeare in Love In these categories And they win Best Picture But it's not common What about Adapted? Adapted is a curious Is a curious group of movies this year I'll read through them.

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs by the Coen brothers, which is based on the short stories, All Gold Canyon by Jack London and The Gal Who Got Rattled by Stuart Edward White. Can't say I've read that one. Black Klansman, which was written by Spike Lee, David Rabinowitz, Charlie Wachtel, and Kevin Wilmot. It's based on the memoir Black Klansman by Ron Stallworth.

Can You Ever Forgive Me, which is written by Nicole Holofcener and Jeff Witte. The memoir is by Lee Israel. If Beale Street Could Talk by Barry Jenkins, based on the novel by James Baldwin. And A Star Is Born, which is written by Bradley Cooper, Will Fedders, and Eric Roth,

and based on the 1954 film by Moss Hart and the 1976 film written by Joan Didion, John Gregory Dunn, and Frank Pearson with a story by Robert Carson and William A. Wellman. That is a mouthful. Original is easy to understand. This comes from the mind of imagination. This came out of its whole cloth. Adapted is interesting because I think when you at first blush, you'd think, oh, there was a novel and it was a good novel, and a writer had to sit down and translate that medium into the medium of the screenplay for our screen. That's not always what happens. And I don't feel like that's really what's happening

here either. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs being nominated here is super weird, because it's a six-segment film. Four of the segments are wholly original. Two of them are based on short stories. So this goes into the adapted category. Yeah, I mean, some of this is just

kind of being rule nerds, right? Yeah, it's parliamentary. Yeah. Which is odd. Black Klansman, if you've read that book, you know that it is not to the letter

how the film turned out. Correct. Certainly in the third act. Can You Ever forgive me? It feels fairly close. If Beale Street Could Talk is very close. Though some things are changed in the adaptation. And Star is Born is this stew of three previous films and a lot of influences and a lot of anxieties.

What is the front runner here? I actually don't know. I think it's Black Klansman. And I think that the thinking there is give Spike an Oscar. I think you're right. That's kind of disappointing. I actually would rather have him in Best Director than Best Screenplay because this is not my favorite screenplay of Spike's. I agree with you. But again, I think even in this category, it's kind of just making sure that everybody gets a little love. And one, a weird Oscar is better than no Oscar is kind of my theory as it goes to Spike.

I suppose that's true. I think if Barry Jenkins had not won for Moonlight, there might be a little bit more attention on Beale Street. Yeah, but he did. I think he won in- He won in screenplay. Screenplay, yeah. Yeah, I guess it was adapted as well

because he and Terrell Alvin McCraney won. A Star is Born? No. You know, I think it's a really good script. I think it's a really great script as well because he and Terrell have a McCraney one. A Star is Born? No. You know, I think it's a really good script. I think it's a really great script as well, but we also like that movie and they have not been paying attention to this movie at all. Yeah. And I, you know, I

think it's an achievement because it really makes sense of a lot of different sources, some that are stronger than others, and it brings everything together and brings its own ideas and advances them, which is actually what adaptation is. I think it is actually a great adaptation. I don't know that the fine art of adapting is what's being rewarded in this category. It's true. I wonder how much of the genius of that movie is oriented around those little touches that we talked about on the rewatchables or if it's oriented around just the i don't know the big

glamorous historical adaptation quality of it it's a little hard to say this these are some pretty weird categories if you look at um the writers guild awards are a little bit different well they have different eligibility rules as i understand they do but their eligibility rules ultimately resulted in i thought a few more interesting touches. Okay. In original screenplay in particular, 8th Grade is nominated and A Quiet Place is nominated, which I'd like to get a look at the shooting script for A Quiet Place because there's so little dialogue. Yeah.

I wonder how many pages it ran. It's pretty much the same for adapted screenplay, with the rare exception that Black Panther finds its way into that category. The Black Panther script is very good. Yes. And it's very strange that it's not here to me. Now, I realize it's a Marvel movie. That's a factor. I think also that idea of that is adapting, that is taking some source material and being like, okay, here's what I'm going to do with this, and here's everything that I'm going to inject into this. And, you know, I don't know that they are...

I don't think that, like, people are comparing scripts and source material when thinking about these nominations. I think you're right. I mean, I think also Buster Scruggs and the name recognition of the Coen brothers taking the place of Black Panther in this race feels very pointed.

There are more people in the WGA than there are writers who vote for the Oscars. A lot of the writers who vote for the Oscars are a little bit older, been voting on this stuff for a long time. Maybe they're not as familiar with Ryan Coogler. Maybe they don't like what superhero movies have done to their award show. And that incursion leads to, you know, I love Buster Scruggs. I'm on the record about that. I'm not sure that it's the script accomplishment

that Black Panther is in terms of what it had to accomplish in a fairly small frame. What are their thoughts about this race? There are two women nominated in this entire race. Deborah Davis, for the favorite, probably going to win. And Nicole Holofcener. It's nice to see Nicole Holofcener. You know.

How classic that Nicole Holofcener is not nominated for one of her own screenplays. Right. Her screenplay should be in the Smithsonian. She is like one of the great writers of the last 25 years. So that's unfortunate. Right. But I mean, this is, it's nice for her to be there. Only two women is disappointing and also indicative of a year where there weren't that many films by women.

And the films that were by women were not taken as seriously, which is, I don't know. How many times can we talk about it? I know. I'm confused by the Writers Guild timing. The awards happen on the 17th, which is at the tail end of the voting time for the Oscars themselves. So I suspect that this won't have a huge influence necessarily.

And the absence of some of these movies too indicates that it doesn't matter as much as, say, the DGA, which is very influential on the outcome of the Oscars. Like I said, voting opens today. It's exciting. It's finally happening. And then we'll have a couple of episodes next week. We'll talk about some Oscar narratives, some broader themed ideas. And then we're going to do a big predictions blowout. We're going to go through all, we will go through all 24 categories, unlike the Academy on their own telecast. And we will say, this is what's going to win and not win. And I'm going to say to you, what do you think about best animated short? I was going to say, even the shorts, we will discuss the shorts. Please do not listen to Sean about my short

slander. Let me ask you a question. Will you be watching all of the shorts or will you just be going to goldderby.com and then making a choice? Can I be really honest with you? Yes. I was already looking on Gold Derby for any of this information and there's none to be had. Like if you try Googling short documentary or whatever,

it's just a list of the films that no one is doing this work. So if you want to make your name as an Oscar blogger in 2019, I have got an assignment for you. I will say to the listeners out there, all five documentary shorts are now available online. If you'd like to watch those, the animated shorts are a little bit more difficult to find. If you live in New York or LA, perhaps you can see them in a movie theater. If not, tough shit. Amanda, this has been fun. I will see you next week on the Oscar show.

Thanks, Sean. Now, please stay tuned for my conversation with Nicholas Bertel, the Academy Award-nominated composer. I'm absolutely delighted to be joined by Nicholas Bertel, who is Oscar-nominated for If Beale Street Could Talk. Nick, thank you for coming in here today. Thank you so much for having me here. So, Nick, this is your second nomination after Moonlight, a film you also made with Barry Jenkins. I want to talk all about your work, but I'm always curious, especially with composers, the first time you remember hearing film music and what your relationship to film music was as a young person.

So I have a very specific initial experience with music and with film music, which is when I was five years old, I saw Chariots of Fire, and I was obsessed with the movie. And the theme, that theme in the score by Evangelos, just took over for me. And so after watching it, we had this very old upright piano in our apartment on West End Avenue. And I, you know, the theme, you know, even outside of the melody of it, you know, it just has that, you know, that sort of repetitive note. So I could do that. And I went over and I was like trying to figure it out.

And I asked my mom. I was five. I was really into that theme. And so, and I asked my mom for piano lessons. So for me, film and music in so many ways were connected from the very beginning. And did you become a person who was kind of obsessed with this? Because you're obviously a composer and not just for film scores.

You've written other pieces and you work on all sorts of things. But specifically, did you have kind of your guys or your people that you followed in their careers? As far as like the composers and the music, you know, I mean, I think, you know, I grew up in the 80s. And, you know, I just love movies. I mean, there are so many movies that I was into, you know, I grew up in the 80s and there, you know, I just loved movies. I mean, there are so many movies that I was into, you know, every, I mean, and the scores for whatever the reason, you know, my brain would just be attracted to the music and the movies. And I thought, you know, listening to Elmer Bernstein's score in Ghostbusters was as amazing

to me as listening to Mozart's Jupiter Symphony or something. And I became a classical pianist, so I was just as into Mozart and Bach and Schumann and what have you. But I never saw any difference between music in any genre or field. It was just music just happened to be in a film. And in a lot of ways, I think for me, I have always found music in a film to be many times even more powerful than when it's not in a film. There's something about that bizarre alchemy of music connecting with an image that does some certainly does something to me. And I think there is something inherent in that where, you know, when when those things connect, like the music opens up something in the picture and the picture is doing the same thing. It's changing your perception of the music.

So, yeah, I like there's a lot of pieces I like listening to even more in a movie than even outside of a movie. Interesting. Were you a dissector? Like would you try to break down scores even at a young age the way that you did with Vangelis? Oh, yeah. And actually what's interesting is film scores oftentimes the sheet music doesn't get published. And this is something that's just interesting with film music, I think, in general, which is that, you know, like if I want to study a Beethoven symphony, if I want to understand

Beethoven's Seventh Symphony, I can go buy the music. I can look at every note in the whole symphony. If I want to study, you know, Danny Elfman's Beetlejuice score, you know, there are more composers who are publishing those things, but the full orchestral scores of a lot of film music are not available. And it's, you know, it's maybe starting to change. I was going to say, has that changed at all in recent years? A little bit, but it's few and far between, you know, and I've always, I've had a little bit of sort of a private crusade maybe of like feeling that that as an art form, those scores should be available to young composers. Are yours published?

I was able to publish Cue and Moonlight. But I think, I mean, I would love to publish more of my music. It's an interesting thing. I was going to wait to ask you about this because I want to know more about kind of your life and what got you here. But you saying Middle of the World makes me think of how that has become very quickly a kind of iconic film score. And what is that like when you have worked on something very closely with Barry

and that becomes a signature and now I feel like I'm hearing it in places where it wasn't originally intended. And so it feels like it's in a commercial or it's just being used in sort of ambient ways like these YouTube mixes people are just dropping it in. What is that like for you

for something that you've made very specifically for something to kind of permeate into the world? It's really, I mean, I'm so honored. You know, getting an opportunity to score a film is already a very special, you know, privilege and opportunity. But I think that, you know, for me and for Barry, I mean, when we were working on Moonlight, we cared so profoundly about the project. And I think that the dream of any project is you want to share it and you want people. You don't just want to share it. You want people to connect with it or to feel what you were feeling when you made it.

And I think the further that journey goes, the more special it is. So, you know, if you had said to me four years ago that that music would have, you know, gone around the world in various ways, I, you know, I don't even know if I would have believed that. Because it's just, it's not even, you know, it's impossible to imagine those things happening. So let's go back a little bit. You, obviously, it sounds like you were a prodigy. Maybe you probably wouldn't describe yourself that way, but it sounds like you were very gifted at a young age and you pursued music, but you studied music in college as well? So yeah, I was a classical pianist and then I went to high school. I grew up in Manhattan and then we moved to Westport, Connecticut when I was 13. So we lived in Westport when I was sort of from high school years. And then I would commute into Juilliard Pre-College,

which the Juilliard has a pre-college program that I went to from when I was 14 to 18 to study piano performance, harmony, counterpoint, solfege, composition, sort of what have you. I took organ lessons. I was really into the pipe organ. Wow. Love the pipe organ. It's an amazing instrument.

And in college, I knew in high school, or I started to get the sense that being a classical concert pianist wasn't the life, the thing for me. What made you realize that? So, I mean, there's a lot of different questions I think I would ask myself. And I was recently thinking about this quote from, there's a book called Genius about Richard Feynman, the physicist. And there's a moment where he talks about, or the author talks about how when Richard Feynman was at MIT, he was studying pure mathematics. And one day, I think the professor was talking about some very abstruse point in

higher math. And Feynman sort of raised his hand and was like, why are we learning this? And the professor said, if you have to ask, this might not be the place for you. And I remember reading that in high school and thinking to myself, I'm asking myself all the time if I want to be a concert pianist. And I think that kind of an idea of like, I think there are things that you never ask yourself that you just know that you're following. And I was asking myself all the time. So I think some of that played a role in me

not going to a conservatory for college. And in college, I studied psychology. That was my concentration. And I ended up, you know, in every psych class that I took, I ended up trying to find a way to explore neuromusicology about how the brain understands music. And Harvard was wonderful in the way that there were certain courses you could even sort of request where you could find a professor who was willing to just read research with you and you could meet them once a week and talk about it and write papers. So, you know, I did that with Neuromusic, for example. And, you know, those were, those were, you know, it was amazing just getting that chance to think about those ideas because for me, music is such a mysterious phenomenon. And I think it's so, it's almost like so woven into our lives that we don't step back to think about

how odd it is that there are these air pressure changes, these frequencies in the air that somehow connect with our ears. And then the connection of all those frequencies leads to very profound emotions that are very, even incredibly specific at times. And that's, you know, it's this huge alchemy that's happening with music. And I was just curious, like, what is that? And no one really knows, which is sort of the quick answer is I think, you know, we haven't reached a point

where we really understand the brain very well. So there's a lot of theories and ideas. But is that what drew you to studying that? Because ultimately, you didn't go to a conservatory, even though you were deeply interested in music. And then you pulled music through into your academic studies and your higher learning. And then you come back to music, ultimately, although you did do some things in between. Yes. Is there a part of you that when you were a teenager thought, I don't want to make this my life, or this doesn't feel like a lifestyle that I would be happy in? I always dreamed of what it would be like to be

a musician actually and to do that full time. I think it was that growing up, you know, the idea like I loved playing music, I loved listening to music, I loved studying music, I loved writing music. But there's also something about I loved studying music. I loved writing music. But there's also something about, I think, the idea of what a composer is, where, for example, especially, I think, if you have a classical background, you're confronted with these larger-than-life, almost superhuman figures right away. Ideas of people like a Mozart or a Beethoven, they're almost not human. They're so far beyond your conception of what's possible. So I never thought of myself as a composer. I was like, those are composers. I just like music. And it was really in college where two things happened.

One thing was I joined a hip hop band with some very dear friends of mine. We were an instrumental hip hop band with six instrumentalists and then two rappers. So we played live. So it was electric bass, drums, electric guitar. I was on keys and synthesizer, and I would write a lot of the music. We had a conga player, we had a DJ, and then we had the two rappers. And I started writing music all the time.

It became a daily habit where I would be studying audio production and making my own tracks and beats and really rabbit hole, fully immersed. And at the exact same time, a very dear friend of mine, Nick Lavelle, who tragically passed away a few years ago, approached me and said that he was making a $10,000 feature film while we were in college called Domino One. And he wanted to know if I would try scoring it. And both of those things happening at basically exactly the same time led me on this path of just writing music because I loved it all the time. And, you know, working with Nick and getting to, like, experiment with, you know,

looking at scenes and just trying to write stuff on my keyboard. And, you know And there were no rules. We just had so much fun with it. And that was really the moment where, for me, I was like, you know what? I didn't want to be a concert pianist. It was an incredible training. And I love playing the piano. I mean, I play all the time. But I think the specificity of that life was something that that was what I wasn't drawn to. And more and more, I've come to that sort of feeling that so much of our lives is just like, how do you spend the hours of your day?

But even at that time when you were working on that film, that didn't ultimately become your professional life after college, right? So what happened was the movie, I thought that either our band was going to get signed. I mean, we were very serious about the band. We were talking to labels. Were you sort of the Scott Storch of this band?

I'm trying to figure out what your comp is. That's pretty much what it was. Yeah, I wished I was the Scott Storch. I mean, we were obsessed with like Chronic 2001, for example. But no, I was, you know, I thought the band was going to get signed. We were very, very serious about it. We performed all over the Northeast. Our high point was we opened for Jurassic 5 and Blackalicious.

So that was like, that was our dream. We were in college right about the same time. We were, okay, so exactly. You know, we were in it. And then I thought, or, and or, I thought the movie might come out. You know, like, oh, you know, we're going to find, it's going to get released. So unfortunately, at the time, neither of those things happened. Our band started to break up and then it became clear that the journey of the film would be very long and we didn't really know where things were going. And just by total happenstance, I met someone who had gone to

Harvard who himself was a composer who worked in finance. And he was like, you know, I was looking for a job. I wanted to live in New York. And he said, look, you know, we'll find something for you to do here. He sort of kind of saw the different things I was doing, and that seemed interesting to him. And he kind of took a chance on me. So I ended up learning to trade currencies. And I would give, you know, I would still give concerts.

I even gave concerts for like our investors. I would score all my friends short films all the time. I would write, you know, telephone hold music. I would do anything that would come my way because I just wanted to be doing music. But, you know, I think our lives all take a sort of circuitous path sometimes. And I reached a point after, you know, after quite a few years where I realized I was actually very unhappy and I wasn't following this idea that I think I'd always thought I would of being a musician.

And you give things time. I think you have to be patient, but it was very clear that being a currency trader wasn't my dream in life. And I quit my job and started making these pilgrimages out to Los Angeles to, you know, find anyone who would sit and have a coffee with me. What are those? I'm curious, particularly about those early meetings and days where you're trying to string things together. You know, how do you pitch yourself as a composer? It's a good question. What would, you know, I think it was, I would talk about, you know, the, the projects I'd worked on. I would talk about, you know, my band or, or, or this, this film. I had examples of my music, you know, from with like mixtapes. I would,

yeah, CD, you know, that I would have. And, uh, what else? Like, uh, you know, it was really, you know, looking for potential collaborators. And it wasn't even so much, hey, are you looking for a composer? It was, do you possibly know anyone who might know anybody who might know anyone who would sit down with me where I could possibly explore that? Because it's a vast world out here. And I had some very dear friends who would connect me with people. And it took a while because film music is its own universe. It's a very specific community of composers and orchestrators and engineers.

And there really is this very focused industry. But sometimes it's hard to find your way to it. And for me, in some ways, actually, I would say ASCAP. I'm part of ASCAP. And they were really phenomenal at providing advice and resources. And I applied and did a program called the ASCAP Columbia Workshop, where they would pair composers with graduate students in their film program who were making their senior thesis film. And basically for 10 weeks, you would have weekly seminars and you would work closely with a director. And then they would pay for an entire recording session with players from the New York

Philharmonic to come in. I mean, it was amazing. Wow. And, you know, I think I started just, you know, kind of trying to do anything. Like I would go to a lot of film festivals. That was something that was very helpful just to almost go through the motions of being in the industry. Like, you know, seeing what is the lifeblood of this industry?

Where do things happen? So I had no specific game plan, you know. And all the while I was still thinking, oh, maybe Domino One's going to come out one year. We never knew. So did you have a sort of the proverbial big break? Did you have a moment where you're like, this is what I'm going to do now, at least for this time period? When I quit my job, I said to myself, I mean, I knew this is what I wanted to do. It wasn't a, let's see if this works. I think I said to myself, like, I'm just

going to do this. And I knew that it would take a long time. It had already taken a long time. You know, I started, I mean, I started scoring Nick's film in 2001 and this was 2010, you know? So that's already nine years. And then I was like you know what I've been waiting a while I'm just going to keep doing my thing so yeah I didn't have a I don't know

I thought I assumed that somehow I would get some work and ultimately you did I did it was interesting

though it was through friends actually it was through a very close friend of mine who I met through other friends of mine in college Adam Leon who I'd been friends friends of mine in college, Adam Leon,

who I'd been friends with for a decade already. He was making his first feature debut, which was a movie called Give Me the Loot. And I remember hearing from a friend that he had finished shooting it and was editing it. And I think it was my friend Jake, and he was like,

have you talked to Adam about his movie? And I realized I hadn't. And I think it was my friend Jake, and he was like, have you talked to Adam about his movie? And I realized I hadn't. And I just reached out and I said, look, you know, no pressure. If you happen to need any music or anything at all, just let me know. And Adam was like, actually, no, we need a composer. So I worked with Adam on Gimme the Loop. And I had worked with him before. There was a short film that he co-directed with our other friend, Jack Riccobono, called Killer, a few

years before. So, you know, that was the thing. I was always scoring a lot of short films. That was just, I loved it. I thought it was awesome. So Gimme the Loop was the first indie feature and it got, you know, it was getting released. It went to Cannes. It won South by Southwest. So that was really the first kind of indie feature that I had that people may have seen. A serious credit. Yeah. So explain for me and people like me who don't know anything how the scoring process actually works. Because I feel like maybe it's a little bit different with how you and Barry work, but maybe in general you can help listeners understand where does it start?

Do you ever come in with any preconceived music? How much of it is born of conversations with filmmakers? Maybe you can walk us through a little bit of that methodology. Absolutely. It is, you know, there are many ways to score a film. And I think the biggest kind of takeaway is, you know, there are no rules. There's no right way or wrong way to score a movie. The key is a director has shot a film, and there's this whole film team that's putting this movie together, and it starts to be edited.

And there's this question of do we have music? What music? Where does it go? How does that work? to have had the, you know, I think the lucky sort of opportunity to work early on many of these projects where, you know, on Moonlight, I actually met Barry before he had shot the movie. We did talk about some early ideas. On Beale Street, it was the same thing where we started early. Adam McKay and I, we do the same thing where we actually talk. I met Adam while he was shooting the big short, but I was actually able to send him ideas and play him some music, um, you know, before he started even putting the movie together. But the big picture

thing is it's a, uh, you know, it's an exploration. Um, the music, the way that the music works in a movie is going to be different for every composer and every director. And that's kind of what's beautiful about it. You know, there's no, there's no one way to do it. So for me, the way I approach it is you have these early conversations. Ideally, you read a script possibly or you get to hear from the director how they want the movie to feel. Do they have any early ideas musically?

Is it going to be sci-fi texture? Is it going to be strings? Even an early instinct, which those early ideas, there's no way to know if they're going to be right. You know, the whole process is this very kind of iterative, exploratory, experimental thing. I mean, there may very well be composers who work differently, for sure. I mean, you know, it's a very personal approach. But I think for me, I learn what the movie wants as I go. Like on Beale Street, there were certain ideas that Barry would say to me. Like early on, he said he was imagining the sound of brass and horns. It's the first thing he said. And this was before he shot the movie. So I started experimenting with flugelhorns and French horns and cornet and trumpets, and I wrote some music.

And I played it for him right when he was doing some early cuts of the movie. And what was interesting was he loved the music on its own. And then when we put it with the picture, it just wasn't quite right. It was missing something. It didn't feel like it was, there's something about music, I think when it works in a film that it just feels like it's almost like inside the movie. It's just in it. It's connected. It's in the fabric of the movie. And there's, and when a cue doesn't quite work, you know, when you take a piece of music and it just

doesn't quite work, it feels like it's like sitting on top of the movie. It just doesn't. And I don't, I have no idea what, why. I don't know what that is. It is really mysterious. It's alchemical, yeah. It's alchemical, but you have to respect it. There's something – and so much of this process is being kind of humble with your ideas because it's about the movie. We want the movie to be the best it can be. I want the feeling of the movie to be what the director is hoping their movie could feel like. So until we

get there, I'm not done and I'm not happy until we're at that moment. So for example, with Beale Street, we discovered that it was strings and in particular, it was the sound of cellos that represented something of this feeling of love that's in Beale Street. Because Beale Street's about love and it's about injustice. And as regards love, it deals with so many kinds of love. There's an almost sense of divine, unconditional love in the film. There's romantic love. There's erotic love. There's the love that parents have for their children.

There's a feeling of friendship and brotherly love. And the strings, the way that we would evolve the strings through the film was all to that end. It was somehow those cellos felt like love. And then that opened a door of saying, well, what if I took the music I wrote for Brass, what if I played that on cellos? And that would open a door. And then we'd say, well, actually, what if I then mix some brass back in with these cellos? And we start just uncovering things, and every scene is different.

So it's a very, I don't want that to sound overly complicated. It's really just a journey. Barry and Joy and Nat, his editors, are working together. They're trying things out with the film. They're seeing how the film's going to live as one piece. And I'm doing the same thing where I'm looking at different sequences and I'm trying things out. And we're having these conversations where Barry will come to my studio in New York and we'll sit in the room for days on end and watch the movie and order Shake Shack and just like try stuff out. And it's really fun because we don't know. We really don't. And yet when you find that thing that works, it's a feeling unlike anything else.

And I think those are those moments that you're really sort of striving for, those moments where you discover, you write something, and then the way that it connects is sort of inexplicable. And I really do think that's one of the things that I'm always seeking is those kind of special moments where on a very personal level, you know, you've learned something, you've emotionally kind of discovered something and you've done it together. You know, it's not just me, it's not me by myself doing that. It's me and Barry, we're sitting there together and we're both feeling something. And it's a really joyful kind of, you know, moment when that happens. Like Barry and I always talk about, we remember those moments,

you know, like we were talking about that piece, Middle of the World. Like I remember when I sort of connected something there with Barry, I did it in front of him. You know, I was like writing this with him there. And, you know, those moments we, I don't think we'll ever forget. Is it ever not that way? Because even as we're talking, this is the second time we've spoken, and you've already made two references to different physicists in our conversations, one on mic and one off. And you're obviously very- I apologize. No, no, it's fascinating, but you're a brilliant person. And also you have this background in hip hop too, which is this sort of producorial style of music where you kind of have signature sounds

and you have moves and maybe you have sort of an archive of things you can go to. And I'm wondering if you have like a bag of tricks, for lack of a better phrase, that you know, like I'm going into a project. I know I've always wanted to do something like this. I know that I've, you know, I have an idea for X. Do you approach certain projects that way too? That's an awesome question because I wrote so much music when I was in college and in the years after that. And I think one of the things that happens is there are certain, we all have certain things that we like, especially musicians, I think. There are certain chords that move you a certain way, there are certain shapes of melodies that just mean something to you, you know, I mean, I think music does mean something to so many people.

And I think for me, you know, as a composer, there are, there are sort of things that you gravitate towards. But I would actually say that i often try to go away from those things because it's almost easy to fall into oh you know i i like that move and then you know you find yourself doing it you're like no i've done that like i don't want to do that again or i don't want to do that right now you know or or is there a new way to think about that you know um i mean there are certain chord progressions that mean something to me in some way. And I think if I ever go in a certain direction, I want to always keep it kind of new, if that makes sense. And I think actually even down to playing the piano, where piano is such a physical thing.

It's this, you know, your body learns the piano as much or maybe even more than your mind does sometimes. You know what I mean? I feel like when I sit at the piano, my body just sort of goes to certain places. And because of that, I think if I'm writing, I don't always write at the piano. I often write at the computer or, you know, when I'm traveling, I'll just write with, you know, pencil and paper. But at the piano, there are certain things you go towards. And I will often try to play in keys that are not the usual keys because your hands are sort of almost forced to go to places they don't usually go. And you find stuff that you wouldn't otherwise.

Like if I'm going to D minor or C or A, I'm going to go to similar stuff that I would. But if I'm like, you know what? Let's be an F sharp minor. Let's be an E flat minor. Let's be somewhere like that. I don't know. For me, I would find some other stuff there just because my hands are sort of like, oh, where are we?

I'm interested in the language that you and filmmakers have before you start writing or even while you're in the act of writing. Is it because I think people imagine that if you're working with Adam on Vice. Yeah. Is it like magisterial but doomed? You know, like what are the do you have like a checklist of words that you're identifying and then you're applying the sort of feelings and instruments and notes that you need to write to fit those words? There is a sort of mapping that starts to happen. And I think the key thing for me is always talking to directors about emotions. That's my focus.

Even among musicians, I think talking about musical terminology doesn't always help you. If I'm talking to an orchestra as we're recording, saying I need more of a crescendo here as we're going into, you know, G minor, like, sure, that's very specific, but I might actually say, here's what's happening in the scene. Here's actually how I want you to feel like this is a moment of doom or whatever, you know, that the drama or the storytelling of that, I think is much more important. And for, for scoring and for working with directors, it really is about that. We're saying, A, what's happening in the scene? How do you want to feel?

We can explore that emotion. Is this a sad moment? Or there's the other question of what are we actually trying to say? Because the music is not always supposed to enhance what you're seeing. The music oftentimes is supposed to tell you something you're not seeing. You want to hear something else. It could be that you're seeing a moment of doom, but you're actually supposed to be hearing where we're going, which is love or another character or something else

happening. And I think those are the things I really love where the music kind of plays its own story. And it's actually the interaction of those two stories that opens up this other thing. Because sometimes, you know, when you're, you know, there's that metaphor of like a hat on a hat. Like, you know, you don't need a hat on a hat. There are times amplifying something, of course, absolutely. You know, there are times action needs to be amplified.

But I'm always fascinated when it's, you know, you're seeing X and you're hearing Y. It's really interesting. I'm curious, you know, you have a very sophisticated understanding of the films that you work on, perhaps more so than some of your peers. You can agree or disagree about that. I'm interested in the way that you choose projects because there seems to be something progressive and forward thinking about the films that you work on. And I'm wondering how important it is that you believe in the story and believe in the ideas of the filmmaker to do something or, and maybe things will change in the future if you'd be willing to work on something that is

sort of more of an intellectual challenge, but not necessarily something you feel aligned with. I think that music is a very, you know, music is very special to me and connecting emotions and sharing those emotions I think is very you know has a meaning in a way and I do really try to choose projects that I think have at least to me a deeper significance

where I feel I can connect to it if I don't feel you know A having a director an amazing director is something that, I mean, I would go to the ends of the earth for Barry Jenkins or Adam McKay. So whatever Barry wants to work on, I would love to do. So that's already a simple answer there. But I think in a big picture sense, I think films are a way of disseminating not just ideas but feelings about ideas. And oftentimes it can be a very powerful thing where people really understand things through, I think, through, you know, people understand things through their gut in a way, through their feelings.

That's maybe a deeper kind of understanding than, you know, if we're just talking about ideas, you can agree or disagree. But when you feel those ideas, it's a whole other kind of state. And I think that, you know, if I can work on a film that I believe in and I can be a part of creating a sort of sense of emotion around certain, you know, ideas that I believe in, I think that for me, that's a very, that can be a very poignant experience. This is a ringer podcast, so I'm legally obligated to ask you about Succession. That's our favorite show here. You wrote the theme, obviously,

and all of the music in the show, is that right? Yes, all of it. Just can you talk a little bit about the construction of the theme, which is a bit of a theme song in these offices? Absolutely. By the way, thank you. Sure, yeah, of course.

No, I love working on Succession. When I first talked to Adam about it quite a few years ago, and there was a period of time where I worked with Adam and Jesse Armstrong, creator of the show, showrunner, and we met up and I played some early ideas. And it really was kind of what we were talking about before, where there were these early experiences. This was while they were shooting the pilot, where I invited – actually, Jesse came over to my studio in New York. And I was just playing him some ideas, you know, just – again, who knows where these things come from. But I remember saying to him, like, I think it would be cool if there were, like, weird, like, zen bell sounds. And he was like, great.

And then I was like, you know, Waystar Royco, they have sort of a theme. I want to like write that theme and then I want to, you know, think about ways of weaving things together. And then I played him a couple ideas that had this kind of mixture of a huge hip-hop beat. And, you know, I guess I would characterize it as sort of like an insane, out-of-tune piano. Mm-hmm. You know, sort of almost circus-like piano. And I think there was something sort of dark,

but it was also kind of absurd at the same time. And for me, that sort of opened a door. And Jesse was into it, right? I mean, he was like, I like this. He's like, right away. How could you not? Yeah. You know, he was feeling it right away. And, and that was exciting because he was so open to me, you know, to me trying stuff and Adam was

the same way. And, um, when I was working on, uh, on vice and Beale street, I was actually living at McKay's house with the McKay's in their pool house. Oh, wow. So I would over here in LA over here. Exactly. And, um, you know, I lived with the McKay's for the house. Oh, wow. Over here in LA. Over here, exactly. And I lived with the McKays for the first time on the Big Short that summer. So you're really in the family. I mean, I love the McKays. I love the McKays. But it's great because we had the chance to talk about a lot of things, and I could play Adam ideas and show him things.

I mean, Adam loves working on these projects, and I do too. So we really do immerse ourselves full time. We are constantly working on this stuff. But yeah, I think the succession sound evolved from those early conversations where I felt that I wanted there to be something classical, especially with some of the piano motifs.

And for me, something very important with any project is how do we evolve it? Because I think that's actually the, for me, that's the more interesting journey than anything else is if I come up with an idea that feels like it's connected to a project somehow, where does it go? I don't want always 10 ideas.

That's not going to connect things what if I have a few ideas but those ideas themselves are going to shape shift over the course of a project and we are going to feel that change or we're going to learn something and how it's changing that to me is something really interesting like the development of those ideas so with succession you know I started with some of the piano ideas, then strings, then weird woodwinds, then, you know, as we go, guitars and banjos. And, you know, I mean, it was just this constant kind of fun. And, yeah, Adam and Jesse were just always encouraging. So, you know, that is the dream where you have collaborators who – and look, not everything always works. I mean,

there's always, you know, there's always times where they're like, you know what, I don't know if we, you know. Sure, of course. I think one of the biggest learning experiences for me was that, you know, television is different from movies because there's so much more real estate. I mean, you have 10 hours of material versus, let's say, two hours on a movie. You know, what do you do with all that space? And the bigger question was, where do you put music? I didn't want to compete with the tone in certain places. If something's supposed to be funny, how do we explore that? And Succession really was a fascinating tonal landscape

where it is both very serious and dark at times, but it's also very absurdly funny. I, but it's also, you know, very absurdly funny. I mean, it's both of those things. And for me, I think the answer was the music always has to be serious. Nicol, just a couple more questions for you. You're working on season two, I presume. Yeah. That's exciting.

Just started right now. Is there a score recently that you heard that you're jealous of? I would say, I mean, there are scores that I think, you know, I'm impressed with, you know, and I think it's, I think very much for me, you know, it's not, there's no, you know, there's no emotion or competition because for me, like everyone, you know, when someone scores a movie, it's, it is that kind of personal expression. So, you know, definitely not a jealousy thing in any way. I was very impressed

with Anna Meredith's score for Eighth Grade. I thought that was amazing. Yeah, what about it to you? That was unique. That was really unique. And I thought that, you know, for me, a good score is something that feels like it's almost like bringing out the soul of a film. And it was so woven into that universe that I actually try to do that thing when I'm watching movies sometimes where I'm like, let me imagine that score not there. And I couldn't. I couldn't imagine like some other score. And so I think that's always kind of the testament where if a score feels like inevitable, it

feels like there was no other choice there, you know? And so that was one where, you know, I couldn't imagine the movie without that. And I love the movie. That's very good. Is there any part of you that wants to go back to, um, concert pianist? Is there any, do you have any pangs of, should I be a more forward-facing performer? I've gotten through the work I've been doing, I've gotten the opportunity to play more. I know that. That's why I asked. And I, and I love, I love playing. I love playing. Um, I've record, you know, almost all the piano that I, uh, that's in projects I will playing. I love playing. I record almost all the piano that's in projects I will play, for example, except if it's orchestral and if I'm conducting, then I won't play.

Okay. So like in Vice, the solo piano is me. The piano that you would hear in an orchestra is not me. That's a wonderful pianist named Dave Hartley in London. Nick, I end every episode of this show by asking filmmakers, what's the last great thing that they have seen? So you are technically a filmmaker. What is the last great thing that you have seen? That's a good question. You know, honestly, I've watched it a few times, but I love Roma. I thought it was amazing.

Not the first person to say that. I thought it was amazing. And I, no joke today I was able to meet Alfonso Cuaron, and I was just sort of stammering when I met him. I think I said something like, I think about Children of Men every day. He was like, oh. I feel like the level of my incoherence, it's proportional to my feeling for his film.

So yeah, I would say Roma just because to me it felt like this world. It felt like it was more than a movie in a way. I felt like I was teleported somewhere and just existing there watching this story. Nick, that's what your music does for people. So thanks for doing this. Good luck at the Oscars. Thank you.